Sayonara PHP 4!

Excerpt of the End-of-Life announcement:

The PHP development team hereby announces that support for PHP 4 will continue until the end of this year only. After 2007-12-31 there will be no more releases of PHP 4.4. We will continue to make critical security fixes available on a case-by-case basis until 2008-08-08. Please use the rest of this year to make your application suitable to run on PHP 5.

CrossLoop: great product, but is it a trojan horse? - Update (2)

The problem I was facing with CrossLoop / AVG has been RESOLVED.

If you're still facing similar problems, please try updating your AVG. Mine worked with CrossLoop using program version 7.5.476 and virus database 269.10.6/900.

Thanks to the teams at CrossLoop and AVG that were behind this, and many thanks to everyone that shared their experience via comments on this blog.

A great product listens to its users -- kudos to CrossLoop!

Related links:

• CrossLoop: great product, but is it a trojan horse? - Update (1)
• CrossLoop: great product, but is it a trojan horse?

CrossLoop: great product, but is it a trojan horse? - Update (1)

Just received a reply from CrossLoop with regards to a recent problem. No solution until AVG fixes it!

I am DISAPPOINTED. Read the email reply below.

While I trust that they have taken great steps in ensuring tight security, why are they offloading the problem to me? It may have been a better approach to take proactive steps to address this matter, either with AVG directly or by acknowledging it as a possible problem, on their website. I would consider AVG as a very popular free anti-virus software; this type of problem, irrespective of whether it is AVG's error, limits the CrossLoop user experience significantly.

This is what CrossLoop had to say in their email reply (pasted as-is):

Greetings from Crossloop tech support,

Thank you for using Crossloop and for the report! We appreciate your support. It has been brought to our attention that AVG Software is identifying our file CrossloopConnect.exe as a Trojan Virus. This is a mistake on their part. We at Crossloop are very serious about security and have done everything in our power to make Crossloop safe to use. Please go to the following page of our Web Site if you would like to read about our Security model http://www.crossloop.com/security. Please note that no other antivirus software identifies CrossloopConnect.exe as a virus. Please report this mistake to AVG so they can correct it.

Regards,
Joseph Stark
Tech Support
Crossloop Inc.
Joes@Crossloop.com
www.Crossloop.com
Stay 'in the loop" @ the CrossLoop Blog http://crossloop.typepad.com

Rule #1 with customer / technical support: "Never offload your problems onto your users!"

Related links:

• CrossLoop: great product, but is it a trojan horse?

CrossLoop: great product, but is it a trojan horse?

I've been using CrossLoop a lot lately for screen-sharing. It has helped in cases where remote troubleshooting is required, and firewall settings are cumbersome to change.



What is CrossLoop:
CrossLoop is a FREE secure screen sharing utility designed for people of all technical skill levels. CrossLoop extends the boundaries of VNC’s traditional screen sharing by enabling non-technical users to get connected from anywhere on the Internet in seconds without changing any firewall or router settings. It only takes a few minutes to setup and no signup is required.

Strangely, AVG (v7.5.476, Virus DB v269.10.2/894) has been detecting my instance of CrossLoop as a trojan horse. CrossLoop now refuses to work. Has anyone else faced a similar problem?



*p/s: sorry for the geeky post!

Create giant posters in 60 seconds

That's right! Super cool billboard posters, up to 20 metres in size using your regular inkjet printer.

RASTERBATOR is a slick piece of software that allows you to turn any photo into giant posters. Here's how they describe it:

The Rasterbator creates huge, rasterized images from any picture. Upload an image, print the resulting multi-page pdf file and assemble the pages into extremely cool looking poster up to 20 meters in size.

You can either download the software to be used offline, or use their online Flash app which works just as well.

Example of what's possible:



Here's a screenshot of what the online app looks like. It's a simple step-by-step process. By the way, this one depicts Roundhead & Double D, the guys behind Traffic on TraxxFM:



Related links:

• Rasterbator: Homepage
• Rasterbator: Gallery of user-submitted photos