Web 101 I know but still - theres a lot of content in there….

have a peep

TheCodGod

(Now I have to tell him that he should have used PHP to reduce the duplication)

On Google · It’s now too big to be purely good or in fact purely anything. I’m sure that tendrils of stupidity and evil are even now finding interstitial breeding grounds whence they will emerge to cause grief

I love his stance on apple in this awesome post…

http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2010/03/15/Joining-Google

Well, not First Direct themselves - their Twitter account..

When I received the DM from  Amanda Brown and Rebecca Hirst sent ‘only to me’, I got quite excited.

At first I thought, whoa - it was never a First direct twitter account in the first place, but after checking some previous tweets they all looked pretty legit, so I obviously they had been hacked.

Then came FD’s tweets confirming it…

I’d still be very interested in knowing how it happened, more than very interested in fact. If it was just a crap guessable password that’s worrying in itself, anything more clever is even more worrying.

Fortunately the dumb crackers used it to promote medicine that helps in a certain type of stamina, immediately causing alarm bells.

Imagine if they had set up a FD looking page with some dodgy offers - the phishing potential could have been huge! (edit: well not huge there are only 850-ish followers of http://twitter.com/first_direct )

I would probably have trusted a page linked from a trusted Twitter account like First Direct and I’m normally pretty good at keeping an eye on the URL!

It has warned me to be dilligent about the legitimacy of corporate Twitter accounts.

This needs to be a warning to all banks, who do want to engage with thier customers in this way, (and they should)

Could have been a lot worse!

Update - the Guardian explains all… http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/feb/26/twitter-hack-spread-phishing with some good advice

For those that don’t know Kublax is an online personal finance application, showing your transactions and grouping your spending etc, similar to Mint.com in the states. Money Dashboard look like they will be similar.

Even my humble blog with less than 100 visitors a month is not immune, I was honoured with one of their comments!

Is this how they are going to roll? With spam?

I was looking forward to seeing how their Silverlight app would run on my Hardy Heron lap top.

Even if I do get accepted on to the beta, (and its not just me who is waiting…. http://twitter.com/#search?q=moneydashboard%20beta ) I’m not sure I’ll bother.

I’ve also taken the liberty of translating their comment….

Money Dashboard fully appreciates the difficulties Kublax have faced with fund raising and are sorry to hear of their misfortune.

Raising finance is hard, and we are happy that they have failed to do that.

Money Dashboard offers an alternative to Kublax. We are very secure and well financed - we’ve already received £1M in funding at the tail end of 2009.

We’ve raised money. We are pretty smug about that.

Given the trust our users are putting in us it is important for us to ensure that the product is thoroughly tested and well executed before launch.

You didn’t do a great job with Kublax. (I dont disagree there)

Our free online personal finance software tool, also using Yodlee technology is currently in the process of beta testing.

We arent ready yet either.

Currently we have more people subscribing than we are able to welcome to Beta but look forward to inviting you to join in staggered groups over the next few weeks as we continue to polish our feature rich service.

We aren’t ready yet either.

Money Dashboard not only enables you to tag your transactions but also helps you to set up budgets, allowing you to track your spend using our monthly tracker.

We do the same thing as any other PFM

Thing is I was secretly pleased (and a bit sorry) that a company failed who were providing something similar to the project I’m working on, but I’m not sure I could have pounced on the opportunity of a failed company in the way MoneyDashboard have, perhaps I should learn to be more heartless.

Anyway Kublax have a lifeline. I, and I’m sure MoneyDashboard are looking forward to hearing the promised details tomorrow.

Me: “No honey…I wish it was”

Daughter: “why?”

Me: “Because I would be changing the world, and we’d be really rich”

Daughter: “Why don’t you call your website twitter”

pause….

Daughter: “Who’s website IS called twitter”

Me: “Evan”

Daughter: “Is he in your class”

Bless

Others have already written about Kublax with more insider insight than I can…

A well placed competitor…

http://www.lovemoney.com/blog/sauldevine/first-mover-advantage-ask-kublax-3032.aspx

An investor……

http://www.parkparadigm.com/2010/02/16/kublax-rip/trackback/

TechCrunc’s Mike Butcher..

http://eu.techcrunch.com/2010/02/16/kublax-deadpools-after-failing-to-get-more-funding/trackback/

FTPS by default fails … this is due to the FTP protocol requiring 2 ports: one for the commands  (which includes directory creation) and one for data e.g the result of a directory listing or a file transfer.

Passive Mode

Specifically, in Passive mode, during the handshaking  the FTP server tells the client which second port to connect back on for the data channel, this can be any port above 1023, these ports are (rightly) being blocked by the firewall.

Active Mode

in active mode once a client has connected on the command port the server actually initiates the data connection out to the client. The client will be listening on a random port above 1023, although this mode resolves the server firewall issue, it is unfeasible because we would be wholly dependent on any firewalls that the client is behind, and we have no control over them. In fact this is why passive mode exists.

SSL and FTP

The passive mode random port problem  is not usually a problem with normal  FTP (none ssl), because even if only the command port (21) is configured to allow FTP,  smart firewalls know which port is being requested in the protocol and open it so the client can initiate the data connection.

In FTP over SSL  the firewall can’t tell which port has been requested and so the firewall continues to block the data connection.

The Fix

1. Open all unreserved ports above 1023 in your firewall

2. If thats not possible then with most ftp servers (e.g. filezilla) you can specify a limited range of ports the server will reserve for the data channel, doing that and allowing this subset of ports through the firewall all passive more requests should work completely and the connections are still inbound only

This is the best I could do to capture it on my Android G1…

Of course the snow inspired our graphic designers to new heights of creativity….

PB my  youngest…

…came to me a few days ago and said she’d written me a poem, ah bless…

Daniel the Spaniel

Big belly and bum

Hairs on is chin and more on his tum

Sometimes quite serious usually quite fun

prefers his computer

than talking to Mum!

What! not quite there yet then!