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The future of the desktop
Everything is moving to the cloud. As we enter the third decade of the Web we are seeing an increasing shift from native desktop applications towards Web-hosted clones that run in browsers. For example, a range of products such as Microsoft Office Live, Google Docs, Zoho, ThinkFree, DabbleDB, Basecamp, and many others now provide Web-based alternatives to the full range of familiar desktop office productivity apps. The same is true for an increasing range of enterprise applications, led by companies such as Salesforce.com, and this process seems to be accelerating. In addition, hosted remote storage for individuals and enterprises of all sizes is now widely available and inexpensive. As these trends continue, what will happen to the desktop and where will it live?
This is a post by Nova Spivack, founder and CEO of Twine. This is the final version of an article Spivack has been working on in his public Twine. (click link for entire article)
Topic outline:
Is the desktop of the future going to just be a web-hosted version of the same old-fashioned desktop metaphors we have today?
The desktop of the future is going to be a hosted web service
The browser is going to swallow up the desktop
The focus of the desktop will shift from information to attention
Users are going to shift from acting as librarians to acting as daytraders
The Webtop will be more social and will leverage and integrate collective intelligence
The desktop of the future is going to have powerful semantic search and social search capabilities built-in
Interactive shared spaces will replace folders
The Portable Desktop
The Smart Desktop
Federated, open policies and permissions
The personal cloud
The WebOS
Who is most likely to own the future desktop Everything is moving to the cloud. As we enter the third decade of the Web we are seeing an increasing shift from native desktop appli... more -
How hackers could tamper with the 2008 elections
Campaigns and voting rights activists are anticipating all kinds of Internet dirty tricks to spread misinformation. Here are five they are most worried about—and how they can be stopped.
In the late 1800s, during the heyday of Tammany Hall, New Yorkers would often show up to vote with a full beard. "When you've voted them with their whiskers on, you take them to a barber and scrape off the chin fringe," explained Democratic boss Big Tim Sullivan. If the political machine needed still more votes, the voter would return with nothing but a mustache, and then once again clean-shaven. "That makes one of them good for four votes," according to Sullivan.
Technology has cleaned up elections since then. Voting machines ensure one person casts only one vote. Electronic databases let secretaries of state compare their rolls to avoid double registration. Hotlines tell voters where and when to show up on Election Day.
This year, campaigns are relying more than ever on e-mail, texting, and the Web to get their message out and raise cash. But high-speed communication also means more opportunities for electronic skullduggery. Just as new technology lets voters get good information faster than ever in 2008, mischief-makers can spread bad information quickly.
Election tricksters—perhaps working for campaigns, perhaps freelancing—disseminate false polling locations and closing times. They spread rumors that Democrats vote Tuesday, Republicans vote Wednesday, or that anyone with outstanding parking tickets, unpaid rent, or family members in prison can't vote. Voters also get misled about ID laws, believing they're stricter than they really are. (A recent Supreme Court decision to uphold Indiana's voter ID law could be misinterpreted as applying to other states as well.)
1. Fake e-mails. In 2004, Democrats were duped by an official-looking e-mail soliciting donations to the Kerry campaign. Researchers exposed it as a phishing scam, but many donors had already lost their money. Now most contributions to the presidential candidates are given online. And supporters are eager to give—a fake solicitation from Obama campaign manager David Plouffe could rake in cash before the campaign had time shut it down. (Just look how accurately tricksters were able to replicate bank Web sites.) Such fraud doesn't have to be about money: In November, an e-mail falsely attributed to the Mitt Romney campaign called out Rudy Giuliani and "his pedophile friends," reflecting poorly on both candidates.
Defense: Rapid response. Campaigns need an early-warning system that lets them counter false claims as soon as they occur. Branding also helps—the more distinctive campaign e-mails are, the more likely supporters will recognize a fake. Notice that Obama's donation page has a security seal at the bottom designating it an "authentic site." Notice, also, that you can easily copy the seal and post it on your own site.
2. Dummy Web sites. In 1999, a Web site appeared depicting George Bush with a straw up his nose inhaling lines of coke. It was clearly satire, but the GOP sued and the site was taken down. More threatening is the prospect of fake candidate sites that look real. Some weak points have already been exposed: A team from Symantec registered 124 domain names with various misspellings of the candidates' names and attracted 21,000 hits over two months. In April, a hacker redirected anyone who clicked on the "Community Blogs" section of MyBarackObama.com to Hillary Clinton's home page, then posted an apparent confession. (One online security expert recently discovered a flaw in the Domain Name System that could allow hackers to redirect visitors to other pages.) Particularly vulnerable are Secretary of State sites, where many voters go to find polling locations and to preview their ballots. Campaigns and voting rights activists are anticipating all kinds of Internet dirty tricks to spread misinformation. Here are five they... more -
Parallax semantic web browser actually understands what you want
Staff researcher David François Huynh has created an interesting tool for browsing semantic database Freebase, called Freebase Parallax. Written up by ZDNet's Oliver Marks, the video Huynh recorded demonstrating Parallax will knock your socks off. The idea is to allow you to apply multiple filters for your searches and embed live charts in a blog. It's a beautiful idea, check out the video.
This ought to work. Freebase has taken more than $50 million in venture investments, they have a small army of volunteer and computer scientist contributors, they've got robots pumping their database with information automatically. There are now 60% more articles in Freebase than there are in English Wikipedia.
For an alternate view see Alex Iskold's Freebase: Dispelling the Skepticism, and some fault here may lay in the coolness ratio of the video to the Parallax app. Staff researcher David François Huynh has created an interesting tool for browsing semantic database Freebase, called Freebase Paralla... more -
Everybody panic: Google's Gmail goes down
Google's Gmail service went down for an hour or two today. The degree to which the company has become central to online life was highlighted when the outage became the most talked-about story of the day in North America.
Users locked out of their email vented their frustrations on blogs and websites like Twitter – where as many as "dozens" of messages per second about the problem were broadcast, one blogger reported. Several hundred more "tweets" – the name given to posts on Twitter – continued to flood in this morning.
The outage also made mainstream news outlets including The New York Times, The Washington Post and Dallas Morning News. This morning the problem was the most searched-for term on Google, with five of the top ten searches referencing the issue. "Gmail down", "gmail outage", "gmail error", "gmail problems" and "temporary error 502" – the error message displayed to Gmail users – were all in the list. A search for "gmail" on the search giant's homepage today offered a helpful related search for "gmail down".
In messages posted to a Google Help discussion thread, Google said the issue was fixed. It took engineers about one hour to pinpoint the problem and another hour to solve it. CNET reported that the outage may have been caused by a problem in the Contacts system used by Gmail to store addresses. Google's Gmail service went down for an hour or two today. The degree to which the company has become central to online life was ... more -
New war zone is the internet
While conflict continues between Russia and Georgia, there is also something of interest that could be a precursor to a new style of warfare – or at least a new front to be exploited by those looking to start wars. It really stated last year with a massive web attack against Estonia by what are assumed to be Russian based hackers. That attack was due to Estonia moving a WWII monument but resulted in many of the Estonian government sites being taken offline.
Now as things escalate between Georgia and Russia there appears to be a concentrate attack against Georgian sites by hackers located in Russia and in parallel with troop movements. This has resulted with many of the Georgian government sites being re-located to other countries. Currently the Georgia Foreign Affairs is being hosted on servers in Estonia and Civil.ge the Georgian news site has moved its online operations to Google Blogspot domains. Along with this for the first time ever Estonia is sending cyberdefense advisors into Georgia to help battle the cyber attacks.
It is easy to see that warfare is changing but this increasing use of attacks over the Internet against your enemies is a whole new arena we are only beginning to see being exploited. This should be seen as a really worrisome trend and one that should be talked about much more than it is. After all as we move forward in our increasing use of the Internet in our everyday lives one has to wonder just how safe we would be if our own countries became the newest target in a war that is fought online.
While the importance of security against computer attacks as they relate to our real world social infrastructure in crucially important one has to wonder what is being done to protect our online lives. As we move increasingly towards a cyber lifestyle with things like our social networks and data storage on cloud computing platforms is anyone asking how safe these will be from concentrated attacks. After all there isn’t a day that goes by that we don’t hear about some sort of data breach or some new vulnerability is how we use the web being found. Then there are the ones that we don’t hear about until months later.
Where is the assurance from all these startups that are trying desperately to get us to make them a part of our daily online life that they have safety measure implemented that can withstand concentrated attacks? Can we feel safe knowing that these web services have been developed with security in mind (and I don’t mean just the superficial send me my password by email type of security)?
There is no doubt that with our ever increasing reliance on the internet as a part of our daily lives that a country’s Internet infrastructure is going to become a prime target – especially in times of war. What worries me is that none of this is being discussed with the tech blogosphere. No one seems to be concerned with any possible repercussions should concentrated attacks from hackers backed by foreign powers. Just how safe will our online lives and data be in such a case of a cyber world war? Will we find ourselves just as bloodied and damaged there as we would on the streets of our real world? While conflict continues between Russia and Georgia, there is also something of interest that could be a precursor to a new style of w... more -
Seven Degrees Of Separation
A study conduced by researchers at Microsoft Corp. used instant messaging data to confirm the theory that it takes just under seven steps to link every one in the world. The researchers reached their conclusion based on the addresses of 30 billion instant messages sent among 180 million people worldwide during a single month in 2006. They found that, on average, any two people are linked by fewer than seven acquaintances.
The “six degrees of separation” theory has long intrigued people, even inspiring a popular 1993 movie. However, in recent years the theory had seemed to be discredited.
"To me, it was pretty shocking. What we're seeing suggests there may be a social connectivity constant for humanity," Eric Horvitz, one of the Microsoft researchers assigned to the project, said he found the results shocking, told the Washington Post.
"People have had this suspicion that we are really close. But we are showing on a very large scale that this idea goes beyond folklore."
The study, conducted by Mr. Horvitz and his colleague Jude Leskovec, used a database that covered all of the Microsoft Messenger instant-messaging network, nearly half of the world's instant-messaging traffic, in June 2006. The study worked on the premise that two people were considered to be acquaintances if they had exchanged an instant message.
After analyzing the minimum chain lengths required to connect all the users in the database, they found the average length was 6.6, with 78% of the pairs connected in seven or fewer links.
The idea of six degrees of separation originated with Stanley Mailgram, an academic social psychologist in the U.S., after his research asking people to pass a letter only to others they knew by name. The goal was to have the letter reach a named person they did not know living in another city. Mailgram found that the average number of times the letter was passed on was six, and thus coined his “six degrees of separation” theory.
However, in July 2006, Judith Kleinfeld, a psychology professor at Alaska Fairbanks University, reviewed Milgram's original research notes and found that 95% of the letters that were sent out had failed to reach their intended target. At that time, Kleinfeld suggested the theory might be the academic equivalent of an urban legend.
Horvitz and Leskovec reported that, to their knowledge, their study was the first to confirm Milgram's theory on a global scale. A study conduced by researchers at Microsoft Corp. used instant messaging data to confirm the theory that it takes just under seven st... more -
Viewzi 3D web navigation is the future
A very intuitive visual 3D image browser - Viewzi is a new way to experience search. Instead of one big list, you get nice visual Views tailored for the content you are looking for.
You just need to search for a word and click on 3D Photo Cloud View to see it in action. You can then add as many words as you like by clicking where you want to place them.
Another great 3D navigation experience created with Papervision 3D.
Update - Viewzi launches timeline view:
http://mashable.com/2008/08/08/viewzi-timeline-view/ A very intuitive visual 3D image browser - Viewzi is a new way to experience search. Instead of one big list, you get nice visual View... more -
Tag Galaxy image search is out of this world
An explorable galaxy of Flickr tags in a space-like setting. Stunning visual effects, and unique view features make this one of the better Flickr mashups.
The application uses Papervision3D to explore photos via virtual planetary systems.You enter a tag, and the related galaxy appears on screen. Each planet contains the pictures of a certain tag, and when you click on them, the images are placed on a 3D rotating globe.
Created by Steven Wood as a diploma thesis project with PV3D 1.5. Steven is a freelance graphic designer and Flash developer from Germany. An explorable galaxy of Flickr tags in a space-like setting. Stunning visual effects, and unique view features make this one of the be... more -
YouTube and web firms to police 'dark side' of internet
The internet industry must take more responsibility for protecting young people from the "dark side" of digital content relating to abuse, violence and suicide, according to a committee of MPs, the Guardian reports.
The investigation recommended the establishment of a self-regulatory body to create better online safeguards to protect children from being exposed to unsuitable material. The body would police websites, adjudicate on complaints and could help crack down on piracy and illegal file-sharing in Britain.
The report praised efforts of some companies, such as Microsoft and MySpace, but criticised others, notably Google-owned video sharing giant YouTube.
The committee chairman, John Whittingdale, criticised YouTube for not going far enough with proactive measures, beyond a pledge to take down material when it is "flagged" up by users.
Whittingdale cited one specific example of "concern" involving a video of what appeared to be a gang rape that was viewed around 600 times. He said YouTube was made aware of the content by a user but it was not taken down until a second warning came through.
How do you feel about moderation on websites? Can communities be trusted to police themselves? Where is the balance between free speech (which companies don't actually have to uphold - if they're providing a web service they can decide whatever rules they want) and safe, friendly communities? How can young users be protected from unsuitable content? The internet industry must take more responsibility for protecting young people from the "dark side" of digital content rela... more -
Bandwidth is the oil of the information economy
Americans today spend almost as much on bandwidth — the capacity to move information — as we do on energy. A family of four likely spends several hundred dollars a month on cellphones, cable television and Internet connections, which is about what we spend on gas and heating oil.
Just as the industrial revolution depended on oil and other energy sources, the information revolution is fueled by bandwidth. If we aren’t careful, we’re going to repeat the history of the oil industry by creating a bandwidth cartel.
Like energy, bandwidth is an essential economic input. You can’t run an engine without gas, or a cellphone without bandwidth. Both are also resources controlled by a tight group of producers, whether oil companies and Middle Eastern nations or communications companies like AT&T, Comcast and Vodafone. That’s why, as with energy, we need to develop alternative sources of bandwidth.
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The article goes on to discuss how we can take back the airwaves and create our own bandwidth sources, similar to putting solar panels up to create our own energy.
Isn't Google going to provide the internet to everyone in the world for free one day, solidifying their hold in world domination? Americans today spend almost as much on bandwidth — the capacity to move information — as we do on energy. A family of four likely spe... more -
Ted "Series of Tubes" Stevens indicted on 7 charges
WASHINGTON - Sen. Ted Stevens, the longest-serving Republican senator and a figure in Alaska politics since before statehood, was indicted Tuesday on seven counts of failing to disclose thousands of dollars in services he received from a company that helped renovate his home.
Stevens, the first sitting U.S. senator to face federal indictment since 1993, has been dogged by a federal investigation into his home renovation project and his dealings with wealthy oil contractors.
The investigation has upended Alaska state politics and cast scrutiny on Stevens — who is running for re-election this year — and on his congressional colleague, Rep. Don Young of Alaska, who is also under investigation. WASHINGTON - Sen. Ted Stevens, the longest-serving Republican senator and a figure in Alaska politics since before statehood, was indi... more -
Pentagon: The internet needs to be dealt with as if it were an enemy "weapons...
The Pentagon's Information Operations Roadmap is blunt about the fact that an internet, with the potential for free speech, is in direct opposition to their goals. The internet needs to be dealt with as if it were an enemy "weapons system".
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Read all about it at link. The Pentagon's Information Operations Roadmap is blunt about the fact that an internet, with the potential for free speech, is in... more -
Police post crank calls on youtube!
In an effort to cut down on the ridiculous 8400+ crank 999 calls, police in Avon and Somerset have decided to post the recordings on youtube.
Will this have an effect or will it simply become a viral hit and prompt a series of copycat stunts? In an effort to cut down on the ridiculous 8400+ crank 999 calls, police in Avon and Somerset have decided to post the recordings on y... more -
Open-source video marketplace
Jon Labes, the founder of a new video marketplace called Plentitube (pronounced like “plentitude, if you change the ‘d’ to a ‘b’). Jon is probably best known as being the creative mind behind Wallstrip, the financial podcast that was later famously sold to CBS Interactive for a tidy sum.
Through his experience in New Media production Selling-Entertainment-Online Jan-08 as well as the experience of taking a show like that from concept to completion to exit, he was made aware of the wide variety of issues that arise for successful independent video producers that we’re just not equipped to deal with. Legal issues abound, as do business decisions Neuroeconomics-How-Executives-Think , odd technical issues, and sales situations; most of the time indie producers just want to, well, produce.
Plentitube is a marketplace built with that in mind. It’s currently still in an invite only beta situation, but their goal is to take top notch producers and pair them with advertisers, resources and potential investors and owners for the content. In this interview, we explore the history that led Jon to this venture, as well as the intracies of the marketplace, and how it can benefit the New Media video producer set. Jon Labes, the founder of a new video marketplace called Plentitube (pronounced like “plentitude, if you change the ‘d’ to a ‘b’). Jon... more -
John McCain's secret plan for the Internets leaked to press
...this is hilarious
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John McCain is aware of the Internet
The first question at an excellent panel at the Personal Democracy Forum in New York today with top web folks from the leading campaign goes to McCain aide Mark Soohoo.
Moderator Andrew Rasiej asks for a show of hands on whether the panelists have had to tell the candidate not to say "The Google" or other flags of tech illiteracy, then turns to Soohoo.
"Is it proper to say I don’t do raised hand questions?" Soohoo responds.
Echoing an old Grunwald/Penn line -- though also making an accurate point -- Soohoo points out that the gap in things like Facebook "friends" doesn't bear out offline.
"There is this community of people – they just may not be on Facebook," he said of McCain's supporters.
Soohoo is getting beat up a bit before what isn't exactly a McCain audience at the tech conference.
Pressed again on McCain's tech savvy, he defends his candidate.
"You don’t actually have to use a computer to understand how it shapes the country," he says.
"You actually do," former Edwards blogger Tracy Russo responds, suggesting he try to explain Twitter to his grandmother and then ask her how that applies to governing.
"John McCain is aware of the Internet," says Soohoo. "This is a man who has a very long history of understanding on a range of issues." The first question at an excellent panel at the Personal Democracy Forum in New York today with top web folks from the leading campaig... more -
Youtube hosting full-length movies and shows
Hulu is kicking ass because of a simple marketing device: The NBC and News Corp.-backed site is advertising full-length programs on YouTube to get traffic to shows on which they can sell real advertising. YouTube, rather than ban Hulu, is now angling to keep that traffic in-house by allowing partners to upload shows up to 1 gigabyte in size, enough room for full-length film and television programming (though not at great quality).
While YouTube has hosted videos over ten minutes in the past, notably including feature film Four Eyed Monsters, in-house Google videos and Charles Trippy's longest YouTube video ever stunt, and early content partners have had the freedom to push the envelope from time to time. But now it's official, and it's certainly in the hopes of garnering better content, running more ads and pumping up "engagement" metrics like average time on site. Hulu is kicking ass because of a simple marketing device: The NBC and News Corp.-backed site is advertising full-length programs on Yo... more -
Where did all the news go?
One sad editrix of celebrity gossip sheet thinks her profession is living on borrowed time. It's one big void out there, the canvas is blank, there is no news. And it's not just low culture. The zeitgeist at large seems to be suffering from tired blood (maybe too much vital energy spent looking at mobile porn?).
Nicholson Baker's Human Smoke was the most noteworthy book to be published so far this year, and it argued that World War II wasn't worth fighting. World War II. That's not even counterintuitive in a fun Slate-y kind of way. As for the election, we're in a massive lull until at least Labor Day, barring Israel's surgical strike on Natanz, which happened yesterday while you were updating your Tumblr.
Elsewhere the herd of independent minds has taken a collective nap: the red siren that blares in Matt Drudge's head has been as silent as the one in James Wolcott's. So what's going on?
• The Web is dead. Churchill once described a pudding as having no theme. The same is broadly true of today’s Internet; Web 2.0 has descended into bathos, which really ought to have its own 'sphere named after it. Facebook’s great advertising revenue model went bust a year ago and everyone’s already stalked everyone else on MySpace. Most user-generated content reads like a stale algorithm of pettiness, paranoia and semi-literacy. Time formerly proclaimed “us” the “Person of the Year,” and it proved too burdensome a responsibility. We renounce the title.
• The television season is over. What is there to watch now except the Real World set where it always belonged – on a Hollywood soundstage – and with revolving cast members that don’t hang around long enough to come out of the closet, smack each other in the face, or forget to load the dishwasher? Bring back House with its acerbic Bertie Wooster.
• The economy is in limbo. It’s bad, sure, but it’s not quite so bad as to precipitate a new artistic or literary movement. No one's ready to move into lean-tos on the B.Q.E., become a Trotsykist, and found Partisan Review. Speaking of which –
• There are no new magazines. What’s to overhype and then hound to an early grave? Radar’s doing fine in that unremarkable way of its. And n+1 will either lurch into neoconservatism or get bought out by Dave Eggers and turned into Zimbabwean refugee’s emo fanzine.
• There are no parties, except the one being thrown tonight by Keith Gessen, the Julia Allison of public intellectuals, who wants to take back the Internet the way Irving Howe wanted to make socialism relevant.
• We live in atomized and fragmented times. Like academia, the culture is over-specialized and only caters to microscopic – mostly web-based – niches. My Buddhist Scandinavian black metal band can beat up your vomit porn-themed ballet troupe. It’s impossible to congregate under a mass banner of anything anymore. Is this why Barack Obama is deified? Is he the closest thing we have to a popular icon? (Michael Chabon thinks so, and he’s the dean of Superman studies.) But there are no other imagos to make our hearts beat as one and give us a shared cultural experience. What’s the last stadium-venue concert you attended? (I'm seeing Mos Def with a Big Band this month and I can't even get worked up about it.) Who’s the Seinfeld of the humorless aughts, the Geldof of this age of waste?
• Politics has sucked the oxygen out of media. Fortunately, like the TV drought, this may just be seasonal and subject to change once November comes and goes and Obama Girl is cast in the next Tom Stoppard play as Béla Kun's wry housekeeper.
• It’s been an uneventful summer thus far. Might we look forward to a rolling blackout in August that will allow us all to mate in darkened stairwells and wash with tonic water for a glorious twelve hours again? One sad editrix of celebrity gossip sheet thinks her profession is living on borrowed time. It's one big void out there, the canv... more -
Get healthy, live strong
The Lance Armstrong Foundation and Demand Media, a social media company, are launching a Web site today with 600,000 pages of content on health, fitness and wellness. The site has a library of 15,000 articles and videos, 350,000 nutritional food profiles and 50,000 health and fitness-related questions and answers.
The site, www.livestrong.com, includes information from doctors and other experts, exercise tips on everything from flattening flabby abs to improving overall workouts, and an array of help on such topics as quitting smoking and dieting, including a "daily plate," which tracks calories for those on the path to lowering their weight.
The site is free, and unlike livestrong.org, which is dedicated to cancer survivors and their families, livestrong.com is for anyone who wants to make change, Armstrong said.
"The polls will tell that 85 (percent) to 90 percent of Americans want to change something about their life or their lifestyles, but only 40 percent of them get started doing it," Armstrong said. "The obesity epidemic, soaring diabetes rates and other unhealthy trends have America heading to a perfect storm the health care system is not prepared to handle."
The site enables people to work in groups, like the one with 100 women who tested the "daily plate" to collectively lose 1,000 pounds and got messages when they needed to step up their exercise to counteract their daily calories, said Larry Fitzgibbon, general manager of livestrong.com.
"We think this is one of the killer (applications)," Fitzgibbon said. "There are sites for this on the Web, but they cost money."
Articles on the site, such as "Four Ways to Treat Bacterial Infections," or "Five Things You Need to Know About Lipomas," are delivered in a short, simple style. The Lance Armstrong Foundation and Demand Media, a social media company, are launching a Web site today with 600,000 pages of content ... more
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A Series of Tubes
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A Series of Tubes
