Today I saw this list of top Gawker passwords released. While these passwords don’t surprise me, they are pretty amusing. One thing that I noticed is that the author pointed out people who used gawker website names as their password. I think they were pointing out how stupid it is, but actually it’s the opposite. Think about it, I bet you those people didn’t reuse their username and password on another site. It’s almost a full proof password for public sites. The only thing it needs is a salt, something added to the password to make sure it is unique.

To keep yourself safe I would recommend using some type of password scheme for public sites. Choose something like the first 4 letters of a site + a salt you can remember. So my salt for this example will be 32#@. So if i was logging into gawker I would know my password is gawk32#@. Simple to remember, secure, and NOT reused on any other site!

One thing to note is that you will need to apply for the Amazon Associates program. Also you will need access to the AmazonAPI. You will need to add your Amazon apikey, private key, and amazon associates tag at the bottom of this file.

*having issue with the syntax highlighting right now, just copy everything in the php tags, save as amazon.php and upload this to your “contentsources” folder within lfe*

<?php
class amazon_csv
{
	public $url;
	public $user;
	public $pass;
	public $apikey;
	public $apiprivate;
	public $apitag;

	/*----Set initial variables-----------------------------------------------------*/
	function __construct($apikey,$apiprivate,$apitag)
	{
		$this->apikey = $apikey;
		$this->apiprivate = $apiprivate;
		$this->apitag = $apitag;
	}

	/*---Perform item search---------------------------------------------------------------*/
	public function ItemSearch($term,$index = 'All',$page = 1)
	{
		$params = array(
						"AssociateTag="=>$this->apitag,
						"Operation"=>"ItemSearch",
						"Keywords"=>$term,
						"SearchIndex"=>$index,
						"ResponseGroup"=>"Large",
						"ItemPage"=>$page
						);

		//Generated an amazon secuirty token using aws_signed_request
		$request = $this->aws_signed_request('com', $params, $this->apikey, $this->apiprivate);
		$session = curl_init($request);
		curl_setopt($session, CURLOPT_HEADER, false);
		curl_setopt($session, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
		$response = curl_exec($session);
		curl_close($session);
		$parsed_xml = simplexml_load_string($response);
		return $this->ParseResults($parsed_xml,$term,$page);
	}

	/*---- Parse the results returned from an amazon search and return the post array ----------------------------*/
	public function ParseResults($parsed_xml,$term,$page)
	{
		//echo "starting parse <br/>";
		$numOfItems = $parsed_xml->Items->TotalResults;
		$totalPages = $parsed_xml->Items->TotalPages;
		if($numOfItems>0){
			$i = 1;
			foreach($parsed_xml->Items->Item as $current){
					$asin = $asin = $current->ASIN;
					$image = $current->MediumImage->URL;
					$temptitle = $current->ItemAttributes->Title;
					$price = $current->Offers->Offer->OfferListing->Price->FormattedPrice;
					$details = $current->EditorialReviews->EditorialReview->Content;
					$posttext = "<a href='http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/$asin?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=";
					$posttext .= $this->apitag;
					$posttext .= "&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=$asin'>";
					$posttext .="<img src='$image' alt='$title' /></a><br>";
					$posttext .= "<img style='border:none !important; margin:0px !important;' src='http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=";
					$posttext .= $this->api-tag;
					$posttext .= "&amp;l=as2&amp;o=1&amp;a=$asin' border='0' alt='' width='1' height='1' />";
					$posttext .= "<p>$details</p>";
					$posttext .= "<h3><a href='http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/$asin?ie=UTF8&tag=";
					$posttext .= $this->apitag;
					$posttext .= "&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=$asin'>$price - Buy This Item at Amazon.com</a>";
					$posttext .= "<img src='http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=";
					$posttext .= $this->apitag;
					$posttext .= "&l=as2&o=1&a=$asin' width='1' height='1' border='0' alt='' style='border:none !important; margin:0px !important;' /></h3>";

					//get similar product links
					if(isset($current->SimilarProducts->SimilarProduct)){
						$posttext .= "<br/><h2>Related Items</h2>";
						$posttext .= "<ul>";
						foreach($current->SimilarProducts->SimilarProduct as $product){
							$prodasin = $product->ASIN;
							$prodtitle = $product->Title;
							$posttext .= "<li><a href='http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/$prodasin?ie=UTF8&tag=" .$this->apitag. 

"&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=$prodasin'>$prodtitle</a><img src='http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=" .$this->apitag. "&l=as2&o=1&a=$prodasin' width='1' height='1' border='0' alt='' 

style='border:none !important; margin:0px !important;' /></li>";
						}
						$posttext .= "</ul>";
					}
					//$posts[0] = 'asin,image,title,price,details,posttext';
					$title = $temptitle[0];
					$title = utf8_decode($title);
					$content = utf8_decode($posttext);
					$tags = utf8_decode($tags);
					$details = str_replace(array("\r", "\n", "\t"), '', $details);
					$posttext = str_replace(array("\r", "\n", "\t"), '', $posttext);
					//$posts[$i] = "$asin,$image,$title,$price,$details,$posttext";
					$posts[$i] = "$posttext";
					$i++;
			}
			return $posts;
		}else{
			print("<span style='color:red;'>No matches found on page $page.</span><br/>");
		}
	}

	/*---This function generate secure amazon transactions. Fucking stupid -------------------------*/
	function aws_signed_request($region, $params, $public_key, $private_key)
	{
		// some paramters
		$method = "GET";
		$host = "ecs.amazonaws.".$region;
		$uri = "/onca/xml";

		// additional parameters
		$params["Service"] = "AWSECommerceService";
		$params["AWSAccessKeyId"] = $public_key;
		// GMT timestamp
		$params["Timestamp"] = gmdate("Y-m-d\TH:i:s\Z");
		// API version
		$params["Version"] = "2009-03-31";

		// sort the parameters
		ksort($params);

		// create the canonicalized query
		$canonicalized_query = array();
		foreach ($params as $param=>$value)
		{
			$param = str_replace("%7E", "~", rawurlencode($param));
			$value = str_replace("%7E", "~", rawurlencode($value));
			$canonicalized_query[] = $param."=".$value;
		}
		$canonicalized_query = implode("&", $canonicalized_query);

		// create the string to sign
		$string_to_sign = $method."\n".$host."\n".$uri."\n".$canonicalized_query;

		// calculate HMAC with SHA256 and base64-encoding
		$signature = base64_encode(hash_hmac("sha256", $string_to_sign, $private_key, True));

		// encode the signature for the request
		$signature = str_replace("%7E", "~", rawurlencode($signature));

		// create request
		$request = "http://".$host.$uri."?".$canonicalized_query."&Signature=".$signature;

		return $request;
	}
}

function amazon($keyword = '') {
	//run and tell dat
	$apikey = 'YOUR-API-KEY-HERE';
	$apiprivate = 'YOUR-API-PRIVATE';
	$apitag = 'YOUR-AMAZON-ASSOCIATE-TAG';
	$wp = new amazon_csv($apikey,$apiprivate,$apitag);
        $posts = $wp->ItemSearch($keyword);

	//pick a random result
	$rand_keys = array_rand($posts, 2);
	echo $posts[$rand_keys[0]] . "\n";
 }
?>

If you feel like getting nothing accomplished for the rest of your life check out minecraft.

I found a strange catchall domain setup on the account for this site. It appears that someone was using that domain to forward spam. I’m still not sure about the specifics and will have to look into it. I think I have the spam stopped for now. Maybe I will post something interesting on here from time to time. This will probably end up being more of a personal site than technical related since I post all of my tutorials over at TeamTutorials.

I haven’t got to play with htmlSQL yet, but I do plan on writing a tutorial using it soon. If you are interested in htmlSQL you can check out the htmlSQL Live Example or the htmlSQL site.

I also wanted to add some additional functionality to the site. Being a tech related site I saw that we were getting a pretty significant number of off topic comments on posts. We decided to launch a forum to accommodate these requests. Now users can ask anything they feel with out interrupting the discussion at post level.

The comment section was updated to include avatar images and also nested comments. The main category pages also feature a thumbnail for each post. On each post page there is a box at the top giving the description/categories/tags/etc. I also wanted to focus promoting social network/bookmarking services. That was accomplished using the sociable plugin.

Overall I am happy with the changes and think that we will see a great response from our user base. TeamTutorials is on of the long term projects I am focusing on. There is one feature that I wanted to implement that is not yet ready for production and that was a post rating system. I hope to have that feature release in a few weeks.

Check out the new layout.

Tutorialized was create by a man by the name of Kurt. I would give you a link but he has somewhat vanished from the face of the internet (if you are curious you could try searching for his handle pdxkurt). When I was introduced to Tutorialized, you could tell that Kurt really had a love for tutorials. Kurt created the best tutorial directory on the web, period. At one point I believe that the site was ranked number one on Google for several tutorial related terms, providing a mass off traffic. Like most sites Tutorialized capitalized on this traffic by showing advertisements. These ads were highly targeted and didn’t interrupt the usability of the site.

In early 2007 Tutorialized revealed a new theme which was very clean and actually one of my favorite designs at the time.

Shortly after the new design the website was sold. Being the top tutorial site online I can imagine that Kurt made a pretty penny. Well, I hope he did because what he create was awesome and really helped develope the entire online tutorial scene as it is today. I don’t blame Kurt for the sale at all and I hope he is enjoying whatever it is he is doing right now.

Here is a screen shot of the site right after DeveloperShed took ownership.

As you can see there are a few more ads, but it was all that bad. Then dev shed decided to scrap the current layout in order to, I believe, align the design with their network of sites. That’s great but compared to the design that was put in place before the sale the new design looks like it is from 1997.

Then came the change that convinced me I would never use this website again. One of the biggest changes was made to the frame. On the original site, when you click a tutorial a very small frame would load above the tutorial giving you options to rate the tutorial and such. The entire frame was probably between 50-100px tall. Take a look at the frame now.

That is a screen shot on my laptop. As you can see the tutorial is completely unreadable. Now with the new layout in place and ads all over the screen I am sure the new owners are making a pretty penny. Let’s take a look at the estimated traffic (source Quantcast)after the sale.

More estimates from Alexa:

While these are not actual stat, the trend is the same. Since the change traffic is dropping. My question to devshed is how much money can you make off of ads if nobody sees them. This is a perfect example of how to ruin one of the best websites online. I think we will see some changes in the search results also as people stop linking to Tutorialized because it is useless now. Who will be there to pick up all that traffic?

Just in case you can’t tell this post is an iponion of mine and should not be taken as fact. Check out tutorialized and form your own opinion.