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May 26, 2004

Google's Glory Days...

A recent article appearing on CNET reports that a study by Vividence shows that Google isn't a whole lot more accurate than some of its competitors and that it is the clean, uncluttered interface that attracts most users -- whether they know it or not.

As a result, of course, the competitors are laying plans to come up with their own stripped down interfaces. You may have already seen Yahoo's and Amazon's.

The other attractive aspect of Google in my book is the fact that ads are clearly ads rather than being disguised as search results. I wonder if this is another subconscous reason people are more comfortable there. In fact, the study notes that Google isn't so good at getting people to click on the ads for this very reason.

With others catching on that maniacal interfaces don't appeal to everyone, they might start getting more users to use their search engines. And since they are better at getting those clickthroughs for advertisers, it could pose problems for Google.

With Google going public, what's the chance that they will continue to be okay to give up this potential revenue -- the revenue accrued by fooling people into clicking on ad links because they think they are hit results. We'll see. I'm just so cranky about the state of the world right now, I don't feel very hopeful.

Are Google's glory days coming to an end?

Posted by at 8:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 25, 2004

Defend America - Defeat Bush

Mother Jones, May/June 2004 issue, has an item entitled "Stats of the Union - Facts, figures, and uniquely American absurdities." Here are some of my favorites:

The U.S. Governement is going into the red at the rate of $991,000 per minute
If global-warming trends continue, 15%-37% of the world's species will be extinct by 2050
61% of Amercians think the biblical story of the world being created in six days is "literally true
The cost of the Bush tax cuts this year alone is enough to give $93,793 to each of the 2.9 million people who've lost their jobs since he took office
Revenue loss from the bus Bush tax cuts over the next decade equals Social Security's baby-boomer reserve
Without Social Security, 48% of senior citizens would live in poverty

Posted by at 10:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 24, 2004

Online Discussion Forum Software

I did some research on free and/or open source and/or inexpensive online discussion forum software and thought I'd share some of what I found.

PHPBB

Free, open-source. PHP based (obviously) and runs on MySQL, PostgreSQL and others. It's had some issues with security vulnerabilities so check the support forums for how well these are being resolved. Currently at version 2.08.

Unlimited forums can be organised into as many categories as you like
Private forums and those only for specified user groups
Search capability
Polls can be added to posts
Email notification of replies to your topics
Topic subscription capability
Forum, user and group permission management

w-agora

Free, open-source. PHP based and runs on MySQL, PostgreSQL and others.

Email notification of replies to your topics
Three levels of administration
Forums can be public, private, restricted or registered
Search capability
Powerful forum, user and group permission management

vBulletin

Inexpensive. PHP based and runs on MySQL.

Permission system, based on user, usergroup or forums
Search capability
Supports multiple private and public calendars
Unlimited forums/posts
Email notification
Polls
Moderators and super-moderators
Calendar and forum moderation

Anyone using any of these? Sure would love to hear what you think of them. Point us to your site if you are using them for your library!

Posted by at 2:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 17, 2004

Wedding Pictures

If this isn't the sweetest thing ever, I don't know what is. The Human Rights Campaign has put up a site where newly married same sex couples can upload a photo and people can sign the guestbook.

Each picture just oozes with love. And they're all so dang cute!

How could anyone be opposed to love anyway...I never did understand that.

Posted by at 12:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 11, 2004

Webcast in a Box

I do a lot of work with Infopeople, especially in the area of webcasting. I was recently assigned the task of developing a Webcast-in-a-Box. Well, it turns out a very clever fellow has already done just that and I've been working with him to customize his webcast-in-a-box (WIAB) for Infopeople. And so far, it totally rocks!

Here's what we're doing. Since Infopeople uses Horizonlive (HL) to do all the webcast broadcasting, all we needed our WIAB to do was capture and encode the signal to HL. HL then takes that signal and pushes it out over the Web along with the presenter's Powerpoint slides and the chat box that is used by the presenter and the participants. Part of the job of HL is to then automatically archive the whole presentation and within minutes of completing the live Webcast, the archived version is available. Pretty slick.

So we've set up our WIAB such that the Webcast presenter simply has to plug their camera into our box (which they plug into any broadband network connection) and place the USB key into the slot....and bingo, they are streaming to HorizonLive.

There's lots more the WIAB guy can do, but what we wanted was a super easy way to do our Infopeople webcasts from a wide variety of locations using our HorizonLive service to handle the broadcasting and archiving. And it looks like we couldn't be making it any easier!

Posted by at 3:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 5, 2004

Are Your Properly Patched?

With the proliferation of all the worms these days...the Sasser worm being the most recent one, I decided to take another step to ensure I was properly patched. Seems like all the junk floating around has to be the result of people who think they've done the right thing but haven't. It can't JUST be a bunch of irresponsible blokes causing all this trouble...can it?

I decided to try out
Microsoft's Baseline Security Analyzer V1.2 (MBSA). Using this handy tool, I found that I had not installed the updates necessary for my Office XP programs and the MBSA helped me locate the place to get that update. To my chagrin...I was potentially one of the irresponbile blokes. Sigh.

If you don't know about the MBSA, here's a nice FAQ about it.

To summarize, MBSA is the next generation of the MPSA, Microsoft Personal Security Advisor. It does everything MPSA did plus "performs additional application checks (e.g., IIS, SQL) and can be used to scan both servers and workstations, locally and remotely over the network."

It can be run on the following operating systems:
Windows? 2000 Server
Windows 2000 Professional
Windows XP Home Edition
Windows XP Professional
Windows Server 2003

Network Admins...it can be run over the network against Microsoft Windows NT? 4.0 Server and Windows NT 4.0 Workstation, Windows 2000 Server, Windows 2000 Workstation, Windows XP Professional and Home Edition systems, and Windows Server 2003!

What it does (from the FAQ ):
MBSA V1.2 scans for security misconfigurations in Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) 4.0, 5.0, and 6.0, Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) 5.01+, Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 and 2000, and Microsoft Office 2000, XP, and 2003.

It's very easy to understand. Basically, if you see a red flag, you should fix it. It's that simple.

And in case you thought you were all patched up because you use the Windows Update feature, think again. Even if you don't download, install and run the MBSE, you should take a trip to the Office Updates page at the URL below:

Office Updates - http://office.microsoft.com/OfficeUpdate/

Posted by at 8:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)