Posts filed in ‘network’
Ain’t it del.icio.us
Just happened to note that I am pushing 1000 entries on my del.icio.us account. Del.icio.us is one of the most valuable tools that I’ve found on the intarwebs in the last couple of years.
NOTE: future project: now that I have so many links in del.icio.us, I need to set up some sort of system that will select one at random every so often so that I can confirm it’s still useful and add to its tags. Maybe someone out there already has something like this?
Span exploit for spam
An interesting spam made it through my GMail filters today. Some if it’s code looks like this:
<div><font face\u003d\"Arial\" size\u003d\"3\">\n<div>Hello,</div>\n<p><strong>B<span style\u003d\"font-size:10px;float:right;color:#000000\"> pj </span>rand new 2007 re<span style\u003d\"font-size:10px;float:right;color:#000000\"> tj </span>plic<span style\u003d\"font-size:10px;float:right;color:#000000\">\n zi </span>a watch<span style\u003d\"font-size:10px;float:right;color:#000000\"> pn </span>es - </strong><br>Express wor<span style\u003d\"font-size:10px;float:right;color:#000000\"> pt </span>ldwide sh<span style\u003d\"font-size:10px;float:right;color:#000000\">\n rp </span>ippin<span style\u003d\"font-size:10px;float:right;color:#000000\"> cz </span>g available!</p>\n<p><strong>LIM<span style\u003d\"font-size:10px;float:right;color:#000000\"> zp </span>ITED TIME OF<span style\u003d\"font-size:10px;float:right;color:#000000\"> zb </span>FER:
…And so on. The message shows up something like this:
Hello,
B pj rand new 2007 re tj plic
zi a watch pn es -Express wor pt ldwide sh
rp ippin cz g available!LIM zp ITED TIME OF zb FER:
The spammer has used the spans to insert random, garbled text into his message to confuse the spam filters, which are looking for keywords. But at the same time, his message is very clearly human-readable. Try slowly highlighting the text above to see how the message jumps from left to right.
Fairly clever. Beat the Google filters, which are about the best I’ve seen. I’d like to congratulate the spammer for ingenuity before inviting him to die in a fire. Hopefully this kind of exploit will be accounted for soon.
How do you get your video seen the way you want it to be seen?
I was reading Mark Cuban’s post about how the Oscars should deal with YouTube and was inspired to jot down some of my own ideas about video hosting. Mark argues that the best way for content owners to deal with the video hosting sites on the internet is not to bust out the lawyers to remove your content, but to flood the sites with clips that look like your video, but are really just billboards pointing back to your site, where presumably you can collect advertising revenue.
OK, this is a pretty good idea. Most of these video hosting sites will allow you to post just about anything (besides porn and hate material). If you want you could post hours of video of paint drying. There are no restrictions on posting video for commercial purposes. Posting an ad on YouTube in order to draw viewers away from YouTube may seem a little skeezy, but from a business standpoint, it just seems to make perfect sense.
So what’s wrong with this?
Flooding YouTube with ads for your site creates a value differential. Now when someone goes to YouTube and searches for your show, most of the time they are likely to only find your ad for it, while they can be assured of finding what they want on your own site. You’ve decreased the value of YouTube to the point where your site is more attractive. But YouTube still has some aces up its sleeves.
There are social solutions to the problem of flooding a site. All YouTube needs is a method for rating contributors. Voting on submissions. Heck, YouTube users could create systems that blacklist members that have links that point back to the old school media companies that do this. This tactic for decreasing YouTube’s value could very quickly be overcome.
Back to value differentials. If you decide not to try to reduce your competitors’ value, you must raise your own. I think a good example of how to do this is how NBC has dealt with “Heroes”. I don’t watch traditional TV anymore. The old saying, “There’s never anything good on”. I’ll buy DVDs, and I watch live events like sports at a bar. But I caught an episode of this show at my brother’s house one day, and decided that I’d like to see more, and I was excited enough about it I didn’t want to wait for the DVD. There’s plenty of video hosting sites out there that have the episodes within a day or two of broadcast. The quality is good and there are no ads.
So why do I watch it on NBC.com? Because of my high moral values? Pfft! I ain’t that nice a guy. NBC inserts a short ad in several times during the play of an episode, and has a still ad continuously on the side. But the quality of the video is just as good as what I’ll find on a hosting site, and I know exactly where and when I’ll find a new episode. There’s a bunch of bonus features on the NBC site as well, like a comic, a wiki, interviews, etc. So add together the pluses, subtract the minuses of the ads, and overall NBC has provided more value to me than the hosting sites. They’ve won my eyeballs for this show, and maybe I’ll check out some of their others on the site.
Rise of the Machines and Happy Hour
OK, this is pretty cool. I just sent a message through Gmail about happy hour plans for Thursday. Then when I received a reply I noticed a link on the left asking if I would like to add a “Happy Hour” event to Google Calendar for Thursday the 11th. Google is now smart enough figure out that I was planning on going to an event on a specific date and to offer to add it to my calendar. I’m impressed.
Damn Cingular Logo
OK, just look at this. This is a damn fine phone. Black and silver, stylish as all fuck. Makes you feel like James Bond when you slide it open. And there’s Mr. Jerusalem there, looking slick on the large, bright Samsung screen. But wait, the Spider is pissed! Someone’s gone and written “Cingular” all over his forehead. WTF is that all about? Well, no problem, I’ll just go into the settings and turn off the logo, the switch is just right there…
Well, goddammit! it doesn’t work! My best option is to change the color of the logo to make it as unnoticeable as possible.
The branding on cellphones is a little bit ridiculous. On the front of this phone I have “Cingular” printed onto the plastic casing above the screen, the little Cingular jumping-jack imprinted into the selector button on the keypad, and they felt it’s necessary to write “Cingular” again in software on the screen half an inch below the printed logo. I guess just in case I forget who I am using for my cellphone service. And of course, out of the box this thing wants to use the Cingular theme for it’s ringtone.
I can understand a company wanting to get the free advertising, hell, they pretty much paid for my phone with incentives. But why screw with the screen? Most people I know want to put one of their own pictures on there. Do the phone companies think that having their name inscribed on Fluffy’s head is going to get people to speak of their service in glowing terms?
Ease off on the branding guys. Let people do what they want with their phones and maybe they’ll talk up your service to their friends. That’s gotta be worth a lot more than a lo-rez logo uglying up my screen.