November 23rd, 2009

Let's get rid of usernames and passwords for good

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 5:00 am

Categories: Discussion, Major breakthroughs, Next-generation technology, Research, Security, Web development

Tags: Password, Facebook Connect, OpenID, Zack Whittaker

Usernames and passwords annoy me. Expert advice says to have a different username and password for various services, but the amount of subscriptions, email accounts, social networks and other sites we subscribe to can run into the dozens, if not hundreds.

Password managers help, and single sign-on solutions for an array of sites are useful, and devices like smart cards and biometric devices save us remembering a whole array of combinations. But what if you’re away from your primary computer? You still need to remember all of the sequences and mishmashes of letters and numbers whether you like it or not.

Facebook Connect has helped me out greatly. On my home computer, I never sign out because there’s just no point as nobody else lives with me (thank God), and on my office computer, I always lock my screen so again, no need to log out. With this, it means I can not only sign in straight away to supporting services but it means I can cut down on the number of user names and passwords I need.

Perhaps it is time we worked on a new system. No longer should be need to push the “forgot your password?” link, or have to look up a long list of passwords in the filing cabinet, or even have to rely on a browser to take the workload for us. There needs to be a solution.

OpenID has the right idea, but it works in a similar way to university federation services and doesn’t really share any unique factor. Even CBS Interactive sites like ZDNet, TechRepublic, and BNET have a good idea by sharing the same login details across sites so you don’t need to re-register. But again, this isn’t enough.

I’d like something to change but simply don’t see a system being implemented which wouldn’t cost about a zillion dollars. For now, this thirty-year solution may have to stick with the byline of “if it ain’t broken, don’t fix it”. Then again, Google thought e-mail was broken when it brought out Wave…

How would you fix it?

October 15th, 2009

Internet Firechrome Safari: A browsing identity crisis

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 9:43 am

Categories: Discussion, Multimedia, Productivity, Research, Web 2.0

Tags: Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Web Browser, Web Browsers, Internet, Zack Whittaker

The importance of the web browser in our everyday lives has become a focal point of conversation to many. But to throw an interesting slant on browsers, can the average user just get away with using one?

There have been times when I have waded into the browser-battle debate (most notably here). But now I think that the world has it wrong. It shouldn’t matter which browser you use. For me and many of those I work with, it is not a case of “Internet Explorer or Firefox”; it is a case of “Internet Explorer and Firefox”.

(Well, first and foremost, forget the Safari element because running that browser on Windows is like being voted the most attractive person in the burns unit. It sounds all good and well but if you put them into comparison, it really isn’t as good as you would have hoped for. It just sounded like a good headline.)

I play FarmVille but my Firefox browser it gets slow and sluggish, and the Flash element automatically downgrades the quality to try and compensate for all of the things going on within that session. After a search around, I discovered that Google’s Chrome browser was great for FarmVille. While at first Chrome was a “dedicated FarmVille browser”, I have since expanded by browsing to Facebook then and other interconnecting sites.

I am pretty much forced into using Internet Explorer - which may I add, still suffers from frozen tab syndrome - when using Outlook Web Access on campus. But there are times when I will open up a few tabs in Internet Explorer and leave them as they are; my email, the staff directory (global address list) and a status window which is my welfare switchboard for the entire set of buildings under my umbrella.

The point is, is that now I not only use Internet Explorer for email, I also use Firefox primarily for the tab-saving element to bookmark items for later, and Chrome as well initially for gaming but now for broader use.

So in this day and age with multiple sites and online services requiring certain prerequisites or browsers to function, most of us cannot go through a single working or studying day without having to change browsers at some point.

Perhaps a more liberal attitude towards browsers should be considered by the consumer. Whether I would still call Firefox my primary browser, I don’t know because in all honesty I use at least three because there is no browser which offers the full functionality that I need in all circumstances.

Do you use multiple browsers and if so, why?

October 14th, 2009

Double slash in Web addresses 'a bit of a mistake'

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 10:42 am

Categories: Research, Web 2.0, Web development, Weird and wonderful

Tags: Web, Protocol, Channel Management, Marketing, Zack Whittaker

The creator of the World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, has admitted that the double slash we see in every website address was a mistake, and that if he could go back and change things, it would be to remove this oblique double punctuation.

The British scientist according to the BBC News says that the double forward-slash is “pretty pointless”, with:

“[t]yping in // has just resulted in people overusing their index fingers, wasting time and using more paper”.

The rest of the address is relatively important for the browser. Back in the “olden days” of the Internet, there were http protocols, gopher protocols and ftp protocols - and all followed with a colon and a double forward-slash. Now we have more protocols which are used, such as Skype and AIM to initiate a VoIP call or an instant message.

But there is practically no reference to the double forward-slash on the web, or as to why it is even there. In an interview with The Times of London, he could have easily redesigned URLs not to have the double forward-slashes in. Perhaps as a result, it would have reduced initial frustration, confusion over web addresses and saved on paper.

Perhaps along with the evolution of Web 3.0, we may well see the end of the double forward-slash. Anybody fancy visiting http:news.bbc.co.uk or http:www.zdnet.com today?

October 9th, 2009

Coin-sized nuclear batteries to revolutionise electronics

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 12:36 pm

Categories: Environment, Hardware, Major breakthroughs, Next-generation technology, Research

Tags: Device, Battery, Electronics, Engineering, Zack Whittaker

A nuclear battery is not a new concept. For years they have been praised for their longevity and ability to keep running for years, decades longer than the lifespan of ordinary batteries.

Research engineers at the University of Missouri have developed a battery which takes advantage of the decay of benign radioactive elements to create electricity. While nuclear batteries have been used in healthcare, space equipment and military devices, the potential they hold could rule out the need for wireless power.

The real development here is the size factor. Before this feat of engineering, due to the nature of the battery, the radioactive element would decay and provide power, but in the process would damage the semiconductor device which actually collects the energy.

But through using a liquid semiconductor, the particles radiating from the radioactive isotope can pass through more fluidly causing far less damage, as the particles in liquids are far more spread out than those of a solid.

According to the BBC, not only could these devices potentially last hundreds of years, the “renewable factor” could be fixed before the problem even arose.

Gadgets and items of technology last a set number of months or years through either a product life cycle or overuse. But the battery could be taken out, recycled and put into a new device which would carry on going. Why dispose of a battery which not only has a precious element to it, but will continue working for longer after the owner has died?

Digressing for a second - could nuclear batteries be device-generic in the near future? Manufacturers could cut the cost of devices down by removing any battery or power equipment, and have a slide-in battery which you buy separately, and can swap and change with other devices like a universal battery port as and when the device fails or gets replaced.

Some would be naturally concerned with the “nuclear” element to this. For example, terrorists using this to cause mass casualties or death; it simply cannot be used in this way.

But this technology strikes a personal note for me. I wrote a few weeks ago about an experimental surgery called deep-brain stimulation which can mask the symptoms of serious neurological illnesses - Parkinson’s, dystonia, and Tourette’s syndrome - the condition I suffer from.

By using this technology, the pacemaker which will be fitted in the space between my scapula (shoulder blade) and clavicle (collarbone) could be far smaller than the cigarette-box-sized device which is normally used. They now have these devices to just larger than a coin, and hope in the future could be even smaller and almost seamless with the devices they power.

Aesthetics aside, the battery will last far longer than the host patients’ life span, meaning that the battery will never have to be recharged or replaced through invasive surgery.

But take the medical element of the equation for a moment. Just think what this technology could mean for laptops, notebooks, mobile phones; perhaps even further - why couldn’t this be installed in televisions which eat up electricity like no other?

Could nuclear energy (in this respect, at least) be the saviour of the planet that we have all hoped for? Let me know what you think.

October 9th, 2009

Google's ongoing quest for home page simplicity

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 3:46 am

Categories: Google, Multimedia, Productivity, Research, Skills development

Tags: Google Inc., Home Page, Mice, Web Browsers, Hardware, Peripherals, Internet, Zack Whittaker

For those who aren’t in the know, the secret of Google’s success is the home page. This clever design almost one of a kind in that the home page was the only page. All you had was a search bar and a couple of options, but the speed in using the site was phenomenal.

More often than not, you double-click your browser on your desktop and begin typing your search term. Because after loading the site, you don’t need to click. Type in the term and hit the return key. All people do from the home page is search, with the odd exception here or there, but it is rare.

But since then, the home page has become a little cluttered. Google have opened up the floodgates to more services, more search sites, more business links and advanced options… perhaps not for long though.

The company seems to recognise its grass-roots in the simplicity of its home page and is regressing through a live experiment. By adding a bit of JavaScript code to the address bar of your browser once Google has loaded, it will display only the logo, the search bar and the buttons.

Hover over the page with your mouse and the rest of the options, links and services will display. But the beauty of this is that there is no inconvenience; those who search as soon as it loads don’t use the mouse so the simplistic look works.

Once Google has loaded, copy and paste this into the address bar, and hit return. Reload the page and you should see the simplistic view.

javascript:void(document.cookie=”PREF=ID=abac7a90f5a3784b:LD=en:
NR=10:TM=1254990196:LM=1254990236:S=uB6F4jDnMP_DuxtT;path=
/; domain=.google.com”);

To find the codes and more, the Blogoscoped pages and The Register have the details.

October 7th, 2009

Next-gen operating systems: Facebook on steroids?

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 10:33 am

Categories: Cloud computing, Discussion, Google, Next-generation technology, Productivity, Research, Social networking, Web 2.0, Weird and wonderful

Tags: Facebook, Operating System, Operating Systems, Software, Zack Whittaker

The conversation I had with Mozilla Labs UX chief, Aza Raskin, last week has made me think about the future of the web. He envisions a future when the vast majority of things in the cloud are combined with a social web, and “something” where the two overlap. Stick with me on this one for a minute…

Readers of the ZDNet “All About Microsoft” blog should be aware that in the next decade, Windows will be phased out and replaced by a next-generation operating system, “Midori”. My guess is that it will run as a Software+Services model where the client machine will do processing but the vast majority of the “workings” will be run from the cloud, including applications.

It’s just a guess, mind you. There’s nothing definitive yet, and even the Queen of Redmond herself isn’t entirely sure, due to the tight-lipped nature of the Singularity/Midori teams. This is at very least my vision of the future operating system.

So based on this thinking (and I am keen to stress that this is purely conjecture), isn’t this to some extent what Facebook could turn out to be if it was stuffed full of electronic uppers and poppers, and poked very hard with an ingenious stick?

The very nature of Facebook is that of a social experience. You interact with others - friends, family and colleagues - in a way which has gotten modern sociologists wetting themselves with excitement. The psychology of the whole thing is blowing the minds of these radical professors into new ways of thinking, and technologists are seeing this sort of platform as the potential for the future.

Read the rest of this entry »

October 2nd, 2009

Mozilla Labs UX chief: What's next for Mozilla, Firefox and the Web

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 12:08 pm

Categories: Cloud computing, Discussion, Events, FOWA London 2009, Major breakthroughs, Next-generation technology, Open source, Research, Security, University, Web 2.0

Tags: Security, Web, Mozilla Firefox, Web Browser, Mozilla Corp., Aza Raskin, Web Browsers, Internet, Zack Whittaker

Shortly after having a door slam in my face and it nearly breaking my nose, I sat down with Aza Raskin, the head of user experiences at Mozilla Labs to discuss not only where Mozilla is heading in the near future but also what he sees in the next-generation World Wide Web.

This interview was done over a cup of coffee in a bustling room. Everything said here is from Raskin himself, with notes taken by myself and paraphrased to make it readable.

The views from the UX guy

As the head of user experiences at Mozilla Labs, he looks at future-proofing Mozilla as an organisation, and as a result focuses mainly on the web. He assists and helps out on other non-Firefox projects but does spend the largest portion of his time on the browser. Even though he and his team are separate from the Firefox development team, he has a large sway of input. On the other hand, some bits he suggests go in and some do not.

Firefox 3.6 will be the next release of Mozilla’s open-source browser and will be designed specifically with Windows users in mind. The new user interface will incorporate many of the technologies that Vista and Windows 7 have such as the Aero theme; more so with Windows 7, though, as multi-touch features will be included in the browser’s functionality.

The future of the web is difficult to guess or estimate in any capacity. Nevertheless, everyone desires an open web. Microsoft, Apple, and Google with their respective browsers are all aiming for the majority share of the market. Raskin assures me that this is not Mozilla’s aim. As a not-for-profit organisation, they benefit from having a wide range of users but for the most part the userbase is the size it is through personal, hands-on experience and “Word of Mouth 2.0″. The aim is not to get 100% of the marketshare, but enough to get the shift and the space to create.

Something Raskin mentioned in the “open web” were things such as Flash and Silverlight - technologies which are plug-ins but don’t allow you to view the source. In his opinion, it is important that everything you see, view and use should provide the code alongside it. Having non-view source so you don’t know what is going on is not an “open web”. There will of course be exceptions to this, but I’m sure you understand what he means.

I asked why Firefox 3.5 had slowed down, become more sluggish and more lethargic in quality and usage from personal experience.

Because Raskin struck me as an unflinchingly honest and supremely intelligent man who understands full well is responsbility to the end-user, I believed him whole-heartedly when he said it was predominantly Adobe Flash that slowed things down. More often than not, web sites hold Flash advertising which is why when you open a selection of ten random tabs, the collective memory going towards running these advertisements cause Firefox’s memory footprint to rocket. I believed himl it made perfect sense.

He told me that Firefox 3.5 was introduced to make things better. With different technologies incorporating a more user-centric set of experiences such GeoLocation, Private Browsing and SeaMonkey, these were base-level features to make the end-user more client (rather than cloud) based and provide an overall enhanced experience; not only on their own volition but to keep up with other competing browsers.

Google and Microsoft have huge research departments with thousands of people working towards making their browsers accessible but also house the potential for a wealth of features for future releases. Mozilla has “tens” of people, but as Firefox is open source, anyone from academics, students, universities, developers and ordinary consumers make the research process so much more democratic. This is what drove him to work on Mozilla Ubiquity.

Along with this and their “personas”, the customisable themes which you can see in the first image above, the browser should be yours and not be the company developing the browser to determine what it should look like. People love personalisation through their sites, bookmarks and add-ons, which is another reason  why Firefox has done so well.

The future of Firefox –>

September 24th, 2009

What if Windows 8 was touch-input only?

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 3:21 am

Categories: Discussion, Hardware, Microsoft, Mobile computing, Next-generation technology, Productivity, Research, University

Tags: Touch Screen, Operating System, Multi-touch, Microsoft Corp., Keyboards, Microsoft Windows, Monitors & Displays, Tablets, Operating Systems, Hardware

With the news that Microsoft are bringing out a touch-screen tablet which could rival that of Apple’s alleged tablet device, it made me consider what is next for future operating systems.

Some would argue that Windows 7 was designed in and around touch capabilities, as the operating system finally included multi-touch technology which Microsoft had perfected since the “Longhorn” days.

With the Ribbon being integrated into most common programs and the operating system being designed for finger-input, you can tell Microsoft has made a significant push on the touch-screen user.

Bearing this in mind, could the next wave of operating systems - “Windows 8″ specifically, expected to be released in 2011 which by then anything could go, be based on a touch-only interface?

(And of course, I say Windows because I have yet to visit or experience an office or university environment which has a network of over 25 non-Windows machines. It just doesn’t happen).

Mary Jo Foley already has a snapshot of what we can expect in Windows 8 but it doesn’t really tell us about what the hardware will be; the hardware will most likely be out of Microsoft’s hands, unless they decide to make specific devices for their own operating system like Apple do with the Mac.

Because technology is moving forwards so quickly, it is difficult to determine what the next generation operating system could even support, let alone take advantage of. Windows 7 is lucky to have multi-touch support because another six-month delay to the multi-touch technology and it may not be supported in it at all.

As with Pandora’s Box theory, once it is out there in the world, you cannot take it back. Touch is most certainly a viable way of data input and will never leave post-modern operating systems. It first arrived in Windows XP and since then has grown from strength to strength; perhaps not as much as people first thought, however.

Who knows, really? By 2011, the success of the “Courier” tablet, the hardware touch-screen device which Microsoft are developing, could prove so popular that the entire concept of mobile hardware could change entirely. Perhaps the death of the laptop can be seen upon the horizon?

Of course, with their other supposed prototype, “Codex”, which works as a dual-screen journal-like touch device which allows multiple positioning and adjusting, using a Filofax-type device with electronic functionality is sociologically interesting on multiple levels. It is as if we are oxymoronically regressing yet progressing by holding onto a relic of the past only to develop into an electronic device which encourages better collaboration and productivity.

The video is here, but be sure to hold on for the initial conversation in the first scenario; the most uncomfortable, scripted and blatantly obvious acting is about 40 seconds in.

Touch technology is steadily improving and has even twisted my arm round to a touch-way-of-thinking. It is interesting to see what’s next and how viable touch will be. However I cannot get over the thought of working in the university library with a single touch-screen monitor and no keyboard, tapping on a hard surface as I write one of my criminology essays.

The keyboard, as in line with Pandora’s box theory, is out and serves its purpose well. It is a technology which has struggled to be improved over the course of the last three decades because it does exactly what it needs to. Besides the ergonomic design of these methods of input, the technology works. If it isn’t broken, why fix it?

As for data input in the next version of Windows, or any future operating system for that matter, touch will still be in second place to the keyboard, no doubt.

So, what if Windows 8 was touch-input only?

September 7th, 2009

Students exploit optical phenomenon to create 48-inch multi-touch surface

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 3:59 pm

Categories: Careers, Hardware, Major breakthroughs, Next-generation technology, Research, Skills development, University, Windows 7, diversITy, e-Learning

Tags: Multi-touch, Zack Whittaker

A group of engineering students at the University of Waterloo have recently completed building a 48″ multi-touch device, which could potentially rival the Microsoft Surface device, by exploiting an optical phenomenon.

The device is a massive multi-touch input and output screen, very similar in usage to a Microsoft Surface device but with a very different underlying technology. It was constructed during a fourth-year design project at the university. Running Windows 7, the first operating system to really utilise multi-touch technology, the input and feedback are impressive from the very start.

Although not an entirely new concept, the surface technology uses frustrated total internal reflection (FITR) where light reflects off the surface of an object such as prisms or fibre-optics. A real-life example would be to hold a glass of water and seeing the impression of your fingertips on the surface of the water.

In simpler terms of how FITR and indeed the device works, as described on their announcement post:

“If you shine light into the side of a sheet of acrylic, the light will be trapped inside due to total internal reflection. Now when you touch the surface, it ‘frustrates’ the light at that spot and so light escapes. You use a camera to capture this image and [through mathematics] figure out where the finger was pressed.”

Using FITR in this way isn’t new as was displayed by Jeff Han at the 2006 TED Conference in California. Multi-touch computing was being experimented upon in the 1980’s and since then, this concept isn’t the first FITR-based multi-touch device created.

What surprises me is the sighs and sounds of disbelief in the audience of the Jeff Han demonstration whereas now, we consider multi-touch technology as firmly embedded into our lives - the iPhone being a prime example.

But it’s still so damn cool.

What I am most proud of is the contributors to the blog where this is mentioned involve women in this engineering project.

Not only that, the university actively encourages participation of women in ‘non-traditional’ degree subjects, and clearly praises them when they are proud of the work and research they accomplish.

With female students clearly being as intelligent as they are to complete a project such as this, it again exposes the question of the glass ceiling in the IT industry. Even though I still believe the old boys network plays the major role in limiting women into success of higher paid jobs and those with greater responsibility, this will most definitely change when the old boys running the show either die or retire. Literally.

September 4th, 2009

If a flash drive infects a network, who's to blame?

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 3:47 am

Categories: Productivity, Research, Security, Skills development, University, Workplaces

Tags: Education, Network, Council, USB Flash Drive, Virus, Networking, Zack Whittaker

Ealing Council, the local authority for a number of London boroughs, was infected by a virus which crippled the vast majority of the council’s network.

The damage knocked out the housing department, the library service, telephone network and others, according to the BBC, as a result of plugging in an infected flash drive on a networked computer. But this raises a question of those who are still not yet fully IT literate.

If you plug in a flash memory drive and it infects a network, who is to blame - the user who doesn’t know any better, or the IT staff responsible for the network?

Bruce Hughes from CNET seems to think it is those responsible for the network and the company. I’m inclined to agree.

In British (and I suspect in American) law, ignorance is not a defence. You cannot get away with ploughing someone in your car, reversing and going over them again because, “you didn’t realise murder was a crime”. If the judge said, “you’d forget your head if it wasn’t screwed on, you little scamp. Go on, go free!”, I would seriously wonder about the state of the justice system.

But in cases such as these, a legal aspect could easily be thrown into the equation. A bill reaching over £500,000 ($817k) needs to be pinned somewhere, and whether or not legal action could be taken is yet to be decided. At the end of the day, it will be the taxpayer who pays the brunt of the cost.

Even though the Conficker virus never “really” activated or caused damage per se, the proof of how powerful a virus can be in this day and age still exists. It infected as far wide as the French Navy, the German Bundeswehr, the UK Ministry of Defence, the UK Houses of Parliament and more universities than you could shake a stick at.

It is my professional opinion and belief that standard university network security is greater than the average security of businesses and corporate networks. As public machines on campus are all or often in buildings where the doors are opened with your university smart card, access is still limited to those within the establishment.

Not only that, in comparison to a local council or district governance, universities are themselves councils and governors of the campus. Students live and breathe on the campuses and the work that goes on within the network keeps the world ticking over - literally. For the fact they are all inter-connected in one way or another, in the UK at least, to limit spread of malware they have to be secure.

But ultimately it comes down to education, education and education: the do’s and don’ts of computing security. You may not get booted out of university for accidentally offloading a payload of electronic sewage, but you can bet your arse in the real world - you could easily get fired.

So, if a user’s flash drive infects a network, who is to blame?