So the war continues between the two Giants of the Tech world. Once again Microsoft and Google have battled it out…this time in the ADVERTISING WORLD? I’ve reported earlier in the month on how Google and MySpace have connected on a $900 Million Dollar Advertising deal but I don’t believe I mentioned that Microsoft was trying to get that deal before Google, so I’ve been hearing. Apparently MySpace said “bug off” and Google got the deal for a “few more dollars”. Well, apparently Microsoft decided to go to “the next big thing”: Facebook.com …but is it REALLY the next big thing? While neither Microsoft nor Facebook.com have given details on the Price of this deal – sources say it was for approximately $750 Million.

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I won’t lie… I wanted to purchase one of those GREAT SOUNDING Packages for “AdSense Ready” Websites with 30,000 Articles, ready to go for anybody for only $99.00! Sound too good to be true?

If you thought it did – you are dead on. Made For AdSense website companies who sell these packages are overselling these products like crazy, but lying to you in their sales pitch. Each company stresses that they “DO NOT” Oversell their packages, yet they OBVIOUSLY DO! Everywhere I go I see the same trashy websites with the same overly used garbage articles. And the poor saps who purchase these packages might make $10 back, if they’re lucky enough not to get banned by Google… who is coming down on these MFA Sites.

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I found a cool new Search Engine today called: www.Surchin.com and so far it’s awesome. I like how it shows results for the searches. Give it a shot – it’s well worth the 2 minutes to do so (if that)!

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So most of you know by now about the AOL Search Data Leak… I was reading a blog today (I would link to it but I accidently closed the tab and can’t remember the link – sorry to the guy/girl who owns that blog!) and I found a link to this result showing a guy searching for some rather “unusual” information. I hope it didn’t turn out to be as bad as it looks!???

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Everywhere I look lately it seems that Google, Microsoft or another gargantuan Corporation is throwing hundreds of Millions of Dollars into sites such as Facebook.com, MySpace.com, etc. while sites such as YouTube are being reported to be making huge ad impacts lately as well. It’s a huge Social Networking market out there… just not for Adult Social Networking sites apparently lol

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Wow… alot of stress over the past few weeks with plenty of thoughts of Cancer. I did the colonoscopy and the EGD, along with the Bloodwork on Monday. My doctor told me everything looked good, blood count was normal, etc, etc. Although I still have the CTScan to do – but WOW I feel GREAT knowing everything looks good so far. Mentally I feel like a years worth of weight has been lifted off of my shoulders. I was in so much pain yesterday and felt so sick that I couldn’t enjoy a free lunch at Red Lobster but I boxed it up and took it home and ate it about 20 minutes ago today! I’m feeling great right now and I feel like life gave me something new today… mentally I feel GREAT.

Thanks to the few people that were worried but everything is good now! Hopefully the CATScan comes out good too!

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It’s been about a week since my last post so I figured I’d write a quick post until I can think of something else to write about. I’ve been stressing out about Thursday – which is my Doctors appt – because of all the stuff I have to do. I hate being “put under” by medicine and I know I’m going to be stressing like crazy all night tonight… I’m hoping they don’t find anything because (to be honest) I’m scared as hell of the whole cancer thing… I haven’t eaten since monday night and won’t be able to eat anything but clear liquids until thursday after the tests.

Like Homer Simpson says: “me hungy”.

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Cal Evans recently interviewed George Schlossnagle and you can read the interview at Zend.com: http://devzone.zend.com/node/view/id/799

It’s a great read. I’m still amazed at how OmniIT has all those guys working at the same place!

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It still amazes me how many people seem to use addslashes() in their PHP projects rather than using mysql_real_escape_string(). Now, don’t get me wrong – I know that I have used addslashes in the past – but that was when I was a pure n00b in PHP! I’ve been using mysql_real_escape_string for quite a while now for many reasons. For one, when using MySQL you should be using the Native functions, if possible, to add slashes … it just makes sense. I feel that there’s too many books out there teaching n00bs, along with too many n00bs teaching n00bs how to program like this.

These people are usually the same people using $_REQUEST rather than $_GET or $_POST. It’s pure laziness and it erks me to see it.

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I’ve been big on Security over the past 6 months or so and I’ve pretty much adopted the Chris Shiflett method of securing User Passwords. It just seems to work for me mentally and physically – meaning I don’t feel stressed out about Passwords being stolen as easily.
Example:

$clean = array();

$clean['username'] = $_POST['username'];

$clean['password'] = $_POST['password'];

$salt = ‘CLENARD’;

$password = $salt . md5($clean['password'] . $salt);

?>

Of course that’s a simple example and one that Chris Shiflett explains in several examples but it’s pretty similar to what I’ve been using.

How do you secure your passwords? How do you filter your Data? I’m no PHP Expert and never claimed to be… but I love hearing how others secure their passwords. I used to use SHA1 because people claimed md5 reverse engineering was easy to do, which I no longer believe. I’ve tried many “engines” to test MD5 hashes and only one password actually worked out of hundreds I’ve tried.

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