Groom Updates Twitter, Facebook at The Altar

You know that apocalypse thing we’re always being told might be just around the corner? Well, do you feel the chilling breeze? Do you feel the troubled twittering in the trees?

For here is a tale that I know you will discuss with your loved ones, perhaps with other people’s loved ones, even with your psychological professional, the minute you hear it.

It appears a man called Dana Hanna is standing at the altar on November 21. He utters those most solemn vows about how he will love and obey or whatever it is that married people claim to do these days.

The officiant pronounces that Dana and his lovely bride, Tracy, are now married. Does Dana weep? Does he kiss his bride?

Ah, no. For Dana’s Twitter moniker is TheSoftwareJedi and his first loyalty is to his digital followers. So, much to his wife’s surprise, he whips out his cell phone and updates his statuses on both Twitter and Facebook. Right there at the altar. He also hands his wife’s cell phone over to her.

Now that he has uploaded the evidence (which we’re assuming isn’t staged), Dana insists that this was all done for fun.

Indeed, he explained on YouTube: “I have a lot of family scattered around the country and we all use Facebook a lot to keep in touch. So when Tracy and I were engaged, most of my family found out via Facebook because we updated our statuses.”

If you’re wondering what it is he tweeted from the altar, here it is: “Standing at the altar with @TracyPage where just a second ago, she became my wife! Gotta go, time to kiss my bride. #weddingday”

However, another tweet sent on Monday night by Hanna, who is chief architect of NextDayPets.com and president of Torian Technologies, might perhaps offer an even greater insight into his complex and socially networked psyche: “Just changed over the laundry for @TracyPage and was thrown off by the fact a bra was in there. Not used to living with a woman again.”

Oh, Tracy, are you sure about this? I only ask because I just tried to access the Tracy Page Twitter feed and received the message “this page doesn’t exist.”

Source:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-10407686-71.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=News-DigitalMedia

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Filed under: IT News, Information Technology News, Technology News, Web 2.0 News, Web Industry News , Facebook, Twitter, YouTube

Google Boosts Chrome Dev Tools

Google on Monday detailed recent improvements to its Google Chrome developer tools, which include the addition of a heap profiler for JavaScript and a timeline tab offering overviews of where time is spent when loading a Web application.

The tools were introduced in the Google Chrome developer channel. Chrome is the company’s entrant in the browser market.

“[During] the last few weeks, Google Chrome’s developer tools have become much more useful,” said Pavel Feldman, a software engineer at Google, and Anders Sandholm, a Google product manager, in a blog post.

“With the heap profiler you can now take a snapshot of the JavaScript heap at any point in time. A heap snapshot helps you understand memory usage and by comparing snapshots you can also follow memory usage over time. You will find the heap profiler in the profiles tab along with the sample-based CPU profiler,” the officials said.

“The new timeline view gives you a complete overview of where time is spent when loading a Web app. All events — ranging from loading resources over parsing and executing JavaScript to calculating styles and repainting — are plotted on a timeline,” they said.

The company’s tools for Chrome are partially based on the WebKit browser engine. Google also has put together a Web site focused on Chrome developer tools, featuring tutorials and videos. The company also has improved the Web Inspector tool for testing of Chrome Web sites. Improvements were made in areas such as editing and CSS accommodations.

This story, “Google boosts Chrome dev tools,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Follow the latest news in Google Chrome and Application Development at InfoWorld.com.

Source:

http://www.infoworld.com/d/developer-world/google-boosts-chrome-dev-tools-470

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Latest Firefox Beta Offers File-Handling Feature

Mozilla, determined to release Firefox 3.6 before year’s end, is also determined to squeeze as many features as possible into the new Browser.

The latest example: support for the File interface that adds more sophistication to uploading and some other chores.

Support for the feature is one of the 133 changes that arrived in Firefox 3.6 beta 4, which the Mozilla project released Thursday for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

The File API (application programming interface), a draft standard at the World Wide Web consortium, lets browsers handle files better. Among its abilities are uploading multiple files at once, showing thumbnail previews of images that have been selected for upload, breaking a long video upload up into chunks to protect against network interruption problems, and integrating with drag-and-drop Web applications.

While many software projects use beta testing periods to shake down their code, Mozilla isn’t afraid to add new features as it goes. That can mean new ideas arrive sooner, of course, but it also can delay the completion date of the new version. What was to have been a quick Firefox 3.1 release was pushed back months as new features were added and the version ultimately was renamed Firefox 3.5.

For those who want to dig into the File interface, Mozilla offers a Web developer guide to using it.

The beta-testing periods aren’t just important for debugging Firefox itself. New versions often don’t work with older add-ons that people install to customize the browser, so beta testing gives some time for programmers to update those add-ons. Mike Belzner, Mozilla’s director of Firefox, said 70 percent of add-ons are now compatible with Firefox 3.6.

Source:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-10406064-264.html

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Facebook And Twitter’s Corporate Problem

If the multibillion-dollar e-mail security industry has been built to prevent information from seeping out through personal communication, how is social networking in the workplace still going unchecked? After all, consumer social apps such as Facebook and Twitter provide the same information-leakage threat as unsecured, personal e-mail–possibly more, thanks to the viral impact of broadcasting news tidbits to one’s network of friends in real-time.

This question of enterprise social networking security has played out repeatedly in recent months as I watch Facebook and Twitter cross the digital divide from personal to business communications tools. For the most part, social networking has crept into the workplace with very little oversight by IT because people are gradually–and often stealthily–discovering a second purpose (business) for their personal accounts.

Sure, we see the occasional social-networking crackdown: In August ESPN sent out a memo banning reporters from sports-related tweets; about the same time, the Marine Corps banned Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and other social media sites from its networks. But usage policies like ESPN’s and the Marines’ are just a Band-aid approach to their security problems. They ignore the fact that, like corporate e-mail, there is a bona fide need for collaborative tools in the workplace.

For companies seeking a secure a middle ground between outright Twitter-bans and free-for-all tweeting, the answer lies in taking a corporate e-mail approach to social networking in the workplace. Companies need to deploy an enterprise social networking solution– social collaboration software developed specifically for business–that is managed by their IT departments. And we’re seeing more and more activity surfacing that addresses this business need for secure social collaboration.

Earlier this month, Cisco ( CSCO – news – people ) announced its Enterprise Collaboration Platform, a broad set of tools for IM, e-mail, social networking, videoconferencing and document and video sharing. The approach is not unlike similar collaboration projects by IBM ( IBM – news – people ) and Microsoft ( MSFT – news – people ).

A slew of start-ups have also entered this market. DiVitas Networks, for example, makes a social networking Web app that is geared toward private, intra-company communications among mobile users. The solution supports a corporate directory (so-called “friends,” in Facebook lingo) and is accessible directly from an iPhone and other smart phones. Software security is controlled at the server level, so there is no security risk if the phone is lost or stolen.

Socialtext is another company that has tackled enterprise social networking, but from a desktop perspective. It emphasizes intra-company communication, and enables user profiles, microblogging, document sharing, wikis, knowledge management and team collaboration. The company is up against other start-ups in the Facebook/Twitter-for-the-enterprise space such as Yammer, Jive Software and several others. The big draw to these players is the privacy and security that you don’t currently get under the more non-corporate-oriented Twitter or Facebook models.

Given the rate of social networking adoption among business end-users, and the value Social Media brings to enterprises, CIOs should consider deploying a secure social networking strategy similar to corporate e-mail. Businesses should share information over an enterprise collaboration platform, and leave Twitter to Oprah Winfrey and Ashton Kutcher.

Charlotte Dunlap is vice president of Research at Synergy Research Group. Her expertise is in network security and threat protection.

Source:

http://www.forbes.com/2009/11/17/facebook-twitter-security-technology-cio-network-social-networking.html

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Filed under: IT News, Information Technology News, Technology News, Web 2.0 News, Web Industry News , Facebook, Microsoft, MySpace, Social Media, Twitter

Google Adsense Unplugged

Today, on 26th November, Google had a an Event at its Gurgaon Office for Adsense Publishers called Google Adsense UnPlugged the main objectives for the event as apparent was to educate, train the publishers on how to earn from Adsense effectively and intelligently.

The event had 6 sessions -

1. Channels & Reports
2. Tools, Features & Health of Adsense Accounts
3. Ad Formats and other Products (Adsense for content, for Feeds, for mobile etc.)
4. Placements & Positions
5. Google Ad Manager (GAM)
6. Google Analytics (w.r.t Adsense)

Two very interesting things I was unaware of, was -

1. Google place high paying Ads which reside on top of your HTML Source code of webpage
2. Preferably, Do not chose either – ‘Text Ads only’ or ‘Image Ads only’ options, because if option Text & Image Ads (default) is chosen adsense will put only one that outbid the other, so in the end you get more money.

The event was great for me and i was actually charmed by the way Google Adsense Team treated us, it was awesome experience. We were also being given certificates after all completing all the sessions.

Source:

http://www.indianweb2.com/2009/11/google-adsense-unplugged/

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ICurrent Wants to Personalize News for The Masses

People are nostalgic for News Papers for a reason. The growing multitude of options for getting your daily news is more stressful than informative. We have on the one hand Google Reader, with its ever-growing mass of unread items, and on the other sites like NYTimes.com, which even as they get more customizable and webby are still limited to a small set of authors. But attempts to create a personalized news aggregator often require too much work on the part of users.

ICurrent, a personal information delivery service from entrepreneur Ramana Rao, formerly of Inxight Software and Xerox PARC, is trying to be smart but also easy. Funded to the tune of $3 million from Crosslink Capital, Rao said he’s deliberately kept South San Francisco, Calif.-based iCurrent under the radar. “We’re not scared or disrespectful of people in the Valley, but our goal is to build a product for the mainstream,” he said. His target audience lives in Ohio and reads USA Today.

What iCurrent does is filter the millions of news stories and blog posts produced every day into one page of must-read items. Rather than rely — like a feed reader does — on a selection of sources to produce and curate content, it keeps you up to date on your favorite topics.

To set up iCurrent you start by entering subject areas you’re interested in; sample topics might be “future of books,” “rebuilding the economy” or perhaps a more straightforward keyword like “college football.” The service will then build a front page of stories for you, and adjust what it shows based on your clickthroughs as well as any explicit granular feedback you give about what you like and dislike. It also delivers a less personal set of top news articles that may interest you. (If you’d like to try iCurrent, Rao has set up private beta invites for GigaOM readers who use the code “gigaom09.”)

Rao couldn’t specify exactly when the service will be available to the public, saying only: “When we’re ready. When the product’s ready.” But while he may not feel any urgency, it seems likely that in the meantime, the online news world will fill up with paywalls and even paid news aggregation. “There’s a roiling industry around us indeed,” he acknowledged. “We’re being as reactive and responsive to that but we’re a little dot and we’ll let them sort it out.”

While I have no doubt that iCurrent’s algorithms and editors are super smart, the site exists mostly outside of the emerging world of socially filtered information — where sites like Facebook and Twitter surface interesting links from our friends and networks. “Social is particularly good at filtering quality and alerting you rapidly on trending things, but no matter how many times someone else clicks it doesn’t make it interesting to you,” said Rao.

Rather, what iCurrent’s seven employees are wholly focused on is interpreting and anticipating potential users’ “extremely subtle set of requirements for reading.” Give it a whirl and let us know what you think.

Source:

http://gigaom.com/2009/11/25/icurrent-wants-to-personalize-news-for-the-masses/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OmMalik+%28GigaOM%29

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Web 2.0 ‘Neglecting Good Design’

He warned that the rush to make WebPages more dynamic often meant users were badly served.

He said sites peppered with personalisation tools were in danger of resembling the “glossy but useless” sites at the height of the dotcom boom.

Research into website use shows that sites were better off getting the basics right, said Mr Nielsen.

User tests

Describing Web 2.0 as the “latest fashion”, Mr Nielsen said many sites paying attention to it were neglecting some of the principles of good design and usability established over the last decade.

Good practices include making a site easy to use, good search tools, the use of text free of jargon, usability testing and a consideration of design even before the first line of code is written.

Sadly, said Mr Nielsen, the rush to embrace Web 2.0 technology meant that many firms were turning their back on the basics.

“They should get the basics right first,” he said. “Sadly most websites do not have those primary things right.”

There was a risk, he said, of a return to the dotcom boom days when many sites, such as Boo.com, looked great but were terrible to use.

“That was just bad,” he said. “The idea of community, user generated content and more dynamic web pages are not inherently bad in the same way, they should be secondary to the primary things sites should get right.”

“The main criticism or problem is that I do not think these things are as useful as the primary things,” he said.

Well-established patterns of user involvement with sites also led Mr Nielsen to question the sense of adopting Web 2.0 Technologies.

Research suggests that users of a site split into three groups. One that regularly contributes (about 1%); a second that occasionally contributes (about 9%); and a majority who almost never contribute (90%).

By definition, said Mr Nielsen, only a small number of users are likely to make significant use of all the tools a site provides.

While some sites with particular demographics, such as MySpace, Facebook and Bebo, have large involved communities of users that will not hold true for all sites, he said.

“Most people just want to get in, get it and get out,” said Mr Nielsen. “For them the web is not a goal in itself. It is a tool.”

Web firms rushing to serve the small, committed minority might find they make a site far less useful to the vast majority who come to a site for a specific purpose.

Mr Nielsen also questioned championing teenage use of the web as a harbinger of what people will continue to do when they were older.

Although people in their late 30s make very different use of the web to those in their teens, Mr Nielsen expects that when those teenagers grow up the time they spend online will diminish.

“It’s because they are 20 years old that they act differently to 40-year-olds,” said Mr Nielsen.

Source:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6653119.stm

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Cloud Computing And Web 2.0 News Digest

It will take five to 10 years for cloud computing to become mainstream, but it is likely enterprises will always stay in hybrid environments using cloud and on-premises solutions.

That was the view of a number of leading industry executives at a cloud computing open day hosted today by BT.

Chris Lindsay, general manager of Business Applications at BT, told IT PRO: “No doubt, in 10 years cloud will be the dominant Technology for businesses moving forward, but there will still be elements of hybrid environments.”

Seattle PI notes:

Windows Live Messenger led Microsoft’s Web properties in capturing 14.5 percent of total time spent online in September worldwide, handily beating Google, Yahoo, Facebook and other sites, according to analysis firm comScore.

In fact, people spent 36 percent more time on Microsoft sites than they did on sites owned by second-place Google, and 57 percent more time than on Yahoo sites. That’s out of an estimated 27 billion hours spent online globally in September (excluding public computers and smartphones), comScore said.

Windows Live Messenger accounted for nearly 70 percent of the 3.9 billion hours people spent on Microsoft Web properties, the firm said.

People spent 2.5 billion hours on Google sites, 1.2 billion hours of which were spent on YouTube. Facebook was the fastest-growing property, its share of attention jumping 193 percent over September 2008, according to comScore.

The San Francisco Chronicle writes:

At a conference last month in San Francisco, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts credited an employee’s use of Twitter with helping to change the cable giant’s corporate culture toward customer service.

Yet a recent survey of corporate technology executives by Robert Half Technology of Menlo Park found that 54 percent of companies prohibit employees from using social-media sites while on the job.

Experts say those companies could stifle the creativity of employees who are using Twitter, Facebook and other networking sites to help their companies.

CNet News reports:

Microsoft released on Thursday a new position paper, “Privacy in the Cloud Computing Era: A Microsoft Perspective,” that includes information about the remote storage and processing of personal information.

Privacy and security concerns continue to be a primary argument that cloud naysayers use against storing data and applications on the Internet. Big IT vendors and service providers like Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard will sooner or later be forced to take the cloud seriously or risk missing out on the whole next wave of IT consumption. And their large enterprise customers will expect them to offer cloud services with the appropriate levels of privacy and security measures in line with their business needs.

Source:

http://www.web2andmore.net/2009/11/08/cloud-computing-and-web-2-0-news-digest/

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Mozilla: Still Too Dependent on Google for Revenue; Can it Diversify?

Mozilla reported its 2008 audited financials and the organization behind the Firefox Browser delivered consolidated revenue of $78.6 million, up 5 percent from 2007. And the revenue picture looks even better if you exclude the $7.8 million loss in Mozilla’s investment portfolio. The worry: Google, now a competitor, is still bankrolling Mozilla.

Mitchell Baker, chairman of the Mozilla Foundation, outlined the financial picture on her blog. There’s a lot of good stuff in there.

To wit:

• Mozilla funds 200 people working full or part-time on Mozilla.
• The company has outposts across the globe and Firefox comes in 70 languages.
• Mozilla is launching messaging software.
• And Firefox has 110 million daily users as of November.

The worry for me as a Mozilla fan: The foundation’s financial stability depends on Google. Baker noted that Mozilla is diversifying its revenue base somewhat, but not enough in my view. She notes on her blog the majority of Mozilla’s revenue “is generated from the search functionality in Mozilla Firefox from organizations such as Google, Yahoo, Amazon, eBay, and others.”

A trip to the actual audited PDF of Mozilla’s financial results and a note on “concentrations of risk” reveals:

Mozilla has a contract with a search engine provider for royalties which expires in November 2011. The contract was recently amended and extended to November 2011. Approximately 91% and 94% of Mozilla’s revenue for 2008 and 2007, respectively, was derived from this contract. The receivable from this search engine provider represented 80% and 86% of the December 31, 2008 and 207 outstanding receivables, respectively.

Obviously that search provider is Google. Simply put, Mozilla needs to diversify that revenue base from Google, which funds the foundation, but is increasingly a competitor. Having a rival fund your operations isn’t comfortable for any organization. Mozilla’s current situation is like Oracle accounting for the bulk SAP’s revenue. Or Microsoft providing most of Red Hat’s revenue. Or MySpace accounting for the majority of Facebook revenue. You get the idea.

Baker notes in her blog:

The past few years have seen an explosion of innovation and competition in web browsers, demonstrating their critical importance to the Internet experience and marking the success of our mission. In 2008 not only did Microsoft and Apple continue developing their web browsing products, but Google announced and released a web browser of its own. Competition, while uncomfortable, has benefited Mozilla, pushing us to work harder. Mozilla and Firefox continue to prosper, and to reflect our core values. We expect these competitive trends to continue, benefiting the entire Web.

Can Mozilla realistically diversify its revenue base away from Google? That’s unclear on many fronts. Google has the dominant market share in search. Yahoo is a non-factor. And Microsoft has the Bing search engine, but isn’t likely to support Firefox, a browser that competes (and often wins) against the software giant’s Internet Explorer.

Given that landscape Mozilla needs to get creative about that lucrative search box. Of Mozilla’s revenue generating partners only Amazon and eBay have the heft to really help diversify the foundation away from Google. Instead of a search box, perhaps Firefox needs a commerce box that would allow eBay and Amazon to pick up some of the revenue slack.

How do you think Mozilla can diversify away from Google?

Source:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=27670&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+zdnet%2FBTL+%28ZDNet+Between+the+Lines%29

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Telstra goes 100Mbps on Cable; Trials Set Top Box

Telstra announced today that the 100Mbps upgrade of its Melbourne HFC Network has been completed ahead of schedule, and the higher speed will be available to customers from December 1.

The announcement follows comments yesterday from both David Thodey and AAPT CEO Paul Broad that spending large sums of money on fibre for the NBN was unnecessary.

Pricing details have yet to be revealed, but Telstra group managing director of product management Holly Kramer said she was confident the service would be “affordable”.

The telco is initially positioning the higher-speed service as being ideal for households with multiple computers. Group managing director Telstra networks and services Michael Rocca emphasised that 100Mbps was the “download capability” of the enhanced network, and that actual speeds would be limited by the equipment at each end of the link.

Most sites are optimised for lower network speeds, he warned, but on the other hand it is possible to see aggregate speeds peaking in excess of 100Mbps.

A demonstration using a specially configured server showed the simultaneous download of two movies and a game. Progressive movie downloading means playback can begin within a few seconds.

Source:

http://www.itwire.com/content/view/29481/53/

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