Matt Croydon::Postneo

Day: August 24, 2005

  • WordPress Trackback Validator Plugin

    I just saw the WordPress Trackback Validator plugin fly by my aggregator and immediately installed it. I knew Dan online back in middle school, so with this endorsement, I installed it instantly:

    The Computer Security Lab at Rice just released the first public version of the Trackback Validator plugin for WordPress blogs. Since I’ve been using it, I’ve had 100% classification accuracy on Trackbacks (read: every legit Trackback makes it through, not a single spam Trackback). Maybe Trackback isn’t quite so dead after all.

    The system checks to make sure that the URL of the trackback links to your page. This reminds me a lot of Sam Ruby’s feedback mechanism. As a bonus, there’s a great use of sparklines in the plugin page.

  • Google Talk: One IM Identity Among Many

    Gaim Servers

    So I’m cautiously optimistinc about Google Talk rocking the house. Their choice of protocols is superb. The voice stuff is very cool but is something I will probably have to do without until the chat protocol is documented and/or the fine folks ag Gaim add it to their app.

    Unfortunately talk.google.com is a bit of a walled garden, though it looks like they’re going to open up gateways with a few select partners, including the I-think-they’re-cool Gizmo Project. What would be really cool though (and is not mentioned at all in the FAQs) is a Skype/Gizmo/Etc-style GoogleOut and GoogleIn service. Perhaps this could be as simple as a partnership with the Gizmo guys or as intricite as rolling their own solution.

    For now anyway, talk.google.com is one of many (now seven) different IM servers I connect to every day. I had a need for a home and away AIM account before that was baked in to that service, and now I answer to both, so they’re there. I don’t actually use my jabber.com account a whole lot but the others (MSN, Yahoo!, jabber.org.uk) get enough use that I should really be connected to if I’m online.

    Sure, I’d love to connect to one server and have everyone on the planet be able to reach me, but until that happens, I’ll be on all 7.

  • Google Talk

    (23:13:21) gmail.com: The broken link has been fixed. Thanks for being our first users!

    Let the talk begin! I used these instructions for Gaim to get online last night after Russ popped on and let me know that all the cool kids were using Google Talk.

    Per usual the official client is Windows only, but since they’ve done the smart thing and used XMPP (Jabber), you can point just about any client at it and away you go. The setup (at least in Gaim) is a bit non-standard, but it works.

    I really want to sniff some packets on a windows box to see how they’re integrating the VOIP stuff over XMPP. Hopefully they’ve done the right thing again and are using SIP.

    Update: At this time it looks like Google does not provider any server to server connections and (to my knowledge) no gateways to the outside world. Please stay within the walled garden, and don’t stand on the grass. This seems to contradict a lot of the “user choice” and “open communication” bits scattered throughout the rest of the page.

    Their developer FAQ is interesting though. They’re using custom XMPP signalling to a soon-to-be-documented peer-to-peer chat protocol that just happens to work with iChat. They support a bunch of protocols too and are thinking about speex too.

    It looks like their first connections with the outside world will be federations with Sipphones Gizmo project and EarthLink’s Vling services. There’s no GoogleOut or GoogleIn at this time.

    You can find me at first initial last name (all one word) at gmail dot com.