Cranked.Me

How to make Flash under Firefox finally work under 64-bit Ubuntu

2010-01-31T16:07:00.001+01:00

I've finally managed to make my Firefox usable again under amd64 Ubuntu by installing the proper version of 64bit Flash player directly from Adobe (current version is 10.)

I don't have stupid problems with stupid npviewer.bin anymore and my notebook finally doesn't lag.

Here's what you should do to install a native 64-bit version of Flash under Ubuntu:

First of all, uninstall the original flash player:
sudo apt-get remove flashplugin-installer nsplugin-wrapper
Download the 64-bit version of Flash player for Linux from Adobe 64-bit Flash download page
wget http://download.macromedia.com/pub/labs/flashplayer10/libflashplayer-10.0.42.34.linux-x86_64.so.tar.gz tar -xf libflashplayer-10.0.42.34.linux-x86_64.so.tar.gz
Replace the old Flash player with new one:
cp libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/

That's it. You now have a non-laggy Firefox.
If you are interested, I've also stumbled upon this ubuntuforums thread: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1358591. The guys there, however, do too much in my opinion - it looks like rocket science and shooting sparrows using a cannon for me.

P.S. I have found the logo image for this post while googling for 'firefox icon'. Clearly it will become a new firefox logo very soon.

SEO flavor by country - a definitive list

2009-04-02T12:00:00.011+02:00

American SEO: Create a website containing words 'searchengine' in its name. Talk about SEO until everybody considers you an expert. Afterwards, demand 5-digit prices for your 'add alt tags to images' advices.
Russian SEO: Create a hundred of doorways leading to fifty illegal mp3/cracks/erotic sites. Stuff them with endless popups leading to a dozen of half-legal erotic/mp3 sites. Redirect some clicks to lead to half a dozen perfectly legal online stores - either for referral bonus, or run the stores on your own.
Turkish SEO: Pick a niche. Subscribe to 30-40 middle-popularity blogs in that niche. Every day republish one of the posts you read in your blog, removing all the credentials. However, forget to check all the links in the post, accidentally linking back to the author and creating a backling.
Vietnamese SEO: Find a blog template/widget/picture. Modify the backlink to point to you instead of original author. Redistribute.
Ukrainian SEO: Create a website, claiming that you are a success story, and everybody else are losers. Offer others to visit your trainings to learn to become a success story themselves. While doing this, look pathetic, so others in attempt to say 'just look at this idiot' will generate a bunch of links to you.
Indian SEO: Write a howto article, describing a trivial action (How to properly switch off your computer, for example). Repeat for every possible Google query.

Did I miss any? :)

Funny/Geeky/Weird/Grim pages in Wikipedia

2009-03-31T22:01:00.003+02:00

Stumbling through Wikipedia, I've found some pages I like to revisit from time to time. The list of the pages grew bigger, until I decided to share it. What are yours favorite pages from Wikipedia? :)

Real-time statistics

Want to figure out what's hot now on Wikipedia? This page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Popular_pages has it :)

Grim statistics

Pages like these give me creeps under my skin. Watch deaths as they occur in real time - htpp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_in_2009

Users

I find this user page funny: htpp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jesus_Lover

Bots

Love the design of control panel of this bot (by the way, he's also the most active bot on Wikipedia): htpp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:SmackBot
The big red button is just amazing:)

Wikipedia's "official fun pages"

htpp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_humor
htpp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Department_of_Fun

Wikipedia's "official weird pages"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Unusual_articles

Gambling

Wikipedians gamble by making bets on the day something will happen. Like, 666,666th article - htpp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:666,666th_pool
All wikipedia pools: htpp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Pools
htpp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Last_topic_pool

Wikipedia also has a feeling of self-importance

htpp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Awareness_statistics
htpp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Most_referenced_articles
htpp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_charts

As well as wikipedians

List of wikipedians by number of edits - htpp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_Wikipedians_by_number_of_edits

And even their bots :)

List of wikipedia bots by number of edits - htpp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_bots_by_number_of_edits

Web-comics

Want to know which webcomics are recognized and cool?
htpp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_self-sufficient_webcomics

Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia

"Just as many hotels have no thirteenth floor (to the great dismay of several late bungee jumpers), Wikipedia will skip the 666,666th article out of systematically biased prejudice. Or threat of lawsuits from extreme religionists. Radiant 12:50, Jun 10, 2005 (UTC)"

The fear of number six hundred sixty six is called Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia, and also has it's page on Wikipedia: htpp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia

Vandalism

Vandalism in Wikipedia happens quite often (hence so many anti-vandal bots exist). However, it's not always performed because of evil intent. Sometimes it is made for lulz :)
Funny Wikipedia Vandalism - htpp://www.imserba.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-94521.html
Funny Wikipedia Vandalism about government: htpp://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Government&diff=118335356&oldid=118335061

Extras

While writing the article, I also found some other nice leads which I would also like to share.
Meet Fucking, a village in Austria: htpp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/*******,_Austria/
What makes it even more fun, is that this village is only half an hour away from Kissing and Petting :)

Duplicate title tags, part 2

2009-03-24T20:27:00.000+01:00

Hello everyone,

I'm still experimenting on Duplicate title tags/duplicate meta descriptions issue in Blogger.

I've roughly described it in my Tweets:

Eterniel:Just did some changes to my website template. Hopefully they will resolve most of the Duplicate Title Tags issues.
Eterniel:The biggest problem in this issue, of course, is blogger
Eterniel:It generates unneeded '?showcomment=' urls, which are then interpreted by Google Webmaster Tools as distinct pages
Eterniel:Furthermore, Blogger exports these links in /feeds/comments/default feed
Eterniel:So you have to throw away 'all-head-content' includable and replace it with your own.

I'm quite sure this will resolve all the issues. However, it takes quite some time while Google re-crawls the whole site.

I'm quite impatient, so I will use one trick. Don't pay attention to the following lines, that's just some too complicated robot SEO magic:

<!-- **robots -->
<script xmlns='http://www.googlebot.com/1999/gsa-crawler' xmlns:meta='http://www.googlebot.com/1999/gsa-crawler/meta' >
<user-agent name="Mediapartners-Google">
<page>
<uri>http://cranked.me/2008/04/but-i-figure-if-it-isnt-little-scary.html</uri>
<index>1</index>
<follow>0</follow>
</page>
<page>
<uri>http://cranked.me/2008/04/reason-i-dont-shop-online.html</uri>
<index>1</index>
<follow>0</follow>
</page>
</user-agent>

</gsa:script>
<!-- /**robots -->

Direct traffic from Montara - yet another search engine launch? :)

2009-02-19T18:15:00.004+01:00

Today I have experienced a spike in direct traffic coming from one particular city: Montara, California (website)

Montara: is a small city in California, with less than 3,000 inhabitants. A hundred visits a day from city that big was suspicious.

It seems not only I have experienced this.

'The visitor' reports Internet Explorer with resolutions 1024x768 and 800x600, Flash version 10 and Java support.

Do we experience a rise of yet another web crawler? :)

Netvibes.com - the worst first impression I ever had

2009-02-19T15:25:00.004+01:00

— You never have a second chance to make a good first impression.

Today I have visited Netvibes

I havent seen so much fail in quite some time.

The page is composed from modules that use _three_ different languages at the same time - English, German and French. This is simply incredible. Different languages are even within the same widgets (see "Liste de tâches. Nothing to do")
Every service I've seen so far properly identifies my IP as Swiss. Netvibes shows me weather report for Paris, France. Even more, it shows me news from Switzerland and offers me to use german Google Site (google.de).
Too much spam in the first few seconds of our acquaintance ("Set netvibes as my default homepage", "Sign up now, it's free"). I want to see first what you can give me, not what I can do for you.
Inconsistent interface - three different types of "close" buttons on the same page.
Set netvibes as my default homepage image gets cut badly on lower resolution (not seen properly on screenshot)
Duplicate search boxes. Why would I need two google searchboxes on the same page? Oh, I forgot, one is german Google search, even though I am in Switzerland.
What the hell will happen when I press "close" button near "Remind me later" and "Don't show this again"? "Remind me later" or "Don't show this again"? One out of these three ("Remind me later", "Don't show this again" and Close Button) is clearly redundant and even brings confusion.This is overall poor design - and on the page that is supposed to make the first impression on the user, in the most important part of screen real estate - header (see Fitt's law).
Wtf does that check box does near search field in "Recherche Web" multilingual failwidget? You'll have no idea until you click it when you already have some search results to display

Google-bomb "failure" should point to http://netvibes.com/ , not G.W. Bush's profile. I wouild rather set my browser's homepage to about:robots - it is as much informative as default Netvibes page, however less irritating. The only real use of Netvibes was, probably, this.

Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up - tags on last.fm

2009-02-18T13:26:00.001+01:00

I like how "Never Gonna Give You Up" by Rick Astley is tagged "brutal death metal" on last.fm :)

Firefox is slow - how to make it faster?

2009-02-15T18:36:00.001+01:00

Firefox was quite slow and had the following symptoms:

A delay when resolving host names
A couple-second delay when switching between tabs
Slow scrolling inside the page

I did some research and tweaking, and now it runs blazingly fast. This post is here as a reference if I ever have to do it again.

My current setup:

Sony VAIO notebook
Nvidia videocard
Linux Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron
Firefox 3.06 - 3.1 beta - both were lagging about the same

What I did:

Disable IPv6

(this helps with DNS responses from sites)

Type about:config in Firefox address-bar
If needed, press I'll be careful, I promise button :)
Type network.dns in the Filter field, find network.dns.disableIPv6 value in the list below and double-click on it to make it change to True

Speed-up page loading times by increasing the amount of http request Firefox issues simulataneously

On the same about:config page
Type network.http.p in the Filter field
Set network.http.pipelining to True
Set network.http.proxy.pipelining to True
Increase network.http.pipelining.maxrequests value to about 16-20 from the default 4.

Tell Firefox to start drawing page immediately after it receives some part of it from the server

Right-click somewhere in about:config window
Choose New->Integer from the context menu
Name it nglayout.initialpaint.delay
Set it to "0"

If you are an Ubuntu user with Emerald

update your Nvidia driver (this can give drastic performance boost)

Even if you have automatic updates on, you might still have old Nvidia drivers. There is a known interoperability issue between Nvidia drivers and Emerald, so you can either switch to another window decorator, or update drivers.
The easiest way to do it is to use EnvyNG:

Install envyng-gtk if you use Ubuntu/Gnome, envyng-qt if you use Kubuntu/KDE:
sudo apt-get install envyng-gtk
or
sudo apt-get install envyng-qt
for KDE
Launch Applications->System tools->EnvyNG
Choose NVIDIA->Install the NVIDIA driver (Automatic Hardware Detection)
Press Apply and then restart your computer when asked.

Firefox should be now faster than lightning.

References:

Hidden text links in comments

2009-02-10T13:37:00.001+01:00

I was searching for "how blogger generates comment urls" for my post about duplicate title tags/meta descriptions, when my eyes stumbled over the heading of this post - not because it was particularly relevant to my query, but because I eventually did it myself for my blog - style author comments.(This guy came out with JavaScript method though, I do it with raw templating & CSS).

The blog, unfortunately, seemed pretty abandoned. Scrolling through spammy comments, I've noticed this particular one:

What was that rectangle to the right? I mouse-overed it with FireBug - it was link-infested:

Of course, when I turned off Highlight Nofollow Links in SearchStatus, the comment looked perfectly ordinary:

But how can it hurt me, if these links are nofollowed and even non-clickable?

These links are hidden, thus subject to violating guidelines for Google-friendly sites, which can even result in automatic removal of your page from search index
These links slow down your page . The described above link-pack was 5kb - compared to 30kb original post. Take 6 commenters like that - and your page will load almost twice longer.
It can (needs more testing) change the keyword density of your site. (It's not caused by this particular comment, but two most popular keywords on that page are "Viagra" and "Tramadol", making 20% of page content. If you were an indexing robot - what would you think that page is about?)

How to fight it?

It would be possible to make these anchors visible using CSS (for example, specifying padding and background color for <a/> tags), however, everyone who visits your page would see them - and even worse - will be able to accidentally click them - which is not exactly what we need. Instead, have Highlight Nofollow Links or similar feature turned on - and once a spammer is detected - fire at will.

P.S. FireBug and SearchStatus are two great Firefox addons. No competent web developer/SEO can imagine his life without them.

[SOLVED] Amarok lags on every song or volume change

2009-01-18T21:09:00.001+01:00

Since I reinstalled my Kubuntu Hardy (to Interpid Ibex -> Jaunty Jackal alpha -> back to Hardy), my Amarok started to lag heavily on every song change/volume control or basically any other action. I thought this is somehow connected with the new version of Amarok, with Compiz Fusion, and I even changed to Gnome from KDE to test it. Amarok was still lagging the same - Amarok window slowly fades out, stands still for ~5-6 seconds, and then unfreezes.
Finally, I've found what was causing the trouble: SQLite as Connection Database. It seems that Amarok stores every configuration parameter in a database - so every configuration change invokes long and lagging cooperation with SQLite. With other databases (like MySQL) it's way faster.

How to fix it:

Go to Settings->Configure Amarok
Switch to Collection tab
Under Database choose MySQL:
Specify your MySQL credentials. If you don't have MySQL server running on your machine you'll receive an error message like this:

So you can either setup a MySQL server on your machine, or just ignore the messages - but trust me, no matter what you choose it will be a small price to pay for the joy of having that incredibly annoying lag gone.
Press OK to save configuration

P.S. KDE 4 sucks.
P.P.S. I've switched to Gnome.

Google promotes payed text links through ads

2008-12-24T13:59:00.001+01:00

This is what I've seen today in my Gmail:

The text says: Increase page rank - Buy quality text links for better search engine results

Nice advertising partners, Google :) Looking forward to see more links (to porn, warez etc) delivered directly into my Gmail interface :)

Seo is going to die... Isn't it?

2008-12-10T13:31:00.001+01:00

About half a year ago I was planning to make a fortune by creating a socially-tailored custom search engine pages. I even started to write a Firefox addon like StumbleUpon Toolbar. But then I discovered scour.com.

Couple of weeks ago, Google has introduced SearchWiki. The search will never be the same again.

My rant: frankly, I think this sucks. Playing with the system was fun. Discovering the things that the system "likes", being fast to react and getting thousands of hits from search engines (recent example: g00d-stuff epidemy).
Now it all is pretty much gone. Seems botnets is the future of SEO.

RankedHard SEO Comic

2008-12-10T13:14:00.001+01:00

I love RankedHard SEO Comic. Really. They disappoint me with duplicating content though - check the last two comics - did they run out of topics?

And this one:

Seriously, keyword stuffing makes my eyes bleed. Hopefully with rated search results it will be gone.

Duplicate title tags / meta descriptions: Google Webmaster Tools and Blogger blogs (fix-it manual included)

2008-11-13T14:37:00.019+01:00

Sometimes I receive very interesting e-mails or insightful comments like this: Have you found a solution to duplicate title tags/duplicate meta description issue?. I try to respond as extensive as possible at that moment, and often even dedicate posts to describe it in more detail.

So today's post in dedicated to Blogger generated "Duplicate title tags/Duplicate meta descriptions" warnings in Google Webmaster Tools.

I know how bad duplicate title tags and duplicate meta descriptions are, just give me "fix it" paragraph fast.

What is "Duplicate title tags" or "Duplicate meta descriptions"?

Search engines nowadays are smart. Very smart. However they are still what they are - machines. Sometimes they can't decide which exactly your page matches the search query the best - so they check everything that can give them more clue - titles of your pages, their meta keywords, meta descriptions - everything. However, if two your pages have the same title and same meta description, there is no such clue. That's the reason search engines consider duplicate meta descriptions/title tags as "bad", and can actually penalize you for that.

What is Google Webmaster Tools and how is it related to Duplicate title tags and Duplicate meta descriptions warning?

We all know Google Webmaster Tools. It is a great tool that gives you some insight on how your website is seen by Google (and can also give you some hints about up-to-date Page Rank of your pages (while toolbar rank is updated once in a couple of months, data in Google Webmaster Tools is more fresh, see "Crawl stats").
However, sometimes Google Webmaster Tools provide us with such an intimidating picture:

(Numbers in this image are photoshopped, since after applying everything I wrote in this guide I don't have any duplicate title tags/meta descriptions issues anymore)
These numbers can indeed be scary.

Why it happens?

Blogger has a bad habit to refer to comments through links like this: http://cranked.me/2008/07/blogger-templates-and-xhtml-markup.html?showComment=1219419960000#c7051926467725606787. Thus Google threats links like these as separate pages (while it is actually simply a link to an anchor on your page). Actually, there are quite a few other SEO problems in Blogger as well (doesn't mean they can't be fixed though, we'll see it later :)

How bad is it for SEO?

For every comment you have in your blog, Google thinks there exists another page with the same title tag and meta description, thus Google might decide your site is not search-engine-friendly. (Since it's actually one page, these "multiple" pages in Google's eyes will also have the same content, which can lead to duplicate content issue as well). Google Webmaster Tools doesn't show you any statistics about your pages that are considered 'duplicate content', however numbers of 'duplicate title tag issues' and 'duplicate meta description issues' might ring a bell and give you the general idea.

Ok, duplicate title tags/duplicate meta descriptions are really bad. How to fix it?

Basically, all we need to do to fix duplicate title tags and duplicate meta descriptions issue in Blogger is to hide links to comments in your posts from search engines. Content of the comments will still be in search engines because it is a part of your post page.
So the fix is performed in three steps:

Edit template
Wrap blog archive widget
Remove or replace recent comments widget

Note: there is a small twist though: Google will still be able to dig some links to your comment pages from your comments feed (usually located at /feeds/comments/default).

Step 1. Edit your blog template

We need to hide the permalink to the comment from search engines:

(the link that says August 22, 2008 5:46 PM). However, we would still like to be able to link to the comment if needed, so the link should still be there for users.
I'm not a big fan of JavaScript because content generated by it cannot be used for SEO purposes, however this time we will use this weakness for our benefit.

So, open your blog template (remember to previously save it). Tick "Expand Widget Templates" checkbox, and find this code in your template:

<a expr:href='data:comment.url' title='comment permalink'>

  <data:comment.timestamp/>

</a>

It should look like this:

Replace it with the following code:

<b:if cond='data:post.commentPagingRequired'>

  <a expr:href='data:comment.url' title='comment permalink'> <data.comment.timestamp/> </a>

<b:else/>

  <a expr:href='data:blog.url + &quot;#&quot; + data:comment.anchorName' title='comment permalink'> <data:comment.timestamp/> </a>

</b:if>

Save the template and check how it looks. It should look the same as original, however now timestamps should link to comments by their anchor ID's, without confusing Google crawler with ?showcomment= part. (In case multi-page comments are required, the long form will be used).
The described trick works in all browsers that I know of.

Step 2. Wrap blog archive widget

Blog archive widget for Blogger is very nice, however it has a bad habit of generating long links Google doesn't understand. This leads to duplicate content issues and duplicate title tags/meta descriptions. It is easy to fix, however: click the small wrench icon under your blog archive widget, and choose flat list option in the settings window:

Don't forget to press Save button :)

Step 3. Remove recent comments widget

Recent comments widget is made by creating a feed widget with http://<yoursiteurl>/feeds/comments/default url as feed source. It is nifty to have, however it supplies search engines with links to your blog comments, what we try to avoid (because comment content goes to search engines' index with your post page anyway). Either remove the widget or use the javascript recent comments widget. (The javascript one, however, might slow down loading time of your sidebar a bit).

After following instructions supplied here, Google Webmaster Tools will not bother you with the duplicate title tags/meta descriptions issue as there will be none (it takes time for Google to re-crawl all your site, so be patient, takes about 2-3 weeks). This will boost your search engine rankings a little bit since Google now thinks your site is "Google friendly" (and in fact it is).

In the next post I'll describe how to teach Blogger to highlight your own comments with different color/style, so make sure you subscribe to my rss feed.

Good luck and enjoy your Google Webmaster Tools experience :)

How to redirect 404 www subdomains to your main site or Google Blogger got it 404 broken again

2008-10-17T18:43:00.000+02:00

warning: if you use Blogger for publishing, try to access your blog through its www. form - you may have this problem too

When I came back from my vacation, I was quite surprised to see that the www. form of my blog (http://www.cranked.me/ form of my blog is not getting redirected to my http://cranked.me/ site, and instead I receive a Server Not Found Error 404 message:

Amused, I ran to check all the CNAME, A, and even MX records in my DNS domain management interfaces. Everything was intact. Redirect www.cranked.me to cranked.me checkbox in Blogger dashboard was checked as well.
After half an hour of scratching my head and trial-and-error approach I have found a way that worked:

Go to your Blogger dashboard->Settings->Publishing and uncheck Redirect www.yoursite.com to yoursite.com:
Solve the CAPTCHA below and press SAVE SETTINGS
Now, on the same page, check back Redirect www.yoursite.com to yoursite.com checkbox:
Solve the CAPTCHA below and press SAVE SETTINGS
Wait a couple of minutes and try to access your site/blog through it's www. form - it should work.

Explanation? Google uses Name-based virtual hosting to host all sites. Somehow, maybe while updating Blogger engine, the setting of Redirect www.yoursite.com to yoursite.com checkbox got messed up, and Blogger was no more redirecting the www- form of your blog to your main blog. This could cause a loss of some PageRank and problems with sites like Alexa or Domaintools which often use www- form to access your website.

Luckily, we got everything covered up :)
I also recommend you to subscribe to my RSS feed if you haven't done so yet, so you can always receive fresh SEO and webmaster updates from the constantly changing Internet world.

Back in business

2008-10-14T08:51:00.006+02:00

My vacation is coming to end.
I'm writing this post as I sit on a plane home.
Korean 'hello' greeting 안녕하세요 'anniong haseyo' [ANION: HASEJO:] literally means 'my soul is at peace, and yours?'
My soul is at peace. I feel very relaxed and at ease. Refreshed and ready for action.
For my vacation, I took almost a hitchhikers route through Central and Eastern Europe. (Switzerland, Austria, Czech Republic, Poland, Ukraine, Russia). The original plan was to end up in Russia - just like my friend Markus did once, however, I got 'delayed' in Ukraine :)
Ukrainian girls are beautiful and sweet as always.
Roads in western Ukraine are very nice. With markup even in smallest villages, and - omg - flashing lights on signs.
There were also a lot of ~~shoplifting~~ shopping in Prague.
I didn't want to go home.

--- Offtopic ends here ---

I've spent as much time as I could replying to e-mails and following people back on Twitter.

Some things I have also managed to notice, even while being on vacation:

Judging from analytics statistics, Google Chrome now has around 2.5% market share - and this is statistics from different sites, not only SEO - oriented.
I've discovered a strange Google page - http://google.com/home. Wonder how it's functionality is connected with 'home' keyword in url.
There is also a problem with www. subdomains redirect with Google hosting which I will describe in my next post.

I will also upload some photos - just need to get back to my notebook.

Offtopic: Vacation in Prague

2008-09-12T14:59:00.002+02:00

offtopic - my vacation.

Not only Alex Papadimoulis of TheDailyWTF has his vacation now - I'm having one too :)

Let me introduce my younger brother:

He keeps sending me photos from parties in Prague, like this

source - monsterbeat.cz

so I have finally decided to pay him a visit. I'm going to Czech Republic to hang around with my brother and some friends from IBM - that will start my vacation. Where will I go after that - I don't know yet, and that's the part that I like the most :)

The vacation will last around 2 weeks - I won't probably post much in this time, yet I will try to do some updates on my Twitter profile.

Meanwhile, Happy Programmer's Day, everyone, and have a nice weekend :)

John McCain and Barack Obama on social networks

2008-09-12T13:33:00.005+02:00

Social and professional networks take a big share of Internet activities of modern users. Thus, company activities like marketing on social sites emerge, and presidential candidates are no different. (Barack Obama friends 52,000 users on Twitter).

Public profiles of USA president candidates on LinkedIn (in alphabetical order :)
John McCain
Barack Obama

Oh, btw, profile links on LinkedIn do pass PageRank.

Social media is important. Do it. If your company still doesn't have a page on Twitter - it's about time. Friend me there as well.

And, as a bonus: John McCain recommends Sarah Palin on LinkedIn ;)(you will need to log in) :

Download Metallica - Death Magnetic (2008) - the newest album from legendary metal band

2008-09-07T23:17:00.010+02:00

READ THIS: This was a SEO experiment, there's no unlicensed music here and never was.

Some fast guys have already put Metallica - Death Magnetic album for download: ~~http://letitbit.net/download/a58339622514/Metallica---Death-Magnetic-28200829-www.hard-mus.com.rar.html~~
Update: the link doesn't work anymore. You can try this one:
http://www4.sendthisfile.com/d.jsp?t=fj5yZgZvwTCfgMU78XZgvET8">http://www4.sendthisfile.com/d.jsp?t=fj5yZgZvwTCfgMU78XZgvET8

Update: I have put all the music to dedicated hosting. Links down in the post.

Make sure you download it fast, until it has reached it's download limit. Metallica's last album from 2008 - it's something we all were waiting for. I will buy Death Magnetic as soon as it is in stores, yet I'm glad I can have at least a peek at this album right now :) (P.S. "The Unforgiven 3" and "That Was Just Your Life" are cool).

List of tracks for Metallica - Death Magnetic:
1. That Was Just Your Life
2. The End of the Line
3. Broken, Beat & Scarred
4. The Day That Never Comes
5. All Nightmare Long
6. Cyanide
7. The Unforgiven III
8. The Judas Kiss
9. Suicide & Redemption
10. My Apocalypse

Metallica - Death Magnetic

Special thanks to Cheese for sharing the link.

Google Chrome security flaw - first vulnerability found

2008-09-06T11:40:00.001+02:00

Google Chrome Buffer Overflow vulnerability

The SVRT-Bkis guys have found a first vulnerability in Google Chrome that allows a malicious website to execute code on remote system. It works on Windows XP SP2 - on other systems the exploit just crashes Google Chrome.

How to check: goto http://security.bkis.vn/Proof-Of-Concept/PoC-XPSP2.html and click SaveAs.
(you will need win XP SP2 however).

It is super sad that this 'vulnerability' is a stupid buffer overflow. Somehow I believe there will be way more to come. Welcome to the real world, Google Chrome.

Twitter nofollow bugfix yields angry reaction from exploiters

2008-09-04T17:45:00.005+02:00

Yesterday, Twitter fixed a bug that allowed you to have a value-passing link from Twitter to your website. This caused a big reaction, and since it was Matt Cutts who pointed this bug, Google took all the blame.

It is popular nowadays to nofollow all the links that go from your domain. Wikipedia does it. Twitter was no exception. The scenario is simple:

get all the link juice in
give no link juice out
Profit $$$.

This boosts your pagerank a little, but also turns you into a "black hole", sucking link juice from everyone and keeping it all for yourself, thus giving you a reputation of a bitch.

All the links that you would drop in your twitter messages were nofollowed. A website that you specify in your twitter profile was nofollowed as well. However, due to poor skills of Twitter engineers, a good workaround was found by inventive ~~blackhats~~ SEOs. All you needed to do is to put a link to your website into your One Line Bio profile field - and stupid processing engine would turn it into a fancy value-passing link from a high pagerank page (Twitter currently has PR8, your page could be PR5-7).

Of course, everyone who had even a slightest idea what SEO is, exploited this heavily.
Now it has been shut down. Oh well, happens - exploits usually don't last long. But what the hell is the reaction to this?
I will quote Sugarrae in her post to which I have linked before:

An even bigger question for me is, if, IF, Google is really coercing companies like Twitter based on threats of dropping them from their index for non-compliance, at what point does someone decide that due to Google’s reach and power, that doing so is no longer a case of “guidelines” but rather one of blackmail?

What the fuck is wrong with you, people? It was a bug - if Twitter creators really intended to give you a credit for your work on Twitter they wouldn't nofollow your webpage link from the very beginning. You exploited this bug as hard as you could - and once it's been shut up - it's Googles fault - because it was Matt Cutts who finally pointed this out.

The biggest flaw in your claim is that Google actually gives a damn about followed/nofollowed links from Twitter. Why would it care? How will it influence Google? Google would actually benefit more — because if you are a smartass that can build a nice internal PR on Twitter, and then pass it to your website, then you are obviously smart and worth showing high in search results. Now, instead of this 'extra information' that would do Google even better, Google has one more black hole on its hands.

So give it a break, stop whining and don't blame Google because you have just lost a fancy high PR link that you got by cheating anyway.

Google Chrome - download it or it will download you!

2008-09-02T09:15:00.004+02:00

Today Google releases it's browser - Google Chrome. The download page is here: http://www.google.com/chrome

Meanwhile, while you wait, feel free to check the comic about Google Chrome: http://books.google.com/books?id=8UsqHohwwVYC&printsec=frontcover#PPA2,M1

It's fun, I promise :)

Ubiquity for Firefox

2008-08-27T14:46:00.008+02:00

Ubiquity by Mozilla team is just amazing.

Ubiquity: Existence or apparent existence everywhere at the same time; omnipresence: “the repetitiveness, the selfsameness, and the ubiquity of modern mass culture” (Theodor Adorno )

I also like terms omnipotence and omnipresence as well :)

I have just checked the weather in Bern, added some birthday reminders to my Google calendar, twittered my 'testing ubiquity' status, looked up some pit bull puppies photos on Flickr, messed my open tabs in Firefox and even counted the amount of words in this post - all in a couple of seconds using Ubiquity :)

Ok, what is Ubiquity?

Ubiquity: Firefox add-on that springs to life once you press Ctrl-Space (or Option-Space if you're using Mac) and lets you type what do you want to do instead of where do you want to go in browser to do it. For most commands Ubiquity will fetch the results using the desired website's API and display them in the same window, without a hassle for you to go there and enter search terms/perform an action yourself

Check this movie to see how it works:

Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

This brings back the movies from 80's when a cop used to type 'find all persons with name Hans Jakobli'. Everyone at least a little-bit computer literate used to laugh watching movies like this back then, but now computer power has reached the level to make tricks like this possible. All you need to do to get Ubiquity - have Firefox and click this link: install Ubiquity (this links you to Mozilla site). (you will have to install Growl too if you use Mac).

That's it - after this you are ready to roll :) While being only version 0.1, Ubiquity is very powerful. This is just a few of the available commands (you can check the full list by Ubiquity Commands link once you have Ubiquity installed):

add-to-calendar Adds an event to your calendar.
convert Converts a selection to a PDF, to rich text, or to html.
digg If not yet submitted, submits the page to Digg. Otherwise, it takes you to the story's Digg page.
escape-html-entities Replaces html entities (<, >, and &) with their escape sequences. (Extremely useful if you do heavy html hacking like this)
flickr Searches Flickr for pictures matching your words.
map Turns an address or location name into a Google Map.
map-these Maps multiple selected addresses or links onto a single Google Map.
tinyurl Replaces the selected URL with a TinyUrl
translate Translates from one language to another.
twitter Sets your Twitter status to a message of at most 160 characters.
weather Checks the weather for a given location.
wikipedia Searches Wikipedia for your words.
youtube Searches YouTube for videos matching your words.

Commands can be typed using only first few symbols - so w saffron burrows will show you clickable wikipedia results for Saffron Burrows in the same window:

And tw writing about Ubiquity will update your Twitter with message 'writing about Ubiquity'. Commands are extendable and people can write their own - that guarantees the growth of amount of available commands.

Ubiquity is an extremely powerful tool - and it is pretty easy to guess that it will be used on OS level in the future (the attempts to do this include OS X Spotlight, Vista's Start Menu, Google Desktop, Launchy) - yet in present this is the most powerful of them all.

Ubiquity is a Firefox extension - so it will work on any operating system (as mentioned, Mac users will have to download Growl first though). ~~Ubiquity for Linux is currently not available~~ Despite claims on the Ubiquity development page that Ubiquity doesn't yet work on Linux, it actually works on my Ubuntu home box - and even better than on my Windows machine at work :)

Hope you enjoy Ubiquity as much as I do :)

"Rocky is back" featuring Remi Gaillard as Rocky:

2008-08-17T18:49:00.006+02:00

"Rocky is back" featuring Remi Gaillard as Rocky:

This guy (Rémi Gaillard) is amazing. Check him on japanese TV:

And this is my favorite.

Remi Gaillard as a bodybuilder impostor in Mister Universe bodybuilding contest

MSN worm / virus g00d-stuff.com epidemic launch

2008-08-14T00:09:00.032+02:00

This page describes the http://g00d-stuff.com MSN virus/worm (also known as PICS FOR MSN FRIENDS), that has been activated on Aug 14th, it's sources and methods of infection, vulnerable platforms/browsers, methods of removal of http://g00d-stuff.com and similar MSN viruses/worms.

Information about http://g00d-stuff.com and similar sites

g00d-stuff.com is an MSN worm that spreads through MSN instant messenger with provoking text description, encouraging users to follow the attached link.

Sources of infection

MSN user receives a text message from one of the users in his contact list. A message can sometimes contain a provoking text and always contains a link to a site, containing a virus.

Provoking message can be one (but not limited to) of these:

"Album photo.zip"
oh you and me? nah its me the clown again"
"lool someone put ur photo here: D"
"i want you to swim with me! send this file to swim with me!"
"lool someone put ur photo here: D"
"lol someone has put your photo here: D"

Embedded link can be one of these:

g00d-stuff.com
username.bl1ng.info
username.jumphost.info
username.n1cestuff.info
checkdiz.info
username.awes0me.info
username.ther1ng.info
username.snapsh0t.info
username.da-real-deal.info
username.ch33se.info
c0ol-th1ng.info
imgeshack.info
m0bil3.info
imageloko.info
imagedino.info
imagealina.info
hostapic.info
holyimage.info
imagrshak.info
get-that-stuff.info
coooool.info
datsyou.com
is-thatt-you.com
is-dat-u.com
thatzyou.com

After visiting, the virus uses an unknown yet vulnerability of Firefox/Internet Explorer to infect the victims machine and distribute itself by sending links to further contacts.

Malicious website forms and variations

There are two known forms of g00d-stuff MSN worm page: The PICS FOR MSN FRIENDS phishing page and "FREE RINGTONES, WALLPAPERS, JAVA-GAMES" page etc.

PICS FOR MSN PAGE will look similar to MSN login interface and will ask you to enter your MSN login credentials to proceed. DO NOT enter your credentials there under any circumstances.

"FREE RINGTONES, WALLPAPERS, JAVA-GAMES" page looks like this (photo from Switzerland):

Both pages are heavily booby trapped with viruses and exploits, and if you use Windows and Firefox lower then version 3.0 or Internet Explorer - you are probably already infected.

Vulnerable platforms/browsers

List of known vulnerable platforms:

Windows 95/98/Me/2000/XP/2003/Vista

List of known vulnerable browsers:

Internet Explorer
Firefox 2.0

First things to do

First of all - DON'T PANIC! :)
It really helps not to open the link, enclosed in the text message. However, you have probably already opened it - and that's why you are here
Try to notify your friends and warn them not to open any links they will receive.
You can also set a warning message as your status in MSN
And if you didn't open the link - you are pretty much done :) If you actually did and you notice that you keep sending links to other people - proceed to g00d-stuff removal instructions

How to remove http://g00d-stuff.com MSN virus from your system

Download MSNFix utility (yes, it is safe - I can clearly state it after checking the batch file code and finding other reputable sources linking to it (like this site with 34 thousands subscribers)).
Extract the contents into some directory on your hard drive (for example, C:\MSNFix)
Run MSNFix.bat
Choose your language
Press R to start virus scan

(Update: Author of MSNFix has left a comment here, asking for submission of all non-detected modifications of virus to http://upload.changelog.fr/. There you can leave your nickname, url where you've gotten the virus, your comment, and an infected file - so it will be analyzed and MSNFix will be updated to be able to cure your modification of MSNFix as well (Just in case: the button for download is marked Envoyer, not Annuler)).

After test and removal is performed (so you don't have any spyware/malware/keyloggers on your machine), you will need to reclaim your MSN account:

1. Go to http://login.live.com web page and click on Forgot Your Password.
2. Type in your MSN e-mail address, type the characters that appear in the Picture box, and click Continue.
3. Click Send yourself a password reset e-mail message.
4. Click Send Message.
5. Click Done on the confirmation page.
6. Open your e-mail and follow the link in the e-mail message to reset your password.
7. On the Confirm your e-mail address page, type your e-mail address, and then click Continue.
8. Type your new password two times, and then click Continue.
9. If you want to enter an “alternate” e-mail address, type the address two times, and then click Continue. If you do not want to enter an “alternate” e-mail address, click Skip.
10. When you receive the “You’ve changed your password” message, click Done.

If you want to receive updates about the g00d-stuff virus activity and methods of removal, subscribe to my rss feed - I will keep an eye on that one since couple of my friends are still infected.

References

First report of a new g00d-stuff form of known PICS FOR MSN FRIENDS virus (French)
Description and removal instructions page (French) (doesn't look very trustworthy to me to be honest)
MSNFix - MSN virus removal tool (zip file, 772kb)
PICS FOR MSN FRIENDS description (English) - quite good and informative source
Relevant Yahoo! Answers thread (Italian) - good for watching for updates

This article has received hundreds of hits from Google by "g00d-stuff"-related queries in first hours after being published, meaning it has became a real threat due to unknown before vulnerability of Firefox. Judging by geographical locations of requests through the day (over a thousand), I can say that the most affected countries are USA, Canada, China, Hong Kong and Australia.