One of the Wolves

The Open Planning Project just released a small community website for those in the greater NYC area: http://www.blockpartynyc.org

From here:

Block Party NYC is a new program by the New York City Streets Renaissance Campaign helping neighborhoods around NYC come together and enjoy their street, free from the usual hazards and distractions of automobiles. This summer, we’re providing mini-grants to over 30 block parties throughout the 5 boroughs, [as well as] the services of a professional urban planner to combat community problems like traffic, speeding, noise and air pollution.

Interested in meeting your neighbors? Getting outside? Having some good ol’ fashioned family fun? Well here’s your chance.

Work

I’ve been playing around with the look of the site in order to get more space on-screen. You’ll notice that the sidebar’s gone, and the archives have moved to their own page.

The one problem, which, depending on your perspective, may not be a problem at all: It’s hard to tell the difference between the main page (’/'), and a single post. For instance, go to http://www.oneofthewolves.com (you’re likely already there), and then click on a single post. Can you tell the difference? If you clicked on the first post, were you able to tell the difference without scrolling?

I’m not sure I like it, though I do enjoy the added space. Watch for more dust as I keep making changes.

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Since my previous post below, I received three spam email messages that linked to malicious content using Google’s ad servers. The first time was interesting, though the next few times made me think: Is Google the only ad service that allows this?

The answer is no. I went searching the net for online ads similar to Google’s, and I found some pretty interesting results. See a pattern?

Where known — or easy to find through a whois lookup — I’ve listed the company serving the ad.

1. Google: http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/ …. &adurl=http://www.oneofthewolves.com
2. Interclick: http://a1.interclick.com/ …. click.ic?http://www.oneofthewolves.com
3. EyeWonder: http://www.eyewonderlabs.com/ …. &click=http://www.oneofthewolves.com
4. Etology.com: http://pages.etology.com/gtbclk/ …. /15/http://www.oneofthewolves.com
5. MySpace: http://desb.opt.fimserve.com/lnk/?k=Nz …. href=http://www.oneofthewolves.com
6. http://adc.brandreachsys.com/ …. &Redirect=http://www.oneofthewolves.com
7. Tacoda: http://anad.tacoda.net/ …. //REDIRURL=http://www.oneofthewolves.com
8. ReduxMedia: http://ad.reduxmedia.com/click,JiIAA …. ,,http://www.oneofthewolves.com
9. DoubleClick: http://ad.doubleclick.net/ …. fhref=http://www.oneofthewolves.com

For some reason, it seems these companies don’t care that they’ll redirect to any site on the net. Granted, sites like desb.opt.fimserve.com look like spam anyway… But Google is a household name. Shouldn’t they care?

The one condolence I had in all this was Yahoo! For reasons that you might expect, the following link results in: “This link is not authorized by Yahoo!”

http://rds.yahoo.com/_…. /**http://www.oneofthewolves.com

Woot!

Bugs

I received an email this morning purporting I was the main actor in an embarrassing video online. The email — obvious spam to anyone tech savvy — insisted I take a look.

The sender was Bale Garnock. I don’t know a Bale, but from his (her?) email address, I could tell he was legit: myoshida AT ws.ipc.fit.ac.jp. (Please, if this is anyone’s email address, let me know!) I mean, c’mon: Who takes the time to alert others of embarrassing videos they star in? This guy must be my friend.

His email only contained one line of text, which got my attention. It said “Take a look at yourself :)”, all of which was linked to this address:

http://www.google.com/pagead/iclk?sa=l&ai=YJsnJu
&num=85998&adurl=http://scramignon.com/video.exe

Being as cavalier as I am, I decided to click it. What came up (unsurprisingly, of course) was a “video” I was asked to download. No website. No ads. Just a video.

Before actually looking at it — Hey, it’s a video of me right? — I noticed the link pointed to http://www.google.com/… Wow. I was pretty surprised.

From what I can tell, it seems a spammer was able to peddle their “video” through Google’s servers by simply editing a Google ad’s query string. (Look. I can do it too: http://www.google.com/pagead/iclk?sa=l&ai=YJsnJu
&num=85998&adurl=http://scramignon.com/video.exe

Being as cavalier as I am, I decided to click it. What came up (unsurprisingly, of course) was a “video” I was asked to download. No website. No ads. Just a video.

Before actually looking at it — Hey, it’s a video of me right? — I noticed the link pointed to http://www.google.com/… Wow. I was pretty surprised.

From what I can tell, it seems a spammer was able to peddle their “video” through Google’s servers by simply editing a Google ad’s query string. (Look. I can do it too:

Bugs

One of the great things about open-source software is that you can take ownership of it and make it your own.

Mel Chua, a recent intern at The Open Planning Project, saw my rant below — while also hearing me speak of it in the office — and took it upon herself to do something about it. During a presentation last week on “How to write Trac plugins,” she gave me and fellow coworkers a great introduction, smoothly following it up with a demonstration of a working trackback plugin. (No lie!)

I was estatic.

Through collaboration with Mel, Douglas Mayle and Joshua Bronson at The Open Planning Project, we’ve come up with a first implementation of  “tracbacks” within Trac (notice the missing ‘k’). In fact, Mel wrote up a great description here.

Along with the Tracbacks plugin, I used Mel’s tutilage and help from the #trac channel on Freenode to create what I’m calling “Trashtalk.” Trashtalk is, in a sense, the external version of the Tracbacks plugin, where it (enter: slogan) “records incoming links — url’s that link to each ticket — in order to gauge each ticket’s effect on the community.” Ever want to know who’s talking about your bugs? Well now you can with Trashtalk.

It’s in its early stages now, and there’s still more coolness to inject into it, but — thanks to Mel’s initial contribution — I get the feeling TOPP and TOPP’ers alike will feel more empowered to change their (bug reporting) environments for the better.

PS: A more in-depth showcase of both plugins may be on the horizon. You probably want screenshots. If I were you, I’d want screenshots.

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I’ve tried to write this post many times. I’ve tried taking different strategies, from telling a story-based account that led me to an idea, to being blunt and direct about what I was trying to say. I even tried using big words that act as “intelligence flags” for those who don’t understand the message. Though I made three tries, I was satisfied with neither.

Instead of trying to talk around a topic that doesn’t seem to have a whole lot of discussion — nothing that I can divine, anyway — I’m instead going to say it very cheaply.

Given these premises: …

1. Bug reporting systems are communication tools that aide people in talking about software defects, problems, bugs, etc.
2. Bug reporting systems intentionally or unintentionally become huge silos of information that don’t play nice with other software.
3. Bug reporting systems encourage communication that is formal, dry, and sometimes (most of the time?) uninteresting.
4. Bug reporting systems are not people focused.

… And, given this observation: …

1. Bug reports and blog posts are essentially the same technology. They are, at their core, a block of text followed by inline discussion.

… I’ve come to this conclusion:

1. Bug reporting systems are rather old technology, and their creators can learn a lot from the blogging movement.

What if bug reporting systems had trackbacks, for instance? Or a meaningful RSS feed?* Or maybe, “What’s new?” “What’s interesting?” or “What’s the hottest bug that we know of right now?” What if a bug report displayed who was talking about it (e.g., who linked to it) or performed the mundane task of figuring out which bug reports were related (again, who’s linking to it)?. Wouldn’t that make things easier? If there was a better interface — rather than the top of the bucket — that management could peer into, wouldn’t that solidify the role of the testing organization and help management keep track of their software’s status day-to-day?

Isn’t that bug advocacy?

This all stemmed from our use of bug reporting systems at The Open Planning Project. In short: One Big Bug Reporting System is unmanageable given many users and many avenues of input. Eventually, the silo will become too big. Multiple bug reporting systems are unmanageable given software systems that are tightly integrated. Eventually, a single bug will affect each system, and multiple people — whose hands are somewhere within each bug reporting system — will have to respond to it.

I almost hate to say it, but online bug reporting systems are the oldest Web 2.0 applications I know. So why have they fallen so far behind?

* Our system, thankfully, has an RSS feed, though my impression is most bug reporting systems are behind the times.

PS: I could be convinced that all I’m really suggesting is that Y generation testers will start advocating bugs to management through current Web 2.0 technologies, such as blogs. However, I wouldn’t be disappointed if some bug reporting systems learned from the blogging movement, evolved a bit, and became more open to information sharing across a large, interested audience.

My current open-source favorite is Trac. No guarantees, but there may be a new plugin on the horizon.

Experiences, Questions, Testing, Work

Quick tests show that timothyjcoulter.com is up and running. Things may be rocky for the next couple days, but I’m optimistic it’s working as normal.

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If you’ve sent me email within the past day, I have not received it.

This is because I messed with some server settings which seemed to be harmless; little did I know things were going to freak out, and my domain’s MX record would be erased. (As of this writing, timothyjcoulter.com does not exist).

I’m working on fixing this, and I will let you know when everything is up and running.

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