The site’s value has been hotly debated since its launch with some saying it’s an incredible recommendation service while others say it’s a privacy disaster waiting to happen. Interestingly enough, it was featured yesterday on the New York Times, where that same question was posed to readers.

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Update: Blippy’s Response

Blippy just posted an update on the company blog, arguing that the security breach “looks super-scary and certainly sucks for the 4 people who were affected (to whom we apologize and are contacting), and is embarrassing to us, it’s a lot less bad than it looks.”

You can find Blippy’s full explanation here.

Thanks to a tipster who apparently emailed all the popular technology blogs (see: VentureBeat, Mashable, CenterNetworks for more coverage), there’s a way to enter a simple search query into Google and get back the credit card numbers of Blippy users.

The query is: site:blippy.com +"from card"

At present, this security hole seems to be affecting Citibank-issued MasterCard numbers only, according to the bloggers at VentureBeat.

Blippy proponents will likely argue that the mistake, although quite a large one, was caught in time before major damage could be done. It’s doubtful that any identity thieves have been able to retrieve these credit card numbers quickly enough to cause harm to those affected.

However, the users whose credit card info has been compromised will now have to cancel their cards and be issued new ones – a hassle to say the least. Was the benefit of using Blippy worth it? What if this security hole was only discovered by criminals and not a white-hat hacker-type like the guy who contacted us?

We’ve argued before that people should definitely weigh the risks to their privacy before using services like Blippy, especially since you’re not just sharing info from one private credit card account, you’re aggregating all of them. If Blippy’s infrastructure was compromised, hackers could get all your credit card info and the usernames and passwords you use across the Web, too. (Probably the same one you use everywhere, if you’re like most people).

If that risk is acceptable to you, then by all means, share away. You might find it interesting to see what others have shared too. But when something like this happens, don’t be surprised. Nothing put on the Web is ever really private – as this breach clearly shows.

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However, there’s a small problem with this new, easy-to-use new tool: it’s possible to trick users into liking anything – even pages they’ve never visited!

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“Likes” – A New Tool for Spammers?

As Arnab Nandi, a PhD candidate in Computer Science at the University of Michigan, recently discovered, it’s simple to create a like button for a page you’re not even on.

Using the wizard provided by Facebook, you can create a button for any URL you want and embed it on your site.

Why would anyone want to do this, you ask? While no self-respecting webmaster would want to deceive a visitor to their site, says Nandi, an “enterprising spammer” certainly would. By tricking site visitors into “liking” something by mistake, spammers could immediately place their links into that person’s News Feed, a feed seen by all of that person’s friends. And since an average Facebook user has 130 friends, even tricking a handful of people into doing this gives the spammer access to hundreds, potentially thousands, more people.

Nandi already coined a word for this new hack: “News Feed Spam.”

And yes, it will exist.

How the Button Works

Creating your own evil like button is incredibly simple, as we’ve demonstrated below. Nandi uses the “safe for work” example of “liking” the Britney Spears site in the example on his blog, but we know that our readers don’t want that affiliation in their News Feed for even an instant, so we created a much safer example for you to try by using our own Twitter account as the “like” target. (Really, we promise!).

Although you can remove the “like” from your News Feed after clicking, when you “like” something on Facebook, the affiliation is now attached to the Open Graph API. That means that your “like” data is associated with your profile, even if you remove it from showing in your News Feed.

In any event, all we did was fill in the necessary info into Facebook’s wizard and we got code for the button below:

(NYT readers, visit the original site for the demo).

If you click that button, you’ll see that you just “liked” ReadWriteWeb’s Twitter account, not this post or this website.

So the question now is this: did Facebook make the “like” button too simple? Should the button display more info about the target of the like so you know what you’re getting into? Will this problem become so widespread that people begin to fear “liking” things across the net? What do you think?

Image credit for original post: Zazzle

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Now they have released Amberjack 2.0, which allows easy creation of On-Page Tutorials. Users can navigate with bubble arrows, keyboard right/left or mouse click left/right. Text bubbles explain page elements to your visitors. You can also use HTML and CSS knowledge to customize the bubbles as you like. Embed a video is also possible.

You can have a look at the source here. However, we have to wait a bit longer, in order to get more tutorials and documentation of Amberjack 2.0.

Requirements: -
Demo: http://amberjack2.org/
License: LGPL

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Pixmac: Stock Photos, Royalty Free Pictures and Images

Google, AT&T, General Electric, Intel, The Climate Group and the Natural Resources Defense Council and others will hold an event tomorrow titled "Power in Numbers: Unleashing Innovation in Home Energy Use.”

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“By giving people the ability to monitor and manage their energy consumption, for instance, via their computers, phones or other devices,” the group wrote in its letter to the President, “we can unleash the forces of innovation in homes and businesses.”

Substantial challenges stand in the way of widespread smart-grid innovation. We highlighted a write-up by green tech reporter Katie Fehrenbacher last year that discussed the foot dragging going on in the world of local utility providers. (Why Smart Grids Could Be Slow to Beat Web 2.0) Fehrenbacher argued that utility companies don’t get it, are afraid of the costs, and are thus unlikely to offer the kind of “real time” data delivery that could serve as a foundation for eye-opening innovation like we’ve seen from the networked world of the Internet.

Fehrenbacher wrote last year.

Many people (myself included) have painted a picture of how the consumer piece of the smart grid could develop into a real-time, two-way communication network that looks a lot like the Internet. In that world, consumers would be able to see variable pricing change in real time, while smart meters and energy management devices read and visualize energy consumption data every second, leading to changes in consumer behavior. The ultimate vision of that landscape is that real-time energy data unleashes innovations and applications that we haven’t yet thought of, which will deliver substantial behavior changes.
Well, that’s the outcome for which entrepreneurs and innovators are hoping. The reality is that the consumer piece of the smart grid will look very different for many years to come.

Perhaps a large coalition of organizations can prompt meaningful government support that will engage with these and other obstacles to energy data innovation.

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You are welcome if you want to share more useful web apps that our readers/viewers may like. Do you want to be the first one to know the latest happenings at  smashingApps.com just subscribe to our rss feed and you can follow us on twitter , follow us on Google Buzz and do not forget to become our fan on facebook as well.

YourAM

YourAM is a web based solution. There is no software to install. YourAM is built to automate your appointment management so that you can simply focus on your core business. This can be used for busy individuals or large organizations that need to automatically track, organize and manage appointments.

Meetifyr

Sometimes you just want to know which night in the next few weeks is best to meet up with friends. You don’t need a intergrated lifestyle tracking solution you just need to know when people are free. Meetifyr is the worlds simplest online shared calendar. You create a calendar, add your name and availability then send the link round to your friends to see when they’re free. It’s really that simple, try it if you don’t believe us.

BetaEasy

BetaEasy is equally useful for web sites/applications as well as for classic  desktop applications. This service helps you to built your own community of users who will cooperate with you and contribute to your website/software improvement. All feedback is collected in one place, priorities are clearly identified, feedback is turned to improvement. It’s really easy to get started.

Springnote

Springnote is a great way for you to create notebooks for ideas, interests, multimedia, projects, and documents. It allows you to create pages, to work on them together with your friends, and to share files.

Preceden

Preceden is a free web 2.0 timeline visualization tool that lets you you make simple, powerful timelines for just about anything. This is perfect for autobiographies because our timelines lets you organize your life’s events into layers like relationships, location, education, jobs, etc. By organizing events in layers, you can see exactly how the important events in your life overlap.

Reddynote

Reddynote is a clear and comprehensive work platform, where all your tasks are being listed. Only a quick look on the platform allows you to see your status, tags (keywords) and progress of every single task you have.

CalendarFly

CalendarFly is the next generation free scheduling solution. CalendarFly is uniquely suited for school systems, sports teams, families, and any other organization because it automatically maintains and updates the schedules of teachers, administrators, coaches, parents, and students–making it easy for all of them to connect in real time and real places.

Bill4Time

With Bill4Time, you will always know where you money is going and how your business is performing. Monitor employee progress, client activity, unbilled time, and everything else you need to successfully manage your growing practice.

HiTask

HiTask is a friendly and easy-to-use task management system that anyone can start using right away. It is designed to satisfy both sophisticated followers of David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” methodology and anyone who just needs a quick and easy tool to manage their everyday tasks.

Needtomeet

You can use Needtomeet’s free and simple calendar to find a time that works for everyone. It will help you to see everyone’s availability at a glance. It is simple no-fuss way to find a time for your event. You dont need to download anything, no registration, and best of all, it’s free for everyone.

MakeSomeTime

Tracking time has never been easier. Keep your times organised by clients, projects and tasks with MakeSomeTime. This is super easy and having simple user interface. No clutter. Just what you need to get your work done.

Fileshare HQ

Fileshare HQ is a great place to store and share files. You can upload files using the easy web admin, or you can use FTP and load direct to your account. You can use FileShareHQ from the web, or with your favourite FTP client, to upload files and share them with the team, clients or friends.

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Barry Schnitt, Senior Manager, Corporate Communications and Public Policy at Facebook, told us in an email that “the right way to think about this is not like a new experience but as making the [Facebook] Connect experience even better and more seamless.” There will be new user controls made available, but this is a new experience: this makes Facebook Connect opt-out instead of opt-in.

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The proposed change was first written about by Jason Kincaid on TechCrunch, who called it Facebook’s Plan To Automatically Share Your Data With Sites You Never Signed Up For.

Here’s the language Facebook used to describe the draft policy:

Pre-Approved Third-Party Websites and Applications. In order to provide you with useful social experiences off of Facebook, we occasionally need to provide General Information about you to pre-approved third party websites and applications that use Platform at the time you visit them (if you are still logged in to Facebook). Similarly, when one of your friends visits a pre-approved website or application, it will receive General Information about you so you and your friend can be connected on that website as well (if you also have an account with that website). In these cases we require these websites and applications to go through an approval process, and to enter into separate agreements designed to protect your privacy.

That sounds downright creepy. It’s nice to have one-click access to your Facebook info if you decide to share it with other sites – that’s what Facebook Connect does – but the prospect of having that information automatically shared when you show up on another website seems like an idea that won’t be well received by users. There’s a big difference between opt-in and opt-out “data portability.”

Schnitt says: “People love personalized and social experiences and that’s why Facebook and Facebook Connect have been so successful. We think there are some instances where people would benefit from this experience as soon as they arrive on a small number of trusted websites that we pre-approve.”

In that interview, Schnitt also acknowledged that business reasons, like pageviews and advertising, were part of why Facebook was transforming away from privacy as well. We asked if this new opt-out Facebook Connect was the first step in a Facebook Ad Network, where your profile on Facebook is used to target ads that Facebook sells on sites all over the web. Schnitt told us, “this has absolutely nothing to do with advertising.”

Do you buy all that?

Do you trust Facebook to select trustworthy websites to automatically share your data with when you browse around the web? If you don’t trust Facebook’s judgement, you will be able to opt-out of exposing that data. But by default you’ll be sharing it.

By default, you’re sharing more and more these days, with more and more people. Perhaps that’s because of your love for Twitter and reality TV, but perhaps its because of Facebook’s cultural and commercial agenda.

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The best is likely to come as the app’s login process points to the next version of Digg as a platform. In that future scenario, top stories will be surfaced faster and more to your liking by integrating links shared by your friends on Twitter and Facebook. Meanwhile, there are a number of reasons I’m more likely to use this new app than I am to visit Digg.com.

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The new Digg app’s design is clean, simple and easy to browse. No ads, no story summaries until you ask for one, no extraneous text about Digg features. It’s much easier on the eyes than the site itself, which has grown overloaded with features, colors and text. Feature request: It sure would be nice to be able to peruse the images section of Digg on the iPhone, especially if there was a way it could be made fast.

Bookmarking stories to read later is smart. That’s a feature unique to the iPhone interface. Browse your favorite categories looking for the stories you’re interested in reading, bookmark them, then go back and see them all in one place. That’s a compelling use-case, especially on mobile. What percentage of the stories on any Digg page do you really want to read? Hunting for interesting content amongst what’s popular is part of the fun. Why stop hunting for fear of losing track of a gem you’ve found? Feature request: Instapaper integration. I’d love to hit up Digg while sitting on the tarmac before a plane takes off and easily save some good stories to read while I’m up in the air. Perhaps just off-line reading like the New York Times app is what I’m looking for.

The “most popular” paradigm is particularly well-suited for mobile. If you’re a serious web user, you probably get news and links from all over the web, not from one site. Right now Digg’s links are probably old news to you, too. The limited selection or most-popular “in case you missed it” type of stories you’ll find on the Digg front page is uniquely well suited to mobile reading. I don’t have time to do too much exploration on my phone so please recommend me some good stuff in a hurry. Feature request: Please bring me personalized recommendations asap in this app.

The sooner those recommendations can be tied to the activities of my friends on Twitter and Facebook, the better. Unfortunately, it looks like that New Digg is still several months away.

Until it comes out, though, the Digg iPhone app is a pretty good way to follow popular news online. You can get it here or search for it in the app store.

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Websecurify is an automated web application security scanner that scans different security parameters of your website and generates detailed statistical analysis that helps you find security loop holes so as to keep your website safe and secure.

Websecurify is free and open source so that you can extend the functionality as per your needs.  It is a cross-platform application developed with JavaScript but most parts can be redeveloped with Java, Python and C.

Key features of Websecurify include:

• Improved and easy to navigate user interface.
• Engine can be taken out and integrated with other web applications.
• Results can be exported in CSV, XML, HTML and JSON.
• Supports asynchronous testing so that while it tests, it generates reports.
• Support of multiple platforms i.e. Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.
• Provides an integrated browser with the support of multiple sessions.  All the browser traffic is recorded and can be easily formulated.
• Records sub-transactions as well so as to make it a good choice to test AJAX applications as well.
• The design of the application is modular hence it can easily be extended.
• Provides an API to support numerous types of commercial and free testing engines.
• Support of localization so that results can be translated in multiple languages.

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You are welcome to share more firefox add-ons that you think will be useful and feel a better browsing experience that our readers/viewers may like. Do you want to be the first one to know the latest happenings at SmashingApps.com just subscribe to our rss feed and you can follow us on twitter and do not forget to become our fan on facebook as well.

Feedly

You can organizes your favorite sources in a magazine-like start page. It provides seamless integration with Google Reader, Twitter, Delicious, YouTube and Amazon.

WOT – Safe Browsing Tool

Web of Trust is one of Mozilla’s most popular add-ons. This safe surfing tool uses a traffic-light style rating system to help you stay safe when you search, surf and shop online. WOT ratings are powered by a global community of millions of trustworthy users who have rated millions of websites based on their experiences. The WOT add-on provides reputation ratings to search results when you use Google, Yahoo!, Bing, Wikipedia and other popular sites, helping you protect your computer and personal information. Your online email account – Google Mail, Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail is also protected.

ReminderFox

ReminderFox displays and manages lists of reminders and ToDo’s. ReminderFox makes sure you remember all of your important dates via easy-to-use lists, alerts, and alarms, right in your browser without the need for a separate calendar program.

Video DownloadHelper

DownloadHelper is a tool for web content extraction. Its purpose is to capture video and image files from many sites. Just surf the Web as you are used to, when DownloadHelper detects it can do something for you, the icon gets animated and a menu allows you to download files by simply clicking an item. For instance, if you go to a YouTube page, you’ll be able to download the video directly on your file system. It also works with MySpace, Google videos, DailyMotion, Porkolt, iFilm, DreamHost and others.

ScrapBook

ScrapBook is a Firefox extension, which helps you to save Web pages and easily manage collections. Key features are lightness, speed, accuracy and multi-language support. Major features are saving web pages, snippets of web page, saving a web site, organizing the collection in the same way as Bookmarks and much more.

Xmarks

Xmarks is the #1 bookmarking add-on. It takes only a moment to get up and running with Xmarks. After you install the add-on, click on the notification to set up Xmarks and start backing up and synchronizing your bookmarks. Install Xmarks on each computer you use, and it seamlessly integrates with your web browser and keeps your bookmarks safely backed up and in sync.

Adblock Plus

Adblock Plus allows you to regain control of the internet and view the web the way you want to. The add-on is supported by over forty filter subscriptions in dozens of languages which automatically configure it for purposes ranging from removing online advertising to blocking all known malware domains. Adblock Plus also allows you to customize your filters with the assistance of a variety of useful features, including a context option for images, a block tab for Flash and Java objects, and a list of blockable items to remove scripts and stylesheets.

FastestFox – Browse Faster

You can save time and get faster, parallelized downloads, quick definitions, auto-loading of next page, improved searching, and can do more with FastestFox.

DownThemAll

DownThemAll is all you can desire from a download manager: it features an advanced accelerator that increases speed up to 400% and it allows you to pause and resume downloads at any time. is fast, reliable and easy-to-use! It lets you download all the links or images contained in a webpage and much more: you can refine your downloads by fully customizable criteria to get only what you really want.

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The free version of Phonebooth offers up a good variety of features: you get a local phone number for your business, an automated attendant to direct calls, voicemail-to-email transcriptions and other functionality that generally makes phone calls easier to manage. The free version does only offer 200 minutes a month, but if you’re primarily web-based, you may not need much more than that. Phonebooth does offer a premium version for $20 per month per user — that version offers unlimited local and long distance calling. Either choice will work for a small team: you can create extensions for different people on your team, and make yourself more efficient by routing phone calls into different departments.

You can also easily integrate Phonebooth with an existing web site. The “Contact Us Plus” system offered in both versions of Phonebooth allows you to add a button to your web site that directs anyone trying to contact you to the best number. That can include displaying extensions for different members of your team, or showing extensions just for sales or other departments, which allows any callers to skip phone trees.

Managing phone calls as you travel is easy with Phonebooth as well. You do get a local number for your business, but you can forward your phone calls by selecting options online. You can control call routing so that you don’t miss any calls, as well as route phone calls to team mates as needed. You can also use your computer to accept calls with the premium version of Phonebooth — it’s just a matter of plugging an IP phone into your laptop. It also allows for simplified conference calls with temporary numbers, as well as providing separate passcodes for both moderators and participants.

Technically, the free version of Phonebooth is still in beta. You can sign up to be notified when more people are able to sign up. However, invites do seem to be rolling out fairly quickly. The free version does seem reliable; however, if phone communication is crucial to your work, it may be worth upgrading, just for the improved reliability offered in the premium version, as it is hosted through redundant geographically-dispersed data centers.

Which virtual phone system do you use, and why?

Related GigaOM Pro content (sub. req.): Enabling the Web Work Revolution