Bag of Beans

This site did a little investigation into those software awards that are given out by download sites.

The obvious explanation is that some download sites give an award to every piece of software submitted to them. In return they hope that the author will display the award with a link back to them. The back link then potentially increases traffic to their site directly (through clicks on the award link) and indirectly (through improved page rank from the incoming links). The author gets some awards to impress their potential clients and the download site gets additional traffic.

• Link (via Slashdot)

Here’s a thoroughly engaging profile of Google cofounder Sergey Brin.

The co-presidents share management duties with Eric Schmidt, a seasoned software executive whom they hired as chief executive officer in 2001 to oversee the day-to-day aspects of Google’s business—in short, to be the “adult” in the playroom. But they have no intention of ceding control. Since day one, they have resisted outside meddling, preferring to do everything their own way, from opting to piece together computers on the cheap (and build a computer casing out of Lego blocks) to flouting Wall Street in an unconventional initial public offering.
Blazing one’s own trail comes naturally to Sergey. The Moscow-born entrepreneur and his parents have been doing it their entire lives.

• Link (via Digg)

Ars Technica has a short article on the recent debate about Wikipedia’s funding model and whether they should resort to advertising on their site.

Though Wikimedia has less than ten full-time employees, it has real expenses. Bandwidth in 2007 is expected to cost up to $100,000 a month, and the group now runs more than 350 servers. Will the necessary money continue to flow in from donations when so many ‘Net users have grown used to getting content for “free”?

Not everyone thinks so. While Wales wants to keep Wikipedia free of ads and corporate influence, others say that this is exactly what the site needs to grow and ensure its financial stability. Weblogs Inc. CEO Jason Calacanis has been harping on Wikipedia for months, arguing that the encyclopedia could rake in as much as $100 million a year with only minimal advertising.

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A brief article on how profitable the open-source Firefox project has become.

You see that little Google search box on the upper right? If you use that box to make a search and click on one of the Google ads from the results page, Firefox gets an estimated 80% of the money. In addition to the search box, Mozilla also makes money from searches made on the Firefox start page.

• Link (via Digg)

Here’s a hack that may allow you to access sites that let Google in to index them but require regular users to register.

Ever experienced this? You ask Google to look something up; the engine returns with a number of finds, but if you try to open the ones with the most promising content, you are confronted with a registration page instead, and the stuff you were looking for will not be revealed to you unless you agree to a credit card transaction first…. The lesson you should have learned here is: Obviously Google can go where you can’t.

• Link (via reddit)
• Firefox users should look at the User Agent Switcher extension.

Here’s a comparison of which of the most popular BitTorrent sites have the most torrents indexed, and which has the best features.

When I first began to use BitTorrent in 2004 there was little question as to which indexing site to use. Today, Suprnova is long gone and we are left with an array of diverse options. This is a comparison of today’s ten most used BitTorrent sites according to Alexa.com.

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IEEE Spectrum has written a nice article on Blake Ross, one of the co-founders of the Firefox project, and on what he is working on next.

But there were others in the cubicle trenches who hadn’t conceded the browser war to Microsoft. Late one night in the summer of 2002, at a nearby Denny’s restaurant, Ross fell into an impassioned discussion with Dave Hyatt, a senior engineer at Netscape who shared his vision for a leaner but more flexible browser for the masses. Rather than starting from scratch, the two took the Mozilla browser, which they thought was bloated with super­fluous features such as chat rooms and an e-mail client, and began stripping it to the bare essentials. They felt they were raising the Netscape browser from the ashes and so named their stripped-down version Phoenix. But the rebel project became anathema to some Mozilla diehards. “I don’t see the need for Phoenix,” posted one detractor at the time. Another was more succinct: “Phoenix sucks,” he blogged.

• Link (via Digg)

Lifehacker has collected together some of the more useful config tweaks for Firefox 2.

The Firefox homepage calls the web browser “fully customizable to your online life,” and that’s not just marketing claptrap. Beyond the extensive options available in its menus and dialogs, there’s a lengthy set of advanced Firefox preferences that can customize the browser to your specific needs. Sure, your brother-in-law’s not likely to edit Firefox’s default configuration, but you? You’re a power surfer and you want your web browser your way.

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• Here’s another useful guide to tweaking Firefox 1 & 2

A workaround has already been found to bypass the IE7 Windows validation check during install.

You must have Windows XP Service Pack-2 (SP2) in order to install Internet Explorer 7.0. But still you will face a problem while installing this new Internet Explorer if your copy of Windows XP is not a genuine (non-pirated) one, since IE 7.0 installation requires genuine windows validation!!! So what to do??? Don’t worry… There are some tricky steps through which you can install IE 7.0 even in your pirated copy of windows XP bypassing the genuine windows validation.

• Link (via Lifehacker)

DailyLit has broken down their collection of classic texts into small portions and will email them to you one at a time. Just select a text and a delivery schedule, and start catching up on your reading.

Why read books by email?

Because if you are like us, you spend hours each day reading email but don’t find the time to read books. DailyLit brings books right into your inbox in convenient small messages that take less than 5 minutes to read. This works incredibly well not just on your computer but also on a Treo, Blackberry, Sidekick or whatever the PDA of your choice. In the words of Dr. Seuss: Try it, you might like it!

• Link (via Lifehacker)

A new web-based riddle, similar to Notpron, and the Python Challenge.

The goal of the Antiriddle project is to not only entertain those that enjoy intellectual challenges, but also to teach a certain degree of computer literacy and to foster a sense of cooperation in solving an issue.

• Link (via Digg)

Some unfortunate choices for web addresses.

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eConsultant has many useful lists in different categories. In particular, their freeware and open source software lists are very comprehensive.

• I want a Freeware Utility to … 450+ common problems solved
• Open Source Freeware : 400+ free applications and utilities

This blog has a great collection of optical illusions. Check out this fantastic piece of sidewalk chalk art:

• Link (via MAKE: Blog)

A useful cheat sheet to make sure you have backup copies of your del.icio.us bookmarks.

Del.icio.us remains the grand-daddy of all the Social Bookmarking Services. It was bought out by Yahoo but, it remains slow and has many outages. Here are ways to backup your bookmarks for this 24×7 world.

• Link (via lifehack.org)

1UP.com has a nice list of free games you can find on the web, compiled by Computer Gaming World.

You don’t care how you get your fix. You just want to play a new game right now and you don’t want to pay a lot for the privilege. Thank God for the Internet, where everything (and its mom) is available for free. So, taking a break from downloading patches and porn, we set upon a journey to gaming-freebie Mecca.

• Link (via Lifehacker)

This is a fantastic and hilarious comic set in the Half-Life universe and rendered using the Half-Life 2 engine along with Garry’s Mod.

Concerned is the story of Gordon Frohman, former Black Mesa entry-level employee, survivor of the Portal Storms and the Seven Hour War, and now earnest and hard-working citizen of City 17. Frohman is a simple guy trying to earn an honest buck in a post-apocalyptic world ruled mercilessly by hordes of heavily armed alien hybrid soldiers (called Combine) bent on draining the Earth of its last natural resource and exterminating the human race. He also enjoys playing backgammon.

Gordon Frohman arrives on the scene a few weeks before Doctor Gordon Freeman — scientist, hero, anti-citizen, and star of Half-Life and Half-Life 2 — first appears in City 17. Due to the similarity in their names, Frohman is often initially mistaken for the crowbar-wielding Freeman, though due to Frohman’s chatty nature and general incompetence the error is usually sorted out fairly quickly.

Very funny and incredibly well done.

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The hotly anticipated community news site Newsvine has just finished their private beta and officially opened their doors yesterday.

Not only can you read, share and comment on news stories but, if you are so inclined, you can publish your own stories and news articles to your account. Any ad revenue it generates is shared with you.

Worth checking it out.

• Newsvine

The Ethical Hacker Network has some tips on using Google queries to check the security of a site. The article is an excerpt from the book Google Hacking for Penetration Testers.

Although we see literally hundreds of Google searches throughout this book, sometimes it’s nice to know there’s a few searches that give good results just about every time. In the context of security work, we’ll take a look at 10 searches that work fairly well during a security assessment, especially when combined with the site operator, which secures the first position in our list. As you become more and more comfortable with Google, you’ll certainly add to this list, modifying a few searches and quite possibly deleting a few, but the searches here should serve as a very nice baseline for your own top 10 list.

• Link (via Lifehacker)

This is another web-based riddle, similar in concept to Python Challenge. But, this one doesn’t require any programming. You will, however, need to be proficient at figuring out subtle clues, lateral thinking and searching for information on the web.

There are a total of 138 levels. Good luck!