Monthly Archive for August, 2006

Ringing around the world at the right time

Published on Tuesday, August 29, 2006 in Business and Travel. 0 Comments

If you travel a fair amount as I do and also need to ring people up who may live on the other side of the world it’s not always easy to remember what the best time to ring people is.

Well, fear no more, you’ll never make a mistake again with the World Clock Meeting Planner !

world clock meeting planner

As you can see you have the appropriate ‘business’ parts of the day and corresponding local time are in green (good to go). You also have in a nice yellow colour the parts of the day that are for family and good friends. If you’re ringing up in the red parts there had better be a good reason whoever it is ! ;)

Here I was checking out what time I could ring Sebastien in New York, while taking into account his hectic work day.

The spying CD

Published on Monday, August 28, 2006 in Design, Tech and Trend. 0 Comments

A CD from Sony that can tell how many times you have copied it !!!

I can remember that Martin, a flat mate at University, used to leave his copy of New Scientist hanging around in the kitchen for us to read. Since that time I have often bought a copy and now check the website. A pretty astonishing catch in this months issue concerning a patent from Sony.

First of all it’s not astonishing from Sony since you may remember that they already made a complete mess with their previous attempt. Second, well, will they learn it’s easy to hack whether they try to use software or hardware ? Third this could easily backfire on them, I’m not sure how but a company that has been so stupid thus far is bound to mess up again ! People have figured out how to spy on which links you visited using CSS so spying on what you played with this type of device installed would probably be feasible.

Allowing people to transfer the music to play on mp3 players is obviously not in Sony’s interest. It’s not like they make mp3 players (can you hear the sarcastic tone?).

Maybe Sony should read Architectures of control and “PRM” over at ‘The Flowing Candy Bees’, they might realise how they could be liable again.

Spying on your visitors

Published on Monday, August 28, 2006 in Code and Web. 0 Comments

Jeremiah Grossman demonstrates an issue with CSS and visited links which allows sites to verify the sites you have visited prior to theirs.

The issue/bug/vulnerability isn’t new, as comments explain, it was first discovered in 2002 and is well documented here at the seclist.org site.

CSS has a feature that can be abused to exactly the same ends. It is simpler, more accurate, and more easily abused than the timing attacks described in the above paper.

There is a demonstration here of how it works, on top of the Grossman post :
https://www.indiana.edu/~phishing/browser-recon/

It seems variations enable this hack on IE, FireFox, Opera and Mozilla unless there are plug-ins that block the browser from comparing with its history function…

WebWag : your personal page

Published on Monday, August 28, 2006 in Design, News, Personal and Web. 2 Comments

A personal page service that allows you to choose what and where you add content, isn’t new, but when it just does that, then it quickly provides more than the others, with more freedom in the what (you add) area.

I recently finished work on a plug-in that provides personal page functions, so I appreciate the value of WebWag, it is very impressive. Both functional and usability aspects are good. This type of product is capable of easily expanding services and functions as well.

webwag

You can add pages that appear as tabs at the top of the page, rename the whole area, add, move delete the boxes that correspond to the different functions and content that appears. I didn’t find a way to edit the way the page looks (colours, font size, column width, page width). Also it could be me, but I couldn’t place search anywhere else but in the middle column.

The system is impressive however and I think it will only get better…

Zeo’s profile on Technorati

Published on Friday, August 25, 2006 in Blog. 0 Comments

By pure coincidence while I was trying to find a link to Zeo’s hack for the wp-admin page, I tried Google after Technorati (as you can see from the tabs) but just before closing the Technorati page I recognized the photo of the member at the bottom left. A quick mouseover confirmed it was Zeo. So Zeo is now officially famous ;)

Zeo profile on Technorati

And take a look at the name of the post below to the right !

zeo zoom

PS : Zeo here’s the link to the full image.
PS 2 : Zeo I was using Opera as you can see :)
PS 3 : Zeo is one of the developers working on the K2 Wordpress theme from Michael Heilemann.

Multi-browser site testing

Published on Thursday, August 24, 2006 in Design, Tech, Web and Writing. 2 Comments

I have just published an article that covers the subject of testing your site/pages and the compatibility with different browsers, several different services and solutions exist. I aim to cover as many solutions as possible in the article.

The main areas of the article are :
- Hardware based solutions
- Software based solutions
- Standalone solutions
- Remote Testing Machines solutions
- Cross-Browser screen capturing
- Standards Compliance
- Load and Stress Tests

Browsercam capture
A screenshot from the Browsercam tutorial.

AJAX Write and Sketch and Tunes

Published on Thursday, August 24, 2006 in Experimental, Music, Web and Writing. 0 Comments

ajax writeWell I just came across this AJAX based Word Processor system called ajaxWrite that can actually read and write MS Word documents and several other formats. It is AJAX based so it just works directly in your browser, it’s really cool !

 
 

But I then realised that this was just the tip of the iceberg. There is a ajaxSketch that can read and write SVG type documents and it all just works seamlessly as you can see from the screenshots in your web browser.
ajax sketch

I then clicked on ajaxTunes and this “is a web-based music player that lets you play high-quality streaming music straight from the Internet on any computer” Not only that but it seems to link to remotely stored music. It’s amazing !! I am impressed !
Oh and the first song that appeared ‘Breathe Me’ by Sia is also a sing I really like so these guys got everything right first time with me, bravo !

But as these guys are really good they have actually got the system working so you can add the code to your pages so I’m going to give it a try. My page will not validate anymore but it was already giving me CSS errors anyway so here goes :
Listen to Sia’s ‘Breathe Me’ right now !

Update : It works in FireFox, IE and Opera. Sia’s singing to me from my blog, this is great :)

FireFox Crop Circle Celebration

Published on Wednesday, August 23, 2006 in Blog and Web. 0 Comments

firefox_crop_circle.jpgFor the cool guys and girls from the Oregon State Linux Users Group, celebrating the 200 million download milestone, the decision was made to better the previous events with a really memorable one. What better than a crop circle of over 45,000 square feet.
So August 2006, only one year and nine months after the launch of FireFox 1.0, the Mozilla Corporation has distributed over 200 million copies. Some die-hard FireFox fans admit they may have downloaded it over 50 times each but hey that’s no much of a dent on 200 million now is it ??
This is obviously recounted at the Fox Tales web site, a pure FireFox fanatics blog about all things FireFox of course…

For a closer look at how the crop circle came to life check out the story here, including a full photo gallery, and even videos !

As per Red Herring :

Meanwhile, the 200-million downloads mark could also bring Firefox closer to 15 percent of the total browser market share.

May FireFox continue with a long and happy life !

The fight of the free in Newspaperland

Published on Tuesday, August 22, 2006 in News, Society, Trend and Writing. 0 Comments

London is the place to be for free newspapers. Soon there will be three free newspapers for Londoners to choose from !

The Guardian’s opening paragraph :

Newspapers are dying, but no one can accuse them of going quietly.

London is home to a “free frenzy” in Newspaperland. Next month there will be three free newspapers for commuting Londoners. Metro will be joined by a free newspaper from Associated and another from Murdoch. The battle is novel since unlike previous ones that entailed ‘price slashing’, free means no price wars ! Paris already has several free newspapers (one of them is Metro) and now it is London’s turn to have companies fight for the population’s reading time. Studies have shown however, as in Paris, how free newspapers actually create new reading time, in that many new readers of free newspaper didn’t read before. They didn’t read articles nor the adjacent adverts !

What can be referred to as ‘barriers of entry’, not only the price but the distribution barriers have been taken away. On top of being free, if Paris based free newspapers are an example then they can even be handed to you or placed conveniently on your way to work ! What more can you ask for ?

I find this interesting for several reasons :
- Newspapers are complaining about declining number of readers yet the example below of the Guardian shows that you cannot read the article before registering : access barrier
- Several newspapers like the WallStreet Journal and some sections at the New York Times cost members money to read : financial barrier.
(This model seems sustainable specifically to the WSJ which is a very specific case but for how long ?)
- Access to the Internet will soon be far easier/convenient than finding the closest newsstand/newsagents both at work and from home : distribution/access barrier
- Like the Internet the future of newspapers seems far more linked to advertising than circulation revenue
- Barriers are also barriers to viewing the placed adverts

The specifics of the current fight between Murdoch and Associated is further complicated by the fact that each company also distributes traditional newspapers that people pay to read. Creating a good free newspaper can obviously not be allowed at the moment to put the circulation revenue of their other (paid) newspapers in jeopardy.

But as the Independent article explains the idea of getting people into the habit of reading is not bad including the other (paid) newspapers :

Jim Bilton says: “Free newspapers are the only way of getting to the younger, non-newspaper readers and introducing them to the reading habit.”

The list of free newspapers in London will increase next month and as you can see at Free Daily Newspapers (below) there is also a 2 page A4 teaser from the Financial Times along with free newspapers in Manchester, Newcastle and Brighton in the UK.

Article refs.
- Roll up for a good, old-fashioned fight for the future (Guardian)
- Why should newspapers cost less money than a coffee? (Independent)
- Free Daily Newspapers

Web 2.0 Bubble and Star Bubble

Published on Thursday, August 17, 2006 in Film, Thoughts, Trend, Web and Writing. 0 Comments

So what do film stars and Web 2.0 have in common ? Read on to see why value is not always where you think it is !

While checking out CNN I came across an article called “Beware the return of the Web Bubble”, which turned out to be about media companies potentially spending too much money for online social networking businesses.
Linked to this article was another called “Star Power fades in Tinseltown”, the same journalist Paul R. La Monica discusses the failures of recent movies with big stars as opposed to the success of movies like ‘Superman returns‘ and ‘The Chronicles of Narnia’. Even though I watched and enjoyed both these movies I truly can’t think of the names of the lead actors.
As the journalist explains, numerous stars, including Cruise and Gibson, are making the headlines for bad reasons, alienating “a large portion of moviegoers”. Indeed, why not go for great writers, special effects and search for new talent. Paying millions for a well known movie star is not proving to be so rewarding.

For the past few years, monstrous box office hits have often been based on comic books, novels and sequels. And most of them have not had featured well-known actors and actresses. The characters and stories have driven the film’s success.

What is the common factor ? ‘Star’ sites of the moment on the Web considered ‘Web 2.0′ and film stars are being paid far too much ! Buying into a company is completely different to paying a well known star to be in your movie, but maybe the glitter of the stars, just like the web 2.0 buzz, is distracting people from the real value.
As Jeffrey Zeldman explains in his “Web 3.0″ article, it does seem that the hype around web 2.0 is getting a bit much. ‘Copy cat’ projects with a simple Web 2.0 veneer are popping up like honey pots. As La Monica points out on CNN Money, this could create a vicious backlash, similar to the web 1.0 bubble burst !

Taking these two concepts further, the real issue is savvy business decisions, rather than a cyclic economic trend. When News Corp. bought MySpace they most probably made a great deal. The finance world later realised that News Corp. had swooped in at just the right time, which triggered this grand race to copy them.
The CNN article is more of a warning, just like Zeldman’s web 3.0 article; it shouldn’t be a race it should be business as usual. Rushing into negotiations and paying 20 times the real market value (if there is any value and it’s not just a pale copy) is what lead to the web 1.0 bubble. I recommend Zeldman’s article for a better understanding of the web 2.0 hype.

There is real value out there, regardless of all the hype about web 2.0. Just make sure that you’re buying into value and not hype.

Article Refs. :
- Media companies shouldn’t overpay for their own MySpace (CNN Money)
- Star Power fades in Tinseltown (CNN Money)
- Web 3.0 (A List Apart)