So I started to do a little snooping. I discovered many of my PHP files had a large string of characters at the start of every file. I also notice server not found errors in my log. I googled the error and server and discovered that this is a known WordPress virus. The solution was to eradicate it from every PHP file. I did, it was present in several dozen files including some plugins. But, things were no better, maybe worse! Now, my admin pages were all OK, editing worked, etc. But my blog’s pages came up empty, nata, nothing. No code at all in the pages. I spent some time on the WP forums and had some things to try but none worked.

I finally did a complete removal of my entire wordpress directory – except my wp-config and my uploads directory in wp-content. I did a manual reinstall of WP 2.9.1 and logged in. Same thing, no blog pages. Frustrated I went back to WP forums but found nothing helpful. Then I had an idea, I went to the Themes admin page and changed my theme to the Classic 1.5 theme. Reloaded, and voila, everything worked fine! I reinstalled my favorite theme – Vesper – and plugins and all is good on the EclecticGuy blog again. What a pain that was though. I changed all my passwords and admin login just to be safe.

Did anyone figure out what that drawing above is? It’s the common cold virus!

Here is a short overview from the blog to describe what we are doing and who we are:

Hello!

This blog has been put up to track the work of the Van Buren Boys, a crack team of fishing nuts who have been charged with creating a historically accurate ca. 1850s fishing kit that would have been used by President Martin van Buren. In the following weeks we will have photos, commentary, and articles from the Van Buren Boys updating everyone on the progress of the work.

Trust me when I say you will all be blown away by this project!

– Dr. Todd
–
Dr. Todd Larson who heads the group and will be writing the history of Van Buren and Fishing.

Dr. John Elder is an accomplished rod maker and woodworker extraordinaire. John will be charged with constructing an 1850s-period Porter General rod and a period tackle box.

Philip Allen is a metalsmith genius. Philip will be in charge of constructing period 1850s metal spinners and flights, which Van Buren used for muscky fishing on the St. Lawrence.

Royce Stearns is a fly tier so good you think the flies will fly off his vise. Royce will be tying period 1850s flies.

Dr. Michael Hackney is a renaissance man who can make just about anything. Michael will be reproducing a period 1850s fishing reel in brass and constructing a horsehair line.

Follow the blog to watch as we create an exhibit worthy of a President!

Cheers!

The way it works is quite easy, when you attempt to connect to the Web in a Hotspot (with Wifi enabled of course), an AT&T page asks for your iPhone’s telephone #. A few seconds later, you get an SMS message with a link to click to enable your access at that Hotspot. Took all of 15 seconds for the entire sequence.

I give AT&T a lot of credit for taking this big step to support their iPhone customer base.

Back in “the day” we dialed in to on-line communities called bulletin board systems (BBS) using 300 baud modems. My first modem was even acoustically coupled! This was back in the mid 1970s. There were relatively few communities back then – basically any individual with a personal computer, 1 or more modems connected to it, and some central theme or topic could set these up. It was tough to even find what was out there since there were no central directories for these message boards. But some of these BBSes became very valuable for knowledge sharing amongst interested users from all over the country and sometimes, the world.

Even back then I had a lot of interests and I used this new technology (which, of course, was another interest) to find experts and discover knowledge. From the beginning, it was easy to find BBSes that supported communities of early computer geeks – hardware message boards helped me build my first Z80-based computer from scratch and programming boards helped me learn to program it in assembly language. But I also found and participated in BBS sites that specialized in Studebaker cars and their restoration (my first car was a 1957 Silver Hawk), black powder gun making and shooting, archery, remote controlled model airplanes, remote controlled model cars, and one of my favorites, a fly fishing BBS with trip reports, techniques and fly tying patterns.

The Usenet and commercial BBSes with subscription fees started to emerge – CompuServe, Q-Link/AOL, and too many others to recall. By the mid 80s you could, with a little effort, find information on most any interest you might have. What was amazing about all of these, was that they had very active user communities that were willing to share their knowledge, help newbies, and just socialize. These were the precursors to today’s Web Forums. I think many of the earliest participants may have come out of the Amateur Radio world (btw, amateur radio operators were one of, if not the, first to use technology to create virtual communities consisting of members from all over the planet. They still do in fact).

These early BBSes offered 2 primary capabilities; 1) the ability to traverse a file directory and download or upload documents and 2) threaded discussions with other members. Virtual communities were simple but effective then. There was a lot of camaraderie on these early BBS sites with very few lurkers – most sites had near 100% participation. This was probably due to the fact that It took a fair amount of effort to find and visit these sites, so users that stuck around after their first visit or 2 stayed engaged.

As the internet became accessible to the masses, most of these BBSes gave way to Usenet and commercial forums like CompuServe. For a short time in the early 1990s, Gopher was hot but it quickly gave way to the new, very cool World Wide Web (WWW). The Web really lowered the accessibility bar (a good thing BTW). Now people from all over the world can form communities for all topics imaginable. In just a few decades a completely new, universally accessible and extremely rich communication and social networking infrastructure was created more or less organically. Even though Social Computing is a hot topic today, people have been leveraging computers and networks to help and learn from one another for quite some time.

Here are a few of my favorite communities (in no particular order) in which I actively participate:

Pelican Porsche Forum

Early Porsche 911S Registry

Fly Tying and Rod Building Forums

New England Kayak Fishing

RC Groups

Facebook

LinkedIn

Photography-On-The-Net

1) Mobile device manufacturers are keeping tight controls on application development on their platforms

With the exception of Apple’s iPhone and the future possibility of Google’s Android, developers have to jump through hoops and pay for the privilege of developing on the platform. Talk about stifling innovation! These same mobile device manufacturers have not put any significant effort in to improving their Web browsers – the technology that can either make or break the “Mobile Web”. If the mobile browser is inadequate, the mobile browsing experience will suffer and users will not flock to the web. If these platforms were developer friendlier, innovation on the browser would have started sooner. The Mobile Firefox project could provide some relief.

2) The mobile carriers are gouging the market with high cost data services

With the high cost of data services (upwards of $35/month), only hard core technophiles and those with corporate expense accounts can afford/justify it. Think about how ridiculous .25 an SMS message or $10/month for unlimited text messaging is! Text Messaging – the stuff you do for free on IM on your laptop! And with the pitiful browsing support on most handsets, the Mobile Web is not going to drive users to subscribe. The folks at RIM have at least got email “right” and that does indeed drive a lot of corporate usage.

Have the device manufacturers and carriers killed the Mobile Web? I don’t think, so but they have kept it languishing for a long time. Back in 1999, the wireless Palm VII offered the first glimmer of how powerful and simple the Mobile Web could be. The service was $15/month (for the base limited page view service) and special “Web Clipping” apps were required (and there was no fee to develop them). But you know what, they worked really well and a lot of companies jumped on the “PQA” (Palm Query Application) bandwagon. I bought a lot of books from Amazon using the Amazon PQA and finding the nearest Starbucks was dead simple. Without GPS, the Palm VII could locate you based on the cell network – this was in 1999! How cool is that? I finally have this capability again on my iPhone.

I see a change in the tide coming. Firstly, the iPhone is truly spectacular. It tears down the barriers of a closed system – which will allow real unimpeded innovation. It provides an amazing Web browser, the Mobile Safari browser. Granted, Mobile Safari has some limitations in its first release but, wow, what an amazing browser it is. The touch interface is superb and the resolution and colors are spectacular.

Secondly, the carriers are starting to see competitive pricing pressure. Sprint recently announced their Simply Everything Plan that gives unlimited everything – voice, SMS, email, Web browsing, GPS, picture and video messaging – for $99.99/month. Still a big premium to pay but a step in the right direction. Even the iPhone rate plans are attempting to reduce the cost of unlimited data services.

So, what does all this mean? If you’ve ever used a Palm VII, Blackberry or, especially, an iPhone, you know how convenient and powerful mobile Web, email and data services done “right” can be. The iPhone is mere weeks away from ripping down the walls that have held in innovation for too long, Android will (hopefully) follow within a year. We are not hearing the last gasps of the Mobile Web, rather, I am reminded of that scene at the end of Braveheart when William Wallace takes in a breath of air and clearly yells … “FREEDOM”!