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Hurrah for Silicon Alley Insider: Time For Bank CEOs Like Wachovia’s Ken Thompson To Step Down — If CEOs get rewarded when companies like Washington Mutual, Citigroup (C), Wachovia, UBS, Merrill Lynch (MER), Morgan Stanley, GE (GE), Bear Stearns (BSC), et al, gamble and win–and, boy, do they get rewarded–then they should get punished when the same gambles lose.

Short, sweet, and to the point.

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Finally getting around to implementing linkback functionality for my links…for links in new posts, I’ll test pingback, stop there if it works, and try trackback if pingback isn’t enabled. Thanks to Teli Adlam for a very clear tutorial on linkback (esp. ettiquette), and an URL to test against without being considered evil. Also to Mathieu Fenniak and Matt Croydon for the pingback and trackback libraries I’m using, respectively.

I’ll make my home-grown script available once…well, it’s completely working. *grin* Also a good opportunity to resurrect my source repository, in which I’m now using mercurial rather than subversion. Distributed version control rocks, folks. I’ll never go back to anything else (where I have a choice). I love me some subversion, don’t get me wrong…but mercurial makes version control even better.

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Cool…it’s official; Flickr is now for video sharing as well! I like the model…it’s for pros only (helps with the bit o’ cash flow, and Flickr Pro is actually totally worth $25 a year), and 90 seconds or less — which captures probably 75%+ of what I’d want to share anyway. Plus, I have blip.tv for long form. Actually, this should help me move casual sharing material OFF of blip…those guys should actually be pleased with Flickr’s move. IMO, it helps blip.tv to focus on what they’re good at (shows and long-form works). Flickr’s done a good job thinking this through, at least at first glance.

So, without further ado; here’s my good buddy Harry from work, helping me demo…

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I like Silicon Alley Insider’s take on Google App Engine, and I agree. The implementation is distinctly different than AWS; it’s more designed to allow quick, scalable, lightweight application development leveraging Google’s infrastructure. It imposes constraints on the developer, but in turn really gives them a leg up, making things like authentication, interop with other Google components, etc. almost transparent. Definitely more of a direct Facebook competitor than a AWS one (though at least indirectly, it does compete with any cloud-based system).

Don’t get me wrong…I think App Engine is a Very Big Deal. I do, however, agree with SAI that the initial blogosphere focus was on the wrong comparisons. Thanks to Silicon Alley Insider for some cogent analysis here. The article is definitely worth giving a twice-over.

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Just a quick note (it’s a hectic week)…I am very interested in Google App Engine, and I think it’s a intriguing addition to the big name cloud computing services like Amazon’s AWS suite and Microsoft’s SQL Server Data Services. Google’s entry here slants a little differently; it is less decoupled than AWS…more take-the-whole-thing approach than the S3, SQS, EC2 etc. options that Amazon provides for various tasks. So you have to like Google’s choices…luckily, they picked Python, with a side of Django, so I’m in good shape. Basically my web development platform choices, sucked up into the Googleplex, and backed by BigTable and GFS. Hell yeah!

So….I’m on the waiting list, and planning on downloading the SDK while I wait. I’m in the process of building a new Django-backed app right now, and I may very well port this thing over, and see how she flies…

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Thanks, and keep up the hard work: ’03 U.S. Memo Approved Harsh Interrogations — The thrust of Mr. Yoo’s brief has long been known, but its specific contents were revealed on Tuesday after government lawyers turned it over to the American Civil Liberties Union, which has sought hundreds of documents from the Bush administration under the Freedom of Information Act.

Nothing particularly surprising here, but that’s the sad part, really. We’ve known for a long time how screwed up we let things get in our zeal to fight the Global War on Nouns…but it’s still disheartening to read the actual flimsy justification behind this. How small we were; how small we are. We’ll answer to history, as always. Go out and buy John Adams on DVD, folks, ’cause the documentaries made about our statesmen from this period aren’t going to be quite as inspriing.

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I just finished listening to what turned out to be quite an engrossing Technometria podcast; an interview with David Ulevitch from OpenDNS. OpenDNS is an improved DNS system, with both performance and functionality enhancements compared to the classic, boring old Domain Name System. Ulevitch makes a good case for his service; ISPs (the traditional provider) don’t usually consider DNS a core competency, and often lack the resources to properly scale their DNS service as traffic and users expand. (Anyone who’s had DNS troubles with their cable or DSL provider will be familiar with this). OpenDNS devotes dedicated resources, development support, and infrastructure to optimizing their system. Makes sense.

In addition, they offer capabilities that are simply above and beyond what normal DNS provides. First out of the box is phishing protection; you can get this by just using their DNS resolvers (208.67.222.222, 208.67.220.220) without even setting up an account! OpenDNS runs the PhishTank anti-phishing site, and uses this data to detect and block DNS requests to known phishing sites (say, from accidentally opening a phishmail purporting to be from your bank). Great service; especially for less Net-savvy types. If you set up an account, they can go far beyond the defaults, allowing site blocking by domain name or by type (adult, gambling, etc.), URL shortcuts (help –> http://helpdesk.yourdomain.com, stock FOO –> Yahoo stock info for FOO), etc. Stats are available and allow deep analysis of your DNS use, and account management is flexible enough to handle either a single machine/NAT, or a large network.

Really quite fascinating. Like Phil and Scott on the podcast, I think I’m sold. It’s easy to try out…just change your DNS settings to the addresses noted above (OpenDNS gives very straightforward directions for just about any configuration). I went the next step and created an account, mainly for purposes of stats analysis. I’m not interested in domain blacklisting (other than phishers), but your milage may vary.

And with all that, OpenDNS not only stays free, but even has a business model! They offer ads on selected “domain not found” pages, monetizing some misspellings and typos (though they also fix the common ones transparently and without the ads). Pretty low impact, and apparently, they are profitable.

Thanks to Phil Windley for a fascinating podcast (as always), and to David Ulevitch for offering such an interesting service for free.

(Note: be aware that DNS-based internet filtering is just as imperfect as any other type is. There are multiple ways around it, and it shouldn’t be considered a panacea. Used with awareness of the strengths and weaknesses, though, it’s pretty useful, and certainly easy to manage.)