Posted April 15th, 2010, in: Computer Problems and Fixes| Evil Robots| Ideas, Observations, Opinions, Rants Etc| Reviews & Thoughts About Products| Technology| WordPress

When I get asked for help with an attack on a WordPress site, it’s often on the same few hosting providers.  And when it’s not, it’s usually a small, local hosting provider.  When I have spoken to the staff of one of these hosting providers, about what seems to only occur in these few situations, they never take responsibility for having oddball server settings. And it’s not uncommon for them to actually blame their customers for using WordPress in the first place!

Some of the more popular Hosting Providers that seem to have more trouble than others with WordPress malware attacks in the past two years (in my experience) are Network Solutions and IX Web Hosting. And in general, hosting providers that have a lot of issues with malware affecting WordPress sites either

• Have screwy server settings that tempt developers to take risks with file permissions, or
• Have vulnerabilities that allow malware to sneak from one hosting account to another

As for some of the local, ma ‘n’ pa providers I’ve had problems with, I’m not going to hit them when they’re down by naming names.  But let me just say this: Buying local isn’t necessarily a good idea when it comes to hosting. It’s often the worst thing you can do.  You usually get crappy support, a high price, a non-standard product, and to make things even worse, you also often get a territorial ‘server guy’ who wants to blame any technical problems on the customer and not take responsibility for anything.

I can imagine being a hosting provider and not wanting to change how I do things just because a few of my customers want to run some weird PHP software they found somewhere.  But WordPress is hardly obscure anymore. And although I could be wrong, it seems that the server settings required for a smooth, safe ride with WordPress are in line with “best practices” for hosting providers in general, since all the best and most popular hosting providers seem to run WordPress perfectly.

So in the ‘news,’ I guess on April 12th, 2010, someone (rshinsec) at Network Solutions announced that an attack on many of Network Solutions’ customers’ sites was actually caused by a “WordPress Vulnerability.” (Quote is actually from a WordPress.org page HERE, because according to the WordPress.org page, Network Solutions has since edited the announcement)”

“Beginning last week a WordPress vulnerability has been the target of attacks on multiple WordPress websites on hosting platforms around the web. We have a blog post with additional details about the vulnerability and how to secure your WordPress site.”

In fact, it was not a WordPress problem at all.  So in response to some of the inaccurate anti-worpress blogosphere chatter caused by Network Solutions passing the buck like this, Matt Mullenweg, founder of WordPress posted to the WordPress Development Blog, clearing some things up, as well as putting it like this:

“Summary: A web host had a crappy server configuration that allowed people on the same box to read each others’ configuration files, and some members of the “security” press have tried to turn this into a “WordPress vulnerability” story.”

Thank you Matt!  We the people that use and love WordPress need to stand up for ourselves and demand what we deserve.  We are not a fringe community anymore.  WordPress is mainstream software and any hosting provider that has issues with it needs to check themselves!

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Posted September 2nd, 2009, in: Ideas, Observations, Opinions, Rants Etc| Reviews & Thoughts About Products

I’m playing around with a mashup that includes the music of NWA, but I had initially decided to focus only on their first 3 albums, “and the posse,” “straight outta compton,” and “100 miles and runnin…”

My buddy pointed out to me that for what i’m looking for in the samples, “Niggaz4life” might be a good idea.

DAMN!

I’ve heard all these songs before, and I think when I first heard them (while I was riding a skatebord and wearing punk combat boots) I was turned off ’cause the music seemed “over-produced” and “overly-mass-marketed,” (the latter probably because there’s even reggae-influenced rapping which i wasn’t used to)…

The lyrics are of course mostly terribly juvenile.

But here’s the thing.  This is a shining example of great early rap production.  The beats are awesome and really cleanly done.

I hear a lot of the style I assoicate with the name “Dr. Dre.”

I’m rockin’ this shiznit.

The rapping is pretty good mostly.

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Posted July 19th, 2009, in: Ideas, Observations, Opinions, Rants Etc| Marketing/Advertising In The Cloud| Music Industry| New Media| Reviews & Thoughts About Products| SEO, SEM, SMO Etc| Technology| The War on Free Culture| Viral Marketing| Web 2.0

OK so I have to admit that I’ve overestimated the popularity of Last.FM. At least, I am realizing how different LastFM is for a user like me that mostly has mp3s on my hard drive, and users who stream music from lastfm.

PowerPlay isn’t going to do a lot of good for me very quickly since I’ve chosen to buy impressions on radio streams for artists that are pretty obscure.  I did this because conversion rates (see web marketing 101) are higher in a narrower target, so if I try to compete for impressions/plays on Bjork’s radio stream, the chances that the users will actually like my music are considerably smaller than if I target people who like more obscure music like the constellation acts or something.  Going for Bjork is more like going for Britney Spears in that there’s a fairly diverse audience and the users are more likely to be fairly mainstream (Bjork being one of the strangest things they like).  Going after a band like Excepter or HRSTA is a better bet for me because these are people looking for fairly unconventional soundtrack-y experimental music.

In ten hours since I launched my first $20 Powerplay campaign (100 plays on radio streams of ten artists I chose), I’ve gotten ZERO plays.

On the upside, twenty bucks is going to provide my with at least 3 months of entertainment since I’ll have one more site to check in with a few times a day when I’m being neurotic.

The music industry is a mess.  The best discovery tools suck because the content owners are afraid of change, while the best music delivery systems are either incomplete (legal or illegal but private) or unreliable (illegal but public).

And legal or not, there’s no real integration between the streaming services and the OS environment.

Maybe the Chrome OS or the Smartphone market will change that.  I’m sick of storing tons of MP3s.

OH!  If these other music acts are so obscure, maybe I should buy their Keywords from Google.  Hmmm…

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Posted February 6th, 2009, in: 1| Cultural Acceleration| Humanity, Culture, Philosophy, Politics, Ethics Etc| Ideas, Observations, Opinions, Rants Etc| New Media| Reviews & Thoughts About Products| Social Software and The Social Graph| Technology| Web 2.0

If you haven’t played around with EtherPad, and you have a few friends you can get to screw around with you on this thing, do yourself a favor and try it out.

At first, it’s very simple:

EtherPad is a Collaborative Text-Editing environment. It’s real-time though, so it’s not as much like Google Docs (remember Writely?) as it is like IM.  Yes, it’s like Instant Messaging only more instant.  Every character typed or removed by anyone working on the text is seen in real-time by everyone else editing the document.  The page never has to reload or anything!  Ah, the beauty of Javascript.

Be warned though, this means that the people you’re working with can see how slow you type!  And as of yet, there’s no spellcheck, so you’re basically letting it all hang out. 

I heard about this from the Technometria Podcast, and it’s clear to me that, as they discussed in the show, for students taking notes during a lecture, nothing I’ve ever seen in my life could ever be as valuable as this technology is, even in its youngest form, that is, as long as the students in question have computers and friends.

Before I go any further, I should mention that my techie friends are all telling me about JQuery… I’m not a programmer, so that doesn’t mean anything to me (yet)… Also, EtherPad is only one of several spotlight applications running on a new platform called AppJet, which I guess is a Javascript-based development platform that’s really visual/browser-oriented.  Maybe even a sort of WordPress for Ajax?  

Well whatever. I’m not a dev so I’m not qualified to criticise that stuff, but the mention of JQuery seems timely given what I’ve been hearing, all-hype though, as far as I’m qualified to say, as a non-programmer.  The use of Javascript in general,  is not all-hype, my instincts tell me… We better move on because I don’t know shit about Javascript. But I do think it’s the future, if you’re asking my nose.

I would like to see EtherPad with TinyMCE because at the very least, UL’s and OL’s (un-ordered and ordered lists), Bold and Italics, Links Etc, would make the collaboration so much more useful! 

Beyond that, I’d love to see an app that can be installed anywhere that allows people to run controlled instances of ET, while controlling certain parameters like the maximum number of characters or lines per document… Etc…

I have a lot of ideas about the possibilities of this kind of real-time text-editing.  Big ideas.

Hey AppJet! Wanna talk?

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Posted December 24th, 2008, in: Reviews & Thoughts About Products| Semantic Web| Technology| The Semantic Web (Giant Global Graph)| Web 2.0| Web Browsers| WordPress

Trying out Zemanta, a service for finding related resources. 

They make Plugins for WordPress, TypePad and other blogging platforms, as well as extensions for both FireFox and IE.

Currently, as I’m writing this, the Zemanta plugin is only giving me a “Loading Zemanta…” message… I figured Zemanta’s database would likely have plenty of articles about Zemanta.  Maybe not.

We’ll see.  Very cool idea either way.

Update:

I guess the first time I loaded my WordPress Dashboard’s Editing page, Zemanta took a little while to load… Ever since it’s been super fast.

Pretty cool little Plugin. 

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Posted November 14th, 2008, in: Ideas, Observations, Opinions, Rants Etc| Intellectual Property| Reviews & Thoughts About Products| Technology| Web 2.0

This is a message to the guys behind the IP Colloquium Podcast, an Audio Podcast about Intellectual Property Law, hosted by Doug Lichtman, Scholar in Residence at the UCLA School of Law, and brought to us by the UCLA School of Law, the law firm Loeb & Loeb LLP and the Intellectual Property Symposium. I hope you guys have your ears on!  If you’re an attorney, the IP Colloquium Podcast can be used as CLE Credit.

First of all, Thanks for the IP Colloquium Podcast.  This is great stuff so far.

I wanted to point out a few things about your WebSite that are annoying for ‘Power-Users’ like me and/or that are standing in your own way.

1. Flash is not the way to go.  Flash Websites are less accessible than sites that display HTML. There are many reasons why.  Here are a few:
   • Navigation-Buttons or Links within Flash sites don’t allow right-click functions such as “Open Link In A New Window/Tab,” which people who use the Web well use often.
   • Flash Content is Less Machine-Readable (for instance, by robots like Search Crawlers), Less Universally Semantic, Less Friendly to Alternate Viewing (Like Text-Only Browsing or Viewing of the Page-Source).  The reason is that the content is hidden within the Flash animation objects.  Essentially, Flash sites are about as Machine-Readable as pictures of text are, probably less.  You want to be found in Search Results, right?
   • Flash sites require an extra browser plugin which is sometimes a barrier for people on alternate systems or that aren’t very technically savvy.  Barriers aren’t a good thing.
   • The Text within your site cannot be copied from the browser window, making it harder for people to quote you etc.  I had to actually look at Doug Lichtman’s name etc to post this entry.  Sure hinders my abilty to blog about you guys.
   • Since your site is Flash, updating it is surely more complicated than it would be if you were using some sort of Content Management System (CMS), like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal etc. This is also true for making minor ‘look-n-feel’ changes. When your design elements are separate from your content, you have a lot more flexibility if you decide you don’t like some font or color etc.  Again, HTML and CSS based sites are superior for this reason.
2. You do not have an RSS/Atom Link in your Site’s HTML Head.  This is easy to do and is what is expected of modern sites that are content sources. All you need to do is put the following line in the top of your HTML: <link rel=”alternate” type=”application/rss+xml” href=”http://ipcolloquium.com/rssfeed.xml” /> …This is what makes the little RSS icon/indicator show up in the URL field in FireFox/Safari/Etc, which is expected from sites that are Syndicating content via the web (like you are). 
3. Your Feed is not set up properly for “Enclosures” which is what makes Podcasting tick.  Perhaps the iTunes Subscribe link you give out is being processed by FeedBurner or something, but I can’t tell because the site is Flash so I can’t “Copy Link…”  …Really, if you moved to WordPress, you could use any number of podcasting plugins that will take care of all the dirty work of making your feed Standards-Compliant, iTunes-Ready and user-friendly.  If you don’t want to go down that road, you should at least consider running your feed through FeedBurner and then linking to that feed rather than the “/rssfeed.xml” one.  This way, the Audio files show up in your feed properly as ‘enclosures,’ and your feed will work in all feed-readers and ‘pod-catchers.’  
4. It’s also mildly annoying to have links on your site automatically open new windows.  It’s just one of those things that gets on people’s nerves.  If we want a new window or tab, we’ll open one.

I really think you guys should consider a quick re-build using a more standards-compliant Content Management System (CMS), like my favorite, WordPress (which is free and great for podcasting).  This really only takes about an hour or two to do and requires no special skills.  It’s especially easy for a site like yours that has such a minor burden of content migration.  Joomla and Drupal are also free, but for the IPC-Cast, I recommend WordPress.  There is also a handful of other powerful open-source CMS solutions out there that I haven’t mentioned.  Bottom line, you don’t need to spend money on software.

Anyway, I’m just trying to help.  Keep up the great work!  The Podcast is great.

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Posted July 6th, 2008, in: Reviews & Thoughts About Products| Technology

SustainableWebsites.com hosting does NOT have 24/7 phone tech support!  This is a huge problem, if you believe your time is valuable.  SustainableWebsites claims to be carbon-neutral.  I guess this why they charge so much for so little.

I like BlueHost …They are offering some really good deals right now.  GoDaddy‘s hosting is pretty good too. Also, I should add that I’ve had some great experiences with IXWebHosting.com‘s tech support too.  

24-hour tech support is just SO necessary in my opinion, carbon-neutral or not.  Would you buy a carbon neutral car if it didn’t actually run?  I wouldn’t.

SustainableWebsites is way more expensive than other hosting providers and falls way short, in my opinion. Look at what they offer and compare it to the others I mentioned.  

IXWebHosting and BlueHost both offer unlimited space and unlimited data transfer in their least expensive packages!  You can host a small business’ site on IX for about $5/month!  

Use the money you save to by some carbon credits or something.  At least you’ll be able to call your hosting provider whenever something goes wrong, talk to a real person, and find out what’s going on.

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Posted May 6th, 2008, in: Humanity, Culture, Philosophy, Politics, Ethics Etc| Marketing/Advertising In The Cloud| New Media| Reviews & Thoughts About Products| SEO, SEM, SMO Etc| Social Software and The Social Graph| Technology| Videos| Viral Marketing

(Lately I’m realizing that good companies and orgs have watchlists so a post like this one serves as an open letter to the company, unless of course, they’re not listening, which of course is their problem, a big problem.)

To TED

I love that you’re providing all of these stimulating and informative videos.  Thank you for that.  

But why did I just spend five minutes clicking around on ted.com, looking for a “Podcast” or “RSS” link?  

I was thinking “C’mon!  You MUST have a feed here somewhere!!”

Finally I decided to search the iTunes Music Store for TED… There it is!  WTF?  Why are you hiding your feed?

I’m so glad I found it. But you need to put a link somewhere on your site so people don’t waste their time looking for what’s not there.

Please?

-Andrew

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Posted May 2nd, 2008, in: Data Portability (DataPortability)| Reviews & Thoughts About Products| Semantic Web| Social Software and The Social Graph| Technology| The Semantic Web (Giant Global Graph)

I heard about this through Lawrence Lessig’s blog. Professor Lessig is taking the month of May off, and off the grid, which I applaud him for.

What this web app does is allow you to make links that, through the free Apture service for your site, link to numerous resources, all previewable via the same sort of javascript popup you get from Snap or the ZitGist “zLinks” plugin.

You must see this in action. This is inspiring. It shows how much more dynamic web pages can and will be in the near future. I’m a bit sick of the over-use of javascript, ajax, whatever you want to call it. It tends to be resource-heavy on your machine. This is an exception.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TznonD_OGXw]

I wonder if these guys are going to implement any Semantic technologies into the data they store… I wonder if they’re going to make deals with bookmarking services like del.icio.us… All my words could automatically be links to mini-libraries of items I’ve bookmarked! It’d look a little ugly given the current style conventions but hey. Let’s change those.

It’s interesting to me to ponder how this non-semantic-web service, because it’s also a library/bookmarking tool, could become hugely useful to the Semantic Web as they snatch up web user’s resources/web-bibliographies.

Oh man. This is a hot item!

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Posted April 5th, 2008, in: Computer Problems and Fixes| Reviews & Thoughts About Products| Technology| Ubuntu/Xubuntu/Linux

Currently on OSX 10.4.11

GOODBYE AZUREUS HELLO TRANSMISSION

I’m going to miss the cute frog I’ve gotten so used to relying on.

But what I’m not going to miss is VUZE or VUSE or whatever, the media portal that Azureus started making me look at a while back. There hasn’t been any settings for making it so Azureus launches into “advanced” view, so every freaking time I launch Azureus, I end up having to deal with that Vuze shit.

Goodbye Azureus. Hello Transmission!

Transmission is light-weight, user-friendly, smart, Open-Source… Do I need to go on? It’s just way better.

Sorry, cute, shiny frog. Goodbye. I doubt I’ll ever look back. But I will miss the froggy.

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