WiMAX challenges Wi-Fi

When most people hear “wireless Internet,” they think “Wi-Fi.” The technology has allowed millions of computers and mobile devices to browse the Web without the snarl of cords. But there’s another wireless standard out there – one that’s arguably more tempting if it can get its act together.

WiMAX delivers the Web similar to Wi-Fi, but covers wide areas like a cellphone tower. While the range of a Wi-Fi router is measured in yards – enough to blanket a house or office – WiMAX can broadcast for miles. This added range has attracted interest from local governments looking into citywide wireless networks.

Several early citywide Wi-Fi plans were abandoned because they underestimated the cost of installing enough hot spots. But with WiMAX, “Instead of needing 20 or 30 Wi-Fi access points per square mile, you need one,” says Craig Settles, an independent wireless analyst. And many cities won’t need to brainstorm creative places to stick a WiMAX antenna, because it can be attached to current cell phone towers. Sprint rolled out a pilot WiMAX program in Baltimore last year. The network delivers average download speeds of two to four megabits per second, half the rate of cable Internet but several times faster than the 3G mobile service used by many of today’s smart phones, according to Sprint’s tests. The company plans to introduce WiMAX in 10 American cities this year and five more in 2010.

“But here’s the big problem,” says Mr. Settles. “How many iPhones have a WiMAX chip in them? None.”

In fact, barely any devices understand a WiMAX signal because it uses different frequencies from Wi-Fi. This incompatibility issue has exacerbated the normal chicken-and-egg problem that plagues new technology: People won’t buy WiMAX devices until there are more WiMAX networks, but why build the network when Wi-Fi is doing so well? Sprint’s plan requires a proprietary antenna that plugs into laptops, similar to the early Wi-Fi cards that have since been built into computers.

If WiMAX takes off, its performance could drop off quickly, says Settles, because fewer towers means that each station needs to juggle more requests. “Some testers were stunned at the difference in reliability as more people join,” he says. “3G has about a 90 percent uptime. WiMAX is around 70% .” In the US, WiMAX has an additional hurdle because it relies on frequencies that are regulated by the government, so companies will need to pay extra for broadcast rights.

While Settles questions WiMAX’s chances, he says there’s a middle solution. “Locally owned” service provider B2X Online harnesses WiMAX-like towers to deliver broadband Internet to Franklin County, Va. The towers, which transmit over an unlicensed frequency, allow the small company to circumvent the expensive process of laying Internet cables to rural areas.

from the CSMonitor …

Njoy …

An invention that could change the internet for ever

The new system, Wolfram Alpha, showcased at Harvard University in the US last week, takes the first step towards what many consider to be the internet's Holy Grail – a global store of information that understands and responds to ordinary language in the same way a person does.

 

Although the system is still new, it has already produced massive interest and excitement among technology pundits and internet watchers.

Computer experts believe the new search engine will be an evolutionary leap in the development of the internet. Nova Spivack, an internet and computer expert, said that Wolfram Alpha could prove just as important as Google. "It is really impressive and significant," he wrote. "In fact it may be as important for the web (and the world) as Google, but for a different purpose.

Tom Simpson, of the blog Convergenceofeverything.com, said: "What are the wider implications exactly? A new paradigm for using computers and the web? Probably. Emerging artificial intelligence and a step towards a self-organizing internet? Possibly... I think this could be big."

Wolfram Alpha will not only give a straight answer to questions such as "how high is Mount Everest?", but it will also produce a neat page of related information – all properly sourced – such as geographical location and nearby towns, and other mountains, complete with graphs and charts.

The real innovation, however, is in its ability to work things out "on the fly", according to its British inventor, Dr Stephen Wolfram. If you ask it to compare the height of Mount Everest to the length of the Golden Gate Bridge, it will tell you. Or ask what the weather was like in London on the day John F Kennedy was assassinated, it will cross-check and provide the answer. Ask it about D sharp major, it will play the scale. Type in "10 flips for four heads" and it will guess that you need to know the probability of coin-tossing. If you want to know when the next solar eclipse over Chicago is, or the exact current location of the International Space Station, it can work it out.

Dr Wolfram, an award-winning physicist who is based in America, added that the information is "curated", meaning it is assessed first by experts. This means that the weaknesses of sites such as Wikipedia, where doubts are cast on the information because anyone can contribute, are taken out. It is based on his best-selling Mathematica software, a standard tool for scientists, engineers and academics for crunching complex maths.

"I've wanted to make the knowledge we've accumulated in our civilization computable," he said last week. "I was not sure it was possible. I'm a little surprised it worked out so well."

Dr Wolfram, 49, who was educated at Eton and had completed his PhD in particle physics by the time he was 20, added that the launch of Wolfram Alpha later this month would be just the beginning of the project.

"It will understand what you are talking about," he said. "We are just at the beginning. I think we've got a reasonable start on 90 per cent of the shelves in a typical reference library."

The engine, which will be free to use, works by drawing on the knowledge on the internet, as well as private databases. Dr Wolfram said he expected that about 1,000 people would be needed to keep its databases updated with the latest discoveries and information.

He also added that he would not go down the road of storing information on ordinary people, although he was aware that others might use the technology to do so.

 

Wolfram Alpha has been designed with professionals and academics in mind, so its grasp of popular culture is, at the moment, comparatively poor. The term "50 Cent" caused "absolute horror" in tests, for example, because it confused a discussion on currency with the American rap artist. For this reason alone it is unlikely to provide an immediate threat to Google, which is working on a similar type of search engine, a version of which it launched last week.

"We have a certain amount of popular culture information," Dr Wolfram said. "In some senses popular culture information is much more shallowly computable, so we can find out who's related to who and how tall people are. I fully expect we will have lots of popular culture information. There are linguistic horrors because if you put in books and music a lot of the names clash with other concepts."

He added that to help with that Wolfram Alpha would be using Wikipedia's popularity index to decide what users were likely to be interested in.

With Google now one of the world's top brands, worth $100bn, Wolfram Alpha has the potential to become one of the biggest names on the planet.

Dr Wolfram, however, did not rule out working with Google in the future, as well as Wikipedia. "We're working to partner with all possible organizations that make sense," he said. "Search, narrative, news are complementary to what we have. Hopefully there will be some great synergies."

from Independent …

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Black Holes of Internet !!!

There are plenty of places online that you would do well to steer clear of. A brief visit to some unsavoury websites, for instance, could leave your computer infected with worms or viruses. Then there are the "black holes" to worry about.

If your emails mysteriously disappear, or your favorite website is suddenly unobtainable, you might have run into one. Though nowhere near as destructive as their cosmological cousins, information black holes can create all kinds of problems for surfers. Essentially they are points on the network at which data packets simply disappear due to broken connections, say, or misconfigured routers - devices that maintain lists of addresses and which help direct internet traffic. A team including computer scientist Ethan Katz-Bassett at the University of Washington in Seattle has detected almost 1.5 million black holes since it began looking in 2007. The majority persist for over 2 hours, he says. Unfortunately it is tough to predict where they will appear next, so it's hard for the average surfer to avoid them.

Far easier to avoid are a kind of online chatroom called Internet Relay Chat channels. Though the majority are legitimate, a few IRC channels have a very dark reputation, and are run as open markets for stolen goods. One 2007 survey found $37 million worth of illegal stuff in IRC channels, including 80,000 credit card numbers and bank account details. And if that is not bad enough, some of these chatrooms are also used by hackers to send commands to their networks of malicious software bots, or botnets. When a PC is infected by a virus or malicious software it may be hijacked and used as part of a botnet to launch spam or cyber-attacks elsewhere.

Then there are significant pockets of cyberspace - some 5 per cent of all internet addresses - that are not fully connected to the rest of the net. Dubbed the "dark internet", they are often the result of faulty routers or networks with strict security policies that block traffic.

Amongst these dark regions are blocks of seemingly unused internet addresses that may suddenly and briefly flare into activity. Although this behavior might have an innocent explanation, it can also hint at dubious activities.

A three-year study by online security consultants Arbor Networks revealed that dark internet addresses can be a source of cyber-attacks and junk email. The study suggests that hackers or spammers hijack routers and use them to create false addresses which are left dormant until the hackers bring them to life to facilitate their nefarious ends. These dark addresses seem to be multiplying in proportion to the growth of the net, says Arbor Networks' Craig Labovitz.

from New Scientist ..

Njoy …

Hiding Identity under the Onion … How To of TOR software

 

Just like i said before … Tor is really good application … in this post i will show how this thing works and anonymize our identity on internet !!!

first all you need is to download the TOR from TOR project website … i chose , the 2nd option, “ Tor Browser Bundle for Windows (Contains Tor, Vidalia, Torbutton, Polipo, and Firefox) “ … its 0.2.1.14-rc … they says its UNSTABLE so … may give unexpected results or may be it will not make you much “anonymous” around the internet but i really don’t know the actual reason .. sigh … i use this version because , NO NEED TO INSTALL or SETUP anything and its PORTABLE …

once you download it , extract it on a usb drive ( if you are planning to use it on any other pc )or in any folder of computer ( to use only in that machine ) …

now , simply double click on that Vidalia icon … it will run the script and automatically

once connected to Tor network , it will launch Tor’s old buddy …. the Firefox … you can make sure that you are connected by viewing , the Vidalia control panel , which shows CONNECTED TO THE TOR NETWORK message with green onion …

 

 

as it will launch FF, you will see the welcome message just like above ( ofcouse IP will be different ) … just remember to NOT TO CLOSE FIREFOX , because it will automatically exit TOR … ( i think you can change that option ) …

 

 

the thing is , i was using google’s chrome too , now see when is check the website … www.whatismyip.com …

 

 

the chrome shows my real IP , but the TORed firefox shows the IP that others will SEE when i use TOR … hmm …thats TORrific .. right ??

and if you ever wonder what is the route to that IP from ur IP , and how you are anonymized … just try to see the routing path of TOR … it shows TOR NETWORK MAP … as you know TOR uses onion routing , so after passing through these much number of nodes … its really hard to find your real IP ( that’s the best part ) … !!!

and the thing is , i am sitting in public library which has restricted access to sites and can’t access to youtube ( no offence ) … but i really like to watch cartoons on it … so before i can’t use it because it has been blocked by firewall and filters … but now ?? … nothing is between me and my favorite show ( expect my g/f .. hehehe ) …

so that is the way how can you anonymize your identity on internet using tor … but you need to remember that TOR is all free , open to public and non profit thing , so may be you won’t feel glitch when you surf the internet , but you will feel a bit leggy performance when you watch video on youtube …and about security , TOR CAN NOT secure your connection outside the TOR network , means hacker sitting at the end of exit node can intercept / sniff your packets and crack your password  ( for security, TOR recommends SSL connection between End to End Connection )…  also , many times the search results are different then what you expected or language is different … this is because , now you have IP of another geographic location , the search engine  thinks you are from that place so it will display results according to it ( its good if you surf porn sites a lot , because they will not get your real location ….. huh, wait a minute … do you really want it  ??? ) …

 

Njoy …

Hiding Identity under the Onion !!!

 

Vidalia … a sweet onion , great in taste indeed and better choice for eating raw compared to other breeds … but the vidalia onion i am talking about is something different … its the TOR Project , which has symbol of vidalia onion, because it uses onion routing concept … Tor is a software , which allows user to surf internet anonymously …

Logic behind the Onion …

Onion routing is a technique for anonymous communication over a computer network. Messages are repeatedly encrypted and then sent through several network nodes called onion routers. Each onion router removes a layer of encryption to uncover routing instructions, and sends the message to the next router where this is repeated. This prevents these intermediary nodes from knowing the origin, destination, and contents of the message. Here, volunteers provide their network node ( at their expense of bandwidth and $$$ ofcourse ) …

But Tor is not the magic wend of fairy god-mother that will make user completely anonymous on internet … it has its own limitation and rules … it does not guarantee for security of data transmitted , once it leaves tor network … so to ensure end-to-end security, measures need to be taken ( SSL connection for example ) … because it has been already proved that , a user ( a hacker , to be more precise )  sitting at end node of network can sniff / capture data leaving tor network and can use it too …

But if you are an adventurer just like me … who just want to try tor for study and experiment … then its really amazing …

the tor software which runs from usb drive gives you ultra portability , ease of use … you don’t even need to install anything in pc … and more good , we can use it anywhere …  is just amazing …

i want to write about  it but some another time …

history about tor …

tor official site …

till then …

Njoy …

Antivirus that lives in the Cloud …

 

Now a days , everything seem to be adopting itself for cloud computing … the latest edition is an antivirus by PANDA ANTIVIRUS … they call its Cloud Antivirus … which according to panda , lives in the cloud and , consumes least memory … yet provides the best protection against everything threat that internet posses to average joe !!! … But still its in BETA … and so only time can say who much successful it will be in reality … but good thing is , panda thinks to keep it free even after releasing its final version … at present its available only for XP and Vista ( too bad for me , as user of 7 and Jaunty Jackalope ) … but they are planning to release version for windows 7 too

till then , read this article from my favorite site about cloud antivirus …

With threats like Conficker fresh in the public's mind, security remains a top concern for Windows users. Panda Security, publishers of Panda Internet Security and Panda Antivirus, is set to take antivirus where it hasn't been yet: into the clouds. Panda Cloud Antivirus beta bets that nearly three years of development can pay off into a better protection system for users. To that end, Panda's willing to make the client free for personal use--even after it leaves beta testing.

 

the program uses Panda's proprietary cloud computing technology, which they call Collective Intelligence, to detect viruses, malware, rootkits, and heuristics. It takes advantage of "millions of users," according to Panda, to identify new malware almost in real time. Panda says that Collective Intelligence can classify new malware in under six minutes, and that it handles more than 50,000 new samples per day. The Cloud Antivirus works by classifying threats into executables that must be scanned immediately, and non-executables that are checked at a lower priority--usually when the computer is idle.

In exchange for using consumer data to build the Collective Intelligence database, Panda decided to offer the Panda Cloud Antivirus for free, said Pedro Bustamante, senior research adviser at Panda Security.

The new program reportedly takes up around 50 MB on the hard drive and eats around 17 MB of RAM when in use. That compares well against the industry average that Panda provided of 60 MB, and Bustamante said that they're aiming for 12 MB of RAM when in use.

Cloud computing may make sense from a system resources point of view, but what happens to system security when the computer isn't connected to the Internet? "The model we've implemented is to break down the traditional antivirus to client and server, so when the user is not connected they keep a local cache copy of Collective Intelligence, including detections for what Collective Intelligence sees is spreading through the community," he said.

Panda Cloud Antivirus is for Windows XP and Windows Vista, with planned support for Windows 7 when it's released. Bustamante added that it will stay in beta as it's being accepted by users, although they hope it will leave beta by the end of this summer.

from CNET …

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Is Internet running out of fuel ???

 

Internet users face regular “brownouts” that will freeze their computers as capacity runs out in cyberspace, according to research to be published later this year.

Experts predict that consumer demand, already growing at 60 per cent a year, will start to exceed supply from as early as next year because of more people working online and the soaring popularity of bandwidth-hungry websites such as YouTube and services such as the BBC’s iPlayer.

It will initially lead to computers being disrupted and going offline for several minutes at a time. From 2012, however, PCs and laptops are likely to operate at a much reduced speed, rendering the internet an “unreliable toy”.

When Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the British scientist, wrote the code that transformed a private computer network into the world wide web in 1989, the internet appeared to be a limitless resource. However, a report being compiled by Nemertes Research, a respected American think-tank, will warn that the web has reached a critical point and that even the recession has failed to stave off impending problems.

“With more people working or looking for work from home, or using their PCs more for cheap entertainment, demand could double in 2009,” said Ted Ritter, a Nemertes analyst. “At best, we see the [economic] slowdown delaying the fractures for maybe a year.”

In America, telecoms companies are spending £40 billion a year upgrading cables and supercomputers to increase capacity, while in Britain proposals to replace copper cabling across part of the network with fibreoptic wires would cost at least £5 billion.

Yet sites such as YouTube, the video-sharing service launched in 2005, which has exploded in popularity, can throw the most ambitious plans into disarray.

The amount of traffic generated each month by YouTube is now equivalent to the amount of traffic generated across the entire internet in all of 2000.

The extent of its popularity is indicated by the 100 million people who have logged on to the site to see the talent show contestant Susan Boyle in the past three weeks.

Another so-called “net bomb” being studied by Nemertes is BBC iPlayer, which allows viewers to watch high-definition television on their computers. In February there were more than 35 million requests for shows and iPlayer now accounts for 5 per cent of all UK internet traffic.

Analysts express such traffic in exabytes – a quintillion (or a million trillion) bytes or units of computer data. One exabyte is equivalent to 50,000 years’ worth of DVD-quality data.

Monthly traffic across the internet is running at about eight exabytes. A recent study by the University of Minnesota estimated that traffic was growing by at least 60 per cent a year, although that did not take into account plans for greater internet access in China and India.

While the net itself will ultimately survive, Ritter said that waves of disruption would begin to emerge next year, when computers would jitter and freeze. This would be followed by “brownouts” – a combination of temporary freezing and computers being reduced to a slow speed.

Ritter’s report will warn that an unreliable internet is merely a toy. “For business purposes, such as delivering medical records between hospitals in real time, it’s useless,” he said.

“Today people know how home computers slow down when the kids get back from school and start playing games, but by 2012 that traffic jam could last all day long.”

Engineers are already preparing for the worst. While some are planning a lightning-fast parallel network called “the grid”, others are building “caches”, private computer stations where popular entertainments are stored on local PCs rather than sent through the global backbone. Telephone companies want to recoup escalating costs by increasing prices for “net hogs” who use more than their share of capacity.

Is it just a theory .. or will it become nightmare of technology …. only time will answer this question … in world of today , where applications are transforming them selves into web applications …. it will surely death call for them ….

from TimesOnline …

Njoy …

Supporting Piracy !!!

 

The convictions and prison sentences handed down to the defendants in The Pirate Bay case have prompted Sweden's youth to action. The Pirate Party reports booming support as demonstrators turn out in force on Saturday.

The Pirate Party organized demonstrations against the convictions at several cities across Sweden on Saturday. More than 1,000 people turned out in Stockholm to show support for The Pirate Bay defendents and the practice of file sharing.
"We young people have a whole platform on the internet, where we have all our social contacts - it is there that we live. The state is trying to control the internet and, by extension, our private lives," said Malin Littorin-Ferm of the party's Ung Pirat youth league to the assembled crowd in Stockholm on Saturday. Since the Stockholm district court passed judgment on April 17th the Pirate Party confirmed on Saturday afternoon that its membership has swelled to 21,000. The party's youth league is now, with its 10,000 members, larger than all of the parliamentary party youth organizations.
To claim seats in the European parliament, to which elections will be held on June 7th in Sweden, the party must gain at least four percent of the vote and the support of Sweden's younger voters will be crucial to achieving this.
In the last European parliamentary elections the Swedish voter turnout was a mere 27 percent.
The debate around file sharing and the future of the internet has piqued the interest of many young people and could increase the voter turnout among the unusually large number of first time voters, concluded Henrik Oscarsson, a political scientist at Gothenburg University.
"If they can mobilize their passive support to the voting booth on June 7th then voter turnout could increase among this group. It is a long way to the four percent threshold," he pointed out.
The Pirate Party's leader Rickard Falkvinge is confident of the attraction of the party's platform.
"These citizens have never previously had a significant issue with which to become involved. It is not that politics does not interest young people - it is that the former generation's problems and political solutions do not interest the youth," he said.

Just a day before this demonstration … Internet service providers refuse to cooperate with an entertainment industry group's demand to shut down The Pirate Bay. The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) is demanding that Pirate Bay website be shut down.
But Internet service providers (ISPs) refuse to cooperate, reports the Svenska Dagbladet newspaper.
Neither has the judgement slowed down file sharing. Several minutes after the Stockholm District Court delivered the verdict, almost ten billion files were being downloaded.
The ISPs maintain that the ruling doesn't apply to them.
"In part, this is not a legally binding decision, but above all, this is a judgement against Pirate Bay and nothing that effects any service provider. We will not take any action (to block) the contents if we are not compelled to do so," Patrik Hiselius, a lawyer at Telia Sonera, told Svenska Dagbladet. Bredbandsbolaget and Com Hem had the same reply. Jon Karlung, managing director of Bahnhofs, said the judgement does not change anything.
"We will not censor sites for our customers; that is not our job. I am against anything that contradicts the principle of a free and open Internet."

By reading all these news , it seems that these pirate guys will not be convicted … or even if they will be , then they will not be charged notably … which will be not good , because it will encourage more piracy all around the world !!!

 

from theLocal ….

Njoy …

Access any Hard Drive from internet …

 

PogoPlug, available in North America as of today, is a cheap, straightforward, single-purpose device that aims to transform network-attached storage into an appliance. It combines any old USB hard drive with your existing Internet connection, and then, voila: everything delicious and convenient about network-attached storage is now within reach.

What is network-attached storage, you ask? It's any device that makes a hard drive available on a network and/or the Internet. Having a network-attached storage device means you can: access all your music, movies, and critical documents, no matter where you are; back up your important files to a single location; and share all your photos, media, and anything else with friends -- without the intervening step of uploading them to YouTube, Flickr, etc.

Here's how it works.

The PogoPlug is $99, and no bigger than the wall plate for a light switch. It resembles an oversized wall wart (like the one hanging off the end of your cell phone charger).

By design, it's dead easy. You plug it into the wall, and into your home router via an ethernet cable, and then into an external USB 2.0-compatible hard drive (or even USB thumb drive) which you've probably got sitting around anyway (and if you don't, they can be had very cheaply).

Go online, register your PogoPlug, and voila --  the drive connected to the PogoPlug is now accessible via my.pogoplug.com. No setting up IP addresses for your home server, or tunneling through your firewall, or needing a spare computer to use as a media server --  all of that is taken care of by a combination of firmware in the PogoPlug and an independent back-end service running on Cloud Engine's own servers.

And this is what it does.

Aside from all the things that any network-attached storage device is capable of, the PogoPlug does a number of nifty things, including automatically generating thumbnails for your media and transcoding video on the fly so that it can be streamed to remote devices without you having to wait for the whole thing to download first.

There's even an iPhone application in case you want to, say, access to every vacation photo you've ever taken, ever. Or swap out your tired playlist for some new music, even if you're in Aruba and your hard drive is in Saskatchewan.

Sharing files with friends is even easier --  you just punch in their email address and the PogoPlug software emails them a link; they don't even have to register. There's no backup software specific to the PogoPlug, though, which, unfortunately, means backing up is still a drag-and-drop operation.

Because it's based on the ultra-low-power Marvell chipset (Marvell works with the same ARM chips that show up in cell phones and portable gaming devices like the Nintendo DS), the PogoPlug draws fewer than 5 watts of power. Most external hard drives are smart enough to turn themselves off after a pre-set period of inactivity, so together the two devices aren't going to draw a lot of power unless you're hitting the server all day long --  even then, it's a lot less than the 20-100 watts that would be required to run a full-blown laptop or tower-based server.

If you want to get really crazy, Cloud Engine's engineers have apparently created an API for the PogoPlug. This means you could access it from any other website, thus making it a DIY media server. However, that would mean that your home or apartment would then be a DIY colocation facility, which is fine if you're sharing baby pictures but not so great if you're hosting business-critical files. Either way, it's nice to have the versatility, and it probably means hackers will come up with a number of cool, off-label uses for the device. 

Njoy …

Bill Gates’ own Facebook page !!!

 

 

 

i am sure that Bill Gates … or even anyone mentioned in this facebook page … really does have it … but just imagine , how Mr. Gates would be doing if he really had it …

again from my same fav. site … geeks are sexy …

Njoy …

Are we really ready for Cloud ??

All the data that make up our lives seem to be heading for the clouds. From photos on Flickr to memos on Google Docs, we are entrusting more and more to computers in giant data centers—a model called cloud computing. It's certainly convenient to have access to our stuff wherever we are and on whatever device we choose. But is it safe?

There are two kinds of risks in putting your data online. One is that you can never be quite sure who has access to your information once it has migrated beyond the hard drives and backup storage devices in your home. The other risk is that the information, and sometimes the applications you need to make use of it, may be available only when you are connected to the Internet and the service is up and running. These twin dangers are now abundantly obvious to users of a collaborative Web-based word-processing program called Google Docs. Google recently notified its users that a software glitch had allowed some subscribers unauthorized access to "a very small percentage" of these documents, which are stored on Google's servers.

The security of data stored in the cloud varies with both the design of the system and how well the safety measures are implemented. Some services encrypt information both in transit and in storage in such a way that only the owner can decrypt it. These services are generally the most secure against either accidental or malicious disclosure—though your information can be lost forever if you lose the password. In general, services that allow Web access to data from any computer are riskier than more restrictive systems, and those that allow the information to be shared among a group of users pose even greater hazards.

Sometimes you have control over this—for example, by declining an option that lets you access your data from a Web site. This choice is available on many online backup services and can be handy if, say, you are on the road and need to get a file that's on your home or business computer. But clearly that access increases the risk that your information could be exposed to third parties.

The security practices of cloud storage systems are usually described in the fine print of their security and privacy policies, but in practice it's difficult to assess safety. Corporations run security audits to gauge the practices of cloud computing operations, but this is beyond the reach of individuals or smaller businesses. The simpler course for most of us is to think before committing data to the cloud. Those photos from the family trip to Disney World ? No problem. But the term sheet for a proposed merger or acquisition should probably stay encrypted on a hard drive that you control. Anything in between? Just consider how much embarrassment or trouble it would cause in the wrong hands.

The issues of getting to your online data are less serious. The growing ubiquity of wireless services means there are fewer and fewer places where you can't get on the Net if you need to. Wi-Fi is even slowly creeping onto airplanes, the last wireless frontier.

Will your cloud service be there when you need it? Google got a lot of unwelcome attention recently when its Gmail service was unavailable for about three hours. Back in the days of the Ma Bell monopoly, AT&T promised 99.999% availability, which allowed a bit over five minutes of downtime a year. But "five nines" of reliability is fabulously expensive. Google promises its corporate Google Apps customers 99.9% uptime, which leaves room for outages of nearly nine hours a year. The fact is, most enterprises don't deliver higher reliability on their own systems; the difference is that outages on big public services get publicity.

Ultimately, putting your data in the cloud involves choosing convenience and productivity at the cost of some security risk. In the real world, convenience almost always wins, and there's nothing wrong with that. What's important is that you understand the dangers.

from BusinessWeek …

Njoy …

EVERY LINK YOU CLICK IS DANGEROUS !!!!

 

Well , title seems to be a bit more paranoidal … i should say …. every link you click can be dangerous ??? or simply … don’t click randomly ??? …. what ever it is … but the essence of the story is as follows …. from one of my fav. sites ….

Magic tricks are all about suggestion, psychology, misdirection and showmanship (see Tricks of the Mind), or as Cutter perhaps will say, every magic trick has tree parts: the pledge (where the magician shows you something ordinary), the turn (where the ordinary becomes something extraordinary), and the prestige (where the extraordinary turns into something you have never seen before).

In a similar way, real world information security breaches are combination of the characteristics you will often find in the performance of skillful magicians. Therefore, allow me introduce you to a simplistic form of an attack, perhaps so simple that in fact it may work far more often than we would like to admit, which skillfully uses suggestion, psychology, misdirection and a great doze of showmanship.

So, we’ve all heard of clickjacking and we know that it is a design bug and therefore it is very hard to deal with. However, are there other flawed areas of modern browsers design which can be abused? Of course there are. It just takes time to find them all because they are often well hidden underneath our common believes, ignorance and prejudice. Here is some code

<html> <body>

<script>

function clickme() {

var w = window.open('http://www.google.com');

setTimeout(function () { w.location = 'http://www.gnucitizen.org'; }, 5000); }

</script>

<input type="button" value="click me" onclick="clickme(this)"/> </body> </html>

 

Quite boring! I agree. First of all the user clicks on a button/link. Then a new tab/window opens which loads the content of http://www.google.com. Five seconds later, the newly created tab is preloaded with the content of http://www.gnucitizen.org. Do you find this code disturbing? I do. It is disturbing because it breaks the trust relationship that is going on between the user and google.com in this specific example. Call it surfjacking, framejacking,tabjacking or whatever you want to call it, but at the end of the day, I believe that this is just yet another form of bad design.

Here is another example. You browse the web, you click to digg a story, you get redirected to digg.com to login. SSL looks fine. The browser lights up all green. It is OK to type your username/password and you do. In the background, the page which initially took you to digg.com waits for you to login. It subsequently queries the digg.com login page for changes in the DOM structure by using script tags and error handlers to capture different error code offsets (check AttackAPI), and as such it tries to detect when you are fully logged on. It does these checks every half a second. Once a successful login is detected, it simply fires w.location = "some evil url here"; which will force the browser to render something else, perhaps something malicious, instead of the page that should have came after a successful authentication. Perhaps, the evil caller could even fire just a simple alert('Hey there!'); message as a form of misdirection and than return back the control with another w.focus().

Would you check the address bar again? Perhaps not, because the page which was forced onto you now contains similarly looking digg.com login page accompanied with some red and quite scary looking text which tells you that your login was unsuccessful. This is the psychology. The attacker uses the red color to distract your from the address bar so that you put all of your attention into the login form. You cannot escape your instincts. The forms screams at you that all you have to do is to fill in your username and password and everything will be fine again. You rush to fill in your credentials again. Your request is recorded. A 302 redirect fires back and the browser redirects you to your digg.com account like nothing has ever happened. This is the prestige.

As far as I know, although I might be wrong, this form of an attack is new. It is definitely not devastating and it wont break the Web. However, my honest opinion is that it does break a lot of things. For example, it breaks the user’s normal surfing experience. The good news is that there is an easy fix. Simply put, do not allow pages to redirect windows which are preloaded with content from a different origin! We fix this, we save the Web again.

from GNU Citizen …

Njoy …

US-CERT Advisory for Conficker worm …

 

HISTORY …

Conficker, also known as Downup, Downadup and Kido, is a computer worm that surfaced in October 2008 and targets the Microsoft Windows operating system. The worm exploits a previously patched vulnerability in the Windows Server service used by Windows 2000,Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7 Beta, and Windows Server 2008 R2 Beta . The worm has been unusually difficult for network operators and law enforcement to counter because of its combined use of advanced malware techniques.

Although the origin of the name "conficker" is not known with certainty, Internet specialists and others have speculated that it is a German portmanteau fusing the term "configure" with "ficken", the German word for "fuck !!!".  Microsoft analyst Joshua Phillips describes "conficker" as a rearrangement of portions of the domain name 'trafficconverter.biz'

Four main variants of the Conficker worm are known and have been dubbed Conficker A, B, C and D. They were discovered 21 November 2008, 29 December 2008, 20 February 2009, and 4 March 2009, respectively.

SYMPTOMS …

• Account lockout policies being reset automatically.
• Certain Microsoft Windows services such as Automatic Updates, Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS), Windows Defender and Error Reporting Services disabled.
• Domain controllers responding slowly to client requests.
• Unusual amounts of traffic on local area networks.
• Websites related to antivirus software becoming inaccessible.

EFFECTS …

Experts say it is the worst infection since 2003's SQL Slammer. Estimates of the number of computers infected range from almost 9 million PCs to 15 million computers.The initial rapid spread of the worm has been attributed to the number of Windows computers—estimated at 30%—which have yet to apply the Microsoft MS08-067 patch.

Another antivirus software vendor, Panda Security, reported that of the 2 million computers analyzed through ActiveScan, around 115,000 (6%) were infected with this malware.

Intramar, the French Navy computer network, was infected with Conficker in 15 January 2009. The network was subsequently quarantined, forcing aircraft at several airbases to be grounded because their flight plans could not be downloaded.

The U.K. Ministry of Defence reported that some of its major systems and desktops were infected. The worm has spread across administrative offices, NavyStar/N* desktops aboard various Royal Navy warships and Royal Navy submarines, and hospitals across the city of Sheffield reported infection of over 800 computers.

On 13 February 2009, the Bundeswehr reported that about one hundred of their computers were infected.

A memo from the British Director of Parliamentary ICT informed the users of the House of Commons on 24 March 2009 that it had been infected with the worm. The memo, which was subsequently leaked, called for users to avoid connecting any unauthorized equipment to the network.

IN NEWS !!!

As of 13 February 2009, Microsoft is offering a $250,000 USD reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the individuals behind the creation and/or distribution of Conficker.

On 24 March 2009, CIRA, the Canadian Internet Registration Authority, locked all previously-unregistered .ca domain names expected to be generated by Conficker C over the next 12 months.^[35]

On 31 March 2009 NASK, the Polish national registrar, locked over 150,000 .pl domains expected to be generated by Conficker C over the coming 5 weeks. NASK has also warned that worm traffic may unintentionally inflict a DDoS attack to legitimate domains which happen to be in the generated set.

Message , FROM United State Computer Emergency Readiness Team …

Conficker/Downadup worm, which can infect a Microsoft Windows system from a thumb drive, a network share, or directly across a corporate network, if the network servers are not patched with the MS08-067 patch from Microsoft.
Home users can apply a simple test for the presence of a Conficker/Downadup infection on their home computers. The presence of a Conficker/Downadup infection may be detected if a user is unable to surf to their security solution website or if they are unable to connect to the websites, by downloading detection/removal tools available free from those sites:
http://www.symantec.com/norton/theme.jsp?themeid=conficker_worm&inid=us_ghp_link_conficker_worm
http://www.microsoft.com/protect/computer/viruses/worms/conficker.mspx
http://www.mcafee.com
If a user is unable to reach any of these websites, it may indicate a Conficker/Downadup infection. The most recent variant of Conficker/Downadup interferes with queries for these sites, preventing a user from visiting them. If a Conficker/Downadup infection is suspected, the system or computer should be removed from the network or unplugged from the Internet - in the case for home users.
Instructions, support and more information on how to manually remove a Conficker/Downadup infection from a system have been published by major security vendors. Please see below for a few of those sites. Each of these vendors offers free tools that can verify the presence of a Conficker/Downadup infection and remove the worm:
Symantec:
http://www.symantec.com/business/security_response/writeup.jsp?docid=2009-011316-0247-99
Microsoft:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/962007
http://www.microsoft.com/protect/computer/viruses/worms/conficker.mspx
Microsoft PC Safety hotline at 1-866-PCSAFETY, for assistance.
US-CERT encourages users to prevent a Conficker/Downadup infection by ensuring all systems have the MS08-067 patch (seehttp://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/Bulletin/MS08-067.mspx), disabling AutoRun functionality (see http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/techalerts/TA09-020A.html), and maintaining up-to-date anti-virus software.

 

currently this worm is set to get active at 1st April , 2009 ( TODAY !!! ) … and yet nobody knows what’s it upto … lets hope people come with some sound solution to this perhaps the most notorious virus in history of viruses !!!

 

Njoy …

parts from … US-CERT  and Wikipedia …

Online Banking Fraud is at its peak !!!

 

Software allowing fraudsters to track what you type led to the level of online banking fraud more than doubling in 2008, according to a banking body.

Fraudsters use a device called keylogging - when keystrokes on a computer are tracked to gather passwords and credit card numbers.

Online banking fraud jumped to £52.5m last year, up from £22.6m in 2007, said UK payments association Apacs. Total fraud losses on UK debit and credit cards rose by 14% to £609m. Most victims of card fraud are not liable, so their money is refunded.

Malicious programs

Online banking has become increasingly popular in recent years, with consumers becoming more comfortable using their home computers rather than queuing at branches.

But fraudsters tend to adapt to new technology more quickly than consumers, so online banking fraud losses have been rising steadily in recent years. The £52.5m stolen from accounts in 2008 compares with £12.2m in 2004. Malicious computer programs, including those that track what users type without their knowledge, generally find their way onto computers when users click on an unsolicited e-mail. "The industry continues to remind customers to ensure that they have their computer's firewall switched on and anti-virus software up to date," said an Apacs spokeswoman.

Targeting cards

UK credit and debit card fraud had been falling following the introduction of chip-and-pin, but in 2007 and 2008 the figures have started to rise again. The biggest area of card fraud continued to be with goods bought over the internet, phone or by mail order - where chip-and-pin was not used. Fraud levels in these instances rose 13% to £328m. The most significant rise in 2008 was when criminals took over other people's accounts, known as card ID theft, with losses up by 39% to £47.4m.

Apacs said that, although card fraud losses had increased during the last year, losses as a percentage of card turnover were falling, dropping to 0.12% of turnover in 2008 from 0.14% in 2004. The group also stressed that over the last five years, the most rapid acceleration in fraud has not been in the UK, but by fraudsters using UK cards overseas. This was usually in countries where chip-and-pin technology was not in place. Apacs said it was putting pressure on countries such as the US to introduce chip-and-pin.

Anyone in the UK who is a victim of fraud is not liable, under terms outlined in the Banking Code. As long as they have not acted fraudulently or without "reasonable care", they will be reimbursed if somebody uses their card, steals it, or clones it. The code says that if somebody uses a card before it is reported lost or stolen, or somebody knows a Pin, then the victim could have to pay the first £50 that is lost.

from UK.BBC

Njoy …

Hackers start P2P Bank !!!

 

The hacking community and open source hardware developers have joined forces to create a funding source.
Usually when you think "open source", software comes to mind. However, in the background, the open source hardware market is booming.
The concept is great -- eventually there will be specs published for a variety of hardware ranging from graphic cards and CPUs to laptops and desktops. Anyone who wishes will have the ability to take the designs and build upon them. This would allow for individuals to make money based on free designs, while also giving back their improvements to the community that they've benefited from.
The downside is that open source hardware development needs a lot more money than software, due to the physical materials needed for test builds, and the services of the specialized plants used to build chips and printed circuit boards.

Hardware enthusiasts often find that they have a difficult time securing funding for their projects.
When Justin Huynh and Matt Stack met at a New York event they found that they had a major common interest: open source hardware. Huynh works as a pharmaceutical consultant and saw a need for community-funded open source projects. Huynh and Stack have now opened the Open Source Hardware Bank which they will utilize to fund hardware projects. Details of the bank and its concept are laid out in Stack’s blog.

Their new bank will work to raise capital from hardware enthusiasts and then share the wealth with developers. Much like any other social network or community, this group will work to finance one another. Currently the two manage the bank using Open Office Calc and a statistics program called R. Eventually they want to take the banking online via their website and provide a list of funded projects. "This speaks to the rise of the do-it-yourselfer, someone who is not just a consumer but also a producer, inventor and investor," Huynh told Wired.com. "But someone also ought to be thinking about the money problem when it comes to open source hardware and we are doing just that."

The Open Source Hardware Bank wants to deliver freedom from two financial issues faced by hardware developers: throwaway costs that come from having to repeatedly revise a product during the development process and the unfortunate inability to take advantage of reduced rates that come when one purchases in bulk.
Each project which the bank funds is provided with the funds to build twice as many units as there are potential buyers. This doubles the number of units which are developed, thus reducing production rates by 10 to 30 percent for each unit. The bank received some of its inspiration from peer-to-peer lending sites like Prosper and Zopa. Prior to the current credit crisis these sites delivered borrowers and investors with a connection tool that acted as a secondary market for funds and investments.

Currently, the Open Source Hardware Bank is not fully open for business. Additionally it is not yet a federally regulated lending institution. With 70 lenders signed up with the bank it does allow individuals with interest to make investments in specific products and then ideally reap the benefit of a 5 to 15 percent return for the successful project sales. For developers the bank is capable of delivering funds which could significantly reduce their project costs and push them to continuously be ingenious and create. For investors these returns are much greater than those you’ll find anywhere else in today’s economy.

The lenders are given their returns based on rolling six-month averages, meaning that projects that do not take off will be offset by those which flourish. The bank owners feel that it won’t take but a few deals to make great money and with the community which it is developed around being both knowledgeable and dedicated to their craft great projects will be funded with ease.

How Open Source Hardware Bank tells you to invest:

The SEC has many regulations which involve peer-to-peer lending and they are not always simple or cut and dry. Currently Open Source Hardware bank is working through these issues. Regardless the company is in business and ready to work.

from … APC Magazine …

Njoy …

10 reasons to not to switch to LINUX !!!

 

My eyes caught this nice post on one of my regular visit site , this guy is explaining why one should not switch to LINUX …

1) You shouldn’t switch to Linux because… you actually enjoy paying for an operating system that is so mired with bugs and issues that it shouldn’t be even released as an alpha build. What recession?

2) You shouldn’t switch to Linux because… change is always scary. Look at Obama, he scares the shit out of me. I voted for him but he always talks about change and change is always scary even if that change will make things better.

3) You shouldn’t switch to Linux because… the only thing you use your computer is to play games. I mean people still use computer for anything other than games?

4) You shouldn’t switch to Linux because… You love to dedicate one whole day of your week just for scanning purposes. Anti-virus scan – Spyware Scan – Defragmentation scan – Registry Scan & defrag. What Fun!

5) You shouldn’t switch to Linux because… You love to pay for Anti-virus/spywares (with yearly subscription renewal) for protection that the OS should provide you in the first place. Even though Windows Defender does a fabulous job, its just not there yet.

6) You shouldn’t switch to Linux because… most people use Windows. If most people use windows it must be good!

7) You shouldn’t switch to Linux because… you realize that nothing lasts forever. Eventually your windows will succumb to a BSOD, while Linux has its version of kernel panic, you might have to wait couple of years to experience it, if at all.

8) You shouldn’t switch to Linux because… you LOVE Internet Explorer and you can only use the latest version of Internet explorer on windows. Imagine going online without IE?

9) You shouldn’t switch to Linux because… you have to be a geek to use Linux and we all know that geeks don’t have girlfriend.

10) Last but not least. You shouldn’t switch to Linux because… you don’t want to be a conformist and do what everyone tells you to do. You want to be unique, which is why you want to use windows. Oh wait…

from linuxhexor …

Njoy …

Nearly Half the Hard Drives on EBay Hold Personal Data !!!

 

 

EBay … one of my favorite place to buy computer junk online with good price and options … just like many people around the world …

Recently a New York computer forensics firm found that 40% of the hard disk drives it recently purchased in bulk orders from eBay contained personal, private and sensitive information -- everything from corporate financial data to the Web-surfing history and downloads of a man with a foot fetish.

Kessler International conducted the survey over a six-month period, buying up disk drives from the United States and Canada ranging in size from 40GB to 300GB. The firm, which completed its survey about two weeks ago, bought a total of 100 relatively modern drives, the vast majority of them serial ATA.

"With size of the sample, I guess we were surprised with the percentage of disks that we found data on," said Michael Kessler, CEO of Kessler International. "We expected most of the drives to be wiped -- to find one or two disks with data. But 40 drives out of 100 is a lot."

While Kessler's engineers had to use special forensics software to retrieve data from some of the hard drives, others contained sensitive data in the clear, having never been overwritten or erased. The data included personal documents, financial information, e-mails, DNS server information and photographs.

"The average person who knows anything about computers could plug in these disks and just go surfing," Kessler said. "I know they found a guy's foot fetish on one disk. He'd been downloading loads and loads of stuff on feet. With what we got on that disk -- his name, address and all of his contacts -- it would have been extremely embarrassing if we were somebody who wanted to blackmail him."

Kessler said his company specifically avoided buying drives whose sellers indicated they'd been erased.

Kessler International broke down the kind of data it retrieved this way: Personal and confidential documents, including financial information, (36%); e-mails, (21%); photos, (13%); corporate documents, (11%); Web browsing histories, (11%); DNS server information, (4%); Miscellaneous data, (4%).

"We were more concerned with searching for people's identification, which is what we found, but we were surprised by all the corporate spreadsheets and business finance records we found," Kessler said.

The forensics firm even found one company's "secret" French fries recipe, Kessler said.

In recent years, hard drives have shown up on eBay that contain all kinds of sensitive data. In April 2006, Idaho Power Co. learned that drives it thought had been recycled had actually been sold on eBay with data still intact. The Boise, Idaho-based utility had used the drives in servers; when bought on eBay, they still contained proprietary corporate information such as memos, customer correspondence and confidential employee information.

well i think it may be true for all sites that sell old HDDs … it may contain personal information … and i think for this user may need something more then just disk formatting tool say … drive scrubber ?? … which can even re-write tracks and sectors of HDD which makes almost impossible to recover data from formatted HDD !!!

 

Njoy …

Google mistakenly calls entire Net malicious !!!

 

A typing mistake led search giant Google last weekend to briefly classify the entire Internet as potentially malicious.

On Saturday morning of last day of month , every search result began to display the "This site may harm your computer" link that Google uses to flag potentially malicious sites. The search company quickly fixed the issue and stated in a blog post that human error caused a flawed update to its list of bad sites, resulting in every Internet site being classified as dangerous.

"We periodically update that list and released one such update to the site this morning," Marissa Mayer, vice president of Google's search products and user experience, said in a blog post. "Unfortunately — and here's the human error — the URL of '/' was mistakenly checked in as a value to the file, and '/' expands to all URLs. Fortunately, our on-call site reliability team found the problem quickly and reverted the file."

The StopBadware project, which maintains criteria that Google's uses to create its own filters, clarified a misperception in many media reports that the list used by Google comes directly from StopBadware.

"The mistake in Google’s initial statement, indicating that we supply them with badware data, is a common misperception," the statement said. "We appreciate their follow up efforts in clarifying the relationship on their blog and with the media. Despite today’s glitch, we continue to support Google’s effort to proactively warn users of badware sites, and our experience is that they are committed to doing so as accurately and as fairly as possible."

Google stated that, because its updates are staggered, the problems should have lasted only about 40 minutes for any particular users. However, in a separate blog post, the company added that the block list is also used in its spam filters, so legitimate messages may have been classified as spam. Google is currently reviewing all filtered messages to return legitimate e-mail to its recipients' inbox.

 

Njoy …

Net Neutrality Tools from Google & group !!!

 

Its been in news from long time that IPS were throttling some particular type of network traffic such as BitTorrent …  and also there was many online tools with which’s help you can find out weather your ISP is throttling Torrent Client or not … but i think its an interesting thing to mention that , Google is now it the field !!!

Google and a group of partners have released a set of tools designed to help broadband customers and researchers measure performance of Internet connections. The set of tools, at MeasurementLab.net, includes a network diagnostic tool, a network path diagnostic tool and a tool to measure whether the user's broadband provider is slowing BitTorrent peer-to-peer (P-to-P) traffic. Coming soon to the M-Lab applications is a tool to determine whether a broadband provider is giving some traffic a lower priority than other traffic, and a tool to determine whether a provider is degrading certain users or applications.

"Transparency is our goal," said Vint Cerf, chief Internet evangelist at Google and a co-developer of TCP/IP. "Our intent is to make more [information] visible for all who are interested in the way the network is functioning at all layers."

The tools will not only allow broadband customers to test their Internet connections, but also allow security and other researchers to work on ways to improve the Internet, Cerf said. Current Internet performance tools "are geeky to the extreme," he said during a Washington, D.C., forum on the M-Lab tools.

The M-Lab project, launched Wednesday, comes after controversy over network management practices by Comcast and other broadband providers. Earlier this month, two officials at the U.S. Federal Communications Commission questioned why Comcast, the largest cable modem provider in the U.S., was exempting its own VoIP (voice over Internet protocol) from traffic congestion slowdowns, but not offering the same protections to competing VoIP services.

The set of tools will allow broadband customers to measure their providers' performance, said Michael Calabrese, director of the Wireless Future Program at the New America Foundation, a think tank involved in the M-Lab project. Consumers "deserve to be well-informed" about their broadband performance, he said.

Some of the M-Lab tools have already been released, but participants in the project plan to further develop the tools and host them on servers around the world, added Sascha Meinrath, research director at the Wireless Future Program. All the M-Lab tools will be released under open-source licenses, allowing others to modify and improve them, he said.

People on either side of a debate on whether the FCC or U.S. Congress should develop network neutrality rules should welcome the tools, said Ed Felten, director of the Center for Information Policy and a computer science and public policy professor at Princeton University. It took months for policymakers to gather solid information on Comcast's network management practices, but net neutrality advocates can use the tools if they suspect broadband providers of interfering with traffic.

"If you believe that network neutrality government regulation is not needed, if you believe that the market will handle this ... then you should also welcome Measurement Labs," Felten said. "What you are appealing to is a process of public discussion ... in which consumers move to the ISP [Internet service provider] that gives them the best performance. It's a market that's facilitated by better information."

However, one ISP industry source, who asked not to be identified, questioned whether the tools would accurately point to the cause of broadband problems. Spyware or malware on computers can affect browser performance, and problems with the wider Internet can cause slowdowns, the source said.

The M-Labs partners seemed to bypass broadband providers when putting together their tools, the source added. "It may appear that issues that are occurring off an ISP's network may be the ISP's problem," the source said of the tools. "It's important for groups like this to collaborate, not only among themselves, but also with ISPs."

from … CIO

Njoy …

Internet Web has been finally connected !!!

It sounds a bit weird right ?? … but if you are into heavy internet use then you must have always felt that there is something missing in internet … still internet is not convenient … still doesn’t have all-in-one web service … right ??

For example , You’re writing an email to invite a friend to meet at a local San Francisco restaurant that neither of you has been to. You’d like to include a map. Today, this involves the disjointed tasks of message composition on a web-mail service, mapping the address on a map site, searching for reviews on the restaurant on a search engine, and finally copying all links into the message being composed. This familiar sequence is an awful lot of clicking, typing, searching, copying, and pasting in order to do a very simple task. And you haven’t even really sent a map or useful reviews—only links to them. This kind of clunky, time-consuming interaction is common on the Web, because there’s no easy way other than copy-and-paste to get your data between one web-application and another. Its kind of advanced Mashup , a web 2 replacement of Portal .. right ???

Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

I found something amazing research is going on at Mozilla Labs , they call it , Ubiquity … an application / add-on to firefox that will connect and allow users to use many different web services and combine them together !!! its still in beta phase , but it really looks promising to me … ( i am not critic , so please don’t consider my words seriously ) … Mozilla Labs define ubiquity as ,

• Make it extremely easy to Extend browser functionality, and share new functionality with other users.
• Enable on-demand, user-generated mashups with existing open Web APIs. (In other words, allowing everyone–not just Web developers–to remix the Web so it fits their needs, no matter what page they are on, or what they are doing.)
• Empower users to control the web browser using a natural-language-like command interface. (With search, users type what they want to find. With Ubiquity, they type what they want to do.)
• Use Trust networks and social constructs to balance security with ease of extensibility.

but i should say , it requires a bit of advance computer knowledge , because to perform any task you are required to write down certain commands which you have to remember …

Njoy …