MAMP, a local webserver environment for the Mac, is perfect for testing, developing and designing with WordPress. MAMP comes with a ready to use configuration of Apache, MySQL and PHP in a single folder.
But after installing and configuring a WordPress blog, you may loose the access to the MAMP start page:

Forbidden
You don’t have permission to access /MAMP/ on this server.
Apache/2.0.63 (Unix) PHP/5.2.11 DAV/2 Server at localhost Port XXXX

That’s a big issue, as the start page links to the local phpMyAdmin page for MySQL-database configuration. So you cannot admin the database anymore.
I traced down the problem to a wrong placed file: When I configured the WordPress installation via the web-interface, an .htaccess file was placed in the root directory of my harddrive. Quite scary … but a problem which can be fixed easily

As always: no guarantee and on your own risk … especially the Terminal is a wonderful tool … but if you do the wrong thing, you may be in serious trouble!

You normally do not recognize the .htaccess file within the Finder: all filenames starting with a dot are hidden files in a UNIX system … and the Finder does not show those hidden files. But if you use the Terminal, you can look at all the hidden files easily.
So fire up the Terminal app and go to the root directory of your hard drive:

cd /

then looks at all the files in your root directory:

ls -la

If you find a .htaccess there … you probably found your problem. But look inside the file before your rename or delete it:

cat .htaccess

The easiest way to proceed is to rename the htaccess file:

mv .htaccess htaccess-backup

This way the file is shown in the Finder again and does not confuse your MAMP installation. If you know what to do you can delete the renamed file now within the Finder and drag it to the trash

Adobe announced the export capability from Adobe Flash Professional CS5 to built native iPhone apps. This is the next round in the battle for market shares in the field of mobile application platforms.
Adobe tried to position Flash with their shrinked down Flash Light as a global OS independent application development platform for mobile devices. Today more than 800 million mobile devices are Flash Light enabled. It looked like they found the philosopher’s stone – but when you dig deeper, Adobe is facing a lot of issues:

• Those more than 800 million mobile devices have different screen sizes, different buttons or keyboards and some even have a touch screen. That does not help developers to create stunning GUIs on mobiles where every little pixel needs to be arranged.
• Flash is very performance hungry. That’s why they had to shrink it down to Flash Light – but even flash light is struggling with performance issues on many of the 800 million devices.
• Adobe does not provide a application store infrastructure for its developers … maybe one of the biggest issues of all

But on March 6, 2008 an other threat to Flash and Flash Light appeared: Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone SDK which provided a easy way to create third party applications for the iPhone with high mobile performance and the ability to take advantage of most of the sensors – like touchsceen, accelerometer, microphone, camera. And Apple solved one of the biggest hurdles for mobile application developers: They provided an easy application store solution for the developers to sell their apps or distribute them for free. And also the market for these native iPhone applications is quite attractive: There are more than 50 million iPhones and iPod touch devices out there – all of them having the exact same screen size, all of them having a touch sceen, all of them having an accelerometer. Apple attracted a lot of independent developers as well the big names in game industry with their mobile application ecosystem.
Bringing Flash support to the iPhone Safari web browser was blocked by Apple because of those big performance issues. Apple also did not license Flash Light for the iPhone – quite logic because they built up their own developer base and their own mobile app ecosystem.
The only chance Adobe had was to built up an “injection”-strategy and develop their Flash authoring tool into an Objective-C & Cocoa code generator which allows Flash developers to create native iPhone applications by the press of a button. Then the Flash developers can upload their app to the iTunes AppStore and use it as a selling and distribution channel.
This probably wasn’t an easy job and it will be quite interesting to watch Apple’s reaction on this move. It probably will have a massive effect on the AppStore as this will flood the store with new apps: More creativity and more junk.

Louis Gerbarge spotted the technical issues of the Adobe Flash to native iPhone code generation – and takes a look on the performance and private API issues of the beta version of the CS5 solution. His post makes clear that taking the Flash way won’t offer the Flash developers the features and beauty of the uncountable iPhone SDK 3.x APIs.

Microsoft’s Windows Life Hotmail service wasn’t fun on the iPhone (and on other mobile devices), until now: You had to check the emails via the hotmail website. This was possible with modern smartphone browsers – but it was a usability nightmare.
Now, it looks like Microsoft had to give in the pressure of their customers and add POP3 service to access emails from Hotmail. It’s an old hat for all the other free-mail-providers – but an “innovation” for M$. Now even M$ customers can access their Hotmail-emails via a standard email-client.
This way, it’s even possible to use the native mail app on the iPhone to receive and edit and send mails via a Hotmail account. Also other smartphones like the T-Mobile Google G1 or the Blackberry can now access Hotmail. On the Mac and the PC mail clients work, too – like Apple Mail, Mozilla Thunderbird or M$ Entourage on the Mac.

The following account settings are needed:

• POP-Server: pop3.live.com (port 995)
• SMTP-Server: smtp.live.com (port 25)
• SSL-Encryption for POP and SMTP connections must be turned on.
• SMTP password authentication must be turned on, too.

New email-accounts can be set up on the iPhone via “Settings” > “Mail, contacts, calender”. Maybe this makes Hotmail a little bit more attractive …

Source: news.softpedia.com

The registration for the – again – biggest Ruby-on-Rails conference in the US is now open: RailsConf 2009. O’Reilly organizes the conference again. but this time it’s not Portland but Las Vegas where the rails community meets again. Las Vegas is not only the US center of gambling and entertainment – it’s also one of the much sought-after conference locations
If you register before March 16th 11:59pm you’ll get an early-bird bonus and save 200 USD.
All rails-pros who want to share their knowledge and give a presentation at the conference, the Call for Participation deadline is extended to February 17th 2009. So you have to be fast!
The conference will be at the Las Vegas Hilton from May 4th to 7th 2009.

Viva Las Vegas!

Sources: rubyonrails.com, RailsConf.com

Great! Now, also some German universities publish some free podcasts, videos and scripts via “iTunes U”. Until now, you can find content from the following universities from Germany:

• Hasso Plattner Institut / IT Systems Engineering / University of Potsdam
• RWTH Aachen University
• Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich
• University Freiburg

Perfect! Especially high school graduates can get a first impression of the different universities. At the end there is no getting around visiting the favorite universities to make the decision, but the iTunes U content is another first impression.
But also for students, post graduates and alumni, there are quite interesting contents – and some real gems also

Source: Macnews.de (only German)