Everything Great is *Nixbased

As many of you have probably been reading Google has released a web browser called “Chrome”. It first caught my attention due to the innovative way in which Google accidentally announced the launch on September 1st, via a comic book illustrated by Scott McCloud and designed to show the positive features and architecture of their new product. The 38-page comic landed in the mailboxes of a few Europeans due to a “mailroom error”, was scanned and then uploaded to the unofficial Google blog Google Blogoscoped for all to see. As if a browser by Google wasn’t enough to get people talking, using a new approach like a comic book to make product announcements and explain it’s features is great for visibility in the blogosphere. Google released a blog entry later the same day confirming that “Chrome” was not a hoax and in fact would be released on September 2nd.

The browser which can be downloaded from Google’s Chrome page, is based on the open source web browser engine WebKit, the same browser engine that Safari uses. It is a browser truly fashioned with the Google mindset as it is light weight, using a smaller memory footprint than both Firefox and Internet Explorer (this can be compared by typing “about:memory” into the address/search bar)  and is very clean  from a user interface perspective.

The install process is straightforward with almost no need for user intervention, only needing the user to to close their current web browser so it can import bookmarks and passwords which is an inspiration to other developers when it comes to install processes, not to mention it lends it’s self well to those whom are new to computers.

The only thing I am REALLY missing with Chrome is the Add-ons and Greasemonkey scripts I have become so accustomed to in Firefox, well that and the fact it doesn’t have a Linux or Mac version. It is however much better than IE 8. All and all considering it has only been out less than 24-hours I think Chrome has an amazing shot at consuming a large part of the web browser market if the ability to use add-ons is incorporated. To see a more in depth (and informative) first look at chrome visit the Lifehacker entry titled Google Chrome First Look.

So I haven’t been writing on here but allot has been happening. For now I’m going to talk about torrents and Oink among other trackers. OiNK as you probably all know was taken down not so long ago and two new trackers popped up attempting to fill the void while other established trackers seen a huge increase in members as well. The two new trackers are Waffles and What. I am not a member of Waffles as of yet but am a member of what. From what I hear both trackers complement each other very well so I will be checking out waffles in the future.

Demonoid was also taken offline recently, with the troubles concerning the CRIA earlier this year and no word from Deimos nobody can say for sure if Demonoid is down for good or if this is just temporary. Currently the page displayed on the Demonoid domain reads as follows:

“The CRIA threatened the company renting the servers to us, and because of this it is not possible to keep the site online. Sorry for the inconvenience and thanks for your understanding.

We have brought online a forum in order to help the community stay together. This forum is not file sharing related in any way, it’s just a mean to help the community stay together - please read the forum rules before posting.

You can visit the forum by clicking here”

To top it all off the “Web Sheriff” has decided to team up with Prince and attempt to sue The Pirate Bay. Have fun with that one Prince. After this long you would think artists and others would get the hint that A) shutting down a BT tracker hurts their record sales and lowers the respect their former fans had for them and B) TPB has been approached and sued by more then 1 person/organization and is still there so one person isn’t going to take them down.

There is more BT news such as how to get around Comcast’s Sandvine setup but I’m tired of writing. I promise updates will be more frequent from now on.

How many of you remember a time when the Internet wasn’t cluttered with intrusive ads and lame phishing attempts? I do, and I wish it could go back to that state. Recently I have noticed a major increase in popup, pop under and animated ads on websites with large user bases. As you can see from this site I have nothing against using ads, I just wish Webmasters would do it in some sort of ethical manner. Statistics show that intrusive advertising does NOT work so why do these Webmasters continue to load even more of it onto the web?

Due to these annoying ads I am now forced to implement ad-blocking solutions on my home and work networks. It sucks because I like to support sites that use non-intrusive ad methods but some people have ruined that for everyone, at least in my case. For those of you who need an ad-blocking solution I have outlined the methods I am currently using below.

The 1st step is to change the DNS servers your network is using over to OpenDNS. Though not directly related to ad-blocking OpenDNS is generally a faster DNS then the DNS servers provided by your ISP and protects against phishing attempts. Corrects misspellings and allows you to block sites easily via their online interface among other things.

To setup OpenDNS visit http://www.opendns.com/ and follow the instructions for the hardware you are using. In short all you need to do is change your networks DNS servers to 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220 (on your computers network connection if you are directly connected or via your routers admin interface if you are on a network) and optionally create an account via the OpenDNS website for all the bonus features the service provides.

Now if your not using Mozilla Firefox as your browser I suggest you start doing so. Mozilla has pretty good built in popup blocking and two great extensions called Adblock and Adblock Filterset.G Updater. If Firefox is already installed type “about:config” into your browser and in the filter box type dns, it should return a result of network.dns.ipv4OnlyDomains along with a few others. Change the value of network.dns.ipv4OnlyDomains from .doubleclick.net to true.

Now go to https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1136 and
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/10 and grab the Adblock and Adblock Filterset.G Updater extensions. If Firefox isn’t installed, install it, follow the steps above and then grab the extensions. This extensions are an optional step as the next step accomplishes the same task (in some ways) but I like to have as many layers of protection as needed within reason. Avoid Adblock Plus as it has some memory management issues.

The SafeHistory extension for Firefox is another worth mentioning, it allows control over cookies and allows you to defend against some web privacy attacks. The extension can be found here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1502

In Firefox, Tools>Options>Privacy tab> you can manage how the browser deals with cookies as well, for those of you who are really paranoid, set the cookies to be deleted when the browser closes. You can also mange what sites are allowed to set cookies within Firefox.

The next step that is needed is to go to http://everythingisnt.com/hosts.html and grab the installer for “Mike’s Ad Blocking Hosts file” (if your using *nix grab the file for manual installation) The site explains installation in a rather simple format so let’s skip ahead. So you have the ad blocking hosts file installed but you notice the surfing is a little slower. What you need to do is browse to the directory where the file is installed and modify the entries in the hosts file, for those of you who used the Windows installer the directory is:

XP: c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc
2000: c:\winnt\system32\drivers\etc
95/98: c:\windows

Open the hosts file with your favorite editor and change all instances of 127.0.0.1 to 0.0.0.0. On Linux I use vi, on Windows I use Editpad lite as it is free, lightweight and has the search and replace functionality. This will stop the looping connection attempts to your local machine when you browse to sites which contains ads blocked via the host file. One thing to note is that using 0.0.0.0 may cause issues with some applications. If you notice an issue you can always change it back to 127.0.0.1.

Depending on your setup there are other ways to accomplish ad blocking on a network wide basis such as blocking via an internal DNS server. I may cover solutions like this if there is a interest, until then this should help the average user block ads and some malicious traffic.

Lately life has really kicked it into high gear. The business is coming together, the projects I volunteer on are buzzing with activity and on the downside the family is dealing with some stress due to some medical issues (not myself). In the midst of all the chaos my better (this can be debated) half has taken on a new pastime. She’s now playing Second Life.

So what is Second Life and why do I feel it is important enough to write about? Second Life is a Online game that simulates a world controlled by the players themselves. You are able to own land, build structures, and make clothes to sell to other players and so on. The world operates on it’s own currency which can be exchanged for real cash. My better half really wants to make a go at trying to get an income out of this game. Others have done it so it is possible and the concept is great but there is a not so pleasant side to all of this.

This “game” is extremely adult oriented. There is everything from sex toys to escort services. Often times as a new player your only choice for income is to become an escort. Lucky for my better half she met some people and bypassed this step. What is rather disturbing to me is not the escort services as I believe people can do whatever they please. It is the fact that some people are taking it a step further and doing web cam shows for the in game currency. From what I have been told some of these players are quite obviously underage.

I’m all for making money on a game via making clothing or avatars (this is currently what the woman in my life is focusing on) but you must not think much of yourself if you are doing live cam shows for what equals about $6 an hour at best. I’m curious if it’s considered prostitution or how that falls into some of the legal systems around the world.

I hope this little venture does work out for her but I sure am glad she has self respect.

As my day perusing the WWW begins I find myself thinking about what I do most and what enables me to do it. The conclusion of such thought is that I mainly use Email and Search. For E-mail I use an IMAP account on one of my domains. For search, I use the giant monstrosity known as Google.

Personally I love many of the products that exist in the Google arsenal. Google is such a big part of the online experience. Millions of Internet users search using their #1 product, the Google Search Engine, use Adsense to earn income from their blogs and websites, receive email using Gmail and enjoy all the other products Google has brought to us over the years. Some of us whom are more interested in technology and time saving techniques have read books to help us use Google products more efficiently such as Google Hacks: Tips & Tools for Finding and Using the World’s Information as well as Google Advertising Tools: Cashing in with AdSense, AdWords, and the Google APIs.

Some Google product users however, have for one reason or another not read the many publications focusing on Google products. For these people I am posting here a few decent links to some helpful tools to streamline the Google experience. Though nowhere near a full list these are the ones I personally use. It is possible I will update this page or add new blog entries as I find new things or think of information to add,

http://www.google.com/intl/en/options/ possibly the most important link, this page allows you to see and use all of Google’s features.

Googlebar Lite: A light-weight Google search toolbar for the Firefox browser.

GooglePreview An an add-on for Firefox which inserts preview images of web sites and Amazon products into Google and Yahoo search results.

Gooscan is a Linux based tool that automates queries against Google search appliances, but with a twist. These particular queries are designed to find potential vulnerabilities on web pages. Think “cgi scanner” that never communicates directly with the target web server, since all queries are sent to Google, not to the target.