Broadband - Opinions

Social networking hype 2.0

Clever social networking-related startups with obscure taglines -- including Causecast ("Change your world, and the world will change"), Qik ("See what happens"), and Joongel ("Internet the easy way -- we have chocolate") -- line the showroom of Tech...

Life at 10 years AG (after Google)

There were many ways to search the Internet before Google came along, but none of them turned into a verb. These days, a big deal is being made of Google's turning 10 by a lot of the media. Most of the coverage has had a bit of an edge to it, as if p...

Is Web 2.0 already on its way out?

At a conference that devoted much of its attention to celebrating the rise of collaborative platforms, media, and technologies, you had to wonder if the "Web 2.0" collaborative future would die before it really began. That was my takeaway from the De...

Zoho adds Google Docs-like file management

Zoho has finally added a central document management page called Zoho Docs to tie together its many useful online apps. The clean-looking, functional page looks much like the Google Docs start page, with a folder view on the left and all files - spre...

Elgan: When LinkedIn knows where you are

Within two years, I believe mobile social networking will become the most valuable business application since e-mail.

Chinese democracy meets US justice

Yesterday, FBI agents raided the Los Angeles home of 27-year-old blogger Kevin Cogill and arrested him. Cogill's crime? He uploaded nine unreleased tracks from the upcoming Guns N' Roses album to his blog.

Internet Explorer 8's XSS Filter examined

Microsoft's Security Vulnerability Research & Defense team (SVRD) have recently posted information online about the Cross Site Scripting (XSS) filter to be incorporated into Internet Explorer 8 when it is released.

Still Nervous About Online Shopping? Really?

Last October, I wrote about Assurz, a service that-for a small up-front surcharge-would let you return anything you bought at a participating retailer, on very generous terms: no questions asked, a 90-day window, and no shipping charges or restocking...

Tweens, teens turn to MySpace, iTunes, P2P for music

When you were growing up, how did you discover and listen to new music? Very likely, it was from 45s, LPs, and CDs recommended by friends, or songs played by radio and club DJs. Nowadays, as the music industry watches its old business models fade, yo...

Fooling Google News is this easy

I did it yesterday. Not that I was trying, mind you -- honestly, I wasn't. I did, however, predict it would happen, so I'm going to take this opportunity to gloat about that.

Cuil: Terminally uncool

Building Web applications that are robust and perform well is hard, but trying to promote them, build a market for them, and then make money from them is far harder. And harder still is when you're launching a Web service that competes with an establ...

PHP 4 is dead, long live PHP 4

For a technology that has been in stable release since May 22, 2000, PHP 4 has finally reached the end of its official life. With the release of PHP 4.4.9, official support has ended and the final security patch for the platform issued.

Firewall pioneer wanted a 'super-secure' blogging service ... so he's built his own

Bill Cheswick -- best known for writing "Firewalls and Internet Security" in 1994 and his earlier work at Bell Labs -- doesn't want to let commercial blogging software within hacking distance of his hardened Web server. A self-described Apple fanboy,...

Anonymous returns, Scientology responds

It seems Anonymous has resurfaced and hired a publicist. Two days ago I received an email alerting me to two new YouTube videos from the anti-Scientology crusader(s). I'd been wondering what had happened to it/them, since things had been so quiet lat...

Korean Govt experiences first-hand the fickleness of online media

In South Korea, the world's most online country (by percentage), the Internet has become a tool of politics as much as it has a tool for the everyday Web surfer. When a former CEO took the reins of the country earlier this year, it was effective use...