razorshine
by riaz kanani
Archive for November, 2005
November 30, 2005 at 6:11 pm ·
It was always going to happen.. as a technology becomes more widestream there are always people out there who will try and take advantage. Memeorandum is reporting that Trend Micro have released a white paper that says RSS would be a lucrative target for future bot worm attacks. The release of IE 7 is only going to make this more likely to happen. Maybe Microsoft can implement something inside IE 7 to stop this in the first place?
The article states that the rss reader could be used to allow unwanted content to be downloaded to a system bypassing firewalls and other security barriers. Of course, it is a whitepaper paid for by Trend Micro so it is not surprising that the recommendation is employing http traffic scanners which would detect the worms and remove them before they hit local systems. I am sure there is a product from Trend Micro somewhere which does this - their website is not that clear though which product that would be - they would be mad not to.
Regardless of who paid for the whitepaper, it is another threat to be aware of and introducing this sort of protection at the gateway is important - if only to stop the headaches afterwards! It will not just stop this possible new threat, it is a good way of stopping existing threats.
November 30, 2005 at 1:53 pm ·
I have been meaning to post about this whitepaper from Yahoo and Ipsos Insight for ages. It came up again in a meeting I had this morning and so has prompted me to look at it again. It came out last month and looks at how RSS and podcasting is crossing into the mainstream.
In brief, it shows that whilst only 4% of users knowingly use RSS, 27% use RSS without knowing it. Even better, the demographics of this userbase is similar to that of the average Internet user - a sure sign that if we can position the technology correctly RSS will not be for the tech savvy.
The first step in this for me is to get rid of the various names for RSS (whether it is Live Bookmarks, Atom, web feeds, feeds and so on) and replace it with one word. I dont particularly care what it is - some people say an acronym like RSS or XML is not a good idea - XML is definitly not a good idea as it is also so many other things. RSS could come to mean something to the average user (maybe like mp3 did to some extent or abs in the motor industry) but I think that RSS is a fundamental way of moving information around the web and there are many more examples of words or brands doing the job better. What it does do is make the user make a connection with it quicker. The average user seeing an orange button with the letter RSS are not intuitively going to know what it does. The word "feed" works better but is not perfect. Subscribe works well for me as it tells you what it is doing. I have a feeling though there are circumstances where this might not always be the case. I need to think on that a bit more. The other option is to have some sort of icon which represents the current standard. People globally can then associate with a standard regardless of the text that happens to accompany it. So what icon should we use?
November 23, 2005 at 11:47 am · Filed under: media players
I just downloaded Quicktime 7 to upgrade my version 6, I thought it would be painless - how wrong could I be! Let me explain.
In the last few years, I only really use Windows Media Player to play audio or video on my system. Why? Well Real takes over my system when I open it, requiring me to register and log in to them. It pops up messages at me and became so irritating that it takes a lot for me to want to use it. It only stays on my computer because some companies insist on using it still. Thankfully that number is ever smaller - I have only opened it maybe twice in the last 6 months for my own usage (and that includes once today - unfortunately I have to open it more times when I have to test client’s content). As for Quicktime, well most film trailers use this so I have to use it more often though why film websites do not move to Flash is beyond me - greater penetration and high quality - what am I missing? (except for maybe the point that most film companies use Macs..). Why do I not use it? Well thinking about it, its all to do with my usage, it just doesnt feel like an audio player, and I play more audio then video - so I use Windows Media for audio and therefore the same for video <shrugs> bit weak I know.
Today’s experience though makes me less likely to switch from Windows Media Player though. When I upgraded, it took me to the iTunes and Quicktime download. I didnt even notice and downloaded it where it promptly installed both iTunes and Quicktime 6. I do not want iTunes!!! Worse than this though, I now have a Quicktime icon back in my system tray - what happened to preserving my settings?
<grumble> and all because I couldnt stream a file in Quicktime 6 
Here is another example of where there should be cross platform support for all codecs. Then there is no need for me to have 3 players on my system!!!
November 21, 2005 at 10:55 am · Filed under: mobile mobile_phone motorola_a1000 orange rant riaz
arghhhhhh! Well it has not been a good start to the day I give you, but for the past 4 years I seem to have had an inane knack of picking the wrong mobile phone. First the 1st gen SPV from Orange (Microsoft’s 1st Gen mobile phone) and then the 2nd gen - both lasted me no more than 3 months due to their umm inability to be a phone (dropped calls and inability to answer them being minor problems in a phone..). Anyhow Back in Feb I got the Motorola A1000. To be fair to it, it all seemed to be going ok for 4 or 5 months, the problems I had with it were not major enough for me to return it:
vibrate is non existant
on start and on shutdown if the sound is on a jingle is played. Fine set it as the default if you must, but allow me to switch it off!!!!!!
it crashed a few times
No in the past few months, it seems to have developed a few really irritating problems. The clock seems to run slow and then fast - jumping almost an hour this morning - not exactly an hour (and daylight saving was switched off because that didnt work when it was supposed to anyhow). Thankfully this happened the other way round a while back so I no longer use this phone as my alarm clock.. on top of that, it has been doing a mighty good impression of the 1st and 2nd gen SPVs - it has rebooted when I answer a call several times now and there always seems to be a delay when I answer the phone. I actually have to consciously pause before saying "hello".
OK rant over 
November 18, 2005 at 2:04 pm ·
In the last few days I received an invite to get onto the Windows Live mail beta (thanks guys) - it will be the replacement for Hotmail when it launches. I nearly missed it as I have safe lists enabled so only authorised people can get to my inbox in my hotmail account. This usually works well as my hotmail account has been redundant since I switched to Gmail and it stops me having to trawl through all the spam I get on Hotmail. I also have a Yahoo mail account, but like my Hotmail account, I now only use them for testing client’s email communications. I find the Yahoo interface clunky and not that intuitive so it has never been my main web client yet. Fingers crossed on their next version 
The name
Windows Live Mail - this is so Microsoft - it just doesn’t roll off the tongue. I can see the logic - build the Windows Live brand and then add services on to it. Hence Windows Live Messenger as well. It is certainly logical, like all of Microsoft’s naming conventions in the past they all make sense and you know what they are, they just never sound cool. I think my major problem with it right now though is that I cannot associate the name Windows Live with Microsoft’s web services strategy.. it feels like a brand stretch too far for me (I associate Windows too much with the OS and not at all with the web). If anyone can make it work though it’s Microsoft. Gmail is a great name and still managed to get the Google brand across. Of course Google have run into trouble over the name Gmail in both the UK and Germany and have had to switch to Google mail in those countries. I still prefer this to Windows Live Mail though. From now on I am shortening it to WLM
Why did I move to Gmail?
I never really believed in the whole store all your email and search it mantra. I certainly did not move for this. WLM has a search facility, though I cannot compare speed as yet as its not completed yet. The major reasons I switched was a quicker interface (WLM is defintely quick) and SPAM - Google had none and Hotmail had lots. It’s too early to tell if this issue is solved but there is supposed to be protection from phishing and virii.
What do I think?
It has only been a few days, so these are my intial thoughts - more to come as I use it a bit more First impressions are, I like the interface and as a Personal Information Manager (PIM) it is significantly better than Gmail as Gmail does not offer a Calendar or Tasks etc. yet. I like the shared calendars, though like all the major players these things only work with their own members (ie other Passport users). It is quick and a much more refreshing layout than gmail. It is by no means complete yet either so I intend to use it for a while and see what happens. I love using the right mouse button so it will be good to see more shortcuts added there (there are some already) - that’s something I miss in Gmail. There is also drag and drop which is also a a simpler and nicer way to manage your emails. There is a obviously plenty still to come as even basic features are still missing.
What do I want?
Conversations 2 - Google’s current implementation of conversations is nice enough but it doesnt do too much more than a functionality that is already there elsewhere - most email clients include the train of email messages beneath the email so you can see the conversation train. This actually works to cause problems in Gmail conversations - each email is longer than it needs to be as it shows the train of emails. What I would like is the ability to see all the recent emails to that particular person - a contact email history if you like and then also strip out the email train below the email and into separate email conversations.
Labels - The ability to tag or categorise emails - using this you could probably implement contact email history I wanted above.
Cross Vendor communication - as I inferred above, I am fed up with having to either adopt one company or another. Why can we not have true competition in this space? Let me give you an example. My favourite Messenger client is MSN, yet I use Gmail for my email. Why can I not get notifications of emails through my MSN client? I had an MSN Spaces blog which was great inside MSN Messenger - but now I have a Wordpress Blog I cannot notify my friends using the same interface to notify them that my blog has updated. I could go on. For me this is what Web 2 should be about - the ability for applications from different vendors to interact with each other - kind of like a Bluetooth for software. Of course we have not even got Bluetooth working properly in the hardware world just yet but thats another story..
There are still so many possibilities..
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Designed by Peter Andre Jensen. Edited somewhat by Riaz Kanani.
