WebProNews » Addresses

Internet Neighborhood Has Grown Dramatically

WebProNews Staff — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 00:44:39 +0000

Over 2.7 billion addresses have been charted by researchers performing the first Internet census since 1982.

Twenty-five years ago, the Internet neighborhood resembled a small subdivision. Only 315 addresses had been allocated.

The subdivision is more like William Gibson’s ‘Sprawl‘ these days. In the first census that’s likely been conducted since 1982, according to researchers at the University of Southern California Information Sciences Institute, more than 2.7 billion addresses have been allocated globally.

As noted by PhysOrg, the researchers’ work involved pinging every address assigned on the Internet. Many of these pings, 61 percent, returned no information.

Over time, the researchers obtained a clearer picture of the Internet, as other machines responded to those ICMP packets. They have been able to render this in a color map, gradiated in color by the percentage of responses.

Addresses matter because this iteration of them, IPv4, could run out by 2011. The next Internet Protocol, version 6, will alleviate this shortage.

Facebook Addresses BNP Problem

Doug Caverly — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 16:47:50 +0000

One week ago, six major corporations pulled their advertising from Facebook. Then the British government followed suit. Now the social networking site has introduced a solution that may bring them all back.

First, though, comes a recap of the strange event that caused the mass departure: it seems that these companies’ ads were being shown on the British National Party’s Facebook page. And yes, that sounds innocent enough, but you must stop to consider that the BNP is “committed to stemming and reversing the tide of non-white immigration . . .”

Naturally, no one wanted to be associated with that sort of thing. Hence the advertisers’ exodus.

But losing that revenue – and, quite possibly, getting a lot of questionable press – just wouldn’t do, so “Facebook has added a tweak to the site so that advertisers can opt out of the groups section entirely,” according to the Guardian Unlimited’s Jemima Kiss. Facebook has also “emailed all its UK advertisers and agencies to point that out.”

Because of this development, it’s probable that most (or all) of the advertisers that left will return.

Lastly, for a bit of fun, we’ll check back in on a couple of Facebook groups. “A Chief Export of Chuck Norris Is Pain” now has 12,747 followers, while the “The British National Party”’s got about 1.7 percent of that with 217 members.

Google Addresses IM Etiquette

Doug Caverly — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 16:58:04 +0000

We’ve come to think of Googlers as cool people, as smart people, and above all, as tech-savvy people. I’m not here to challenge that perception, but a new post on the Official Google Australia Blog implies that Google’s employees deal with some of the same crap as the rest of us. The topic of the post? IM etiquette.

“We favour using our own IM applications – Google Talk and Gmail Chat – over email to quickly ‘ping’ each other work-related messages and questions,” writes Christine Knight, a “Creative Maximiser.” Knight goes on to list eight IM-related tips, and although we’ll just hit a handful of them, they are, as she says, “Straight from the Australian Googlers’ mouths.”

Number one hits upon the “I’m busy” sign. “It generally means that the person is busy,” stresses Knight. “Don’t IM them to say ‘I know you’re busy, but…’” Unless, presumably, the person’s car is on fire or something – most folks would forgive an interruption for a message of that nature.

If the person’s car is all right, it’s best to take it slowly. “Begin your chat with ‘Do you have minute?’ or, ‘Need to ask you a quick question’, rather than diving straight into the topic,” advises Knight in her seventh suggestion. “Think of it like having a conversation with someone in person. If you wouldn’t say it to their face, don’t say it over IM.”

The rest of the post is an interesting read, but since there’s little point in reprinting the whole thing here, I’ll include only one more tip: “Take advantage of the great features like the ability to set a ‘nickname’ or ‘alias’ instead of using the user’s actual email address,” writes Knight. “For example, your friend’s name/alias is ‘K007kid’, you can just make it display as ‘Steve’ on your end and stop those ‘who on earth is that again?’ moments.”

OS Licensing for SaaS

Ross Mayfield — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 20:55:41 +0000

Open Source came before, if not provided a platform for, Software as a Service. Open Source Licenses have a big loophole for the most common method of software distribution today. Tim O’Reilly addresses this while making yet another argument for open data.

Linux Magazine’s article The GPL Has No (Networked) Future recognizes a point that I’ve been making for years: that free software license requirements to release source code are all triggered by the act of distribution, and that web applications, which are not actually "distributed," are therefore not bound by these licenses. (See, for example, my 1999 debate with Richard Stallman at the Wizards of OS conference in Berlin.)

The article describes how during the GPL v3 discussions, there was a move to close the "SaaS loophole" by including some of the provisions of the Affero General Public License or AGPL:

the FSF supported the creation of the Affero GPL and attempted to integrate it into the early drafts of the GPL3. However, that plan backfired and the FSF not only struck the text that would extend the GPL to software delivered as a service but clarified just what "to ‘convey’ a work" actually means.

Mere interaction with a user through a computer network, with no transfer of a copy, is not conveying.

In other words, software delivered as service is now officially not covered by the GPL.

…the community forced the provision out as indicated in the FSF’s 61-page rationale document [pdf] that accompanies this latest draft.

We have made this decision in the face of irreconcilable views from different parts of our community. While we had known that many commercial users of free software were opposed to the inclusion of a mandatory Affero-like requirement in the body of GPLv3 itself, we were surprised at their opposition to its availability through section 7. Free software vendors allied to these users joined in their objections, as did a number of free software developers arguing on ethical as well as practical grounds.

The article concludes that while this is the right decision, it places real limits on the long-term significance of the GPL: "The future is networked. The GPL isn’t."

Bryan Richard’s article is a great analysis and the implications of keeping the loophole open for SaaS are significant. There are both practical and philosophical reasons to close this loophole with a network use clause:

If you’re unfamiliar with the SaaS loophole, it’s probably best described by a license that actually covers it. Fabrizio Capobianco, who created the Honest Public License describes it as such:

Some people interpret distribution of software as a service not as distribution of software (because GPL v2 was created before web services were on the horizon and therefore did not address them in the license). They believe that they can use open source software to offer services to the public, without returning anything to the community.

As to why you might need it, the creators of the Affero General Public License have this to say:

We believe that certain software can extend the bounderies [sic] of a person, and therefore should not be out of the control of the individual. We believe that people’s freedom should be protected. We believe that this includes their digital interface to others.

Affero and the Common Public Attribution License (CPAL)

Many OSI Certified licenses were developed before the web became a common method of distributing an application to users. Making an application available for use over a computer network, such as an email service accessed and used like GMail, should be treated the same as compiling it, burning it on a CD-ROM, and mailed out that CD-ROM. We sought to address this issue when developing the Common Public Attribution License (CPAL). Some licenses use the Affero Network Use clause to this effect, but we chose the External Deployment clause from the Open Source License (OSL) because it is more technology-neutral (OSD #10) and future proof, and is clearer about the philosophy behind the requirement.

The other issue is the Affero license, while widely known and used, is not OSI Certified, whereas OSL is. My hope is that CPAL, an MPL plus APL plus OSL license, is approved by the OSI at their next board meeting at OSCON at the end of the month and I can write sentences with less acronyms. But my other hope is that there is a license accepted by the community that provides Attribution like GPLv3, but also closes the SaaS loophole.

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Calacanis & Godin – Ultimate Linkbait?

Barry Welford — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 14:42:46 +0000

‘Link Bait’ Or ‘Link Worthy’, Are The Lines Becoming Blurred? That’s a topic that is being currently discussed in the Cre8Asite Forums. With Google putting so much emphasis on links, there is a natural tendency to drum up as many links as you can. ‘Link Bait’ Or ‘Link Worthy’ almost seems to revolve around whether you are the author or the general reader.

Of course bad news or gossip tends to get more attention than good news. So if you were to create link bait, how would you do it? Probably discussing celebrities involved in questionable practices would seem to fit.

So what should we make of the following. Jason Calacanis has written a post asking, “Why is Seth Godin not talking about the Squidoo problem?” For those not familiar with Squidoo, it’s a concept developed by Seth Godin and described as follows:

Squidoo is the world’s most popular site for people who want to build a page about their passions. Highlight books, blogs, vids, online shops, or just spread the word about stuff you love.

Later in the same day, Jason Calacanis wrote another post acknowledging that Squidoo addresses spam concerns. However the previous day, Gil Hildebrand, Jr. of Squidoo had already given ‘An update on spam‘. So what was this all about: linkbait or link worthy? I’ll leave you to be the judge.

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Google Goes To D.C., Addresses Immigration

Doug Caverly — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 19:25:04 +0000

When a homeless person says something, not many people listen. When your average middle-class person speaks, he (or she) might, at best, be able to get on the local news. But when Google talks, nothing short of Congress itself is ready to pay attention, and that was the case as Laszlo Bock laid out his company’s case for more H-1B visas.

Bock serves as Vice President of People Operations at the search engine corporation, and, as reported by the AP’s Dibya Sarkar, his appearance marks the first time any of Google’s executives have testified about immigration in front of Congress.

Sarkar conveyed Bock’s main message: “American technology companies will lose highly skilled foreign workers to Indian and Chinese rivals if the country’s work-visa program is not fixed.”

Bock also, according to CNET’s Google+Foreign+workers+are+key+to+our+success/2100-1028_3-6189093.html” title=”Google Favors More H-1B Visas”>Anne Broache, emphasized the importance that those workers have played in Google’s own past. “Within Google, there are countless examples of immigrants and nonimmigrant foreign workers playing a vital role in our company,” he stated.

As for the future, Bock continued, “It is no stretch to say that without these employees, we might not be able to develop future revolutionary products like the next Gmail or the next Google Earth.”

It could be difficult to poke holes in Bock’s arguments – Google has been immensely successful, stayed unexpectedly “good,” and, as far as anyone knows, not created any terrorists. But, lawmakers being what they are, I’m sure someone will find a way. And this debate affects many more people and companies than just those based out of Mountain View.

Still, Google got to go to Washington, and that’s pretty interesting.

ASP.NET – Block IP Addresses from Your Site

Mads Kristensen — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 14:41:49 +0000

Recently, one of my readers asked me how to block certain IP addresses from accessing his ASP.NET website.

It was a good question that could be answered in multiple correct ways.

My answer was a plug ‘n play HttpModule that could be reused in any ASP.NET application.

When an IP address is blocked it stops the response and sends a “403 Forbidden” header.

Even though it’s almost impossible to block someone from accessing your website, this is a simple way to make it much harder to do.

For the regular web users this is probably enough to keep them out.

Implementation

Download the IpBlockingModule.cs below and add it to the App_Code folder. Then add the following line to the section of the web.config.

Then add the IP addresses you want to block, separated by commas, to the appSettings in web.config.

Download

IpBlockingModule.zip (0,76 KB)

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Mads Kristensen currently works as a Senior Developer at Traceworks located
in Copenhagen, Denmark. Mads graduated from Copenhagen Technical Academy with a multimedia degree in
2003, but has been a professional developer since 2000. His main focus is on ASP.NET but is responsible for Winforms, Windows- and
web services in his daily work as well. A true .NET developer with great passion for the simple solution.

http://www.madskristensen.dk/

Cloaking Is Bad… Unless It’s Good

Chris Richardson — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 17:30:40 +0000

The concept of page cloaking has come under fire; again, because the idea is being used by a number of legitimate sites in order to protect or hide their content from users and/or search engine bots. The fact that these sites do not get punished for using cloaking techniques has become a sore spot with some bloggers.

Wikipedia defines cloaking as:

Cloaking is a black hat search engine optimization (SEO) technique in which the content presented to the search engine spider is different from that presented to the users’ browser. This is done by delivering content based on the IP addresses or the User-Agent HTTP header of the user requesting the page. When a user is identified as a search engine spider, a server-side script delivers a different version of the web page, one that contains content not present on the visible page. The purpose of cloaking is to deceive search engines so they display the page when it would not otherwise be displayed.

Basically, you are presenting search engine bots with a certain kind of content while delivering different content to the site visitor. Normally, the cloaked pages are created to fool search engines in order to get better result rankings. However, what if you are using cloaking procedures for legitimate reasons like protecting paid content or serving different content based on the visitor’s IP address? Should sites doing this be subject to the same penalties? It depends on whom you ask.

On the Graywolf SEO blog, readers are asked how they save articles from the New York Times because they are only available to the public for a limited amount of time. Once an article gets to a certain age (2 weeks), the NYT hides it unless the Google crawler (or other search engine bot) requests it – fitting the definition of cloaking, something Graywolf takes the search engines (and the NYT) to task over.

Philipp Lenssen of Google Blogoscoped also has some issues with Google seemingly allowing WebmasterWorld to cloak their pages, which goes against the search engine’s webmaster guidelines. For his post, Philipp conducted a search related to CMS and PHP and a WebmasterWorld post held the first position. However, when Lenssen tried to access the page from the search results, he was taken to a login page – another example of cloaking in action (unfortunately, when I try to duplicate the search, I am taken directly to the content).

Both Lenssen and Graywolf wonder how these otherwise legitimate sites get away with these cloaking exercises when Google and the rest are explicitly against the act. However, the examples given by both bloggers represent the “white-hat” side of cloaking in the sense they are not trying to game the search engines. These sites and companies are merely trying to protect their content.

However, this does not matter to either Lenssen or Graywolf. Because Google has actually addressed this issue in their guidelines, both believe there should be no quarter when it comes to punishing the guilty parties, whether the sites have a legitimate reason for cloaking or not. They also feel Google’s Matt Cutts should address the situation so there will be no more confusion.

At the Chicago SES, while it was never explicitly stated (at least in the sessions I attended), there seems to be a growing sentiment that as long as the webmaster isn’t trying to be deceptive, search engines will tolerate some cloaking. The Wikipedia page discusses delivering content based on a visitor’s IP location (IP Delivery) as one of the instances where cloaking is indeed accepted. Although, the explanation also points out IP delivery isn’t the best example of cloaking because the content in question is not being hidden from search engines or users; it’s just being manipulated based on the visitor’s location.

The question remains, however – should the search engines punish pages being cloaked for content protection reasons? If you follow the two bloggers cited in this article, then yes, all sites doing so should be punished. If they are not going to punish these sites, then the search engine spokesmen and women should speak up and address the confusion.

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Chris Richardson is a search engine writer and editor for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest search news.

EC Addresses Web Accessibility

Doug Caverly — Fri, 16 Jun 2006 19:32:18 +0000

34 European countries have agreed upon an “Internet for all” plan of action that is intended to make sure the nations’ most disadvantaged groups have Web access. The European Commission (EC) created the agreement.

The EC encompasses 25 member countries, and 9 additional nations agreed to the plan. The EC found that Web accessibility in urban areas is quite high – it puts the figure at 90 percent. But rural areas lag behind, with only 60 percent penetration. Only one-third of European households are thought to have broadband access, and as much as 30 to 40 percent of the population may not use the Internet. The “Internet for all” plan targets 90 percent broadband coverage across Europe by 2010.

The agreement also aims to specifically benefit disabled people. Older individuals might reap the benefit of any changes, as well – only 10 percent of Europeans over the age of 65 use the Internet. With these groups in mind, the EC would like to create and enact mandatory accessibility standards by 2010. “It’s something that sector is aware of and (is) taking action on, but it is a challenging issue,” said a representative of the Society of Information Technology management. “Local authorities are doing better than the private sector by far.”

One recent report found that only 19 percent of sites in the U.K. are accessible to disabled people, and separate research indicated that only 3 percent of European public-sector Web sites meet the World Wide Web Consortium’s accessibility guidelines. There is obvious room for improvement.

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Doug is a staff writer for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest eBusiness news.

Habeas Creates Sender Reputation Lists

WebProNews Staff — Tue, 09 May 2006 16:55:31 +0000

Habeas Inc. announced the creation of SenderIndex, an email reputation database of over 60 million IP addresses and domains, designed to help authenticate email senders. And it’s free, too.

Collecting email traffic information from some 140,000 servers, the company runs the IP addresses and domains it collects through the Habeas Reputation Engine, a set of automated tests that calculate and update information about each email sender.

Senders are then assigned to one of three lists: the SafeList, the AcceptList, or the BlockList.

Habeas SafeList represents the IP addresses which pass all of the Habeas Reputation Engine tests. Senders on this list have also passed the Habeas Certify email accreditation program – an email practices validation and compliance program that ensures compliant senders send legitimate email. Habeas says receivers can bypass filtering for emails identified by this list and deliver such email directly to recipient inboxes.

Habeas AcceptList represents IP addresses which have passed all of the Habeas Reputation Engine tests and are predicted to be “not bad” senders (e.g. a spammer or phisher) based on their observed behavior, message infrastructure and public reputation. However, these IP addresses have not passed the Habeas Certify email accreditation program. Senders on this list need to be scrutinized before delivery allowance.

Habeas BlockList represents IP addresses which fail the bulk of the Habeas Reputation Engine tests. As these are IP addresses which fail all (or nearly all) the tests, it is highly likely that these senders are undesirable (i.e., these IP addresses appear to be spammers or phishers).

“With SenderIndex, a sender’s reputation goes beyond black and white lists and relies more on the specific data that enables receivers to make informed decisions on effectively managing inbound email,” said Habeas CEO Des Cahill.