Archive for September, 2005

Have you ever deleted important data by mistake?

I know I have, and it’s not pretty unless you have a good backup. It?s a fact: at least 2 out of 3 people have deleted an email and then found it was important. The more common reasons for data loss are not as out-of-this-world as you might suspect. Studies show that hardware failure and malfunctions account for half of the reasons why people lose their data. Accidental deletion comes in at a close second and 1 out of 3 people lose their data just because of that. If you haven?t thought of backing up your data, you might want to start thinking about it. Today, I will review WinBackup 2.0 Standard and tell you why our people are buying the software. Read More.

Microsoft’s Nightmare has a Name

And it’s name is Google. Read a really intersting article on news.com, about how an executive at Microsoft wrote a memo called “The Web is the Next Platform”, where he described how the internet will be the next platform, he said;

“The Web…exists today as a collection of technologies that deliver some interesting solutions today, and will grow rapidly in the coming years into a full-fledged platform (underlined for emphasis in the original memo) that will rival–and even surpass–Microsoft’s Windows,” Slivka wrote.

Microsoft went the other way and focused on the Operating system, pushed the head of development of the next version of Windows, Jim Allchin. Today they are making hosted services a more strategic part of the company and will fold their MSN Web portal business into its platform product development group, where Windows is developed. Focusing on the web and their new crop of competitors. But, is this the same ol same ol with new names in the competition slots? Google is by far the most likely to be able to take on Microsoft, with billions in the bank and more being made every year, they are luring away top employees from Microsoft and others, something which Microsoft itself used to do.

Google has also been buying up loads of dark fiber, fiber that is not being used, and it has been speculated that this will help them host applications and services to help steal some of Microsoft’s desktop dominance.

Another memo, called “Google–The Winner Takes All (And Not Just Search),” is also making the rounds. This internal memo, written in 2005, argues that Google threatens Microsoft and the company’s crown jewel, Windows.

“Google threatens Microsoft’s position on the Internet, and could potentially lock Microsoft out of its existing distribution channels and reduce the value of Windows.”

We shall see. Microsoft has had so many competitors who were supposedly going to help knock them from their perch, AOL, SUN, IBM, Oracle, etc, and it’s never happened. Profits at Microsoft amount to about 12 billion a year, tripling in the past eight years, and far exceed Googles, making it easier, in my opinion, to hold off Google and all comers. If Google falls out of favor with internet users, then that will pretty much end their reign, but it will take much more for Microsoft to go away.

More Music Fallout

News.com is reporting that some popular peer to peer file sharing sites are shutting down do to pressure from the RIAA. They reported that Bearshare, eDonkey and WinMX were some of the targets, but it seems that WinMX is the only one down, as eDonkey and Bearshare are still up. They did report that an office in New York of eDonkey had been closed, they also reported no one from any of the networks could be contacted. Like they really want to answer the tough questions from news.com about file swapping and it’s legalities.

The decentralized nature of most peer-to-peer file-sharing software makes it uncontrollable once it is released over the Internet. However, shutting off sites where users first download the software may strangle the flow of new users.

“There’s certainly a big realignment of networks going on after the RIAA letters. Everyone is going to see a fallout since the ruling is making it tough for these companies to exist,” said Marc Morgenstern, vice president for Loudeye, during the Digital Hollywood conference in Santa Monica.

Other Articles:
The Supreme Court has handed movie studios and record labels a sweeping victory against file swapping, ruling that peer-to-peer companies such as Grokster could be held responsible for the copyright piracy on their networks.

The Recording Industry Association of America has sent letters to seven peer-to-peer companies, asking them to halt what the RIAA alleges is their practice of encouraging users to illegally distribute copyrighted material.

Common Malware Enumeration initiative

Well, this is a good idea and a long time coming, I’m sure everyone has been confused at some time in the past with viruses and their names, variants, etc. The Common Malware Enumeration initiative is meant to reduce the confusion caused by the different names security companies give viruses, owrms, and other pests.

“There is a lot of confusion over the way that malware is referred to,” Desiree Beck, the technical lead for the CME initiative, said in an interview. “We’re trying to alleviate that by giving malware a common identifier, so everybody is talking about the same thing when some malware event happens.”

The antivirus industry has tried, and failed, before to agree on common naming for worms and viruses. This time, US-CERT, the part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that coordinates response to cyberattacks, is running the show. With that in mind, and because the plan allows companies to keep their own naming by assigning an ID rather than a common name, security software makers are hopeful that the effort will be a success, and they’re eager to participate.

Here is a link to their homepage and a link to the news.com story.

CME is not an attempt to solve the challenges involved with naming schemes for viruses and other forms of malware. Instead, CME is working with the security community to facilitate the adoption of a shared, neutral indexing capability for malware. An example of a CME identifier would be: CME-123.

Opera is Going to be Free

Opera has removed the banners, found within their browser, and the licensing fee to make their browser completely free. Opera’s growth, due to tremendous worldwide customer support, has made today’s milestone an achievable goal. The most full-featured Internet power tool on the market, Opera includes pop-up blocking, tabbed browsing, integrated searches, and advanced functions like Opera’s groundbreaking E-mail program, RSS Newsfeeds and IRC chat. Plus, you can customize the look and content of your Opera browser with a few clicks of the mouse.

Download here.

This was just posted at news.com,
“Removing the ad banner and licensing fee will encourage many new users to discover the speed, security and unmatched usability of the Opera browser,” Jon von Tetzchner, CEO of Opera Software, said in a statement. Premium support via e-mail is still available from the company for $29 per year. Version 8.5 also addresses some security vulnerabilities and includes a feature called Browser JavaScript, which automatically fixes out-of-date browser scripts.

Realtechnews.com also has a post about it, “Opera has moved away from selling their core browser and into selling only support services as well as Opera for mobile devices. While Opera may not have the popularity of Firefox (probably due in large part to it not being free) it does have much of the same security when compared to Internet Explorer and a couple neat features such as IRC and voice built into it.”

Is Google Doing Wireless?

There have been rumors about Google launching a free nationwide wireless service, and according to some web pages that were recently found, they are. Speculation about a forthcoming Google WiFi service has been rife since August following an article in Business 2.0 magazine, but the company has refused to discussed its plans.

WiFi internet access is an increasingly popular technology that is used to provide high-speed wireless Internet access in homes, business and public spaces like airports, train stations and coffee shops, mostly aimed at travelers and people not close to their home conneections. Google launched a sponsored WiFi “hotspot” in San Francisco’s Union Square district in April with a start-up called Feeva.

Now, according to an article on realtechnews.com, they are launching secure access for their VPN for wireless connections. According to Google, “One of our engineers recognized that secure WiFi was virtually non-existent at most locations. As a result, he used his 20% project time to begin an initiative to offer users more secure WiFi access. Google Secure Access is the result of this endeavor.”

Digg.com has loads of comments on this one.

So, apparently they are going to offer wireless internet access, hopefully they will be able to cover more than the large metropolitan areas.

update Google, the online search leader, confirmed on Tuesday it has begun a limited test of a free wireless Internet service, called Google WiFi. Google spokesman Nate Tyler said the current test is limited to two public sites near the company’s Mountain View, Calif., headquarters–a pizza parlor and a gym–located in the heart of Silicon Valley. “Google WiFi is a community outreach program to offer free wireless access in areas near our headquarters,” Tyler said. more here at news.com.

Athens Display Series

I think this picture says it all.

I think I am going to need a bigger desk.

Found this post on realtechnews, and I agree, this monitor is something else. No prices listed yet, would probably make me cry if I saw it anyway.

Marvel. Because there is nothing quite like it. With 5 widescreen UltraSpeed LCD Panels featuring resolutions of up to a mammoth 19200 x 2400 Pixels, the new Athens Display Series brings desktop views and resolutions to unheard of new heights. Featuring ‘s Ultra-Speed Display Technology and available in both HR and for the first time in available 3D LCD configurations, the all-new Athens Display Series is exclusively custom-built in an all-aluminum design, breaking grounds in every engineering and design detail, making every other monitor out there look like… well… just a monitors.

It does say this on the main page, so this may not be available for awhile.

Presently, no new pre-orders are being taken for any current or future products and all new hardware and software product development roadmaps are under re-structuring. Equally, no technical, post sales and updated drivers for existing L products are being supported till further notice.

Mozilla More Vulnerable than IE

A report from Symantec has stated that Mozilla Web browsers are currently potentially more vulnerable to attack than Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE), and it also said that today’s hackers are still focusing their efforts on IE. This makes sense since that’s the largest installed base and a bigger target for hackers, virus writers, etc. Whatever browser has the most users will have the most people trying to hack it, it won’t matter how good their security is, they will still try to find a way to exploit the browser.

Mozilla browsers, such as the popular Firefox, have always been seen as more secure than IE, which has suffered many security problems and exploits in the past. Mitchell Baker, president and chief lizard wrangler of the Mozilla Foundation, insisted earlier this year that all of the Mozilla browsers were fundamentally more secure than IE, and would not face as many problems as IE even as their marker share grows. But Symantec’s Internet Security Threat Report Volume VIII contains data for the first six months of this year that may not agree with this perception.

There is one caveat: Symantec counts only those security flaws that have been confirmed by the vendor. According to security monitoring company Secunia, there are 19 security issues that Microsoft still has to deal with for Internet Explorer, while there are only three for Firefox.

Sure. There are always different ways you can spin stories, and always something that’s not included. From, news.com.

AOL for Sale?

Lots of stuff going on in the internet portal, search engine, isp area’s as Microsoft has been reported to be in talks with AOL about a variety of possible combinations of the former’s MSN Internet portal with the latter’s America Online operations, including a merger of the two into a new company that would be jointly owned. This would make it the biggest internet portal, they would have 23% of the total internet searches, and a much better case to put in front of advertisers. It would be win-win for both companies as they compliment each other in many different area’s, Microsoft is strong in many countries while AOL has mainly concentrated on the United States and it would help raise Time Warner’s stock prices. This would also help Microsoft with it’s battle with Google, who it fears could one day maybe compete with it on the OS level.

Now, news.com has reported that Google could make a bid for AOL to protect it’s $380 million in advertising revenue it’s gets AOL.

“We believe it is entirely possible that Google could consider making a bid for AOL as well,” Lauren Rich Fine, an analyst at Merrill Lynch, wrote in a Friday report on the implications of an AOL-Microsoft Network deal. “This would certainly protect Google’s revenues from AOL as well as enable Google to keep 100 percent of the search advertising revenues as well as gain a significant amount of content.”

The Wall Street Journal has reported that AOL may be considering switching its search engine from Google to MSN, which could cut Google’s earnings per share by between 5 percent and 10 percent, the report said. AOL generated about 12 percent of Google’s revenues in 2004, or $382 million.

We are going to see more and more purchases, consolidations, mergers, etc, everyone wants more content nowadays to pull in the advertising eyeballs, whichever site gets the most visitors gets the most money, today, it’s all about the benjamins.

Just noticed this article from news.com, Google invites 400 to ‘off the record’ event.
Google is planning a partner forum for about 400 people, including bloggers and journalists from major media outlets, and is prohibiting participants from writing about it, according to a search engine industry expert.

Probably going to be hard to keep everything out of the press, wonder who’ll spill the beans first?

Sony UMD Movie Format and the PSP

Been reading up some on the Sony PSP, my boy wants one for his birthday, and have been reading on how popular the UMD movie format for the PSP has become. According to an article on RealTechNews, Over 8 million UMD movies have been sold for the Sony PSP encouraging Gamefly, the video game rental service, to begin offering flicks via mail-order last month. Netflix says that it is to highly specialized and a marginal niche. They ask, will we be seeing set top boxes to play these UMD movies. I highly doubt it, the picture looks great on the Sony PSP screen, but would not look as good on a TV let alone a big screen.

The disks themselves only hold around 1.8 gigs of storage, so you can’t really fit a good high quality movie on them, you might be able to do tv shows, etc, at high quality, but who would buy those? I don’t think I’ll be buying any for my boys PSP, since we get them all on DVD already, but that will just leave more money for games.

An article on TomHardware.com says, “At the Entertainment Media Expo in Hollywood California, Sony executives touted the success of their Universial Media Disc (UMD), specifically movie UMDs. Millions of these 2.3 inch-diameter discs that hold either movies or games have been sold to PlayStation Portable (PSP) owners. Sony believes that movies will make more than 60 percent of UMD sales in the near future.

Sony estimates that they have already sold 9 million games on UMD and 8.2 million movies. Current manufacturing lines are stretched to the max – Bob Hurley, with Sony DADC, says that Sony is churning out 200,000 UMDs a day and future capacity is expected to be 500,000 per day.”

Me, I just want to check out the games for the PSP, as it certainly looks like the best handheld system to date. You can Buy your PSP games and UMD movies here from Sony.