Daily Bits

2007: The Year of Social Networking

by 1 Comment

An article at PC World does a great job of summarizing the major developments in social networking space in 2007 and ponders over the prospects and uncertainties for 2008.

One insightful point mentioned in the article is how innovation at start-ups startles tech giants. Google, the great Web firm that one-upped Yahoo in claiming the search crown and hailed as the poster child of innovation was beaten at the social networking front. All the major internet firms such as Yahoo, Google and MS were done in by FaceBook which sort of perfected the concept of applications around social networks.

Social Networking is moving from the domain of an ‘nice add-on’ feature to a must-have even at the enterprise level. Various organizations are now waking up to the possibility that to attract the next generation of talent, it is essential to incorporate the flavor of social networking and connectivity within the enterprise.

While there were major salvos fired at FaceBook’s walled garden approach to social networking apps (which it did counter by licensing the F8 platform), it will be LinkedIn’s progress in the API space that will be really interesting. Being a site for business networking, it is one network that will really see a boost with professional networking going beyond just the website to the Web as such.

But another shift that can also be expected is the increased availability of affordable feature-rich mobile phones and compelling mobile applications. Apart from the enterprise user, the benefits of mobile applications have not really trickled down to the casual user. 2008 will hopefully be the year when mobile applications especially for social networking will really take off. Since Google has made several bold moves in the mobile space, expect a lot of innovation in this front.

Overall, its been a great year for Social Networking and for 2008 there’s a lot to anticipate.

Keeping Your Windows PC Clean – Part 2: Malware and You

by 1 Comment

This is the second post in my “Keeping Your Windows PC Clean” series. If you haven’t yet, check out my first post on using Windows Update.

Virii Plush Dolls
Picture from Paul Holloway @ Flickr

I realize now that the first post may not have been one of the most exciting topics, but when talking about the more advanced elements of Windows troubleshooting I believe it’s important to have your basics covered. Today we’ll be moving on to the most common issues Windows users face: Malware.

What is Malware?

Malware is an umbrella term that includes such computing staples as viruses, trojans, and spyware. In terms of risk prevention, it’s best to keep all of the different sorts of malicious software in mind. Simply put, there’s more to worry about than spyware and viruses. You can read an exhaustively complete explanation of all the different types of malware at Wikipedia.

Here are a few steps you can take to hopefully prevent getting malware in the first place:

Pay Attention to What You’re Installing

Once you get used to installing Windows programs, the installation process tends to feel the same after a while. It’s often tempting to simply click Next until the installation is finished, blithely ignoring the options presented to you. While it may speed up the installation process, this also opens you up to unwittingly installing malware on your computer.

The solution to this is to simply pay attention and read everything you see during installation. While an antispyware program will save you if you install junk on your computer, it’s always better to avoid putting it there in the first place. Pay attention and you’ll notice far more software trying to sneak onto your system than you previously thought. Also, choose the “custom” installation option if possible to see exactly what the software is putting on your system.

Some examples of malware include the software that tries to sneak into your system when you install the Weatherbug application (just stay away from that entirely), and the variety of junk you’re presented with when installing RealPlayer.

Take note: This isn’t just good practice for preventing malware, it also prevents tons of legitimate software which I find wholly unnecessary. These sorts of things won’t actively harm your computer, but pile enough of them on and you’re bound to notice a performance decrease. Some examples of this includes the auto-updating features of Quicktime and the Google Applications, as well as anything that masquerades as a “helper application” in your system tray.

Be Wary When Using Downloaded Files

Semi-related to the topic above, you should also pay attention to the files you download from the web and P2P applications. If possible, make sure the files you’re downloading are “clean” (checking comments usually helps with this, if they’re available), and don’t contain any strange executables. Things to look out for include random .exe and .dat files when you only expected to find music.

If you have antivirus software (which will be covered soon in this series), you can scan the files you download to make sure they’re not harboring malware. This is a last resort method of course, and the best course of action is not to download anything from sketchy pirate sites at all.

Use Firefox and Internet Explorer 7

Anecdotally, I would guesstimate that around 80% of malware that the average user installs comes from Internet Explorer 6. It’s no big secret that IE6 was one of the biggest security holes in Windows XP. This had to do mainly because of the way IE6 was integrated into XP. The tight integration was seemingly a good idea to Microsoft for development reasons, but in reality it opened up some gaping security holes.

After Service Pack 2 for XP was released, IE became a bit more bearable with a few security upgrades. Then came Internet Explorer 7 which offered greatly improved security (especially for Vista users), but unfortunately still couldn’t compare much to Firefox.

My advice for this section boils down to this: Use the latest version of Firefox for your primary web browsing, but also make sure to have Internet Explorer 7 installed because you need to have some version of IE installed. You might as well have the most secure version. (Of course if you followed my advice from the first column, you’d already be covered.)

Coming Up Next Time

The next article in this series will cover what you need to do to remove malware from your system. I didn’t include it in this one because it’s honestly a very different topic, and if you followed my advice in this section to heart you may never actually need to remove any malware 😉

Also, I realize that everyone has their own theories when it comes to computer maintenance, so I welcome you to offer your suggestions for avoiding malware in the comments.

Yahoo Expands in Mobile Search, Strikes Another Major Deal

by Leave a Comment

Yahoo’s done it again. In a partnership announced with the leading wireless provider in Latin America, America Movil, the search giant will be delivering mobile services to 16 of the Latin American nations.

America Movil’s subscriber base of 143 million makes this the single largest partnership for Yahoo. Bundled with the mobile services will be Yahoo’s oneSearch. The search application will be the default search feature America Movil’s subscribers.

Localization is one big feature that is supported on oneSearch. Yahoo has promised to make information specific to a particular country available via oneSearch.

Google, Yahoo’s chief rival in the search space has been drawing a lot of attention with its Android platform for mobile software development and of course with its bid for 700 MHz Wireless spectrum. But there is a stark difference in the strategy being deployed by Yahoo. And while it gathers success after success, it will be interesting to watch the rivalry between the firms spew out in the mobile space.

New Features Anticipated at Digg

by Leave a Comment

I came across this article at Read Write Web on the new features that are anticipated to hit the major social bookmarking site – Digg.

Here’s a summary of the features :

  • Groups : Feature to create and joins groups around topics.
  • Customized alerts : Rejig of the system to receive e-mail alerts with lot more options.
  • New achievements feature to showcase and reward top diggers
  • A NSFW (Not Safe For Work) Filter on the content.
  • Recommendation Engine : A killer feature that discovers content for users based on their digg behavior.
  • Customization of Digg to receive and view user selected content
  • Remote Digg: Ability to bring the Digg systems to entities beyond the web such as hotels, restaurants etc.

These new features indicates the kind of transformation taking place in the online social bookmarking space. The model of search engine related data retrieval is slowly but steadily turning out to be a platform for research and extended information. A social bookmarking platform fills in several niches that a search engine cannot. It gets users data that he may be interested in. It can fetch user data that has been found to be more relevant in the field that the user is interested in.

Social bookmarking is bringing to fruition the kind of goals that engines like Mahalo and Cha-cha have set out to achieve. While these engines are human powered, they are essentially based on the crawl-the-web-rank-the-pages paradigm. Social bookmarking seems to fit the relevancy requirement a lot more better. Let the users get the data that they feel is important and then apply algorithms on this refined set of data to achieve more personalization and relevance.

Internet Cookies Aren’t Evil: 6 Myths Busted

by 17 Comments

Viruses, Trojan horses, worms, phishers, spam e-mails, and online fraud; these are the perfect ingredients to scare the unaware users of the Internet. And I am not talking about a certain group or country here. It seems like anywhere around the world, people have heard of such threats and have become more afraid to the point that they even take too much a precaution with (or against) their most trusted websites. Sadly, innocence played the bad guy’s role this time, and one of its victims is the tiny little chunk of data we call Internet cookie.

internetcookiesevil.jpg

Today, let’s play myth busters and help our dear Internet cookies rid themselves of a number of accusations. Let’s investigate such misconceptions one by one.

Misconception #1: Internet cookies are a form of virus or worm that can cause damage to your computer.

For those who believe and are going overboard on thinking that Internet cookies are destructive viruses or worms, then I’m sorry for breaking the news to you. Internet cookies cannot cause damage, unlike a computer virus or worm. In fact, cookies do not really have anything to do with your computer system, as it is only composed of text understandable by both your browser and the web server that sent it. In short, Internet cookies are composed of only data, not programmed or programmable code.

Misconception #2: Internet cookies are spywares that give away your private information to the entirety of the web.

Don’t instantly believe your anti-spyware when it detects “something malicious” from certain websites, for it might just be judging your cookies by mistake. Internet cookies contain information like browser type, IP addresses, and some private information, like usernames, that you provided (out of your own free will, of course), and that fact makes you afraid of Internet cookies being spywares themselves. But fear not, for the reason why Internet cookies took such information about you is because they only want to customize your surfing activities to your own liking.

For example, most websites that require registration for you to visit them have an option of whether to remember you or not. This means that the web server of one of those websites can use Internet cookies to identify you among their database of users. The Internet cookie for that website will then customize your surfing activity by remembering your login information for you, so you don’t have to type them again. However, as mentioned in number one, Internet cookies are non-programmable and non-configurable, so there’s really no need to worry about them being spywares.

On a personal note, I must warn you not to fully trust such “auto-remember” features of a website especially when you are using public or office computers. My warning is not because your Internet cookie might be a spyware (which it is not), but you should avoid being remembered by the Internet cookie of a website because some malicious others can easily access your accounts once they use the computer where you are the last one who logged in to.

Misconception #3: Internet cookies produce pop-ups or allow their entrance to your browser.

This is definitely a “no-can-do” for Internet cookies. Simply put, pop-ups comprises an online advertising scheme that increase Internet traffic, as they are contained in a separate browser window once its link is clicked. I find it rather doubtful that an Internet cookie could be triggered, not to mention open a web browser and burden the fast-paced Internet traffic that has always been loaded with server requests and replies.

Misconception #4: Internet cookies give way to spamming.

Spamming, according to Wikipedia, is the abuse of electronic messaging systems to indiscriminately send unsolicited bulk messages. In relation to Internet cookies, this, certainly, is not one of the functions of an Internet cookie, especially since an Internet cookie is just a group of data, not a programmed or programmable code (this seems to be the best explanation for all the misconceptions people have against Internet cookies). Also, they can only serve as informative tools browsers use for the computer user and nothing more.

Misconception #5: Internet cookies are for advertising purposes only, causing alarm on the consumer’s part.

Internet cookies serve a lot of purpose other than advertising. While it is true that advertisers somehow make use of the cookies’ ability to store browsing behaviors of users who click on their advertisements in a web page, Internet cookies are more than what we thought. Actually, Internet cookies care a lot about the consumers in this virtual market.

Like any form of media there is today, the Internet also runs on advertisements to make browsing websites free for consumers. It would be too hard for you, a consumer, if you need to pay a website before browsing it every single time, right? It would also be too hard for online publishers if they should generate revenues of their own, similar with advertisers if they cannot reach their audience. Internet cookies make this seemingly triangular problem by allowing advertisers to promote on different publishers’ websites for consumers. Through watching a consumer’s surfing behavior, the cookies ensure that, while keeping enough ads for advertisers to catch an audience and for publishers to generate income, consumers will not be bombarded by too much promotion.

This means that website publishers’ revenues will remain constant (if not increase), which will maintain the good qualities of websites and website contents. Also, advertisers will continue supplying resources to the publishers. In turn, Internet surfing will remain free of subscription for us consumers. I believe everyone will agree with me that the last premise is for everybody’s own good!

Misconception #6: The best way to avoid any damage caused by Internet cookies is to disable and delete them.

You don’t want to do this, believe me. Internet cookies make our virtual lives easier by giving us an option to remember all our seemingly repetitive details we keep on typing on websites’ textboxes. Imagine your Internet life without cookies to aid you. You have to type every single detail about you whenever you have to log on some website.

This holds true for online buyers who do not have time for sorting out details and figuring out where their desired products are. Online buyers tend to just browse at a specific category of online products, get some news on what’s latest about their purchase, learn about the stock prices, and know exchange rates and other involved fees. Internet cookies actually do all those things for online buyers because, as mentioned earlier, the cookies observe the surfing behavior of a person. In the case of our online buyer above, the cookies will give highest priority to the types of products the consumer usually look for, setting the web page to that product as if by default. Also, other online services the consumer is fond of requesting for will be “suggested” by cookies through website elements like advertisements and safe pop-ups.

In relation with hindering cookie activities, a lot of Internet users believe that they will be safe from computer viruses, worms, and Trojan horses if they do disable and delete their Internet cookies. That is so wrong, because cookies cannot carry any other information than that of your browser and its web host. Computer threats like viruses need not require cookies to infect your computer. We will discuss those computer risks some other time.

Companies behind it?

Let me remind you that the misconceptions above are often abused by certain software companies for their gain. There are online software companies that overstate security threats because of the misconceptions above, persuading you to install their program to fight such “devilish tracking device” which we all know as Internet cookies. Don’t believe them, especially now that you know there is nothing to worry about regarding cookies. Be the harbinger of good news for Internet cookies, and educate those who are sticking with their false beliefs. I can only hope that someday, one of the online security organizations will look into this issue and bring Internet cookies to salvation.

Anyway, let me end this article with older findings of surveys that still speak the truth even up to now. In a study entitled “Users Don’t Understand, Can’t Delete Cookies,” by Brian Quinton of Direct Online Magazine last May 2005, a number of online companies and security watchers published reports on behavior of consumers towards cookies. Starting with a report by Jupiter Research, research entities published their own studies, all of which consistently points that roughly 35 to 50 % of online users delete their computer cookies at least once a month.

Moving along within the study, Insight Express, an Internet marketing research firm published all of their findings. Here are figures about how Internet cookies are wrongly perceived:

The indication that users are ascribing evil intent to cookies was made clearer in another portion of the InsightExpress survey. Asked to check off all the reasons that they delete cookies, two-thirds of respondents—66.5%– said they erase cookies to “protect my privacy/ prevent tracking.” That response was the second most widely given in the survey, following only “clean computer/ free up disk or memory”, something 77.4% of those polled said they agreed with.

At least the privacy/ tracking prevention answer has the virtue of being valid. Other choices from the list of reasons to delete cookies show a serious misunderstanding of the technology’s capabilities. About 57.2% said they get rid of cookies to “remove spyware/ adware” from their hard drives. About 43% said doing so “eliminates spam”; 38.7% said it prevents pop-ups; and 33.8% said it prevents computer viruses. Fifty percent of those polled also said they deleted cookies because it was “recommended”.

And finally, on June of 2005, BURST Media published a report about cookies entitled “Don’t Understand Them, Can Be Good, But, Should Be Deleted” and I would like to wrap this article up the same way they did. Here’s the last paragraph, a quote, from their report:

“Privacy and security issues taint online users overall perception of Internet cookies. Nevertheless, only one-out-of-four say they want Internet cookies ‘eliminated’,” says Chuck Moran, BURST! Media’s Market Research Manager. “There is significant opportunity for the Interactive industry – including content publishers, agencies and clients as well as third parties to build user understanding of and trust in Internet cookies.”

Google and Its Doodles

by 1 Comment

Google’s got a way of keeping its users uptodate with latest on content. And that extends right from the most compelling links to the very doodles that appear on the home page. The Doodles (the Google logo) have a very interesting history in themselves – having been produced for the first time in 1999 by Sergey and Larry themselves after they attended the Burning Man Festival.

And the oodles have gone all the way from the commemoration of Louis Braille’s birthday to the once-every-122-years Transit of Venus. And the man behind the Google Doodle, Dennis Hwang does the doodles only as a small part of his job as Google’s International Webmaster.

You could also go ahead and send in details on any event that you feel needs to be reflected on the Google home page.

And if you’ve noticed recently, Google’s present doodles are ‘in-the-making’ holiday doodles. Click on the image and you are led to a page with a set of holiday images and quizzed on what to expect next.

Another first from Google I think, doodles for a doodle in the making. Its the face of the company to the world and it reflects the real-time dynamism that has made it the powerhouse of the Web.