At Webapper, we've always described our tuning & troubleshooting consulting as a "wire-to-wire" service. This means that we find and fix performance and/or stability problems wherever they are, even if they're in the network layer (e.g., the TCP "silly window" problem). And beyond troubleshooting production systems, we've always found that HTTP sniffers are useful during development, too. We just heard about a free tool from Microsoft, named Fiddler, so I thought I'd blog it here along with some others that we use regularly:

• Fiddler: It's a free tool written by Eric Lawrence at Microsoft. It's really technically an HTTP proxy, and thus is a specialized tool for sniffing Web requests.
• Wireshark (formerly Ethereal): This is one we've used for a long time. It's a general purpose packet sniffer, and sees all packets, not just HTTP.
• ServiceCapture: Written by Kevin Langdon, we've got copies of this laying all over the virtual office. The killer feature in this tool is its decoding of service requests. It'll decode AMF/remoting packets, for example, and show you their full data structure. Very, very useful.

It seems that a lot of people, including myself, are clamoring for Flash on the iPhone. I'm highly disappointed in Apple for claiming to have the "real internet" on the iPhone, but then they leave out the one standard that is on a good number of websites, and is pre-installed on a majority of new computers, including their own.

Now, does this mean I'm not interested in an iPhone? Of course not... In fact, if anyone at CFUnited wants to camp out with me at a Apple/AT&T store on the 29th, let me know. And I'm sure I'll be developing a few CF apps to run in Safari on my phone, to supplement whatever functionality I feel is missing.

Some people in the development community (including what originally started this rant) are asking what Adobe is going to do about it. First off, Adobe won't get to do anything if Apple won't let them. Besides that, there are a few things that we all need to remember about the iPhone and Flash...

1. If Apple meets it's own sales goals, it will have 1% of the mobile phone market. Also, there are no announced plans to release the iPhone outside the US at this point, and AT&T has the exclusive in the US for 5 years. Now, sure, the iPhone is getting a ton of hype, and nobody knows how well it will/won't do, and you have to admit that 1% of the market is an awful small window to target.

2. Apple is, so far, not opening the phone up to the average developer. Sure, you can build a web application for the iPhone, but it's treated by Apple like a red-headed step child. There's no way to get your app a button on the home screen, and so far off-line abilities are not present.

3. Adobe already has a mobile Flash platform, Flash Lite. While I'll be the first to admit that I'd love to develop full-fledged Flash 9 apps (read: Flex apps) on the iPhone, it would probably be a better strategy to use Flash Lite on the iPhone. The sales pitch to developers can then be uniform... Build once for Flash Lite, and deploy on most any mobile phone. Perhaps Adobe can tackle both, to appease everyone.

4. Apple & Adobe probably have already talked about Flash on the iPhone at some level. Apple knew it wanted YouTube and the "real" internet, so I'm sure Adobe was consulted early on in development. Obviously, something didn't work for one or both parties for launch, but I'm sure that if enough users complain to Apple about lack of Flash support, they will add it in one form or another. Technically, they could write their own Flash 7 engine for the iPhone, since the SDK is available, though that would seemingly be a waste of our time and their resources, since Flash 9 already has very high penetration numbers.

I've searched for months for an all-inclusive, low-cost backup solution. Here were my basic requirements:

1. Off-site datacenter with it's own backup system, so my backups are backed-up.
2. Software that works, and can be easily scheduled.
3. Incremental backups.
4. Versioning.
5. Multiple jobs.
6. Support multiple machines... Servers, desktops and laptops.

I looked into most of the online backup services, and while the pricing seemed nice, it was usually per-machine, and backing up a server required an even more expensive business account. Backing up to an external hard drive is great, but I really wanted a true disaster-recovery plan.

In my earlier research into shared hosting, I looked into the costs & limits of many plans. I ended up giving up on them as options, mostly because no shared plan could handle the number of requests/second I needed. A few weeks later, I realized that the huge storage sizes and virtually unlimited bandwidth would be perfect for doing backups. But I needed to find some FTP software that would really handle what I needed. I searched high and low for free solutions, to no avail. I tested a bunch of shareware/commercial solutions, and a majority of them were too buggy to use. I eventually settled on Backup4all Professional. At under $50/license (it goes down as you buy more copies), it is priced reasonably. In addition to standard backup program features, it also supports backup via FTP, versoning, incremental backups, multiple jobs, email notification and file encryption, all wrapped up in a nice Windows GUI.

As far as the shared hosting service, I ended up picking DreamHost. I know that there are a ton of people who have had good and bad experiences with them, and I'll say that so far my experiences have been... average. There was a small DNS hiccup during my registration, but an email to tech support had it fixed within the hour. But to be honest, I chose them for their price (around $10/mo, depending on what payment plan you choose) and features....

1. Ever-increasing bandwidth and storage: Every week, you get a modest boost in storage and bandwidth. Currently, you get an increase of 1Gb of disk and 16gb of transfer. If, as a web developer, you can add more than that, you probably can afford a more appropriate solution.
2. Subversion support. After I signed up, I found out that you get your own free Subversion setup. It's nice to not have to manage it myself and just create new repositories via the web control panel.

Even with quite a few home and production machines, I have room and bandwidth to spare. Since my backups occur at low-traffic times (i.e. while I'm sleeping), I haven't had any problems with servers being overloaded or down. The bottleneck at home is my DSL line's upstream speed, but from my production servers, they seem to go more or less as fast as the lines can handle.

Overall, I have yet to find a solution that can beat the value of this setup. With a little cash up front (probably about what you'd spend on an external hard drive), and a low monthly fee, you too can have professional-strength data recovery.

Our march towards world domination continues. Expect our next conference giveaway t-shirts to read "All your base are belong to us". ;)

Seriously, though, we're ecstatic to welcome Tyson Vanek to the team here at Webapper. He's actually been a member of our extended "family" for many years, in that he was part of the Allaire Consulting Services team, where many of the Webappers here originally met and worked together (including yours truly). Both during and since his time at Allaire/Macromedia, Tyson has been the Lead Architect of some of the largest, most complex ColdFusion applications in the world. At one time, Tyson held the highest recorded score on the BrainBench Certified ColdFusion Developer exam (Master level), and was eventually hired to write the next version of the exam. In addition to his time at Allaire/Macromedia, he has also delivered his expertise to customers such as Foot Locker, Williams-Sonoma, The Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Lockheed Martin, Abbott Labs and Discovery Communications.

He brings his considerable expertise to fill the role of Senior Web Architect here, and his first project will be to spearhead a rewrite of a massive ColdFusion-based insurance underwriting application. A big Webapper welcome to Tyson!

This article is really a must-read. Some sites are just fast, fast, fast (like Gmail). Others are always slow, no matter the pipe you have (like wired.com). Aaron Hopkins will tell you why. (I ripped this link from here.)

If you're here at MAX, just a quick reminder that we'll be doing our SeeFusion demo at MAXUP this morning right after the keynote address. We'll be giving away lots of swag--tshirts and free software. See you there!

Steve and I were walking through the casino (you have to walk through the casino to get anywhere around here) and ran into Ben Forta. We were on our way up to the room for some beers (hey it's past 2pm already!) and offered a cold one to Ben. He declined, but was so impressed with our offer that he spilled the beans about Adobe's keynote tomorrow morning.

First off, he instructed us to get there nice and early, front-row seats if possible. And if you plan on sitting in the first 10 rows, "bring a poncho". Hmm, that got our attention.

So I asked him, "Ben, how would tomorrow's keynote compare, to say, the lazer light show of 2000's Allaire DevCon?"

Ben replied, "We decided not to do lazers because of the injuries and resulting lawsuits in 2000. But I promise you that, if you bring the ponchos and while you're at it, a stack of one dollar bills, this will blow 2000 away." Being in Vegas, we knew exactly what he meant.

As we parted ways, I asked him, "We already have a stack of ones, but where do we buy a poncho around here?"

He smiled and replied, "Through the casino."

A non-tech related post here, but I thought it important to remind fellow MAX travelers that the TSA has new guidelines about bringing toiletries on the plane. Here's the skinny:

http://www.tsa.gov/press/where_we_stand/liquids_refined.shtm

Just a friendly reminder about our earlier post this week. We're giving away 5 3-server copies of SeeFusion throughout the week at MAX. Just track one of us down in our white Webapper shirts (logo on front), and we'll give you a password to play our slot machine game in order to try to win.

Here's the game site:

http://www.seefusion.com/max2006/

Also, I've linked to the original post below (click on the title if you don't see the related entry). See you there!

We're giving away up to 5 3-server copies of SeeFusion 4 at MAX, which, with our special 2-for-1 licensing plan, will allow you to monitor up to 6 ColdFusion servers. Each 3-server license has a retail value of $897!

Here's how the giveaway will work. We're sponsoring CFUnderground 8 on Sunday, attending MiniMax on Sunday evening, presenting at the MAXUP area, and of course we'll be at MAX all week, too. In the spirit of Sin City, we're launching a slot machine application, and each player will be given a preset spending limit. You'll play the slots until you win a copy of SeeFusion, or run out of money. In order to play, all you need to do is track one of us down, and we'll hand you a business card with the slot machine URL, and a special entry code, and you'll be able to play wherever/whenever you like. We'll all be wearing white t-shirts with our Webapper logo on the front (SEE BELOW).

Looking forward to seeing you all there, and to giving away SeeFusion!

Best, Patrick