Wednesday, September 23, 2009

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Basic Flaw Reveals Source Code to 3,300 Popular Websites Top
A Russian security group has posted a detailed blog post ( translation here ) about how they managed to extract the source code to over 3,300 websites. The group found that some of the largest and best known domains on the web, such as apache.org and php.net , amongst others, are vulnerable to an elementary information leak that exposes the structure and source of website files. A web surfer is able to extract this information by requesting the hidden metadata directories that popular version control tool Subversion creates. The actual ‘exploit’ itself has been well known for a long time. It is the fault of the server administrator or developer, rather than the fault of a particular application, since the working metadata directories in Subversion are only required for working copies of code. What is surprising is just how prevalent the problem is – and who it affects. Finding version control metadata directories is as simple as looking for ‘.svn’ or ‘.cvs’ folders within web paths, for example: http://www.test.com/.svn/ . The metadata directories are used for development purposes to keep track of development changes to a set of source code before it is committed back to a central repository (and vice-versa). When code is rolled to a live server from a repository, it is supposed to be done as an export rather than as a local working copy, and hence this problem. Most web servers are configured by default to disallow access to directories that begin with a period (the traditional prefix for a hidden file or folder in UNIX) – which makes this problem more embarrassing for the affected sites as not only have they mismanaged their version control, but have somehow managed to disable the standard safeguard in webservers meant to prevent hidden files and folders from being returned to users. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
Cloudera And Facebook Shed More Light On Hadoop Integration Top
For a startup that was founded less than a year ago, Cloudera has seen some pretty amazing growth. Backed by an impressive list of investors and advisors and run by a team of experienced technology veterans, Cloudera commercially distributes and services Hadoop. It’s similar in theory to Red Hat’s distribution of Linux. Hadoop is a Java software framework born out of an open-source implementation of Google's published computing infrastructure which is fostered within the Apache Software Foundation. Hadoop supports distributed applications running on large clusters of commodity computers processing enormous amounts of data. Cloudera helps distribute Hadoop, and provides services around the technology. Via Cloudera, Hadoop is currently used by most of the giants in the space including, Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Amazon, AOL, Baidu and more. To date, Cloudera has raised $11 million in funding from Accel Partners and Greylock Partners. Cloudera is organizing and hosting a conference, Hadoop World: NYC, in a few weeks to support the growing Apache Hadoop community. Facebook, Yahoo, Amazon Web Services and IBM will all be making presentations about how they use the technology to support large volumes of data. Facebook is one of the more interesting use cases of Hadoop use, says Cloudera co-founder Christophe Bisciglia. Facebook software engineer Ashish Thusoo said that prior to Hadoop, the social network uses conventional RDBMS based data warehousing technologies and switched to the open-source Hadoop because of its scalability, cost and flexibility. Facebook implements both Hadoop and Hive, which is a data warehouse infrastructure built on top of Hadoop that provides tools to enable easy data summarization, adhoc querying and analysis of large datasets stored in Hadoop files. For example, the software makes it easy to create business data reports with data, aggregation and analysis that is used to drive Facebook products, model generation and optimization problems for ads. Cloudera is offering an exclusive discount code to the Hadoop event in New York City, with will knock off 25 percent of the list price of $399 per ticket. It’s valid through 9/29. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
The Last Has Fallen. The Embargo Is Dead. Top
Late last year I announced a new policy at TechCrunch – we don’t do embargoes. Well, it was a little more complicated than that, and designed to stir up chaos in the PR ranks. We said we’d break every embargo, and we also said we’d honor embargoes for exclusives plus a few select companies, particularly Microsoft and Google, because they had proven to be reliable. Overall, we meant to be confusing, and we were. Embargoed news, if you aren’t familiar with the term: a company wants to announce news, like a product launch or a new funding. They brief lots of press with a stated day and time for the news to break. Press agrees not to write before that time. But generally someone goes early, with a really good excuse like a time stamp software problem, and then everyone floods out with the news. Whoever broke the story in the first place generally gets more eyeballs and attention than the others, so there are lots of incentives for mistakes. Particularly because no one ever punishes the offenders. A lot of people said our new policy would be the death of TechCrunch. We’ve more than doubled our readership and page views since then, so with the benefit of hindsight I disagree. But what’s interesting is that since that post the embargo culture in the tech news world has essentially crumbled. Chaos rules, and even the once great Microsoft and Google have fallen. This is a good thing for readers. Earlier this year the Wall Street Journal also implemented a no embargo policy unless they get an exclusive, mirroring our position. People freaked out. In June a Microsoft embargo for Microsoft Hohm broke early (that was VentureBeat, a wonderfully repeat offender – last year they once broke every embargo for a week and then claimed it was a daylight saving issue or something). That left Google as the sole company with the clout to force press to stick to embargoes. This morning, with Google Sidewiki, Google stumbled. PaidContent, who unfortunately are sticklers for sticking to embargoes, went hours early, way before the product was even live. I wasted three hours testing and writing about that product last night, so you can imagine my happiness at the news chaos was tempered somewhat by my frustration at bothering to wait on my post. I should have published at 2:30 am, when I was done for the night. With Google and Microsoft no longer able to hold embargoes, there really isn’t much left to do but abandon the whole practice. I, for one, am happy about that. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
Mallory From Family Ties Could Be A Harbinger Of What's To Come With Twitter Retweets Top
So Justine Bateman, you know, Mallory Keaton from Family Ties , completely lost her cool this morning with a bunch of people on Twitter. She kept noticing people she doesn’t follow showing up in her tweet stream and proceeded to publicly call them all “shitheads.” Of course, what she doesn’t realize is that this really is a feature and not a bug. And it could spell some trouble for Twitter if they don’t handle it properly. The issue is that Twitter apparently enabled Bateman’s account with the new retweet functionality. Obviously, she wasn’t made aware of it, and doesn’t seem to know what the feature actually is. Clearly, she doesn’t frequent TechCrunch or a number of other tech blogs who have been covering this upcoming change extensively, because if she did, she would know that with the new retweet changes , users will now see the original tweets that are being retweeted in their stream, rather than a person they follow retweeting it. This means that people who you don’t actually follow could show up in your stream, which is exactly what happened to Bateman. Here’s what she wrote to Thing Labs (makers of Brizzly ) founder Jason Shellen: Mr. Shellen, I don’t know what kind of deal you cut with TwitterBerry or how much it cost you, but suddenly you’re on my Twitter feed and I NEVER OPTEN TO FOLLOW YOU nor do I wan to. I’m set to flame this incident all over the Internet. I suggest for the sake of your reputation on-line, YOU GET YOUR TWITTER ACCOUNT TOGETHER, and stop attempting to shove your posts into other people’s feeds. Sincerely, Justine Bateman There have been plenty of other examples of her threatening other Twitter users who showed up in her feed too. Including blogger John Gruber and Twitter employee Ryan King. Setting aside the fact that it’s mildly hilarious that Bateman thinks that somehow users are to blame for this, and that she thinks her lame Internet threats will put an end to all of this, there is actually a potential issue here for Twitter. When the new retweet funtionality goes live, which should happen relatively soon, Twitter needs to make it very clear to all users that the change is happening, and what exactly it means. Otherwise, we could very well see a backlash similar to Bateman’s only on a massive scale. As we’ve seen when Facebook rolls out changes to its site, users generally don’t like change, even if it’s for the better. The backlash that occurred immediately after Facebook rolled out their News Feed a few years ago is a perfect example of this. As is the backlash FriendFeed initially saw when it rolled out its real-time continuous updating system earlier this year. Both of those changes were for the better, and users eventually realized that, but initially they thought the company was ruining their experience. I think Twitter’s new retweet functionality is in the same boat. It seems like it will ultimately be a positive change for the service, but plenty of users are sure to hate it at first. There’s not much Twitter can do about that other than explain what is happening very clearly and to say something along the lines of “try it out, give it a chance.” But if they drop the ball on the transition, potentially millions of users who have no idea about the change are going to wake up and think their Twitter accounts have been compromised by tweets of people they don’t follow. If those users are thinking clearly (which Bateman clearly wasn’t), they’ll likely questions whether Twitter has sold them out and violated their privacy (which, of course, won’t be true, but that’s how it should look to those users not in the know). Or they’ll see it as another Twitter failure. So in some ways, Twitter is lucky that Bateman seems to be a hotheaded user who doesn’t mind attacking people publicly on the Internet. She has given them a potential taste of what is to come. Twitter should look at her reaction and come up with a plan for how they’re going to explain this upcoming change to other confused users. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
DEMO: CallSpark Looks To Be Your Phone's Ultimate Contact Database Top
Our phones are smarter than ever, but figuring out a business’s or personal contact’s phone number can still be a trying task — especially when this data can be scattered across multiple address books, Facebook profiles, and professional contact management tools. CallSpark is a new startup that’s making its debut at DEMO Fall that’s looking to help solve this problem. The company has an iPhone application that will be out soon, with plans to support more platforms in the near future. First, the company looks to help find a phone number quickly, using data from Yelp, the white pages, yellow pages, and other sources. You can run a keyword search to find matches in your vicinity — for example, a search for ‘Hyatt’ would find the phone number for the most relevant Hyatt hotel in the area. It isn’t clear how this is better than what you get using the iPhone’s integrated Google Maps functionality, which also makes it easy to look up a phone number, but the app does have a number of other interesting features. The second thing that CallSpark offers is the abillity to import information from sources like your company’s Salesforce account. You can use this information as an address book, as well as to look up details about a contact during a call (beyond contact information, CallSpark can include content from sites like Twitter and Facebook). Another use case for CallSpark is to locate contact information that would typically be buried in your Email. Say, for example, your friend had sent his new phone number to your Email account but you had yet to enter it into your address book. CallSpark will automatically identify the number in the mail message, and include it as a match next time you run a search on your contact’s name. Finally, CallSpark offers something called ‘Ring Pages’, which lets companies and individuals create a default website that users should see when they call their number using CallSpark. For example, a FedEx RingPage might include links to track your packages, or find the nearest FedEx locations. CallSpark says it will soon be announcing a ‘large carrier deal’. Carrier deals may well be key to CallSpark’s success, as it’s unlikely the company will have much luck getting businesses to build Ring Pages if the app doesn’t have a considerable user base. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
Nokia To Acquire UK Startup Dopplr Top
Nokia has been on an acquisition tear lately, albeit mostly small deals (Plum, Cellity and Bit-Side all this year). A source close to the deal says that they’ve just made one more acquisition: boutique travel social network Dopplr , headquartered in London. The purchase price, we’ve heard, is between €10 million and €15 million ($15 million – $22 million based on current exchange rates). Dopplr cofounder and CEO Marko Ahtisaari was previously the Director of Design Strategy at Nokia. We first covered Dopplr in 2007 when it closed on seed funding. The site has never grown to huge usage, but core users are passionate about the service, which lets them share travel plans with friends. And they’ve supposedly raised just €1.25 million or so in total funding . Dopplr was about to close a new round of funding when Nokia swooped in for the buy. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
You Collaborate On Web Docs. Now Collaborate On Web Designs With Notable. Top
When companies have employees based in different locations, collaboration can often be difficult. At TechCrunch, we use Yammer to communicate. But what if you want a team to collaborate and provide feedback on the development of content and features on websites and web platforms? That’s where Notable comes in. Notable, which is a product of design agency ZURB, lets you quickly and easily give feedback on design, content, and code on any page of a website or application without leaving your browser. Notable is essentially a page capture utility with an annotation feature that lets you highlight copy, design elements and even code that needs to be tweaked. To get started, you either install the Notable Firefox plugin, or download the Notable iPhone application from the App Store [ iTunes link ]. From there, you capture the design via a Firefox tool button, upload a JPG image or design mock-up from your desktop, or type in a URL. You can invite people into your “workspace” where they can leave comments in dialog boxes that can be dragged around the page and provide feedback on the design and code. Notable is giving away a free iPod Touch to anyone who has the most views on a public post through September 30. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 

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