Here is a very useful article by Steven Whitney devoted to helping you protect your website from being hacked.
This link came my way via a commenter on a LinkedIn discussion board, Caroline Bogart, from Massachusetts.
Google and Verizon motives
Uh oh — Google and Verizon to undermine public interest? Visit the website to save net neutrality.
Or, is this a tactic by Google and Verizon to bring Google’s data closer to users and reduce both of their network delivery costs? Cringely makes a good point here.
HTML 5 can do what Flash does
HTML 5 can do what Flash does thanks to this Javascript code library. See what a Google employee built with it — a retro asteroids game!
Update in 2011: former Apple employees create new HTML5 animation Mac program
Intrusive consumer-tracking technologies
Are you aware of how large the site tracking industry is growing? WSJ reports about intrusive consumer-tracking technologies:
The 50 [sample] sites installed a total of 3,180 tracking files on a test computer used to conduct the study. Only one site, the encyclopedia Wikipedia.org, installed none. Twelve sites, including IAC/InterActive Corp.’s Dictionary.com, Comcast Corp.’s Comcast.net and Microsoft Corp.’s MSN.com, installed more than 100 tracking tools apiece in the course of the Journal’s test.
The companies that placed the most tracking tools were Google Inc., Microsoft. and Quantcast Corp.
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Some of our web clients need analytical visitor tracking tools, which are not used to build consumer profiles but rather to determine content popularity and effectiveness of Adword Campaigns and referral sources. They have not joined networks like Quantcast to track all of your activities across other websites.
PHP skills are the most sought after, still
DoNanza, a freelance jobs search engine that aggregates project postings from job markets like Elance and oDesk, reports that PHP skills are the most sought after, even before iPhone, iPad and Android developers.
Read the full report at DoNanza
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The iPhone signal problem
The Real Story behind the iPhone signal problem
Anandtech gives a great investigative analysis. In short, all smartphones will suffer from various hand grip positions. But Apple’s design is flawed… it needs to add insulation to the antenna band, and subsidize a “bumper” for customers.
UPDATE: the bumper is not an ideal solution, and the newer iPhone for Verizon exhibits the same problems.
App Inventor software for Android devices
App Inventor for Android
Reading up on a visual mobile app builder from Google and MIT.
You can make an app for almost any task you’d like to accomplish.
For the iphone and the ipad, which use Apple’s iOS instead, there’s:
http://www.redfoundry.com/
an easy app builder.
What is Foursquare, and should I care?
What is Foursquare?
Primarily a “location-based social networking service” for smartphones and mobile users. Users “check in” to places they’re at so that their friends know where they are. The most frequent visitor of a place (bar, restaurant, venue) can become the “mayor”, and users can also earn badges for completing special tasks.
The point of all this? The service posits that the world will really care about knowing the most popular, “hottest” places to be right now. Companies of course will hope their venue is just such a place and can advertise to the hordes.
One new service aggregates a group of services: http://socialgreat.com/
It gives a gestalt view from: Foursquare, Twitter, Brightkite, and graffitiGeo.
When your sales staff is compensated based on deal size, not profit
Interesting if not obvious-in-hindsight complaint about Sun Microsystems by Oracle head:
More infuriating, says Ellison, is that Sun routinely sold equipment at a loss because it was more focused on boosting revenue than generating profits. The sales staff was compensated based on deal size, not profit. So the commission on a $1 million sale that generated $500,000 in profit was the same as one that cost the company $100,000, he said. “The sales force could care less if they sold things that lost money because the commission was the same in either case,” he said.
See Reuters article.
Why HTML5 can’t replace Flash
The best analysis for why HTML5 can’t replace Flash – Apple is being “disruptive” in the worst way.
HTML5 Vs. Flash. What You Haven’t Heard — a guest post by Carlos Nazareno, an interactive media artist… in sum, “HTML5 is just as bad, if not worse than Flash.”
And besides, just use CloudBrowse, an app for your smartphone that browses for you.