There is a supposedly reliable Google updates list on the Web, though its retainers are not affiliated with Google so can only make predictions. Among the updates included in this list:

• Toolbar PageRank Update
• Google Directory Update
• Backlink Update
• Algorithm Update
• Toolbar Program Update

Bill Gates arrested in his younger days (photo in public domain)

Some time the past I composed a little tool from various scripts to correct for the differences between Windows and Linux servers. To quote just the gist:

The Linux filesystem behaves differently from that of Windows. For example, Linux treats index.htm and INDEX.htm as if they are separate files; Windows does not.

In the logs, I repeatedly observe errors like the following (from half an hour ago):

[Tue Jul 12 05:48:11 2005] [error] ...
[client 207.46.98.35] File does not exist: ...
/home/schestow/public_html/guestbook/spam/

The correct URL is in fact /home/schestow/public_html/Guestbook/Spam/ (note case)

Performing a reverse DNS lookup, I discovered that MSNBot was the culprit. Its Windows-egocentric requests invoke errors again and again, making false positives and adding noise to the error logs. Phrased differently, whenever requesting non-existent pages (by manipulating their names), MSNBot flags errors which result in a chaotic mess (I view my error logs several time a day).

Are Microsoft intentionally tempering with Linux servers? Are Microsoft punishing us because we did not buy their expensive server software? That’s what it boils down to.

aving gathered statistics, I estimate that my Firefox theme adaptations had over 100 downloads from this domain. The more popular of the two themes is the Mac OS X clone (shown below). It can be downloaded or directly installed. Enjoy!

Note: this theme should be compatible with all platforms

Click image to see it full-sized

Martha Irvine of Associated Press writes about the price of telling too much over the Internet (via Yahoo):

…putting one’s life online can have a price. A few bloggers, for instance, have been fired for writing about work on personal online journals. And Maya Marcel-Keyes, daughter of conservative politician Alan Keyes, discovered the trickiness of providing personal details online when her discussions on her blog about being a lesbian became an issue during her father’s recent run for a U.S. Senate seat in Illinois (he made anti-gay statements during the campaign)…

…Some also speculate that more scandalous blog entries — especially those about partying and dating exploits — will have ramifications down the road…

I have noticed a few bloggers who fear nothing they publish. One has to remember that blogs do not have to lead to personal discussions. This is perhaps one of the advantages of technical blogs where opinions expressed are about products or companies, seldom about individual people. The mentioning of names is still a true danger.
 
 

any interesting tools are being pointed out by Jeff Veen and the latest such tool is the personalised tags cloud, which is currently in beta (testing) phase. This Web-based tool, which goes by the name TagCloud, inputs a collection of RSS feeds (as OPML) which reflect on your interests. It then counts the frequency of words within (essentially tags) while excluding stop words like “and” or “since”. Tags reflect on what happens in your own ‘cyber-sphere’ — the means by which you become better orientated. By looking at the cloud, you get a preview of what you’ll see plenty of once entering your browsing cycle.

Owing to his recommendation I built myself a cloud (seen above). The many news feeds make London the primary tag in my case. I later discovered a flaw: if a single feed contains a term which repeats itself over and over again, that term (tag) can dominate.

ahoo officially offer delivery of search results as RSS feeds. They join MSN Search in providing this type of service. Is it possible that Google’s competitors are willing to proliferate as much bandwidth as it takes just to challenge Google and steal some of its avid users? No doubt RSS feeds of this nature consume a lot of traffic and get a very low clickthrough rate from feed subscribers. In fact, people with interest in such a service are often pre-occupied with SEO and keep track of SERPs or news of one particular niche.

The news is rather disappointing for Google enthusiasts. As they offer no analogous service (Google Alerts instead), I set up about 5 feeds from MSN search (no clickthrough though, ever), 2 from Yahoo! Finance (since February 2005) and 5 from Yahoo! News. Google appear reluctant to provide feeds so I ended up using a workaround. There are similar workarounds for eBay or even static HTML pages.

n a life that involves subscription to many feeds, it is worth knowing which ones are the most popular. The Radio Community Server collects some statistics and ranks the Top 100 RSS feeds based on the number of subscribers. Below is the top of the list:

All the rest can be found at the aforementioned site.

Feeds slowly become the substitute to the Web browser