Archive for August, 2007
Bloglines Beta Redesign
Posted on August 31, 2007, under Blogging, Tools and Services.
Earlier this week, Bloglines released a beta to its popular web based RSS reader. Bloglines has had the same look and feel now going on two years, so it is really good to see something finally come from the company. I have been a long time user of Google Reader, which I came to from Bloglines some two years ago. At the time Google Reader was a breath of fresh air, and offered better interaction when gong through my RSS feeds. Now, in trying the beta of Bloglines this week, I am strongly thinking about switching back. The new UI is slick, and offers some great views when reading RSS feeds. The beta is a little slow, but I am sure that they are getting a ton of traffic from the PR blitz this week. For some time it has looked like Google Reader had become more popular than Bloglines, but Read/WriteWeb crunches the real numbers.
Luckily for users like me looking to switch back, you can easily import and export your OPML file from service to service. The beta looks promising, and hopefully it will not be beta for some ungodly amount of time; like most betas these days.
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Stemplate, Free Web Template Elements
Posted on August 30, 2007, under Tools and Services, Web Design.
I usually do not write about services that people contact me about, as it’s hard to weed through the “spammers” that are just randomly submitting new services to blogs. A little while ago I got an email from someone over at Stemplate, which is a web design template website. The difference between this server and others, for one is they have all free templates. The second major difference is that they do not give you entire website templates, but instead portions of websites for example navigation banners, buttons, etc.
The reason I like Stemplate over other template sites is because it gives me stuff to build off of, or integrate into my own design. I can do some design work, but I am not nearly as good as those that can crank out templates one after another. I am more of a designer that can piece things together, and build off of things. Stemplate also serves as a good resource for learning how to do certain things. The service is new, so it is a little thin in content but I am sure there is more to come soon.
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Bust A Name Fool!
Posted on August 27, 2007, under Networking, Tools and Services, Web Hosting.
We have all been there before: you are starting up a new blog or killer service and can’t find a domain name because all the cool domains are already taken. Well not really, there are still some good gems out there that the cyber squatters have not snatched up yet. The trouble is, how do you find them?
Enter Bust a Name. Before this little slick tool came across my radar, Name Boy was my favorite tool for this task; but no more. Bust a Name, like other tools allow you to enter keywords that describe your blog or service, and it will compile a list of available domains. There are other little bells and whistles that allow you to tweak the domain results listed back to you. Giving this a test with some keywords, it actually came up with a couple good domain names. If I did not already own a slew of domain names, I just might have bought them. Bust a Name also makes it easy to purchase any domain names you find with the click of a button. The are probably getting an affiliate fee for any domain name purchased through them, so help support their free service by buying through their affiliate links.
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Trying Mahalo for a Week
Posted on August 26, 2007, under Search, Tools and Services.
Note: I am not employed, endorsed, or in any way associated with Mahalo or any other of Jason Calacanis’s properties.
Today is Monday, the start of a new week. I have decided to try Mahalo, the new “Human Powered Search Engine” by Jason Calacanis, for an entire week. I have started by installing the Firefox search extension and will be using it for every primary search this week. This means when I need to search for something, I will be trying Mahalo first and then resorting to traditional search methods as a fall back. I feel that the hardest thing to get use to during this trial is not having to weed through search results myself, as Mahalo’s guides compile the “best” of all links into a customized page.
I have decided to try this experiment with Mahalom and other non-Google search engines, primarily because I feel a lot of us get stuck in our ways of doing things and then it becomes that much harder to eventually branch out. I have decided to start with Mahalo, because it is a far reach outside the traditional search engines.
I hope you come back for a full review next Monday.
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How To Hack Experts Exchanges In Two Steps
Posted on August 23, 2007, under How To, Tools and Services.
Experts Exchange use to be a valuable resource for finding answers to common and uncommon problems, and is a good resource for developers. The problem is now they employ some “shady” techniques to get it Google’s top pages results to promote their paid content. This is against Google’s Terms of Use, and some are pushing to get it removed from Google search results.
Personally for me, when I am searching for an answer to something online while developing, I can’t tell you how frustrating it is to click on one of their links that pushes signing up for a membership. Most users have no intention of signing up, and they led you to this page under false pretenses. I am all for companies making money, but they are polluting Google page results and leading you to paid content. Not something that sits well for Google or Experts Exchange. I usually do not promote “hacking” techniques, but I would hardly consider this hacking; it’s really just using your browser. So lets get started:
Here are what Experts Exchange answers usually look like. Blocked out with overlays promoting their pay service.
The basis of this technique is we are going to block Experts Exchange from setting any cookies on your browser, and this tutorial is a walk through for Firefox you can do the same in IE.
Step One: Clear Existing Cookies From Expert Exchange
Go to your options under the “Tools” menu in Firefox, and click on the “Privacy” tab. Next click on the “Show Cookies…” button. Search for any cookies for “experts-exchange.com” and delete them.
You can now close out of this dialog.
Step Two: Setup a Block Filter for Experts Exchange:
Now you want to click on the “Exceptions…” button, and type “experts-exchange.com” in the text box. Now click the “Block” button, and then close out of this dialog and all the way back to your browser. Restart Firefox after this just for good measure.
Results:
Now when you go to an Experts Exchange link with blocked out answers, you will still see the blocked out answers and it may appear that this hack did nothing. Scroll down all the way to the end of the page and you will see the answers.
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Microsoft Codenames, and the Experimental Operating System Singularity
Posted on August 22, 2007, under Development, Software.
Wikipedia is great tool, contributors have compiled a very in depth list of codenames from Microsoft’s products over the years. This list dates back to Thunder, or Visual Basic 1.0. Or even earlier Janus, or Windows 3.1.
Scrolling through the list I came across the experimental operating system Singularity, that I have never heard of before. From Wikipedia…
Experimental operating system based on the Microsoft .NET platform, using software-based type safety as a replacement for hardware-based memory protection.
Channel 9 has some videos with the developers and researchers of this project.
- Singularity: A research OS written in C#, Channel 9 video and blog, Redmond, WA, August 23, 2005.
- Singularity Revisited, Channel 9 video and blog, Redmond, WA, December 13, 2005.
- Singularity III: Revenge of the SIP, Channel 9 video and blog, Redmond, WA, September 1, 2006.
- Singularity IV: Return of the UI, Channel 9 video and blog, Redmond, WA, September 1, 2006.
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Why Google, and Other Services Don’t Make Off-line Backup Tools for Their Services
Posted on August 20, 2007, under Email, Operating Systems, Software, Tools and Services.
Web services are everywhere, I do not need to go into examples like Google Docs, Gmail, Office Live, etc. Everything is moving toward the web, and the security of having everything on your local hard drive will be no more. The one thing that will prevent a lot of people, and corporations, from moving everything to a web based email or document solution is the feeling of not owning the content. To that point, the one thing that you do not see for these online services are backup tools. Why is this?
A backup tool in mine and most definitions, is an automated way of exporting all data in the event of a failure on either the service or the client side. This does not mean manually going in an exporting emails or documents, rather pressing a button and getting a local copy.
I understand that a lot of these web services are new, and a backup tool is probably not the first, or the second, feature that a Google or Microsoft would bring to market. Beyond that, what is taking so long? GMail still does not have an API, and if you apply this time line to Google Docs; it will be a while before we see it for that as well. An API would open up the ability for third party developers to create a backup application.
The way I see the answer is control. If Google or Microsoft make a way to easily backup your email or documents, it makes it that much easier to go to another service. If I were a betting man I would say that Microsoft will create a backup tool for its online services long before Google will, because Microsoft already owns the desktop and Word Processing market. For them, they need to give the ability to go from Microsoft Office on the desktop to Office Live on the server and back again seamlessly. The same goes for Windows Mail on the desktop to Live Mail on the server. This in itself is a backup solution, the ability to download your email or documents on a web service to your local hard drive. In true Microsoft fashion I see it being a closed source formats you can’t easily go over to GMail or Google Docs.
Additionally with the soon-to-be released Windows Home Server, Microsoft has another opportunity to one-up Google by giving the ability to backup Office Live or Live Mail, after all this is what the Home Server is all about; seamless backups.
The ironic thing about all of this, is choosing a business model over your customer wants and needs is sometimes enough to push someone to another service. Your thoughts?
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Thoughts about PHP after the Facebook Source Code Leak
Posted on August 15, 2007, under Development, How To, Networking, Security, Tools and Services, Web Hosting.
So by now, you already know that Facebook source code was leaked due to a mis configured server. And if you didn’t already know Facebook is written in PHP, a language that is compiled when it’s executed. So there are some questions that come to at least my mind about this situation.
First, what does this mean for Facebooks’ reputation? It is in a legal dispute over whether or not Mark Zuckerberg, the sites founder, stole source code from fellow university students. Even though the source code of any popular and profitable company is valuable. It is arguably not nearly as valuable as the data that goes along with that source code. This is the case with Facebook, who has millions of users and personal information in databases. But how can someone get access to the databases just by having the source code, you ask? Well with PHP it’s not so difficult. In most cases there is a configuration file that has all of the database information you need.
So how could have Facebook, and others prevent this sort of this sort of thing from happening? Here are a couple ideas:
- Put your configuration file where it can not be executed directly. For example, not in your “httpdocs” folder anywhere. In this situation Facebooks’ servers were mis configured so the PHP code was not rendering but instead showing itself. This means if the configuration file was under the “httpdocs” folder somewhere, presto! Access to the database. (Obviously firewalls and things like that might stand in the way).
- Obfuscate your PHP code. Yes this might slow down the processing of your PHP code by milliseconds, but it really would have helped in any situation like this where the possibly of PHP being show is present. Some obfuscation tools will also optimize the code, so it might make up for any processing time gained by obfuscating.
- Sandbox environments, and pulling production boxes out of rotation. Not sure what Facebook’s server setup is, but sandbox environments might have caught this server misconfiguration before it made it to production. Additionally if you have any sort of mirrored servers (a company like Facebook is bound to have something along these lines), you probably have your servers behind a load balancer. When you push code to production you need to pull these servers out of rotation (meaning not available for outside access). You can then test these servers individually before putting them back into production with the new code. Tedious? Yes, but worth it for not having a PR nightmare like your source code leaked. Additionally there are lots of tactics you can employ to make this process semi-automated and not as tedious.
These are obviously just some of many tips you can deploy to keep this from happening to you. Most large companies like Facebook will have similar processing in place, but the key is to always follow protocol… no shortcuts not matter what time crunch you are under. One slip and your source code is all over the Internet… might even be worse.
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Finished Book: The Search
Posted on August 14, 2007, under Books.
I am back logged on books to read, and am using vacation to catch up on some much missed reading. I finished The Search today by John Battelle. Not to sound like an advertisement for the book, but this was a great book. A great read for any geek, or person in the IT business. It was even nicely written to the point that someone not so up to par on search or technology in general, would still find it a great read. Even though it was written a while ago, it was still a really good read.
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Colin Hanks and Larry Page; Separated at Birth
Posted on August 9, 2007, under Miscellaneous.
Today has been a hectic day, trying to get some projects done before shipping of on vacation. Yes, Code and Coffee will continue during vacation; might be a little low key but I do not view this as work so I do not need a break 
While reading some RSS feeds this morning I realized that Colin Hanks and Larry Page look very similar. Colin Hanks of course is son to Tom Hanks, and Larry Page… well we all know who he is.
Anyway, hope you day is going better than mine.
