U.S. NetworX

I’ve been following two large-scale events over the last month that look straight out of the movies or some Tom Clancy-type techno-thriller. Let’s look at both today.

Call a plumber, you have a WikiLeak

Most likely you’ve heard/read about WikiLeaks and all things associated with it. From the hosting of U.S. State Department cables between countries, to Julian Assange’s arrest for alleged sex crimes, all the way up to a community-based distributed denial of service attacks … it’s been a wild ride.

Here are some recent recaps of what’s been going on:

New York Times’ series on the cables and diplomatic reactions to the content

Der Spiegel’s coverage

El Pais’ extended reporting

NYT’s primer on the WikiLeaks site and related developments

Swedish documentary film about the WikiLeaks organization

An anti-nuclear worm unleashed by a spy agency?!

Less known than all of the WikiLeaks drama is the Stuxnet mystery. This “worm” is being investigated as a possible weapon designed for subtle damage to specialized industrial equipment: centrifuges used to purify materials for possible nuclear weapons. It appears to have been spread via a USB memory stick and looks to be targeting high-level industrial locations and factories. Taking that a step farther, there are some hints in the worm’s code that might connect it to Israel as being the developer.

Now for the big disclaimer: none of this has been proved yet, but how are those JFK conspiracies going?

Here are some reports on the Stuxnet worm:

F-Secure security group runs through a (sometimes funny) Q/A review

CBS reports that Iran says Stuxnet stopped their centrifuges

Fox News does a good job wrapping the details together

I’m going to try something different this time: a post of some interesting links I’ve read or heard vs. one long post. Let’s see how this works out.

Where does social media fit into marketing prescription medicine?

I heard this going home the other day, about the FDA investigating how pharmaceutical companies are using social media tools to promote their wares. I did appreciate the point of (and I’m paraphrasing) “we’re not promoting sneakers” but prescription medicine via Facebook. But I do worry that people feel comfortable in taking complete strangers’ medical advice over seeing their doctor.

What happens to a deceased user’s Twitter account?

Twitter has a new policy page to handle such a situation. The social media tool can either remove the account or provide the user’s tweets to family members. Read on for a comparison of what Facebook offers for deceased users’ accounts, as well – it’s not the same as Twitter. (I don’t know about you, but there are some Twitter posts I don’t think my parents would appreciate. Sorry, Mom and Dad.)

Breaking news: If you’re cute, you’ll have more success on online dating sites

Sorry for the sarcasm, folks, but here we have some good data that backs up the “Well, DUH!” nature of this topic. The OkTrends blog is connected to the OkCupid.com dating website, and is used to take their dating data (say that 10 times fast) and provide a thorough analysis of what they record. And this time they’ve looked at users’ images and compared them to their dating activity. It just goes to show that if you have suitable data from a website, there are amazing things you can do with it.

If you have extra time, their blog tackles other online dating research such as popularity of age groups, what to say in your messages, and a whole lot more…but with real data to back it up.

And now for something completely different…

Enough serious and topical discussions; it’s time for a laugh. Our topic this time? The top 10 signs and warnings your hosting company won’t be around next year.

1. The CEO’s email ends in @gmail.com, @aol.com, or an ISP’s domain, like @comcast.net or @bellsouth.net
2. Their website has an animated stick figure wielding a shovel with the words “Under Construction!” blinking under it.
3. You get a popup that suggests you download the company’s official screensaver.
4. Their contact page doesn’t work and the phone number has been disconnected.
5. You see a note that the website was “Optimized for Internet Explorer version X, at Y by Z resolution.”
6. They swear up and down you’ll have unlimited disk space and/or bandwidth.
7. They recommend adding a publicly viewable counter to your site design so you can track visitors.
8. Once you load their website, music auto-plays. And it’s probably unlicensed.
9. The English language isn’t their primary tongue. Or secondary, for that matter.
10. They have a MySpace page.

It’s looking like there’s enough of a growing backlash of Facebook users who are concerned for their privacy, that an open-source challenger is being developed.

Profiled in the New York Times, Diaspora* is promoting itself as a locally grown social media platform. The idea behind the new platform is to answer (or even fix) privacy concerns Facebook users are bringing up, plus allowing a distributed approach to social data. (A recent Wired article delves into Facebook’s changing privacy model.)

Installing what the four-man team of developers call “seeds,” users will collect and combine whatever data you want to feed it, but with more control over who gets to see what. You can still have your Facebook account and your own Twitter feed, but via Diaspora* you have a more customized approach to pushing that data to other users.

So how popular is the idea? The team’s funding goal was $10,000, which was met in 12 days. As of May 13, they were up to a shade over $90,000, backed by over 2,100 donors.

The Diaspora* team is aiming for a September launch.

I’ve given two of Google’s products a spin recently, and here are some thoughts and notes I’ve collected. By no means am I CNET-caliber in covering online technology, but an above-average Internet user. So maybe I have an idea of what to expect and how things should work.

The Chrome browser

At home, I was frustrated with the slow download of photos from a photographer’s website. I had previously tried Chrome at home (Hey, that rhymes!) when it was released, but I deemed it too buggy and some sites didn’t react too well to it, so I returned to Firefox.

With the current version of Chrome, though, the speed increase over an updated Firefox was noticeable. Chrome loaded more quickly and didn’t stall and eventually crash like FF did. Winner, winner, chicken dinner! With that result, I’ve started using Chrome at the office as my go-to browser. It’s only crashed once on me; probably the good ole PEBKAC issue.

The other bonus for me was the search function, especially when I need to find a word in a long post or list of links. Firefox does it well enough, but I noticed that Chrome not only highlights the word, but also adds little notches in the vertical scroll bar to help say, “Hey! Look! Go up HERE to see another instance!”

Only thing I’ve seen as an issue with Chrome was a Flash website that took longer to run and didn’t match the look of the same site in Firefox. Honestly, I don’t know how much of that is a Chrome bug vs. that site developer not taking Chrome into consideration.

Verdict: It’s worth a try if you feel like experimenting with a browser that’s Internet Explorer or Firefox. There is a speed difference in your favor, too.

Next time: Google’s Wave

I met with a company yesterday who told me a horror story of the time that their server crashed with all of their accounting and historical information on it.  They were doing tape backups every week, but guess what?  When the tapes were accessed, nothing was on them!  They were able to get some files back to the tune of $11,000 dollars, but most of the information was corrupted and completely unusable.

In a world of earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, fires and more, I urge everybody -  BACKUP YOUR INFORMATION, preferably in a secure data center.  Most of us have experienced that horrible dismay of realizing not only has your computer crashed, but you haven’t backed up in months.  Imagine if that happened to your entire organization’s information!

Do yourself a favor now, TODAY – double-check your backup processes.  If they are insufficient, contact your hosting company immediately to get this resolved.  Your entire company’s information could be wiped out in a matter of minutes.

In light of recent economic occurrences (we’re in a recession — or not, depending on who you listen to), it’s understandable to keep a tighter rein on the company funds.  However, don’t sacrifice cost-efficient ways to promote your business, i.e.  your website.  Now, I know I am in the web business, but the facts speak for themselves:

1.  An e-commerce site is waaaaayyyyy more affordable than a brick and mortar store.

2.  Why spend a fortune for an ad in a magazine or newspaper or a television commercial that only a few people will see a limited amount of times, when you can have a website that is available globally 24-7?

3.  Yellow Page ads?  You’re still doing those?  What happens if your ad gets printed wrong (happened to us!)  They’re not going to print a retraction, you know.  You’re stuck with it a whole year.  If you’re going to advertise in the Yellow Pages, at least do it online!

4.  How many of you store owners are working at midnight?  Okay, maybe some of you.  But with an e-commerce store, you can sell while you sleep.  If you’re like me, you work in your sleep anyway, might as well get something out of it.

5.  How many of you that have websites have a way to edit the content?  If you don’t, then call your web developer today.  Talk about an inexpensive way to promote your company – just a little bit of your time.

These are just a few facts.  I’ll add more as I think of them.  And, if you have some cost-saving tips of your own, shoot us an email or give us a call!  I’ll post them on our blog!

That’s what Microsoft researcher, Gordon Bell, said about storing details of our lives on a computer instead of in our heads -  and, he’s serious!  Microsoft is actually working on this contraption called a SenseCam that hangs around your neck capturing everything in your daily life.  Then, you would just keep all of that information on a computer so you can relive it later.

Imagine if we could upload all the information in our brains to a computer (for some of us, that wouldn’t take very long).   We could relive it all and show our kids and grandkids what we were really like (I’d password protect a large portion of mine!).  And, of course, we’d have to be able to access this information at anytime using our cell phones.  We could find out where we left our keys and where our car is in the mall parking lot.  Wow!

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I was reading today about how The Wall Street Journal is going to start charging people to read the paper on mobile devices like iPhones and Blackberrys.  I guess it’s no secret that the newspaper industry has taken quite a hit with the success of the Internet.

The WSJ currently requires an online subscription to be able to read their news from the website, and it is reportedly pretty successful, however I think it will be interesting to see how the mobile version of this is received by users.  If it is, which news media will be next?  Maybe there will come a time when paper becomes obsolete.

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