This Phish Isn't Biting

As I checked my email inbox this afternoon, I discovered an email which was supposedly sent from CNN. The subject line was CNN Alerts: My Custom Alert. The problem is, I’ve never configured custom alerts on the CNN webpage. However, The email looks very legitimate and I almost clicked on the links until I noticed that the FULL STORY link points to a site other than CNN. Check out this screenshot.

I’ve never received a phishing email which has appeared to originate from CNN. I’ve received similar looking emails from Paypal, Ebay, Chase bank, Bank Of America, etc. They almost fooled me on this attempt.

The funny thing is, when I typed in the URL of the full story link into Google, I checked out the search result for the McAfee Site Advisor and according to them, the site is just fine, no significant problems found.

Here is what I find disturbing. How many people do you think may have been as careful as I was with this link and checked out the site advisor page only to see that there was not any problems associated with the site thus, they went ahead and clicked on the link? Thankfully, the comments section of the McAfee post filled me in on the details:

“…didn’t find any significant problems.” Better look harder!!!
CNN.com Daily Top 10 spam has disguised links to <http://www.blackhawkk9.com/cnntop.html> concerning which:
DANGEROUS: LinkScanner Online has found [Trojan Fake Codec]
Yeah, as well as clicking the fake link of your choice they want you to download a trojan loader, submit your machine to a botnet and further their aims to rule the observable universe (nice work if you can get it).

Name: blackhawkk9.com
Address: 68.178.211.52
(Owned by GoDaddy.com Inc)
Nameservers:
ns17.domaincontrol.com 64.202.165
ns18.domaincontrol.com 208.109.255.9

Registrar: GoDaddy.com Inc

Also, I sent word about this email on Twitter and many other people have reported receiving the same thing.

Word of warning, do not click on the links within this email. Immediately send it to the trash bin or your spam folder or simply delete it. Although this email smelled phishy, this phish almost took the bait.

Woopra 1.2 RC2 Now Out For Testing

Woopra.com Logo While traversing the web, I noticed that Woopra 1.2 RC2 had been released and is now being tested by the public. Mac users on older operating systems who have not been able to use Woopra because of Java 1.5 will be pleased as this new release should fix that issue.

Some other things worth mentioning:

The Woopra main dashboard “home” view is improved and will showcase the Woopra Blog and a summary of your websites.

Major improvements in speed, stability, CPU performance, and less memory leaks and crashes, with even more efficient code coming your way.

Woopra Connection Handling for servers.

Ability to add your logo to the Woopra map.

Thank goodness a new version appears to be on the horizon as I have had nothing but trouble with the software since they released 1.1. For example, when I click on the Currently Viewing link, I get a com null redirection error. No idea why that is and it has driven me up the wall. Others have reported the same issue in the forum. Woopra was a blast to use, but ever since 1.1 was released (should of been codenamed party pooper) I’ve opened Woopra less than 3 times a month.

I know quite a lot of you have jumped on the Woopra bandwagon. Have you had a positive experience with 1.1? Did anything break? Has the coolness factor of Woopra disappeared?

New Look In Store For Jeffro2pt0

After traversing the realm of WordPress themes the past few days, I’ve come across one which is an oldie but a goody. It’s called WP-Magazine. More specifically, the 2-column layout. I enjoy the featured post block as well as the layout in general. The Jeffro2pt0.com homepage will end up having some similarities with what used to be called a portal page. I’m not a big fan of the gray color scheme which is why I will be porting my current color scheme into this new theme. I’ve hacked my current theme (Shifter) to death and now it’s time for me to start over with a fresh code base and go from their.

The new site design will focus on the content as well as the community. Since most of the interaction on the blog takes place through the comments, you can rest assure that I will be taking special care of that section in the redesign. I plan on keeping a similar look and feel as I currently have within the comments section, but I’ll be adding a WYSIWYG text editor for the comments, larger text sizes, CommentLuv support, the ability to quickly reply or quote a specific comment, comment editing, the ability to subscribe to comments and more.

I don’t plan on having the new design ready any time soon, but I think I’ll have it online somewhere between the week of August 10th or sooner. As for Jeffc.me, I’ve been having some Addon Domain issues as of late and until I can export my personal posts from this site, into the personal blog, I won’t be doing much of anything.

Jeffc.me Don't Wear It Out

This Thing Costs $20.00!

I just finished the checkout process at GoDaddy.com for my newest domain name, Jeffc.me. The plan is to turn jeffc.me into a personal portal or a site which aggregates everything I do online. Jeffc.me will also host my personal blog so that I no longer will have to post that type of information on the Jeffro2pt0.com domain.

This will open the door for me to clean out the content found within Jeffro2pt0.com and refocus the site. During this domains first year of existence, when I wrote about Web 2.0 startups, did those in-depth reviews while also posting news about icon packs and news in general, it allowed for comments, a nice set of backlinks and most of all, conversation. I’d like to take this opportunity to turn Jeffro2pt0.com around and give it some focus.

As for myself, I’d love to write about things dealing with the Internet, WordPress, Blogging, Tech, Web 2.0 and news worthy items. But, what is it that you would like to see me write more about?

For those of you that have stuck around since this blog launched, you’ll know first hand that I was a posting machine. Whether someone covered a particular news item or not, you would find it here. I also provided in-depth reviews that the big sites were too busy to create and those received a lot of attention as well. Last but not least, WordPress stuff along with news of Icon Packs were also big hits. Would you like to see this blog go back to the way it was? Or do you have something else in mind?

I love community which is why I am going to either redesign this site or rearrange things to bring back that community atmosphere. Also, since the personal blog will be taken off of the Jeffro2pt0.com domain, this will give me a chance to play around with advertising as a means of monetization on the site. Many people have told me to place an area on my sidebar for 125X125 images and up until this point, I have refused to do so. Well, the time has come for me to take things up a notch and thus, I’ll be experimenting in the coming months with various advertising methods. Rest assured though that I will never stain my credibility nor will I ever do something unmoral. I truly believe in transparency and so thats what I plan on doing.

Jeffc.me Don’t Wear It Out

This Thing Costs $20.00!

As for myself, I’d love to write about things dealing with the Internet, WordPress, Blogging, Tech, Web 2.0 and news worthy items. But, what is it that you would like to see me write more about?

Apple Jumping The Gun On .me Domain?

GoDaddy is rolling out a new top level domain (.me) which has been open to LandRush orders since 5/6/08. The LandRush orders will expire on 6/26/08 where any domain which has been requested by multiple parties will have to go through an auction period. The winning bid will retrieve the domain while the losing bidder will be eligible to receive a refund. Open .me registrations will take place on 7/17/08 on a first come first serve basis.

However, at WWDC Apple rolled out a new service called MobileMe which is a new service for iPhones, iPod touch, Macs and PCs. Think of it as a way to keep everything synced.

How fitting would it be for Apple to get a hold of the mobile.me domain? Apparently, pretty fitting as this screenshot will tell. Click the image for a larger view.

Let’s see what happens after the auction dust settles.

Will Plurk Kill Twitter

In last months poll, I asked if you would listen to a daily WordPress podcast. And here is how the poll turned out.

Well, I don’t think I’ll be doing anything in regards to a daily podcast. I have more on my plate at this time then I did when I started the poll. However, I still have to talk to a few people about the idea but I may try and do a live podcast that deals specifically with blogging and all aspects of it.

The poll for this month is, Will Plurk Kill Twitter? Since there are so many people going hogwash over the service, I thought I’d put my foot in the hype water and see what you think.

Is Jaiku Still Around?

Jaiku Logo Remember Jaiku? That service which was launched in 2007 which aimed to be a Twitter like service except that it was more of a content aggregator than anything else. Using Jaiku, users can type in 140 character messages as updates while also having conetent aggregated from other services they are apart of through parsing RSS feeds.

As it turns out, Jaiku is still around. In a blog post published on the official Jaiku blog on May 30th, Jyri reminded folks that Jaiku is still alive and well and that moving the service into the Google App Engine has taken much longer than anticipated. Jyri also mentioned that they do in fact have plans for future development. What that future development might be is anyone’s guess.

What I find interesting is that, this service called FriendFeed has ate Jaiku for lunch and then spit them out. FriendFeed works in a very similar fashion to Jaiku except there are no 140 character limits and the content aggregation looks much prettier on FriendFeed. Also, there appears to be much more conversation surrounding the aggerated content items on FriendFeed than there is on Jaiku.

So although Jaiku was one of the first services out of the gate to allow aggregation of your content into a central location allowing others to comment on those items, either their timing was wrong for the service or they had a few things wrong with their implementation. If that was the case, I don’t know what those wrong items might of been. The bottom line is, Jaiku was the first major player in this arena and once Google acquired them, they have fallen flat on their faces. Also, I find it funny that the people behind the FriendFeed service are ex Google employees. Isn’t that quite the coincidence?

The bottom line is, FriendFeed is the place to be in terms of content aggregation in a central location. The early adopters along with many of the big names within the blogosphere are climbing all over each other on the service which is usually a good sign that the service is worthy of your time. Jaiku on the other hand is still invite only which doesn’t appear to be doing them any good.

I don’t see Jaiku ever becoming a threat to FriendFeed. FriendFeed has picked up where Jaiku has left off, improved upon their offerings and apparently, they have done everything right. There is no looking back for FriendFeed and if I were the creators of Jaiku, I’d be thanking my lucky stars that I was acquired before the launch of FriendFeed.

One last thing before I go. I wanted to highlight the fact that it would seem as though being the first one out of the gate does not guarantee anything. I strongly believe that the Google acquisition has done nothing but set Jaiku back but hey, at least Jryi and company received a nice paycheck.

Twitter Implements New Limitations

According to the StopTwitterSpam website, the folks at Twitter have updated their Help Page to reflect new changes that have gone into effect in regards to Following and Updating limits. It looks like these limitations have probably gone into effect to not only lessen the strain on the overall infrastructure of Twitter, but to also deal with spam. As far as the limitations go,

What are the limits, specifically?

The limits are based on multiple parameters–not a single metric. Because the limits are in part meant to curtail nefarious behavior, we are not revealing the specifics of how they are reached. Please note that these limits are sure to change as we figure out what works. We’ve taken a best guess to get started, but Twitter is still evolving and new uses are being invented all the time.

Good idea on their part as this will make it harder for Twitter spammers to reverse engineer the limitations. Hopefully, this does not adversely affect the majority of legitimate Twitter users and helps to make Twitter a more reliable service.

Happy Birthday Jeffro2pt0.com

Thats right folks. Today is this blog’s birthday and what better way to celebrate than to look back on the past 365 days this blog has been online.

Jeffro2pt0.com Birthday

For those of you that are wondering, the first post published on this site occurred on June 4th, 2007 New Fan Of Tumblr. Since then, I have provided a number of reviews on different sites and services, offered tips on blogging, covered various news items and a whole lot more.

Instead of rehashing the story, if you would like to know how this blog came to be, please read my About page which goes into detail as to how this blog came about.

For those of you familiar with the story, let’s take a trip down memory lane together to review some of the highlights of this past year of blogging. Continue reading →

Thoughts and Insanity From Jeff

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