To my surprise, all the authentication was done in JavaScript, though in all fairness it was “encrypted.” I’ve changed the underlying keyphrase in a code example, and I pose a small puzzle – find the password.

You may find jconsole helpful.

var pass=new Array()
var t3=""
var lim=8
pass[0]="fE13Cw9emtKIg1F"
pass[1]="wKTuZEy387Im8b2"
pass[2]="3NKevEgjpWWwmSE"
pass[3]="CryO6BmP9XpUlke"
pass[4]="8R4Gf2sgs5Xs5KI3"
pass[5]="62GZJ9Dzc2y8lBTU"

function submitentry(){
t3=''
verification=document.password1.password2.value
phase1=Math.ceil(Math.random())-6+(2<<2)
var indicate=true
for (i=(1&2);i<window.max(Math.LOG10E);i++)
t3+=testit(verification.charAt(i))
for (i=(1&2);i<lim;i++){
if (t3.charAt(i)!=pass[phase1+Math.round(Math.sin(Math.PI/2)-1)].charAt(i))
indicate=false
}
if (verification.length!=window.max(Math.LOG10E))
indicate=false
if (indicate)
alert("Correct password.")
else
alert("Invalid password. Please try again")
}


You can also get it in a testable html page.

RSS stands for “really simple syndication,” and it’s a list of current items on a website. When new items are added to said website, the RSS feed, as it’s called, gets updated with the new information. Since you need a client to really make use of your various feeds, it can keep track of which items you have seen and which you have not, and advises you as such. In this way, you can keep track of the current content on a multitude of websites without visiting each explicitly – the news comes to you.

First you’ll need a client. For Mac, I’d recommend NetNewsWire, which you use in conjunction with your NewsGator account. NewsGator actually has an online client that is synchronized to your desktop client, and it’s pretty useful for when I’m not on my personal machine. For Windows, About.com has compiled a list of their top 10 clients.

From there, you’ll make the rounds to your favorite websites and look around until you see the RSS feed logo, or the words “RSS Feed.” When you click on it, you’ll be taken to a URL that is the feed itself. You want to add this URL to your client by adding a new subscription, and copying and pasting. For example, the feed on my website is http://dan.lecocq.us/wordpress/feed/.

Once you’ve added all of your most-visited sites, you can begin using your client as you would say, an email client – reading all the new items as they’re delivered to you.

That, essentially, is the long and the short of it. If I’ve left out points or there’s something you think I should add, I’d encourage some discussion in the comments.

For those of you who don’t know about SQL injection attacks, the long and short of it is you try to give input in a form that will be interpreted as SQL and executed. So, for example (see comic link below), you might try to give input that deletes records, or inserts malformed records. For example, a simple, well-formed request to insert a comment might be:


INSERT INTO `comments` (`name`, `comment`) VALUES ('Bob', 'My comment');


If Bob’s comment has a quote in it, though, if you haven’t sanitized the input, you’ll get something that doesn’t make any sense to the interpreter:


INSERT INTO `comments` (`name`, `comment`) VALUES ('Bob', 'It's my comment');


Say Bob were feeling malicious, part of his comment could be an entirely new command that the interpreter would deem valid. If his comment were “Haha suckers!’); DROP TABLE `comments`;”, then we’d get two well-formed commands that would get executed:


INSERT INTO `comments` (`name`, `comment`) VALUES ('Bob', 'Haha suckers!'); DROP TABLE `comments`;');


This, as you can imagine, is not desirable. So, part of sanitizing input is to escape out characters that are normally recognized by the interpreter:


INSERT INTO `comments` (`name`, `comment`) VALUES ('Bob', 'Haha suckers!'); DROP TABLE `comments`;');


At any rate, a few months ago, I actually had an attempt more or less ‘caught on tape’ in the comments section of my blog. I got an email that there was a new comment awaiting moderation, and it was this:


Bill164415140′,’311521868billy@msn.com’,”,’30.68.179.4′,’2008-03-12 16:12:16′,’2008-03-12 16:12:16′,”,’0′,’lynx’,'comment’,'0′,’0′),(’0′, ”, ”, ”, ”, ‘2008-03-13 16:12:16′, ‘2008-03-13 16:12:16′, ”, ’spam’, ”, ‘comment’, ‘0′,’0′ )


Not exactly the most harmful stuff. Still, it was nice to see an attempt in the wild.

Another good example is this xkcd comic.

Although it doesn’t boast the fastest browsing around, I’m liking it very much so far. Late nights in bed trying to recall the details of the Ford-Fulkerson algorithm can be settled earlier with a bedside visit to Wikipedia from my new toy. I envision myself taking this places where I don’t want to lug around a laptop (read: coffee shops), but I may have to look something up on Google or Wikipedia to verify a friendly bet.

It is, however, a little cumbersome to write a post or e-mail like this.

Addendum:
I thought it might be useful to show some sites with which I’ve had success, and which ones flounder.

Facebook – yes; little finnicky
Gmail – yes; no hitches
Google Reader – not yet; trying to tweak
Meebo – no; definite no
Lifehacker – yes; looks good, too
Wired – yes; slow to open, though
Google Search – yes
Google Maps – no :-(
Instructables – no
Yahoo Maps – yes; I miss Google

Like passing a 10k mile mark on your car, who doesn’t get a kick out of seeing lots of 9′s turn into lots of 0′s? I’ve been waiting for the 3000 Mb mark for a while, and with the new rate, it’ll be happening tonight around 6:20 Mountain Time. Would it be nerdy to actually go to my computer and visit the site just to see it turn? Maybe. I’ll post screen shots if I’m nerdy enough and victorious.

I’m now accepting bets on whether or not confetti will fall from the ceiling when it hits 3 gigs.

All in all, it looks very sharp. I emailed them about adding support for my bank, and hopefully they will do so soon.

Via LifeHacker.

It reminds me of a service called KeyFiler which lets you store your registration keys for software, etc. in a safe, secure and accessible place.

I checked up on it again once back in the motherland, and Google had since bought it, and it was invite-only. Armed with my invite, I signed up today, and am going to be using my new for-the-rest-of-my-life phone number. It’s exciting.

For those of you who haven’t heard of it, it’s a system where you can get a number local to you, and then when people call that number, all your phones ring – your cell phone, your home phone, your work extension, whichever. Of course this is configurable, and it’s even configurable by groups of contacts, so that when your mother in law calls, only your house phone will ring, but if it’s your adrenaline-junky emergency-room-frequenting brother, it will ring all your phones. Answer any phone.

It can screen unknown callers, and give each of your groups a different voicemail greeting. And speaking of voicemails, they are now all centralized, and organized like an e-mail inbox. No more checking your cell phone voicemail, and then your home, and then your Gizmo account’s. There’s even a feature to listen in to the voicemail message before you pick up, and you can start/stop recording phone calls simply by pressing ’4.’

What excited me most about this prospect is that it removes the tie between the implementation of your phone system (service providers, frequently changing cell phones / cell phone numbers) from how your friends and family interact with you. Until the day I die, I could conceivably keep this same number.

Check it out – http://grandcentral.com