The development team is currently compiling a task list and looking for suggestions from the community, which can be left as comments here.

Do you plan to be a part of Google’s Code-in contest, and will you claiming any of the WordPress tasks this year?

The new interface provides real time stats for clicks, views, and podcast downloads, which means you can start seeing what content is drawing traffic from feed readers, Twitter, and other syndicated sources as it happens.

The interface can be accessed by clicking the “Try out the NEW (beta) version!” link at the top of your FeedBurner account page.  According to the launch article, “The best way to see these real time features is to publish a new post and then switch to the ‘Last two hours’ view to begin seeing updates.”

At this time, the new interface is primarily for the showcasing the new real-time stats.  All other account actions will still need to be done from the old interface.

What’s your take on the new FeedBurner upgrade? Is this just what FeedBurner needs to bring life back into the service, a step in the wrong direction, or too little too late?

Speaking of security, the security through obscurity argument regarding the public display of the version number of WordPress in the source code was over once the code for WordPress was available to the public. Matt Mullenweg mentioned this in his post regarding how to keep WordPress secure.

Hide the WordPress version, they say, and you’ll be fine. Uh, duh, the worm writers thought of that. Where their 1.0 might have checked for version numbers, 2.0 just tests capabilities, version number be damned.

So, I’m with Google in that including the version number in the source code can do more good than harm. In order to receive these update notifications from Google, you’ll need to have a Google Webmaster Tools account with a site attached.

The majority of people in the WordPress community have continuously advised removing this generator from being seen in the source code as a means of security. Will this line of thinking continue, or will we see more people add or leave it in to take advantage of the updates from Google?

I am the owner of a midly popular community on Orkut with about 25k users. Since I was given the privilege of being a beta tester on Orkut, I had created a community called Calcutta many years ago and that community has since, taken on a life of its own. It is run by moderators who report to me and I log in every so often to perform maintenance and help the moderators out. My existence is not only a mystery to the members of the community, it is also the source of much speculation and conspiracy theories, which was fine and dandy.

The Orkut application itself is full of holes and though Google seems to respond to major public reports of vulnerabilities, they keep coming back. Support for Orkut from Google is almost non-existent with what appears to be zero accountability. If one plows through the Google help sections to try and solicit help, they are either faced with a page not found or convoluted help screens that barely ever actually lead to a form to request support. Pleas for help and more often answered by the “Orkut hackers” than by actual Google employees. The Orkut application is so dangerous that people do not click on any links that are not Orkut generated and even then accounts and communities are compromised all the time. Hacking scripts and techniques are easily found via a simple Google search.

Now I am just as selfish of an individual as everyone else. I barely cared about any of these issues until something bad happened to me that I needed help for. I was the target of a phishing attack on Orkut and I fell for it hook line and sinker. My Google login is associated with my Orkut login. As soon as I realized that I had just sent my username and password to a phisher (within a few seconds of me hitting enter), I changed my Google account password. But alas, the damage had already been done.

This is where things get really weird. Apparently, a group of “hackers” had taken over my Orkut profile and were making drastic changes to the Calcutta community. Emails, IMs and phone calls started to roll in and I was in full panic. I was immediately concerned that my Google account was still compromised and all my personal stuff in my email would be in jeopardy. I went into damage control mode. I changed all my authentication credentials for everything Google.My Gmail account seemed to be untouched but my Orkut account, which uses the same login credentials (I know that was my own fault), seemed to still be under rogue control.

In spite of changing my passwords multiple times, changing login names, changing email addresses and trying all authentication tricks to fix Orkut, the miscreants still regained control of my profile. Instead of falling for the FUD about viruses and worms on my computer (many well wishers who reported the problem to me suggested that I format my computer because i had a key logger that was sending my password to the hackers, completely untrue), I decided to do some research on the problem. The more I learned, the less confidence I had in Orkut and Google’s intention and/or ability to fix the problems.

Now the only reason I disclose this issue is because I have not only reported it to Orkut (and received no answer), it appears to be the same an age old vulerability and one of many similar issues that were purportedly fixed. You can recreate this at home if you please.

The Orkut application stores cookies in such a way that if your cookie is ever recreated by someone else or transmitted to someone else, they can use that cookie to log in to Orkut as you. forever. No matter how you change your credentials, you have no recourse of regaining control. So if you ever get caught in a phishing scam that sends your password to someone else and they recreate your orkut_state cookie, they can login as you forever. I will not go into the technical details but the link above discusses it. If you log into your Orkut account using Firefox, using a cookie editing plugin, look for a cookie called orkut_state and copy the contents. Then log out of Orkut. After logging out, re-add the orkut_state cookie to Firefox with the cookie editing plugin and then visit www.orkut.com You will find yourself logged back in. Now I have tried changing my password, using a different browser, using a different machine from another location and other tricks with the same cookie and I have been granted access in all cases. From my research, it appears that Orkut expires the state cookie after 1 day (other reports talk about a 14 day expiration) but that problem is easily circumvented.

So essentially, I am completely at the mercy of the people that have re-created my orkut_state cookie using my old password that I disclosed on the phishing site. I have tried to contact Orkut help, posted messages in the help groups, emailed and complained to Google, emailed and complained via the Orkut complaint forms and even tried sending messages to places that are not meant to be Orkut related. It has been over two weeks and I have yet to receive a single acknowledgment. Nothing, nada, zip.

I don’t mind telling you that it is despicable for a company like Google to run an extremely popular application with a complete lack of care for its netizens. While I acknowledge that Orkut is not the most important product that Google offers, I think Google should still stand by their product. I also acknowledge that the fact that I am in this mess is my own fault, but shouldn’t there be some recourse? Would Facebook or MySpace do the same thing? Are we all under the false hope that someone in these big companies actually cares about the people that use their products? Is the online world doomed to failure in circumstances or are we willing to make a stand only when it affects us?

Who can I contact at Google that can even pretend to help? I am NOT “negotiating” with the hackers who have control over my profile, which has also been suggested and immidiately turned down by me. Or is my community a complete loss because I made a mistake and fell for a phishing attack?

I am not sure how I feel about trusting my life’s contents to Google if this is how Google treats compromises in security.

Gears support in WordPress.com means you will be able to store all images and other web page components of the WordPress administration panel locally which will speed up access to those files while reducing unnecessary web traffic. To enable this feature, click on the TURBO link in the WP.COM dashboard area. This will be located in the upper right portion of the screen. You will need to have the GEARS extension installed before you will be able to take advantage of this new feature.

[EDIT] Rundown on Fool’s Wisdom of Google Gears Privacy concerned raised. Thanks Lloyd!

Google Summer of Code (GSoC) is a program that offers student developers stipends to write code for various open source projects. Google will be working with a several open source, free software, and technology-related groups to identify and fund several projects over a three month period. Historically, the program has brought together over 1,500 students with over 130 open source projects to create millions of lines of code. The program, which kicked off in 2005, is now in its fourth year. If are feeling nostalgic or are interested in learning more about the projects we have worked with in the past, check out the 2006 and 2007 program pages.

There are some big names on the mentor list such as Matt Mullenweg, Lloyd Budd, Joseph Scott and newly acquired Andy Peatling with Matt taking on the double duty of being the Mentor’s Mentor. Mentors act as administrators over a particular idea or project that is undertaken by a student.

Some of the ideas that have been proposed for this years GSOC include:

• Performance
• XML-RPC
• Web Forums Export/Import Standard and Tools
• WordPress Import/Export Tuning
• Trac Social Bug Tracking development
• Integrated Caching Solutions
• XHTML validation framework, which helps ensure that all output of WP (including templates) produces valid HTML
• Extending the search system to support more advanced search syntax, relevance, and external APIs like Google or Yahoo’s.
• Batch editing of post and attachment attributes such as categories, tags, author.

As you can see, there is good range of projects for the aspiring coder to participate in. If you are looking to hone your skills and are looking for a challenge, this is a good way for you to test your knowledge.

If you would like to see what was worked on in the previous GSoC, check out the WordPress SOC 2007 Google Group or the article within the Codex.

The Blogging World is agog over the (confirmed) news that Feedburner is being bought out by Google for 100 million. My congratulations to the Feedburner team and the VCs who thought this was a good investment. However, I have also been reading some disturbing rumors/thoughts that Feedburner might inject Google Ads into feeds. I cannot see Google imposing this on Feedburner users but if they do, they will lose me as a user. I choose to keep my feeds ad free and I will look elsewhere.

Google is reported to be cracking down on websites and blogs that have little content and lots of ads (or made for adsense type websites, a form of arbitrage). The NY Post reports that a number of users have been notified of being dropped from the AdSense program. I feel that this policing is just the beginning and Google will only continue to try and keep their search results as clean and useful as possible. I do not think most bloggers have to fear if they have content.