SAN FRANCISCO--It's no secret that spam now pollutes Web sites as well as e-mail in-boxes. But Web site operators can take actions to combat it, a Google expert in the area said Friday.
Matt Cutts, Google's lead engineer for combating Web spam, at the Web 2.0 Expo
(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET Networks)Matt Cutts, head of Google's Webspam team and an engineer who's been working on the problem for eight years, offered some tips about combating it during a speech at the Web 2.0 Expo here.
"Spammers are human," Cutts said. "You have the power to raise their blood pressure. Make them spend more time and effort...If spammer gets frustrated, he's more likely to look for someone easier."
How? Forthwith, some tips for those who manage their own or others' Web sites.
• Use captcha systems to make sure real people, not bots, are commenting on your site. He uses a simple math puzzle--what's 2 + 2?--but he also likes KittenAuth, which makes people identify kitten photos.
One blogger merely requires people to type the word "orange" into a field. "The vast majority of bots will never do that," Cutts said.
• Reconfigure software settings after you've installed it. A little modification of various settings will throw bots off the scent. "If you can off the beaten path, away from default software installations, you'll save yourself a ton of grief," he said.
• Employ systems that rank people by trust and reputation. For example, eBay shows how long a person has been a member and how satisfied others are with transactions with that person.
• Don't be afraid of legitimate purveyors of search-engine optimization services. "SEO is not spam. Google does not hate SEO," Cutts said. "There are plenty of white-hat SEO (companies) who can help you out."
Registering your Web site at Google's Webmaster Central site can help find bogus search-engine optimization tricks others may use on your site, such as keywords written in white text on white backgrounds, he added.
SAN FRANCISCO--Sun Chief Executive Jonathan Schwartz rightly gets credit for pioneering the corporate blog as a tool to reach customers, employees, and others. But pretty soon the novelty of his methods will wear off, he predicted.
Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz speaks at the Web 2.0 Expo
(Credit: Corinne Schulze/CNET Networks)"At some point the word 'blogging' will be anachronistic," Schwartz said at the Web 2.0 Expo here in San Francisco. "I communicate."
And he predicted, in effect, that the rest of the executive world will catch up. "Historically, communication took place by being a celebrity CEO who met with heads of state, and got the local media to cover it," he said in an on-stage interview with O'Reily Media chief Tim O'Reilly. "You got the message out in an inefficient and environmentally irresponsible way. Then the Internet came round and gave you a way to reach the entire planet."
In Sun's effort to recover some of the glory and profitability it had in the first Internet bubble, the company has embraced open-source software, adopted servers based on Intel and AMD's x86 processors, and switched CEOs.
One thing hasn't changed, though, from the Scott McNealy era to the Schwartz era: the company tries to be provocative. It's cheaper than advertising, and blogs are just a new way to accomplish the goal.
"If you say undifferentiated things that are expected, then you shouldn't expect anyone to care," Schwartz said, asked about what he meant when he said, "Controversy was...not a byproduct of the strategy--it was the strategy," on his blog earlier this month when discussing his company's open-source processor strategy.
Blogs and open-source software are complementary, Schwartz added.
"Sun makes money by selling the innovations in data centers," but that's a hard market to reach, he said. "Free software and free ideas are the best way to reach the marketplace."
If you can't remember the URL of a site you've once visited, what do you do? You can either scour your history, willing the evasive address to remain listed, or you can search in Google by the keywords you remember and hope the site you want floats near the top of the results.
The latest version of Opera Software's 9.5 Beta browser, released Thursday for Windows, Mac, and Linux, makes fishing for past Web addresses much easier with a new feature called Quick Find.
Can't remember a URL? The Quick Find feature pulls up suggestions based on keyword.
(Credit: CNET Networks)Quick Find essentially bundles the keyword search directly into the Opera browser's address field. Typing in a few keywords produces a list of URLs from your past. Simply clicking the selection opens the Web page. I tested it out, and so far it works as advertised--as a fast, useful time-saver that gives your brain license to forget specific URLs.
Those familiar with Opera Mini will recognize Quick Find as the sister to the "find in page" feature in Opera Mini 4.1.
There are other updates to the beta build, but Quick Find remains the only new feature that users will engage with directly. The official Opera announcement also unveils faster e-mail rendering for its built-in client, support for EV (extended validation) SSL certificates, and more complete antiphishing protection thanks to collaboration with PhishTank and NetCraft's databases.
Then there's the unofficial announcement, leaked by Huib Kleinhout, Opera's desktop team manager, on Opera's blog. Through Opera Link, users will soon be able to synchronize notes in real time between Opera browsers for desktops, mobile phones, and devices.
That feature is in development, an Opera representative contact confirmed, and has not been released in this morning's build. For now, Opera Link behaves as it has been, populating each Opera browser you use (desktop, cell phone, Wii) with bookmarks added from any other.
SAN FRANCISCO--The company behind Photophlow, a site that presents a lively chat room interface around the Flickr photo-sharing site, plans to demonstrate on Thursday a similarly elaborate presentation of Google's YouTube video service.
Start-up Oortle's service, called Videophlow, lets people post videos into a chat room and lets those in the room control the video playback. And as with Photophlow, people can use Videophlow to take advantage of YouTube features such as searching, adding comments, or marking videos as favorites.
Oortle, the company behind Photophlow, is working on a video equivalent called Videophlow.
(Credit: Oortle )"You'll even be able to throw a tomato at the screen for everyone to see," Neil Berkman, founder of Oortle, said in an interview at the Web 2.0 Expo here, where he is scheduled to demonstrate the technology.
While Videophlow is still undergoing closed testing, Photophlow has been groaning under the weight of its membership, with slow response times and sometimes no access at all.
"Scaling and bug fixing are still our biggest priorities," Berkman said. "Supporting real-time interaction in the way we do means we can't use off-the-shelf software. It's a hard thing to get right, but I'm sure we will."
Streaming videos are tougher than photos for servers to handle, but happily for Oortle, that burden falls on YouTube operator Google. It's no more difficult to build its framework around video than around photo, Berkman said.
Another difference between the earlier site is that Videophlow will have "less emphasis on big public rooms. The main use we'd like to support is small groups of friends watching together," he said.
As with Photophlow, Videophlow is expected to be offered through a private beta test version.
SAN FRANCISCO--The glitzy, interactive abilities of Web 2.0 have led to a profusion of new applications, but the technology also is bringing a new era of security vulnerabilities, a security researcher warned Wednesday.
"Security was a challenge to begin with, but if anything it's getting harder in the Web 2.0 world," said Jacob West, manager of the security research group at Fortify, a company that helps companies make sure their software is secure. He made his comments during a talk at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco here.
Jacob West, manager of the security research group at Fortify
(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET Networks)A big culprit is JavaScript, a language that's widely used to control Web browsers and enable more sophisticated operations. JavaScript has been around for more than a decade, but new risks are emerging since it's a major component of Ajax, a Web 2.0 technology used to build richly interactive sites.
"The number of unique problems from Ajax will remain pretty small," West said in an interview after his speech. But Ajax means that JavaScript is being used much more widely and in much more complicated ways, so existing vulnerabilities are more widespread, and "attack techniques are improving quickly."
He did describe one particular Ajax-specific problem called JavaScript hijacking. With it, a Web browser that picks up malicious JavaScript code from a Web site can be instructed, in effect, to send confidential information with an attacker.
"JavaScript hijacking is Ajax-specific," West said. It relies on the transmission of personal information packaged as JavaScript code, and "transmitting information with JavaScript I unique to Ajax code."
Another problem triggered by Ajax are that JavaScript is more complex and therefore harder to test. And more sophistication brings more opportunities for problems with "input validation"--making sure that text typed into forms, for example, isn't actually naughty code that could sidestep ordinary scrutiny and run on somebody's computer.
West was pessimistic that fundamental progress would help reduce vulnerabilities. Companies with browsers and Web sites are reluctant to embrace change that would break compatibility with older technology, for example.
"We're talking about fixes that are going to come in the 10-year time frame," he said.
But some are working to at least close up the holes. For example, programmers working on Direct Web Remoting (DWR) and the Google Web Toolkit (GWT) updated their Ajax programming toolkits to head JavaScript hijacking attacks off at the pass.
Other toolkit makers were not so responsive, though, he said: "Microsoft and Yahoo wrote back and said, 'Nope, we're not going to fix that.'"
As with most core strategies at Microsoft, Live Mesh has a strong platform angle.
At the Web 2.0 Expo on Tuesday, Microsoft unveiled Live Mesh, a cloud service for synchronizing files, folders, and Web-delivered content, such as news feeds, across multiple devices.
Along with giving people access to a test version, the company offered a tech preview that will allow developers to access the Mesh APIs to write Web applications with the data-syncing features.
People have long said Microsoft doesn't "get" the Web or is too tied to its desktop heritage. Well, part of the PC legacy is the hard drive, as in "your information."
With Ray Ozzie as chief software architect, Microsoft is tackling one of the trickiest computing problems of the day: data.
(Credit:
CNET News.com)
• Services Are the Core of the Platform--the Live Mesh platform exposes a number of core services including some Live Services that can all be accessed using the Live Mesh API; these include Storage (online and offline), Membership, Sync, Peer-to-Peer Communication and Newsfeed.
• Same API on Clients and in the Cloud--the programming model is the same for the cloud and all connected devices, which means a Live Mesh application works exactly the same regardless of whether it's running in the cloud, in a browser, on a desktop, or on a mobile device.
• Open, Extendable Data Model--a basic data model is provided for the most common tasks needed for a Live Mesh application; developers can also customize and extend the data model in any fashion that is needed for a specific application.
• Flexible Application Model--developers can choose what application developer model best fits their needs.
Reaction among developers and tech bloggers has been generally positive, likely because Live Mesh seems to serve a real need for people with multiple devices. Developers also shed light on how the platform helps Microsoft competitively.
Josh Catone at ReadWrite Web said that Live Mesh brings offline access to Web applications, much like Adobe AIR and Google Gears (which is still in development). Catone writes:
"Web apps using the Mesh platform will be able to lean on the client software to take their Web applications offline, including all user data, and sync it up when the user gets back online at a later time.
Microsoft is taking an offline approach that is more akin to Google Gears or Mozilla Prism than Adobe AIR--the Web-to-desktop functionality of Mesh is essentially a wrapper for the actual Web app.
Ryan Stewart, a rich Internet application (RIA) evangelist at Adobe Systems, pointed out how important Live Mesh is to getting Silverlight, Microsoft's alternative to Adobe Flash, onto more devices. Live Mesh only works on Windows machines now, but Silverlight runs on the Mac OS, Linux through Moonlight, and mobile devices. Stewart writes:
"As an RIA fan boy, I'm excited to see what people build on top of Live Mesh because I think it tries to solve the right problem. We should just have access to our data. It shouldn't matter if we're in the browser, on the desktop, or on a device. That's a goal I think both Adobe and Microsoft share and I think the next couple of years are going to be great in unifying the Web and getting rid of 'Web application' versus 'browser applications.' They're just going to be applications when all is said and done."
Meanwhile, all that talk of Web OSes or Webtops seems to be coming from Microsoft, the company with presumably the most to lose as computing moves from the PC to the Web.
"Is this like a WebOS (Webdesktop, Webtop?)--yes, although everyone seems to be avoiding the term, this is a lot like all those WebOS apps you've seen. You get a virtual desktop with 5GB of storage and you can access it from anywhere. It's integrated with Windows' Remote Desktop, so it's really simple to set up," writes Stan Schroeder at Mashable.
What developers actually do with the Live Mesh platform remains to be seen. But third-party applications are key to delivering on its promise.
Intel wants to make the whole Web editable, just like a single Wikipedia page.
The chip giant on Tuesday will make a beta available of Intel Mash Maker, a free browser extension that allows users to modify Web pages and combine information from different sources. Its first beta works with Firefox 3 and Internet Explorer 7, though at this point the features are far more mature in Firefox, Intel said.
The product, which originated in Intel's research labs, is similar to existing mash-up tools like Yahoo Pipes and Microsoft Popfly in that it has a graphical design tool.
Intel Mash Maker suggests customizations and widgets.
(Credit: Intel)What's different is that the actual mashing up of information on Intel Mash Maker happens on the client, rather than the server. So instead of making a different Web application to, say, plot real estate listings on Google Maps, Intel Mash Maker lets people add a widget that adds visualization to the real estate listing site.
... Read more
Google on Monday invited programmers into a new sandbox that will let them test out significantly expanded possibilities for Web gadgets, small applications that can be hosted on the company's iGoogle personalized home page.
The sandbox, available at Google's iGoogle developer page, lets developers get started with a number of new features that eventually will make their way to the regular iGoogle home page, said lead product manager Jessica Ewing.
Among those new features are a left-hand region of the Web browser that lets users navigate quickly through a list of gadgets, a "canvas view" that can give gadgets more screen real estate, and the ability to take advantage of some social features for gadgets that employ OpenSocial standards. OpenSocial is an API, or application programming interface, that lets a gadget run on Web sites, such as MySpace.com, Ning, Salesforce.com, and Friendster, that support OpenSocial.
For example, with the features, somebody using a Pac Man game gadget could both expand the game to full-screen size and, when not playing, use OpenSocial's notification abilities to hear when a friend beat the high score, Ewing said.
"It makes the home page environment a lot more interesting and engaging," Ewing said.
Google has Yahoo on the defensive, but Yahoo has a bigger lead with its My Yahoo portal site than Google does with iGoogle. Other home page sites include NetVibes and PageFlakes, which was just acquired by LiveUniverse.
Ewing wouldn't say when the new abilities would be available to regular iGoogle users. "There are no firm dates yet. We're hoping soon," she said.
More details are available on the Google Code Blog and an explanatory YouTube video.
Google's news arrived the day before the Web 2.0 Expo begins. The timing was coincidental, but no doubt Web 2.0 programmers will be interested.
Etelos on Monday will open a limited beta for software that lets hosted application providers give their customers access to information offline.
It's called Apps on a Plane (AOP), a name that addresses a long-held limitation of Web applications. Namely, they can't be used when someone is on a plane or otherwise offline.
Company founder and Chief Technology Officer Danny Kolke said the software will synch data from an end user's computer to back-end applications when they go on and offline.
It's designed so that independent software vendors or businesses can convert existing applications to the offline synching capability without having to write code. By contrast, other alternatives for taking Web applications offline, including Google Gears, require developers to recode their applications, he said.
A rules engine gives people a way to automate how data should be moved when people go on and offline. For example, a salesperson's contact information can be updated to a CRM system and be set up to resolve conflicts, Kolke explained.
Initially, AOP will modify applications written with LAMP or Java Server Pages, he said. Etelos will then support other development frameworks, including Ruby on Rails and .Net.
A limited beta for AOP will start Monday and Etelos will demonstrate it at the Web 2.0 Expo next week.
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