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One of the AfterDawn.com servers had connectivity problems during the weekend, which caused problems for our North American users. Users in other regions could have been affected as well.
The problems were caused by a combination of abnormal network latency and cache frontend server configuration. There also was another problem that caused occasional "Oops, there has been an error" -messages when no error actually occured. This was also caused by an overly optimistic default setting in the version of Varnish Cache we were using. The setting has now been fixed along with an upgrade of Varnish.
We are deeply sorry about the inconvenience the problems have caused, and hope that they are now behind us.
Should you encounter problems accessing or using our site, please don't hesitate to contact me directly via email at firstname.lastname@afterdawn.com or via Twitter at @ketola or @afterdawn.
As many of our regular visitors have probably noticed, we had outgrown our four-year-old server setup quite a while ago. We have worked on a new infrastructure for quite a while now, and finally switched to a new location earlier this week.
We have now ironed out much of the (inevitable) bugs that appeared in the transition. However since this was quite a major upgrade, there's bound to be some more problems lurking around in the shadows. Therefore please do let us know if you encounter something that is not working as expected.
In addition to moving to completely new server hardware, we also switched from very old and unsupported BlueDragon FREE Coldfusion server to an open source version of the same software - Open BlueDragon (or OpenBD for short).
Probably the most significant change was moving the hosting location from Dallas, Texas to Amsterdam in the Netherlands. The change in location allowed us to get much more beef behind the scenes (full server specifications after the break).
To celebrate the annual Towel Day we here at AfterDawn decided to give away a bunch of AfterDawn towels. How clever!
In order to enter the drawing, just comment on this article, like it on Facebook or Tweet about it. If you include an appropriately towel-themed picture of yourself, your chances to win will increase fortytwofold!
We have just implemented a couple of relatively small, but quite significant changes to the site. Both changes aim to improve the overall page rendering speeds. In short - pages should hopefully load and display faster than before. The changes focus on the way advertisements are displayed on our pages, and on the way certain images are loaded. After the change most of the advertisements are loaded after the page has completed, which allows you to start viewing and reading faster than before.
Even though we have done our very best to test the changes on a variety of browsers and platforms, there is a strong possibility that problems occur on some combinations of browsers, operating systems and service providers. Should you run across any problems with, for example, advertisement placement (see this fabricated example), please let us know either by commenting this news article or by sending us feedback.
Another change that we've implemented has to do with loading images on some of the "image heavy" pages at AfterDawn. A good example of this is the Desktop pics forum thread. Slow loading pictures in posts or signatures can cause some forum pages to load very sluggishly. Now, after the recent change, all the images in the all posts are loaded "lazily", i.e. when they are scrolled to view. You'll see placeholder images such as this when you view posts. Those placeholders will be replaced by the actual images once your browser has loaded them.
There is an un-patched vulnerability in OpenX advertisement server that affected the advertisement delivery at AfterDawn.com for short while today. The vulnerability was used to tamper specific files on our advertisement server, which caused advertisements fail to load. Advertisements are served from an isolated server, and no other AfterDawn services were affected at any stage.
The vulnerability is not in OpenX itself, but in an included component of Open Flash Chart 2. The vulnerability has been known for a long time but has not been patched to date. It's effects to OpenX and instructions for fixing and cleaning up after the issue are explained at kreativrauschen.com blog.
In our case the advertisement server simply broke down and delivered no advertisements at all. Access to the server caused Chrome to throw an "Error 330 (net::ERR_CONTENT_DECODING_FAILED): Unknown error" error while Firefox displayed "Content Encoding Error: The page you are trying to view cannot be shown because it uses an invalid or unsupported form of compression."
Nokia's Board of Directors has appointed Stephen Elop President and Chief Executive Officer of Nokia as of September 21. Elop currently heads Microsoft's Business Division. Before joining Microsoft, Elop held senior executive positions in a number of US-based public companies, including Juniper Networks, Adobe Systems Inc. and Macromedia Inc. He holds a degree in computer engineering and management from McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada, which is his home country.
Elop commented on his new Nokia position:
I am extremely excited to become part of a team dedicated to strengthening Nokia's position as the undisputed leader of the mobile communications industry, with a relentless focus on meeting the needs and expectations of customers. Nokia has a unique global position as well as a great brand upon which we can build. The company has deeply talented and dedicated people, and I am confident that together we can continue to deliver innovative products that meet the needs of consumers. The Nokia slogan clearly states our key mission: Connecting People, which will acquire new dimensions as we build our portfolio of products, solutions and services.
Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo will leave his current position as President and CEO of Nokia on September 20, 2010 and his position on the Nokia Board of Directors with immediate effect. He will continue to chair the Board of Nokia Siemens Networks in a non-executive capacity.
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Once again, it is the time of the year when AfterDawn.com team would like to wish all our users, moderators, associates and employees very, very merry Christmas and happy holidays!
It is time for us to take a short break here at the AfterDawn.com office, but we will keep our eyes and ears open in case something interesting happens. If you're hungry for more, check out our forums!
The eagerly awaited Google Chrome web browser has been released, and is now available for download. The browser includes a lot of promising features - features that have clearly been thought through rather thoroughly.
One of the most prominent new features is the new "new tab" page. Normally when you open a new tab you are presented with either your home page or an empty page. By default Google Chrome presents you with thumbnail screen shots of your most visited pages and a box for searching through your page history. The browser adjusts to the way you use it - not vice versa. Unlike regular page history that is able to search through page names and URLs, Chrome's history search looks for matches in the actual contents of the pages as well.
There's a lot of cool features under the hood, too. Each tab runs in its own process, so one malfunctioning page, at worst, crashes the tab it is running in - not the whole browser. In whole the browser is designed to meet the needs of modern day web users and web pages.
We just received our review samples of Popcorn Hour A-110 Networked Media Tank and Popcorn Hour B-110 Mini-ITX motherboard. Both units came neatly packed in nice, sleek black boxes and included everything you need to get started.
While we go about testing the devices (including the previous, A-100 model), please enjoy the following unboxing pictures along with side-by-side comparisons with A-100. The differences are small, but perhaps significant to many. I personally welcome the switch from PATA to SATA.
If you can't see the slideshow above, you can view the gallery at:
On behalf of the whole AfterDawn.com staff congratulations to Teemu (our web designer) and his wife Katariina who yesterday became parents of a baby girl!
Things aren't looking too bad in the High Definition front for early HD DVD adopters or other HD enthusiasts. In the wake of Toshiba's announcement to drop HD DVD a number of lucrative deals have surfaced.
Most notably the prices of the HD DVD players have plummeted. You can now get, for example, Toshiba HD-A3 + two movies for as little as $79.99, which is rather ridiculous for a player with an excellent upscaler. For people with an existing DVD collection, HD capable display and no upscaling DVD player, the deal is quite tempting.
Even though the format will most likely fade away by the end of the year, there's still plenty of HD DVD movies available - often at bargain prices. For instance Amazon offers The Bourne Trilogy (The Bourne Identity / The Bourne Supremacy / The Bourne Ultimatum) at an incredible price of $29.99. That's almost $60 off the list price. DeepDiscount.com offers HD DVD movies from $9.98 and HDScape is dumping the HD DVD versions of their high definition demo videos at $6.95/each or $39.95 for the bundle of 8 discs.
The day that we all (well at least many of us.. or some) have been waiting for ages has arrived -- the AfterDawn.com servers have been upgraded. Our old servers had been running at peak capacity for over six months now, and there was very little left to optimize. The new server setup that we switched over to today should dramatically improve response times across the site.
The switch may cause some oddities until DNS updates propagate to everyone. You might want to clear your browser cache and restart the browser to help speed up the change.
Along with the new servers we introduced individual timezone settings for the users. You can access the new user settings page at http://login.afterdawn.com/settings/. The timezone is set under Edit settings. Under the settings page you can also define whether or not you want to 1) subscribe to discussion threads by default and 2) use your signature in forum posts or news comments.
The server switch and timezone implementation may cause some weirdness during the transit period (e.g. forum posts showing up in wrong places).
It's been quite a while since we last ran a user survey here at AfterDawn.com. Since then a lot has changed at the site. We would be interested in knowing more about how You use AfterDawn.
Taking the survey takes no more than two minutes of your time. If you've got the time to spare, we would appreciate your input!
Update: Based on feedback received we've updated some of the questions in the survey. If you found the options in the previous survey too limited, please have a look at the new one. If you already took the "old" survey, you can fill out the new one as well.
Update 2: We received over a thousand replies over the weekend. The survey, therefore, is completed.
After the introduction of Google+ Pages we have opened a page for AfterDawn.com as well. You can access it easily at http://afterdawn.com/+. If you have joined the Google+ Platform Preview program you might also see Google+ Badges around the site!
One of the AfterDawn.com servers had connectivity problems during the weekend, which caused problems for our North American users. Users in other regions could have been affected as well.
when you view posts. Those placeholders will be replaced by the actual images once your browser has loaded them.
It's time for us here at AfterDawn to take a break, and enjoy some quality time with our friends and family.
Nokia's Board of Directors has appointed Stephen Elop President and Chief Executive Officer of Nokia as of September 21. Elop currently heads Microsoft's Business Division. Before joining Microsoft, Elop held senior executive positions in a number of US-based public companies, including Juniper Networks, Adobe Systems Inc. and Macromedia Inc. He holds a degree in computer engineering and management from McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada, which is his home country.
Once again, it is the time of the year when AfterDawn.com team would like to wish all our users, moderators, associates and employees very, very merry Christmas and happy holidays!
The eagerly awaited 
We just received our review samples of Popcorn Hour A-110 Networked Media Tank and Popcorn Hour B-110 Mini-ITX motherboard. Both units came neatly packed in nice, sleek black boxes and included everything you need to get started.
Things aren't looking too bad in the 
