A while ago, I had the need for a file comparison utility to compare the difference between files on my Web server and those on my computer. After a bit of searching, I came across a utility called Beyond Compare.

From the beginning, I was impressed at just how easy it is to use Beyond Compare. All you do is open one file, then “compare” it to another file. Beyond Compare scans the files and identifies all of the differences. Then, you can click on the up and down arrows in the menu at the top of the utility, and it will automatically transport you to the highlighted differences in the files.

One of the biggest pros I’ve found in this software, besides its ease of use and its power, is the fact that the trial operates the way a trial really should. You can download a 30-day trial from the Web site, and, unlike other trial software packages, Beyond Compare actually lets you use the software for 30 days. Rather than expiring after 30 calendar days have passed, Beyond Compare (at least, the 2.5.2 version I have installed at work) doesn’t expire until you’ve actually used it over 30 days. Each time you use the utility, if it is a different day than the last time you used it, one day is subtracted from the trial period. Therefore, even if you keep the utility installed for six months, if you only use it twice, you still have 28 days left in your trial period.

Once you want to buy the software, though, it’s very reasonable. The price right now is $30 for a license.

NetTuts has a good look into 5 common css issues and how to resolve them easily and quickly. The five css issues are:

• Why are my styles not effective?
• The difference between relative and absolute positioning
• Internet Explorer 6 double margin issue
• Specific selector issues
• Testing your site in multiple browsers

As always, if you run into trouble, post your questions in our CSS help forum.

It seems that I am seeing more and more news and posts about plagiarized songs. You can’t go to the movie theaters and watch an original movie any more. With a few very rare exceptions (Metalocalypse, for one), television is a vast wasteland of unoriginal, uninspired ideas. Web sites (especially the news sites) all look the same nowadays.

With all this rehashing and regurgitating of ideas, why should logos be any exception? They’re not. Here are a few posts (anyone catch the irony in this post?) detailing some of the more aggregious logo copies (not all of them are actually ripoffs, but they still look strikingly similar):

• DataPortability Project Sued by RedHat
• Red Cross vs. Twiddict
• When logos look alike

Pingdom is out with a new analysis piece looking at physical security over hacking. It’s easy for us to try to prevent hacker attempts, viruses and worms, but what about actual physical security? We just moved HTMLCenter to a new host a couple of weeks ago. Never once did I ask or think about what’s their actual physical security model.

The real issue isn’t the stolen servers, it’s the stolen data. The data is always worth more than the hardware itself.

GlobalScape, the company behind CuteFTP, CuteHTML (which was discontinued a little over a year ago) and many more useful Windows-based applications for Web developers, has unveiled a brand new service called CuteSendIt.

CuteSendIt is a browser-based file sending utility. With the free version of CuteSendIt, you can send files up to 100 megabytes each to any recipient you choose. You can send up to 10 files per month, and use a total of 1gigabyte of bandwidth each month.

Amazon’s S3 storage service appears to be down. CenterNetworks images are broken because of it and I had to move the style sheet back so the site at least renders correctly. Sites like Twitter have massive broken images currently because Amazon S3 is down.

We will keep updating this post until the service has recovered. As of Noon Eastern time, the S3 service is down.

Amazon’s S3 service was also down this past February and Amazon explained the reasons for the outage and downtime a few days later. There has to be a way to failover when S3 is down.

As always report in if you are having issues with Amazon S3.

Update: Amazon S3 clients are now posting outage messages on the forums. It appears EC2 is working ok.

Update 2: Amazon is now reporting on their health dashboard that Amazon S3 has "elevated error rates".

Update 3 – 12:55pm: Now down over an hour, Amazon says they are "pursuing several paths of corrective action. Sites affected include SmugMug and Twitter. Twitter is up with no images while SmugMug had to take the service down since so much of it relies on Amazon’s services.

Update 4 – 1:55pm: Amazon now reporting, "10:33 AM PDT A quick update that we believe this is an issue with the communication between several Amazon S3 internal components. We do not have an ETA at this time but will continue to keep you updated."

Update 5 – 3:45pm: We are now down over 3.5 hours – Amazon’s latest update, "12:25 PM PDT We have restored communication between additional hosts and are continuing this work across the rest of the fleet. Thank you for your continued patience."

Every few days, I receive some sort of newsletter from BNET, the business-focused arm of CNET. The newsletter I received today actually had a few good articles that I wanted to share.

Being somewhat new to Facebook, I am still enjoying my time on there. I am curious as to which Facebook applications you are all using, and which ones are your favorites.

I really like checking the pictures available in the Bumper Sticker application. Most of them are ridiculous, and some are offensive, but I usually find at least one or two really good ones on the first handful of pages. I also like using the Flixster Facebook app, and really like taking some of the quizzes. For quizzes, though, I like the iLike application even better. Being the music junkie that I am, iLike is a perfect application for me. The music quizzes are usually insanely difficult, but they are a blast to play.

What are your favorite Facebook apps? What do you find yourself doing to kill time while you’re logged on over there?

WordPress 2.6 has been released, and the new feature list seems impressive.

Here is a quick list of the features that have been added to the new version of WordPress:

• Versioning control – you can now track and compare changes when editing an existing post
• Press This! – you can add a bookmark to your browser’s toolbar, which will automatically start a post with the content of whatever page you’re viewing when you press the bookmark. For instance, if you visit YouTube, you can use the Press This! button to automatically post the video you’re viewing on your blog
• Gears – I’m honestly not sure what this does, but it appears to be some sort of plugin for your browser, completely independent of WordPress, that allows you to cache common CSS and JS files while you’re browsing the Web
• Theme previews – you can now test drive a theme while you are developing it, rather than having to make it active to see what it really looks like
• Word count
• Image captions
• …much more

Here’s a short video detailing some of the updates. A higher res version is available in the official WordPress blog:

If you are using WordPress (like we are here at HTMLCenter and I am on one of my personal sites), it seems like it’s really worth it to run out and pick up the new version. If you’re not a WordPress user, now might be a good time to become one.

Let us know what you think of it once you get it configured.

I have been using and customizing a couple of Gallery2 installations at work and in my personal life. I have to say that I am extremely impressed at how advanced and powerful the application really is.

The installer is probably the easiest (besides WordPress) installation I’ve ever performed. All I had to do was download a small starter package, add a password and upload it to the correct directory. From there, the installer transferred all of the necessary files from Gallery’s server over to mine and gave me very explicit instructions on how to configure all of the settings.