November 26th, 2009

Microsoft: To spam or not to spam

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 11:18 pm

Categories: Cloud computing, Discussion, Microsoft, Research, Security, Web 2.0, Weird and wonderful, Windows Live

Tags: Microsoft Corp., E-mail, Cyberthreats, Spam, Online Communications, Security, Spam And Phishing, Zack Whittaker

It’s not often that I get spam through to my university email account, mostly on the part that I am careful with who I subscribe to using the email address given to me. No doubt through subscribing to certain services through a single email account would determine which subscription providers were selling on addresses to spammers.

So as you would expect, I was surprised when I got this strangely outdated-looking email from Microsoft, stating that my subscription to Hotmail Plus (more space, no advertisements and a few other features) was due to expire. But every bone in my body screamed out to me that I should take this email with a pinch of salt even though I have a Hotmail Plus subscription.

Here’s what I saw, and with your knowledge of spam which you have received, come to your own conclusions.

So, out of interest and by using a totally democratic process through a voting system, let’s see what the vast majority of you think, and then you can draw your own conclusions from the answer.

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Afterwards, you can find the answer here.

November 23rd, 2009

Chrome OS: More questions than answers?

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 6:48 am

Categories: Cloud computing, Google, Hardware, Major breakthroughs, Mobile computing, Next-generation technology, Open source, Productivity

Tags: Desktop, Google Inc., Operating System, Google Chrome, Hardware, Operating Systems, Software, Zack Whittaker

Hearing the news of Google’s Chrome OS at the end of last week left me with an uneasy feeling about the future of operating systems and computer use.

The general idea behind Chrome OS is that the operating system as you see it will be nothing more than a web browser with a few things plugged into it, and a massively slimmed down operating system which will load in a fraction of the average time taken with existing products.

But even as a man who looks towards the next generation, this doesn’t sit too well with me. Not only did the announcements and the coverage seem to ask more questions than give answers, but Chrome OS also seems to exclude a very important market - students.

Students won’t be able to take their laptops everywhere as they can now without access to the web. Students can’t live entirely in the cloud, which I’ve already proved once before, even though many university campuses are blanketed with a cloud of wireless signals. And even then, not all students should be able to anyway with applications which are absolutely necessary to run on desktop computers.

To start off, take a spare ten minutes and watch the videos that Jason Perlow added to his blog just before the weekend which will brief you on the latest.

Bandwidth issues

Everything is stored in the cloud is accessed through the web. Even the “applications” such as the calculator and the calendar - simple desktop applications for Windows and Mac OS X - but not for Chrome.

If you have no Internet, I have no idea how Chrome OS would even turn on. Perhaps it’s like the Chrome browser, which works offline with Google Gears enabled sites. But that’s hardly optimal. Will the Chrome OS work where the is no Internet access on the road, on a plane or train (at least in the United Kingdom anyway) or even sitting out in a park in the city. Sure you could use a wireless 3G card or your phone modem but this will cost a lot to run an entire operating system.

And what if the damned broadband goes down? This is something I seem to face quite a bit and frankly, without access to the Internet, the Chrome-specific device just becomes a very expensive paperweight.

Read the rest of this entry »

November 12th, 2009

Cloud storage: Impossible to fill?

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 3:00 am

Categories: Cloud computing, Discussion, Google, Multimedia, Productivity, Virtualisation, Windows Live

Tags: Storage, Hardware, Zack Whittaker

There are vast numbers of online storage solutions, services and products at the moment. More often than not they’re free, being paid for through advertisements, and most offer a number of gigabytes; some into double figures.

But taking a look at a random selection, some including email services like Gmail and Hotmail (which offer very much the same thing in a different format), are they giving us too much storage? Are the cloud storage providers giving us infinite capacity?

Side note: semantics and technicality could shoot me in the foot here. When I mean “infinite”, I do not mean a never ending supply of data storage, rather the storage we currently have in the cloud will never be filled by us as individuals.

Take SkyDrive as a perfect example. Even though you have 25GB at your disposal, you can only upload 50MB at a time. There seems no logical reasoning to this, with the possible exception of not being able to abuse the storage for uploading of illegally downloadable films and videos. However, this restricts you somewhat.

If it were to be fully open, you could literally drag and drop an entire system image into your cloud and take it anywhere with you. Then again, you can create a restore image and use WinRAR or HJSplit to cut them into tiny 50MB sized pieces and upload manually.

I don’t think every user truly has 25GB space, though. It would make logical sense for the “drive” you have to be a dynamically expanding (virtual) hard drive. If every user used their 25GB today, the datacenters would be overfilled by tenfold no doubt.

The point is, as most online cloud services offer these vast storage quantities, you are restricted in how much you can upload in one go; this makes it ideal for documents and music files, but not for massive files like movies and large videos.

The same applies to Gmail, of which emailing something to yourself acts as pretty much the same concept. The 25MB limit is purely coincidental, but limits the user once again.

Using this time calculator, my own connection, a stopwatch on my phone and a bit of graphics editing, I’ve concluded to fill up a 25GB drive such as SkyDrive, it would take you:

… and that’s continually, without sleep, walking the dog or even going for a pee. Although, I guess maybe you could pee during the upload, but you get my point.

Still, you could always bypass the whole system and map your cloud storage to your other local computer and drag and drop that way.

Has cloud storage become unfillable?

November 9th, 2009

10 technological changes in 10 technological years

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 4:39 am

Categories: Cloud computing, Discussion, Events, Hardware, Major breakthroughs, Multimedia, Social networking, Uncategorized, Weird and wonderful

Tags: TV, Computer, Internet, Productivity, Text Messaging/SMS/MMS, Cellular Phones, Consumer Electronics, Personal Technology, Online Communications, Zack Whittaker

My goddaughter is now of an age where she can talk, understand, and learn pretty well. She’s six, so she’s pretty on the ball with things already. The things that she experiences and sees are so different to mine, and she’s only 16 years younger than me. Times change quickly, I know, but it hit me like a wave of elderly welfare benefits disguised as a petrol tanker last night.

The differences between her generation and mine, even though separated by a few years, are stark and somewhat terrifying in hindsight.

1. There were nine planets in the solar system.

For years it was always nine planets and then one day, they decided it was either going to be eight, or about twenty. They chose eight. After seven years of primary education, the world I knew it was, well gone actually; they had just declassified it as a planet.

2. A BlackBerry was a fruit, and so was Apple.

I wouldn’t be too surprised if people heard either “blackberry” or “apple” and genuinely thought of the fruit. But I cannot seem to shake the association now built with my mobile device. People say, “have at least one of your five a day”, whilst I have my BlackBerry in my hand making a call. I’d say that counts, right?

3. To load up a program, you’d have to slam in a cassette tape and wait 20 minutes for it to load.

My first computer, a CPC-464. It was so heavy you could have used it as a concrete block in a mafioso novel. A ten year gap is a bit of an exaggeration but I knew people still word processing back then on green-screened computers. When the 5″ floppy disk came out, we saw that as a mini-revolution in itself.

4. You had to dial into the Internet.

You couldn’t just have the Internet flowing in and out of the computer like an out of control waterfall. No, you had to tell it to dial another computer and information would be sent to and fro through, what was essentially a computer-to-computer phone call. What’s even more weird is that it’s still available, even today.

5. A single gigabyte hard drive simply couldn’t be filled, through no will of trying.

My first computer bought for the family at Christmas 1996 (yes, it had Windows 95) had a 64MB memory and a single gigabyte of storage. My dad said, “we will never, ever fill that”.

6. Video tapes the size of Bibles would be the only way to record a television programme, and even then it’d only be able to record an hour and a half at best.

Even though I’m far too young to remember the Betamax vs. VHS war, I most certainly remember hoping to watch back an episode of The Simpsons which I’d recorded on the oldest VCR in the world, and it failing miserably with tape lodged and jammed in every bit. It was heartbreaking.

7. The only porn we could find was the shredded remains of a dirty magazine under a bush in the local park.

This generation of Internet kids has seen more porn than any other generation of children, ever. When I was a lad, one morning you’d be lucky enough to find a shred of it near where the local dirty old man sleeps in the evening. “Kids having kids… blame the parents”: no, blame the Internet.

8. There was only one computer in the house, and if there were more, only one would connect to the Internet at a time.

No such things as wireless back then. The only wireless you’d know of was the radio, and that would have been a main source of entertainment. It may sound like wartime England, 10 years ago wasn’t that far away. Windows XP hadn’t come out yet, I was still in a school uniform and the computers we used were running Windows NT.

9. There were no such things as flat screen televisions.

At least commercially, anyway. I come from a generation where our eyes are slightly closer together yet facing slightly the opposite way from being transfixed by a CRT television for all these years. And I laugh now at the “radiation warnings” from the sticker on the side of the box…

10. Twitter was called “text messaging” and the “tweet” only went to one other person.

Yes, a new phenomenon which many don’t realise that was basically text messaging. While sending a text is still far more popular than Twitter, the days where news would slowly seep its way through a friendship group (nowadays a “social network”), whereas now you can update literally anyone and everyone in the space of 160 characters.

A lot can happen in ten years.

November 3rd, 2009

Google Wave: Has potential, but let loose too soon

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 4:12 am

Categories: Cloud computing, Google, Multimedia, Next-generation technology, Productivity, Skills development, Social networking, University, Weird and wonderful, e-Learning

Tags: Google Inc., Google Wave, E-mail, Corporate Communications, Online Communications, Marketing, Zack Whittaker

Google Wave has annoyed me so far. Because I am set in my ways and stubborn enough to brandish anything new, exciting and radical to my everyday routine as “a giant waste of my time”, I saw Wave as more of a challenge than anything else.

At the moment the only real factor it has in its favour is the real-time collaborative space, and of course I see this as a positive from a students’ perspective in a university enterprise arena. But besides that, it has very little substance. Sure it has the avatars, the ability to change the colour of certain items here and there, and it’ll give you a contacts list. Besides that? Mostly unfinished features and no obvious end-game.

One of my favourite features so far is the “Sign out” button in the top right hand corner. This has been particularly useful when pulling out my own hair, trying to work out what the hell is going on, and becoming confused as to what is being said.

Read the rest of this entry »

October 23rd, 2009

Email Overload Syndrome: Too much in too many places

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 7:56 am

Categories: Cloud computing, Gratuitous rant, Java, Mobile computing, Productivity, University, Windows Live, Workplaces

Tags: E-mail, Online Communications, Zack Whittaker

As I prepare for “reading week”, a mid-point in the Autumn term which gives us a week off to catch up with all of our reading materials, I have reflected back upon the frustration of communication failures since the new arrivals started.

I sit here at home on a Friday morning an exhausted man. The reason? The constant influx of information from left, right, center… email account, BlackBerry, Outlook and Facebook has reached the point where I am tempted to pack the lot of them in and head to the most isolated part of England for a week.

If only life were that simple.

I have four email addresses. One is a @hotmail.com which has newsletters and mostly spam come through, and a second is a @live.com which pretty much just manages my social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. My third is an xGSi account which I now rarely use, but only use for keeping up to date with my former workplace, and my last but most important is my university email account @kent.ac.uk.

With the exception of my university email account, my communications are a shambles. Read the rest of this entry »

October 12th, 2009

Cloud storage vs. flash storage: Security vs. simplicity

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 3:15 pm

Categories: Cloud computing, Government, Hardware, Productivity, Security, University

Tags: Security, Storage, USB Flash Drive, Robin Harris, Flash Memory, Zack Whittaker

A few weeks ago I bought a Kingston 2GB flash drive from my local music store. Only after I got back home that afternoon I wondered why I had actually bought it. I had no use for it (pot calling the kettle black) but still thought it could be useful in one of those moments where data transfer was needed and the network had failed hopelessly.

Robin Harris seems to think that optical media is as good as dead. As a non-read-only medium, I would agree with him. They are still mighty useful for distributing films and software, but flash drives seem to be taking over in some respects.

So in a vain effort to publicly and perhaps pointlessly sort out this conundrum for myself, I’ll weigh them up against each other.

A majority of the developed world has access to a broadband connection. In places such as schools, colleges and universities, the Internet connection is far faster than those commercially available. With integration now between Office and SkyDrive as well as other non-Microsoft combinations, saving a document to an online storage provider is as simple as saving it to your hard disk - and the file is available from anywhere, including mobiles.

Flash drives for me are my last ditch alternative. It’s my backup for when my Internet connection occasionally drops (feel free to detect the element of sarcasm in that). Then, I use it to transfer data from one place to another; more often than not a large movie from a friend’s computer to mine or vice versa. I also use it as an ultimate backup device - in the context of needing to give a presentation and having it there in my pocket just in case the network epically fails.

Then again, for those in student accommodation living in halls of residence, they will find that their Internet speeds are throttled to act as a quality-of-service moderator for other users. That said, most student digs are supplied with Ethernet ports, so the intranet speeds between computers in your block of flats are incredibly fast. To transfer things across the Ethernet network is near instant and much quicker than transferring to a flash drive and walking to the other room.

Flash drives also have the potential to become riddled with malware which not only self-replicate once they plug in to other machines but they exploit the nature of the device itself by installing auto-starting applications. Network administrators spend many of their waking hours clearing up the mess from devices which are infected with malware as I have previously written mentioned.

But because the cloud services are actually a bunch of servers sitting in a warehouse in Arizona and provided by organisations who can afford it, the need to protect themselves is greater than that to protect the user. So you can bet that the physical security and anti-malware features will be pretty substantive. You don’t get this on a flash drive.

However with flash drives, you have the feeling knowing that the data you hold dearly to your heart is in fact dearly in your pocket, protected and safe. It cannot be hacked into or manipulated when it is in there. You can be mugged, though. But even if you get rained on and your flash drive gets mashed in the weather, because of the solid-state goodness, the device is almost always salvageable. It’s not an excuse to drop it in the bath or down the toilet, though.

Ultimately, the cloud is a highly scalable and as secure as it can get, and the flash drive in my opinion is outdated and insecure - especially in corporate/government and university environments - but more practical than optical media. When it comes down to it, user preference always counts more than what I or any other journalist says. Personally, I prefer the cloud, but simply because it’s free.

Thoughts?

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 10th, 2009

What do Google and Microsoft gain from student cloud services?

Posted by Zack Whittaker @ 6:12 am

Categories: Cloud computing, Discussion, Google, Microsoft, Money, Productivity, University, e-Learning

Tags: Google Inc., Google Apps, Microsoft Corp., Microsoft Live@edu, Cloud Computing, Zack Whittaker

Google announced yesterday that over 5 million students have now “gone Google“, in that these students will start their academic sessions using the Google Apps Education Edition.

Along with this, they have a new site which shows where Google Apps has been rolled out across the globe, along with reasons to switch and case studies. Microsoft on the other hand are maintaining their efforts to compete with their rival service.

Google Apps statistics (as of today)

Google has now rolled out Apps to roughly 5 million students across 145 countries, which has increased roll-out by 400% since last year. “Thousands of schools” have picked up Google Apps with colleges following behind, and universities the least. However as a result of switching, some institutions such as the University of Notre Dame saved $1.5 million in costs.

In-depth statistics are unavailable at the time as Google don’t seem to want the world to know accurate figures. My guess is with the Google/Microsoft competitiveness, it’s an easier way to psych out the opponent.

Microsoft Live@edu statistics (as of today)

Microsoft’s statistics are much more clear cut, which is obvious as they are creeping ahead in the education market with their cloud student services. Live@edu is used by “thousands of schools” in over 86 countries and the user base has more than doubled to 10 million users since Februrary (this year, presumably).

Again, more in-depth analysis of the figures are hard to come by with the corporate spiel spouting more self-promotion to a journalist who just wants the numbers to crunch. Had Microsoft provided more in terms of numbers to the public relations officer, it would have made me certainly a less-grumpy blogger for this time of morning.

The reason for providing free cloud services

In both cases of Google Apps and Microsoft’s Live@edu, both use the phrase “thousands of schools“. There isn’t very much in it between the companies except Google is reaching out to regions Microsoft hasn’t hit yet.

The main differentiator is the number of students actually signing up for accounts. It seems based on the figures that schools offering Live@edu have more students actually signing up for accounts than those at schools offering Google Apps. There is no definitive answer as to why this is the case but it is an interesting trend nonetheless.

But what is in it for the companies?

It has come to my attention that Google uses the Apps Education Edition as a way of branching out to more customers as the software is free to use. Google makes their money from rolling out Apps to enterprises; the business which can afford to spend money somewhat lavishly. Google appear to be relying on these educational establishments to provide credibility and references to potential enterprise customers.

To be fair, it is good business sense as it is the least schools can do after saving millions of dollars in running and maintenance costs of their own systems.

Microsoft uses Live@edu as a testing ground for their own products. Outlook Live uses Exchange Server 2010 which only a few months ago was the only public viewing of the service. With that, Microsoft has gained around a year’s worth of feedback and user data before Exchange 2010 had even been released, allowing them to make products better based on error reports and usage et al.

This is also one of the reasons why Live@edu users will be given first hand access to Office Web Applications. As my PR contact pointed out, it is an easy way to stress-test the system before bigger and badder companies start adopting the service.

It’s an interesting approach, and both companies are providing their products free for a reason. Perhaps now this will shed some light on the internal processes both Microsoft and Google take into account when offering free services or products.

What do you think? Ethical? Unethical? Good business practice or doomed to bite them in the arse?