hacks

Jul 18 2008   11:40AM GMT

Bit.ly: A better URL shortener for developers, data geeks and microbloggers

Posted by: Alexander Howard
applications, Web 2.0, programming, software, data, Technology, Web services, Internet, innovation, useful, cool, hacks, free, public domain, feeds, social bookmarking, social publishing, design, creativity, reviews, startup, resource, collaboration, community, WhatIs.com Editor's Award, code, tracking, traffic, Web analytics, tool, Web design, blogging, communications, Web applications, statistics, interface, geek

The old adage about not reinventing the wheel doesn’t quite extend to Web applications. URL shorteners may have been around for years but there is plenty of room for improvement. This list of 68 URL shorteners from Honkiat.com show both the competition in the space and the need for innovation. There’s certainly plenty of demand: TinyURL.com, for instance, which has been around since 2002, purports to receive over 1.5 billion hits a month. While that seems a little high, the emergence of character-limited microblogging platforms like Twitter and long, forgettable Web addresses spit out by content management systems has resulted in a need for effective ways to simply Web addresses.

Enter bit.ly. Bit.ly was created by Betaworks, the NY-based software concern that created Summize. Summize was recently acquired by Twitter, if you’re not following the rapidly evolving Web.20 startup space.

Dave Winer used a post announcing the launch of bit.ly on scripting.net to explain why bit.ly fills a number of other needs:

“They asked what it would take for me to use bit.ly, I said: data. I need to know how many clicks each pointer got and where the clicks came from. They gave me that, and thumbnails, permanent caching of the pages I’m pointing to (goodbye linkrot) and a lot of smart stuff going on behind the scenes that we’re not ready to talk about yet. (Though we told Marshall and he explained.) Here’s the info page for this post.

And, most important, an XML/JSON interface, so I can process all that data with my own programs. Here’s the XML readout for the shortened link to this post.”You can use your own keywords to the URL, organizing your links like tags.

Winer also notes that he’s a minority investor in the service, so while you can take his words with a grain of salt, try the service out and weigh its merits for yourself.

 I will say,  however, that bit.ly is easily the best URL shortener I’ve used to date.  It accomplishes its core mission quickly and easily, converting long URLs to short ones on the bit.ly homepage or using a bookmarklet you can drag to your Web browser’s toolbar. (It’s even kinda cute; note the blowfish mascots on the right.)

If you’re a Web developer or simply a data geek, the ability to pull all of the data about a given shortened URL through a XML or JSON interface will be quite helpful for analyzing your traffic and audience behavior.

Here’s a quick rundown of some of bit.ly’s other nifty features:

• display your 15 most recent shortened URLs below the entry field
• tracking of both clicks on shortened URLS and referring pages
• an API for creating shortened URLs from web applications, which is quite useful is you’re a Web developer
• automatic creation of thumbnail images that can be displayed on a webpage next to shortened URL

If my excitement about bit.ly doesn’t move you, Marshall Kirkpatrick has posted a glowing review of bit.ly at ReadWriteWeb that thoroughly explains why bit.ly is worth a try, along with an endorsement of bit.ly’s advanced URL tracking capabilities by Lifehacker.

If you like bit.ly, please recommend it to others. The larger the bit.ly community grows, the more effective and useful this nascent index of the Semantic Web will become. That’s because bit.ly is analyzing all of the pages that its users create shortcuts to using the Open Calais semantic analysis API from Reuters. All the data gathered is available in public RSS feeds. bit.ly is also using the MetaCarta GeoParsing API to draw geolocation data out of the database of submitted links.

Mar 12 2008   10:53AM GMT

Video: RFID Pet Food Access System

Posted by: Alexander Howard
Audio, innovation, cool, hacks, interesting, invention, creativity, gadgets, RFID, authentication

This canine version of access control combines radio transmitters with a high pitched warning signal to keep each dog away from the other’s bowl. The scenario is similar to many that role-based access control (RBAC) solves in an enterprise.

Unfortunately, programmers would still have to eat their own dogfood.

I wonder if this would help keep my roommate out of my beer.

Aug 20 2007   6:06PM GMT

WikiScanner: How Googlebombing Virgil led to radical transparency for Wikipedia editing everywhere

Posted by: Alexander Howard
applications, programming, Internet, search engine, innovation, useful, cool, hacks, free, academics, interesting, Silicon Valley, collaboration, wiki, community, tracking, tool, humor, Web applications, controversy

Sometime this past summer, future CalTech grad student (and self-styled”disruptive technologist”) Virgil Griffith decided that he wanted to see if he could elevate his personal home page to the top of search results for “Virgil.”

While that dream may or may not come true, there’s no doubt that the “quotes” should now be removed from disruptive technologist, (along with my self-styling). Virgil hasn’t written an epic quite yet but he’s clearly provided a useful tool to journalists and inquisitive netizens alike. Meet WikiScanner.

In two weeks, Griffith created a Web site that matches the IP addresses attached to edits of Wikipedia pages with the IP addresses listed in the publicly accessible whois database for companies and media organizations worldwide.

Using a simple, minimally designed interface consisting of a form, text, dropdowns and hyperlinks, Griffith’s site allows users to first determine what the IP address of an organization is and then plug it into to discover what edits have been made from that IP range.

By providing the means to cross reference who is editing what, Virgil’s code nearly approaches poetry, at least judging by Jimmy Wales, who told the AP that “It is fabulous and I strongly support it.”

It’s not quite fair to say that the effort is all about the Virgil Google bomb, either. According to this Wired article, Griffiths was inspired by the discovery that many Congressional offices were editing their own entries. Wondering what corporations were doing the same thing, he created WikiScanner.

As Griffiths notes wryly in his WikiScanner FAQ, the reaction to the tool’s discoveries has been more or less as expected. The CIA and FBI, Disney, Diebold, Exxon and a rapidly expanding universe of other entitities, large and small, have been editing away. Take a look at Wired’s “list of salacious edits” to see how far the count of “minor public relations disasters” that WikiScanner has enabled — and be aware that any edits that you make to Wikipedia may not be as anonymous as you might think.

Jul 23 2007   11:24AM GMT

News rivers: Dave Winer makes mobile feed browsing brilliantly easy

Posted by: Alexander Howard
Mobile, Technology, XML, Internet, aggregator, cool, hacks, free, feeds, lifehack, tool, information, trend, RSS, buzzword

Dave Winer, generally considered the father of RSS, has been playing with different ways of organizing, aggregating and displaying feeds for years. OPML was a meaningful contribution (and, for once, a less controversial one) to the syndication world, allowing users to share, import and export lists of feeds, all using free tools at opmlmanager.com.

Recently, with the launch of the iPhone, an RSS hack that Winer created two years ago has been getting much more attention. Essentially, he’s optimized all of the content that a news site makes available through RSS so that it’s ideal for viewing on a mobile device, removing formatting, images (read: advertising) and all other content extraneous to the simple - and potent - combination of headline, link and summary.

For Dave’s definition of a “river of news,” refer to ReallySimpleSyndication.org, where he uses a “conveyor belt sushi” metaphor to explain the concept further.

Mmm. Sushi.

[Photo credit: Biohabit.org)

To use the newsriver, just point your browser, mobile or otherwise, to bbcriver.com for the BBC or nytimesriver.com for the New York Times. To see how it works, view this video of a BlackBerry user browsing a newsriver:

.MOV

Critics of the technique and technology point out that Avantgo and other clipping services have provided similar functions to early adopters using wireless Palm Pilots or Pocket PCs years ago. That being said, the explosion of smartphones like the BlackBerry, Treo, Windows Mobile devices and now the iPhone has made quick-loading, mobile optimized news content much more compelling than the graphically-clogged homepages of many providers. Of course, the iPhone’s ability to browse the “full Internet” makes it quite possible, even pleasant, to surf through the different major newspaper and online media sites, but if you’re stuck on the EDGE network as you browse, it’s quite possible that a newsriver may be preferable.

I’m not sure whether Dave deserves credit for something entirely new. I do know that what he’s created makes it easier for me to access the news on the go, and for that I thank him. I’m not alone in that. A-list bloggers like Jeff Jarvis, Dan Farber, Read/Write Web, Scoble and Dave Winer himself have all held up newsrivers as something revolutionary. Steve Rubel, over at MicroPersuasion, recently pointed out that Megite, which aggregates blog posts like TechMeme, now provides a newsriver.

The point that Dave makes in the post that reintroduced the concept of the river - and defends it against critics - is much the same as the one I just made above. While it’s been possible to do this sort of thing on a PDA or BlackBerry for some time, no one has made it as easy as simply pointing your mobile browser to a URL.

Now, in the wake of losing my MDA on a fishing trip last weekend (RIP), my next challenge to decide which mobile device I’ll be using to paddle down the newsriver.

Jul 5 2007   5:56PM GMT

Hacker or cracker?

Posted by: Ivy Wigmore
commentary, hacks, conversation, hacking, controversy, word meanings

Throughout the years I’ve been writing and editing on WhatIs, I don’t think there’s been another issue that’s cropped up as often or been as gnarly to try to settle as the question of whether a person who attacks computers and networks is a hacker or a cracker.

Just about everyone but the serious geeks uses hacker to mean an attacker but anytime we do we get notes from readers to the effect that a malicious hacker is a cracker and a hacker is just someone with mad computer skills. Furthermore, they feel that we should be upholding proper usage and not letting standards slide. On the other hand, when we’ve used “cracker,” we often get notes asking if we don’t mean “hacker” and suggesting that we might want to think about using the same term everone else does.

I’ll admit I’ve often tried to skirt the issue by using “attacker.” But the time comes when an editor has to take a stand. Especially in the wake of several years of wishy-washy, indeterminate indecision. So. Decision time. Let’s see what everyone else says…

Wikipedia has a fairly extensive entry for hacker. The article starts out by defining a hacker as “a person who illegally breaks into computer and network systems” but links to a better page for hacker definition controversy.

Alpha hacker Eric S. Raymond weighs in authoritatively on the topic in his article, How to become a hacker:

There is another group of people who loudly call themselves hackers, but aren’t. These are people (mainly adolescent males) who get a kick out of breaking into computers and phreaking the phone system. Real hackers call these people ‘crackers’ and want nothing to do with them. Real hackers mostly think crackers are lazy, irresponsible, and not very bright, and object that being able to break security doesn’t make you a hacker any more than being able to hotwire cars makes you an automotive engineer. Unfortunately, many journalists and writers have been fooled into using the word ‘hacker’ to describe crackers; this irritates real hackers no end.

The basic difference is this: hackers build things, crackers break them.

There’s much more in Raymond’s FAQ-style article, including:

The Hacker Attitude

1. The world is full of fascinating problems waiting to be solved.

2. No problem should ever have to be solved twice.

3. Boredom and drudgery are evil.

4. Freedom is good.

5. Attitude is no substitute for competence.

On the other hand, you can also find support for the use of hacker as a synonym for cracker. According to wordorigins.org, that usage goes back to the November 20, 1963 issue of The Tech, the M.I.T. student paper, where it was used to refer to breaking into the phone system:

There are those that claim that hacker should not mean someone who maliciously invades computer systems, and that it really means someone proficient in computer use. But this is not the history of the term. Hacking from its beginnings at M.I.T. has always been associated with using technology to subvert institutional systems for personal use. Besides, the meanings of words are determined by usage, not etymology. So if people use hacker to mean someone who breaks into computer systems, that’s what it means.

So, the way I see it, there are a number of fairly compelling arguments for either side, chief among them being:

• Eric Raymond says a hacker is defined by skill and good intention. And everybody loves Eric Raymond.
• The earliest reference to skill-based, non-malicious technology hacking that I could find traces it back to ham radio operators in the fifties, predating the MIT paper cited on wordorigins.
• However, as wordorigins correctly points out, common use is what drives definition. So if people use hacker to mean cracker, eventually that’s what it will mean.
• And yet… cracker is unambiguous. If one uses cracker in this context, people get it. So if we use “hacker” to mean a highly computer-literate geek and “cracker” to mean an attacker of whatever skill level…

Sigh. ‘Round and round and round it goes. I’m just not sure. I’d love some input. What do you think? ~ Ivy Wigmore

Jul 2 2007   3:56PM GMT

uMouse: Control your computer using gestures and a webcam, not a mouse

Posted by: Alexander Howard
applications, fun, cool, hacks, interesting, invention, creativity, freeware, code, gadgets, interface

This past weekend’s iPhone launch has introduced hundreds of thousands of users to a new paradigm for mobile computing interfaces, multi-touch. While only time will show if an small, touchscreen keyboard will be a pleasant and productive experience, there are any number of other companies and researchers experimenting with different ways of controlling our digital devices. I’ve been using a Kensington Orbit for years, for instance, a USB trackball that has proven tough, easy to use and helpful for scrolling and editing long lines of code. Earlier this year, I invested in a Logitech MX Revolution, easily the best wireless mouse I’ve ever experienced. I can’t emphasize how much I love the hyperscroll wheel, forward/backward buttons right where my thumb rests or programmable buttons.

This afternoon, however, I found a new and downright fun new way of moving the cursor around the screen. Sadly, the brain-computer interface (BCI) that DARPA is developing isn’t quite ready for prime time, so don’t get too excited — yet. Instead, programmer Larry Lart has created uMouse, a free Windows application that, in concert a USB webcam, allows the user to control the cursor and left- or right-click using head movements or hand gestures. While the real-time visual tracking the program uses to translate movement into directives is a bit processor intensive, anyone who presents often or needs to have more flexibility in where and how they interact with a laptop or workstation now has another option with undeniable geek appeal.

Nice work, Larry! Now, to decide what I want my PC to do when I smile.

Jun 11 2007   12:38PM GMT

Google search field hacks

Posted by: Alexander Howard
Google, Internet, search engine, search, useful, cool, hacks, education, free, listings, tool, howto, ebooks, cheatsheet

I’ll admit it: I’m a frequent Googler. I Google from the office, when I need to research new terms for WhatIs. I Google from home, when I need information about events, people, tide charts or news. These days, I’m Googling from the car and train as well, enabled by the handheld attached to my belt on an o-so-slow GPRS connection, using my MDA as a sort of primitive Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. That’s rather useful, of course, when I need to determine the number from which the meaning of life, the universe, and everything could be derived.

Some time ago, however, I started to be considerably smarter about my Googling, as I realized that with just a bit of syntax ahead of my search terms, I could make much better use of the search field. These additional words are called “operators,” for my semantically-obsessed fellow travelers. They make life easier. Following is my short list of favorite Google search field hacks. If you have some of your own that I missed, please let me know in the comments so that we all can become more efficient Googlers too.

Google Phonebook: I particularly love this one. I stopped using the white pages because of this very feature. Just type in “phonebook: ” and then a name, comma, zipcode. I’m a “victim” of fixed-mobile substititution, so there’s no danger of revealing my digits to the world here in an example. If I did have a landline, however, you’d find it that way. It’s also possible to reverse engineer the lookup by entering a phone number, revealing the attached adress. For those a bit freaked out by this ability, it’s worth noting that you can request that your name be removed ,

Google Weatherman: While I look to NOAA.gov for all-things-meteorogical, if I just want to know whether to grab a jacket, sweater or shorts, typing in weather: zipcode is perfectly effective. For instance, here’s the weather in lovely Needham Heights, Massachussetts today.

Google Movies: I adore this feature. Just enter “movie: zipcode” to get a list of theaters and showtimes near you, with links to showtimes with available tickets and reviews. This stripped down, entirely textual results page is especially useful and usable when I’m mobile.

Google Dictionary: This is spectacularly relevant to my work, given that I write definitions for WhatIs.com. If you’d like to see all of the entries for a term, simply type “define: term” and you’ll be presented with a list of hyperlinks and short summaries. Try define: blog for a comparison of takes on that hotly contested term, for instance.

Google Site Search: While searching the entire Web is undeniably useful, sometimes you just want to look through one Web site, like, say, WhatIs.com. Just type in site: domain name search term (like site: WhatIs.com geek) and you’re off and running.

Google University: Just as you can restrict search to a specific site, you can also focus on certain domain names, like .edu. If you’re a developer, for instance, you could enter [ruby tutorial site:.edu] Of course, these days you can also just use Google Scholar.

Google for Media: Looking for ebooks on Java? Paste the following syntax into your search field:

-inurl: (htm|html|php) intitle:”index of” +”last modified” +”parent directory” +description +size +(.pdf) “Java”

If you replace .pdf with other extensions and Java with a different keyword, you can also find all kinds of other media out there too, though it’s worth noting that relevant intellectual property laws still apply to your actions.

As I wrote initially, this is only a short list the tweaks that I actually use with any frequency. For more information, see Google Blogoscoped’s post about using special syntax or Google’s list of operators, including a printable search cheatsheet.

Apr 10 2007   4:07PM GMT

MakeZine: DIY elevated to an artform

Posted by: Alexander Howard
Technology, innovation, blog, hacks, invention, creativity, lifehack

From one of the founders of the O’Reilly Network, the Makezine blog “brings the do-it-yourself mindset to all the technology in your life.”

Apr 10 2007   2:58PM GMT

Kevin Kelly’s Cool Tools

Posted by: Alexander Howard
Technology, blog, useful, cool, hacks, culture

Kevin Kelly’s Cool Tools is is a Web site owned and operated by, of all people, Kevin Kelly, one of the co-founders of Wired Magazine way back in the 20th century. He writes about different “cool tools” weekly on his blog as well as other interesting topics in technology and culture in general, as one might expect from Wired’s “Senior Maverick.”