Author Archive | David Worthington

Facebook Takes Another Page from Twitter’s Playbook

Posted by David Worthington on June 25, 2009 at 4:46 pm

Facebook LogoFacebook insiders are reporting that a beta version of the site’s “publisher” allows users to choose whether anyone on the Web can view their status updates. Can you say “Twitter?”

What would be interesting would be to see Facebook separate its events stream from the rest of the site, essentially creating a Twitter clone. It could then focus on letting developers build services that piggyback on top–targeting one of Twitter’s strengths. 

Regardless of how aggressive it plans to be, I’ve been continually impressed by Facebook’s ability to evolve itself to remain relevant. It went from being a static social networking site that offered basic messaging capabilities to a site that is focused on actions, events, and mobility. Friendster and MySpace were too late to adapt, and lost their luster.

Earlier this month, Facebook made user names available to its users as a replacement for the random string of numbers that used to represent people. These are all small steps in the right direction that preserve what I like about Facebook while selectively adding what’s best about Twitter.

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Is the iPhone Accident Prone? Survey Says: Not Much!

Posted by David Worthington on June 23, 2009 at 8:23 pm

Falling iPhoneA TechCrunch article citing research by SquareTrade, a company that sells insurance plans for smartphones, says that Apple’s iPhone is “an accident magnet.” I wouldn’t have drawn that same conclusion.

SquareTrade’s report, “One-Third of iPhones Fail Over 2 Years, Mostly From Accidents,” should be viewed with skepticism. For starters, while SquareTrade used  a sample of many thousand smartphones covered by its warranty products, it didn’t cleanse its data (for instance by removing unlocked phones), and performed no statistical tests. Rightfully, the report includes the disclaimer:

SquareTrade has made efforts to ensure that the data we present is correct. SquareTrade makes no warranty, express or implied, about the accuracy of the data. SquareTrade is an independent third party, and has no affiliation with any of the handset manufacturers cited in this study. Users of the information in this document acknowledge that SquareTrade cannot be he liable for any damages whatsoever to any individual, organization, company, industry group or representative arising from the use of this data.

TechCrunch seized on the report’s findings that over 20% of iPhones have been damaged in the last 22 months, with cracked screens being the leading cause of damage. But the SquareTrade report doesn’t report on damage rates for other phone models, so it’s impossible to judge whether iPhones are any more likely to crack (or croak altogether) than other brands. Phones, after all, are more likely to get dropped than desktop PCs, HDTVs, or printers–no matter who manufactured them.

The study does say that iPhones are “significantly more reliable” than phones manufactured by Palm and RIM (9.9% of iPhones cited in the survey malfunctioned, versus 15.3% of BlackBerry and 19.9% of Treo phones). And it says that the iPhone 3G is a more reliable handset than the original iPhone.

My statistics are a bit rusty, but a common test called a T-test would have shown whether there was any significance difference between the iPhone’s likelihood of being damaged versus its competitors. The same goes for its supposedly higher manufacturing quality. Bottom line: It’s worth thinking twice before drawing conclusions about the iPhone from a single survey or news report. Colorful graphs always don’t tell us much.

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Google: “We’re Still Cool.”

Posted by David Worthington on June 22, 2009 at 4:37 pm

Google has take a small step toward making it possible for computers to recognize landmarks in the physical world. Today, its researchers presented a paper at the Pattern Recognition (CVPR) conference in Miami, Florida that conceptualizes a technology to automatically tag locations within images.

It might not coincidental that Google is hyping its research not long after Microsoft launched its Bing “decision engine.” It needs to show that it is still the cool kid in the classroom.

A Google blog entry about the paper reads: “To be clear up front, this is a research paper, not a new Google product, but we still think it’s cool. For our demonstration, we begin with an unnamed, untagged picture of a landmark, enter its web address into the recognition engine, and poof — the computer identifies and names it: ‘Recognized Landmark: Acropolis, Athens, Greece.’ Thanks computer.”

When Bing earlier this month, the New York Post hysterically blustered about “fear gripping” Google, and co-founder Sergey Brin suposedly ordering “urgent upgrades” to its service. It is doubtful that fear is gripping Google, but Bing is snagging Google’s headlines.

Google’s research is just that– research. The company has not created any revolutionary process that is going to change the world anytime soon. What it’s doing is creating buzz, and it clearly wants to continue to be seen as the innovator of the search market.

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Microsoft Subsidizes iPhone 3G S

Posted by David Worthington on June 19, 2009 at 6:28 pm

File this one under “irony”‘ Microsoft’s is providing an incentive to purchase Apple’s iPhone though its Bing marketing campaign. In an attempt to entice users to try its Bing search engine, the company is offering 35% discount for AT&T’s online store, which sells iPhones.

When Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said that Apple’s iPhone had “no chance” of gaining significant market share, no one would have expected that Microsoft would lend a hand one day.

The discount is valid for both existing and new customers. However, it is not immediately deducted from the purchase price for AT&T customers. Happy shopping. Could I also interest you in some Bing merchandise?

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iPhone 3.0 is a Giant Security Rollup

Posted by David Worthington on June 18, 2009 at 8:07 pm

In the countdown to iPhone 3.0, users were not just waiting for the ability to cut and paste: Apple was sitting on a slew of critical security fixes. CNET is reporting that the iPhone 3.0 software update fixes 46 security vulnerabilities, and I’m not the least bit surprised.

While some teams at Apple may have security expertise, the company lacks a holistic company-wide approach to secure development. The company practices security through obscurity, hoping that hackers will not exploit bugs if that do not know about them, which is not security at all.

Earlier this month, Security expert Rich Mogull sharply criticized Apple for falling short on protecting its customers. He recommended that Apple adopt a security development life cycle (SDL) process that a handful of companies, including Microsoft, implemented several years ago, and share with third party developers.

The number of security vulnerabilities found in Microsoft’s product have dropped markedly, because it changed how it makes its software. No code can be shipped out of Redmond unless it has gone through the SDL process. Apple is another story.

If left unpatched, the iPhone is as exposed as the broad side of a mountain. Twelve iPhone components are exploitable ranging from its Mail application and Safari browser down to lower level graphics and telephony stacks.

Apple’s saving grace is that it controls the iPhone’s application ecosystem, and it’s harder for malware to reach users . It has said that it evaluates apps against security criteria, but I wonder how comprehensive that process is in light of its disjointed vetting process. Maybe it has just been lucky.

In March I called for Apple to assist its developers to write secure Apps for the iPhone. I repeat that call, and am upping the ante by challenging Apple to share its internal processes for secure development (if those processes are even mature enough to share).

I love my iPhone, and own several Apple computers, but I’m not in love with Apple’s halfhearted approach to security.

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Twitter Proves Its Worth

Posted by David Worthington on June 16, 2009 at 4:04 pm

twitterlogoA 140 character message lacks the iconography of former Russian president Boris Yeltsin speaking from atop a tank during the 1991 Soviet coup attempt, but Iranian twitters are nonetheless staging courageous acts. The clandestine tweets have inspired sympathizers from around the world to act in solitary by changing their location to Tehran to mask protesters’ identities.

The circumstances were very different in 1991, but cable news and radio played an important role in thwarting a coup by soviet hardliners. Cable news was the new media of the day, and coup planners were either unwilling or unwilling to stop domestic and international broadcasts that may have contributed to the plot’s failure.

Today, Twitter is being leveraged to baffle the old guard. The Iranian government shut down Facebook, but Twitter has remained in operation, and protesters have used the hashtag “#IranElection” to organize. People are attempting to overwhelm Iranian censors by changing their locations, so that the tweets (and Tweeters) will not be silenced (or harmed).

The U.S. State Department did its part by asking Twitter to delay scheduled maintenance that would shut down the service during crucial daylight hours in Iran.

If there was ever a justification for Twitter’s existence,  this is it. Tweets can be as banal as someone saying what they had for breakfast, or they can be a means for people to stand up for their beliefs.

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Does Piracy Make Music Better?

Posted by David Worthington on June 12, 2009 at 10:42 pm

Sometimes roundabout logic does makes sense. A BBC feature article published today is arguing that illegal file sharing has exposed a generation of artists to a infinity of influences that makes today’s bands better, strengthening the music business.

Robin Pecknold, who is the lead singer of the band “Fleet Foxes,” told the BBC that file sharing helped him discover music that inspired him–music which he may not have otherwise heard. “As much music as musicians can hear, that will only make music richer as an art form,” Pecknold told the BBC.

I can’t argue with him (well, aside from the stealing part). The Internet has revolutionized music discovery. It is shocking that the music industry never envisioned that broader exposure to music through the Web could yield some positive developments. Where were the music lovers in the business when the industry stood opposed to the Web?

Don’t get me wrong, something had to be done about Napster. There was a substantial loss of intellectual property happening, and piracy is not excusable. However, there was another way: The industry could have embraced the medium instead of going to war with grannies.

That tactic has been successful before. DVDs are a good example of copyright holders working in partnership with technology companies. It’s an obvious conclusion, but the music industry has made some major missteps with how it has handled the Web. Maybe the pirate artists will help save it.

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Another DTV Transition Cost: Tech Trash

Posted by David Worthington on June 11, 2009 at 9:23 pm

Tomorrow the United States will finally make the transition to digital television. The government went to great expense to ensure a smooth transition, and planned it for years. But what happens to all those aging TVs when people toss the rabbit ears and decide to buy a new set?

The answer: no one really knows. CBS ran a report called “The Electronic Wasteland” on “60 Minutes” in November 2008 that tracked some of the tech trash back to rural areas of China. Children were found with high levels of lead in their blood, and played in toxic ash. Government officials, gangsters, and economically disadvantaged people were complicit in hiding the activity.

E-waste from cell phones, monitors, and PCs contains cadmium, chromium, lead, mercury, and PVCs. CBS’s report said that the U.S. municipal waste stream contains 130,000 computers a day, and 100 million cells phones per year. Those toxins can lead to cancer, lead poisoning, and kidney disease. Tha’s why there are recycling centers, right?

As it turns out, even some recycling programs are fraudulent. Last month, an environmental group called Basel Action Network (BAN) uncovered a recycling scheme that was sponsored by the Western Pennsylvania Humane Society. The tech trash that was supposed to be recycled was tracked to international shipping containers.

That violates domestic and international law that is supposed to protect developing nations from environment discrimination.

We spent billions to keep our TVs broadcasting, why not spend money to manage toxins? Here’s a thought: hardware makers should be required to receive and process their old products, and you and I should absorb some of that cost.

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How iPhone 3G S’s Better Graphics Complicate Matters for Developers and iPhone Owners

Posted by David Worthington on June 10, 2009 at 3:28 pm

I’ve had several computers that were less powerful than the iPhone 3G S. My Intel 486 machine was bleeding-edge at the time, but could not compare to the ones like my 300-MHz Pentium powered PC that I owned just a few years down the pike. iPhone owners will soon experience a similar phenomenon, and some apps in the App Store will be off limits to anyone that doesn’t have the latest Apple hardware.

The iPhone 3G S has a 600MHz CPU, 256MB of RAM (my family’s Commodore 128’s clock speed was about 4 MHz, and it had 128KB of memory). The graphics processor in the 3G S is the PowerVR SGX (same as the Palm Pre) that supports OpenGL ES 2.0 3D graphics–meaning, it would blow my old desktop PCs out of the water.

The iPhone 3G only supports version 1.1 of the OpenGL ES specification. It’s possible to write an iPhone app that provides basic graphics on an iPhone 3G and better ones on an iPhone 3G S, but many developers may not bother. That means owners of the iPhone 3G will not be able to run applications and games with souped-up graphics. An increasing number of applications will be off limits, essentially being roped off into a VIP section of the App Store. How that will affect application development is an open question.

My take is that developers will need to decide which version of the iPhone they will be targeting. With Apple offering the iPhone 3G for $99, its market share will ostensibly increase–especially if Apple opens up to another domestic carrier in the U.S. Developers have finite resources, and will have to pick one or the other.

Consequently, there may not be many advanced games available for the 3GS  for some time. Over time, the number of 3G S owners will hit a critical mass, and developers will target it more often. If I was buying the 3G S simply so that I could play more advanced games, I wouldn’t be in a rush to get one.

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Facebook to Implement User Names

Posted by David Worthington on June 9, 2009 at 5:20 pm

Facebook LogoFacebook announced today that user names will become available at 12:01 a.m. EDT on Saturday, June 13. Save the time and date: Legions of homebodies with nothing better to do will be the first in line for the land grab.

If someone wants to find out what I’m up to on Facebook, they have to log in and search for me unless they know the random string of numbers that represents me. Whereas Twitter already has easy to remember user names that people can type into their browser (I’m twitter.com/dcworthington).

This is a welcome improvement, and it complements Facebook’s strategy of focusing more on its users’ stream of events. I’m equally happy that it still requires people to use their full names when they register for an account. That protection adds a measure of trust, which many be one of the reasons why I am not spammed on Facebook. I get spammed on Twitter, and now to a lesser extent, Myspace. Adding user names is that latest of many smart decisions Facebook has made to evolve itself.

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