QTrax Broken

After a delayed launch, Qtrax is finally available for download. The only problem now is that http://music.qtrax.com is broken displaying the Welcome to Oracle Containers for J2EE page.

Not the greatest product launch ever!

Update:
News from Engadget:

The company issued a press release over the weekend saying it has (finally) signed up with Sony / BMG, Universal, EMI and Warner, but Wired did a little bit of digging and found out that Qtrax isn’t being exactly honest — spokespeople from all four labels flatly denied that any deals were in place.

Link to story

Cool Google Logo for the 50th Anniversary of the Lego Brick

QTrax Overwhelmed

Qtrax, claiming to be the first free and legal P2P music application, was set to launch today.

The site is currently unavailable due to overwhelming demand and asks visitors to check back in 24 hours. I hope they out buying some extra infrastructure.

Due to overwhelming demand, Qtrax.com is currently unavailable. Please check back in 24 hours to download the first, free, and legal P2P music application. Thank you for your understanding.

The service offers unlimited free song downloads which can be transferred to your iPod using the Songbird-like player. Other features of the player include music video downloads, album reviews and song lyrics.

Qtrax originally had to shut down in soon after launch in 2002 to avoid legal action.

Good things come to those who wait.

Update:
Site has been updated to say that the download will be available at Midnight EST. According to Google it is just after 01:30 and still no sign of the download. (1:32 AM Monday (EST) – Time in New York, United States of America)

Update:
Download is available!

Massive href hacks MySpace

<a href=”badplace.com” style=”position: absolute; top:0; left: 0; height: 8000px; width:1000px”></a>

The above piece of HTML code inserted into several MySpaces pages allows the download and installion of malware on unexpecting user’s machines. With the href being so large, should the visitor mis-click any link, they will be redirected to the infected site. The user might not be suspicious on a media rich site such as MySpace, thinking that they need to install a codec to view a video etc.

For developers like myself, this introduces a problem. The rule is never to trust any user provided content and remove scripts, iframes etc. With this exploit, we will need to validate all external links too.

Wonders of Africa as seen on Google Earth

Google Sightseeing has a great post on African animals caught in the act on Google Earth. Here are a few highlights from the post:

Small family of elephants in Chad	Huge flock of Pink Flamingos taking off in Mozambique	Hundreds of Tanzanian hippos wallowing in the mud

Link to a kml file containing hundreds of animals found in Google Earth
Visit the official Megaflyover and National Geographic pages.

Link to Google Sightseeing post

Ext 2.0 beta 1

The Ext team has recently announced the availability of version 2 of their popular framework. I’ve been an Ext developer for about 12 months now and am really excited by what version 2.0 promises.

Some cool Ext related links

• Link to the Ext blog post
• Ext 2.0 Change Log
• Filespots: an awesome new application built in Ext 2.0
  Link to Ext JS Forum post
  Filespots.com
• Ext 2.0 GUI Builder

Free Parental Control for the Web

Being the father of a young child I find the Internet a pretty scary place. Our child is still too young to understand what the Internet is but she will soon be using it as part of her everyday life. When she does start using the Web, I’d like to fully control the sites that she may and may not access.

Read/WriteWeb has posted an article on a new Firefox plugin that adds parental control to Firefox. Glubble fully re-skins the browser providing a simple and appealing look and feel and allows the parent to fully control the child’s online experience.

Once the plugin is installed, an administrator account is created along with accounts for your children. The plugin also let you set the level of each child, either for children who can read or for younger children who cant. Should the second level be selected, the UI is changed as to not display a URL and search bar but rather icons representing predefined sites.

Once Glubble is configured, Firefox will present you with a family sign on screen every time it is started. The plugin uses a preloaded white list of sites which can be fully maintained by the administrator account.

Online Code Snippet Repository

Code Snippets is a great little site that offers a online repository of code snippets. Anyone can register and post their favorite snippets. All code is tagged making the site really simple to use. There are currently only 29 users but I’m sure the idea will catch on.

I’m a big fan of Code search sites like Krugle and Google Code Search, but I often battle to find exactly what I’m looking for. The concept of tagging, the same as that used by GMail, is perfect and makes the process of finding exactly what you looking for really quick and simple.

Link to the site.

Feedburner

If you are a subscriber to my blog via a RSS Reader, please could I ask that you change the RSS feed to the following:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/wordpress/bjrM

Does the Internet break if Google Reader is down?

For a Reader Fan like myself, I’m afraid it does. It appears that Google Reader has been down for the last couple of hours.

Link
Link to TechCrunch Post confirming that Reader is down