Yet another Google service. :)

When we do a search for a book in Google Print, whose content contains a match for your search terms, Google will link to it in your search results. You can view the entirety of public domain books or, for books under copyright, just a few pages or in some cases, only the title’s bibliographic data and brief snippets.

I’ve just tried it out, searching for “DaVinci Code”, and it came out relevent books such as “de-Coding Da Vinci: The Facts Behind the Fiction of the Da Vinci Code”. Amazingly, it allowed me to read from Page 60 (not sure why from page60 :-? ), I was able to flip back and forth.

According to Google, there are 2 sources for the book content:-

• Google Print Publisher Program
• Google Print Library Project

Google is really doing a great favour to all book lovers, we can now view the book before buying it.
It’s no boubt a win-win strategy for both consumers and publishers.

To WordPress Users,

There is a security vulnerability in WordPress that may be triggered if you’re running the default template.

If you would like to apply the fix manually it is relatively simple:

1. Open the wp-includes/template-functions-category.php file in a text editor like Wordpad.
2. Go to around line 103 where it says get_the_category_by_ID.
3. Create a new line after that and paste in $cat_ID = (int) $cat_ID;

or

You can upgrade by overwriting only one of your old WordPress 1.5 files. I’ve added the above codes into my template-functions-category.php. Feel free to download it and use it in your WordPress 1.5.

template-functions-category.php (Updated)

[Source]

As we have probably known, Microsoft officially unveiled its next generation Xbox “game and entertainment system” two weeks ago. Given the Xbox 360’s all-new PowerPC-based embedded architecture, the question arises: What operating system is embedded inside the Xbox 360?

The earlier Xbox (shown on the right) is based on a Pentium-family processor and is rumored to run a variant of Windows 2000. But the Xbox 360 has a completely different architecture, based on a custom triple-core IBM PowerPC processor along with other specialty silicon including a custom graphics processor made by ATI, plus 512MB of system DRAM. So, since Windows hasn’t supported the PowerPC architecture since Windows NT 4.0 SP3, and Windows CE also doesn’t support PowerPC, below are some questions to ponder:-

• Has Microsoft ported Windows XP to the PowerPC for the Xbox 360? Or, Windows CE?
• Does the Xbox 360 run a version of some off-the-shelf embedded OS, perhaps a variant of BSD UNIX?
• Does the Xbox 360 run a completely new embedded software platform developed specifically for Xbox use?

Continue Reading »
What OS Runs Inside The Xbox 360?

U.K.-based Web security firm Netcraft on Wednesday released a Firefox plugin of the anti-phishing toolbar that’s been available for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer since December 2004.

Netcraft toolbar, which installs as a Firefox extension, or plug-in, automatically blocks suspected phishing sites identified by other users and verified by Netcraft. The company’s database of Web site information is also used to display several attributes of any visited site, including its country location, longevity, and popularity.

Basically, Netcraft anti-phishing system consists of a user interface implemented as a toolbar (a small program that is active whenever the user is using a web browser) and central servers, able to respond quickly to large numbers of requests as each user moves around the web. The central servers are managed by Netcraft and hold the information about URLs and sites provided by the Toolbar community and Netcraft.

At the moment, Netcraft Toolbar can be used simultaneously with Google Toolbar, but not fully compatibled with MSN Toolbar.

Download Netcraft Toolbar

[Source]

Google WebAccelerator has been launched in the beginning of May, and now Google has decided to stop accepting new user for registration of the service.

Quoted:
Thank you for your interest in Google Web Accelerator. We have currently reached our maximum capacity of users and are actively working to increase the number of users we can support.

Hopefully, Google will reopen the registration for new users soon. :)

Last night around 11pm GMT+8, when I was recommending Google Adsense to one of my friends, I searched in Google for its URL. I found that the first link appeared in the search result was not
www.google.com/adsense/,
instead,
www.all-in-one-business.com/adsense/ was.

Coincidentally, JenSense blogged about “Google AdSense Site Hijacked” too.

Quoted:
Yes, the first result for “Google AdSense” and “AdSense” goes to www.all-in-one-business.com/adsense/, which if you click it, goes straight to the Google AdSense main index page. And if you watch the redirect fast enough, you can see the www.all-in-one-business.com/adsense/ page sitting pretty with a PR9. The actual Google AdSense main page is a grey bar. The Google cache of the www.all-in-one-business.com/adsense/ page also shows the Google AdSense index page.

Anyway, this is the first time I see Google program’s URL has been hijacked in its own search results. :D