Tom’s Graphic Design Journal

Google Base is a wonderful new tool. It allows people to post useful information including reviews, classified ads, events, jobs, company profiles, personals, and more. This puts out a very powerful tool that directly competes with the infamous Craigslist. I personally think that Google Base is better than Craigslist. The organization and searching capabilities are top notch.

However, that and many other good things about Google Base are clouded now by the major problem I'm finding with it. Spam...Many people interested in search engine optimization will post links just about anywhere. Heck, they even have automated programs to do so! It's terrible and there's an alarming rate of junk posts all over the internet on various blogs, forums, and other sites. Link farms are another terrible thing that plagues the internet with pollution.

Is Google Base opening the doors for spammers? Will it become the largest link farm on the internet? I don't know about becoming the largest link farm; however, I certainly would argue that it did just a fine job of opening the doors for SEO spammers and "black hat" practitioners. I don't have to really say anything other than show this image to make my point here.

Despite the "report item" link, I think that many people will continue to get away with this kind of spam. I truly hope something improves and Google manages to find a way to at least remove the dupes because Google Base sounds like a very wonderful thing.

I'm in the middle of working on my out of date portfolio site...which always seems to be under construction. Fortunately I'm not applying for any jobs anytime soon - BUT it is something I mean to do. I feel lazy if it's not up to date.

So I wanted to use some effects from the moo.fx library because I'm in an anti-Flash kinda mood. While I like Flash, I think it's over used and used in very very non-efficient (or effective) ways.

Since moo.fx lacks good documentation, I created an example page to share with the world. I wish that I would've had an example/tutorial like this when I first set out to use moo.fx as it would have helped a lot. So hopefully it is of help to someone out there.

Check out my moo.fx fade example.

There's been a large buzz about Google's code search and at first I was amazed! Anxious! ...and all that good stuff. However, the more I looked at it the more I realized how many security issues it must cause. I did a quick search for things like "password" or "db_password" and tried to see if it would spit out passwords. It seemed to return results with passwords encrypted...was this done in the code? Or by Google? I'm not sure.

Possible Security Issues?
I was also alerted to possible security vulnerabilities with various software I use in relation to Google's code search. So someone must be using it for something malicious.

I don't know if one could steal someone's password, or if they couldn't now. However, I certainly think encoding your source code will become a more popular thing. Zend, Source Guardian, IronCube are among just a few wonderful ways to protect your code. I personally use IronCube and LOVE it.

Hurting Open Source?
My feeling is that the point of Google's code search is to promote open source software...But I think if people fear their sensitive data stolen, or if there is ANY sort of wide scale security breach caused by Google code search, then people are going to turn to encrypting their code. This ultimately will hurt open source efforts...So could Google code search defeat the entire purpose of open source?

I mean, one could simply encode just the files that contain sensitive data (or use various programming methods to be more careful and to encrypt just their passwords and usernames which are even natively available in languages like PHP) but how many people are going to take that chance? I think this is good for companies like Zend and IonCube, etc. I think this is potentially bad for the open source community.

Usefulness of Google code search?
Generally speaking, a programmer doesn't need Google code search...they can find software that does something that they like and step into that community of developers for help. There are many many many large and friendly communities of programmers out there that can very often provide help. Aside from the fact that almost every piece of open source software out there has been forked a million times, finding code is already fairly easy in my opinion. I may use Google code search in the future, but it probably won't be my first place to turn. www.php.net does a VERY good job for PHP with their user contribution under their manual.

Bottom Line
I think you really need to know exactly what you're looking for to use Google code search effectively...and sometimes we don't always know exactly what we need...likewise I don't think we know exactly what we're going to get with Google code search. Good, bad, or indifferent.

I can't wait until graphic design is no longer something "trendy" to do. It will help weed out the misguided and untalented individuals with big mouths who confuse the market place. If you are good at spinning bullshit and are good at looking "cool" you should be a salesperson or something - not a graphic designer...or a rapper (I'm sure some people in the music industry feel the same pain).

I think lately for lack of a mature society, we have turned everything we possibly can into a popularity contest. Graphic design among the younger generation is all about being a rockstar and being trendy. At least I think so lately. These pretentious sorry excuses for designers don't understand anything about technical skill, layout, or quality.

I also think people get their signals crossed up when learning or trying to mimic what they see. Some people who think it's trendy and cool to smash same color letters together bastardizing the skill of typography is just one example. OK playing with type is fun. Yes, we can use what is called "negative leading" or have very tight tracking and make capital letters touch. Yes, that's fine. It's not an excuse to use it everyday, but it's ok. HOWEVER, what isn't ok is making all those letters the same color without using a tint or any kind of device (like an outline) to distinguish the letter forms. This is a clear attempt to deliberately lose half of your readers. Senior citizens, people with vision problems, and people quickly glancing over the text will be really annoyed. ...but these young kids these days...they just don't get it. HA. I am a younger person myself! Is it just me? Or do I sound like an old person?

I don't mean to come down on someone like their grandfather, but boy it pisses me off to no extent when people carrying iPods, drinking Star Bucks, dressing like a cross dresser, and listening to suicide music comes and says, "Look at this pile of shit I gave birth to! All hail this pile of shit because I created it while wearing designer clothing, listening to my iPod and drinking Star Bucks."  ... but it's a pile of shit! No one gets it, or no one can read it, or it's been done before by someone else with no talent...

But I digress... It's Wednesday, hmm I though it was Tuesday for a minute. Back to work.