JaysonSchultz.com

Just found an awesome resource on Digg for anyone (like myself) that is looking to get familiar with AJAX. I’m sure you have heard by now about this new Web Technology that taking the Internet by storm, but do you know how to apply it? Sang Shin of Sun is teaching a 10-week online course for free (as in beer). Class starts on August 4th. EDIT: When I was showing this to a co-worker today, I realized that I had not posted a link to this Doh! You can find the course here.

Technorati Tags: AJAX Training

This has really been a slow news day. Therefore, I figured I’d report on a few Firefox bits that I heard over the past week or so. First off, Information Week is carrying a story about some of the features of FireFox 2. All of these features come can be experienced first hand in Firefox 2 Beta 1. One note before you plunge into this upgrade, if you currently use extensions, many of these will be incompatible with Firefox 2. If there are plugins that you can’t live without, you may want to contact the developer to see if they can release an updated version. (EDIT:  After I published this, I ran across a very cool tool on Digg.  This document describes how you can make your addon’s compatible with FireFox 2.  Yes, some may experience true incompatibillities that the developer will have to address, but others can be verfiied using this tool)  And once you download Firefox, why not tell someone else? World Firefox Day was July 15th. As part of this, for the next two month (September 15), if you tell someone about Firefox and they install the app through the process on this site, both of your names will be imortalized in Firefox 2 code.

Technorati Tags: firefox, bon echo

One more interesting article on Slashdot today was about the use of your Social Networking site in a job interview.  Many of these services have the abillity to make the content private to only those you wish to grant access to.  However, in the speciffic case cited here, a student was seeking an internship at a State Agency.  Despite marking his profile as “private” he was asked invasive questions about his Facebook profile in the interview.  When asked how they got the information, the agency cited that they accessed his Facebook account under the provisions of the legistation we’ve all grown to hate, the Patriot Act.  This is disturbing on two different levels.  For one, the fact that this information is used in an interview at all is very interesting and something that all college students shoud be aware of.  Moreover the fact that the Patriot act was used to gain access to this information, and then held against the individual in question is even scarier.  Let this be a lesson to everyone developing online content.  If you don’t want something published in the newspaper, dont’ publish it at all. 

Technorati Tags: Facebook, MySpace, Patriot Act

Phishing is everywhere nowdays and the Internet is more dangerous now than ever before. All this possible due to the increased dynamic content and more integration with other technologies, like ActiveX. One of the new defenses against phishing attacks is multi-factor authentication schemes. In this scheme, users are authenticated to a service by more than just a username/password combination. Generally, this uses another authentication proof (what you have, what you know, and what you are). While this is a new technology, company’s such as Citibank have been implementing this to maintain a competitive edge and secure their customers’ data. Well, now it appears that said solution from Citibank has been circumvented. The Washington Post is carrying details on how a WebSite used a “man-in-the-middle” attack and some very cleverly designed emails and website to lure unsuspecting users in. A few interesting points here… First, the email calls out an IP Address of the “hacker that tried to access the account”. Once a users bites, they are taken to a web page that appears to be in the citibank namespace, but upon closer inspection is actually on a russian (.RU) site. When the user enters their credentials and the one-time pin from the token, these are passed to a PHP page which logs into CitiBank as that user. Then a money transfer is quickly performed while the pin is still valid (lifetime of 1 min). Even better, if you present bad credentials, you will see an error on the phishing page. This is a very convincing phishing scheme that many would fall into. This is just further proof that we all need to be on our toes when surfing online. 

Technorati Tags: CitiBank, Phishing, Man-in-the-middle, privacy, two-factor authentication

You may remember that I first covered the Pirate Bay fiasco near the end of May and followed up when the site was back online only a few days later.  Since then there have been some very interesting developments.  You may be aware that some of the folks involved with The Pirate Bay were also invovled with a political party in Sweeden known as the the Piratpartiet (Pirate Party) whose main goal was to focus on copyright and intellectual property (IP) rights in Sweeden.  Well when news of the Pirate Party came out, a group here in the US took it upon themselves to find out establish a US version of Sweeden’s Pirate Party.  There goals are similar: to reform US copyright and IP laws.  Hopefully, one day, there will be representation in Congress for issues such as Net Neutrallity and the Broadcast Flag.  The interesting part is to keep in mind that this exposure was due to the MPAA trying to shutdown and evil pirate site…

Speaking of the evil pirate site, here is proof that US was behind their shut down.   Well now that they’re back, the big plan is to make the site a distributed model.  Then the MPAA can’t take it down in one fell swoop.

You can get all the latest updates from the horse’s mouth at the Pirate Bay’s Blog.  Also, while we’re on the topic, TWiT #58 has some good commentary from the gang as well.  Check it out! 

Technorati Tags: The Pirate Bay, Pirate Party, mpaa, Bit Torrent

GameWorld Network has streaming footage from E3 of the famed Wii-mote (for the Nintendo Wii) in action.  The innovation in this remote alone coupled with the puported low price tag of the Wii is why I think Nintendo will dominate the console wars this holiday season.  It’s also why this guy will be first in line in Bloomington for his Wii. 

Technorati Tags: wii-mote, Nintendo, wii

If you’re driving a gas guzzling SUV, you might go into shock when you read this. The Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) recently held their Supermileage Competition. The goal of the event was to develop a vehicle that has the best gas mileage. The winner was a group from the University of British Columbia (UBC). Their single occupancy vehicle, designed to be driven lying down, get’s an impressive 3,145 MPG. Now that’s some serious gas mileage! Putting this into perspective, this is enough to go from Vancuuver to Halifax on a single gallon of gas. 

Technorati Tags: sae, supermileage, gas mileage

Apparently if you create a website nowadays, it is your responsibility to ensure that those using your site don’t do anything stupid when they’re not on your site.  At least that’s the claim of a Texas girl (14) and mother.  Basically, the 14 yo met a 19 yo on MySpace and of course had to meet up with him and of course got raped.  Now, the family is suing MySpace for $30 million.  Yes, that’s 6 zero’s after the 30 (and before the decimal point).  This kind of reminds me of the woman that spilled coffee on herself at McDonald’s and claimed it was McDonald’s fault since they didn’t tell her it was hot.  Ridiculous….

Technorati Tags: MySpace, sexual assault, privacy, stupidy

Yes, Virginia. You read the title right. Ever wonder why your wireless signal just sucks some times? Ever wonder why you can never place a phone call when you’re usign your computer wirelessly? Well wonder no more. MetaGeek has launched a spectrum analyzer that the common man can afford. At a mere $100, you can see all the inteference and noise that your wireless card see (in a graphical format, of course) to help you pinpoint the reason of why you can’t ever seem to get a wireless signal. If you’re technically inclined and are either looking for something to do one weekend or manage a wifi network, this might now be a bad investment.

Technorati Tags: wispy, spectrum analyzer, 2.4 Ghz

Football fans and Unavision viewers everywhere are already well aware that the 2006 World Cup is underway in Germany. For these of you, like myself, that are looking to get into the action or those of you that want to get more connected, I have found some interesting things on the Internet. Users of Firefox can enjoy realtime updates with all current games by using the Joga.com Companion. User’s of IE are out of luck and should upgrade!!! Also, users of Google can run a search for “World Cup” at any time to receive up to the minute score updates. Moreover, anyone with a personalized Google homepage can add World Cup information for easy viewing. Many websites have a plethora of streaming content including Live matches at the BBC. However, I am happy to report that we are well into the first round and the internet has not yet shutdown.

Technorati Tags: soccer, world cup, firefox, google, joga companion, bbc