Google Latitude on iOS 4 update

Now don’t get me wrong Latitudie does what it says on the tin, but boy…does it drain the battery. I also found that the only way to turn it off was to stop the background app from running, and then disable the location service for it.

The setting I used for background were, Best location, periodic updates when not moving…off. With these settings, a full battery would last around 8 hours on my iPhone 4, and around 6 hours on C’s 3GS.

Now suprisingly I would have expected to App store to be over saturated with Google latatide apps, however I could only find one other, called Device Locator.

Device Locator like Latitudie will track your position, and update the latitude servers, however does so much more.

You initially need to create an account on the Device Locators site, download the app, sign into the app, then your good to setup.

Via the website you can configure how you want your phone to update. The range is as follows

Cell Tower Switch
2 Hours
1 Hour
30 mins
10 mins
1 min (emergency)

Now I’ve been running at the 10 minute interval update, and it’s hardly touching my battery, my battery was fully charged at 8am this morning, and when I write this 3 hours later, my battery is on 99%, which is a vast improvement over Latitudie, this would normally be in the low 80%.

The website also give you a small google maps preview showing you currently location of device, and a history down the left hand side. There is even a graph to tell you how much battery you had at the last poll.

There is also the option to send a text message to your phone (if somebody has swiped it), or set the alarm going (assuming you can’t find your phone).

Now granted, this app is £2.99 however it’s a small price to pay in comparison to the mobileme account which does a very similar job. Judging by the website, this is still in the very early stages (no css on the site as yet), however it works very well.

Tags: 10 mins, 3gs, apps, cell tower, comparison, configure, Download, drain, emergency, google, google maps, graph, iphone, iphone 4, job, last poll, latitude, left hand side, location, location service, Locator, Locators, minute interval, mobileme, option, periodic updates, phone, poll, servers, sign, store, switch, text, text message, tin, Via

How to stop spam bots on phpbb3

Over the past couple of months I’ve been having a bit of an issue with spam bots signing up, and posting spam all over my forums. I spent the best part of 2 days trying to combat this but to no avail. I was just about to tear my hair out, when I stubled accross a brilliant idea over at awesomestyles.com

The idea was to create a custom field which was compulsery on signup.

Custom profile fields are a feature of phpBB3. They allow you, as admin, to easily add fields that a user can fill out to their profile – such as location, age and so on. It is possible to use a custom profile field to help and prevent spam bots from registering on your forum.

Adding a new custom profile field

Firstly you need to login to your admin forum and click the Users and groups tab

From the left hand menu select the Custom profile fields from the Users menu

This will show all the custom profile fields currently added. Add a new one from the box in the bottom right of the page.

Use a name in the textbox such as ‘stop_spam’ or ‘no_spam’ (17 characters max, a-z and underscores only allowed). Select Dropdown box from the dropdown box and click Create field

The settings

You’ll now be shown a more detailed form. The field type and identification fields should already be filled in. Make sure that the Display profile field option is set to Yes and the Display on registration screen and Required field options are checked.

Enter some text for the bottom 3 boxes. In this tutorial the Field title is Are you a spambot?, the description is Sorry we have to ask and the options are just Yes and No.

Once you’ve entered this text click Profile type specific options and you’ll be taken to the next stage in adding the custom profile field.

The default settings here should be fine. Both drop down boxes need to be set to Yes. This means that “Yes” is the default option when on the registration page and that a value of “Yes” will cause an error. This means that whoever is registering will have to change this value to “No” – the idea being a spam bot would not know to do this so won’t be able to sign up to your forum. Click the Language specific options button. This will allow you to translate the text you entered (Are you a spam bot, etc) in step 1 to any other languages installed on your forum. Once that has been completed click Save.

That’s it! This won’t stop all spam bots however it will help to prevent some spam and it is a very easy system to implement.

Using just 1 field didn’t work for me, however adding 2, worked just a treat, my registration screen look like the below, and since implementing a couple of days ago, no more spam bots !!

Reg screen

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