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Run parallel threads/jobs in php with gearman

About gearman job server

Gearman provides a generic application framework to farm out work to other machines or processes that are better suited to do the work. It allows you to do work in parallel and to load balance processing, all the nice things that php isn't able to do out of the box.

Gearman is still in an early state, but it's stable enough that big player like Yahoo! and Digg use it in their productive...
05-24-2009 1 Comment(s) read the full article

Create your own website screenshot server

... only with firefox, no other software is required

For some applications it's necessary, useful or only a nice feature to display screenshots/thumbnails of websites.

Mostly it's not very easy or comfortable to setup a server that can take a screenshot of any website you want and return the result as a image.

I found a very simple solution with firefox which can be run on every operation system firefox supports.
05-22-2009 3 Comment(s) read the full article

Run multiple Internet Explorer versions simultaneously

... with Internet Explorer Collection

There are serveral methods to run multiple versions of IE (.local files, ... ), but none is as comfortable as the Internet Explorer Collection. A simple guided installer installs all released versions of IE in a few steps. You can also install the Developer Toolbar for all versions >= 5 with one tick. For me the collection is the best solution, to test my applications with the Internet...
05-18-2009 1 Comment(s) read the full article

Zabbix - Open source website and server monitoring solution

The monitoring solution for everyone

Nowadays it's very important to observe the availability of websites to prevent loss of sales and profit. But a system that informs you when it is already too late and the website is not reachable, can not be the only solution. Such a system has the job to inform the administrator about problems before the website is down, and in the majority of cases this is really possible, for example:
nearly...
05-16-2009 1 Comment(s) read the full article

Use data URI's in CSS across all browsers, even in IE < 8

What are data URI's and why you should use them?

Data URI's provide the ability to embed data directly into a document (for example: HTML pages, CSS, ...) without referencing to an external source.

This make it possible to embed images directly into a stylesheet, and you get one single file which is responsible for the look of a website.

Data URI's are a perfect way to reduce the HTTP requests on a website. Reducing the number of HTTP...
05-03-2009 5 Comment(s) read the full article