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Last Updated: 5/21/2007

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Wednesday, April 09, 2008 

Category: Web, HTML, Tech


I found an excellent site where you can interactively select a color and brightness using your mouse, and get the 6-digit HTML code for the color:



http://www.allprofitallfree.com/color-wheel2.html

3:46 AM 
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Sunday, April 22, 2007 

Category: MySpace
I attended the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco last week, representing the AOL Developer Community. While researching materials related to the Expo on the Web, I came across this April 11, 2007 blog post on Pete Cashmore's Mashable.com blog:

Photobucket vs MySpace: Potentially Explosive Facts

I had no idea there was an ongoing dispute between MySpace and Photobucket.

Here's an excerpt from Pete's post:


for those who are unaware of the news - Photobucket is reporting on its blog that MySpace has blocked the embedding of Photobucket videos. As of noon today, slideshows and images can be embedded.

Photobucket's Achilles heel, which we emphasized last week when they became suspiciously communicative with the press (indicating that they're trying to sell the site), is that relations between MySpace and Photobucket have always been poor. The hate between the two companies is mutual, but Photobucket has more to lose, and should be sucking up to its unpredictable master.



Of course, things may have changed since April 11. But, knowing that these two have declared war on each other is certainly surprising to me. They seem like a great match...
6:13 PM 
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Saturday, April 21, 2007 

Category: MySpace
Want to know some of the people who are visiting your MySpace profile? MyBlogLog.com offers a widget for MySpace that lets you see which other MyBlogLog registered users have visited your MySpace blog. Look at the "Recent Readers" section at the top of my "General" interests section for an example.

To have this on your own MySpace profile, you need to register yourself at MyBlogLog.com and also identify your MySpace blog. Then, on your "My Home" tab, you'll see a "Get Widgets" button beneath your blog image. Click the "Get Widgets" button and you'll be provided with code you can paste into your MySpace profile.

Once it's in place, whenever a MyBlogLog member visits your site, their picture and a link will be displayed in your MyBlogLog "Recent Readers" widget.

Cool!
5:32 AM 
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Saturday, March 24, 2007 

Category: MySpace
My friend Maral didn't want her Top Friends section to be visible, but still wanted a "View All Friends" link. "Is there a way to do that?" she asked

Yes, there is. To do this we'll use the MySpaceSupport.com "Hide only your friends" code, and add a custom "View All Friends" link.

First, make sure you know your own FriendID. If you don't know this, you can hover your mouse over your "View all friends" link. Look at the bottom of your browser to see the link URL. Your FriendID is the number that appears after "friendID=".

Now edit your profile. In the bottom "Who I'd Like to Meet" enter the following (we'll pretend that your friendID is 987654321):


<a href="http://friends.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewfriends&friendID=987654321">View my friends</a>

<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;}
</style>


Save your changes, and you should no longer see your Top Friends, but there should be a "View my friends" link just above your comments.
3:54 AM 
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Tuesday, February 13, 2007 

Category: MySpace
The technology magazine Baseline posted a very long, detailed history of technology at MySpace. The article, titled "Inside MySpace.com", is a very interesting read for people who find servers and databases and web servers and scalable software and infrastructure exciting.

Still with me? Excellent! Those of you who have chosen to continue will be rewarded by finally finding out what those irritating "Unexpected Error" pages really mean.

Here's the lead-in blurb for the article:



Booming traffic demands put a constant stress on the social network's computing infrastructure. Yet, MySpace developers have repeatedly redesigned the Web site software, database and storage systems in an attempt to keep pace with exploding growth - the site now handles almost 40 billion page views a month. Most corporate Web sites will never have to bear more than a small fraction of the traffic MySpace handles, but anyone seeking to reach the mass market online can learn from its experience.




Why We See "Unexpected Error" Pages

And what about those "Unexpected Error" pages? Click here for the full details. But here's the most important cause: Microsoft SQL Server limitations or crashes:



anytime a database craps out, that's bad news if the data for the page you're trying to view is stored there. "Anytime that happens, and uncached data is unavailable through SQL Server, you'll see one of those unexpected errors"




Yup, the "Unexpected Error" page is really Bill's problem, not Tom's.
10:39 PM 
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Wednesday, February 07, 2007 

Current mood:  surprised
Category: Web, HTML, Tech
On my MySpace profile page I list 64 of the HTML colors using the hexadecimal color codes. I had been under the impression that there are only 17 named HTML colors. Then my MySpace friend Lady of Avalon started telling me that she was able to enter fairly obscure color names such as "Lavender" and "Fuchsia" into her profile, comments, and blog posts, and the color names were correctly rendered by the browser.

So, I decided to research this a bit more. And sure enough, I found a page at the excellent W3schools.com site titled "HTML Color Names". More than 140 named HTML colors are actually supported by most browsers!

So, if you prefer specifying your HTML colors by name rather than by trying to memorize strange 6-digit hexadecimal combinations, the "HTML Color Names" is definitely one to add to browser bookmarks/favorites.

References

6:34 PM 
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Sunday, January 28, 2007 

Category: Web, HTML, Tech
My friend Chris notified me that MySpace has made a new change to their profile editor that breaks HTML comments! So, if you've customized your profile and you'd like to document internally, within your code, what code sections do what, your comments end up displayed on your profile page, rather than being visible only when you edit your profile.

Here's what the current MySpace profile editor does to comments. Say you're editing your profile, and you'd like to make a note to yourself using the following standard format HTML comment:

<!-- the code below creates a scrolling window -->

This is a valid HTML comment.

Here's what the MySpace editor enters into your profile when you click the "Save All Changes" button:

.. the code below creates a scrolling window -->

This, of course, is not an HTML comment, so it will be displayed in your profile when people visit your page.

Undoubtedly MySpace made this change to fight some kind of hacker attack. Unfortunately, when they do these things they often do so without thinking about the implications for members who are trying to apply standard coding techniques to their profile customizations.

References

5:31 AM 
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Saturday, January 20, 2007 

Category: MySpace
According to Pete Cashmore, who writes the Mashable.com blog, MySpace Tom's profile was hacked last Sunday. You can find the details in Pete's January 15 blog post titled "MySpace's Tom Hacked". Here's a snippet from Pete's post:



On Sunday afternoon, a particularly high-profile attack hit the network: Tom's profile was hacked, sending spam to his 148 million friends. Although lots of users set up fake "Tom" accounts with his profile photo, this bulletin came from Tom's genuine friend ID, and invited users to click a link. Doing so took them to a phishing site that asked them to log in again - the site then used their login details to send out more spam mails.


11:09 PM 
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Saturday, January 20, 2007 

Category: MySpace
The person who maintains the Sharon Marshall MySpace profile contacted me because a spammer had left a comment on her page that she wanted to delete. This particular spammer was also a bit of a clever hacker: the comment HTML code was designed such that MySpace's "Delete My Comment" link does not appear when you edit your profile and select "Edit Comments".

Javascript call method

The OctalForty.com site documents a method for deleting any comment using a URL that directly executes what appears to be MySpace's own command for deleting a comment. You can see that method at:

http://www.octalforty.com/octalified-guide/octalified-guide-how-to-delete-myspace-tracker-comment

This method worked for me when I did the following:

  • go to my profile page and click "View/edit all" to see all comments

  • enter the octalforty code by first copying the first line and pasting it into my URL box, then copying the second line and pasting it into my URL box right next to the first section



In other words, you can't just cut and paste the entire two lines on the octalforty page. You have to merge them into a single line in your URL box at the top of your browser, then press the "Enter" key while your cursor is still inside the URL box (or click the browser "Go" button).

MySpace Safe Mode Method

But there is an easier method, that was soon discovered by the person who maintains Sharon Marshall's profile:

  • Edit your profile

  • Click "Safe Edit Mode" in the upper right

  • Click the "Comments" tab in the middle of the tab group



Now you'll see a list of comments in text boxes with "Delete" links beneath each comment. Since this page is maintained by MySpace and all HTML code is stripped from the comments themselves, the code the spammer/hacker entered to disable deleting the comment in normal edit mode has no effect.

Now you can just scroll down to the offensive comment, click "Delete", and it will be gone.

And while you're at it...

But I wouldn't stop there. This person's goal is to use your profile for posting their spam. I would delete the person from your friend list and block them. It might also be a good time to change your password, since this kind of spammer obviously knows a few things about web scripting.
3:33 AM 
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Friday, January 19, 2007 

Category: Web, HTML, Tech
Almost everyone has run into a situation where access to MySpace is blocked by the policies of the institution. This is the case at many schools, libraries, and businesses. The institutions typically do this by setting up a proxy server that will not allow requests from browsers to certain web sites and domains.

You may have also heard that methods exist to get around these restrictions.

Google to the rescue!

A few weeks ago, an article titled "Using Google to View MySpace or Any Restricted Site" was published on the O'Reilly Network. This article describes three ways to use Google to bypass a proxy server.

But, please, be cautious and polite

Now, if the building you're in blocks MySpace, you need to consider the consequences if you subvert the system and go to MySpace anyway. You certainly don't want to lose your job or get reprimanded by your school.

The unfortunate thing is that institutions like schools and businesses typically apply a "yes" or "no" approach when they decide which web sites and domains to block. They do this because that's the easiest approach. As is frequently the case, this system punishes all users, because the institution is determined to stop the few people who would abuse the privilege of being able to use MySpace.

My recommendation is that you take extra special care if you decide to apply methods that bypass restrictions. While I do not in general favor blocking sites, I certainly don't want to see any of my MySpace friends get in trouble!

I recommend being both cautious and polite in your use of MySpace in these situations. That is, don't broadcast it across the room that you're using MySpace when they don't want you to! And go to MySpace only occasionally, and stay there briefly, just to check in and perhaps post a quick reply to a message or comment. This type of usage is very similar to checking a standard email account, which few institutions try to block. If you do it this way, then probably no one will really mind (or even notice) that you took a few trips over to that forbidden site, MySpace.com.
2:31 AM 
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