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CyberArtisans Newsletter Vol 4, Number 10 Welcome to the October 2005 issue of the CyberArtisans monthly newsletter! Our goal is to present information that will be useful to you as a website owner and as a user of the web. If these newsletters are useful, please forward this to a friend. To unsubscribe, follow the directions at the bottom of this email. This Month's Topics Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you. Recently a group of nerds who worry about privacy in the computer world noticed something curious -- some printouts from color laser printers had tiny yellow dots on them. The dots were very hard to see but showed up well using a blue LED flashlight and a 10X magnifier. It turns out these dots were an undocumented code containing the date and time of printing along with the serial number of the printer. A Xerox official confirmed that the dots were part of a government/printer industry project aimed at fighting counterfeiting. For the moment, only laser printers are implicated, but we suspect that it won't be long before this appears in inkjet printers also. There's lots more information at http://www.eff.org/Privacy/printers/, including a list of printers that do and don't have this "feature." Suppose you could give Google a complete sitemap of your site in a form that the Google spider understands, so you'd be sure that your entire site was crawled every time Google visited? Well, Google has implemented just such a feature. You can read about it here. Incidentally, we take issue with one of the statements on that page. About two-thirds of the way down Google says "Participating is Easy." Don't believe it. The detailed instructions span several long and very technical pages. Once you dig in far enough you find there are some shortcuts, but even those take some technical understanding. We have, however, done this for our site, so we know how it's done. If you want us to do it for yours, contact us. Last month we mentioned the TinyURL site that allows you to make a long URL into a very short one. But, someone asked, if someone sends you a TinyURL, how do you know if it's legitimate or if it will send you to a website that will try to hijack your computer. Good question, and the folks at TinyURL have an answer. If you go to http://tinyurl.com/preview.php and enable the Preview feature, any TinyURL you click on will first take you to the TinyURL website, which will display the original URL. At that point you have the option of continuing on to the site or not. It's an extra step but a worthwhile one in today's security-conscious environment. You don't believe Microsoft shares your pain when their software screws up? We have dug up documented proof that Microsoft is getting ready to share your pain. It's a video so a broadband connection is probably necessary. The beginning looks like standard marketing hype -- stay with it past that point. Want to see back issues of this newsletter? Go to http://www.cyberartisans.com/newsletter and select an issue. Jonathan Spencer |
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