The Man Behind Google's Ranking Algorithm
Slashdot by CmdrTaco - Jun 3, '07 10:45amnbauman writes "New York Times interview with Amit Singhal, who is in charge of Google's ranking algorithm. They use 200 "signals" and "classifiers," of which PageRank is only one. "Freshness" defines how many recently changed pages appear in a result. They assumed old pages were better, but when they first introduced Google Finance, the algorithm couldn't find it because it was too new. Some topics are "hot". "When there is a blackout in New York, the first articles appear in 15 minutes; we get queries in two seconds," said Singhal. Classifiers infer information about the type of search, whether it is a product to buy, a place, company or person. One classifier identifies people who aren't famous. Another identifies brand names. A final check encourages "diversity" in the results, for example, a manufacturer's page, a blog review, and a comparison shopping site."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Are 99% of Executives Failures?
All ITtoolbox Blogs - Jun 3, '07 2:49am99% of executives fail in meeting long-term top and bottom line growth expectations, according to a recent study.
Amp’d Mobile Implodes: Burns $360 million, Declares Bankruptcy
TechCrunch by Duncan Riley - Jun 2, '07 11:52pmMobile social networking company Amp’d Mobile has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware.
Amp’d Mobile competed with VelvetPuffin, Loopt and Helio in an attempt to deliver a compelling mobile based social networking product to a worldwide marketplace of 2.6 billion cell phone users.
According to mocoNews, Amp’d Mobile owes $33 million [...]
[PHP5 Magazine] PHP 5.2.3 Security Release
PHP Magazine - Jun 2, '07 5:44pmPHP Team released PHP 5.2.3 with many security and stability improvements as well as addressing two regressions introduced by the previous 5.2 releases. These regressions relate to the timeout handling over non-blocking SSL connections and the lack of HTTP_RAW_POST_DATA in certain conditions. All users are encouraged to upgrade to this release. From the ChangeLog :
- Fixed an integer overflow inside chunk_split() (by Gerhard Wagner, CVE-2007-2872)
- Fixed possible infinite loop in imagecreatefrompng. (by Xavier Roche, CVE-2007-2756)
- Fixed ext/filter Email Validation Vulnerability (MOPB-45 by Stefan Esser, CVE-2007-1900)
- Fixed bug #41492 (open_basedir/safe_mode bypass inside realpath()) (by bugs dot php dot net at chsc dot dk)
- Improved fix for CVE-2007-1887 to work with non-bundled sqlite2 lib.
- Added mysql_set_charset() to allow runtime altering of connection encoding.
To upgrade there is an excellent migration guide over the php.net website, and detailing changes introduced in PHP 5.2.3. Download PHP 5.2.3
Google Launches a Directions API
O'Reilly Radar by Brady Forrest - Jun 2, '07 4:26pmMicrosoft is no longer alone in offering a routing API. At their Developer Day, Google launched a Directions API -- not a big surprise (Radar post). This will allow third-party sites to offer directions directly on their site. These...
Exploit-y news
All ITtoolbox Blogs - Jun 2, '07 2:56pmHi folks,
Thare are two developments worth mentioning.
First is that we are detecting increased usage of MS07-027. (MS07-027 patched several vulnerabilities, but the one we're seeing in use involves a dll called MDSAUTH which apparantly allows arbitrary file writing). The critical think about this is that it was only patched on May 8th, however, and the proof of concept code was released and available
Facebook Polls: Don’t Mention The Competition
TechCrunch by Duncan Riley - Jun 2, '07 7:26amFacebook Polls launched Friday night with a fair bit of fanfare. It’s a tool with a wealth of possibilities but be warned: don’t mention the competition in your poll questions!
My first attempt at creating a Facebook poll:
After initial surprise I tried a few related questions. “Is Facebook better?” works indicating that Facebook is not restricted [...]
The Story of TestDriven.NET and Visual Studio Express
InfoQ Personalized Feed for Unregistered User - Registered to upgrade! - Jun 2, '07 7:20amWhen we first reported on Jamie Cansdale's TestDriven.NET, it sounded like the classic big company bullies the little one. But as the full story was been revealed, sentiment has begin to swing from die-hard support for Jamie Cansdale to a call to boycott TestDriven.NET . InfoQ looks back at how this unfortunate incident came to pass.
Oracle 11.0.5.10 Beta tools for .NET
ASP.NET Blogs by Wallym - Jun 1, '07 9:04pmhttp://www.oracle.com/technology/software/tech/windows/odpnet/index_11gbeta.html
Sweet, looks like a new set of tools for working with Oracle in .NET. Too bad its beta.
Cost vs. Benefit In Tracking Down People Using AP Content
Techdirt by Mike Masnick - Jun 1, '07 11:06pmThe Associated Press (surprise, surprise) is covering that the Associated Press has signed on with some new startup that will help them scour the web to find websites that use AP content without a license. This is presented by the AP as a thing that clearly makes sense for the AP to do... though, that's not necessarily true. Doing this costs money, as well as time and effort (and lawyers) to respond to those who are using the content in an unauthorized manner. Compare that to the benefit of the AP forcing random sites that probably don't get any traffic to take the AP story they copied down. It just doesn't seem worth it. If there's a really big site using their content in an unauthorized manner, it seems likely to come to the AP's attention pretty quickly anyway. The small sites that this type of service will probably turn up aren't really costing the AP anything because they'd never license the AP content in the first place. So, if you look at the cost-benefit, you have to wonder how this could possibly make sense for the AP.