What’s so great about Google Talk?
Everyone’s talking about Google talk, but I don’t really know why. It’s just another Jabber-using IM client that hooks into GMAIL and ties more users to the Google platform. The plan? A migration from to Google IM to GMAIL, or just yet another way to compete in a market you’ve never entered and don’t plan to release a strong product for. Probably, they’ll end up wowing a few users, converting a few others, and increasing their stock price, which is actually down $.07 as I write this.
The screenshots:
The main Google talk window. You have to first “invite” your gmail friends to be on your buddy list, and so far none of mine have responded.
It also, and quite annoyingly, in my opinion, notifies the user of new email which takes you to this stripped-down GMAIL interface.
The actual notification is done with an MSN-style widget. Way to rip off Microsoft, you innovators at Google!
The hidden scoop:
But what’s inside Google talk? Where did it get it’s VOIP solution? The answer is Global IP Sound, which you can find on the help-about page. How does it certify it’s servers? It uses an Equifax Secure Global eBusiness CA-10 certificate. Where did it get its implementation of the STL for .NET? From Dinkumware, Ltd., according to this copyright notice: Copyright (c) 1992-2001 by P.J. Plauger, licensed by Dinkumware, Ltd. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Did you know that Google Talk will automatically update itself from the information found in google-talk-versioncheck.txt? They use a 387-hex-byte key for verification, but checksums can always be faked. Google talk also includes a reference to this registry key: 226b64e8-dc75-4eea-a6c8-abcb496320f2, which contains version information about the product in the windows registry.
There’s also a list of IP addresses, probably the Google talk servers:
64.233.167.194
64.233.167.193
64.233.167.192
64.233.167.126
216.239.37.194
216.239.37.193
216.239.37.192
216.239.37.126
From the strings in the binary, we find the following mysterious path Software\Google\Cricket\Accounts. However, from other strings, we can deduce a lot about the internal build environment at Google. For example, from error codes like vector<bool> too long we know that they’re using C++ and the standard template library, but from Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library we see that they’re not using GCC. From encoded paths such as c:\cricket_builds\64\sources\googleclient\experimental\phone\app\statusmenu.h we can learn that some framework called “cricket” is used for their internal build development. A complete listing of source file names included in the binary is:
.\aboutnotification.cpp
.\asynchttprequest.cpp
.\asynchttptask.cpp
.\autodetectproxy.cpp
.\autoupdater.cpp
.\bottomtile.cpp
.\callnotification.cpp
.\chatlinkbar.cpp
../client\message.h
.\chatlog.cpp
.\chatnotification.cpp
.\chatview.cpp
.\contacttile.cpp
c:\cricket_builds\64\sources\googleclient\experimental\phone\app\statusmenu.h
.\contactview3.cpp
.\dialogs.cpp
.\drawutility.cpp
../../cricket/xmpp/xmpplib\buzz/saslcookiemechanism.h
../../cricket/xmpp/xmpplib\buzz/saslplainmechanism.h
.\gaiaauth.cpp
.\gaialauncher.cpp
.\mailnotification.cpp
.\phonewindow.cpp
.\pointerwindow.cpp
.\socketwindow.cpp
.\statusview2.cpp
.\toptile.cpp
.\tray.cpp
.\wsaasyncsocket.cpp
Other Takes:
Matt gives it a grudging nod, while Mark Evans thinks it’ll do, but just barely. Tom Keeting found an Easter egg. Liew loves it…
CU Store Programming WTF, in VBScript
Saw this while trying to buy books from Cornell:
<% @LANGUAGE = "VBSCRIPT" %>
<%On Error Resume Next
ip = Request.ServerVariables("REMOTE_ADDR")
ipp = Left(ip,InStr(ip,".")+7)
‘if ipp = "128.253.193" then
‘ crseurl = "http://cbslinux1.cbs.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/rgw/RBTRN/FrameBookList"
‘else crseurl = "http://twok1.cbs.cornell.edu/rboS/tx/booklist"
crseurl = "http://twok1.cbs.cornell.edu/rboS/tx/booklist"%>
What’s funny is the classic “On Error Resume Next”, the hacky ip-address extraction that will break on ipv6, and the attempt to match on and off campus users which will probably not be 100% accurate because I believe some Cornell IPs don’t begin with 128.253.193 (commented out), and finally, the if/else which has also been commented out. It’s also in VBscript, which probably won’t work on anything non-ie…
Adsense Plugin for Google Deskbar
Check out this nifty Adsense Reporting plugin for the Google deskbar:
It reports daily/weekly/monthly statistics for you Adsense account, including earnings, impressions, clicks, click through rate, and CPM, which is handy to have at a glance, I think. Here’s a screencap:
How is this actually useful? It’s not, but it keeps us adsense freaks from maniacally checking our daily statistics, which is a nice creature comfort. SEO value is slim, quality of life value is high!
Update:
There’s an edge case parsing bug for when the day rolls over from an old to a new day. When your Adsense account reads:
AdSense for content - No data available -
The plugin fails to recognize that there is no data and instead spews random HTML to the output window. Minor bug, easy to fix.
Update 2:
Fixed!
Tentative Course Schedule
CHIN 101 Elem Standard Chinese-Mandarin 6.0 COM S 381 Theory of Computing 3.0 COM S 430 Information Retrieval 3.0 COM S 513 Systems Security 4.0 COM S 565 Computer Animation 4.0 MUSIC 120 Introduction To Digital Music 3.0 MUSIC 333 Cornell Chorus 1.0 Total Hours: 24
Bloglines Down Again
Yesterday they had a database crash, and today at 10:31 EST bloglines appears to be down again. This is what I got before any sort of “Bloglines Plumber” page was put up:
Internal Server Error
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.
Please contact the server administrator, webmaster@bloglines.com and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.More information about this error may be available in the server error log.
In this regard, while people have been complaining that Technorati works only 75% of the time, I think they should be taking their wrath out on Services (with a big S) that people rely on more, like bloglines or Flickr, that go down. When technorati goes down, sure I can’t search, but if Flickr goes down, all my photos are lost, and bloglines? I’m cut off from communication.
