Data centres to off-centre opinion

Early reports that Google employees were tricked into installing malware which allowed the hackers to steal information have been corroborated by McAfee.

The attackers are alleged to have identified friends of the Google employees via social networks (like Facebook, LinkedIn etc) and then posed as those friends to trick the employees into installing the malware as they believed it was trustworthy. The industry is claiming this is a watershed in the sophistication of attacks, and undoubtedly it is very sophisticated, however it seems to me that its more evolutionary: for years spammers have been sending email which claims to be from someone else, indeed the most sophisticated spammers have obtained address lists from users (either via unpatched machines or more regularly now by tricking them into sharing their username/password for their email [see my post about Threadsy]) and send emails to all their contacts as if it came from that user. The clever (?) thing about this attack is the fact they used social networks specifically to get users to believe an IM was trustworthy.

There is no new lesson here, keep practicing the safe internet usage guidance which hasn’t changed for several years:

• Always install updates for your software (Windows/OS X, IE/Sarafi/Firefox, Flash etc)
• Run AV (AVG or Microsoft Security Essentials are good free versions)
• Enable the firewall
• Dont click on anything which looks suspicious or you’re not expecting, even if its from someone you know – always check the person sent it.

I’m lucky enough to have received an invite to the beta of Threadsy. In their own words: threadsy is the world’s first integrated communications client! it combines your existing email, Facebook, and Twitter accounts into a unique, enjoyable experience.

Earlier this year I wrote a post asking for just such a thing, however now I’ve got it I’m faced with the question of trust. Do I trust Threadsy with my usernames and passwords for Twitter, Facebook, Live Mail etc? How do I know Threadsy is legitimate & secure? The answer is I don’t. I have to make up my own mind based on their privacy policy and reputation. The one thing they have going for them is the fact they were featured on Cnet – a site I do trust. In other words, trust by association, which is just like life: you build trust through recommendation/association and experience.

With the explosion of blogs and social networking sites over the last few years, its apparent (at least to me) that whoever creates a compelling aggregation service will be onto a winner. Facebook is getting there, you can already integrate it with Twitter, but what about all the other information sources we each use?

I consider aggregation from two perspectives; the publisher (me as an individual and my internet persona) and reader (me seeing everything my freinds & colleagues are up to).

Why do I need a publisher?

• I have several blogs each focused on a particular theme
• I have Facebook, LinkedIn, Windows Live and numerous other online profiles
• I publish photos on my Flickr account, in my Facebook profile and in my Windows Live Photo Gallery
• I scroble music on Last.FM and I have a Zune profile

Few of these are connected, and many now offer competing services. Should I be uploading photos to my Facebook profile, my Flickr account or my Windows Live gallery? For me, the answer is all of them because each offer somthing unique. Flickr is great for “just sharing photos”, Facebook is great for sharing photos relating to some event and Windows Live is just plain easy with the local client (Windows Live Photo Gallery) and I tend to use it for my climbing photos. I want all these connected so anyone can see all my photos, nicely organised irrespective of the service they’re hosted on. The same applies for blogs, tweets etc; it makes it easy for you to see what I’m doing or thinking about. The converse of this is my desire to see everything my friends are up to, in one place. Aka, the reader aspect.

Whoever is able to pull together a social graph/aggregator like this, whilst still allowing the uniqueness of each service to be exposed (i.e. not attempting to replace each service, just provide a launch pad) will be onto a winner. They may even be one of the first to make money from social networking.

After writing this blog entry and searching for a suitable image, I found that Google are ahead of me and already have an API which could help a would-be developer build a social aggregator.

Spotify, the new on-demand music streaming service is an interesting (and in my opinion, innevitable) evolution of internet radio. Its idea is simple, install the client, create an account, type the name of an atrist, enjoy. Unlike Last.FM, you’re not forced to listen to your chosen artist interspersed with others, its U2 all the way (or whoever you chose).

From a technology standpoint, they’ve done nothing clever: iTunes and Zune basically do the same thing, only they deliver you an MP3/WMA/AAC rather than stream. Oh, and you have to pay for tracks you download from iTunes and Zune Marketplace.

What makes Spotify interesting is their business model; either listen to the odd add or pay a monthly subscription for ad-free listening. No doubt most users (me included) will be opting for the ad-funded version, it will be interesting to see how many tracks per ad Spotify settle on to make money. In other words, Spotify is to Music what Google is to search from a business perspective.

Now the clever part; if they’re able to profile their users, they will be able to target us with more relevant ads, which turns into revenue for them. If I were them, I’d be partnering with Microsoft, Google and Yahoo to obtain user profile information. Which leads me to think they’ll be bought pretty soon. It may not be one of those three, I could see a media company picking them up, but rest assured, if they’re able to prove the business model works they’ll be bought, and soon.

Can Last.FM evolve to compete? Will MySpace, iTunes or Zune offer something similar? I don’t know, but I’m sure they’re watching, very closely.

I’ve been using a spare Laptop running Windows XP since my main laptop was stolen last Friday, and its been a revelation to me. There are quite a few Vista features I miss and some are not that obvious before you’ve lost them. In no particula order;

• Search built into the Start Menu – I realise now that I use it to find programs more than documents.
• Variable sized thumbnails – I have load of photos at home and viewing them in XP is painful.
• Side Bar – this surprised me, but I use the Side Bar far more than I thought. I miss my clocks showing the different Timezones of team I work in, the C89.5 radio gadget, my weather station gadget and the calendar gadget. Without these I’m definietly less productive (ok, the weather station and radio gadgets dont affect productivity).
• Suspend/Hibernate – now this may be driver/hardware based but the suspend and resume process on the temporary laptop isn’t as reliable/consistent as on the old Vista laptop. I’ve gone back to the “flaming rucksack” days (where the laptop wakes up in the rucksack then overheats).
• UAC/RunAs – Even under XP I never used to use an admin account day-to-day, and I’m now reminded how much better Vista handles elevated access compared to XP (networking, timezone etc).

As I said, some of these aren’t that obvious until you’ve lose ‘em. To be fair, I should also list the stuff I don’t miss;

• Folder view in Explorer – the lack of a simple folder view in Explorer windows annoys me: I prefer the XP one
• Startup time – the XP machine doesn’t bog down as much on first startup

Whilst I was climbing with Beat Schwegler in Switzerland last weekend, he told me about the most recent book he’d read: Microsoft 2.0, How Microsoft Plans to Stay Relevant in the Post-Gates Era by Mary Jo Foley. I read the first two chapters whilst we were waiting for the rain to clear and enjoyed it sufficiently to order it from Amazon. This is unusual for me as I find business books mind-numbingly boring most of the time.

Having read some more, I’m still enjoying her observations and perspectives. I don’t agree with some of what she says, but most of her insight seems rational to me (so far). Whilst the book obviously focuses on Microsoft, I’d recommend anyone pick this up if they’re interested in the future of IT.

Nicholas Carr has written an interesting article on how Google is disrupting many traditional businesses, from newspapers to movie studios and internet firms, and in so doing he explains their motivations (in his opinion) and draws a comparison with other businesses, including Microsoft.

Whilst I don’t agree with Nicks opinion that Microsoft is in business only for the money, the article makes for a good read, as do the comments from his readers.

Unbeknownst to me, whilst I was writing the Chrome post last Wednesday afternoon before flying off to Swtizerland for a weekend of climbing, a storm was brewing over the terms of the Chrome license. I wrote;

How they strike the right balance between using Chrome to deliver more adverts to their users (which means user profiling) and maintaining user privacy will be an interesting thing to watch

and it turns out this balance wasn’t right, but not just in the way I imagined. I thought they would be using Chrome to profile your use of the internet (which they are), however the liecense went much further asserting that anything you create whilst using it is re-usable by Google. Every email you write on GMail or Hotmail, every blog post you write etc. As reported on CNet, Google have since changed the license terms which is a good thing,  but your browsing habbit are now profiled in addition to any searches you do, irrespective of search provider.

For more information, see the ongoing CNet coverage of Chrome here.

Its been all over the web for the last 24 hours; Google have announced they’re working on an IE and Firefox competitor called Chrome. I share some of the opinions raised in a Cnet news.com article, especially the points about Google having to share Chrome with the open source community, but I’m not sure I agree with its conclusion.

Matt Asay essentially says people will not defect to Chrome because Google has thus far failed to get any significant adoption of its existing client-side software. He makes a good point, but I can’t help but feel people want a better (or maybe just new) way to surf the web.

Byond tabs (which are “just” an evolution  – albeit a very useful one) we’ve not really seen significant innovation in browsers for a number of years. I emphasise seen because both Mozilla and Micorsoft (and to some degree Opera) have all made improvments to their respective browsers, but the basic idea remains the same. Do any of us think the current model cannot be improved? I honestly don’t know. Web Slices (in IE8) seem like a good idea – I’ve long wanted a way to cut out a part of a webpage and paste it onto my desktop and still have it “live” with updated information. However, slices require a webpage to be coded in a certain way to support them, which will slow down adoption.

Google have a strong brand and if Chrome manages to significantly improve the way we use the web without further eroding user privacy, I’m sure it will be adopted. How they strike the right balance between using Chrome to deliver more adverts to their users (which means user profiling) and maintaining user privacy will be an interesting thing to watch.

Last night I was using my iPhone to browse the web on the train into London. Now I’ve done this since I owned my first web-enabled phone in 2001 so I know the experience is pretty poor due to the patchy network coverage. However, on this journey the iPhone hung completely, not even holding the power button would shut it down. After about 3 minutes, it turned off and restarted fine, but every single AppStore application I’d already downloaded would just crash. I wonder if I’m now a victim of the iPhone app crash bug?.

Before it crashed I was reading an article on news.com about rumours that Microsoft will launch an AppStore equivalent called SkyMarket (rubbish name IMO) for Windows Mobile sometime in the Autumn. This got me thinking: are the iPhones apps poorly written due to the developers lack of experience? Is it because Apple haven’t exposed enough of the iPhone’s system? If its the former I’m sure we will see similar issues plague applications in SkyMarket as its likely to draw more developers to Windows Mobile – especially as it has twice the market share as the iPhone at the moment.

Whilst I’d get a lot of satisfaction out of blending my iPhone, I still enjoy using the device.