Homepages Are Dead, Long Live The Blogs *

Not a very long time ago, people used to have their own homepages on geocities.com, tripod.com, etc., and there they used to publish some info about themselves, their own photos, or some articles they write. But these pages were rarely updated as you have to edit - you had to know HTML - the entire page in order to add a new article or photo there. So, now more people are moving from the Homepage phenomenon to the Blog one, since it is much easier to add a new post to your blog everyday with no need to edit the entire page - just some clicks here and there - even if you don't know HTML at all. This is what made blogs more like a personal free newspaper where you can publish whatever articles you want to your online readers. I myself haven't updated my homepage since one year or so, and on the other hand I have published more than one hundred blogs during that year.

However homepages still excels the blogs in their organization, they can be organized by links and menus and not by date like blogs, and that's why it is still used in professional fields like companies sites, and online news sites, etc as information can be sorted by categories and organized in different menus. But will this continue to be true in the near future? O.K. Google's point of view is "Why sort your stuff, where you can search for them", and you may notice this in your Gmail account, where you cannot organize your mails into folders as you can just leave them as they are, and then search for the mail you want any time. And that's why I think that the lack of organization of the blogs will not be a problem anymore as long as they are searchable and indexed by searching engines. I also expect the blog hosting sites to have search plugins on the near future to be added to the blogs there. Finally, will there be someday where there will be "http://microsoft.blogspot.com", "cnn.blogspot.com", and "otlob.blogspot.com"!?

* The title of this article is inspired by Gartner's article; "Intrusion Detection Is Dead, Long Live The Intrusion Prevention"

Tags: Internet, Blog, Web, Writers, Gr33n Data

Spanish Arabic Connection

This is a list of some Spanish words borrowed from the Arabic Language:

aceite — oil Alá — Allah alberca — tank, swimming pool alcade — mayor alcohol — alcohol aldea — village (same source as English word "alderman") algarroba — carob algodón — cotton algoritmo — algorithm alkimia — alchemy almohada — pillow alquiler — rent arroz — rice asesino — assassin atún — tuna ayatolá — ayatollah azafrán — saffron azúcar — sugar baño — bathroom berenjena — eggplant Corán — Koran cuzcuz — couscous espinaca — spinach fulano — what's-his-name gacela — gazelle guitarra — guitar hachís — hashish hasta — until imán — imam islam — Islam jaque — check (in chess) jaque mate — checkmate jirafa — giraffe limón — lemon mezquita — mosque momia — mummy muslim — muslim ojalá — I hope, God willing olé — bravo ramadán — Ramadan rehén — hostage rincón — corner, nook

Blog Honeypot

Some sites like SiteMeter.com and BlogPatrol.com etc offer a service of seeing who is visiting your blog, where are they from, what operating systems do they use, and what search words do they used to come across your page. So I have an idea of making a blog post with different keywords in it to see which of these keywords are used most in people's searches. This can give you an idea about people's interests and what are the trends and common stuff that worry them at that time. I think there must be an advanced way to know that, like running your own search engine or so. But this is the easy and free however inaccurate way to do this. Note: This has nothing to do with Network Honeypots used in Network Security to capture Hackers and worms, and to help in creating Attack Signatures for Intrusion Detection and Prevention Systems. I just used the same word as the keywords here will be like honey that will attract search engine queries to it. Tags: Blogs, Search, Gr33n Data

It's still 3:09 P.M.

Yesterday, the Daylight Saving Time (DST) has been ended here, and the noon is 12 again instead of 1 P.M. The day is very long now ... it's still 3:09 P.M. now. Hope they stop that DST thing one day as I think it is useless and doesn't save power or anything.

Real Life Puma

Rest of The World

Once upon a time I was chatting on mIRC - I dun like IRC anyway - and then I asked some person where is he - actually I dun remember if it was a he or she - from? So he replied Georgia ... And obviously I expected that he means that country near Turkey and Russia, but later on I realized that he meant the American state where Atlanta 1996 Olympic games were held. The point is that it is very normal for the Americans to tell you the name of the state you live in when you ask them about their location instead of USA. It it the same thing as asking some foreigner from Egypt the same question and telling you he is from Aswan, Gharbeya, or even Western Desert Governorate. So are we supposed to know the names of the 50 states in USA!? Why do they think that USA is the whole world and everything else is the rest of the world!? Also it is very normal in US web sites -even if these sites are not for Americans only site - that you find in the drop-down list where you are supposed to choose your location, a list of the US states instead of the different countries of the world. So if you are not in USA, then nobody cares about the name of your country, you just live in the REST OF THE WORLD !!!

Code Masturbation

Code Masturbation is an expression I created - I don't know if it has been created already or not - in order to describe the state where people like to write code (programs in C++, Java, Perl, Assembly, etc) independent on what is that piece of software and what it is supposed to do. Programmers sometimes like the feeling of solving tough problems, hacking on existing open source software's like (Snort, Apache, Linux Kernel, etc.) Sometimes writing code is like puzzles solving, where you have to have some imagination in order to find the optimum solution for your problem. So what is your favorite programming language, and is there an open source software that you like hacking on and learn much by reading it and the various techniques in it. For me I like C and like to learn much from Snort and the Linux Kernel.

Opera is now Free

The makers of the Opera Web browser has decided to make their product completely free - like Linus Trovalds the creator of Linux sait, "Software is like sex, it is supposed to be free" - and to remove the banner ads from its browser altogether. I’ve never been a huge Opera fan, but it’s known to be very rich features wise, but also comes with a slightly more complicated Interface than Firefox or IE. Obviously this move was inevitable, as Firefox is stealing the lights, and Opera is barely profiting from the Ads or the browser in the first place, as it controls only around 1% of the marketshare. If Opera browser is to gain more momentum it will have to be free.

Source: http://www.technoogle.com/

GeoURL

GeoURL is a location-to-URL reverse directory. This will allow you to find URLs by their proximity to a given location. Find your neighbor's blog, perhaps, or the web page of the restaurants near you. All you have to do it to insert some meta-tag in your blog/page containing you location which can be got from here

Happy Birthday Google

Today it the seventh birthday of Google. You know, I wish I can know what are the stuff that people search for most. I think that they have to publish the top keywords searched for today and in the previous days or weeks.