My Guest Appearance On The PowerScripting Podcast Is Live

Last Thursday night Hal (@halr9000) and Jon (@jonwalz) over at the PowerScripting Podcast had me on their weekly podcast for episode #61.  Hal and Jon are both highly esteemed in the PowerShell community and I caught their attention with my recent PowerShell ABC's blog series. During the interview, I discussed my personal background, F5, the BIG-IP product family, DevCentral, iControl, and our PowerShell implementation.  We ended up the interview going a bit more in depth with a few of my ABC posts including Generics, JavaScript, Synthetic Members.  If you listen long enough, you'll also find out what...

PowerShell ABC's - A To Z

With yesterday's post, another 26 blog posts are in the can.  For those who missed the first 26 PowerShell ABC's, here's the complete list.     Arithmetic Operators: Unlike strongly typed languages like C/C++ and Java, PowerShell is a dynamically typed language meaning that it can "morph" data types depending on the context in which they are used.  This comes in handy when you need to do string manipulations.  PowerShell has the standard arithmetic operators you would expect from basic programming language.   begin: For all you Cmdlet writers out...

PowerShell ABC's - Z is for zh-CHT

Welcome to this addition of the PowerShell ABC's where you'll find 26 posts detailing a component of the PowerShell scripting language, one letter at a time.  For today's letter of "Z", I'll discuss PowerShell's internationalization features and it's support for country cultures like zh-CHT. PowerShell 2.0 added features that make script internationalization relatively simple to implement.  The script internationalization features query the user interface culture of the operating system during execution, import the associated translated text strings, and allows you to display them to the user.  To support international text, PowerShell 2.0 includes the following features: ...

PowerShell ABC's - Y is for Yellow

Welcome to this addition of the PowerShell ABC's where you'll find 26 posts detailing a component of the PowerShell scripting language, one letter at a time.  For today's letter of "Y", I'll discuss PowerShell's host interface and, most importantly, it's ability to specify one of my favorite colors Yellow. PowerShell is really an engine that operates within a hosting application, the default being the PowerShell.exe command line application.  The host serves to expose a command line and a host interface to communicate with the commands invoked by the command line.    The Cmdlets There are several buildin...

PowerShell ABC's - X is for XML

Welcome to this addition of the PowerShell ABC's where you'll find 26 posts detailing a component of the PowerShell scripting language, one letter at a time.  For today's letter of "X", I'll discuss PowerShell's ability to work natively with XML. XML (Extensible Markup Language) is being used more and more in today's computing environments.  PowerShell is no exception in that it uses XML for its type and configuration files as well as for it's help system.  Since PowerShell uses XML so much internally, it makes sense that it has to expose a way to process XML documents...

PowerShell ABC's - W is for Widening

Welcome to this addition of the PowerShell ABC's where you'll find 26 posts detailing a component of the PowerShell scripting language, one letter at a time.  For today's letter of "W", I'll talk about PowerShell's type-promiscuous feature of numeric widening. PowerShell is a type-promiscuous language in that PowerShell will do it's best to try to convert whatever type of literal you are using into the type you need with as little work on your part as possible.  This means that if you want to multiple a number by a string representation of a number, it will behave as...

PowerShell ABC's - V is for Voidable Statements

Welcome to this addition of the PowerShell ABC's where you'll find 26 posts detailing a component of the PowerShell scripting language, one letter at a time.  For today's letter of "V" I will talk about default statement output, and specifically voidable statements. In traditional programming languages, statements do not return a value.  Think of the C++ increment operator in the following statement: "a++;".  In this example the value of variable a is incremented by one.  The value of the variable a is not returned from this statement.  In fact, All C/C++/C# statements do not return values.  This is...

PowerShell ABC's - U is for Unraveling

Welcome to this addition of the PowerShell ABC's where you'll find 26 posts detailing a component of the PowerShell scripting language, one letter at a time.  For today's letter of "U" I will talk about PowerShell's automatic unraveling of collections. To unravel is to "separate or disentangle the threads" or "to free from complication or difficulty; make plain or clear". One problem that people run into with .NET methods that return enumerators is that PowerShell will unravel the enumerator by default.  By this I mean that it will "take it apart" and put it in a format that...

PowerShell ABC's - T is for Type Literals

Welcome to this addition of the PowerShell ABC's where you'll find 26 posts detailing a component of the PowerShell scripting language, one letter at a time.  For today's letter of "T" I will talk about type specification and, in particular, Type Literals. If you've seen any example PowerShell scripts, you've likely seen some syntax that looks like [type].  This is referred to as a type literal.  In PowerShell, you can use type literals to specify a particular type for your operation. Type literals can be used  in several ways.  They can be used as operators in a type...

PowerShell ABC's - S is for Synthetic Members

Welcome to this addition of the PowerShell ABC's where you'll find 26 posts detailing a component of the PowerShell scripting language, one letter at a time.  For today's letter is the letter "S", I will discuss PowerShell's extension of existing object with Synthetic Members. A powerful feature in PowerShell is it's ability to extend existing object types and instances.  In doing so, it can overlay a common set of interfaces onto an existing source of data.  This is different that the traditional method of sub-classing or creating types derived from other types in other object-oriented programming languages where...

PowerShell ABC's - R is for Runspace

Welcome to this addition of the PowerShell ABC's where you'll find 26 posts detailing a component of the PowerShell scripting language, one letter at a time.  Today's letter is the letter "R" and for it I'll cover the runspace. If you've downloaded PowerShell, you may think of PowerShell as a console application that is a replacement for the old CMD.EXE console.  That is true in that the process is called PowerShell.exe, but there is much more to it.  PowerShell is simply a console application that hosts the PowerShell runtime using a console window as a mechanism for allowing the...

PowerShell ABC's - Q is for Queues

Welcome to this addition of the PowerShell ABC's where you'll find 26 posts detailing a component of the PowerShell scripting language, one letter at a time.  Today's letter is the letter "Q" and there wasn't really much to go with.  We've got the "-Quiet" switch but that's fairly limited in it's usage.  I opted for it's support for the FIFO data structure: queues. A queue is a particular kind of collection in which the entities in the collection are kept in order.  Operation on a queue are to add items to the end position and remove them from...

PowerShell ABC's - P is for Parameters

Welcome to this addition of the PowerShell ABC's where you'll find 26 posts detailing a component of the PowerShell scripting language, one letter at a time.  Today's letter is the letter "P" and for it I'll cover the basics of defining input values, or Parameters. Parameters (or arguments) are how you customize the actions of a command.  There are 4 types of commands in PowerShell, scripts, functions, Cmdlet's, and External Commands.  Scripts and Functions are the areas I'm going to focus on here and I'll show you how parameters are defined in those two command types. Scripts Scripts,...

PowerShell ABC's - O is for Output

Welcome to this addition of the PowerShell ABC's where you'll find 26 posts detailing a component of the PowerShell scripting language, one letter at a time.  Today's letter is the letter "O" and for this letter I'll discuss the Output system. PowerShell, like most other scripting languages, wouldn't be much use without an input and output system for retrieving or sending data.  PowerShell has various output systems. The Pipeline A pipeline is a series of commands separated by the pipe operator "|".  Each command in the pipeline receives an object from the previous command, performs some operation on...

PowerShell ABC's - N is for Numbers

Welcome to this addition of the PowerShell ABC's where you'll find 26 posts detailing a component of the PowerShell scripting language, one letter at a time.  Today's letter is the letter "N" and for this letter I'm going to discuss one of the core types of objects you'll likely be dealing with: Numbers. PowerShell supports all of the basic .NET numeric types and performs conversions to and from the different types as needed.  The types, along with the PowerShell type names are in the following table .NET Full Type Name |...

PowerShell ABC's - M is for Matching

Welcome to this addition of the PowerShell ABC's where you'll find 26 posts detailing a component of the PowerShell scripting language, one letter at a time.  Today's letter is the letter "M" and I'm going to touch on the power of regular expressions and pattern Matching. Along with the basic comparison operators (-[ci]eq, -[ci]ne, -[ci]gt, -[ci]ge, -[ci]lt, -[ci]le, -[ci]contains, and -[ci]notcontains), PowerShell has a number of operators allowing one to perform pattern matching comparisons.  These operators work on strings, matching and manipulating them using the wildcard and regular expression patterns.     Wildcard Patterns ...

PowerShell ABC's - L is for Location

Welcome to this addition of the PowerShell ABC's where you'll find 26 posts detailing a component of the PowerShell scripting language, one letter at a time.  Today's letter is the letter "L".  For "L" I'm going to give an overview on Location. The current working location is the default location to which commands point if you don't supply an explicit path to the item or location that is affected by the command. In most cases, the current working location is a directory on a drive supplied by the built-in FileSystem provider but it doesn't have to be.  ...

PowerShell ABC's - K is for Keywords

Welcome to this addition of the PowerShell ABC's where you'll find 26 posts detailing a component of the PowerShell scripting language, one letter at a time.  Today's letter is the letter "K".  I had some recommendations for "Kill" and "Keep" but I think I found one a little bit more topical.  Today I'm going to talk about PowerShell keywords. First of all, let's talk about keywords.  A keyword, in a programming language such as PowerShell, is a word or identifier that has a particular meaning to that language.  In most languages, keywords are reserved words - meaning that...

PowerShell ABC's - J is for JavaScript

Welcome to this addition of the PowerShell ABC's where you'll find 26 posts detailing a component of the PowerShell scripting language, one letter at a time.  Today's letter is the letter "J".  Bet you thought I was going to go with Jagged Arrays for this one huh?  Nope!  Today's word is JavaScript. Huh?  You may ask why I would pick JavaScript since that is a completely different scripting language and this is a series on PowerShell features.  Well, I'm glad you asked.  PowerShell is a very extensive scripting language, but it is relatively new to the scene of windows...

PowerShell ABC's - I is for is

Welcome to this addition of the PowerShell ABC's where you'll find 26 posts detailing a component of the PowerShell scripting language, one letter at a time.  Today's letter is the letter "I".  For "I", I opted for a couple of operators that you might not know about, but come in very handy with PowerShell's loosely typed framework.  The word for today is "is" (with a double bonus of "isnot" and "as"). In a previous post, I talked about the PowerShell's Arithmetic Operators.  In addition to Arithmetic, there are Assignment (=, +=, -=, *=, /=, %=), Comparison (-[ci]eq, -[ci]ne, -[ci]gt,...

PowerShell ABC's - H is for Here-String

Welcome to this addition of the PowerShell ABC's where you'll find 26 posts detailing a component of the PowerShell scripting language, one letter at a time.  Today's letter is the letter "H".  For "H", I'm going to talk about a feature that PowerShell Guru Jeffrey Snover loves talking about each time I see him: Here-Strings. Before we get to here-strings, it's probably a good idea to go over the different kinds of string literals in PowerShell.  There are actually 4 different kinds of string literals - single-quoted strings, double-quoted strings, single-quoted here-strings, and double-quoted here-strings.  All of these...

PowerShell ABC's - G is for Generics

Welcome to this addition of the PowerShell ABC's where you'll find 26 posts detailing a component of the PowerShell scripting language, one letter at a time.  Today's letter is the letter "G".  For "G" I've picked a feature that was introduced in version 2.0 of the .NET Framework that allows for creating more generic types of objects.  So, today's word is "Generics". Generics allow you to create generic objects such as collections without being constrained to the specific type of object that it contains.  Generics introduce the "type parameter" that you pass in to the creation of an object...

PowerShell ABC's - F is for Format Operator

Welcome to this addition of the PowerShell ABC's where you'll find 26 posts detailing a component of the PowerShell scripting language, one letter at a time.  Today's letter is the letter "F".  For "F" I've picked the word that relates to how you can make nice and pretty output.  Today's word is the Format operator (-f). Most often, PowerShell's build in output formatting is good enough for your needs.  But, there will always be those times when you want a more fine grained control over the formatting of your output.  You may also want to format strings in a specific...

PowerShell ABC's - E is for ExecutionPolicy

Welcome to this addition of the PowerShell ABC's where you'll find 26 posts detailing a component of the PowerShell scripting language, one letter at a time.  Today's letter is the letter "E".  For "E" I've picked the word that relates to how PowerShell's security model supports execution of scripts.  Today's word is ExecutionPolicy. One of the main features of PowerShell is the ability to execute scripts.  But, scripts are not inherently "safe" and since PowerShell has no concept of sandboxing, the execution of scripts are disabled by default.  The default way to execute scripts is via the console interpreter....

PowerShell ABC's - D is for Debugging

Welcome to this addition of the PowerShell ABC's where you'll find 26 posts detailing a component of the PowerShell scripting language, one letter at a time.  Today's letter is the letter "D".  For "D" I've picked the a term that most everyone who writes scripts needs to understand.  The word for today is debugging. Debugging is a very large category so I'll scan over the various components and dig more into script level debugging since that is what most users will use most often. Basic Error Handling PowerShell implements two types of errors: terminating and non-terminating.  Terminating errors will...

PowerShell ABCs - C is for CmdLet

Welcome to this addition of the PowerShell ABC's where you'll find 26 posts detailing a component of the PowerShell scripting language, one letter at a time.  Today's letter is the letter "C".  For "C" I've picked the most efficient type type of commands supported by PowerShel, the CmdLet. CmdLets (pronounced "Command-let"), functions, scripts, and native Win32 executables are the four types of commands supported in PowerShell.  A Cmdlet is implemented by a .NET class that derives from the Cmdlet base class in the PowerShell SDK.  This class is compiled into a DLL and loaded into the PowerShell process.  Since a...

PowerShell ABC's - B is for begin

Welcome to this addition of the PowerShell ABC's where you'll find 26 posts detailing a component of the PowerShell scripting language, one letter at a time.  Today's letter is the letter "B".  For "B" I've opted to go with a keyword that you likely don't know about but can allow you write script level functions that behave like compiled Cmdlets.  The word for today is "begin" Most PowerShell users write script level functions as standalone statements that work on values in the pipeline but since functions run all at once, they cannot do streaming processing.  Filters can be used run...

PowerShell ABC's - A is for Arithmetic Operators

Well, now that I've got the Networking and Social Media ABC's completed it's time for another round of glossary fun and games.  Being from a development background, I figure it's about time to focus on something a little more technical.  For a while now, I've been toying with the PowerShell scripting language from Microsoft so I figure that's as good a place as any to get started on a new series.  So, in the next 28 work days or so, be on the looking for another ABC listing of all the need goodies in the PowerShell language. Since there's...

Social Media ABC's - A To Z

Well, yesterday's post brings to a close the 26 days of Social Media ABCs.  For those who missed them all, here's a full listing of all the words I came up with for my version of the Social Media ABC's A To Z:   Aggregation:  Aggregation is the process of gathering and remixing content from blogs and other websites that provide "feeds" of their data.  This most commonly occurs with the RSS syndication format, but also can be with other technologies as well.  The results may be displayed in an aggregator website such as Bloglines or Google Reader, or...

Social Media ABC's - Z is for Zombie

Welcome to my series of blog posts on the ABC's of Social Media, a tool that you can use to make you more "hip" in the world of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn (just to name a few).  Today's letter is "Z".  There aren't many Z words directly relating to Social Media but I think I've found one that actually applies to me.  Are you one of those who will join any and all Social Media services just because everyone else is?  Then, like I, you are a Social Media Zombie. "Z" is for Zombie Zombie Pronounced: Zom-bee It...

Social Media ABC's - Y is for YouTube

Welcome to my series of blog posts on the ABC's of Social Media, a tool that you can use to make you more "hip" in the world of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn (just to name a few).  Today's letter is "Y".  Y was a pretty hard letter to come up with social media terms for so I'm going to default to the major way viral videos make it onto the Internet.  With over 5 billion online videos viewed in July 2008, YouTube is definitely a force in social media. "Y" is for YouTube YouTube Pronounced: Yoo-Toob Founded in 2005...

Social Media ABC's - X is for XMLHttpRequest

Welcome to my series of blog posts on the ABC's of Social Media, a tool that you can use to make you more "hip" in the world of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn (just to name a few).  Today's letter is "X".  There aren't many "X" words in relation to Social Media so I opted for a word that is part of the underlying plumbing needed to make blogs and other web 2.0 social applications usable.  Today I picked the infamous XMLHttpRequest. "X" is for XMLHttpRequest XMLHttpRequest Pronounced: Eks-em-el Eych-tee-tee-pee Ri-kwest XMLHttpRequest, or XHR, is a XML DOM API...

Social Media ABC's - W is for Walled Garden

Welcome to my series of blog posts on the ABC's of Social Media, a tool that you can use to make you more "hip" in the world of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn (just to name a few).  Today's letter is "W".  The "W" words Web 2.0, Widget, and Wiki stand out but I'm going to go for something a bit more serene - the Walled Garden. "W" is for Walled Garden Walled Garden Pronounced: Wawld Gahr-dn With regards to the internet, a Walled Garden refers to a browsing environment that controls the locations the user is able to...

Social Media ABC's - V is for Viral

Welcome to my series of blog posts on the ABC's of Social Media, a tool that you can use to make you more "hip" in the world of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn (just to name a few).  Today's letter is "V". "V" brings us vlogs, VIOP, and video but I'm going with something a bit more clinical.  Today's word is Viral. "V" is for Viral Viral Pronounced: Vahy-ruhl For something to be viral, means that it is able to replicate itself or convert other objects to copy itself when those objects are exposed to it. In the context...

Social Media ABC's - U is for UGC

Welcome to my series of blog posts on the ABC's of Social Media, a tool that you can use to make you more "hip" in the world of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn (just to name a few).  Today's letter is "U".  For "U" we have URL and upload but I'm going to go for something a bit more "social".  Today's word is UGC, short for User Generated Content. "U" is for UGC UGC Pronounced: Yoo-Gee-Cee User Generated Content, or UGC, refers to media content that is created, produced, and shared publicly by end users. From Wikipedia: The...

Social Media ABC's - T is for Troll

Welcome to my series of blog posts on the ABC's of Social Media, a tool that you can use to make you more "hip" in the world of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn (just to name a few).  Today's letter is "T".  The letter "T" brings us words Taxonomy, Trackbacks and Transparency but I'm going for something a little more fairytale-ish.  The word for today is Troll. "T" is for Troll Troll Pronounced: Trohl We all know that the mythical Troll was a race of creatures from Norse mythology who found their ways to living under bridges with a...

Social Media ABC's - S is for Smartmob

Welcome to my series of blog posts on the ABC's of Social Media, a tool that you can use to make you more "hip" in the world of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn (just to name a few).  Today's letter is "S".  There are lots of "S" words like SaaS, SEO, SMO, SOB, and Social Media itself.  But the anarchist in me opted for the more fun and entertaining Smartmob! "S" is for Smartmob Smartmob Pronounced: Smahrt-mob A Smartmob is a group that behaves intelligently and efficiently due to it's technology related connections.  Their network allows them to...

Social Media ABC's - R is for Remixing

Welcome to my series of blog posts on the ABC's of Social Media, a tool that you can use to make you more "hip" in the world of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn (just to name a few).  Today's letter is "R".  "R" brings us Readiness, Regsitration, Roles, and RSS but I'm opting for social media's answer to the question: Will it blend?  The word for today is "Remixing" "R" is for Remixing Remixing Pronounced: KRee-miks-ing Social media offers the possibility of taking different items of content, identified by tags and published through feeds, and combining them in different...

Social Media ABC's - Q is for QWERTY

Welcome to my series of blog posts on the ABC's of Social Media, a tool that you can use to make you more "hip" in the world of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn (just to name a few).  Today's letter is "Q".  There really aren't that many "Q" words that are directly related to social media so I opted for one that most of us English typing bloggers are familiar with on a daily basis, the QWERTY keyboard layout. "Q" is for Qwerty Qwerty Pronounced: Kwur-tee QWERTY is the most common modern-day keyboard layout on English-language computer and typewriter...

Social Media ABC's - P is for Permalink

Welcome to my series of blog posts on the ABC's of Social Media, a tool that you can use to make you more "hip" in the world of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn (just to name a few).  Today's letter is "P".   The "P" words in social media include Participation, presence and podcasting and the word picked for today: Permalink. "P" is for Permalink Permalink Pronounced: Purm-uh-lingk A permalink is a URL that points to a specific blog or forum entry after it has passed from the front page to the archives. Because a permalink remains unchanged indefinitely, it...

Social Media ABC's - O is for OWL

Welcome to my series of blog posts on the ABC's of Social Media, a tool that you can use to make you more "hip" in the world of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn (just to name a few).  Today's letter is "O".  The letter "O" brings us OpenID, OpenSocial, Online and Offline but today's word is a bit more obscure.  Ever heard of XML?  How about OWL? "O" is for OWL OWL Pronounced: Ou-Wuhl No, I'm not referring tot he little metal bird from Clash of the Titans, but rather the Ontology Web Language.  The Ontology Web...

Social Media ABC's - N is for Netiquette

Welcome to my series of blog posts on the ABC's of Social Media, a tool that you can use to make you more "hip" in the world of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn (just to name a few).  Today's letter is "N". The letter "N" gives us Navigation, New Media, and NoFollow but the web wouldn't be the great place it is without the set of rules guiding your behavior while online.  So today's word is Netiquette. "N" is for Netiquette Netiquette Pronounced: Net-i-kit "Netiquette" is network etiquette, the do's and don'ts of online communication. Netiquette covers both common...

Social Media ABC's - M is for Meme

Welcome to my series of blog posts on the ABC's of Social Media, a tool that you can use to make you more "hip" in the world of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn (just to name a few).  Today's letter is "M". Mashup, MashBoard, Moblogs, and Microblogging are all great M words, but an infectious word seemed more interesting.  So, today's word is the ever contagious "Meme". "M" is for Meme Meme Pronounced: Meem A meme consists of any idea or behavior that can pass from one person to another by learning or imitation. Examples include thoughts, ideas, theories,...

Social Media ABC's - L is for Linkbait

Welcome to my series of blog posts on the ABC's of Social Media, a tool that you can use to make you more "hip" in the world of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn (just to name a few).  Today's letter is "L".  For "L", we have Lurkers, Linking (one-way, multi-way, campaigns, incestuous, over and under, and doping).  Today I'm going to pick a linking word that bloggers use to increase their search rankings - Linkbaiting. "L" is for Linkbait Linkbait Pronounced: Lingk-beyt Linkbait is a type of website marketing used to increase your web site link popularity.  Linkbait is...

Social Media ABC's - K is for Klog

Welcome to my series of blog posts on the ABC's of Social Media, a tool that you can use to make you more "hip" in the world of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn (just to name a few).  Today's letter is "K".  K words include Keywords and Knowledge, but I thought Klog to be a bit more unique.  No, it's not the wooden shoe, but a specific type of blog dedicated to knowledge. "K" is for Klog Klog Pronounced: Klawg A klog, short for Knowledge Blog, is a type of blog usually used as an internal/Intranet blog that is...

Social Media ABC's - J is for Jargon

Welcome to my series of blog posts on the ABC's of Social Media, a tool that you can use to make you more "hip" in the world of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn (just to name a few).  Today's letter is "J". There weren't too many social media words starting with "J".  There were some technical terms such as JSON and JavaScript but those didn't seem to fit.  So, I went with a more general term that is used in social media every day: Jargon. "J" is for Jargon Jargon Pronounced: Jahr-guh n Jargon is terminology that relates...

Social Media ABC's - I is for Instalanche

Welcome to my series of blog posts on the ABC's of Social Media, a tool that you can use to make you more "hip" in the world of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn (just to name a few).  Today's letter is "I".  There aren't too many "I" words aside from Instant Messaging and the Internet. But I did come across one fairly unknown one and that's my pic.  Ever had your site taken down with an instant avalanche of page views?  We'll you've experienced an Instalanche. "I" is for Instalanche Instalanche Pronounced: In-stuh-lanch The origin of the word Instalanche...

Social Media ABC's - H is for Hat Tip

Welcome to my series of blog posts on the ABC's of Social Media, a tool that you can use to make you more "hip" in the world of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn (just to name a few).  Today's letter is "H".  Of course there is HTML, Hits and Hyperlink but I've got a better one.  Today's word is for all those out there willing to pass along a nice bit of info to your fellow bloggers.  Today's word is "Hat Tip". "H" is for Hat Tip Hat Tip Pronounced: Hat-Tip A Hat tip is a cultural expression...

Social Media ABC's - G is for Glocalisation

Welcome to my series of blog posts on the ABC's of Social Media, a tool that you can use to make you more "hip" in the world of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn (just to name a few).  Today's letter is "G". There aren't too many "G" words in social media but I did come up with Google and GPS as options but they just didn't hold their own against Glocalisation. "G" is for Glocalisation Glocalisation Pronounced: Gloh-kuhl-uh-say-shun Glocalisation (or glocalization) is a combination of globalization and localization.  By definition, the term "glocal" refers to an individual, group,...

Social Media ABC's - F is for Folksonomy

Welcome to my series of blog posts on the ABC's of Social Media, a tool that you can use to make you more "hip" in the world of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn (just to name a few).  Today's letter is "F".  F gives us works like Feeds, Forums, Friends, and Flogs, but I'm going with another odd one that you most likely haven't heard before - folksonomy. "F" is for Folksonomy Folksonomy Pronounced: Fohks-son-uh-mee Folksonomy (also known as collaborative tagging, social classification, social indexing, and social tagging) is the practice and method of collaboratively creating and managing tags...

Social Media ABC's - E is for Eye Rest

Welcome to my series of blog posts on the ABC's of Social Media, a tool that you can use to make you more "hip" in the world of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn (just to name a few).  Today's letter is "E".  I could have went with Ecto, Edublog, or Embed, but I picked one that most bloggers out there do not think about.  How about giving your users some relaxation once in a while.  How about giving them some Eye Rest. "E" is for Eye Rest Eye Rest Pronounced: Ahy Rest In the blogging world, "Eye Rest" refers...

Social Media ABC's - D is for Dooced

Welcome to my series of blog posts on the ABC's of Social Media, a tool that you can use to make you more "hip" in the world of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn (just to name a few).  Today's letter is "D".  There are some great social media sites such as Digg and Delicious but that would have been too easy.  How about a fun new word that relates to a risk of blogging?  Are you a blogger? Just be careful what you post and don't get Dooced. "D" is for Dooced Dooced Pronounced: Doost Dooced is a term...

Social Media ABC’s – C is for Chicklet

Welcome to my series of blog posts on the ABC's of Social Media, a tool that you can use to make you more "hip" in the world of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn (just to name a few).  Today's letter is "C".  I could have went with the safe options of Captcha or Comment Spam, but I figured I’d dig a little deeper and I found one that we encounter almost every day when browsing blogs.  Ever noticed the little “RSS” feed icon that allows you to subscribe to someone's blog fee?  Did you know that that icon has a...

Social Media ABC's - B is for Blogs

Welcome to my series of blog posts on the ABC's of Social Media, a tool that you can use to make you more "hip" in the world of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn (just to name a few).  Today's letter is "B" and it would be irresponsible of me not to mention blogs in my list as blogs are the cornerstone of the social media revolution.  So, today I bring you: Blogs! "B" is for Blogs Blogs Pronounced: Blahgs A blog (a contraction of the term "Web log") is a Web site, usually maintained by an individual, with regular...

Social Media ABC's - A is for Aggregation

Now that I've finished up the ABC's of Networking, I figured that I would jump right in and start a new glossary of geekdom.  Since Social Media and Networking are a passion of mine and also since that is really what makes DevCentral be the great site that it is, I figured I'd tackle that list next.  So, welcome to the first post in the ABC's of Social Media!  for the letter A, it was really an easy choice.  Whether you know it or not, if you browse the web, you are likely consuming content that is derived from multiple...

The Networking ABC's - A through Z

In yesterday's post, I finished up my Networking ABC's with the final post of Z.  For those of you who can't find my ABCs tag list on my blog, I figured I'd list them all for you in one place.  A is for AuthB is for BINDC is for Cookie PersistenceD is for Dynamic Ratio Load BalancingE is for EncryptionF is for FirewallG is for GatewayH is for HTTPI is for iRuleJ is for JabberK is for Keep-AliveL is for LatencyM is for Man in the Middle N is for Nagle's...

The Networking ABC's - Z is for Zone

Today's word in the Networking ABC's starts with the letter Z.  This entry will round out the 26 entries in the Networking ABC's series so I wanted to make sure I got a good one for Z.  When one thinks about computer networking, switches and routers come to mind.  But what makes the whole internet thing work resolves around resolving user friendly domain names into network addresses.  Products such as F5's Global Traffic Manager do all the hard work so your users can get to your site regardless of the geographic location.  The information where these domain entries are...

The Networking ABC's - Y is for Yobibyte

Today's word in the Networking ABC's is the letter Y.  It took me a long time to find the right networking term that starts with the letter "Y".  A few folks mentioned using "Yank" (as in Yank the cord) or "YMMV" (for Your Mileage May Vary) but I wasn't satisfied with those so I waited.  Finally I came across a term that I thought deemed satisfactory for the Networking ABC's.   The work for today is "Yobibyte".  The Yobibyte is the largest unit of measurement for computer data and seeing how we are immersed in data day and...

The Networking ABC's - X is for X-Forwarded-For

Today's word in the Networking ABC's is the letter X.  There really aren't that many words that start with X so my choices for today was limited.  But, luckily for you all, there is one word that stands out as a necessity for application servers hosted behind HTTP proxies.  The "X-Forwarded-For" HTTP header is used to allow a proxy server to inject the true originating IP address of a client connection into the HTTP request allowing the application server to know the callers true identity. "X" is for X-Forwarded-For X-Forwarded-For Pronounced: Eks-Fôr'wərd-ed-Fawr The X-Forwarded-For (XFF) HTTP header...

The Networking ABC's - W is for WAN

The letter for the day in the Networking ABC's is the letter "W".  WAP, Web, Windows, Wireless, and WMI are common W words but for today's word I chose the one that makes disaster recovery as well as localized service possible: WAN or Wide Area Network. "W" is for WAN WAN Pronounced: Wahn A WAN, or Wide Area Network, is a computer network whose communications links cross metropolitan, regional, or national boundaries.  WANs are used to connect LANs (or Local Area Networks) and other types of networks together, so that users and computers in one location can communicate...

The Networking ABC's - V is for VIP

The letter for the day in the Networking ABC's is the letter "V". Vary headers, verification, and VLAN's find a home with the letter V, but I opted for a word that enables scaling of websites by virtualizing the resources.  Todays word is the word "VIP"   "V" is for VIP VIP Pronounced: vip VIP, not be confused with V.I.P. or Very Important Person, stands for Virtual IP.  A Virtual IP is a mechanism to allow for scalaing and maintenance no a physical resource by virtualizing the access to that device.  A server is accessed by it's network address. ...

The Networking ABC's - U is for URL

Today's letter in the networking ABC's is the letter "U".  UDP, UIE, and users are popular words for this letter, but I opted to a word that most folks use every day but don't necessarily know it.  If you open a browser and connect to a website, you are making use of the word URL. "U" is for URL URL Pronounced: yōō'är-ěl' URL, or Uniform Resource Locator (or also known as Universal Resource Locator) is, in popular usage, a synonym for Uniform Resource Identifier (URI).  A URL begins with a scheme name that defines it's namespace, purpose, and...

The Networking ABC's - T is for TCL

Today's letter in the Networking ABC's is the letter "T".  Other words beginning with "T" that would have worked today are TACACS, TMM, trunk, TCP, throughput, traffic, and ToS.  But, being a developer at heart, I opted for the word that I use on an almost daily basis.  The word for today is the programming language of iRules: TCL. "T" is for TCL TCL Pronounced: Tik-uhl Tool Command Language (or TCL) is a scripting language created by John Ousterhout who devised the language "out of frustration with programmers devising their own (poor quality) languages intended to be embedded...

The Networking ABC's - S is for SSL

Today's letter in the Networking ABC's is the letter "S".  For today's word I skipped SCTP, SNMP, self IPs, security, SIP, SNAT and spanning tree and opted for one that touches everyone who browses on the Internet.  Today's word is SSL for Secure Sockets Layer) and forms the basis for encrypting Internet traffic. "S" is for SSL SSL Pronounced: Es-Es-El SSL (Secure Sockets Layer), and it's successor TLS (Transport Layer Security) are cryptographic protocols that provide secure communications on the Internet for such things as web browsing, email, instant messaging, and other types of data transfers.  Developed by...

The Networking ABC's - R is for RTSP

Today's letter in the Networking ABC's is the letter "R".  I could have went with redundancy, RADIUS, rate class, router, or round robin, but I opted for a term that has to do with optimizing media transmission across the network and that's really important for us here at DevCentral as we are all about media!  The word for today is RTSP or Real Time Streaming Protocol "R" is for RTSP RTSP Pronounced: Ahr-Tee-Es-Pee RTSP, not to be confused with RSTP or SCTP, stands for Real Time Streaming Protocol.  RTSP, developed by the IETF and defined in RFC...

The Networking ABC's - Q is for QoS

The letter for today in the Networking ABC's is the letter "Q".  There wasn't a big selection of Q words with regards to the networking world.  I could have went with queue or query, but those didn't have the umph that Quality of Service does.  So, the word for today is the abbreviation for Quality of Service: QoS "Q" is for QoS QoS Pronounced: Kyoo-on-es The Quality of Service (QoS) level is a means by which network equipment can identify and treat traffic differently based on an identifier.  QoS is the ability to provide different priority to different...

The Networking ABC's - P is for Pool

The letter for today in the Networking ABC's is the letter "P".  "P" has a lot of words that relate to networking such as Persistence, Pipelining, Ports, Packets, and PAM but I chose the following word because it had the best picture associated with it.  Today's word is "Pool" "P" is for Pool Pool Pronounced: Pool In networking terms, a pool refers to a logical group of pool members.  A load balancing system will balance requests to the pool members within a pool based on the load balancing method and persistence method that is chosen as part of...

The Networking ABC's - O is for OneConnect

The letter of the day in the Networking ABC's is the letter "O".  While OSCP, Optimization, and OpenSSL were good choices, I opted for a word that refers to minimizing the network overhead for backend servers. "O" is for OneConnect OneConnect Pronounced: Wuhn-Kuh-nekt The OneConnect feature optimizes the use of network connections by keeping server-side connections open and pooling them for reuse. OneConnect was originally designed to allow sharing of server-side HTTP keep-alive connections which otherwise would sit idle or time out waiting for that single client to make a new HTTP request (connection pooling) and also...

The Networking ABC's - N is for Nagle's Algorithm

The letter for today in the Networking ABC's is the letter "N".  For "N", there are NATs, netmasks, and NNTP servers, but I opted for a word that's common to those who have dug into the implementations of TCP stacks, but may not be known to the rest of the human race.  This week's word is Nagle's Algorithm.  Without it, the web would be a much slower place. "N" is for Nagle's Algorithm Nagle's Algorithm Pronounced Nay-gullz Al-guh-rith-uh-m Nagle's algorithm, named after John Nagle, is a means of improving the efficiency of TCP/IP networks by reducing the number...

The Networking ABC's - M is for Man in the Middle

Today's letter of the day in the Networking ABC's is the letter "M".  Unlike it's siblings MD5, MAC, and Monitor, today's word is actually a phrase that is important when privacy is concerned.  Today's word(s) is(are) "Man in the Middle". "M" is for Man in the Middle Man in the Middle Pronounced: Man-in-th-uh-mid-l The man-in-the-middle attack (also known as a bucket-brigade attack and abbreviated MITM) is a form of active eavesdropping in which the attacker makes independent connections with the victims and relays messages between them, making them believe that they are talking directly to each other over...

The Networking ABC's - L is for Latency

Today's letter in the Networking ABC's is the letter "L".  "L" has it's last hops, layers 1-7, loopbacks, and load balancing methods.  But I opted for a word that is relates to something I despise: waiting in line.  Today's word is Latency. "L" is for Latency Latency Pronounced: leyt-n-see Latency is defined as the delay between the moment something is initiated and the moment its first effects begin.  In the networking world, this is the waiting you must deal with between the time a network connection is established and when your request can be processed.  As I mentioned...

The Networking ABC's - K is for Keep-Alive

Today's word of the day in the Networking ABC's is the letter "K".  There aren't that many good "K" words out there with regards to networking.  Of course there are Keys with regards to cryptography, Kernel, and kilobytes.  But, since networking at it's core is about connections, I opted for the "Keep-Alive" extension to HTTP that helps with connection consolidation. "K" is for Keep-Alive Keep-Alive Pronounced:  keep-uh-lahyv The HTTP protocol is designed to be a stateless connection consisting of an inbound Request and outbound Response.  The request and response are the content contained within a single TCP...

The Networking ABC's - J is for Jabber

Today's letter in the Networking ABC's is the letter "J".  "J" was a tough one as there aren't that many networking specific terms specific to networking.  I looked and looked and after catching up on twitter, I realized the app I'm using for twitter is using a "J" word under the seems.  Google talk is an instant messaging client that has integration with twitter via the Jabber protocol.  So, there it is: today's word is "Jabber".  BTW, does anyone know why I used the shark?  "J" is for Jabber Jabber Pronounced:  jab-er Jabber is a broad term...

The Networking ABC's - I is for iRule

The letter for today in the Networking ABC's is the letter "I".   Words that come to mind starting with "I" are ICMP, IPSec, Interface, and the Internet.  But since I get to pick the words, I picked my favorite "I" networking word: iRule. "I" is for iRule iRule Prounounced: Ahy-rool An iRule is a powerful and flexible feature of BIG-IP devices based on F5's exclusive TMOS architecture. iRules provide you with unprecedented control to directly manipulate and manage any IP application traffic. iRules utilizes an easy to learn scripting syntax and enables you to customize how you...

The Networking ABC's - H is for HTTP

Today's letter in the Networking ABC's is at the core of what makes the Internet work.  If you have used a browser to surf the Internet, then you have been, without knowing it, a user of the HTTP protocol.   "H" is for HTTP HTTP Pronounced: āch'tē-tē-pē' HTTP, or the Hypertext Transfer Protocol, is a communications protocol for the transfer of information on networks including intranets and the world wide web.  Developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), HTTP's original purpose was to provide a way to publish and...

The Networking ABC's - G is for Gateway

Today's letter of the day in the ABC's of Networking is the letter "G".  Gzip and group based authorization come to mind when thinking about G words, but for today's word, I've picked another core component to networking: the gateway. "G" is for Gateway Gateway Pronounced: Geyt-wey In networking terms, a gateway is a node that is equipped for interfacing with another network that uses different protocols than the source network.  Gateways can operate at any layer of the OSI model.  It's job is much more complex that that of a router or switch in that...

The Networking ABC's - F is for Firewall

Today's letter of the day in the ABC's of Networking is "F".  "F" starts some great networking terms such as Failover, Floating addresses, Filters, FQDNs, Forwarding, and Flooding.  But none of those were exciting enough, so I opted to go with the "F" word of Firewall since a Firewall is a requirement in any modern network. "F" is for Firewall Firewall Pronounced: fīr'wôl A Firewall is used to represent any number of security schemes that prevent unauthorized users from gaining access to a computer network.  Typically a firewall is implemented as a device or set of...

The Networking ABC's - E is for Encryption

Today's letter of the day in the ABC's of networking is "E".  While there are many great networking words that start with "E" such as "EAV", "ECV", and encoding, I opted to go with a more fundamental word that deals directly with security and protecting your information.  The word for today is "Encryption" "E" is for Encryption Encryption Pronounced: En-krypt-shun Encryption is the process of transforming information using an algorithm (referred to as a cipher) to make it unreadable to anyone except those processing special knowledge (usually referred to as a key).  Encryption is especially important for wireless...

The Networking ABC's - D is for Dynamic Ratio Load Balancing

Welcome to the continuing series on the ABC's of Networking.  For Today's letter  of "D", I picked a core component in the scaling of websites and application servers.  Today's word is a load balancing method that deals with dynamically changing application servers. "D" is for Dynamic Ratio Load Balancing Dynamic Ratio Load Balancing Pronounced:   Dahy-nam-ik Rey-shoh Lohd Bal-uhns-ing The ratio method of load balancing distributes connections across an array of servers in a server farm in proportion to the static ratio weights assigned to each individual server.  The Dynamic Ratio mode is like the Ratio method, except that ratio...

The Networking ABC's - C is for Cookie Persistence

Welcome to the continuing series on the ABC's of Networking.  In the "B is for BIND" post, I referenced the BIGipCookie which is a perfect lead-up for today's post.  Today's letter of the day is "C" and for it I chose Cookie Persistence.  BIGipCookie just happens to be the cookie name that the BIG-IP uses for it's implementation of cookie persistence. "C" is for Cookie Persistence Cookie Persistence Pronounced: Kook-ee Per-sis-tuh ns Persistence is the mechanism of connecting a single client connection to a single node in a server farm.  Cookie persistence is a mode of persistence where a...

The Networking ABC's - B is for BIND

And so continues on the ABC's of Networking.  For today's letter of "B" I could have talked about bandwidth, BIGipCookie, browsers, buffer size, or bursting restrictions but I opted to pick one of the core components that keeps the internet's wheels rolling.  Today's word is the Berkeley Internet Name Domain, otherwise known as BIND. "B" is for BIND BIND Pronounced: bahyndAbbreviations: BIND, 81|\|[) BIND, short for Berkeley Internet Name Domain, is the most commonly used DNS server on the Internet and the de facto standard on Unix-like systems.  DNS, or Domain Name System, is the "Phone book" for...

The Networking ABC's - A is for Auth

I was digging through some ideas for blog posts and with the popularity of the "101" series of tech tips we've done on DevCentral, I figured test the waters with some structure like that on my blog.  So, here's a go at the first of (at least) 26 posts on "The Networking ABCs".  Who knows, maybe someone will invent a new letter by the time I get to "Z".  "A" is for Auth Since the term "Auth" is used freely to mean one or both of the following terms, you'll get a bonus for this first entry!...