VT’s Tech Blog

Have you taken a look at the latest from Google – Google Code Project Hosting?

Google Code  Project Hosting is an open source project repository similar to Sourceforge. Unlike Sourceforge, Google’s interface is clean and simple to use. They’re using SVN (Subversion) for source control.

Links:

• Google Code – Project Hosting
• Google Code – Project Hosting FAQs

Here’s a new image hosting service  from CNET which allows you to host images for your blog / site / ebay auctions. They also allow you to upload your images to an album if you signup for a webshots account.

Do take a look at their terms of service before you start uploading your images over though.

“.. When you post or transmit Content on or through Webshots you grant Webshots, its parent company CNET Networks, their affiliates and partners a nonexclusive, irrevocable, worldwide, sub licensable, royalty-free license to use, store, display, publish, transmit, transfer, distribute, reproduce, create derivative works of and publicly perform that Content on and through each of the services provided by Webshots. This license shall apply to the distribution and the storage of your Content in any form, medium, or technology now known or later developed. You may remove Content you have posted on or through Webshots at any time. When you do remove your Content, this license will automatically expire.”

Their license essentially states that in exchange for the image hosting service, they get a license to reproduce or create derivative works from your images as long as you host the images over at their site.

Link: http://allyoucanupload.webshots.com/

Nope, this is not a link to a fantasy site! The image above was created with nothing but Photoshop. If you’re interested in checking out how this image was created, head over to the tutotial over at:

http://www.cgarena.com/freestuff/tutorials/photoshop/lukx/yuka.htm

Here’s a cool site where you can test some of your XSS skills. You’ll have to go through all the stages of this workshop, if you’re able to inject a javascript through XSS to get the password to the next stage.

See how many stages you can  complete : XSS Workshop – Stage 1

everystockphoto.com is a source for free stock photographs. They’ve got a whole collection of Creative Commons and public domain photographs.
everystockphoto.com – your source for free photos

Zoho launches Zoho Show which is an online presentation application, which allows you to create presentations online. Here are some of the features offered by Zoho Show.

• Create your presentations online
• Import your presentations from MS Powerpoint & Open Office
• Invite people by email & control your presentations from remote
• Pull-in public images from your Flickr account in your presentation
• Upload images from your desktop
• Publish your presentations & have others view it
• Drag-and-drop text, components within a slide & in between slides
• Duplicate slides easily

With Zoho Show, Zoho has become the first AJAX-based Office suite online. Zoho Show joins Zoho Writer (http://zohowriter.com), their online word processor & Zoho Sheet (http://zohosheet.com), their online spreadsheet application.

I’m still waiting for Zoho to integrate all their services under a single sign on service. At present you’ll have to sign up for each one of these services separately.

Links:

Zoho Show
Zoho Writer
Zoho Sheet

Here’s a cool new search engine powered by Ajax. They’ve got Ajax powered “suggest” features while you type, you can scroll through your results using the arrow keys on your keyboard, view result pages inline and lots more…. check out Snap.

“Snap is a very different way of searching, one we suspect will take a bit of getting used to. As you can imagine, we’ve done a ton of usability testing in developing Snap and here’s what we’ve learned: while Snap isn’t complicated, it is a different way of searching in which a little bit of orientation goes a long way to increasing satisfaction. So, we’ve tried to help introduce ourselves to you in a number of ways. “

Link: Snap

A cool image gallery implemented purely in CSS. The images pop out when you hover over them. There is no Javascript used in this at all.
Link: Hoverbox Image Gallery

If you’d like to know how this is done, you can go through a mini-tutorial over here:

http://sonspring.com/journal/hoverbox-image-gallery 

Here’s another example of the same CSS method being used to create a menu system:

Link: Hoverbox Menu

(IN)SECURE Magazine is a freely available digital security magazine discussing some of the hottest information security topics. It can be distributed only in the form of the original non-modified PDF document.

In the latest Issue (March 2006):

• Best practices in enterprise database protection
• Quantifying the cost of spyware to the enterprise
• Security for websites – breaking sessions to hack into a machine
• How to win friends and influence people with IT security certifications
• The size of security: the evolution and history of OSSTMM operational security metrics
• PHP and SQL security today
• Apache security: Denial of Service attacks

Download Issue 6 of (IN)SECURE

Link: (IN)SECURE Magazine