Way back when, “link cloaking” referred to a Black Hat SEO technique (a way to get high rankings on search engines). I won’t go into the technical details, but basically the web page sends different information to the visitor based on who they are. In short, if the server detects that you are Googlebot (Google’s search indexing system which ranks content relevance) it displays “nice” information. This “nice” information would rank well, and consequently the site would be one of the first ones displayed in the search results). However, if the server detects that it is a human (i.e. you!), it displays “other” information (usually trying to sell you something). While an interesting topic in itself, that’s not what this post is about

Originally known as “affiliate link cloaking”, it has now replaced the Black Hat SEO technique as the assumed definition of “link cloaking”. As an example:

• This is an uncloaked link to Google
• This is a cloaked link to Google

If you click on the links above, both will take you to www.google.com.
But you’ll notice that the cloaked link doesn’t display the same information on the bottom-left of your browser.

There are many reasons why someone might want to cloak a link. The most common reason is for affiliate sales (where the affiliate gets a commission if they refer someone who ultimately makes a purchase). Under these circumstances, link cloaking does the following:

• Obscures the sale (so that you might not immediately know that you’re going to be buying widgets from company XYZ, until you actually click on the link and go to the XYZ’s site).
• Prevents you from “bypassing” the affiliate (where you remove the affiliate’s code and go “directly” to XYZ’s website). Doing so won’t actually save you any money. But because the seller won’t know which affiliate referred you, the affiliate loses out on the commision.

Anyway, without further ado, here is the code of my link.php file.

<?php
$path = array(
'123' => 'http://www.google.com'
);
$key = htmlspecialchars($_GET['key']);
if (array_key_exists($_GET['id'],$path))
header(’Location:’.$path[$_GET['id']]);
?>

Basically, this file compares the ID paramter (e.g. www.wandering.net/link.php?id=123) against the array. If a match exists (”123″ in this case), then it uses the PHP Header Location call to redirect the browser (”www.google.com” in this case).

To use, just change the HTML A (link code) from

<a href=”http://www.google.com”>This is an uncloaked link to Google</a>

to

<a href=”http://www.wandering.net/link.php?id=123″>This is a cloaked link to Google</a>

Simple

This morning, Google announced their free TiSP (Toilet Internet Service Provider) service!

Here’s an quote from the official Press Release.

Users who sign up online for the TiSP system will receive a full home self-installation kit … Home installation is a simple matter of GFlushing™ the fiber-optic cable down to the nearest TiSP Access Node … Within sixty minutes, the Access Node’s crack team of Plumbing Hardware Dispatchers (PHDs) should have your internet connection up and running.

It’s nice to see the guys and gals over at Google having fun on April Fools!

The pages probably won’t stay up after today, so here are the pages saved forever.

Google’s home page with the link to TiSP

Google’s Press Release for TiSP

TiSP home page

TiSP “How it works” page

TiSP FAQ page

If you haven’t heard by now, there’s a new search engine that’s getting abit of press. ChaCha Serach, is one of the newer and more popular kids of the block. The catch-cry is that the searches are powered by humans!

Basically it’s like a normal search engine (presumably using google-like relevance ranking) but after you get the results, you have an option of asking a “guide” for help. Which, then spawns a chat-window and the human-expert helps you find the answer you need. Further details of how the guide system works can be found here.

There are invitations floating around the Internet, for people to sign up as a guide. I don’t have the details, but I’m led to believe that guides do the work out of the goodness of their hearts (i.e. they don’t get paid) and can do it on their own schedule (which presumably means there’s alot of guides for each topic to ensure adequate coverage). I haven’t actually used the ChaCha guide system yet… I feel guilty to call them up just so that I can “test their value”.

For the record, most people are classifying ChaCha as a Web 2.0 Search Engine. Although, going back to human help would seem to make it a Web 0.5 Search Engine

For a tech-geek, I have to admit… I don’t have a MySpace account and wouldn’t know what to do with it if I did. I don’t understand the need to make “friends” with total strangers (I guess I was taught too well to “never speak to strangers!”).

As if I wasn’t far enough behind the “hip” crowd, along comes Twitter. The growth of Twitter is astounding, everyone’s talking about it, and everyone mother is throwing out invitations to join. If I were to summarize Twitter, it’s basically a public Instant Messenging service. The object (so it seems to me) is to put short sentences regularly and often about what you’re doing at any point of the day. I think it’s something to do with letting people know what you’re up to, although I haven’t quite figured out what other people are supposed to do with that information. Start a private conversation because you both frequent the same pizza joint? Try to meet you at some location? Stalk you? I just don’t get it

Anyway, this is an interesting picture that describes how Twitter fits into the grand scheme of technological-connectedness (yes I just made that term up).

While my view is in a miniscule minority, I am not alone. Other like-minded people (who explain Twitter much better) are: passionate and blyberg.

The simple act of registering a domain opens yourself up to alot of privacy issues. In it’s basic form, it allows people to harvest your email address for spamming. It doesn’t take alot of imagination to figure out how much further hackers can take it (socially-engineered hacking, identity theft, etc).

As demonstration of how readily available this information is, let’s look at who owns wandering.com. You’ll see that it is registered to Murat in Istanbul with his Yahoo email address, phone and fax numbers. Compare that to wandering.net’s records. All my details are hidden behind NameCheap’s WhoisGuard. I’m sure that my information is not perfectly secure, but at least it’s an added layer of protection.

I always get similar privacy protection for all domains that I register. When I was with GoDaddy I used their “Domains By Proxy” service (an “added value” aka “charge you more money” service). NameCheap’s WhoisGuard is free (for now). It doesn’t matter who you register with, but I’d always recommend buying the privacy service (now you know why)!