By on . Updated: .

wifi.jpg

I recently installed Fedora 23 Workstation on a MacBook Air, which sports a Broadcom BCM4360 802.11ac wi-fi adapter. Unfortunately wi-fi does not work out of the box on this laptop, though most of its other hardware is supported just fine by this latest flavor of Red Hat's community Linux distro.

In order to get your Broadcom wi-fi card to work on Fedora 23, run the following commands in a Terminal (enter your sudo password when prompted):

wget http://git.io/vuLC7 -v -O fedora23_broadcom_wl_install.sh && sh ./fedora23_broadcom_wl_install.sh;

Note: the above commands require a working/wired network connection to download the Broadcom driver files. I have an Android tablet that I tethered to my Air via USB in order to get online to download the required files.

These are the exact commands that will be run on your machine to compile and install the driver:

After running the above shell script, the Broadcom driver will be loaded and your Wi-Fi device will be configurable via NetworkManager. Happy (wireless) surfing!

Comment below if the above script did not work for you for some reason.

Here's a few reference links that helped me figure all of this out:

By on .

There's currently a little bit of a buzz going on today on Twitter and CrackBerry among BlackBerry people about an article titled Web Security Analysis Of 12 BlackBerry 10 Applications published by a website called FileArchiveHaven.

The FileArchiveHaven post takes a look at various popular BlackBerry 10 applications, and analyzes the third-party Internet connections they make while they are running.

Some apps are called out for making unencrypted connections to various web services and for potentially passing user-identifying information in the clear. This is a definite no-no for app devs who care about data security.

Flurry Analytics is referenced several times throughout the article as one of the services being used over an unsecured connection. This doesn't have to be, as Flurry supports sending analytics data over HTTPS (also known as SSL and TLS).

Because Flurry Analytics is a popular web service that many BlackBerry 10 devs integrate to learn more about how their apps are being used, I'm sharing some info today on how to make the Flurry SDK connect from an app to the Flurry web service over a secured/encrypted connection. It's actually fairly straightforward as I will illustrate below.

The following example uses the Flurry SDK for Native/Cascades C++ BlackBerry 10 applications. The same can be easily accomplished for developers who are using the BlackBerry 10 Native C APIs, as well.

Here's how a typical Cascades application would establish a Flurry session within an app's main method within main.cpp:

Q_DECL_EXPORT int main(int argc, char **argv)
{

    Flurry::Analytics::StartSession("ABC1234567890"); // API key faked for obvious reasons ...

    // ... Rest of app initialization logic continues here ...
}

With 1 additional line of code, app developers using the Flurry Analytics SDK for BlackBerry 10 can enable analytics data to be sent over an encrypted HTTPS connection.

Modify your main method so that it now looks like:

Q_DECL_EXPORT int main(int argc, char **argv)
{

    Flurry::Analytics::SetSecureTransportEnabled(true); // Note this new line telling Flurry to use a "secure transport"
    Flurry::Analytics::StartSession("ABC1234567890"); // API key faked for obvious reasons ...

    // ... Rest of app initialization logic continues here ...
}

That's all there is to it.

Protect your users and your own good reputation as a BB10 app developer by only using encrypted web services wherever possible!

Flurry References:

By on .

onpub.png

A new, stable version of Onpub CMS has been released.

Click here to download Onpub CMS.

Here's a list of some things that have changed in this latest version:

  • Enhanced re-direct logic now detects when an article's section changes.
  • Updated YUI, CKEditor, and phpThumb libraries to their latest stable versions.
  • Made Roboto the default font.
  • Implemented new blog-style default home page.
  • Use the relative protocol for Google Fonts include.
  • Removed api directory from main Onpub repo as this code is now included via Composer.
  • Added support for yui3 Bower component.
  • Started adding Article microdata schema markup to home page articles.
  • Increased default menu font size.
  • Fill all available horizontal space with standalone YUI grid divs.
  • Deprecated and removed a couple of obsolete onpub_conf config variables.

See the full Onpub CMS change history on GitHub for more details on what's new with this release.

The Onpub demo site has also been updated to feature this latest stable release.

By on . Updated: .

blackwik-icon.png

Looks like Blackwik is getting some love by way of the BlackBerry User Group of Kassel, Germany!

I recently stumbled across this article, titled Update: Blackwik auf Version 1.3.0.1, which roughly translates to Update: Blackwik to version 1.3.0.1 in English.

This appears to be a blog posting that briefly profiles the features of Blackwik, from someone by the name of Oliver who is seemingly appreciative of Onpub.com's free Piwik client app for BlackBerry 10 smartphones, which includes native German language support.

The author even includes a nice screenshot of Blackwik, shown running on the BlackBerry Z10 smarphone:

Click here to read the full in article in English as translated by Google Translate. Thanks, Oliver!

It's no mystery to me that Blackwik is popular among Piwik and BlackBerry 10 users in Germany. Our app analytics tell us that German is the most-used language among Blackwik users around the globe, topping even the native English translation of the application.

It's clear that BlackBerry and Piwik are popular platforms among German techies who favor software that values both their privacy and security.

No doubt, Onpub.com will continue to release new versions of Blackwik (now at version 1.5) that include full support for folks in Germany and other German-speaking nations.

Click the BlackBerry World icon below to download the latest version of Blackwik, which now includes even more useful features (including full support for 11 other lanugages/locales apart from German and English) since version 1.3 was last profiled by BlackBerry Kassel.

Click to download Blackwik