The amount of apps in the Windows Phone Marketplace
Microsoft's Windows Phone Marketplace has now reported to have passed 25,000 apps by one site tracking comings and goings within it. (source: WindowsPhoneAppslist, July 2011)
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Meh. I can't believe everyone's making such a big deal about this, though I suspected as much after the iTunes Mini Store thing. (Though that, at least, was a lot more justified than this one.)
I noticed Little Snitch alerting me after I updated to 10.4.7 so I checked it out with Ethereal. It's innocuous, at least as far as I'm concerned, so I let it go.
It looks like a security mechanism to check if any malicious/blacklisted widgets are installed. (As my system sends no information whatsoever it's pretty likely that it's a blacklist.)
For the paranoid, here's a recent packet capture I did of the conversation. Basically, dashboardadvisoryd makes two HTTP GET requests and, amazingly, gets two responses from Apple's webservers. Your system sends NO OTHER INFORMATION, though Apple does get your IP address, just like every other webserver does. Oh the horror!
Here's the skinny:
--------- GET number 1 ---------
------ client request ------
GET /widgets/widgetadvisory HTTP/1.1
User-Agent: CFNetwork/129.16
Connection: close
Host: www.apple.com
------ server response ------
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Age: 11392
X-Cache-TTL: 75008
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Date: Fri, 07 Jul 2006 15:49:40 GMT
Content-Length: 2095
Content-Type: text/plain
Expires: Sat, 08 Jul 2006 15:49:40 GMT
Cache-Control: max-age=86400
Server: Apache/1.3.33 (Darwin) PHP/4.3.10
Last-Modified: Thu, 08 Jun 2006 22:08:55 GMT
ETag: "82f-44889ff7"
X-Cached-Time: Wed, 28 Jun 2006 06:14:24 GMT
----- BEGIN SIGNATURE -----
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
----- END SIGNATURE -----
BEGIN;
INSERT OR REPLACE INTO meta VALUES ('serial-number', 1);
COMMIT;
--------- GET number 2 ---------
------ client request ------
GET /widgets/parser.info HTTP/1.1
User-Agent: CFNetwork/129.16
Connection: close
Host: www.apple.com
------ server response ------
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Age: 11586
X-Cache-TTL: 74814
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Date: Fri, 07 Jul 2006 15:46:26 GMT
Content-Length: 4
Content-Type: text/plain
Expires: Sat, 08 Jul 2006 15:46:26 GMT
Cache-Control: max-age=86400
Server: Apache/1.3.33 (Darwin) PHP/4.3.10
Last-Modified: Thu, 18 May 2006 21:51:56 GMT
ETag: "4-446cec7c"
X-Cached-Time: Tue, 04 Jul 2006 22:24:46 GMT
....
--------- end ---------