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"System could secure data by encrypting it before it leaves your computer. by Joe Silver - Mar 25 2014, 9:35pm CET Privacy 44 A new platform for building Web applications, called Mylar, aims to provide encryption services that activate on your computer before data ever moves to a server."

There's an antitrust angle to this; it could be viewed by a court as anti-competitive. But given the prevailing winds on digital privacy, my guess would be that Google would slide by.

"Recent revelations of the National Security Agency's (NSA) data mining capabilities have come to the forefront recently, making "big data" a new subject of interest and concern for many people."

Direct P2P encrypted file syncing, no cloud intermediate, which should translate to far more secure exchange of files, with less opportunity for snooping by governments or others, than with cloud-based services. 

Re: Google. I don't know if it's the 'kiss of death" but they're definitely going to take a hit, particularly outside the U.S. BTW, I'm remembering from a few years back when the ODF Foundation was still kicking. I did a fair bit of research on the bureaucratic forces in the E.U. that were pushing for the Open Document Exchange Formats. That grew out of a then-ongoing push to get all of the E.U. nations connected via a network that is not dependent on the Internet. It was fairly complete at the time down to the national level and was branching out to the local level and the plan from there was to push connections to business and then to Joe Sixpack and wife. Interop was key, hence ODEF. The E.U. might not be that far away from an ability to sever the digital connections with the U.S. Say a bunch of daisy-chained proxy anonymizers for communications with the U.S. Of course they'd have to block the UK from the network and treat it like it is the U.S. There's a formal signals intelligence service collaboration/integration dating back to WW 2, as I recall, among the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Don't remember its name. But it's the same group of nations that were collaborating on Echelon. So the E.U. wouldn't want to let the UK fox inside their new chicken coop. Ah, it's just a fantasy. The U.S. and the E.U. are too interdependent. I have no idea hard it would be for the Zoho folk to come up with desktop/side encryption/decryption. And I don't know whether their servers are located outside the reach of a U.S. court's search warrant. But I think Google is going to have to move in that direction fast if it wants to minimize the damage. Or get way out in front of the hounds chomping at the NSA's ankles and reduce the NSA to compost. OTOH, Google might be a government covert op. for all I know. :-) I'm really enjoying watching the NSA show. Who knows what facet of their Big Brother operation gets revealed next?

ZOHO is an Indian company with USA marketing offices. No idea where the server farm is located, but they were not on the NSA list. I've known Raju Vegesna for years, mostly from the old Web 2.0 and Office 2.0 Conferences. Raju runs the USA offices in Santa Clara. I'll try to catch up with him on Thursday. How he could miss this once in a lifetime moment to clean out Google, Microsoft and SalesForce.com is something I'd like to find out about. Thanks for the Wuala tip. You sent me that years ago, when i was working on research and design for the SurDocs project. Incredible that all our notes, research, designs and correspondence was left to rot in Google Wave! Too too funny. I recall telling Alex from SurDocs that he had to use a USA host, like Amazon, that could be trusted by USA customers to keep their docs safe and secure. Now look what i've done! I've tossed his entire company information set into the laps of the NSA and their cabal of connected corporatists :)

[ Regulating Google's Results? Law Prof Calls 'Search Neutrality' Incoherent * By Nate Anderson, ars technica * January 22, 2011 | "Neutrality" - if it's good enough for the core of the internet, isn't it good enough for the edge? The biggest internet providers say it is, and they would love to have the government slap a few neutrality rules on Google, just to see how the advertising giant likes the taste of the regulatory bridle. ]

A company called The US Copyright Group have started targeting illegal movie downloading, picking up where the RIAA left off in 2008. Ars Technica senior editor Nate Anderson says that these lawsuits could be an attempt to create a new revenue stream for the movie industry rather than to curb piracy. http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2010/06/25/05

"The Bespin project, which aims to develop a browser-based IDE, has attracted significant attention in the Web development community. Ars looks at some of the buzz around Bespin and the project's innovative use of the HTML canvas element.........." Good stuff here. The Bespin project started off as a JavaScript code editor written in JavaScript, but the really exciting part looks to be the innovative use of the canvas element and the JavaScript API for drawing. There is also the development of using Bespin as a Web page editor using the new canvas text rendering API! One of the advantages Flash has over WebKit is the proliferation of SWF based IDE's. Silverlight will similarly have an excellent collection of IDE's. There are no WebKit - Canvas based IDE's today, but Bespin will perhaps change that. I can also imagine that many of the Flash based IDE's like Swifft tools and my favorite, "SwishMAX", could provide multiple vector graphics; including Canvas! Note that Adobe is scheduled to discontinue all support for SVG this coming March of 2009, moving everything to the proprietary SWF.

Microsoft opposes the stunning collection of EcmaScript standards improvements to JavaScript ES3 known as "ES4". Brendan Eich, author of JavaScript and lead Mozilla developer claims that Microsoft is stalling the advance of JavaScript to protect their proprietary advantages with Silverlight - WPF technologies. Opera developer "Haavard" asks the question, "Why would Microsoft do this?" Brendan Eich explains: Indeed Microsoft does not desire serious change to ES3, and we heard this inside TG1 in April. The words were (from my notes) more like this: "Microsoft does not think the web needs to change much". Except, of course, via Silverlight and WPF, which if not matched by evolution of the open web standards, will spread far and wide on the Web, as Flash already has. And that change to the Web is apparently just fine and dandy according to Microsoft. First, Microsoft does not think the Web needs to change much, but then they give us Silverlight and WPF? An amazing contradiction if I ever saw one. It is obvious that Microsoft wants to lock the Web to their proprietary technologies again. They want Silverlight, not some new open standard which further threatens their locked-in position. They will use dirty tricks - lies and deception - to convince people that they are in the right. Excellent discussion on how Microsoft participates in open standards groups to delay, stall and dumb down the Open Web formats, protocols and interfaces their competitors use. With their applications and services, Microsoft offers users a Hobbsian choice; use the stalled, limited and dumbed down Open Web standards, or, use rich, fully featured and advanced but proprietary Silverlight-WPF technologies. Some choice.