Internet

Ruby as a "quick and easy interpreted scripting language for object oriented development" did not really pick up until the Ruby On Rails (RoR) platform started taking off.It was only a matter of time for full-fledged Content Management Systems  (CMS) based on Ruby on Rails to emerge.Here is a list of a few I found out, still the early stages.

• RadiantCMS, licensed under the MIT License. It seems at a very early stage though, but has a small library of "third party behaviors" (modules/plugins), and templating is via special markup (check the demo).
• RailsFrog is another RoR CMS in the early stages as well. They need programmers, and Drupal's Ber Kessels is on board there.

The web is full of buzz on Web 2.0.

Here is a quick guide on how to identify Web 1.0 vs. Web 2.0 at a glance.

Resources

• Wikipedia article on Web 2.0.
• O'Reilly article on What is Web 2.0.

One often needs photos for web sites, or other projects that require photos. Here are some free stock photo sites that have a wealth of subjects.

• Yotophoto. This site runs Drupal, an Open Source project I am involved in, and categorizes photos from other free stock photo sites. It uses tags.

Here is really cool web site: Wikimapia.

This is a fusion of Google Maps with the concept of a Wiki where anyone can add/edit information on a site (similar to Wikipedia).

Google Trends is a tool from Google Labs that shows what the world is searching for.As an experiment, I used a Google Trends Drupal search, and got a graph showing a steady upward trend in searching for  Drupal from 2004 till now.What is intriguing is the spike in mid 2005. Was that around the time that the servers choked and we had the fundraising for the new servers (July)?The other intriguing tidbit is why Budapest and Hungary are the top city/region? Why is Indonesia and Czech Republic the top two after that? Vancouver seems obvious due to the conference there in February.

The media is full of news about Google and Microsoft heading on a collision course. Although it started several months back,  things are heading for an technology arms race. Microsoft hates competition, and Google has been gaining ground and promoting rival products, such as Firefox and Opera. All this is normal in the business world.

In various fields, the Golden Ratio is considered a key to beauty and style. This goes for architecture, painting, sculpture, design, and more, as well as being found in nature as well. The Golden Ratio is also called the Divine Proportion among other names. Its value is 1:1.618. Recent research in the UK has shown that  for web sites, the golden ratio can be harmful, making them harder to navigate.

Brian Krebs writes in the Washington Post about an online interview with someone who setup a botnet of 30,000 Windows PCs  by downloading malicious source code and making it into a worm.The main reason is unpatched Windows that lack security fixes. Slashdot has a discussion on this.

Brian Krebs of the Washington Post has a very telling article on the spyware and adware industries, and the botnets that are setup to serve them by shady individuals and operations.

The article has an interview of a 21 year old high school dropout who goes by the name of 0x80 who runs a botnet, and 180 Solutions, a company that distributes its pop ads by spyware/adware that is installed by the likes of 0x80.

Although these are bad uses of a botnet, akin to using it to send spam, they are not the worst. Other botnets are used for phishing, the practice of tricking users into giving the credentials for their bank, Paypal or eBay accounts, or demanding a payment lest a denial of service attack be launched on a site.

Searching Google for the proper name Khalid returns this web site in the top 10. Of course, having a non Anglo-Saxon name helps a bit.Also, see this post, and comments, on Om Malik's web site about other geeks on Google. Or you can read more about what the name Khalid means.