Unquiet Desperation

If you tried to come to this site in the past few days, and you got a notice that my humble little blog was an attack site, I apologize. Google, you see, blackballed me from the Internets.

Early last Saturday, my sites were hacked. I cleaned them all up, changed the passwords, did the usual things that you do when this sort of thing happens. But by the time I was done, Google had already reported me to StopBadWare.org,
and then it was all over.

If you tried to get to this site via Google, you were out of luck. They put up a page completely blocking access to my site. You could, of course, go around it by entering the full url in the address bar of your browser, but at that
point, the special nanny-like features of the browser took over. In Firefox and Safari, you would get a red screen screaming that, OH NOES, you were going to an attack site! Don’t go there! Don’t stray from the path!

You could disable the warning if you knew where in the preference panels to do so. But really…how many average users look at the security settings on their browser? (Not enough, which is exactly why this sort of hand-holding exists.)

On top of this, sites like Twitter and Facebook, deleted my URL from my profile, based on the report from Google.

I have mixed feelings about this. Part of me thinks it’s good that companies are trying to block malicious site for average users. Part of me thinks that average users might need to learn a little bit about the medium they are using, so they can protect themselves. I think it’s a slippery slope, having block lists that work on such a broad level. It seems dangerous to me in a Big Brother sort of way.

It took five days to clear the mess up, but I’m back, and I have some content for you. Have a seat, and I’ll give you a helping.

Update: I just tried to tweet this entry using my domain, and I was told that Twitter still thinks that my site is a Known Malware Site. How many places do I need to clear my name?

I wonder if my Google Calendar is trying to tell me something.

photo credit: dalelane

About a month ago, I got a G1 from my local T-Mobile dealer. I’d like to bore you with the details.

• I like the style of the phone. At it’s most basic, the G1 is a Sidekick with a better OS and rounded corners. Since my last phone was also a Sidekick, I’m right at home.  I do wish the G1 had the translucent trackball, which you could program to light up in different colors in different situations¹.
• I also love having a physical keyboard. The iPhone keyboard sucked when I used it. This one is perfect for me.
• I like the size of the screen and the apps that come with the phone.  Linking things in to my Google accounts has made my life one hell of a lot easier.
• Everything you’ve heard about the battery life is true…if you’re an idiot.  Yes, if you leave every service on all the time², the battery will be dead in two hours.  It just so happens that there is a great app called Locale which fixes this little problem. Developed by a group of MIT students, this app tracks where you are using both Wifi and GPS and will switch off services when you are in a certain location automatically. With will also change your ringer volume and make decisions based on system status, such as low battery life. It completely rocks.
• The App market is still underdeveloped, but it’s a new platform, and that’s to be expected. There are some great apps in the Android Market, such as Park Mark, Wikitude, Shop Savvy.
• The only downside I’ve found is that sometimes the memory gets pegged and the whole phone slows or pauses  When apps stop responding, the system handles it gracefully, asking if you want to force the app to close, or wait for it to finish.  I’ve never had a full-out crash or needed to reset the phone.

Would I recommended it?  I already have, several times. The most common criticism of the G1 is that it’s not an iPhone. That’s just fin with me. I love the openness of the Android system, and I cannot wait to see what people find to do with it.

1. for instance, blue if you have voice mail, red if your boss called and you missed it, etc[back]
2. GPS, Wifi, and Bluetooth[back]

We’ve recently switched the backend of Mahalo to use Hadoop for all of our text archiving needs. What’s Hadoop? Glad you asked…

Hadoop: When grownups do open source | The Register

Hadoop is a library for writing distributed data processing programs using the MapReduce framework. It’s got all the makings of a blogosphere hit: cluster computing, large datasets, parallelism, algorithms published by Google, and open source. Every four days or so, a nerd will discover Hadoop, write a “Basic MapReduce Tutorial with Hadoop” tutorial on his blog with some trivial examples, and feel satisfied with himself for educating the world about a yet-undiscovered gem. Comparatively, very few people actually use Hadoop in practice, and those who do don’t write about it. Why? Because they’re adults who don’t care about getting on the front page of Digg.

Read on. It’s great stuff, and you’ll definitely learn something useful if your site needs to…well…scale.

It’s been quiet both here and over at the Secret Lair. You’ve not seen me much on Twitter in the last three weeks. For all you know, I’ve vanished off the face of the planet.

Not so, good reader. There are two reasons for my silence. The first is that I’ve been traveling: went to the Google I/O conference in San Francisco then to Santa Monica for Codejam V at the Mahalo Mothership. For more about my views on how Google I/O went, check out the interview with me over at the Command Line Podcast.

The second is that we’ve decided to move to Los Angeles. This one…well…it’s huge. We’re looking to get the house on the market as soon as humanly possible, which means that we’ve been painting, patching, and handling all the stuff we’ve been putting off for a while. It’s a tough market out there for selling a house, and we’re hoping to have it done soon so that we can be in L.A. by Sept 1. Too optimistic? Maybe. So far, things have fallen into place every step of the way, and we’ve been incredibly lucky to have a our families and friends helping us out as we prepare. The insanity of all of this is the reason I’ve been off the interwebs for a bit. There’s simply not enough time in the day anymore.

For those of you who know the area, we’re looking to settle in Sherman Oaks. My good friend Nicole took me on a tour of the neighborhood while I was out there last week, and I really liked the feel of the place. If you know anyone looking to rent a three-bedroom house out there, hook me up.

Finally, I’m dropping a little something into my podcast feed this week. J.C. Hutchins interviewed me for his Ultracreatives series. We had a great time, and I think it’s my favorite interview to date. I got to talk about a number of things that I rarely touch on in my blog or the shows I produce, so it was a real treat.

More on the move as it develops. Otherwise…it’s good to be back.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download