More Chrome

Previously I have written about my initial thoughts on Google Chrome. Today I was riding the train to visit some customers. To pass the time I read Information Week magazine. This week's issue had a couple articles about the Chrome browser.

First and foremost, the magazine acknowledged that Chrome is still in Beta mode. These days web applications are getting very common. To keep up with changes needed to support web apps, Google decided to roll a browser of its own. Mozilla just could not keep up given its lack of financial backing.

Underneath the hood, Chrome uses the WebKit rendering system. This is significant since Android also uses WebKit. Android is Google's phone browser.Co-found Sergey Brin of Google was quoted as saying that while Chrome may not be an operating system, it is a fast engine to run web applications.

Initial users of the browser like how it maximizes screen real estate by eliminating menu and buttons at the top of the window. I personally have not downloaded and installed Chrome. To tell the truth, I do not like how Chrome will automatically update and get downloaded frequently. People in large companies might also not enjoy the Google license that states they are free to advertise in the browser. Such is the trade off when dealing with a free product.

FreeHackers Union

Every once in a while I read Zed Shaw’s blog. This guy comes off as a bad ass. Recently he lashed out against the suits that have, according to Zed, destroyed the software business. So he decided to form the FreeHackers Union (FU). It was initially supposed to be a bunch of real developers in New York City sharing the new projects they are working on. However this movement seems to have caught on. At least that is what Zed is saying in his blogs. I find this interesting as Zed reports that there is a chapter of the FU forming up in my local area. It might be something worthwhile to check out.

The FU rules sound a little like Fight Club. You have to earn the right to be a member of FU. The way you do that is you attend your first meeting, where you will be forced to “perform” for 5 minutes. During this time you must share what new projects you are working on. If you get gonged during those 5 minutes, you cannot join the club. You can try again during the next meeting.

This FU revolution is a backlash to the business types that have infiltrated the hacker scene and are bringing the whole thing down. The 3 themes of the FU are art, wires, and code. Personally the code appeals to me. I imagine most of the other members are also coders. Groups are apparently forming all over the world. Let’s hope this is not some sort of hoax. Judging from Zed’s character, I would think it is not.

You never know. This could actually be the start of something big. The FU plans to video tape each of its gatherings. Maybe some day I will tell the newbies that I was there when they formed the FU. Who knows?

Google Chrome

Everybody seems to be talking about Chrome. It is a new browser from Google. Chrome is being hyped as a faster, safer, and easier web browser. Google is releasing it under the BSD license. Part of the speed increase is due to a new JavaScript virtual machine named V8. The most prominent user interface change is that the tabs are at the very top of the window.

Chrome is in Beta right now. Under the hood, separate tabs are in sandboxes. Other tabs should continue to function if one of them crashes. There is also a window which does not log any activity to your PC. Google released the Windows version of Chrome this week. Versions for the Max and Linux are coming soon. Google stated that they used parts of Mozilla Firefox and Apple WebKit to develop Chrome.

Google man Matt Cutts came out with a blog post explaining what types of information the Chrome application sends to Google. Nothing is sent to Google if you surf around by clicking links. However Chrome will contact Google search if you type something in the address bar. By default the crash reports are not sent to Google. However for some 404 error pages, Chrome will contact Google to recommend other pages to you. Chrome does phone home to check for an update every 25 hours, and it downloads a list of dangerous URLs from Google every 30 minutes. It also downloads a dictionary when you initially choose your language in Chrome.
I read on Robert Synnett’s web site that he found Chrome a blazing twice as fast as Firefox in general. It also goes real fast when accessing Google JavaScript. Go figure. Robert also mentions that the JavaScript debug tools that come with Chrome are very strong. I confess that I have not installed and used Chrome yet. But with all the buzz I cannot help but be curious and will most likely take it for a test drive soon. I do use a lot of sites from Google which are heavy with JavaScript. I will keep you posted.

Cuil Twiceler

The TechCrunch blog has asked “Is Cuil Killing Web Sites?” This was a post by Don Reisinger. Cuil has an indexing bot named Twiceler. Apparently some web site owners are complaining that Twiceler brings their sites down. It is almost like a denial of service attack. Some people are saying that Twiceler just guesses at random URLs and checks a web server if they exist.

Cuil has said that Twiceler is in a developmental state. However it does obey the “robots.txt” file. And Cuil has also stated that there are Twiceler imposters out there doing damage. Some comments on the blog post include one that likens this to the early days of Google. Another poster asked where is the proof that Twiceler is actually doing all this damage.

Personally I thought that perhaps Twiceler was eating up some extra bandwidth on web servers. But the theory about it guessing URLs at random has to be bunk. Come on. Do you think anybody with some brains is going to write an indexer that guesses URLs randomly? No. You crawl the web using links from other pages right? You could spend all days guessing at random URLs on just one web server and get nowhere. Twiceler has to search the whole web.

There is a lot of FUD out there about both Twiceler and Cuil. It is best to get your facts straight. Hey I have posted about Cuil. And I did not have good things to say. However everything I wrote was backed up by hard facts. I did not go out and create some weird theories about the evil actions behind Cuil. Maybe Microsoft and Google got together and decided to spread some rumors about Cuil to shut it down? There. Do you see how silly it is to promote FUD about a company, new or otherwise?

To the people on the Cuil Twiceler team, good luck to you. You are going to need it. And you might want to spend some money on public relations damage control. Your name is quickly becoming mud in the blogosphere.

Instant Message Bot

I read a short blog post by Amit Aggarwal entitled “How to Write Your Own IM Bot in Less Than 5 Minutes”. Now that’s a catchy title. It seemed like it would not take too long to follow Amit’s advice. Essentially he recommended the use of the IMified service. You can write your bot in any language. And getting a simple one started takes little time. I was interested to say the least.

IMified was launched around a year and a half ago. I think it might be only two dudes in the company. Their service is free to use. You create an account with them. Then you create a web page and host it on your own server. You tell IMified who your bot is going to IM. Then the service will do the instant messaging and communicate with your web page. You web page just responds to IMified, which shall do the instant messaging for you.
At first I thought maybe this was talking about those smart bots you see when you go into chat room. You know. Those are the ones that are usually spamming the people in the room. However I realized I was wrong. Amit is talking about sending messages from a bot over an instant messenger such as Yahoo Messenger. That is still quite a feat. However it was not as exciting as the chat room bot idea.

What it boils down to is that IMified has figured out the instant messaging protocol for all the popular instant messaging systems. It then provides an API that you can program to control IM message bots. If you were trying to do an IM message bot, that seems like a lot of help. You don’t have to decode the instant messaging protocol yourself. Somebody else has done the research for you. I imagine IMified will keep up with changes in the instant messengers as they get upgraded.

I am sure IMified is a business. They do not charge you for their bot service. However I always wonder how companies such as this make money. Usually there is some catch. I got the feeling from their web site that they do more than just IM message bot control. Perhaps they make their money elsewhere. I hope they come out with an easy interface to chat rooms for bot purposes. Then I will check them out for sure. In the mean time I am going to brush up on some web programming skills.

Goodbye Click

I wanted to put some ads on my site to help out a friend. However the ad program does not allow you to put ads on sites featuring hacking. Ouch. So I cleaned up my house (blog) a little bit. Got rid of the blatent post titles referencing hacking. Just did a little renaming.

The hard part was that I had to delete my first couple posts that were about my old Click program. That little prog had nothing but evil intentions. So it had to go. I left all the other programs up on my blog. They all have legitimate purposes. They can still be used for evil. But none of the remaining ones are not inherently or specifically for hacking.

I find that most of the programs I write are to solve a certain personal need. For example I am working on a custom program right now that quickly backs up my PC. It concentrates on the most important data files and software configuration. Now I need to do a lot more testing before I post an alpha or beta version here. You don't want to mess around with backup software unless it is pretty solid. However this program has nothing to do with hacking. It has a lot to do with the technical side of Microsoft Windows. And I think that is good stuff. Expect more of the same here on my blog in the future.

AVG Ownage

Recently I have been having some problems with my Windows machine. I suspect some type of virus is acting up and causing erratic results. So I was interested to read a recent article on Malware. The author said he tested out some web sites on the Internet that try to trick the user into downloading some bad code to this computer. The author said he used AVG antivirus software to detect and remove the malware. So I thought I would give AVG a try for my own computer problems.

I was a little disappointed that the AVG web site did not seem clear on how to get the free version. It kept trying to get me to pay $4.95 to buy a copy. Now if AVG could actually correct my Windows problem, I would be happy to pay them a lot more than 55 bucks. But I needed the proof first. I thought I got to the place on the AVG web site where I could get the free edition of the software. However it turns out it was just a trial version of the software. I figured that would help me determine whether the software could resolve my problems.

The AVG antivirus install program was a huge download. And I have a high speed broadband connection. However I still had to wait a long time for the download to complete. When I installed the program, it immediately found some problems. I chose the option to fix these problems as a power user. But I was a bit disturbed that AVG warned me that this might cause the computer to go into a unstable state. WTF? I proceeded anyway. Then I got really annoyed when AVG kept popping up windows asking me if I wanted to fix the same problem over and over again. This pop up could not be closed with the normal Windows close button. Is this a virus removal program or an actual virus program I had just downloaded?

Finally I chose to actually run a virus scan. It detected a couple problems that looked promising. Then AVG told me I needed to reboot my machine. I accepted this action. However on reboot, Windows said it could not find my profile. It loaded the default profile for my computer. Oh no! All my desktop items were gone. So were my Internet Explorer favorites. I was in a panic state. So I immediately uninstalled AVG antivirus from my system. Luckily another reboot got my profile back. Here are some lessons I learned:

• Back up your files
• Don't not store anything on the Windows desktop
• Do not use AVG antivirus software

I thought I heard somebody say AVG is one of the common antivirus software. From my first experience, I cannot imagine anybody putting up with their poor web site and software with loads of problems. I almost got owned by AVG. Do not do the same.