Month: October 2015

Posted on

EC2 VPC VPN Gets an Update with NAT Traversal, Additional Encryption Options, and More

You can use Amazon Virtual Private Cloud to create a logically isolated section of the AWS Cloud. Within the VPC, you can define your desired IP address range, create subnets, configure route tables, and so forth. You can also use a network gateway to connect the VPC to your existing on-premises network using a hardware Virtual Private Network (VPN) connection. The VPN running in the AWS Cloud (also known as a VPN gateway or VGW) communicates with a customer gateway (CGW) on your network or in your data center (read about Your Customer Gateway to learn more).

Source: EC2 VPC VPN Update – NAT Traversal, Additional Encryption Options, and More | AWS Official Blog

This raises some interesting possibilities for secure applications that would benefit from the heightened security for the data being moved.

Posted on

My Twitter Digest for 10/28/2015

Posted on

My Twitter Digest for 10/27/2015

Posted on

3rd Hackcess to Justice hackathon winners include app built on #Drupal8

After two days of brainstorming and collaboration in North Carolina’s capital city, lawyers, students and coders developed legal apps to aid farm workers, streamline legal aid cases and evaluate legal
…
The $500 third place prize went to Michael Silverman, a developer. His submission of a Legal Aid eligibility test is intended to provide a simple, easy to use, mobile friendly interface that allows individuals to learn if they are eligible for legal aid by answering a few questions. Silverman plans to continue to work on the app to be accessible through voice prompts which will be translatable to different languages.

 

Source: App to aid migrant workers wins 3rd Hackcess to Justice hackathon :: ABA Journal

That third place prize went to an app built on Drupal 8 as a custom module. That’s pretty cool. All of the projects worked on are on the Hackcess To Justice submission page.

Posted on

IBM is reportedly going to buy Weather Company’s digital assets

International Business Machines Corp (IBM.N) is nearing an agreement to buy the Weather Company’s digital assets in a deal that could be announced as soon as this week, according to a source familiar with the matter.

Source: IBM nears deal to buy Weather Company’s digital assets: source :: Reuters

The Weather Company’s digital assets include weather.com, the Weather Underground, and a bunch of platform apps. The weather.com website is generally considered one of the largest Drupal powered sites in the world.

This seems lit a bit of an odd move for IBM since it looks like a content play. Big Blue is more likely after the data that drives the digital properties and the talent pool it brings.

Posted on

My Twitter Digest for 10/26/2015

Posted on

Why is design in open source projects often ugly?

If you know a professional designer who is contributing time to an open source project, chances are they fall into one of these three categories, explained Garth Braithwaite, who spoke Monday at the All Things Open conference:
1) They were tricked into it or peer­ pressured by a friend who is also an open source project manager.
2) They work for a corporate sponsor, so they’re paid for their contributions.
3) They’re a designer who just so happens to be a developer.

Source: Report from All Things Open: Design in open source | Opensource.com

Open source projects often attract top flight developers, but designers are few and far between. The result is a lot of function over form design that is often utilitarian and ugly. This articles looks at why this is and what might be done about it.