Google to flag websites hiding malware

Nick Carr reports Google is planning to flag websites hiding malware.

While Carr headlines his article with "Google preparing to police web", I don't think it's quite a police action. If Google, using its algorithms, can identify malware before we click on it, I'm fine with that.

We have met the enemy and he is us.

Quoting a Google white paper, Carr gives us this chill:

"Many websites feature web applications that allow visitors to contribute their own content. This is often in the form of blogs, profiles, comments, or reviews. Web applications usually support only a limited subset of the hypertext markup language, but in some cases poor sanitization or checking allows users to post or insert arbitrary HTML into web pages. If the inserted HTML contains an exploit, all visitors of the posts or profile pages are exposed to the attack. Taking advantage of poor sanitization becomes even easier if the site permits anonymous posts, since all visitors are allowed to insert arbitrary HTML."

In other words, you may catch a social disease just visiting your favorite bloggers. Yowsa.

Technorati : botnets, bots, google, malware, nick carr, niels provos, viruses

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 09:39pm in Technology | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (0)

500 takes on Web 2.0

37signals asked Basecamp users what the term "Web 2.0" means. The 500 answers seem to fall into two big buckets: "It's bullshit/hype" and "it's Ajax."

Via Rex Hammock (who got it through Signal vs. Noise)

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 07:30am in Technology | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (0)

Goodbye RocketPost, Hello again, Ecto!

Neville Hobson and I were on the same wavelength, today. [Update: I see Lee radiated the thought yesterday from Australia... are we all joined at the brain?]

I've been mentally composing this post about why I am dropping the utterly abominable Anconia RocketPost as a blog-post editor. But I see Neville Hobson has beaten me to the punch. In fact, he beat me to the punch weeks ago in a post I (to my bitter regret) did not notice.

I installed the demo version of Anconia RocketPost when I saw Lee Hopkins get so excited about it. At the start, I was pretty happy with it. For one thing, it was WYSIWYG, which Ecto wasn't; for another, it just felt easier to use. I was a little disturbed that it never seemed to be able to download all my posts from the server, but I decided I could live with that since I never touch the old ones.

RocketPost also had one other problem: inexplicably, it would start a cycle to install Microsoft Office Premium, whatever that is (I have Microsoft Office Pro). Clicking "cancel" let me move on, but it was disturbing.

What possessed me to buy the damned thing when the trial expired, I'll never know. Cheap, for one thing (Neville says he paid $99, but my CC receipt says $29). I liked it, for another, except for the quibbles I've mentioned.

So I downloaded the "paid for" version, and my life went to hell. Crashes, lock-ups, faulty screen painting, utterly inexplicable error messages. More and more as the days passed. Not one -- not one -- of my pleas to customer support has ever been acknowledged, much less answered.

Finally, in frustration, I decided to uninstall the whole thing and reinstall. It seemed to uninstall. But, when I reinstall, I'm told it must uninstall every old version and then install -- and then it tries to do this, and collapses in a heap of exhaustion.

Now, I've been around computers since 1980, so I know how to really uninstall -- delete every trace of registry keys, etc. But where Anconia RocketPost is hiding theirs will forever be a mystery to me, because the damned thing simply will not install again.

If you are tempted to try Anconia RocketPost, do yourself a favor. Go get a beer, instead. Because you'll need a case of beer if you install it.

[Clarification: No, Lee, this will not imperil  your FOACADRC.]

Technorati Tags: Anconia, RocketPost, Ecto

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 09:27pm in Blogging, Social Tools, Technology | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (6)

Onion pokes Sony....ooooh. That must be giving Sony's PR folks fits.

When The Onion aims its shotguns at a company, it's never a pretty sight. I wonder if Sony's PR people are bunkering down or polishing their resumes?

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 08:08am in Humor, Public Relations, Technology | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (0) | TrackBack (0)

Google Analytics: Holtz and Wackå warning me off...

Yesterday, I posted about Google Analytics' questionable TOS & added that I would wait to install until I saw Shel Holtz's results.

Today, Shel writes he's getting poor mileage with Google Analytics. And Fredrik Wackå writes that Google Analytics cookie policy may put European bloggers on the wrong side of the law.

Scratch that off my list.

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 11:35pm in Law, Technology | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (0) | TrackBack (0)

Europe's Digital Divide: no surprises

Eurostat released "The digital divide in Europe" earlier this month, an eight-page analysis of the demographics of European computer and Internet use.

As you would expect, the affluent, employed and better-educated tend to use computers and the Internet more than the poor, unemployed and under-educated. The report carefully avoids drawing any conclusions from this fact, and rightly so. I suspect the use of almost all technology and media tracks pretty closely with affluence and education.

Hat tip to Fredrik Wackå

Technorati Tags: digital divide, europe, eurostat, demographics

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 09:41am in Society, Technology | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (0) | TrackBack (0)

Google Analytics and End User Privacy

For several reasons, I've not installed  Google Analytics, Google's new tool for the blogging-for-benjamins crowd. I've been neck-deep in projects, for one, and I thought I would watch and see if the program  blew up Shel Holtz's rig. And, frankly, I was put off by Google's demand for a phone number and that I name Desirable Roasted Coffee's home country (naturally, I lied on both questions. I hope Google doesn't really try to call pi to the 8th power).

Phil Bogle points out that Google Analytic's TOS bear closer scrutiny than many of us are likely to give it:

It's one thing to give Google full access to all of the information I enter into Google. It's another thing to share with a third party the complete session history of everyone on my site. Google's privacy policy ought to more clearly spell out what they will do with this data. (They do promise not to give it away to a third party, but when you're a large corporation you don't need to give it away to extract a great deal of value.)

There's plenty more at Bogle’s Blog � Google Analytics and End User Privacy. Enough that's Google Analytics hasn't sold me, yet, by a long shot.

Technorati tags:
Google Analytics

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 10:20am in Technology | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (0) | TrackBack (0)

Remembering Forbes ASAP (from Phil Gomes)

Phil Gomes remembers Forbes ASAP, the short-lived, but lovely "big thoughts about the future" magazine that flourished during the dot-com era. I'm jealous; I have only two of the four issues. Phil has them all:

They're on my shelf right now, protected by motion sensors, lasers, and snarling dobermans. If you're nice, I'll let you look at them. A box of sterile latex gloves is nearby, lest the acidic secretions of your grubby digits come in contact with my prize.

That's about right, because were a great read: unusually thoughtful articles from a wide variety of thinkers.

If Forbes ever wants to publish a box-set, I'm there.

Technorati tags:
Forbes
Forbes ASAP

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 09:27pm in Journalism, Technology, Writing I Enjoy | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (0) | TrackBack (0)

Technology Makes Canadian Youth Wicked and Weak

File-sharing is eroding the moral fiber of Canadian youth, and one can't help feeling it's a damned shame.

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 01:36pm in Bizarre but Expected, Technology | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (2) | TrackBack (0)

Lee Hopkins: Now Also Blogging IT

Professor Lee Hopkins  has a new place to wreak havoc: The IT Toolbox stable of blogs, aimed at IT professionals. Now, you'd think they'd be making him pay rent, what with his attitude, but you know what? They're paying the man!

His first post: Want to communicate better with non-techies? Try this.... is a fine start.

I'll just whet your appetite with his opening lines:

"You probably know this already, but there are generally held to be four main personality types, which I call: Extrovert, Amiable, Analytical and Pragmatic.

"Let's take a moment to consider each of them in the workplace."

If you know Lee, you are already chuckling in anticipation. If you don't, go over and read it.

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 07:35pm in Bloggers, IABC, Technology | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (0) | TrackBack (0)

Google Adopts Prediction Markets

First published, in slightly different form, at the MarComBlog of Auburn University.

Last week, I wrote some about prediction markets. These are markets where hundreds, even thousands, of participants, each armed with "some" knowledge, pool their thinking to make better predictions than pollsters, better decisions than "experts".

(Note: Wikipedia's Prediction Market article is a good starting place if you want to learn more, as is James Surowiecki's The Wisdom of Crowds (search inside at Amazon).)

But what applications do prediction markets have for business and PR practitioners? The evidence is thin to date, but last week, Google announced it's using prediction markets to make better internal decisions:

At Google, we're constantly trying to find new ways to organize the world's information, including information relevant to our business. Building on the ideas of Friedrich Hayek and the Iowa Electronic Markets, a few Googlers (Doug Banks, Patri Friedman, Ilya Kirnos, Piaw Na and me, with some help from Hal Varian), set up a predictive market system inside the company.

The markets were designed to forecast product launch dates, new office openings, and many other things of strategic importance to Google. So far, more than a thousand Googlers have bid on 146 events in 43 different subject areas (no payment is required to play).

We designed the market so that the price of an event should, in theory, reflect a consensus probability that the event will occur. To determine accuracy of the market, we looked at the connection between prices of events and the frequency with which they actually occurred. If prices are correct, events priced at 10 cents should occur about 10 percent of the time. (Read more)

Google claims the prediction market is working: prices quickly reflect what's likely, and entropy declines significantly over time. Just as you would expect in a functioning market.

The next step (and Google doesn't say if they have or will take it) is to use prediction markets to make better management decisions. To do so would be a significant departure from management doctrine, which is that -- no matter how "flat" your organization -- most important decisions are made by the CEO/COO/CFO. But if markets, no matter how much the participants are laypeople, make better predictions than experts, then that's the logical next step.

Looking back on my own tenure as CEO of a 125-person agency, and as Finance Director of a 13,000 member association, I am pretty sure the "market" -- had we had them -- would have made some different decisions than I and my management colleagues made.

What's this mean for PR practitioners? Probably little, now, since prediction markets are only now slipping in to management's minds. But if I were doing PR for Microsoft's MSN Virtual  Earth, I would be concerned about this graph, for example. Taken from the Yahoo Research Buzz Game, a prediction market, it shows how poorly the "buzz" around MSN Virtual Earth (red dots, bottom graph) has been compared to GoogleEarth (blue dots). And how the "market" views the two properties (top graph). (Note, the green lines denote NASA's product).

I've had only a few clients where a prediction market could have been deployed effectively (it takes a fairly good-sized pool, I believe), but I've no doubt the market would have made some of our marketing decisions easier and faster.

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 09:53pm in Advertising, Communication, Corporate Management, Economics, Prediction Markets, Public Relations, Smart Communities, Social Tools, Society, Technology | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (0) | TrackBack (0)

Girls Aren't Into Tech? I'd be in Deep Trouble if I'd Written This

My 12 year-old daughter has a blog & and a website & keeps pestering me for a Gmail account. My partner runs a complex factory full of clanking, loud stuff that can either yank your arm off or boil you in two seconds, depending on its mood.

In other words, the girls in my life are into tech.

So I'd be boiled here at home if  I'd written this piece of... dung.

"Manufacturers will have to take a more girlie approach if they want to get women turned on to the latest gadgets, says Rachel Forder 

"Would you rip files at a high or low bit-rate? Do you prefer AAC, WMA or MP3? If you are completely baffled by these questions, you are probably a woman."

Hat tip to Shelley Powers.

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 09:05am in Society, Technology | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (4) | TrackBack (0)

Social Tools - Ripples to Waves of the Future

On June 11, I wrote We Dont Have the Tools is OUT as an Excuse  about Dina Mehty's inspiring presentation about how quickly the Southeast Asian Earthquake & Tsunami Blog/Wiki sprang to life -- using only volunteers and free communication tools.

I described her presentation as best I could, but I've found a far better description on Dina's own blog: Social Tools - Ripples to Waves of the Future. An amazing story about "gettin' it done".

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 01:14pm in Communication, Social Tools, Technology, Tsunami | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (0) | TrackBack (0)

More Reboot 7.0 Notes: Loïc Le Meur on the European Blogosphere

I know, I know, Reboot 7.0 has been over for three days, and few notes from me.

On Day 2, Loïc Le Meur, the European guy for SixApart (makers of my fine blogging platform), gave us a run-through on the state of the European Blogosphere.

Or, rather, tried to. Loïc is one of these super-enthused speakers who, in the flurry of thinking faster than he can speak, tends to start down one fascinating trail, only to abrubtly choose another. Five trails followed to completion would be great content; 10 trails started and abandoned is like going to a tapas bar and not being allowed to eat.

Further, he was using his wiki as both the presentation to us and speaker notes for himself, which always means a lot of cursors flying around the screen, three-four pages in quick clicking succession, only to have the wrong page show up. Followed by furious back-clicking and re-clicking. I don't know about the rest of the room, but by the end, I was a twitching bundle of nerve.

But... he had some cool notes to impart.

The best way to get at them is to visit his European Blogosphere Wiki, where you can, of course, make corrections and additions.

A few notes:

• Note the differences in the number of bloggers in different countries: 3 million in France, 600,000 in the Netherlands, and 5,000 in Denmark. He may be right (after all, he sells blog platforms), but the numbers seem hinky to me. Accepting his arguments about France, for now, it's still hard to imagine there are 120 times more bloggers in the Netherlands (or 120 times fewer in Denmark): the countries are somewhat similar in population, cultural attributes, and adaptation of technology.
• He argues France is heavy in bloggers largely because of French culture and tradition of debate. Well, I don't know if you've been in an Irish pub lately, but if tradition of debate were a criterion, Ireland should be thick with bloggers. Mystery to me.

Le Meur gave us several case studies. The one that caught my eye was that of La Fraise, the brainchild of Patrice Cassard.

Cassard likes tee-shirts. Likes odd tee-shirts. He started showing his best ones on his site... and people started asking where they could buy them. A problem, since they were custom-made.

Now, most people would rapidly come up with the idea of starting an online tee-shirt store. But Cassard goes further: he lets readers come up with designs, and lets readers vote on the ones they like best. Cassard creates the winners in limited, and pricy, editions (and a few lucky voters get theirs for free).

And who generates the buzz? The lucky tee-shirt wearers who now have begun sending Cassard photos of them in their shirts.

How quirky is that?

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 03:57pm in Bloggers, Blogging, Blogging for Benjamins, Blogging for the Sheer Hell of It, Citizen Journalism, Reboot 7.0, Technology | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (2) | TrackBack (0)

Reboot: We Don't Have the Tools is OUT as an Excuse

Yesterday and today were given over to the Reboot, a European meet-up of the mash-up of society and communication and technology (with a fairly strong tilt to technology). Two days of bang bang bang sessions punctuated networking, getting acquainted and getting to grips (sort of) with where micromedia is leading us.

I didn't blog directly, but many others did (not all results will be about the conference but pick around). I do better waiting for the serendipity to happen.

I'll post highlights as I get my head around them. Here's the first in a series:

We don't have the tools is OUT as an excuse

Dina Mehta's presentation used as its case example the South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami Blog Dina helped organize. Incredible. The team used free (or nearly so) collaborative tools (Skype, IM, IRC) to put together a blog that attracted 1 million visits in the first week. And as the contributions and comments to the blog began (quickly) to become unwieldy, they created sub-blogs, and then a wiki to categorize the information.

The team was flat, without titles, with immense passion and, apparently little recourse to sleep. What's key here is that drive and brains and a willingness to collaborate, not expensive tools and committees, created this site.

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 11:05pm in Bloggers, Blogging, Blogging for Benjamins, Blogging for the Sheer Hell of It, Citizen Journalism, Communication, Copenhagen, Reboot 7.0, Technology | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (0) | TrackBack (2)

Is GMail getting creaky?

Neville Hobson asked about glitches in GMail, Google's still-in-beta email service. He and others speculated that it could be system tray GMail Notifyer.

Now I'm getting them. Server errors all morning. And when I am able to get to my inbox, I am often unable to access the individual posts. I don't use GMail Notifyer, so that's not the problem. It's entirely at Google's end, though they are not posting about it.

When is it no longer a beta thing? God knows, the entire wired planet has been invited to GMail (I've got 50 invites, by the way, if you want to join); I think it's time to move with it, get it out of beta, and admit it's a mainstream product. And service it like it is.

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 12:35pm in GMail, Technology | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (3) | TrackBack (0)

Seth Godin Spots a New Digital Divide

Seth Godin spots the New Digital Divide... a divide based on choice, not circumstance. For example, the Digerati uses an RSS reader to keep track of the blogs they have and read, while the Left Behind don't know what RSS is and only read blogs (sometimes).

Link: Seth's Blog: The New Digital Divide.

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 06:58pm in Bloggers, Blogging, Communication, Technology | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (4) | TrackBack (0)

Reboot: It's Spring and a Young Man's Fancy Turns to.....

At the height of the dot-com frenzy, in 1998, 1999 and 2000, spring in Copenhagen meant Reboot, the annual tech hypefest that drew crowds to its seminars, and even bigger crowds to its awards show and raucous -- the only word for it -- after-party.

We listened raptly to Justin Hall, though no one now quite knows why, and hung on Ann's every word.  And proceeded to be raucous until  the early AM.

If you were a client of web services, you received about a dozen invitations to be the guest of vendors, and if you were in an agency, you were there even if you were an intern hired that morning. The soberest of newspapers gave the event coverage usually reserved for the big events of real industries.

Thank God no one had camera-phones.

The bubble burst, of course, and that was that.

Last Friday,  enjoying conviviality in Copenhagen's Café Europa, either my friend or I asked "What happened to Reboot?" To which the other answered "Dead... gone".

But were we wrong.

Reboot 7.0 has been announced, with a vengeance. With a fine line-up of speakers, a good price, a two-day format, none of the glitz but all of the grit.

I was probably going to hit IABC's International Conference in DC, but I think I will use my conference budget on Reboot.

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 11:31am in Communication, Copenhagen, IABC, Technology | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (2) | TrackBack (0)

GMail Always Slips New Features in Under the Radar

I've been a huge fan of GMail since about 4 minutes after Neville gave me an account. Easy, does what it's supposed to, makes road work easy and you can use it as an extra hard disk.

But they slip new & needed features in under the radar. I lamented that sending photos was a pain with GMail, and found out quite by accident that its now integrated with  Picasa. And I'd been despairing of ever again using italics in an email; but now they've added rich text capability.

What bemuses me is that Google never announces this stuff. They just add it and hope you suss it out. While finding new features can certainly add unexpected joy to my day, I'd usually like a heads-up.

Why would Google do this? I suppose one advantage is that no one can accuse them of flogging vaporware.

By the way, I have gazillions of GMail invites to go. If you would like an account, let me know.

UPDATE: one reader wrote to ask about the ""use it as an extra hard disk" feature. News of this GMail Drive Shell Extension came via NevOn on 9 March.

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 07:56pm in Technology | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (0) | TrackBack (0)

50 Gmail Accounts to Go

Like tout le monde I have 50 GMail accounts to give away. This largesse from the folks at Google surely signals GMail's imminent move out of beta.

If you would like a GMail account -- and I can't recommend it highly enough -- please email me.

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 07:53pm in Technology | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (0) | TrackBack (0)

Folksonomy Sans Frontières

Sinking further into the quicksand of taxonomy/folksonomy of the Net, I can only commend Peter Van Dijck's Guide to Ease to your attention.

Specifically, his series starting with Translating Taxonomies and Categories looks at the problems of classification across languages and cultures.

Much of the debate I have read so far, at other sites, takes it for granted that the tags and sites are in English. And certainly the problems of classification are huge even if we only had one language to deal with. But leaven that with a mix of cultures and languages and -- and I believe my fellow expats would agree -- and.... well, it's not my field, but this layman sees huge scalability problems.

Via friend Gunnar Langemark's quirky blog.

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 12:16pm in Blogging, Society, Taxonomy of Cyberspace, Technology | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (0) | TrackBack (0)

Tagging and Folksonomies: My Head Aches But Other Heads are Thinking

Earlier this month, Steve Rubel admonished us all to pay more attention to tags and folksonomies, because they show what people are thinking about:

One of the most important social media trends to watch this year is the increasing influence of tags, also known as folksonomies. According to Wikipedia, folksonomy is the collaborative categorization of user-generated content using simple tags. Folksonomies are wildly popular on Flickr, a photo sharing site, and on del.icio.us, a social bookmark site.

Although tags are far from perfect, you should nevertheless be using them to keep your finger on the pulse of the American public. Right now, at a minimum, you should be monitoring your company/brand tags on Flickr as well as your competitors' folksonomies. I wrote about this last week. Jeremy Zawodny smartly advised marketers to take in del.icio.us as well.

Since Steve is usually ahead of the curve, I've been trying to take his advice by learning what I can and noodling how to a) apply the idea to Desirable Roasted Coffee and b) advise clients about it.

I keep running up against two issues.

First, since tags are self-applied by tens of thousands of Flickr users and other bloggers, I suspect we are bound to end up with common categories too large to be useful (Parties, Dogs, NewYork) and, because no one need agree to any one taxonomy, a plethora of tags that refer to the same thing (insulinpump, insulin_pump, insulininjectiondevice).

Second (but related) is how we bloggers can discipline ourselves to apply tags judiciously; moreover, how will and should tags affect how we design blogs. For example, Technorati already interprets Typepad categories as tags. Does that mean Typepad bloggers should drastically expand their category lists? It would seem to be a good tagging idea, but it would also render "categories" fairly worthless.

None of which means I am giving up on the idea; it simply troubles me.

It also seems to trouble Shelley Powers at Burningbird. In Cheap Eats at the Semantic Web Café, Powers examines -- in what I believe is the longest blog post I've ever read (and one of the most thoughtful) --  seemingly every aspect of tagging and folksonomy. Extensive quotes from Weinburger, Doctorow, Rebecca Blood, Clay Shirky, Julian Bond, and a host of other thinkers.

Clay believes that ultimately ontologies will fall to folkonomies, as the latter gain rapid acceptance because of their low cost and ease of use; I believe that ultimately interest in folksonomies will go the way of most memes, in that they’re fun to play with, but eventually we want something that won’t splinter, crack, and stumble the very first day it’s released.

What we don’t need are more cheap solutions, and ultimately, I find that Technorati Tags are a ‘cheap’ solution, though a compelling one, and useful for generating conversation if no other reason. And I don’t want to deginerate Technorati’s efforts with this, because I feel in the end Technorati is going to play a major role in our semantic efforts. Still, no matter how many tricks you play with something like tags, you can only pull out as much ‘meaning’ as you put into them.

What we need, instead, is a way of making richer solutions more accessible to people, and in that, I do agree with Clay–lower the barrier of participation. In the email list for the Identity Commons effort, the members talked about how the URL which serves as identifier within LID is also a URI, which forms the basis for XRIs, and how the group should look at ways of achieving synergy with this new effort. Rather than being disdainful, they sought to turn LID into an opportunity.

Finally, most of the conversation the last month at Many-to-Many has been about tagging and its applications.

Many minds working hard on this issue. Go read.

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 06:55pm in Blogging, Society, Taxonomy of Cyberspace, Technology | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (0) | TrackBack (0)

EFF: Endangered Gizmos!

The Electronic Frontier Foundation laments how the entertainment industry and compliant (read: industry supported) legislators are conniving to keep new technologies out of your hands because the new gizmos threaten their profits.

EFF reviews the extinct and endangered technologies.

Link: EFF: Endangered Gizmos!.

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 07:14pm in Law, Technology | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (0) | TrackBack (0)

Gerry McGovern Says 2005 Will See Shift to Content

Gerry McGovern predicts that 2005 will see a shift in content management thinking: from technology to the editor.

"From portals to personalization, from dynamic content to automated metadata, technology promised to efficientlyand cheaply solve the content problem.

"Technology is a marvelous thing, but too many treat the latest technology as some sort of god that will quickly and cheaply solve all problems. The foundation for success of content management is having professional editors and writers."

If you've been on the Net a while, you'll remember that Gerry was the guy behind the NUA Internet Surveys, which were the best source for information about Web use by country, profession, gender, you name it. The last update was in 2003, but they are still on line, and a key resource if you want to see what the WWW looked like five years ago.

Via friend Gunnar Langemark

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 11:06am in Communication, Technology | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (0) | TrackBack (0)

Danish Gov't Test Gives Thumbs Up to Open Source

Good news on the Open Office front. Berlingske, a Danish daily, reports that a government test of Open Office (free) vs. Microsoft Office (€220 license) shows no real difference between the two.

Several Danish municipalities and government agencies participated in the test.

The study, conducted by Devoteam Fischer & Lorenz, says there's no difference in productivity between the two packages. Users found Open Office had trouble handling some files, but almost always where tailored systems were being used.

The Danish Parliament will consider legislation in January to require all public IT systems to use open-source software.

Via Berlingske (in Danish)

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 07:08pm in Technology | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (0) | TrackBack (0)