Programming ArchiveEnd Of The Storm Botnet?
At Dark Reading, they're reporting that the infamous Storm botnet may have been abandoned: "It’s been nearly a month now since the Storm botnet sent its last spam run -- significantly long enough that botnet researchers now conclude this could be the end of most infamous botnet once and for all. Well, good. The worm, which peaked around the start of this year seems to have been laid low by its own fame. Future security threats will be different. Posted by Joe Caponi at 02:28 PM, October 16, 2008 Getting To Know Fake Steve Jobs
Attending any trade show on the last day is usually an exercise in solitude. This past Friday, with the show floor already closed, I wasn't surprised to find New York's cavernous Javitz Center nearly empty as I arrived for the Web 2.0 Expo. Much to my surprise though, the spacious keynote hall downstairs was standing room only for a series of quick addresses, highlighted by a talk by Dan Lyons, author of the hit blog The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs. I've posted my take on Fake Steve (as he's come to be known) over at our Channel Wire blog. In part: "Prodded by "fear and bordeom," Lyons decided to hone his new media skills by launching an anonymous blog, parodying such CEO blogs as Jonathan Schwartz's at Sun. He chose as his protagonist the CEO of Apple, a person with a unique role in modern technology as well as, 'a tiny bit of an ego.'" The web development sessions I attended after Lyons' talk -- including one featuring Brendan Eich, the creator of Javascript -- were also crowded, and more importantly, well worth the trip. More about those later...
Posted by Joe Caponi at 12:17 PM, September 23, 2008 Browser Season
Microsoft offers its second beta preview of Internet Explorer 8 (though heed the XP warnings); Mozilla is prompting users to upgrade to Firefox 3; and wait, what's this? Google Chrome, a new browser in beta from Google. All these updates stress their privacy and security features. This will be an exciting fall for web developers (and readers). Posted by Joe Caponi at 09:54 AM, September 2, 2008 Labor Day Linkfest
Here's hoping we all get the opportunity for some rest and relaxation, as we reach the unofficial end of summer. But don't take your eye off your labors for too long--here's some top links to enjoy this weekend: Continue reading "Labor Day Linkfest" Posted by Joe Caponi at 02:44 PM, August 29, 2008 San Francisco Admin Hands Over Passwords, Remains In Jail
Network admin Terry Childs met Monday with San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom and provided the passwords to the city's FiberWAN network that he'd been witholding: "Newsom took the password to a team of Cisco Systems code crackers that had been working on the case for the city... Childs provided the missing protocols which, when paired with the password, gave the control back to the city. " But if Childs was hoping this would help get him out of jail, it hasn't yet: "Terry Childs, the jailed city of San Francisco network administrator accused of locking out superiors from the portion of the city network he managed, failed in his motion to have his bail reduced from $5 million Wednesday." While it's still not clear exactly what's going on behind the scenes, prosecutors have begun to reveal their thinking in holding Childs on higher bail than most violent criminals. The San Francisco Chronicle reports: "Terry Childs envisioned the ultimate revenge on his bosses, prosecutors say - the meltdown of the city's computer network at the flick of a switch... And prosecutors still fear Childs still has access to the city's network, either via other individuals' passwords or via banks of modems Childs has set up in various locations throughout city buildings. Posted by Joe Caponi at 11:40 AM, July 24, 2008 The Inscrutable San Francisco Network Lockout
The case of Terry Childs, the San Francisco city network manager currently in jail, charged with computer tampering, remains mysterious. We describe what's known and what isn't: "The man accused of hijacking San Francisco's main IT network has been depicted by sources in various news reports and blog posts as everything from a gentle, quiet fellow who's been the victim of a giant misunderstanding to a disgruntled loner bent on revenge... InfoWorld claims to be in contact with "a source with direct knowledge of the City of San Francisco’s IT infrastructure and of Childs himself." They report: "My source appears to believe that Childs' motivation was the antithesis of tampering, and that Childs did everything possible to maintain the integrity of the network, perhaps to a fault." Hat tip: Slashdot.
"it happens in almost every IT shop: A handful of people, or even one person, has the sole responsibility for and knowledge of critical systems... Virtually every IT manager recognizes this problem, but far fewer do anything about it. San Francisco is now learning its lesson the hard way." We'll keep an eye on this... Posted by Joe Caponi at 03:19 PM, July 21, 2008 Hacking San Francisco
Yes, it's not going to be worth the tremendous amount of trouble he's in, and it's a warning to all organization executives and network administrators, but you've got to admire the nerve of Terry Childs, at least a little: "A San Francisco city computer network administrator charged with taking over the city's computer system and blocking access to it has had an arraignment date set... I can't wait to find out why... UPDATE: Information Week has more... "Childs... is still being paid his six-figure salary while he sits in jail, refusing to divulge the password he created to hijack the computer system that stores 60% of all city government data... The suspect has refused to divulge the password that would unlock the system, which remains operational. " Posted by Joe Caponi at 10:22 AM, July 17, 2008 RSS Feeds Update
Today, we've begun using Pheedo to manage the distribution of our site RSS feeds (and yes, to show some ads). There should be no disruption in the feeds, and our old URLs should work just fine. To subscribe to any of our feeds, visit our feeds page. To pick out a web-based feed reader, don't miss my Best RSS Feed Readers slide show. Any other problems, let me know. UPDATE: Okay, there were a few problems, but we've got our main feeds running now and should have the rest shortly. Sorry for the difficulty. Posted by Joe Caponi at 10:11 AM, July 16, 2008 Firefox 3 Day 2
This morning, Mozilla's Spread Firefox site is reporting nearly 11,000,000 downloads of Firefox 3, including over 8,000,000 during Download Day itself. Further, they're claiming a browser market share of "around four percent at the end of Download Day." From the looks of it here, they may be doing better than that. Our own ChannelWeb visitor statistics show Mozilla 3 (including beta versions) jumping up over 10% of our total this morning. How is Firefox doing otherwise? At the Red Ferret Journal, Nigel is overjoyed: "The beauty of it is that the 15,000 small things that improve it really do add value, they’re not just there for feature bloat or to show off. Get it. At InformationWeek, they're concerned about the lack of focus on enterprise features: "'It's just one more app to support,' Ericksen VP of technology David Pluke said in an e-mail. He just hasn't seen any compelling reason to switch from Internet Explorer or add support for Firefox... [Though] Boeing and Fidelity Investments are among the companies that support or encourage Firefox use." A security exploit has already been discovered (though it affected earlier verions, as well). While at Lifehacker, they've already put together a whole batch of extensions and tips for using Firefox 3.
Posted by Joe Caponi at 07:12 AM, June 19, 2008 Firefox 3 Download Day
Remember system crashes? Those "why did my computer just reboot and what happened to everything I was working on?" moments? Thankfully those days are pretty much over, though I do still see regularly see application lock-ups on my Mac, where one program will retreat into itself and refuse to acknowledge my concerned mouse-clicking. A "Force Quit" will be required to get it running again, or even a "Kill" command from the Terminal. Since I've stopped using Lotus Notes, just about the only program that still locks up on me is Mozilla Firefox. So I'm looking forward to today's release of Firefox 3, promising improved stability and better handling of whatever the World Wide Web throws at it. While Internet Explorer 7 is certainly a big improvement over IE 6, as a web developer, I still find Firefox a far more accurate renderer of my HTML and CSS code, and I use a number of Firefox plug-ins to extend it's functionality. (See our slide show comparison of Firefox vs. IE.) On bMighty, Fred Paul says the new Firefox is fast: "The first and most important thing you'll notice is that Firefox 3 is fast. Not just a few ticks faster than Firefox 2 and IE6 or IE7, but significantly and noticably faster. I was stunned the first time I loaded a page in FF3. It finished loading while I was still getting ready to see how long it would take. There's lots more to Firefox, but it would be the browser of choice for that alone." Our own Test Center liked the improved malware defenses: "Reviewers purposefully infected the test PC with some particularly annoying adware programs. IE infection was immediate, but Mozilla was able to stave off the malware. The pornographic pop-ups and site redirections that occurred after installing the malware became a nuisance in IE 8 but did not happen with using Mozilla." Firefox 3 won't be available via automatic update for version 2 users, yet, but the Mozilla folks are still eager to get it into your hands. With with "Download Day," they're going for a record. Gayle Kesten reports: "Finally, with Firefox 3 -- and some clever marketing -- Mozilla is pushing to set a world record for the most software downloads in a 24-hour period. Its pitch: 'All you have to do is get Firefox 3 during Download Day to help set the record for most software downloads in 24 hours.'" Download Day got off to a bit of a rough start, but is on track now. See live stats here. Download Day continues until 11:16am Pacific Daylight Time today. Posted by Joe Caponi at 08:00 AM, June 18, 2008 Turning The Tables On Storm
Dark Reading reports that European computer experts have 'infiltrated' the Storm worm botnet, are learning more about it's size and scope, and can even disrupt its operations: "The researchers, from the University of Mannheim and the Institut Eurecom, recently infiltrated Storm to test out a method they came up with of analyzing and disrupting P2P botnets. Their technique is a spinoff of traditional botnet tracking, but with a twist: it not only entails capturing bot binaries and infiltrating the P2P network, but it also exploits weaknesses in the botnet’s P2P protocol to inject 'polluted' content into the botnet to disrupt communication among the bots." This is great news. I wouldn't bet against Storm's ability to adapt -- that's its strength -- and it has significant support as well as plenty of cash to help it continue. But eventually, either by technical wizardry or old fashioned police work, the Storm ring will get cracked. That'll be quite a story.
Posted by Joe Caponi at 09:47 AM, April 25, 2008 Google's App Engine Brings The Cloud To You
There's been much discussion this week about Google's App Engine beta test, offering developers the opportunity to deploy their (Python-based) apps on Google's infrastructure, and take advantage of Google's enormous storage, bandwidth and scalability resources, for free. Continue reading "Google's App Engine Brings The Cloud To You" Posted by Joe Caponi at 01:51 PM, April 11, 2008 Let's Stop Daylight Saving Time
Coming late this Saturday night. They're hashing out the pros and cons at Slashdot, but it's still not worth the trouble. And yes, it's Daylight Saving Time, not Savings. Posted by Joe Caponi at 02:53 PM, March 4, 2008 The Data Center Arms Race
Ed Moltzen looks at Microsoft's rumored plans to open up to two dozen more data centers for 'cloud computing': "This is a company so intent on building out its online infrastructure that it is offering $44.6 billion to buy Yahoo. But building 20-plus, massive data centers is a special kind of 'wow.'" Who else could do this sort of thing? Google and Amazon, for two. Could the phone companies? How about a university with vast technical know-how and an equally significan endowment? Stanford and Harvard, I'm looking at you... UPDATE: Information Week's John Foley provides a visual tour of Google's upcoming Council Bluffs, Iowa, data center. Posted by Joe Caponi at 11:03 AM, March 3, 2008 Leap Day Links
It's been a busy day, what with changing companies and all, but if I don't get this Link Day Linkfest up I'll have to wait four years... Continue reading "Leap Day Links" Posted by Joe Caponi at 04:33 PM, February 29, 2008 Storm: Friends In High Places
The Storm Worm is notable for it's perniciousness and adaptability, not only in cyberspace, but in the real world as well. The Washington Post reports: "Federal law enforcement officials who need to know have already learned the identities of those responsible for running the Storm worm network, but that U.S. authorities have thus far been prevented from bringing those responsible to justice due to a lack of cooperation from officials in St. Petersburg, Russia, where the Storm worm authors are thought to reside." That report comes to us via Information Week's George Hulme, who concludes:: "It's no doubt a profitable business model, as attackers get paid for sending out the spam, as well as a cut of the profits generated by the spam. That conclusion was also reached by our Ed Moltzen, who recently noted:: "Would Storm come to halt if its creators were further pursued by international law enforcement agencies? UPDATE: At TechRadar ,they're sceptical that Storm is making 'millions of dollars a day.' Posted by Joe Caponi at 11:45 AM, February 11, 2008 RSS Feeds Update
Well, this has been a long time coming. As you can see at our RSS Feeds page, we've added a ChannelWeb Complete Site Feed at http://www.crn.com/cwb/globalcontent/cweball/index.xml. This feed contains all the new articles on the site: news, reviews, slide shows, and articles from the print magazines. The ChannelWeb Breaking News Feed remains at http://www.crn.com/cwb/globalcontent/cwebnews/index.xml, and includes all our breaking news and blog postings*. Looking for a Feed Reader? Check out my Best RSS Feed Readers slide show. *Well, except for me. Hot Topics is on a different blog system (just hedging our bets). The feed for this blog is http://www.crn.com/blog/hottopics/movabletype/index.xml. Posted by Joe Caponi at 10:04 AM, February 5, 2008 Storm: Phishing As A Service
As it contines to develop, the Storm botnet (which we've discussed before) now appears to be becoming a platform for other attacks: "The notorious botnet is increasingly used in multi-faceted phishing attacks, and security experts say that portions of the Storm are actually 'rented out' to phishers... It may take some 'social engineering' to crack this ring, but sooner or later, somebody's going to be in a situation where they need to make a deal... Posted by Joe Caponi at 10:47 AM, January 18, 2008 New Year's Links
All of us at ChannelWeb send our wishes for a happy, healthy and prosperous 2008. Some quick links for the day off: Dr. Dobbs reports Perl 5.10 Now Available. I remember, way back, giving Perl as an example of a programming language I'd never know. But I have learned it, a little, thanks in large part to Learning Perl, and the wonderful (really) Mastering Regular Expressions. It's my secret weapon for slicing and dicing spreadsheets and long text files to extract usable content for the web. The newest version promises even richer regular expression support, along with other performance and functionality enhancements. And despite a reputation for being opaque, Perl nonetheless has a "do what I mean" feel that makes it, well, actually fun. I'll be trying out 5.10 in 2008. A cubicle? We used to dream of working in a cubicle! No, that's not some grumpy old-timer. That's you, in the future, if this trend takes off. On bMighty, Naomi Grossman says it's an acknowlegement of a whole new workstyle companies will have to come to terms with: "If, as a small to midsize company, you want to be able to attract and retain top IT workers, you need to acknowledge... that most of your good employees won't stand for a Dilbert existence anymore -- especially when they have other options." I like it, but Andrew Hickey reports Google Reader Making More Enemies Than Friends. But then, I haven't been sharing any links (unless you count right here). Ed Moltzen looks at Microsoft's "boldest move yet into virtualization" -- Windows Server 2008: "It also appears to be Microsoft's most aggressive move to date into an area that was once the province of companies like IBM, Sun Microsystems and Hewlett-Packard: clustering." Jennifer Lawinski looks at Apple's Year on our Apple Channel blog: "Apple's thriving iPod and iPhone businesses may not have any impact on the channel, except perhaps to cause a bit of "why can't we sell those too!" ire, solution providers can take heart that business may be on the upswing for Apple resellers who cater to business accounts." The prognosis for portable electronic health records remains cloudy. Thanks, Netscape, we'll never forget you. For tonight: my favorite champagnes. I hear they make them elsewhere, too, but stick to Long Island, to be sure. Happy New Year! Posted by Joe Caponi at 12:47 PM, December 31, 2007 Managing Your Feed Reads
Along the lines of my feed reader suggestions, woodtang over at 43folders.com has moved to Google Reader to keep up with the many feeds he follows. I do like his twist on organizing them, though: "When given the option to group things, we tend to do it topically, with labels like “Sports,” “Technology,” “Blogs,” etc... Indeed, I have some low-frequency/high value feeds I want to keep a special eye on, while there are others that I'm far more sanguine about letting roll by... Posted by Joe Caponi at 11:27 AM, November 28, 2007 Thanksgiving 2007 Linkfest
Some high-quality links to feast on over the looong weekend: The Channel How to make your state VAR-unfriendly: Maryland To Tax Computer Support Services. The comment thread is also quite entertaining. Forewarned is forearmed: 2008 Security Threats. You'll also find a slide show on the Top 10 Security Threat Predictions For 2008. Hewlett-Packard has crossed the $100-billion revenue mark. Craig Zarley looks at 10 Reasons Why, including both the hiring, and firing, of Carly Fiorina. As Thank Carly reminds us, the better HP does, the better some of Carly Fiorina's decisions look. My favorite line from Clerks is "This would be a great job if it weren't for the f***n customers." SitePoint examins how to Learn to Love Complaining Clients. Operating Systems You can't blame them for trying: Microsoft: Give Windows Vista Another Chance. Apple has certainly picked up on this theme in their latest ads. One Microsoft product partners would love get their hands on is that cool coffee table. But not yet. Speaking of surfaces, Apple already has it's iPod Touch. Could they have more tablets up their sleeve? They do, says Forbes' David Ewalt. Information Week tries out small-footprint Linux distributions in Linux Lite: 5 Tiny Distros That Pack A Big Bang. Is the internet an operating system? It's getting there. My slide show on The Best RSS Feed Readers demonstrates one way for the web to be your control center. Careers Are you a double-threat? Actor-Director? How about manager-techie? 'Hybrid' workers are more effective in the field, so don't kick yourself too much for not being a specialist. Dilbert agrees--Scott Adams provides some Career Advice, and recommends becoming "very good (top 25%) at two or more things." Programming Microsoft's Visual Studio 2008 is attracting praise in the developer community, particularly for Visual Studio Shell, a tool to produce custom-purpose IDEs. Along those lines, ActiveState has launched Open Komodo, their own tool-building tool. But if all of today's programming languages are just too jejune for you, you can look forward to the product launch of Microsoft's F# language for functional programming. Games, Math and Science Finally, we know the answer. Played exactly right, checkers should always be a draw. Just like tic-tac-toe. Meanwhile, the optimal solution to any Rubik's Cube problem is now down to 26 moves. So easy. Never give up: after a seventeen year gap, thanks to the Wii, Nintendo is back to being the "number one maker of console gaming systems". I know my kids want one! Finally, don't miss this Star-Trek styled home theatre. Engage! Have a great Thanksgiving! Posted by Joe Caponi at 12:28 PM, November 21, 2007 The Zen Of Bento
Mitch Wagner has been trying out Bento, FileMaker's new personal database and organizer for Mac OS X Leopard: "Bento doesn't organize your life, it organizes your stuff. Reading over that marketing material again, I can see that's what Apple meant to say -- but, still, I wish they'd been more clear about it. Posted by Joe Caponi at 01:20 PM, November 16, 2007 The Search For The Best RSS Reader
Fortunately, we've come a long way. Continue reading "The Search For The Best RSS Reader" Posted by Joe Caponi at 05:06 PM, November 15, 2007 That Distant Thunder Is Storm
Ed Moltzen discusses the evolution of the Storm worm: "The trojan that brought us the "halloween.exe" attacks this week, is showing signs of subtle changes that, at first, make it look like it's becoming more benign. Until the experts looked a little closer... We've written about Storm previously; and this probably won't be the last time--these folks are in it for the long haul. Posted by Joe Caponi at 04:19 PM, November 5, 2007 Web 2.0, Web 3.0. Whatever It Takes
Wrapping up last week's Web 2.0 Summit, Jack McCarthy looks at Steve Ballmer's visit, where he positioned Microsoft as being on an ambitious acquisition strategy among new innovative Web companies: "Ballmer said Microsoft has set out an acquisition strategy that will focus on up to 20 smaller acquisitions of $50 million to $1 billion each annually rather than larger deals... [though] Microsoft is also said to be targeting acquisitions like Yahoo, or social networking phenomenon Facebook." Ballmer was also involved in showing off Popfly, a "Mashup" tool that showcases Microsoft's new Silverlight technology. Nokia demonstrated their N810 Internet Tablet, an upcoming challenger to Apple's iPod Touch: "The Nokia device allows users to connect to WiFi hotspots or over a Bluetooth mobile phone and allows users to check Google Mail or a Facebook account, watch videos on YouTube or update blogs using the device's slide-out keyboard and touch screen. It comes with built-in maps and satellite navigation." Note to manufacturers: I love the idea of these gadgets, but don't call me until I can run Java in the browser on one of them. Finally, what would be the next big thing after Web 2.0? You guessed it: "A number of companies were touting their Web 3.0 or semantic Web credentials. Radar Networks, a San Francisco company which touts itself as a pioneer of Semantic Web or Web 3.0 technology, for example, introduced Friday the "invite beta" of Twine, a service aimed at providing a way for users to share, organize and find information more easily." UPDATE: Web 2.0 Summit Slide Show Posted by Joe Caponi at 03:25 PM, October 22, 2007 The Siren Song Of Web 2.0
Stacy Cowley reports from the Web 2.0 Summit, where the question on the minds of web application developers was can you trust your business to Web 2.0 platform companies? "Within 24 hours of going live on Facebook, iLike had more registered users than it had attracted in the entirety of its previous, independent incarnation... Posted by Joe Caponi at 11:03 AM, October 19, 2007 The Gathering Storm
Enterprise security expert Bruce Schneier has been keeping an eye on the 'Storm' worm, and the worldwide botnet it's been building all year, for reasons yet to be understood. Over on Wired, he reports on why Storm is different: "Although it's most commonly called a worm, Storm is really more: a worm, a Trojan horse and a bot all rolled into one. It's also the most successful example we have of a new breed of worm, and I've seen estimates that between 1 million and 50 million computers have been infected worldwide... David Ewalt calls it "chilling". That's about right. Posted by Joe Caponi at 10:45 AM, October 12, 2007 A Programming Lanugage Showdown
TIOBE Software posts a monthly Programming Community Index, showing "the popularity of programming languages... based on the world-wide availability of skilled engineers, courses and third party vendors." It's great geeky fun. Java sits way out in front, with a 50% higher rating than C, in second place (though C's days at #2 may be numbered if the Visual Basic family has anything to say). Everybody else is in there somewhere. Just as interesting, you can display trend graphs for any particular language -- watch out for Lua! If you're in the market for a new programming language, it's worth checking TIOBE to see if your effort looks like a good bet.
Posted by Joe Caponi at 03:02 PM, October 11, 2007 A Fall Harvest Of New Developer Tools
Stacy Cowley reports on the 'bonanza' of new programming tools just out: "Dynamic languages developers received new IDEs from the Eclipse Foundation's PHP Development Tools project and CodeGear's cleverly named 3rd Rail, a toolkit for Ruby on Rails development. Meanwhile, Sun launched version 2 of its GlassFish open-source application server and the beta version of NetBean 6, Sun's Java development IDE." CodeGear is the recent spin-off of Borland's developer tools group, so they know a thing or two about coding. Posted by Joe Caponi at 10:20 AM, September 24, 2007 Stop Bad SQL, Before It Starts
Okay, I admit to coding some web forms and basic databases that were way to easy to hack, but at least my data usually consisted of information we wanted to share anyway. Your requirements may be tighter. Frank Ohlhorst looks at how you can protect your web systems from SQL Injection attacks in our latest TechBuilder recipe: "SQL injection attacks have been the bread and butter of system crackers since the first SQL database became Web-enabled. Why is that? Simply put, if you can break through the authorization challenge presented at log-on, you can access the data stored in the SQL database." Posted by Joe Caponi at 04:42 PM, September 5, 2007 Virtualization Times Four
The CRN Test Center evaluates 4 Virtualization Suites in their latest "bake-off" review. Products from SWsoft, Virtual Iron Software, VMware and XenSource were put to the test. Products were specifically evaluated in terms of their suitability for distributed application development, and one product wound up on top. Posted by Joe Caponi at 11:46 AM, August 13, 2007 Developers Take A Shine To Silverlight
Stacey Cowley was at Microsoft's TechEd conference and found plenty of enthusiasm for Silverlight, the company's new technology that aims to give Adobe Flash a run for it's money: "'I'm itching to get started,' said Jon Nowick, a systems engineer with logistics software maker Coyote Logistics in Lake Forest, Ill. A self-described "old-school Flash programmer," Nowick would prefer to never deal with Flash again. From what he's seen of Silverlight tool and programming model, he expects it to be easier to use than Flash's." At the CRN Test Center, Mario Morejon has tried it out for himself and says Silverlight may do just that: "Microsoft's new Silverlight technology will engage the average corporate Web developer more than ever before when it comes to creating rich, animated online content and applications, the CRN Test Center believes. Silverlight sports a simple framework, built purely on XML and .Net, that stands to significantly ease Web design and development." Meanwhile, Adobe has not been complacent. The company is hard at work on their Adobe Integrated Runtime, formerly called 'Apollo', which aims to combine web app simplicity with desktop-based applications rich functionality and persistence. "AIR's distinguishing point is its emphasis on harmonizing online and offline application development." Posted by Joe Caponi at 03:55 PM, June 15, 2007 Google As A Security (and) Desktop Company
Continuing our inadvertent Google theme this week, don't miss this illumninating look by Lawrence Walsh at a little noticed Google acquisition, and it's implications for web security and web security vendors: "Imagine being able to search the Web carefree of security risks. Google could incorporate GreenBorder's technology to scan sites before allowing search engine users access (or at least warn them of the security risk). Likewise, Google could integrate GreenBorder in the Google Web browser toolbar, giving users an easy to use tool that provides a certain degree of insulation from malicious Web sites. Either way, Google enhances its value proposition to its paying customers and makes it increasingly more attractive to users than rivals, such as Microsoft and Yahoo." Meanwhile, Carolyn April examines Google Gears--new technology to run web applications off-line: "Google's own products will get the Gears treatment, which means eventually the company's word processor, spreadsheet and other business apps will work offline, better positioning them against Microsoft Office... Long run, this could become a competitive challenge for the Redmond, Wash., market leader." Posted by Joe Caponi at 02:34 PM, June 1, 2007 Google's Stunning 'Street View'
You have to see it yourself. This week Google launched 'Street Views' of at least five major cities (and surrounding areas) in the US. Click on a point on a Google Map, and--where available--up pops a 360 degree panorama image from that point. Here's New York's Penn Station, for instance, or the Metropolitan Museum of Art. But it's not only landmarks--their Manhattan coverage looks pretty near complete, and continues out past my town out on Long Island. And knowing Google, it'll soon be everywhere, and with improved quality. Think about the implications for business and personal life. At VARBusiness, we've been carefully evaluating the revenue reports of solution providers in preparation for June's VARBusiness 500. A quick look at company's headquarters location might reveal whether a report of $50 million in revenue is plausible. Real estate shoppers, job hunters, virtual tourists, and many more will flock to this application. What does your front door say about you? How can your business take advantage of this opportunity? And if you thought Google is keeping too close an eye on you before, this won't make you feel better. Thousands of people are clearly visible in the photos--one woman has noticed that her cat is visible. The blogs are burning up over Street Views and it's implications. Try it yourself and let me know what you find. Posted by Joe Caponi at 11:34 AM, May 31, 2007 Memorial Day Linkfest 2007
I've got a look at top VAR technologies, Second Life and math software, Al Gore's office, and more, in today's Memorial Day weekend Linkfest: Continue reading "Memorial Day Linkfest 2007" Posted by Joe Caponi at 04:09 PM, May 25, 2007 A Scorecard For Building The Rich Web
New web development platforms have been sprouting up like flowers the last few weeks, as developers race to trump each other and keep up with rising user expectations. AJAX applications (such as Google Maps) have raised the bar by behaving more like traditional desktop apps, with robust interfaces and quick, seamless screen refreshes. To aid in building these applications, vendors are releasing new development suites that marry full-fledged programming environments with a focus on easing web development and deployment. Among the latest moves: Continue reading "A Scorecard For Building The Rich Web" Posted by Joe Caponi at 04:49 PM, May 11, 2007 Speaking of Web Fads: Twitter
Combine blogging and IM and shake vigorously. Twitter puts you in the middle of a global stream of consciousness in which you can share your every thought, feeling and action, with everyone, right now. According to Stacy Cowley, it was all the rage at Microsot's Mix07 event: "Twitter offered real-time feedback on Mix07 -- a community groundswell Microsoft encouraged by featuring the running commentary on screensavers on all of its conference computers, using Flittrbook, a stylish application cooked up by one of its engineers. Posted by Joe Caponi at 10:37 AM, May 3, 2007 We Get Zinged On (Lack Of) Change Of Address
A reader emailed last week looking for a 'change of address' feature for our newsletters. I had to reply that there wasn't one yet, and that resubscribing at the new address was the proper approach. Well, don't tell that to an IT guy. This came back: "Pardon my laughter, but a major web and email based organization has no mechanism for someone to change their mailing address? Except for the PAPER part of it. He's right, of course, and we're (slowly) moving on the problem, trying to connect different databases gracefully. Meanwhile, our reader understands how imperfect systems can arise in organizations--and even be an opportunity for a smart solution provider. He wrote back (in part): "I apologize for the rambling... It is 3:20 AM after a very long couple of days of fire fighting for a company that did not believe in security because they were 'too small to be of interest to any hacker.' Right now, our change-of-address: 100% unhackable. Posted by Joe Caponi at 03:08 PM, April 6, 2007 Pre1 Powers Publishing With FileMaker
Choosing a database platform is a critical decision for a small ISV. Pre1 Software has found success by offering publishing solutions based on a FileMaker Server core. "FileMaker Server has provided a significant competitive advantage. We've built a robust product in a few short years, and can develop at a more rapid rate than otherwise," said Mark Jockin, Pre1 general manager. Continue reading "Pre1 Powers Publishing With FileMaker" Posted by Joe Caponi at 10:29 AM, April 6, 2007 Use Wikis To Connect To Customers
When working on large projects, involving numerous members of your own staff and your customers, what's the best way to--literally--keep everyone on the same page? Many tech companies are turning to wikis. These web sites feature content that can be edited online by any reader. Instead of chaos, you can build a system that documents your project, helps troubleshoot problems and provides user training all at the same time. The newest TechBuilder recipe, Wikis for System Builders, demonstrates how-to use Seedwiki to deploy a wiki solution that can benefit any channel organization. "A wiki (from the Hawaiian word for "quick") can be thought of an online encyclopedia that is created through group collaboration. The central feature of a wiki is the grouping of Web pages under a single title—the wiki." Posted by Joe Caponi at 10:46 AM, March 19, 2007 Daylight Savings Linkfest
Douglas Adams wrote, "Time is the worst place to get lost in..." And in accordance with the U.S. Energy Policy Act of 2005, that's exactly where we'll be, come March 11. On that day, Daylight Savings Time begins, three weeks earlier and extending one week later than in previous years. Trick-or-treaters get an extra hour of daylight on Haloween, but for developers, server administrators, and PC calendar users, the trick comes early, with system clocks, server jobs, and calendaring software all potentially an hour off. The big software makers have issued warnings and fixes--including Apple, Novell, and Microsoft, but it will fall on VARs and sysadmins to deal with the possible fallout. Gizmodo suggests that disconnected gadgets may be the most likely to fail, while Network Computing sees trouble in Java-based applications. On our ChannelWeb forums, readers are already weighing in. KeithAckerman applauds Microsoft for getting in front of the problem: "This is a government mandated change that Microsoft could not have been aware of when it published the vast majority of its applications over the past several years... I frankly have not seen any other publishers helping to get the word out." While grozelle points out a patch for older Windows systems. Posted by Joe Caponi at 04:19 PM, February 16, 2007 DST Dilemmas
I have never been a big fan of Daylight Savings Time... if we're micromanaging time, we've gone too far. Despite this, Congress has altered the dates for Daylight Savings Time for 2007 and beyond (one minor improvement - more daylight for trick or treating!). Of course, this wreaks havoc for time-dependent programming. Ed Moltzen has more: " Before anyone jumps off the deep end, though, (IBM Software Services) provides some useful links as to how to fix or mitigate the problem." Ed's also been keeping an eye on All Things Dell - go to The Chart and keep scrolling. Posted by Joe Caponi at 04:57 PM, October 18, 2006 Discoveries With TextWrangler
Sometimes you discover a solution that completely resets your expectations of what's possible. This week I found TextWrangler's Shebang menu. Continue reading "Discoveries With TextWrangler" Posted by Joe Caponi at 04:13 PM, October 13, 2006 Fifteen Years Of The World Wide Web
TechWeb has just posted a special package of articles on the fifteenth anniversary of Tim Berners-Lee's little hypertext project we now call the World Wide Web. Features include a web timeline dating back to 1945; a history of the browser wars; a look at what Web 2.0 is all about; and this cool gallery of web browsers Posted by Joe Caponi at 11:21 AM, September 14, 2006 Development Darlings
Stacy Cowley tracks down the top five issues in application development today: Rise Of Ruby On Rails & AJAX Eclipse Dominates Among Java IDEs Sun's Open-Source Java Plans The Looming Vista Wave Posted by Joe Caponi at 10:45 AM, September 1, 2006 New Mac, New Editing Tools
Blogging was quiet yesterday as I moved in to my new Macintosh here at ChannelWeb. Not one of these, (yet) but a still-speedy, dual-processor, MDD "Windtunnel" Mac G4, replacing a slower single-processor "Quicksilver" G4. It's faster. And yes, a little noisy. I'm also enjoying a couple of upgrades to two of my favorite text editors. TextWrangler, in which I'm writing this, is a successor to my high-speed word processor of choice for years, BBEdit Lite. While free, BBEdit Lite was also very fast to open and edit, yet featured regular expression search and replace, a directory listing import I constantly used, case changing tools, and multi-file editing. TextWrangler, to start with, adds color syntax highlighting, a real plus when coding web pages. Also in my OSX 10.4 is nano, the follow-up to pico, my favorite command-line text editor. For more advanced programming, I use jedit, on both Mac and Windows, but for quick notes and lists, nothing beats pico for speed. Nano adds a regex search-and-replace that'll make it much better for advanced editing. Posted by Joe Caponi at 10:33 AM, August 11, 2006 20 Years of Viruses
CRN has posted TechWeb's special report on 20 Years Of PC Viruses, including looks at the history of malicious computer bugs, the ten worst viruses, the earliest bug-fighters, and advice on dealing with a malware attack. "The first worm to spread widely over the Internet was the Morris worm, released in 1988 by Robert T. Morris, then a graduate student at Cornell University and now an MIT professor. Morris claimed to have created the worm as an intellectual exercise to measure the size of the Internet; however, it spread farther than intended, and many machines were infected multiple times. Infected computers -- Unix machines rather than PCs -- slowed down so much that they became unusable." Posted by Joe Caponi at 09:33 AM, July 7, 2006 Visual Tools For Databases
Microsoft offers expaned database integration and testing functionality, and continues it's reign as king of long product names, with Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals: "Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals will include tools for managing changes to database schema, a unit test harness, and a feature that generates test data mimicking the volume and format of production-database information." Posted by Joe Caponi at 10:23 AM, June 2, 2006 Sun Grid vs. Digipede
The CRN Test center tries out the 'utility supercomputer' from Sun, and contrasts it with a smaller competitor, Digipede, with some compelling capabilities:
Posted by Joe Caponi at 12:18 PM, May 8, 2006 Rails, Eclipse, And Atlas
Stacy Cowley's been doing good work on the development beat over at CRN. Check out her report on Ruby on Rails 1.1, which beefed up AJAX and JavaScript support in the hot-development-tool-of-the-moment; and her wrapup of the EclipseCon and Mix06 shows. "Developers are barreling toward a June launch of Callisto, an initiative coordinating the simultaneous release of 10 major Eclipse projects, including a C/C++ IDE and a graphical modeling framework." Posted by Joe Caponi at 11:48 AM, March 31, 2006 Eclipse And Microsoft Mix It Up
It's shaping up as a big week for developers with the Eclipse Foundation EclipseCon and Microsoft's Mix06 both taking place. Stacy Cowley previews both shows. Posted by Joe Caponi at 07:57 AM, March 20, 2006 Ruby On Rails
This new web toolset, combining the Ruby scripting language with new web and database tools, is starting to make a lot of noise in the programming community. CRN's Stacy Cowley introduces the language: Ruby on Rails "is a fledgling toolset for developing Web applications that reached the version 1.0 release milestone three months ago. Despite its youth, Rails has an impressive sphere of influence. Its admirers include tech guru Tim O’Reilly and Tomcat creator James Duncan Davidson, who calls Rails 'the most well-thought-out Web development framework I’ve ever used.'" Posted by Joe Caponi at 09:55 AM, March 13, 2006 |
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