On request on commenter, I have taken a look in Elgg platform. We are developing separate inhouse platform now, but it is always nice to look at different code and see whats made correctly and what can we question.

Let’s see how this Elgg does and compares to others.

The first impression is Elgg platform significantly resembles drupal with some facebookish look. The platform itself is hook based, though plugins use more user-friendly system than drupal (which I hate). The comparison to both Boonex and Drupal is quite obvious.

The page builder, which builds pages from widgets, is both good and bad thing. Good in terms of usability and reuse, bad in terms of performance on heavy sites. The Elgg shares with boonex profile fields builder as well. I would say plugins would be a better choice for extending profiles.

Negatives

1. Elgg uses myisam tables for storing information. These tables are faster, though you cannot create triggers/stored procedures or use foreign keys to ensure data integrity.

2. Setup process still needs some fine-tuning in Elgg platform – you have to enter information correctly at first time. It is written at once into files/database and if you mess up, you will have to fix it directly as site will not work. That is a big problem in Elgg, also some of the setup points should be simplified, including the data directory location. Note: system is broken if you put data directory inside of your web directory. 

3. Page/profile builder would need to be reconsidered.

4. Discussion system is quite weak compared to drupal. Though nothing can be worse than boonex.

5. No custom routing. Lots of links are hard-coded. The www root is hardcoded badly in fact, with little or no checking when setting it up.

6. Also, too much configuration stuff is loaded from mysql database. There should be a pre-generated config file somewhere for better performance.

7. Requirements for system is quite specific. Not everyone uses php 5.2.x and sometimes you have to leave older versions of php to maintain legacy code. 

Positives

1. I simply like the way plugin system is done. It is more elegant than drupal one, simpler, though powerful enough.

2. Templating is definitely better than Boonex. The whole coding of modules separates DB, control and display code nicely, which is a good thing.

3. Elgg has potential on avoiding drupals problem with amount of modules needed to construct working site. It’s maybe me, but I hate systems which consist of smallish modules that do only small parts of useful task separately. Like 3-5 modules to make audio upload and play work in drupal nicely (not exact numbers, remember from times we tried to do something useful from it a year ago).

4. Also, data model where you do not have to extend database schema and work on existing set is (possibly) a nice thing. As you have less things to worry about. 

Overall

Elgg has lots of potential to be better than many of the choices. It does not cut to be replacement for custom in-house developed social system, though. Some things have to be added natively, like custom routing, which would allow using elgg as replacement for allready existing systems. This is kind of a must to have for us.  Also, the performance of system is questionable. 

I still recommend to give it a try, especially if you considered boonex as choice.

I have to admit that Komodo Edit 4.4 is the editor I use the most for editing and developing. What I like is code collapsing/expanding, quite nice syntax help, also SSH2 support, which is a must for any editor. Additionally, it is free (there is a paid Komodo IDE version too). Overall, quite nice tool.

However, there are couple of points where it could improve as well.

First, Komodo edit’s project management is far from satisfactory. It automatically adds files in the same directory as project file to project, which is not desirable behavior sometimes. Quite often project files are used for keeping shortcuts to important files in remote server only, so the “projects” are quite messed up. The more project you got, the more messy it looks

What’s even worse, the files in project are handled by their name, and not by name and location like it should be. So, you can not add 2 files with same name to same project, even if locations are completely different. One co-worker even lost content of one file due to this “nice” Komodo edit’s feature.

The remote access to files needs a fine-tune too. In previous versions, reloading a project would change active remote dir to the one of last file loaded. Nowadays it does not change it, and it feels like a downgrade in capabilities – I have to browse more till I can edit the files required.

Overall veto: Komodo Edit is more geared towards local project development with some ocasional edits on remote server. Quite good tool if you are cheap

It looks like only couple of weeks passed from the time I updated to 2.3, and it was time to update to 2.5 version of WordPress. This upgrade went seamless for a change, and after couple of moments I was greeted by completely unfamiliar look in admin page.

The layout is different. The menu is divided into couple of logically-related parts and the color scheme had changed somewhat as well. Writing posts page got somewhat different as well. It is clear, that it will take some time to get used to this.

The strange thing which forced some headache was that my visual editing mode was set off. Would guess it was due to Danns fck editor plugin, which i removed during instalation. That was easily fixed with tweaking the setting in admin panel.

I have also upgraded couple of plugins I use and switched to different tracking code by google analytics. Still have to get my spellchecker working.

Wont say that I’ll miss old wordpress Overall, a good upgrade.

This will be a short review of some of the leading anti-spyware solutions. Mostly the talk will be about good or bad things and things they should improve. Nor will I touch some of subjects that might be important for some of the users.

So, what constitutes good spyware remover? In my opinion, the most important thing is not number of parasites it removes, but how fast it reacts for new important parasites. This is true for all 3 parties in this story: affiliate, manufacturer and end-user. However, it’s a bit different what the important parasites are.

Manufacturers have no time to fully check and add all the spyware that is emerging, although some of them try to do so. They risk on adding parasites that noone uses that much, that are not widely spread. However, they want to increase the numbers they show on their frontpage too. Some of them try to do this artificially (rogues), some of them add easy “parasites” like tracking cookies just to maintain the image that they are capable on finding something (especially when there is nothing else to be found). They need the reputation of being biggest, fastest, best and so on.

The hype after spyware is on the downturn, and the most important parasites for the end-user are not the ones that steal information and spy on you, but the ones that you see most. Funny enough, the most seen parasites are fake removers themselves (also called rogue, PUA, malware, corrupt, etc). Who cares nowadays about rootkits and keyloggers? Probably business people only or dudes that try to hide what they do on the net from their wife. Also, end user does not care that much about the Trojans that are responsible for bringing the parasites on your system. Or spam bots… Except when they disturb they torrent downloads.

So who’s doing good or bad?

Lets start with the oldie free SpyBot S&D. It might sound harsh, but I am not planning installing it on any of my PC, even if I might suggest it as alternative for others. Why it is so for such a highly rated remover? Well… It is driven by community. And it gained both best and worst from this fact. It has passionate developers that believe to know too well what is right and wrong. And here are the problem This remover is clear example how one can focus on adding software that is neither harmful nor dangerous in their removal list, feeling legitimate on doing so and still miss parasites that are important. For example they still try to remove newest version of spyware remover spyhunter, which comes with uninstaller and is assumed to be legitimate remover, but entered Virus Heat on 20 days later than us, a long while after the infections started. Good Job!

SuperAntiSpyware. I like it. I really like it, though not their affiliate system . Why is that, you might ask ? Well… Free edition is quite good, even better than their comparison shows. It is one of the best runners up in the market. Currently, I am waiting for a new version of it and we will see how much better it got.

CounterSpy . Despite good ratings, I have a feeling that this software has some updating problems as well. I hope they will fix them.

Malwarebytes anti-malware. Same category as superantispyware, however their free edition is somewhat weaker. Paid edition gives lots of promise. It is quite a nice tool overall. It is heavily promoted in bleepingcomputers.com, I assume they have some standing deal or belong to the same people, but that’s not so important.

Spyware Doctor Well, this software is very good, as it has quite small update time. Much better than Spybot. Probably the best paid remover.

SpywareSweeper. I do not understand these guys. They change affiliate system without a warning and often do only country –specific promotions through affiliates. They forget to warn affiliates about changes (or we missed it). Product is nice though, but would not say that better then SpywareDoctor both from user and affiliate view. That’s why I see less promotion of it on the net.