Microsoft is compelled to offer an Ajax solution, said analyst John Rymer, vice president of application development and infrastructure at Forrester Research Inc.

"It fills a gap within their development environment. They didn't address Ajax at all," Rymer said. "I think a lot of people are overestimating Ajax, how valuable it's going to be. But a lot of people are using it, and Microsoft just had no answer."

He added that Ajax is just scripting. Although flexible and easy, it is difficult to maintain applications written with scripts because of a lack of structure, he said. "It's not a silver bullet."  "Full Article" "More Here"

A "social" Web browser, called Flock, has been created to meet the needs of a new generation of web users who want to edit, comment on and share web content, rather than just peruse it.

Of course this is a double edge sword; While I assume it matters little to someones blog. The concept is certainly not for commercial web sites. It is clear the web should support more methods of direct interaction. "New Scientist" 

The Redmond, Wash., software company instituted a new policy for all developers that bans functions using the DES, MD4, MD5 and, in some cases, the SHA1 encryption algorithm, which is becoming "creaky at the edges," said Michael Howard, senior security program manager at the company, Howard said.

MD4 and MD5 are instances of the Message Digest algorithm that was developed at MIT in the early 1990s and uses a cryptographic hash function to verify the integrity of data. "Eweek article"

While Bruce Schneier, and other experts in the field outlined the end of MD5.  It appears that MS is at least listening to some degree. Though one would think they would be on the edge at least they are not ignoring this. Seems that scraping SHA1 is also in their best interest as well.

The next and more serious question is what about all the exsisting use, that is in production. Is the problem so serious that we cannot get beyond it? As I have stated I am certainly no crypto expert. It seems a fair question, and is some cause for concern.

Google chief executive Eric Schmidt said few of the company's recent hires have been as significant as Cerf, widely regarded as one of the internet's creators because of his seminal work developing the network's essential communications protocols, TCP/IP, at Stanford University in the 1970s.

"He is one of the most important people alive today," said Schmidt, who has been friends with Cerf for more than 20 years. "Vint has put his heart and soul into making the internet happen. I know he is going to jump right in here and start shoveling out new ideas for Google."

When he starts work at Google on Oct. 3, Cerf's official title will be "chief Internet evangelist," but he is determined to be more than a figurehead or detached visionary.

"What I have done in the past is not going to be important at Google," Cerf said, "What's important at Google is what you are doing today and what you going to do tomorrow. That's the metric I will be measured by."

Cerf will remain chairman of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the oversight agency for internet domain names.

He also will continue as a visiting scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he has been focusing on a very Google-like project — trying to figure out a way to connect the internet to outer space. He said working at Google is "really my dream job."

Oracle Corp. announced Tuesday that it is shipping Oracle Database 10g Release 2 on the Windows platform.

The move gives the company's Windows-based customers the ability to tap into enhancements made to the version, specifically in the areas of grid computing, performance, scalability and security.

"This announcement is one in a long line of those we've already made that show our commitment to the Windows platform and its users," said Willie Hardie, Oracle senior director of product management.

Oracle has served customers on Microsoft Corp. platforms since 1985, and in May 2004, the company joined the Microsoft Visual Studio Industry Partner program to offer better integration between Oracle Database and Visual Studio .Net 2003.

Hardie added that the release will allow developers to tap into core functionality that's designed to increase scalability and management at an affordable cost.

Oracle Database 10g Release 2 incorporates new features geared toward Windows developers, such as extensions for .Net, which include stored procedures. The feature allows developers to use the .Net language they prefer, which Oracle believes will reduce the time needed to build and deploy its database applications.

Windows customers will also be able to tap into Release 2's regular features, including automatic storage management, transparent data encryption, real application clusters and support for the W3C XML query standard.

Google UnSafeSearch

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Oracle Corp. Monday agreed to acquire Siebel Systems Inc. for $3.61 billion in cash and stock, putting to rest long-running speculation on Wall Street about Siebel's future.

eBay Inc. (EBAY)(www.ebay.com) has agreed to acquire Luxembourg-based Skype Technologies SA, the global Internet communications company, for approximately $2.6 billion in up-front cash and eBay stock, plus potential performance-based consideration. The acquisition will strengthen eBay's global marketplace and payments platform, while opening several new lines of business and creating significant new monetization opportunities for the company. The deal also represents a major opportunity for Skype to advance its leadership in Internet voice communications and offer people worldwide new ways to communicate in a global online era. Skype, eBay and PayPal will create an unparalleled ecommerce and communications engine for buyers and sellers around the world.

"Communications is at the heart of ecommerce and community," said Meg Whitman, President and Chief Executive Officer of eBay. "By combining the two leading ecommerce franchises, eBay and PayPal, with the leader in Internet voice communications, we will create an extraordinarily powerful environment for business on the Net."

Founded in 2002 by Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, Skype offers high-quality voice communications to anyone with an Internet connection anywhere in the world. The Skype software is easy to download and install, and enables free calls between Skype users online. Skype's premium services provide low-cost connectivity to traditional fixed and mobile telephones. Skype's software also offers a robust set of features, including voicemail, instant messaging, call forwarding and conference calling. Upcoming product innovations include Skype video, expressive content such as avatars, and customized toolbars for Outlook and Internet Explorer.

If you are looking for a simple FREE web service to use in your asp code to validate and Email address when someone signs up to your mailing list. Check out the script and article here.

    ' Name: A+ Email Verification
    ' Description:Will call a webservice that will verify an
    ' email address down to server level. 
    ' This service is provided for FREE! No costs involved.
    ' Try it out! By: TinyQuote
    '
    ' Inputs:email address
    ' Returns:A code that tells how good the address is
    '
    ' Assumes:This calls a web service that is free to use 
    ' if you only check 1000 or less addresses
    '
    ' Side Effects:Must have MSXML3.0 installed from MSDN 
    ' on the server you are using ASP on.
    '
    ' This code is copyrighted 

    <HTML>
    <%@LANGUAGE="VBScript"%>
    <%
    Dim email
    Dim status
    Dim emaildata
    if Request.Form.Count > 0 Then
    	' Requires Microsoft XML SDK 3.0 available at msdn.microsoft.com.
    	' fill data
    	email = Request.Form("email")
    	
    	' Call Webservice at CDYNE
    	 Dim oXMLHTTP
    	 
    	 ' Call the web service To Get an XML document
    	 Set oXMLHTTP = server.CreateObject("Msxml2.ServerXMLHTTP")
    	 oXMLHTTP.Open "POST", _
    	"http://ws.cdyne.com/emailverify/ev.asmx/VerifyEmail", _
    	False
    	 oXMLHTTP.setRequestHeader "Content-Type", _
    	 "application/x-www-form-urlencoded"
    	 oXMLHTTP.send "email=" & server.URLEncode(email) 
    	 Response.Write oxmlhttp.status
    	 if oXMLHTTP.Status = 200 Then
    		 Dim oDOM
    		 Set oDOM = oXMLHTTP.responseXML
    		 Dim oNL
    		 Dim oCN
    		 Dim oCC
    		 Set oNL = oDOM.getElementsByTagName("ReturnIndicator")
    		 For Each oCN In oNL
    		 For Each oCC In oCN.childNodes
    		Select Case LCase(oCC.nodeName)
    		 Case "responsetext"
    		emaildata = emaildata & "CodeTxt: " & occ.text & "<BR>"
    		 Case "responsecode"
    		emaildata = emaildata & "Code: " & occ.text & "<BR>"
    		End Select
    		 Next
    		 Next
    		 if status = "" Then status = "OK"
    		 Set oCC = Nothing
    		 Set oCN = Nothing
    		 Set oNL = Nothing
    		 Set oDOM = Nothing
    		 
    		 
    		 
    	 
    	 Else
    	 Status = "Service Unavailable. Try again later"
    	 End if
    	 Set oXMLHTTP = Nothing
    	
    End if
    %>
    <HEAD>
    <BODY><FORM method="POST" action="">
    <P>Email Address Checker<BR>
    <INPUT type="text" name="email" size="40" value="<%=email%>"></P><%=status %>
    <P><INPUT type="submit" value="Check Email" name="B1"></P>
    <P><%=emaildata%></P>
    </FORM></BODY>
    </HTML>

Today a friend ask me; How do  I do a complete NSLookup? I said just go to LogicalPackets and get the answer. He said no I want to do it in command prompt. Since this is a question I am asked from time to time, I thought it better to just post it to the blog so I can just say look at the blog.

So as you can see the command is: nslookup -type=any domainname.com

Lets use this example of anchor text:

You run a web design site, and that you want it to rank high with the search engines for the search term "web design". If you had 100 links pointing to your homepage, and the anchor text of all of them said "click here". This wouldn't tell the search engines a whole lot about your site. The search engines will not give you a good ranking.

However, if instead of "click here", the anchor text on those links said "web design", the search engines would easily conclude that your site is an authority on web design, and will give your site a high ranking.

Adding a bullet can give you yet another kick in position.  "Web Design" Doing this you can add image alt tag to the link as well as anchor text.

Example of Anchor Text:
<a href="http://blog.activeservers.com/SEO/" title="Internet SEO Articles">Articles</a>

See More From "Tumbleweed Communcations"

Typically, a Directory Harvest attack will target a specific domain with emails to many millions of combinations of email address at that domain, such as: adamsmith@domain.com; adam.smith@domain.com, adam_smith@domain.com, smitha@domain.com etc. Often the domain owner is targeted either for malicious reasons specific to that organisation, or because the business type of the domain owner is incorrectly identified by the attacker. 

One of the best things you can do is removing the catch all account. It is one of the best ways to avoid these types of attacks. If you use an alias correctly these types of attacks only refuse the email. Though it does little to reduce the traffic that might be clogging your mail system it certainly reduces the number of deliverable emails.

These are two good articles. Dark-Traffic  Dark-Mail Rising

Consultant Ben Edelman faulted Yahoo for not letting its advertisers know where their ads might end up.

"We know people pay very high pay-per-click fees when they think they're getting traffic from Yahoo, because advertisers think Yahoo users are more valuable," Edelman told internetnews.com. "Whatever their value actually is, advertisers who are buying the stuff should be told what they're getting."

Adware is free ad-supported software that users can download at no charge. But in his blog, Edelman documented how the software is installed without clear notification.

The bug isn't itself a vulnerability, Microsoft said in an advisory last week, since it can't be used to invade a system. It is, rather, an "unexpected behavior" that an attacker could use to cover up malicious activity, Microsoft said.

The company issued a patch for the problem, available only to authenticated Windows users.

The flaw is in the way Windows Firewall displays exception entries, which are created by administrators to allow incoming network connections. If an exception is created in the registry, it won't be displayed in the Windows Firewall user interface, meaning users might not be able to spot the exception entry.

It's unlikely that such a registry entry would be created under ordinary circumstances, and a user couldn't create one without administrator privileges, Microsoft said.

"It is more likely that an attacker who has already compromised the system would create such malformed registry entries with intent to confuse a user," Microsoft said in the advisory.

Learn about RSS and how to programmatically create an RSS file for your FrontPage 2003 Web site. The download that accompanies this article contains a VBA project and an XSLT file that you can use to generate and display RSS feeds.

If you have a Web site that contains content that you frequently update, such as articles or stories, you may want an RSS feed to help your customers keep up with your updates. This article explains the XML behind RSS and provides a Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003 Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) project that you can use to programmatically generate an RSS feed for your FrontPage Web site.

"Full Article Here"

While blogs arguably make up the majority of RSS content, many news sites also syndicate content via RSS—for example, Search Engine Watch is available via RSS feeds.

But RSS feeds are increasingly being used for other types of content. For example, you can get RSS feeds with weather forecasts, company news and financial information, package tracking and lots of others. Even the venerable Yahoo Directory is available now through RSS feeds.

Although there are literally millions of feeds available, finding those that are appealing and relevant to you isn't always easy. The major search engines are all dabbling with feed search, but none offer a robust service as yet. And while there are a number of smaller, specialized blog and feed search engines, their lack of resources and the problem of blog and feed spam means their search results are often useless. So finding relevant feeds, at least for the time-being, often remains a hit-or-miss affair.

"Full article here"

Google penalizes page rank when content is duplicated by other sites

Have your rankings slipped? It is possible that your page contents have been duplicated causing a duplicate content penalty. Google doesn't want multiple copies of the same content. So they will devalue all but one of the copies of the content based on the age of the page.

It has been a chore to check for duplicated content. This chore is easier now - www.copyscape.com. Just by entering the URL of the page you want to check, Copyscape will return a list of pages in the Google index that contain text also present on your site.

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies Inc. has started shipping a higher-capacity version of its Microdrive 1-in. hard disk drive and has made improvements to its 1.8-in. Travelstar drives, the company said Friday.

The drives are commonly used in portable consumer electronics devices such as digital music players. Products featuring the drives with increased capacity could be available before the end of the year, San Jose-based Hitachi said.

The company's current highest-capacity Microdrive is a 6GB model, and the new drives will be available in capacities of 6GB and 8GB. In the case of the 8GB drive, the extra space is enough for about 500 more average-size MP3 songs. In addition to the capacity boost offered by one of the new drives, they have several improvements over existing models: Size has been reduced by around 20%, and power consumption has been cut by 40%, the company said.

Justice Murray Wilcox of Australia's Federal Court ruled largely in favor of music labels, including Universal, Sony, Warner and Festival Mushroom, which had argued that the Kazaa software--owned by Australian-based Sharman Networks--was used to undertake copyright infringement on a massive scale. The labels had also targeted United States-based Altnet, which provides a search technology for Kazaa and is a close partner of Sharman.

Wilcox also ordered respondents Sharman Networks, LEF Interactive, Sharman CEO Nicole Hemming, Altnet and Brilliant Digital Entertainment boss Kevin Bermeister to pay 90 percent of the music industry's court costs.

The judge dismissed the music industry's claims the Kazaa parties had contravened Australia's Trade Practices Act and engaged in conspiracy, as well as dismissing as "overstated" the industry's allegation that Kazaa's managers were engaged in copyright-infringing behaviour themselves. "The more realistic claim is that the respondents authorized users to infringe the applicants' copyright in their sound recordings," he said.

Kazaa can remain in operation, Wilcox said, if the software maker meets either of two conditions. First, "non-optional key-word filter technology" would need to be included in current versions of the software received by new users and in future versions of the software and if "maximum pressure" was exerted on existing users to upgrade to a new version containing the technology. The other option was that the Altnet search software--called TopSearch--be restricted to providing lists of non-copyright-infringing works.

   While it has become clear that most of the news in America has only become a mirror of the wire services, and called reporting. I am simply appalled by their handling of the Hurricane Disaster in the Gulf Coast. I sit and watch the network "pretty girls" spitting out words which are misused; almost as if they have no concept that they are talking about Americans.

I am sorry but listening to the reference of "VICTIMS or SURVIVORS" as "Refugees" or better yet MSNBC is referring to them as both "OUTCASTS" and "Refugees" is unacceptable. I will not even state my views of our government's lack of response to this Disaster. I cannot imagine anyone in the media would refer to any of their friends or family in this way. These are all Americans first, and should be treated as such by both media and our government. They are people who have lost it all by a disaster. I am sorry but did these media people even go to school? What has happened to a reporters / journalists in this country anyway?

This whole event should make every government offical and agency embarrassed by the way they handled this. Being referred to by many world news papers and media as "Third World America" was shocking at first. We spent a fortune on this group called Homeland security. Security what a joke!

People only behave badly if there is no law and order. I admit that the New Orleans Police have never had a good record. But please, to take 5 days to get any type of order is something that our government should be totally ashamed of. You can do air drops of food and water to an enemy, but cannot help people in your own country. SHAME ON YOU!

I have high hopes that one day we can again live in a country where a journalist; even after reading a stupid teleprompter; would question the use of the words "OUTCASTS" and "Refugees". Is that too much to ask for? They spend millions of dollars to fly these reporters to the scene. Could someone please buy them a dictionary? I will note one "orginal article" however which seems correct.

This is a quote from a 70 year old victim.

"What took you so long? I’m extremely happy, but I cannot let it be at that. They did not take the lead to do this. They had to be pushed to do it."

What is this page about?

This page is generated to attempt to slow down Spam bots from collecting e-mail addresses off the web via spam programs. The purpose of this page is to try and fill the Spam bots with worthless non-existing emails which will force them to clean out their list which will clear all the emails including all the real emails it's collected.

How does this page work?

This page produces 50 random non-existing emails each time it is loaded. The spam bot will collect all of these emails and after it has completed the list, there is a link followed after which the bot will follow hence collecting more nonsense emails. This is iWEBTOOL's attempt to FIGHT Spam.

How can I help iWEBTOOL fight spam?

If you would like to help us fight spam then simply just add a link wherever you can.
You can try adding links onto:

- Forums/Message Boards
- Your Website
- Guest books
- Blogs

FIGHT SPAM NOW

The creator of software designed to surreptitiously observe individuals' online activities has been indicted for allegedly violating U.S. federal computer privacy laws, local and federal authorities said Friday. If convicted, Carlos Enrique Perez-Melara could face a maximum sentence of 175 years in prison and fines of up to $8.75 million. His current whereabouts are unknown. Four individuals who purchased the Loverspy software to illegally spy on others were also indicted. His indictment was returned on July 21 by a federal grand jury sitting in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California in San Diego but wasn't unsealed until last week.

"This federal indictment -- one of the first in the country to target a manufacturer of 'spyware' computer software -- is particularly important because of the damage done to people's privacy by these insidious programs," John Richter, acting assistant attorney general of the U.S. Department of Justice's Criminal Division, said in a statement. "Law enforcement must continue to take action against the manufacturers of these programs to protect unsuspecting victims and seek punishment for those responsible for wreaking havoc online."

Perez-Melara, 25, was indicted on 35 counts of manufacturing, sending and advertising a surreptitious interception device (the Loverspy program), unlawfully intercepting electronic communications, disclosing unlawfully intercepted electronic communications and obtaining unauthorized access to protected computers for financial gain. Each count carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a maximum fine of $250,000.

Perez-Melara advertised and sold Loverspy and EmailPI software over the Internet for $89 a copy to people looking to secretly monitor another computer user's e-mail, passwords, chat sessions, instant messages and the Web sites they visited. Purchasers of the program could log into a Loverspy Members Area on the Loverspy or EmailPI Web sites and choose an e-card and greeting that would be sent to the victim.

Bruce Schneier, a security expert, talks about a new set of MD5 collisions generated by two researchers in Bochum. This renders MD5 not safe, i.e. completely useless. A very interesting read indeed.

For those of you who have never heard of MD5 before, a simple explanation is in order. Keep in mind that I am not a cryptography expert, and I am trying to understand these things myself.

The MD4, MD5 and SHA-1 algorithms are secure hash functions. They take a string input, and produce a fixed size number - 128 bits for MD4 and MD5; 160 bits for SHA-1. This number is a hash of the input - a small change in the input results in a substantial change in the output. The uses of secure hashes include digital signatures and challenge hash authentication.

This document is a good introduction to hash. While many people view MD5 not safe. But for a web site it is generally more than enough. "JavaScript Here." There are other hash-functions that are still considered secure, Tiger for instance, and SHA-2.

A deadline has been extended that could have left tens of thousands of people without their Internet phone service next week.

The Federal Communications Commission said Friday it would delay a Monday deadline for providers of Internet-based phone calls to obtain acknowledgments that their customers understand the problems they may encounter when dialing 911 in an emergency.

Providers of the phone service, known as Voice over Internet Protocol or "VoIP," had been told by the FCC that they should disconnect service by Tuesday to people who had not responded.

The agency extended the deadline to Sept. 28. If by that time a provider still has not received confirmation, then the company should disconnect a customer's phone service, according to the FCC order. "Full Article"