Just a quick post if you’d like to get a history of SVN commits between an older revision and your current working copy. Get the current revision number from your local copy:

svnversion .

Then get a commit history between and older version and your current version:

svn log -r 6885:8485

Where the number before the colon is your old version and the one after is your current.

If you’re working with Magento Commerce you’ll most likely want to remove index.php from the URL when you go live. Or maybe you don’t care so feel free to stop reading.

This post addresses all the things you can do to remove index.php, but let me touch on the items that worked for me:

- From Magento’s admin go to System > Configuration > Web and change “Use Web Server Rewrites” to Yes

- Make sure both Base URLs for secure and unsecure don’t contain index.php

- Make sure Apache rewrites are enabled: sudo a2enmod rewrite

- This is the big one…I had to change my Apache config (/etc/apache2/sites-available/default) where it references AllowOverride None to AllowOverride All

- Restart Apache and you should be good to go

I hope this helps!

If you’re really bored and decide you want to lobby for a GPS bus tracker on your campus then be sure to check out the video below. I recently posted this article about a Tufts GPS bus tracking project with Ublip. At Ublip, we’re working hard to connect people with remote assets and this project is a great demonstration of our technology foundation.

One of my pet projects at Ublip is focusing on building an online community centered around M2M. If you’re interested in learning more about the M2M industry then I encourage you to check out www.m2mforums.com. The site is in its infancy, but there’s already a strong community of knowledgeable experts talking about all different aspects of M2M. If you’re not familiar with the industry let me explain the overall problem. Right now there are so many areas of fragmentation that starts with sensors and embedded devices, wireless networks and protocols, middleware software, database, and ultimately web applications. There are so many different implementations and suggested standards in each of these area it will make your head spin.

The goal of M2MForums is to create a community where this information can be shared across different areas of the value chain. Since I’m a guy that is heavily involved with Web development I may be able to  provide suggestions and best practices to an embedded guy work on an implementation. This is a two way street and there are so many areas and nitty-gritty details to understand. I could ramble on and on, but please feel free to join and I look forward to seeing you over there!

A buddy recently sent me a link to a cool site that allows you to search for Amazon Prime items. The site is called iPrimr and if you haven’t heard of Amazon Prime yet you should definitely check it out!  I can guarantee this will come in very handy for holiday shoppers.  I’m not currently a member, but plan on joining soon.  It seems like a no-brainer if you do a considerable amount of shopping on Amazon, which I do.  Enjoy!

The cat is out of the bag. At Ublip, we’ve just released our easy to use GPS tracking system that is very affordable and can be self-installed. If you analyze a majority of our competitor’s offerings you’ll notice the “kitchen sink” approach where the GPS software has every feature under the sun. We believe we’ve baked in just the features you need to locate your assets, view basic reports, geofences, and notifications. Of course we’ll be extending the product, but our current customer base is extremely pleased with the features that are available out of the box. In the world of GPS vehicle tracking, fleet management, or whatever name you prefer, we believe there’s a HUGE opportunity to make GPS asset tracking more approachable from both a technology and cost perspective. Check out a tour of our web-based GPS tracking software and we’ll be releasing a live demo soon. Also, if you’re interested in using a GPS enabled mobile phone for tracking then please drop me a note or leave a comment below. I’m contemplating bringing the Windows Mobile and Symbian versions of BlueGPS out of retirement for a basic phone implementation.