All about Mobile, Web, Technology, Politics, Security, E-Commerce and Living in the Philippines.

Sunday, December 31, 2006

Txtdomain Mobile CMS

Txtdomain.com is the first true Mobile CMS in the Philippines utilizing Mobile 2.0 technology which offers instant creation and management of mobile services accessed using SMS keywords and short code combination. Check out the demo video that was recently released for non-registered users which shows how easy it is to create you own mobile service in under 30 minutes.

For inquiries please email or call 897-3377, Monday to Friday between 10 AM to 5PM




 


Watch on site demo of Txtdomain in wide screen format here.

Saturday, December 30, 2006

Beware of wire tapped phones

As more people uses mobile phones as alternative wallets compared to credit cards, the more we must be aware about and protected against mobile data theft. There are actually lots of mobile data theft that has been reported on the news especially with local celebrities where they allegedly had their mobile phones repaired but ended up having their private pictures from their phone published on the Internet.





This brings me to the site endoacustica.com who specializes on spy equipments, one of their hot selling items are the Spy Phones -- a normal looking phone (latest models are available) but it was reprogrammed (firmware + chip hack) to allow certain number to call the phone without ringing, it even works while the phone is off! This allow the caller to eaves drop using the phone without the user being aware of, it also allows interception of SMS (forwarding). Now imagine theives using this type of technology, given the right motives and person to attack. These spy phones may intercept starting anything from private business negotiations up to bank account details.

Mobile ADS

Often when we talk about mobile ads we refer to SMS Spams, Ads on Wap sites, sponsored wallpaper and poly/ringtones, ads that only promote mobile services and content. Although mobile based ads market isn't that big, its growing rapidly these past 2 year due to telcos adaption of 3G technology. There are companies like Cellfire that took mobile ads one notch higher by providing mobile delivery of discount coupons but its not enough. For ads to be profitable it must be delivered to mass audience with the longest possible retention time. Not just by SMS broadcast that happens once in a while or via sponsored contents which users still needs to download like Game Jump.

Verizon recently announced it will be offering ads on its phones, beginning early next year, Verizon Wireless will allow placement of banner advertisements on news, weather, sports and other Internet sites that users visit and display on their mobile phones, company executives said. This is a good example of what I'm looking for to push mobile ads to go mainstream, but I have reservations depending on Verizon's final idea if its actually inserting ads into each sites the user's visit via mobile phone. That would be data tampering and a sever violation of its user's privacy, the same reason why your ISPs doesn't insert ads on every page you browse. It would be OK if Verizon will just stick their ads on their own portal which eventually one step falling short of how ads should work. It should be based on the same concept how Internet ads should work like Google Adsense. But putting Google Adsense on mobile proves to be not a good way to track impressions since current mobile infrastructure routes each GPRS or 3G traffic through telco's Internet web proxy (mobile devices doesn't have IP address anyway).

After much thought I came up with another solution to the problem, but it requires that both ad providers/server and connection provider be on the same network. The solution would totally allow the same Adsense experience on mobile which IMHO is worth venturing into especially for telcos.

I did prior test with Google's Adsense with the solution and it works for click-through ads with the ad server not being on the same network as the telco but it cannot track unique ad impressions. With this alone I'm confident the solution for mobile ads to be successful is if and only if:

Telco = Google

Saddam is DEAD

Saddam is finally dead, the story has 7,945 diggs by the time im writing this post -- about 10 hours after the execution. IMHO its a good way to end the year by ending the burdens the world has carried this past year and not letting it pass on the new year.

See the video when Saddam has sentenced to death:



Full coverage of Saddam's execution via CNN.

Thursday, December 28, 2006

Taiwan Quake Cripples Philippine Internet

December 27, 2006: Taiwan was hit by an earthquake which killed and injured a lot of people and destroyed billions worth of infrastructure including the underwater fiber optics cables that serves as the Internet backbone for Asia. This only reminds us that even if we struggle to design a secure computer systems, its still based on the flawed physical systems which makes it forever vulnerable.

Here's a snapshot of the chaos the earthquake caused in the cyberworld:

Sunday, December 24, 2006

How SEO should not be: Bizzare Google Request

Dean Hunts Blog is taking a beating as more and more bloggers flock to his blog site after he posted a hilarious email from some company guy with a very strange request.

The Email reads as follows:

Hello Dean,

My name is [edited] and I run [edited].com

I have been running the site for over two years and we have been ranked very highly for the search term [edited].
On Thursday morning I checked our google positions and your site is now above us for this term. I haev checked your blog and it has nothing to do with [edited], so I think it would be best all round if you remove your blog from google for this search term.

Please understand that we make our living from this, and you are just writing a blog that has nothing to do with [edited].
If you do not remove yourself from google for this search, then I will call them myself and have you removed.
I expect a reply soon.

Thankyou.

Track more of this at Dean's Blog

Saturday, December 23, 2006

Greetings

Merry Christmas and I wish you all Happy Holidays!

Btw my company wishes to extend its greeting also:

Releases of iPhone killer

The much anticiated iPhone will have to face rough competition when it comes out due to iPhone killers that was released earlier. Take a look at Samsung 8GB T9 MP3 player which was featured on TelecomsKorea website:

"The new T9 can store 16 films (500MB) downloaded from Samsung Media Studio and 2,000 songs(4MB). T9 features Bluetooth connectivity, built-in lithium polymer battery, FM radio tuner, and voice recording. Playing time for music is 30 hours and for video is six hours."


Photo from TelecomsKorea.com


I do agree it will not definitely hurt iPhone's sales due to Apple's cult followers but undoubtedly on countries like Korea, iPhone will be a long gone fad by the time it comes out.

Friday, December 22, 2006

Transformers : The Movie

Check out this first Transformers The Movie trailer! Awesome.

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

MySpace Mobile on Cingular


MySpace, the social-website which was recently bought by News Corp now opens it mobile version of the service for Cingular. Subscribers to Cingular, the largest U S cellphone company, can use MySpace Mobile to post pictures, add friends, and update blogs for $2.99 a month. MySpace plans to sign partnerships with other U S wireless carriers next year, Kapur said. MySpace also plans to offer wireless services overseas, he said.

Story via Boston.com

Monday, December 18, 2006

Microsoft defeated by crackers (again) Vista activation got cracked.

Since last week, rumors have surfaced about Vista's activation crack. Not until this weekend that the story was verified, its true. Vista got cracked and MS scrambled to release KB929391 WGA to patch the hole but warnings has already excalated not to apply the patch for cracked Vista.

The crack is ingenious, tit actually runs an emulated WGA authentication server and validates the Vista installation. This technique is not entirely new, using packet reverse engineering any server can actually be emulated, even Blizzard's complex WOW server has been emulated a few weeks after the game was released out of beta. Certainly MS WGA server isn't as complex as WOW server so it not surprising it was reversed that fast.

Sunday, December 17, 2006

Google Phone!

Google and Orange are in the talks for creating the first Google Phone. Google who has vast expertise in data gathering and retrieval but still a newbie when it comes to mobile technology, that's why Google chose Orange, which is owned by France Telecoms, Europe's second-largest telecoms group.

At first I was excited about the prospect on owning a Google Phone, imagine mobile location based searches as superior as Google Earth. But i think there is a miss, first Phone doesn't equal to Orange. If Google wants a good phone in terms of usability and design then they should go to Nokia and if they are going to open their own telco infrastructure specially catered to data then they should have talked to Japan's NT DoCoMo; if they wanted to earn expertise with building mobile applications then they should talk to Sun and finally if they want skill mobile developers, marketing consultant and product developers, then they should come to the Philippines :)

Mobile Adsense ! Following-up: YouTube Mobile

Following my post about the developement of YouTube Mobile; we think it will definitely drive 3G traffic once its launched and what better way to monitize traffic? SEO will say it clear, Google Adsense. Yes, YouTube Mobile will come out with Google Adsense!

Step 1: Find your favorite YouTube Video and take note of its ID found in the URL.



Step 2: Type in the YouTube ID on YouTube Mobile via WAP

Step 3: Click Download, the demo site is not configured to handle multiple request so will take time to process your request depending on number of qued request. Don't complain, this is just a demo. Actual production servers can handle all the request simultaneously.



That's it then a link will be generated to download your YouTube Video for mobile. BUT WAIT... what's that peaking on the lower portion on the page? It reads.. Google Adsense for mobille? Let's scroll down the page and take a look... Yep for REAL!



Take a click on the link and it converts ordinary websites straight to mobile format too! All these thanks to Google :)


Tuesday, December 12, 2006

How to hack using MySpace, Full Video


I love instructional videos, this wouldn't be totally possible without Flash streaming technology. Check out this video of a real hack using Metasploit Framework's WMF exploit and good old Flash to sneak in a virus into a vulnerable MySpace user.

I think im going to make the same video but using Blogger.com... Just right now im actually rooting you..

Kiddin :)

Monday, December 11, 2006

IMEVRYWHR... what? dont stutter please!

Globe Telecoms Philippines launched its IMEVRYWHR service powered by FastMobile to integrate IM, SMS, MMS and voice. Philstar.com posted an article titled "3G, Going, Gone, Gone" last December 8, 2006 which was "removed" from the archive from some reasons; maybe they are scared of big G? The article seems to be a rip-off anyway of the article published on Businessweek title "3G: Going, Going, Gone". The Philstar- article tackles Globe's non-productive 3G infrastructure compared to it's closest, rival Smart Telecoms and says Globe released its IMEVRYWHR service just to keep up its 3G service's PR.

If anyone has a cached version of the site from Google Desktop please email me at

SMS spamming is a crime!

US Senate passed a legislation to severly punish Pre-Texting (more commonly known as SMS Spams). It is now a federal crime to obtain a person's cell phone number without permission and use it for SMS Spamming.

I wish they would pass that same bill also here in the Philippines.

Story via www.NyTimes.com

Samsung caught playing underhanded poker

Research in Motion (RIM) filed a lawsuit against Korean cellphone maker Samsung for naming its recent product "BlackJack". The lawsuit was filed at Lost Angeles Federal Court banning Samsung from using the name.

Story via Telecoms Korea.

Tuesday, December 05, 2006

Vice City Mario!



I've been playing Mario Kart GP during weekends for about 2 months now, so far i havent been thru this stage yet. LMAO.

Sunday, December 03, 2006

YouTube Mobile...Philippine Edition!



According to Techcrunch, YouTube Mobile will be rolling out after 14 months. I think i can beat them to that :D

YouTube Mobile Downloader comming out in the Philippines!

Well.. its another product of a boring day, the storm that hit last weekend didn't make much fuss so i had the whole office to myself. The Internet was so crappy for surfing YouTube so i decided to download them while I play Diablo II, I can always view them later after I beat Baal on nightmare level. A few minutes later i found a whopping 1Gig usage in my HD, since each 10-30 minute FLV file has an average size of 50MB. To save space I converted them to 3GPP format and later on, because i still couldn't beat Baal, I decided to make WAP enabled service out of the entire process.

Wednesday, November 29, 2006

The Software Truth Commission


Shocking news, a software salesman confessed to have knowingly sold flawed products. So far the commission summed 24,393 sales professional to hearing.

Saturday, November 25, 2006

Deck The Halls!

Oliver Starr of Mobile Crunch is at it again, after some intense comments on his post on Berggi, he now tackles the issue on having services being run on carrier's deck or off deck. This issue is very important as it most probably dictates the future trend of mobile.

Here is my take on the issue (as posted on Mobilecrunch.com):

[Comment by godie — November 25, 2006 @ 6:19 am]

Ok here’s my final take on the on or off deck issue with some data from our own services (i wont be naming them).

Case 1:

Back in 2005 we launched a mobile service for a very popular social website based in the US with telco’s backing up the promotion which aims to target 5 Million users of their website.

On the First 2 hours alone we have 75K+ users registering for the service after Ads on TV appeared sponsored by the telco, the day ended up with around 100K+ users registering. On the succeeding days were hitting 100-150K+, but after 3 months the active usage drops around 7K+ per month; that’s when the telco promotion ended (off deck).

The 2nd case:

Early January 2006 we launched a Web/Mobile2.0 platform allow companies to promote their product via mobile instantly with capabilities for Infotxt (SMS/MMS), Mobile to Email, Mobile to Web, Mobile polls… all the works!; all the companies need to do is promote them (off deck). Most of the initial clients struggled at 15+K users at best, its then decided we have to put them “on deck”, by “cross-selling” (it works like google ads but via SMS) their mobile service with our existing on deck services. In 1 months alone, their service usage started to increase dramatically by 100%.

You see, being on telco’s deck (at least here in the Philippines) gives you that kind of promotion mileage: Web (via telco’s portal), SMS/MMS broadcast, print, radio, and TV — It’s unbeatable, by just being in carrier’s deck, a service here can reach 35 Million Philippine users in a week; that’s 6 times more market penetration compared to promoting it via print, radio and TV combined.

Lastly with the increasing number of scams via mobile, viruses and mobile data theft, being on carrier’s deck give users enough assurance that you are running a legitimate service especially for services that requires installed applications on users’ phone.

These data might be only true for Asia,but if anyone out there willing to share data for US and Europe then maybe we can finally figure out what’s the global trend.

Thursday, November 23, 2006

Oracle gunning on RedHat's support service.

Oracle shocks Linux groups
11/21/2006 1:45:00 PM
by Howard Solomon and Shane Schick
via www.itbusiness.ca

Oracle has surprised the Linux community by announcing it will provide the same enterprise class support for the open source operating system as it gives for its database, applications and middleware.

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Nuclear Batteries on sale at Amazon. Save 100%!



Rather than speding millions on building power plants, why don't we buy these nuclear batteries instead? :D

My Own Mobile Service


I finally got my own Mobile Service via Txtdomain.com and it now comes with a cool widgets that you see at the right side of this page. (disclosure: I work there :D) These days, mobile technology is rapidly advancing up to the point that its almost homogenous with the Internet.

Where Web might have failed in giving us a total freedom and personal space, mobile has succeeded.

The screen shot above is from Txtdomain's web interface that allows full control in creating your own mobile service.

Saturday, November 18, 2006

Philippines and Terrorism According to Japanesse Anime.

I've been watching new anime about pirates via WinampTV titled "Black Lagoon" then episodes 11-12 struck me when the story ended up in Basilan Philippines. The story goes like this, a couple of terrorist related papers has fallen to the hands of a pirate group called "Lagoon Company" after a US embassy was bombed and its their job to deliver it to a CIA agent at Basilan, Philippines. WTF?! Anyway as the story goes on and they went rampaging around, blewing up things and killing all the terrorist. Wow, now i know why they bombed Basilan! Anyway it can't be helped that other countries look at Philippines that way due to the country's history of military and civil unrest.

Enabling Microsoft Remote Desktop for Windows XP Pro SP2

Recently I have been working remotely most of the time so my usual Tight VNC wasn't good enough anymore, so I decided to fire up MS Terminal Service. I know there are a couple of dangers involved opening up my PC up for access but I guess I just need to monitor it closely from now on.

Enabling MSTS wasn't easy, primarily because with Windows SP2 has totaly disabled it without any option of having it turned back on! (shame). MS did provide a way to enable it again but it doesn't work, there's also another hack to enable it but IMHO its too barbaric, it involves loging into safe mode and replacing some critical files and hopes it work. Therefore i come up with a more elagant approach.


  1. Disable MSTS if its running. My Computer > Properties > Remote > Allow users to connect remotely to this computer (disable checkbox)

  2. Download SP1 version of termsrv.dll and save it to your Windows folder (C:\Windows).

  3. Run the regisry editor (Regedit.exe)

  4. Edit key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services
    \Mup\DisableDFS and set its value to 0

  5. Edit key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services
    \TerminalService\Parameters\ServiceDll and set its value to %SystemRoot%\termsrv.dll

  6. Re-enable MSTS. My Computer > Properties > Remote > Allow users to connect remotely to this computer (enable checkbox). Add up some users also that would be allowed remote access.

  7. Reboot your PC.

  8. Test your MSTS connection and make sure that the firewall is configured to allow accress via TCP/UDP port 3389

Monday, October 30, 2006

Jollibee "Sex" Scandal



Jollibee responds to PR nightmare on YouTube.

Is Eskwela.com biting Friendster.com's market?

I was invited AJ Batac to try out Eskwela.com's open beta testing about 2 weeks ago, i heared of this site already months ago and the name itself gives a hint on its offerings. Eskwela is just like Facebook but it's still rough on the edges, notably the site make use of AJAX alot which makes the user experience very Web 2.0. Undeniably it's target market are Filipino students and alumni, IMHO its a great way to start since most of us was at one-time a student thus connecting with our roots in schools is the best way to link up. Although there's a much heated debate about the site's tag line and a sharp critic on its functionality, this is truly unavoidable due to its beta nature so i will refrain from anymore of that on this post.

However there is one serious issue to consider, is Eskwela.com after Friendster.com's market?

Friendster's target audience is the entire population of the world, mostly ranging from students to working professional. However because MySpace has already captured most of the US and UK audiences, Friendster prospered on Asia especially on the Philippines. It is reported on a case study conducted by Friendster that their Philippine based users contributed to its growth equally compared to all their other users put together in the whole world.

How will Eskwela's entry into the market affect Friendster's growth?

Let's compare the two model's together. Friendster is modelled upon social networking of
people, since everyone in the world is connected within 6 degrees of acquaintance. Eskwela on the other hand is modelled on similarity of attributes between people such as schools, hobbies, etc. Most Filipino spends 14 early years of his/her life in school, making school its second home where we develop our primary values, ideologies, sense of membership. Coupled with Filipino traits that values family and friendship, Eskwela is on the right track on reuniting as well as affirming bonds between each Filipinos.

Why might Eskwela's succeed where Friendster failed?

It is still a very early to tell how Eskwela will grow but how it is likely succeed compared to Friendster is already answered by Eskwela's tag line: 100% Pinoy. Friendster's network was built on rough fragile bonds of friendship built on occasional and distant degree of acquaintances while Eskwela is based on strong rooted relationship that lasted for avaerage of 14 years and there's no other people on the world would understand that than the people that built Eskwela.com; a 100% Pinoy and not by Americans who built Friendster and who's social bonds are built less that what we Filipino's have. That's why there are a lot of fake profile's now on Friendster, this is a sign that people are desperately searching for something with stronger bonds to affirm.

Will Eskwela learn from past mistakes?

I sure hope Eskwela will not make the same mistake as Facebook, Friendster or Alumni.net; but after a quick look at Eskwela.com team member's list; oh its Terence Pua! The same guy who made Friendster classifieds (formerly Pusit.com acquired by Friendster) possible.

I'm more assured now mistakes will not happen twice :)

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Root Meeee: Linux Virtualization on WinXP


I had another itch to try something crazy so i tried installing a virtual OS on Windows XP.

I tried Ubuntu at first but my PC just couldn't take it and keeps on hanging so i settled for Damn Small Linux which is based on Knoppix/Debian. Im pretty pleased with its speed considiring im running it with just 5Gig Virtual HD and 128Mb Virtual Memory using QEMU. I can run in on background with all my usual heavy duty WinXP apps also running; keeping it at 11% CPU usage which is amazing considering im running an entire OS compared to some of my WinXP apps that takes up alot of CPU power by just idling.

Kudus to DSL and QEMU developers!

Sunday, October 08, 2006

Build your own meebo.. or even better!


After being dunk from an office party, i decided to sleep over at my desk rather than go home but couldnt fall asleep. So i decided i'll do some far off experiment Txtdomain once again.. i set my goal to replicating Meebo (or atleast some part of it); don't get me wrong here, I dont hate Meebo. I think it's very cool and im always using it whenever im not at the office.

To cut my work short i Googled, found Jabberd2 easy enough as my Jabber/IM server and a few more scripts downloaded to support bindings to other transport. Then i caught a snag when I tried using purely PHP and Apache to connect to Jabberd2 so i decided to go Java with Tomcat since i was already able to make a Jabber Bot earlier with JivesSoftware.

It took me a while on how to handle cross server authentication without sacrificing security, so ive settled for one time embeddable javascript to pass the data plus it is protected by a session based login. Since i freely control the passwords i made them dynamic so Txtdomain will pick a random password every time a user logs-in then change it to something else again when the user logs-out. I could have deleted the Jabber account but i wanted the users to recieve offline messages as well.

In the end it took me 15 hours to finish the experiment and embed in into our Txtdomain site. I'll try to write a howto later when i have the time, i will also try using eJabberd instead of Jabberd2.

Check out the screen shot, SMS to IM and even to GoogleTalk! Now to think of it, it does sounds more like a Chikka competitor rather than for Meebo :P

Sunday, September 03, 2006

All your bases belongs to Linux


From:
"Myths, Lies, and Truths about the Linux kernel" http://www.kroah.com/log/linux/ols_2006_keynote.html

Sunday, August 27, 2006

A.I. ownage! Are people's social chatting skills dumb enough or bots has become more intelligent?

I have been working with A.I. bots for almost 2 years now as a hobby but its my first time to ever put one on IRC. When you put a bot chat via a webpage then people usually catch on very quick that they are being fooled but with IRC where most of the people just says something witty the; A.I. bot made some very interesting results.

The bot i made uses Program-D and the default Anna AIML plus some additional templates for the usual IRC greetings. The bot is then binded into my existing IRC EggBot with EggHttp and Alice.tcl

here are some of the chat logs:

allen_24.alice.log
[(08.26.06) 14:42] hi ctc
[(08.26.06) 14:42] <^anna^B> Hi there . Mmmm.....really?
[(08.26.06) 14:43] nasl pls.
[(08.26.06) 14:43] <^anna^B> Huh....Intriguing .
[(08.26.06) 14:43] how old are you
[(08.26.06) 14:43] <^anna^B> I'm 20 years old.
[(08.26.06) 14:43] m,e im 24
[(08.26.06) 14:43] <^anna^B> Really, you are?
[(08.26.06) 14:43] r you working laready
[(08.26.06) 14:43] <^anna^B> I am working right now.
[(08.26.06) 14:44] what work mo?
[(08.26.06) 14:44] <^anna^B> What about it?
[(08.26.06) 14:44] me im working also.. in a semiconductor compamy
[(08.26.06) 14:44] <^anna^B> I Do you get paid to be a judge here? Describe your surroundings.
[(08.26.06) 14:45] what do you mean?
[(08.26.06) 14:45] <^anna^B> , Sorry that was an obscure remark.
[(08.26.06) 14:46] saan you nagwork?
[(08.26.06) 14:46] <^anna^B> ........
[(08.26.06) 14:46] its seem your not interested at all
[(08.26.06) 14:47] <^anna^B> Huh.... You're kidding. it is?
[(08.26.06) 14:47] saan location mo?
[(08.26.06) 14:47] <^anna^B> Ummm......What were we talking about again?
[(08.26.06) 14:49] saan location mo?
[(08.26.06) 14:49] <^anna^B> How do you like the weather in Atlanta?
[(08.26.06) 14:49] can i met you?
[(08.26.06) 14:49] <^anna^B> And exactly how'd you go about that..?
[(08.26.06) 14:49] atlanta ? you mean you are outside the philippines
[(08.26.06) 14:49] <^anna^B> Huh....Really? Thanks for telling me that I am outside the philippines.
[(08.26.06) 14:52] cge bye
[(08.26.06) 14:52] <^anna^B> Maybe Ill see you at the Conference Later.
[(08.26.06) 14:52] what conference?
[(08.26.06) 14:52] <^anna^B> What about it?
[(08.26.06) 14:53] do you have web cam can i see you
[(08.26.06) 14:53] <^anna^B> Where would I get it?.

Looks like we got the guy fooled there for 10 minutes but here is a winner :)

france_21.alice.log
[(08.26.06) 11:32] HELLO
[(08.26.06) 11:33] <^anna^B> Hi there!
[(08.26.06) 11:33] ASL
[(08.26.06) 11:33] <^anna^B> 20/Female/Massachusetts..... ;).
[(08.26.06) 11:37] REALLY??????
[(08.26.06) 11:37] <^anna^B> For real.
[(08.26.06) 11:37] STILL STUDYING???
[(08.26.06) 11:37] <^anna^B> How long? Do you prefer books or TV?
[(08.26.06) 11:38] IN SCHOOL
[(08.26.06) 11:38] <^anna^B> How do you like your school?
[(08.26.06) 11:39] WHERE R U NOW???
[(08.26.06) 11:39] <^anna^B> Huh... Atlanta, Georgia, of course : ).
[(08.26.06) 11:39] ARE YOU STILL STUDYIG??????
[(08.26.06) 11:40] <^anna^B> Maybe. I am many things.
[(08.26.06) 11:41] MAY I KNOW TOUR N
[(08.26.06) 11:41] <^anna^B> Do whatever youd like to do.......
[(08.26.06) 11:41] MAY I KNOW YOUR NAME???????
[(08.26.06) 11:41] <^anna^B> Do whatever youd like to do.......
[(08.26.06) 11:42] YOUR NAME PLEASE>>>>>>>
[(08.26.06) 11:42] <^anna^B> Too much recursion in AIML.
[(08.26.06) 11:42] WHAT??
[(08.26.06) 11:42] <^anna^B> Ummmm....Never mind.
[(08.26.06) 11:42] I CANT UNDERSTAND!!
[(08.26.06) 11:42] <^anna^B> Hmmm.....How can I explain it better?
[(08.26.06) 11:43] WHAT IS YOUR NAME?????
[(08.26.06) 11:43] <^anna^B> My name is Anna.
[(08.26.06) 11:44] ARE YOU STILL STUDYING????????
[(08.26.06) 11:44] <^anna^B> Maybe. I am many things.
[(08.26.06) 11:45] DO YOU HAVE CELLPHONE NUMBER???/
[(08.26.06) 11:45] <^anna^B> No I don't have it..
[(08.26.06) 11:45] WHY??/
[(08.26.06) 11:45] <^anna^B> Reductionism.
[(08.26.06) 11:46] DO YOU WANT TO CALL ME???????/
[(08.26.06) 11:46] <^anna^B> Hmm, I will have to think about CALL you.
[(08.26.06) 11:47] DO YOU WANT TO GET MY #??????
[(08.26.06) 11:47] <^anna^B> Hmm, I will have to think about GET your.
[(08.26.06) 11:48] I THINK TOU ARE FILIPINO
[(08.26.06) 11:48] <^anna^B> Ummmm... Since when? Ummm...all of them?
[(08.26.06) 11:49] BCOS I GET UR ADD IN UP
[(08.26.06) 11:49] <^anna^B> How far up?
[(08.26.06) 11:51] ARE U SURE THAT U ARE IN MASSACHUSSETTS????????
[(08.26.06) 11:51] <^anna^B> Yeah, Im sure.
[(08.26.06) 11:52] YOU KNOW HOW TO SPEAK FILIPINO?????/
[(08.26.06) 11:52] <^anna^B> Too much recursion in AIML.
[(08.26.06) 11:53] GTG
[(08.26.06) 11:53] <^anna^B> Goodbye.
[(08.26.06) 11:53] BYE
[(08.26.06) 11:53] <^anna^B> Bye.

Friday, August 18, 2006

Google 3D

Im a great fan of 3D animation and it took me a while to learn how to do it myself, however the learning curve can now be lowered thanks to Google's SketchUp plus it works with Google Earth!

SketchUp is best for those who want to start into 3D modeling, it provides the simplistic approach on understanding the basics of 3D modeling and textures while still being equally powerful as supporting known formats for 3DSmax and AutoCAD. The extensive flash video tutorials also helps alot to quick start you learning process which also covers using the application with real photos as textures, Google Earth and Google's 3D warehouse which allows all the authors to share their works.

Oil Spill

The striken oil tanker Solar-I which sank Friday off Guimaras with 2 million liters of bunker fuel on board is leaking and threatens nearby coastal areas. The ship is on the sea bed some 3,000 feet (900 meters) deep. Philippine salvage teams only have the capability to dive to around 120 feet making any retrieval difficult. The black sludge had already reached Negros, the country's fourth largest island, and contaminated the beaches of Bago City and two adjacent towns.

Without sophisticated equipment, local residents are using indigenous materials like bamboo, straw, coconut husks, wood and other materials like oil drums, rubber tires, fishing nets and wire mesh for the booms. Macario Macariola, safety officer of Sunshine Maritime Development Corp. and team leader of the operations, said the company will hire a member of each affected household to help in the cleanup while it is still unknown how much this will affect the local wild-life.

It's apparent that these oil companies lacks the proper competency to address such disasters; I after this incident a more strict compliance should be required before oil companies are permitted to operate on the country. However, in the way i see it, since supplying the country with enough oil while maintaining the prices to barely affordable level is vital to the economy; the government has no choice but to turn blind-eye in imposing such regulations.

Friday, August 11, 2006

First Look at a New Web OS : Desktoptwo

Story from Digg: "Desktoptwo is an online web based desktop built in Flash.
OS online that feel and functionality of a local PC."

Why wait for Vista? Again MS is being left behind, while concentrating too much on its desktop empire. Google and other Web2.0 upstarts has clearly seen the future. As internet becomes faster and faster while browsers adapt more remoting features, just a few years then when we won't need pricy desktop apps anymore.

read more | digg story

Windows defense handcuffs good guys

A story on Digg: "Microsoft's PatchGuard is designed to keep out malicious code. Security firms complain it's keeping them at bay, but not intruders."

Looks like another bad idea, MS seems to be streaking lately on "bad".. bad design, bad idea, bad code. Or maybe people just became wiser.





read more | digg story

Thursday, July 27, 2006

PornoTube: Fuck Around

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Saturday, July 08, 2006

New Web Based Operating System Built as a Science Experiment

Experimental "Web operating system" that a small team at MIT created. YouOS is an online platform with a window-based, graphical user interface.

read more | digg story

Ten signs you're tech obsessed.

Most of us have a love-hate relationship with technology, but for some it goes beyond healthy admiration, writes Harriet Alexander.

read more | digg story

Monday, July 03, 2006

PacMan is still the best!

Manny "Pacman" Pacquiao retains his WBC Internation Super-Featherweight belt after a 12 bout with Mexican challenger Oscar Larios held at Araneta Coliseum QC, Manila, Philippines.



Persons like Manny makes being a Filipino a reason to be proud of... Mabuhay Pilipinas!

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Nokia and Siemens on $30B Venture

Nokia and Siemens, two of world's giants in the telecommunication industry has announced a merger in $30B venture (via AP), it will be called Nokia Siemens Networks. This is has big implications since Nokia, Seimens and Erricson are the three major providers of technology and hardware for telecommunications; while Erricson went with Sony to augment its phone design; A Nokia and Seimens combination would far exceed just augmenting the designs of their phone but in terms of technology as well since both has been in forefront of producing technology for Voip, Wifi and Web2.0 for mobile.

Monday, June 19, 2006

Smart (Telecom) Philippines deploys HSPDA

Nokia released today; June 19, 2006; states that Smart Philippines has deployed its HSPDA network which is a simple software upgrade on its existing 3G network.

Original Press Release:

NOKIA PRESS RELEASE June 19, 2006

Nokia powers Smart's HSDPA network in the Philippines

Nokia Connection 2006, Singapore - After the first High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) call in a live WCDMA network in the country, Philippines' leading wireless service provider Smart Communications Inc. (SMART) launched their HSDPA network. The solution, provided by Nokia, allows Smart to operate its network more cost-efficiently and offer its customers data services at speeds of up to four times faster than current 3G speeds.
 
"Our aim is to revolutionize mobile communications by enabling our subscribers to access data-rich multimedia content and application right through their handset," said Rolando Peña, Network Services Division head at Smart Communications. "To accomplish this, our engineers are working round-the-clock to establish the widest 3G network in the country in the shortest possible time."
 
To date, Smart has deployed more than 1,000 3G base station sites across the country. This allows more subscribers to enjoy Smart 3G services such as video calling, video streaming, high speed Internet browsing and downloading of data-rich content like full music tracks and video clips.
 
"Nokia is pleased to have met our rollout challenge with Smart. Deploying HSDPA is just a simple software upgrade to the Nokia supplied WCDMA network. It is for this reason why it was easy for us to make the first HSDPA call in the country which was just a month after 3G network was operational in February," says Markku Nieminen, Account Director, Networks, Nokia. 
 
In WCDMA 3G, Nokia has 59 customers to date. Nokia's high-performing HSDPA is a simple software upgrade to Nokia WCDMA networks, thus enabling cost-effective and fast rollout.  Nokia is a leader in the HSDPA market, with over 20 contracts globally.  Many network operators have already opened their HSDPA networks with the Nokia HSDPA.
 
Nokia is supplying the HSDPA solution to Smart as part of the WCDMA 3G network contract announced in January 2006. Nokia has been the sole network supplier to Smart since 1998.
 
About Smart Communications Inc.
Smart Communications, Inc. is the Philippines' leading wireless services provider with 20.4 million subscribers on its GSM network as of end-December 2005. Of the total subscriber base served, 15.4 million are under the brands Smart Buddy, Smart Gold, addict mobile, addict mobile prepaid, Smart Infinity, Smart Kid, Smart Kid Prepaid and Smart ACeS. The remaining 5 million are serviced through its subsidiary, Pilipino Telephone Corp., under the GSM brand Talk 'N Text.
 
Since launching its GSM service in 1999, SMART has introduced world-first wireless data services, including mobile commerce services such as Smart Money, Smart Load and Smart Padala. SMART is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Philippines ' dominant telecommunications carrier, the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company. For more information, please visit www.smart.com.ph

PRC.gov.ph hacked. Hacker announces on public mailing list.

Around 12.57AM Today, June 19, 2006, A message was posted on the IT Specialist mailing list at Yahoo announcing a successful defacement of the Philippine Regulations Commission's website by White Hat Hackers from the Philippines called PHTeam. Although i find it to be a generous act, the government officials may blow it out of proportion and use it as an excuse to lash back against all Hackers (White Hats, Grey Hats, or Black Hats) which could turn into another Hackers Crackdown like what happened in the US.

Original post (email address hidden):

Message-ID: <20060618165750.62569.qmail@web52412.mail.yahoo.com>
Subject: [IT SPECIALIST] sino gusto pumasa sa PRC exam?

http://www.prc.gov.ph/links.asp <-- kami yung white hat hackers

this monday morning (12:35 AM) ko lang na-hack yung database nung site. hopefully mamya pasok sa opisina, naandyan pa rin yung pinasok ko entry na white hat hackers, including the url. mawawala lang siguro yan kung gising ngayon yung other team of hackers and matakaw sila sa credit and burahin nila yung pinasok ko sa database may access na me sa database ng Professional Regulation Commission. grabe ang sql injection atsaka grabe yung pag nagamit pala ng "sa" na username sa ms sql server database na website o kahit sa desktop application. pag "sa" yung connection string, pwede mag-command shell using sql.  buti hindi "sa" ang ginamit na user connection string ng PRC. kundi baka mas devastating pa yung pwede gawin nung other hackers. mas limited lang yung pwedeng gawin since walang shellcode exploit. ni-try ko i-reboot (i.e. shutdown -t 5) using sql server's shell stored proc yung site nung PRC, pero hindi gumana. basta't "sa" yung mssql connection, meron shelling ng executable, anything can be done, alter index.html (home page defacing or the whole site), create a file, delete a file, shutdown the pc, install a program there, the list is endless. but since hindi "sa" ang ginamit na username sa connection string dun sa PRC, di possible yung shellcode exploit, confined lang ang defacing ng site sa mga table rows. pero delikado pa rin site nila maski walang access sa shelling, meron pa rin mga permission sa tables yung connection string, pwedeng-pwede ko halimbawa mag-insert ng pumasa or mag-alter ng exam result, nakapag-create din ako ng two tables dun. ang hirap din pag public-facing ang application like websites. prone i-attack ng hackers. kailangan security-conscious talaga yung program developer, lalu na kung e-commerce site halimbawa, what if yung i-shi-ship na product order ng iba is gusto mo sayo i-direct, kagulo na actually dalawa hackers na yung  nakapasok dun sa PRC site. yung team ng http://www.phcare.org and http://www.infotechxchange.com/ sa susunod na mga gagawin ko program using ms sql server hindi na "sa" yung gagamitin ko username sa connection string pero ang nakakatuwa rin dun sa site ng PRC, hindi lahat MS SQL yung ginamit na database, yung iba portion ng website ni-implement using MySQL nasa 62 (64 minus the two table i created there) tables lahat yung MS SQL  database nila dun. hopefully within this week ma-ayos na ng PRC yung vulnerability ng site nila

Tuesday, June 13, 2006

Microsoft WGA Defeated Again.

News submitted to Geek.com says Microsoft will disable for the mean time the Window Genuine Advantage (WGA) tool which MS distributed via Windows Update. This is after the tool received much bad press last week due to it intrusive nature. According also to the story, MS "promised" to fix this problem by setting the tool to check every 14 days instead of the daily routine.

However a quick search over the net will give you a pretty large amount of information how to disable the tool ranging from using firewalls to block the tool from connecting over the Internet to completely disabling it via registry which leaves me thinking, was this tool really necessary? MS cant even secure Windows against casual crackers and hackers, what more against the entire world who is bent into defeating WGA I guess MS will be fighting a losing battle with this one

Thursday, May 25, 2006

Nokia Release Code for Series60 Web Browser

According to the press release i received from Nokia dated May 24,2006; the Nokia S60 Web Browser was released to the open source community under BSD license.

There are 5 main features of the browser that makes it better than any mobile browser I have tried so far.

1. Ability to view to entire web page then zoom in to specific area of the page to interact.
2. Ability to view snapshots of previously visited pages.
3. Search for a word while you type, the browser automatically zooms to the first matching string.
4. It has an RSS reader and also auto-sense sites with RSS feeds just like Firefox.
5.  Finally a feature that is not anymore unique to OperaMini, AJAX Support!

Monday, May 15, 2006

Mobile content could 'choke the Internet'?

Slashdot has an article about the possibility of HD Video choking the Internet but this is not just the case since internet contents are also starting to pop-up into the mobile segment.

Unlike internet, mobile  has higher market penetration rate which means more people will likely access content via mobile phones. Since the ratio of mobile phone to user is commonly 1:1 (its highly unlikely 2 people will share viewing a content on phone in close range due to its viewing size) compared to TV which is 1:many viewers, this mean the number connections downloading content will undoubtedly shoot-up; not to mention since mobile phone has a limited storage capacity most of these contents are accessed via stream format.

However there maybe a short-term solution by caching contents on servers acting as super-nodes similar to P2P technology. Adapting this technology to normal web traffic will also lower access-time and content download failures; now the biggest question will be: who will pay for setting up the super-nodes?

Friday, April 14, 2006

Windows Live OneCare: What virus you want installed today?

I was feeling adventurous today so I went beta hunting, I ended up at Microsoft.com and I found this front page ad about Microsoft Live OneCare. Being a fan of cutting edge technology I was excited with the prospect to be one of the first users to try it out.

Like any good user would do, I checked out the systems requirements first to see if it runs on my old Windows machine, well good enough its on the guide's Step #1 then... WTF!?!



"Step 2. Uninstall other antivirus and firewall programs"

Has MS been on dope!!? I tried to read again, maybe I'm still half-awake after an all-nighter work.. noooooo. It even goes worst than that:



"Antivirus and firewall programs known to conflict with Windows Live OneCare:"

* Symantec Norton Internet Security 2005
* Symantec Norton Antivirus 2005
* Symantec Norton SystemWorks 2005
* McAfee Internet Security Suite 2005
* McAfee VirusScan 8.0/2004
* Trend Micro PC-cillin Internet Security 2005

Ok this is crazy! These are the best anti-viruses available on the market, what is MS thinking of? Ok so what's their suggestion on how to protect myself:

"You do not need to uninstall Windows Firewall, which is a component of the Windows operating system and cannot be removed. It does not conflict with Windows OneCare; in fact, Windows Firewall provides basic firewall protection while you are removing the old software and installing Windows Live OneCare."

Great! I'll be left protected virtually by nothing but a useless firewall that i don't even use. I think this new product's motto is: "Windows Live OneCare: What virus you want installed today?"

Ok Microsoft Live OneCare Beta, i hope you just stay that way forever. i can't even start to imagine what it would want me to uninstall when it comes out of Beta.

Furl: http://www.furl.net/search?search=cache&id=8017707&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.windowsonecare.com%2Fpurchase%2Fs+ysreq.aspx

Google Calendar

Finally Google Calendar is out which makes perfect use of AJAX.

What separates "GCal" from other calendar user interface (UI) is the dynamic date range for all views.


You can highlight consecutive dates and view the entries side by side and auto-switching between time based to date based view.


Unfortunately you cant highlight non-consecutive dates like MS Outlook.


Another plus would be the SMS based alerts and the fact that its integrated with GMail, the alerts went further than just a scheduled alerts. Whenever an attendee accepts or rejects an event, GCal also send alerts whenever someone accepts or cancels an event. The integrated GMap is also interesting, its great when holding parties and making sure your guests wont get lost.



I would be keeping a close eye on GCal, I'm sure there will be a lot of mash-ups services comming out that uses its iCal and XML features.

Is Wifi War Driving Unethical/Illegal?

This is in response to the blog post at PinoyTechBlog.com on the issue on Wifi War Driving.

Is Wifi War Driving Unethical/Illegal?

There are a lot of issues to be considered but let me just focus on what I think has the strongest points.

First on the issue that hot-spot owners must secure their own access point: Yes, it is the responsibility of the operators to secure their access point as much as it is one's responsibility to drive safely. Some establishments offer Wifi access without even having the competency to administer their service; they usually rely of pre-installed setups offered by the dealers. The owners are just interested on driving customers to their establishment but is not concerned on the quality and security of these service which of course affects the safety of the Wifi users (oh well, they are free anyway. right?). These hot-spot owners are compared to people buying a car but doesn't know how to properly drive.

If we are going to debate on "if war driving is illegal or not" then I would only say: Internet is public. period. As long as you network is accessible thru the Internet then it is public, this is the founding concept of the Internet and its never meant to have locks and keys on the first place. But due to the demand of corporations to monetize the use information thru the Internet, the locks were placed and only because of these locks we could differentiate between the public Internet and the private/corporate ones.

This brings me to the issue, hot spot licensing. Since hot-spot owners provide these services to the public then they must kept in check to ensure user's "public safety" (those who prey of the unsecured users and those who uses the Wifi access to commit fraudulent acts on the Internet knowing they can be traced easily). If you need to know how vulnerable Wifi users are against attack then check this little demo done during the Defcon 12 at http://www.evilscheme.org/defcon/. Anyway these Wifi accesses are not free at all in the truest sense; since these are value added services; the cost of the service is actually paid in part by each customer as they buy the products offered by the establishment. Therefore the owners must be obligated to provide a quality service. On how these measures are to be implemented, I leave this to the experts on laws and licensing (maybe the NTC would be interested).

Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Developers make an application great, not language.

In response to blog post http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/jag?entry=scripting_flamewar. I see it as nothing but a the flame war.

It's not the language that makes an application great, its the developers.

PHP, Java, Ruby, Perl and many others can scale, can use both free or proprietary DB and Http servers and I always believed a good programmer can create his own framework depending on the systems he/she is working on to avoid the following pitfalls:

1. Insisting on using a framework that doesn't fit to the system because developer has adept skills in using the framework. Try to learn to build your own and never depend on a third party framework since you'll never know how long it will be supported as well as the possibility that certain frameworks has its disadvantages that isn't announced publicly.

2. Modifying the system to fit the framework which would eventually cause the system run inefficiently. This should be the last case.

3. Insisting on using costly software because they provide the functionality that the developer cannot create. I'm skeptical to persons who says this, its like saying that only certain developers can acquire the required knowledge while others can never learn it. I often find developers insisting on using costly DB's like Oracle because it provides easiest way to cluster DBs while doing the same thing

4. Insisting on using open source because the source is freely available. This is not always be for the better since most of the times we are working on proprietary systems that are already in place. We must first make use of the proprietary APIs included.

5. Insisting the system can do everything. This is a nice goal but it may come with a hefly price. Sometimes its better to make things work first efficiently before making it possible for everything to work; the same experience developers encounter that sometimes its better to start from scratch than continue on a design that doesn't fit well (an example is Firefox 3 -- which rumored to be designed from a separate HEAD).

Finally, Lets us invest on our developers, they are the IT industry's raw materials. The one that truly makes great software and designs the best hardware.

Yahoo's Publisher Networks ads surpasses Google Adsense.

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us

I was surfing You Tube looking for current events about Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (PGMA), after submitting my search to YouTube's engine I was surprise how clever Yahoo's Ads was able to heuristically find the relation between "Gloria Macapagal Arroyo" and "Dwarf and Love" (http://www.LittlePeopleMeet.com).

Background: Pres. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo was always been called by her critics as a "midget", checkout PGMA's Political Friendster profile.

Monday, April 10, 2006

Google Buys Search Algorithm Invented by Israeli Student

Google recently acquired an advanced text search algorithm invented by an Israeli student. Yahoo and Microsoft were also negotiating.

read more | digg story

Sunday, April 09, 2006

Playing around with Web 2.0


Click image to view comic strip :D

Gospel of Judas

The most significant find of the century is about to be unveiled on TV, will the Gospel of Judas provides us the missing link about Jesus Christ and will this eventually change our views about the Church.







Nationalgeographic.com

Saturday, April 08, 2006

Direct Link: Video of Israeli Made "Forcefield"

Developed by Israeli company Rafael, it creates a sort of protective bubble defending ground vehicles against RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades) and tank rounds. Video in swf form.

read more | digg story

Friday, April 07, 2006

'Gospel of Judas' Surfaces After 1,700 Years

Apparently Jesus made him do it!

read more | digg story

U.S. Rolls Out Plan to Build 125 Nukes per Year.

The Bush administration Wednesday unveiled a blueprint for rebuilding the nation's decrepit nuclear weapons complex, including restoration of a large-scale bomb manufacturing capacity.

read more | digg story

Time to buy a new phone to use 3G

I was a bit curious on how 3G works and why it requires newer phone models (if firmware upgrade is just enough). Let's first look at the technology and how it evolved.

[1G]
First we started on 1G which is the grassroot technology; there were 2 different types of network implementation namely TDMA and CDMA which powered the first Mobile Call and SMS. I won't discuss the properties of the two but the difference is basically the first uses time division scheme and the other is by using different frequencies, both has it's pros and cons.

[2G]
The second stage is 2G which gave us MMS capabilities, this is where TDMA networks evolve to GSM. Although WAP is present its not yet widely used and it’s mostly constrained to delivery of MMS due to bandwidth restriction 2G imposes. However converting WML to WBXML can greatly speed up WAP by transforming WML to binary format but it didn’t work well with dynamic pages.

[2.5G]
Shortly GSPR-EDGE started the 2.5G by piggy-backing on base CDMA technology to arrive compatibility with GSM and NT Do Como, this gave us the MMS inter-compatibility between to networks (however the 2 network can also exchange MMS via MX servers over the Internet but this complicates things by encapsulating MMS into Mail and back to MMS, its a nasty hack but it works). WAP is widely used and newer phone were release that has XHTML capabilities, compared to WML, XHTML gave the first true mobile Internet experience since the protocol is more flexible (XHTML sites take up more bytes compared to WAP but 2.5G's bandwidth is just right for this)

[3G]
With the advent of 3G, CDMA networks enjoyed a direct migratory path by just upgrading the software (according to Nokia) to CDMA1X (other version include CDMA20001XRTT and CDNA ED-VO) while GSM suffered a complicated migration to W-CDMA or UTMS due to the piggy-backing. 3G boosted not only mobile browsing but also the interest in streaming data and that is where the video compression H.263 came into play giving us the true viable video call feature. If you’re a fan of video compression you can check out: http://www-mobile.ecs.soton.ac.uk/peter/h263/h263.html

So for my question why we need to buy 3G phone? The old phone model lacks the chip that can process the video and the speed of the 3G that is also why the migration required telecoms to license higher frequencies (licensing is required to make sure frequencies doesn’t overlap, you wouldn’t want your phone calls interrupting your frequency for TV, Radio and other networks). 3G also required newer changes to be incorporated in your SIM to upgrade it into a UTMS SIM (that’s basically what you download to activate your 3G, its a 3G profile for your SIM)

If your interested to dig more into UTMS visit: http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/print/1582, it also shows a detailed diagram of components for the Telco 3-phase migration from 2/2,5G to 3G without disrupting service.

I found an article before (which I forgot to take down the URL) that non-3G SonyErricson phones can be upgraded to 3G phones by downloading the firmware from SE's site (so maybe you don’t need to buy newer SE phones).

Another important fact is that 3G phones is required to be tri-band or quad-band, i'm guessing that aside from the required bandwidth, video call routes its video delivery on the extra-bands so it wont disrupt your voice calls. I still need to dig into Nokia technology to verify this.

That's basically answered my question and I therefore conclude that I have to buy a new phone. Damn :))

Shameless plug:
BTW if you’re interested on deploying newest mobile stuff just contact us at info@fingerapps.com, we have tons of bleeding-edge technology that might suit your needs :)

Thursday, April 06, 2006

Child porn investigators raid NASA

The Register has an interesting story about a NASA manager who has (not only) passion for peeping into stars and also on naked children.

how fast can they crack your password

An interesting article on the speed at which passwords can by cracked. Comparing types of passwords.

read more | digg story

NEW Internet Explorer Exploit

This one is VERY VERY Bad Phiser's are using it already! Digg This so Others can do the Test, Click on the Link and go to the "Start Test" link on the page

read more | digg story

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

There is a God: Alcohol cloud spotted in Deep Space

Astronomers say they have spotted a cloud of alcohol in deep space that measures 463 billion kilometres across, a finding that could shed light on how giant stars are formed from primordial gas. Mmmm Beer...

read more | digg story

18 New Ajax Programming Patterns

Full text for 18 new Ajax patterns, completing a first-cut draft for all Programming Patterns content, which will be one part of the book. This section bridges the gap between the very basics of Ajax - XMLHttpRequest, DOM, etc - and the high-level stuff like widgets and visual effects.

read more | digg story

Google Music Launching - ITunes Competition

Late last week, Google met with a group of music industry executives and described the private event as merely for "networking." But Caris analyst Mark Stahlman suspects that Google is getting ready to launch a Music Store to rival Apple Computer iTunes.

read more | digg story

More on Theorems

Dilbert's Theorem of Salary

Here's an interesting bit of science...
Dilbert's Theorem on Salary states that engineers and scientists can never earn as much salary as business executives and sales people. This theorem can now be supported by a mathematical equation based on the following three postulates:

Postulate 1: Knowledge is Power (Knowledge = Power)
Postulate 2: Time is Money (Time = Money)
Postulate 3: (as every engineer and scientist knows): Power = Work / Time

It therefore follows:

Knowledge = Work / Time

and since

Time = Money,

we have:

Knowledge = Work / Money.

Solving for Money, we get:

Money = Work / Knowledge

Thus, as Knowledge approaches zero, Money approaches infinity, regardless of the amount of Work done.

Conclusion 1: The Less you Know, the More you Make.
Conclusion 2: This is the reason why bosses are paid more than you!!!

Take note: you still have to work so that Money will not be zero, because if Work = 0, and if its divided to any number, the number will be 0, then

Money = 0. I wonder if you could replace Work with something different like "Pretending"?

AIDS - the number 1 disease in the office. (As If Doing Something)

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

Google Releases 3" Resolution Aerial Photos of Las Vegas

For a small area of downtown Las Vegas you can see VERY high resolution photos in Google Earth (NOT Google Maps). You can easily see car types, even see people and their shadows, see dolphins swimming in an aquarium, see the duplicate Eiffel Tower at the Paris Hotel, and more.

read more | digg story

Friday, March 31, 2006

Typepad is launching blog widgets!

"SixApart's Typepad is about to announce Widgets for bloggers. And this is about to simplify the life of million of bloggers who until now had more or less to deal with placing html code in their template to customize and enrich their blogs with third party features." Can I just add... Finally!

read more | digg story

Google TV!

We’ll not quite there yet but if you want a preview how will Google TV looks like then check out http://www.current.tv/google/ where Google produces segments about top searches from Google Search.

Amazingly after watching the first two segments i was hooked, its more entertaining than your usual TV programs. Why? Because its current, its what people are all digging about in the web. This is the most effective use of media reconstruction phenomena that drives sites such as Digg and Slashdot.

Now if only Google has:

1. Froogle TV – TV shopping network featuring Froogle products. Then you can purchase via the web too. Fantastic, it will totally nuke E-bay.
2. Google News – 15 minute digest of all the top news, I bet this will kick CNN off its butt :)
3. GoogleSpace – more like Orkut + Google Video. A Segment about personals where they let users create their own videos about the things they like or do then. It should feature also the top preference for Celebrities, Favorite TV shows, Books.. and the list never ends.
4. GoogleLifeStyle – Segment based on Google Local where fine places in your locality is featured and it had to show it in Google Maps.
5. Google Earth TV – Segment about Travel Guides using Google Earth as the tour guide.
6. Google Tech – segement like MSDN TV, it would feature gadgets, scientists, great people of the opensource revolution and even the guys that work there at Google.

What would Google TV go afterwards? We’ll if Ipod can have WIFI, Google can broadcast these all to Ipod users with Google’s Free WIFI Project as a subscription.

You like that dont you? :)

Note: The host Conor Knighton is hillarious.

Related contents: http://www.teleportingtattler.com/2006/03/google-tv-still-under-radar.html

Thursday, March 30, 2006

Autistic or just a Geek? Take the Test

Apparently a much higher than average percentage of computer workers are diagnosed with a mild form of autism called "Asperger's Syndrome". This test allow you to filter yourself out as just Geeky or maybe having something to actually worry about.

read more | digg story

Googlebot destroys incompetent company's website

Josh was called in to investigate and noticed that one particularly troublesome external IP had gone in and deleted *all* of the content on the system. The IP didn't belong to some overseas hacker bent on destroying helpful government information. It resolved to googlebot.com, Google's very own web crawling spider. Whoops.

read more | digg story

Defcon 12 attendee's get PWND by airpwn funny read with pics and vid

Attendee's at Defcon 12 can't figure out whats going on with thier machines. The 1337 d00dz get pwnd hard. pics and small vid. Very funny stuff!

read more | digg story

PHP encoders, cracked!

The site http://www.phprecovery.com/ is claiming it can recover compiled PHP codes from Zend, Ioncube, SourceGuardian, TurckMM, SourceCop, ScopBin and CodeLock. Looking at the submitted test scripts by users, it seems the decoder can only recover the code but not the comments.

I’m not surprised at all since most of these encoders just compiles the script or even if it uses some sort of encryption the keys are always the same such that you can create a lot of hashes then try to find the collision.

There are now discussions on how will this affect developers who uses encoders to protect their programs; how about those who already deployed their programs, how will they protect them now?

Microsoft Vista: Not 'People Ready'

The new programs are phenomenally complex, with scores of buttons and pull-down menus and myriad connections among various applications.

read more | digg story

Sunday, March 26, 2006

Http Streaming

Most web services do some processing, send back a response, and immediately exit. But in this pattern, they keep the connection open by running a long loop. As soon as a state change occurs, it pushes new data to the outgoing stream and flushes it, but doesn't actually close it.

read more | digg story

TRY Google's new interface

Change a cookie or read the comments for someting to add to the URL to see the new interface.

read more | digg story

RTOC - Real-Time AJAX Users Online and Counter

RTOC is a free statistics script that uses flatfiles to store data.
It includes an onine users counter aswell as a unique hits counter
that stores unique hits for that day aswell as a total. It uses
JavaScript to update itself dynamicly, so that all stats are in
real-time!

read more | digg story

Thursday, March 23, 2006

Bill Gates makes Fun of Himself (video)

Bill Gates recently gave a keynote at Mix '06, where he got on YouTube and did a search for "Bill Gates".

read more | digg story

Internet Explorer 7 to be split from Windows Explorer

In 2007 when Vista comes out Internet Explorer will no longer be intergrated with Windows Explorer

read more | digg story

Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Study: Casual games can help your mental health

Who says games aren't good for you? A new study suggests that playing casual games including puzzle games can help you maintain a healthy mind.

read more | digg story

Fedora 5 boosts desktop features

Red Hat released its Fedora Core 5 version of Linux Monday, giving enthusiasts new graphics and virtualization abilities, as well as some desktop utilities based on a software framework from Microsoft.

read more | digg story

Yahoo! Messenger takes on Skype- Phone Out and Phone In Voice launched

Yahoo! Inc. today introduced a new public beta of its instant messaging suite, Yahoo! Messenger with enhanced PC-based calling capabilities.
Consumers in the U.S. can now make low-cost Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) calls using their PC to call traditional or mobile phones in more than 180 countries

read more | digg story

Free text messaging solution for your organization

Telco-grade mobile solutions now being offered to the public for free thus for the first time such solution is no longer limited to large corporations who can afford such marketing edge. Will this be the future battle ground for feirce competition between business?

read more | digg story

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

I got my GooglePage!

A letter worth waiting for ...

"Hi there,

Thanks for your interest in Google Page Creator.  We appreciate your patience, and we're excited to tell you that we enabled your account today, so you can start making pages now!  To get started, head over to http://pages.google.com and sign in with your Gmail password.  We haven't opened up Google Page Creator to everybody yet, so you'll see a message on our home page saying that accounts are unavailable — you can just ignore that.

Google Page Creator is an experiment on Google Labs.  Google Labs is where we put projects before they're ready for prime time so that we can start getting feedback from our users.  So, please, tell us what you think, what features we should add, what problems you're experiencing, or anything else that can help us make Google Page Creator a better tool for you.  We're listening.

This is the only email we'll be sending you — unless you'd like to receive updates in the future.

— The Google Page Creator team"

... and the fruits of patience, please visit my google page at http://alienatednluv.googlepages.com/home

New Backbase AJAX Library

Watch out 37Signals! Another 3-year-old company has released a Community Edition of their framework that is now open-source.

Beyond great asynchronous capability, they've got some pretty sweet objects demonstrated by their drag-and-drop shop, directory explorer, RSS reader, office locator, and more.

read more | digg story

Monday, March 20, 2006

MobileCrunch: Think Different? Try Wear Different. NTTDoCoMo's new take on mobile&

http://corruptedpartition.blogspot.com

MobileCrunch: Think Different? Try Wear Different. NTTDoCoMo's new take on mobile&.

MobileCrunch has an interesting story about NTTDoCoMo’s promotion of mobile technology that doesn’t exist yet; or does it? Considering Japan is always on the edge of mobile technology this could be the introduction or it could be another Mobile 2.0 bubble.

Txtmokko.com has joined GoogleTalk Federation

To all Google users, you can now access the Txtmokko - Google Talk IM trial service. This will enable users to forward SMS to Google Talk and hopefully to AIM, MSN,ICQ, Skype and Yahoo! (as soon as Google Talk Federation is on the way).
 
For this trial you can chat with Txtmokko@Gmail.com via Google Talk, its an information bot that can answer some questions about Txtmokko. The servers were having a maintenance tonight till morning so i wasn't able to integrate it with Txtmokko's SMS messaging right away. To start just add Txtmokko@Gmail.com to you contact list
 
Pls enjoy chatting with the bot, if you don't have Gmail then its probably time you get one! Email me so I can give you an invite -- I have 97 invites to give with 2.7+ Gig of email space and now with SMS-IM + chat bot from Txtmokko
 
You can reach me via SMS just text:
MSG GODIE <place your message here>
then send 2948 for Globe/Sun and 3940 for Smart.
You like to have this too? Register at http://www.txtmokko.com/
All messages cost Php2.50, Philippines only.

What Windows Vista will do for PC gaming

The launch of Windows Vista will not only fatten the pockets of Gates' but it will also bring with it DirectX 10. "It will offer six to eight times the graphics performance of DirectX 9.0"

read more | digg story

Fedora Core 5 Final Screencast

Although not officially announced yet Fedora Core 5 is available. LinClips has a screencast (video) of the release!

read more | digg story

Wednesday, March 15, 2006

Microsoft Vista: Microsoft loses confidence in .NET

Microsoft appears to have concentrated their development effort in Vista on native code development. In contrast to PDC03LH, Vista has no services implemented in .NET and Windows Explorer does not host the runtime, which means that the Vista desktop shell is not based on the .NET runtime.

read more | digg story

Google forced to hand over private data

A JUDGE has told Google that it must help the American government put through an internet child protection law by handing over private data to the Justice Department.

read more | digg story

Tuesday, March 14, 2006

McAfee update exterminates Excel

An error in McAfee's virus definition file released Friday morning caused the company's consumer and enterprise antivirus products to flag Microsoft's Excel, as well as other applications on users' PCs, as a virus called W95/CTX, Joe Telafici, director of operations at McAfee's Avert labs, told CNET News.com.

read more | digg story

WinXP on a Mac! Finally!

So it appears, someone has cracked the Mac. Sources indicate that a solution has been submitted for review to claim the now $12,000 prize. Furthermore, it appears the source is enlisting additional testers. Guess, its not impossible after all!

read more | digg story

Monday, March 13, 2006

Google Launches "Google Mars"

Google has just launched a new service called "Google Mars" that lets you browse the martian land just as you would with Google Maps.

read more | digg story

MySpace Messenger

AIM, MSN, and Yahoo! have someone new to worry about. MySpace slated to launch an instant messaging service based on their popular website. Yet another way for your little sister to get lured into the deep bowels of society.

read more | digg story

Topless Women Sell Phone Service At CeBIT

VK Mobile has hired NAKED WOMEN to wander the halls of the German CeBIT trade show painted with incomprehensible marketing blather to get mindshare for its cell phones.

read more | digg story

Google hires 15-year old kid

15 year old student, Tom Vendetta has been hired by search engine giant Google Inc. The student will receive a lowered salary, which will be placed into a bank account for future education, said Google CEO Larry Page.

read more | digg story

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

SAJAX Class

I forked SAJAX into OOP so its cleaner but still works like the original.

class sajax {
var $sajax_version = '0.12';
var $sajax_debug_mode = 0;
var $sajax_export_list = array();
var $sajax_request_type = 'GET';
var $sajax_remote_uri = '';
var $sajax_failure_redirect = '';
var $sajax_remote_uri ='';
var $sajax_js_has_been_shown = 0;

function sajax (){
$this->sajax_remote_uri = $this->sajax_get_my_uri();
}

function sajax_get_my_uri() {
return $_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"];
}

function sajax_get_js_repr($value) {
$type = gettype($value);
if ($type == "boolean") {
return ($value) ? "Boolean(true)" : "Boolean(false)";
}
elseif ($type == "integer") {
return "parseInt($value)";
}
elseif ($type == "double") {
return "parseFloat($value)";
}
elseif ($type == "array" || $type == "object" ) {
$s = "{ ";
if ($type == "object") {
$value = get_object_vars($value);
}
foreach ($value as $k=>$v) {
$esc_key = $this->sajax_esc($k);
if (is_numeric($k))
$s .= "$k: " . $this->sajax_get_js_repr($v) . ", ";
else
$s .= "\"$esc_key\": " . $this->sajax_get_js_repr($v) . ", ";
}
if (count($value))
$s = substr($s, 0, -2);
return $s . " }";
}
else {
$esc_val = $this->sajax_esc($value);
$s = "'$esc_val'";
return $s;
}
}

function sajax_handle_client_request() {
$mode = "";
if (! empty($_GET["rs"]))
$mode = "get";
if (!empty($_POST["rs"]))
$mode = "post";
if (empty($mode))
return;

$target = "";
if ($mode == "get") {
header ("Expires: Mon, 26 Jul 1997 05:00:00 GMT"); // Date in the past
header ("Last-Modified: " . gmdate("D, d M Y H:i:s") . " GMT");
header ("Cache-Control: no-cache, must-revalidate"); // HTTP/1.1
header ("Pragma: no-cache"); // HTTP/1.0
$func_name = $_GET["rs"];
if (! empty($_GET["rsargs"]))
$args = $_GET["rsargs"];
else
$args = array();
} else {
$func_name = $_POST["rs"];
if (! empty($_POST["rsargs"]))
$args = $_POST["rsargs"];
else
$args = array();
}
if (! in_array($func_name, $this->sajax_export_list))
return false;
else {
echo "+:";
$result = call_user_func_array(array(&$this,$func_name), $args);
echo "var res = " . trim($this->sajax_get_js_repr($result)) . "; res;";
}
exit;
}

function sajax_get_common_js() {
$t = strtoupper($this->sajax_request_type);
if ($t != "" && $t != "GET" && $t != "POST")
return "// Invalid type: $t.. \n\n";
ob_start();
?>
// remote scripting library
// (c) copyright 2005 modernmethod, inc
var sajax_debug_mode = sajax_debug_mode ? "true" : "false"; ?>;
var sajax_request_type = "";
var sajax_target_id = "";
var sajax_failure_redirect = "sajax_failure_redirect; ?>";

function sajax_debug(text) {
if (sajax_debug_mode)
alert(text);
}

function sajax_init_object() {
sajax_debug("sajax_init_object() called..")

var A;

var msxmlhttp = new Array(
'Msxml2.XMLHTTP.5.0',
'Msxml2.XMLHTTP.4.0',
'Msxml2.XMLHTTP.3.0',
'Msxml2.XMLHTTP',
'Microsoft.XMLHTTP');
for (var i = 0; i < msxmlhttp.length ; i++) {
try {
A = new ActiveXObject(msxmlhttp[i]);
} catch (e) {
A = null;
}
}

if(!A && typeof XMLHttpRequest != "undefined")
A = new XMLHttpRequest();
if (!A)
sajax_debug("Could not create connection object.");
return A;
}

var sajax_requests = new Array();

function sajax_cancel() {
for (var i = 0; i < sajax_requests.length; i++)
sajax_requests[i].abort();
}

function sajax_do_call(func_name, args) {
var i, x, n;
var uri;
var post_data;
var target_id;

sajax_debug("in sajax_do_call().." + sajax_request_type + "/" + sajax_target_id);
target_id = sajax_target_id;
if (typeof(sajax_request_type) == "undefined" || sajax_request_type == "")
sajax_request_type = "GET";

uri = "sajax_remote_uri; ?>";
if (sajax_request_type == "GET") {

if (uri.indexOf("?") == -1)
uri += "?rs=" + escape(func_name);
else
uri += "&rs=" + escape(func_name);
uri += "&rst=" + escape(sajax_target_id);
uri += "&rsrnd=" + new Date().getTime();

for (i = 0; i < args.length-1; i++)
uri += "&rsargs[]=" + escape(args[i]);

post_data = null;
}
else if (sajax_request_type == "POST") {
post_data = "rs=" + escape(func_name);
post_data += "&rst=" + escape(sajax_target_id);
post_data += "&rsrnd=" + new Date().getTime();

for (i = 0; i < args.length-1; i++)
post_data = post_data + "&rsargs[]=" + escape(args[i]);
}
else {
alert("Illegal request type: " + sajax_request_type);
}

x = sajax_init_object();
if (x == null) {
if (sajax_failure_redirect != "") {
location.href = sajax_failure_redirect;
return false;
} else {
sajax_debug("NULL sajax object for user agent:\n" + navigator.userAgent);
return false;
}
} else {
x.open(sajax_request_type, uri, true);
// window.open(uri);

sajax_requests[sajax_requests.length] = x;

if (sajax_request_type == "POST") {
x.setRequestHeader("Method", "POST " + uri + " HTTP/1.1");
x.setRequestHeader("Content-Type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded");
}

x.onreadystatechange = function() {
if (x.readyState != 4)
return;

sajax_debug("received " + x.responseText);

var status;
var data;
var txt = x.responseText.replace(/^\s*|\s*$/g,"");
status = txt.charAt(0);
data = txt.substring(2);

if (status == "") {
// let's just assume this is a pre-response bailout and let it slide for now
} else if (status == "-")
alert("Error: " + data);
else {
if (target_id != "")
document.getElementById(target_id).innerHTML = eval(data);
else {
try {
var callback;
var extra_data = false;
if (typeof args[ args.length-1] == "object") {
callback = args[args.length-1].callback;
extra_data = args[args.length-1].extra_data;
} else {
callback = args[args.length-1];
}
callback(eval(data), extra_data);
} catch (e) {
sajax_debug("Caught error " + e + ": Could not eval " + data );
}
}
}
}
}

sajax_debug(func_name + " uri = " + uri + "/post = " + post_data);
x.send(post_data);
sajax_debug(func_name + " waiting..");
delete x;
return true;
}

$html = ob_get_contents();
ob_end_clean();
return $html;
}

function sajax_show_common_js() {
echo $this->sajax_get_common_js();
}

// javascript escape a value
function sajax_esc($val)
{
$val = str_replace("\\", "\\\\", $val);
$val = str_replace("\r", "\\r", $val);
$val = str_replace("\n", "\\n", $val);
$val = str_replace("'", "\\'", $val);
return str_replace('"', '\\"', $val);
}

function sajax_get_one_stub($func_name) {
ob_start();
?>

// wrapper for

function x_() {
sajax_do_call("",
x_.arguments);
}
$html = ob_get_contents();
ob_end_clean();
return $html;
}

function sajax_show_one_stub($func_name) {
echo $this->sajax_get_one_stub($func_name);
}

function sajax_export() {
$n = func_num_args();
for ($i = 0; $i < $n; $i++) {
$this->sajax_export_list[] = func_get_arg($i);
}
}


function sajax_get_javascript()
{
$html = "";
if (! $this->sajax_js_has_been_shown) {
$html .= $this->sajax_get_common_js();
$this->sajax_js_has_been_shown = 1;
}
foreach ($this->sajax_export_list as $func) {
$html .= $this->sajax_get_one_stub($func);
}
return $html;
}

function sajax_show_javascript()
{
echo $this->sajax_get_javascript();
}
}


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