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Captcha – are you smart enough?

Kjell Arne Brudvik — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 19:02:10 +0000

I read a Norwegian news article earlier today regarding that spammers had overcome the current version of CAPTCHA that Microsoft uses at their services. And I can’t but help thinking that why are we fooling ourself? If it can be programmed then it can be reversed – end of discussion. Does it help? Not really, it only slow down the spammers, and make life miserable for the end-user of your webpage. Soon you need a doctor degree in typography in order to actually understand what the CAPTCHA is trying to tell you. Sure, it’s impressive to see what new ways they are coming up with to try to keep the robots out; but when I need to take out a dictionary to form words or look up on Wikipedia to figure out what kind of animal they just asked me to describe – then in my eyes its gone way too far.

It gets even worse, as I were browsing around the internet following various newspapers that had picked up this so-called-story; I found numerous services where they claim that they can beat quite a few of the CAPTCHAs out there; though there is one that really stood out; an Ukranian company – OCR Research Team. These guys have broken services like:

Friendster
MySpace
Rapidshare
Paypal

And thats just a few of the services where they have automated the CAPTCHA responses. We can only hope that someone soon finds a better way to tell man from computer; since CAPTCHAs really have outlived their role.

The OCR Research Team

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NimBuzz – Mobility is the answer

Kjell Arne Brudvik — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 14:39:18 +0000

So I stumbled upon a article in TechCrunch covering imo.im, not that interresting to me, but what I did take notice of, was NimBuzz. I got interrested as it could combine my contacts from MSN, Skype, Facebook and others, and then you could quickly and easily reach them through your cellphone. As I have a cellphone with WLAN abilities, that would mean you more or less have free calls at your hand. The installation took just a few minutes, so did the configuration – and before I knew it, I was up and running.

The user interface is quite intuitive and it doesn’t take long to get rather familiar with the way it works. One thing I do suggest though, is to edit the settings so that it will only display the contacts of yours that is online, if not – you’ll have a pretty huge list. Both chatting with your friends, as well as calling them (MSN and Skype at least from what I tested) works without problems. Now, the application is great on a ordinary cellphone, though on iPhone it’s pretty damn nice. Sadly I don’t have a iPhone myself, but a co-worker of mine tested it on his, and I must say I am impressed with how it runs there.

Some of the social networks/applications it supports is: Skype, Windows Live Messenger (MSN), Yahoo Messenger, ICQ, AIM, studiVZ, GoogleTalk, Facebook, MySpace, Jabber – as well as others. Go take a look at it and install it on your phone today, you won’t regret it. There is also a PC applcation for NimBuzz which easily connects your friends from the same range of IM networks.

Links:

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Spokeo – End of privacy

Kjell Arne Brudvik — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 16:55:35 +0000

While researching a bit about Pipl.com I stumbled upon a service, not publically available – but available upon signup and payment. This service combines an even more in-depth search covering a lot of social networks. Not only does it then search for given people, but it also then build a personal profile of you, what you do, friends, photos and similar. Sure – it might be nice to have it all at one place, but I am starting to feel more and more that we’re heading towards a world where “big-brother” knows all.

What networks does spokeo include?

Well it can track you over 30 different services, as well as any blog and/or website that has a RSS feed. Some of the supported services are as follows:

Amazon Wish List
Bebo
Blogger
Buzznet
DailyMotion
DeviantArt
Digg
Facebook
Flickr
Fotolog
Friendster
Hi5
iMeem
LinkedIn
Last.fm
Livejournal
MySpace
Netlog
Pandora
Photobucket
Picasa
PictureTrail
Slide
Twitter
Veoh
Vox
Webshots
Windows Live Spaces
Wretch
Xanga
Yahoo Videos
Yelp
Youtube

Are you spooked yet?

http://www.spokeo.com/

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