Extend Google Desktop Search Filetypes with GDSPlus

Scott Kingery writes about GDSPlus, which allows you to specify what extensions the Google Desktop Search (GDS) tool will index. This includes the ability to add new text extensions not yet supported by Google, such as:

• .XML
  
• .log (mIRC and Trillian)
  
• .cs, .vb (Visual Studio .NET source code files)
  
• .frm, .bas, .cls (Visual Basic 6 source code files)

Basically, any ASCII text document can be now be indexed by allowing you to specify the file extensions of those documents. This does not add additional support for other filetype like Adobe PDF documents in other words. Additionally, you can also remove support for any of the extensions that Google included and you do not want indexed.

GDSPlus can be downloaded for free at http://www.trivex.net/

This software does not come with an installer, so it is important that you follow instructions in the readme.txt file. The installation process calls for clearing your current Google Desktop data, editing a Windows Registry entry and then reindexing your hard drive.

Be forewarned, GDSPlus is a replacement for your GoogleDesktopCrawl.exe and GoogleDesktopIndex.exe files from Google. The current version of GDS is v.100504 and should be the only version of Google Desktop Search Beta available right now.

If Google updates GDS in the future, then you will more than probably have to get your update from GDSPlus instead of Google if you want to continue to have the extra filetype support. It may come to pass that Google will add this functionality into GDS in the future though.

While GDSPlus only supports text filetypes and does not add other types (Google will have to do that), Scott has noticed that you can still index the filenames of other filetypes such as .wav, .rar, .png, etc. It does not index the contents of the files, just the filenames themselves.

Official Gmail Bug List

'nuf said, here is the official Gmail Known Bugs list.

VIA: Aimless Words

"Jane, you ignorant slut"

Some of you may remember this classic line uttered by Dan Aykroyd in a Saturday Night live skit many years ago. It seems that every twenty years or so that classics tend to re-emerge, and none could be so closer to this again as this classic blog post from one of the most ignorant sluts on the Internet today.

Janeth, you ignorant slut. You have bashed me in public long enough with hundreds of petty arguments and fabrications that are so far-fetched that even Jon Lovitz would be envious. You might remember Jon on SNL in his "lieing guy" character.

It seems that I and a friend of mine are the number one topics of conversation on two fora, Janeth's Freaks on Mushrooms and Phil de Crepid's SEO Front Shop, full of puppets-on-strings-like members who seem to believe everything that they are told. If it were not for us, they would not have any entertainment for their troops and the post count would be considerably lower. It is quite humorous reading, and I encourage you all to have a look see here and here.

Actually I feel kind of privileged to be getting more net-time from these two than Jill Whalen, one of my favorite all-time SEO Bitches. I should be thanking them for all this free publicity. Thanks, you anal retentive shitheads.

Keep it coming guys, I need a good laugh every now and then. God knows you ain't got anything else going for you right now. Phil has milked that fucking PR paper of his long enough and needs new material. Janeth, the "Queen of I agree posts", does not have a single original thought in that pea-brain of hers. And Fathom, what is up with this guy? I used to have a lot of respect for him. Now he is reduced to the same child-like behavior of the other two and rumor has it that he is covertly going back into WebProWorld and deleting his past posts.

Browser Newcomer, iRider, Beats Firefox Extensions

Robin Good Marjolein Hoekstra, an independent writer who contributes to the Robin Good network says she prefers a new paid-for browser, iRider, over Firefox and its extensions. For a nominal fee of $29 USD, she considers it to be money well spent.

This is not the first time that I have heard this. Andilinks, a member of the Band of Gonzos forum, has tried iRider out already and came to the same conclusion. That conclusion is that it beats Firefox hands down in many departments.

The one feature that both Andi and Marjolein highly acclaimed was the sidebar navigation. Much akin to tabbed-browsing, this has more advanced features that tabbed browsing cannot provide. The sidebar is visually appealing by showing you thumbnail shots of the websites you are visiting. The navigation panel will let you instantly know whether a page is done downloading, whether you have visited a page or not, allows you to "pin" a page for future use (pinned pages are retained from one iRider session onto the next) and at which level the link was opened.

iRider is an Internet Explorer based product. iRider claims that they have plugged several security holes in their browser that currently plague other versions of IE. They also offer highly detailed technical support to secure your browser even further.

With security issues aside however, being an IE-based browser, iRider will accept any IE plugins that you may have grown attached to or just cannot do without. One such plugin, Pluck, which turns your IE into a full fledged newsreader has no comparative extension available in Firefox (Sage does not even come close).

UPDATE: I erroneously reported that Robin Good recommended iRider. The article actually was written by Marjolein Hoekstra, an independent writer who contributes to the Robin Good network.

"While I wholeheartedly respect Marjolein in-depth reporting and viewpoint, I have personally never stated that I would toss USD $29 to have iRider replace my FireFox.

I am a strong supporter of moving away from the IE platform, so while I must bow to iRider useful innovations, I look forward to having those same features without having to depend on IE."

My apologies Robin.

Two New TLD's (.travel & .post) Near Approval

ICANN has announced that it has entered final negotiations for implementing two new top-level domains, .travel and .post. This final process can still take months.

In addition to .travel and .post, proposals for new TLDs include .xxx, .jobs, .asia and .eu. The status of the other applicants is still pending however.

Yahoo! Bidding for CBS MarketWatch

Yahoo! has an eye on the "big eye" of CBS MarketWatch. Yahoo! currently provides financial news and information through its Yahoo! Finance channel. This move could gain several subscription-based products if they could buy MarketWatch, it also would turn them into a content provider. To date, Yahoo! has merely been disseminating information from other content providers.

Google Desktop Search for Mac OS

Google chief executive Eric Schmidt says that Google has plans to release a version of its desktop search tool for computers running on the Mac operating system. He did not set a timetable for a Mac version of Google Desktop, saying it had to be rebuilt from the ground up because of the fundamental differences between the Mac OS and Windows.

So far Google has not targeted any other operating system other than Windows. This will be the first time Google will move away from that trend.

UPDATE: Nathan Weinberg of InsideGoogle dug a little deeper on this story, and it is basically a non-story. The report from Reuters (et. al.) was taken out of context and highly exaggerated.

What Schmidt actually said was "yes and no", that a Mac version would require a new project from the ground up, and that while Google would like to, it wasn't planning anything.

Google plugs hole exposing Gmail mail-boxes

When the news hit that a vulnerability in the Gmail login that could allow attackers to hijack their accounts, it was all over the Internet. Just as quickly as the news was getting around, Google has fixed the security flaw.

"Google was recently alerted to a potential security vulnerability affecting the Gmail service. We have since fixed this vulnerability, and all current and future Gmail users are protected," Google spokesman Nathan Tyler said.

An investigation by Google found that only a handful of Gmail users were victimized, the source close to the Mountain View, California-based company said.

Riddle : Correct Answer Gets a Gmail Invite

People love to hand out Gmail invites like candy. Screw that. That is too easy. Lets have some fun with these invites!

First person that can tell me what this is (that is the easy part) and what it is actually "pointing at" will get a Gmail invite.


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Placemark>
  <name>Here is a kml file for you</name>
  <View>
    <longitude>-122.0836513298948</longitude>
    <latitude>37.42228634135405</latitude>
    <range>637.0999999999299</range>
    <tilt>-3.180872743978974e-011</tilt>
    <heading>-0.0007160463744580959</heading>
  </View>
  <visibility>1</visibility>
  <styleUrl>root://styles#default</styleUrl>
</Placemark>


Round Two: AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo dish out more SPAM lawsuits

America Online, Microsoft, EarthLink and Yahoo are teaming again to turn up the heat on spammers.

The companies, which make up the Anti-Spam Alliance, announced that they've each filed new lawsuits in U.S. Federal Court against senders of unwanted computer messages. The companies filed suits in the states of Washington, Georgia and California accusing defendants of violating the federal Can-Spam Act, along with other state and federal laws.

Another Useless Google Trivia Bit

Ever notice that freshdate tag in the Google SERPS is sometimes one day earlier than the actual date in the cached version of that page? This is because the timestamp of the cached version is simply Greenwich Mean Time (GMT -0 hours). The freshdate tag is based on Pacific Standard Time (GMT -8 hours). There will be an 8 hour window where the date will not overlap.

VIA: Zorgloob

Send Firefox to your Desktop

A mozillaZine member, wig_out_on_me, offers up a Windows Registry file that will create a Desktop namespace for Firefox similar to the way Internet Explorer, My Computer and the Recycle Bin shortcuts are set up. This namespace provides for a context menu with Profile Manager, Safe Mode, etc. included on it. Any shortcuts created from this namespace will retain the added context menu items which is handy for the Quick Launch toolbar.


VIA: Gemal's Psyched Blog

AOL to offer free antivirus protection

America Online says it will start bundling McAfee antivirus software for free into its proprietary service and no longer charge a subscription for it.

AOL is not alone in offering antivirus software, Yahoo and MSN both offer antivirus and anti-spyware features in their premium service packages.

Of course, AOL will probably need the antivirus software for their new AOL Browser which is based on Internet Explorer.

Firefox 1.0 RC 1 Released

From MozillaZine Talkback:

"'Today we have our first Firefox 1.0 candidate builds available for testing. You can get these test builds from FTP. If you've already downloaded 1.0 PR (the 'feature complete' preview) and you're not really interested in testing and bug reporting, then you should probably stick with 1.0 PR for a couple more weeks and upgrade when we release the official Firefox 1.0.

The release candidates include about 250 bug fixes since Firefox 1.0 PR and we'd appreciate any feedback around any of those areas. With this release, we're also featuring Mozilla Foundation builds for up to two dozen locales (slowly trickling in. if you don't see your language, try back in a bit.) If you do find regressions from the Preview Release, please file bugs in Bugzilla and nominate them as Firefox 1.0 blockers using the 'blocking-aviary1.0?' flag on the bug. Thanks for your help in testing Firefox!'"

The Release Candidate is about one week behind schedule, as mentioned in the Firefox Roadmap, but they have accomplished one of their goals in reducing The List. There are just a handful that remain and those are newly discovered bugs in the software.

They are not too much in want for testers either. Last glance at the tally, there have been over 6.5 million downloads of Firefox Preview to date.

Google Desktop Search: Tips, Tricks and Workarounds

While probably not a totally exhaustive document on Google Desktop Search, Scott Kingery's GDS Tips is pretty darn close. It covers the basics thru some of the more obscure features of GDS.

Scott has gleaned information from various sources, such as the Google Desktop Search Group, and compiled all of that into one handy page.

DHTML Lab: Popup Calendar 1.2

In the DHTML Lab section of WebReference, they introduce their first maintenance release of Popup Calendar. They have added better navigation bar styling and the ability to clear read-only input fields. Also included, new functionality that enables you to separate form elements to display any combination of a user-selected date, month and year.

This is a stunning piece of code that you will just have to see for yourself.
(Click on the to access the calendar features)

Videoblogging with Blogger

Svein Høier and Jon Hoem have put together an excellent tutorial on video blogging with Blogger. The tutorial includes template code changes and php/javascript code to launch a dynamic pop-up window for your video, as well as, general tips about video compression.

Once your template changes are made, posting the video is a snap. Enter the path to the video in your URL Link text box (this can be activated in your Blogger Settings), then upload your video via an attachment.

It dawned on me that you could also use this as a method for doing simple image blogging as well. By using this technique, you could just as easily have pop-up windows for your images.

VIA: Weblog Tools Collection

List of Photoshop Tutorials, Tips & Tricks

Just browsing around the net and came up with these interesting sites dealing with Photoshop. Tutorials, tip, tricks ranging from beginning to advanced. A little bit for everybody. Enjoy!

• Janee's Photoshop Tutorials, Courses in Photoshop
  
• Tutorial Outpost
  
• Good-Tutorials.com
  
• PhotoshopCAFE
  
• Photoshop Tips & Tricks
  
• Photoshop Tutorials
  
• PurePhotoshop Tutorials & Articles
  
• Free Adobe Photoshop Tutorials
  
• 80Four Adobe Photoshop Tutorials, Video Tutorials
  
• CreativePro Photoshop Articles
  
• Photoshop for Photographers
  

If you have any to share, just drop them in a comment or two or three.

UPDATE: Oct 20, 2004

• Studio-X Photoshop Tutorials
  
• Axialis Tutorials
  
• HeathRowe Photoshop Tutorials
  
• Photosjop Tips & Learning
  
• TeamPhotoshop Tutorials & Tips
  
• DesignsByMark PS Tips & Tutorials
  
• Grafika PS Tutorials (Czech)
  
• BioRust PS Tutorials
  
• CBT Cafe PS Tutorials & Articles
  
• Photoshop Lover

UPDATE: Oct 23, 2004

• Creative Bits: PS Tips Blog
  
• 3 Simple Improvements (Greg Roberts)
  
• Planet Photoshop Tutorials
  
• Computer Darkroom (Misc Tutorials)
  
• DevCo Photo Tutorials
  
• Nebulus Designs PS Tutorials
  
• Phong PS Tutorials
  
• Eyewire PS Tips & Tutorials
  
• Think Dan PS Tutorials (Index listing)
  
• Magic Pixel PS Workshop

UPDATE: Oct 27, 2004

• Digital Photography Tutorials
  
• Informit Photoshop Articles
  
• The Makeshift Miracle Tutorials
  
• The Slimarillion
  
• Shanzcan Photoshop Tutorials
  
• Photoshop Brushes Tutorials
  
• GrafX Design PS Tutorials
  
• Pegaweb Web Design & PS Tutorials
  
• RetouchPRO Tutorials
  
• Carl Volk's Photoshop Tips

Google Acquires Keyhole Corp

A Google press release announces that they have just purchased Keyhole Corp.

With the Keyhole software and an Internet connection a user can enter an address or other location information which accesses the database and takes them to a digital image of that location on their computer screen. The interactive software then give users many options, including the ability to zoom in from space-level to street-level, tilt and rotate the view or search for other information such as hotels, parks, ATMs or subways. Unlike traditional mapping technologies, Keyhole creates a dynamic 3D interface for geographic information.

Keyhole is probably most famous on CNN when they do the "fly-by shots" that are composed of animated images from satellites and airplanes.

"With Keyhole, you can fly like a superhero from your computer at home to a street corner somewhere else in the world - or find a local hospital, map a road trip or measure the distance between two points," said Jonathan Rosenberg, vice president, Product Management. "This acquisition gives Google users a powerful new search tool, enabling users to view 3D images of any place on earth as well as tap a rich database of roads, businesses and many other points of interest. Keyhole is a valuable addition to Google's efforts to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."

There is a price reduction in the Keyhole 2LT, effective immediately, from $69.95 to $29.95.

Blog-style Buttons on the Fly

Adam Kalsey has a handy online tool to create those little buttons that everyone is so fond of. The tool uses Bill Zeller's button maker script which is written in PHP, so you could host this application yourself with without much trouble.

UPDATE: It does not appear that the script is available on Bill's site.

VIA: Band of Gonzo Forums

More Google

As the Google Blog entry says, "It's not that all you know about Google is wrong; it's just that, most likely, all you know isn't all there is to know."

I guess this is true. For instance, they have a neat little "cheat sheet" and this is the first time that I laid eyes on Google Catalogs. Man, how did I miss that one.

Microsoft Plans Release of Corporate IM Software in December

Microsoft is planning to release in December new software designed to secure instant messaging and other communications within big companies.

What all is Microsoft debuting that month now? New Search Engine and Desktop Search, now Instant Messaging on a corporate scale.

In a not so related article, Microsoft released on Tuesday a preview version of new tools intended to make it easier for companies to create custom Web applications.

Microsoft released a "community technology preview" version of modeling tools, formerly code-named Whitehorse, to be included in Visual Studio 2005 Team System, an upcoming addition to Microsoft's line of developer packages that focuses on enterprise developers.

PostNuke Distribution Server Hacked

While the phpBB folk will probably snicker at this a little, it is no laughing matter. Hackers have compromised the download server for the open source PostNuke content management system, redirecting users to malicious code in place of the .zip download of the PostNuke program. The hacked code was distributed for more than 32 hours before PostNuke site maintainers addressed the security breach.

PostNuke users who installed a zip archive downloaded between 11:50 pm Sunday night and 8:30 a.m. today face a serious threat. All data submitted during the installation - including the server name, database credentials, admin name and password - were likely sent to the hackers. In addition, "in one file there was code allowing a malicious user to execute any shell command on the web server."

The PostNuke team is advising users who may have installed the compromised files to reinstall the code, and immediately change their database details, including username, password and the name of the database if possible.

VIA: Netcraft

Bush Campaign Web Site Rejects Non-US Visitors

Yep, apparantly it is true, the Bush Campaign Website, GeorgeWBush.com, is rejecting web requests from outside of the United States. It is a wonder that Russell Beattie is not all over this yet.

Aggregate your own RSS newsfeed from Yahoo! News

Jacob Rosenberg blogs an entry into today's Yahoo!Search blog to expose some of the more useful (and lesser known) features of Yahoo! News.

He gives examples of advanced search queries to over 7,000 Yahoo! News sources. You can filter your content based on Location, News Source, Category, Language, and News Type. You can even compose your own advanced search by using the above search commands or use their advanced news search page.

There is also a new xml button on the News Search result page, in which you can now turn any search into a fresh full-blown RSS 2.0 feed.

"For example hurricane location:florida gets you your own ongoing feed of hurricane news from Florida. The only restriction is that the source parameter doesn't work in RSS mode, and some providers may choose to opt out of RSS results."

This is probably the best new feature of all. You can roll your own news feed.

Improving SEO in your Blogger Template

SEbasic has some great suggestions for simple Blogger template changes you can make to optimize them for better rankings. He has complete sample code all laid out for you to paste into your templates. Worth a peak!

Finding mirrored hosts and duplicate content

One of the interesting technical challenges that every search engine comes up against is identifying duplicate content. Super-geek, Greg Linden, learns of a whitepaper from his friend Jeff Dean who co-authored (along with Krishna Bharat, Andrei Z. Broder and Monika Rauch Henzinger) a paper (PDF) on this very topic.

"The paper analyzes the performance of several techniques for detecting mirrors, from simple approaches like the similar IP address or hostname to more complicated and quite clever analysis of the link structure of sites. The paper concludes that a content-based approach (called 'shingles' in the paper) works well but that a combination of several approaches works best."

New Look of MSN Search?

An excellent find from Gary Price that may give us a glimpse of what the new MSN Search will look like. The interface is chock full of little goodies, of which, the most impressive is a set of slider switches that you can use to manipulate certain "ranking weights".

Gary discovered this interface when he noticed a new URL in the cache link at the Tech Preview site. The URL pointed to http://cc.msnscache.com/.

To access the sliders, click on the label +Search Builder. which will drop-down a tabbed interface. Next, click on Results ranking and you will see the sliders.

Unfortunately, the sliders do not work in Firefox. These may be ActiveX components and will probably only work in Internet Explorer.

I am wondereing what the "cc" sub-domain stands for. Perhaps "carbon copy" or "cache copy"?

New Google Desktop Exploit Discovered

A new Google Desktop "phishing" exploit is being reported by Netcraft.

Salvatore Aranzulla, an Italian journalist who discovered the exploit, says "The flaw allows attackers to target users of the Google Desktop application and modify the contents of search pages by injecting scripts located on external servers. Such cross site scripting attacks provide attackers with a means of obtaining information under the guise of a reputable domain."

Aranzulla has published details about the new vulnerability on his web site, where he includes some example exploits (Italian). Inexperienced users may be susceptible to phishing attacks like this one. Experienced users may become suspicious of it however.

This exploit is similar but seperate to the exploits discovered earlier in which one Google had known about for two years. That exploit was not severe enough until the release of Google Desktop prompted them to look at it again.

What I can ascertain from Aranzulla's example (it is in Italian), is that this exploit will probably need an update in the software itself. The previous exploits could be fixed at the Google Website. Aranzulla is recommending removal of the software.

So far there has been no response from Google.

Google Testing New User Interfaces - Image and Froogle Links

RustyBrick finds a WMW post where a member had conducted a normal search at Google, at the top of the page, you would find a line of text that read IMAGE RESULTS FOR 'KEYWORD PHRASE'. When you click on that link, it would take you to where you would go if you would click on the 'image' tab.

GoogleGuy Says "You know us; we're always testing out different little UI changes.."

Meanwhile, over at Zorgloob, they reveal that a search for flower will show Froogle results at the top of the page.

This seems to be permanent feature in the Google results now.

Nathan Weinberg of InsideGoogle to Appear on Search Engine Radio

There is a rumor floating around that Nathan will be Brad Fallons guest on Search Engine Radio tomorrow (Tuesday) morning at noon, EST (9 am PST). The show will run for one hour.

"This should prove to be fun and stressful", Nathan says, "I'll, of course, be talking about Google, but the field is wide open ... I've done radio before, but never a guest, always a host, so I think I might enjoy this. That, or make a complete fool of myself."

If you want to ask Nathan a question, you can call in at 1-888-327-0061 at the time of the show. Good luck Nathan!

UPDATE: Nathan's interview has been postponed for at least two weeks.

Google is so horrendous ...

I tell ya, if it t'aint one thing, 'tis another. You would think that some people have better things to do with their time.

Google Labs MapReduce - Part of Florida Update?

Not too long ago, GoogleGuy broke his silence over at Webmaster World and made mention of a new document.

"... if you didn't notice, Rob Pike is answering questions over at Slashdot:

http://interviews.slashdot.org/interviews/

Rob only joined Google a year or so ago, but I'm really glad we have him--I read his book a long time back. For the folks that like to read papers from Google, here's a systems one that Rob mentions:

http://labs.google.com/papers/mapreduce.html

I think it's pretty cool that Google keeps writing stuff like the GFS paper and the MapReduce paper; not too many other search engines are talking about their systems."

MapReduce is a programming model and an associated implementation for processing and generating large data sets. Users specify a map function that processes a key/value pair to generate a set of intermediate key/value pairs, and a reduce function that merges all intermediate values associated with the same intermediate key. Many real world tasks are expressible in this model, as shown in the paper.

In that newly released paper there is evidence of Google using this process on its production index in August of 2003. The next major update in that index appeared in November of 2003, the Florida Update.

"One of the most significant uses of MapReduce to date has been a complete rewrite of the production indexing system that produces the data structures used for the Google web search service. The indexing system takes as input a large set of documents that have been retrieved by our crawling system, stored as a set of GFS files. The raw contents for these documents are more than 20 terabytes of data."

Eric Baillargeon who discovered this passage is wondering if this is all coincidence.

One graph in the document shows the significant growth in the number of separate MapReduce programs checked into their primary source code management system over time, from 0 in early 2003 to almost 900 separate instances as of late September 2004.

"MapReduce has been so successful because it makes it possible to write a simple program and run it efficiently on a thousand machines in the course of half an hour, greatly speeding up the development and prototyping cycle. Furthermore, it allows programmers who have no experience with distributed and/or parallel systems to exploit large amounts of resources easily."

It is very evident in the graph that Google has sharply increased its usage of MapReduce since February of 2004, which coincided with another update at that time, Brandy.

Also, from this point in time, numerous backlink updates have taken place. I am assuming that MapReduce may have had something to do with new instances of it being introduced into parts of the source code that addresses this.

I don't think it is a matter of coincidence, as Eric mentioned, it is now a matter of record. MapReduce is now part of Google and understanding the mechanics of it will soon be discussed in many a forum from this time forward.

Yahoo and Adobe in Browser Partnership

The Associated Press announced (via USA Today) that Yahoo and Adobe Systems have joined forces to tap each others' customers and put Web search features into Adobe's Acrobat Reader software. This is Yahoo's latest maneuver against Google and Microsoft in the fight to put its own search service and Web access on as many desktops as possible.

Initially, the toolbar will feature links to Yahoo products and services as well as to Adobe's Web-based subscription service, which converts documents into the Adobe P.D.F. (for Portable Document Format) file format.

Later, the companies said, the toolbar will add features like the ability to quickly convert Web-based content into Adobe P.D.F. files. Yahoo search will also be built into a future version of the Acrobat Reader, permitting users to search for more information from within the document without going through the extra step of launching a Web browser.

A Trip Down Google Memory Lane

Through the magic of the Internet Archive via their Wayback Machine, we can look back at Google and "what a wild strange trip its been".

From the very simplistic design on 11-11-1998 you will see that they had a mere 25 million pages (soon to be much bigger) in the Google Search Engine Prototype. Then there is the "might work some of the time" Alpha Google (1-25-1999). Uck ... gag me! Glad this design went into the waste basket.

Fast forward to 04-23-1999 and they are wanting to know if you feel lucky! Well, do ya? Special Stanford and Linux searches are part of more Google...

Lets move way ahead to 05-11-2000 and see that Google was voted Best Search Engine by Yahoo Internet Life. Secretly they are still saying that, I'll bet.

At or around this time, you can get Google Buttons, three Google Web Search Plans including the Gold Plan for $2000 a year, they are hiring, and Google goes wireless.

Advancing on to 09-19-2000, you will see the hallmark Google as we know it today (with minor changes). Not much change in the layout over the last four years. They have added more tools, yes. But Google seemed to settle on what was going to be at this point in time.

Thanks to SEbasic for inspiration on this article.

UPDATE: Gary Price stopped by in the comments to let us know that he has a page of Google Milestone Pages which include Backrub (1997), Google's First Press Release (1999) and links to key documents and patents.

Google Desktop Proxy - Remote Access to your GDS

Google Desktop Proxy (GDP) is a java program that provides access to your Google Desktop search service from remote machines. The software is provided by Project Computing in a precompiled Java JAR file. The Java source code is also being made available.

Google Desktop was designed with a built-in web server which binds to your PC's TCP/IP loopback interface and can only be accessed by requests originating from your PC. No other machines can send search requests to your Google Desktop search engine. Google Desktop Proxy allows you that access however.

This program is a very simple proxy. A browser or other program on another computer can open a connection to this program which passes the request through to the Google Desktop web server on the same machine as the proxy. Because it is on the same machine, the Google Desktop web server processes the request and passes the result back to the proxy which in turn sends it back to the originating requestor.

There are some bugs with this software that still need to be ironed out. Also, it has no authorization support, so use at your own risk.

Thanks to John for pointing to this.

Google Making a Mockery of Microsoft

A passage in a New York Times article (or via Washington Post) that sums up Google's strategic plan pretty well.

"Several financial analysts said on Thursday that they were still trying to understand what the company's business would be over a longer period because the company has kept much of its strategy closely held, even after going public.

'We can't adequately answer the question of whether the company's stock is overvalued until we can tell what the company is,' said David M. Garrity, a financial analyst with Caris & Company, an investment firm in New York.

However, he added that the broader underlying outline is that the company intends to use software technology made available freely to its customers to drive traffic and that could be a model that would be difficult for rivals like Microsoft to compete against.

'Google is making a mockery of existing technology solutions, to wit, Microsoft,' he said."

We don't know what Google is going to do, but we know how they are going to do it.

Thanks to Bill Holmes for the tip.

Microsoft to Release Desktop Search Tool by Year End

CNET News.com is reporting that Microsoft has set a firmer date for the release of its desktop search software.

During its earnings call with financial analysts, Microsoft said an MSN-branded tool would be made available before the end of 2004. The tool and an algorithmic Web searching engine will be in beta testing by year's end, a representative said.

Microsoft first demonstrated the technology for its own desktop search tool at a financial analysts' conference in July. At the time, MSN executive Yusuf Mehdi would say only that it would be out before the release of Longhorn, the next version of Windows.

The PC search technology that Mehdi showed allowed a computer user to search within Microsoft's Outlook e-mail client as well as within Windows folders such as "My Documents." It was just two weeks prior to the demonstration that Microsoft acquired Lookout Software, a small company with technology for searching e-mail, which may have allowed Microsoft to make progress on the local hard-drive search technology.

Customizing Google Deskbar to Access Google Desktop

If you are using both Google Deskbar and Desktop, then here is a tip for customizing your Deskbar search for use with Google Desktop. The tip also includes suggestions on setting up "sticky searches" to filter for email, files, web history, etc.

Firefox Reaches Goal for NY Times Ad Campaign

Firefox advocates' call for donations to pay for an advertisement in The New York Times has more than reached its target , and only three days into the campaign.

The campaign, run by Spread Firefox volunteers, started Tuesday to raise money to place a full-page ad for the launch of the open-source browser in The New York Times. The goal was to get 2,500 people to donate $30 or more to the marketing fund within 10 days, or before the official release of Firefox 1.0 on Nov. 9.

The Firefox Release 1.0 is a landmark moment in the browser wars. "This is Mozilla’s most important release ever," says Ben Goodger, lead engineer for Firefox. "We have an opportunity to take market share from Microsoft. This is as good a chance as ever existed." And the fact that its fans are paying for a full-page ad in the New York Times calling attention to the product will likely result in a few more stories such as this.

UK to have own SEM Trade Association

A working group of search engine marketing professionals in the UK has come together to plan the formulation of a UK based trade association for Search Engine Marketers. The proposed Search Marketing Association UK (SMA-UK) will provide a platform to inform and educate the marketplace of the benefits of search marketing in the overall marketing mix, as well is giving its members an industry voice.

The new Association is being headed by Barry Lloyd (acting Chairman) of the search marketing firm MakeMeTop. Andy Atkins-Kruger of search marketing firm Web Certain is the acting Deputy. Other current members of the working group include Paddy Bolger , Richard Gregory, Edward Cowell, Colin Irwin, Simon Collingridge, Jason Cartwright, Ammon Johns and Mike Grehan.

The Group cited that SEMPO (an existing US-based organization) was not seen to be appropriate in its operations for the UK market. Barry Lloyd, commenting on the reason for a new UK based association said:

"The UK search engine market is currently the second largest in the World outside the United States. After looking at the way trade associations are being developed internationally it has became apparent that the UK should have its own association for this growing sector, set up in a manner to reflect the specific way that both businesses and trade associations operate in the UK and other parts of Europe."

VIA: SEO Book

Yahoo Buys E-mail Search Company Stata Labs

Yahoo has purchased e-mail software company Stata Labs, in what could be an investment in a coming PC search tool to rival Google and Microsoft. Stata Labs sells (actually sold) an e-mail application called Bloomba that lets people search message text and attachments.

The Stata Lab's Web site notified its users of the buyout with this message:

We are pleased to announce that Stata Labs has been acquired by Yahoo!. We are thrilled to join Yahoo!’s industry-leading team of technical experts. This acquisition will provide Yahoo! with exceptional technological expertise and strategic assets.

We appreciate the ongoing support we’ve received from our customers and partners. We intend to continue supporting Stata Labs’ existing customers for one year from date of product purchase. Again, we thank you for your support and encourage you to review the Frequently Asked Questions.

Bloomba was billed as the world's first search-based email. You can instantly find any email message, attachment or contact whether or not you use folders. Bloomba came with an integrated personal information manager that includes a searchable calendar and contacts.

Elizabeth Millard of ComputerUser interviewed Stata Labs Co-founder and CTO, Raymie Stata, earlier this year and asked him what he thought are the largest challenges that you see in providing your products?

"Our biggest challenge is the perception that, to survive as a software company, you need to out-box Microsoft. The fact is, fragmentation of the e-mail and PIM markets is inevitable, with players like us building products for heavy users. These users feel more pain at the hands of old-fashioned products like Outlook and need something new and better. Our company can not only survive, but thrive on this smaller segment, and in this role paint a brighter future for all users."

Stata described their product as a "Personal Content Database," a database that's optimized for the type of semi-structured data typical of personal data and the configurations of personal platforms. At the database level, our focus is on fast, scalable search, and on replication. At the same time, we're building applications that leverage this underlying database technology. We've started with e-mail--where the management problems have become the most acute--and we'll be slowly expanding the footprint.

It seems that the "footprint" will be expanding much faster than he had imagined at that time. Welcome to Yahoo Raymie!

Security Patch Release for Serendipity PHP Weblog System

There is a security patch release (0.7-rc1) as well as the last release candidate for Serendipity 0.7. It is advised to upgrade to this version.

This release contains a bugfix to the a possibly exploitable HTTP Response Splitting, which may allow intermediate caching/proxy servers to perform man-in-the-middle-attacks.

Gmail Drive Vulnerability Reported

Per a OSVDB report, Bjarke Viksoe's Gmail Drive 1.2 contains a flaw that may lead to an unauthorized information disclosure. The issue is due to the program naming the drive based on the Gmail account login name, resulting in a loss of confidentiality.

GMail Drive is a Shell Namespace Extension that creates a virtual filesystem around your Google GMail account, allowing you to use GMail as a storage medium.

Currently, there are no known upgrades, patches, or workarounds available to correct this issue.

AOL offers broadband subscribers free flicks

Wowsers! AOL launched a promotion that lets subscribers of its broadband service download full-feature films for free through Movielink. This almost is a temptation to get me to sign up, but unfortunately I do not have a local number for AOL and the telephone company would tack on a surcharge to my bill for access.

Stll the promotion sounds pretty good. Under the program, the companies will make 10 'classic titles,' including 'Steel Magnolias' and 'Against All Odds,' available for free in the first month. In subsequent months, five movies will be offered. Once downloading is complete, customers have 30 days to watch the film and 24 hours to complete it, once viewing begins.

The words, 'classic titles', does give me pause however. I interpret it to mean 'only from a limited list of our choosing and you have no other choices'.

SOURCE: CNET News.com

Google (paritally?) fixes security hole

As I reported earlier, Jim Ley posted the warning about Google's script-insertion flaw. As it turns out, this cross-site exploit has affected Google's main site for as long as two years. Now with the addition of Google Desktop, it has become more serious because it places the results of a desktop search into the output of a regular Google search.

It appears that Google has fixed this security flaw in its Web search service that could have allowed malicious hackers to modify its pages. But, according to Ley, the fix doesn't seem to be complete to him. In special cases, strings used in javascript and vbscript can still put things other than http urls into img elements. This may mean there are remaining vectors to attack, either with different script methods, or by playing with charsets that bypass the filtering.

"I seem to be getting what appears to be successful google exploits coming in again, I don’t know if this is because of proxy caches, or some google boxes haven’t been patched, or just because the logs are making other requests look like google ones. But a reasonably steady request for the javascript files with google referrers. and then subsequent hits to the steal uri just like the pattern when it was working for me are coming in."

"Still appears patched for me though - Netcraft however says they’ve found another though, not surprising, but lets hope google are little faster at fixing it this time - Turns out my 2 years was actually an undersestimate, in May 2002 I posted it to usenet, and that was months after I’d let google know."

"Google was recently alerted to a potential security vulnerability affecting users of our Web site," a Google representative said. "We have since fixed this vulnerability, and all current and future Google.com users are protected."

This is in direct contradiction to Ley's statement of them being informed over two years ago and leaves you to wonder just how safe the Desktop product is.

UPDATE: Netcraft reported that Google has fixed the second phishing vulnerability that was discovered on Wednesday. Google notified Netcraft that they had closed the vulnerability, making this less-than-two-days response much faster than the two years reported by Jim Ley when he discovered a separate but similar bug.

List of Search Engine IP Addresses

You can see the latest list of Search Engine IP Addresses and hostnames here. Included on the list (last updated in September) are:

• Fast/AllTheWeb
  
• Alta Vista
  
• Lycos
  
• Inktomi
  
• WiseNut
  
• Google
  
• Ask Jeeves/Teoma
  
• Misc Search Engines
  
• Non Spiders

Robots.txt Validator

An online utility that will validate your robots.txt file.

VIA: Band of Gonzos Forums

Mozilla / Firefox / Camino Tabbed Browsing Vulnerabilities

In a Secunia Advisory they have discovered two vulnerabilities in Mozilla, Mozilla Firefox, and Camino, which can be exploited by malicious web sites to obtain sensitive information and spoof dialog boxes.

1) Inactive tabs can launch dialog boxes so they appear to be displayed by a web site in another tab. This can be exploited by a malicious web site to show a dialog box, which seems to originate from a trusted web site.

2) Inactive tabs can gain focus from form fields on web sites in another tab. This can potentially be exploited to collect sensitive data entered in form fields on other web sites.

Secunia's solution is don't visit trusted web sites while visiting untrusted web sites or disable JavaScript.

Mozilla apparantly have been aware of this vulnerability since October 4th. It has now just been made public.

The form focus tab flaw (the second issue) was fixed on the Aviary branch (1.0 releases of Firefox and Thunderbird) and the 1.7 branch on October 6th. The fix is more of a workaround than a proper solution. The first issue is still open.

You can test for vulnerablities by visiting the Secunia Advisory page.

I gotta get one of these

It is so long that...
* Some webforms are unable to read it
* Some software cannot be configured
* People have a hard time typing it in
* Companies think that it is a fake
* It is the longest one on earth

What is it?




It is The World's Longest Alphabetical Email Address of course.

And it is free.

I am thinking about dropping one of these onto the site for the email harvesters to choke on.

Thanks to Itchy Hands

Cross-site Scripting Attacks Possible on Google Desktop

Netcraft is reporting that a cross-site scripting vulnerabilty has just been plugged, but another one still exists.

"A British computer scientist has demonstrated that opportunities exist for fraudsters to launch phishing attacks using cross site scripting bugs on the very widely used Google sites. Using these conduits, fraudsters would be able to inject their own content onto the site in order to collect credit card details and other sensitive information.

Jim Ley's demonstrations include a well crafted credit card submission form which explained that Google was soon to become a subscription-only service at $5 per month, but that users could take advantage of an earlybird special offer to obtain lifetime free searches for just $10.

See screenshot.

Google's introduction of the Google Desktop has exacerbated the situation, as Google search results can now include the content of local files. The vulnerability uncovered in the Google Desktop allowed an attacker to search a user's local machine for passwords and report the results directly back to the attacker's own web site.

Ley notes that both of these problems were fixed earlier this morning. However, while investigating his report, Netcraft noticed at least one more serious phishing vulnerability which would allow an attacker to inject their own content using the Google web site. Such links are easily hidden in web forms or disguised as links in phishing mails. Netcraft has notified Google of the vulnerability and will explain the issue when they receive a response from Google."

Google Top Ten Search for "powered by"

An interesting observation by Evan Williams for the search term "powered by" (with quotes) in Google. The search will pull up results that mostly contain the term in the anchor text of links pointing to the sites (view the cache version of the pages to see this).

Anchor text is one of the most powerful ranking factors at Google. The results are a pretty good gauge of how many pages are powered by certain software or services. Of course, pages with higher PageRank could influence the list and not just the brute strength method.

The top ten, at the time of this post, are:

1. Apache.org
   
2. MySQL.com
   
3. PHP.net
   
4. Blogger.com
   
5. Bravenet.com
   
6. FreeBSD.org
   
7. ListBot.com
   
8. RedHat.com
   
9. RingSurf.com
   
10. Linux.org
    

Surprisingly, Google.com did not make the cut. It came in at #14.

Your results may vary, depending on your location. Evan actually had Apache, Blogger and MySQL in the top three.

Google Rolls Out Corporate Search

Available only in the US for the last two years, Google has now rolled out Corporate Search into the global market. This technology enables firms to "google" their own networks easily.

This Google appliance comes in a yellow box which can be rack mounted into the Company Server. The box contains a Google search engine with "tweaks" and runs on a version of Linux.

Google's new solution carries its own hazards though. It makes all documents on an intranet visible to all, unless security steps are taken.

VIA: The Unofficial Google Weblog

Lycos UK launches 10GB webmail - Includes Online Drive

Digital Media Europe is reporting that Lycos UK has launched today a 10GB webmail service - Lycos Personal Mail 10GB.

Storage on the Lycos UK Freemail service rises to 300MB as part of the upgrade.

The expanded LYCOS UK Personal Mail 10GB account is now the largest fee-for-service e-mail service available.

All the revamped e-mail services include access to Lycos UK's new Online File Storage Drive (Online drive). The service enables Lycos UK customers to drag and drop files from windows directly into an online storage drive.


VIA: ResearchBuzz

Cloaking 101 - Questions and Answers

A frank and very open discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums regarding cloaking techniques ... and the pitfalls.

The thread has liberal amounts of thoughts from their resident "industrial strength cloaker", Fantomaster. You will learn such things as IP Delivery, Shadow Domains, and a host of other tricks of the cloaking trade.

Meanwhile, Larry and Sergey are in Japan on their promotional tour. They had this to say:

"The company is also working hard to stop search engine optimizers (SEO) from distorting search results...There are many SEOs that are trying to manipulate Google. Our biggest message is that through our products, we always want to promote a better and healthier service."

No that was not in response to the thread at SEW, it is just Peter's quirky sense of humor in his blog post today.

Google Desktop Caches Deleted Files

Philip, of Blogoscoped, has just discovered that Google Desktop will cache files that have been purged from your Recycle Bin.

"I tested this by creating a text file with a unique string in it. I then threw the file in the Windows trash can, which I emptied afterwards. And guess what, the file can now still be found, and Google Desktop offers me its full-text cache of the file even though it had been removed."

This is something I think all people should be aware of. It could be a good thing, then again, it could be a bad thing.

You can instruct Google Desktop to exclude the Recycle Bin from being indexed of course, but I think this is a bass-ackwards approach myself. I think it would be more convenient to actually be able to select what you want to include in the first place. I am hoping that Google will take this approach in the future. It will be far more simpler, and then they do not have to worry about people wondering why their private documents are showing up in searches. They would only have themselves to blame.

MozillaNews (re)Ponders Google's Browser Plans

It seems that some people within Mozilla are digging up certain inconsistencies and covert goings-on which add to the speculation of a new Google browser may still be in the works.

"As I stated, Mozilla.org and Mozilla developers have been very quiet on all of this. But with such an open organization, it's hard to hide all secrets. There have been a lot of hidden bugs in Bugzilla related to searching, bugs that even members of the Security group can't access. Recently, there was a bug duplicated to a confidential bug with the following comment by the triager: 'This is a duplicate of a private bug about working with Google. So closing this one.' That bug also now closed, but it was open long enough for people to notice it.

There's also a lot of 'covert' code going into the tree without individual bug references. And none of these patches are being checked in by Google staff, but by other Mozilla developers, ostensibly checking in code for Google employees to keep a low profile. None of this is Google-exclusive, per se, as much as it is code that one could easily see as making life easier for a third party developer making heavy integration changes. The checking commends are usually very technically described, possibly to obfuscate their use to the majority of watchers to maintain the secret. Example"

The bug mentioned above, is one that I reported on earlier, in which Blogzilla's Pindar reported that Bug 226572 - Google branded Mozilla browser was suddenly marked as Private. Now a duplicate bug appears, and disappears from sight. This time the reason for marking it Private is because of "working with Google". It is still unclear what the bug actually is, but it does show that there is activity going on around this non-existant Google browser.

There are also recent acknowledgements from the Google camp which fan the flames even higher. Google, being Google, are pretty good at secrets though. This is one that they are seemingly playing very close to the vest.

"IE Shines On Broken Code", says BugTraq Test

Slashdot has a post from timothy where he came across a BugTraq entry on web browser security. Basically, the story is that Michal Zalewski started feeding randomly malformed HTML into Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Opera, Lynx, and Links and watching what happened. The bottom line?

"All browsers but Microsoft Internet Explorer kept crashing on a regular basis due to NULL pointer references, memory corruption, buffer overflows, sometimes memory exhaustion; taking several minutes on average to encounter a tag they couldn't parse."

If you want to try this at home, he's also provided the tools he used in the BugTraq entry.

France's Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool has Trademark Warning

The French version of the Overture keyword suggestion tool has an additional note attached. The note briefly states:

Note 2: You can check whether a word corresponds to a registered trademark by visiting the INPI website <http://www.icimarques.com>

This seems to suggest that Overture is putting the burden on the user to validate whether a Trademark has been registered or not. At least, that is the way I look at it.

VIA: SEO & Web Marketing News -> North

Ping-o-matic hits 20 Million

Ping-o-matic hit it's 20 millionth ping sometime today.

Them's a lot of pings, but I am sure it is just the beginning of a lot more to come. Congrats guys!

Gmail for Dummies - Coming to an Amazon Near You

That is right. A new book simply titled The Gmail Book: Your Definitive Guide can be ordered in advance at Amazon.com for $21.99 $15.39. Hey, it is already being discounted! There is even free shipping on orders over $25. Kewl, I think I will take two then.

Don't bother rushing in to pre-order the book. You have plenty of time to do so, it is not due out until April 8th of 2005. I am sure Prentice Hall will be going thru quite a few rewrites before then.

What gets me is that there are 304 pages in this book. Come on! Why would it take 304 pages to explain how to use Gmail?

Thanks to geraldine in the Gmail-Users Group.

Drupal 4.5.0 released

Drupal has just announced the final release of Drupal 4.5.0.

Some of the key changes since Drupal 4.4.2 include:

• Tab based user interface
  
• Configurable menus
  
• Multiple roles per user
  
• Document/image uploads
  
• Node-level permissions
  
• Improved locale support
  
• Anonymous comments
  
• Theme system improvements
  
• Customizable user profiles
  
• Usability improvements
  
• Configurable input formats
  
• Performance improvements

For a complete list of the major changes, please consult the Drupal Changelog.

Coming with the new release, Drupal is also sporting a new look.

"For Drupal 4.5 one of our action points was improving the Drupal.org site itself. As well as making information easier to find for users, we wanted to make the site friendlier for people who are new to Drupal. As part of this, a new look was designed for Drupal.org. The style, called Bluebeach, was inspired by the Bluemarine Xtemplate and was designed by me, Steven Wittens."

Looks very nice!

Desktop Search - A Closer Look

Dennis O'Reilly has penned a new article that will appear in the November issue of PC World Magazine which has an accounting of ten desktop search tools for your hard drive and inbox. Some of the software is well known, and not so well known.

While this is a more interesting read than the Open Sourcery's list and Amit's detailed comparison, it only accentuates the fact that everyone's view of what Desktop Search should be and how it should function are widely varied. All three had different choices for top dog in desktop search. (Btw, Amit mentions Filehand Search which was not on either of the other two lists.)

The only thing they could agree on is that Windows Search sucks and Google Desktop is an interesting novelty, albeit a hot topic garnering a lot of buzz.

Commonalities in Desktop Search
All of the software have something in common though, they do not support too many non-Window file types. If they do, it is made to order.

The fact is some of these programs leverage a portion of the Windows operating system known as the Catalog Index Server which drops a file called index.dat onto your hard-drive. The aforementioned Filehand Search states that the program will not function properly if you turn the Index Server off.

Carlos Perez says that Google Desktop uses the index.dat file to locate URLs you visit, the email you receive and send, AIM chats, your cookies and apparently everything you open with the file manager. He also has a stark warning about spyware that already exploit this file:

"Google Desktop could make it even easier to exploit, allowing for easier discovery of confidential data on your computers! Now you have to make a call. Do you trade convenience for a potentially massive privacy hole? The problem is compounded when you have no option but to use Internet Explorer, the primary entry point of most Spyware programs."

I do not hold a PHD in Computer Science, so I will take this statement with a grain of salt. I will concede however that with all the choices that we now have out there ... are any of them really that safe to use?

Faster Search using Windows Index Server
So why is it that Windows Search does not utilize this Index Server as efficiently as these programs can? Good question, of which I do not have an answer for.

But Windows does have another file search available to the user, if you look in the right place. This search is lightening quick and searches a lot more than just email and html pages.

Located in the Control Panel's Administrative Tools is the Computer Management snap-in. This snap-in allows you to configure and create custom catalogs that can be queried within the snap-in itself.

The catalog that you will want to query is located in the Computer Management snap-in under Services and Applications > Indexing Service > System. You will see the "Query the Catalog" link, which will open up your search form. I tried a couple of searches and the results were instantaneous.

Another feature is that you can create custom snap-ins that will hold your searchable catalogs. This allows an easy one-click access to your custom catalogs -- all of which you choose what gets searched and what directories will be included to be indexed.

Here is a complete guide on Creating/Configuring a Catalog for Indexing at Microsoft Support.

I am exploring this more in detail. It is not as pretty as the other alternatives, but it is just as effective. This method does give you far more control than any of the other alternatives, namely you are in control without the use of a third-party software and therefore no security issues.

Embedded Creative Commons License Lookup Made Easier

Creative Commons has provided a tool, ccLookup, which allows you to drop an MP3 file onto the program icon (or a running window) in order to verify an embedded CC claim, if any. The free download is available for both Mac OS X and Windows.

Creative Commons has had a long-standing specification for embedding licenses in MP3 audio files which requires two pieces of information: a license claim embeddded in the audio file, and verification metadata hosted on a web page. While command-line tools for looking up the verification metadata have been available for a while, the ccLookup tool provides for an easier drag and drop solution for examining an embedded claim.

VIA: Creative Commons

Gmail Begins Signing Email with DomainKeys

According to a post at IETF's MAIL-SIG list, Google has begun to sign outgoing email from Gmail with Yahoo's DomainKeys signatures. This is the first large provider of email that is actually doing so (not even Yahoo has started that yet).

VIA: Slashdot

Unofficial Yahoo! Weblog seeks new blogger

Nino Marchetti blogs that there has been a huge drop in postings recently.

Why, do you ask? Not enough time. I have too much on my plate these days to be able to keep at this like it requires.

Nino and Jason are looking for a new person to take over at the Unofficial Yahoo! Weblog.

Interested? Drop them a line and you might find yourself the next Unofficial Y! Weblog blogger.

MSNBC Rips Off Yahoo! News

Not only does MSNBC follow Yahoo!News' lead in providing a recently added News feed of their own, but it appears that they have snagged a copy of Yahoo's TOS as well.

See Jeff Boulter's side by side comparison of the TOS.

"Jeff is an engineering manager for Yahoo News and one of the driving forces behind Y! News RSS", says Jeremy Zawodny and adds, "Apparently the lawyers at MSNBC would rather copy Yahoo's "terms of use" for RSS than start from scratch."

This isn't the first time that MS has "borrowed" something, but it is the first time that I have seen this much blatancy while doing it.

Certain Labels in Gmail are not allowed

Per a member post in the Gmail-Users Google Group, he found that the label "unread" gets a system error and thinks there may be another feature on the way.

Creating a label entitled "unread" gets the following error message:

  System specific label names are not allowed. Please try another name.  

I don't think there are any new features on the way, for you get the same response for the labels entitled "draft", "starred", "trash", etc. But it is an interesting piece of information to file away.

Firefox Toolbar Update - Google Desktop Now Included

The McDonald brothers have updated the Google portion of the Firefox Toolbar to include Google Desktop. Grab your update now.

While the Google Firefox Toolbar does work on Macintosh, Google Desktop does not, so this update will not be of any use.

VIA: Blogoscoped

Another Google Backlink Update in Progress

I just learned that there is another Google backlink in progress. Sure enough.

Checked a few sites out, the links are pretty funky. I am picking up backlinks from redirection scripts (FURL) and from comments that I made in a few blogs. In the case of the later, those are also scripted and the pages do not have any PR. Basically, I picked up a whole slew of crappy links.

UPDATE: Forum coverage list. More to come.

• Band of Gonzos
  
• DigitalPoint
  
• HighRankings
  
• JimWorld
  
• SearchEngineWatch
  
• SEO Chat - Slower than a slug.
  
• WebProWorld
  
• V7N Forums
  
• Webmaster-Talk - Technical problems
  
• WebmasterWorld
  

Turn Google News into an RSS Feed

A simple php & curl script to turn Google News queries into an RSS feed. Please be warned though, this is a scraping script. 'nuf said.

I tested the script out in my Sage reader for Firefox, and it is works very well. No reason why it would not work in most readers.

Since you can not use the Google API to query the Google News area, this is about the only way to get a feed from them. It would be nice if Google would start providing feeds for their News Search though.

Firefox Hack: Numbered Tabs for Firefox

Here is a great hack for Firefox. If you are a person with numerous tabs that are open and want to jump to a particular tab, then this is the thing for you.

This hack will modify your userChrome.css file to overlay the number of the tab onto it. You can visually see the number of the tab to use for the correct CTRL-number keystroke to access it quickly and easily.

My Yahoo Upgrade Not Available to SBC/DSL Customers

Apparantly the new beta upgrade of My! Yahoo is not available to SBC/DSL customers a paid Internet Service of Yahoo. Maybe this has been posted somewhere, but it is news to me.

Yahoo's response:

"... we hear your frustrations, however, it is important to note that the service is a beta, which means that we are continuing to work out the kinks.

We are planning on rolling out the My Yahoo! enhancements to our SBC Yahoo! members before the end of the year. This is consistent with how we always looks to extend service improvements to our SBC Yahoo! members. This allows both Yahoo! and SBC to make sure the service works well and is virtually bug free."

Oh yeah, almost forgot. There are slides (Powerpoint) and audio (40 min. stream) of their presentation of My! Yahoo RSS at Gnomedex.

Daniel Brandt's "Letter to the Editor" at Playboy

Since Playboy will not publish a Letter to the Editor from Daniel Brandt, I guess he has to throw it up on his site (excuse my pun ... but gag me!).

Daniel includes an note stating that he has given Playboy enough lead time on his letter which was in response to the Page/Brin Interview, and he is going ahead and publishing it in its entirety.

Google Watch editor's note: The letters editor at Playboy asked Google Watch if we'd submit a letter about the above interview. The following was submitted a week later, and Playboy acknowledged receipt. Now it is October 16, and the November issue is out. We have no idea if any portion of this letter was published, or will be published in the future. We didn't post the letter until today because we wanted to give Playboy some lead time.

The letter is just more of the same blah-blah-blah from Daniel ... cookies, security, Google is Evil, etc. Nothing new here that he has not already blogged, published or posted in the forums.

Maybe next time, Daniel, you should also send in some photos too. Actually, have you tried Playgirl yet?

Google Desktop Contains IM Code

According to a CNET News article, Richard Smith, a well-known security consultant, said he examined the code in the desktop application and found included in the program files a new protocol: google_im://. "This is a good sign there's an IM client," he said.

A Google representative said the protocol flagged by Smith does not hint at a pending Google IM product; rather, it is merely a component used to capture IM data from America Online Instant Messenger and make it searchable on the desktop.

Another non-story.

Smith did unearth some of the history behind the desktop search application, before it was named Google Desktop Search, the software was code-named Total Recall. Google confirmed the handle and said the project had also previously taken the code name Fluffy Bunny.

Ping-o-matic's My Yahoo Pings Failing

Ping-o-matic is having problems with pings to My Yahoo. Yahoo is not intentionally blocking them. They've been in contact with techs at Yahoo, and they are supposed to be looking into it. No timeline on when it should be fixed.

In the meantime, however, My Yahoo picks up pings from blo.gs and weblogs.com, so as long as you continue to ping those, Yahoo will see when you’ve updated.

Buenos Aires University Student is Winner of Google Code Jam

Google announced today that Sergio Sancho, a computer science student at the University of Buenos Aires won the Google Code Jam, Google's annual computer programming competition, which comes with a $10,000 first prize. Sancho competed against a total of 7,500 top programmers from around the world for first place.

A second place prize of $7,000 went to Po-Ru Loh, a mathematics student at Caltech.

Third prize of $5,000 was awarded to Reid Barton, a math major at MIT, and fourth place and $3,000 went to Tomasz Czajka, who is studying for a doctorate in computer science at Purdue University.

Additional cash prizes went to the other top 50 finalists, who are working or studying in the United States and in 16 other countries, from Scandinavia to central Europe to Hong Kong, Korea, Australia and New Zealand.

Google flew all finalists to its Mountain View, Calif. headquarters this week to compete in the championship round.

In 2003, Jimmy Mardell of Stockholm, Sweden, took home the grand prize.

Google Desktop - Under the Hood

InsideGoogle has a very revealing expose of what is underneath the hood of Google Desktop. Nathan caught up with Marissa Mayer, Google's director of consumer web products, at Digital Life today and got an earful of interesting tidbits.

Here are some interesting parts of the article:

• Gmail users will have a bit of good news. Gmail users should be able to search Gmail in the next few weeks.
  
• While PageRank is not used in determining relevancy on desktop searches, Desktop does make use of nearly every other method of determining keyword relevance Google uses, from titles to bold text. 'The way queries are parsed is the same' Marissa said.
  
• The Google Desktop Index maxes out at two gigabytes. The data can't go above that ceiling, so don't worry about it taking over your hard drive.
  
• For now Desktop is only for one user on the computer. First come first serve, the others are plum out of luck. They are working on fixing this as soon as possible.
  
• It's likely Google will do a software bundle in the future, so users can download all Google products in a single installer.
  
• The reason that Hello is getting such low press coverage is that the Piccassa team doesn't think its ready for prime time.
  
• The codename 'Puffin' was the designation for the Deskbar, and that's been out for a while. Marissa wouldn't say what Desktop's code name was, but it sure wasn't 'Puffin'. (oops)

Source: InsideGoogle

Google Desktop Search in Firefox via Mycroft

Here is a Mycroft plugin for the Google Desktop Search tool. It requires slightly more work to install than the standard Mycroft plugin (three short steps instead of one), so it has not been submitted to the official Mycroft website.

This plugin allows you to search your computer’s hard drive using the new Google Desktop Search tool by typing your search query into the search box in Firefox. It also displays 100 results by default, as opposed to the 10 that the standard GDS shows.

Gmail Invites Have Stopped?

According to members of the gTray Google Group, Gmail invites have come to a stop. Personally I have a few left to hand out and have not noticed.

It was a few months ago that this had happened and then the invites resumed with an actual increase in the number of those invites. This could be a signal for a repeat of that type of action from Google, or is it something else?

On that note, first person to leave a comment here will get one of my invites. Leave the email address you want me to send it to (I will edit it out later and not leave it up for very long). Please be advised that Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail accounts may toss this invite into the bulk bin or worse, so be on the lookout for it.

AOL Testing Desktop Search Waters

A CNET News.com report states that America Online has confirmed that it is testing a new search engine that scans for files on a PC's hard drive, mirroring Google's Desktop Search. The AOL desktop search is being developed by a third-party's technology, and it is not Google.

The desktop search tool is currently being offered as a feature within a test version of a standalone Web browser that AOL is developing. As reported earlier, AOL is readying a stand-alone browser that is being based on the Internet Explorer engine.

It was also reported that the new desktop search tool will match many features offered in Google's similar application. Both products can search for Microsoft Office files such as Word and Excel, photos, music, chat logs from AOL Instant Messenger and previously viewed IE pages.

This might explain why AIM files were included in the launch of Google's desktop search. Both products, however, cater only to Internet Explorer web page history and leave other browser technology out of the mix. As I just reported though, it is possible to hack Firefox to allow any tool to index visited web pages. It does leave you to wonder why both Companies are ignoring the other browsers.

VIA: InsideGoogle

Firefox Hack: Add Firefox History to Google Desktop Search

One of the biggest buzzes right now is Google's Desktop Search. Unfortunately if you are using Firefox as your main browser, then you are SOL when it comes to searching your browser history. Google Desktop Search only supports Internet Explorer history.

There is hope however. Jon Udell mentions that Ken Schutte's Slogger is a Firefox extension that saves your viewed pages. Once the pages are saved, then any indexer can be used -- including Google Desktop Search.

I couldn't wait to try this out. I installed version 0.2.2 from the main Slogger site, because there does not seem to be an update posted over at Mozilla. I have to say that it does work, but according to ClassyDee it will not give you the browsing history metadata.

There is a toolbar button which I suggest that you add in a convenient place. This button has some options that will come in handy, such as auto-logging the web pages that you visit. Alternatively, you can set this up as a one-shot save option that you can use on a page by page basis which would be useful if you are either low on disk space or really do not want to log your complete browsing history. In the case of the later, this might be a wiser choice, especially if you have a tech savvy significant other.

FCKeditor - Text Editor for the Internet

Don't let this name fool you, but the FCKeditor is a full fledged text editor for Internet. This HTML text editor brings to the web many of the powerful functionalities of known desktop editors like Word. It's really lightweight and doesn't require any kind of installation in the client computer for it is all TTW (or Through The Web).

It is also Open Source and jam packed with features, including Internet Explorer 5.5+ and Gecko browser (Mozilla / Netscape) compatibility, skinnable, link creation and anchor support, table creation and cell editing, form fields, right click context menus support, spell checker, CSS support, automatic browser detection, multi-language support, integration with many scripting languages (ie: PHP, ASP, ASP.NET, ColdFusion, etc.) and image / file uploading.

You can demo it here.

MSN Tech Preview - Still Has Aces in the Hole

What Microsoft is revealing in their Tech Preview and what is going on behind the scenes are two different things, says Robin Good. Robin, one of the MSN Search Champs, was shown some of the key facilities and ideas that are going to power the new MSN Search engine during the whirlwind tour at the Microsoft Campus in Redmond just recently.

"None of the innovative ideas, interface solutions and other new solutions showcased to us during the 2-day event has yet made it to this Preview release, though stable and fully functional features will be gradually rolled out to it as soon as they will become available."

Robin is bound by his non-disclosure agreement and does not mention much more than that. But he does confirm that the MSN Search Team are seriously committed to rolling out the new Search Engine before year's end, although there was no specific date given.

"This does not mean that the new MSN Search will contain the full spectrum of features and facilities that are being developed right now, but that upon launch the new search engine will be able to stand up on its own when compared to its closest competitors (Google, Yahoo)."

Robin has a great article on his visit to Seattle, very good reading.