WordPress.org warned tonight that a few popular plugins (AddThis, WPtouch, and W3 Total Cache) for self-hosted WordPress blogs were suspiciously updated today. Upon closer inspection, the updates did not appear to come from the plugins' respective authors and the changes made to the code included backdoors to allow others access to the site. Since becoming aware of these … [Read more...]
ICANN Votes In Big Changes Coming To Domain Names
ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, voted in a pretty big change to domain names at its special session held in Singapore today. They have voted to allow registries to buy and control the top-level domains, or TLDs. Typical TLDs include .com, .net, or .org but after the vote, individuals will be able to apply to run a wide variety of what they want. … [Read more...]
State of Illinois Sued For Unconstitutional “Amazon Tax” Law
I have covered the State of Illinois passing HB3659, commonly referred to as the "Amazon Tax", before the governor signed it and after it was signed into law because it affected me and my income once Amazon disconnected all Illinois-based Amazon Associates. Since then, I've had moderate success regaining that lost revenue stream through other affiliate programs and Skimlinks … [Read more...]
Twitter Launches More Dynamic Follow Buttons
Twitter has had embeddable Follow buttons for your website that were basically just images that take a person to the site's profile. Now Twitter has introduced more dynamic Follow buttons that can allow a visitor to start following the account's tweets with a single click. It can show the follow button, the user name, and how many followers the account has. To add a Follow … [Read more...]
Google AdSense Needs To Allow Category Blocking Of disGUIsed Ads To Improve User Experience
I'd like to think myself pretty stringent on the quality of ads shown here at 404 Tech Support. Not only must ads be served fast but they must also be relevant and high quality. Fortunately for me, Google's AdSense has been pretty compatible with my requirements. They serve ads up fast (some networks faster than others) and have a good user interface for seeing reports and … [Read more...]