© abardwell

At the recent CanSecWest Applied Security Conference that was held in Canada, three computers running Mac OS X, Vista and Ubuntu Linux respectively were offered for hacking. None of the three were compromised remotely, i.e., via network access, on the first day.

The second day, with rules relaxed a bit by allowing hackers access to all applications that come bundled with the OS, the Mac OS X fell via a Safari web-browser vulnerability. The hacker setup a malicious web site and was able to gain access to the computer after Safari was pointed to that site. Lesson here, don't go to sites that you are not familiar with.

The third day saw Vista fall after the contest allowed third party applications to be probed for vulnerabilities. Adobe Flash was found to be vulnerable, making Vista fall.

Of all three, only Ubuntu Linux was left standing! Talk about security! Bwahaha.

See full article.

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Windows Vista no more secure than XP: Report - 31 May 2007

Snorting with Red Hat Enterprise Linux - 23 June 2007

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Filed under: Internet, Video, Features, Social Software

Untitled from Download Squad on Vimeo.

At SXSWi 2008 we had the pleasure of speaking with Gary Vaynerchuk, wine connoisseur and host of Wine Library TV’s daily videocast. Gary, who is truly one of the most dynamic individuals we have ever met, spoke with us about the importance of loving your community, the power of online video and the essence of “radool.”

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Google announced its YouTube analytics tool called YouTube Insight. The tool providers the uploaders of videos insight into statistics dealing with the geographic areas where the videos are viewed and the metrics associated with the views of the video over time.

An excerpt from SearchEngineJournal

YouTube Insight gives users two categories of video usage data - page views and popularity. Page views for videos can be displayed by 5 days, 1 month, 3 months, 6 months and one year. Page views can be further categorized by country.

Popularity is another way showing a video's total page views that is by categorizing it by a number from 1 to 100 100 being the most watched video and 0 for being the least watched.

Emerging as one of the most popular destinations on the video web, the metrics tool will provide more directions for advertising and marketing on YouTube.

More information:

YouTube Debuts Viewer Analytics Tool (Information Week)

YouTube Releases Video Analytics Tool (CRN)

See full article.

Related Entries:

Web Exec: Yahoo would be better YouTube partner than Google - 14 October 2006

Youtube Remixing tool released - 18 June 2007

两周前的Google（快速链接版） - 05 十一月 2007

5 Free/Affordable SEO Tracking Tools - 20 November 2007

Contents of this feed are a property of Creative Weblogging Limited and are protected by copyright laws. Violations will be prosecuted. Please email us if you’d like to use this feed for non-commercial activities at feeds - at - creative-weblogging.com.

Google announced its YouTube analytics tool called YouTube Insight. The tool providers the uploaders of videos insight into statistics dealing with the geographic areas where the videos are viewed and the metrics associated with the views of the video over time.

An excerpt from SearchEngineJournal

YouTube Insight gives users two categories of video usage data - page views and popularity. Page views for videos can be displayed by 5 days, 1 month, 3 months, 6 months and one year. Page views can be further categorized by country.

Popularity is another way showing a video's total page views that is by categorizing it by a number from 1 to 100 100 being the most watched video and 0 for being the least watched.

Emerging as one of the most popular destinations on the video web, the metrics tool will provide more directions for advertising and marketing on YouTube.

More information:

YouTube Debuts Viewer Analytics Tool (Information Week)

YouTube Releases Video Analytics Tool (CRN)

See full article.

Related Entries:

Web Exec: Yahoo would be better YouTube partner than Google - 14 October 2006

Youtube Remixing tool released - 18 June 2007

两周前的Google（快速链接版） - 05 十一月 2007

5 Free/Affordable SEO Tracking Tools - 20 November 2007

Contents of this feed are a property of Creative Weblogging Limited and are protected by copyright laws. Violations will be prosecuted. Please email us if you’d like to use this feed for non-commercial activities at feeds - at - creative-weblogging.com.

Google's price tumble in the last few weeks has got big focus in the online forums. The question is whether the increased scrutiny that the company is put to may have led to drop in investor confidence.

An excerpt from MarketingVox

comScore analysis reports slow growth in Google's paid click numbers, reports MarketWatch. Paid clicks rose a paltry three percent in February, according to comScore.

The question on most analysts mind is whether the results are a precursor to a slowdown or is it due to the quality increase in clicks as Google claims. Perhaps the results in the next few months will throw more light on the issue. From the quality standpoint it would be fair to give the results more time since quality is an ongoing process.

See full article.

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What Major search engines Do To Combat Click Fraud - 25 February 2007

PPC Advertising: How To Start - 30 April 2007

Google Universal Update’s BIG Traffic Winners - 09 June 2007

7 Ways Your Site Can Be Sabotaged - 30 June 2007

Contents of this feed are a property of Creative Weblogging Limited and are protected by copyright laws. Violations will be prosecuted. Please email us if you’d like to use this feed for non-commercial activities at feeds - at - creative-weblogging.com.

Google has added more cities to Street View.

An excerpt from SearchEngineJournal

Google's Street View is growing substantially with 13 new cities, both large and small, from around the United States, and Yellowstone National Park!

The list of cities includes : Albuquerque (NM), Anchorage (AK), Austin (TX), Cleveland (OH), Fairbanks (AK), Little Rock (AR), Madison (WI), Nashville (TN),Rockford (IL), Richmond (VA), Spokane (WA), St. Petersburg (FL), Tampa (FL), Yosemite National Park (CA).

The Street View is part of Google Maps API and more information on that can be obtained from the
See full article.

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传Google Maps将加上“Street View”模式 - 27 五月 2007

Google Maps正式增加“Street View”（街道视图）功能 - 30 五月 2007

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更多Google Maps Street View拍摄汽车图片（二） - 30 七月 2007

Contents of this feed are a property of Creative Weblogging Limited and are protected by copyright laws. Violations will be prosecuted. Please email us if you’d like to use this feed for non-commercial activities at feeds - at - creative-weblogging.com.

Google has added more cities to Street View.

An excerpt from SearchEngineJournal

Google's Street View is growing substantially with 13 new cities, both large and small, from around the United States, and Yellowstone National Park!

The list of cities includes : Albuquerque (NM), Anchorage (AK), Austin (TX), Cleveland (OH), Fairbanks (AK), Little Rock (AR), Madison (WI), Nashville (TN),Rockford (IL), Richmond (VA), Spokane (WA), St. Petersburg (FL), Tampa (FL), Yosemite National Park (CA).

The Street View is part of Google Maps API and more information on that can be obtained from the
See full article.

Related Entries:

传Google Maps将加上“Street View”模式 - 27 五月 2007

Google Maps正式增加“Street View”（街道视图）功能 - 30 五月 2007

Google Street View: Ein Kater bringt den Stein ins Rollen - 03 Juni 2007

更多Google Maps Street View拍摄汽车图片（二） - 30 七月 2007

Contents of this feed are a property of Creative Weblogging Limited and are protected by copyright laws. Violations will be prosecuted. Please email us if you’d like to use this feed for non-commercial activities at feeds - at - creative-weblogging.com.

Google has released a tool at Google Webmaster Central that lets users generate robot.txt files for their sites. A robot.txt file is like is what the spiders or crawlers of search engines read to know what part of the website they have access to. There is a general introduction to the robot.txt file at SearchEngineLand ( also the source of the information). A general know how on the format of robot.txt is necessary if you want to maintain you own website.

Things to keep in mind are that the robot.txt file must lie in the root directory of the website and also that you have to get the names of the specific spiders or crawlers or bots of searchengines right if you have to address them to make certain parts of your site unaccessible.

See full article.

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Unleash the Domainer in You - 20 March 2007

The ‘Doubly Lucky’ Google - 29 July 2007

Contents of this feed are a property of Creative Weblogging Limited and are protected by copyright laws. Violations will be prosecuted. Please email us if you’d like to use this feed for non-commercial activities at feeds - at - creative-weblogging.com.

Filed under: Finance, Internet, Features, Social Software, DLS Podcast, web 2.0

SXSWi 2008: Freshbooks talks to Download Squad from Download Squad on Vimeo.

We’ve written about Freshbooks — the online invoicing system — before and have been big fans of their approach and service. We were even more impressed upon meeting Saul and Sunir, two of Freshbook’s team members, at SXSWi 2008.

Grant talked to Saul and Sunir about the service, the importance of community and traveling from Miami to Austin in an RV and stopping along the way to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner with customers.

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Filed under: Fun, Internet, Photo, Video, Social Software

We’ve covered Animoto before. It’s a rocking web app that allows you to create a music video with your own photos or video in about 5 minutes or less. Now, Animoto has recently won the Film/TV Web award at the 2008 SXSW conference and has some new features we thought deserved a revisit.

For starters, Animoto has a new Facebook app which allows you to produce unlimited free 30 seconds spots using your Facebook photos. If any of your photos are tagged with your Facebook friends’ names, they too will get an alert in their News Feed informing them.

If you’re not too excited by that, (is it possible to get excited by Facebook apps anymore?), you can also now export any of your Animoto videos directly to YouTube by clicking a little button. The beauty here is there’s no video camera or video editing software required to produce professional results.

And there’s the ability to post your videos to most every social network around, like: MySpace, Friendster, Blogger, TypePad, Freewebs, Webwag, Pageflakes, Netvibes, Windows Live.com, iGoogle, Orkut, Hi5, LiveJournal, Xanga, myYearbook, LiveSpaces, Tagged, Multiply, BlackPlanet, Eons, Piczo, and Vox.

In our previous post, we said we wanted the ability to add text to the photos. Apparently that idea has registered with Animoto but it is not live yet. A work around is to add your text to a photo and save it as a JPG or GIF and upload it like your other photos. They are also still working on the ability to send videos to cellphones and downloading videos to your computer.

No word yet on a Lessig Method video tool. Now, wouldn’t that be something?
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Filed under: Developer, Web services, Social Software, web 2.0

Kevin Marks talks Open Social with Download Squad’s Christina Warren from Download Squad on Vimeo.
With all the buzz around OpenSocial, it’s easy to get lost in hype. While we were at SXSW we caught up with Kevin Marks, a man with more techno-credibility than you can shake a stick at. He’s currently working on OpenSocial for Google, and he’s got a lot to say about the concepts behind organizing and connecting the diaspora which is the current state of the social web. Our own Christina Warren cuts through the hype in this short interview.
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Filed under: Macintosh, Yahoo!, Social Software, Beta

Yahoo! has just released Yahoo! Messenger Beta 3 for the Mac, with the long-awaited, much-crowed for addition of voice calling.

With the latest version of Messenger for the Mac, users can make free PC-to-PC calls (yes, a Mac is a PC too) to other Messenger buddies. You can also sign up for a Phone Out account to make calls to landlines and mobile phones. Or, if you want to go all the way, you can sign up for a Phone In account, which assigns you a number so people can call you on your PC.

In other words: picture Skype, but with a big yellow smiley face instead of a cool blue talk bubble.

Check out the Yahoo! Messenger blog for a complete rundown of the new features and a handy screencast.

[via TUAW]
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Filed under: Audio, Social Software

New York City hipsters have struck again, bringing quick and easy mixtape sharing to the ‘net at Muxtape.com. The site was built by Justin Ouellette, and early mixes have been uploaded by Jakob Lodwick (of Vimeo) and Patrick Moberg (of nygirlofmydreams.com fame). Muxtape is easy as pie: upload songs in mp3 format, drag and drop to organize, send the link to your friends.

Muxtapes hold up to 12 songs in a nice minimal layout (LARGE TYPE! CLICK TO PLAY! CLICK AGAIN TO STOP!). You can’t download songs directly from other people’s Muxtapes, which keeps the focus on finding good new artists to support. Justin says RSS feeds and m4a support are already in the works, so Muxtape should just keep getting easier.
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Filed under: Photo, Security, Social Software

Although this particular hack, which was reportedly done by making a slight change to the URL, is now fixed, the lesson is not to assume that the privacy settings on sites like Facebook and MySpace will totally protect your photos. The good news is that Zuckerberg has said in interviews that privacy is going to be Facebook’s major focus as social network data becomes more portable, and additional privacy settings were introduced last week. In spite of all that hard work, though, this incident suggests Facebook still has a lot of work to do.

[via ReadWriteWeb]
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Filed under: Developer, Internet, Features, Google, Social Software, web 2.0

Yahoo!, MySpace and Google announced the creation of the OpenSocial Foundation today. The foundation is a non-profit entity aimed at ensuring “…open and transparent governance of the OpenSocial specifications and intellectual property.”

On the final day of SXSW Interactive 2008, we were lucky enough to sit down with Kevin Marks from Google’s OpenSocial project. Kevin broke down what OpenSocial is, where it is going (MySpace, Hi5, and Orkut among others had already signed on as of our interview) and what the plans are for the future. We’ll be posting our interview with Marks shortly.

In the meantime, you can read more about the new foundation after the jump

Continue reading OpenSocial Bonanza

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Filed under: Internet, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Google, Freeware, Social Software

While Google’s GTalk messaging application is currently Windows only, shankri-la points out that similar functionality can be achieved by using Mozilla’s beta project, Prism, to create a standalone web application.

After Prism is installed, run the program and enter the following line as the application URL:

https://talkgadget.Google.com/talkgadget/client

Next, give your application a uRL, like “GTalk,” and choose your shortcut locations. You’ll then have a GTalk/Prism web application that runs separately from your regular web browser (which is helpful for keeping conversations on a separate monitor or to prevent accidental quitting of the application during web use).

Signing in to your newly-created gadget will present you with your contact list and basic GTalk instant messaging. You won’t be able to do fancy things like send files or use the music status functions, but you will be able to group chat, use emoticons, and save your chat history (if you’ve enabled that preference in your Gmail settings).

We know you could use the Google Talk within Gmail or use a Jabber client for Mac/Linux to connect, but using Prism to create a web app can create a better workflow for some users. You won’t have to keep a Gmail tab open for IM, and you won’t mistakenly quit Firefox when you’re done browsing on another tab (which would close your IM session as well).
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Is your website nowhere to be seen in Google? It might be that Google doesn’t like your website because it looks like spam. Check this list to find out whether your website might look like spam or not.

Filed under: Fun, Internet, Features, Web services, Social Software

If you can’t get enough of the English-language Weblogs, Inc. blogs, you can always check out some of the ones we serve up in other languages — Autoblog Chinese or Engadget Spanish, for example. What? You don’t know any other languages? Well, it’s time you learned.

Babbel is a well-designed Web site designed to teach you a foreign language. It’s part instruction, part wiki, and part social (isn’t everything these days? What’s next? A social network for wood stork enthusiasts? But we digress). Babbel incorporates a few different methods to facilitate learning one of the five languages they offer: Spanish, French, Italian, English, and German.

Continue reading Learn a new language at Babbel, por favor

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Filed under: Internet, Blogging, Web services, Social Software, web 2.0

If you go to sign up for a new LiveJournal account, you may notice something missing. The company behind the blogging service/social network has removed the Basic account option, while leaving the Plus and Paid options in place. For $2 a month you get the ability to post more picturs, receive more notifications, and store more media online than you could with a free Plus account. And you don’t have to put up with advertising.

The Basic option used to be ad-free as well, but users didn’t get advanced search options, additional storage space and many other features that came with Plus and Paid accounts. In other words, LiveJournal wasn’t really making any money off of Basic account holders. You know, unless you count the fact that Basic account holders were adding value to the service by creating a community of active users that was so popular that some people were even willing to pay for advanced features.

When LiveJournal management announced the change earlier this month, LiveJournal users didn’t exactly keep their concerns private. As of this writing, there are 68 pages filled with comments, most from users who are critical of the change. But since the new policy affects new users more than existing users, it will probably take a while to determine what impact the change will have.

[via ReadWriteWeb]
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Filed under: Internet, Web services, Social Software, web 2.0

Diigo is a social bookmarking service which we covered briefly while it was in private beta. But the service is out of beta, and has launched a new set of tools that make it easy to mark up web pages, save pages to your account, and search through your bookmarks and those of other users.

The service has also added a recommendation engine. Since users are constantly saving and tagging web content, Diigo has a huge database of web pages that may feature similar content. So if you like pages about Windows freeware, Diigo probably knows that and when you click on the recommendations feed you should be able to find pages that you’ll like.

[via ReadWriteWeb]
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