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Wait... wait... let me explain!
1 week ago - Comments (View)Life has drop-kicked me in the face
Just wanted to update everyone with some detail as to where the heck I’ve been these past few weeks, and where things are with Plurker development.
Unfortunately, life has sort of reprioritized Plurker for me lately. Let me explain and try to stand up for myself here…
Two weeks ago I was out of town on business for a week, and this week I’ve been spending time with my fiance prepping for our wedding this weekend!
That’s right folks. This world will have one less single man in it after this weekend. And the fun doesn’t stop there. I’ll be honeymooning for a week in Jamaica starting this weekend as well.
So, as much as I hate to say it, Plurker development has been somewhat placed on the back burner.
Have no fear though. Once I return from my Jamaican tour, I’ll start cracking at it again and trying to get out a stylish Beta to everyone. It’s very close to being ready for some testers to hit it.
It’ll need some styling, a preference window with basic options (saving username/password, etc), and some slight tweaking code-wise. It’ll have a very basic feature-set to start out with, but that’s the most important part of the application right now. I could give you all the bells and whistles you clamor for, and if you can’t send and receive Plurks at the end of the day, all is for naught, right?
Don’t hate me too much, my dear anxious fans… I’m trying to keep myself from tripping when I’m walking down the aisle and have all my groomsmen’s tuxes ready for the weekend.
Wish me luck, and stick with me for just a little while longer!
Keith Hanson
Plurker Developer
Feedback - YOU matter to us.
1 month ago - Comments (View)Hey guys, I’ve just dropped in a feedback tool done by UserVoice. It’s on the left, and we’d love to hear what features you’d like to see most or feedback you have to say to us.
We may be planning a skinnier initial release feature wise to help get things moving, and this will help us nail down exactly what is most sought after.
Feel free to toss up an idea and get some voting going! We’d love to hear from you!!!
Yours forever, Ken Hanson
Plurker’s friendly neighborhood Markup Ninja.
Signup for Private Beta
1 month ago - Comments (View)Oh yes childrens, we are -that- close to getting this guy out the door, and so today we’re opening up private beta.
If you didn’t notice it already, go ahead and look in the top right. Yup. The big button. Click it =p
Welcome back. You may have noticed that its hosted over at the good ole lair of MarkupNinjas.com. I’ve gotta sort out server stuff with my brother, so until then, enjoy hanging out with the code ninjas and stop on by. I did this so that we didn’t impede any traffic and signups at all, and since I have space readily available, I had no problem housing the forms.
Anyways, looking forward to seeing who’s on the list and who’s not, and we’re excited to be releasing a beta to a select few soon!
Yours forever, Ken Hanson - Plurker’s friendly neighborhood Markup Ninja.
Phantom Plurker Solved
1 month ago - Comments (View)
Last night while I was working on Plurker, I got a chance to see some really interesting stuff happening.
The full details are here: Plurk Post Phantom - mypleeps.com
Essentially, users were clicking what they assumed to be harmless links posted by their friends, and suddenly had strange posts appear in their timelines under their names that they never actually posted.
I had two theories:
The attacker had figured out how to spoof posts using some yet undiscovered API call (which was infuriating to me, because I’m pretty sure I’ve mapped most of them).
The attacker had crafted a malicious link for users to click that stole the user’s cookies (simply, the mechanism that tells Plurk you are who you say you are without actually logging in). The attacker could then use that cookie and become you.
Theory #1 was ultimately very very grim. No one would be safe if this were the case.
Theory #2 was a little better, and quite a childish attack. You could defeat it simply by logging out and back in. But both of these still cast a dark shadow over the Plurkosphere for me.
I was delightedly wrong.
Your Plurk logins, passwords, and timelines are safe. This is an incredibly simple ‘hack’ (if you could call it that), and it DOES use Plurk’s API.
Without getting too deeply into the nitty gritty, when you post a Plurk to your Timeline, it makes a ‘behind-the-scenes’ web request to this url: http://www.plurk.com/Timeline/addPlurk .
That URL requires at least two things before it’ll actually post a plurk for you.
- a Qualifier (is, has, thinks, etc)
- Content, or the actual message
Normally, you never see this, because it’s in the background. But it’s easily possible to make that call yourself by typing those requirements into your browser’s url, like so (click this only if you’d like to show your love for Plurker!):
http://www.plurk.com/TimeLine/addPlurk?qualifier=says&content=I%20Love%20http:%2F%2Fblog.plurker.org
As you can see from the link above, two portions are of interest: qualifier and content. We pass the values in and like magic, a post appears.
You can defeat this pretty simply. When hovering over the link, look in your browser’s status bar and look at where the link is pointing. Be careful about where you click. And if there’s any links pointing to plurk.com, only go to the ones with /p/ or /user/ in them (those are individual plurk pages and profile pages).
So how can the A-Team fix this? They simply need to ensure that any plurks being added to the timeline are coming from a POST request.
It’s been great playing detective with everyone!
I’m Keith Hanson, the developer for Plurker.
Why Plurker Won't Be Developed Using Adobe AIR
1 month ago - Comments (View)1. Native Code
We’re writing a revolutionary desktop client for Plurk. We need the native capabilities of WPF and .NET. Here’s just a few of the things that we want to do that would be annoyingly difficult in AIR or impossible:
When a user closes the client, we want it to drop into the system tray.Without any window being active, we want to show customizable pop-up notifications that can appear on any corner of any single, dual, or even triple monitor setup.- We want REALLY sexy animations and effects that utilize DX10 and the GPU when possible.
- Yeah, AIR can do cool animations, but it can’t do ‘em using accelerated graphics like WPF can. Accelerated Graphics are a GoodThing in our opinion.
- Adobe AIR doesn’t have Multithreading (OUCH!)
- This means that newer processors can’t be utilized to their full capabilities. Multi-core processors will run Plurker beautifully using WPF. Not only that, with the way Keith is writing his API and GUI code, WPF will perform much more smoothly using native threads. This is an entire topic unto itself for why we’re going with WPF.
2. WPF’s ability to truly split UI design and back end programming
WPF has the insanely awesome ability to allow us to split the development and UI design processes. What this means is that Keith can throw some buttons and user controls together and throw them in a window, and start writing code right away.
When Jacob is completely finished with the Interface Design and UI, Ken can implement that interface using Expression Blend or whatever he feels comfortable implementing with. As long as he keeps the buttons and interface elements named the same as Keith is expecting, the two processes can be completely separated.
In other words, while Keith is hammering out the core features for Plurker, Jacob is creating the UI, and Ken is implementing it as soon as he gets each piece of the UI and making it work with the current version of the application.
In even simpler terms, we get shit done faster this way.
3. Keith has written the API in .NET
A small but important piece of information. One of the main reasons we’ve written Plurker thus far in WPF and .NET is because the API he’s created was written in it. The API is extremely robust thus far, and includes various options for us to talk to Plurk. We can do it Synchronously or Asynchronously, which is an absolute must if we want the Interface to be responsive and snappy.
Keith has implemented a means to quickly and easily implement changes that Plurk implements in their AJAX requests. For example, it took Keith a little under an hour to have the ‘mute’ feature code complete and completely tested. At the moment, we haven’t seen any unofficial APIs released that have these sorts of capabilities.
4. Most of our users will use Windows
The main argument for AIR is its support in Windows, OS X, and Linux.
Though all three of us are OS X lovers, and Keith is even an avid Linux fan, the numbers are pretty clear. Of our approximately 142 visitors on our first day of having this blog live, we saw over 100 users using Windows.
All of that being said, we will be releasing a Mac client in the future. And we’ll be doing that client with native Cocoa code as well, for all the reasons we listed above.
Hope this helped clear up any questions. Feel free to friend or add any of us on Plurk or just say Hi!
—The Plurker Team
Jacob Morse | Ken Hanson | Keith Hanson
1 Developer + 1 Designer + 1 Markup Specialist = Plurker
1 month ago - Comments (View)What Is Plurker?
Plurker is the Upcoming Windows application that will turn your Plurking inside out and make it the Plurktastic experience it should be.
Plurker’s goal is to get your Plurks organized using powerful searching and awesome filters that move plurks from your timeline to new windows so that you can see what’s happening across your Timeline at a Glance and never miss a beat.
The Plurker Team listened, watched, and waited to see what YOU wanted out of Plurk. While we love what Plurk has done for SocialMedia, we want what you want, and so we’re giving it to you.
Who is The Plurker Team?
We’re a passionate group that loves to Plurk, and all of us are experts in our respective fields. We work on Plurker in our free time, and hand it back out for free. That’s right. No cost, no signup, no anything. Just Plurker. We’re doing this because we love the Plurk community and love Plurk, but want a better experience. Ultimately, we’re writing Plurker for ourselves and you, so you can expect greatness with the high standards we set for ourselves.
Jacob Morse is a first class Designer, with a capital ‘D’. He’s passionate about User Interface Design and cares about your experience while using Plurker. He runs his own company called Volo Creative and has done work for some serious clients. He donates his expertise and experience to the Plurker project for free. What a guy!
Say ‘Hi’ and ‘Thanks’ when you see him on Plurk: JacobMorse! Without him, Plurker would be Fooooogly!
Ken and Keith Hanson are identical twins with a passion for development and the web.
Ken’s a Markup Ninja, and has a passion for CSS/Markup like no one you’ve ever met. A perfectionist by nature with an artistic eye, he turns your designs into tangible creations. He runs his own business at Markup Ninjas, working for some serious names and clients who give him nothing but praise. He’s also donating his free time to the Plurker project. Without this Ninja Master, we’d never be able to actually use all the sexy designs Jacob makes.
Feel free to hit Ken up on Plurk: KrazyKen04 and give a big round of applause for his awesome work.
Keith is a passionate web and application developer. He’s also the original visionary for Plurker, and who wrangled Ken and Jacob into working with him. Keith started writing software when he was 12, and hasn’t stopped since. Currently, he works for Gratis Internet as a software developer, but has worked for clients like EDS, The New York Times: Syndicate, Allstate, Honda, and many others. He carries his expertise to Plurker, and makes the buttons work and the Timeline update.
Keith would love to hear your opinions for Plurker on Plurk: KeithHanson!
