Friday, January 28. 2005

Social Networks are a hot topic right now -- if you're paying attention to anything it has really become the flavor of the week. Regardless, unfortunately right now I think Social Networks are largely worthless to me and I'm wondering why it has to be that way.

The problem I'm seeing with social networks are, basically, they are very segmented to the point where they are more trouble than they both need to be or are worth. Recently I made myself an account on my first business-oriented Social Network LinkedIn. I like the account, I felt like it was actually useful compared to Orkut which sort of was neat for awhile but didn't really give me anything particularly useful. Unfortunately as I was going through my Contact List inviting those who weren't signed up to join, and connecting with those who already had an account, I realized it was a waste of my time because half the people I invitied accepted my invite then promptly invited me to another service that they favored for whatever reason... I now have accounts on four different social networks (Orkut, LinkedIn, Plaxo, and Open BC). That means I have to re-enter and answer the same stuff four times, manatain that information in four different locations, and honestly who really has the time to deal with all this crap?

In my opinion, this segmentation between the networks makes them more trouble than they are really worth. I'm better off just keeping my contact list to myself in Evolution than going through the trouble setting up an account on a network.

My question is this: Why can't these networks provide a Web Services API?

Think of Instant Messenger Clients which had the same problem years ago -- I needed one for my friends on Yahoo!, one on my friends on AIM, one for MSN, and it was a real pain until someone got their act together and wrote clients like GAIM and Trillian which consolidated all of those contacts into one easy to manage list. What was the result? Basically everyone ended up with an account on every network and everyone was happy -- I think the same thing would happen to Social Networks if they'd let it.

If I had access to a Web Services API for these sites I would love to write a web-based application which communicated with all of them and provided a single interface to search, interact, and otherwise manage my social network without having to worry about which physical company's network my contact belongs to. I would think that this is probably possible now to some degree, because most of these networks provide Outlook or I.E. toolbar plugins which communicate with the network -- it's only a matter of understanding the protocol they are using.

Although that's a possible solution, it'd be nice to just see these sites expose an API via SOAP which would let me do all of this. I know one of the companies is planning something like this, I don't suppose an employee of one of the others might be able to chime in and give me some advice here?

Thursday, January 27. 2005

On January 24, Zend announced strategic investments by Intel and SAP and caused another Spartacus backlash from the PHP community because Zend has once again portrayed themselves as the "creators" of PHP -- an arguably misleading statement not giving credit to the many volunteers who have poured countless hours into the project.

Thanks to some complaining by influental PHP community members however, I'm pleased to announce that Zeev and Andi have intervened within the company and will from this point forward change the wording used in press releases to more accurately reflect the ongoing contributions to PHP by those in the general community. I get the warm fuzzies to see my employer willing to change their ways a little bit and give credit when credit is due! I'm told they'll also be changing the press release which caused the backlash on the web site soon as well.

With any luck, it's the last we'll see of Spartacus!

Sunday, January 23. 2005

Over the past few months I have entertained myself by reading and checking out e-mails sent out by hackers phishing for my e-bay password, paypal password, credit cards, etc. In most cases, such as this one. They come to me with a similar e-mail:


Dear customer,

We regret to inform you that your eBay account will be suspended due to the violation of our site policy below:

* Misrepresentation of Identity (User) - Representing yourself as another eBay user or registering using the identity of another.

Due to the suspension of this account, please be advised you are prohibited from using eBay in any way. This includes the registering of a new account.

Please note that this suspension does not relieve you of your agreed-upon obligation to pay any fees you may owe to eBay.

According to our site policy you will have to confirm that you are the real owner of the eBay account by completing the following form or else your account will be deleted.

http://free.hostdepartment.com/e/ebaybilling/signin.html

Our apologies for this unconvenience.

Thank you for using eBay! http://www.ebay.com


Some are more clever than others, but all end up linking to a fake login / validation page for eBay and execute a classic man-in-the-middle attack to compromise the user's validation information. While some are Unsecured Linux Boxes running a default Apache which hackers have gotten into and created bogus eBay login pages with, there is a new flavor I have recently found as well, such as this one which takes advantage of unsecure form mailer scripts running on respectable web sites to send e-mails to drop-box e-mail accounts with the login creditials, credit card information, etc. of anyone who is ignorant enough to buy into the scam.

Unfortunately, all of these phishing attacks have one thing in common: They are taking advantage of stupid people running PHP. Although different approaches are being used, neither could have happened if PHP wasn't involved. Of course one shouldn't leave an unsecured fresh linux box in the wild in the first place, but there is no reason why a company should have a form mailer script out there which allows me to bounce e-mail anywhere I want in the world as I see fit. Unfortunately, my attempts to contact the company running this nonsense has resulted in nothing but bounced e-mails (imagine that..)

When it's all said and done this is not a new problem, but for the lack of somewhere better to vent my frustrations I thought I would post them here. After all, I've been talking about this stuff for 4 years now so I doubt anything is going to change now.

If anyone has any brilliant suggestions on how PHP itself can be changed (perhaps a default configuration changed, or new anti-phishing restrictions put into place) which make any sense I'd love to hear them.

Monday, January 17. 2005

Well I've returned from the west coast after giving my talk on PHP 5 and SOAP to the PHP West conference crowd in awesome (yet incredibly cold) Vancouver, Canada. Although this conference was a very short one (only one day, one track) it was a special one for me because it was the first time I got to see both of my new books PHP Unleashed and The Zend PHP Certification Practice Book. While the Unleashed book wasn't for sale at the conference, I did give away a number of signed copies to attendees.

For those of you who missed my talk, or perhaps would like to reference my materials, I have put the slides from my talk online in my Talks Section. You can find a direct link to them Here.

(note, for some reason my talks section is a little sluggish.)

Thursday, January 6. 2005

Although I have yet to actually get a copy myself, as you can see PHP Unleashed is back from the printers! Also, you can now purchase the Zend PHP Certification Practice Test Book as well online through Amazon. I thought getting one book published would be exciting, but I never thought I'd have two out at the same time!

Go get a copy!

Wednesday, January 5. 2005

TIOBE Software, maintainer of the TIOBE Programming Community Index has named PHP the Programming language of 2004. While I'm not surprised myself, I was very interested in hearing that while PHP has grown over 3% Java has dropped a relatively steep 6%. Admittingly the way this is measured isn't an absolute indication (it is based on figures taken from the major search engines: Google, MSN, and Yahoo!), I do think it serves as a valid barometer.

TIOBE credits the release of PHP 5 with PHP's surge in usage. While they don't draw the line between PHP's rise accounting for Java's drop, I do believe that has been a factor. In my work with Zend I have seen many companies now turning to PHP to solve their serious "mission critical" (I hate that phrase) problems, and thanks to the new object model PHP can now solve these problems using many of the same software engineering techniques Java brought to the table without the complexity of Java enterprise architecture. I know that makes my life easier, and I think it's that ability of PHP to develop scalable, hardened applications fast which makes it the powerhouse it has become today.

The best part about all of this, which is the part that really excites me, is that I can see PHP taking the web to all new places. With its ease of development and hot new technologies on the horizon (such as web services and XUL) which it can interact with I don't think it's a stretch at all that PHP will play a major role in the "Network Operating System" of the future myself and men such as Tim O'Reilly have been talking about over the years. It'll just take a little time to pull it all together, but it'll happen.