Have Laptop Will Travel

Social bookmarking: An evolution of the internet

I am in the middle of a new project with some friends and one of them decided to bring in this girl who has the experience we need for the project. She is quite the techie and her inputs have proved very valuable. One thing she kept talking about though is social bookmarking. I am no slouch in matters involving computer and internet technology but I have to admit that I am not very familiar with the term social bookmarking — maybe because the term uses the word “social”, which I am not online. But when she said dropped names like Digg, Del.icio.us, and reddit I realized that I was just wasn’t familiar with the term but I did understand the concept.

This techgirl is champioining social bookmarking as a great way of building links and being a more efficient way of finding related information on a particular subject. I have to agree, social bookmarking has really made it easier to do research or just read up on topics that are of particular interest to a person. It lessens the dependence on search engine results and is more intuitive and accurate.

Social bookmarking marks another step in the evolution of the internet.

Russia based malware preparing for attack?

 Malware and other malicious code still remains to be one of the biggest headaches of a computer owner. I hate to say this but attempts to get rid of bad software is just a never ending war of escalation. A hacker or malicious coder makes a virus, a software security company finds a solution to stop the virus, the hacker then attempts to create new code to bypass the new security. It just goes on and on.

At this stage of this cycle it looks like the hackers are on the upsurge. Security vendors have reported that there has been an increase in malware activity in Russia.

Researchers from Trend Micro revealed that they have discovered a Russian server that is hosting around 400 types of malware in what is seen to be a likely preparation for a future large scale attack.

According to the report, Trend Micro network architect Paul Ferguson said that the server had a “cornucopia” of new malware. Further investigation revealed that web sites containing malicious iFrames that were proxying requests for the malware. All of the web sites had, according to them, Italian sounding names and content but the hosting facility is located in Germany.

This is a great caus of concern for us desktop and laptop users. I would suggest being more vigilant in opening ALL attachments and in allowing scripts to run on web sites you are not familiar with.

[tags]malware, Trend Micro, iFrames[/tags]

American Airlines to test inflight broadband internet access in 2008

Laptops can be such an addictive machine. I remember when I had my first laptop — I just had to bring it with me wherever I went. Lugging around my computer made me feel so much more productive because I can squeeze in more work. Entertaining myself when I’m bored was also answered by having my laptop with me. With the advent of WiFi, bringing a laptop became so much more fun. You can now chat with friends, surf your favorite sites or even play online. Unfortunately, there are some areas where you can only wish that you can use the internet with your laptop. Long airplane trips are one of those situations where having an internet access would have made a great difference. Fortunately, American Airlines sees the world the same way I do.

The airline company has recently announced that it will begin tests for the deployment of inflight broadband internet access by 2008. The tests will initially be conducted on American Airlines’ transcontinental routes. The service is going to be fee based and will also block video conferencing and VOIP services so that these internet tasks will not disrupt ground to air communications. Also, this particular service will only be available in US flights because of the nature of the technology being used.

Microsoft presents Winterlight beta

We all know that Microsoft is a very jealous child. Time and again, it has proven that it is never content to just use a new and promising technology that other people developed. It always has to make its own version and, if possible, kill the pioneering technology.  We’ve seen it with the Internet Explorer, with DirectX, its own Java version, right down to Xbox and the Zune.

Microsoft continues that “tradition” by opening for beta testing its Silverlight project.  Silverlight is a multi-browser, multi platform plug-in that aims to become a delivery system for .Net based media content and other interactive applications for the internet. To put it simply, Silverlight will aim to eat the marketshare of Flash as well as some of the presentation elements of Ajax. It will also directly compete with Sun Microsystem’s JavaFX, which was actually released a few days after Silverlight.

I am keeping my opinions on Silverlight for the time being since I haven’t really immersed myself that much, and besides, it’s still at beta. But if this project does turn out to be a success, I am pretty sure that the other children in the playground will be complaining about what is, this early, already being conceived as bullying tactics from Microsoft.

Safari’s venture to Windows goes bust

A few weeks ago, I found out from a friend that Apple has finally released a Windows version of its Mac internet browser Safari. Naturally, I was excited about this news. Any migration from Apple to Windows interests me because this could be first steps towards more intriguing developments in the future (just look at iTunes coming to Windows and how mp3 purchases subsequently).

I immediately downloaded and installed Safari expecting nothing short of a revolutionary or at least a more satisfying browsing experience from my usual Firefox surfing. I have to say though that it was an underwhelming experience. Safari never really offered anything new to Windows users. In fact, Safari even came short in terms of offering features that other browsers like Internet Explorer 7, Firefox or Opera already possess.

A more damning piece of information against Safari though is this recent article from extremetech.com. The article enumerated 10 reasons why Windows users should NOT use Safari. It was an eye opener for me. I have always associated Apple with streamlined, no frills software that goes to the market near perfect, not like the glorified beta versions Microsoft constantly releases to the public. The article’s claims that Safari is bloated and yet underfeatured with serious security issues has left me surprised. I guess it’s back to the drawing board for Apple’s engineers as far as Safari for Windows is concerned.