LOOKIT IS TEH BROWNPAU GOOGLE PAGE! So Google Pages gives you 100MB of free HTML and image hosting, a WYSIWYG editor with limited HTML coding capability and themability, and a googlepages.com subdomain. The markup produced isn’t so great, though: lots of crufty tag soup with deprecated elements and invalid code. For me, it’s just part of the kitschy amateur charm, but Drew McClellan has problems with that.
I found bigger problems, though, when I looked at the page edit URL — /edit/brownpau/home — and thought to myself, wow, wouldn’t it be funny if I entered someone else’s username in there and got his edit page? So I tried it with Mathowie’s edit URL, and got, whoa, his edit page — and I was able to edit it.
I filed a bug report — and belatedly told an alarmed Mathowie of the hax0rage — and later got an email, and then a call from Justin Rosenstein, Google Pages project manager. Apparently there was a huge number of factors working in the background which happened to synchronize — Justin described it as “a dozen stars aligning just so” — that somehow gave me admin-level access to edit and publish several other users’ Google Pages. The bug was fixed, and he thanked me for being nice enough to report the bug and not go on a wild vandalism spree.
I told him a lesser mortal would have given in to the temptation to “goatse all over the place,” to which he responded, “Goat what?” He should totally Google it. (Note: Don’t Google it. If you don’t know Goatse, don’t ask. You really don’t want to know.)
Anyway, there’s my Google-related 15 minutes for today. Justin said they’d mail me a goodie bag or something for being so nice. That’ll be something to look forward to. In the meantime, enjoy my new home page on the internet web!
Also see other people’s Googlepages as they make them.
Update: The Google Goodie Bag is here!
14 Comments
ROFL. You sir, are 1337.
Teh Internet wants more spinning gif files!
(I used up the last of my official internet and leet-speak language allowance for the month posting this)
I like WEBTEK INTERNET WEB DESIGN. So futuristic. hahaha!
Hahah! That site kicks butt.
MY EYES! My precious eyes! (those were my last pair, damn ye!)
OK, I totally Googled it, and I still don’t get what this goatse thingy is, ‘cuz I’m too lazy to dig through a brazillion references to find it.
Dude, you stole my homepage design from 1997! I’m so suing you. Or editing your page through Google pages.
Kyriosity: Don’t do it. One thing brownpau left out is that the thing he suggested be Googled is VERY NOT SAFE FOR WORK. It isn’t safe for anyone. Don’t let curiosity kill the kyriosity.
Yikes. I will take y’all’s word on that!
(And Pau, with your “Remember personal info” checkbox ever work?)
Hmm…I bet it’s “ew”.
That is the bestest homepage ever! More cats! The internet doesn’t have enough! More exclamation points, too!!!
Wow, talk about coincidence: today BoingBoing provided a work-safe link to the Wikipedia article about goatse. Um. Yeah.
Flashing text, animated GIFs, too! many! exclamation! points!
Did you miss any cliche? :)
Paulo, you’re my hero.
No for real. That page made me laugh so hard. Much love from North Carolina, my friend.
The Google Pages project manager doesn’t know what goatse is? They should revoke his access to the internet.
So, OK, I didn’t read the fine website Pau created–until today.
Aray.