bruceb news

You can take a peek at one of the experiments by the New York Times as it tries to deliver an online experience that is as satisfying as holding a newspaper in your hands. The “article skimmer” is a work in progress, not a finished product. It presents a single screen overview of a number of articles, so your eye can browse just as it would on the printed page.

Use the space bar to go down a section, or use the arrow keys to go up and down, with sections scrolling into place neatly to create the visual effect of a long scroll of paper. […] continued

From the official Google blog today:

“This site may harm your computer” on every search result?!?!

1/31/2009 09:02:00 AM

If you did a Google search between 6:30 a.m. PST and 7:25 a.m. PST this morning, you likely saw that the message “This site may harm your computer” accompanied each and every search result. This was clearly an error, and we are very sorry for the inconvenience caused to our users.

What happened? Very simply, human error. Google flags search results with the message “This site may harm your computer” if the site is known to install malicious software in the background or otherwise surreptitiously.

[…] continued

This doesn’t affect you directly but it’s an interesting glimpse at How Things Work.

The vast bulk of international voice and Internet traffic travels through underwater cables. There were several reports in 2008 of broken or cut cables in the Mediterranean, giving rise to conspiracy theories and talk of terrorists, and making us wonder a bit about whether the Internet is really as invulnerable as we were led to think. In January, two cables were cut in the Mediterranean, causing Internet disruptions and slowdowns for users in the Middle East and India. On December 19, three more cables were cut, disrupting 75% of communication between the Middle East and Asia and the rest of the world. […] continued

Sometimes you’ll hear me groan or sob quietly when you describe a simple problem. Let me give you an idea of some of the things that go through my head when a problem comes up. Take this as an example:

“My Internet connection is slow.”

Your Internet connection is fine; your computer is slow.

Your computer is running normally but it has malware installed that is using up all your bandwidth sending out spam email.

Your computer’s network card is going bad and needs to be replaced.

Your connection is saturated by another computer in the house that’s downloading movie torrents.

[…] continued

Let me give you a quick overview of the kind of issue that makes it fun to be a consultant.

When you go to a web site where any personal information is going to be exchanged, you’re likely to see the web site address change from http:// to https://. The data is encrypted (has a “Secure Sockets Layer” or SSL) and is reasonably well protected against eavesdroppers. You’ll see it at banking sites or almost anything involving money or payment, as well as on web sites for access to company networks and other places where data should be confidential. […] continued

The volume of junk e-mail sent worldwide plummeted on Tuesday after a company providing the servers for the spammers was taken offline.

The bad guys install malware on computers that they can control in vast networks, primarily to send spam for counterfeit pharmaceuticals and designer goods, fake security products and child pornography. Approximately 190 billion spam messages are sent every day from more than 1.5 million hijacked computers. The spammers set up servers to control the hijacked computers and to display web pages offering illicit goods for sale.

The spammers don’t buy their own servers. They buy server space from hosting companies, which are shielded from liability in many cases and not directly responsible for the actions of their customers. […] continued

“Windows Azure” is a terrible name but you need to be aware of it anyway. Windows Azure is a breathtakingly ambitious platform outlined by Microsoft at last week’s Professional Developer Conference, another attempt by Microsoft to position itself to profit from a paradigm shift that will be just as important as the move to the Internet in the 90s.

Yesterday I used word processing as an easy example to imagine what it would be like if you had universal access to your files with the ability to open and edit them from any computer. Of course, it’s just as easy to imagine having easy access from anywhere to your Excel spreadsheets and Powerpoint presentations, with the programs running in a browser if you don’t have a copy installed on the computer nearby. […] continued

There are lots of projects intended to move our computing lives online. Let me try to paint a picture of where our world is heading over the next 5-10 years. I’ll use Microsoft projects as examples but keep in mind that other companies have similar projects and goals.

Start with hundreds of thousands of high-powered servers all over the world, run by big companies, providing storage space and computing power to do interesting things. Amazon and Google are already in that business, and one of Microsoft’s big announcements at last week’s conference was that it intends to commit the future of the company to providing services from its own global network. […] continued

Windows Live Mesh has just been updated, as of about noon on Thursday 10/30. If you are using it already, you will be notified to install the update; it will stop working until the update is installed on each computer running it. If you are not using it yet, it has been fully opened up to everyone – read about it, make sure you have your Windows Live ID set up, and you are free to sign up.

Windows Live Mesh is a place to store files online, a program that runs on your computer to keep folders in sync on multiple computers, and a way to get remote access to your computer from anywhere. […] continued

Access everywhere! Lots of interesting services are being set up to make it easy for you to have access to files, folders, photos, and computers from anywhere, whether it’s working on an office computer from home or bringing up pictures from your home computer on a mobile phone.

The latest entry comes from Dell, strangely enough. Dell just introduced Dell Remote Access, a ten dollar per month service for a number of tasks loosely related to “remote access.” It’s designed to be extremely easy to use. You’ll install some software on the computer to be controlled; the software will run continuously and periodically check in with Dell Server Central Command. […] continued