Make next available legal U-turn...

Google at the gas pump translates to happy motorists, retailers

Everyone has problems going places. Mapping has evolved through the days of needing to actually go inside the gas station to ask for directions or get a map. Today people can log onto Mapquest (usually what everyone considers the only mapping site) and get directions before they leave. Even more, the GPS has become a staple in many cars across the country, some even coming built right into the dashboard.

With a Global Positioning System (really just a bunch of satellites in strategic positions), you can get directions to any address on the fly, and even if you make a wrong turn it can recalculate, something you can't do with those printed out directions, unless for some reason you brought your laptop and have a mobile internet card. That would be cheating the system though.

As seen in this article, arch-ruler of the Internet, Google, is beginning to install some screens at gas pumps that connect directly with Google Maps, this blog writer's mapping website of choice. With this, lost motorists without GPS and maybe with wrong directions can figure out where they're going, all while pumping their gas. Although not the greatest advancement this century, its a pretty good idea and hopefully Google products will appear in other random places around the world.

Well, its been a great three weeks, but I think its time to put an end to my blogging experience. It's been fun getting my thoughts out, and you can get more of my opinions in last week's retrospective piece, or the questionnaire that I'm sure you'll be reading along with this. Thanks for reading.

Google, phone home

It's official: Google announces open-source mobile phone OS, Android

After days, weeks, months, almost a year, the rumors about a "Google phone" or "gPhone" can be put to rest. Beginning in December 2006, the Internet (and the "revered" blogosphere) went absolutely crazy buzzing about a possible Google endeavor to permeate the every day, away from computer market, and challenge the (then still rumored) iPhone. A true gPhone would've been great, and concept images showed just a portable screen that could do anything, be anything, look like anything, and most importantly, can search Google.

Sadly to some of us who dissed the iPhone and were anxiously awaiting a totally open source phone supported by the high and mighty Google (like...me), Google did not announce their own brand of phone. Instead, Google announced their own mobile operating system, the open-source platform called Android. It runs on Linux and will be available for free under the Apache software license.

This is significant because Google has set up the Open Handset Alliance, a consortium of over 30 technology and mobile companies who will be supporting the new platform. With several carriers being part of the Alliance, it is likely that the consumers will benefit, receiving the new software on their own phones, as well as driving the carriers not taking part to either get on board or create their own software that can compete. One of the best features of Android is that it will be open for developers to create their own applications for via an SDK (software development kit) from Google.

Google may not have created the god of all cellphones, but this might even be better. Instead of creating one phone, Google has built a platform on which every phone can be built upon, along with the accessibility for any developer to create any applications they want for it. The possibilities for this are endless, as its possible that within the next five years, every mobile user could be on a unified platform which can open up a fantastic future for mobile systems, and possibly the first step towards what some writers have tagged as "Web 3.0," a truly mobile Internet.

Forgot my password

Graffiti as password: secure and memorable

Many people have problems remembering passwords. For this reason, people make horrible choices in the word or phrase they use to secure their data. Although more important sites are making it impossible to do, some people are still struggling to remember that their password is the name of their dog, allowing it to be easily hacked into by bad, bad people.

As more people are putting their valuables online, such as banking, shopping, chatting, and e-mail (well that was always online), the sites that house these services begin to force people to make sure their passwords have something like 8 characters, alternating case, a number, a symbol, and a Chinese character. The problem with this is that people still can't remember it, so in this case you're forcing them to write it down on a sticky on their monitor, allowing that guy in accounting to steal all of their money the day before he quits his job and leaves the country

Thus there was a scramble to create something new, something better. After a brief foray into trying to come up with pictures as passwords, someone realized that recognition was probably less secure than recall. That being said, there are some good things already out there. Bank of America has you pick a picture and give it a title as your "SiteKey" and will show you this combination so you know you're actually on their site and not being phished.

Today (well a few days ago, I couldn't blog over the weekend and have it count for this week) there is a new frontier, as a computer security conference had a presentation about graffiti as a secure password. Sounds, dumb, but think about it. How many people would deface a picture the same way you would? I like it, and although it wont work at ATM machines, it seems perfect for both computers and mobile devices with styli. I look forward to the future of passwords when touchscreens will be able to encrypt thumbprints and send them via the Internet.

Two weeks of posts...

Can bloggers be journalists? Federal court says yes

And what do I have to show for it? A blog that nobody has seen but me. I mean, I could just send this to my friends but I'm not really adding anything that hasn't already been said by professional journalists, or even more experienced bloggers on their own sites. I'm not really planning on saying much about the article I posted but I thought it was a good segue into a little rant about blogging in general. Oh I think you also might've noticed that I'm not in fact posting every day. And if you actually read every post, put the word "banana" into my scoring description on the LMS somehow.

The blog is a great tool for aspiring journalists, amateur anythings, or angst ridden teens who just need to vent somewhere instead of cutting their wrists. It's even better if you can find some niche and attract readers who are genuinely interested in what you're writing about. The problem is, as I've learned in economics, once a market fills up, there's not really much left to do in that sector. For instance, I've been writing about technology. I could name 10 other sites that do it much better than me, and I see 7 of them in my quicklinks bar in Firefox as I type this. I don't mean to squash the dream for anybody, or talk badly about this assignment, but this is no more than just a taste of what the Internet could really offer somebody that's committed and finds a good place.

Even if I opened up this blog, sent it to people, committed myself to updating it every day...where will that get me? I'd probably be shut down for plagiarism, and I don't really have any sources, by the time I get a story its been everywhere and every side of the story has been written about. Not-so-long story short, the blog is great if you have a crack team of well-trained writers working around the clock to make sure they get good stories first. For a student like me who's just doing this for the grade, I don't really see the appeal in doing this 3 weeks from now. Maybe I'll change my mind, we'll see.

Citation needed

Prof replaces term papers with Wikipedia contributions, suffering ensues

Speaking at the Educause 2007 conference this past week, University of Washington-Bothell professor Martha Groom gave a speech on using Wikipedia to "reimagine" the term paper. Feeling that her students were not getting the most out of the experience writing a paper where the end results was being thrown away after only the professor would read it, Groom felt that she would experiment with one of the more popular sites on the Internet, and one that allows anybody to add to it at that.

Although it seems like a great idea, and in theory it did work, this was a colossal failure. It worked because the students did become more invested in their work (all but one), according to a survey of the students at least. In addition, Groom felt that the work produced by her students surpassed that of what she was used to seeing in a standard situation, such as a paper written by them.

The reason that this was a failure was from the reaction from the Wikipedia elite. As anybody who frequents Wikipedia can tell you (especially somebody who has ever made an edit), anything you add will be removed within 20-30 minutes because you don't have a PhD in something, and even so there's a ton of reasons for somebody to revert your edit. Basically, all of the students' articles were either deleted or the lucky ones got merged into existing articles, which is probably an even worse feeling than getting your paper back with an F on it.

Wikipedia is a great site, and it carries so much potential. It has snowballed into a hub of information, and although many people will tell you that since anybody can edit it, you might be getting bad information, the editors that do nothing but watch over Wikipedia would say otherwise. Unfortunately, these are also the people who will stifle your attempts at adding new content. All in all, its a win-lose situation, a win for people who want to use Wikipedia to learn something (also for us who don't want it getting spammed), while its a lose to these kids who could've taught us all something new.

Net Neutrality

Once thought dead, net neutrality roars back to center stage

One of the more interesting debates in technology recently has been that of network neutrality, or net neutrality for short because its snappier. Net neutrality is a huge issue because nobody really knows about it but if nothing is done everybody will face Internet problems pretty quickly. What is net neutrality? I will tell you.

Net neutrality is basically the idea that everybody gets fair access and priority to the Internet, or basically what most users are used to (or think they have) now. Big telecommunications companies are trying to move against this and offer higher speeds and priority to higher paying customers. Smaller telecommunications (and people who know what they're talking about) are arguing against this, for a bill to establish network neutrality.

Giant companies like Comcast, who I've already blasted in an earlier entry, is front and center in this debate. Comcast has already begun to shape packets and give priorities to certain kinds of traffic. For example, business oriented activities such as e-mail or some sort of executive file-sharing protocols will achieve faster speeds than that funny video you're trying to watch on YouTube (on the other hand, Comcast is also blocking Lotus Notes so who knows what they're trying to do). Packet shaping is also a problem because application suites that accomplish this allow the ISPs to view exactly every piece of data that goes through each user's connection, which is a pretty scary breach of privacy on their part.

Comcast has vehemently denied all reports of all of their wrongdoings, but its one of the top Internet villains around. Other bad guys include the FTC and the Department of Justice who have already said that net neutrality isn't gonna happen (from them anyway). Meanwhile, the FCC is still looking into it, but Congress is where things are really going to happen. Hopefully the lobbyists for the people step up and these two Congresspeople who are trying to get this done, well, get it done.

We're at war, pick a side

http://tech.yahoo.com/news/nm/bluray_hddvd_dc

An emerging debate in modern technology is that between HD-DVD and Blu-ray for control of the high-definition DVD market. As stated in this article, Blu-ray sold more discs (2.6 million) than HD-DVD did (1.4 million). So what does this mean? Absolutely nothing.

Each of these formats have their own company backings which have created such a divide. Recently companies have started to support both formats, making more of a mess out of this. The biggest backers are Sony and Toshiba, the champions of Blu-ray and HD-DVD, respectively. Sony has a slight advantage being that they also own a movie studio and have a back catalog of exclusive movies to start out with. In addition, Sony adds a Blu-ray player with every Playstation 3 console it sells.

Conversely, HD-DVD players can be purchased for an extra 200 dollars as an add-on to Microsoft's Xbox 360 console, giving more affordable alternatives to standalone players, which up until very recently have been upwards of 500-600 dollars. Sony and Toshiba have also generously offered 5 free movies with their respective players as a sort of mail-in rebate incentive after purchasing a player.

Sony is known for backing proprietary formats, as seen with the Betamax (and the MiniDisc, and the miniDV, and the UMD...) and sadly although Blu-ray barely has any traction it isn't outright losing, which is a big plus for Sony. Many Sony-haters who happily dismissed Blu-ray early on are getting nervous that its starting to gain some ground, and the glimmer of hope surrounding a few solid titles coming out for the PS3 will send Xbox 360 fanboys running for their copies of Halo 3.

This war could go a few ways. First, both could achieve saturation and people will have to pick one or the other, get a dual-format player, or every studio might just support both. A second way is that one format wins outright and early adopters of the loser will be devastated. Finally, both could lose and people will enjoy their DVDs, or maybe streaming high-def video over the internet onto their TVs (points for imagination on the blog).

The beginning of the...middle of the end

OiNK.cd Servers Raided, Admin Arrested

This story has been unfolding within the last 24 hours, and its an interesting cross section of what's going on right now in the file-sharing scene. OiNK.cd is a well known private BitTorrent tracker for pre-release music albums. That being said, it was already being pretty closely watched by MediaSentry and probably tons of other agencies worldwide.

Being owned by a man in England and having servers in the Netherlands, however, left OiNK a prime target to be demolished by a joint effort between the IFPI and BPI (record associations and anti-piracy advocates) as well as Dutch police forces. The website right now mentions "suspected illegal music distribution" but a lawyer would probably know the consequences better than I. Fortunately this is a blog and I can just put in my opinion regardless.

Being a BitTorrent network, most of the content is really owned by the users, which makes it more of a challenge to really win in court against a site like OiNK, who is really just a medium of exchange. You can't close down a shady corner of a city just because drug deals are going down. This brings us to the crucial point of this. It appears that OiNK is being forced to cooperate by revealing the IP addresses and usernames for all of its users.

This is an issue because these people don't want to go to jail. Really, that's it in a nutshell, but it'll be difficult to both pin IP addresses to people and then try to win in court (actually the RIAA did just that last month but that's a story for another entry. Hopefully this will go away quietly and nobody will get hurt, and even if they take down both the site and all of its users, ten more private trackers will pop up.

What's next for the illegal file-sharing scene? Who knows. Private tracker networks are going down hard and fast while the RIAA is finally getting into real lawsuits with KaZaA users from years ago. With a story about a Usenet provider being looked into, there might not really be any safe ways to "do business" anymore online. College kids everywhere begin to cry as they are forced to pay the (high) price for music.

Bringing it

Comcast traffic blocking: even more apps, groupware clients affected

I saw this story yesterday, but forgot to start the blog until today, so here it goes. I frequent about 8 different websites, arstechnica being one of my favorites because all of the stories are pretty interesting and well written.

To sum up this story, Comcast has been accused of many different things recently, and being the #1 cable provider in the country its a pretty big deal. On top of backing out on some of their "unlimited" speed claims, or basically setting a limit whenever someone is actually utilizing the "unlimited" offer, they have been known to throttle traffic in an attempt to block illegal file sharing. When this wasn't really working, they outright blocked certain protocols such as BitTorrent, which has a large following as a legal means to distribute large files.
Yesterday it was found that not only was BitTorrent being tampered with, but also the Gnutella network, which is utilized by the infamous LimeWire application, amongst many others. Comcast disguises their musings well, as sometimes customers will be able to use these as they wish, and others they just totally break down.

The biggest problem, the one really focused on in the article, was that in Comcast's efforts to block illegal file sharing, they have ended up blocking certain groupware programs, such as Lotus Notes, which has no ties to anything illegal at all. This is when it goes too far, as it can be agreed by most that BitTorrent and Gnutella are primarily used for evil, even if not always. But in this case, Lotus Notes is commercial software that should be functioning regardless of the ISP. Hopefully Comcast gets their act together, but it'll probably take a bigger story for anyone other than the Internet elite to really care that much.

Basically I just summed up the article, hopefully I'll get better at this blogging thing and add more of my own thoughts to this.

Hey there

So I have to start a blog for my IST 195 class, but you probably know this already because there's a very good chance if you're reading this you're grading it because I doubt anyone else I send this link to will even click on it. I need to complete a 3 paragraph (each with 3 sentences) post 3 times a week for the next 3 weeks, but I'll probably post every day because I don't have anything better to do. I might also do the podcast choice as a bonus just for the hell of it.

Anyway, the blog can be about anything we want. I'm going to try to stick to the topic of technology because it interests me, but considering I'll probably be posting more than the minimum requirements I'll be straying a little. My basic format will be to find an interesting story about technology (or again anything that really interests me) and do a commentary on it.

From here on in will be what you'll see from me from now on, just a post. Actually I'll probably do an intro anyway talking about random stuff every other day too.