Monthly Archives: July 2007

Since I was addressing poor online busin…

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Since I was addressing poor online business ethics in my last post, I might as well touch the following, as it came up while I was browsing the upcoming security stories thread on Digg.

I was googling my online trail recently, and was quite stirred that the nickname I use on a lot of online communities started showing up as a registered user of a number of social-networking-flavoured porn sites. Most of them pumping out (pardon the analogy) long lists of sites and videos one allegedly features on their profile as interesting, à la Digg et al.

I thought someone else was simply using the same moniker, but the following article and its author might just have provided me with some valuable insight: Why are my picture and name showing up on porn sites without my permission?

Thankfully, this seems limited to the user name for now, and my real name isn’t returning such search results. But it is definitely of interest to me professionally, since McGill does have, and is looking forward to further develop, people pages. We will definitely have to take this trend in consideration in the upcoming incarnation of the software and content.

First Facebook worm[-ish behaviour]?

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A friend of mine supposedly sent me a Facebook-based invite for an FB app called Advanced Wall. It came as a notification in FB and prompted me to retrieve a message from my contact by adding the app to my profile.

‘k, I bite, since I’m in Facebook-API-craze mode for work and fun anyway and get the following, as allegedly written by my friend:

Check this out!

It’s an Advanced Wall!

You can change colors, sizes, fonts, add smilies, pictures, videos and a lot more…

:)

Odd.. Especially from the supposed author…

First, I was just curious to know if they are using tinyMCE for the advanced editor, like WordPress and co. Evidently, I dig a bit deeper, and fire up Firebug, which as a complete aside is the most amazing piece of software. I use it everyday, and am still baffled by how efficient and powerful it all is.

So, the Javascript doesn’t look familiar and the editor’s iframe goes to http://ai.idlestudios.com/write.php, a domain which strangely enough doesn’t respond under http://www.idlestudios.com/ or http://idlestudios.com/, and just redirects http://ai.idlestudios.com/ to the app’s description inside FB (as of 2007-07-22, ~1 AM).

Odder…

Head off the the terminal: whois idlestudios.com tells me the domain is registered to a more than likely fine fellow from the Russian Federation, which in and of itself doesn’t really imply anything.

But that’s when I start noticing the ads in multiple locations around the Advanced Wall’s WYSIWYG editor. Text ads, subtly placed in the telling Facebook colour scheme. Blockbuster, icon sets, the usual.

So on to my friend’s profile I go, and what do you know? What do I see on his wall, with no other message than:

Check this out!

It’s an Advanced Wall!

You can change colors, sizes, fonts, add smilies, pictures, videos and a lot more…

:)

Really? And it’s coming from someone else in my contact’s own friend list…

Next: Facebook » Profile » Applications » Edit » Remove

:)

This all said, I haven’t gotten a reply from my friend yet on if he actually sent the invite in the first place (it’s late, and the invite was sent at 11:59pm), so maybe I’m just seeing things and outta get to bed. I’ll post an update here when I know more. Call me traumatized by another friend’s experience. ;P See update below.

Personally, I’m not sure I’m willing to go for this one anyway. Best case scenario, it’s gonna be MySpace all over again…

And if by any chance you receive an invite for Advanced Wall from me, you’ll at least know how it did not get there: Not-by-my-click.

Update (20:45): Well, it seems that my friend is as surprised as I was. Although he did see an option to invite his friends, he is fairly sure he canceled. Yet, the app seems to have propagated itself to his contact list. He also had the same reaction as I with the dubious first message template, and brought to light an error message he received from the app stating “there are still glitches we’re working on with the facebook team“. So worm[-ish]? Questionable interaction design? Buggy app? Plain old bad taste? I’m not a security expert by any stretch, so I’ll hold off on the labeling, but as a software developer, I say: none for me, thanks.

We Should Not Bite the Hand that Diggs

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I’ve been noticing that Digg has been getting a substantial amount of cr*p about things they’ve done on and with the site recently. Nothing new or exceptional, as every popular Web outfit gets the community treatment once in a while, but now that the dust settled a bit, I just wanted to express the following thoughts.

I had the pleasure to meet with some of the Digg crew in San Francisco last month, coincidentally hours before they released their new commenting system. What I saw was a group of people who, on top of being passionate about their respective vocations, actually believe in the product they bring us. This is a relatively rare and precious thing, and I think that as a community, we should nurture it as much as we can.

I’m definitely not saying we should just fall into blind fanboy-ism and idolize their every actions, but I do think that there’s a [not so] fine line between constructive criticism, which is usually welcomed by any self-respecting professional, and plain old bashing, which can be the most depressing aspect of public releases. And it’s not like they’re not listening (1, 2).

Yes, I do think that a balance between surprise releases and usability testing could gain to be developed. And yes, I do understand that sudden changes to something you enjoy can be offsetting for users. But I also know that they’re cultivating a tight-group/almost-family-like atmosphere amongst their ranks, and that the last thing I want is for the people behind the code to be nudged anywhere close to just being yet another bunch of salary makers, in yet another faceless corporation.

So I say, keep on guys, and thanks for your efforts. I’ll happily keep on digging and watching the site evolve.

And no, I’m not going to submit my own post to Digg. ;)

A Swarm of Angels: Remixing Cinema

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I found out about this open source movie project last winter, and am happy to see that they are so far reaching their set targets.

A groundbreaking project to create a £1 million film and give it away to over 1 million people using the Internet and a global community of members.

  • P2P-friendly: free to download and share
  • No DRM: watch on anything
  • Creative-Commons licensed: remixable

A fantastic initiative, in my humble opinion.

See also: Elephants Dream, by the Orange Open Movie Project.