Open Web

Might be right. Might be wrong. Oh, the joy of having people around who feel entitled to read other people's data, whether it's shared or not. 

Yee-haw! E.U. sanctuary and rewards for NSA whistle-blowers. Mandatory warnings for customers of U.S. cloud services that their data may be turned over to the NSA. Pouring more gasoline on the NSA diplomatic fire. 

"The new iPhone is here - but is Apple in danger of delivering too little with its latest upgrade? This is an excellent in depth review of the iPhone 5, By Gareth Beavis  September 27th 2012 ..... 8 COMMENTS Moatly the iPhone 5 is compared to the Smasung Galaxy 3, and the HTC One X. HTC wins the form factor and feel award. Samsung beats the iPhone in near everything else. Both the HTC and Samasung use Quad Core Processors. The iPhone 5, although greatly improved over the i4, uses a dual core processor. Some highlightes for the iPhone 5: ...... Photo stitching ....... Siri In most things the iPhone is "average". Where it really shines is an improvement to the iPhone 4 !!!!! Some serious drawbacks: ......... No Google Maps !!!! AAnd the new Apple Maps are a JOKE ......... The core Contact-Calling-Email system is native and quite outside of the Google Apps. No sync PAGE 1 OF 14 : Introduction and design The excitement of the rumor mill, the titillation of every leaked photo led to higher than ever levels of expectation for the iPhone 5, and while the announcement was greeted with some derision at the lack of perceived headline improvements, the record sales tell an entirely different story. Given the underwhelming changes to the iPhone 4S, the iPhone 5 really needs to re-energize customers to prove Apple can repeat the game-changing trick it managed with the iPhone 4. So is the Apple iPhone 5 the greatest smartphone ever, one that will finally see Apple ascend to the top spot in our 20 best mobile phones chart? Or is it a case of too little, too late?"

"The good: ......... The iPhone 5 adds everything we wanted in the iPhone 4S: 4G LTE, a longer, larger screen, free turn-by-turn navigation, and a faster A6 processor. Plus, its top-to-bottom redesign is sharp, slim, and feather-light. The bad: ............ Apple Maps feels unfinished and buggy; Sprint and Verizon models can't use voice and data simultaneously. The smaller connector renders current accessories unusable without an adapter. There's no NFC, and the screen size pales in comparison to jumbo Android models. The bottom line: .............. The iPhone 5 completely rebuilds the iPhone on a framework of new features and design, addressing its major previous shortcomings. It's absolutely the best iPhone to date, and it easily secures its place in the top tier of the smartphone universe."

This seems like a reasonable role for government. 

White paper from Intel discusses HTML5 and the future of computing. Intro: Computer programmers have been grappling with cross-platform issues since there was a second platform. Since then, the number of issues has rapidly increased. Today's developers can target at least four operating systems (plus their fragments), running on devices with all shapes, sizes, resolutions, persistence levels, input methods, carrier networks, connection speeds and states, UI conventions, app stores, deployment and update mechanisms, and on and on. Many of the world's developers once looked to Java* as the shining knight of cross-platform development. Indeed, the structured language of Sun* (and now Oracle) continues to solve many cross-platform issues. But it also introduces obstacles, not the least of which is a class structure that heavily burdens even the tiniest of program functions. Java's heft grew still more burdensome as developers turned to the browser for app delivery; Java applets are black boxes that are as opaque to the browser as the language is closed to the developer (with all due deference to the JCP). Around the same time Java was fuelling the browser wars, a like-named interpreted language was beginning to emerge. First called Mocha, later LiveScript, and finally JavaScript*, the language proved more useful than Java in some ways because it could interact with the browser and control content display using HTML's cascading style sheets (CSS). JavaScript support soon became standard in every browser. It is now the programming language of HTML5, which is currently being considered by the World Wide Web Consortium as the next markup-language standard. To better understand HTML5-why it is where it is and where it's going- Intel® Software Adrenaline turned to Moh Haghighat, a senior principal engineer in the Developer Products Division of Intel's Software and Services Group. Moh was the technical lead from Intel's side on the first JavaScript

From the Dept. of YouGottaBeKiddingMe. 

Good review of a break through product.

Interesting stats coming out from the recent Forrester study on Office Productivity.  The study was conducted by Philipp Karcher, and it shows a fcoming collision of two interesting phenomenon that cannot continue to "coexist".  Something has to give. The two phenom are the continuing dominance and use of client/server desktop productivity application anchor, MSOffice, and, the continuing push of all business productivity application to highly mobile cloud-computing platforms.   It seems we are stuck in this truly odd dichotomy where the desktop MSOffice compound document model continues to dominate business productivity processes, yet those same users are spending ever more time mobile and in the cloud.  Something has got to give. And yes, I am very concerned about the fact that neither of the native XML document formats {used by MSOffice (OXML), OpenOffice and LibreOffice (ODF)} are designed for highly mobile cloud-computing.   It's been said before, the Web is the future of computing.  And HTML5 is the language of the Web.  HTML is also the most prolific compound-document format ever.  One of the key problems for cloud-computing is the lack of HTML5 ready Office Productivity Suites that can also manage the complexities of integrating cloud-ready data streams. Sadly, when Office Productivity formats went down the rat hole of a 1995 client/server compound document model, the productivity suites went right with them.  Very sad.  But the gaping hole in cloud-computing is going to be filled.  One way or the other.

"We (Forrester) just published a report on the state of adoption of Office 2013 And Productivity Suite Alternatives based on a survey of 155 Forrester clients with responsibility for those investments. The sample does not fully represent the market, but lets us draw comparisons to the results of our previous survey in 2011. Some key takeaways from the data:   One in five firms uses email in the cloud. Another quarter plans to move at some point. More are using Office 365 (14%) than Google Apps (9%).  Just 22% of respondents are on Office 2013. Another 36% have plans to be on it. Office 2013's uptake will be slower than Office 2010 because fewer firms plan to combine the rollout of Office 2013 with Windows 8 as they combined Office 2010 with Windows 7. Alternatives to Microsoft Office show little traction. In 2011, 13% of respondents supported open source alternatives to Office. This year the number is just 5%. Google Docs has slightly higher adoption and is in use at 13% of companies. "

Excellent interview from 2010. Still worth reading. excerpt: "In December 2009 Jobs beckoned Houston (pronounced like the New York City street, not the Texas city) and his partner, Arash Ferdowsi, for a meeting at his Cupertino office. "I mean, Steve friggin' Jobs," remembers Houston, now 28. "How do you even prepare for that?" When Houston whipped out his laptop for a demo, Jobs, in his signature jeans and black turtleneck, coolly waved him away: "I know what you do." What Houston does is Dropbox, the digital storage service that has surged to 50 million users, with another joining every second. Jobs presciently saw this sapling as a strategic asset for Apple. Houston cut Jobs' pitch short: He was determined to build a big company, he said, and wasn't selling, no matter the status of the bidder (Houston considered Jobs his hero) or the prospects of a nine-digit price (he and Ferdowsi drove to the meeting in a Zipcar Prius). Jobs smiled warmly as he told them he was going after their market. "He said we were a feature, not a product," says Houston. Courteously, Jobs spent the next half hour waxing on over tea about his return to Apple, and why not to trust investors, as the duo-or more accurately, Houston, who plays Penn to Ferdowsi's mute Teller-peppered him with questions. When Jobs later followed up with a suggestion to meet at Dropbox's San Francisco office, Houston proposed that they instead meet in Silicon Valley. "Why let the enemy get a taste?" he now shrugs cockily. Instead, Jobs went dark on the subject, resurfacing only this June, at his final keynote speech, where he unveiled iCloud, and specifically knocked Dropbox as a half-attempt to solve the Internet's messiest dilemma: How do you get all your files, from all your devices, into one place? Houston's reaction was less cocky: "Oh, s-t." The next day he shot a missive to his staff: "We have one of the fastest-growing companies in the world," it b

"FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS What is WhiteHat Aviator? WhiteHat Aviator; is the most secure , most private Web browser available anywhere. By default, it provides an easy way to bank, shop, and use social networks while stopping viruses from infecting computers, preventing accounts from being hacked, and blocking advertisers from invisibly spying on every click. Why do I need a secure Web browser? According to CA Technologies, 84 percent of hacker attacks in 2009 took advantage of vulnerabilities in Web browsers. Similarly, Symantec found that four of the top five vulnerabilities being exploited were client-side vulnerabilities that were frequently targeted by Web-based attacks. The fact is, that when you visit any website you run the risk of having your surfing history, passwords, real name, workplace, home address, phone number, email, gender, political affiliation, sexual preferences, income bracket, education level, and medical history stolen - and your computer infected with viruses. Sadly, this happens on millions of websites every day. Before you have any chance at protecting yourself, other browsers force you to follow complicated how-to guides, modify settings that only serve advertising empires and install obscure third-party software. What makes WhiteHat Aviator so secure? WhiteHat Aviator; is built on Chromium, the same open-source foundation used by Google Chrome. Chromium has several unique, powerful security features. One is a "sandbox" that prevents websites from stealing files off your computer or infecting it with viruses. As good as Chromium is, we went much further to create the safest online experience possible. WhiteHat Aviator comes ready-to-go with hardened security and privacy settings, giving hackers less to work with. And our browser downloads to you - without any hidden user-tracking functionality. Our default search engine is DuckDuckGo - not Google, which logs your activity. For good measure, Aviator integrates Disconnect

Not surprisingly, Microsoft is going to pound on "productivity" as the key differential between their desktop-cloud-mobile computing products, and those of mobile-productivity platform challengers, Apple and Google. There are three platform contenders, and this article points out that it is Google Apps that is keeping Apple in the business productivity game. Very interesting insight. Especially since a recent Forrester Report has the Apple platform capturing 65% of all mobile business application development. And Microsoft with only 1%. Google weighs in with 13%. This is a stunning setback for Microsoft. The MS monopolist empire is built on business productivity, with 98% of clinet/server marketshare. excerpt: "Over time, Microsoft has tried to tilt the marketing message to position Surface as a "productivity tablet". Now that Surface 2 is out, the "productivity tablet" message is coming across loud and clear. But can what people use tablets at work for actually be described as "productive"? Surface might be new, but the idea of using tablets in business is not. Although Microsoft would like us to believe that a tablet that doesn't run Office and doesn't have a good solution for a keyboard can't be used in business, the iPad has been used in business since its release in April 2010. Mobile device management (MDM) allows enterprises to control which apps are available on both on BYOD and enterprise-supplied tablets. Some MDM vendors publish reports and surveys on what their customers' allow and disallow. This information can provide some insight into what apps people are typically using. Back in June, my ZDNet colleague Adrian Kingsley-Hughes reported on a report put out by one such vendor. Fiberlink gave this list of iOS apps that are commonly whitelisted: iBooks Adobe Reader Google Citrix Receiver Numbers Dropbox Pages iTunes U Keynote WebEx Along with those apps, you also need to add that apps that come with the device - namely web browsing, email,

excellent comparison!

"At its Ideas Summit in New York, Google has announced that it is working on developing a browser extension that will act as an easy-to-use way to bypass country-specific Internet censorship and make connections safer and more private. Safer connections The tool, which was developed by the University of Washington and seeded by Google, is at its core a peer-to-peer personalized virtual private network (VPN) that redirects Internet traffic coming from an initial, less secure connection through a second, trusted connection, and then encrypts the pathway between the two terminals. Whenever you access the Internet, the connection is routed through a number of terminals. At each step of the way the connection may be blocked, surveilled, or even tampered with (especially if the data is not encrypted). On the whole, the safety and privacy of your data is only as good as the weakest link in the chain. Google's solution with uProxy was to develop a tool that makes it much easier to make an unsafe connection more secure, with the help of a trusted friend. The software, which will be available as a Chrome and Firefox extension to begin with, can use existing social networks like Facebook or Google Hangouts to help find users who already have uProxy installed on their system. If two users agree to use the service in tandem, the software can begin to make data connections safer. How it works Let's assume that Alice, who lives in a country with an Internet censorship problem such as China or Iran, contacts Bob, who has much safer, or uncensored, or unmonitored access to the Internet. Bob agrees to act as a proxy for Alice, and as long as his browser is open, Alice's outgoing web traffic will now be routed through Bob's connection, and so she'll now be able to access websites that she wouldn't otherwise be able to reach on her own. The connection between Alice and Bob is also encrypted. To an external observer looking at Bob's connection, it would appear that he is simply s