My friend Romah wanted to customize one of her MySpace groups. She knew what she wanted to do, and she has the right code. She was trying to apply a Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) that applies attributes to many HTML elements, including body, table, td, links, various styles of text, etc.

Romah entered the style sheet into the "Description" section for her group, but it didn't work.

MySpace's mysterious and troublesome editors

Anyone who has ever tried to show Web page code to other people on MySpace knows that that's a difficult thing to do. MySpace's editors often interpret the code as something that should be acted upon, or the editor ignores the code.

The problem is complicated by the fact that several different editors are applied by MySpace, and each of them works in a different way when it comes to interpretation of code.

The nasty thing the Edit Group editor does to code

The MySpace Group editor is helpful in that it does not strip away HTML code that you enter into the "Description" box for your group. Unfortunately, this editor converts line breaks in code into HTML <br> elements!

So, if you're entering a cascading style sheet, and you type it into your group description box using standard CSS formatting (that is, with line breaks), you'll end up with invalid (and hence non-executing) style sheet code.

For example, when Romah entered the following style sheet snippet into the edit box:

body {
background-color:000000;
border-width:1px;
border-color:#99CCFF;
border-style:solid; }

The editor changed it to the following when she saved her changes:

body {<br>
background-color:000000;<br>
border-width:1px;<br>
border-color:#99CCFF;<br>
border-style:solid; }<br>

In other words, the editor turned her valid CSS code into something that every browser will look at and say "Huh?"

The single line of code cure

There is a fix! It may sound dumb, but it works.

When you're entering code using the MySpace group editor, you need to put all of your code into a single line of text (using a text editor). Then you can copy and paste that single line into the MySpace groups editor. Or, if you manually enter the code into the MySpace groups editor, you must never press Enter/Return as you type the code into the editor.

Romah's nice group look

To verify this with Romah's code, I took the <br> littered style sheet code I found in her original group page source, copied and pasted it into a stand-along text editor, spliced it all into a single very long line of code, then copied and pasted it into the description section of one of my groups:

O'Reilly MySpace Tools And Add-Ons

I asked Romah to confirm that this was the look she had intended, and indeed it was.

So, having the right code isn't always enough when you're working with MySpace. Sometimes you have to work around the quirks of MySpace editors. In these cases, knowing a bit of HTML and CSS can help, especially when you use the "View Page Source" option in your web browser to diagnose what's going wrong.

References

I just discovered a very cool beta application produced by AOL's Image Competency Team, called Image Organizer.

This nifty and fun tool searches your photo albums for faces, asks you to name the people, then searches other photo albums to find more pictures of the people you've identified.

This is a wicked cool application of serious mathematics and artificial intelligence that AOL offers for free. It often works, and when it doesn't it makes you laugh like crazy. For example, at one point it told me it had found a new picture of a person I had identified, and it showed me a rock!

I wrote a much longer article about the Image Organizer and my initial experiments with it over on my AOL blog. Take a look!

I think if you try out the Image Organizer, you'll like it a lot! It's free and it's fun. What have you got to lose?

My MySpace friend James asked:

What code do I need to customize my group to match say my webpage color for background colors, text colors and page link colors?

Just as MySpace profiles can be customized, MySpace groups also provide someone who knows some HTML and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) coding techniques with the opportunity for customization of the group's home page.

To customize your MySpace profile, you typically add CSS code and HTML to the "About Me" and/or "Who I'd Like To Meet" sections of your profile. To customize a MySpace group, you add CSS code and HTML to the "Description" box when you are editing your group.

Change a MySpace group background color

For example, to change the background color for a MySpace group to red, go to the group home page and click the "Edit Group" button to edit the group. In the "Description" box, enter the following code:

<style type="text/css">body {background-color:red;} td, table {background-color:TRANSPARENT;}</style>

Note that you may need to enter all of the code on a single line. If you don't do this, then the MySpace group editor will insert <br> HTML tags into your style sheet, which will make the style sheet invalid, resulting in your changes having no effect. Just keep typing the code on the same line, and let the edit window itself decide where to break the lines. Don't press the "Enter" or "Return" key to insert line breaks on your own.

In the above CSS code, the "body" section defines that the background for the entire page will be red. The "td, table" section defines that tables and table cells will have a transparent background color, which means the page's own backround color will show through the tables and table cells. This is important because most of a MySpace group page is occupied by HTML tables and table cells. If you don't make tables and table cells have a transparent background, then their default background color will be displayed instead of the background color you chose for the page.

Carrying over themes from profiles to groups

A lot of the basic types of changes you can do with respect to customizing your MySpace profile can be applied in your MySpace groups as well. However, the codes that work for your profile may have to be modified in order to produce the same effect on a MySpace group page. If you know CSS and HTML basics, you may be able to get the effect your looking for through experimentation.

If enough people are interested in MySpace groups customization, I can look into this in more detail. Or, you can get the books and become an HTML and CSS expert yourself!

References

Now that you've got your brand new digital camera, how do you use it to best advantage? "Digital Camera Basics, Part 1" covered camera types and image resolution. In this post, I look into digital camera memory and zoom.

Again, my reference for this post is the first chapter of Digital Photography: The Missing Manual (by Chris Grover and Barbara Brundage), which is titled "Digital Camera Basics."

Digital camera memory

In my experience (with the several digital cameras I've purchased), the camera invariably comes equipped only with a small amount of memory, an amount small enough that it's almost guaranteed that you're going to want to buy extra memory for the camera. Hence, the price tag you see on the camera box is misleading. If you don't buy more memory, you may be limited to taking just an handful of pictures (especially at your camera's highest picture resolution) before your camera's memory is full.

The authors of "Digital Photography" put it a bit more bluntly:

The memory card that comes with most cameras is a joke. It probably holds only about six or eight best-quality pictures. It's nothing more than a cost-saving placeholder, foisted on you by a camera company that knows full well that you have to go buy a bigger one. When you're shopping for a camera, it's imperative to factor in the cost of a bigger card.

The authors recommend purchasing a large memory card, so that you can take lots of pictures without having to unload your pictures onto your computer. With a large amount of memory available "you can shoot more freely, increasing your chances of getting great pictures."

How many pictures will fit on my camera?

To calculate how large a memory card you'll want to buy for your camera, you need to think about how many pictures you'd like to fit on the camera before you have to empty the pictures onto your computer, and you need to consider the resolution you'll be using for most of your pictures.

You might think you can just divide the size of the card in Megabytes by the number of mega-pixels for your camera to come up with the number of pictures the memory card will hold. But that formula doesn't hold true.

Why? Because it takes less than 1 byte of data space to hold 1 pixel of image. A byte of data space actually holds almost 2 pixels of image. So, to roughly approximate how much memory you need to hold a certain number of pictures in your camera, multiply your number of megapixels by the number of pictures you'd like to hold in the camera, then divide by two.

For example, say you've got a 5 megapixel camera, and you'd like to be able to take 100 high-resolution pictures before you have to attach to your computer and empty off the pictures. Here's your equation:

[5 megapixels] times [100 pictures] = 500 Megabytes;
half of [500 megabytes] = 250 Megabytes

So, you'll need a 256 megabyte card to hold about 100 high-resolution pictures in your 5 megapixel camera. Of course, if you're taking picture at the lower resolutions, then you'll be able to hold more pictures in your camera memory. But your resolution selection should really depend on how you'll be using the pictures, as was discussed in the "Digital Camera Basics, Part 1" post. If you want to print your pictures on a high quality printer using high quality photo paper, you'll want to take your pictures at the maximum resolution. If you're taking pictures to share on the Web or to send to people in email messages, then using a lower resolution is probably fine (as long as you don't change your mind later and decide you want to print the pictures!).

Zoom

In advertizing zoom, digital camera makers often make statements that can really confuse a digital photography novice. A camera may come with two different kinds of zoom: optical zoom and digital zoom. Digital zoom in a camera is actually useless, because you can digitally zoom any image using basic image processing software in your computer. It's optical zoom that really matters.

If a camera has both optical and digital zoom, it is typically stated as having "3X/10X zoom" (or something like that, the numbers may vary). Here's what the "Digital Photography" authors say:

The number before the slash tells you how many times the camera's lens can magnify a distant object, exactly like binoculars and telescopes. That measurement is called optical zoom.

Then there's the number after the slash--the digital zoom. ... Truth is, digital zoom is nothing to write home about. When a camera's digital zoom kicks in, the camera's merely spreading out the individual pixels, in effect enlarging the picture. The images gets bigger, but the picture's quality deteriorates. In most cases, you're best off avoiding digital zoom altogether.

As I said, who needs to pay extra money for a camera that digitally enlarges a picture, when you can do the same thing right on your computer using Photoshop or a free image editing application?

Don't pay extra to get a camera that offers digital zoom. And if your camera has digital zoom, you probably shouldn't use it.

Conclusion

We've now covered types of digital cameras and image resolution (in "Digital Camera Basics, Part 1"), and digital camera memory and zoom (in this post). In my third and final digital camera basics article I'll talk about flash and some other common digital camera options.

References

The Wall Street Journal had an interesting article in this past Wednesday's paper, titled "Blogs for Shoppers." So I decided to take a look and see if they talk about any bloggers who are writing about gifts that might be of interest to people who like technology, gadgets, digital photography, etc.

Engadget.com

The web site Engadget.com has six different gift guides featuring -- you guessed it -- gadgets. Click below to get to each individual Engadget gift guide:

• for him


• for her


• for son


• for daughter


• for dad


• for mom

Go to the Engadget's Holiday Gift Guide! front page for additional gift ideas and "Breaking News" about gifts.

Uncrate.com

Uncrate.com describes itself as:

a web magazine for guys who love stuff. Our team finds the best gadgets, clothes, cars and more so you can blow your rent money easier.

Sounds like a great place to find gifts for the guys on your holiday list.

Popgadget.net

Popgadget.net is about "Personal Tech + Innovative Lifestyle for Women." They've just posted their "Holiday Gift Guide 2006 - Kids." Their Devices category is a good page to visit as well, for gifts for gadget-loving people.

Babygadget.net

It's important to get baby off to the right start, isn't it? For the babies you're buying gifts for, there's Babygadget.net, which features "contemporary finds for modern tots." The "2006 Babygadget Holiday Gift Guide" features "gadgets" such as a mobile, tricycle, and car, along with fluffy things and some nice baby clothing.

"Gifts for Geeks": Share your favorite "geeky" gift ideas

If you find interesting gifts, please consider posting a picture and description in our O'Reilly Gifts for Geeks group.

Thanks,
Kevin/diyincite

My MySpace friend DJ did not want to have to select a group of "top friends" from among all his friends. He had installed the following code into his "About Me" section, to remove the "Top Friends" section from his profile.

<style type="text/css">
td.text td.text table table table,
td.text td.text table br,
td.text td.text table .orangetext15,
td.text td.text .redlink,
td.text td.text span.btext {display:none;}
td.text td.text table {background-color:transparent;}
td.text td.text table td,
td.text td.text table {height:0;padding:0;border:0;}
td.text td.text table table td {padding:3;}
td.text td.text table table br {display:inline;}
.rid br {display:none;}
</style>

Unfortunately, this code also removes the "View all friends" link. So, there was no way for visitors to see any of his friends.

Adding a custom "View my Friends" link

A solution to this problem is to add your own "View my Friends" link, either at the bottom of your "Who I'd Like To Meet" section, or elsewhere if you prefer.

To do this, you need to know your own friend ID. Your friend ID is the number that uniquely identifies your account. If you go into "Edit Profile" and hover your mouse over "View My Profile" you should see your friend ID displayed at the bottom of the browser. It will be in the middle of the long URL string, and it will immediately follow "friendid=".

In the example code below, I'm assuming your friend ID is 999999999. Substitute your actual friend ID when you implement this code.

Here's the code that adds a custom "View my Friends" link:

<a href="http://home.myspace.com/Modules/ViewFriends/FriendsView.aspx?friendID=999999999">View my friends</a>

Just replace the 999999999 with your actual friend ID, and you should be all set: no Top Friends on your profile page (from the "style" code listed above), but a link that lets people see your entire friend list.

The Wall Street Journal printed an article last week titled "Digital Cameras Get Flashy." The article was subtitled "Say Goodbye to Blurry Pictures As Amateur Photographers Snap Up High-End 'SLRs'"

SLRs are the high-end "Single Lens Reflex" cameras I mentioned in my "Digital Camera Basics, Part 1" post. Since SLRs are apparently a hot item this holiday season, I thought I'd fill people in on what the Wall Street Journal article says about them.

The high-end cameras generating all the excitement are what the industry calls SLR cameras, for "single lens reflex," because the photographer frames the picture directly through the lens rather than through a separate viewfinder.

One of the big advantages of SLR cameras, according to the article, is that the pictures are taken almost immediately when you click the button. That's something I'd find to be a big improvement over the digital camera I have. With mine, the delay is big enough that I almost never capture the exact moment I wanted to have in my picture. I have lots of pictures, for example, of half of my pet's body in a picture, because they darted away between the time when I clicked a shot of them in a cute pose and when my camera actually took the picture.

SLRs also take better pictures than the smaller (and, yes, quite a bit less expensive) compact cameras:

Digital SLRs create better pictures than compacts for several reasons. Most important is the size of the sensor that captures the image. While both compacts and SLRs often have sensors with eight megapixels or more, the pixels in the SLRs are much larger. Larger pixels collect more light, which allows them to shoot an image more quickly and more accurately capture a picture in low-light conditions. They also can snap a series of shots of athletic action without blurring.

Viewing through the lens permits more accurate composition of a photo than using the 2.5-inch screens commonly on the back of both types of cameras. Indeed, many compact cameras lack any optical viewfinder, which sometimes makes them difficult to use in bright sunlight.

The ability to take pictures at nearly professional quality is something new for amateur photographers. Camera technology appears to be making the leap that already has happened with music recording, where today a solo artist or a band can make a recording in a home studio that's of better quality than was possible in the best recording studios in the music industry 40 years ago.

The price of SLR cameras is still high: the low end is around $500, with many models in the $900-1000 range. Models for professional photographers can cost $4000 or more. But if you really love photography, if it's a serious enough hobby for you, something you like doing for hours every week, then an SLR digital camera may be the right choice for you.


References

The online technology site eWeek.com has a front page headline about the attack that has hit so many MySpace users since last week.

The article, titled "Phishers Attack MySpace with QuickTime Exploit Worm", says in part:

a fast-spreading worm is exploiting the JavaScript support in QuickTime and targeting a MySpace vulnerability to lure users to phishing sites.

"Once a user's MySpace profile is infected..by viewing a malicious embedded QuickTime video..that profile is modified in two ways," Websense said. The links in the user's page are replaced with links to a phishing site, and a copy of the malicious QuickTime video is embedded into the user's site.

"Any other users who visit this newly infected profile may have their own profile infected as well," the company warned.

In the past few days a new, particularly malicious, and possibly mutating, attack has been active on MySpace. This was first brought to my attention on Friday (December 1) by my MySpace friend Lady of Avalon, who noticed that the area near the MySpace navigation bar at the top of her profile page looked different. She went into "Edit Profile" and saw new code that wasn't her own in both the "About Me" and "Movies" sections.

Here's her description:

When I first opened my profile this morning, I noticed a bright blue banner under my navigation links. When I clicked on Home, I arrived at a page I didn't recognize. I immediately went to "Edit Profile", discovered a large section of code containing "www.cake.fi/images/login.html",
copied the code into a text file and then deleted it. I ALSO found a malicious code in my "Movies" section containing an embed command to allow script access, and deleted that as well. I then changed my password yet again.

I suspect this invasion occurred while viewing the profiles of friend requests... Please be on your guard, and do notify your friends if you spot the blue banner on any profiles.

Navigation links redirected

When I looked at the code, I saw that the MySpace navigation links had all been redirected to what appeared to be image files on the cake.fi site. By the time I went to that site, it wasn't available. There was an active web server in operation, and the "ping" command returned a response, but the pages returned "Service Unavailable" and similar messages.

Another user reported that, earlier in the day, clicking on the navigation links brought her to a fake MySpace login page, which asked the user to enter their MySpace login ID and password. This person made the mistake of entering the information, and soon found herself unable to log into MySpace and her email account (for which she was using the same password).

This serves as a warning for all MySpace users:

Do not use the same password for both the email account you use for logging into MySpace and for your MySpace account.

By the way, any time your profile is compromised in any manner, it's wise to change your MySpace password. This is a point Tom repeated stresses in his occasional messages to the entire MySpace community (the ones that show up on your MySpace Home page).

Multi-phase attacks, or copy-cats?

Not too long after, Lady of Avalon visited one of her friend's profiles, and again saw the changed navigation menu. The next thing she knew, her own profile had been infected again. Here's her description:

I was just hacked AGAIN, by a copycat hacker, using the same blue banner under the navigation links, (code inserted in "About Me"), and the code inserted in the "Movie" section which contains an Embed Command to allow script access. And it's a different site....something British with im. ?....I didn't bother to copy it, just deleted it. The other (cake.fi), was out of Finland ...This one is out of England.

I had been on ______'s page, and her Number 1 friend's page, immediately before I saw the blue banner. One of them must be infected.

Our mutual MySpace friend Lea Ann, who was also investigating the attack after having been hit herself, posted an informative bulletin about her observations. Here's an excerpt:

Let's talk about these hackers!!! Several of you have been hit not once but twice. I was hit yesterday and a friend of mine was hit once, cleaned up her computer, was hit again the same day, and the next day she got hit by a copycat hacker. I have it from a realiable source that these are not kids trying to cause trouble, but people who know what they're doing.

Check all the codes in your profile to see that it is what you've put in there and nothing else. If something looks wrong delete the existing code and get another one. Once you have checked that your profile codes are right COPY AND PASTE EVERYTHING FROM YOUR PROFILE TO NOTEPAD. Making sure to put everthing in sections. Save it to your computer. If you make changes to your profile don't forget to change that section in your saved file. This has helped me at least 8 times that I can remember.

... change your password ALOT. Don't use birthdays, anniversaries, kids names, cities you live in, the state you live in. No personal information. Off the wall passwords and 6 or more letters. Even if you have to write it down next to your computer it's better than putting personal information passwords on your MySpace. And don't use the same password for email, MySpace, etc, etc...... Once a hackers gets a password they will try that password on anything they can get from you.

So friends, I go through a lot of steps to try and keep my computer virus and hacker free. Even with all of this, I still get hit. Keeping an updated version of my profile helps me a lot.

I went to the UK site, and it looks like a legitimate business (unfortunately I don't have the URL any more). This implies that the people behind this particular instance (either the original attackers or copycats) had gained access to the business's server and placed code onto it. Again, the MySpace navigation links were redirected to a page named "login.html" in an "images" subdirectory one level down from the main site URL.

Later on, we saw another instance, where the MySpace navigation links were directed to a third domain. This domain again appeared to be a legitimate business whose site had been compromized into including an "images/login.html" beneath the main site URL.

Sophisticated code detects login status

The code that is being placed on people's MySpace profiles appears to be mutating. Either a single team is putting out new "improved" versions of their attack code, or copycats are adapting the original code.

For example, in some cases the code detects whether or not a visitor to a MySpace profile is logged into MySpace. In one instance, if you are not logged into MySpace, when you attempt to visit a profile you are directed to a fake login page. You do not have to be logged into MySpace to view a profile page! If you are logged in when you visit the profile, your profile is immediately hacked.

In another version of the attack, if you visit a profile when you are not logged into MySpace, the profile appears normal (the navigation links point to their normal MySpace locations); but if you are logged in, you see the hacked links, and your profile is subsequently hacked.

Does platform matter?

It appears that the platform you're running on matters. Users of Internet Explorer report seeing an ActiveX control warning when they visit an infected profile page. Firefox users do not see this warning.

Also, the attack on Windows machines may go beyond your MySpace profile. Lady of Avalon's Windows machine's performance slowed to a crawl after the attacks, implying that something was inserted onto her machine.

Nonetheless, even if you're using a Mac, your MySpace profile can be infected if you visit an infected site. My guess here is that the malicious code may read information stored in cookies in your browser. So, if you've had your browser save your login and password so you don't have to re-enter it every time you want to log into MySpace, you may be vulnerable to attack if you happen to visit an infected profile.

Recommendation: do not let your browser store your MySpace login information. Uncheck the "Remember Me" check box on the main MySpace page, and clear saved passwords out of your browser.

Is this related to other recent Internet malicious hacker activity

In the past month or so, there have been major increases in activity by malicious spammers and hackers on the Internet. A sophisticated team in Russia has hijacked millions of computers and is using them to send out massive volumes of spam email encouraging people to invest in penny stocks, etc.

Meanwhile, blogs are under attack by suddenly increased volumes of comment spam, where Internet robots post spam masquerading as comments about blog posts.

The MySpace attacks appear similar in their degree of sophistication (i.e., complex programming is required) and magnitude (a very broad attack).

Attacks of this nature come close to rendering what's being attacked nearly useless. If 95% of email messages and 95% of blog comments are spam, and if we can't visit our MySpace friend's profile without having your own profile maliciously altered, does it make sense to even try to be online? I've never seen this magnitude of what appears to be professional destructive activity. It is indeed troubling...

In the past few years I've bought four digital cameras (three as gifts). My method for selecting the cameras was typically to walk into a store, look at the cameras, then make my best guess and buy the camera. There's got to be a better way!

I'm looking at the first chapter of Digital Photography: The Missing Manual (by Chris Grover and Barbara Brundage), which is titled "Digital Camera Basics." Sounds like just the information I could have used the past three years when I bought the gift cameras!

The book was published just a few months ago, so we can assume the information is up to date. So, here's what the authors have to say about digital camera basics.

Major manufacturers: the good news

The major digital camera manufacturers include traditional photography companies like Kodak, Canon, and Olympus, and electronics companies like Sony, HP, Casio, and Samsung. Here's the good news:

Fortunately, if you understand just a few important digital camera basics, you can evaluate--and take great photos with--almost any camera you pick up.

Here are some things you'll want to think about before you select a specific digital camera.

Point-and-Shoot or Single Lens Reflex

There are three main categories of digital camera available today:

• Point-and-shoot cameras: these are small, designed to travel in your pocket, purse, or backpack, and usually cost $200-400. They usually have simplified and automatic settings. Just watch out that the camera isn't too too small, making it hard to use comfortably.


• Advanced digital cameras: these are bigger, and typically cost $300-600. These cameras typically have a zoom lens and offer you the option to manually focus by turning the focus ring on the lens. With advanced cameras, you can control more settings, like exposure, ISO speed, and color balance.


• Digital single lens reflex (SLR) cameras: SLR cameras are ideal if you're transitioning from high-end 35 mm photography to digital. You can use interchangeable lenses, filters, and lots of other gear. The cost can be $500-1500 or more. Some of your old lenses from your 35 mm camera might work with the new SLR digital camera, but not in exactly the way you might expect. The authors recommend taking your old lenses to the store with you, if you're considering using your old lenses.

Image Resolution: Megapixels

Digital cameras all have a "megapixel" rating. The word "pixel" is actually short for "picture element." A pixel is one tiny dot in your digital photograph. A megapixel is 1 million pixels. The number of megapixels the camera has tells you what the maximum resolution of the pictures is.

If your camera has 5 megapixel resolution, then pictures at that resolution might be 2500 pixels wide by 2000 pixels tall. In many cameras, you can select different megapixel resolutions for your pictures (to conserve memory and let the camera store more pictures before you need to empty it). If your 5 megapixel camera has a 1 megapixel setting, then your pictures at that resolution might be something like 1200 pixels wide by 833 pixels tall.

Do you have to get the camera with the most megapixels? More pixels means more dollars, of course. Here's what the authors say:

How many of those pixels you actually need depends on how you're going to display the images you shoot.

If your pictures are going to be viewed only on computers, you can get by with very few megapixels. Even a 1 megapixel digital image will entirely fill most computer screens.

So if you're taking pictures to share with friends, by email or using a photosharing site, or your own web site, and that's all you're ever going to do with digital photography, then you really don't need to spend the extra money to get the camera with the maximum number of megapixels.

If you intend to print pictures on a high resolution printer, using high quality photographic image printer paper, then it's a different story. In that case, you'll be packing 150 or more pixel dots onto an inch of paper. For printing pictures on paper, a 2 megapixel camera is necessary for printing 5 x 7 inch photos. If you want to print quality 8 x 10 inch photos, you'll have to go with a camera that has at least 3.3 megapixels.

Conclusion

This post covered the two most important things you need to think about when you're about to purchase a digital camera: camera type and image resolution. In my second digital photography post I'll look into digital camera memory and zoom. In the third post I'll talk about flash and some other common digital camera options.

References