What is an RSS feed?
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication (although versions before RSS 2.0 have been known by other names). In simple terms, an RSS feed is a system that allows web content to be put into a standard format for viewing through an RSS feed reader. It allows the user to save time [...]
The internet is filled with very interesting TV content that any type of individual will definitely love, thus people are using all means to record online TV. The videos ranging from TV shows, full length movies, short video clips and other visual media are the targets of some people for recording. They want to record [...]
Fasten your seatbelt and get set for the ultimate entertainment explosion!
Playstation-3 is a gaming experience that is beyond anything known today. It is a computer entertainment system that unleashes a brilliant, high-definition entertainment experience which is incomparable. It delivers the next generation of interactive entertainment.
Playstation-3 is the third home video game console produced by Sony [...]
I was looking for a handy place to put a bit of info from Nielsen Online: the UK’s Top 10 web browsers, according to their “unique audience” (online use). Market shares are also given as percentages:
1. Internet Explorer………. 25,169,576…..75%
2. Mozilla (Firefox)………… 4,014,924…..12%
3. AOL Explorer…………….2,554,037…….8%
4. Yahoo! Browser………….1,359,823……4%
5. Opera Browser……………..111,443…….0.33%
6. MSN Explorer Browser…….75,428…….0.22%
7. Flock…………………………..14,356…….0.04%
8. Avant Browser……………….10,765…….0.03%
9. Safari……………………………9,826…….0.03%
10. SlimBrowser…………………8,840……..0.03%
(I’ve asked why Safari gets such a low score. It looks very wrong.)
I think it’s a pretty safe bet that Google’s Chrome will soon be in the top 5, but it will be interesting to see how it turns out.
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A court ruling in New Jersey doesn’t seem all that surprising, but may lead to more legal questions in the future. The case involved an employee who was stealing from his employer. The employee was eventually found guilty of the theft, but argued that the evidence used against him was gathered illegally, in that it was in a password protected file on his company-owned laptop. It’s actually a little more confusing, as the guy actually claimed the laptop was his, but that turned out not to be true. He had originally purchased the computer using his employers credit card… but then still pretended the computer was his personal laptop. Yet, later, he “sold” the laptop to the company — so realistically, the company had bought the laptop twice.
So, then the legal question was whether or not the guy had a “reasonable expectation of privacy” for stuff stored on that laptop, especially in a password protected file. The court ruled no, that an employee does not have a reasonable expectation for privacy, and that, effectively, anything on the computer is fair game for the employer (even if it’s password protected).
You can understand the reasoning there, as it makes sense that a company should feel free to go through the contents of a computer it owns. However, it does raise some other questions. Earlier this summer, we wrote about another case in which a company continued to read the personal email of a fired employee, because he had left his personal online email account logged in from the company-owned laptop. While that seems different, is it really that big a leap from data stored on the local hard drive, to data stored on a remote hard drive, accessed via a web browser? It does, however, start to become a much trickier question, especially as more data and apps move from the local laptop into the “cloud” and as work and life boundaries blur.
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Now you can take that round-the-world trip from the comfort of your home, and see not just the obvious tourist sites but people having parties or playing with their kids in the back garden. All you need is a web browser and Earth Album – an online photo album that covers the whole world.
Earth Album doesn’t actually have any of its own photos, of course: it takes them from Flickr, the popular photo-sharing website. Nor does it have a map of the world: it uses Google Maps with a hybrid satellite view. What Earth Album does is take these two giant internet properties and link them together in what’s called a mashup.
It’s easy to use. You start with a map of the world and zoom in on the area you want. Earth Album takes any Flickr photos associated with that place – perhaps by geotagging – and displays them in a scrolling strip across the screen. You can click on any photo to see a larger version, along with its caption, if it has one.
The results vary according to what’s available. If you focus on a small or desolate region you may not find anything. Zooming out increases the chance of finding at least a few images, and the country-level views have some stunning images. The major cities and tourist spots are well covered, as you’d expect, but some areas are very badly served. Google Maps’ coverage of Georgia, for example, is poor, and it can be hard to find many photos except for Tbilisi.
There are shortcuts, and you can find a place by typing in the name or entering an address. If you want London Ontario, Paris Texas or Boston Lincs, you have to be specific. Curiously, York takes you to New York instead of the city in Yorkshire.
You can also search by keywords and find things like mountains and sunsets. In this case, Earth Album seems to be picking up cues from titles and captions.
There are one or two annoyances. The main one for me is the scrolling of the picture selection. This works well as you go from right to left, bringing up more photos, but clicking the left arrow takes you right back to the beginning. This seems bizarre on a site that has been around for two years.
A very minor complaint is that there should be a more obvious way to jump from any photo to its home on Flickr (clicking the title works). Flickr often gives you the background to a picture, and access to a stream of related images.
Earth Album’s results may seem somewhat voyeuristic, because they can include personal snaps taken at parties and weddings, at work, at home or in pubs. On the other hand, it’s interesting to see the same sort of snaps from Santiago, Singapore, Sapporo and similar places. In the end, Earth Album is giving us the chance to see and share our common humanity, and that must be a force for good.
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So-called “cloud computing” has taken a beating over the past few weeks. The concept is simple enough, and hundreds of millions of people have been doing it for many years via Microsoft Hotmail. It just means accessing an online application - in this case, email - via a web browser, instead of running a separate program on your personal computer.
Of course, the number of online applications has grown tremendously. It now stretches from simple to-do lists via office-style programs such as spreadsheets and project management to more specialised business services such as accounting and customer relationship management. Users can also store their photos and movies online.
This certainly has advantages. People can access their online applications from any computer at any time, and collaborative work becomes easier. Often, too, these online applications are “free” (paid for by advertising).
But cloud computing also has drawbacks, which the pundits may be much less keen to tell you about. One has been highlighted recently: reliability. Google Docs, Gmail, Twitter and Amazon’s S3 service have all been out of action, and some of Apple’s MobileMe users have had a torrid time. At Webware, Rafe Needleman has posted a list of the 10 Worst Web glitches of 2008 so far.
Alas, even if the online application works, users may not be able to get to it. They may have local problems with their browser or their internet connection. Their internet service provider may have network problems. Remember, the internet is never guaranteed to work: it just operates on the principle of “best efforts”. (We tried. We failed. Hard luck.)
Even if an online application works and you can get to it, things can still go wrong. The company that provides the application can change it in any way (turning the interface you loved into one you hate, for example), without asking, or they can simply close it. Nikon is about to close its Fotoshare photo service, and AOL may well close its Xdrive online storage. If you were a paying Streamload user, all your data has already been dumped. Hard luck.
Still, at least when services close, users are usually given a few weeks to rescue their stuff. It’s much worse when people are locked out because the supplier thinks they have done something wrong, or because their account has been hacked.
Nick Saber, for example, recently found himself locked out of Gmail. That was bad. What was worse was that he was automatically locked out of every other Google service that uses the same logon. If it happens to you, you won’t be able to use Gmail, Google Talk, Google Docs or your calendar; you won’t have access to your photos at Picasa, and so on. It’s devastating.
Yes, people can also lose access to their data when they fail to back up their PCs. We’ve been telling them that for decades. But online data also needs to be backed up, and supporters of cloud computing should be telling people that as well.
How far cloud computing can go is another matter. Applications run much slower online than they do on a local PC, and a browser provides a much more limited interface than a desktop application, so there are sacrifices as well as advantages. Still, it’s not either/or: I think there’s plenty of room for both.
But anybody who thinks the cloud is going to replace personal computers completely is welcome to put their PC in the bin. Indeed, if you have a very recent high-end PC or Mac, I might take it off your hands for free.
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NebuAd is a company we’ve discussed before, that basically works with ISPs to use your clickstream data to send targeted ads. It’s quite similar to Phorm, which has received plenty of attention for its questionable behavior over in the UK. Now, some researchers have looked into the details of what NebuAd really does… and it’s not pretty:
NebuAd exploits normal browser and platform security behaviors by forging IP packets, allowing their own JavaScript code to be written into source code trusted by the Web browser. NebuAd and ISPs together cooperate in this attack against the intentions of the consumers, the designers of their software and the owners of the servers that they visit…. NebuAd breaks the rules of acceptable behavior on the Internet. It monitors what you do and see on the Internet, it breaks in and changes the contents of your private communications, it keeps track of what you’ve done, and if you even know that it’s happening, it is impossible to opt-out of it.”
Perhaps Charter Communications and other ISPs that have signed up for NebuAd should have researched things a little more thoroughly. Congress is already investigating the legality of something like NebuAd, and one assumes that a report like this may find its way to many of those politicians pretty quickly.
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Computer giant Apple launches a version of its web browser Safari for Windows XP and Vista.
Looks like our favorite Web browser is about to go mobile. Mozilla head honcho, Mitchell Baker, told the folks at APC magazine that Mozilla is working on a Firefox to go for your cellphone. It’s a long-term project (meaning it’s not coming out any time soon), but the goal is to allow it to work with all the add-ons and plug-ins that the full version works with. As long as it works on my smartphone, sign me up. – Louis Ramirez
Firefox Will Move to Mobile Phones: Mozilla CEO [APC via Gadgetell]