Category: Web

Barely a month after buying up software developers @Last Software, Google have released a free version of their popular 3D-modelling application SketchUp.

Running on Windows 2000 and Windows XP Home and Professional editions (Mac users will have to wait), the free version of SketchUp is a cut down version of SketchUp Pro 5, a high-end, commercial product.

Google SketchUp is touted as an ‘easy-to-learn’ 3D modelling program, offering simple tools to let users create 3D models of houses, sheds, decks, home additions and whatever else takes their fancy – all drawn with dimensional accuracy.

To get 3D newbies up and running there’s thousands of pre-drawn components available to download, with video and self help tutorials available from within the program to explain what button does what.

Details, textures and glass can also be added to models, which can then be uploaded onto Google Earth or shared with fellow modelling aficionados by posting them to the 3D Warehouse – a new site where SketchUp users can store, share and collaborate on designs.

Google SketchUp is free for personal use (no registration required) and the 20MB program files can be downloaded from here http://sketchup.google.com/

3D Warehouse
Placing SketchUp models in Google Earth

In the seemingly endless round of upgrades and improvements, Opera Software have just announced the first public Beta of Opera 9.

A number of new features have been included, those most relevant to the content world being a BitTorrent client built directly into the browser, so downloads can be kicked off without having to load a separate piece of software. BitTorrent is a distributed file-sharing protocol that enables the simple sharing of large files, without the need for a central server, or the bandwidth bills associated with it.

It will be interesting to see if Opera’s other customers who use the embedded version for Consumer Electronics chips, throw any objection to the inclusion of BitTorrent – given the content worlds near-obsessive dislike of it.

Widgets are being included. These will be familiar with Apple Mac users, as it will do with users of the Yahoo Widgets, after their purchase of Konfabulator. They’re little applications that can be written by users to provide features like a calendar, calculator, alarm clock, news headlines, weather reports, etc.

With the writers at Digital-Lifestyles being tab-monsters, we find one of the new features, thumbnail preview, highly desirable. By hovering over a tab, a miniature version of the page will popup to help you identify which page relates to which tab.

Among the other features in the new version are

• Content blocker – Choose the content you want to view. Remove ads or images – it is up to you. Right-click on the Web page and choose “Block content”
• Improved rich text editing – Take advantage of rich text editing capabilities when using the latest Web mail or blogging services
• Customize your search engines – Use your favorite search engine in the search box. Right-click on the site’s search field and select “Create search” from the menu
• Site-specific preferences – Do you need to view a site in a different way or deny certain cookies? Want to block pop-ups on certain sites only? Site specific preferences hold the key

Opera

“Today’s state of the art in spam control solutions is far ahead of where it was, say, two years ago. Improved spam filters being available to more people — plus laws that allow the citizenry to penalise spammers — will cause the scourge of email spam to wither and die.”

Yes, it’s the issue of paid-for spam, as many have called it, as proposed by Goodmail. It’s been hailed, controversially, by American IT pundit Esther Dyson, who told New York Times readers that the “barrage of criticism” launched at the idea was wrong.

“These organisations seem to think that all Internet mail must always be free, just because it was free before. Yet they pay for computers and Internet access and office supplies, just like everyone else,” Dyson wrote.

Today, email expert Richi Jennings of Ferris Research retorts that the problem isn’t as bad as that. Where Dyson says “Pretty soon, all mail will cost money, but I think that’s only right…” Jennings says: “While we see a role for companies such as Goodmail, we don’t agree that ‘most’ email will cost money in the future, and it’s not ‘only right’ because the fact that email is free is part of its appeal.”

Dyson’s argument, says Jennings, “stands or falls on the assertion that today’s spam filters aren’t working. Jennings and Ferris Research think the opposite is true.

Time will tell, of course, but Dyson’s vision of the future is that there will be more and more Goodmail competitors.

The Goodmail idea is simple enough; you create a world in which only mail from known sources gets through. You and I, as mail users, tell our email system that if we don’t have someone’s name in the address book, then it’s spam. And our email system then says: “I’ve been given money to let this person through” and we say: “Well, I trust my email system.”

There is one reason to presume that this system is better; and that’s the sheer volume of spam today. In theory, anybody could send a viagra advert through the paid system – but it would involve a complete change in the way spammers finance themselves. They work on the assumption that they can as easily send six million messages as sixty million as six hundred million; and if only 0.001% of mails get a reply, they’re in big business.

Goodmail (and its rivals) reckon that they can turn that free six hundred million messages into something that costs half a million dollars to send. And they also reckon that we’ll find a way of ignoring the spammers, and that they won’t be able to break through.

It’s that last question that I’d query. Can we really make the world’s email system insist on authenticating all email? Or are we still stuck with a system which allows “spoofing” of mail, so that spam will simply arrive in our mailboxes looking like it’s from real friends?

Esther is definitely right about one thing. There’s absolutely no threat to anybody from Goodmail. Yes, it will mean that people will send advertising to you; but the problem with advertising isn’t just “it’s advertising!” – it’s the amount.

One advert a day, I probably won’t notice. It’s three hundred a day that makes email unmanageable; and no marketing operation can afford to send three hundred emails to every user on the planet every day, if it costs on a per-mail basis.

If Goodmail changes advertising from 300 a day to one a day, then nobody will mind. If paid-for mail still runs at 300 a day, people will drop AOL and other Goodmail customers, and move to other ISPs who don’t allow it. I’m with Dyson on this: the market will sort that one out.