March 2006

Verisign Want To Help You Trust The Internet
Interesting to see Verisgn’s Chief Security Officer, Ken Silva, spreading himself over the news warning of a new type of Denial of Service (DoS) attack.
The new twist with the DoS attacks? Requests are initially made to a DNS with a faked return address for the DNS to reply to. This false address is the site being attacked, with the effect that the DNS is sending lots of responses to the target-server, bring it down. hence the Service being Denied.
Why would Verisign be interesting in telling people about this? Well they own Network Solutions, the largest domain register, so clearly they’ve got a vested interest in DNS working well.
More interestingly, their main business is selling security certificates. These certificates are used to ‘prove’ who you are and are, in turn, verified by VeriSign (See how they came up with the name now?).
To date, certificates have generally only really been used by sites to provide potential purchasers with a level of confidence in translating with them.
I think Verisign has a vision far beyond this. I imagine they’re getting very excited about the semantic web, where machines will be forever talking to each other, swapping little nuggets of data. I imagine that when the verisign CxO’s are lying around fantasising about how life could be, a world where everyone of these machine need to have a certificate (one of theirs naturally) would pretty much be the highest state of excitement.
Look at their spate of purchases towards the end of last year; weblogs.com and moreover and see how this strengthens the argument. They want to be in a position to prove that your blog post is created by you, or that the news source that says it the Digital-Lifestyles is Digital-Lifestyles.info and not some wanna-be imitation. Positioning yourself as an owner of frequently used ping server can only help you.
So keep your eye on VeriSign, we think they think they’re going to become a large part of your online life.
17 March, 2006
Google – Read, Right? Edit
Suppose you ran a Web site, and got a little money in advertising. And then suppose someone came along, and said: “I can give you more readers, and extra advertising!” – would you be grateful? Especially if this was genuine, and tested out? Well, Russell Buckley isn’t grateful.
His moan sounds silly, but effectively, his gripe is that when Google Mobile take pages for his site and configure them for mobile phone surfers, they take out the adverts, and put their own adverts on. And he’s complained to Google about this, and blogged it, and still, they don’t respond.
He has, nonetheless, a point. His actual argument, when you strip away the egotism of comparing his complaint about Google with the collapse of Kryptonite business, is that Google is actually editing his page, not just formatting it.
The Kryptonite comparison, summary: inhabitants of the InterWeb Blogland discovered you could steal a bike locked with Kryptonite even if all you had was a ball point pen, and Kryptonite dismissed those quaint Bloglanders as irrelevant. Well, yes; if you sell a product which is shown to be non-functional, you need to deal with the bad press.
But the comparison viewed in one way is empty. Google is doing nothing of the sort – its product works, and works as described. It adds extra revenue to the Web site owner’s income stream, and it does it by making a sensible call on how to format pages.
Viewed from another position, you might think that Google should start of listen to the buzz on the blogs (it’s not like they don’t have the tool to find out is it!), in the way that Kryptonite _didn’t_.
That said, Google is arrogating to itself a decision which you’d normally expect the Web site manager to make: what appears on the Web page. And it really ought to have the consent of the site manager to do that. And if it hasn’t, then it should talk.
Now, I can see Google’s point. “What is this guy’s problem?” you might say. After all, most adverts on Web pages are there without the explicit consent of the site manager. One-click and other advert providers post adverts “on the fly” and track the individual user. Click on one advert for fast cars, and they’ll probably show you more next time you visit; and they don’t ring up the Web site manager and ask specific permission. They just download the advert. (Eventually. When you’re almost out of patience, and thinking of switching to Firefox and running Adblock. Another story…)
What Google is doing is even more sensible. They are saying: “This advert is simply too big to run on a mobile phone. It will cost the phone owner real dosh to download, it won’t render properly, the advertiser will be horrified to see how it looks, and it will hide the actual page content which the subscriber wants to see. We’ll hide it, and show a Google Adsense advert instead.”
And frankly, most of us would say: “Exactly what we want you to do!” – and at the end of the day, the site owner gets a share of the Adsense revenue, from readers who wouldn’t have seen the page otherwise.
But if Russell told Google he didn’t want them to do that. He’s entitled to do so. And he blogged it when they ignored him. And yes, his blog got some traction – in that other bloggers linked to it – and Google still ignored him.
I get the impression his bona fides are not altogether clear, here, because someone who ought to know, has said that Russell has (or has had) an association with a rival outfit – Yahoo. It would be good to hear his response to that – but if true, it’s definitely something he should have disclosed. We’re pleased to say that Russell did get in touch, and we thank him for that. He assures us that he has no connections with Yahoo, and therefore has no axe to grind on this one.
At the end of the day, whatever the rights and wrongs of his approach, and whether he’s exaggerating the influence of his blog and the blogworld, or not, he has a point: Google is being arrogant. It is making decisions which its mobile clients have not asked for, and even, have specifically asked them not to do – and when they complain, it isn’t responding.
It may be small beer to Google, but it’s exactly this “faceless bureaucracy” which is its Achilles heel. Anybody who deals with the company will tell you that getting a real person to respond, is harder than getting a refund out of City Hall; and that the “don’t be evil” motto appears to be one which Google parses according to its own standards, not necessarily those of the rest of us.
17 March, 2006
VoIP Vivifies The US Home Phone Market
Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is slowly but steadily creeping into American homes, with adoption up 20% since June 2005, and growing user satisfaction.
The figures, released by consulting firm Telephia, show that nearly 3.9 million US households are now VoIP’ing away, with Vonage securing the highest market share at 47.5 percent. This translates into 1.9 million households – up from 40 percent from the last year.
The grandly named Telephia Emerging Personal Communications Options (EPCO) survey saw Skype lag miles behind Vonage with just 11.8 percent market share (463,000 household subscribers), followed by AT&T Call Vantage at 5.6 percent, (218,000 subscribers),Verizon Voice Wing 5 percent (196,000 subscribers) and new boy Google with just 2.5 percent (97,000 subscribers).
Only way is up
As that dreadful song by Yaz insists, the only way for VoIP is most definitely up, with more wireless subscribers already using the service as their primary phone line.
Kanishka Agarwal, vice president of new products at Telephia, commented: “About 30 percent of 18 to 24 year olds only have a wireless phone…VoIP has an appeal, because it’s less expensive, about $5 monthly…we will see higher adoption in this age group,” he added.
Early adopters to VoIP may recall the experience being akin to talking to a stuttering Dalek in an echo chamber, but the research revealed that 67 percent of VoIP users believe voice quality is now equal to traditional landline services, with 19 percent reckoning that internet calls sound better than those on wired phones lines.
Realibility is on the rise too, with 71 percent of VoIP households finding Internet telephony to be just as reliable as land lines, with sixteen percent considering VoIP to have better reliability.
Naturally, mobile manufacturers like Nokia have been taking note of the growing demand for VoIP handsets, and we can expect to see a flurry of dual-mode Wi-Fi/mobile handsets in the coming months,
16 March, 2006
The Blog System That’s Eating Blogs
Making blogging too easy seems to be making it hard. It may be coincidence, but one example of “too easy” blogging is the spam blog, or splog – and suddenly, there’s a rash of upset bloggers who have had their blogs blacked.
The latest example, listed on “the other Inquirer” tells the sad tale of a long-term addict to public navel-gazing: “I have been blogging since April 16, 2004, a day after my youngest daughter was born. On March 8, 2006, I was surprised to find my blog locked,” he writes.
The villain – as listed – is Blogger. Blogger has several tools designed to stop your public diary from being filled up with spam. And understandably! – there’s really nothing more frustrating than posting a deeply-held opinion, and coming back a day later to find it full of dozens, even hundreds, of comments that actually aren’t comments at all. They’re simply spam: “Great blog! You might like to read about my organ enhancement products on *www.biggusdickus.blogspot.com” and all pointing to the same crooked site.
And a spam blog is something that doesn’t actually have any real content. It’s just links to trackback pointers for everybody else. The trouble is, all the signs of a spam blog are caused by the ease with which they are built. You just have to create the blog (two clicks) and then set up a robot that scours the web for new posts, and links to the trackbacks.
So, the coincidence: just before he got black-listed, our navel gazer switched to a blog automator. The product is one of so many I can’t make myself go there. It’s called Qumana, and what it does (amongst other things) is allow you to create your blog quickly and easily, including advertising, even if you’re offline. You’ll get an idea of the scale of the problem if you look at Technorati’s tag for Qumana.
Yes, in a fit of egotism, idiocy, the authors decided to write software that creates a tag for qumana for every blog page that is created on qumana. It doesn’t matter whether the subject is carrots, cameras or carcases; the tag for Qumana will also be created. As a result, you’ll have real trouble finding what the current discussion about Qumana is about; it’s lost in the backgroud noise.
I’m not saying that Qumana is what caused the blog to be blacked. I am saying that if it produces a series of random, unrelated tags to a single site, it’s going to fulfil one of the prime indicators of a splog. And when random, unrelated blog entries all get tagged “Qumana” whatever their subject, you have something so similar, it’s going to be quite hard to see what a blog provider can do to filter it.
So our injured blogger has moved from Blogger to WordPress – which is something that could be said about better publications than his – and Blogger has instituted a standard “are you human?” check. But the real problem is that if you make blogging so easy that anybody can do it, anybody (or are splog creators things) will do it. And quality and quantity are not always good bedfellows.
*( for Monty Python fans, that is not a real URL! – yet)
16 March, 2006
Wales Aims For 100% Broadband Coverage
The Welsh Assembly has announced today that they’ve selected the BT Group to provide the broadband infrastructure for the remaining exchange areas in Wales.
Nothing particularly exciting about that of course, except that the agreement is a major step on the way to Wales becoming one of the few countries in the world to offer 100% broadband coverage.
With much of lovely, lovely Wales being rural, the Assembly’s Regional Innovative Broadband Support Scheme (RIBS) was set up to connect up parts of Wales described as ‘broadband blackspots’.
The new scheme with see around 10,000 households and businesses receiving access to at least first-generation (512kbps to 2mbps) broadband services at prices comparable with urban areas of Wales.
Once completed, virtually every single household in Wales will be able to join in with the broadband revolution and get stuck into video conferencing, Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) and other business and entertainment uses.
Andrew Davies, Minister for Economic Development and Transport and eMinister for the Welsh Assembly Government swivelled into spin mode: “Currently, around 99% of the Welsh population can access broadband technology – a remarkable achievement in its own right. However, the Assembly Government is committed to ensuring that virtually every single individual and business in Wales has the opportunity to benefit from the advantages offered by this technology.”
Broadband uptake in Wales has almost doubled over the past 12 months, underlining the country’s economic transformation from industrial to a dynamic, knowledge-driven economy.
Compared to some other European countries, Wales’ achievement is significant; in Ireland, for example, only about 18.0% of the population have broadband connections.
The Welsh Assembly has been proactive in ensuring that the country achieves its 100% coverage target, as Ann Beynon, Director BT Wales, explains, ” BT, like the Welsh Assembly Government, is contributing to the cost of enabling these final exchanges and without the Assembly’s assistance, the upgrading would not have been commercially viable.!
Work to equip the remaining BT exchange areas with broadband is scheduled to start immediately.
BT Wales
Broadband Wales Observatory
16 March, 2006
CEA Entertainment Technology Policy Summit
15-16 March Digital technologies are allowing consumers to do more with their content. How can we preserve intellectual property, protect consumers’ fair use and ensure the freedom to innovate? How will proposed revisions to the Telecomm Act affect the debate? CEA’s Entertainment Technology Policy Summit will address these issues and more. Hear the innovators. See the products and hear first hand from the content community about the challenges these products create as well as the opportunities. Gain insight into the policymakers’ struggle of defining what’s right and what’s wrong. And learn about the final steps to the big finish for HDTV. Washington, D.C, USA http://www.ce.org/Events/event_info/default.asp?eventID=HDTV06
15 March, 2006
Oregon Scientific Wireless Easy Weather System Pro Review (85%)
It may not look as pretty as an old fashioned barometer, but Oregon Scientific’s Easy Weather System Pro can provide a wealth of information about the weather – with no need to tap its face to get the dials moving.
The £49 ($86, €72) wireless weather station will provide users with ample material for Britain’s favourite topic of conversation, with a large LCD screen dishing out a veritable storm of weather-related data.
The weather station comes in two parts with a large main unit (142 x 63 x 158mm) powered by three AA batteries and a smaller remote sensor which beams outdoor temperature and humidity data back to the main unit every 40 seconds.
Getting the sensor to talk to the weather station was simple enough – set the channel number on the sensor (the system can support up to 3 sensors), press ‘memory’ and ‘channel’ on the main unit for a few seconds and that’s it.
The sensor has a small, built-in LCD read-out, with the main unit sporting a signal reception icon and low battery warning.
Time accuracy is ensured with a radio controlled alarm clock and calendar that synchronises to the radio signal from Rugby, with a handy onscreen indicator shows the signal strength.
Once set up, the large LCD screen provides indoor and outdoor stats for humidity/humidity trend and temperature/temperature trend as well as barometric pressure/trend (the trend readout displays an arrow to show whether the data is rising, steady or falling.)
A large animated icon forecasts the next 12-24 hours of weather within a 30-50km radius with what Oregon claims to be “75% accuracy” – we found it to be pretty accurate throughout.
Finishing off the feature set, a large clock display gives the time, date and seconds/day with a Moon phase readout.
Over the test period, we found ourselves being strangely drawn to the Oregon’s display, constantly checking for barometric blips and temperature twitches and rapidly becoming a walking encyclopaedia of weather waffle.
For anyone with an interest in what’s going on weather-wise, the Oregon Wireless Weather Station represents fabulous value and offers a stylish – if sizeable – addition to the work desk – and Lord help anyone who then rings you to innocently ask, “What’s the weather like where you are?”
Our verdict:
Features: 85%
Ease of Use: 85%
Build Quality: 80%
Overall: 85%
Oregon.
15 March, 2006
Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow
Don’t Stop thinking about tomorrow is Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies’ first Don’t Stop confernce and, they hope just the beginning of a long range of international futures conferences. This year thye’ve chosen to focus on business innovation. Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies has more than 35 years of experience in corporate foresight. The objective of the CIFS is to strengthen the basis for decision-making in public and private organisations by creating awareness of the future and highlighting its importance to the present. Copenhagen, Denmark http://www.dontstop01.com/programme.php
15 March, 2006
Google Chalks Up SketchUp
Several forests are having to be torn down to supply Google with enough chequebooks to keep up with their current spending spree.
Barely has the ink dried on the Writely deal earlier this week than the big spenders at Google whipped out their heaving wallet and scooped up @LastSoftware, the company who make the 3D SketchUp software.
The high-end program is used by architects, game players and other 3D bods and has a plug-in designed to allow developers to export 3D models into Google Earth.
Bought for an undisclosed sum, a statement on @LastSoftware’s site details how they fluttered eyes at each other a wireframe table: “We got to know a bunch of Googlers while we were building the Google Earth plug-in for SketchUp, and it quickly became apparent that we could really stir things up together.”
Brad Schell, co-founder of the 7-year-old company, said it would continue to develop and sell SketchUp, which retails for a pricey $495 (~£283, ~e411).
“Google’s resources will allow us to serve our current users better, and Google’s reach will allow us to expose more people to SketchUp in one year than we could have touched in 10 years on our own,” he commented in a budsy message to customers.
Clearly getting excited, Schell whooped, “‘3D for Everyone’ is becoming a reality; we’re bringing the ‘3D’ part; Google’s contributing the ‘Everyone.’”
Google’s move into 3D mapping software looks to be part of a strategy to spruce up their mapping and direction service, as an entry in the @Last blog explains: “We do not have any announced plans regarding the integration of this technology with current Google products and services, but we can say that we’re tired of all those grey boxes in Google Earth.”
The combination of SketchUp’s 3-Dimension models overlaid on Google Earth’s maps could serve up a competition busting offering, with the added detail offering real value to GPS users.
@Last have said that they won’t be shifting from their current headquarters in Boulder, Colorado or moving their Munich and London offices, although the company’s name would change to Google while SketchUp will retain its name.
SketchUp
15 March, 2006
Windows Live Family Safety Settings Announced
Microsoft is to release a suite of free parental controls and other safety measures designed to safeguard children on the Internet.
The software, called Windows Live Family Safety Settings, runs on Windows XP and lets parents block Web content which they feel is inappropriate for their little Timmy or Tabatha.
Parents can choose individual settings to ‘allow,’ ‘block’ or ‘warn’ for a range of content categories for each member of the family, with the filtering settings being activated when a user logs on to a PC running Microsoft’s Family Safety Settings.
The settings can be changed over time (“OK son, you’re old enough to see some breasts now”) with the settings applicable to Web pages, email or messenger communications as well as Windows Live Spaces.
Kids definitely won’t like this, but the software also lets parents access their activity reports to check what they’ve been up to online.
“Contact management,” an update coming later in the year, will let parents approve contacts on Windows Live Mail and Windows Live Messenger (the new brandings for Hotmail and MSN Messenger respectively).
Another feature will give parents control over who can access their kids’ blogs on MSN Spaces.
Family Safety Settings will be available for any PC running Windows XP with Service Pack 2 as well as the upcoming Windows Vista operating system.
Microsoft has said that it expects the service to be available to “Windows Live customers in dozens of countries worldwide” by this summer.
In addition to the Live family filter for Windows XP, Microsoft is building parental controls into their next-gen operating system, Windows Vista.
Windows Live
Windows Live Family Safety
15 March, 2006