Archive for February, 2009

Website monitoring against hacking

Friday, February 20th, 2009

A brilliant idea codes from Google’s “Official Google Webmaster Central Blog“. If your site gets hacked you might not notice it until it’s to late. And it can be a lot of work to check your site each day.

So Google suggests to use Google Alerts to scan your site on a regular base for common malware terms by searching for something like “site:example.com viagra OR casino OR porn OR ringtones”.

It’s not a 100% solution but I’d say it’s pretty good and quick to set up.

Installer Terror with GoogleEarth…

Friday, February 6th, 2009

I’ve just installed the latest update for GoogleEarth. And what I experienced is almost a top 10 list on how to make a terrible installer. So by observing Google and doing the oposite you can actually learn something.

  • The “Download” button on the Google website doesn’t work all browsers
  • You don’t download GoogleEarth. You’re downloading a program that loads the rest. But the don’t tell you up front.
  • They don’t tell you how much will effectively be downloaded
  • You can’t choose the installation folder
  • You’re not told how long the download or installation will take.
  • You won’t see a progress bar for the installation. Just a useless animation
  • You’re not able to cancel the installation

Useless animation and no chance to quit

And the worst:

  • Google installs a background process running all the time without asking for permission or telling you about it. That fits my personal definition of “potentially unwanted software”.

Removing GoogleUpdaterService.exe

To get rid of the “GoogleUpdaterService.exe” simply kill the process and delete it from “C:\Programme\Google\Common\Google Updater\”