Robin Majumdar 2.0

Breaking : Twitter announces security updates proactively : All 3rd party apps can no longer store password & new T.co URL shortening service

Robin — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 03:32:44 +0000

Well, Twitter just sent out an email with significant improvements to their security model – something that Mark at Facebook just doesn’t seem to consider a priority over monetizing the trust of his 500 million Facebook members.

The highlights from the announcements by Twitter (full email details after the break) include:

There are 250,000 3rd party apps that connect to Twitter
All 3rd party apps will have to use the OAuth authentication method, and will not be allowed to ask for – or store – the actual Twitter user name or password
Launches t.co – their very own URL shortening services … will be interesting to see how this plays out with dominating URL shortening services such as bit.ly

I’m impressed by this news… social media is wonderful, but the skeptics who are avoiding it (which includes a vast majority of “normal” non-tech and early adopter folk) should be reassured by this proactive approach by Twitter to making their environment a bit more secure.

Now, if only they could continue to work on the ever present FailWhale-powered site outages…

Full email received:

From: Twitter [mailto:*****************@postmaster.twitter.com]
Sent: Wednesday, September 01, 2010 11:20 PM
To: ****************
Subject: Update: Twitter Apps and You

Hi @majumdar,

Over the coming weeks, we will be making two important updates that will impact how you interact with Twitter applications. We are sending this notice to all Twitter users to make sure you are aware of these changes.

What are applications?

There are over 250,000 applications built using the Twitter API. To use most applications, you first authorize the application to access your Twitter account, after which you can use it to read and post Tweets, discover new users and more. Applications come in many varieties, including desktop applications like TweetDeck, Seesmic, or EchoFon, websites such as TweetMeme, fflick, or Topsy, or mobile applications such as Twitter for iPhone, Twitter for Blackberry, or Foursquare.

Update 1: New authorization rules for applications

Starting August 31, all applications will be required to use “OAuth” to access your Twitter account.

What’s OAuth?

• OAuth is a technology that enables applications to access Twitter on your behalf with your approval without asking you directly for your password.
• Desktop and mobile applications may still ask for your password once, but after that request, they are required to use OAuth in order to access your timeline or allow you to tweet.
What does this mean for me?
• Applications are no longer allowed to store your password.
• If you change your password, the applications will continue to work.
• Some applications you have been using may require you to reauthorize them or may stop functioning at the time of this change.
• All applications you have authorized will be listed at http://twitter.com/settings/connections.
• You can revoke access to any application at any time from the list.

Update 2: t.co URL wrapping

In the coming weeks, we will be expanding the roll-out of our link wrapping service t.co, which wraps links in Tweets with a new, simplified link. Wrapped links are displayed in a way that is easier to read, with the actual domain and part of the URL showing, so that you know what you are clicking on. When you click on a wrapped link, your request will pass through the Twitter service to check if the destination site is known to contain malware, and we then will forward you on to the destination URL. All of that should happen in an instant.
You will start seeing these links on certain accounts that have opted-in to the service; we expect to roll this out to all users by the end of the year. When this happens, all links shared on Twitter.com or third-party apps will be wrapped with a t.co URL.

What does this mean for me?

• A really long link such as http://www.amazon.com/Delivering-Happiness-Profits-Passion-Purpose/dp/0446563048 might be wrapped as http://t.co/DRo0trj for display on SMS, but it could be displayed to web or application users as amazon.com/Delivering- or as the whole URL or page title.
• You will start seeing links in a way that removes the obscurity of shortened links and lets you know where each link will take you.
• When you click on these links from Twitter.com or a Twitter application, Twitter will log that click. We hope to use this data to provide better and more relevant content to you over time.

Thanks for reading this important update. Come and check what’s new at http://twitter.com.

Thanks,
The Twitter Team

This article was originally published at: Robin Majumdar 2.0

Breaking : Twitter announces security updates proactively : All 3rd party apps can no longer store password & new T.co URL shortening service

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Twitter virtually unreachable during final Obama / McCain debate – endless downtime

Twitter suspends SMS notification for Canadians due to SMS cost increases by Canadian carriers

TweetDeck 0.25 released ! Painless upgrade from 0.21.5

RéseauContact offre 7 jours de membre privilège gratis suite au problème de recherche

Robin — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 00:21:01 +0000

Le site de rencontre RéseauContact éprouvait des difficultés techniques avec le moteur de recherche interne sur leur site depuis presqu’une semaine entière !

Ils avaient publié des informations tout le long de l’interruption de service qui affectait seulement une partie des fonctionnalités du site – cependant, essentielle car la recherche est évidemment utilisée par la majorité des membres pour trouver des personnes ou des profils qui correspondent à leurs besoins ou intérêts.

Aujourd’hui ils ont réussies à résoudre l’enjeu entourant la recherche et ont annoncé que tous les membres payants – des membres privilèges – ont eu un crédit sous forme de 7 jours d’abonnement additionnels.

Ça, c’est du bon service à la clientèle… et important car l’industrie de rencontres en ligne est hyper compétitive – RéseauContact est un site Canoë qui appartient à Quebecor.

This article was originally published at: Robin Majumdar 2.0

RéseauContact offre 7 jours de membre privilège gratis suite au problème de recherche

Touchality finally releases new WinMoSquare Beta 1.5.0 Windows Mobile Foursquare client – many features & … stability !

Robin — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 20:46:33 +0000

Touchality has finally released a new beta version of WinMoSquare – the Windows Mobile client for Foursquare.

Updated August 22 to include a video of the new features with screenshots… see below after the break

If you’re not yet familiar with WinMoSquare or Foursquare ; 4SQ is a location based service that allows people to check-in to venues from their mobile devices (Smartphones, Net-books, Laptops, etc.) equipped with a GPS.

The idea is that you check-in to venues (originally restaurants, bars and that sort of thing but now pretty much everything including elevators, highway intersections and who knows what) and see if the venue offers “specials” for regular visitors. The more frequently you visit a venue, the more chances you have of becoming “Mayor” of a venue. Being the Mayor of a Foursquare venue gets you nothing from 4SQ themselves – except for status & recognition on the Foursquare website. A venue manager or owner can, however, decide to promote repeat business to their venue by offering specials to people who check-in and perhaps extra perks for a mayor. In addition, any Foursquare user can leave tips about a venue (try the steak, arrive before midnight, free parking in the back, etc) that other members can see and add as a “to-do” or “done this” item.

Foursquare have native client applications for the Android, iPhone, Blackberry and Palm smartphones. All other mobile devices can connect to the Foursquare Mobile website at m.foursquare.com.

Up until a few months ago, there was *no* client software for users with mobile devices running Windows Mobile…. That changed several months ago when Touchality released a beta version of WinMoSquare – a graphical client to run on WinMo phones … it required Windows Mobile 6.5 and the .NET compact framework (3.5 or higher)…

I installed it pretty much immediately on my HTC Touch phone that I’ve had on Bell Mobility for the last 3 years… I really liked the user interface of WinMoSquare, even if it didn’t have all the features (notably specials and tips) of the Foursquare mobile website. Still, it was more practical and fun to browse nearby venues and check-in using the WinMoSquare app.

The big problem was in terms of stability. The moment that WinMoSquare was unable to connect to the Foursquare site … the application would crash. Similar behavior when unable to get a GPS fix… the nice design and UX was almost negated by the incessant stability problems – search for WinMoSquare on Twitter to read about many users diatribes against the recurring crashes. Many folks simply said it was “unusable”…

Touchality started tweeting hints of a new release with many new features (and improved stability) around the end of June with a promise of a July availability… July passed. August came upon us, and yet no new beta release – or nary an update of development status!

In early August, MySquare was released – finally a second option for Windows Mobile users. In addition, it had many more features than WinMoSquare (notably venue specials, tips and more) but most importantly it provided what seemed to be a far higher level of stability.

It impressed me enough that I uninstalled WinMoSquare and started using MySquare exclusively.
So early this Saturday afternoon Touchality sent out an email to their (1000+) beta testers announcing the availability of the long awaited beta release update!

I was surprised by the long list of new features (and feature improvements)… here they are, quoted verbatim from their email release:

• Added leaderboard
• Added in-app maps
• Added specials
• Added mayor icon to friend’s list
• Added mayor informaiton to venue details
• Updated app icon
• Added in-app friend request
• Added user history
• Added support for both male and female default user icons
• Improved lists can now return more than 50 items
• Added specials here icon to venue list and detail screens
• Added distance to venue in venue list
• Added score panel
• Added the ability to edit a venue
• Added the ability to flag a venue as mislocated
• Added the ability to flag a venue as duplicate
• Added the ability to flag a venue as closed
• Added support for venue tips
• Added support for viewing user photo full size
• Added ability to follow Touchality on Twitter
• Added ability to friend Touchality on foursquare
• Added in-app change log
• Added venue category icons
• Added user agent header to all web requests
• Improved code to determine location based off cell tower
• Improved code to determine location based off wifi connections
• Improved code to determine location based of IP address
• Better error and exception handling
• and a WHOLE lot more

Whew – talk about a slew of new features! It looks extremely promising. I think that, given the number of complaints in the Twitterverse and Blogosphere, I would have put “better error and exception handling” at the top of the list. Hopefully it was the priority in coding this latest release as I’m sure anyone will agree that dozens of features in a product are pretty much useless if it crashes all the time.

Here’s a video highlighting the new features and screenshots:

I installed 1.5.0 on my device and will post a review after testing it for a few days. In the meantime, see the following resources:

WinMoSquare 1.5.0 download (3,147 KB .cab file)
WinMoSquare Website (pretty empty for now)
Touchality Site
Twitter updates mentioning WinMoSquare
Rising Mobility MySquare (competing WinMo 4SQ software – worth trying out for sure!)

This article was originally published at: Robin Majumdar 2.0

Touchality finally releases new WinMoSquare Beta 1.5.0 Windows Mobile Foursquare client – many features & … stability !

Waze social mobile app for crowd-sourced traffic and mapping just released for all major mobile devices

Canadian Tire closes their online affiliate program – will CanadianTire.ca survive ?

Robin — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 23:06:14 +0000

Well, less than 18 months after Canadian Tire essentially closed their online store, they’ve now officially announced the demise of their affiliate program. The affiliate program was initially designed for webmasters to make a commission on sales generated by driving visitors to the CT online store to make purchases. Once the online store was essentially closed, the affiliate program languished on – albeit it was pretty much to reward webmasters who sent visitors that bought CT gift cards; which are one of the few products they now sell online.

I ran campaigns on several client sites pointing traffic to the Canadian Tire site, and I’m also (like any real Canadian) a big fan of Canadian Tire, so I’m a bit saddened to see them backing away even further from the online world as far as eCommerce goes. Perhaps they just figured out that their core clientele preferred the fun of shopping in their bricks and mortar outlets. That, or the prohibitive cost of offering reasonable shipping rates given the weight and volume of most products they sell outweighed the expanded marketplace.

Here’s the official news we received:

Dear Robin Majumdar,

Please be advised that Canadian Tire has decided to discontinue their affiliate program. We would like to thank you for all of your hard work and dedication over the years to the Canadian Tire affiliate program. As of JULY 31st 2010 activity will no longer be tracked through Linkshare for the Canadian Tire affiliate program and the Canadian Tire affiliate agreement with you will expire.

PLEASE REMOVE ALL CANADIAN TIRE CREATIVE supplied through Linkshare including text links, banners, data feeds, or any other type of Linkshare link for the Canadian Tire affiliate program by July 31st 2010. After this date, links will no longer track or land on their intended landing pages.

Canadian Tire will not be transitioning their affiliate program to another network. Please let me know if you have any questions.

Thank you,

Tim Mueller (Linkshare) and The Canadian Tire Affiliate Team

Note the final quote about not transition to another network (from Linkshare) which pretty much drives a nail into the online venture for Canadian Tire – for now. The question that remains… how much longer will CanadianTire.ca. continue to exist – and in what form?

This article was originally published at: Robin Majumdar 2.0

Canadian Tire closes their online affiliate program – will CanadianTire.ca survive ?

Protected: RETScreen 4 Test Download Page de téléchargement Test

Robin — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 13:05:59 +0000

This article was originally published at: Robin Majumdar 2.0

Protected: RETScreen 4 Test Download Page de téléchargement Test

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.com domain name for $5 today at GoDaddy (with coupon code)

Robin — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 00:33:23 +0000

Today only, get a .com domain registration for $5 using the coupon code gravity2 – the link on the image above should include the discount code automatically, if not enter it at the checkout screen.

A couple of points:

This is valid today only (until 23h59 EST)
It’s good for only 1 registration (renewals may work, I didn’t test) per account / credit card
It definitely works for .com (tested) but may also work for .net, org, us, etc… worth a try

If it does work for renewals or non .com extensions please let us know by leaving a comment below.

This article was originally published at: Robin Majumdar 2.0

.com domain name for $5 today at GoDaddy (with coupon code)

Register a domain name for only $0.99 at GoDaddy – with coupon code today only !

Robin — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 02:29:41 +0000

Yup, get a new .com (or .net/org) gTLD domain name for $0.99 today only – use the coupon code BUY99COM when you check out at GoDaddy. Click the image / link above… no, I don’t get any commission for these coupon deals from GoDaddy. Just wanna share with any IT / domainer / entrepreneur types that read our content here.

It may or may not work for renewals as well; I used it for a new .com registration. A contact mentioned that it did not work for a .ca renewal. That’s pretty much expected since the .ca domain space is managed by CIRA with a completely different set of pricing, registration rules, etc.

This article was originally published at: Robin Majumdar 2.0

Register a domain name for only $0.99 at GoDaddy – with coupon code today only !

Waze social mobile app for crowd-sourced traffic and mapping just released for all major mobile devices

Robin — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 23:12:20 +0000

This is cool news and one of the next bleeding edge apps I will definitely install on my mobiles. Waze is a crowd-sourced mobile app that uses information from mobile users to provide real-time mapping and traffic situation information.

It’s just been released for all major mobile devices (iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile, Nokia / Symbian) but obviously is not a Blackberry app.

It’ll be going on my HTC Touch (Vogue) with Windows Mobile 6.5 and I hope to get Canada represented on the Waze community… plenty of traffic and mapping challenges for those of us in Montreal!

Here’s a cool demo they did at DemoFall09 yesterday:

So what is this? Basically free navigation with crowdsourced information that uploads your mobile activity (motion, speed, etc) along with your GPS receiver … basically showing other users about slowdowns, radar traps, accidents, etc.

Impressive tech of the day in the new world of mashups, location based services and user generated contents.

Downloading now with the latest beta of Opera Mini 5 – the mobile browser that totally rocks!

This article was originally published at: Robin Majumdar 2.0

Waze social mobile app for crowd-sourced traffic and mapping just released for all major mobile devices

Touchality finally releases new WinMoSquare Beta 1.5.0 Windows Mobile Foursquare client – many features & … stability !

GoDaddy .info domain name registration for $0.89 with no coupon code required !

Robin — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 20:55:50 +0000

A bit less than a year ago, I wrote about a limited time promotion where GoDaddy was offering .com domain name registrations for $0.99 … that offer is long over, but if you go visit that old article you can use that link to get .info domains for just $0.89 with no pesky coupon required.

I personally love .info domains – especially for a buck; is there any better possible investment? There are still many many .info domain names available, and registering them for less than $1 is a no-brainer.

This article was originally published at: Robin Majumdar 2.0

GoDaddy .info domain name registration for $0.89 with no coupon code required !

Human Resources Social Network for sale on eBay – HRMtoday.com ; 34 bids at $1500 : 1000 members & 3500 articles. Bargain!

Robin — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 21:16:57 +0000

I came across a pretty interesting auction on eBay for an established human resources social network called HRMtoday.com ; it’s a well priced (about USD $1500 as I write this) investment if you have a bit of passion for running an HR type site.

Granted, the deal seems like a classic case of website / domain flipping, but the product is definitely there in this particular offer. The seller mentions the site has over 1000 members and 3500 blog posts. I visited the site (very briefly) and it’s very nicely done.

Anything under $5K would be a real bargain to anyone with a bit of knowledge in the human resources area, and interested in possibly starting their own online business…

This article was originally published at: Robin Majumdar 2.0

Human Resources Social Network for sale on eBay – HRMtoday.com ; 34 bids at $1500 : 1000 members & 3500 articles. Bargain!

WordPress 2.8.3 security update – upgrade now; it’s easy and essential.

Robin — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 05:14:40 +0000

Short and sweet:

An important out-of-band update to WordPress has been released; 2.8.3 includes a security patch to fix unauthorized privilege escalation issues.

Since you all have 2.7 or higher (right) and online updating is easy… do it now!

This article was originally published at: Robin Majumdar 2.0

WordPress 2.8.3 security update – upgrade now; it’s easy and essential.

Dell Days of Deals 2009 – Day 4: Kingston 16GB MicroSD SDHC memory card + reader $49.99 with free shipping

Robin — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 17:13:04 +0000

Well, Day 4 of the July 2009 Dell Canada Days of Deals and so far the hottest deal (by far) was the Garmin Nuvi 255w on Day 1 for $149 shipped (it sold out by the early afternoon) and hopefully you snagged one if you’re in the market for a GPS as it’s a great unit and $149 was a seriously hot price.

Today is day 4, and the most interesting deal is the Kingston 16GB MicroSD card with a MiniSD USB adapter / card reader. 16GB is pretty much the maximum size card (I know that 32GB Micro SD – MicroSDHC) are available but they’re at prices which are quite out of reach and unreasonable as far as bang for the buck goes.

The Kingston Micro SD model # MRG2+SDC2/16GB that they’re offering will be good for users with cell phones, smartphones or any mobile device that needs (and supports) 16GB memory cards. Note that it only supports Class 2 speed (out of a possible maximum of Class 6) so it may choke a bit if you plan on using it to record or play back video… other than that, it should be fine for playing music or taking digital pictures on most devices.

It’s a couple of bucks cheaper than places like NewEgg, with free shipping, so worth considering. Personally, I want to check a Class 6 card – even if it’s “only” 8GB…

Click the image above for a direct link to today’s deals.

This article was originally published at: Robin Majumdar 2.0

Dell Days of Deals 2009 – Day 4: Kingston 16GB MicroSD SDHC memory card + reader $49.99 with free shipping

Dell Days of Deals for July 2009 start Monday, July 13th !

Robin — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 17:16:00 +0000

So a quick heads up to get your credit card ready and cleared for the next round of Dell Days of Deals – scheduled to start this Monday, July 13th. If the previous days of deals are any indicator, there will be some decent deals on LCD monitors (I recommend 24″ with 1920×1080/1200 pixel resolution as a minimum).

In particular, watch for the 2707WFP or 2709W LCD monitors – hopefully under $600. These are superb monitors. Another good option is the 2407w or 2405wfp 24″ monitors. All these preceding monitors have a minimum resolution of 1920×1080 which I believe should be your new minimum resolution requirement – but only on a large enough (24″ and up) and high quality (IPS or PVA) panel. Search my previous articles for historical pricing and reviews.

Other likely deals to keep an eye out for are Canon SD series digital cameras (hopefully the SD1200is and/or SD790is) and a Garmin 2xx series GPS.

This article was originally published at: Robin Majumdar 2.0

Dell Days of Deals for July 2009 start Monday, July 13th !

Dell UltraSharp 2709W for $599 – third time in 2009 – days of deals ; check the 2709w reviews

Robin — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 01:35:09 +0000

Dell 2709W S-PVA LCD Monitor Picture

OK, so I realize I’m a bit late with this, but Dell Canada is having one of their “Days of Deals” events and today is day 5. I used to highlight one hot deal (IMHO, of course) for each day.. but let’s face it, they aren’t as hot as they used to be – nothing new if you follow Canadian deal sites such as RFD and Canucks.

But… today, they once again have the Dell UltraSharp 2709W 27” LCD monitor supporting 1920×1200 pixel resolution, all the input connections (HDMI, DVI, and yes – displayport) as well as 5 USB connections, an S-PVA panel, and so much more.

I wrote previously about reviews of the Dell 2709W so if you use the search feature on the top to look for my previous articles and reviews of the Dell 2709W, you’ll see that it’s been $549 and $599 so far this year.

It’s at $599 today only (until 6:00 a.m. EDT Saturday morning)… as I’ve mentioned before, I have actually used this monitor for over a year. OK, not this exact one, the 2707WFP… summary ? I love it.

BTW, Dell is experimenting with lightbox display of their promos (mistake, Mike Dell) and it’s causing so many XML errors that they have a “click here if this page isn’t displaying” option. The above link should work ok.

Wait ‘til you run it with Windows 7

This article was originally published at: Robin Majumdar 2.0

Dell UltraSharp 2709W for $599 – third time in 2009 – days of deals ; check the 2709w reviews

Confidentialité de l’adresse IP – pas vraiment. Les informations transmises aux sites que vous visitez

Robin — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 01:13:55 +0000

L’autre soir je discutai avec une amie concernant la confidentialité d’une adresse IP, et ce que quelqu’un d’autre pourrait faire s’il connait ton adresse IP.

Alors, c’est un sujet qui sera difficile à couvrir entièrement dans quelques phrases, et je viens de terminer une autre discussion avec un collègue (qui travail en sécurité informatique, ahem… cheers Benjamin.) pendant qu’on tentait de déboguer des problèmes d’indexage de recherche de SharePoint Server.

Donc, en bref, l’adresse IP est unique. L’adresse est généralement accordée à une connexion réseau par votre fournisseur d’accès réseau – ou, dans le cas d’un réseau corporatif, par votre administrateur réseau à partir de la banque d’adresses IP accordé à votre compagnie.

Pour les gens qui utilisent des services d’accès Internet à la maison, l’adresse est généralement assignée par votre fournisseur Internet. Contrairement à l’environnement corporatif, il est plutôt rare que l’adresse IP assigné à votre connexion résidentielle soit statique. C’est-à-dire que l’adresse IP sera en rotation avec d’autres clients. Ceci est nécessaire car il y a une quantité limité d’adresses IP

Est-ce que l’adresse IP est confidentielle ? Alors, ca dépends. Le protocole Internet nécessite que lors que vous faite une demande à un autre serveur (par exemple, votre fureteur Web qui demande une page sur un site web) vous transmettez multiples informations incluant votre adresse IP, le contenu (page) que vous désirez consulter, votre système d’exploitation, version du fureteur … et beaucoup plus

La confidentialité de ces informations est entièrement dans les mains …. et responsabilité.. des sites que vous visitez. Ces informations sont utilisés par les administrateurs de sites web principalement pour fins d’analyse statistiques et optimisation de leur site et contenu pour mieux répondre aux spécifications de votre ordinateur, fureteur, résolution graphique et (oui) localisation géographique.

Certains sites Webs, par exemple les sites du gouvernement Canadien *.gc.ca, ont des politiques internes très strictes sur ce qu’ils feront avec ces renseignements et également des contraintes sur les accès internes. Chez le gouvernement Canadien, c’est généralement seulement les administrateurs de systèmes ayant la cote de sécurité approprié *et* une justification qui pourront accéder ces informations. C’est parce que OUI, c’est possible d’associer une adresse IP à une personne spécifique dans certains cas. Dans ces cas, c’est possible d’identifier les actions et comportements d’un individu …

Ces politiques de protection de la vie privée varient beaucoup de site en site… mais finalement, qu’est-ce que quelqu’un faire avec ton adresse IP ? J’aime la comparaison avec votre adresse civique de votre résidence… ca dépend sur ce que vous avez à protéger sur votre réseau (ou ordinateur) et… si vous laissez des portes et fenêtres ouvertes vous augmentez les possibilités que quelqu’un accède à des choses à l’intérieur de votre résidence. Cet exemple s’applique de façon similaire à l’ordinateur (ou les ordinateurs) accessible via votre adresse IP.

Exemple des informations que vous transmettez à chaque site que vous visitez? Voir http://www.find-ip-address.org/ip-information.php

Bref, protégeons nos ordinateurs, assurez vous d’avoir un logiciel de sécurité (antivirus et firewall) à jour et faire des scans régulièrement à partir de disque de démarrage connu comme étant non-infecté. J’aime bien AVG…

This article was originally published at: Robin Majumdar 2.0

Confidentialité de l’adresse IP – pas vraiment. Les informations transmises aux sites que vous visitez

No related posts.

Sharepoint / MOSS licensing – do we need MOSS CALs for users with access only to WSS sites in a separate site collection

Robin — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 00:46:57 +0000

Whew, that’s one crazy long title.

OK, I’ve been dealing with licensing reps from MSFT, fellow Sharepointers in the twittersphere, and I’m still not 100% sure about this particular Sharepoint licensing scenario.

Let’s say I have a Sharepoint farm, with MOSS 2007 installed. I have 100 regional users for whom I have 100 MOSS standard CALs.

I wish to have non-CAL users access sites in a separate site collection on the same Sharepoint Server. The non-CAL users would not have access to the MOSS portal site, no My Sites, etc. They would only have access to the separate site collection.

In this latter scenario, am I still within the licensing requirements? My 100 users for whom I have CALs would have access to everything. The non-CAL users would have access only to site collections and no MOSS portal site access.

It annoys me when MSFT reps say that licensing is “simple” and “straight forward”… sorry; not. I spend 15% of my time trying to explain licensing to my C-level executives… (and I have a hard time grasping all the finer elements of MSFT licensing soup myself… after 10+ years working with MS enterprise software.)

This article was originally published at: Robin Majumdar 2.0

Sharepoint / MOSS licensing – do we need MOSS CALs for users with access only to WSS sites in a separate site collection

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Chitika hits 50,000 publishers – congrats! a great way to supplement your Adsense & other website revenue methods

Robin — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 16:17:34 +0000

I’ve managed website monetization strategies for quite a while now, and first started using Chitika about 3 years ago or so, when they were essentially providing widgets to online stores that would pay a commission. At the time, it was a murky fit if you already had Adsense running, since it involved an option to insert their code to deliver ads in a contextual manner (adjusting ads based on the content of your page)…

At the time they offered 2 types of ad integration for website publishers; either through a fixed keyword method (where you chose a keyword to indicate products to be placed from their pool of advertisers) and a contextual method where they would place ads based on your page content. At the time, Adsense was the biggest (perhaps only significant?) player in the contextual text ad game, so it was hard to really give up the “sure-fire” Adsense revenue to experiment with Chitika. I did try it with the specific keyword method, but their product advertiser range was quite limited – mainly electronics; and as such it didn’t work well with our non-electronics based sites.

That all changed around a year ago, and now they have a great advertising model, where their JavaScript-based ad code only appears to visitors arriving from a search engine. Basically their ad code recognizes the search string that your visitor used on the referring search engine, and then Chitika displays relevant ads based on that particular keyword. It’s not purely contextual, and therefore can be used in tandem with Google Adsense – the latter program specifically disallows for the use of concurrent contextual advertising spots.

This way, it’s only your visitors who arrive from search engines who see the Chitika ads, and you get paid per click that your visitors do on the ads. The payouts are quite decent, and it’s fairly uninstrusive for your visitor base.

Congrats to Chitika who just reached 50,000 publishers! If you own a website, I highly recommend you try out Chitika and get a few extra dollars flowing your way.

This article was originally published at: Robin Majumdar 2.0

Chitika hits 50,000 publishers – congrats! a great way to supplement your Adsense & other website revenue methods

Kingston SNV125-S2BN/64GB 64GB SSDNow solid state drive for $126.99 at Newegg Canada

Robin — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 12:48:08 +0000

A pretty hot deal over at Newegg Canada for the Kingston SNV125-S2BN 64GB SSD drive… it shows $136.99, but if you apply the coupon code CEMCLTML39 it takes it down to CA$126.99. A good deal for a SATA II, 2.5″ notebook drive…

Your call if the benefits of an SSD drive outweigh the price difference compared to regular mechanical drives. The specs claim 100MBps sequential read with 80MBps writing speed.

That’s a pretty good deal considering the same drive is US $134.99 on Amazon.com US $134.99 on Amazon.com

This article was originally published at: Robin Majumdar 2.0

Kingston SNV125-S2BN/64GB 64GB SSDNow solid state drive for $126.99 at Newegg Canada

Domain name denial.com sells for USD $6100 on eBay – good investment (and sale)

Robin — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 16:46:52 +0000

Lunchtime – yeah, I know, I should take a break from the net at least over lunch, but hey, Lady Grey is curled up next to me on the couch and I’m enjoying a slice of Premiere Moisson bread with tuna and Tzatziki sauce.

Now on to an interesting domain name sale over on eBay. The name denial.com auction ended with 49 bids at $6100… a pretty good deal, in my opinion, for both buyer and seller. I’m thinking it’s a great generic name that can have a wide range of applications – my first thought is to develop a portal for self-help.. or perhaps a news site about politicians and/or lawyers

It seems like a legitimate sale – although we’ll have to watch the Whois information for the changes and who the new buyer is. This is one of the rarer high value domain sales that take place on eBay; we’re used to seeing these type of transactions over at SEDO:

This article was originally published at: Robin Majumdar 2.0

Domain name denial.com sells for USD $6100 on eBay – good investment (and sale)

Official : Microsoft to close Office Live Affiliate Program

Robin — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 00:56:50 +0000

OK, so admittedly, I haven’t been maintaining the site over the last few weeks (check the right sidebar for my Twitter activity tho’)… regardless, just got a note from Adrienne Erreca of Commission Junction that pretty much confirms that Microsoft will be ending the affiliate program for Office Live.

I don’t think that MSFT is unhappy with the affiliate model, rather it’s most probably a rebranding strategy (Bing it, you’ll see)…

Office Live was pretty much MSFT’s first foray into SaaS cloud computing targeting small and medium businesses that were (for the most part) already exploring online tools like Google Docs.

Did anyone make any coin referring visitors to Microsoft Office Live? They’re paying $1 per registration for their service – but only until June 30th!

Here’s the official news:

From: Microsoft Office Live [mailto:owner-membermessaging@mx6.cj.com]
Sent: Wednesday, June 03, 2009 8:31 PM
Subject: Microsoft Office Live affiliate program to close 6/30/09

Robin Majumdar,

We’re writing to let you know that the Microsoft Office Live Small Business affiliate program will be closing 6/30/09.

We appreciate all of the time and effort that you put into promoting the program and wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me directly at aerreca@cj.com or 805.730.8377.

Sincerely,
The Microsoft Office Live Affiliate Team
Adrienne Erreca | Sr. Program Manager
Commission Junction | a Valueclick Company

This article was originally published at: Robin Majumdar 2.0

Official : Microsoft to close Office Live Affiliate Program