I recently had a chat with a peer/CTO-type who has argued before Congress a local board on net neutrality. Got me thinking again. Even though I made these arguments in the mid 00’s (in a more, um, polemic venue) I thought it might be worth revisiting. ..
We have January browser numbers. Firstly, we note that Internet Explorer 8 is now the most popular browser, overtaking IE6. ..
Today, Google announced that it will begin phasing out support on older browsers, most notably IE6, for Google Docs. It will take this step with Gmail and Calendar later in the year. This is a big step. ..
So, I’ve been going a little Ajax crazy lately. I am using a progressive enhancement approach — make everything work solidly without Javascript, then drizzle on some Ajaxy goodness as refinement. ..
I like the concept of e-books, if not their current state-of-the-art. The Kindle device sounds very impressive, I’ve only played with them a bit, and I know they have a lot of devoted fans. ..
I did a little test. I am using jQuery UI’s dialog, and setting it to be draggable. Pretty standard stuff — after all, dragging windows around your computer is commonplace. ..
It appears that the hack against Google was perpetrated via their law enforcement compliance system. As an eminent group of security experts argued in 2008, the trend toward building surveillance capability into telecommunications architecture amounts to a breach-by-design, and a serious security risk. As the volume of requests from law enforcement at all levels grows, the compliance burdens on telcoms grow also — making it increasingly tempting to create automated portals to permit access to user information with minimal human intervention. ..
Hat tip to Sarah Lacy for laying it out so well: Google is ready to burn bridges. This is not how negotiations are done in China, and Google has done well enough there to know that. You don’t get results by pressuring the government in a public, English-language blog post. If Google were indeed still working with the government this letter would not have been posted because it has likely slammed every door shut […] This was a scorched earth move, aimed at buying Google some good will in the rest of the world; Chinese customers and staff were essentially just thrown under the bus. ..
I am sitting in a cafe and a woman is impressed that “this is the kind of place where people leave their computers unattended”, which I guess is true. With the coming age of the netbook, let’s look at the economics of crime. ..
It would appear that Google is learning something about customer service: Google is selling the phone directly to end-users. That means many users are turning to it first, and the search giant doesn’t have the kind of customer support that mobile-phone users are accustomed to.[…] Another [customer] using the name SouthFlGuy was also sent back and forth between HTC and T-Mobile after finding no help from Google. “I guess I was under the wrong impression but I thought Google would handle the service on the phone,” he wrote. ..