Google Wave RIP. Google has halted development of its Wave project. This comes just over a year after it was unveiled to great fanfare. Google Wave was an uneasy hybrid of email, instant messaging, blogging and social networking. It was heralded as a ground-breaking form of real-time communication when it was first revealed in May 2009. Initially, interest in the service reached fever pitch, with invites to the Wave beta changing hands for up to £55 on eBay. Early hysteria soon petered out, with users struggling to find a use for the service. I think I tried it once...oh well.
IE6 Inertia. The UK Government's refusal to upgrade from Internet Explorer 6 has been lambasted by the developer who started the petition against the nine-year-old browser. The petition calling for the Government to upgrade IE for the sake of security and developers' sanity. The Government said departments are free to choose whichever browser they like, but claimed that upgrading is expensive even when the software is free. One commentators said "E6 is the leaded petrol of IT".
Australia's coalition promises to ban Labour's internet filter. The announcement prior to the election has been greeted with great enthusiasm by the Greens and Electronic Frontiers Australia. The Coalition chose an interview with Treasury spokesman, Joe Hockey, on ABC Radio's 2JJJ to show its hand. The ABC, on its web site - reported him as saying "We believe the Internet filter will not work and we believe it's flawed policy. It is not going to capture a whole lot of images and chatter that we all find offensive ... that are going through email."
Ballmer says that Microsoft has lost a generation. Ballmer's mid-July remarks to attendees of Microsoft's annual Worldwide Partner Conference, when he said that Windows Mobile had missed a "whole generation of users" before promising that Windows Phone 7 would staunch the bleeding. However other commentators have pointed out while ballmer was talking about Microsoft's mobile strategy, they see a parallel in Microsoft's core business: Windows. Companies are increasingly allowing workers to choose between Macs and Windows PCs — and the percentage of employees opting for Macs is rising. The same trend is happening among college students, with 70 per cent going Mac — an increase of 10 to 15 per cent from only a year ago. This generational loss is bad news for Redmond, for when those students move from classroom to office, the odds are high that they'll pick Macs when given the choice.
DAB change-over Statistics and Lies. Ofcom have redefined "a radio listener". It now includes four-year-old children. And at a stroke, DAB radio's prospects suddenly look a lot healthier. Last month Ofcom released its "Digital Radio Report". One graph purports to demonstrate the reach of digital-only stations. Ofcom claims five digital-only stations are reaching over one million listeners a week. But on closer inspection, the listeners are aged "4+". This is odd, because the radio industry counts listeners aged 15+ as its benchmark. This is the qualification threshold used by RAJAR, the ratings body jointly owned by the BBC and commercial radio operators. When the graph is adjusted to the more standard metric, the five stations count falls to three. In addition, BBC World Service is listed as "digital-only", even though it can be heard in the UK through analogue on medium wave (648Khz) and long wave (198), although the latter is actually Radio 4. Make that two, then. It's just one of several dubious statistical shenanigans highlighted by analyst Grant Goddard; you can read his full breakdown here:
http://grantgoddardradioblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/lies-damned-lies-and-ofcoms-first.html
Most dubious of all is the assertion that analogue listening is falling - Ofcom claims it's fallen from 87.2 per cent in 2007 to 76.4 per cent now. This is cherry-picking: analogue was 66.1 per cent in Q2 2007 and 66.7 per cent in Q1 2010. A significant chunk of RAJAR's figures are "unspecified" listening. Ofcom also used data from a survey that asked if anybody had ever used digital radio. This was then used to create results demonstrating how many people use digital radio. You could not make this stuff up. It is comic really.
How the bad guys get your personal information. While headlines herald stories about a bank employee losing a notebook or a civil servant dropping a disc with social security numbers. a report from Verizon notes that 98% of the stolen data was snatched directly from company servers mostly by use of malware and direct hacking. Added together, these attacks accounted for 79% of all stolen data not e-mail, not infected documents, and not zero-day attacks. And what of the never-ending process of receiving and applying security patches to quickly shore up those security vulnerabilities? Not an issue, says the report. "It is very interesting to note that there were no confirmed cases in which malware exploited a system or software vulnerability in 2009 … there wasn't a single confirmed intrusion that exploited a patchable vulnerability. So this puts the fear based advertising by operating system and anti-virus vendors aimed at the consumer into a new light. It really is time for businesses and institutions to make sure there house is in order! See the "Tips of the month" below.
Business Security. A new report identifies a 5-step approach:
http://www.smallbusinesscomputing.com/webmaster/article.php/3896756
Got Windows 7? Windows 8 due in 2012! Break that vendor lock and plan now for Open Systems. Perhaps use the change to extend the life of your systems securely. Start looking at the cost benefits now for free. Download one of the latest Linux desktops here:
http://www.ubuntu.com/
http://fedoraproject.org/
FBReaderJ 1.6 announced for Andriod. This is a clone of the original e-book reader which can handle oeb, epub, fb2 formates. The binary package is available from the Android Market. (To install, start Android Market application on your device, search FBReader and press the "Install" button.)
I hope this information was helpful. Do you want more information? Were you unimpressed, are not interested, and would like to be removed from the distribution? Please email me by clicking: mailto:bernard@elbourn.com?subject=Newsletter Response. There is a real human (me! Berni), and not a mail list machine, at this email address. I fully respect your privacy.
Please find back issues, and lots of other information about Elbourn Computer Services at http://www.elbourn.com/