Widgets

A lot of people were sceptical when two gigantic investment firms, Fidelity and T. Rowe Price paid $50 million or a 9.1% stake in Slide, a San Francisco-based company best know as the purveyor of entertainments like SuperPoke, which allows Facebook users to ‘slap’ or ‘punch’ their friends. Slide was built using a portion of Slide CEO Max Levchin’s fortune when he sold PayPal, which he co-founded, to eBay for $1.5 billion. Some people believe that Slide and its ‘widgets’ could be the long-awaited solution to the problem that has been plaguing everyone in the business of selling ads on the Internet.

 

Widgets are small, self-contained programs that can be plugged into a web application like a blog or social network. The widget factory Levchin built is considered a giant in the world of widgets. It is now the largest in the world in terms of users. It is no doubt that widgets are important when you use Facebook or MySpace because those are what make social networks more enjoyable! Where in the world do you get to ‘ninja kick’ your friend without breaking their ribs and putting your friendship on the rocks?

 

Since the usage of most of the widgets is free, then where is the money, I hear you ask. Slide CEO offers you two answers. The first has to do with the changing nature of the web. According to TIME magazine, online search only accounts for 6% of what people do when they go online. So what else do they do? Even though there are a lot of people spending more and more time on MySpace, Facebook and other social networks, they are not a loyal bunch. They tend to flock towards the newest and hottest thing and will not look back again. But whenever they go, they’ll find Slide’s widgets, which can be programmed to work anywhere with just some minor adjustments.

 

Levchin’s second answer has to do with how a company measure the success of their ads. The metric most ad buyers, including Google, use does not work so well when friends are trading virtual kicks and punches with each other and Levchin thinks he has the solution, which he calls ‘engagement’. He can mine that database of 50 million active widget users for all kinds of behavioural data. Unfortunately, engagement does not exactly appeal to the people of Madison Avenue. Most advertisers still continue to price ads by the number of people who view them. So if people view the ad, the more expensive it is. Still, engagement seems to be catching on, albeit slowly.

 

So what do you think of these widgets?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pros and Cons of Computer Gaming

Ten years ago, when you write ‘gaming’ as your hobby, you would probably be getting blank stares. But nowadays, I dare say that gaming has definitely become one of the top hobbies among teenagers. With more and more games popping up everywhere like Half-Life, Medal of Honour, PS3 etc, one should not be surprised by the amount of people being ‘lured’ as they are able to choose their favorite games from a myriad of sources with different themes. While teenagers think of them as a way to kill boredom, most parents think of these games with a vengeance. Instead of doing useful things like revising the newest chapter taught in school or helping mum cook dinner, they waste their spare time sitting in front of a glowing screen, possibly getting backaches and sore eyes.

 

But parents, playing games on the computer has its good effects as well as its bad influences. Researchers have discovered that playing these games actually improves the hand-eye coordination of the players, enhances their logical thinking skill and makes them more alert to little details that take a non-player longer time to notice. War strategies found in certain games help them to think more logically, educational games assist in their communication and problem solving skills, alertness and so on. Teachers have also found improvement in mathematics, reading and spelling skills of those students. These students can process visual information thirty percent faster than non-gamers and generally score better in eye tests.

Researchers of University of Rochester have recruited some gaming fanatics and performed two tests. In the first test, an image would appear on a video screen for 1/160th of a second, after which the subjects were asked to locate where they had seen the image on the screen. In another test, twelve images were shown for a fraction of a second and the subjects were asked to assess how many images they had just seen. The gamers had shown a higher accuracy in answering correctly than non-gamers. 

Before the gamers open champagne and celebrate, the bad side of spending too much time on playing games is very real as well. Some of the games are extremely violent in nature, and it has a rather huge negative impact on the young minds. Apart from this, spending too much time on the couch or the bed playing these games will also result in obesity, which in turn leads to other illnesses like diabetes. Other than that and the usual eye strain, wrist and neck pain, playing the game for too long will also result in headaches, hallucinations, muscle and nerve damages. Gaming does help to develop the brain, but instead of developing it uniformly, it only develops the sections related to vision and detecting movements. Specialists have also confirmed that children who spent too much time on those games also have a much higher chance of developing a bad posture and also cause disequilibrium in their daily routine. To cure these problems will not be an easy process as they might have to go through simple relaxation exercises or even undergoing physiotherapy and also hydrotherapy treatment.

 

What do you think of computer gaming?

 

Cybercrime

The cyberattacks that bombarded Estonia, knocked out the websites of government departments, political parties, media groups and banks of the world’s most wired countries, according to TIME magazine. The sophistication of the attacks was unprecedented, and it marked the first time the power centers of a country were targeted simultaneously. The attacks began on April 27, when the Estonian authorities removed a controversial war memorial from a park. The bulk of the strikes involved what are known as Distributed Denial of Service attacks, in which websites were overwhelmed by a number of requests for information far higher than normal, bringing the sites’ networks of servers and routers to a complete halt. On May 10, during the peak of the cyberattacks, hundreds of thousands of computers from all over the globe were barraging targeted Estonian websites with thousands of times the normal flow of data.

 

 

This should not be the cause of concern for the Estonians only, but to everyone in the world as well. The attacks have shown us how vulnerable the Internet is in the face of an assault. The “tools and instructions are readily available at low cost”, says Oliver Friedrichs, a director at the security response unit of Symantec, which makes it all the more easier to lay siege to targeted websites. According to timesonline.co.uk, the number of computer viruses has reached one million for the first time. Symantec has reported that just over 711,000 new viruses were discovered, an increase of 468 per cent on the number identified the previous year, and they are all capable of creating havoc. For example, the blasé and infamous Trojan e-mail attacks are used to purloin confidential data from secure networks. Free to perform tasks reserved only for the owner, the invader is able to steal passwords, upload documents and transmit new attacks.

  

 

Defending against these attacks is not all that easy either. Large companies have the modal to invest in state-of-the-art hardware that detects off patterns of requests for its websites and steer away from dubious ones. Smaller firms, however, will face problem to fend against these malicious attacks. They are not used to large volumes of traffic and they also lack the money to help face the onslaught of the incursions. Facing massive bombardments like what happened in Estonia, even well-equipped government networks can be brought down.

 

 

Head of the Asia Security Programme at the Royal United Services Institute in London, Alexander Neill worries that this kind of cybercrime, breaking into top-secret networks for reconnaissance, could serve terrorists logistics or research cells. Given their command and control over things, we are left with no doubt that the terrorists have experts capable of causing such damage. Fortunately, there is reason to assure us that the terrorists might not attempt the sort of online blitzkrieg experienced by Estonia. “Terrorism is about creating true fear with spectacularly lurid attacks,” says Oxford’s Zittrain. They would “rather do something physical.”  

 

What do you think of cybercrime and the problem it poses?      

 

  

DoubleClick

E-commerce marketing concept was the topic of the week for Development in Digital Business class. It talks about Internet usage, online consumer behaviour as well as marketing techniques to attract and retain the customers. One of the examples of the best known advertising network given during the lecture was DoubleClick and I think it would be fascinating to talk about it here =)  

According to DoubleClick itself, it is a provider of digital marketing technology and services. DoubleClick’s expertise in ad serving, rich media, video, search, and affiliate marketing help the world’s top marketers, publishers, and agencies to provide superior insights and insider knowledge to its customers.  

The three main aspects that DoubleClick is doing are: 

• Freeing you to focus on strategy and creativity
  • Integrate products to simplify and streamline your advertising sales, buying, operations and billing.
• Ahead of the market – then and now
  • DoubleClick has been on the forefront of the industry since 1996. Its Innovation Lab and R&D program are constantly developing new solutions.
• Where the world’s top publishers, marketers and agencies connect
  • DoubleClick works across industries, platforms, and around the world. 

 How DoubleClick works?

Headquartered in New York, DoubleClick’s vision of being an ad-serving company that understands their customers as well as the messages and offers that drive the best response has always been challenging.

DART for Advertisers is a comprehensive ad management and serving solution with the flexibility and scale to handle the entire scope of your digital marketing program. DART platform allows you to manage advertising campaigns in both current and emerging media with the introduction of seamless integration of display, search, rich media, and video.

DFA is a single solution to manage, traffic, serve and report on your complete online advertising campaigns. It saves time by handling manual and time-consuming tasks in managing your online ad campaigns. DFA’s sophisticated targeting ability allows the user to reach the intended audience.  

Despite its success, DoubleClick is often involved in the controversy over spyware. It uses HTTP cookies in the browser to track and record what commercial advertisements they view and select while browsing. According to a San Francisco IT consulting group, DoubleClick offers an opt-out page, which only affects the cookies. It continues to track users via IP address. 

IP address, domain, browser, local time and date, operating system, and page viewed are collected during creation of the customer’s profile. According to DoubleClick, the personal information stored in the DoubleClick servers belongs to DoubleClick’s clients and is used only for the purpose for which it is requested, and it generally uses the date only as a statistical or aggregate information source. They promised that they will not use the information that they could recognise as either sensitive or personally identifiable to target ads source. 

So do you now know why Google tried so hard to acquire DoubleClick? On 14^th April 2007, Google announced the acquisition of DoubleClick. However, it was only until on 11^th March 2008, the European Union regulators approved the purchase of DoubleClick. Google purchased DoubleClick for $3.1 billion in cash, making this by far Google’s biggest acquisition to date. Just so you know, Google acquired YouTube for only $ 1.65 billion in an all stock purchase.  

As I mentioned in the previous post, Google had “snatched” DoubleClick from Microsoft, which was also said to be considering an acquisition of DoubleClick. It was seen as a blow to Microsoft. As now software and “old media” content is moving online in ad-supported form, Microsoft is going to fall even further behind  in the ad-industry.  

What Google is doing with its adSense is selling ads whereas DoubleClick serves or delivers the ads. But why the sky-high price? The main reason is DoubleClick has something that Google does not have – a vibrant advertising business. Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, and Google co-founder and Technology President Sergey Brin have always emphasized on the importance of display advertising. David Rosenblatt, DoubleClick’s CEO, perceived that the market could be equal to – or even bigger – than paid search. 

Google is a minor player in display advertising industry as compared to Yahoo, AOL, and MSN. DoubleClick has contact with nealry every major online publisher and more than half of the online ad agencies. DoubleClick enables Google to complement their search and content-based advertising capabilities. By enabling AdSense network to work with DoubleClick, the advertisers are now able to obtain more accurate metrics in order to judge the effectiveness of their campaigns.  

Acquisition of DoubleClick has put Google in stronger position. Do you think this is the right move?

Mic-Goo? Mic-Ya? Ya-Goo?

The controversial issue about the bid that Microsoft places on Yahoo has sparked my interest to start a blog with this topic. Thanks to my friend, Salim, who has given me a few constructive idea on this area =)  

  

On 1^st February 2008, Microsoft has announced that it has made a proposal to acquire Yahoo! for $31 per share, which add up to a total equity value of approximately $44.6 billion. Yahoo! concluded that it is not their best interest of all as they believe that Microsoft’s offer undervalues Yahoo! global brand, large wide audiences etc. In February last year, Yahoo! already informed Microsoft that it was not for sale but would look for a way to cooperate to fight with Google. Microsoft’s proposal of the acquisition of Yahoo last month is said to be breaking its promise.

Having said that, Microsoft seems to stand firm to the decision and persistent on the proposal until today. 5 days ago, The Times has learned that Microsoft is going to aim for coup if Yahoo! fails to start serious talks or accept the bid within a week. According to the rules that govern the way in which Yahoo! is set up, any shareholder can nominate directors before the annual meeting. The deadline for this nominations is March 14. If Microsoft’s nomination is successful, the appointment will be made effective right away.

  

  

Regarding the combination of Microsoft and Yahoo issue, Google seems to be very concerned about the future of the Internet should the companies merge. David Drummond, chief legal officer of Google believes that the acquisition is not just about financial transaction, it is about preserving the underlying principles of the Internet: openess and innovation. Google raises the question on whether the PC software company will unfairly limit the ability of consumers to freely access competitor’s email, IM, and web-based services. Google also is borrowing a page from Microsoft’s book by urging antitrust regulators to take a hard look at the proposed marriage between its two rivals. Google is trying every way to delay the its approval as long as possible in order to have more time to draw a plan to counteract the acquisition.

Microsoft is eager and anxious to take control of Yahoo! because Google is dominating in today’s Internet scene.  Microsoft wants to dominate the online advertising market which is going to double its size in 2 years time. The Google’s DoubleClick purchase was seen as a blow to Microsoft, which was also said to be considering an acquisition of DoubleClick. Apart from that, Google Doc is threathening the existance of Microsft Office. Google Doc allows the creation of documents, spreadsheets, as well as presentations online. The best thing about it is that it allows anyone you’ve invited to share and collaborate it in real time as soon as they have signed in. There is no need to worry about the failure of hard drive or power failure as it uses online storage and auto-save.  

Microsoft and Google are already debating pros and cons regarding the proposals while Yahoo! has very little to say until now. It is known that Google has started offering whatever help they can to stop Yahoo! from being swallowed by Microsoft. It seems that Yahoo! wanted to restart a merger talk with AOL, the Internet arm of Time Warner, but it is understood that AOL is not interested. Yahoo! has also started talks with News Corporation, the parent company of The Times, over a possible joint venture that would involve merging News Corp’s My Space social networking business into Yahoo! in return for a large shareholding. The talks are believed to be continuing.

The question is: Which combination that you think is the most competitive, most likely to create real value? Microsoft has the resources to pay for the development of the business whereas Yahoo has the global brand name and the wide Internet audiences. It will have the second-largest ad network and a vast array of sites on which to place its own ads.

Yahoo’s strong point is that it understand how to bring poeple together to have fun but its search engine has always not been competent enough to compete with Google’s. With Google as a potential business partner, Yahoo can merge its email into Gmail and concentrate on the enhancement of its social applications such as Yahoo! Groups, Flickr etc.

Google has a clearly dominant position in Internet searching whereas Microsoft as a search competitor could change the market’s assessment of Google’s value. If Microsoft attempts to integrate Web search features directly into its coming Longhorn operating system, it could restart the bitter feud that led to the government antitrust case that grew out of Netscape’s failure.      

What do you think?

Social Networks for Enterprises?

The term “Web 2.0” has clearly taken hold after the first O’Reilley Media Web 2.0 conference in 2004. The dot-com burst in the fall of 2001 was once seen as if the web had overhyped. In fact, the shakeouts marked the technological revolutions and had separated the pretenders and the real success stories.

Web 2.0 did not introduce new technical specifications. What makes it different from Web 1.0 is that it changes the way on how the end users and software developers use the web. It is an expression referred to the second generation of the Internet-based services, such as the social networking sites, wikis, communication tools, and folksonomies. It aims to facilitate collaboration, creativity, and sharing among the users.

Web 2.0 is the trend in the Internet technology. Social networks are growing like weeds and have attracted millions of users that integrated these sites into their daily lives. This creates fear among the employers who worry that the trend will cause the workers to waste their time on the social network sites during working hours and share the corporate information on the sites, which are not protected by corporate firewalls.

Since the Web has already made its way into most of our heart, it is appropriate that the employers start accepting this fact and implement the social networking tools to drive business value and gain competitive advantage to the company. In fact, most corporate executives believe that Web 2.0 assist the employees to work more efficiently.

Security ProPortal.com stated that 472 executives around the world had been surveyed by the professional services firm and the Economist Intelligence Unit and nearly 70% said they believed that Web 2.0 tools will help the employees to work more efficiently. 75% said that Web 2.0 tools would foster innovation within their businesses and 86% see them improving knowledge sharing.

Another survey done by Sophos last year has shown that the respondents perceived that good productivity is the result of good management. Some of them worry that the employees might try to get round the Web filters and try to gain access to the site in some other way.

Israeli-American software company, WorkLight Inc., is one of the growing number of software companies that provides secure server-based software product that provides a secure, simple, and customisable “Web 2.0 style” access to corporate data that resides in the enterprise application. These accesses include RSS readers, personalised homepages, gadgets/widgets, application mashups, and instant messaging. The employees are the one who define how they want the information to be aggregated and presented.

WorkLight was approached by a major US bank that has 70, 000 employees (and about 10% on Facebook) and was focusing on communication among remote users and expertise. The investment bank installed IBM’s Lotus Connection but it is not adopted by the employees in a meaningful way. The solution for this is the WorkBook.

WorkLight launched WorkBook Facebook application in the UK on 19th February 2008. This is to address the issues caused by the usage of social networking sites among the employees. Since many employees are already familiar with Facebook, it requires no training and they are able to pick up the new software instantly.

To install WorkBook, log on to Facebook and install it like FunWall, SuperPoke or other Facebook applications. It will appear in your application list and when you click on it, you will be asked for authentification with your organisation’s identity services. You can have your company information on your Facebook profile but it is only visible in the WorkBook application. Workbook enables you to communicate securely with colleagues and to perform the functions you normally find on Facebook, such as form groups, share information and ideas, as well as search for employees with specific expertise or by the location, department, project etc. It also allows you to receive activity streams from the Facebook news feed. 

Apart from implementing social networks for enterprise, WorkLight has begun trial to allow customers to view their credit card and bank account transaction history on NetVibes, iGoogle or Yahoo homepage. WorkLight also has a software that enables the employees to fill out their expenses on their personalised homepage. Unlike SAP software, which requires the employees to go through tedious steps just to file their expenses, there are no flags, no codes to memorise, and no need to involve a help desk on WorkLight.

All of these applications are hosted on the company server and are protected by security layers as the software deals with highly valuable and private personal or corporate information. Only those who are presently on the company network or who sign in via VPN are allowed to gain access to the WorkBook.

While these benefits are encouraging companies to implement the system, putting up highly confidential data on the Internet is always a risky business. Will you adopt the social networking site as your collaboration tool for your company?

Taliban vs Afghan’s Mobile Phone Companies

I have recently got wind that the Taliban has ordered the mobile phone networks to be shut down from five in the evening until seven in the morning, adding a deadline of February 27^th for their compliance. Their action will bring on a serious impact to the country, should their demand be accepted. The Internet network relies on the network of phones to function, and by shutting it down at night, the Internet will be inaccessible. Students will not be able to use the Internet for their homework, businessmen who work 24/7 will not be able to keep track on the rise and fall of their own business. Generally, the entire flow of information will be seriously disturbed at night.

Mobile phones have become an important aspect in the lives of the Afghans as using a mobile phone is the pre-eminent way of communication. It has also become the fastest-growing and most profitable sector in the country’s economy. By commanding that the mobile phone networks be shut down for fourteen hours, it will certainly affect the growth of the company’s economy. During an emergency outside the safe haven of a house, one usually reaches for a mobile phone instead of searching for miles for a chunky house phone or – god forbid – a piece of paper and a pen. If the mobile phone companies choose to capitulate to the militants’ demand, then the communications within the war-torn country will really be seriously disrupted.

 

We are all living in a world where technology reigns supreme. People chatting on mobile phones or typing SMS is one of the most common sights on the streets. Gossipers can spread news faster than ever to their fellow friends; parents are delighted to discover this new way of monitoring their child; mobile phones have even become the indicator of one’s status on the social ladder in some students’ lives. By ordering the networks to be shut down, the Taliban’s action directly affects the lives of the people of Afghanistan. According to Taliban spokesperson, Qari Muhammad Yousof , the occupying forces stationed in Afghanistan use mobile phones at night for espionage to track down the mujahideen. The four major mobile phone companies that have received the ultimatum – Areeba, Roshan, Etisalat and lastly, Afghan Wireless Communication Company – have also received a threat saying that if the command of the Taliban is not complied, then they will target their towers and their offices.

The Taliban’s action also has a great impact on the mobile phone companies. They must be losing their workers who are worried about their own safety. If the companies give in to the ruthless ex-ruling organisation’s demand and the threat remains just as that – threat – then there is nothing to be worried about. But due to the Taliban’s bloody past history, and the companies refusal to comment on any of this, the workers do have a right to worry about their own lives. Without sufficient workers, the companies will not be able to function. This could also be one of Taliban’s many goals in this matter. Mobile phone companies were threatened by militants in the past, accusing them of being in league with the U.S. and other foreign military forces. But so far, none of the threats have been truly acted upon.

Personally, I don’t agree with the action of the Taliban as it affects the lives of others. By ordering the mobile phone networks to be shut down reveals just how selfish they are. They continue to strongly believe that the U.S. uses mobile phone signals to track down the remaining members of the Taliban despite the U.S. being reportedly uses satellites and not mobile phone operators for tracking. Communication experts have also verified that the U.S. military has the ability to pick up mobile phone signals even without the help of the mobile phone companies. Mobile phones still continue to send signals to the network even when they are not making calls. The Taliban’s ludicrous action takes away human freedom, takes away all the people of Afghanistan’s right to make calls at night just to save the lives of the remaining Taliban. Of course, some of you might agree with the Taliban’s course of action because they just want to protect their own people from being tracked down by the U.S. and other foreign military forces. But don’t you think it is more than a little absurd to sacrifice the right of the whole citizens of Afghanistan just to protect the lives of a few people? What do you think? Is the Taliban’s action proper?

Prelude

Welcome to the ‘Ravings abt Technology’, a site designed by a lover of all things technological. I will be posting up blogs related to e-commerce technologies, digital business as well as recent IT and Web developments. Thank you for your interest in techrave. Do feel free to leave your comments =)