Geekblok

Web2.0 is all about reflections and rounded corners, or so it seems. We’ve seen how to make reflections online before, so now it’s time to get rounded corners without Photoshop or GIMP.

The website RoundPic does this for you, and does it quite fast too! First you upload an image, or give them an URI to download and and click later, you have rounded corners. Woohoo!.

Let’s see the results. I gave them a photo of the Insomnium concert I recently attended and within a few seconds, the metal band was a little less frightening, with rounded corners.

Time for the sixth parth of the ssh guide. This time I’ll dig a bit deeper into using a command in your authorized_keys file. That way you will be able to remotely run a command, about the same way you would like: ssh b10m.example.net uptime, which would return the uptime of the server. If you want to restrict the commands that can be used in the remote command, simply put them into the ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file:

bq. command=”/usr/bin/uptime” ssh-dss AAAAB3NzaC1kc3M…[ rest of key ]…ED8s Comment

If you try to login to the other server now, you only get the output of uptime back:

bq. $ ssh joffie@b10m.example.net
9:24PM up 162 days, 3:45, 5 users, load averages: 0.03, 0.14, 0.12

Make sure that you have got the full command you want to run in the authorized_keys and nothing that could be used by hackers. If you, for example, have a command like command="/usr/bin/vi /tmp/file.txt", the user could exit this vi session with a command like :!/usr/local/bin/bash. Though this example might not seem too “real world”, it shows that you always need to think on what a hacker can do. (In this case starting vi with the -S option would disallow external program calls).

Other interesting features are the use of SSH_ORIGINAL_COMMAND, which is given to the remote environment.

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I usually can’t stand mashups and refuse to post all the ones I come across, but today I found a nice example of where it’s just a little more than the average.

MuViBee is a mashup. It grabs data from iTunes, YouTube and Amazon to provide you a site where you can browse, watch and buy your favorite music. Since I’m about to attend a Amorphis gig tomorrow, I’d thought it be fun to test the website with this band.

After typing in ‘amorphis’ in the search box on the front page, I was taken to quite an eye pleasing framework with three columns. The first column is the one in which the owners of MuViBee like to generate some cash (for I assume they have some affiliate deal with Amazon and iTunes). The second column shows you the videos found and the last column shows you the video screen and playlist.

As said, it’s all looking quite attractive and it works rather well. That’s probably what’s making this mashup a little better than the rest. Now let’s wait until they add “similar artists” links, provide to them by last.fm

It has been a while, but it is time for the next guide. In this guide I will dig a bit deeper into the ssh-agent. In the previous guide I noticed the passwordless logins that can be accomplished with ssh keys. I suppose you have still got the dsa key that you generated via that guide (or another one) around.
Remember that you will need to have it passphrase proteced. If you haven’t done that, please do so via:

bq. ssh-keygen -p -f ~/.ssh/id_dsa

Also copy the public key to the server you want to login to

bq. ssh b10m.example.net cat < ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub “>>” ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

In theory everything should now be set up right to use key authentication, but there might be some caveats..

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Everyone likes helping other people, especially if it doesn’t involve too much effort. Free Rice has a rather unique and fun approach to help the World Food Programme. Now you can help people while you improve (or better, show off your awesome) vocabulary.

The website shows you a word with four optional answers. Simply click on the right answer and if you’re right, you have automatically donated 10 grains of rice. Get another word right and donate 10 grains more. The actual donations are done through sponsors that are shown on the website. Since October 7th (the launch date), 1,712,371,750 grains have been donated already.

What a great concept! Can’t wait to see more websites like this!