ajb{log}: learn something new each day

I’ve been searching for a quick link to Google Profiles on Google.com and there really isn’t one that is obvious to the regular users. It’s actually buried in a help page from Google.

So, here is the link to your Google Profile, making it easy for everyone else who is having a hard time looking for it.

http://www.google.com/s2/profiles/me

Want to search for someone else’s profile on Google? Easy. Let’s say you are looking for Barack Obama’s Google Profile. Just go here…

http://www.google.com/s2/profiles?q= 

…then simply enter “Barack Obama”.

That was easy right? Yeah I know, it’s pretty cool.

Here are the people I find interesting at FriendFeed

Mona N.

Cee Bee

l0ckergn0me

Stupid Blogger (aka Tina)

Paul Buchheit

Duncan Riley

Mark Wilson

Zee.

Louis Gray

MG Siegler

Here are the awesome people who finds me interesting!

Morton Fox

Stupid Blogger (aka Tina)

Yolanda

Lindsey

Carmen

April Buchheit

? Rahsheen™

Michael J. Cohen (mjc)

Cee Bee

(jeff)isageek

Who are yours?

ABS-CBN, in a statement said that it will acquire 2.5 million shares (5 percent stake) at Multiply, a Florida-based social networking site. Multiply is the second largest social networking site in the Philippines after Friendster.com. Multiply.com maybe catching up slowly with Friendster.com in terms of unique visitors (see Compete estimates below).

Friendster on the other hand, the most popular social networking site in the Philippines may be losing its steam after more than 2 days of downtime due to a data center power outage in Santa Clara, California. You just can’t seem to wonder how did Friendster allowed itself to be offline? Was it because it had a single point of failure? Having one data center housing more than 85 million users? Could a data mirror in Asia have helped since most of their active users are there?

In any event, Multiply just got a strong partner in the Philippines - media giant ABS-CBN. But will Multiply be able to grow their user-base in the Philippines with the help of ABS-CBN and overtake pinoy-favorite Friendster? The answer to this question might be sooner than later.

What are your thoughts?

Sources: Business Mirror, ABS-CBN

I don’t know if this has been announced already. But I just noticed a URL parameter on Google Ads. Coordinates.

They’re probably starting to track click coordinates on graphic ads. Google can/should provide Google Adwords users heatmap statistics on graphic ads pretty soon. A feature already being offered by Crazy Egg for some time now.

Friendfeed launched today a cool beta feature, Friendfeed Real-time. Here’s a quick tip on how to load Friendfeed Real-time on your Firefox sidebar:

1) Add this to your bookmark http://friendfeed.com/realtime?embed=1

2) Right-click the bookmark

3) Properties

4) Tick the “Load this bookmark in the sidebar”

5) You’re done!

It should look like the screenshot below

Now you get the best of both worlds in FriendFeed. The standard view and real-time view at the same time.

Enjoy!

This was a question posted at Friendfeed last Thursday. It was a simple question I had with a co-worker and we both need answers from different people with different opinions and perspective. Here’s the result:

I ?d playing Starcraft and Warcraft + Playstation. - Me

Expensive but by no means a waste of money - Joe Dawson

Moderation - directeur via NoiseRiver

Heck no. If something is fun and/or entertaining, it’s never a waste of time. - Alex "Lasagna" Scoble

Nope - Lindsey Smith

Only if you do it wrong. - Bored

for a Philosopher’s take — think of the value of drinking parties (Plato) - Michael Maranda

Depends on what type of games you’re talking about. I think there’s a lot more value in complex tabletop games and games like chess than in dumb Flash games online or whatever. - Rochelle

I have pretty much abandoned gaming in favor of social media. I was a several-hours-a-day PC gamer for 10+ years. I like to think that SM has more possibility of a return on my time investment than WoW did. - Daniel J. Pritchett

Nope, because I rock at Star Wars Battlefront II. - Steven "The One" Perez

I sure hope not. I was really sucked into Sims 2 for a couple years. Now I play a few times a week. Mostly to design houses. But, I’m still a sucker for ‘casual games’ like Diner Dash, etc (bigfishgames.com). I get lost in trying to beat the damn things. - Yolanda

Games recharge my brain and leave me refreshed to think about other things, a lot like a good walk. - Jennifer Dittrich

one exgamer says no - Dobromir Hadzhiev

No. Games can improve mental and physical dexterity, mental acuteness, memory, etc. There have been studies done. And *applauds* Alex’s answer. - JMakesAwesomeSauce

Honestly, I’d rather read a book. - RachelW

Depends on your priorities, but for me, I enjoy games. - Rodfather

no. Because some times you just need to escape the doom and gloom - Duncan Riley

Not if it’s Sorry or Life. - Thomas Hawk

Games are a release from the horrible world outside. They can bring joy and relaxation and bring down your stress life. They are a great interactive entertainment media. How is that a waste of time? Waste away I’d say. - Kol Tregaskes

"The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted." - Bertrand Russell — Sometimes it’s wasting time, just like movies and reading, sometimes it’s useful. It does have benefits for hand-eye coordination, problem solving skills, teamwork, tactics, reflex improvement, vocabulary, cash management, etc. - xero

I don’t know… is maintaining sanity a waste of time? - Michael W. May via twhirl

Only if you think it is. - Mona N.

Absolutely not a waste of time. - Clay Newton

Scrabble stimulates neurotransmitters. - Shelly Weiss

Really, I don’t think that matters so much. What’s important for our health is to intentionally indulge in completely frivolous "waste of time" activities on a regular basis. Playing games, feeding ducks in the park, blowing bubbles, coloring with crayons. If it feeds your spirit, do it, no matter who says it’s a waste of time! - Heather Sillypants Mina

Everything is a waste of time, then you get put in the recycle bin. Use your time the way you want to. - Sam Levine

No more a waste of time then being on FriendFeed. I can gain social interaction using both and at the same time be happy that I took something away from each. (No matter how trivial, it’s still a small sense of accomplishment and fun.) - David Cook

Thanks for participating guys. Appreciate it! - You (edit | delete)

I’ll come back and answer once I finish Missile Command - Glen C

It has been argued that humans are "homo ludens" more than they are sapient. That said, I personally find that they can easily become a time tax, and tend to avoid them, preferring to spend that time on more solidly creative activity. - david beckwith

So, having read all the above opinions, what’s your take?

For those who haven’t seen the 2008 presidential debate between Republican nominee Senator John McCain and Democratic nominee Senator Barack Obama.

This is one event you shouldn’t miss.

There are many ways you can refresh your feeds on FriendFeed. One of my favorite is Hao Chen’s “FriendFeed Refresh Feeds Button” userscript. However, if you are not a Greasemonkey fan or you simply do not use Firefox, there is a way to refresh a feed on FriendFeed.

I took Tumblr as an example for this post. So here goes… I just posted something at Tumblr and I can’t wait for FriendFeed to schedule the crawling of my feeds. Here are the quick steps to force FriendFeed to refresh it immediately:

1) Assuming you are already logged in, click on the “Share something” button (image)

2) Now, click on the “Import your stuff” link. No, you are not going to import your feed again.

3) Once you’ve done that, click on the feed that you want to be “refreshed”. In this case, I chose Tumblr. Click on it.

4) You will see something like this (below). Now click on the “Refresh feed” link.

5) You’re done! You should see the content now on your Friendfeed.

It should be noted that you shouldn’t abuse this functionality as it might put some stress on FriendFeed’s servers although I’m pretty sure they can handle it.

By the way, I am using the  “Cleaner FriendFeed” userstyle in case you were wondering why I have a different look and feel. You can also use Cleaner FriendFeed. All you have to do is install the Stylish Firefox plugin then install the Cleaner FriendFeed userstyle.

Anyway, hope this helps someone today.

There’s a new security tool that Surf Jack that allows one to hijack HTTP connections to steal cookies - even ones on HTTPS sites. Works on both Wifi (monitor mode) and Ethernet.

Here’s a proof of concept to steal session cookies on HTTP and HTTPS sites that do not set the Cookie secure flag.

It’s really a scary to see that even Gmail was vulnerable before to these types of attack. So, how about Yahoo Mail? And what more if you use Hotmail Live? Makes you really think if there is such thing as 100% security nowadays.

First off, what is Baidu? Why does it make sense to submit all your websites there? Ok, simply put, Baidu provides an index of over 740 million web pages, 80 million images, and 10 million multimedia files. According to Compete, the Baidu has more than 1.5 million monthly visitors. And that’s the main reason why.

I can’t understand Chinese. How and where do I submit my site? Here’s how:

1) Go to this URL: http://www.baidu.com/search/url_submit.html

2) You should see something like this:

Just enter your URL (web address) on the first input box.

3) Enter the code that you will see just right at the bottom (It’s Y2C2 in my case. That code changes randomly).

4) Click the submit button beside it and you’re done!

Easy huh?

Here’s the URL again http://www.baidu.com/search/url_submit.html, bookmark it for future use.

Here’s the English translation if you really wanted to know.