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This blog library reflects the newest and most current information related to the many facets of intergovernmental technology. Content will be added to and updated on a daily basis.
All the World in a Wristwatch
It Might Seem Tiny and Insignificant, but It Tells a Lot About the Tech World, Column By MICHAEL S. MALONE
It is often the most prosaic of consumer products, the most forgotten corner of the tech world, that can offer the most interesting lessons about how high technology really works -- especially as it collides with human nature. It is a lesson often forgotten by high-flying young companies and that often brings them suddenly to Earth.
Do AndroidGuys Dream of Google Phones?
By LAURA M. HOLSON
There are many well-known blogs that track developments in the mobile phone industry, from the Boy Genius Report to mocoNews.net.
But sometimes it’s the little guys that are more interesting. One such blog that caught my attention in recent weeks is AndroidGuys, which has chronicled Google’s year-long effort to bring to consumers a mobile phone powered by the company’s new Android software.
Pay no attention to rumors that the internet is getting full
In fact, over the last 12 months, international net bandwidth in backbone grew 62 percent, while internet traffic grew only 53 percent and filled only 43 percent of the tubes' capacity at peak times, according to a new report released by bandwidth-monitoring firm TeleGeography.
In short, the internet's tubes are growing faster than even YouTube videos can fill them, and they're in no danger of filling up anytime soon.
That's despite the occasional Chicken Little proclamation from ISPs, pending caps on 'unlimited' internet usage and hand-wringing over peer-to-peer file sharing of movies such as Cool Hand Luke.
In the same time period -- mid-2007 to mid-2008, Latin America and South Asia both doubled the capacity of their backbones -- the net's fiber-optic equivalent of a highway system.
Wholesale prices for sending and receiving data continue to fall, and with the cheapest prices in North America and Europe, where there's still more abundant capacity, the Global Internet Geography report found.
Firefox boss responds to Google's Chrome
Mozilla's best friend is about to invade Mozilla's prime market with a Windows browser
September 2, 2008 11:08 AM
John Lilly, chief executive of Mozilla Corporation, has blogged about the launch of Google's promised Chrome browser (below). Basically he welcomes the competition and says: "Chrome will be a browser optimized for the things that they see as important, and it'll be interesting to see how it evolves."
Lilly also addresses the obvious questions: How does this affect Mozilla? and What does this mean for Mozilla's relationship with Google? He says:
On the technical side of things, we've collaborated most recently on Breakpad, the system we use for crash reports -- stuff like that will continue. On the product front, we've worked with them to implement best-in-class anti-phishing and anti-malware that we've built into Firefox, and looks like they're building into Chrome. On the financial front, as has been reported lately, we've just renewed our economic arrangement with them through November 2011, which means a lot for our ability to continue to invest in Firefox and in new things like mobile and services.
Google's Chrome and the browser end game
A blog about technology from BBC News
The news that Google is launching its own open source browser, called Chrome, has understandably got the blogosphere all excited.
It's certainly the biggest news in the browser space since Firefox started to dent Internet Explorer's lead and many people see this as a re-ignition of the browser wars. A few things struck me:
How to avoid spam: start with a Z
What's in a name? Quite a lot, it seems
August 26, 2008 12:38 PM
Fed up with spam? You're not the only one. But Cambridge University security researcher Richard Clayton thinks the problem might not just be your spam filters, but your name. In an academic paper - recounted at Light Blue Touchpaper blogs - he says that Aardvarks - people with names high in the alphabet - receive 35% spam, and zebras - those at the tail end of the dictionary - get 20%. Why?
3-D Printing for the Masses (flash audio)
By Duncan Graham-Rowe, MIT Review
A new online service aims to bring customized manufacturing to the masses by allowing consumers to submit digital designs of products that are then printed, using 3-D printers, and shipped back. Currently, such 3-D printers--in which successive layers of different polymers are sprayed gradually, building up a 3-D object--are very expensive, says Peter Weijmarshausen, CEO of Shapeways, a spinout from Philips Research, in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. But the new service, launched last week, makes this technology accessible to anyone: budding artists, architects, product designers, and general hobbyists. A small design company might want to make samples to show a client, or an artist might want to make copies of the same sculpture created digitally, for example.
AT&T Mulls Watching You Surf
By SAUL HANSELL/Technology
UPDATE Comment from Google has been added.
AT&T is “carefully considering” monitoring the Web-surfing activities of customers who use its Internet service, the company said in a letter in response to an inquiry from the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.
Intel Releases USB 3.0 Interface Specifications
Intel has released a draft specification revision 0.9 for the Extensible Host Controller Interface (xHCI). The revision, released Wednesday, comes in support of USB 3.0 architecture, also known as SuperSpeed USB. The draft specification provides a standard method for USB 3.0 host controllers to communicate with the USB 3.0 software stack.
One important factor in adopting SuperSpeed USB products is interoperability between multiple devices from different manufacturers. The xHCI draft specification revision 0.9 aims to make interoperability easier to implement, while also making it easier for developers to create software support for the market.
JavaScript 2 Looking Good Thanks to ‘Harmony’ Project
By Scott Gilbertson
The dust is finally starting to settle in the world of JavaScript, which is the primary tool that powers many of web 2.0’s most popular features. As we’ve mentioned in the past, JavaScript is due for an update and the specification on which JavaScript is based — known as ECMAScript — was planning a serious overhaul. However, the ECMAScript 4 specification, which would have been the basis of JavaScript 2, has been reworked and its ambitions somewhat curtailed in favor of practicality. Virtually as soon as ECMAScript 4 was proposed a group headed by Microsoft and Yahoo split off and suggested ECMAScript 3.1 as an incremental step to 4.0. Since then the two groups has worked in conjunction, but also sometimes at odds.Fortunately for web developers hungry for the the next generation of JavaScript, the ECMAScript specification is nearing completion.
Mozilla Labs has put out a call for concepts. The people who brought you Firefox want your ideas, mockups or prototypes.
Mozilla Labs, from the people who brought you Firefox, has put out a call for participation. It says: Today we're calling on industry, higher education and people from around the world to get involved and share their ideas and expertise as we collectively explore and design future directions for the Web.
fire eagle site
today in Webmonkey/tutorial
Don't Touch That File! Modifying User Permissions
If you've ever tried to edit a file stored on a Unix or Linux server, you've probably seen a user permissions message -- usually an error. User permissions are a necessary roadblock on any file server, but dealing with them doesn't have to be a pain. Webmonkey Paul Adams demystifies those puzzling permissions.
Onstream Media Awarded Three New Public Sector Contracts
POMPANO BEACH, Fla., Aug. 7 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Onstream Media Corporation (Nasdaq: ONSM), an online service provider of live and on-demand Internet video, today announced that it has been awarded three new multi-year public sector webcasting services contracts. Onstream Media's robust set of on-line digital media services, combined with Akamai Technologies Inc.'s (Nasdaq: AKAM) globally-distributed network for delivering and accelerating content and applications, will support the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), California State Department of Technology Services (DTS), and California State Board of Equalization (BOE) for an allocated total of $1.5 million in contract awards. These projects are all intended to help make legislative discussion and materials more transparent to the public. Onstream Media is an Akamai reseller. Government agencies today need a proven solution to provide video and audio broadcasts online and ensure that public hearings, training material and other specialized events and information are available to reach their constituents, industry partners and employees. Many government agencies do not have the resources and support tools and infrastructure to address this growing need. Onstream's relationship with Akamai enables the two organizations to address this critical need in the marketplace with solutions that are designed to ensure that customers in the public sector have access to these capabilities.
How to Fix the Spooks' New 'Vision'
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence recently released their new vision for the future of the spooks and spies community. And, shockingly enough, it's actually pretty smart -- sparking a bit of optimism for those who think serious change is too long in coming. It's a more far-reaching document than I have seen come out of the IC (Intelligence Community) in the past. The parts about supplying intelligence to everyone from the Departments of Health and Human Services to international organizations to private sector and non-governmental organizations were especially heartening.
That said, it still doesn't reach far enough. Everyone in the IC likes to say that we're in a period of unprecedented and extensive change. If that's the case, I'd expect the response to match the challenge. Some suggestions:
August 4, 2008 - 6:51 P.M.
Can IBM save Lotus from the Microsoft onslaught?
TAGS:IBM, Lotus, Microsoft, notes, SharePoint
Computerworld Blogs
Microsoft has IBM in its cross-hairs, aiming to kill Lotus Notes and replace it with SharePoint. But Microsoft will have a tough time, because IBM, rather than Microsoft, seems to have gotten religion when it comes to Web 2.0.
August 4, 2008, 7:41 am
Web Filtering Moves to the Cloud
By BRAD STONE
For those of you spending your workdays posting videos of the cat to YouTube or trading messages with friends on Facebook, you’d better start cultivating another pastime. Web filtering software is moving to the cloud — that all-knowing, pervasive, sometimes unreliable cluster of computers in the digital ether — and it’s going to watch your every move online and tattle to your boss. Zscaler, a Santa Clara start-up created by serial security entrepreneur Jay Chaudhry, is publicly unveiling itself Monday. Over the last decade, Mr. Chaudhry has founded such companies as AirDefense (sold to Motorola), CipherTrust (sold to Secure Computing), SecureIt (sold to VeriSign) and CoreHarbor (sold to USinterworking.) That makes him kind of like the Brett Favre of security entrepreneurs –- he keeps coming back. Zscaler’s idea is to relieve companies of the tiresome and costly burden of managing Web filtering and security on their own servers. Instead, the cloud-based service, which is rented to companies by the month, acts like a Web proxy, intercepting all incoming and outbound HTTP traffic from employees and scrubbing it for malware and online activity that violates company policy.
Firefox 3.1 Alpha Preview Delivers Slick New Features
By Scott Gilbertson
Firefox 3.0 is barely out of the gate, but already Mozilla is moving toward the future with the first alpha release of Firefox 3.1. The final release of 3.1 is scheduled for the end of 2008 with the usual series of alpha and beta releases in the coming months. The first 3.1 alpha (code-named Shiretoko) already packs some impressive new features like the new visual tab switcher, which offers previews of pages, and changes the sorting order based on which tab was most recently open. In essence it mimics the behavior of cmd-tab application switchers on most OSes. The visual eye candy is quite nice, but the real benefit is the dynamic ordering, which makes it much easier to quickly jump between recently viewed tabs.
Peeking Into Google’s Use of Data
Google, which gathers a lot of data and to some is increasingly scary, has decided to shine a spotlight on one way it is using all that information. According to a blog post on Wednesday, Google will start explaining how it customizes the search results it displays. Google uses its best guess about where you are and sometimes the history of what you searched for in an attempt to provide more relevant results.
Now a small note in the upper-right-hand corner of the results pages will give some clue that this is happening. In one example, the note reads “Customized for the San Francisco metro area.” The text may also have a link to a page that has additional information. In the example of this sort of page, Google showed the Internet Protocol address it used to determine that the search came from San Francisco. It also identified the previous search terms it was taking into account.
The Virtuous Competition in Cloud Computing Research
One more sign that we’ve entered the cloud computing era: the big corporate players are competing with each other to rev up academic research initiatives (partly with an eye toward wooing future computer scientists to work for them, of course). Yahoo, Hewlett-Packard and Intel announced a research venture on Tuesday that spans the United States, Germany and Singapore. The goal is to advance Internet-scale computing — the proverbial “cloud,” in which more computing chores are delivered to personal computers and cellphones as services, with the heavy computational lifting done remotely in large data centers.
The Ghost in Your Machine: IPv6 Gateway to Hackers
It may be years before the new internet protocol IPv6 takes over from the current IPv4, but a security researcher is warning that many systems – corporate and personal – are already open to attack through channels that have been enabled on their machines to support IPv6 traffic.
Social Networks Break Earthquake News First
Many may be shaken by the fact that the first news out of a 5.8 earthquake in Southern California shortly after noon Tuesday came from live streaming tweets on Twitter.
Even more stunning are the thousands of first-hand accounts that streamed in to the service shortly after the earthquake — all tweets confirming the authors were both okay and had electricity and/or cellphone service.
With this unfortunate natural disaster, social networks may have just proven its worth beyond fun and quirky notes about moods, feelings or what you’re doing on vacation. As shown today, the statuses can also be used for posting your health status, location and first-hand information after an emergency instantly to all of your friends and family.
Pressure mounts in the USA for a national broadband infrastructure policy
Many years of unrealised fibre projects have left the USA trailing far behind Asia in the deployment of FttH networks. Despite having very a high total number of broadband subscribers, in terms of penetration (based on subscribers per 100 inhabitants), the USA dropped from 4th place in 2001 to 12th place in 2004 where it remained through 2005 and 2006. By 2007 the USA had dropped a further three places to 15th.
Commenting Your Code — What’s Too Much, Too Little? By Scott Gilbertson
Do you often forget to comment your code and find yourself scratching your head years later, trying to figure out what’s going on? After a few experiences like that you might be tempted to start leaving comments all over the place, but that can be just as bad of an idea. Blogger Jeff Atwood recently posted an interesting look at what makes good comments and how some simple refactoring can make your code self-documenting. If you stick to best practices like giving functions and variables logical names, it shouldn’t be too hard for you or others to figure out how your code works.
New Foundation Wants to Bridge the Gaps Between Open Web Tools By Scott Gilbertson
Speaking at the OSCON Open Source Convention, Six Apart’s David Recordon recently announced the Open Web Foundation, a meta-standards organization dedicated to smoothing the way for large businesses to embrace open web standards like OAuth, OpenID and more. While there is already the Data Portability Workgroup, which acts as an open standards evangelist, the new Open Web Foundation aims to do the behind-the-scenes dirty work. The goal is to ensure that the various standards, like OAuth and OpenID have consistency, a legal framework and communication between them.
Microsoft: Windows 7 on track
Posted by Ina Fried, BEYOND B1NARY
Windows unit head Bill Veghte said on Thursday that Windows 7 development remains on track for release on time. The company has officially said it would ship by January 2010 but top executives have also said from time to time that it would be done by the end of 2009.
Technology’s Next Wave: Transforming Teamwork and Travel?
My article today talks about how more and more companies are rethinking the face-to-face meeting — when it makes productive sense to travel for that essential in-person experience and when that is no longer necessary, mainly because of advances in computing and telecommunications technology.
What Works (And What Doesn't) on the Mobile Web. By Scott Loganbil, webmonkey, the web developer's resource
When considering the future of the open web on mobile devices, it’s easy to see that the desktop’s days as top dog are numbered. Nielsen Mobile, one of the many companies that pays close attention to such things, recently reported unique mobile internet usage has grown 73% since 2006 (PDF). And according to the blog ReadWriteWeb, mobile ad tracking service AdMob claims mobile web use has doubled in the last year.
Goodmail Is Back Trying to Sell Access to Your In-Box
By Saul Hansell
Two years ago I wrote about Goodmail Systems, a company that wants to help big companies make sure that e-mail they send doesn’t wind up trapped in a spam filter. Their idea is to charge the sender and give most of the money to the Internet providers and Web e-mail companies (like Google or Yahoo) to assure safe passage for paying messages.