[GEEKY] Weakness in Mac OS X Software Update
Everyone loves how much easier Mac OS X makes it to install software. Well sort of. It's a place where new users easily get stumped. What the heck are those .dmg files anyway, and where's the installer? Well this post isn't about that. After all, it wouldn't count as [GEEKY] if that's all it did.
Being a neat freak, I have sub folders in my Applications folder, which as you know is the default place for software to be installed ("just copy the file, what could be easier?")
Turns out that for Apple supplied software, e.g. iPhoto and friends, the automagic software updater depends on finding them at the top level of Applications. If they aren't there, they don't get updated and you aren't alerted to available updates.
Mystery solved. So if for some reason you seem not to be getting an update you know is available, check whether you might have moved the application somewhere, hiding it from the [tag]Software Update…[/tag]
Hackers and the elections
In New Scientist Tech, an interesting article about hackers and the elections:
"The web may not deserve its reputation as a great democratic tool, security experts say. They predict voters will increasingly be targeted by internet- based dirty tricks campaigns, and that the perpetrators will find it easier to cover their tracks." (from Hackers could skew US elections")
Read the whole thing here.
Is Newser this weeks Daylife?
Newser.com is a new news site, with the tag line: "Faster, Smarter News." Seems like it does some kind of automatic classification of news by one of 9 major topics and organizes it automatically and attractively. It may or may not be trying to personalize what it displays for me.
To my eye it is similar to Daylife.com. Remember Daylife? It flashed pretty good a few months ago, but haven't really heard much more about it. Again I am not sure whether it does any personalization or how that works.
As someone who follows these kinds of products pretty closely, I don't immediately see the key differences. Do you?
Temporary phone numbers and eBay
When you are selling or buying something on the web, say eBay or Craigslist, it always is a question whether to give your 'real' phone number out. I just came across Numbr.com (credit Lifehacker, and several others) which appears to have a neat solution to this.
Simply, it gets you (for free, but doesn't everything have to be free nowadays?) a temporary phone number which will anonymously forward calls to your real number. Simple and useful. Check out Numbr.com.
Lotus alums getting acquired left and right: Zingku and Buzzsaw
In recent weeks there have been two exciting announcements of acquisitions of companies started by friends of mine, and not coincidentally, ex-Lotus Development Corporation folks.
Congratulations to Mussie Shore , who started Zingku on his announcement that he's entered into an agreement to have Google acquire their Zingku service.
And congratulations to: Rick Treitman, Mike Kraley, Paul Kleppner , and many others on their announcement that Adobe Systens has signed a definitive agreemenet to acquire Virtual Ubiquity, makers of Buzzword.
Way to go!!!
Enterprise 2.0 – What’s in it for you?
Enterprise 2.0 is one of those terms that is being bandied about by various people. In the Portals and KM Blog, Bill Ives has written a couple interesting run downs of what's going on in that world.
In "Description and Reviews of Enterprise 2.0 Tools", there's a good summary of some of the new open source and commercial tools and services that support Enterprise 2.0. Awareness is especially impressive, and one that I know well, as I've been working with them for the last 6 months or so.
In "Growing Collection of Enterprise 2.0 Success Stories", there's a great list of actual case studies of deployment and implementation of Enterprise 2.0 projects in diverse organizations.
if you are interested in [tag]Enterprise 2.0[/tag] these are good reads.
LinkedIn has photos, finally
Finally, welcome to the 20th century, [tag]LinkedIn[/tag]:
"It’s taken four years for LinkedIn to add photos, when every other [tag]social network[/tag] has done it forever. The site for business professionals has always kept a conservative, business-like tone. But although it says the decision has been driven by members, LinkedIn could not have escaped noticing that business people are using sites like Facebook to network both personally and for business. Adding photos ticks a box marked ‘we can be as friendly-looking as Facebook too guys’."
Google Maps Causes US Navy To Change Its Swastika Building
Check out this post from Search Engine Land: News About Search Engines & Search Marketing:
"[snip…] You have to feel a bit sorry for the US Navy. They have a building in California that looks like a swastika from the air. But who looks at buildings from the air? Until Google Maps popularized easy access to aerial views, only the occasional bored air traveler. But thanks to Google Maps, the swastika building got known, discussed, and now is being camouflaged.[snip…]"
(from : Google Maps Causes US Navy To Change Its Swastika Building)
Shelby is back from Liberia
My friend Shelby has been living and blogging from Africa over the last year or so. From reading it you can tell what a unique experience she has had, and that she comes back a changed person. Welcome back, Shelby!
Check out this post from Plantains and Palm Trees:
"[snip…] Going from Liberia to the US, my overwhelming thought is always this: It's not that they're poor and we're rich. It's that they're incredibly poor and we're incredibly rich. [snip…]"
Read her blog, there are lots of other interesting and revealing stories.
OpenID not all happyness and light?
I don't follow the Identify world that closely and like everyone I've now come across services who suggest that you log into them with an [tag]OpenId[/tag] account. So I have one now too. It's free. It's decentralized. What's not to love?
Well apparently it isn't 100% love. Read this article, by [tag]Stefan Brands[/tag], who admittedly seems to be closely associated with a competing service, [tag]Credentica[/tag], which might well be the anti-OpenID. So he's got his own biases:
"[snip…]OpenID was designed as a lightweight solution for “trivial” use cases in identity management: its primary goal is to enable Internet surfers to replace self-generated usernames and passwords by a single login credential, without needing more than their browser. Concretely, OpenID aims to enable individuals to post blog comments and log into social networking sites without having to remember multiple passwords. (Of course, local password store utilities already do that; more on this later.)[snip…]" (from The Identify Corner)
Still this long article quotes many many other writers, so whatever the bias it is shared by many. And from my "B+" level of knowledge of the broad world of security, there's some highly valid criticisms in here. You should read the actual article, but here's a nice laundry list to get you going:
"[snip…]Beyond this, OpenID is pretty much useless. The reasons for this are many: OpenID is highly vulnerable to phishing and other attacks, creates insurmountable privacy problems, is not a trust system, suffers from usability problems, and makes it unappealing to become an OpenID “consumer.” Many smart people have already elaborated on these problems in various forums. In the rest of this post I will be quoting from and pointing to their critiques.[snip…]" (from The Identify Corner)