Miss out on the best of Lifehacker this September? Here's a list of our most-viewed posts of the month:

• Transform Your Classic Xbox into a Killer Media Center
  "Don't ditch your classic Xbox just because you can't play Halo 3 on it: nowadays it's easier than ever to transform that old neglected console into a Unix-based media command center."
• Find Out If Your Computer Is Secretly Connecting to the Web
  "If you are trying to track down why your computer is running so slooowwwly, try using this simple DOS command to uncover a possible problem."
• Yahoo Mail Innovates, Gmail Stagnates
  "Less than two years after their beta release, Yahoo Mail has begun rolling out of beta after releasing an onslaught of innovative feature improvements along the way."
• Turn Your Windows PC into a Media Center Powerhouse On the Cheap
  "If you've purchased a new Windows computer in the past few years that's running Windows Media Center Edition or Vista Home Premium or Ultimate and you aren't taking advantage of its baked-in DVR Media Center software, it's time we change that."
• Top 10 Wikipedia Tricks
  "Without a doubt, Wikipedia is one of the most useful and amazing sources of information on the internet--but chances are you aren't using it to its full potential."
• Install Third-Party Applications on Your iPhone
  "In less than two-months time, a persistent and merry band of iPhone hackers have been pushing out application after killer application for the iPhone, and hacking your iPhone to install those applications has become dead simple."
• Best Free Software to Unlock Your Favorite Hardware
  "It sucks that your favorite gadgets have more functionality than their default software exposes, but it rules that several software applications are built to unlock that potential for free."
• Top 10 Ways to Put Your Remote Server to Good Use
  "An always-on server can come in all kinds of handy for running automated tasks, syncing your data, remote controlling downloads and acting as a proxy."
• Soup Up Your Xbox Media Center
  "So you've turned your classic Xbox into a full-blown media center (or you're thinking about it) and now you want to add the finishing touches--like games, album art and streaming video--to your setup."

LookSmart seems be trimming their suite of search related products as they have closed the doors on the Wisenut.com website, which was once a respected search engine technology and helped to power LookSmart search.

Wisenet has been swept under the carpet for years as LookSmart has repositioned itself as a paid search network & enterprise technology, with a foundation of content driven niche portals and Furl bookmarking, so not very many people will be missing it.. except for Gary Price, who noticed the closing over on ResourceShelf.

Thanks Gary, I’ll be missing Wisenut too :)

Consider the question of Google's greatest business secret. Is it the algorithms behind its search tools? Or is it the way it organizes vast clusters of computers around the globe to answer queries so quickly? Perhaps predictably, Google won't disclose the number of computers deployed in its vast information network (though outsiders speculate that the network has at least 450,000 computers).

I believe that the physical network is Google's "secret sauce," its premier competitive advantage. While a brilliant lone wolf can conceive of a dazzling algorithm, only a superwealthy and well-managed organization can run what is arguably the most valuable computer network on the planet. Without the computer network, Google is nothing.

Eric E. Schmidt, Google's chief executive, appears to agree. Last year he declared, "We believe we get tremendous competitive advantage by essentially building our own infrastructures."

Process innovations like Google's computer network are often invisible to the public, and impossible to duplicate by rivals. Yet successful companies realize that maintaining competitive advantage depends heavily on sustaining process innovations. Great process innovators often support basic research in relevant fields, maintain complete control over the creation of every aspect of a product and refuse to rely on outside suppliers for important components.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sam Harrelson broke the story over at ReveNews that Jason Calacanis, CEO of Mahalo, has been confirmed as the keynote for this winter’s Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas, NV (February 24 to 26, 2008 at the Rio Hotel and Casino).

He must have received notice of that via email or twitter, because the official Affiliate Summit blog does not report anything yet. It does not surprise me though, because I can imagine how busy the Affiliate Summit staff is now, because of the first Summit in jolly old England, which is currently being held in London.

That will be an interesting keynote. Considering Jason’s history and opinion about search engine optimization, which Is also an important subject for affiliate marketers, am I eager to hear what nice things he might has to say about the industry that is infected with adware, email spam, trademark abuse and typo-squatting hehe.

I remember the keynote conversation with Danny Sullivan at SES Chicago 2006. “SEO is bulls$#@!” is how Barry spelled out what Jason actually said in his keynote transcript for Search Engine Roundtable.

[SEJ actually covered this first, but nice citations for SERoundtable :) - Loren]

You can download the audio from the Daily Search Cast web site or watch keynote conversation video on YouTube (three parts: part 1, part 2 and part 3). Search Engine Marketing Gurus made a condensed version of the keynote available for anybody who does not want to spend 40+ minutes watching/listening to the whole thing.

The keynote followed another attack on the SEO industry from his blog, which remains a recurring thing since then. If he really means it or if it is just a marketing trip to draw attention to his own search project Mahalo is not clear, but no matter what the case might be, one thing is sure. Jason did not make many friends in the search engine marketing space since end of last year.

Affiliate marketers are still somewhat neutral when it comes to the opinion about whether or not Jason is a good or bad person. I wonder if that will change next year. If he had that kind words for the SEO industry, which had far less issues than affiliate marketing, I would honestly be surprised if he turns out being an evangelist of performance marketing. I can’t wait to see that.

Cheers!
Carsten Cumbrowski
Internet marketing and web development resources portal at Cumbrowski.com for small-business entrepreneurs and corporate marketers.

Sergey Brin is telling employees to stop making old products and start improving new ones. "For example, said Chief Executive Eric Schmidt, Google plans to combine its spreadsheet, calendar and word-processing programs into one suite of Web-based applications."

More blogs, more ads, more freedom

Google and Microsoft went toe-to-toe yesterday on Capitol Hill, jawing over Google's proposed $3.1bn merger with online ad firm DoubleClick.…

[Photo from Dvorak.org, which broke the story]

These black Volkswagon Beetles with video cameras mounted on them have been seen patroling the streets of London, capturing footage of unsuspecting innocents. Is Google behind this?

Expect Google Street Views of London popping up sometime soon on Google UK.

PartyChat is like a group chat, except that it's less obtrusive and persistent across different login sessions.

For example, say your friends are in a party chat named "drivel". To enter the chat, IM partychat@gmail.com with the line "/enter drivel." After that, you'll receive messages sent in "drivel" from partychat@gmail.com and all messages you send to partychat@gmail.com will be broadcasted to your friends in "drivel."

If you log out of Google Talk and then log back in, you're still in the party chats you were in prior to logging out. To leave a party chat, IM "/leave" or "/exit" to the address you were chatting with (e.g. partychat@gmail.com).

Seems Google is testing using time elements in their search results, according to results found by Cheezhead, though the first comment was from Danny Sullivan who thinks the results may be related to advanced search.

Time elements could be an interesting filter when dealing with news or blog sites, but beyond that it promotes constantly changing your content. I would like to hear from anyone else that has seen this or people with comments on its use.

I started a thread here.

Google is testing the ability to search its web search by time, such as posts in the last 24 hours, week, month and incremental months and years.

Freshness is becoming more of an important trait in ranking and more and more sites are adding blogs, news rooms and articles to keep up with the demand. With Google consolidating its blog, news and other search channels into one Universal search, the demand to search by day or time becomes more important.

Here’s a screenshot from Cheezhead :

In the recent days, an unusually high amount of Google-related security issues have been reported on the web. For instance, one developer was reportedly able to insert a backdoor into Gmail by luring people onto a specially prepared webpage, exposing private data. In not all, but many of these exploits, the problem is that your Google Account cookie can be stolen via so-called cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks; “cross-site”, because the cookie info wanders from Google.com (where it’s supposed to be read) to SomeRandomAbuserDomain.com (where it’s not supposed to be read). Basically, such an attack can be executed when someone finds a way to publish their own, free-style HTML/ JavaScript onto any *.google.com domain (like Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Reader, Google News and so on).

Now, co-editor Tony Ruscoe stumbled upon another XSS vulnerability. By posting his specially prepared file of the Google Docs family which exploits a non-standard, incorrect Internet Explorer behavior, and then pushing me as experimental “victim” onto this file by sending me a link I clicked, Tony was able to get a Google Account cookie of mine, as I was previously logged-in to Google. (Tony did not need to point me to a domain of his, I was only accessing Google-hosted content; I did have to use Internet Explorer though, as it didn’t work with Firefox.) Google security has been informed about this vulnerabiliy and we won’t disclose how to reproduce this for now to give Google time to fix it.

Now, here’s what Tony was able to do with the cookie (as opposed to how a real attacker would act, he only did this after I gave him permission, of course):

• Read my Gmail email subject lines and the first words of my mails. This was possible by including a Gmail gadget onto iGoogle, using the extra-wide tab layout.
• Access my Google Analytics statistics, including stats of external sites that had been shared with my account.
• View many of my iGoogle gadgets, e.g. a Todo list.
• Access the full contents of my non-public Google Notebook notes/ non-public notes that had been shared with me by others.
• Check my Google Reader.
• See the names of my Docs, Spreadsheets and Presentations files.

Here’s what Tony was specifically not able to do:

• He didn’t see my full emails.
• He didn’t see any of the content of my Google Docs, Spreadsheets or Presentations.
• He didn’t see all of my iGoogle gadgets, e.g. a Google Talk gadget required another log-in.
• He wasn’t able to compromise my account login/ password, e.g. change it to then fully access my Google services.

Below are some of the screenshots Tony took while exploring my Google account:

In other words, this stealing from the cookie jar can be risky for the victim, but it must not be completely dramatic in all cases. Even so, it’s another reminder how the growingly powerful Google Account framework not only offers more power to lazy people (you don’t need to sign-in to Google services over and over), but also more power to abusers. All that’s needed to start most of these attacks is a bug or oversight in one of the many Google services, and a victim who visits a prepared webpage. If you want to be save from this, you can always log-out of your Google account when not using Gmail and other services, and try to not view pages you don’t trust (and try not to follow to pages you may think you trust, but which have been sent to you by non-trusted people).

[By Philipp Lenssen | Original post | Comments]

Google say they acquired “certain assets and technology of Zingku,” the Google Operating System blog reports. Here’s what Zingku does, according to their About page:

<<Our service is designed from the mobile phone, outward, allowing you to create and exchange things of interest ranging from invitations to “mobile flyers” with friends in a trusted manner. On the mobile phone, Zingku uses standard text messaging and picture messaging features that come with every phone. On the web, our service uses your standard web browser and instant messenger. There is nothing to install.>>

It’s a bit like a mobile social network and communication platform, supporting polls, RSS to SMS converters, mobile photo sharing and more.

At this time, sign-ups for new users are frozen while Zingku integrates with Google; existing users get the chance to opt out of the move until October 4th.

[By Philipp Lenssen | Original post | Comments]