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Aug 29

Just when you thought it was safe to hang up those

commentary

(Credit:
Snowbird)

Snowbird just won’t give up. Last week the Utah resort got a foot of new powder. Yesterday? Fourteen more inches, and it’s still coming down. We’ll be skiing through July in Utah this year.

Friday morning is looking like a ski morning….

Aug 24

wikileaks.org shut down by Federal Judge

Wikileaks describes itself as “developing an uncensorable Wikipedia for untraceable mass document leaking and analysis,” and indeed, although the wikileaks.org domain is no longer active, the site continues to be mirrored at various domains around the world. As Bob Egelko at the San Francisco Chronicle points out, the “site was the first to post the confidential Defense Department manual about operations of the U.S. detention camp at the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba, and has also posted rules of engagement for U.S. forces in Iraq.”

The documents contain allegations of improprieties by the bank in the Cayman Islands. Baer, in court papers, attributed the allegations to “a disgruntled ex-employee.” The Wikileaks documents contain numerous references to the bank’s former vice president in the Caymans, Rudolf Elmer, but Wikileaks has not confirmed that he was the source. In a press release posted in response to the injunction, Wikileaks compares their legal situation to that of the New York Times following the publication of the Pentagon Papers in 1971. “The Wikileaks injunction is the equivalent of forcing the Times’ printers to print blank pages and its power company to turn off press power. The supreme court found the Times censorship injunction unconstitutional in a 6-3 decision.”

The First Amendment of the US Constitution has protected the rights of the press in many legal battles throughout history, but last week, when US District Judge Jeffrey White signed a permanent injunction (PDF) ordering wikileaks.org shut down, it was a disturbing indicator of the uncertain status of press freedoms in the United States.

“Wikileaks never expected to be using the alternative servers to deal with censorship attacks, from, of all places, the United States,” but it’s a good thing they already had a plan in place after dealing with censorship around the world. How many US outlets have had the foresight to develop such a contingency plan?

But it wasn’t the publication of subterranean government documents that eventually triggered the federal government’s wrath (though it’s possible that may have played a motivating factor). According to the Chronicle, the judge ordered the site to be shut down, “after it posted documents purporting to describe offshore activities of a Swiss bank.”
…the bank, Julius Baer & Co., requested the shutdown order Feb. 7, saying Wikileaks had wrongfully obtained hundreds of confidential bank documents, some of them altered or forged. Baer indicated that it wanted the site closed until the host, a San Mateo firm called Dynadot, removed all bank-related documents and made sure no others were posted.

Until last week, the notion that such a precaution would be necessary to protect the flow of information within the United States was probably quite a stretch, but after White’s ruling, perhaps such data redundancy plans are long overdue.

The order was written by Cayman Island’s Bank Julius Baer lawyers and was accepted by judge White without amendment, or representations by Wikileaks or amicus. The case is over several Wikileaks articles, public commentary and documents dating prior to 2003. The documents allegedly reveal secret Julius Baer trust structures used for asset hiding, money laundering and tax evasion. The bank alleges the documents were disclosed to Wikileaks by offshore banking whistleblower and former Vice President the Cayman Island’s operation, Rudolf Elmer. Unable to lawfully attack Wikileaks servers which are based in several countries, the order was served on the intermediary Wikileaks purchased the ‘Wikileaks.org’ name through — California registrar Dynadot, who then used its access to the internet website name registration system to delete the records for ‘Wikileaks.org’. The order also enjoins every person who has heard about the order from from even linking to the documents. What is frightening about this account is the broad scope of the injunction. While the judge could have simply ordered the documents in question to be removed pending litigation, he instead chose to follow the wishes of the bank and issue a permanent injunction against the entire site. Though the move was essentially meaningless, wikileaks states in their release that, “in order to deal with Chinese censorship, Wikileaks has many backup sites such as wikileaks.be (Belgium) and wikileaks.de (Germany) which remain active,” it does demonstrate dramatic departure from the notion of a free and independent press unhindered by government influence.

Aug 23

MySpace releases API for Data Availability

MySpace is set to release on Thursday the application programming interface (API) for Data Availability, a developer project that the News Corp.-owned social network announced in early May. Through Data Availability, participating social sites can let users synchronize accounts with MySpace profiles, importing public profile data like photos, interests, and friend lists.

MySpace's Data Availability logo.

But MySpace’s project isn’t the only one of its kind: rival Facebook has extended its existing API to encompass data portability in the form of “Facebook Connect,” and Google has a new project called Friend Connect designed to bring social credentials to otherwise non-social Web sites.

“Our users spend hours updating and making changes to their profiles, uploading content, and building friend relationships,” a post on the MySpace developer blog explained. “With your help that data can now be available to MySpace users no matter where they go on the Internet.”

Data Availability’s formal launch partners are Yahoo, eBay, Twitter, and News Corp.’s Photobucket, but with the release of the API, any third-party site can have access to it. Authentication is handled through the OAUTH open standard, and controls have been configured so that a high level of coding expertise is not required.

Aug 23

Start-up Turn offers automated online ad market

A Redwood City, Calif. start-up called Turn is launching on Monday a beta of what it says is the first fully automated market for online advertising.

“When we get an ad request from a publisher we search through the database of ads and rank them based on the probability of an action,” such as a consumer clicking on it, said Jim Barnett, chief executive of Turn. “We automatically figure out where your ads should be displayed and blend all the targeting approaches.”

The Turn Smart Market has more than 500 advertisers and agencies placing ads and 3,000 Web sites offering up inventory. What makes it different from other online ad marketplaces is it handles all types of ads, pricing, and targeting methods and uses a machine learning platform to predict what combination will generate the most revenue for the publisher.

For instance, Turn Smart Market automatically blends contextual, audience, behavioral, and other targeting methods and does not require category, site, or keyword selection to increase the chances that the ads will be effective. It also gives advertisers and publishers the ability to control fair market pricing and brand reputation.

Aug 23

Five things I love hate about the iPhone

I thought I’d compile a list of the five best things about the iPhone, and the five worst. It’s not a perfect device by any means. It’s interesting to see that some of the iPhone’s greatest strengths pave the way for its greatest weaknesses.

commentary

I expect my list will change over time, but hopefully Apple will remove the negatives and continue to accentuate the positives. This is a very cool device. It can only get better.

So, what’s not to like? Despite all that it does well, there are some serious shortcomings to the iPhone.

But first, the good:

The typing on the iPhone is lightning fast. I never would have guessed this, but it’s true. I was pretty fast on my Blackberry 8700 and then 8800, but I’m at least 25 percent faster on the iPhone. I worried about the lack of tactile feedback, but the iPhone gives visual feedback (the key you’re about to hit enlarges to meet your finger) which is arguably superior. In addition, it’s very, very smart about correcting misspellings. Often I’ll keep typing, even when I know I made a mistake, because I know the iPhone’s software will correct my mistake for me. It usually does.
The (almost) full web experience. While the iPhone won’t work well with Flash-heavy or other websites that rely on Microsoft technology, it sings on just about everything else. I was getting used to the crimped web experience on my Blackberry, but the iPhone is teaching me that I need not compromise.

By the way, I also find that Apple’s choice to have third-party applications run off its
Safari browser works…pretty well. I’ve “downloaded” (i.e., bookmarked a web page) several applications - from games to Skype - and everything works pretty cleanly.
Audio. There is a site that I regularly visit that offers the ability to listen to the website read to me. This comes in handy when I’m on the road, rushing to get ready for my meetings, and don’t have time to read. Before I would bring my laptop into the bathroom with me to listen while I shaved, brushed my teeth, etc. Now I just bring my iPhone and listen through the built-in speakers. Perfect.

Additionally, I never would have guessed how much I’d like having my music accompany my “productive” applications like calendar, email, etc. But I do. It’s fantastic to have the two sides of me served by the same device. Last night I was getting ready for bed, listening to Radiohead’s “Bodysnatchers” while typing text messages to friends. This sort of thing simply wouldn’t be possible on my old Blackberry.
Google’s applications are integrated seamlessly, beautifully. The integration of things like Google Reader, Google Docs, and Google Maps is so seamless that it almost feels like Google and Apple have merged into one company. I had decent access to Google’s applications on my old Blackberry, but nothing like this. On the iPhone Google feels like a first-class citizen. On the Blackberry it felt like a bolt-on.
The iPhone user interface is mind-blowingly cool. It’s amazing at how quickly you get used to flicking pictures, resizing web pages, etc. with the touchscreen. My Blackberry held little appeal for my kids; the iPhone keeps them occupied for long car drives, church meetings, and long lines at Disneyland while waiting to meet “the Princesses.” Apple has changed the user experience for mobile devices forever. It really is that cool.

I’ve had my
iPhone for a week now and am amazed by how much it has changed the way I use a mobile device. My Blackberry was all work: I used it for email and to read stories on Arsenal. (Yes, that counts as work these days.) The iPhone is much different. There is so much to do with it. I find that I use it far more, but for less drudgery and more fun.

A bit like how I use my
Mac.

The (almost) full web experience Specifically, Flash is missing and it’s maddening. I visit Google Analytics several times each day and would love to be able to do so from my iPhone. No dice. Not yet.

It’s clumsy to navigate between applications. When I’m in the iPhone’s browser, I’m 100 percent in there. The only way out is by pushing the home button, and then on the icon of the next application that I’d like to use. On the Blackberry, I have shortcut buttons that whisk me away to a new application. I like the elegance of the iPhone, but another button or two wouldn’t hurt anyone.
No web browsing in the background. Especially on slow networks (like AT&T’s), it’s useful to start one thing (e.g., a web page loading) while navigating to another application (e.g., email) to work while you wait. On the iPhone, you can’t do this, as the web page goes into a holding pattern when you leave it until you return. When you’re on a web page, you have to be 100 percent there. Frustrating.
The network is pokey and the iPhone doesn’t provide a convenient way to get around this. I wasn’t going to call out this point because it’s somewhat immaterial: Most devices are still relegated to a dial-up speeds. But the iPhone is worse than my Blackberry in this regard because on my Blackberry I could turn off images and what-not to speed up the web experience. Yes, it was a crippled web experience but at least it was relatively speedy because of the workarounds Research in Motion built into its browser.
Single-account email view. I like my email to go into a common pool, especially on my handheld device. On my Blackberry I had five email accounts all piling into the same inbox. On the iPhone I have to check each account separately, which seems like an inane thing to foist on users, especially since Apple’s Mail client for the desktop allows me to “pool” my accounts into one common inbox.

Aug 23

Wonder why everything isn’t speech controlled

ScanSoft went on to acquire about a dozen other companies, including some that were themselves made up of acquired companies.

(Credit:
Nuance)

And now I know why. When it comes to speech technology, one company is holding just about all the cards: Nuance Communications.

The company lists its competitors as AT&T, IBM, and Microsoft. Sounds formidable, but each of these giants competes with Nuance in specific, limited markets. Nuance is far and away the 800-pound gorilla of speech technology.

Last November, I wrote a post titled “Top 10 technology flops.” One of the 10 was speech recognition. Judging by the feedback I got from all over the Web, you’d think I’d said Apple was a flop or Bush was a great president.

While all this was happening on the East Coast, Nuance spun off from Stanford Research Institute (SRI) in 1994. In 1996, the Menlo Park company deployed its first large-scale, call-center-based commercial speech application.

That said, I don’t really care that American Airlines can recognize my voice responses on the phone. The only speech application that actually benefits me on a day-to-day basis is on my cell phone, and that’s pretty basic stuff.

What I meant, at the time, was that I was disappointed that we’re not rid of all the keyboards, buttons, and remote controls by now. So I did some research and discovered that speech technology is indeed proliferating in some industries: defense, medical, call centers, and rudimentary capability for cell phones, edutainment, and high-end automobiles.

For the most part, we’re still banging away on computer keyboards and drowning in a sea of proprietary consumer electronics devices and remote controls.

As for its business strategy, Nuance seems to have done a good job of focusing its limited resources on the largest vertical markets where it can optimize profit margins. The company’s primary focus is on helping businesses improve efficiency and productivity while reducing costs.

Still, the next time you get off the phone with an automated call-center that communicates eerily well, only to fumble around with the myriad of keyboards, buttons, and remote controls in your own life, at least you’ll know what name to curse: Nuance Communications.

In September 2005, ScanSoft merged with Nuance and the combined company adopted the Nuance Communications name. Since then, Nuance has gobbled up another dozen companies, the largest of which being Dictaphone for $357 million and eScription for $400 million.

The fact that the company says little about aggressively driving its technology into the consumer space is telling. That’s simply not its business plan, and I can certainly understand why. The consumer electronics market is highly fragmented with thin margins and high support costs. And if Nuance wishes to avoid that, well, there really isn’t much competition left to twist its arm.

I’d say Ricci is a shrewd businessman.

The company’s history is a tribute to M&A gluttony. Let’s see if I can get this right. In 1980, Xerox (so many of these stories begin with Xerox) bought inventor Raymond Kurzweil’s optical character recognition (OCR) company and ultimately renamed it ScanSoft.

Courtesy of dozens of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) over the past 13 years, Nuance now owns much of the speech technology on planet Earth. The company boasts a $3.5 billion market cap on annual sales that will likely top $800 million this fiscal year but, remarkably, has never been profitable. I can see why. Nuance has been so busy acquiring companies it hasn’t had a chance to worry about a little thing like profitability.

In late 2001, ScanSoft bought Lernout & Hauspie, a Belgian company that had previously acquired a host of other companies including Berkeley Speech Technologies and Dragon Systems. Amazingly, L&H–the leader in the speech technology field–was bankrupt so ScanSoft got it for a song: $39.5 million.

In 1999, a scanner software company called Visioneer bought ScanSoft and adopted the name. That seems to be about when current Nuance Chairman and CEO Paul Ricci entered the picture, and that’s when all the fun began.

According to my math, the current incarnation of Nuance Communications is actually made up of 42 companies, with a $180 million acquisition of SNAPin Software in the works and an unsolicited offer of $40 million for Zi on the table. Got all that?

Aug 23

Exclusive video Hands-on with the Canon XSi

You’ve read the blog, now see the video. Starring Phil and Canon’s new consumer dSLR, the EOS Rebel XSi.

Aug 23

Estonia posts its cybersecurity strategy

In May 2007, the Baltic nation experienced a series of denial-of-service (DoS) attacks as a result of its government’s decision to relocate a statue honoring an unknown Russian person killed during World War II. At Black Hat in 2007, security expert Gadi Evron said the attacks were not directed by the Russian Federation, or any government entity; he suggested it was the work of a “flash mob” of individuals from all over the world. In January, a native Russian in Estonia was convicted for his involvement in the event.

The report calls for Estonia to apply a graduated system of security measures, develop high awareness of information security to the highest standard, develop appropriate regulatory and legal framework of information systems, and promote international cooperation toward achieving global cybersecurity.

Eighteen months after a denial-of-service attack, the Estonian Ministry of Defense has posted a detailed report (PDF) on the attacks. While focusing on specific steps the nation needs to take to prevent another attack, the report contains global recommendations as well.

The report concludes that Estonia should seek the cooperation of all nations in strengthening local cybersecurity law enforcement by presenting its expertise and experience at global security conferences.

On the latter topic, Estonia will seek global condemnation of cyberattacks given the impact on individuals’ livelihoods. In Estonia, a nation that is well-wired per capita, the DoS attacks shut down local ISPs and prevented people from buying food, getting gas, or completing bank transactions for several days.

Aug 23

On advising Microsoft

Some have asked me to clarify what this means that I’ll be a “consultant [to Microsoft] on these interoperability initiatives.” It’s very easy to do so: I’m not and I don’t know. I have not been asked to be a “consultant” to Microsoft; rather, I’ve been asked to serve as an advisor to Microsoft (completely uncompensated) to help keep it honest in its efforts, as have a few other members of the open-source development and business community (to be announced at some point, though I don’t know when).

But on the second part (”I don’t know”), I have no idea what this will entail as all I’ve received to date is an informal invitation over the phone from Sam Ramji.

So, that’s who I am and who I will continue to be. But I’m not prepared to go lightly on Microsoft just because one corner of the company has offered me a chance to amplify the volume of my criticism (friendly or otherwise). I see this as a positive but by no means conclusive move on Microsoft’s part. Once you see the other members of the advisory committee, you’ll see that Microsoft hasn’t selected people whose “votes” it hopes to buy off.

Yes, I’m generally optimistic that this can happen. It’s just part of my mentality. I was raised to believe that people can change. I believe that people are essentially good (and, by extension, so are the companies they populate). I will believe this until proved otherwise, and then I’ll believe again a few minutes later when I’ve overcome my disappointment.

Regardless, the true advisory committee is you (and I), the community. We’re the ones who need to help Microsoft make this change through constant pressure (government and otherwise). The way forward is not through side-deals and backroom capitulation. It’s by demanding open agreements in the open.

I wouldn’t read too much into it - I’ve been very public about my criticism (and sometime admiration) for Microsoft’s products and business strategy. My opinion won’t change until Microsoft changes.

commentary

Aug 23

Netflix down for at least five hours

Site outages are typically no big deal as any company can suffer one. But a blackout that lasts for more than an hour is rare, and one spanning several hours is rarer still.

Updated at 4:00 p.m. PDT:
We have posted a completely new story here that details how Netflix will be forced to delay deliveries.

“Our engineers have been feverishly working on repairing the problem all morning,” Swasey said. “It was an unanticipated, unplanned outage and we apologize to our customers.”

Customer service personnel told CNET News.com that they were told the site was undergoing routine maintenance when something went wrong, information they then passed on to customers. That is incorrect, according to Steve Swasey, the company’s director of corporate communications. He said he couldn’t discuss the causes but that it had nothing to do with site maintenance.

This is one of the few setbacks suffered by Netflix in the past year. Since October, the company’s shares have doubled in price. In midday trading, Netflix was trading at about $38. The company’s site also went down for an extended period last July. The cause was never disclosed.

Internet movie rental company Netflix suffered a site outage beginning at 7 a.m. PDT Monday, and the company doesn’t know when it will have the problem fixed, a Netflix spokesman said.

Netflix, which has 7 million subscribers, continued to ship DVDs after the outage began, though its unclear whether the problem will eventually affect the company’s entire database, Swasey said. This means it’s possible that users might see some delays in receiving movies. He added that customers needn’t worry about their stored movie picks. None of their information will be lost.

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