Big Brother Is Back!

The modern moguls of the mobile world, Apple and Google, have both admitted that they can and do track mobile devices using their independent operating systems along with GPS from a mobile carrier. (Subsequent statements deny these claims.) This has sparked debate as many see the action as a “big brother” invasion of privacy. The Senate has called a hearing with executives of both Google and Apple to discuss the privacy concerns along with members of the FTC. The FTC is advocating “Do Not Track” features on mobile devices much like the features now found on web browsers.

Apple claims they are not tracking users but harvesting user information pertaining to cell towers and Wi-Fi network positions. Whether the tracking software is nefarious or benign is the matter of debate. It’s obvious that these “features” could be used for both beneficial or invasive purposes.

Arguments for the former include SocialPass, an iPhone app that is taking advantage of GPS location to offer discounts and deals based on the user’s location right here in Philly. Also, in January of this year, police were able to capture a criminal by using the GPS in the phone he stole from his victim in Upper Darby. Arguments against could include fear of stalkers, ex-spouses or others with ill intent who might like to track your whereabouts.

But don’t panic yet. The tracking by Apple on their mobile devices is stored in an unencrypted file on your mobile device and desktop or laptop if you sync devices. Although it’s not encrypted, it’s not readily accessible unless someone were to steal or hack your device.

Sony and Facebook are also under fire for failure to safeguard the private information of its users. A hack of Sony’s Playstation allowed thousands of users’ data to be compromised. A security breach in Facebook gave nearly 100,000 advertisers and 3rd party applications access to personal profiles, photos and chats according to Symantic, although it’s likely they weren’t aware they had access. Facebook has since rectified the problem. Facebook’s proliferation has tempted numerous unscrupulous persons to attempt hacking users’ accounts, so be careful.

Technology has become commonplace today and provides numerous advantages but it also poses a risk to your personal information. Weigh the risks to benefit ratio to decide what you use and share. One of the most common safeguards often ignored is managing your passwords. It bears repeating: use strong passwords and change them regularly.

In other news, Microsoft spent a whopping $8.5 billion to acquire Skype, the popular VOIP software that allows users to engage in voice or video conversations for free or connect to a phone for pennies. It plans to incorporate Skype in many of it’s products. Meanwhile, LinkedIn stocks went from $45/share to $94.25/share in it’s first day on the NYSE. 110% in one day? Not bad.

Just Browsing

Some think the browser may soon become the most important piece of software on your computer...if it isn’t already. With the continual increase in cloud services you can understand why. (I’m writing this on Google docs.) Now that Microsoft offers a choice by ballot on Windows 7 operating system there may be more exploration and experimentation with the more popular browsers available today.

If you have Internet access then you likely use a browser everyday. In fact, the popularity of the Internet was in part because of the first graphical web browsers like Netscape. Soon Microsoft used it’s marketing dominance by including it’s browser, Internet Explorer, with the Windows operating system resulting in the prolific use of IE. Soon Opera, Safari, Mozilla Firefox, Chrome and a host of others appeared to vie for Internet users attention.

If you consider yourself a web enthusiast then you may have chosen different browsers for specific purposes. You may notice that certain websites perform better on one browser than on another. Like anything, there are pros and cons in your choice.

Most browsers provide support like pop-up blockers, search fields and custom toolbars. Security features can be enabled or disabled by going to “Options” or “Internet Options” in the “Tools” menu dropdown. “Favorites” or “Bookmarks” are a common feature for saving your most commonly visited website addresses.

Besides these shared features there are some notable differences. Internet Explorer supports ActiveX which is sometimes used to enhance an application’s feature set. (Note: ActiveX can also be used to exploit your computer by untrusted sites.) Firefox does not support ActiveX and thus is noted as a safer browser with numerous plugins available for functionality, customization and usability. However, some plugins can actually hinder your browsers rendering speed. Google’s Chrome has gained popularity recently for eliminating extras in favor of simplicity and speed. Opera also concentrates on speedy delivery and Safari is used on Apple’s popular mobile devices like the iPhone and iPad.

Some useful features or plugins for your browser include Awesome Screenshot for Chrome which is great for capturing screenshots and modifying them to share on or offline. FireBug for Firefox is an excellent resource for developers for analyzing the code behind the page. Google toolbar has many features. One of the best of these is the Autofill for forms. Fill out your personal information and let the browser remember it to conveniently fill out similar web forms in the future. Safari has this built-in the “Edit” menu dropdown.

Today their are literally dozens of web browsers available. The most popular and their latest estimated use are Internet Explorer - 44%, Firefox - 29%, Google Chrome 14%, Safari 6%, Opera 3% and mobile browsers at 4%. For a long list of browsers and some of their features, visit http://www.multibrowsers.com . You may find one that fits your particular style or requirement. Happy surfing!

You’ve Got Mail! or not...

I’ve been anxiously expecting a few letters. I haven’t received them. I’m accustomed to getting my mail everyday but I haven’t received any mail for an entire week. Two visits and a phone call later, I still have no mail even though I live across the street from the post office. Very frustrating! We expect our messages to get through. Afterall, we are living in the 21st century.

So I understand when people come to me regarding problems with their e-mail. We’ve come to rely on e-mail to get to it’s destination quickly and without incident but it doesn’t always work as expected. So I thought I’d give a brief history and then trace the path of an e-mail.

E-mail emerged from businesses’ need for communication within their own network. Then came e-mail services that acted much like some social networks today. You could only communicate with those who were also subscribed to your brand of e-mail but not to anyone outside of it. Of course this was less than optimal so today we have e-mail that can communicate with anyone else on the planet that has an e-mail address.

The top three free e-mail services today are Hotmail, Yahoo and Gmail with a combined 600+million subscribers. Then there are a plethora of other e-mail servers that accommodate the many website domain names out there.

If your message doesn’t reach it’s destination, there are numerous possibilities why. Your message originates as simple text with a header that determines the recipient. Your e-mail server searches the internet to find a nameserver which defines the physical location of the e-mail server hosting your recipients e-mail. If that can’t be found it isn’t going anywhere. If it is found it must travel a virtual gauntlet. E-mail travels along the many ISP lines owned and maintained by companies like Verizon, Comcast, ATT, and others on it’s way from server to server like a passenger on a train going from station to station. There are typically from 6 to a dozen servers along a given path. If any of those lines are disconnected or any of those servers are down then your e-mail could be delayed or lost completely.

Not only that but your message also has to transverse a series of firewalls, anti-virus and anti-spam programs. The anti-spam alone compares information in the e-mail against 25+ lists maintained with typical spam triggers. Systems are usually “weighted” to give more credibility to some of these lists than others. However, if your e-mail has elements flagging it on enough of these list compares, it is caught in the anti-spam net. The trick for e-mail server administrators has always been how to configure the “perfect” scenario to catch the true spam without catching the legitimate e-mail. Some services are better than others in this area.

So if your e-mail doesn’t reach it’s destination, there’s just a couple of possibilities for it’s failure. Don’t fret. It’s still more reliable than my post office.

The Next Big Thing

A wave of technology is breaking against the consumer world.  Although the amplitude is relatively the same, the frequency is increasing exponentially.  It’s so prolific that Best Buy has touted it’s buy back program on recent commercials.  (You know the ones, “3G, 4G, 5G, 6G”...”A new phone is out that’s better than yours”)

The latest and possibly the most influential items tossed our way is the cloud and the tablet.  You might find, as many others do, that there is a cloud surrounding the “cloud”.  A simple definition for the “cloud” was reiterated by the speaker at a seminar in New York I attended a few weeks ago, ‘Any solution that uses another computer through a network’.  Acknowledging that definition implies we’ve been using the “cloud” for years in one form or another.  So why all the hype?  Part of that is a marketing method latched onto by many companies to infuse new fire into older products that have been using the technology and some is the new ways in which it is being used.

What is happening is a shift from reliance on our personal or business computers and the catalog of programs we load on them to simply accessing programs that are built and maintained on another network, in most cases through the internet.  Many enterprise businesses are already eliminating cost of IT personel, servers, backup, hardware upgrades and maintenance by using “cloud” based systems.  It appears this shift is starting to infiltrate the consumer world as well.

The tablet has been a ripple until Apple’s iPad hit the scene.  Apple announced it sold over 7.3 million iPads in the 4th quarter of 2010 alone, raising the number to over 19 million for the year.  The popularity has attracted other big players such as google whose Android platform is now featured on the Samsung Galaxy Tab, Dell Streak, Motorola Xoom and soon on devices by Toshiba, HTC and LG according to Ian Paul of PC World.  This is leading some to predict the total sales of tablets to triple this year. That is a flood of tablets entering our media world.  Watch a movie, watch TV, listen to music, read a book and send a spreadsheet all in the palm of your hand.  Not too big, not too small.  It’s somewhat surprising tablets didn’t take off when they were introduced a decade ago.

The combination of these and other trends is changing the way we produce, seek and view media similar to how TV entered nearly every home in the twentieth century.  The continual advances of the internet, cloud computing, tablet technology and mobile access combined with social networks are changing how we work, play and view the world.  And just like TV it is producing both good and bad consequences in many ways.  Let’s hope the good win out.

Communication Breakdown?

You could argue we live in a world of communication overload.  Telephone, text messages, instant messaging, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, RSS feeds, e-mail, postal mail, TV, radio,...did I miss anything?  Oh yeah! Tablets are here.  Can you name how many of these forms of communication is not tied to the Internet in some way? One.  Every modern form of communication is influenced by or provided by the Internet.  And there’s some big news where the Internet is concerned.  We’ll mention our top contenders.

In our number one spot goes back to the roots.  ARPA, Advanced Research Projects Agency, was responsible for the first computer network that eventually became the Internet using a 32bit addressing system.  The current addressing system, IPv4 (Internet Protocol version 4), allows for over 4.2 billion addresses...and we’re running out!  Vint Cerf who was part of the ARPA project and a Vice President at Google is involved again promoting the new version 6 that will allow for hundreds of trillions of addresses.  Google along with Facebook and Yahoo! are planning on testing the newer protocol within their highly trafficked sites on June 8, 2011, proclaimed by the Internet Society as World IPv6 Day. This will be the largest scale use to date and could determine the future of the Internet, literally.  Anyone remember that webpage that said “You’ve reached the end of the Internet”?  Who’d a thunk?

Web 2.0 has been around for awhile now and video is a large part.  You can watch TV shows, movies, tutorials and public videos on the web now.  It may be transparent to most but the new standards for web documents are in process and its name is HTML5.  Well, unfortunately there continues to be no agreed upon standard for videos.  They’ve been dispersed into proprietary formats for Flash, Quicktime, Windows Media Player and more. Just when developers and users thought that a new standard would be born for the future of web video, the big players, Google, Adobe, Apple, Microsoft and others can’t agree on what that should be.  So, Mozilla’s Firefox and Chrome backed by Google will support one format while Microsoft’s Internet Explorer will support a different format.  The losers? You, the users who will undoubtedly carry the headache of installing plugins (and don’t forget updates) for your browser and web developers that will continue to pay for the burden of these Goliath vs. Goliath battles by creating workarounds and multiple outputs to allow the masses to view in their favorite format.

Speaking of video entertainment, federal regulators approved a merger between Comcast and NBC (who also owns majority stake in Hulu, a provider of network TV on the Internet) on January18th.  Apparently, a stipulation was that the merger support the emerging online video market and broadband accessibility rather than stifle or manipulate the market with their formidable combined content and delivery capabilities.  I’m sure they’ll be happy to comply.  Relatively sure...

Domain Name Gold Rush

How would you like to make a 75,000% return on your investment?  The domain name, ringtones.com, recently sold for a whopping $750,000 according to DN Journal.  The original registration cost was likely around $10.00.  This is not typical but it is becoming more and more commonplace as the demand for domain names increase and the available domain names decrease.  After all, an estimated 47 million websites were added in 2009 and they all need domain names.

A little about domain names:  Domain names are registered through registrars accredited by Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).  You might be more familiar with some of the accredited registrars such as GoDaddy, Dotster or others.  The domain name (sometimes referred to as the URL) is the address, www.MyDomainName.com , by which viewers find your website.  When a viewer looks up a particular website, the request goes to the registrar that documents the name server for that domain name and the name server then points to the web server where the website’s files reside.  Think of the name server as a post office. It keeps track of the addresses (domain names) and their physical location (web server/IP).  The appropriate web file is retrieved and your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, etc.) then interprets the file and presents the page for your viewing pleasure.

Typically, a domain name can be registered for about $10-$30 per year.  However, we live in a capitalist society so you can buy an unregistered domain name and resell it for a profit.  Since there is a limited supply of unique desirable domain names, many have bought up domain names with aspirations of making money.  So are you out of luck?  Not really, unless your surname is McDonald and you’re looking to create a family web page McDonalds.com.

The more generic or commonplace the name, the better chance that it’s already been registered.  However, domain names are potentially as limitless as the letter/number combinations that make them up.  So it’s possible that you can find a name that is specially suited to you.  Furthermore, there are a number of suffixes available for each name.  Although .com is by far the most recognized, many others exist such as .net, .org, .us, .info and many others, some of which are country specific.  If ‘gidgetsandgadgets.com’ is already taken, perhaps ‘gadgetsandgadgets.us’ is available.  Most registrars will offer alternative names if the one you choose is taken.  (Note: domain names are not case sensitive.)

One thing to keep in mind when purchasing a domain name is that google may place a website higher in the search results if it has a pertinent keyword within the domain name.  So if you sell gadgets then you may want a domain name like Bobsgadgets.com.  Your web designer should be able to help you choose a name that will work for you.

Building a Website. Easy as Pie.

Are you a fan of cheesecake, apple pie or chocolate chip cookies?  My mouth waters just thinking about them.  But I’ve had bad desserts.  Maybe the baker wasn’t really a master of his trade or the ingredients were not entered in the right quantity, or maybe the process wasn’t followed quite right.  If you’ve ever substituted baking powder for baking soda or vice versa you’ll know exactly what I mean. Yuck!

The reason I’m catering to your taste buds is because I often use baking a cake as an analogy for building a website.  Ingredients, process and human interaction all work together to create the finished product and a flaw in any one can dramatically affect the outcome. Let me explain.

The ingredients are the most important part of a website and that’s where you come in.  It’s your business and you know it best.  Who is more suited to provide the content than you?  Who knows your customers better than you do?  No one.  But one of the most common errors made is relying on your web designer to provide the content of your website for you.  The second most common mistake is not providing enough information.

Don’t underestimate your knowledge.  We all go through our daily routines never thinking twice about things we do on a regular basis.  But would you ask a random person to fulfill your daily tasks with just a handful of information?  No way!

It’s the same when asking your web designer to fill in the blanks of your website.  You know your products or services best.  You know your customers and competition.  So dig deep, access those important reservoirs of knowledge that only you know and put them in words.  There is no limit to how much information you can share on the internet.  The more information (ingredients), the more cake.  And everyone loves cake!

So now you have some quality ingredients.  The economy is tough and everyone is looking to save money by doing things themselves.  Now, I know my way around the kitchen to a point but I also know that there are others that are much more adept and can accomplish tasks faster and more efficiently in this arena.  If I was trying to impress others I would call on my mom.  She’s definitely a master at baking.

The same holds true in our website analogy.  Your purpose is to impress others enough to buy your products or services.  With the right ingredients a web master can create something that will do just that and he/she can likely do it much faster and with better results.

That’s not to say you can’t be of any more assistance.  Learning about the process can help everyone involved.  I hope to share some of those things in my next article.  Stay tuned.