Google AdSense goes down

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Google AdSense

Wow! This is a big surprise for 2005 going on 2006.

Google Blog in 2005

This is the 201st post to be published on the Google Blog in 2005. In closing out the first full year of our company-wide effort to share news and views, we thought you might be interested in a few factoids. Since we"ve had Google Analytics running on this blog since June, some of these numbers reflect only half a year. In that time, 4.3 million unique visitors have generated 8.7 million pageviews. Readers have come from all over the world, not just English-speaking countries: 53,001 visitors from Turkey have stopped by, for example; so have 155,691 from France, 29,614 from Thailand and 8,233 from Peru.
Official Google Blog: A year of Google blogging

I am one of 29,614 from Thailand.  It seems to be the official press release for all of us to know what’s happening inside Google. To keep in touch with Google Blog, Google Sidebar is my favorite. Actually, I was a real user of Sage. However, Google Sidebar is much more convenient in case of I don’t have time to refresh it manually.

Technorati Tags: Google, Blog, 2005

AllPeers: P2P for FireFox

• Unleash your online experience and add multimedia sharing capabilitities to your favorite browser.


• Share private photos worry-free. No passwords to remember, no public access.


• Share your videos without uploading - save on hosting costs while saving time.


• No cumbersome interface. No sharing restriction. Private and secure. No spyware, no adware, no annoying advertisements.

AllPeers is a free extension which combines the strength of Firefox and the efficiency of BitTorrent to transform your favorite browser into a media sharing powerhouse.

Regain control! You decide which media files you want to share with whom and to maximise your privacy, communications are encrypted.

Forget about complicated setup or obscure user interfaces. If you know how to use Firefox you know how to use AllPeers.

For for specific information, please read FAQ.

In my opinion, AllPeers aimly target to share multimedia files through FireFox interface using BitTorrent-style protocol.

Hot Jobs for 2006

Whether you"re looking for a job or looking to fill one, expect hiring to heat up this year, driven by small but consistent gains in IT budgets. And if you"re a job seeker with the right skills, 2006 could be your big year.
What Tech Skills Are Hot For 2006? - Computerworld

(via: Slashdot: News for nerds, stuff that matters)

There are 3 recommended jobs such as developers, security expertises, and project manager for 2006.

Technorati Tags: Job, Technology, Developer, Security Expertise, Project Manager

Another Predictions for 2006 by Mercury News

In the article, 10 predictions were described as follows.

• WiFi


• Cell phones do everything


• Internet phone calls zoom


• The office moves to the Web


• Stem-cell research advances


• Biotechs target flu vaccines


• Even small start-ups go global


• Video comes to the blog


• On-demand video everywhere


• Clean technologies

Technorati Tags: Technology, Trend, Prediction, 2006

Search Predictions for 2006

Many blogs has published search predictions for 2006. For example, John Battelle, Philipp Lenssen.and many ones in Search Engine Watch. Let me think and predict ones.

Let's go to France

The French Parliament voted last night to allow free sharing of music and movies on the Internet, setting up a conflict with both the French government and with media companies.

If the amendment survives, France would be the first country to legalize so called peer-to-peer downloading, said Jean-Baptiste Soufron, legal counsel to the Association of Audionautes, a French group that defends people accused of improperly sharing music files.

The law would be a blow to media companies that increasingly use the courts worldwide to sue people for downloading or sharing music and movie files. Entertainment companies such as Walt Disney Co., Viacom Inc. and News Corp.’s Fox say free downloading of unauthorized copies of TV shows and movies before they are released on DVD will cost them $5 billion in revenue this year.

Bloomberg.com: Europe

(via: Slashdot: News for nerds, stuff that matters)

See you there!

Technorati Tags: P2P, France, Free, Legal

File-Sharing Winners and Losers of 2005

The year 2005 was an excellent year, depending of course on your point of view. For the tech industry, BitTorrent soared to new heights while Steve Jobs enjoyed record breaking iPod sales. Yet not everyone shared this success. The RIAA continued its fight against P2P networking with little effect, as Sony-BMG disgraced itself and the DRM concept.
Slyck News - File-Sharing Winners and Losers of 2005

In conclusion, below is a list of winners.

• BitTorrent


• Apple Computers, Inc.


• LimeWire


• Open Source P2P


• ThePirateBay

And losers.

• RIAA


• Sony-BMG


• Sharman Networks


• Grokster


• Pay P2P

What’s going on next year?

Technorati Tags: P2P, File Sharing, BitTorrent, IPod, Apple, LimeWire, Open Source, Pay, Gnutella, BearShare, EDonkey, ThePirateBay, RIAA, Sony, BM, Sharman Networks, FastTrack, Grokster

Ping-o-Matic Module for Google Homepage

Another useful tool for bloggers is Ping service. Basically, blog could be updated more often than usual web pages so you have to notify something every time you updated a blog. This mechanism is called "Pinging". There are so many Ping service on the net. One of them is Ping-o-Matic which actually, is a proxy to multiple Ping service. Once you pinged to Ping-o-Matic, the ping request will be forwarded to multiple Ping service simultaneously.

To make pinging simpler than ever, Ping-o-Matic module will sit on your Google Personalized Homepage. What you need to do is just to click the submit button. Your Personalized Homepage would be turned to a kind of blog control panel.

The module URL is http://base.google.com/base/items?oid=5512574423514304229 or Google Modules.

Technorati Tags: Google, Module, Ping, Ping-o-Matic, Personalized, Homepage, Blog, Blogger

Overture Keyword Selector Module for Google Homepage

If you are working on Search Marketing career, e.g., blogger, publisher, content master, and etc., you might need to know which the most popular keyword is for specific terminology to optimize your contents for getting high rank in search results.

There are many on-line tools that could help you. One of them is Overture Keyword Selector Module for sure. It is so easy to use this service. Anyway, we have Google Personalized Homepage so I would like to run this service on a single page like a control panel.

The module URL is http://base.google.com/base/items?oid=10815836575279507280. It is also reachable at Google Modules.

Technorati Tags: Google Homepage, Module, Overture, Keyword Selector Tool, Google Base

bramcohen: BitTorrent is hiring

BitTorrent Inc. is now hiring for several different positions. Our offices are in downtown San Francisco. See our jobs page for more information.
bramcohen: BitTorrent is hiring

According to the jobs page, the company is looking for Python Engineers, Product Manager, Web Designer, Support Manager, and Marketing Directory. Wanna try?

Guido Goes Google

Wow! I found Guido Goes Google story that make me so happy. Guido van Rossum is the Python creator. I love Python. The source, ju², posted this news in com.lang.python 2 days ago but nothing confirmed yet. Luckily, Jeremy Jones seems to confirm it. Wikipedia also refers to this confirmation in his biography.

Python is going to be the most powerful scripting language!

Technorati Tags: Google, Python, Guido, Scripting, Language, Programming

Google and AOL

According to the recent announcement of Google and AOL, Marissa Mayer, VP of Search Product & User Experience, made commitments to serve us the best result without biased ones (to AOL or other partnerships). We might see more results from AOL because a main goal lead to. This goal is to organize all the world"s information. AOL is a part of them. Anyway, nothing is going to be biased at all. Google just lets AOL understand how the Google crawler works aka Search Engine Optimization in detail.

I hope to see the improvements soon. It was $1 Billion for a 5% Stake in AOL.

Technorati Tags: Google, AOL, Announcement, Partnership, Search Engine, Advertisment, SEO, Search Engine Optimization

WIKINDX 3

WIKINDX is a free bibliographic and quotations/notes management and article authoring system designed either for single use (on a variety of operating sytems) or multi-user collaborative use across the internet.

(via: WIKINDX)

Fixed Temperature Unit Problem

Since Yahoo! Weather Module for Google Homepage had released in this morning, there are a few responses to me at Google Modules. One bug was identified by Rhyspace regarding temperature unit. The symptom is unit was always Fahrenheit even though the RSS URL was set to Celsius.

I have finally found the cause of this problem. It is the limitation of Google Homepage API that user preference must not contain value with "&" charactor. Otherwise, all characters after "&" will be discarded.

To fix this problem, I added a new user preference to explicitly specify temperature unit so that the missing unit could be ignored. Please wait for a while until the updated module will be published in Google Base.

Technorati Tags: Yahoo, Weather, Google, Module, RSS, URL, Bug, Temperature, Unit, Celsius, Fahrenheit

Azureus PHP Control Layer

The Azureus PHP control layer is an interface for Azureus written in PHP. It"s based on the Swing control layer and interfaces using XML over HTTP with Parg"s XML control plugin for Azureus.
Strawp.net - Azureus PHP Control Layer

Rootkits and BitTorrent

A group of malicious hackers is using the BitTorrent peer-to-peer software to push copies of movies and Disney cartoons onto infected machines. A group of hackers in the Middle East is believed to be responsible for the BitTorrent infections, which were observed on a network of computers infected by a recent instant message worm. It is the first known instance of the popular P2P software being used by hackers for malicious purposes, according to researchers at FaceTime Communications Inc., an IM security company. BitTorrent is a popular, free, open-source file sharing software program that allows users to share files on a distributed network of computers. In November, FaceTime staff noticed that modified versions of the BitTorrent client were being distributed to machines that had been infected with the lockx.exe rootkit by an IM worm that spread over the AIM (America Online Inc.’s Instant Messenger) network the month before, said Tyler Wells, senior director of research and development at FaceTime.
Botnet Uses BitTorrent to Push Movie Files

Hackers are fighting back to RIAA and MPAA. This kind of news has been referred by eweek and many others, e.g., Vitalsecurity.org and Digg.com.

Linux screensaver for Windows

Construct and package a Linux® LiveCD so that it will install using the standard Microsoft® Windows® install process and will operate as a standard Windows screensaver. Answering the most common concern about open source software, this article shows that, yes, Linux will run under Windows.
Linux screensaver for Windows

(via: Slashdot: News for nerds, stuff that matters)

Actually, it is QEMU. The latest version is 0.8.0. QEMU 0.8.0 initially supports USB and SMP.

Technorati Tags: Linux, Windows, Emulator, QEMU, SMP, USB, Screensaver, Installer, LiveCD

Yahoo! Weather Module Updated in Google Base

According to recent announcement, if you can"t add Yahoo! Weather Module, Please try it again. I have just found the problem and solved it already. The problem is newline. The newline was converted to <br> which leads to incorrectly processing the module during add mechanism. It should work by now.

To make it more publicized, I also submitted this module to Unofficial Google Modules so you could found it at Yahoo! Weather for __UP_rssname__. The word __UP_rssname__ is a keyword that expected to be replaced by a preference setting namely rssname.

Technorati Tags: Google, Homepage, Module, Yahoo, Weather, Google Base

Yahoo! Weather Module for Google Homepage

Yahoo! Weather Module for Google Homepage is my first module for displaying weather information provided by The Weather Channel. Anyway, Google already published Weather Module integrated as overlay on Google Maps. Unfortunately, the weather data are not available for cities outside U.S., e.g., Bangkok. That’s why I have to find new sources. Even though The Weather Channel has data around the world, it is not easy to use formatted data. Yahoo! Weather does as a proxy to provide the data in well-form RSS format so other tools, e.g., Yahoo! Widgets Engine, could query the raw data correctly.

This module uses cross platform XML parser for JavaScript from XML for <SCRIPT>. The module has just been published on Google Base. The item url is http://base.google.com/base/items?oid=4726150508691049611.

To use this module, you can just simply go to Personalized Homepage and add content using the module url via developer module (add content developer.xml). It is required that you specify 2 preferences; name and url of the RSS feed. To find out suitable RSS feed for your location, please go to Yahoo! Weather and search for the city or country you want. For example:

• Bangkok - http://xml.weather.yahoo.com/forecastrss?p=THXX0002&u=f


• Mountain View, CA - http://xml.weather.yahoo.com/forecastrss?p=USCA0746&u=f

You just need to fill an RSS feed in the second preferences.

Technorati Tags: Yahoo, Google, Weather, Module, RSS, Map

Google: Search Trends

As part of the personalization team, I"m pretty addicted to looking at my search history for interesting patterns. So I decided to go a step further and write a script to pull together some stats about how I was searching. We thought other people might like to see this sort of thing too, so today we launched a Trends feature that gives you a look at a list of your top searches and clicks and other info about your search activity.
Official Google Blog: Setting trends

As Yu Chen mentioned in Official Gooble Blog, actually, it is just relevance keywords based on history data.

Technorati Tags: Google, Personalized, Trend, Relevance Search

Google Zeitgeist 2005

It turns out that looking at the aggregation of billions of search queries people type into Google reveals something about our curiosity, our thirst for news, and perhaps even our desires. Considering all that has occurred in 2005, we thought it would be interesting to study just a few of the significant events, and names that make this a memorable year. (We’ll leave it to the historians to determine which ones are lasting and which ephemeral.)
Google Press Center: Zeitgeist

(via: Slashdot: News for nerds, stuff that matters)

Everything about Google are big topics this year. Google Zeitgeist 2005 may be the last announcement of Google before year end. ProBlogger also mentions this event in the blog.

Instead of just plain top search statistics, Google also shows thir frequency by time and marks the date of important event like London (bombing), Whose News, WMD, Pope, CIA, Rosa Parks, and many more. See the images for example what it looks like.

Comparing to Yahoo!, 2005 Top Searches has been announced first but mainly focuses on the words.

The truth about SuprNova.org shutdown

For a year now, there have been many rumors why SuprNova.org was taken offline. Some have said that it was because of legal issues, some said it was because I sold out to eXeem project, or because I became a millionaire and did not want to bother with the site anymore, and the rumors go on.
SuprNova.org - Universal P2P News Source

I will not copy the whole article here. You have to go and read it carefully.

MS Research: Typo-Squatters Are Gaming Google

Researchers at Microsoft Corp. have blown the lid off a large-scale, typo-squatting scheme that uses multi-layer URL redirection to game Google"s AdSense for domains program.

The scheme was uncovered when Redmond lab rats decided to extend its HoneyMonkey exploit detection system, a project that runs automatic and systematic Web scans to investigate the seedier side of the Internet.

With the new Strider Typo-Patrol System, the Microsoft Research Systems Management Research Group was able to track down a ring of typo-squatters registering misspelled domain names and generating traffic to serve advertising from Google.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Google, Typo, Adsense, Exploit, Research

Maximize revenue on parked pages

AdSense for domains allows domain name registrars and large domain name holders to unlock the value in their parked page inventory. AdSense for domains delivers targeted, conceptually related keywords and advertisements to parked domain name pages by using Google"s semantic technology to "understand" the meaning of each domain name. Powering over 3 million domain names, AdSense for domains is the industry"s leading parked page service.

AdSense for domains is fully scalable and is designed for easy integration - so your network of sites can start earning revenue through AdSense for domains quickly and easily.

Supernova.org - One Year Later

Marking the one year anniversary of Suprnova.org"s closure, Snarf-it.org has returned. After escaping the Netherlands due to the copyright enforcement pressures of Brein, Snarf-it.org has released a new version of its indexing site. Not to be outdone however, Suprnova.org"s Sloncek, the former administrator of the massive indexing site, has issued an apparent "tell all" on the events surrounding December 19, 2004. Read Supernova.org - One Year Later.

Technorati Tags: BitTorrent, Sloncek, Supernova, Snarf-It, P2P

Dell Recalls Laptop Batteries

Dell and the Consumer Products Safety Commission have announced a recall of about 35,000 notebook batteries that could potentially pose a fire risk.No injuries have been reported from the faulty batteries. Dell has received three reports of damage to table tops and desks as a result of the problem, it said in a joint news release Friday with the CPSC. Around 22,000 of the batteries were sold in the U.S. Dell will replace all the affected batteries free of charge.
PCWorld.com - Dell Recalls Laptop Batteries

Hurry up to protect your notebook.

Post2Blog 1.10 RC

The developer team at ByteScout has just notified me for the latest version of Post2Blog. Many bugs have been fixed and added support for ImageShack instantly.

My last request is to allow me to choose to ping using Permalink instead of main blog.

Technorati Tags: Blog Client, ByteScout, ImageShack, Post2Blog

How to Maximize Google AdSense Revenue

If your daily life is at all involved in the care and feeding of websites, you might use Adsense to monetize your content. You show Google Ads on all you pages, and they give you money when people click the ads. It’s easy to sign up and it’s worth doing.

If you have signed up already, then you might know about the Public Service Ads.

Depending on some magical random formula your website will be showing Public Service Announcements from Google that you don’t get paid for. You can’t choose which ones to show, either. To show ads instead and thereby maximize your revenue, use AlternateURL’s ad network in your Google Adsense script.

To do this takes seconds you just put the url they give you into the ’alternative url’ field on the AdSense for Content page that builds your AdSense script.

People Teaching People How To Do Stuff | Orature

Good suggestion! I will try.

del.icio.us: Don't underestimate the power of Murphy's Laws

Due to the power outage earlier in the week, we appear a number of continued hiccups. We"ve taken everything offline to properly rebuild and restore everything. I apologize and hope to have this resolved as soon as possible. Thank you for your continued patience.

del.icio.us

Oh, my god! Everything could happen according to Murphy’s Laws.

Obtaining Weather Data Programmatically

I am looking for a way to obtain weather data automatically via API. Unfortunately, Google don"t provide the data for Bangkok so I have to find other solution. The next company in mind is Yahoo!. It provides very convenient interface to obtain that data in REST style. For Bangkok, the city code is THXX0002. To see how it looks like, you just try this link http://xml.weather.yahoo.com/forecastrss/THXX0002_c.xml.

By the way, I really want to implement weather map like Weather Underground do using Google Maps (see Bangkok).

Technorati Tags: Weather, Yahoo, Google, Bangkok, Thailand, Weather Underground, Google Maps, REST, Forecast

Move HPC Topic to New Home

According to confusing topic of this blog, I decided to move out one by one to keep this blog as clean as possible. The first one is HPC. All new HPC related posts will be available at http://hpcnews.blogspot.com/. Hope you find what you want quicker.

GUI Automation

For those who want to automate GUI testing or batch task, there are so many solutions. One of the best is to write your own. Don"t panic. Python provides everything sufficient for you to accomplish this task. All you need is actually just win32all introduced by Mark Hammond. It has been adopted by ActivePython so if you installed ActivePython, win32all has been sitting there waiting for you to use it.

To simply development process, you might be interest in winGuiAuto.py. It was written by Simon Brunning.

How Google woos the best and brightest

Free cafeteria food, annual ski trips to the Sierra and free laundry are just some of the fringe benefits of working at Google. Getting hired is the trick. Every month, aspiring workers deluge the popular Mountain View search engine with up to 150,000 resumes, equivalent to a stack of paper at least 50 feet high. And the firm claims to read each and every one.


How Google woos the best and brightest

Google is one of the most attractive compaty to get hired. You works get high impact over the world.

Software Predicts Movie Success

Sharda selected seven criteria on which to predict a movie"s potential viability in the marketplace. Those include its rating by censors (e.g. G, PG, R), strength of the cast, genre, competition from other films at the time of release, special effects, whether it is a sequel, and the number of theaters in which it will show.


Technology News: Software : So Much for Critics: Software Predicts Movie Success

(via: Slashdot: News for nerds, stuff that matters)

Professor Ramesh Sharda, an information systems specialist at Oklahoma State University, has developed a computer program to help Hollywood predict the potential success -- or failure -- of a film.

Shavano wrote this kind of system for music refered to Forbes.

Coopers & Lybrand is using a computer modeling software program that uses 50,000 "agents" to predict which music CDs will hit the charts and climb to the top. The 30,000-line program contains information such as age, income level, domicile, gender and buying habits for each imaginary music consumer based on Census Bureau and market research data. After plugging in some parameters for each CD, such as how popular the group is already, the program spits out the answer -- yes, this one will sell, or no, that one’s a loser. The program attempts to overcome the shortcomings of straight spreadsheet prognostication, incorporating some of the chaos inherent in human affairs: "There are junctures that are very difficult to describe in mathematical equation," says the project leader. "These are for very low-probability but potentially devastating events -- for example, the rate of takeoff in fads. This program can write these complex equations itself." (Forbes 7 Apr 97)


Shavano Music Online - Sales Prediction Tool

Is it possible to find criteria for senior project/thesis/dissertation?

Where Do All of the Old Programmers Go?

full-of-beans asks: "I work as a software developer for a large UK based international organization. Most of my colleagues that program are under 40 years old. Those that are over 40 tend to be in either Management or IT Support! I was wondering were do all the old programmers go? They can’t all end up in management. I know we don’t get paid enough to take early retirement. Is there some other career that tends to attract 40+ year old programmers, if so I’d like to know, because I’m not that far of 40 myself!"


Slashdot | Where Do All of the Old Programmers Go?

Interesting question for me. What will happen to me after 40 years old. I don’t like to be just IT support or change to management career.

Testing Ping in Post2Log

I have found several problems regarding to MSN Spaces, HTTPS, and ping. It"s not too bad for me, Eugene Mironichev, the author of Post2Blog has just replied me. The problems are going to be fixed very soon. For now, I will help him to find ping problem by tracing the log.

This blog is not a complain to Post2Blog. I just want to share my experience of its improvement and its potential to be the best blog client.

Official Google Blog: 'Tis the season

Official Google Blog: 'Tis the season: "We've done a bit of seasonal decorating -- even put up some holiday lights. Have you seen them yet? If you search on the names of, say, some special days in December, you just might."

Google offers mobile phone version of Gmail e-mail

Internet News Article | Reuters.com: "Google has created a special version of its Gmail e-mail service that provides mobile phone subscribers with quick access to their e-mail, the company said on Friday."

Google, Microsoft to Fund New Internet Lab

Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. are setting aside their bitter animosity to back a new Internet research laboratory aimed at helping entrepreneurs introduce more groundbreaking ideas to a mass audience.

Sun Microsystems Inc. also is joining the $7.5 million project at the University of California, Berkeley. The Reliable, Adaptive and Distributed Systems, or RAD, lab was scheduled to open Thursday and will dole out $1.5 million annually over five years, with each company contributing equally.


Google, Microsoft to Fund New Internet Lab - Yahoo! News

I bought Post2Blog

Eventually, after so long testing blog clients, I have just bought Post2Blog for everyday use. It looks nice and I recommend you to give it a try. You will love it.

This is my first blog published by registered version of Post2Blog.

Technorati Tags: Blog Client, Post2Blog

VirtueMart

The other carts claim to be easy to use. VirtueMart not only tows the line with Joomla (also: Mambo) for being easy to use, but it was easy to install and looks very easy to comprehend and maintain.

Read more at virtuemart.net/index.ph...

Google loves music

Now you can search for a popular artist name, like the Beatles or the Pixies, and often Google will show some information about that artist, like cover art, reviews, and links to stores where you can download the track or buy a CD via a link at the top of your web search results page.


Official Google Blog: Searching for music

Now Google provides related information according to artist name like it does for stock quotes. For example, Robbie Williams, Kelly Clarkson, Craig David, and etc.

Blogger Web Comments

Blogger Web Comments for Firefox is an extension that makes it easy to see what bloggers are saying about a page you"re viewing in Firefox and even make your own blog post about it, all without leaving the page you"re on.


Blogger Web Comments for Firefox

Darren writes a good review and examples. I am going to install it right here, right now.

G2G Share - Another Gmail Hack

G2G Share has only been around since November, but already has more than 7,000 users and 127GB of data. A PHP script logs into subscribers’ Gmail accounts and makes a list of all the files there, then publishes them with links on the G2G Share Web site. Anyone who visits the site can search for and download any files they please.

"If someone wants to download a file at your account, the system accesses [it] and forwards the mail with the file," says Robbie Groenewoudt, the 17-year-old author of G2G Share. "Everything is done by the system and no user will ever see any passwords." Gmail’s labels serve as file indexers, and mail account holders can specify which labels are shared on G2G and which remain hidden.

NewsForge | Teen teaches Google to share

Unfortunately, this service has been shutted down by Google because it does not conform to program policies.

Technorati Tags: G2G Share, Gmail, P2P

Another battle of Microsoft and Google

Great! Adam Sah, a software engineer at Google, has announced the release of Google Homepage API. This API lets developers to create modules like Windows Live do in Google"s way. In contrast, Microsoft has promoted the use of Live at microsoftgadgets.com. For them, every pieces of work are called gadgets. For Google, they are called modules. Google also provides content directory as same as microsoftgadgets.com do. At present, there are only 5 modules listed in the directory and all of them created by staffs.

Microsoft Gadgets

A gadget consists of a manifest, JavaScript(s) and CSS(s). That means developer must have a web server to upload 3 files and use the manifest as the entry point. Actually, the manifest is a RSS. You may read a simple tutorial for more detail.

Google Modules

A module of Google Homepage is simpler than Microsoft since it is just HTML and JavaScript encapsulated in an XML. In other words, a module is an XML. For example, below is the Hello, World module.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<Module>
  <ModulePrefs title="hello world example" />
  <Content type="html">
     <![CDATA[
       Hello, world!
     ]]>
  </Content>
</Module>

If you don’t have a web server to host this module, Google offers Google Base to host your module. As the best of all, developers may define user preferences and module preferences easily via XML tag.

For further information, please read Developer Guide.

Biometric security could be cracked with Play-Doh

"Digits from cadavers and fake fingers molded from plastic, or even something as simple as Play-Doh or gelatin, can potentially be misread as authentic," Schuckers explained.


PC Pro: News: Researchers crack biometric security with Play-Doh

Wait a minute! I am going to buy Play-Doh.

Self-deleting text is here

Called StealthText, the service automatically deletes texts 40 seconds after they have been read, making sure, developer Staellium claims, top secret or embarrassing information does not fall into the wrong hands.


Scotsman.com News - Sci-Tech - Self-deleting text is top secret affair

Eventually, Mission:Impossible is possible.

Linus uses KDE

CmdrTaco wroted "Torvalds Says ’Use KDE’" at slashdot. Linus does not like GNOME’s mentality (users are idiots, and are confused by functionality). He also gave example of GNOME’s mistaken for making decision instead of letting configuration by end-users.

Well, I like GNOME even though KDE is far more better. GNOME could be improved to reach the same quality as KDE some day.

Technorati Tags: Window Manager, GNOME, KDE, Linux

Next Desktop War

After Yahoo! bought Konfabulator, eventually, it has released Yahoo! Widgets with lots more widget tightly integrated to Yahoo! services like Mail, Maps and Notepad. Google has released this kind of pieces aka Sidebar bundled with Google Desktop.

What is the best for you? Yahoo! Widgets seems to be the most beautiful program in this area. Anyway, I like the simplicity of Google Sidebar. Actually, I installed both of them.

Technorati Tags: Yahoo, Widget, Google, Sidebar, Desktop, Search

Joomlaboard - Webboard for Joomla

Joomla is the new name of Mambo, one of the most famous content management system. Anyway, Joomla is not like other CMS such as PostNuke which bundled with all necessary components (blog, forum, download, and etc). Instead, the good thing of Joomla is its highly extensible integration platform to other system. That's why Simpleboard has been widely deployed on Mambo and Joomlaboard could do the same.

Go to download area and install Simpleboard or Joomlaboard immediately to see what the best is. Otherwise, you could try Simple Machines.

Technorati Tags: Joomla, Mambo, PostNuke, Content Management System, Forum, Webboard, Simpleboard, Simple Machines

Posting Preformatted Code through Post2Blog

I am looking for a Blog Client which supports wysiwyg and preformatted code for posting code sample easily. Post2Blog is a good candidate with lots of functionalities that helps me authoring good blog quickly.

select *
  from
    xxx
  where
    xxx.aaa = 'bbb'

I have just found that Post2Blog has built-in code highlight function. However, it produces lots of line breaks so I better use Quick Snippets with $$TEXT$$ macro. The snippet is as follows.

<pre><span>$$TEXT$$</span></pre>

Look good?

Technorati Tags: Blog Client, Post2Blog, Code Highlight, Quick Snippets, Macro

JD-WP 1.52-1.0 Beta 1 released

Joomla Developingsite - JD-WP 1.52-1.0 Beta 1 released Finally, JD-WordPress has been released in Beta version.

Invision Board Adsense Integration

Invision Board Adsense Integration: "This modification will integrade adsense ads to the bottom of every topic in order to increase visibility of the advertisement and gain higher Click Through Rate."

FreeBSD Mail Archives

FreeBSD Mail Archives: "I use ps/2 mouse. When run startx, error occured 'Cannot open mouse
(Device not configured)' How to fix this problem ?

------
Sugree Phatanapherom
sugreep@ac1.ac.ac.th
http://ac1.ac.ac.th/~sugreep/"

This is my e-mail since I was in grade 11 going on grade 12 at Assumption College.

Official Google Blog: A cure for the common inbox

Official Google Blog: A cure for the common inbox: "Ever get the feeling that your email experience is a little too predictable? I certainly have. Over the past few months, I've been working on Gmail Clips, a new feature that can help mix things up a bit. Starting this week, you can see headlines from your favorite blogs and news sites right above your Inbox. Gmail tips and relevant text ads appear from time to time as well."

del.icio.us: y.ah.oo!

del.icio.us: y.ah.oo!: "We're proud to announce that del.icio.us has joined the Yahoo! family. Together we'll continue to improve how people discover, remember and share on the Internet, with a big emphasis on the power of community. We're excited to be working with the Yahoo! Search team - they definitely get social systems and their potential to change the web. (We're also excited to be joining our fraternal twin Flickr!)"

BitTornado doesn"t support proxy

I received a message in forum that requests for help about proxy setting in BTQueue. Unfortunately, BitTornado doesn"t use urllib2, instead it uses httplib for directly connecting to tracker. I am investigating to move to BitTorrent 4.2.1.

Intel compiler crippled on AMD chips!

Intel compiler crippled on AMD chips!: "A while ago I upgraded my copy of the Intel Fortran Compiler for Linux (to version 7.1.040, build 20040309Z). All seemed well, and the code compiled with the new version passed all of our unit tests. However, when we moved the new executables out to our compute farm they started segfaulting all over the place. What was going on?"

Using Post2Blog to post preformat code

In some situation, blog could be used for sharing codes to community. Unfortunately, Blogger doesn"t provide convenience way to post the code in beautiful format. That's why I have to look for a Blog Client which provides that feature. There are 2 candidates here: w.bloggar and Post2Blog. However, w.bloggardoesn't provide wysiwyg but Post2Blog does it very well. Both of them doesn't support preformatted as a built-in feature but it is possible to insert <pre> directly in HTML code.

def abc():
     abde

Post2Blog is a good shareware tool which I could buy it someday. Unfortunately, the space manually inserted in HTML code has been removed. w.bloggar is still the best one I have in hand. Post2Blog provides lots more features but not support <pre>. Oh my god.

CEO Schmidt Test Runs Google Transit - Forbes.com

CEO Schmidt Test Runs Google Transit - Forbes.com: "Google Transit Trip Planner has not yet been integrated with Google Local, because the company 'wanted to develop the product further by learning, through user feedback, how people really use public transportation data, and thus how Google Transit can be improved to be as useful as possible.' Thus, in keeping with the spirit of mutual cooperation that the Internet occasionally engenders, public agencies that oversee public transportation for their cities can send their timetables to Eric E. Schmidt's Google for their records."

Mozilla Downplays Firefox 1.5 Exploit

Mozilla Downplays Firefox 1.5 Exploit: "The exploit, which was posted on the PacketStormSecurity.org Web site, targets a buffer overflow in Firefox 1.5, the newest browser release from Mozilla.

'That [code execution] claim is unsubstantiated. We've had no reports, internally or externally, that this goes beyond denial-of-service issue,' Schroepfer said in an interview with Ziff Davis Internet News.

'We've been able to reproduce a denial-of-service problem. We've looked at the source code to analyze the risk and found that it's not a very severe issue.'

'At this point, we have no confirmed evidence that this is anything more than an annoying denial-of-service attack,' he added."

The Unspoken Taboo – The Never Expiring Password

HNS - The Unspoken Taboo – The Never Expiring Password: "Firstly you have the problem of the never expiring password on a system which is accessible by administrators and anyone else who might have privileged access to a system. The problem is more acute when a company is relying on hosting services from a third party. Your applications are accessing valuable business critical data thousands of times a day, using the same user ID and password. In fact there might very well be hundreds of applications all accessing using the same credentials. And since the applications do not have any integrated security such as VPN technology, the passwords to these accounts are often stored in clear text (not encrypted), thus becoming visible to developers, support staff and anyone that has access to the application code.

Secondly because these passwords are often hard coded within the applications/scripts, a reset of a Service Account password becomes a complex process involving changes to application code, compilation, and in some cases a long process of transferring the code from development to QA to production. In some cases this change might result in or require downtime for the application, a scenario that is unacceptable in cases of confidential information.

Thirdly auditing is virtually impossible. Because the credentials that are embedded in the application, although in theory only accessible to the application they can actually be used by any developer who has access to the code. So if for example a person was to log in using the credentials, it would be impossible to discover this through a simple audit check.
Finally the most serious aspect of this is that this user ID and password is known by developers and support staff and can be used for personal access to the resources. And in many cases today those credentials are know by off-shore developers who have been contracted to develop the applications for your organisation. So access to your business data is ultimately in the hands of developers who may be thousands of miles away."

The future of HTML, Part 1: WHATWG

The future of HTML, Part 1: WHATWG: "In this two-part series, Edd Dumbill examines the various ways forward for HTML that Web authors, browser developers, and standards bodies propose. This series covers the incremental approach embodied by the WHATWG specifications and the radical cleanup of XHTML proposed by the W3C. Additionally, the author gives an overview of the W3C's new Rich Client Activity. Here in Part 1, Edd focuses primarily on two specifications being developed by WHATWG: Web Applications 1.0 (HTML5) and Web Forms 2.0."

Sober code cracked: ZDNet Australia

Sober code cracked: ZDNet Australia: News: Security: "'Sober has been using an algorithm to create pseudorandom URLs which will change based on dates. Ninety nine percent of the URLs simply don't exist ... however, the virus author can precalculate the URL for any date, and when he wants to run something on all the infected machines, he just registers the right URL, uploads his program and BANG! It's run globally on hundreds of thousands of machines,' Hyppönen wrote in his blog."

Operating Systems : Deadlocks and Deadlock Avoidance

Operating Systems : Deadlocks and Deadlock Avoidance: " Strategies for Dealing with Deadlock "

Sugree! Please read this carefully!

Intel to develop hardware rootkit detection chip

IT Observer | Intel to develop hardware rootkit detection chip: "Intel is trying to eliminate the human factor when dealing with root-kits detection by developing a new hardware-based technique to discover and notify users when they are downloading unintentionally a root-kit to their computer.

According to Intel, their new project involves placing a small chip on a PC’s motherboard to monitor constantly programs that might be affected of a malicious attack. Travis Schluessle, a researcher with Intel, said that the project goal is to detect when unnecessary memory modifications are made to programs or system services.

'We need to connect the computers directly to the data, so the human beings don't have to be the I/O channel, and elevate the role of the human being to a more supervisory role,' said David Tennenhouse, director of research at the company.

Intel doesn’t expect its project to replace various protection software, but it believes it could enhance them. According to Schluessle, the project would provide a back-up for the anti-virus software, which is usually the first target to be shutdown by malicious code.

Intel’s latest initiative was presented during an open house for journalists and analysts in Folsom, California. The project is scheduled to become part of Intel's products around 2008 or 2009."

Microsoft to offer aerial views on its maps / Realistic images of skyscrapers highlight search service competing with Google Earth

Microsoft to offer aerial views on its maps / Realistic images of skyscrapers highlight search service competing with Google Earth: "A new online mapping tool from Microsoft allows users to view aerial images of San Francisco, including its marquee skyscrapers photographed at 45-degree angles.

The bird's-eye view, to premier today, is part of Windows Live Local (at local.live.com), a hub for driving directions, business listings and interactive maps.

The photographs were taken from a low-flying plane, using global-positioning technology. Users can zoom in on the images and see the various sides of such locations as the Transamerica Pyramid and SBC Park."

And the word of the year winner is "Podcast"!

Digital Home Canada - And the word of the year winner is "Podcast"!: "Podcast, defined as 'a digital recording of a radio broadcast or similar program, made available on the Internet for downloading to a personal audio player,' will be added to the next online update of the New Oxford American Dictionary, due in early 2006.

The word is derived from a combination of 'broadcasting' and 'iPod' and according to the dictionarys publishers, 'podcast' was selected as the Word of the Year for 2005 because thousands of podcasts are now available online at websites such as iPodder.com, tracked on sites such Podcast.net."

OpenWrt

OpenWrt: "OpenWrt is a Linux distribution for wireless routers. Instead of trying to cram every possible feature into one firmware, OpenWrt provides only a minimal firmware with support for add-on packages. For users this means the ability to custom tune features, removing unwanted packages to make room for other packages and for developers this means being able to focus on packages without having to test and release an entire firmware."

Broadband Routers with Modems/Wireless-G (802.11g)/WRTSL54GS

Linksys.com - Products/Wireless/Basic Networking/Gateways: Broadband Routers with Modems/Wireless-G (802.11g)/WRTSL54GS: "The Wireless-G Storage Link Router with SpeedBooster is really four devices in one box. First, there's the Wireless Access Point, which lets you connect Wireless-G, Wireless-B, and other performance-enhanced SpeedBooster devices to the network. SpeedBooster technology is a compatible add-on to standard Wireless-G, which increases 'real-world' wireless network performance by up to 35%. There's also a built-in 4-port full-duplex 10/100 Switch to connect your wired-Ethernet devices together. The Router function ties it together and lets your whole network share your high-speed cable or DSL Internet connection.

And we've included a Storage Link that lets you easily add gigabytes of storage space onto your network using readily available USB 2.0 hard drives -- or plug in a USB flash disk, for a convenient way of accessing your portable data files. There's a built-in Media Server, which streams music, video, and photos from the attached storage device to any UPnP compatible media adapter. You can also set it up so that your storage is accessible from the Internet -- files can be easily downloaded via your web browser. Your files can be available publicly, or create password-protected accounts for authorized users.

The new push button setup feature makes it easy to configure your wireless devices. Just push the button on the router and on your other SecureEasySetup-enabled wireless device to automatically create an encryption-secured wireless connection. Wi-Fi Protected Access? (WPA) protects your data and privacy with up to 128-bit industrial-strength encryption. The Router can serve as a DHCP Server, has a powerful SPI firewall to protect your PCs against intruders and most known Internet attacks, supports VPN pass-through, and can be configured to filter internal users' access to the Internet. Advanced configuration is a snap with the web browser-based interface.

With the Linksys Wireless-G Storage Link Router with SpeedBooster it's easy to start a home network with a shared high-speed Internet connection and lots of storage space!"

Multiverse

Multiverse: "THE COMPLETE MMOG PLATFORM" Building your own MMOG!

Google: Ten Golden Rules

Google: Ten Golden Rules - Issues 2006 - MSNBC.com:

# Hire by committee. Virtually every person who interviews at Google talks to at least half-a-dozen interviewers, drawn from both management and potential colleagues. Everyone's opinion counts, making the hiring process more fair and pushing standards higher. Yes, it takes longer, but we think it's worth it. If you hire great people and involve them intensively in the hiring process, you'll get more great people. We started building this positive feedback loop when the company was founded, and it has had a huge payoff.

# Cater to their every need. As Drucker says, the goal is to 'strip away everything that gets in their way.' We provide a standard package of fringe benefits, but on top of that are first-class dining facilities, gyms, laundry rooms, massage rooms, haircuts, carwashes, dry cleaning, commuting buses?just about anything a hardworking engineer might want. Let's face it: programmers want to program, they don't want to do their laundry. So we make it easy for them to do both.

# Pack them in. Almost every project at Google is a team project, and teams have to communicate. The best way to make communication easy is to put team members within a few feet of each other. The result is that virtually everyone at Google shares an office. This way, when a programmer needs to confer with a colleague, there is immediate access: no telephone tag, no e-mail delay, no waiting for a reply. Of course, there are many conference rooms that people can use for detailed discussion so that they don't disturb their office mates. Even the CEO shared an office at Google for several months after he arrived. Sitting next to a knowledgeable employee was an incredibly effective educational experience.

# Make coordination easy. Because all members of a team are within a few feet of one another, it is relatively easy to coordinate projects. In addition to physical proximity, each Googler e-mails a snippet once a week to his work group describing what he has done in the last week. This gives everyone an easy way to track what everyone else is up to, making it much easier to monitor progress and synchronize work flow.

# Eat your own dog food. Google workers use the company's tools intensively. The most obvious tool is the Web, with an internal Web page for virtually every project and every task. They are all indexed and available to project participants on an as-needed basis. We also make extensive use of other information-management tools, some of which are eventually rolled out as products. For example, one of the reasons for Gmail's success is that it was beta tested within the company for many months. The use of e-mail is critical within the organization, so Gmail had to be tuned to satisfy the needs of some of our most demanding customers?our knowledge workers.

# Encourage creativity. Google engineers can spend up to 20 percent of their time on a project of their choice. There is, of course, an approval process and some oversight, but basically we want to allow creative people to be creative. One of our not-so-secret weapons is our ideas mailing list: a companywide suggestion box where people can post ideas ranging from parking procedures to the next killer app. The software allows for everyone to comment on and rate ideas, permitting the best ideas to percolate to the top.

# Strive to reach consensus. Modern corporate mythology has the unique decision maker as hero. We adhere to the view that the 'many are smarter than the few,' and solicit a broad base of views before reaching any decision. At Google, the role of the manager is that of an aggregator of viewpoints, not the dictator of decisions. Building a consensus sometimes takes longer, but always produces a more committed team and better decisions

# Don't be evil. Much has been written about Google's slogan, but we really try to live by it, particularly in the ranks of management. As in every organization, people are passionate about their views. But nobody throws chairs at Google, unlike management practices used at some other well-known technology companies. We foster to create an atmosphere of tolerance and respect, not a company full of yes men.

# Data drive decisions. At Google, almost every decision is based on quantitative analysis. We've built systems to manage information, not only on the Internet at large, but also internally. We have dozens of analysts who plow through the data, analyze performance metrics and plot trends to keep us as up to date as possible. We have a raft of online 'dashboards' for every business we work in that provide up-to-the-minute snapshots of where we are.

# Communicate effectively. Every Friday we have an all-hands assembly with announcements, introductions and questions and answers. (Oh, yes, and some food and drink.) This allows management to stay in touch with what our knowledge workers are thinking and vice versa. Google has remarkably broad dissemination of information within the organization and remarkably few serious leaks. Contrary to what some might think, we believe it is the first fact that causes the second: a trusted work force is a loyal work force.

Sun to Open-Source UltraSparc

Sun to Open-Source UltraSparc: "Sun Microsystems Inc. is looking to ramp up interest in its new UltraSPARC T1 processor by open-sourcing parts of the multicore chip."

Web services RPC calls over Google Talk

Web services RPC calls over Google Talk - [ Guillaume Laforge ] described a cool idea to use XMPP over Google Talk for XML-RPC.

Sun to Roll Out First of 'Niagara' Servers

Sun to Roll Out First of 'Niagara' Servers: "Sun Microsystems Inc. on Tuesday is unveiling the first systems to run on its new multicore UltraSPARC T1, which the company hopes will give it greater traction in sectors now dominated by x86 machines.

The rollout is a cornerstone of Sun's four-quarter product announcements, being made in New York City. Sun officials have been talking about the processor?which offers up to eight cores per chip?for more than a year and officially introduced it in November.

The chip (formerly code-named Niagara), with eight cores that can process four instruction threads simultaneously, is designed to offer greater performance than current single- or dual-core processors, but without ramping up energy consumption or heat generation. The UltraSPARC T1 has a 70-watt power envelope.

Sun officials refer to these capabilities?high throughput with low power consumption?as their 'CoolThreads' technology."

Tech behind Google

Have you ever wondered how Google works? What makes it so fast like that? The most interesting part for me is its file system. Google implemented its own file system named GFS (Google File System). Anothor part is system architecture aka system landscape. The Google Cluster Architecture has been described here. It clearly stated that Google don"t care hardware reliability because Google"s softwares are highly tolerance. Everything is simple. Keep it simple, stupid!

I am finding out a good blogging client for me and my wife. Post2Blog - handy desktop blogging client - is a good one.

post2blog_main_window

Sons of Solaris

When it released the source code to its Solaris operating system, Sun Microsystems bet that people would pick it up and run. Sun said it wanted to see a community form around the OpenSolaris code, and take it beyond what the company had done with it in its more than 25 years of development of the OS. Today the community Sun was looking for seems to be coming to life.

Since the OpenSolaris community was launched in June, at least three derivative distributions - - SchilliX, BeleniX , and Nexenta -- have been created and released. Parts of OpenSolaris are also making their way into other operating systems. A port of DTrace is in the works for FreeBSD.

Providing Computing Power on demand Using the Grid technologies

Providing Computing Power on demand Using the Grid technologies: "As one of business diversification using grid technology, the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST, President: Hiroyuki Yoshikawa) presents new business model 'GridASPTM*' which provides the required amount of computing power at the right time as a utility for businesses, research organizations, and other users.

In the existing ASP (Application Service Provider) model, there are high overhead costs associated with preparing computers and operators for each application, so it is expensive for the user. However, as we can see in Figure 1, GridASP divides companies into three providers that can respectively provide applications, computers, and portals which can be supplied in any combination to meet user demands. This can raise the operating efficiency of each company and reduce the costs to the user.

The AIST has been developing software called GridASP Toolkit that can embody the framework of GridASP. The ? version has been completed, which is being publicly released as free software. Part of this software was developed as METI's Business Grid Computing Project that was launched in 2003.

In addition, a test environment was created in which proof-of-concept experiment were begun using GridASP Toolkit in cooperation with companies to provide services. These experiments will be conducted to not only examine the functionality of the software, but also to identify problems associated with business applications, to estimate service price, and to investigate application license style, among other things."

Fedora Directory Server 1.0

Main Page - Fedora Directory Server: "We are pleased to announce the release of Fedora Directory Server 1.0! This version fulfills the promise to open all of the directory server source code that we made almost 1 year ago - 12/8/2004 - the date at which Red Hat acquired the code."

Major Vendors Explore MegaGrid Frontiers

Major Vendors Explore MegaGrid Frontiers: "While grid computing vendors Sun and IBM are taking the reins of the utility computing market, the competition is collaborating to provide proof-of-concept projects to improve and showcase their services and offerings.

This week brought us the announcement of Project MegaGrid, a collaborative effort between Dell, EMC, Intel and Oracle that is focused on developing a standardized approach to designing, deploying and maintaining an enterprise grid architecture.

Each of the four companies is bringing in the technologies for which it is best known. Dell is providing the complete networking architecture, including the server hardware. EMC is providing the storage networking architecture. Intel brings its processors and expertise in processor and server management. And Oracle provides its database software and management tools designed to run in a grid environment. Each of the participants is contributing cutting-edge products to the test environment.

The project is being done in phases. Phase 1, now complete, compared two different grid models, one based on dual-processor Xeon servers and the other based on quad-processor Itanium 2 servers, versus one of the latest generation large SMP Unix servers currently on the market. The goal was to run a real-world telco application at a rate of 550,000 transactions an hour in order to simulate an environment that could benefit from the advantages that grid computing offers.

The project claims to have demonstrated that Oracle Real Application clusters are capable of handling the scale-out approach of grid computing without requiring any application changes, as well as showing comparable performance to the single large, high-priced Unix server."

IBM Ships New Autonomic Computing Tools

IBM Ships New Autonomic Computing Tools: "The new Tivoli offerings that enable automated monitoring and self-healing of systems and applications are intended to help reduce the complexity of IT environments and reduce the amount of manual labor that has typically been required to manage IT environments.

The new offerings include IBM Tivoli Monitoring version 6.1, which brings new capabilities to define certain situations that are encountered and then define the actions that users want the software to take to automatically correct the issues."

KDE browser pips Firefox in Web standards test

KDE browser pips Firefox in Web standards test - ZDNet UK News: "The people behind the latest version of the Linux desktop environment, KDE, say the main benefits will be better standards support in its Web browser, Konqueror.

The KDE project team said on Tuesday that the browser in KDE 3.5 has passed the Acid2 test from the Web Standards Project (WaSP). This test examines a browser's support for W3C recommended standards including CSS1, HTML4 and PNG.

The KDE team pointed out that it has passed this test 'ahead of Firefox and Internet Explorer'."

Microsoft Testing Its Own 'Google Base'

Microsoft Testing Its Own 'Google Base': "Microsoft Corp. said it is readying an online marketplace, code-named Fremont, which is apparently in response to a similar feature that rival Google Inc. introduced a few weeks ago.

Fremont is a free service in which people contribute listings, whether it's about a couch for sale or someone looking for a commuting partner."