One of the hottest things to promote for the last year has been the Wow Sham offers. That’s why I thought this smoking gun article about him making it to jail due to a fight with a hooker seemed at least somewhat amusing:

“Shlomi said that when he kissed Harris, she suddenly “bit his tongue and would not let go.” Shlomi then punched Harris several times until she released his tongue. The affidavit, a copy of which you’ll find here, notes that during the 4 AM fight Harris sustained facial fractures and lacerations all over her face (she is pictured here in mug shots snapped following busts in 2008 and 2005). After freeing his tongue, a bleeding Shlomi ran to the Setai lobby, where security summoned cops. Harris refused to cooperate with officers, who recovered $930 from her purse.”

The article even includes the link to a pic of the hooker.

I guess it means we, the online audience, are nothing but a bunch of stoned morons.

Thanks Obama.

Chaaaaaaaaaaaanng!

Via Waxy links I found this gem:

You’ve seen in Google SERPs, how, when you’re logged in, there is a place to promote or remove a particular SERP. It’s the X or the arrow up graphic we talked about a few months back.

What the search engines need to add is the ability to completely remove certain sites from my personalized search results. Right now, when I nuke a SERP with Google’s “Hot or Not” button, it has no effect on future similar searches.

As a user, there are some sites that I just never want to see (for example: twitter, experts-exchange.com, and pdf-search-engine.com). Yes, I understand that as a power user, i can do things like -site:twitter.com; but I don’t want to screw with that for every query.

Plus, it would be helpful for parents. Let’s say we don’t want our kids to see certain sites in the SERPS. Again, I understand there are services like NetNanny, but I don’t even want the site to appear in the SERPs.

The solution is simple and obvious: Google should add a third button in the shape of a mushroom cloud to the SERPs that let’s users Nuke the entire site for personalized search.

PS: I just noticed that Google Chrome is not working with the Javascript elements of my wordpress installation. Sigh.

That’s one of the more interesting take aways from this interview at zdnet with Pwn2Own Hacker Charlie Miller.

It’s really simple. Safari on the Mac is easier to exploit. The things that Windows do to make it harder (for an exploit to work), Macs don’t do. Hacking into Macs is so much easier. You don’t have to jump through hoops and deal with all the anti-exploit mitigations you’d find in Windows.

It’s more about the operating system than the (target) program. Firefox on Mac is pretty easy too. The underlying OS doesn’t have anti-exploit stuff built into it.

They go on to say that Chrome on Windows is the most secure:

here are bugs in Chrome but they’re very hard to exploit. I have a Chrome vulnerability right now but I don’t know how to exploit it. It’s really hard. They’ve got that sandbox model that’s hard to get out of. With Chrome, it’s a combination of things — you can’t execute on the heap, the OS protections in Windows and the Sandbox.

I might have this bug and I might be able to get code execution. But now you’re in a sandbox and you have no permissions to do anything. You need another bug to get out of the sandbox. Now you need two bugs and two exploits. That raises the bar.

Worth a read.

Alexa ranking is one of the metrics people use to measure the size and traffic of a site. A better ranking will, at least in theory, make you look more popular and therefore more credible.

You probably spend a fair amount of time on at least some of your own sites. I mean, they can’t ALL suck – can they?

If so, there’s a simple, passive way you can slightly increase your Alexa rank. Toolbars, for the most part, are crap, but there is an Alexa fireforx addon, built by Alexa, that doesn’t suck that much. It’s called Alexa Sparky.

Alexa uses the data from surfers that install this Plugin and their toolbar to determine Alexa rank. If you install this addon, you will be increasing the alexa rank of all the sites you visit.

It’s that simple. So go ahead and add this addon.

We’re headed back to Germany for SEOktoberfest where planning is a relative cakewalk.

3 Days

22nd – 24th of September

First day -> Famous VIP tent Käfer Wiesn Schänke + After Party in famous P1

Second day -> A whole day in a luxurious spa. 6 massage therapists, pools and sauna (got the whole spa to ourselve!!) + dinner in one of the best restaurants in munich (”Die blaue Donau”)

Third day -> Schützen Festhalle (the No.1 tent for the local in-crowd) + After Party in secret location

There will be an email going out by next week to attendees of SEO de Janeiro and last years SEOktoberfest on how to book. This time, to get everyone in the same hotel, the rooms will have to be booked by all attendees and experts in the very near future (probably by around march 31st).

If you want to get on the wait list for the event, go ahead and contact me or marcus. The price, once again, will be 5000 euros.