Myside's Spew - Blog of Spontaneous Combustible Spew

Facebook Runs into Insta-Problems

11 April, 2012 13:16 CST6CDT

It used to be the case that if a company or piece of software got bought by Microsoft, it instantly became uncool. In the movie, Social Network, Jesse Eisenhower, who plays Mark Zuckerberg, says Facebook is “cool.” Well, it isn’t anymore.

The reason for this is long and is a typical story for an internet venture that just got too big. Of course, it should be noted that the cult if Apple seems like it will never lose its cool, but there’s always time for that. No, think of Microsoft and Yahoo, maybe even MySpace (whisper it), but this could be where Facebook is going. The first sign of this anti-cool began to show this week with the acquisition of Instagram for $1,000,000,000. That is a lot of money for a photo sharing app.

What is Instagram?

Instagram LogoInstagram is a photo sharing application for Apple iOS and Android. The software is quite simple. Users take a photo on their smartphone or on their tablet computer or upload it via a digi cam to their computer, then upload it to Instagram. They are then able to control, through a set of filters, exactly who can see the photo. This provides users with a large amount of control over their images and their data.

Last week it launched its new Android application, which racked up a further 1 million users inside the first 24 hours alone. Add to this the 27 million Apple users via the iPhone, Mac and the iPad, and you have a hip and fast growing user base. Like many hip and niche programs and communities, many of the users felt a strong bond with the company, and many used it because it was not a part of big business and more specifically, because it was not a part of Facebook.

Why Would Facebook Want It?

Mark ZuckerbergOnce businesses, especially social networks and software companies, have expanded as far as they can in their chosen field, they seek to use their power and finances to move into other territories. Witness Google and Yahoo hoovering up various online ventures and programs or simply moving into such territories themselves. Of course they hope to bring along with them a range of dedicated followers, but few realize that such followers use them only because there’s little other choice. Microsoft is the default operating system for many, Google is the default search engine and Facebook is the default social network.

Earlier, Facebook wished to turn its in-site chat function into a downloadable desktop messenger service ala Yahoo and MSN messengers. It also wanted to develop its own photo sharing program or application, which could then be used on Android and iOS tech, thus putting Facebook into those operating systems.

The problem was, however, that in building its own messenger service and in building its own photo-sharing application, it technically started with zero users. The much easier option is to buy an existing, but small, service that has a growing fanbase, but is actually making no money. This makes them prone to takeovers that tie them into the Facebook system. Hence, the purchases of Beluga and Instagram.

Is Facebook Losing Its Cool?

Hell yes it is and this was before The Social Network. Let’s look at the reasons for this. Facebook grew on the back of a consumer need. It needed a digital version of good old fashioned networking and sharing. Facebook provided a user format far superior to rivals such as MySpace, Bebo and Friendster.

The Social NetworkThe first great problem that has undermined Facebook’s coolness is its inability to understand that consumers want a choice. Therefore, by forcing users to change the profiles from one style to another, from standard layouts to timelines, by forcing changes on groups, pages, and so on, they are alienating people who want to shape their own identities online.

The second point is that users perhaps do not understand the deal with the devil they are signing up to with Facebook. As a company, Facebook needs to make money. This comes from advertising and advertising is going to be based on targeted information. When Facebook makes changes to said profiles, it often reverts security information and settings to open, forcing users to recognize this and click everything back into place. This is time consuming and reminds users about SOPA and other government proposals to snoop. Facebook’s information has become a snoop’s dream.

Then there is the absorption and treatment of other programs, applications and companies. Facebook has followed the growth models of other big companies such as Microsoft, Google and Yahoo. It buys up a promising app, pays off the developers and puts them on the payroll, then it strips the program, absorbs the users, puts out its own version of the program, and then it re-deploys the original developers on other programs. That app has lost its identity and has become just another Wal-Mart mattress, albeit a VOC-free mattress.

Mark Zuckerberg has promised that things will be different with Instagram, but that has not stopped what has been dubbed an insta-backlash by Techcrunch. Users do not want their data being hacked and used for advertising by Facebook. They want an independent set applications they can feel an almost familial affinity with. Most of all, they do not want to be a part of Facebook. The question remains whether this will be a crack in the dam as far as Facebook are concerned or just an expensive acquisition and at $1 billion, it is a very expensive purchase indeed.

This article was written and submitted to myspew.com by Imogen Reed <imogen@linegray.com>

A year ago I was writing...

Omission Bias
Smith's Cycling and Fitness - Re-Built Summer Transportation
Michael Moore - Stephen Colbert a tool of Viacom Video
Gallery3: ImageMagick (convert) using PHP-CGI (Fast-CGI) Patch - Bypass open_basedir, Fix for short_open_tag & Howto Disable eAccelerator Using htscanner
FreeBSD 7.1 End of Life (EOL) - Update to FreeBSD 7.4-RELEASE

Technology  Software  Article & Comments

Samsung Intercept FB01 2.2.3 Update Breaks Bluetooth

13 March, 2012 18:36 CST6CDT

Samsung started to push out an Android update in late February.  I received the update just a few days ago.  The Android update, FB01 for the Sprint Samsung Intercept updates the Android version from 2.2.1 to 2.2.3 and also updates the baseband (modem firmware), among other various fixes and patches.

It has been speculated by other websites that the intention was to remove the Carrier IQ software.  Unfortunately the update breaks 3rd party application access to the phone's Bluetooth resources.  Built in Bluetooth profiles such as OBEX file transfers and BT Audio for wireless headsets continued to work as it should.

I have several applications that need extended connections or administrative access to the Bluetooth resources.  Therefore I needed to revert to the stock 2.2.1 ROM or a 3rd party ROM and trick the Samsung update servers to show that the phone had been patched.  If this is not done, the update will continue to nag and annoy you with notifications of an update no matter if you are not using a stock Intercept ROM.

I decided to use a 3rd party ROM, however the stock 2.2 ROM is available on the Internet and is installable using the CM01 recovery tool.  Your phone needs to be rooted.  You may be able to do a factory reset as well to revert.  I do suggest flashing the new baseband firmware.

The file build.prop is located in the root /system folder after the Intercept update S:M910.05 S.FB01.  Any ROM, reverted Android version, or the like, may use the build properties section of this file to be copied and pasted in replacement to this section in your chosen Android alternative.  The section with the current phone build properties is located between "# begin build properties" & "# end build properties.".  Do not modify anything below these separators.

I have no information if or when the Intercept's 2.2.3 Bluetooth problem will be addressed by Samsung or Sprint.  I was not able to find an alternative solution in a reasonable amount of time.

edited 2012-03-15

Samsung Intercept (SPH-M910) related binary applications/utilities, miscellaneous resources, and ROMS may or may not be available here: Samsung Intercept

 

A year ago I was writing...

Updating Live: Japanese Earthquake and Nuclear Reactors
RCA ANT806 Reviewed - High Performance Universal Amplified Indoor/Outdoor Antenna
It is squirrel Thursday! - Evil Fur Kills Resistance
Problematic Social Structure of Thought - Mindsets see free as of: no quality, quantity, or value
HOWTO Tip - Waterproof your Smartphone

Software  Projects  Article & Comments

Current & Updating Webalizer Search Engine List

02 February, 2012 06:40 CST6CDT

as of 2012-02-02

The Webalizer is a HTTP server log analyzer that generates HTML visual output statistics with graphs about Internet websites and its visitors.  One of the many features of The Webalizer is its search engine query (keywords) referral logging.  Each search engine uses a URL parameter that contains the search query the Internet party or person used to be directed to a resource on you web server.  Webalizer uses the search query keywords to generate one of several reports that may be viewed and referenced.

This article contains a current list of search engines and parameters for Webalizer's SearchEngine parameter.  Feel free to add or modify a search engine (SearchEngine) for The Webalizer search engine query parsing in the comments.

SearchEngine    aolsearch.      q=
SearchEngine    ask.com q=
SearchEngine    bingj.  q=
SearchEngine    bing.   q=
SearchEngine    facebook.       q=
SearchEngine    google. q=
SearchEngine    image.youdao.com        q=
SearchEngine    kvasir.no       q=
SearchEngine    m.yahoo.        p=
SearchEngine    search.alot.    q=
SearchEngine    search.aol.     q=
SearchEngine    search.aol.     query=
SearchEngine    search.comcast.net      q=
SearchEngine    search.conduit. q=
SearchEngine    search.lycos.   query=
SearchEngine    search.pro      q=
SearchEngine    search.yahoo.   p=
SearchEngine    webcache.googleusercontent.com  q=
SearchEngine    altavista.com   q=
SearchEngine    eureka.com      q=
SearchEngine    hotbot.com      MT=
SearchEngine    msn.com         MT=
SearchEngine    infoseek.com    qt=
SearchEngine    webcrawler      searchText=
SearchEngine    excite          search=
SearchEngine    netscape.com    search=
SearchEngine    mamma.com       query=
SearchEngine    alltheweb.com   query=
SearchEngine    northernlight.com  qr=
SearchEngine    sensis.com.au   find=

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Postfix TLS Fingerprints for MTA to MTA Identification

28 January, 2012 06:39 CST6CDT

edited 2012-01-28 11:30:43

I have a home mail server with a Linux operating system & Postfix that is the primary mail exchange (MX) for its domain.  In addition to the primary MTA, I have a static secondary relay mail server with a FreeBSD operating system & Postfix in the case my home connection were to go down.  I was looking for a way that my secondary or primary MTA (mail transport agent) could relay e-mail to my legitimate dynamic IP address if my home mail server were to go down by doing a verification that my dynamic domain name IP address with an open port 25 was truly its relay destination.

I accomplished simple MTA to MTA verification using Postfix, which is installed on both servers, and my home TLS certificate's fingerprint.  When my backup mail exchange server receives mail, it will relay it to my dynamic home server when it becomes available, though will only be delivered if my home TLS MD5 certificate fingerprint is valid.  If the MD5 fingerprint expected does not match, it is deferred, re-queued, and repeats indefinitely until it is safe to deliver.

The first step is to do a MD5 fingerprint on your home, dynamic Postfix server's TLS PEM file defined in the Postfix main.cf configuration file with the variable smtpd_tls_cert_file=/path/to/ssl-cert.pem using the openssl command:

openssl x509 -noout -in /path/to/ssl-cert.pem -fingerprint -md5

Let's assume the MD5 fingerprint output is: d5:68:da:c4:cd:ee:0d:ba:3a:bc:dd:b6:7b:67:51:88 and our dynamic domain name is domain.not.  Let's also assume the home mail server is setup and ready to receive e-mail for this domain and your users.

On your secondary and static backup MX server, make sure that domain.not is defined in the following parameters:

  • relay_domains=domain.not
  • relay_recipient_maps = hash:${config_directory}/relay_recipient_maps.cf

The configuration file relay_recipient_maps.cf contains a table of your recipients and may look like the following:

first.last@domain.not     first.last@domain.not

Make sure to execute: postmap /etc/postfix/relay_recipient_maps.cf or replace /etc/postfix with your configuration directory.

Your "transport_maps=" may look something like the following:

domain.not   smtp:[domain.not]

If your ISP blocks port 25, you may use the following for port 26, or any upper number port that is open and available:

domain.not smtp:[domain.not]:26

Now that we have the MD5 fingerprint of our home server and the static backup server knows what e-mail to accept and where to deliver it when your home server is up, we may now define in Postfix to only deliver mail if when requested the home Postfix server shows its certificate, and the MD5 fingerprint of the certificate matches.

First tell Postfix to use MD5 hashes for TLS policies: smtp_tls_fingerprint_digest = md5  Next, define your TLS policy configuration file, smtp_tls_policy_maps = hash:${config_directory}/tls_policy.cf

Here is an example SMTP TLS policy map:

[domain.not] fingerprint
    match=d5:68:da:c4:cd:ee:0d:ba:3a:bc:dd:b6:7b:67:51:88

In the above TLS policy, domain.not requires TLS and the MD5 fingerprint of the certificate must match, match=  Be sure to postmap the tls_policy.cf file, reload postfix, and you will now be using simple, low level MTA to MTA identification.

Software  Projects  Article & Comments

Firefox Now Does a Rapid Release (Backport) on Ubuntu

27 January, 2012 16:42 CST6CDT

This morning I noticed APT had a new version of Firefox waiting to be updated.  Firefox 9.0.1 was a welcomed update for my 10.04 LTS Xubuntu installation.  Ubuntu will now be releasing the browser upgrades as Mozilla rolls out it's web browser application with the next generation of Internet technology, such as enhanced HTML5 support, and security enhancements.

"The upstream Mozilla Firefox web browser has moved to a rapid release cycle. New Firefox versions are being released every six weeks and contain new features and security enhancements. Until now, Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and Ubuntu 10.10 have been getting 3.6 point releases of Firefox. As such, users have not been benefiting from new features, support for new web technologies, security enhancements, and performance improvements. Firefox 3.6 will be reaching its end of life soon, so we need to migrate users to rapid release so that they will continue to receive security updates in a timely fashion."

The roll-out was announced to start January 17th, though I thought from the start it was to be the 27th - and it turned out to be so, for me.  Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and Ubuntu 10.10 installations are now on a rapid release cycle as is the latest Ubuntu distribution sets available.  I am sure it is relieving a lot of stress now not having to patch Firefox 3.6 as security issues arise, as this is the default and once permanent version of these older maintained Ubuntu distribution sets.

APT repository add-ons for the previous Ubuntu Firefox branded version will be migrated to the new Firefox version through Mozilla's add-on service, addons.mozilla.org.

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