CAT | Technology
I realized I hadn’t yet picked up the latest She Wants Revenge album, so I figured this would be a good chance to check out Amazon’s new MP3 store. 15 non-DRM’d 256kbps tracks for $8.99 is a steal IMO. Thank god there is a place for someone like me to buy music now. I listen to my music on a variety of non-ipod devices, so anything with DRM isn’t really an option for me. While iTunes won’t be going away anytime soon, Apple is already feeling the effects and is realizing their monopoly is just about over.
Anyways, only a couple songs into the album, but I like what I hear so far. So check it out.
Well, I just upgraded from Wordpress 2 to 2.3 and MySQL from 4 to 5, so this is mostly just a test. Oh, and the theme I was using doesn’t play well with WP 2.3’s tags, so I’ll have to work on getting another one up. In the meantime, you guys get “Default”. Be excited. I’ve also scrapped the categories for the most part in favor of tags as that structure makes more sense to me. I’ll work on rebuilding the both over the next couple days. I can’t believe it took Wordpress this frickin’ long to introduce tags. Yeesh.
In a logical step, Google has launched a mobile version of it’s ad network AdSense so users can now visit sponsored links on sites they are browsing on their phone. The original incarnation of AdSense uses JavaScript to embed ads in a page, which carries little security risks to the user and the server the page is hosted on. However, because most mobile devices don’t support JavaScript, they had to resort to using servers-side scripting languages (PHP, Perl, ASP, etc..) to embed ads prior to delivering the page to the user. Here’s an example of the PHP version of Mobile AdSense.
<?php
$GLOBALS['google']['ad_type']=’text’;
$GLOBALS['google']['channel']=”;
$GLOBALS['google']['client']=’pub-5039159613133207′;
$GLOBALS['google']['format']=’mobile_single’;
$GLOBALS['google']['https']=$_SERVER['HTTPS'];
$GLOBALS['google']['host']=$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'];
$GLOBALS['google']['ip']=$_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
$GLOBALS['google']['markup']=’xhtml’;
$GLOBALS['google']['output']=’xhtml’;
$GLOBALS['google']['ref']=$_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'];
$GLOBALS['google']['url']=$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] . $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];
$GLOBALS['google']['useragent']=$_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'];
require(‘http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.php’);
?>
While Google’s motto is “Do No Evil” and I don’t think they would ever do anything to harm a Mobile AdSense client’s server, using server-side scripting languages presents a massive security hole on most servers. Once I can execute that code on your serer, all bets are off. One could access the database to gain customer information, redirect users to phishing sites, or even just reformat the hard drive just for the hell of it. The best method for hacking a server running Mobile AdSense would be DNS Cache Poisoning.
While I don’t exactly have any solutions on a method to deliver dynamic ads from the AdSense network that doesn’t use JavaScript or a server-side scripting language, I find their approach completely unacceptable from a security perspective and you will find a lot of objection in the enterprise community towards this method.
Who remembers two years ago when Yahoo was rumored to be buying Facebook for $1 billion and people thought Y! was crazy. Then, Facebook said “No, we’re holding out for $2.5 billion?”, and people thought FB was absolutely nuts? Well, fast-forward the clock, Facebook is now open, not only to non-college students, but also “open” as in an open development platform that anyone can develop applications for. Now, Microsoft is considering buying them…
Microsoft Is in Talks To Buy Facebook Stake – WSJ.com
One estimate puts FB at a $10 Billion (Yes, with a B). At first, that seems like an insanely high number, but then factor into the equation FB’s goal to create a social map of the world and their business savvy leaders, and well… ok, $10 Billion still seems insanely high. But hey, if M$ wants to spend that much money, they can, and people will call them crazy, like they will. Read on and you’ll find this gem, “Facebook has indicated that it might hold out for a higher valuation – as much as $15 billion” WTF?!?! $300 Million (profit) / $15 Billion = 50 P/E ratio. And FYI, Google’s P/E ratio is currently at 48.
So there you go Google, Facebook considers itself more valuable than you, go get ‘em.
It’s amazing how you can waste hours of your day playing around with the brand new Google satellite maps. Here are a few interesting locations I’ve come across…
White Sands Missile range. The middle of the circle is where the first atomic bomb exploded.
View Larger Map
I have no idea what this is. It looks like it has a road and a building leading up to it.
View Larger Map
Mars (No, actually northern Wyoming)
View Larger Map
Gotta be some sort of military missile testing range
View Larger Map
Flock of birds
View Larger Map
The Manicouagan Impact Crater
View Larger Map
Elmendorf Air Force Base. Almost looks like an optical illusion
View Larger Map
Bermuda. Took a while to figure out what this island was. Had no clue it was so far north.
View Larger Map
