Technically Speaking

Maybe you’ve heard about the “next generation” search engine, brought to you by the people who designed Google? The new search engine, called Cuil (pronounced “cool”), debuted yesterday, and in my opinion, it didn’t live up to the hype.

What was the hype? Cuil claims that it indexes far more web pages than does Google, but I don’t know that I  believe them. My first search in Cuil was a vanity search for my own name, Paul Pehrson. I was intrigued by the results window, which puts results in three columns with more information about each search result, but my blog, and my writing portfolio were noticibally absent from the results. There were lots of things that talked about me, but not my websites. I even did a search on site:paulpehrson.com and found no results, so Cuil simply isn’t indexing my site, which is being indexed by all the four major search engines.

Cuil reportedly got in excess of 30 million dollars in venture capital funding (pretty good, in today’s economy), but the results don’t feel as relevant to me (but I’m biased because my main presence on the web has been excluded). TIME published an article today that reports that Cuil had so many visitors yesterday that Cuil’s servers crashed, returning no results for a time. They also report the following:

Cuil has a distinctive, if old-fashioned, approach to indexing websites. Instead of ranking them based on popularity, as Google does, it focuses on the content of each page. That may make sense in theory — after all, the most popular restaurants, for example, rarely serve the best food — but it is precisely the model that Google broke away from in order to give users more relevant results. That could explain why a Cuil search on “insomnia” directs the user to the American Insomnia Association rather than to the Wikipedia entry on the subject pulled up first by most other search engines.

And I’m not the only detractor. Here is a list of headline articles today:

• Why Cuil is no threat to Google (TIME)
• Google is Cooler than Cuil (Motley Fool) (Say this one out loud)
• Ex-Googlers launch Cuil, but maybe too early? (ZDNet)
• Cuil is cold (Network World.com)
• Google-Wannabe Cuil: Worst. Launch. Ever. (Silicon Alley Insider)

That’s not to say that there aren’t some benefits to Cuil. The interface is clean. I like the results layout. TIME reports that Cuil’s privacy policy will make privacy rights groups very happy. But all that isn’t enought to get me to use a search engine unless I can trust the search results to be complete and relevant.

So it’s back to Google for me. Cuil just didn’t cut it. Makes you feel a little sorry for the investors, doesn’t it?

So, I lied. Sorry about that. I didn’t know I was lying. In fact, I thought I was telling the truth. However, I’ve since discovered that my blog was, in fact, hosting malware. See, I was still running WordPress 2.2.2 (the current version is 2.5.1) because I knew that I had plugins that would break if I switched to a newer version of WordPress. (WordPress is the back-end software that runs my blog.)

It turns out that when WordPress developers said there were security fixes in newer versions, they weren’t kidding. Somehow somebody has been able to gain access to my blog to insert hidden frames that download malicious content to people’s computers.

At the database level, I’ve removed every instance to the iframes that cause the problem, I’ve removed every reference to <noscript>, which is another way hidden content is injected into pages, and I’ve checked for any outgoing links to the server that was the target of the injection.

At the software level, I’ve upgraded to the latest version of WordPress, which caused some plugins to fail. I haven’t had time to diagnose all of the plugins yet, but I know for sure that my image-based headlines no longer work with WordPress, so I disabled that plugin. If you find other ones that aren’t working like you expect, please contact me.

At the admin level, I’ve changed my login credentials for WordPress, plus I’ve changed my database credentials; hopefully this will ensure my content remains secure from future injections.

I’ve notified Google of the changes I’ve made, and I’ve requested that they review my site to see if it is safe to browse again. (I’ve cleaned everything, so I know that it is.) Hopefully I’ll be off their black list soon!

In the next few weeks, I will be upgrading all the plugins to the latest versions, and I’ll probably be changing my theme (to a widget- and tag-friendly version), so you’ll be seeing some changes. In the mean time, I’ll keep working on ensuring my server is safe for all my visitors!

Thanks for your patience!

Google has banned my site. They are raising a false alarm about my blog being an attack site, and are blocking it for users of Google Desktop (as far as I can tell).

I’ve checked my site code, and the only way I can imagine that I’m passing on “attack” content is if it is served from the Google ads. Now isn’t that ironic? Google placed the ads on my site then blocked it because they say the ads are “badware.” it turns out my blog got attacked. (Read more about this in a later post.)

And how is this my fault? And what does Google want me to do about it? If this isn’t resolved in a day or so, I’ll have no choice but to remove the Google advertising.

This is rediculous!

UPDATE (later the same day): So, it turns out I was wrong about what I wrote here. Google found some legitimate badware linked from the site. It turns out my WordPress blog got hacked. But I’ve now fixed the problem, so there is no need to worry any more! Deletions to the original post are crossed out and additions are in italics. 

In my spare time I occasionally do some web design and web hosting work for a couple of different clients. Mostly these are my family members, friends, and neighbors who need a relatively simple website and a place to host it.

Recently I started helping out an uncle with a site for his new business. He had already worked with a designer to create some printed letterhead, and he wanted to use the same stuff for the header on his website. He said he’d send me a copy of the letterhead so I could put it on the site.

The letterhead came as a Word document, and I didn’t love the font choice, so I told him. He said he did like it, and he’d already used it to send out some letters and create business cards, so he wanted to keep it. I said I’d get it up on the site.

The Word document had the following font (I’ve only reproduced part of it, for the sake of my client’s privacy):

I thought the font wasn’t very professional, and I couldn’t get the font out of the Word document, and I wanted to make it a bit clearer for the website, so I found a close font which looked like this:

It wasn’t a perfect replica, but I thought it looked better than what he had. He contacted me and wanted the font changed back to the original. This didn’t look like his letterhead, and he wanted a consistent look and feel. I told him that without the font file I couldn’t re-create the logo in Photoshop, so I’d have to just take a screen shot of the Word document and make that the header image. He thought that was a fine solution. I took a screen shot of the Word document, and up went the original image:

The next day he contacted me again and said he still didn’t like the image. He thought it looked unprofessional and by the way, weren’t we going to just take a screen shot of the Word document?

Then it dawned on my wife that what he was seeing in his Word document was different from what we were seeing in our Word document. In fact, he hadn’t embedded the font into the Word document, so when I opened the document on my machine, Word did a silent replacement of the font.

After he embedded the font in the Word document, I was able to see the same letterhead he was seeing:

No wonder he didn’t like the first two attempts!

We both thought we were communicating, because we were both looking at the same source document, when in fact, we were seeing something completely different, but didn’t know how to talk about it. That was due, in part, to our family relationship; he didn’t want to tell me how ugly it was, and how it didn’t look anything like what he was seeing. Our family relationship hindered our ability to communicate properly in a business relationship.

At least now we have the right font on the site. And next time, we’ll make sure we’re both talking about the same thing when there is an apparent disagreement.

I saw WALL-E last weekend with my wife, and we had a really good time. The movie was fun, and really worth seeing. I have to admit that when I first saw EVE, I leaned over to my wife and said, “She’s a Mac, and he’s a PC” which led to my graphic, above.

What I liked

Pixar is amazing. The animation in this movie is simply stunning. I was very impressed by the lighting, the reflections, and the texture that almost made you forget you were watching an animated movie. The story is driven by action, not by dialog. In fact, there is precious little dialog, especially for the first 30 minutes or so. This means the story must show, rather than tell, which generally makes for more powerful filmmaking anyway.

Since there is so little dialog, the sound effects and score end up being a lot more important, and they don’t disappoint. In fact, I thought they were phenomenal. I  fully expect WALL-E to be nominated for some major awards in this category.

WALL-E is a very likable little robot, and the romance story between him and EVE is cute but maybe a tad cliché: the backwards guy falls for the sophisticated, classy girl who is uninterested until he saves her by sacrificing himself in some way, and she falls in love with him. But it was well told and cute. The story while following the traditional arc remained unpredictable, and I kept wondering what would happen next and how the story would resolve.

What I disliked

In general, I love Pixar/Disney movies. I love the underlying stories that make the characters real and lovable. The character development is usually at the root of the story. In WALL-E, however, there isn’t much character development. The characters pretty much remain flat without much motivation. As my father-in-law pointed out, there isn’t much to WALL-E’s character arc; in fact, it’s pretty flat.

I decided that what brings me back to a movie is the story line, and after I saw how the story would be resolved, I’m not sure WALL-E has what it takes to bring me back to a story over and over again. I’m not in it for the action, I’m in it for the characters, and I’m not sure that WALL-E’s characters were strong enough to bring me back for more.

I am willing to give it a second go, however, so maybe I’ll find that WALL-E is charming enough to make me re-watch it for other reasons than character development. We’ll have to see about that one.

Conclusion

I really liked this movie. I thought it was well worth the time and money investment. It is a film that people of all ages will enjoy. I give it four and a half stars. You really need to see this one–at least once, maybe more.

And let me know if you thought the same think about EVE reminding you of a sleek MacBook Air, or some other Mac product… I thought it was bang-it-in-your-face obvious.