Google's new +1 button is the information innovator's response to the fairly ubiquitous Facebook, StumbleUpon, and other icons that let you promote content you find useful. I noticed that Google incorporated this feature into my search results as well, so I decided to experiment.
A popular blog post of mine describing a DIY screen protector for the Viewsonic G Tablet appears at spot #9 among my Google search results as shown below:
Note the greyed out +1 button just to the right of the link title, which animates tantalizingly as you hover over the search result. I went ahead and clicked it, essentially voting my link up in the rankings. Here's the result:
From the #9 to the #5 spot with one click?? I'll take it! You also receive a notification just below and to the left indicating that you've +1'd a given link.
I don't know whether "+1'd" has as catchy a ring to it as "Liked", but if it brings more traffic to my site, then I'm all for it!
Encountered what appears to be malware with some javascript which caused Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) to throw errors and almost, but not quite, infect a system.
Popup notifications appeared in the systray every few seconds, and the MSE process MsMpEng.exe was gobbling up 50%+ CPU trying to keep whatever was trying to infect this Windows XP service pack 3 PC under control.
MSE's log showed the following error at the top of the details:
Microsoft Security Essentials encountered the following error: Error code 0x800703e4. Overlapped I/O event is not in a signaled state.
It listed numerous instances of the following as the most recent triggers for the cleanup:
TrojanDownloader:Java/OpenConnection.J
TrojanDownloader:Java/OpenConnection.JJ
Interestingly, the malware kept triggering the alerts from a specific path on the system:
C:\Documents and Settings\User\Application Data\Sun\Java\Deployment\cache\6.0\14\3cb28b8e-3c71bd02->lort/cooter.class
Apparently lort/cooter.class is related to a family of malware dubbed JAVA/Exdoer, based on a log file I found posted here. The system's default browser (Firefox) was redirecting Google search results to various sites with advertising. While MSE seemed to be detecting and responding to whatever active component of this malware, freshly-updated installs of SpyBot, MalwareBytes, and PrevX did not detect it.
I decided first to try to simply close all browsers, then run a utility called GOOREDFIX.EXE as described in this forum post. It returned the following log info:
GooredFix by jpshortstuff (03.07.10.1)
Log created at 15:54 on 13/04/2011 (Jan)
Firefox version 3.6.16 (en-US)
========== GooredScan ==========
Deleting HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Mozilla\Firefox\Extensions\\{A1E5480F-729F-4237-AD8E-2C46BA793DFE} -> Success!
Deleting C:\Documents and Settings\User\Local Settings\Application Data\{A1E5480F-729F-4237-AD8E-2C46BA793DFE} -> Success!
========== GooredLog ==========
C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\extensions\
{972ce4c6-7e08-4474-a285-3208198ce6fd} [18:53 08/03/2011]
{972ce4c6-7e08-4474-a285-3208198ce6fd}(2) [18:19 08/03/2011]
{CAFEEFAC-0016-0000-0017-ABCDEFFEDCBA} [20:30 16/01/2010]
C:\Documents and Settings\User\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\c06n7342.User\extensions\
adblockpopups@jessehakanen.net [01:37 14/03/2011]
{20a82645-c095-46ed-80e3-08825760534b} [01:08 27/12/2010]
{7b13ec3e-999a-4b70-b9cb-2617b8323822} [19:18 12/04/2011]
{d10d0bf8-f5b5-c8b4-a8b2-2b9879e08c5d} [16:22 27/03/2011]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Mozilla\Firefox\Extensions]
"{20a82645-c095-46ed-80e3-08825760534b}"="C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v3.5\Windows Presentation Foundation\DotNetAssistantExtension\" [20:46 30/09/2009]
"jqs@sun.com"="C:\Program Files\Java\jre6\lib\deploy\jqs\ff" [20:30 16/01/2010]
-=E.O.F=-
However, something seemed to reactivate the malware upon reopening Firefox, and the MSE systray popups began again.
I closed the browser, ensured that neither firefox.exe nor any other suspicious executables were present among the running processes, reran GOOREDFIX.EXE, then simply deleted the following folder:
C:\Documents and Settings\User\Application Data\Sun\Java\Deployment\cache\
Upon reopening Firefox, no further MSE notification popups appeared, and after running a full scan with MSE, no threats in memory nor in the file system were reported. So far, at least, it looks like whatever this malware was has been eliminated, but we shall see!
Google recently unveiled a tremendous new feature which allows you to block sites from their search results.
A feature previously only available as an extension for Chrome, users with a Google Account can now maintain their own, personal blacklist of sites whose search results aren't useful.
The original entry about this release on the Google blog tells the story, and you can click the following link to actually access your very own Manage Blocked Sites screen (assuming you're signed in to your Google account).
I mainly use Google, Bing, and Ask for my searches, but now Google is in my top spot solely for this feature. Too often I've submitted a query to a search engine only to be bombarded by useless results consisting of anything from advertising to porn to advertising about porn to malware, and habitually I'd just click the third or fourth page of results in the hope that I'd find some worthwhile content. Now I can shape my search results by eliminating much of the fluff, which translates into much more productive searches.
Creators of fluff are on notice:
"Sites will be blocked only for you, but Google may use everyone's blocking information to improve the ranking of search results overall."
Content is king, as the saying goes, and this is one big step in helping us mere users leverage the system by enabling us to trim away the fluff as we find it.
Well played, Google!
