Dan Kaminsky: bug in DNS

A computer researcher revealed a fundamental flaw in the Internet’s addressing system, necessitating a massive Internet security upgrade primarily for businesses and service providers, according to a division of the Department of Homeland Security.

The problem makes it possible for computer hackers to reroute Internet traffic at will, enabling them access to sensitive and valuable information from businesses …

So there’s a bug in DNS, the name-to-address mapping system at the core of most Internet services. DNS goes bad, every website goes bad, and every email goes…somewhere. Not where it was supposed to.

DTD manipulation

Document Type Definition (DTD) is one of several SGML and XML schema languages, and is also the term used to describe a document or portion thereof that is authored in the DTD language. A DTD is primarily used for the expression of a schema via a set of declarations that conform to a particular markup syntax and that describe a class, or type, of document, in terms of constraints on the structure of that document. A DTD may also declare constructs that are not always required to establish document structure, but that may affect the interpretation of some documents. XML documents are described using a subset of DTD which imposes a number of restrictions on the document’s structure, as required per the XML standard (XML is in itself an application of SGML optimized for automated parsing).

HTML 5: What’s news?

January 22nd W3C published the latest working draft for HTML 5. The HTML 5 working group includes AOL, Apple, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Mozilla, Nokia, Opera and many hundred other vendors.

Some of the new features in HTML 5 are functions for embedding audio, video and graphics, client-side data storage, and interactive documents. Other features are new page elements like <header>, <section>, <footer>, and <figure>.

HTML 5 improves interoperability and reduce development costs by making precise rules on how to handle all HTML elements, and how to recover from errors.

jQuery: JavaScript library

jQuery is a lightweight JavaScript library that emphasizes interaction between JavaScript and HTML. It was released January 2006 at BarCamp NYC by John Resig.

Dual licensed under the MIT License and the GNU General Public License, jQuery is free and open source software.

“You start with 10 lines of jQuery that would have been 20 lines of tedious DOM JavaScript. By the time you are done it’s down to two or three lines and it couldn’t get any shorter unless it read your mind.” – Dave Methvin

Adobe AIR in 5 minutes

Make an Adobe AIR app in Five Minutes – “The Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) is quite a hot topic among web developers. And well it might be! With AIR, Adobe’s new desktop-based web application system, desktop applications can now be built with the technologies web developers have been using for years–plain old HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to do exactly that: build a simple web-based application for the desktop with Adobe AIR.”

Viewzi – New Ways to Search the Internet (Max Kiesler)

Visual searches just keep getting better and better. Viewzi is a meta search engine that lets you view relational data in a fun and easy to use visual paradigm. Currently, there are fourteen ways to view a search term including, mp3, video, 3d photo, basic photo, web screenshots and the list goes on. You can scale the results with an interactive slider and they also provide related results in the sidebar. Overall, I find Viewzi a compelling and engaging way to search.

Flash Cross-Site Scripting Attacks

Adobe Flash content on numerous web sites contain input validation vulnerabilities. A remote user can conduct cross-site scripting attacks. [Editor's note: This is not a vulnerability in Flash player.] Some Adobe Flash content (‘.swf’ files) may not properly filter HTML code from user-supplied input before displaying the input. A remote user can create a specially crafted URL that, when loaded by a target user, will cause arbitrary scripting code to be executed by the target user’s browser. The code will originate from the site hosting the Adobe Flash content and will run in the security context of that site. As a result, the code will be able to access the target user’s cookies (including authentication cookies), if any, associated with the site, access data recently submitted by the target user via web form to the site, or take actions on the site acting as the target user.

RIA – Rich Internet Applications (Marc Domenig)

Rich Internet Applications, or RIA, are web-based applications that approach the speed and elegance of local applications. The term “Rich Internet Application” was introduced in a Macromedia white paper in March 2002.

In traditional web applications, all activity used to be centered on client-server architecture with a thin client. Under this system all processing used to be done on the server. The client was used only to display static content. This proved to be a very slow and tedious process as it required all the interactions to pass through the server. With RIA, a client side technology can be made use of which is capable of executing the instructions on the client’s computer. The biggest advantage of RIA is that it can circumvent the slow and synchronous loop for multiple user interactions.

Prototype JavaScript Framework

Prototype JavaScript Framework is a JavaScript framework created by Sam Stephenson which provides an Ajax framework and other utilities. It is implemented as a single file of JavaScript code, usually named prototype.js. Prototype is distributed standalone, but also as part of larger projects, e.g. Ruby on Rails, script.aculo.us and Rico.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

What is SEO?

SEO is the active practice of optimizing a web site by improving internal and external aspects in order to increase the traffic the site receives from search engines. Firms that practice SEO can vary; some have a highly specialized focus, while others take a more broad and general approach. Optimizing a web site for search engines can require looking at so many unique elements that many practitioners of SEO (SEOs) consider themselves to be in the broad field of website optimization (since so many of those elements intertwine).

This guide is designed to describe all areas of SEO – from discovery of the terms and phrases that will generate traffic, to making a site search engine friendly, to building the links and marketing the unique value of the site/organization’s offerings.