With UbiKann, I Can Be Everywhere
TestFreaks have written an interesting article about the different unknown areas of Vista that may provide you with essential opportunities to further the operating system for you.
Some nice functions covered are for example:
- Managing Your Documents
- Personalizing Your Folders
- Teaching Your Computer to Listen
- Protecting Files
- Organizing Your Music
- Internet TV
While you are waiting for the next version of Windows, don’t forget to take advantage of Vista.
Just came across an article by Julian Sanchez that explains what the glyphs mean that are used in the TV series Fringe just before adverts. The below picto was created by FringeTelevision.com, it illustrates the glyphs used and already looks superb.
As expected, with JJ Abrams, who hooked me with Alias, the concept is brilliant, engaging, and could prove to be just as interesting as his series Fringe.
So if you were to list the functions you would like in a USB drive what would it be?
Here is my list:
1) Small and not bulky, not heavy, easy to transport, can fit in your pocket
2) Large capacity, at the moment that would be 128 Go
3) High speed read and write capacity ( > 30MB read and > 20MB wite per second)
4) Biometric user authentication (fingerprint)
5) Hardware based data encryption
6) Backup via Internet of data (incremental backup, versioning) when connected
7) Shock proof, water, temperature and magnetic protection, with a lifetime warranty
8 ) Nice sleek but simple design (maybe titanium for extra protection and light weight) without a cap or with a cap that is attached and can’t be lost, fall off.
9) The ability to run an OS or software from the drive and or use as a memory booster
10) Maybe a short range beacon type system or even a GPS system that can be activated if it is lost, to quickly find it
11) For the paranoid a wipe or even remote wipe system, should the key really be lost and if it has confidential information on it. I guess this would need a small battery power source that triggers ths should it be tampered with or to allow for the GPS function if not connected to a computer.
12) It could serve as an RSA type system that randomly generates a number. This number when combined with a user id completes a login identification process
Edit: I was just checking out the comment from Steve below concerning the 64 Gig USB Key from Kingston and came across an advert for the “IronKey”. It seems that quite a few of the items from the above wish list can be found in the IronKey USB key coined as being the “world’s most secure USB key”. Looks pretty impressive take a look.
Below is a multipart documentary about John Rendall and Anthony ‘Ace’ Bourke who purchased a lion cub from Harrods in 1969. They brought the cub up in Chelsea, London near Kings Road. Following a chance encounter with Virginia McKenna of the 1971 hit film ‘Born Free’ they were able to envisage taking the then young lion back to Kenya to release him to the wild.
It is a moving and true story that is well worth watching. The story has become a web phenomenon with the video having been viewed on YouTube by an estimated 50 million viewers worldwide!
Part 1
Part 2a
Part 2b
Part 3a
Part 3b
Part 4
The last video from above was the video that became viral on the Internet in 2008 (added is the encounter between the student that put it on YouTube and consequently met John Rendall and Ace Bourke).
Here is the extract from the book that was then published to relate in further details this extraordinary story about the two men and their lion cub:
In 2008 an extraordinary two-minute film clip appeared on YouTube and immediately became an international phenomenon. It captures the moving reunion of two young men and their pet lion Christian, after they had left him in Africa with Born Free’s George Adamson to introduce him into his rightful home in the wild.
A Lion Called Christian tells the remarkable story of how Anthony “Ace” Bourke and John Rendall, visitors to London from Australia in 1969, bought the boisterous lion cub in the pet department of Harrods. For several months, the three of them shared a flat above a furniture shop on London’s King’s Road, where the charismatic and intelligent Christian quickly became a local celebrity, cruising the streets in the back of a Bentley, popping in for lunch at a local restaurant, even posing for a fashion advertisement. But the lion cub was growing up–fast–and soon even the walled church garden where he went for exercise wasn’t large enough for him. How could Ace and John avoid having to send Christian to a zoo for the rest of his life? A coincidental meeting with English actors Virginia McKenna and Bill Travers, stars of the hit film Born Free, led to Christian being flown to Kenya and placed under the expert care of “the father of lions” George Adamson. Incredibly, when Ace and John returned to Kenya to see Christian a year later, they received a loving welcome from their lion, who was by then fully integrated into Africa and a life with other lions.Originally published in 1971, and now fully revised and updated with more than 50 photographs of Christian from cuddly cub in London to magnificent lion in Africa, A Lion Called Christian is a touching and uplifting true story of an indelible human-animal bond. It is destined to become one of the great classics of animal literature.
Quick note to say that there seems to be a twitter security issue based upon cross site scripting. Initially it was thought to be a virus but this post on NetworkWorld seems to indicate that it is in effect a cross site scripting hack . This basically means that should it be an XSS hack, Twitter are not high up there with their security standards. It won’t look good if what seems to be a phishing hack is possible on their site!
Update: the script used to infect all the Twitter users was crafted by a 17 year old from Brooklyn who claims to have been bored and was highlighting the vulnerability while promoting his own site! Twitter have “closed the hole” as per Geoff’s comment below.
So Google was one of the first large companies to actually use cloud computing extensively and now, as usual in the English language, there is a move to talk about ‘the cloud’, dropping the more geeky ‘computing’ part! Like other buzzwords, take web 2.0 or SaaS (Software as a Service) not everybody has the same definition. It is highly likely that some people will say that ‘could computing’ and ‘the cloud’ are two different things.
Seamless access to hardware and software: the Supercomputer
The main idea with ‘the cloud’, from an IT perspective, is to seamlessly supply extra resources to providers of IT services and by ricochet to end users of these services. Even though it is not a behemoth word like sustainability that continues to suck in so many different meanings, cloud computing is likely to evolve and cover more and more services. Hey it could even end up being synonymous with the Matrix type concept from the film!
In the case of IT infrastructure, people are interested in outsourcing their hardware needs which can be covered by what is called HaaS (Hardware as a Service). One of the most well known services of this type is Amazon’s Elastic Computer Cloud or EC2.
Does this remind you of passive terminals that connect to supercomputer?! It is not a coincidence that equipment like Netbooks are so successful in the current context of more and more key services, instantly available on the internet. Cloud Computing can help provide further such important services to people. The Cloud services currently available and Netbooks are however far more complex than the mainframe and passive terminal model.
HaaS and SaaS
The Cloud services provided can be viewed as building blocks. Both HaaS (Amazon’s and Google’s server farms) and SaaS type applications (like Google Docs, Salesforce.com and Sliderocket) are purchased without needing to worry about the risks involved in evaluating growing usage. In this sense cloud computing is also referred to as “on demand computing” where you just purchase the system and someone else worries about your evolving needs.
Utility Computing & Server Virtualization
If you are aware of solutions like VMWare that allow you to run several virtual instances of a server on a physical server, then you will quickly see the similarity with cloud computing whereby clusters of servers can provide hundreds of instances of virtual servers. Google’s need to ‘crunch’ huge quantities of data, which requires highly knowledgeable people in cloud computing or grid computing. Like Amazon, Google is now offering the public some of the cloud computing services that used to be restricted to their own projects and internal service requirements.
The ability for companies to tap in to this cloud of both services and hardware (data centers) in the same way you would just turn on the tap or the light, provides powerful and efficient “on demand” services and resources a bit like a utility grid hence the idea of utility computing.
The Cloud is in its infancy but is already proving to be an extremely efficient solution for small to large companies and even the general public though services like Google Aps etc. Could computing is also likely to take on many new meanings along the way
Take a look at the following video where numerous tech celebs explain what Cloud Computing is (audio is a bit shoddy though):
Tim O’Reilly, Dan Farber, Matt Mullenweg, Jay Cross, Brian Solis, Kevin Marks, Steve Gillmor, Jeremy Tanner, Maggie Fox, Tom McGovern, Sam Lawrence, Stowe Boyd, David Tebbutt, Dave McClure, Chris Carfi, Vamshi Krishna and Rod Boothby are asked “what is Could Computing?”.
I was just flicking through “The Economist” (An old edition from May 10th Edition 2008) and got stuck on the adverts. Well I work in an interactive Ad agency so I suppose that it’s a professional misfortune to make this type of comment. Even though this is from a year ago it still happens that you see ads like this with no URL or at the best a URL that is for the company and not the product. I can’t understand why, on so many adverts, which will have cost the companies advertising a fair amount of money, there is no continuity or synergy with the online, no link to a website. I checked 2 consecutive adverts with no URLs, (no links to websites). I then looked through several pages and many had URLs but these two were for HSBC and Chevron had nothing and I can’t understand why there would be an advert created for a magazine that could not/would not be relayed on line.
When I was working on an automobile account in a web agency recently I found out that less than 5% of the ad budget was spent for online advertising, the majority being spent for TV then outdoors with online getting below 5%. I know many people still spend a lot of time in front of the TV but is 5% a real fit for the Internet currently ? Can you really create an effective online campaign to reach the numbers that are currently spending a large amount of their time online with such a small amount of the overall Ad budget ?
Even if it is an appropriate reflection of how people spend their time, I still deplore the lack of synergy that occurs between TV and outdoor ads versus online. Triggering people’s appetite to engage and continue the experience of a well thought through campaign online is so easy and yet so few companies actually do it. How many full blown campaigns that really use the potential for intelligently using TV, outdoors, radio etc. and online come to mind. Very few for most people because that type of synergy between Medias is very rare. Search Engine Optimisation may be a buzz word at the moment as it provides increased numbers of visitors when done properly but synergies the 360° type synergies between offline and online are way more effective in immersing people in your message!
If you can think of some cool synergies in your country please let me know and share the examples !
Just came across an interesting article that provides some good tips for people looking a simple checklist of the key areas to review with regards to SEO. The main parts are:
1. URL canonicalization and 301 re-directions.
2. Unique Title Tags and Meta Data.
3. Search Engine Friendly.
4. Has the site been submitted to Google Webmaster Central?
5. Check for Duplicate Content.
There are also details for each section that are in this article called “5 Minute SEO Site Audit“.
Also there is a tendancy to see SEO as the “be all and end all” solution when behavioural targeting versus SEO is a subject I would recommend you look into
Two new interesting adverts. First Npower uses Wallace and Gromit. Second Timberland’s Delirium advert for the Earthkeepers campaign.
If you have ever thought about hiding your identity in order to view sites in the US that just display a message saying you aren’t allowed to see it this may be for you. There are technically complicated ways of doing it that are not for the faint of heart and there are solutions like HotSpot Shield that is nicely explained on the below video:
So open the doors to TV sites in the states, that allow you to see the last episode of your favourite series and whether you are from France, Germany, Spain , Italy, UK etc., Enjoy !
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