Latest Buzzword: Podcasting

You probably won't find the word podcasting in your printed dictionary. It is a word made up of 2 words iPod and broadcasting (not that you can find IPod in your printed dictionary either).

It is simply the syndicated broadcasting of MP3 files over the web. Think of RSS feeds except substitute text with audio files. Instead of reading about say your commentator on Open Source Software, you will just hear an audio recording, assuming of course that the commentator provides the podcast.

By the way, you don't need to own an IPod to try podcasting. I don't for sure. Most podcasting clients can download directly to iPods. You can also play back those audio files on your computer.

What does it do for you and I? For me, not much. I generally prefer reading over listening for various reasons: it is faster, I can better scan and screen it, etc. I guess I am just a reading type of guy. I also find that again in general to write something requires more mental/cognitive organization than speaking, and so in theory, the result should be of higher quality. Of course, there are exceptions, but then I could screen them out much faster with newsfeeds, can't I?

I did try podcasting out, though. I was curious if and how well Bottomfeeder, my news aggregator supports podcast feeds. It should, because podcast is just another RSS feed with a MP3 file attached.

In fact, it does support it. You add the podcast to bottomfeeder just like you would add any news feed. To listen to the audio, just double click on the MP3 file link under Enclosures.

If you really want a more podcast-specific tool, I heard jPodder is good. It is cross-platform (Linux & Windows). It is a Java tool, so you need Java installed on your PC.

More Google Hacks

A few days ago, I mentioned an advanced Google search operator site: as in site:softwarejourney.blogspot.com. You use the site: operator to match against the domain and the host name. The site: operator does not support port numbers, e.g., www.somesite.com:8080. Also, it will not match the directory or the file name. For those kinds of searches, you need another operator/hack, inurl:.

The inurl: operator will try to match the thing you specify against the characters anywhere along the url, including the port #, the directory, and the filename. For example, if you enter inurl:blog, you may get these results back:

www.somedomain.org/blog/ 
www.blogger.com/
www.peterleung.com/somedir/blog.html

The inurl: operator comes in handy when you know a keyword is in the url (perhaps, even the filename), but the keyword may not be in the title or the body of the HTML document.

Google has become an indispensable tool in my live (and perhaps yours too), and getting more proficient at Google shouldn't hurt.

Blogging about Blog

Folks, it has been over 1 month since I started this blog. It is time to take a step back and evaluate the experience: my blog and my blog host (blogspot).

According to industry studies, the majority of surveyed blogs are temporarily or permanently abandoned: 66.0% of surveyed blogs had not been updated in two months. Of the active ones, fewer than 50,000 were updated daily.

This blog is one of the 50,000. However, I must tell you that it is no stroll in the park. What keeps me going is the readership: the people who actually read the stuff. So far, it is between 20 - 30 per day (an estimate). I suspect that most readers are people I know, but as a fact there are some who wandered into this blog. And God bless these good souls.

That brought me to one major gripe. It has been over a month, but my blog is still not indexed by Google. I have tried several things to get this blog indexed, and hopefully increase readership. Time will tell.

Creating a blog on blogspot is easy. Customizing the look and feel may take some technical skills.

Despite being the top blog host (second being liveJournal), feature-wise, I find it to be wanting. One missing feature is the ability to auto publish blog entries on a future date (although that is on their feature list). Second, the blogs can be more interactive. For example, I'd love to have polls.

It is probably time for me to investigate livejournal and see how it compares in terms of features.(livejournal is built using open source software)

Another annoyance with blogspot is that the google search at the top of the blog does not work. Specifically, it does not search entries in this blog. I submitted a problem report to blogspot, but all I received is a template reply to tell me to check its FAQ.

Which Windows ports are open?

Do you know what ports on your computer are open and listening? An open port means an outside process can potentially connect to your computer through that port.

Many operating systems, by default, try to be as user ready as they possibly can when first installed. Inadvertently, they make it hacker friendly as well. Having more ports open than you need is one example. Windows, especially the older versions, are guilty of this.

So, as a security precaution, you need to identify what ports are currently open, and then decide on whether they should be.

You can run a native Windows tool called netstat (a more powerful version of netstat exists on Linux). netstat is a command line tool. So, open a Windows prompt, and enter
netstat -an

Below is some sample output:

C:\tmp>netstat -an
Active Connections
Proto Local Address      Foreign Address    State
TCP   0.0.0.0:22         0.0.0.0:0          LISTENING
TCP   0.0.0.0:135        0.0.0.0:0          LISTENING
TCP   0.0.0.0:445        0.0.0.0:0          LISTENING
TCP   0.0.0.0:1028       0.0.0.0:0          LISTENING
TCP   0.0.0.0:1032       0.0.0.0:0          LISTENING
TCP   0.0.0.0:1038       0.0.0.0:0          LISTENING
TCP   0.0.0.0:3389       0.0.0.0:0          LISTENING
TCP   127.0.0.1:80       0.0.0.0:0          LISTENING
TCP   127.0.0.1:1031     0.0.0.0:0          LISTENING
TCP   127.0.0.1:1031     127.0.0.1:1032     ESTABLISHED
TCP   127.0.0.1:1032     127.0.0.1:1031     ESTABLISHED
TCP   127.0.0.1:3306     0.0.0.0:0          LISTENING
TCP   192.168.0.41:139   0.0.0.0:0          LISTENING
TCP   192.168.0.41:1038  195.140.142.166:80 CLOSE_WAIT
TCP   192.168.0.41:1974  204.209.205.53:110 TIME_WAIT
UDP    0.0.0.0:445         *:*
UDP    0.0.0.0:1025        *:*
UDP    0.0.0.0:1026        *:*
UDP    0.0.0.0:2967        *:*
UDP    0.0.0.0:38037       *:*
UDP    0.0.0.0:38293       *:*
UDP    127.0.0.1:1332      *:*
UDP    192.168.0.41:137    *:*
UDP    192.168.0.41:138    *:*
UDP    192.168.0.41:500    *:*

The details of how to use the report are beyond the scope of the blog. Suffices to say that you can identify the active ports under the Local Address column.
The port is the number after the colon, e.g, 22, 135, 445 are port numbers.

Unfortunately, netstat (Win 2000) does not tell you the process ID, the service name or the path of the executable. To obtain that kind of information, you need to download another tool: fport

Sample fport output is as follows:

C:\tmp>fport
FPort v2.0 - TCP/IP Process to Port Mapper
Copyright 2000 by Foundstone, Inc.
http://www.foundstone.com
Pid  Process            Port  Proto Path
876  ssh2master-> 22    TCP C:\Program Files\SSH Communications 
Security\SSH Secure Shell Server\ssh2master.exe
1720 apache    -> 80    TCP C:\PROGRA~1\EASYPH~2\Apache\apache.exe
488  svchost   -> 135   TCP C:\WINNT\system32\svchost.exe
8    System    -> 139   TCP
8    System    -> 445   TCP
688  lserver   -> 1028  TCP C:\WINNT\System32\lserver.exe
1532 firefox   -> 1031  TCP C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe
1532 firefox   -> 1032  TCP C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe
1708 EasyPHP   -> 1038  TCP C:\Program Files\EasyPHP1-8\EasyPHP.exe
1608 mysqld    -> 3306  TCP C:\PROGRA~1\EASYPH~2\MySql\bin\mysqld.exe
364  termsrv   -> 3389  TCP C:\WINNT\System32\termsrv.exe
8    System    -> 137   UDP
8    System    -> 138   UDP
8    System    -> 445   UDP
264  lsass     -> 500   UDP C:\WINNT\system32\lsass.exe
708  NSCTOP    -> 1025  UDP C:\Program Files\SSC\NSCTOP.EXE
708  NSCTOP    -> 1026  UDP C:\Program Files\SSC\NSCTOP.EXE
1328 Winamp    -> 1332  UDP C:\Program Files\Winamp\Winamp.exe
624  rtvscan   -> 2967  UDP C:\Program Files\NAV\rtvscan.exe
1116 MsgSys    -> 38037 UDP C:\WINNT\system32\MsgSys.EXE
584  pds       -> 38293 UDP C:\WINNT\system32\cba\pds.exe

It was reported that the version of netstat on Win XP SP2 does provide similar info as fport. I don't have Win XP so I can't try it out. But if you, try this:

netstat -abno

The fport or netstat report is just the first step. From the reports, you need to identify any suspicious active ports, and proceed to shut the corresponding program or Windows Service/daemon down.

What does Google know about me?

Now that I had had this blog (http://softwarejourney.blogspot.com/) for a few weeks, I wondered if Google, the all-knowing web genie, had any knowledge of my humble existence. For your information, blogger.com, the host of my blog, is owned by Google (So, you would think that it was a given).

There are several ways to find out. The obvious is to go to Google, and type in some hopefully unique keywords. Well, the search came back negative. I was in denial mode.

How could I be sure? Google had some interesting, advanced features (otherwise known as hacks).

For instance, enter site:softwarejourney.blogspot.com into Google search. This particular search returns all pages that Google knew about that web site. In addition, you can use the site: parameter together with any keywords that you may have.

The search came back empty, confirming that Google had not detected my blog site yet. Sigh!

If you have any Web presence (a blog, a home page, a forum, etc)at all, you should run the hack against it, site:www.yourdomain.com. This lets you know what Google (and anybody for that matter who cares to find out) knows about you. You may be surprised about certain web pages or files that you did not know are available on the Web.

It is a privacy defense tool (used by you), but also a privacy enemy (used maliciously by someone else).

Selectively Revealing the HTML Source

GEEK Alert:

All browsers I've ever used let you examine the source HTML code of a web page. With Firefox, there is a neat, little feature.

You can view the source code for a specific region on a web page. Just choose your mouse to select a region that can include graphics. Then, right click and select View Selection Source from the menu. The HTML code that corresponds to the selected region will be displayed in the browser.

It is that convenient.

Google Maps

For longest time, I have been happily using mapquest to find driving instructions and map information. Lately, there has been a lot of buzz about Google Maps because of the reputed innovation in web interaction design. So, I figure that I should take a peek.

GEEK Alert:

Google Maps is an application that uses a set of technologies known as AJAX. AJAX, or Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, provides a more responsive (faster), and richer user interace for web applications that approaches what we experience and expect of desktop applications.

I was immediately sold on Google Maps. What can I say, it is the cool factor again.

Google Maps is still officially beta right now. But it is certainly good enough for me. I think I will be using it for the next little while, not so much that it offers any mapping-specific features that mapquest doesn't but more for the user interface experience.

Sorry, mapquest.