Category: Technology

Opera 9.10 adds antiphishing

Opera Fraud Protection

Opera 9.10 is out today with the the addition of what they’re wisely calling “Fraud Protection” (Firefox calls phished or spoofed sites “suspected forgeries“).

Similar to Firefox’s hybrid approach, wherein you can either download a list of sites to your computer or instead run checks against a Google service, Opera downloads a list of URLs from Phishtank and then runs a query against GeoTrust to see if the domain you’re visiting is legit.

It’s interesting to see that the heaviest area of browser “innovation” in the past couple years seems to be in anti-phishing, anti-spam, anti-popups, anti-forgeries, anti-fraud and generally fighting other things that make the Internet suck.

Now, at least, most of the major browsers are caught up with technology that will submit your surfing habits to third party sites in the interest of protecting you from the baddies, though it’s of course curious the choice of partners in each case and how this benefits each, enabling them to learn from this data… For example, in the case of Firefox or Microsoft, who partnered with Google and… Microsoft… respectively, will they also be able to use this information to improve their search results and advertising tactics? They say no, but hey now, if they’re the only choice on the block, that puts them in a pretty powerful position to determine who’s on the up and up and who’s… not.

SiliconHappyDevHouse 14 + TechnoPoliticsCamp

SiliconHappyDevHouse 14

In case you’ve not heard or been before, the fourteenth classic SHDH will be taking place this weekend (tomorrow) at David Weekly’s SuperHappyFunHouse in Hillsborough, CA. Geektivities start at 1pm and last post-BBQ to 1am.

Oh, and don’t forget! Sunday at the Open Source Application Foundation at 543 Howard St, Todd Davies is putting on Technology and Politics Camp, a BarCamp derivative, billed as “a hands-on day of networking, brainstorming, and planning for organizations working at the intersection of politics and the Internet (or media in general)”.

Would you like Google Java with that?

Google has open sourced its Google Web Toolkit under the Apache 2.0 license. This is great news for Java-based web developers… but for other folks who prefer PHP and Rails, I’m not sure what to make of it. I do have to admit, their announcement and all the pieces of it make for a great example of a textbook launch of a new open source initiative.

Project management on the Mac has a new name

OmniPlan 1.0

I’m rather excited that the Omni Group has announced the One Point Oh release of OmniPlan, now the Mac’s answer to Microsoft Project.

It’s funny, but here around Citizen Space I’ve already had two encounters with folks other than myself using it who are loving it. Lee even claims that after showing it to his Microsoft Project-prone business instructor that next semester they’ll be upgrading to something that… just works.

Personally, playing along through the beta program afforded me an opportunity to put together an OmniPlan timeline for a potential client that I’m quite sure left them rather impressed. And, it already looks like we’ll be planning out our work with Edgeio using OmniPlan, as John Dowd is already an eager user.

Don’t forget, if you took advantage of their November deal on OmniWeb you can use your registration for 5% off your purchase (you can actually use any non-bundle Omni license to get this stackable discount).

Ask and yee shall receive: FlickrBooth

FlickrBooth

Nearly a year ago, I asked for someone to hack Photo Booth so that I could upload photos directly to Flickr. This would be useful at BarCamps, parties and, well, anywhere else that you wanted to speed up the capture-to-Flickr process.

Turns out that Tristan O’Tierney, a self-proclaimed Mac Geek, has finally built the solution, which he calls FlickrBooth.

I tried it out and not only does it work as described, but it’s mind-numbingly easy to install and start using.

Another Flocker flies the coop

New Flockstar Swag

Word came out that Flock Community Ambassador Will Pate will be flying the coop and moving to a part time contract position, handing over much of the community management to Evan Hamilton.

Although Teh Flock claims support by such personalities as Borat (no comment), plans for the fabled One Dot Oh (so called Euphonia) remain obscure at best.

And while the latest nightlies suggest that there’s certainly been work going on behind the scenes, it’s hard to get a sense for where the product direction and vision are coming from.

In talking to Will, it seems the new CEO, Shawn Hardin, who took over from Bart Decrem in November, is taking his time to examine the environment and consider a path forward.

I’ve not yet had a chance to talk to Shawn about his plans, but I do hope that, with all the turmoil and turnover that Flock’s seen since its launch, he’s able to set a clear course and deliver on the promise and potential of the social browser.

Searching for the Noah’s Ark of Syndicated Content


Original © copyright 2003, University of Delaware College of Marine Studies.

Filed under “thank god I’m not alone in this”.

Khoi Vihn recently posted on a topic that I very strongly relate to… “So Many Blog Posts, So Little Time”:

The problem is there’s so much great, engrossing net activity and blogging going on, and I have so little free time. When I do find myself with a spare moment, I’m struggling just to keep this blog up-to-date, leaving me very little time to just surf. The net effect is that I just can’t keep up with what everyone’s saying, except in fits and spurts. So, when talking to folks whom I consider to be good friends, I’m perpetually embarrassed by my shallow knowledge of exactly what they’ve been up to.

Phew. Well, at least I know I’m not alone — and Tara’s feeling this too. Running a business, having a flooded inbox, dealing with being a human, all that stuff, well, it makes you wonder what’s going to happen when the long tail starts experiencing this problem and revolts by abandoning social networks in droves, unable to keep up with the steady stream of service notifications. I mean, feeds help — but only at literally aggregating content… they do nothing to actually provide you more attention or brain power to consume or make sense of the content.

Meanwhile, Matt over at SvN4 lays out a couple possible solutions to what he calls “The RSS avalanche”, proposing four different filtering solutions:

I’d add three more options:

But still, these are only mechanisms for paring down the content available to you to consume. How do you still pick from these filters the things that are worth revisiting, bookmarking, taking time to consider, or even to respond to, in the comments or on your own blog?

What will the solutions look like for non-tech savvy audiences? Or just folks who increasingly don’t have the time to fiddle around with setting up these filters? Is this not the suggesting an inevitable return to the travel agent model? Wouldn’t you like an information-travel-agent to pick out the most interesting content, customized for just you? Who you can trust not to let anything slip by? I don’t think that robots or community filters can play this role, though they can help.

So I have a confession to make. I’m only subscribed to 15 feeds right now. Total. And with email, I still can’t keep up. So what are you doing about the coming deluge? Have you discovered the Noah’s Ark of Syndicated Content? And if so, why haven’t you shared it yet?!

Technorati becomes an OpenID iDP

iDP you ask? Well, that’s the new acronym you need to familiarize yourself with… it stands for “iDentity Provider” and in the world of OpenID, is akin to a credit card provider like MasterCard or Visa — since they provide you with a card and a network that accepts their plastic. Of course, Technorati was already a consumer, allowing you to claim your blogs… and now you can use your Technorati profile URL to log in at other OpenID enabled sites, like Ma.gnolia.