CoMagz Nir's column

What's new at CoMagz

Tue, 16 May 2006 05:01:24 -0700

Message To New Visitors

Linkadelic Magazine is an open blog. It's content is not run by anyone in particular but by all it's visitors. If you find interesting content that is relevant to the categories of Linkadelic Magazine, please submit it by registering and pressing the Submit link at the top of the page. If you put a complete interesting article with interest to our readers you are more than welcome to sign with your blog link.

How it Works: In a CoMagazine everyone can post stories, news, links or write a column. Other users read and vote on the content. Best content gets to the front page while bad content can even be thrown away.

New Interface

CoMagazines now have an updated interface with top menu (Submit, Recent, Hot ) that makes a cleaner look and easier navigation.

Youtube Movies

Youtube movies can now be integrated directly into the posts. To add a youtube movie click the 'video' button under the textbox on the submit page. Copy the url of the movie and it's there.

Looking for bloggers

We have a special offer for some bloggers with excellent content. Read about it here

The Ultimate Homepage

We have added a special CoMagz project that shows all the web buzz in one place. It's the Ultimate Homepage

The Ultimate Homepage shows you the headlines of major news sources like Digg, Reddit, Google News, Slashdot and others. All in one page chronologically ordered and updated live. (no need to refresh it, items come in as they are published).

Enjoy CoMagz

Nir Ben-Dor

Spammers Using Psychological Warfare Against BlueSoft Users?

Tue, 09 May 2006 05:03:42 -0700

I just received the email below to my spam folder. The sender address is someone @ntlworld.com and the 'to' address is nio0205 @yahoo.com which is definitely not my email address.

I'm totally confused about this email. It could be a regular spam/advertising email but on the other hand it could be a psychological warfare attempt by Spammers fighting against Blue Security and its users. For background about Blue Security and Spammers wars read here.

The email recommends a company that sells anti DDOS device and mentions that its founder is Blue Security CEO Eran Reshef.

The structure of the email is strange since in the company profile section it just mentions two executives. This is not a company profile so someone must have copied the company brochure or something and pasted Eran Reshef's details there.

Could this be a way for spammers to say -Eran Reshef is an expert on DDOS so he must have known that turning last week's DDOS attack on BlueSoft to Typepad will take TypePad blogs down ?

I really don't know.

The Email:

Skybox Security Solutions
Simulated DDoS Network Attacks and Network Intrusions

Customer Challenge:

Large corporations often hire consultants to conduct quarterly penetration (DDoS)
testing on specific segments of their corporate network. This testing can cost over
hundreds of thousands of dollars, and also exposes the network to many potential
disruptions. These disruptions are the result of the intense DDoS attacks testers
can impose on live networks in order to isolate vulnerabilities and weaknesses.
Since the network is constantly changing, and DDoS attacks are rarely dispersed
from a centralized location, the penetration test results often become nullified and
end up being limited to a small portion of the total network.

The Skybox Solution:

Skybox Security performs accurate and non-intrusive DDoS attacks across a larger
portion of the corporate network. The tests are modeled and analyzed through an
automated process via our large botnet network rather than manually performed on a
live network. As a result, the tests are repeated rigorously on a scheduled basis
without any fear of network disruption. Through DDoS attack and access simulation,
vulnerability exposures as well as security control weaknesses are revealed instantly.
DDoS attack simulation discovers all possible attack scenarios and reveals the step
by step process that an attacker or worm may follow. It illustrates specific vulnerabilities
to be exploited and network access traversed for each exploitable path. Access simulation
calculates network access privileges determined by firewall and routing configuration.
Our botnet helps characterize the interconnectivity between any two given points, reporting
not just whether access is possible, but also the detailed path to reach a final destination.
Based on these combined results, security personnel are able to determine what additional
DDoS attacks are necessary and where to deploy our organizations penetration testers.

Awards:

Info Security - Info Security Hot Companies 2006
The Wall Street Journal - One of the most innovative companies in 2005
Information Security Magazine - Product of the year
Network Magazine - Most Visionary Security Product
Network Magazine - Best of the Best in all categories
Secure Enterprise Magazine - Editor's Choice
Gartner - " Cool Vendor " in the security & privacy space
SC Magazine Awards 2006 Winner - The Best Security Solution for Financial Services
IM2005 Award finalist - Information Security and Product of the Year

Company Profile:

Eran Reshef
Founder, Chairman & CEO of Blue Security ( www.bluesecurity.com )

A serial entrepreneur, Eran is currently the founder, chairman & CEO of Blue Security,
the do-not-disturb registry pioneer. Prior to Blue, Eran co-founded Skybox Security and
served as its Chairman. Prior to Skybox Eran founded and managed Sanctum (acquired
by WatchFire), the leader in web application security. Eran holds a variety of security-
related patents that are based on his inventions.

Rina Shainski
General Partner at Carmel Ventures ( www.carmelventures.com )

Following a successful career leading business development and R&D operations in
high-growth software companies, Rina has been investing in software companies ever since.
Before joining Carmel she served as the VP Business Development at Clal Industries and
Investments where she was responsible for software investments. From 1989 to 1996, Rina
held several managerial positions in Tecnomatix including VP Business Development and
R&D Director. Rina serves on the boards of Followap Communications, Skybox Security,
mFormation and Silicon Design Systems. Rina holds a B.Sc. degree in Physics from Tel
Aviv University and a Master of Science degree in Computer Science from Weizmann Institute.

Contact Information:

2077 Gateway Place, Suite 550
San Jose, California 95110 USA
Phone: 866-6SKYBOX
Phone: 408 441 8060
Fax: 408 441 8068
Regional Offices (Israel)
60 Medinat Hayehudim St.
P.O.Box 4109
Herzliya Pituach 46140 Israel
Phone: +972-9-9545922
Fax: +972-9-9545933

Support BlueSecurity Now - It's Your Chance To Fight Spam Back

Tue, 02 May 2006 11:22:37 -0700

In case you haven't heard, spammers have started to threat users of BlueSecurity Blue Frog. A company which is fighting spam by annoying spammers back. Please read below. Its your chance to help fight spammers and bring them down.

Background:

Blue Frog is a service that fight spammers on your behalf. They do that by giving you a small client software that adds a button to your email web page or client. This button reports the emails that you mark as spam to Bluesecurity.

BlueSecurity use your spam to fight spammers by requesting opt- out, reporting the spammers to authorities and demanding ISPs to block the spammers that use their resources. They do that in your behalf.

The recent developments, as reported in Slashdot is that spammers have sent threatening emails to Blue Frog users. At the bottom of this post you can find a copy of such email.

To my mind. Spammers are holding people's email hostage. This is outrageous and unacceptable for any web citizen. This situation can only advance in one of two ways. It is up to you to influence on which one of them.

Scenario 1: Users of bluesoft service will be deterred and leave the service. Spammers win! You and everyone will keep getting bulk of junk email and belive it's not our problem.

Scenario 2: Many users will join Bluesoft to support its fight against spammers. The spammers will get more and more annoying requests and complaints from users (via BlueSoft system) and will eventually find that spamming does not pay. In the long run spam will decrease and spammers will have to think twice before spamming.

Think about it this way: The spammers would not have sent the threatening emails to users if they did not get damaged from BlueSoft's service. The service must be working and hurt the spammers.

I call anyone who reads this and is not using Bluesoft service to join now. It is a real fight against spammers and you should join the good side and not sit back. The time has come to put a stop to spamming.

Nir Ben-Dor

CoMagz founder

Email from Spammers:

Hey,

You are recieving this email because you are a member of BlueSecurity 
(http://www.bluesecurity.com).

You signed up because you were expecting to recieve a lesser amount of 
spam, unfortunately, due to the tactics used by BlueSecurity, you will 
end up recieving this message, or other nonsensical spams 20-40 times 
more than you would normally.

How do you make it stop?

Simple, in 48 hours, and every 48 hours thereafter, we will run our 
current list of BlueSecurity subscribers through BlueSecurity's database, 
if you arent there.. you wont get this again.

We have devised a method to retrieve your address from their database, 
so by signing up and remaining a BlueSecurity user not only are you 
opening yourself up for this, you are also potentially verifying your 
email address through them to even more spammers, and will end up getting 
up even more spam as an end-result.

By signing up for bluesecurity, you are doing the exact opposite of 
what you want, so delete your account, and you will stop recieving this.

Why are we doing this?

Its simple, we dont want to, but BlueSecurity is forcing us. We would 
much rather not waste our resources and send you these useless mails.


Its simple, we dont want to, but BlueSecurity is forcing us. We would 
much rather not waste our resources and send you these useless mails, 
but do not believe for one second that we will stop this tirade of emails 
if you choose to stay with BlueSecurity.
Just remember one thing when you read this, we didnt do this to you, 
BlueSecurity did.

If BlueSecurity decides to play fair, we will do the same.

Just remove yourself from BlueSecurity, and make it easier on you.

Sharlene Teague

Linkadelic it! button - new feature added to CoMagz Linkadelic Magazine

Wed, 01 Mar 2006 12:03:56 -0800

New feature added to Linkadelic Magazine, Linkadelic it! Button.

What is Linkadelic It button?

By a simple drag and drop, you can put the Linkadelic It button on your browser bar. When you visit an interesting website that you want to submit to Linkadelic Magazine recommended links section, you simply press the Linkadelic it! button.
A window will open with the Add Link page of Linkadelic Magazine, and the title of the page and its URL will be in the right boxes. You only need to add the website description and a picture if you want and submit it. Linkadelic it! Is a real time saver and a cool feature.

How it works

1) Register to Linkadelic Magazine, this entitles you to submit articles, news link recommendations or write a column.

2) Find the Linkadelic it ! link on the left side (see picture) and drag it with your mouse to where your links and bookmarks buttons are located. Place it next to one of the buttons. (See image 2).

<< Linkadelic it link

drag the Linkadelic it Link to the browser bar and place it as in the example below. (you will probably have other buttons on the buttons bar).

3) When you visit a website which may be of interest to the rest of Linkadelic Magazine readers, simply press the Linkadelic it! Button on your browser. You will see a new window with the Submit Link form of Linkadelic Magazine. You will also find that the title and the link to the site you are recommending (the URL) were automatically filled for you.

4) Write a description of the website, select the categories and add an image (screenshot or logo). Then press Preview, check the result and press submit.

Tips:
1) If you do not succeed in placing the Linkadelic it! button on your browser toolbar, right-click the Linkadelic it! link and select Add to favourits . Place it under Links folder if you use IE or Bookmarks Toolbar folder if you use Firefox.

2) If you still experience problems with placing the Linkadelic it! button on your browser toolbar or with activating it. Disable the popup blocker you have temporarily (Alexa toolbar, Google Toolbar and many others have popup blocker. Popup blockers usually have a button which enables popups temporarily.

3) If you have further questions, use the contact us form to write to us and we will do our best to help

A brief on recent CoMagz mentionings elsewhere on the web

Thu, 16 Feb 2006 06:01:28 -0800

Here is a brief on where CoMagz was featured recently

J- walkblog pointed to an article in CoMagz

http://j-walkblog.com/index.php?/weblog/ comments/advances_in_subliminal_manipula tion/

Digg Watch Blog mentioned CoMagz Linkadelic Coolprojects #2 - Digg Buzz Alert

http://www.diggwatchblog.com/
http://www.diggwatchblog.com/digg-tools- digg-buzz-alert/

Web Marketing News
http://www.webmarketingnews.com/archives /2006/02/comagz-linkadelic-mag/

Yaniv Golan - Founder of Yedda.com and a great photographer. Check out the Flickr part. The photos are awesome.

http://yanivg.blogspot.com/2006/01/web-2 0-kicking-israel.html

IdeaTemple (German)

www.ideatemple.de/
titled as Die fiesen Taktiken der Manipulation

Daniel Cohen from Gemini VC bought 50 CoMagz shares at Alexadex
http://coheda.typepad.com/israel/

Linkadelic Magazine featured by Robin Good

Sun, 05 Feb 2006 05:28:55 -0800

Linkadelic Magazine and CoMagz, has been featured in the New media picks of the week list by Robin Good.

Robin Good, is an online publisher and new media communication expert that researches, writes and publishes on the effective use of new technologies for learning, business and social change. A successful art and design director, film and videomaker, radio broadcaster, DJ, TV producer, information designer, computer graphics and multimedia production specialist, Robin Good has set himself to be a pioneering interdisciplinary explorer of the unfolding new media revolution. His writing often challenges traditional assumptions and modus operandi with radical new ways and approaches to effective online communication. His mission is one of helping both individuals and large organizations leverage the infinite potential for positive co-operation that the intelligent use of new media technologies offer us.

Where to get images for CoMagz posts

Wed, 01 Feb 2006 08:26:59 -0800

The Italian blogger Robin Good has a great list of online websites with free images.

Find your favourite website and bookmark it for easy access to images for your CoMagz posts.

Check carefully before downloading an image, that it's actually royalty free and that it's licnse allow to show it on websites.

Link: Where to find free images

If you want to jump to images website now try http://sxc.hu which is the one Robin Good recommends.

New algorithm for front page of CoMagz magazines

Tue, 31 Jan 2006 23:50:53 -0800

A new algorithm was implemented today, which selects the items for the front page of a CoMagazine according to two factors.

1) The time from submission

2) The score per users' votes

The algorithm sort the articles per user votes, then punishes each article per the time it's alive. This way very good posts stay longer than lower voted posts. And all posts make way for new posts as time advances.

This change improves the front page of Linkadelic magazine by showing news in more chronological order.

CoMagz blog is now active

Fri, 27 Jan 2006 08:57:58 -0800

This post is officially the first one in the CoMagz blog. This is also my personal column in the CoMagz Linkadelic CoMagazine.

I don't consider myself a natural born blogger and I do not see myself posting often. The reason for this blog is to allow interested people to get a deeper view at the process of getting CoMagz running and on what's behind it.

In the CoMagz blog I will probably announce improvements once in a while, let you know of things which happen behind the curtains. And perhaps share some of my views about the way community magazines/ blogs/ media should evolve and the part which I hope CoMagz will play in this exciting field.

- Nir Ben-Dor

CoMagz linkadelic magazine is now open for your submissions

Wed, 18 Jan 2006 06:13:11 -0800

CoMagz linkadelic magazine Is an online magazine, written completely by its users, about what's cool and interesting on the web.

Linkadelic magazine can be viewed as combination of Digg, Wikipedia and ordinary online magazines. It takes users content, put interesting content first, all with online magazine touch and feel.

Anyone can submit news, recommended links, write articles or a personal column.

Voting of other users kick out bad content while bringing the interesting content to the readers.

Found something interesting on the web ? Submit it now.

CU @ CoMagz Linkadelic Magazine

Magazine subscription is accomplished

Fri, 28 Oct 2005 14:23:15 -0700

A new feature added to the site.

Users can ask for subscription and receive periodically (probably every couple of weeks) a "magazine issue" directly to their email.

Magazine issue is a collection of the best articles, news, personal columns and links per users' ratings for the period.