You probably know Wikipedia as the world’s largest encyclopedia, suitable for research on most any topic. You know you can look up terms, but what you may not know is that Wikipedia features a ton of other information that can do a lot more than help you with that research paper. Wikipedia can also be a: Read more »
Well, now that the Digg effect has mostly subsided, and as I prepare for my inevitable descent from being the #1 blog and post on Wordpress.com, I think it’s high time for another post. This time: How to coast to the front page of Digg. Now, to be fair, with only three front page stories, I can’t exactly be considered the authority on getting to the Digg front page. And, as you can see by my record of submissions, I have a record of failing 88% of the time. Nice, but 12% is a better success ratio than most venture capitalists. All the same, I think I’ve found a few dirty, underhanded, scoundrelly tricks to hit the Digg front page. I’m guilty of using a couple of these myself, of course, but they don’t violate the Digg TOS, and rest comfortably in that ethical grey area we’ve all come to love. Note that these tricks can apply to other social news sites, and indeed advertising in general, but the focus here is on Digg, as the original and most popular social news site. Here we go:
This is an idea I’ve been rolling around in my head for some time. Now that I have a blog, I can finally share it with you:
For years, system administrators and savvy users have needed to create long passwords to thwart password guessing attacks. However, those passwords are complicated and hard to remember. Is there a way to create strong, easy to remember passwords that are impervious to most attacks? Yes, thanks to something I call the compound password. It’s very simple, but also incredibly powerful. Essentially, the compound password is a juxtaposition of two simple words, with their letters alternating. For example, dcoagt is a compound password. Can you see the two words in there? How about now: dcoagt . The two words in the compound password are “cat” and “dog”. To generate the password, “cat” is “inserted” into “dog”. But what of memorability? To the unenlightened, this looks like randomly generated, hard to remember ASCII text. But, remember, this is nothing more than the juxtaposition of two words. A simple entry trick means that all you will need to remember is your two words any time you need to type in that password. Here’s how:
