Month: December 2006

Unfortunately it’s too late and not in a positive light (TechCrunch, Rubel). Both the top tier bloggers picked up on a brief story in Ha’aretz, the major Israeli daily paper, that RawSugar has run out of money, laid off the staff and has been unable to sell the company or its major assets.

Unfortunately the reports are true. I’m unhappy because we had a great team, really good technology and sufficient funding to get to the second milestone (public availability of our product being the first and 75-100k active users, enough to justify a venture round) but for reasons I’m still not quite clear on, we never did get to that level of active use.

I’m surprised that none of the companies we spoke to about an acquisition the last few months made a real offer, because all of them would have benefited from adding our technology to their products. Using tags or labels with small hierarchical groupings is an important improvement for the second level of search and our tech would be a fast way to get there.

RawSugar had a terrific team, if a small one. TwoThree of our key engineering staff have been hired as part of the first group of employees of a new Google Israel lab (don’t ask me what they’re working on since they won’t tell me ;), as has our Haifa office manager. Our VP Engineering, Frank Smadja, has a brilliant understanding of language and semantics and will surely land easily. Our other engineers and our QA manager, I haven’t heard their plans yet but expect to be impressed when I do. Well, our QA Manager is due to give birth to her second child around the end of January and that ought to keep her happily occupied for quite some time, eh?

Our CEO/Founder, Ofer Ben Shachar, is a serial entrepreneur and after taking time to recharge batteries and get his new house complete will undoubtedly start another innovative company–I worked for him at NetDynamics and would join him again in a heartbeat. Working closely with Ofer for two years has been quite an education for me, enabling me to be involved in nearly every aspect of a startup. Also contributing substantially to my education were our bizdev manager Chris Fede and key advisor Dan Seligson.

RawSugar may be in the… well I can’t bring myself to type Mike’s group name but I have no regrets about joining or anything we did.

This does mean that I’m available for a new opportunity, short or long term, if you have an exciting product in the consumer internet or enterprise space. I’ve done big companies as well as startups and can operate effectively and comfortably in both environments. I can help you improve your customer experience in the form of community building and evangelism, product marketing/product management, or managing technical support.

Ofer and Frank will be happy to give you a good reference.

Got this as a throw in with the Olevia TV from Fry’s and have no need for it. Would cost you $100 or more from what I can tell online or in a store but I’ll let it go for $60. Cash or Bank Check/Cashier’s Check only, no Paypal, personal checks or credit card, and you have to pick up from me in Mountain View or nearby.

Craig’s List ad

Sony Product Page

A good post-holiday deal.

I’ll ship it to you (only within the US or Canada) but you have to cover the cost of packaging and shipping and my bank must confirm that your bank/cashier check has cleared before I send it out. My estimate–ESTIMATE–is that shipping will cost a minimum of $15 for UPS Ground (5-7 day) delivery.

Update, two hours later: Wow, that was fast! A nice man contacted me from the CL posting and we agreed to $50, I met him at the Mickey D’s by 101, he gave me the cash I gave him the box and am home again. This is why people love Craig’s List.

Why, don’t you want my two cents? Note that these are all chosen from what I’ve watched, done, seen or heard this year rather than what was released in 2006. So while, say, Clint Eastwood may win another Oscar for his WWII movie (or his other WWII movie) I didn’t see either so they aren’t in the candidate pool.

Moment (personal): My sister and brother-in-law walking in the door of my parents’ house with my nephew Jacob, the first time we got to meet the little guy.

Moment (technical/business): Going to Pasadena in January for the Rails Studio class. Honorable Mention: Gnomedex in Seattle, Eric Banhamou’s presentation at the July JHTC meeting.

Moment (political): Election Night, particularly watching CNN while in SeaTac waiting for my flight home from a job interview at Microsoft. Despite not getting an offer from MSFT.

Moment (sports): Liverpool winning the FA Cup after falling two goals behind, lead by Steven Gerrard’s offense and Pepe Reina’s goalkeeping.

Disappointment: Our troops are still dying in Iraq, Afghanistan is falling apart (with Somalia, the Sudan and Nigeria close behind), North Korea has several nuclear weapons and Iran is close behind and GW Bush is still president. The US team’s completely crap performance at the World Cup and USC’s last minute loss to Texas in the BCS Championship.

Purchase: Easily LittleSteven, my new MacBook, nothing else came close, which was driven home by the few days I had to go back to my WinXP Toshiba when this puppy had to go for service. Honorable Mentions: iBackup from Grapefruit Software, although since this is free/open source software I didn’t purchase it, and TextMate from Macromates, which did cost Eu40.

Gift: The longsleeve Liverpool FC jersey TS1 gave me for Hanukah and the continuing generosity of my parents.

TV comedy: Eureka (SciFi) was funny throughout its first season with good use of science fiction elements in the mystery and a very good Colin Ferguson as the fish out of water sheriff and Family Guy (Fox) was the best 30 minute show on any network. Honorable Mentions: Robot Chicken (Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim) and Viva Blackpool, a limited run musical/comedy/crime story mashup. Simpsons and Monk are still funny but not at their peak; Monk especially seems to have gotten into a rut and will need to pick it up in the winter season premiering in three weeks or lose me.

TV science fiction: Heroes (NBC) has come out of nowhere to show that major network scifi can be well done. Battlestar Galactica is still quality but the producers seem to have lost their way in regards to the bigger picture, similarly The 4400 (USA). Doctor Who is fun to watch but not first rank. Long in the tooth watchlist: both Stargates, though SG-1 is wrapping up after the winter season.

TV drama: The Wire (HBO) did a nearly complete reset this season but got terrific scripts from well-known mystery novelists like Dennis Lehane and Richard Price and consistently strong pacing from the stabl of directors. Mystery Monday (BBC America) brought us some outstanding British series including Life on Mars, Eleventh Hour, Wire in the Blood and Waking the Dead (but not all were worthy: Vincent and Murphy’s Law didn’t keep my interest for even one full episode). Honorable Mentions for Deadwood, 24, Dexter, Murder City and The Sopranos. Long in the tooth watchlist: the original CSI and CSI: Miami, the original Law & Order (when Jerry Orbach died, maybe the show should have too, though I still watch) and ER, which I did stop watching at least four years ago.

Movie comedy: Stranger than Fiction was strange, fictional and twistingly funny, best movie performance by Will Ferrell. Honorable Mention: Find Me Guilty. Classic: Eddie and the Cruisers.

Movie drama: An Inconvenient Truth may be a documentary but its also extremely dramatic and important as real life events continue to show (such as a 66 square kilometer ice shelf snapping off an island in the Candian Arctic). Honorable Mention: Hotel Rwanda. Classic: The Great Escape.

Book: Charlie Stross’s Accelerando was an amazing take on the Singularity and clearly my top read while Iain Banks was new (to me) author of the year, beginning with Look to Windward. I only seem to have read two non-fiction books but even so Jack Weatherford’s Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World is worth your time to understand one of the least well understood transformative figures of the Middle Ages.

Blog: Daring Fireball by John Gruber (note that I’m limiting myself to blogs which I first started reading this year), who I will support as soon as I start getting a paycheck again so I can get his Linked List RSS feed.

My 2006 sports predictions had some surprisingly good picks: Italy in the World Cup finals against a team that was not named Brazil, Germany or USA (though they won); Barcelona did win La Liga and the Champions League and beat an English club in the CL final; Chelsea won the EPL with Man United and Liverpool second and third and Arsenal capturing fourth on the last day of the season after a suspicious rash of food posioning struck Tottenham, the team ahead of them until that game. USC did not beat Texas in the BCS Championship game but Leinart, Bush and Vince Young did all go in the top 10 11 draft picks and both teams were in the preseason Top 10.

The Olevia 337H 37″ LCD TV that the Big Guy and I tried to buy on Black Friday came on sale again for a good price at Fry’s yesterday. The Big Guy had already gotten one online and has been very positive about the picture quality and performance so I decided TS1 and I deserved to have it as well. A day and a half later things are more or less set, but the experience has been a wearing one.

The connection and rationale still aren’t clear to me but Fry’s threw in a Sony DVD/VCR combo box as part of the deal. If it had HD capability… but no, it’s just a normal, $99 list price piece of equipment. Still in the box, probably going on eBay or Craig’s List.

At the store I didn’t think about how I was going to get the large, heavy box up the flight of stairs to our apartment. I could call someone for help but that seemed like overkill for two minutes of work. I punted, leaving the box in the car while I called Comcast and ran over to their office to get the necessary new HD settop box. Warned that the settop box had only a DVI output, I grabbed a DVI-HDMI cable at Radio Shack.

The box also had two of those yellow hard plastic straps around the short side and testing seemed to prove I could use the straps for a decent hold and leverage, which turned out to be true though getting up the stairs required stopping every two or three steps–the box was not only big, it was heavy too.

Disconnecting and removing the old TV and settop box were straightforward though the TV was more difficult to move than the Olevia was to get up. I reviewed all the connections and hard to read instructions and plugged everything together, then gave the cable box a half hour to activate.

Not good. All I could get on screen was black and white picture, no sound and only the basic (non-digital) channels, no matter what I tried. Calling Comcast support yielding the first disappointing news. Neither the TiVo Series1 (which I’ve had and loved for four years now) and Series2 (which I was willing to buy to get the dual tuner, new features and big recording capacity) work with the Comcast HD boxes. Unfortunately we cannot (nor would we even if we could) spend $800 for the Series3 TiVo HD recorder, plus $300 for the first three years of service prepaid.

Initially I thought this was ugly business maneuvering by Comcast, (illegally?) tying their DVR to the HD box. But then I realized that neither the Series1 nor the Series2 have HD input or output and so even if they could be used that would be missing the point of having an HD-capable TV.

The TiVo and my (10 year old) home theater receiver were removed from the wiring flow with the settop box and DVD player connected directly to the Olevia. Still no sound though and, after checking websites, documentation and calling the Big Guy, I found out that DVI (unlike HDMI) only carries video and not sound. Problem solved by adding a cable from the Comcast audio out to the TV.

Still no sound, but good picture on all the expected channels. The DVD player worked fine, sound and all. More reading of documentation yielded the nugget that I’d used the wrong audio jacks on the TV. Okay, sound finally working.

What to do about recording shows though? The only immediate answer was to go back to Comcast and trade up to their HD DVR, which I did this morning. When I asked the officeperson if a box with HDMI would be available any time soon he stopped typing, turned the box around so the back was facing me and pointed to an HDMI jack. So the expensive DVI-HDMI cable went back to Radio Shack and an HDMI-HDMI cable came home to take its place.

The new equipment all went in and, with just a little bit more frustration and annoyance, worked. All in time to watch a repeat of Newcastle-Tottenham on FSC (not an HD channel and not the live match I expected, which was on the Setanta Sports package instead). Afterwards, being energy-conscious, I turned off the Olevia.

An hour or so I later I turned it back on and the screen filled with snow rather than the pretty picture and sound from before. As an experiment I pulled the HDMI cable out of the TV, waited, and plugged it back in. This worked. After a few more minutes I power cycled again with the same snowy result. This is California, it doesn’t snow here!

I called Olevia support this time and was put on hold for over 30 minutes; the front line support rep told me I was 34th in line and 12 techs were on duty. Finally connected, only to learn that this is, er, expected behavior for any HDMI TV connection, regardless of brand, and I could turn off the cable box every time I turned off the TV, losing its recording capability, or leave the TV on.

We can thank our friends in Hollywood because this is yet another noxious DRM-related “feature.” The HDMI protocol requires all devices that can take HD content (the TV) to get an authorization token from the the supplying device (the Comcast box) before it can decode the signal. The Olevia forgets the token, or is required to get a new one, the tech support staffer wasn’t sure, every time the power goes off and on.

The workaround for power cycling the cable box is unplugging and plugging the HDMI cable, awkward due to the jack locations. The HD picture–I’m watching Florida St. beat UCLA on ESPN HD right now–is excellent, I have to say. Can’t wait for some soccer to show up on FSN HD or ESPN HD!

I still miss TiVo, though. If for nothing else the onscreen programming guide is vastly superior to Comcast’s, but also for the much better user interaction design (that is, the number and of type of clicks required for specific tasks like finding shows or setting up recordings), TiVo Suggests and all the Season Passes set up over the years.

The Comcast HD DVR settop box (though not the plain HD one), in its favor, does have dual tuners, which will be handy when the shows come back with new episodes next week month year. I can finally watch My Name is Earl again and deal with SciFi moving Battlestar Galactica to Sundays.

Maybe TiVo will pick on Microsoft’s idea and send me a Series3 to blog about? Stranger things have happened.

FYI: UCLA QB Patrick Cowan just threw an interception that was returned for a TD right after Florida State drove 90 yards for a TD and the Seminoles look to have locked up the Emerald Bowl, leading 44-27 with 2:45 left in the game. Any team that beats UCLA is okay in my book. Go ‘Noles!

I was surprised to read Anil’s entry this morning paying tribute to the Godfather of Soul. Brown has been a star since before my birth and certainly had his share of troubles the last 20 years but still only celebrated his 73rd birthday this year. Most of his hits came before I was old enough to appreciate them; the two that did make an impression on me were Living in America and Say It Loud (I’m Black and I’m Proud).

One thing Brown said that seemed truly meaningful to me was his definition of soul, and perhaps of his own life:

“Soul is all the hard knocks, all the punishment the black man has had … all the unfulfilled dreams that must come true.

The third book in Charles Stross’s entertaining series that meshes science fiction (intra-multiverse travel), fantasy (two of the three Earths featured–so far–are 100 and 500 years behind our’s in development) and present-day drug and national security politics, The Clan Corporate starts a bit slow but perks up about 30-40 pages in and never lets up.

Still, given its place in the middle of things, the book doesn’t really settle any big questions though it does put more plates spinning at the end of sticks. Miriam Beckstein a/k/a Helge voh Thorold d’Hjorth is still in hot water from the events of The Hidden Family, and we spend much of this episode learning about her clan and its place in the politics of Neijwein.

The defection of Mattias at the end of the second volume has made everyone more than a little paranoid, you see. Plus, the Clan is still interested in bringing the royal family into the worldwalkers’ braiding scheme and there are non-Clan political players as well. The results of Mattias’ defection on our own American government, personified by DEA agent Mike Fleming, are not, er, unsurprising either; Stross puts the lever squarely in VP Dick Cheney’s hands and thereby escalates the scheming.

But Stross really does political well. Further, Miriam’s frustration and missteps build throughout and thus she becomes much more human.

recommended

TS1 found this while looking for something to do on New Year’s Eve, I’m not sure how. But I highly recommend if you have a free night between now and January 6, spend the $20 a ticket and drive over to San Jose to see Actors Theater Center’s stage production of The Rocky Horror Show. We had a terrific time, the cast is very good and the show is in a cozy little theater next to a middle school.

Before I lived out here I used to go to shows fairly often, on Broadway, off Broadway and the Paper Mill Playhouse (a, it’s the official state theater of New Jersey and b, the original building was a paper mill, okay?), my parents being quite the devotees of the stage. Out here, not being a huge fan of driving up to San Francisco and the ridiculous ticket prices for big name shows (we checked into seeing Jersey Boys and the cheapest seats worth buying are $90 each, and that’s before the TicketMaster fees).

These days people may not remember that this was originally a stage production in London and the movie wasn’t made until two years later (though Tim Curry was the star of both). Director Jeff Hicks has done a nice job of translating it back and local theater vet Tad M. Morgan is a hoot as Frank N. Furter and David Cori does a perfect job as the narrator, handling the traditional audience responses especially well. After the curtain call, the whole cast lead the audience in doing the Time Warp (again).

It’s been a long time but I used to be a regular at the Friday midnight movie shows back in college and this was a fun time warp. If you’re still looking for a different way to ring in the New Year, this is a good bet.

recommended

Oy! Karl tagged me, and like him I share too much so five things might be a little tough.

• New people I meet always get the benefit of the doubt and will be treated as a friend unless and until they demonstrate they are not.
• I hung out at the Mudd Club, CBGBs and a few other Manhattan punk clubs back in the late ’70s with a buddy named Brian Karlman. During the winter months I was pretty much the only one wearing plaid lumberjack shirts and, no, I never dyed my hair.
• I’m a big Buddy Rich fan thanks to a good buddy of mine from Jersey who was also an awesome drummer (and has perfect pitch to boot). Second and third favorite non-rock musicians are Beethoven and the King of Swing, Benny Goodman.
• My biggest regret about living in California for nearly 11 years is still the distance from my parents, sister and my sister’s family. But my biggest regret career-wise is not recognizing the opportunities in Silicon Valley when I visited here in my senior year of college for my cousin Larry’s Bar Mitzvah.
• Like Sam, I have an irrational fear of heights and also must have the aisle seat on planes and in theaters.

Is there anyone left to tag? Well, Rob and Pam, for sure, and Rogers, Dan and Adam make an even five, go to it folks.

In our English history, in 1837 Charles Babbage designed what might have been a very early sort of computer, the analytical engine, except that he never quite finished the design and manufacturing technology could not have produced even if he had. Authors William Gibson and Bruce Sterling launched the steampunk strand of science fiction in 1991 by speculating in this volume on what might have been if Babbage’s engines were built.

Gibson and Sterling (both Americans) focus primarily on the political ramifications of the invention, not surprising given the rest of their oeuvres, and the key change is a rapid rise of technocrats not unlike our own Silicon Valley elite except that in that time and place money and politics are far more directly linked, especially in light of the connection between Babbage and Ada Lovelace. Her father becomes not only Prime Minister but also the channel through which radical political changes are wrought.

The book itself is more a series of short stories rather than a novel, connected by a mysterious box of punch cards. Babbage’s engines were card-driven for both instructions and memory, with every resident of Britain having their details recorded on a bureaucratic card.

My memories of The Difference Engine were quite fond–and justified on re-reading–and so I took advantage after coming across a copy on deep discount at Tower Records’ going out of business sale.

recommended

After a five hour wait my account seems to have migrated to the new Blogger. I’ll see if the new labels feature will do much for me, otherwise the main value will be the hopefully robust new code base and architecture that allows the Google squad to add or enhance features more rapidly.

Since I don’t (obviously) publish on Blog*Spot the new layouts aren’t available to my blogs and I’ll respectfully disagree with their claim on having improved the Dashboard design (the new layout uses more screen space and all blogs show as having last updated today even though that’s only true for this one).

Anyway, cheers, congrats on finally getting this puppy out of the barn.

Update: Well, those of us not publishing to Blog*Spot cannot control the labels other than what’s possible through CSS styling so they’re a pass for me for now.

Also, this change has broken my access through the Blogger API on the Book Reviews page. I’m working on fixing this but it might take a day or two as I didn’t write the underlying code.

It has to be, right John? Microsoft has filed an application to patent a “content syndication platform, such as a web content syndication platform, manages, organizes and makes available for consumption content that is acquired from the Internet.” The first claim in the application specifically mentions RSS and further down ATOM and the various versions are listed.

Ha-ha-ha, mutherfuckers. One imagines there is sufficient prior art to block this but then again…

(TS1 made this up and gave me a framed copy as today’s Hanukah present, how sweet is this?)

The Reds moved decisively into third on the EPL league table yesterday with a comprehensive 3-0 win over bottomdwelling Charlton. Alonso opened with a third minute penalty kick after former LFC man Djimi Traore put his boot into Jermaine Pennant’s forehead inside the box and then Craig Bellamy and StevieG went net twice in the last 10 minutes for a quality road win. Eleven goals in their last three league games with none allowed.

Arsenal could have stayed a place ahead of us but gave up two early goals to Portsmouth and had a scramble to manage a point at home. Gunners’s results have been far below par since they beat us 3-0 five weeks ago, winning three, drawing three and losing four matches; in fact, that was the last time Liverpool allowed a goal in a league match. They are missing star striker Thierry Henry through injury, and he’s not likely to return until after the new year.

The stage is set, then, for a major clash Tuesday night when Arsenal visit Anfield in a Carling Cup quarterfinal match. In the last round Rafa fielded more of a reserve squad, with Dudek, Paletta, Peltier, Agger, Warnock and Fowler getting starts and beating Birmingham 0-1; Arsene Wenger put a similar type of lineup out, with Almunia, Song, Walcott, Song, Denilson, Traore and Aliadere getting chances to feature, and they beat a full strength Everton 1-0 on a late goal from Emmanuel Adebayor.

Different managers have different practices, and both teams have injuries and tight scheduling, so I can’t say what the starting XIs will look like. Benitez has let the reserves take them team as far as they’re able the last two seasons so I wouldn’t be surprise to see most of the same side from the Birmingham match though Zenden and Sissoko are of course unavailable through injury and Bellamy may be replaced by Crouch and Gonzalez by Guthrie due to changes in regular first team selections.

The teams meet again the first Saturday of the new year, this time in the FA Cup, and Henry says he’ll be ready for it.

Note: Gerrard was made an Honorary Freeman of the borough of Knowsley this week, for his outstanding contribution to national and international football, the first such award in nearly 20 years. A key benefit of the title is that Steve can run his flock of sheep through the town’s roads. Baa-aa-aa!

This novel from Australian writer Max Berry is a good companion to Iain Bank’s The Business, covering much the same thematic territory but more of an out and out satire and really none of the SF-ish suspenseful undertone. Both are entertaining, well-written and highly readable.

Company shows us a few months in the trenches at Zephyr Holdings through the eyes of newly-hired university graduate Stephen Jones. The cover art, a single large (glazed) donut, seems odd but is quite appropriate as one of the subplots threaded throughout much of the book is the question of who ate Roger’s donut on Jones’ first day.

Corporate underlings expending energy for months over this question ought to give you some ideas on Barry’s style of humor. Its used to illuminate the main plot, a complete mockery of the ever-changing, ever-pointless corporate management fads. Plus there’s lots of orange.

recommended

Tonight being the first night of Hannukah, TS1 and I exchanged gifts. Being incredibly thoughtful she gave me a longsleeve Liverpool FC home jersey with #6 on the back since John Arne Riise is my favorite player on the team these days. Him and his blasting Norwegian left foot! For the record, I gave her an armband sports sleeve for her iPod plus an iTunes gift card and a Green Day live CD/DVD pack, all of which I knew she wanted.

Nothing expensive, much less extravagent, but everything truly appreciated.

On the other hand I am getting truly sickened by the diamond and jewelry industry’s advertising. You know the commercials, such as the one where hubby sneaks out of bed to get a diamond gewgaw to drape artfully on the sleeping wife’s neck so that she wakes up seeing it. The huge expense proves, of course, his incredible love and devotion to her.

Really. Does that mean because I didn’t–and won’t–buy my wife useless rocks that she’s been brainwashed into thinking have terrific value I don’t really love her? Of course it doesn’t and fortunately for me she knows so. We can only wish that soon enough more people do and these sick, slick attempts at separating people from huge amounts of hard earned money stop.

You want to buy diamonds because they look great? Fine, no problem. I just can’t stand how easily people fall for this line of marketing crap.

Me, I’m more than happy with my jersey.

I enjoyed Walter Mosley’s novel, there can be no doubt he is one of the finest American writers actively working today, though I wonder if he reached all the way to the very high bar he set for himself with Fortunate Son. The craft of the book is impeccable, the story nearly as addictive as the more conventionally fortunate of the two main characters.

Mosley claims the book is an exploration of the true meaning of fortune, seen through the lives of two boys, self-proclaimed brothers. This is my only criticism, that in this exploration the author uses too many artifacts, people or events too close to ideal to happen in the real world.

Still, I couldn’t read Son fast enough. Two boys are born around the same time; one’s father runs when he finds out his girl is pregnant while the other’s mother dies in childbirth. The first is born sick, kept isolated in a bubble for the first six months at the hospital where the other’s dad is a heart surgeon. The parents meet and fall in love, sort of, and she and her boy move into the the doctor’s home in Beverly Hills.

Tommy and his mom are black while Eric and the doctor are white. Things are fine, for a few years, though Tommy is often sick or injured while Eric is healthy and a burgeoning athlete, and the boys are close as twins. The mom dies suddenly, in her sleep, and Tommy’s real father demands the child despite not really wanting him nor having the means to care for him. Tommy’s life falls apart while Eric’s shines. One becomes homeless and jailed, the other a golden boy who can have any girl–or woman–he wants.

Heartbreaking, thrilling, simply awesome.

recommended

Forbes.com asks How Much Privacy? in an article on the practices of online marketing research firm comScore. Apparently the firm tempts people into using their software with small rewards (gift cards and the like) so they can track web activity, correlate it with user-supplied demographics and sell the (aggregated) information to some very big name corporate clients. [via Slashdot]

Not my cup of tea but some single digit millions of my fellow Americans are okay enough with it to install the software. This begs the question of how well these folks understand what they’ve agreed to but caveat emptor, right?

Except that comScore goes just a bit further than most anyone but the geekiest will be able to understand. Their software, you see, inserts a root certificate authority into your Windows Registry (yay for us Macsters) which allows them to track your activity into otherwise secure websites. That is, after depending for years on the fact that when you see a URL beginning with https instead of http you’ve loaded a secure webpage for, say, online shopping or banking you no longer can feel so safe.

The root CA allows comScore to intercept whatever you send even over those seure http links. The company, of course, claims that they aren’t going to store or use any bank account or credit card numbers or passwords that passes through their software’s filter–which gets a crack at every page visited by their users. Perhaps they won’t.

Even if we’re to trust them, which is an increasingly unlikely proposition, how can one rely on the integrity of their own servers and network when its clearly a juicy target for the criminal types who are attempting to hack into as many potentially useful systems as they can manage?

Further, what if some black hat cracker decided to take a copy of the software, hack it to replace the address of the comScore server with one of their own and then put the package back out for download far and wide? By the time the victims realized what’s happened these criminals will have feasted on the ill-gotten data. Anyone who thinks comScore is going to take liability for such victimization, well, their the most likely folks to download the software.

Posting has been light this week because I’ve spent the time building a new site for the Jewish High Tech Community. First, credit where due, thanks to Andreas Viklund for making so many great designs available as open source as I used his andreas08 package for a very professional color scheme and layout (note that any red/reddish colors were added by me). Second, thanks to Chad Dickerson and his crew at Yahoo! Developer Network as I used the Yahoo! UI library for some nice Ajax effects: the future meetings popup and the in-place RSVP form/error message.

The site, behind the scenes, is much more complicated than necessary given the minimal content but I really was just looking for another technical exercise. All (well, 95+%) of the text you see is stored in a set of XML files, one for the common material and one to hold the material for each specific page. The pages are generated by one of the PHP classes, with common functionality like the header, footer and navigation menu abstracted to a parent class.

Given the nature of the site content, I decided to implement the hCalendar microformat on event pages. For now this is mostly meaningful as a learning exercise for me since the specification is not quite complete nor commonly used, although I expect microformats will gain traction fairly soon and users of the Tails extension for Firefox (or FlockTails for Flock), the Endo OS X aggregator or the Technorati Microformats Search will benefit already. Hat tip to Ryan King for clearing up a couple of questions for me.

I was a bit surprised at how unsimple PHP’s SimpleXML class turned out to be. The documentation could use a boost in explaining how to handle child collections and marked up text. By the former I mean multiple instances of the same type of element nested within a parent such as, in this context, several event elements inside the events element in the XML files that drive the past and future events lists. The latter refers to the near complete lack of mention that a CDATA directive must be used to alert PHP’s processor that the element contains (HTML) formatted text, or otherwise the markup is essentially ignored.

There’s still a bit more work to do but I wanted to push the new pages for the announcement of our exciting January 9 meeting. We have the aforementioned Chad, Evelyn Rodriguez, Anil Dash and Jason Hoffman presenting their forecasts for the likely important events we may see on the web in 2007 and then participating in a panel discussion of them.

Our events are free and open to all, so do join us if you have the time and inclination.