Lost!

While it wasn’t surprising to learn that someone hacked an application using the OpenSocial framework, it was surprising to learn that it had happened again, by the same individual that did it the first time. On top of this craziness, it seems that this “hacker” is a novice. While we all know it was hacked and the larger blogs are complaining and talking about it, there is another issue.

What the real question here is, should one framework rule them all? With Google spending time on other projects and releasing this one very quickly, why should OpenSocial be blindly used by companies, especially when it seems to be prone to security issues?

Some may cry fowl at this news, however, that the applications are insecure and it’s not OpenSocial’s fault. Truth be told, I’m pretty much one of those types of people, but I also blame Google on this aspect. It was released too quickly and no one really had a chance to learn about it.

This is really like a new car - you don’t go out and buy the first year of any model unless you’re ready for headaches. Same goes for software, web or not. Unless you’re willing to handle the issues that come about, don’t install it.

For any web developers that are hurting from this issue, I do not feel sorry for you one bit. You should know better than to release half-assed, bug riddled…crap.

It seems there’s big trouble in little china for Dell and Google. The OpenDNS project has an entry on their blog about a DNS Redirection Package causing all sorts of problems for mistyped domain names. It seems that past news of Earthlink and others providing custom redirection pages with advertisements has popped up again.

If you’re thinking about buying a Dell, I urge you to read this article, not to mention this is gooey information about a Google Partnership gone wrong.

I was reading over Slashdot awhile back and came across the whole thing about how keyword advertising in Utah is banned. This got me thinking - I run Adsense on my site (although I make almost nothing from it) - what would happen if I used keywords to advertise my site? Would the profit from the Adsense outweigh the cost of the AdWords account? You bet it worked! Continue reading…

After watching CNN yesterday morning, they covered Google as the top place to work in the US. Now, the things they listed where lifestyle changes that most of us are not use to in a corporate environment. We’re talking free food, “goof off time”, free internet, multitudes of space to roam, etc.

Now, how come we have businesses crying about how their employees are not happy and they can’t make money because of it when all Google has done is create a work environment where employees feel free? If I where to work at Google, I would be able to work anywhere I wanted - including sitting on the kitchen sink, if I so desired.

I’ve worked in many types of environments myself and I’ll tell you, from personal experience, employees do so much better when they feel like they’re not being watched every moment of their work day.

The best job I had allowed me as many breaks as I needed throughout the day. They gave bonuses for going above and beyond, barely tracked your production, etc - and the company was profitable, customers where happy, etc. Now, when said company was bought out by one with a completely opposite management style, it took them laying off ALL their call centers and doing away with nearly all their US based workers. In case you’re wondering what monstrosity of a company would lay off approximately 6,000 Americans in favor for saving money - Earthlink.

Now, had Earthlink came in and started embracing the MindSpring way, things would have been much different.

For some reason, companies just do not get that if their employees are tracked, put in their place and controlled in nearly every way, they’ll make money. Sure, there are times when there is too much freedom, but you mix freedom with people that actually work and will work hard for you - you’ll make money. It’s no secret that Google likes to “weed the lawn” a little to purge poor performing employees, businesses need to do the same thing. Keep the good, throw back the bad.

Slashdot is covering a story about Google releasing a MySQL patch. While this is news, I consider it huge news - REALLY big news. If you want an argument over the best DB or DB Tools, check out the Slashdot Article - nuthin but a big argument.

What makes this news is the fact that this will help the developer community. I work for an organization that has a pretty strict no OSS policy. This wasn’t the case when I was brought on board, but upper management found out and shot 2 of my projects out of the water, right into the parking lot then buried them with a dump truck of pig shtuff.

With Google releasing this update, it will allow MySQL to gain more ground with companies that think that MySQL can’t handle the load. While I know that this is far from the truth (Yahoo & Google use MySQL), some corps turn an ignorant, blind eye, to the OSS community. While OSS software can be buggy and clunky, there are certain applications, like MySQL, that can be used in a very serious manner.

I can seriously say that I expect more companies to take a look at MySQL over the next few weeks with this news.