The Hypocrisy Weblog

There’s a lot of talk about “social media” and “social networks” these days, but what I think really makes a difference for many of us is the social filtering made by one or more (sometimes online) friends.

I have a few good friends that are active within a wide range of areas, where-as one person is a bleeding edge kind of software guy (open source / Ubuntu Linux) and whom both try out and give me tips on cool new software for my Ubuntu box (yes, I run both Windows and Ubuntu). Instead of me having to put down time and effort (and sometimes risk) in trying new software, my Linux friend does that job for me.

Another friend is an avid web 2.0 fan, whom jump on basically every site out there. Through him I get reviews of what is good or not, and combining this intelligence with a more general buzz I can decipher what is hot or not.

A third friend is an experienced journalist, and he gives me fresh ideas and angles – especially when it comes to politics, but also other fields.

The fourth friend is a security expert, who shares his deep knowledge from within the security community.

The fifth friend… Well, you get the point – right?! The friendship chain of trust is a very good and (most often) trust-worthy source of information. This is why it is so important to form social bonds with the right people, this is not something that Google, Facebook or Wikipedia can offer you.

In short; never understimate the value of personal relationships.

cnet’s web 2.0 blog, “Webware” has announced it’s Webware 100 winners-list. The question is now; how is this list relevant to anyone in the Internet-business? Each and every category, 10 of them, has 10 winners each – and each and every site on the top 100-list anyone who’s involved in working with the Internet (in any way) have heard of.

The categories are; Browsing, Communications, Community, Data, Entertainment, Media, Mobile, Productivity and Commerce, Publishing, Reference.

Surely, it is a good ego boost for the people behind the services to get recognition, but does it serve any journalistic purpose? I am not so sure about that; Rafe Needleman and the Webware crew are preaching for the already saved. There is no internal ranking of the sites in the individual categories – so how do I as a visitor know which site got more votes than the other? (Yes, alright – they do have a list of the over-all top 10 and the sites that got over 1000 votes, though it doesn’t show the internal ranking in between the sites within each category. Perhaps the over-all statistic material wasn’t enough?! I don’t know…)

From my own perspective I am glad that the swizz army-knife-like site Netvibes, which deserves more media coverage – as it is a really nice service to keep track on all your communication needs ranging from rss-feeds (sites, forums, email, blogs etc), to email, to skype, to.. yeah – you get the idea.

Google was the company with most services in the top 100-list, yet this is not surprising as they are the biggest site on the Internet.

To the Webware authors; Please make the list more detailed the next time and get a broader statistic foundation (aka get more people to vote on the list), then we’re talking about a relevant list.

A new mashup-service has opened up on http://www.ip-adress.com , which combines the geographical IP-address database (stores the geographical information for the IP-address your computer uses right now on the Internet) from MaxMind and Google Maps.

The site is worth a try, if not for the novelty of it! If you have never used a trace-tool, this is an easy start to discover the “hidden” world of the Internet.

“Fonero” – what the hell is that?! Yes, if you haven’t heard about this term before you might be a bit confused, but fear not. “Fon” is a spanish-based award-winning wifi-community where you can get free or cheap wifi-access (meaning that you make money on your own FON access-point) wherever there might be a Fon wifi-router around. The Fon “what-is” webpage sums this up pretty well;

“FON is the largest WiFi community in the world. Our members share their wireless Internet access at home and, in return, enjoy free WiFi wherever they find another Fonero’s Access Point.”

Watch the above video for a short run-through on what FON is all about (I am sooooo sorry for the South Park ripoff though )

Now you might think to yourself: -”Aren’t there any security concerns with sharing my wifi with others?!” My answer to this is… no. This text from the FON webpage sums it up pretty well for you:

“La Fonera offers you two wireless network signals (SSIDs), a private and a public one. The private signal is encrypted and offers you complete privacy.

The public signal will be accessible to Foneros only. This signal is the one that turns your broadband connection into a FON Access Point.

Furthermore, all Foneros connecting to the public WiFi signal within the FON Community are registered users. They need to identify themselves by a username and password.

Running an Access Point with La Fonera is not only secure but also easy to control. You can choose the amount of bandwidth you want to share.”

On top of this you can limit the speed allocated to the users on your FON SSID.

In essence; Martin Varsavsky, the founder and Chief Executive Officer of FON, has struck gold when it comes to having and going through with a brilliant idea! He also managed to get funds and support from both Google and Skype, which speaks well for the future of the FON-network. A note in this context is that Google helps FON out with the technical infrastructure.

My personal experience with FON is that it is pretty easy to set up. If you have a DSL-modem, Internet access directly from your ISP through a TP-cable (twisted pair) or through cable-modem it is no sweat to get it to run. The Fon access-point will then get it’s IP-address automatically (via DHCP) from the source it is connected to through it’s Internet-port and then the rest of the information how to get rolling is stated in the information packed with your router-package. The Fon access-point even works in a NAT if you run this at your office / home, though this might mean that you have to go into the access-point and edit a couple of settings regarding which network segment the access-point is in etc.

I really didn’t have any problems besides a bug in my Intel wifi-card sitting in my laptop related to the card’s energy-saving mode. (This isn’t fixed even with the latest drivers even if you said it would be, shame on you Intel.)

Apart from the mishap mentioned above, my first week being a Fonero has gone without a glitch. The access-point I got from FON works well, I can utilize my entire allocated bandwidth from my ISP and the access-point seem to be able to handle high bandwidth and durable datastreams. All protocols work fine, protocols demanding low latency such as server-management via SSH works as good as it would through my TP cable-based connection.

Another important aspect of joining a service is the support you get if something goes wrong, and I can say that the support at FON are knowledgeable and friendly, so if you ever run into a problem you can count on getting help from them.

Do you find all of this interesting?! Then don’t hesitate and join the Fonera network to either get free wifi-access wherever you are (Linus), or make a buck on sharing your Internet connection with the world (Bill)!!! (I am a “Linus”)

Take care everyone!!!

The Swedish edition of IDG writes about PhD in search engine marketing Elias Kai in the town Kalmar of southern Sweden who named his son “Oliver Christian Google Kai”.

The father, Elias Kai, says that his wife had no problem with naming her son after the search engine, and Elias also got the question if he’ll name his next baby “Yahoo!”if it’s a boy or “Altavista” if it’s a girl, but as a self-proclaimed fan of Google, Elias says “no way” and that he’ll considerate names such as “Giggol, Gaggol eller Boogol” instead.

So, what does Google have to say about this? Well, Google’s European vice president Nikesh Arora held a presentation during London Ad Tech in September, and Elias Kai got to speak at the podium and tell the audience that he’ll name his son “Google”. The audience laughed and no-one thought that Elias actually was serious in naming his son Google, though he was.

Perhaps Elias Kai should’ve taken the 200 people strong audience’ reaction more serious and not name his son after a search engine?! I think so… Maybe his father thinks it’s cool to name his son after his favourite cult-object, but I doubt that the father considered the problems that his son will get in the future with such a name, everything from bullying in school to problems at misc. tasks of life – such as applying for a job, applying for a job etc.

I don’t want to paint it all black, but come on…

Google Kai has his own site at http://www.google-kai.com and of course his own blog at http://googlekai.blogspot.com

Though, regardless of anything else, no-one can deny that Google Kai is a cute baby boy, and I am sure that everyone who reads this post will wish him and his family all the luck in the world in his life!!!

Erik Stattin writes (with irony at his fingertips(?) ):

Google just becomes more evil by the second “To Google Inc.“: “Please help us encourage Google to stop undermining education through their policy of displaying ads that encourage plagiarism and academic fraud through the sale of pre-written and made to order term papers and essays especially when these ads are displayed on web sites that promote education.”

Google aren’t saints… they want to make money, just look at their business in China. Everyone does it, why shouldn’t Google?!!

Say hello to Google’s new Instant Messenger (IM) software: “Google Talk“. Google Talk is Jabber/XMPP-based, which means that you can use any Jabber-compatible program to connect to Google Talk.

What you need to connect to Google Talk is a Gmail email-address, and after you install the program, you simply login with your Gmail username and password. (If you need an invitation to Gmail, go to “contact me” on the top of this page and I’ll send you one)

The interface is clean and simple, just as with Gmail which is a plus. It has no extra “crap” like MSN, Yahoo! Messenger and ICQ has – but it yet has no offline-messaging support < - which means that you can't send an instant message when the one you are writing to is not connected to Google Talk. This is a major con which I hope will be fixed in a later version, because yes - Google Talk is still in Beta.

As you see from the image displayed here, the Google Talk interface is clean, just as described above. Another neat feature is that those you email with a lot through Gmail gets added automatically in your Google Talk userlist.

In the same breath as I write about Google Talk, I have to write about Skype. Matt Veenstra at Vibe of the Tribe speculates about Google’s possible next step which could be to buy out Skype and integrate it in it’s own IM-product. I don’t see this happening though, as Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis from Skype declined News corp’s to buy Skype from their hands for the meagre sum of 3 billion dollars US.

Is there room for yet another IM-product on the market? Yes and no, Google doesn’t add anything spectacular to the array of Instant Message software out there, but they do have a very strong brand, which will talk in their favour. Google Talk is also based on the open Jabber/XMPP protocol, which rings good in the ears of the ones who actually care about these things – which aren’t many if you look at the popularity of programs such as MSN messenger and Yahoo! Messenger. An interesting sidenote is that Yahoo! Messenger now uses Skype voice-technology for their Voice-chat. (and yes, ICQ and AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) are compatible with each other nowadays).

I think that Google Talk will attract those who want a small and clean chat-program, and that the success of Google Talk depend upon the success of Gmail as the two products are tightly integrated with each other.

Being one of the beta-testers of Google’s “Gmail”-service, I’ve been following the progress of the service with interest.

This interest of mine comes from both a technological view-point, as well as an interest for the Privacy-issues, where Google takes the right to both scan the contents of the users’ emailboxes and from this match advertisements based on this content-scan.

Having this said, this post will concentrate on the more interface and technical-related issues.

To start up, Gmail is (often) very fast to load, and when one learns how to use the filter and label-function it actually takes the pain out of having only 2 mailboxes; the inbox and the archive.

Interface&design

The interface is very clean and the colors are well-chosen in subtle shades of blue for the email-boxes / contents-display, green for the labels, red for the invites (beta mode, ya know?!) and yellow for the settings. Psychologically this works fine, with the calm blue for the email-display, the positive green for the labels and a sense of importance with the yellow colouring.

All of the above is topped off with the Google-logo on the top, in other words; so far, so good…

Filters and Labels;

Setting up filters and labels within the settings works as a “saved search” function, and you can see how many unread emails you have in a certain label, regardless what emailbox they are located in. Also, when clicking on a particular label, you see all emails matching a certain filter and assigned label.

This function is one of the basics of Gmail, and it’s similar to having folders in a regular email-program or competing webmail-client.

Addressbook

This is yet another positive side of Gmail. The addressbook is both updated when composing and sending an email to an email-address not yet inside the addressbook, and the auto-completion works brilliantly. Another thing is that your contacts are sorted after how often you’ve emailed them, which is a very handy approach.

Antivirus&Spam-protection

The antivirus protection in Gmail is quite primitive, as the incoming mailserver(s) deletes attachments with certain file-endings. One of the responsible people behind Gmail, Georges Harik, says that a complete antivirus-software is on a wish and todo-list.

Concerning the spam-protection system; I didn’t have the “pleasure” to receive much spam to be able to have an opinion on this issue yet, but there have been no false-positives so far.

Google have implemented the “no images unless confirmed”-feature that you may find in webmail-clients such as Squirrel Mail or modern email-clients such as Mozilla Thunderbird, which basically means that no external images will load in the email opened unless you press a button to do so. As you might know, spammers will see that you have read the email they pumped out when loading external images on their servers, as these external images serves as a tracking-tool for a spammer.

Code

Gmail is as of now written with javascript, which isn’t such a good idea, as not all users have this function activated. Google have stated that a html(dhtml?)-based interface is in the works.

The negative aspects

Threading; Sometimes Gmail does not seem to be able to understand that several emails in a conversation, from for example an email-list is in the same thread. Also, the thread is lost if applying / removing a label to the conversation. This is quite annoying if dealing with a higher email-traffic.

Also; there is no possibility to be able to choose a “threaded view” within the web-interface, a huge con.

Composing email; Although the auto-completion is a good thing, there is no way to compose your emails in html-mode in an easy way, and this really needs to be worked at, if you ask me – as even if I don’t personally miss this; many users will.

No virus-scanning; There is no scanning after viruses being done, and an image file could easily contain a virus, and infect your PC while using Gmail to watch attached pictures.

So, do I think that Gmail is a bad service? Not at all, Google is shaping it up to become better and better. The intuitive interface combined with the power of Google’s search knowledge and the 1 GigaByte storage-space are compelling factors to why people would like to use Gmail.

The main factor being against Google’s Gmail is the privacy controversy, where users won’t feel secure that their personal email-account remains… personal.

Further down the road I will write more about the privacy discussions surrounding Google, and what I believe the company should do in order to battle this.

Thank you for reading!

More on Google at Hypocrisy.nu
External link to Gmail

Google’s haused, in beta, webmail-service “Gmail” is vulnerable to a security exploit that might allow hackers full access to a user’s email account simply by knowing the user name, according to reports.

Israeli news site “Nana” writes that the security flaw allows full access to users’ accounts, with no need of a password.

Using a hex-encoded XSS link (Cross Site Scripting), the victim’s cookie file can be stolen by a hacker, who can later use it to identify himself to Gmail as the original owner of an email account, regardless of whether or not the password is subsequently changed.

Following up a tip from an Israeli hacker, several co-workers from the site confirmed the attack and verified the exploit with local security firm Aladdin Knowledge Systems.

Israeli news site Nana writes;
“Everything could get publicly exposed – your received mails might be readable, as well as all of your sent mail, and furthermore – anyone could send and receive mail under your name”, thus reveals Nir Goldshlagger, an Israeli hacker, on an exclusive interview with Nana NetLife Magazine.”

Nana continues to quote Nir Goldshlagger;
“”Even more alarming”, he explains, “is the fact that the hack itself is quite simple. All that is needed of the malicious hacker, beside knowledge of the specific technique, is quite basic computer knowledge, the victim’s username – and that’s it, he’s inside”.”

…and ends with;
“Matters are several times worse when it comes to a service such as Gmail. Besides the obvious blow to Google’s seemingly spotless image, we’re looking here at a major threat to anyone who has turned to Gmail as his major email box. “Because Gmail offers a gigabyte of storage, several times bigger than most other web based mail services, users hardly delete any old correspondence”, says Goldshlagger. “The result is a huge amount of mail accumulating in the users’ boxes, which frequently include bank notices, passwords, private documents and other files the user wanted to backup. Who ever takes a hold of this data, could literally take over the victim’s life and identity”.”

It’s unclear whether the hole has been maliciously exploited as of yet. Google has been notified of the issue and is reportedly working on a fix.

EDIT: Google now claimed to have fixed the problem.

My comment to all of this is that it is quite surprising that Google did not work harder in anticipating such a hack-method while working on their email-service, yet it is understandable that they didn’t see this one coming, as after all; Gmail is in beta.

After this security flaw has been fixed there are still major personal integrity issues to be dealt with, especially when it comes to PR-work. (applies to everything from their core-business; their search-engine to new additions such as the “Google Desktop Search” where Google still have failed to inform the press, and subsequently the public about which information is passed on to Google from the user’s personal computer system. Failure in doing so will endanger Google’s image as “the good company”.

Over and out…