Archives November 2008

In the Twitter-Sphere, there has been controversy surrounding “Twitterank!” and its requirement of you entering your credentials.

This initially prompted this response and update from the Author of the tool:

Disclaimer

I’m not out to steal ur twitterz. Frankly, I wish I didn’t have to ask for your account info, but Twitter doesn’t offer APIs using any other authentication mechanism (according to the docs). So blame them. Read more about what I’ll do with your account info/data in the FAQ.

I will not store your password. I will only use it once to calculate your Twitterank.

However, that still did not stop these other blog posts:

Gullible Twitter users hand over their usernames and passwords – did you get your Twitterank yet?!

Is Twitterank Ranking Your Popularity Or Stealing Your Password?

And other ones.

I initially rebroadcasted (From a trusted source) the links to this very Data, however at the urging of a concerned Party – I took it up a notch and contacted Ryo of Twitterank directly.

He advised that they do not store passwords, nor is it being used as a phishing operation.

Though he does agree that people ought to be more careful about sharing their passwords.

Which brings us to the lesson for the day.  Twitter is a great phenomenon.  And it’s a good thig we have trusting well intentioned souls such as Ryo out there.  But remember.  Not everyone will be nice, and the next cool site (Which may not be trustworthy) could indeed be capturing your data, reselling your DM’s and any other number of things.

So do be careful out there.  At the moment I do retract initial concerns of Ryo himself causing any harm, but do be concerned with any Web Based App that you do not trust, as a mechanism for releasing your Twitter credentials, or any other credentials for that matter.

Thank you for your time, and if these details change, I’ll certainly be the first one to say “Doh! I’m an idiot!” :)

Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with Twitterank in any fashion, nor have I ever used its Services! However, I have changed my password just in case recently, so sorry @Guykawasaki I think I broke the auto-alltopper which would feed off of my account!

#Addition#

@axelator reminded me of this lesson – Wondering, Why is it we would do this? share our twitter credentials, trusting implicitly a site to do with one of our tools?

This is reminiscent of the early days of the Internet (late 80’s, early 90’s) which were Trust was implied.   A lot of you may not have thought that these credentials are indeed the keys to a kingdom, whether you meant them to or not.   Luckily, this was not intended with harm in mind.  But this is a wake up, this isn’t the first time, and certainly won’t be the last.

Be Careful out there.

Special Props to T_rank for this new blog to address the questions as well.

Also, think about your passwords – Sarah Evans makes it succinct here:

Do you share your password(s) freely?

Wow, another bombshell dropped us on by Congress! The clause that Small Businesses in Defense (and other) areas for a guaranteed budget allocation has been squelched.

This previous instance set some serious precedence with no end in sight.

(re: “Preferential Treatment” for minorities called unconstitutional a court has ruled)

So, fresh from the halls of Congress is this little gem:

“Small business program declared unconstitutional”

As Nick Wakeman has had to say,

I think this story is just beginning. Small business advocates will likely be on Capitol Hill explaining ways that Congress can address the court’s ruling. Some will argue that many socio-economic groups still are discriminated against. Another argument is that small business programs foster economic growth.

We definitely need that now.

Perhaps this will drive innovation in these smaller businesses in order to be more agile, nimble and able to take those monies from big business.   But without any major reform in addition to these new lines of ‘reform’ initiated from Congress and declaring things “unconstitutional” we’ll be stuck with more of the same, Big Business Wins, small businesses collapse and Monopolies all around!    The question is, who will be the Thimble and who will be the Car.

Good luck out there small businesses. It’s definitely an uphill battle from here.

You ever find yourself in the position where Twitter Tools no longer updates anymore?

The information is aged, old, ancient – Infact, even if you blow away the tweets displayed, the details on your widget do not seem to go away?

One way to get rid of the tweets it has cached are by dropping your wp_ak_twitter database.

That will result in clearing out the data in the database and in the sidebar, but it may not resolve your ability to actually update and receive tweets.

After I dropped the database, it took a considerable amount of time, but -eventually- it started actually pulling updates from Twitter as a whole – So good luck to you others out there, and hopefully you don’t have to drop your database like I had to!

This will intentionally be a short-post.

Trying to determine exactly what ‘limits’ twitter tools has, as it stopped updating 3 weeks ago and I had to drop its tables in order to clear out old stale data.

We’ll see what comes of this!

This exam is not ready yet! No Beta code to speak of.

But there is already talk about it, so the chances of there being codes.. Soon!

Until such a point, here are some study guides provided by the blessed Garth Jones!

70-635 MCTS: Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2008, Desktop Deployment

70-635 Study Guide

He’s even created a Wiki Page for Exam Prep and Review! so check it out!

So, special props to Garth Jones, and look forward to an update to the Free Testing Archive when we get that Beta Code!