Last week my blog was offline for a day or so because I was the victim of a flood of SQL injection attacks that are still hitting my Web site at the rate of multiple requests a second. I eventually managed to counter the attacks by installing URLScan 3.0 and configuring it to reject HTTP requests that resemble SQL injection attacks. I found out about URLScan in two ways; from a blog post Phil Haack wrote about Dealing with Denial of Service Attacks where it seems he's been caught up in the same wave of attacks that brought down my blog and via an IM from Scott Hanselman who saw my tweet on Twitter about being hacked and pointed me to his blog post on the topic entitled Hacked! And I didn't like it - URLScan is Step Zero.

This reminded me that I similarly found another useful utility, WinDirStat, via a blog post as well. In fact when i think about it, a lot of the software I end up trying out is found via direct or indirect recommendations from people I know. Typically through blog posts, tweets or some other communication via a social networking or social media service. This phenomenon can be clearly observed in closed application ecosystems like the Facebook platform, where statistics have shown that the majority of users install new applications after viewing them on the profiles of their friends.

One of the things I find most interesting about the Facebook platform and now the Apple App Store is that they are revolutionizing how we think about software distribution. Today, finding interesting new desktop/server/Web apps either happens serendipitously via word of mouth or [rarely] is the result of advertising or PR. However finding interesting new applications if you are a user of Facebook or the Apple iPhone isn't a matter of serendipity. There are well understood ways of finding interesting applications that harnesses social and network effects from user ratings to simply finding out what applications your friends are using.

As a user, I sometimes wish I had an equivalent experience as a user of desktop applications and their extensions. I've often thought it would be cool to be able to browse the software likes and dislikes of people such as Omar Shahine, Scott Hanselman and Mike Torres to see what their favorite Windows utilities and mobile applications were. As a developer of a feed reader, although it is plain to see that Windows has a lot of reach since practically everyone runs it sometimes I'm envious of the built in viral distribution features that come with the Facebook platform or the unified software distribution experience that is the iPhone App Store. Sure beats hosting your app on SourceForge and hoping that your users are blogging about the app to spread it via word of mouth or paying for prominence on sites like Download.com.

A lot of the pieces are already there. Microsoft has a Windows Marketplace but for the life of me I'd have never found out about it if I didn't work at Microsoft and someone I know switched teams to start working there. There are also services provided by 3rd parties like Download.com, the Firefox Add-Ons page and Tucows. It would be interesting to see what could be stitched together if you throw in a social graph via something like Facebook Connect, an always-on well integrated desktop experience similar to the Apple App Store and one of the aforementioned sites. I suspect the results would be quite beneficial to app developers and users of Windows applications.

What do you think?

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