Filed under: web 2.0

There's no exploitation in play here, just the wholesale harvesting and presentation of superficial data for roughly one-fifth of Facebook's half-billion strong user-base.

Ron Bowes, of Skull Security, posted the torrent to the Pirate Bay after realizing that his pet project had become something that others might be interested in. He had basically crawled the Facebook directory, and indexed the results. What he got was a list 171 million entries long, representing 100 million unique users, their names, and their Facebook URLs. He packaged it all into a database and posted the 2.8GB file as a torrent.

It's important to note that there isn't any other information in the database. Shortly after word got out about the torrent, the BBC posted a story about it, and quoted a random user in the comments section as stating that it was "awesome and a little terrifying." Honestly, the only thing terrifying about any of this is the thought of going through the Facebook directory. Seriously, I looked, and there are so many people with my name that I would never find myself.

Bowes has stated that, though there isn't any real information aside from names and a URLs in the database, any number of contact details may be present on a user's Facebook page -- it all depends on how that user has his privacy settings set. Basically, with this database in hand, a potentially malicious user could sift through all the names and come across the user he was looking for, see that user's Facebook landing-page (the little page with their name, picture, and a few friends) -- and that's about it.

But regardless of the harmless nature of the database, this torrent has become a big deal, because simply being in the cavernous Facebook directory is an option in itself. Now that there's a torrent containing the most basic contact information for 100 million users, that particular privacy setting has become null for the users on that list.

So, in the end, this is just one more reminder for everybody on Facebook to check their privacy settings.

Mugtug is one name (and website) for two distinct, and equally impressive, image editing/creation applications:

Darkroom is a sophisticated, in-page photo "adjustment" software. Note that I don't use the word "editing." That's because you can't really make selections (unless you want to crop or mirror). You can, however, adjust any image parameter (such as white balance, exposure, contrast, or saturation) and apply specific effects. There's a live histogram, and you can also look at just one channel of the histogram.

Sketchpad is a drawing application with a complete set of tools (except that I couldn't figure out how to draw a straight line!). It's also very fast, responsive, and solid. You get gradients, swatches, multiple options per tool, and a GIMP-like interface with a draggable panel that you can move around.

What's so striking about Mugtug is that it is usable. There are keyboard shortcuts, it's fast and responsive, it's not Flash, and it really doesn't feel like a toy. When I first messed up with the drawing application, I instinctively hit Ctrl-Z to undo; it worked! I then hit it again, and it rolled me another step back. Ctrl-Shift-Z brought me forward again, just like on the desktop. That feeling extends throughout both applications.

I don't know if Mugtug will catch on as an application suite (although I do hope so), but at any rate, I think this is a prime example of where the Web is headed.

I have been wanting to add visitor chat to my company's website for a while now. I think that when you have a fairly small site (for a small company), chat is a great way to get to know your customers and make them feel at home.

An added bonus of using visitor chat is that it gives you a bit of real-time tracking data; you (the operator) can see approximately how many visitors are on your site at any given instant, what countries they're from, what pages they're looking at, and other such data.

So, when I stumbled across Olark, an easy to install JavaScript chat system, I quickly decided to add it to our site and test it. I have been using Olark for about a week now on Tibbo.com, and below is a summary of my own experience and impressions about the system (with screenshots!).

Getting rid of a Facebook account is notoriously difficult, but it may have just become doable with a new "delete account" button that Facebook is testing. Previously, users were able to deactivate their accounts -- although it wasn't too easy -- but Facebook would keep the data on file, so if the user came back to the Facebook flock, they could pick up where they left off.

"Delete" is more permanent than "deactivate" -- it removes all your info, and it doesn't take 14 days of inactivity to complete like the deactivate option. That's good, but like everything else about Facebook, there's a catch: Facebook's terms of service allow them to hold onto your information, even when you delete the account.

That means the big difference between deactivate and delete isn't whether Facebook keeps your data -- Facebook always keeps your data -- it's whether you can get it back if you start an account again.

Delete is currently only available to a small number of users. None of us at Download Squad have the option yet, so let us know if it appears on your account.

[via TheNextWeb]

Touration is a simple to use web app for creating visual tours of your Web pages. If you go to their page and click Show me how it works you'll get a demo tour that would explain the concept in about 10 seconds, but the gist of it is that you get callouts that walk you through page elements, one by one.

They also offer a demo of the editor, which is really simple to use -- which is a large part of its appeal. Simply click a page element and create a rich-text callout for it; that's all there is to it. You can also add floating "dialog boxes" (i.e, explanations not directly related to any one page element), or "groups". Groups are basically callouts which highlight arbitrary sections of the page and not just one image or piece of text.

Note that this is a page tour, rather than a site tour. I think it can come in handy for sites with complex visual layouts or for web apps which pack loads of functionality onto a single page.

Squad (no connection to us) is an interesting collaborative text editor for coders. There are several things I like about it, and several things I don't. Let me count them off real quick:

I like:

• The general look and feel. Stylish!
• Real-time collaboration a-la Etherpad, but with proper syntax highlighting for JavaScript, HTML, and a bunch of other languages.
• The product has Pro versions, so hopefully it's making some money and will stick around for a while.
• The name, of course!

I don't like:

• The fact that there is no Word Wrap.
• That it's pretty slow with collaborative real-time editing.
• No Ruby syntax highlighting!
• No auto-completion.
• Banners for the Free version are huge, and very little screen space is left.
• Free version is extremely limited.

Bottom line: Squad has some great potential, and maybe the paid version is awesome. The free version doesn't quite make the cut, but with a few minor changes it could be a huge hit for collaborative development. [Oh, what happened to Google Wave... -Ed]

Amy Editor is an interesting find; it is an advanced online programmer's editor, which apparently has not been touched since April 2008 (current build is 080401, dubbed version 1.0). But it's still online, and it is very, very impressive.

My need was simple: I need to collaborate on a Ruby project with someone in real-time, working on the same file while discussing it on Skype. And I wanted syntax highlighting and some other niceties to make the process easier. I came across several advanced editors, but none of them had Ruby support -- which is interesting, since Ruby (and Ruby on Rails) appears to be all the rage these days.

While very advanced, Amy Editor still feels half-baked in some ways. For example, I could not figure out how to save my file online or how to start a project. The editor does have a notion of "projects", but you can only "open" a project – I really couldn't figure out how to create one, even after reading the online help (which does exist, and is well-written).

Another thing you should know is that it is not fast; I mean, if you're both going to be working on the same exact spot in code (within one function, for example), the lack of speed might get in the way. But if you just want to collaborate on one Ruby file and are willing to put up with its quirks, Amy Editor is the best solution I could find.

Does anybody know of a better one?

Let me start this off with a disclaimer: If you feel any sort of aversion towards hipsters, you should probably move on; I don't think you can enjoy Forrst. However, if Tumblr feels like a second home, and you spend your days endlessly gazing at ffffound and sharing snarky comments over at the Shirt.woot forums, you are probably going to love Forrst.

The site has a simple, clear-cut mandate: it's "a place for designers and developers to share inspiring code, screenshots, and links with their peers." That is very much to the point; it almost sounds boring.

Forrst is currently in closed beta, but I was curious enough to ask for an invite. To see how the site goes about accomplishing its mission, continue reading after the fold.

UPDATE: It appears now as though this may be a Google cache issue, and not a Facebook issue. I stand corrected, and I do apologize. I love Facebook, and would gladly give Mark Zuckerberg a hug. I do apologize and wish to clear Facebook's name on this one.

Over two months ago, on May 17, 2010, I completely deleted my Facebook account because I felt that they "don't respect my privacy." What a drama queen move, right? Of course they respect it; after all, they changed their policy and made sharing options simpler.

I didn't renew my account; I still didn't trust them. Life moves on, though, and since there was nothing new for me to make a fuss about, I shut up about it and just continued distrusting.

Now, Google has put out a new image search interface. I go to test it, and on a whim, I search for myself. Come on, you must have done things like that too.

Anyway, no image of mine should pop up. But lo and behold, I see a small, yet clearly identifiable, image of yours truly (with bald head, goatee, and all) right on the second line of results. So, who's sharing this image with the world so prominently?

You guessed it! Thank you, Facebook, for respecting my wishes to protect my online identity and remove myself from your system. That's charming, really. If anyone thinks this is just a "lag," and that Facebook will probably remove my image "soon," it has been two months since I closed my account. This isn't a lag; it's complete disrespect for Facebook users and the notion of online privacy.

Google Font Preview is a new way to play with Google's Web Fonts API. The API is already dead-easy to use: you just include a single line of text in your Web page source code, and you can use fonts in your CSS.

But that's "ease of use" defined in web developer terms... What about the designer types who don't always feel like messing around with code just to see what stuff looks like on the screen? While they can always go for something fancy like Type Folly (which I really do like), sometimes that can be a bit of an overkill. Type Folly pulls fonts from paid services as well as Google's free one, and gives you a ton of options.

For the times when you just want to play around with a couple of sliders and be sure you're working with freely available fonts only, Google Font Preview is just what the doctor ordered. As you can see, you can set whatever text you want to play with since your playing field is just a Firefox text area (spell check works, and apparently "Hmm" is not a real word). You get sliders for playing with letter, word and line spacing, you can transform the text (capitalize, uppercase, lowercase), see what it looks like with a shadow, and apply most other CSS3 options. The tool is decidedly newbie-friendly, so you won't see terms like "kerning" or "leading" but only "letter spacing" or "line spacing".

The code you've generated is always at the bottom of the window, so once you're happy with the results you can just copy and paste it into your own page.

[Google Operating System via tobestobs]

If you're not in a band, you probably haven't been to MySpace in a while. You know, MySpace? The social network without a major motion picture about it? Anyway, the MySpace profile pages that used to be laughably hideous have been dramatically cleaned up, with a pleasant new black and white theme that puts the eyesore pink backgrounds and flashing GIFs of the old MySpace right out of our minds. Navigation has been cleaned up, too, with a Facebook-like sidebar. You can check out the new profile design in action before it rolls out to all users by visiting the page of MySpace's Sean Percival.

Is this going to keep MySpace relevant in a market dominated by a company with a Hollywood movie, senators arguing over privacy settings and (perhaps most importantly) FarmVille? Probably not, but it's a good start. The trick isn't doing a good redesign, it's doing an entire rebranding of a place that's long been considered the domain of teens and lowlifes.

Perhaps the most promising part of the profile redesign is a new section for links to your other social networking profiles around the web. If MySpace can cement itself as a meaningful part of a larger web presence -- for someone other than bands, who still don't have a reason to switch over to Facebook -- it can survive to rebrand itself another day.

What's your take? Am I being too harsh? Is MySpace making an amazing comeback, or delaying an inevitable death?

[via TheNextWeb]

Type Folly is a tour de force, showing how far JavaScript and CSS have come. When I first openend the page I got a canvas with all sorts of text, which looks like an image. But then I clicked it, and discovered I can drag stuff around.

Then I noticed the tool panes on the sides; they look like Photoshop tool panes, but are implemented in JavaScript and are fully functional. There are layers, and type properties, and containers sizes and whatnot.

You play around with the canvas just like you would with Adobe Illustrator (including font effects, etc). But the shocker comes at the end, when you get a fully valid CSS3 + HTML code which is the exact canvas you created. It's all done with JavaScript, CSS and HTML.

I'm pretty sure the fonts come from Google, which is a case in point for me. But even if they use some paid service, the point here is the tool itself, which you really have to play with to understand.

DokuWiki is one of those "I can't believe we've never covered it!" tools. It's not new; it's not cutting-edge. It's solid, and tested, and it's been around for years, and it is one of the best Wiki systems on the planet, in my opinion.

DokuWiki is great for content sites where you have one editor and the rest of the world just reads the wiki; it's also great for collaborative wikis, and there was a time when my own personal site ran DokuWiki, too.

I've been working with DokuWiki for years now, and have deployed and managed it several times. Just so you could see how customizable the layout can be – here is the official DokuWiki page, and here is an installation I customized.

In a nutshell, you can customize everything. There are templates you can download and very easily install, but you can also make your own very easily. There is a great plugin system, too: to install a plugin, you just feed its URL into a box, and click Install. That's it; your DokuWiki installation would download it, unzip it and install it.

There are plugins for everything, from new syntax, to making your wiki into a blog, to managing access rights in a different way, to changing navigation ... in short, just about anything really. And as a wiki system, it is far simpler than MediaWiki (the stuff Wikipedia runs on).

Bottom line: Highly recommended; simple, elegant, free, and has an active community. What's not to like?

While I am not an Evernote user myself, I hear it's great. It's a very well-known app, but in a nutshell you could call it a "complete capture tool". It comes as a desktop or mobile app, and lets you save "your ideas, things you see, and things you like".

And now, with the Trunk app store, I just discovered Evernote has its own little ecosystem. It turns out the company has many partners developing products that tie into Evernote itself (this is news for me), and Trunk now makes all of these products available in one location. VentureBeat reports that the store has about 100 apps from 67 different companies.

One interesting note is that the store actually offers hardware too; I am not sure if these devices count as "apps" in VentureBeat's tally. These are devices like scanners and printers from Canon, Fujitsu and Lexmark, and even the Nokia N900 phone which has an Evernote Sharing plug-in.

Does anyone know how good Evernote's right-to-left language support is? For me, the main drawback for these capture systems is that they often support only left-to-right languages, thus making them less than ubiquitous.

Update: The Next Web has now removed the JavaScript alert bar. Hooray!

You may recall a couple of months ago when I falsely reported on what I thought was a new feature of Chrome. It was admittedly kind of neat: I thought websites could link themselves to a Chrome Extension, and pop up an alert at the top of your browser if you hadn't installed it.

As it turned out, it's just a cheap JavaScript hack that looks just like an official Chrome alert. I had hoped that I wouldn't see it again, but of course that was too much to ask of the Internet. As of today, The Next Web is now using it on every single one of its pages. Click through, check it out -- I'm sure they'll appreciate the extra ad impressions.

For a technology blog, TNW displays disgustingly little foresight. This bar is, in effect, an updated phishing or rogue malware attack. You all know the type: that pop-up that claims to scan your hard disk for viruses but actually installs a bunch of Trojans.

Does TNW not realise that you could make this bar link to a nefarious domain that looks exactly like the Chrome Extensions website? TNW's intentions might be benevolent, but with such high profile use of this JavaScript copycat, I guarantee that phishers and malware writers will soon be using this bar for the forces of evil.

Wouldn't it be easy to change the appearance of the bar so that it's obviously not part of the browser? How about making it pink, or changing the logo on the left to something distinctly un-Chromeish?

TNW has just opened a smelly kettle of fish -- and from now on, I suggest you all read your Chrome alerts carefully before clicking.