Digg - It’s time to unban SqlSpace.Com
December 31, 2007
Dear Digg,
We understand the need to enforce the TOS, we understand the reasons for not wanting to upset Microsoft as they are your ad provider. We totally understand you are trying to build a business.
That being stated, it’s time to unban SqlSpace.Com
It’s been well over 1/2 a year since the forum hosted a screenshot of Ubuntu being a featured product on Windows Marketplace.
For some background, The forum, Sqlspace.com hosted a screenshot of Ubuntu being a featured product on Microsoft’s windows marketplace, because of this Digg banned the site.
It’s been well over half a year since the event.
It’s time to allow the forum to be back on Digg.
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Did Digg Really trademark ‘page headers’ ?
December 31, 2007
DIGG, DIGG IT, DUGG, DIGG THIS, Digg graphics, logos, designs, page headers, button icons, scripts, and other service names are the trademarks of Digg Inc.
Page Headers?
A search of the US patent office shows no such trademark on page headers.
Since when can a company trademark a page header in the first place?
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ClickCulture Selected as Web Agency of Record for Coldwell Banker
December 31, 2007
Cool beans, Coldwell Banker goes interactive.
LEIGH, N.C., Dec. 31 /PRNewswire/ — Lloyd Jacobs, CEO of ClickCulture, has announced that the firm has been named the interactive agency of record for Coldwell Banker.
We love releases that show firms moving towards InterActive marketing and choosing an InterActive Firm rather than picking a traditional advertising agency and just having them outsource it to an InterActive firm for a 20% markup.
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Independent Ad Agencies Unite
December 30, 2007
Representatives from six independent advertising agency networks gathered in Paris to talk about trying to work together more often and more effectively. The concept is to launch a major assault on the holding company agency model.
The owners of these firms all head their own little kingdom. Nothing substantial will come from this many insiders have stated.
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Google expands into a gray area of privacy
December 28, 2007
You can delete information from Search History using the search history feature, and it will be removed from the service. However, as is common practice in the industry, and as outlined in the Google Privacy Policy, Google maintains a separate logs system for auditing purposes and to help us improve the quality of our services for users.
That’s a direct quote from Google’s privacy page. That is what concerns us. There is NO opt out of this ‘feature’
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Phpbb3 Review - over 300% faster that Phpbb2 but no RSS feeds
December 28, 2007
We actually had some time to work on the new Phpbb3
It’s a dramatic improvement over the older version of Phpbb2. The test site was done on a well established forum, SqlSpace a leading forum in the breaking political news area.
The site is hosted on a dedicated server, a dual core with plenty of ram…. at the time it was crashing with even a moderate load on Phpbb2. However Phpbb3 has handled the traffic with no problem and no slowdown of speed.
So we clock tested it on page loads from prior to upgrade to after the upgrade. It runs roughly 300% faster than Phpbb2 on the same machine.
Not only that it’s feature packed, It’s roughly equal to having a Phpbb2 forum with every installed mod on earth, except without the mods and the slowdown in speed. Missing from Phpbb3 is a shocker — no RSS feeds out of the box? This was something we didn’t expect to happen. There are thousands of new features… but no RSS feeds. Say it’s not so!
Out of the forum software out there, Phpbb3 is going to be a serious threat to the likes of vBulletin and Invision Power Board, other than the lack of RSS feeds out of the box, Phpbb3 is world class and perhaps the strongest forum software on the market.
We found features like a ‘bump link’ as to stop people from posting random nonsense to get their post back to the top and a ‘friend or foe’ feature that either ignores people you don’t like.. or highlites the people you do and out of the box it allows file uploads (you can disable this if you wish however).
The strength of the forum lies with the features, speed and security.
The kicker, PhpBB3 is open source, meaning it’s 100% free.
They took the best of breed of all the forums out there and included it. Early reports appear to have shown that all the security issues with Phpbb2 are now taken care of, and it’s a highly stable platform.
We suggest everyone on the Phpbb2 platform to migrate to Phpbb3 .. it’s well worth the effort.
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Did Gordon Brown pay Saatchi and Saatchi for ‘Not Flash, just Gordon’
December 28, 2007
The moment mattered because Brown had promised a new beginning, a subtle distancing from the Blair years. If he was dull, he was also dependable. He was honest, he did not spin. In a slogan written for him by advertising agency Saatchi and Saatchi, he was “Not flash, just Gordon.” Yet here he was expecting people to believe he had called off an election because he woke one day worrying about vision.
He thought that was a good tagline?
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Salesgenie.com wants to reclaim Crown as Super Bowl’s ‘Worst Ad’
December 27, 2007
I don’t even know where to start. These guys are actually shooting to have the worst ad being played on the SuperBowl.
They don’t need an advertising agency to do that… though it wouldn’t hurt with some of the stuff we have been seeing being spewed from a few of the agencies out there.
They pushed out this press release
OMAHA, Neb.-(BUSINESS WIRE)-For one Super Bowl advertiser, being voted the worst ad turned into a huge money maker. Salesgenie.com, the leading provider of sales leads and mailing lists, is set to unveil a series of three new spots during Super Bowl XLII, February 3rd on FOX, in the hopes of capturing America’s collective “thumbs-down crown†for the second consecutive year.
Stating that they just want to be the worst.
I know of a few agencies that could assist you with that.. just tell them you want them to be agency of record.. give them a few million… and bingo… you’ll get the worst ad ever…
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Spanish Advertising Agency wants to kill Santa
December 25, 2007
We all know of a few people who just can’t seem get into the holiday spirit, but this is ridiculous: A Spanish ad agency has produced a rap video where they kill Kris Kringle. (Source MSNBC)
Now that’s hot. Kill Santa… who thought of that idea? Better yet.. the company that hired them.. are they proud of that campaign?
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SearchGuild.Com is dead
December 24, 2007
This is horrible. Searchguild.com is dead. After running for 1/2 decade. It attracted the best talent in the industry.
The site was a mecca for Internet Marketers, focused mostly on SEO and SEM as well as organic search.
It’s a horrible story to hear. We ourselves were moderators at Search Guild.
We cut and pasted the official story here in case this part goes down as well.
What? Where’s SearchGuild?
A Story about Muppet Hosting and Hackers…Why you’re here and not at SearchGuild.com
You might be wondering why you’ve been redirected here rather than to the regular shiny SearchGuild site. Some of you might legitimately be wondering why you haven’t been able to get to SG and why as soon as you finally could everything seems to have gone weird. Others might have come expecting one of the informative SearchGuild articles or utilities but found this! Please stick with me, this story isn’t short but it is informative.
Background
SearchGuild is a site that has been around for 5 years. It is, in my slightly biased opinion, useful to the webmaster community and has been of service for many. Originally it made profits significant enough to cover the costs of a dedicated server and to donate to charity, mostly to Sightsavers as the moderator’s preferred charity at each vote. In the latter years although the popularity hadn’t changed advertising had and the dedicated server was funded substantially from my own pocket. This meant SearchGuild was, in my opinion, the most significant forum dedicated to SEO that was independent from any SEO or SEO related organization (if we include sole traders).
At last the Story!
Our story begins on November 6th when a group of hackers gained root access to our server. I’m not sure how they got the pretty secure password, but they did. I doubt it was brute force. In effect this server is a hobbyist server, it is not my primary focus, and because the tracks were quite well covered I did not notice.
But luckily our webhost (1 And 1) knew on the 22nd November
Thank goodness for that. They received an email alledgedly from a foreign bank using a hotmail account that suggested we were running an IRC server that was giving out illegal credit card numbers.
So they shut the server down and told you right?
Well you would think that might be the sensible thing to do. Then we could have cleaned it up, protected people’s credit card information, reported the issue to the police, and everything would be fine.
1And1 claim they locked the server. If you happened to visit the site after the 22nd November then this was clearly your imagination. If when you imagined visiting you noticed posts from other people (as I did when I check daily) then this is clearly also your imagination - because the server was locked so you clearly couldn’t get on it silly.
Some countries can’t get to SearchGuild
Over the last few weeks I started to get reports that people weren’t able to get to SearchGuild. Rather random locations but significantly about half the UK was unable to access the site. I tried emailing 1And1 support from December 10th, I tried many many times to get their support to actually…well…support. At this time I had not a clue what was going on as 1And1 hadn’t seen fit to tell the person with access to the server (that’s me!). So I chanced upon Andreas Gauger’s facebook profile and sent him a message. Here he is:
Andreas didn’t reply so I sent another message on the 19th saying it was a pity he didn’t care. He replied saying he did but he couldn’t find my details and what was my customer number. This was coincidentally just after I got a call from “Michael” in their abuse team. I’ve updated Andreas with all developments since but he hasn’t said anything since the statement that he does care, so I guess he doesn’t after all. I’m really rather disappointed, I thought we had something special going!
So what did Michael Say
Well basically Michael said that they had had a complaint that the server was running IRC and giving out card numbers. Michael didn’t think I was involved personally (how sweet) but that the Germans (the branch of 1and1 where the server is hosted) “had their suspicions”. The Germans I swear have it in for me, it is not enough that I have two servers with 1and1 and have held them for many years, nor that I have a wall full of pretty papers portraying a respectable person, nor that I have a police background checked job. Nah, I am under suspicion!
Under suspicion I may have been but I checked with Michael and it turns out they hadn’t called the police, he wasn’t sure how my “locked” server had been unlocked, and the report had come from a bank using a hotmail address. Michael couldn’t be sure about much because the person dealing with it was “away”. I presume that this is under 1and1′s “International Fraudsters carry on because I’ve got 5 days leave booked with my grandma in Berlin and I don’t want to tell my colleagues” policy.
Given the above and the fact that a reasonable check of the server showed nothing wrong I put this down to sounding like complete hogwash.
And it still didn’t explain why half a country couldn’t get to SearchGuild but apparently I had to contact “support” for that (the same support who by now had ignored days and days worth of increasingly frustrated emails which they promptly filed under “ignore and hope it goes away”).
But it was fixed on the 20th. Sort of
On the 20th there was a brief period where people could get on to SearchGuild from those faraway kingdoms from where they couldn’t before.
Hurrah for 1and1!
Well…ish…because it broke again pretty soon. So I took another look on the server. Lo and behold - hidden very well as dhcp (why oh why was I using dhcp I was asking myself) was an IRC server. Oh, and some log files. Log files with IP addresses. So I secured off their entry points, killed the processes and called Michael.
“Michael, you know I said I couldn’t see any evidence of an IRC server yesterday. Well I’ve found one and there’s a log file with IP addresses. I figure you might want it”
“To be honest unless there’s evidence then there’s very little we can do about it”
I know what you’re thinking? What can I say? They clearly train these people from babies bathbook of computer networking. So I tell him that it is evidence.
Michael calls Germany, he likes calling Germany. I think in Germany they train them from the Billy Blue hat book of computer networking (British reference - sorry other nationalities you won’t get the sarcasm) so they’re better prepared. He calls me back and apparently they would like the log files. I imagine, though I stress I do not know, that they’re probably decorating the wall now next to the big poster of Tinky Winky, La La, Dipsy, and Po.
So I have to say here I have my severe doubts about the whole credit card thing. There was without doubt a successful hack of the server. There was without doubt an IRC server running for the hackers. But the report was from a hotmail account and purporting to be from a bank. Sounds like one hacker dobbing his mates who’ve upset him to me. I’m also confused that 1and1′s reactions don’t seem to fit with Michael’s story of credit card numbers - they didn’t lock the server in any secure way (we could all still get on!) and they didn’t report it to the police. Let’s just say about the credit card numbers I have my doubts but I don’t know one way or another.
Because I don’t know and because there was a vague suggestion that I might be involved I wanted myself and my server to be prevented from any further possibility of being involved. I asked for the server to be locked. I realize that turns the half a country not being able to access the server (which I still don’t understand and wasn’t resolved) into the whole world not being able to access it. I also asked 1and1 to report it to the german authorities; which I doubt they have done.
I have already asked Andreas Gauger for logs, emails, and other information. But he doesn’t love me anymore so I guess I’ll know when I put an official DPA request through their UK office. The truth will out and all that.
So anyway, I mentioned I had two servers right?
And I asked for the hacked one to be locked. The other one doesn’t run websites as such but runs programs that actually make a profit (unlike SG). The programs it runs are time sensitive and it is reliant on being able to do two actions as and when the need arises (i.e. it has open positions of exposure to loss).
Which one do you think Michael managed to lock? Answers on the back of a postcard to: “This question is so flipping obvious it could be one of those questions on morning tv they use to get around the UK requirement that competitions should have an element of skill”, PO Box 3352436356356, UK. All correct answers received will be placed in a big drum (or sugar bowl depending on the number of answers) and the winner will be drawn and given the exact same attention they would get if they sent an email to 1and1 support - namely diddly.
But this is not a problem
Because I have an email address for Michael on which he can say thankyou for the log files in just 10 minutes. This is like warp speed for one and one who I dare say if they had a fire would take six days to get out of the building. So I email it explaining how he’s locked the wrong one and I’m losing money.
40 minutes later I have to phone. 0870 number of course, kerching. I was placed on hold whilst the lady who answered the phone “checked” when I asked to speak to him. Would you flipping believe it but Michael had just that minute done it when they put me through! I’m gutted, imagine the timing on that, a few seconds later and I could have saved the £1.30 call charge.
So why’s SearchGuild not up again?
When you run a site like SG it really needs a dedicated server. SG is already running at a loss (i.e. I pay for the pleasure of running it) and I can’t really afford a managed server nor do I think we could get a managed server to have all the special configuration we need it to. If you manage your own server, which is what I have from 1and1, then that means you have to spend the time on it sorting things out. Leaving aside the moral truth that hackers shouldn’t exist because we know they do - it is clearly my responsibility to protect it from hackers etc; and with this server I just don’t have the time or the money to justify (remember there are no gains at all to me from running SG). That said I’m extremely miffed that 1and1 knew there was an issue and have acted, in my opinion, very irresponsibly in this matter. If it is to be my responsibility to manage the server then it is incumbent upon them to provide me with the information to do so should they have it. Not informing me that there had been an email complaint as soon as they received it is utterly irresponsible. I’m not completely convinced that they’re telling me the truth; things just don’t add up. 1and1′s support is clearly severely lacking, their ability is in my opinion questionable, they make insinuations about long standing customers and they seem to make basic mistakes at my expense. Before it was locked the server still had the original reported problem that many users of SG could not get to it (perhaps ISPs were blocking it, who knows?). Thus if I was to continue to pay for the privelege of running SG I would have to put the time and effort into moving it to a server with another web host. It is a big and complicated site so it is a considerable amount of time; time which I do not have. You see where I’m going here? It just isn’t viable to do so. Pay to run it and spend time I don’t have moving web hosts for what? To spend even more time dealing with more hackers, script kiddies, and muppets in hosting companies, all with no return.
I’m Sorry, but SG is dead.
My thanks to the Admins, Moderators, and Members
Who made it a great place to be and gave it some
great discussionsBlame 1And1, Blame the Hackers. Email 1And1 complaining
if you like; they need the emails to keep /dev/nul busy (techie joke).If you need to get in touch with me
Contact: [email protected]
Facebook Group:
Burgerman has set up a facebook group:
SearchGuild Lost and FoundServer Cancellation
I have pointed Andreas Gauger (CEO of 1and1) here. I suspect he reads my emails even if he doesn’t love me anymore. Who knows, maybe there’s chance for us yet. Andreas, this is my official server cancellation request in writing -
Account: 9626122
Contract: 7635368Which I will no longer be requiring. I still have data on there which I require copies of which obviously I cannot reasonably get; therefore kindly supply a copy. Please do not let Michael process the cancellation as I would prefer it if you cancelled the right one for now.
There’s a footer box here and I don’t know what to put in it. But now it has something so I guess that’s solved that question then!
What a horrible thing to happen.
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