Category Archives: Computers

Tool to View DNS SRV Records for XMPP

Posted on 2011/08/04 by Mark Doliner

I wrote a crummy tool that displays the current DNS SRV records for a given XMPP domain. After writing it I discovered that Olark has already created something similar. My tool attempts to do some really basic sanity checks and … Continue reading →

Posted in Computers, Pidgin | 4 Comments

No Summer of Code for Pidgin This Year

Posted on 2011/03/12 by Mark Doliner

Pidgin/Finch/libpurple/Instant Messaging Freedom, Inc. didn’t apply to be an organization in Google’s Summer of Code (GSoC) this year. Why not? The short answer is that I didn’t feel we had enough developers willing to mentor students for it to be … Continue reading →

Posted in All, Computers, Pidgin | 1 Comment

HTTPS User Guide

Posted on 2010/12/13 by Mark Doliner

In light of my previous post where I talk about how it’s relatively easy to commit a man-in-the-middle attack, I feel like I should explain how people can protect themselves. If you’re typing information that you consider private (typing your … Continue reading →

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Man-in-the-Middle Attacking

Posted on 2010/12/05 by Mark Doliner

Fair warning: This is somewhat technical. Introduction I recently wondered how hard it is to perform a man-in-the-middle attack. The login forms for Facebook, Twitter, Pandora and countless others submit login credentials using HTTPS, however, the forms themselves are served … Continue reading →

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Using Amazon Mechanical Turk for Translating Computer Software

Posted on 2010/09/13 by Mark Doliner

Summary It’s possible to translate software using Amazon Mechanical Turk, but it’s not ideal. What is Amazon Mechanical Turk? It’s a web site run by Amazon (yes, the shopping company). Anyone can create an account and post some questions or … Continue reading →

Posted in All, Computers | 3 Comments

Planned One Laptop Per Child Tablet

Posted on 2010/06/06 by Mark Doliner

I’ve mentioned the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project before. It’s very interesting to me. Originally the project set out to create a $100 laptop (that may have even been the original name of the project?). They did manage to … Continue reading →

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Meebo Announces XAuth

Posted on 2010/04/20 by Mark Doliner

On Monday Meebo announced something called XAuth (not to be confused with the X Windows authorization program). What is it? It’s a small JavaScript library intended to be used by website developers to tailor a web page to a specific … Continue reading →

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AOL, AIM and Openness

Posted on 2010/04/02 by Mark Doliner

When I started working on Pidgin eight years ago (eight years‽ holy crap!) my main focus was the code used to connect to AIM and ICQ. The protocol is called ‘OSCAR,’ and it is a proprietary protocol created by AOL. … Continue reading →

Posted in All, Computers, Pidgin | 7 Comments

Google and China

Posted on 2010/03/25 by Mark Doliner

(This is probably old news for anyone who stays abreast of tech news, but for everyone else…) A while ago I complained about China’s draconian censorship laws. In 2006 Google launched google.cn, a China-based google.cn search page with censored results. … Continue reading →

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Checklist for Keeping User’s Passwords Safe

Posted on 2010/02/15 by Mark Doliner

I recently wrote a series of blog posts about how we handle users’ passwords at Meebo: post 1, post 2 and post 3. Here’s a collection of that same information, distilled into a set of do’s and dont’s written specifically … Continue reading →

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