Multi-touch interactions

Go take a look at some work done at New York University on changing the way we interact with our computers.
Oh, and the videos are distributed using the NYU's Coral CDN network – which I've always thoughts was an excellent free CDN concept.

.mac - Apple / .pc - Microsoft?

So - Microsoft have launched the beta of it's .mac style service. For several years now Apple has been offering a service called .mac available for users of Mac OS X based machines. This has combined backup/file storage, bookmark storage and other useful synchronisation so you can keep your important stuff online, it also has some web storage for some websites (mainly seems to be used for personal blogs and things)... there is an email service, and it even included Virex an anti-Virus software. What has made .mac something that people buy is that it integrates smoothly with the operating system, iLife (the hugely successful so-called 'non-productivity suite') and iWork.
Now Microsoft looks like they are gearing up for Vista to have a symbiotic '.pc' service - the 'Windows Live Ideas' (not so snappy as '.pc' but I'm sure much more trademark-able). It'll have backup, file storage, bookmark ('favorites') storage, web storage (looks like it may be some sort of re-branding of the MSN Spaces or something)... anyone got deja vu yet? Yeah - it would seem that Microsoft has seen the importance of giving users a home on the internet that goes along with their operating system. Just like Apple did, does.
Nice to see that Bill still does things that are original.

Ribbons rather than menus?

I simply cannot believe I missed this discussion, Microsoft trying to improve the usability of their Office applications by using a 'ribbon' style idea.

As Microsoft Office applications become more and more bloated with functionality that only gets used by power users, you'd think that it might be better to really look at the functionality set and consider removing some of it. With so much functionality it does, of course, make it difficult to navigate throught the myriad of menus. I think a good example of this is Apple's iWork applications - just compare the perceived functionality of 'Pages' to 'Word' and 'Keynote' to 'Powerpoint'. They offer totally adequate functionality, at a fraction of the 'bloat' of their Microsoft counterparts.

Remember those 'adaptive interface' menus on Microsoft Office of recent years? Yeah - Office apps would start shrinking the menus and hiding 'infrequently used' functionality. I remember being in close proximity to a group looking at adaptive interfaces - and I happen to agree on the major drawbacks... they don't work when you have a massive number of options. Why do you think Microsoft gave the user the ability to turn them off.

Well the 'ribbon' controls seem to be a rethink about the amount and placement of functionality within the Office products - which can only be a good thing. Listening to Julie Larson talk about this re-think is almost refreshing to hear from a Microsoft person... sounds a little Apple like?

Read more at blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/...

Moving towards a Google powered web?

I'm really not sure if using Google as a distributed proxy style thingy will actually 'accelerate' the web. Maybe I need to find out more about it... but from first impressions this seems to be a combination of proxy technology and a content distribution network (CDN). Maybe this explains why Google was recently buying up all that dark fibre?

Take a look and see what you think: webaccelerator.google.com

Pay peanuts, get monkey hosts

There's been a lot of coverage in UK newspapers and on the BBC Technology site about Alex Tew and his Million Dollar Homepage being allegedly 'held for ransom'. Now, according to the various articles, Alex received an email suggesting that if he didn't pay a quantity of money someone would initiate a Distributed Denial of Service attack. This would be the ransom then. Apparently he didn't, and so a DDoS began on his 'website' (or rather a webpage).
Screams of anguish were clearly to be heard coming from Alex, at least according to the coverage that states both his Hosting company and the UK Police got involved. The Hosting company took at least a week to stop it, at least according to the BBC report.
Wait - that's 7 days. Yes... days. Not hours... not minutes. Days.
Looking closer at who his hosting company is, it appears to be a company that offers 'very cost efficient' hosting packages. Now, I'm ok with companies offering those, after all... there's a need for them. Personal homepages and things. I wonder how much, and what features Alex paid for from them. Sounds like it certainly wasn't 'enterprise enough' to include fairly common anti-DDoS hardware on their network in the data-centre. Someone who is apparently making large quantities of cash but having a hosting package that doesn't take simple steps like anti-DDoS, then getting press coverage about how 'awful' it is - seems a little like crying wolf.
If you are making money from your site, make sure you've got adequate protection from high-tech attackers. There are plently of really good hosting companies where things like anti-DDoS hardware comes as standard with their hosting packages. If you don't know, ask professionals (in his case, his hosting company should have been pro-active - I know the ones I use or spec are, that's learning from experience).