O (b LOG N)

Google Health gadget leaks confidential data via OpenSocial exploit

Shockingly, the same day Google Health launches one of my co-worker’s health information was compromised via an OpenSocial exploit that shared his health information from his HMO for everyone to see.

Google’s "crimes against humanity" unrequited

Google Wins Appeal - Most Bizarre Lawsuit Ever Filed Against Search Engine [SearchEngineWatch]

In September of 2007, Dylan Stephen Jayne filed a (handwritten) suit against the founders of the Google internet search engine, alleging that his social security number when turned upside down is a scrambled code that spells the name “Google.”

He was asking for $5 billion for Google’s alleged “crimes against humanity.”

The District Court reviewed the lawsuit and dismissed it sua sponte (on its own will or motion”) for failure to state a claim. In other words, the judge made a decision without having been asked by either party. (ie. never happened: “Your honor, the defendants, Larry and Sergey, move to dismiss!”)

The ever-resourceful Jayne filed a timely appeal. His case was on appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania and guess what? He lost the appeal a couple months ago.

There just really is no justice…

Wiki.ObLogN.com, a Christmas wiki

As you might suspect, given my affinity for wikis, I’ve a personal wiki. This is running at the un-announced shared hosted site that I won’t mention by name, but I will provide a link to it. I plan to do a complete write-up about this at the work blog in the new year when we announce the service, but by then this gorgeous Christmas theme Damien built will be obsolete. I’m using the Pro version of this service, which gives me 10GB of storage, a custom domain, and custom HTML regions that allow me to injects ads, widgets, Google analytics, whatever into the site. It’s a killer service. I use it a lot for taking notes, sharing files, aggregating content in one view from all over and for keeping private communications. The Pro version is only $60/year. The free version is ad-free and limited to 100MB of storage, but I think we’re going to drop that down to 15MB of storage. I suspect this service will cut into some of the competitors’ market in the shared hosted/software as a service wiki offerings that are charging several thousands of dollars for a weaker feature set, user limitations, and quite frankly an inferior wiki. This is the best damn wiki you can find, you can do mashups, you can run your own ads, and you’ve got the richest enterprise wiki feature set available. For free…or $60/year.

We’ve intentionally kept this service quiet since the Holidays crept up on us while we were still working out some last minute kinks in the service. Announcing it now would be pointless because it would just get lost in the Holidays. Moreover, we’ve still got some minor kinks to get around and we’re already getting a lot of traffic to the site just through the word of mouth of the community. In fact, we’re all pleasantly surprised by the number of Pro registrations we’re getting a day. I’ve seen lots of churches, schools, Universities, orgs, and some businesses going Pro in the last few weeks.

This wiki service is a great extension to a blog because it provides a fully customizable, persistent and collaborative authoring tool. For example, let’s assume you blog about online marketing. Well, your blog is a tool for you to publish time sensitive information on the subject. However, frequently there is the need for a more persistent information architecture. Also, the wiki can provide a medium for building a community around your blog by which you allow your audience to participate in the conversation in a more meaningful way than allowed by comments. It’s important to note that this particular service also allows you to easily and automatically aggregate content from all over the Internet on particular topics. Moreover, you can easily create rich application mashups to serve as interactive extensions to your blog posts. These can include interactive maps, charts, graphs, forms, countless widgets, flickr, news feeds, video, search tools, and more… I’m certain it will soon be the case that all bloggers with a community they’re looking to engage will have a wiki extension to their blog sites to facilitate a richer engagement with their audience and to provide persistent and more robust information sharing.

Microsoft Gatineau you dirty whore

Since Google “Upgraded” Google Analytics, or as I like to call it “google anal”, I’ve been dissatisfied with the service. To be sure, I was not overly thrilled about the the previous implementation, but as soon as the service went 100% Flash I really was disappointed. Common tasks take me more clicks. The map overlay sucks because you can’t get an overview as easily, and I can’t use the service from my iPhone. In general, the site usability of the site has suffered severely from the upgrade. Also, since the upgrade I’ve been unable to get the site overlay to work so I have no way of analyzing, visually, visitors traffic patterns.

I want a better web analytics package! Don’t tell me that Google’s “free”. It’s not free. I’m giving Google incredibly detailed and valuable information about visitors to my web properties. That’s worth a lot of money when you consider the traffic. This is why when I heard of Microsoft’s upcoming web analytics service code named: “Gatineau” I signed up for the beta and waited for an invite. This invite arrived today. It reads:

Thanks for expressing interest in our new web analytics service, code named: Microsoft “Gatineau.”

Get started today
Follow these instructions to get started with the Gatineau beta today.

1. Go to: http://adcenter.microsoft.com/?key=cb6ad37b-fcf3-4c69-8c89-5b0e19adef7c
Invite code: cb6ad37b-fcf3-4c69-8c89-5b0e19adef7c
2. Click Sign Up Today and create an adCenter account using this e-mail address.* You’ll be charged a one-time, non-refundable $5 fee to set up an adCenter account.
3. After your account is created, you’ll be directed to the Gatineau beta invite sign up page. Follow the instructions to begin using the beta.

Wait. What? Let me read this again:

* You’ll be charged a one-time, non-refundable $5 fee to set up an adCenter account.

You want me to pay YOU to test your undoubtedly buggy software? I’ll be running your script on my web properties, slowing down my visitors experience because I’ll surely not drop my Urchin script from Google, and you want me to pay you? Even though I’m going to be giving you incredibly detailed information about my visitors. Moreover, you ask me for a lot information about me and my company including a credit card, which gives you access to all kinds of interesting information. Isn’t this payment enough for me to gain the privilege of testing your buggy software? WTF? You should be paying me $5.

Gatineau, you dirty whore, I shall pass.

Google: “Wiki” more searched than “blog”

According to Google, it is official, “wiki” is now searched more than “blog”.

links for 2007-10-29

• Map Builder::Rapid mashup development tool for Google and Yahoo maps!
  (tags: maps mashup)