Inside Facebook on the discovery of a couple of new functions in Facebook Platform’s
API (the set of hooks provided by Facebook for third-party developers
building their own applications) which hint at additional features,
which could put Facebook in much more direct competition with
professional networks such as LinkedIn, as well as eat away at the
unique selling point of social networks like Multiply, which emphasize user privacy and access controls for a user’s different social groups.

The new functions: friends.getLists and
friends.getListsMembers, suggests that Facebook may be about to roll
out the ability for users to group their Facebook friends into
categories such as ‘professional’, ‘family’, ‘close friends’ etc., from
which different levels of profile access could be applied. The next
logical step would then be to add some of the functionality of a
dedicated professional social networking site (LinkedIn, for example)
in a way that would allow for a user’s social and professional online
presence to be kept separate, but both hosted and managed within
Facebook.

From Inside Facebook:

This could dramatically simplify privacy controls. Right
now, users manage privacy settings per-feature or by managing their
Limited Profile list. The addition of Friend Lists means one can now
much more flexibly and powerfully manage privacy settings per List.
Work friends see one portion of your profile, personal friends see
another, best friends see yet another.

This will be a welcome change for everyone whose LinkedIn networks
have migrated to Facebook. Consequently, this could mean accelerated
LinkedIn attrition: per-Friend-List privacy settings could
substantially decrease the need of many to actively maintain their
LinkedIn accounts as well.

As I’ve mentioned in a previous post (’LinkedIn vs Facebook: room for both?‘)
my social network on Facebook already mirrors (and surpasses) my
professional network on LinkedIn. All that is required to negate much
of the need to ever log-in to LinkedIn again is the option to group
Facebook “friends” into defined categories, with different levels of
access and some specific professional networking features. With regards
to the latter, many third-party Facebook apps already exist which add
features designed to support professional networking or mimic key
LinkedIn features such as recruitment, Q&A, resumes etc. In fact,
LinkedIn itself launched a Facebook app
to enable company job openings to be advertised through Facebook
(although, users have requested much greater integration between the
two networks).

If Facebook does add functionality to make it easy for users to add
a degree of separation between their social and professional networks,
as well as a public-facing ‘resume’ type page (which can be viewed
without needing to be logged-in), then I find it hard to see how
LinkedIn etc. will stay relevant.

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Technorati Tags: design, personal, social network, man

Using NASA satellite imagery, researchers at the University of South Florida (USF) in St. Petersburg have found that it is possible to monitor coastal water quality.
This means that water quality can be checked daily rather than monthly
as done by traditional methods which involves expensive boat surveys.
This information can be crucial for resource managers devising
restoration plans for coastal water ecosystems. According to the
researchers, this method can be applied to coastal waters worldwide
with little changes — providing that resource managers have access to
data from NASA satellites.

You can see above images showing that water quality of Florida’s
Tampa Bay decreases in winter months compared to summer. More particles
suspended in the water, a measure called turbidity, show up as yellow,
orange and red in December (left image) than in July (right). Images
are composites of turbidity data collected in December and July,
respectively, over a span of three years using NASA’s MODIS instrument.
(Credit: NASA/USF) Here is a link to a larger version of these pictures.

This research work has been done at the Institute for Marine Remote Sensing (IMaRS) at the University of South Florida in St. Petersburg. The project was led by Frank Müller-Karger, Professor and Director of the Institute, with the help of Chuanmin Hu, Assistant Research Professor and Executive Director, and of Zhiqiang Chen, a Post-doc Research Associate.

Here is how NASA describes the utility of this research work.
“The team’s findings will help tease out factors that drive changes in
coastal water quality. For example, sediments entering the water as a
result of coastal development or pollution can cause changes in water
turbidity – a measure of the amount of particles suspended in the
water. Sediments suspended from the bottom by strong winds or tides may
also cause such changes. Knowing where the sediments come from is
critical to managers because turbidity cuts off light to the bottom,
thwarting the natural growth of plants. ‘If we can track the source of
turbidity, we can better understand why turbidity is changing. And if
the source is human-related, we can try to manage that human activity,’
says Frank Muller-Karger.”

Observing turpidity was previously done with the help of boat
surveys. NASA satellites are changing the process. “Satellites
previously have observed turbidity in the open ocean by monitoring how
much light is reflected and absorbed by the water. The technique has
not had much success in observing turbidity along the coast, however.
That’s because shallow coastal waters and Earth’s atmosphere serve up
complicated optical properties that make it difficult for researchers
to determine which colors in a satellite image are related to
turbidity, which to shallow bottom waters, and which to the atmosphere.
Now with advances in satellite sensors combined with developments in
how the data are analyzed, Chen and colleagues show it is possible to
monitor turbidity of coastal waters via satellite.”

Now, let’s see how the USF researchers have done to check the
coastal waters of Tampa Bay. “To determine water clarity in Tampa Bay,
the team looked at more than eight years of imagery from GeoEYE’s Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor (SeaWiFS)
instrument, whose data is analyzed, processed and distributed by NASA
for research. The images give a measure of how much light is reflected
by the water. The data were put through a two-step calculation to
arrive at a measure of clarity. Similarly, data from NASA’s Moderate
Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument onboard the Aqua satellite was compared with measurements of turbidity gathered on the ground and then applied to each whole image to make the maps.”

This research work has been published in two separate papers in Remote Sensing of Environment.

• Monitoring turbidity in Tampa Bay using MODIS/Aqua 250-m imagery (Volume 109, Issue 2, Pages 207-220, July 30, 2007)
• Remote sensing of water clarity in Tampa Bay (Volume 109, Issue 2, Pages 249-259, July 30, 2007)

Sources: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center news release, via EurekAlert!, August 29, 2007; and various websites

You’ll find related stories by following the links below.

• Environment
• Geosciences
• NASA
• Sensors
• Space

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Technorati Tags: web, news, man

Three people have written to me in the last 10 days asking about
Intel Core Duo CPUs vs. Intel Core 2 Duo CPUs. I figured it was time to
tackle the topic on the blog.

Intel’s really to blame here for a
horrific naming convention. Any half-conscious marketing executive
would commit suicide before putting both a numeral 2 and the word “duo”
in the name of a product, particularly when there’s also a product with
“solo” in the name. But let’s put that aside and look at the specs of
each.

Core Duo is Intel’s first dual-core CPU. It’s a whole new
architecture for Microsoft, using two cores on a single die, which, put
simply, gives you two chips in one package. Running at lower speeds
than the old Pentium line, the Core Duo conserves substantial power vs.
ratcheting up clock speed while offering what was, at the time,
record-breaking performance.

Now there’s Core 2 Duo. In many ways
Core 2 is the same as Core: The chips are built using the same
production process and fit in the same sockets as Core Duo chips.
Putting aside Core 2 Extreme (a fancy version of the Core 2 Duo), you
won’t see many spec changes: Both chips have the same frontside bus
speed of 667MHz, but Core 2 Duo is now available at somewhat faster
clock speeds (as I write this, 2.67GHz chips are available). The
frontside bus communicates between the CPU and RAM (and other
components), and it’s a notorious performance bottleneck for computers.
The Core 2 also has the same L2 cache that the Core has. However, there
are architecture changes to the silicon that give the Core 2 more
sophisticated processing abilities. Both chips exist in desktop and
laptop versions.

Why does all of this matter? Performance, pure
and simple. In my tests, Core 2 Duo computers outperform Core Duo
computers on tasks across the board, from rendering graphics and video
to spell-checking documents. The speed improvement varies widely, but
on average it’s about 30 percent. That’s significant in an industry
that thrives on tiny, incremental improvement. Better yet, there’s not
an appreciable difference in battery life on notebooks, as power
consumption for both chips (at the same clock speed) is about the same.

Now
let’s consider pricing. Initially, Core 2 chips were more expensive
than Core, but that has changed, as Core is practically gone from the
desktop market now. Surprisingly, you can now get a 2.13GHz Core 2 CPU
for less than the price of a 1.66GHz Core CPU.

Still, expect to
see some systems still on the market that use the Core CPU, especially
in laptops. Performance is still very good with Core, so don’t feel
like you’re getting second-class goods if you buy a Core Duo notebook,
but remember you are buying a chip that Intel is no longer actively
selling, and prices for Core 2 systems aren’t really any different than
they were for Cores. If it was my money, I’d hold out for a Core 2
system unless you got a great deal on a Core… which will be all but
vanished from the market in a matter of months.

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Technorati Tags: money, blog, life, man, microsoft

Add Trend Micro, Check Point Zone Labs and ClamAV to the long list of security products that put end users at risk of malicious hacker attacks.

The three vendors have all acknowledged various security
vulnerabilities in a range of desktop and server products that could
lead to arbitrary code execution, privilege escalation or
denial-of-service conditions.

Trend Micro, which specializes in virus protection software, has issued patches for ServerProtect and the PC-cillin suite.

[SEE: Can you really trust your security vendor? ]

The ServerProtect update, rated “moderately critical” by Secunia,
covers boundary errors and integer overflow errors that could be
exploited to launch harmful code on a vulnerable installation. Two
separate alerts from iDefense (here and here) outline the details and potential risks.

iDefense has also discovered about a remotely exploitable buffer overflow in Trend Micro Inc.’s SSAPI Engine that could allow attackers to execute arbitrary code with system level privileges.

The latest black-eye for security vendors has also affected Check Point Zone Labs. From an iDefense alert:

Local exploitation of an insecure permission
vulnerability in multiple Check Point Zone Labs products allows
attackers to escalate privileges or disable protection.

The vulnerability specifically exists in the default file Access
Control List (ACL) settings that are applied during installation. When
an administrator installs any of the Zone Labs ZoneAlarm tools, the
default ACL allows any user to modify the installed files. Some of the
programs run as system services. This allows a user to simply replace
an installed ZoneAlarm file with their own code that will later be
executed with system-level privileges.

Exploitation allows local attackers to escalate privileges to the
system level. It is also possible to use this vulnerability to simply
disable protection by moving all of the executable files so that they
cannot start on a reboot.

ClamAV, the open-source anti-virus toolkit recently acquired by Sourcefire, has also struggled with security problems that could lead to sudden denial-of-service crashes. Secunia rates the ClamAV issues as “moderately critical.”

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myDots « 

Technorati Tags: software

Overview: Cisco Solutions Simplify Business Communications IP
Communications solutions have proven value in helping organizations
address a host of communications challenges, enabling them to
streamline business processes and reduce costs. For years, companies of
all sizes have been realizing the benefits that a common IP
infrastructure for all voice, data, and video communications can
deliver. Today, with the Cisco Unified Communications system of voice,
video, and IP Communications products, those benefits are greater than
ever. Instead of simply connecting products, the Cisco Unified
Communications system provides structure and intelligence to help
organizations integrate their communications more closely with business
processes, and ensure that information reaches recipients quickly,
through the most appropriate medium.

(Is this item miscategorized? Does it need more tags? Let us know.)

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Technology « 

Technorati Tags: business

Do you know about Google Updater?
There is a good chance you have it installed on your computer already
as it’s bundled with other Google products like the browser toolbar.
Well, in what seems to be an obvious attempt to steal even more users
away from Microsoft Office products, Google just added “StarOffice” to
the the list of available downloads that can be installed and updated
automatically through Google Pack. If you download it directly from
Sun, it will cost you around $70, however Google appears to be giving
it away for free — or at least there isn’t a nag screen or an obvious
way to upgrade to a full version.

Web applications like Google Docs are very useful in many
circumstances, but for power users who need, or prefer, a fat client to
do their work — there was no real choice but to keep using Microsoft
Office if they don’t know about this suite.

StarOffice, which includes their own version of Access, Excel, PowerPoint and Word, is developed by Sun — but Google has been throwing resources at it
since October, 2005. I am going to assume there is a plugin under
development that lets users create documents on their PC and
synchronize them with their online counterpart through Google Docs.
StarOffice already has hooks into Google’s search and desktop
capabilities.

It should be interesting to see if this move helps Sun get more
exposure for StarOffice. What do you think? Are you surprised Google
made this product available through the Google Updater? Will this
affect Microsoft in any way?

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Technorati Tags: google, download, free, man, microsoft

I just finished Chris Dawson’s piece, My anti-Mac bias rears its ugly head,  and it bought to mind a friendly discussion
I had with one of my colleagues just yesterday about my favorite ‘red
herring’ — the perpetual claim that the Mac mini is Apple’s answer to
entry-level computing.  Of course, this red herring is a circular
argument that goes something like this …

(First, let me freely admit that now that Apple uses
Intel processors, and has invested significant sums of money supporting
“Windows-on-a-Mac”, that Dell and HP price-points are nearly identical
to Apple’s when comparing hardware, ahem …  “apples-to-apples”.  {8^)

Windows guy: 

“I can buy a decent dual-core Dell system with Windows Home Premium on it for under $600.”

Mac guy: 

“You should buy a Mac mini for $599 instead.”

Windows guy: 

“If I want to add an Apple-branded display, mouse,
and keyboard, it’ll cost me more than for a new iMac — and the iMac is
more powerful.  Besides, for $600, the Dell comes with a 20″ monitor
and keyboard/mouse, just like the iMac.”

Mac guy:

But you can use the monitor and keyboard that you already have.

Windows guy:

I need new ones anyway — and they are included with the Dell.

Mac Guy: 

“But the Mac mini has better graphics.”

Windows guy: 

“Dell’s graphics card upgrade is only $50 and the Dell has twice the HD space.”

Mac guy:

“But the Mac mini has better multimedia software.”

Windows guy:

“I don’t need to do anything with multimedia except
tweak some photos and listen to music and watch videos.  Windows Home
Premium does everything I need.”

Mac guy:

“But, but but …”

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tags « 

Technorati Tags: free, money, software

So it is, now, with Microsoft. All the respect shown Big Green at Linuxworld can’t mask the fact that its era is ending, that in time the open source model will triumph.

Jim Zemlin spent this week pointing out some of the good things about the Microsoft era, like its support and organization, which Linux vendors can’t yet match.

But in time they will. In time we’ll look back on the Linux-Microsoft war and wonder what all the fuss was about.

That time is coming sooner than anyone in Redmond thinks.

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myDots « 

Technorati Tags: linux, microsoft

Though it’s not specific to Gmail, or easily exploitable by users
outside your network, a session hijacking demonstration by Robert
Graham showed hackers how to take over a users email account by simply
sniffing network traffic and stealing cookies. In the demonstration,
George Ou volunteered an email address
he created to be hacked into — and it didn’t take long. Within seconds,
the attacker was able to use a point-and-click interface to get access
to this account and send a message from it.

The demonstration highlights how easy unsecure network traffic can
make for some very simple session hijacking. One way you can avoid
having your Gmail account taken over by people on your network is to
use the SSL version — be warned though, any website that relies heavily
on cookies for authentication remains vulnerable.

If you don’t have Greasemonkey installed, or you still use Internet Explorer, get used to typing “https://www.gmail.com”
to check your email — doing this will safeguard yourself from prying
eyes through network sniffing. If you have Firefox, you can install this Greasemonkey script to ensure your session always remains in “secure mode”.

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Google « 

Technorati Tags: web, internet

Google is looking to pay out
some very decent commissions to Americans that become “Google Business
Referral Representatives”. How much are they looking to spend? Well, up
to $10 dollars for each business identified. It’s not hard work either
— pull up to a business, take some pictures, and write down some
information (like the address). You could rattle through tens or
hundreds of businesses per day depending on how hard you work.

Now, let’s put this into perspective. According to a quick Google
search, there are over 24 million businesses in the United States
today. If this number is accurate, Google must be prepared pay out
between $48 to $240 million dollars for this information. If I had as
much money as Google, I would wonder why it took me so long to figure
this one out. This is loose change when you consider they are spending
several billions on companies like YouTube and DoubleClick — and the
quality of information they will get will be top notch.

Exactly a year ago, minus about a week, I suggested that Google do this very thing.
Last August, they launched “Google Coupons”, a service that I thought
could be useful if businesses actually knew about it. I doubt they
explicitly listened to me, but I’m glad they decided to give this a
shot — I really do think it’s the best way to get the word out to local
businesses.

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Google « 

Technorati Tags: google, business, money, youtube