Industry Standard Views & Analysis

Campaign contribution laws expose online shortcomings

Cyndy Aleo-Carreira — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 09:30:38 -0700

The New York Times published an alarming article over the weekend: Fictitious Donors Found in Obama Finance Records. The article goes on to reveal that the McCain campaign has also found discrepancies in its contribution records, but due to fewer contributions and less of an online presence than the Obama campaign, logically, there are fewer fictitious contributors.

What the Times failed to acknowledge, however, was the reason for the discrepancies. Online contribution forms currently place the onus on the contributor to provide the correct data in the fields for name, address, and occupation. All payment information is kept separately. In addition, some political campaigns, including the "Barack Obama for President" application that is part of Facebook's Causes, use third-party services for accepting and forwarding contributions, like ActBlue. ActBlue's privacy policy reveals the fundamental problem with recording campaign contributions received online: The contact information submitted by the donor is separated from the payment information, and the payment information isn't stored.

The technology exists to fix the problem, but either campaigns are unwilling or not savvy enough to enforce the final step: If the billing information and the donor information don't match, then the application should kick the potential donor out before ever accepting the donation. The Times piece contacted campaign representatives who suggested that checking every donation is an insurmountable task, but the reality is that the Web application should do it for them. Donor "'Jgtj Jfggjjfgj' with the address of 'thjtrj' in 'gjtjtjtjtjtjr, AP'" certainly doesn't have a credit card or bank account with that same dummy information.

Twitter waves white flag on IM functionality

Cyndy Aleo-Carreira — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 15:54:03 -0700

Back in June, when we first noted the Twitter status chart on the Twitter Status blog, IM functionality was highlighted with red, a signal that the feature was completely not working. Nearly four months later, Twitter announced yesterday that the XMPP functionality that enabled Twitter users to receive and send updates via instant messaging is not only still not working, but also isn't forecasted to be working again at any point in the near future. IM functionality is no longer shown on the status chart at all.

In an update on the status blog, Twitter co-founder Evan Williams states that the feature has been

"moved...from our Things That are Broken list to our Things We Want to Build list. Based on our analysis, the cost-to-benefit for IM for the most users is not as high as some other things—so it will be a while before we tackle it."

Williams also takes the opportunity to highlight Twitter's recently more stable uptime. While admitting that the infrastructure was "not ready for primetime," Williams doesn't answer the question of whether the uptime is due to a decreased load on the system. I can't be the only Twitter user who uses the service far less without the ease and immediacy of XMPP functionality; I simply don't keep up with the messages as I used to. As a result, I've actually stopped following new people on Twitter simply because I so rarely check the updates, even though I run a desktop client for it.

Looking at the stats of two former high-end users of the service indicates the same drop-off in use. Both Robert Scoble of FastCompany.tv and Jason Calacanis of Mahalo seem to have reduced the number of messages sent, according to Twitter stats service TweetStats. Some of that may be due to the uptake in the early adopter set of other social media sites like FriendFeed that became popular during Twitter's frequent outages. But perhaps placing XMPP on the backburner is less about allocating developer resources and more about keeping the service up and running.

Starcraft II: Still no release date, but get ready to open your wallet

Cyndy Aleo-Carreira — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 17:40:45 -0700

While long-suffering Starcraft fans are still waiting for a release date for Starcraft II, they at least got a teaser from Blizzard today. Shack News reports that Blizzard has announced that the game will actually be a "trilogy" with the game broken into three sections, or campaigns. The first to be released will be Terrans: Wings of Liberty, and the following two (Zerg: Heart of the Swarm and Protoss: Legacy of the Void") released as expansion packs. Blizzard maintains that the game has to be split:

"... to maintain the quality of the product, the alternatives either being a long delay of the game, or a scaling back of the campaigns."

While Blizzard claims that the multi-player functionality promised won't be compromised by the split, the company did acknowledge that some game units won't be available as multi-player units.

While Blizzard is undoubtedly hoping for The Sims and World of Warcraft piles of money by moving to an expansion pack model for the game, it may be a misstep for the release. It will undoubtedly be a big seller for Blizzard, but expecting fans to pay three times for a game that's partially hobbled for multi-player gaming may be asking too much.

Geek Week: Sleazy campaigns, MS & Google make peace

IDG News Service — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 14:29:21 -0700

A gaffe and a half. God bless YouTube. Make the smallest mistake and it's captured forever and replayed a billion times. During a rally this week John McCain called his supporters "my fellow prisoners" [video]. (Maybe he thought he was back at the Hanoi Hilton.) Meanwhile, at a rally in Florida, Obama supporter Jim Pacillo introduced Joe Biden as "the next vice president of the United States, John McCain" [video]. (He also said, "we have a simple pretty choice in this election.") In the past, such slip-ups would have been forgotten. Now they're immortalized. So my question is, who should feel more insulted, the GOP prisoners or the faux McCain?

With the greatest of sleaze. Psst, pass it on. John McCain is a brutish, insensitive, egocentric lout. Barack Obama is not only in bed with radicals, criminals, and (gasp) foreigners, he's also taking advice from the clowns who ruined Fannie Mae. Hey, I'm not saying this, it's my inbox. I don't know about you, but I've received more sleazy (and inaccurate) pieces of attack email during this election cycle than in any I can remember. And I bet you have too. Time to take a deep breath and remember the cardinal rule: If it comes to you via email, it probably isn't true (unless it's coming from your boss, and then it definitely isn't true).

A bipartisan effort. Cringester "Bernard" found something interesting on the Web this week: Microsoft endorsing Google Desktop. Well, not exactly. He found an article on Microsoft's Windows Mobile site on how to create a wireless office using a Windows smart phone. Apparently the censors at MSFT didn't read it very carefully, because buried near the bottom was a recommendation for DeskFinder, an app that requires Google Desktop and doesn't support Vista (yet). With all this political rancor in the air, it's nice to see somebody cross the aisle and shake hands with the other side, even if by accident.

Got hot tips or more examples of sleazy online politics? E-mail me direct: cringe@infoworld.com.

It only seems like the only news is the economy

IDG News Service — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 13:44:09 -0700

Not all of this week's news involved global financial turmoil: while IT budgets are being cut and AMD is breaking itself up, a security tool was released for Firefox that prevents "clickjacking" and Microsoft said that Windows 7 will fix issues in Vista's user account control feature.

1. Economic malaise hits IT industry: Disappointing earnings from some IT companies, fewer initial public offerings, lowered earnings forecasts -- all are part of the grim global economic outlook. On the bright side, though, IBM reported this week that its net income rose 20 percent in its third quarter and maintained its profits will be strong for the full fiscal year.

2. AMD to spin off chip fabs to raise funds: Advanced Micro Devices is splitting into two companies, with one designing chips and the other making them. The company also said that two investment funds owned by the Abu Dhabi government will provide capital to AMD and help it compete better with Intel. The news was hailed by analysts, investors, customers and employees as a way to strengthen AMD, particularly in the harsh economic climate.

3. Firefox extension blocks dangerous Web attack: An update of a free security tool for Firefox blocks "clickjacking," one of the most dangerous and vexing problems on the Internet. Clickjacking happens when a Web user clicks on an invisible, malicious link without knowing it. The tool, called NoScript, now includes ClearClick, which can tell if a Web page contains a hidden, embedded element. Users of NoScript who click on such links will be asked if they really want to do that.

4. Microsoft to improve Vista's problematic UAC in Windows 7: Microsoft is tweaking the user account control feature in its Windows client OS and admits that what was meant to be a security feature in Vista has been a hassle for users. The idea behind UAC in Vista is to give primary PC users more control of applications and settings, but it hasn't quite worked out that way. "What we've learned is that we only got part of the way there in Vista and some folks think we accomplished the opposite," said a blog post attributed to Ben Fathi, Microsoft corporate vice president of development in the Windows Core Operating System Division.

5. Accused Palin hacker has a history of intrusion: The Tennessee college student charged with illegally accessing the Yahoo e-mail account of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, who is also the Republican vice presidential candidate, hacked into a server eight years ago at Eastern Hills Middle School where he was a student, according to one of his former teachers. David Kernell, 20, was charged this week with one felony count of accessing a protected computer in the Palin incident. He pleaded not guilty.

6. 11 Microsoft security updates due next week: There will be no rest for weary systems administrators next week -- Microsoft expects to roll out 11 security updates, with four of them rated critical. The monthly patchathon will apply to bugs in Windows Active Directory, Internet Explorer, Excel and the Microsoft Host Integration Server. Besides the critical patches, six others will be rated important and one will be moderate.

7. Apple to hold special notebook event on Oct. 14: Apple sent out an invitation to reporters to attend an event next Tuesday, saying that "the spotlight turns to notebooks." We assume this means that new Macbooks will be out in time for the all-important holiday shopping season.

8. NASA: Messenger sends back never-before-seen Mercury images: NASA's Messenger spacecraft transmitted images of Mercury to scientist this week, proving them with data about parts of that planet that have never been seen before. The Mariner 10 mission in the 1970s identified the Kuiper crater on Mercury, the planet nearest the sun, and an image of the crater was among the first to be relayed to NASA. Messenger took hundreds of photos of Mercury as it got within 125 miles (201 kilometers) of the planet's surface.

9. For a promising IT career, go east, young techie: The IT job market had tightened up even before global financial turmoil gave us all a whack, but opportunities are more plentiful in China, India and Russia, according to analysis of growth trends. Working in such countries also can be good for the old resume. "IT is going global. The IT profession is going global. Developing product for markets all over the world is something you have to learn how to do. Overseas work is a huge enhancer for IT professionals," said Rob McGovern, CEO of JobFox, an international IT employment agency.

10. Obscenity charges raise questions in Internet age: Issues with applying a long-time court test that uses community standards to determine if material is obscene are coming to the forefront with recent prosecutions of Web site operators.

Straddling the great divide

IDG News Service — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 12:46:28 -0700

Some recent research findings from professor Avner Levin of Ryerson University in Toronto may prompt CIOs to re-examine their views around employee privacy.

Dr. Levin is co-author of the study The Next Digital Divide: Online Social Network Privacy, which explores the attitudes and perceptions of young social networkers to privacy and security, as well as organizational policies, practices and attitudes around the use of online social networks. Dr. Levin and his team interviewed more than 2,000 undergraduate students in the largest quantitative research study to date on the use of online social networks by young Canadians.

"Young people believe that information shared with their personal social networks is considered private as long as its dissemination is limited to their social network," said Levin.

This flies in the face of established policy in many organizations, which hold dear the right to examine employees' emails and in some cases monitor their Web activities -- and justifiably so, many would argue, as the abuses of these IT-based activities can have catastrophic consequences for the organization.

The CIO is smack in the middle of this budding controversy. On one hand she must safeguard the corporate interest and satisfy compliance obligations, and on the other she must avoid alienating the Gen Y employees who will eventually be the lifeblood of the IT department and the organization as a whole.

Dr. Levin noted that none of the employers represented in the survey had a policy specifically related to online social networks unless they had experienced a related incident; all assume that their existing policies on the use of the Web will handle it.

It now seems increasingly apparent that the old policies will not suffice. Attitudes were much different when those policies were constructed, and the social networking phenomenon adds a complex new layer to the privacy debate.

It's evident that things will have to change, whether CIOs like it or not. Rather than take a reactive position to the issue, this may be a good time to be proactive. Forward thinking policies around social networking and privacy may go a long way towards helping you attract young tech-savvy employees. And it may help you some avoid some nasty situations in the future.

When you're looking at rethinking your policies, make sure you get some input from those same young social networkers. Despite their incautious networking habits, they still hold strong views on privacy and it will be important to get those views on the table.

Favorite Firefox extensions

IDG News Service — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 11:26:59 -0700

One of the big advantages Firefox 3 holds over Safari is extensibility. Savvy users can customize the browser to look, feel and perform in any number of ways. Our earlier review said "Firefox 3 is an improvement on its useful but somewhat clunky predecessor in nearly every respect."

In this week's Macworld Video, Rob Griffiths show you how to use extensions to extend the power of Firefox 3, all for no cost and with only a little bit of work.

He'll show you how to install extensions, where to find them, and then look at three of his favorites.

Download Macworld Video #71

Format: MPEG-4/H.264

Resolution: 320 x 240 (iPhone & iPod compatible)

Size: 9.1MB

Length: 7 minutes, 24 seconds

Show Notes

For those of you still on the fence about Firefox, Rob details how to do a quick install and get up to speed with accessing extensions, themes and plug-ins.

Three of Rob's favorites are:

Firefox PDF Plugin for Mac OS X: Allows you to view PDFs within your browser window.

Download Statusbar: Keeps track of multiple downloads in your browser's status bar, rather than an external window.

Fast Dial: Presents numerous Web pages in a tabbed format for quick viewing, similar to a popular feature previously found in Opera.

To subscribe to the Macworld Video Podcast using iTunes 5 or later, click here.

You can also see a complete archive of all our videos on Macworld's YouTube channel. Subscribe to that channels and you will be notified whenever we post a new video.

Or just point your favorite podcast-savvy RSS reader to: http://feeds.macworld.com/macworld/video/

Surprise! Web ads aren't immune from the credit crisis

Jordan Golson — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 10:37:19 -0700

Numerous analysts have been slashing their online ad forecasts in the wake of the market bloodbath. Unsurprisingly, market conditions will affect things, but at least there is still growth. Wachovia (resist the urge to snicker) estimates ad spending online will grow by 10% next year rather than a previously estimated 15 percent. That may sound bad, but it's better than magazine and newspaper advertising, which Wachovia predicts will actually shrink.

Lehman/Barclays dropped its 2008 US ad estimate from 23.4% growth to 16.9 percent. Growing still, but $3 billion less than previously predicted. On top of forecasts of overall growth slowing, UBS analysts anticipated revenue estimates for Google, Yahoo and ValueClick by 4%, 9.1% and 19.3% respectively.

"We see no business model based on advertising or consumer spending that will be immune to a downturn," said UBS analyst Ben Schachter.

It's time to hunker down. The hurricane is coming.

Student journalists skeptical of AllVoices' "citizen journalism" model

Cyndy Aleo-Carreira — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 08:18:41 -0700

Online Journalism Blog had firsthand experience with citizen journalism site AllVoices' recruitment tour of U.K. universities. Speaking to college students majoring in journalism, the company seemed to be selling itself as a leg up into the world of journalism, much like the proliferation of writing gigs on job sites promising "exposure" for writers.

However, even the journalism students aren't buying into the hype. Even when shown the automated method of content filtering employed by AllVoices, including a voting system, aggregation, and contributor reputation, the students remained skeptical of the lack of human editors, asking:

"[W]hat if someone posted something false? What if a PR person planted some fluff complimentary to their client? Do you perform any identity checks? And my particular favourite: What if the person writing was a terrorist?"

After watching the repercussions of the Steve Jobs heart attack rumor that began on CNN's citizen journalism site iReport, the students have a point. User-generated content has been a boon to online content, but at the same time, the lack of editorial oversight has tarnished the reputation of citizen journalism. Automation enables efficiency, but does nothing to ensure quality or accuracy. Citizen journalism needs an overhaul to achieve respectability.

Image by Mark Visosky. Used under Creative Commons Attribution License.

New obscenity charges raise questions

IDG News Service — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 07:52:05 -0700

The 21st paragraph of the story "Analysis: New obscenity charges raise questions in Internet Age," posted to the newswire Thursday, has been rewritten to clarify its meaning and now reads: In June, a trial in the Isaacs case ended in mistrial because a Web site maintained by the judge displayed sexually explicit material. The charges against Isaacs have not been dismissed, however.

Tanking economy may lead to spear-phishing and social engineering scams

Cyndy Aleo-Carreira — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 21:04:00 -0700

There's nothing like the smell of fear to lure opportunists, and Dark Reading describes how the current financial crisis can open doors for attacks, both online and offline. Researchers discovered that bank employees are more likely to allow unidentified individuals into branch offices believing them to be Federal auditors. In one instance, the researcher was able to walk into a manager's office and obtain a back-up tape of the bank's data by claiming to be an auditor. In other instances, bank employees have fallen prey to online attacks via email. The emails may include links claiming to compare the bank against competitors, or include attachments claiming similar data.

According to researchers, the climate of fear that surrounds a global crisis like this will distract employees from typical security measures, creating more opportunities for exploits.

Image by Adolph B. Rice Studio via the Library of Virginia

Faltering economy kills U.S. branch of Web 2.0/microlending site Zopa

Cyndy Aleo-Carreira — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 19:27:27 -0700

As global markets continue to dive, Silicon Valley is starting to batten down the hatches. For at least one company, however, the economic downturn is already having major impact, as Zopa announces that its U.S.-based operations will cease.

While the company was never able to roll out its peer-to-peer microlending model in the U.S. due to regulatory issues, it still maintained a microloan function with U.S. credit union partners, who will now assume the accounts of U.S.-based Zopa users. According to the company blog, operations in the U.K., Italy, and Asia will not be impacted by the U.S. withdrawal.

As P2P-Banking.com notes, the irony is not lost on Zopa that the failure of the same U.S. regulations that prohibited the company from rolling out a peer-to-peer model in the U.S. have resulted in the current economic climate, and the company's CFO took the opportunity to point out the company's success in European and Asian markets. The company's eventual success, however, will depend on those markets escaping a domino effect started in the country they are abandoning.

Picture This: Apple announces notebook event for October 14th

Jordan Golson — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 14:14:11 -0700

Apple has announced an event at the company's Inifinite Loop headquarters in Cupertino on October 14th at 10AM Pacific, as previously rumored. The invitation suggests the event will be about notebooks, tagged "the spotlight turns to notebooks" -- perhaps introducing a sub-$1,000 MacBook.

Fear returns to stocks, Yahoo down 8%

Ian Lamont — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 13:36:40 -0700

It was another grim day on Wall Street on Thursday, as credit fears and worries over a recession led to a late-afternoon selloff. The Dow lost more than 7% and the technology sector fell 4%. A few Internet giants were especially hard hit, including Yahoo (YHOO), which fell to $12.65, an 8% drop. Online technology publisher TechTarget (TTGT) was one of the biggest losers on a percentage basis, dropping more than 20% to $3.68.

There were a handful of gainers in the technology sector, including Research in Motion (RIMM) which just yesterday announced its new BlackBerry Storm handset.

New obscenity charges raise questions in Internet Age

IDG News Service — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 13:19:27 -0700

A long-standing court test using community standards to determine whether adult content is criminally obscene has been a potential problem area for the U.S. pornography industry. But a debate that's been largely abstract for years has recently changed as the U.S. Department of Justice successfully prosecuted two Web site operators for obscenity.

Last Friday, Paul F. Little -- also known as Max Hardcore -- was sentenced to 46 months in prison, as well as a US$7,500 fine for distributing adult videos online and through the mail. The Florida judge also fined Little's company, MaxWorld Entertainment, $75,000 and shut down his Web site.

And in August, Karen Fletcher, a 56-year-old Pennsylvania woman, was sentenced to five years of probation, including six months of home detention, and forfeiture of her computer after pleading guilty to six counts of using an interactive computer service to distribute obscene materials. Fletcher owned and operated the Web site, Red Rose Stories, which featured stories, but no pictures, describing sexual molestation and violence against children.

Those cases and other charges filed in recent years have raised questions among First Amendment lawyers and civil liberties advocates, in part because one major test for determining obscenity relies on local community standards for pornography on the Internet. The DOJ established an Obscenity Prosecution Task Force in 2005, but critics have said the agency should redirect those resources toward violent crime or terrorism investigations.

The recent convictions highlight the problems with relying on community standards for Web content, Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, wrote on his blog.

The DOJ "could have chosen any state in the Union, but engineered an indictment in Tampa -- an open case of forum shopping for the most conservative jury pool that it could find," wrote Turley, who also has defended several high-profile clients. "The [U.S. Supreme] Court refused to create a bright-line of the right of consenting adults to have such material so long as it does not involve abuse of individuals. Instead, it went through a ludicrous period of actually watching porn and following the most fluid and biased rules."

The Supreme Court avoided spelling out what is obscene in a landmark case, Miller v. California, decided in 1973. The court laid out a three-part test for determining whether material was obscene, with the first part of the test asking whether "the average person, applying contemporary community standards" would find that the work appeals to the prurient interest.

A second test in the Miller decision relies on state standards, asking whether the material in question "depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law."

The DOJ defended the multiple obscenity charges brought across the country since 2003. "We prosecute cases based on the U.S. Supreme Court's definition of obscenity," said Laura Sweeney, a DOJ spokeswoman.

Sweeney noted that local juries have the final decision in obscenity cases. "We bring the cases where the evidence suggests there is obscenity, and we bring it to a jury," she said.

Sweeney said she wasn't comfortable discussing the potential issues with using community standards to determine whether Internet materials are obscene. The DOJ still has cases pending, she said.

The community standards issue has caused some "big headaches" for Web sites, said Michael Songer, a partner in the Crowell & Moring law firm in Washington, D.C. "Generally, the courts have held that the 'old' rules apply in that you can be liable for any community along the 'chain' of your pornography," he said. "So, if I'm in Utah and look at the porn site, my community is Utah, even though their view of obscenity might be different than California."

In 1996, a California couple operating an online bulletin board was found guilty in Tennessee of obscenity charges. But since then, obscenity charges against Web site operators and porn distributors have been infrequent until the recent efforts of the DOJ, said Jeffrey Douglas, a California lawyer who served on Little's defense team.

Little's conviction appears to be the first time a well-known commercial pornography maker has been successfully prosecuted for obscenity, said Douglas, who specializes in defending the adult industry and has served on the boards of directors for the Free Speech Coalition and the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Southern California.

The community standard causes problems, even without the added issues with online distribution because it's difficult to define who makes up the community, Douglas said. "The community could be anything -- from a township to a city to a county to statewide," he said.

And it's nearly impossible to determine what the community standard is until it's tested in court, Douglas said. "No one in the universe talks to friends, never mind complete, strangers about what they fantasize about," he said.

Then there's the additional problems with Internet distribution. There's no practical way of walling off a Web site based on customers' locations, Douglas said.

With mail order distribution, an adult business could choose not to ship products to locations that may be unfriendly to pornography, he said. "It's difficult, it's impractical, but at least it's not impossible," he said. "With a Web site, you can't block traffic from another location."

Several bloggers and free speech lawyers have questioned Little's conviction, but it's not easy to find defenders of his style of pornography. Little's videos depict hardcore and rough sex, often with actresses dressed to look like juveniles.

Douglas acknowledges that a handful of recent obscenity indictments filed by the DOJ seem to target vendors of extreme types of pornography. In addition to the Little conviction, the DOJ in mid-2007 brought charges against the operators of the business Movies by Mail, which distributed films by Little, and against Ira Isaacs, distributor of several kinds of hardcore pornography.

In June, a trial in the Isaacs case ended in mistrial, after a Web site the judge maintained displayed sexually explicit material. The charges against Isaacs have not been dismissed, however.

In 2003, the DOJ brought obscenity charges against the owners of pornography filmmaker Extreme Associates, which makes similar films. In 2005, a U.S. district court judge threw out the 10-count indictment against Extreme Associates, but the DOJ has appealed that decision.

But Douglas and other defenders of Little say his videos portrayed consensual sex between adults. Douglas is planning an appeal of Little's conviction. "This appeal will be of central importance every adult Web site in the world," Douglas said.

If the women in Little's videos were mistreated, as has been alleged, he should be charged with assault or rape, said Ann Bartow, operator of the Feminist Law Professors blog and a law professor at the University of South Carolina.

"Obscenity as a concept is very abstract," Bartow said. "If the production of porn causes harm, the harm should be addressed directly. If the consumption of porn causes harm, those harms should be addressed directly. Obscenity is all about the reaction of the hypothetical offended viewer. It doesn't address or redress real harms or injury."

Some legal scholars expressed less sympathy for Little, however. Some types of pornography have long been viewed as obscene, and Little's films sound like they come "pretty close to the line," said Eric Goldman, director of the High Tech Law Institute at the Santa Clara University School of Law.

The more troubling charges were against Fletcher, the Pennsylvania woman who operated the Red Rose Stories Web site, Goldman said. "I've always told my students that it's almost impossible for something that is text to be judged obscene," he said. The six-month home detention and other penalties in her plea deal are "still a heavy penalty for thinking out loud."

Yahoo Web Analytics claims faster updates than Google Analytics

Jordan Golson — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 12:50:53 -0700

Yahoo has relaunched IndexTools, a web analytics package it bought earlier this year as "Yahoo Web Analytics." The software seems awfully similar to Google Analytics -- unsurprising since they basically do the same thing. The service allows online stores and websites to track users through the e-commerce "funnel" and determine how best to improve websites to close more sales or drive more traffic.

The software's main selling point over Google Analytics is its response time. Google Analytics can take up to a day to fully render data, leaving users in the dark if they want to know what's going on right now. Yahoo claims its analytics software is updated within minutes.

Yahoo's package is being rolled out to select partners for now and will soon offer all 13,000 Yahoo Small Business hosted websites one-click access to the product. For users who don't like Google Analytics or who don't use Google's massively popular AdWords program, Yahoo Web Analytics could be a nice alternative -- and offer an option to check on data accuracy.

However, once again for Yahoo, it might be too little too late. Google's Analytics has a three year head start.

Syncing iTunes U videos

IDG News Service — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 12:33:19 -0700

Reader Neil has a question about syncing videos from iTunes U. He writes:

I've downloaded a series of iPhone developer videos from the iTunes U section of the iTunes Store. iTunes has considerately created a playlist for each series within a folder. But I'm not sure how to sync the movies because when I mount my iPhone and choose it within iTunes, I don't see these playlists listed within the Music or Video tabs. How can I sync these things?

I gave this a go with the University of Utah's iPhone Programming Association videos and, as you suggest, iTunes created a University of Utah folder and dropped a playlist of the same name into it. While I could see that folder within the Music tab in the iPhone preferences window, I couldn't select it or see the playlist within.

However, the movies within that playlist do appear within the Movies section of the Video tab in the iPhone preferences window. Just enable the ones you want to sync by placing a check mark next to each.

Ah, but when you do this, all those videos appear in a long list under the movies heading on your iPhone or iPod. It would be handier if they were ganged together. And you can do that by tagging the videos as something other than a movie.

For example, in iTunes 8 select a video, press Command-I to bring up the Info window, click the Options tab, and change the Media Kind to Music Video. Repeat for the other episodes. Go to the Music tab in the iPhone or iPod preferences, make sure that the Include Music Videos option is checked, and then locate the playlist of iTunes U videos you want to sync with your iPhone or iPod. Click Sync and the videos will transfer over as music videos.

On an iPhone or iPod touch you'll find your iTunes U playlist listed under the Playlists area in the device's iPod/Music section. On a video-capable clickwheel iPod you'll find the playlist by navigating to Videos/Music Videos.

Alternatively, you can designate the videos as TV episodes. To do that, return to the Options tab of the Info window for each video and choose TV Show from the Music Kind pop-up menu for each video. You'll also want to go to the Video tab within the Info window and assign the same show title to each episode--iPhone Developer Videos, for example--so that the episodes are ganged together within iTunes and on your iPhone or iPod.

Sync an iPhone or iPod touch and the episodes will be listed in the Videos area, gathered together as a TV show with the name you assigned. On a clickwheel iPod you'll find them at Videos/TV Shows, again pulled together under the assigned title.

Open-source Drupal turns pro

IDG News Service — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 12:29:43 -0700

As we've seen time and again, in an increasing number of enterprise software categories, open source has become a promising alternative to commercial software. But there's no free ride.

Support from developers is often problematic, and you need to find products with a large enough following so that programmers have an incentive to build add-on modules. When the Test Center reviewed open source CMSes (content management systems), these two factors often broke the tie between otherwise robust solutions and gave Alfresco the advantage.

(For InfoWorld's comparative review of Drupal, DotNetNuke, Plone, Joomla, and Alfresco Community Edition, see "Open source CMSes prove well worth the price." For the Test Center's top picks of free and open source software for business, IT, and personal productivity, see "Best of Open Source Software Awards 2008.")

Yet if you take support out of the equation, Drupal emerges as the better solution for many enterprise Web projects. That's because this social publishing solution starts with a mature Web CMS, adds a blog system, and then offers discussion forms, community features, and extensibility through 1,800 add-on modules -- many of them also open source. Given this flexibility, it's not surprising that Drupal powers about 250,000 live sites -- including big names such as Federal Express, The Onion, and Popular Science.

But big organization or small, there's a dark side to Drupal: You'll probably need the services of an experienced support staff or a costly consultancy that has mastered a complex setup and knows how to assemble all the building blocks into a workable system. Now, for those with limited resources, Acquia is stepping in with a commercially supported Drupal distribution along with a network that delivers patches and security updates.

Laying Web tracks

I looked at Acquia Drupal 1.0, which includes the Drupal 6.4 core distribution, network modules for communicating with the Acquia Network, and the Acquia Network itself. The last item complements an easy deployment experience with support, online documentation, and performance monitoring.

The process starts when you sign up for an account at Acquia's Web site and download its hardened Drupal distribution. You'll still need to have hardware already set up with PHP, MySQL (or PostgreSQL), and a Web server, such as Apache. Don't underestimate the work to get this running -- especially in a large production setting. It took me about a day to set up and troubleshoot this stack on my Windows Server 2003 server.

However, when you get to loading Drupal, things get much easier. Acquia's engineers have created the necessary customized settings files and configured a suite of contributed add-on modules. After just 30 minutes, I had a running Acquia Drupal site with blogs, forums, social networks (people could publish their profiles), articles, mashups, and Web content management.

Another big timesaver is Acquia's set of pre-integrated add-on modules. Acquia looked at some 1,800 modules available for Drupal -- then selected, fully tested, and integrated the essential ones you'd need for building a modern Web site.

Without detailing every add-in, I think Acquia made very good choices. For example, Content Construction Kit (CCK) lets me create custom content types using a simple wizard. Image creates picture galleries for your sites. Mollom protects sites from spam. And the VotingAPI gives developers a standard way to let users vote for and rate Drupal content. To add any of these modules to your site, you simply select them from Acquia Drupal's administration menu, which renders drop-down choices at the top of the browser for controlling the site.

So without having to play around installing and configuring any extra modules, I went right to the content section of Acquia Drupal's admin menu. After part of another day, I came away with a polished site that had a custom look, populated articles, a blog, video, discussion forums, and a tag cloud. Based on my earlier test of the community Drupal download, Acquia saved me at least a day of work integrating and preconfiguring the various components.

Taking the long view

While deploying a major site quickly is a big accomplishment, keeping the site running, day in and day out, is much more important. The standard Drupal core already has decent management, accessed from a page available to administrators. But several Acquia network modules, installed during setup, take administration a few steps further. These enable your Acquia Drupal installation to communicate securely with the Acquia Network and exchange configuration, operation, and profile information.

In particular, Acquia Heartbeat monitors your site's uptime and sends an alert when unexpected outages occur. Other network services promise to be just as valuable, though I didn't have Acquia Drupal running long enough to fully test them. Code Modification Detection, for instance, automatically senses if you change code that would make future updates difficult or that introduce security holes.

Status of all network services is available from the Acquia Drupal portal, which I found easy to navigate and to use. As an example, the main page alerted me to software updates based on my system profile. I also got a lot of mileage out of Site Usage Statistics, which provides an at-a-glance view of user activity, including newly created content and comments; this is updated daily.

In addition, from the portal, I set up Remote Cron so that Acquia would periodically perform self-maintenance tasks, including caching operations.

A big part of what you're paying for with Acquia Drupal is support; the portal offers a simple way to log support incidents and track your tickets. Depending on your purchase level, Acquia's guaranteed response time can vary from a few hours to the next day. During my testing, Acquia did meet the specified response deadline -- and resolved my questions satisfactorily.

There's also a subscriber forum and documentation. Again, the service was fairly new during my tests, so these areas weren't deeply populated. Still, in scanning the posts from other users, Acquia staff did seem responsive and offered solutions to users' questions.

Time will tell

Although Acquia Drupal was too new to completely evaluate some of the support options (such as discussion forums), the technical underpinnings of this service were solid. Setup and remote management of my Drupal Web site proved to be simple and uneventful. The Ticket Management system worked well. What's more, I believe there are enough subscription levels and support methods (including by phone) for managing production Web sites of many sizes.

As a first version, Acquia has more work to do, too, which company representatives acknowledged. In a briefing, they indicated the staff is looking to integrate more modules, provide better documentation, have simpler deployments (cloud packaging and redistribution through shared hosts), and include more analytics.

Based on a week of testing, I can't offer a meaningful assessment of Acquia's technical support services, nor can I determine whether Acquia will live up to its promise to provide timely updates to Drupal that don't break things. I can say that Acquia makes the deployment of Drupal considerably easier and adds valuable management tools. If the support network follows suit, Acquia Drupal will be a tempting option for organizations that lack the time or staff to deal with the patchwork of a raw Drupal environment.

Survey: iTunes remains "best" music store, Amazon makes strong first showing

Jordan Golson — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 12:09:47 -0700

iTunes remains the "best" digital music store, showing strong gains year-over-year in awareness, usage, familiarity and "best brand" mentions in an Ipsos survey. Nearly every other music store dropped in the "best brand" rankings, with Napster, MySpace, Wal-Mart and Yahoo Music leading the way downward.

Only Rhapsody showed gains year-over-year thanks to extensive advertising and partnerships. Helping Rhapsody is the fact that it doesn't compete head-on with iTunes. Rhapsody is a monthly subscription service offering access to millions of songs for a recurring subscription fee. Much to my chagrin, Apple has thus far not introduced a subscription music service, despite rumors of such a program dating back quite a while.

Amazon's mp3 store, with a very strong brand behind it and DRM-free access to a ton of songs, made a strong first showing, grabbing 9% of the "best brand" rankings. The full chart is below.

iTunes and media file organization

IDG News Service — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 11:27:48 -0700

In a recent Mac OS X Hints blog entry, I explained how to prevent iTunes from changing filenames (in the Finder) when adding items to your iTunes library. As this is something I don't normally pay any attention to myself, I included a disclaimer, to let everyone know that I don't use this hint myself, and as such, may not be able to answer many questions about it. I wrote:

Now, I'll admit that this particular preference change was meaningless to me--I really don't care, nor do I even know, what iTunes names my songs when it imports them. I use iTunes to make listening to music easier, and not having to care about filenames is a key part of the "making it easier" bit.

I've now heard from a couple of readers that the above could be construed as insulting for those who do care about filenames on imported music. In re-reading what I wrote, I can see how it could be read that way. For that, I'm sorry, as that wasn't the intent at all. However, these e-mail exchanges got me thinking about the broader question at hand, which is simply...why do you care what iTunes names your tracks, or how it organizes the files in the Finder?

For me, the filenames and folder structures for my media files are irrelevant, because iTunes manages all those details for me. I use iTunes to play, tag, track, and otherwise handle all the mundane aspects of managing my music and movie collection. Using iTunes' built-in tools, the actual filenames (and storage locations) of the songs or movies being managed are invisible. iTunes presents all the information I need to know--song or movie title, artist, purchase date, etc.--within the iTunes interface, and without having to show me each file's name or storage location. If I ever want to see one of my songs in the Finder, I just Control-click on it in iTunes and pick the Show in Finder option from the contextual menu. (I use iPhoto in much the same way, only rarely bothering to title images--I do, however, spend lots of time with keywords and Smart Albums to keep my images organized).

But I know that many of you prefer to have full control over the file naming and storage location of your iTunes media, and I'm just curious as to why you want this control? What do you give up if you simply let iTunes manage all those details? This isn't meant to imply that my "ignore everything" method is better--I'm genuinely curious as to why some people care about the naming convention for media files that iTunes is going to manage. So how about it--if you're one of those users who manages every aspect of your media collection, including the filenames and folder structures, why do you prefer to do it this way?

Language Weaver's translation tools move from spy vs. spy to Web content

Ian Lamont — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 09:06:53 -0700

Automated, effective machine translation has been a holy grail of computer scientists for decades. It's not just a practical challenge -- it's a technology that has the potential to revolutionize communication and lead to new classes of software applications.

The arrival of a global communications medium -- the Internet -- has increased the need for high-quality translation software. The Industry Standard spoke with Mark Tapling, the president and CEO of Language Weaver, about his company's approach to machine translation. The company's products are centered around a statistical-based translation engine that has been used for years by U.S. intelligence agencies. It supports 50 language pairs. Language Weaver has also launched a high-volume Internet-based application that can be optimized for internal company documents or websites.

One of the company's major selling points is cost: Tapling says human translation averages 21 cents per word, which is too expensive for most types of online content. In the interview (see below) he stated that Language Weaver is a far cheaper alternative.

The company has already attracted several customers who want to produce international versions of their websites. One of the largest is Trip Advisor, which uses the software to translate user-generated reviews of hotels and other places into various European languages and Japanese. However, price is not the only consideration for using Language Weaver -- output quality matters greatly to readers, and the software needs to be "trained" to improve the quality of translated Web content.

Our interview with Tapling follows:

The Industry Standard: How does Language Weaver compare with human translators and other machine translation services in terms of cost?

Mark Tapling: Language Weaver translations are at least 2,000 times more cost effective than the cost of human translators. Our products are priced by application versus tools. In this case, we are looking to establish leadership as both the quality and price performer. Pricing for alternate solutions have a wide variety of entry points, but we know when considering volume, speed, and accuracy that our products are viewed as very compelling on the pricing front.

TIS: What is the breakdown of clients who use the hosted service, compared to the standalone CD-based product?

Tapling: We just launched our SaaS offering 10 days ago. We have two clients up in production, and likely another three coming in the first two weeks, so we are encouraged. The historical business of the company has been geared toward government intelligence applications, and virtually all of those clients are on premise-based systems.

TIS: Which are the top three language pairs among your customers?

Tapling: Arabic, Spanish, are at the top, and then it becomes a race between German and French.

TIS: Who are your competitors?

Tapling: Our biggest competitor is "No Decision, Inc". This is the scenario where clients choose not to pursue translating because the human cost is viewed as too high. If the customer advances past that obstacle, we see Systran, and regional players with limited language coverage.

TIS: Can you describe what "domain training" involves?

Tapling: Our prospective customers deliver to us a combination of mono-lingual destination content, and bi-lingual source/target content. In some cases, we capture this data for them. We then have a series of tools that cleans and aligns data, and runs it against a backbone network containing billions of words. The process updates the statistical algorithms, so that future translation requests understand the lexicon and syntax of a customer's business.

TIS: I observed in several tests of website content (English to simplified Chinese and vice versa, and French to English) that the syntax was often corrupted in the target language. What are the factors that impact translation quality?

Tapling: The key factor is understanding the customer's communication style, and desired outputs. When we can match pairs of input and desired outputs, the translators respond very favorably.

TIS: User-generated content would seem especially difficult to train and parse, considering the variation in writing styles and unconventional word usage. How does the tool accommodate such content? Is there a drop-off in quality?

Tapling: Excellent point. We are also advancing our translators past phrase base capabilities to syntax based systems with a confidence indicator algorithm that enables us to accurately predict end user response. We also have the capability of filtering out the "keyboard noise" of UGC to achieve high levels of quality.

Spam war: Registry operators are taking over the asylum

Cyndy Aleo-Carreira — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 20:10:38 -0700

After seeing our coverage of ICANN's wrist slap of two domain registrars for violations of ICANN's policies requiring correct Whois information, Afilias drew our attention to its latest press release. Afilias, which operates the .info generic top-level domain (gTLD):

"announced a new registration policy that makes the nature of domain name abuses clear for registrants and registrars, and furthers the power of the registry to take quick and appropriate action regarding .INFO domains used for abusive behavior."

The policy, which goes into effect next month, details the requirements of registering a .info domain, as well as penalties that can be levied for abuse of the domains, including spam, phishing, pharming, malware distribution, and distribution of child pornography. As part of the announcement, Aflias is reserving the right to lock the domains of violators themselves, even during a dispute resolution period. In other words, Afilias is taking the power into its own hands that ICANN seems unwilling to wield.

The .info domain has had its share of problems with spammers, possibly due to its status as the first gTLD created since the original DNS development. By opening a new gTLD to the public after allowing trademark owners to claim their names, it became a fertile ground for spammers, phishers, and other abusers. If Afilias' new policies help to combat the abuse of .info, they should be applauded, but the policies are exactly what ICANN should be enforcing themselves, without relying on registry operators to do the work for it.

Large-cap technology stocks fade in late-afternoon trading

Ian Lamont — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 13:15:19 -0700

Large U.S.-listed technology stocks were hurt in a late-afternoon selloff on Wednesday. Even though the Nasdaq declined less than 1% and the Nasdaq Internet Index rose slightly, a small group of Internet, software and hardware companies with large market capitalizations saw significant declines. Yahoo and IBM both lost more than 5% after negative analyst commentary. Google also continued its downward trajectory, closing below $340. Microsoft was down nearly 1%.

However, there were a few bright spots: eBay climbed more than 3% after an analyst's upgrade. Intel rose nearly 1.5%, and Apple also gained back some ground, although not enough to break the $90 mark.

Source: Google Finance

BitGravity rolls out API for HD Web video

Jordan Golson — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 13:06:27 -0700

Online video content distribution network BitGravity, the company providing video distribution for some pretty popular online shows like Diggnation, has rolled out a new API to give users much more control over their content.

Using its "Advanced Progressive API" (APAPI?) BitGravity customers can stream HD video with near-zero lag while enabling auto bitrate adjustment, random access to any part of a video without downloading an entire video and a number of advertising-friendly features which could make it easier for online video sites to make money.

BitGravity's technology serves up episodes of DiggNation very well -- video quality is very high and there is hardly any delay in starting a video or jumping around to various parts of the show. Here's a quick demo of the tech in action.

Tech stocks mostly higher on Wednesday in mid-afternoon trading

Ian Lamont — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 12:29:13 -0700

(See update) Despite the Dow's zig-zag ride on Wednesday, technology stocks are faring relatively well. Apple had recovered more than 5% toward the middle of the afternoon, and eBay was up more than 7.5%. However, several companies saw their stock prices drop. IBM lost ground after an analyst downgrade, and Yahoo dropped to a 52-week low over questions about future revenue opportunities in an advertising slowdown.

Update: Large-cap tech stocks fade in late-afternoon trading