Date: 02/08/08     Keywords: spam, yahoo

With the popularity of blog spamming, can Nigerian scammers (and spammers) be left far behind? Here is an interesting attempt to scam, posted as a comment on blog against this article: Name: frank taylor | Email: frank****@yahoo.com | URL: http://KindAttention | IP: 41.210.17.190 | Feb 8, 9:06 AM | Type: normal [[A (sub)human being [...]

Source: http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/419-nigerian-scam-hits-the-blogs/

Date: 02/07/08     Keywords: no keywords

You may be severely frustrated setting up OneOrZero Trouble Ticket System. The demo on their site works perfectly and yet the local setup doesn’t allow reporters to create task. The solution is simple: Change “User Group Rights Control User Field Values” setting to Off in OneOrZero settings. This simple tip can save your life, remember it. Share [...]

Source: http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/crucial-oneorzero-trouble-ticket-system-installation-tip/

Date: 02/07/08     Keywords: software

Top 10 credos of a Klingon programmer covering (Klingon) Software Development Life Cycle: Specifications are for the weak and timid! You cannot really appreciate ‘User Friendly’ until you’ve read it in the original Klingon. A TRUE Klingon Warrior does not comment his code! Behold, the keyboard of Kalis! The greatest Klingon code warrior that ever lived! Indentation? - I [...]

Source: http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/top-10-credos-of-klingon-programmer/

Date: 02/07/08     Keywords: no keywords

Many of us have a distributed work force which often leaves people wondering what others are doing. Twitter is a great service for updating status. Unfortunately twitter if often down these days. Also there is a privacy concern. Ideally you would like to host such a service yourself and also be able to restrict access [...]

Source: http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/introducing-prologue-for-corporate-communications/

Date: 02/06/08     Keywords: web

You have surely seen Flash pages which displays an animated loading icon which goes away after the page is loaded. Is the same concept appropriate for content heavy web pages too? What are the pros & cons? Share This

Source: http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/should-loader-script-be-used-for-slow-loading-sites/

Date: 02/06/08     Keywords: seo

I accidentally discovered a super-cool re-direction feature embedded in WordPress 2.3.x. Any blog may have multiple url pointing to the same blog. For example blog.taragana.com may also be accessed as www.blog.taragana.com. The proper practice, keeping SEO in mind, is to redirect all such URL to the canonical URL of the site. Now there is a [...]

Source: http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/cool-seo-redirection-feature-in-wordpress-23x/

Date: 02/06/08     Keywords: database, virus, spam

The Spamhaus Exploits Block List (XBL) is a realtime database of IP addresses of hijacked PCs infected by illegal 3rd party exploits, including open proxies (HTTP, socks, AnalogX, wingate, etc), worms/viruses with built-in spam engines, and other types of trojan-horse exploits. I was recently testing this list againt spam email. Here are few observations from [...]

Source: http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/overview-of-exploits-block-list-xbl-spamhausorg-in-comment-spam-protection/

Date: 02/05/08     Keywords: no keywords

There is a trackback validator plugin which checks if the IP address of the trackbacking server is the same as the URL it is trackbacking for. Is this a valid check or will this result in losing many genuine trackbacks? This policy in general will work only when you are directly using the authoring interface [...]

Source: http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/is-ip-address-validation-of-trackbacks-fraught-with-dangers-large-false-positives/

Date: 02/05/08     Keywords: web, google

Every time I have to find the Google Analytics tracking code again for an existing website (rather profile) , I go through the same pain of hunting it down as it is definitely not obvious. Google Analytics tracking code is unique for each profile. To find your personalized tracking code: [...]

Source: http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/google-analytics-how-to-locate-tracking-for-existing-website-profile/

Date: 02/04/08     Keywords: no keywords

I am shocked beyond words. Yesterday night we happened to watch NE TV, a channel covering North-Eastean India. In it was a live coverage of a 20 year old dying from an accident caused by two racing bikers. He just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was immediately taken [...]

Source: http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/the-pain-of-someone-helplessly-die-in-live-coverage/

Date: 02/04/08     Keywords: software, java

I just finished interviewing a candidate with B.Tech. in Computer Science from W.B.U.T. University. He claimed that he knows C, Core Java & Software Engineering in his resume. After some time of interviewing, I hit on an inspiration. I asked him to write Hello World!, the simplest Java program you can think of. He was unable [...]

Source: http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/interview-of-a-btech-computer-science-graduate/

Date: 02/02/08     Keywords: no keywords

I had previously stated clearly that I will not help anyone to hack MySpace, even if I did know how to. Guess how can you incite me? Here is a very interesting email I received through the contact form which does that admirably: emily waters wrote: well you answered my question you said you dont help [...]

Source: http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/do-i-know-how-to-hack-myspace/

Date: 01/30/08     Keywords: yahoo, google

Type the following as a WordPress comment and see the fun: <a href="/go.php?http://www.google.com/" rel="nofollow">This is www.yahoo.com link</a> This should ideally cause the whole phrase (This is www.yahoo.com link) to be hyperlinked and pointing to google.com. Unfortunately WordPress sees it as two links and a plain word: “This is” is hyperlinked to www.google.com “www.yahoo.com” is hyperlinked to www.yahoo.com “link” is not [...]

Source: http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/another-wordpress-comment-hyperlinking-bug/

Date: 01/30/08     Keywords: no keywords

Imagine Company X provides a service. X is nice enough to offer it for free to education and non-profit sites. However in exchange for the generosity ACME demands that education & non-profit sites place a link on all of their pages to two of X’s main products. Would you consider that a link scheme which [...]

Source: http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/is-link-in-lieu-of-payment-from-education-non-profit-sites-acceptable/

Date: 01/30/08     Keywords: no keywords

Most link extractors I know, including the function in WordPress to linkify comments, incorrectly assumes that any text containing http:// is a hyperlink including obvious mistakes like the following: I propose a new protocol starting with phttp://... What do you think? phttp is not http protocol and it should never be treated as a link. Unfortunately most [...]

Source: http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/are-most-link-extractors-including-wordpress-comment-link-extractor-wrong/

Date: 01/29/08     Keywords: no keywords

When you declare a function in your plugin code which has already been declared previously in either WordPress code or in one of the plugins. To prevent this you should declare your functions like this: if(!function_exists('your_function_name')) { function your_function_name() { //.... Function code [...]

Source: http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/one-reason-why-wordpress-plugin-activation-causes-fatal-error/

Date: 01/28/08     Keywords: web

Today I was introduced the nice (as I hear) Web 2.0 application which enables 1-click uploading of images. It sounded great and it was a public beta, so I didn’t think twice (my mistake) before signing up for it. I activated by email and I was raring to go… and then disaster struck. The file I [...]

Source: http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/all-destops-are-not-apple-at-least-not-yet/

Date: 01/24/08     Keywords: web, apache

You have two options. Either you tear your (remaining) hair looking for solution on the web and trying different changes to Apache Web Server or Explorer even try magic incantations (alohamora?). Or you read below for a simple one liner solution. Install NetDrive from Novell. You can download it here. It will allow you to create [...]

Source: http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/how-to-use-apache-http-webdav-server-with-windows-xp-explorer/

Date: 01/24/08     Keywords: no keywords

Believe it or not, I am looking to stock some tamiflu just in case. I have asked our medicine supplier (yes, we have one) to get me 2-3 strips. There is a strong possibility that the H5N1 (Avian Flu) outbreak may not be controlled in time before it does significant damage to West Bengal & [...]

Source: http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/tamiflu-anyone/

Date: 01/24/08     Keywords: virus

Avian Flu has affected over half of West Bengal, India. It has even been detected 40 km (kilometers) away from where I live (Kolkata). It appears the state government has responded too little too late to contain the Avian Flu. An estimated 1,00,000+ chickens have died due to H5N1 virus. Human infection too has been [...]

Source: http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/serious-h5n1-avian-flu-outbreak-in-west-bengal-india-where-i-live/