blogspot code tricks & tips

Over the holidays I did a bit of blog tweaking and thought I would share what I found.

1) CSS. This is an area I knew about but have not had time to study. I have started taking baby steps in customizing my blogger templates and I recommend HTML Dog as a good start.

2) *Templates. There are many free ones available but once you get the hang of the (simple) ones, you don't have to buy them as it is as simple as copying CSS code, although it is considered polite to acknowledge this and provide a link/reference to the creator/inventor.

3) *Inspector "Gadget". These "add-ons" for blogger have changed significantly over the past 2-3 years. No longer do you have to know python/php, C# or Java or even HTML (but it helps) as many of the tools are now wrapped as standardized API's. Blog Doctor is a cheesy example of one of these sites which is really just an amateur trying to make a few bucks, but it does have some good examples.

*This will save alot of grief later. Blogger has a some "backup" features - which is good in case something goes wrong (as I found out last year). But there are a few thing details "gloss'd over" that everyone should known about: 1) You must "export" the posts + comments and save as an xml data file. This will keep all of your and commenter "content" as well as encoded links and linked images (those you upload and store in Picasa may not be safe.) 2) Saving your "template" provides a copy of the basic CSS styles, including "some, but not all" gadgets and their content. For example my profile was intact because it was linked to my Google identity, but all links to blogs/websites I entered in the "links gadget" were lost! Other HTML/Javascript codes were obliterated as well. I suggest saving any unique HTML code a text file as backup.

Tech Help?

These days' finding someone who knows what they are talking about on Tech Issues is a real hassle, and I often find the worst is a "helpful" sales clerks who often just makes things worse. I usually turn to a GOOGLE search, but even that is fraught with challenges - wading through "honey-traps" just baited with key-words to funnel traffic into a number if useless and very questionable "tech" sites.

So this NY Times article caught my eye. Among their suggestions for PC owners - www.answerbag.com, www.fixya.com, and www.techimo.com and it's discussion board. There is also PC World Discussion Board and CNET Discussion Boards.

Hopefully these can help if you have a technical operating/software question. (don't forget blog www.makeuseof.com)

CAPTCHA's, Gamers, Spam + bots

CAPTCHA's - almost anyone who uses the Internet has run into these kinds of man/machine "interfaces". (Chart shows evidence of Russian cyber attack on Georgian servers in August 2008). The embedded Google Video presentation was from 2004 - and if I am not mistaken sometimes after that Google offered this "image naming game" to any Gmail account holder. (I played it a few times to see what it was about. It was not as full featured as the experimental ESP Game as described by Dr. Luis Von Ahn).


His thesis that we need to improve the "parasitic" relationship1 most of us have with the web - and using "gaming" to motivate volunteers is a very good concept. Think of the number of hours that kids today spend playing games on the net!

The purpose of the talk is to explain "Asymmetric Player Verified" games2 that can harness human interaction to solve unique problems that have eluded computers. That it may support the idea of the movie "The Matrix" that computers realize they have to keep us around because we generate power was a nice ending - considering the talk was sponsored by Google.

The rest of PChucks blog refers to his other musings on bots, spammers and how they may evolve in the future3. Very good article.

Here is link to presentation (Google Video).

[Update: Exposing India's CAPTCHA Solving Economy and this article reveals that spammers are converting 92% of Microsoft, 90% of Google and 58% of Yahoo email account CAPTCHA's.]

Footnotes:
1) Dr. Ahn's fact that it took 9 million man-hours to build the Empire State Building and 20 million man-hours for the Panama Canal were compared to the estimated 9 billion hours Microsoft customers have spent playing Solitare online.

2) Some of the websites mentioned in presentation were: www.captcha.net, www.espgame.org and www.peekaboom.org. In particular I found a free CAPTCHA service very useful for hiding my email adress from spam crawlers. They regularly crawl bogs like this looking for victims and although I knew the risks I had no simple way to foil them - until now. I highly recommend this free service.

3) In particular this blog by a Russian security expert is downright un-nerving - worse is that he refers to Captcha's being broken in 2007!

Some fun webtools

This website - www.wordle.net - composes word clouds depending on text input. The image below was generated from Martin LUTHER KING Jr. Aug 23 1963 speech "I have a dream".



© 2008 Jonathan Feinberg subscribe Creative Commons License
Still another website allows one to create quite sophisticated logos/graphics for website use. And this link for free HTML code

And here is a Greeting Card Generator.

And here is another useful link for my daughters math homework.

Quotations

Stumbling about on the net I found this a useful resource - wikiquote.org - as I often want to find a quick quote.

MUSIC I LIKE

Talking Heads

Remain in Light	Fear of Music
Songs about Buildings and Food

MOVIES I LIKE

As I am moving I decided to store my DVD's (I don't watch them that much) and hit on idea of listing here.

Ye Olde Rad Blog: MD5 Checksum hash

Ye Olde Rad Blog: MD5 Checksum hash: "MD5 Checksum hash I noticed the download page for Alex's Motherboard Monitor contains something called MD5 checksum (located near the top) .. followed by this long hash: 799ac45a1c7e570c53dd27839b8379de.

I did some research and discovered that that MD5 is an algorithm (mathematical formula) developed by a Professor at MIT, that serves as a digital security mechanism of sorts, which is 'a way to verify data integrity.'"

I like this guys style - see his photodocumantary about hike up Yosemite Half Dome! CRJ

Fishing for Information? Try Better Bait: "As the Web gets larger and more complicated, encompassing PDF documents, movies and audio files, product databases and ever-changing pages, it can help to know a few tricks that are not so obvious"

Too true! This is a good outline of Google "tips & tricks" plus links to other resources.