mudadosk.com

(Credit:
CNET Networks)

That said, if you do have a properly formatted file, it plays great–and in full quality, meaning you don’t even need to use iTunes to sync up your content if you’re near a high-speed connection.

If you’re done playing around with Google Earth for the iPhone, you might be interested in checking out something with some everyday utility. Last week Box.net dropped its iPhone application on the App Store. Just like the mobile
Safari-friendly version of yore, this lets you access your cloud-stored files on the go, including documents, music, and movies.

In the future, once Apple flips the switch on its live notification service this means you’ll be able to keep track of file changes as they happen, which makes Box.net’s collaborative features all the more attractive. Currently, the only way to see updates is to hit a big refresh button, which will show you any additions or edits to existing files since you launched it.

Access files on the go with Box.net's iPhone app.

The big difference is that this new version takes advantage of your phone’s hardware, letting you upload snapped photos and keep an eye on any updates.

Box.net’s
iPhone app is completely free and available on the App Store. Box.net’s service offers 1GB for free, with two paid monthly plans that cost $8 and $20 and offer 5GB and 15GB of space, respectively.

One thing to note is that while the tool lets you see all the files in your cloud storage folders, items must be specifically formatted to play back on the device. I tried to play several Quicktime files (including MP4s, which are supported), and got error messages. This may seem like a no-brainer, but if you’re trying to view something important that hasn’t been formatted correctly, you’re out of luck.

[via Macrumors iPhone blog]

Union members had authorized a strike when the contract expired in August, but the workers continued working. The two sides reached a tentative agreement days later.

Union workers at Qwest Communications International rejected a proposed three-year contract on Tuesday. But so far, there doesn’t seem to be a threat of a strike.

Representatives of the Communications Workers of America and Qwest said they’d meet again this week to continue talks, according to the Associated Press. CWA represents roughly 29,000 Qwest employees in 13 states. Qwest is the primary phone company in 14 Western states.

Qwest representatives told the AP that the contract proposal included raises of more than 9 percent over three years. It also increased pension benefits for new retirees, and it would have increased base pay of sales staff. But it also would have added a monthly premium for health coverage. Previously, employees paid only enrollment fees.

It’s a little like Jessica Biel worrying about Kathy Bates.

Business never ends. Seasons stretch into infinity. The technology business, however, enjoys seasons that are sometimes brutally short. Change doesn’t merely erode your market, but it can eradicate it almost overnight.

In just the last week or two, Facebook seems to have craned its neck so far over its shoulder at Twitter that it’s performed a Linda Blair. Yet Twitter’s numbers are a mere toenail when compared Facebook’s massive footprint.

Suddenly the bigger brands are divorced dads wearing Levi’s, while the smaller brands are little Brad Pitts whose greatest problem consists in resisting the advances of a million Megan Fox’s.

So the questions for Facebook and Microsoft are very simple: Do they know something about these smaller competitors? Or do they know something about themselves?

Or Tom Cruise sinking into his own personal twilight zone because Katie Holmes casually mentioned Robert Pattinson was cute.

But they still have the insecurities of the high-school quarterback. Will he make it in college? What about the NFL? You’re nobody if you don’t make it in the NFL. And will he ever, ever become, yes, the apogee of a sportsman’s career, a lead analyst on Fox Sports?

It’s hard not to believe that what Apple and Twitter have done is get into their opponents’ heads. Crucially, they’ve done it without appearing to try too hard.

Similarly, Microsoft finally bared its feelings in TV advertising, using the slightly exuberant acting skills of Lauren the Laptop Lover to declare that Apple’s products were expensive and that they preyed on the pathetic emotional need of humans to be cool. Again, Microsoft’s share of its world dwarfs that of Apple.

Is the problem Microsoft and Facebook are dealing with, in full public view, commercial or psychological?

Sometimes when you work for major companies, those who you imagine must love themselves dearly, you realize that they do, indeed, love themselves dearly.

What is it about large, apparently successful businesses that they suddenly get a slightly freaky fixation about a much smaller rival?

This painting, called "Twitter and Facebook", is in the Louvre.

I have a feeling that if Facebook and Microsoft went to see a shrink, she (oh, like Tony Soprano, they’d definitely have a woman shrink) would stare at them above the rim of her glasses and say: “Here’s a thought, sweetie. Let’s talk about why you’re good. Not why someone else is.”

(Credit: CC Brad Bechtel)

Now, I have yet to see a manual on proper Twitter etiquette, but given how easy it is to “un-follow” people on Twitter, it seems bizarre to me that certain readers should determine the proper way for me to Twitter, other than by unsubscribing if my strategy doesn’t suit them. That, to me, seems the proper market-based response. If that 1,195 number were to drop to 500, for example, I might assume I were doing something wrong and correct the behavior.

Matt Asay's Twitter Growth

The great (and terrible) thing about social media is, well, how social it is. Readers, especially on Twitter, aren’t content to be followers. They also want to lead the content, and have no compunction about prescribing their preferred style and content. This is positive, I suppose, but after blogging for several years and Twittering for a few months, I’m finding it can be a bit uncomfortable to realize just how vocal readers can be.

Follow me on Twitter at mjasay.

commentary

More pertinently, it’s very hard to take in social media’s blaring wall of sound and effectively process it. Has anyone else found positive, non-cumbersome ways to interact with their Twitter or blog readerships?

I used to think I was in control of what I blog and what I Twitter. Recently I’ve been disabused of this notion, particularly with regard to what I Twitter. In a postmodern, Jacques Derrida sense, the reader has come to mean more than the author. Or to think that she does.

One of the commentators later suggested to me that he likes much of what I write, but was trying to offer constructive criticism in how to improve the content for him. I care about his perspective, so I’m trying to accommodate him. But I’m still not sure why readers don’t vote more with their feet, rather than with their mouths.

But the data suggests the inverse:

This fact was brought home to me yesterday when two of my 1,195 Twitter “followers” advised me that I was Twittering incorrectly. I had been working myself up to a blog post, and was thinking through the idea over Twitter in 140-character snippets. As a result, I posted a string of short snippets that added up to a full screen of Twitterings. A bit lengthier than I’d like, and much more than I normally post, but I wanted people to see how I think.

Apple has released several new firmware updates aimed at solving problems with its latest batch of notebooks.

The updates should be popping up in Software Update as you read this; let us know if you have any trouble applying the updates or notice any significant changes. Owners of laptops purchased before the major redesign in October need not worry about Wednesday’s firmware releases.

The company also released firmware updates for the SMC (system management controller) chip inside Mac notebooks, which helps regulate power consumption among other things. Those updates “improve the sensing and accuracy of the MagSafe Power Adapter indicator light, and the battery charge indicator lights” on the new MacBook Pro and MacBook. The SMC update for the MacBook Air tackles just the MagSafe issues.

Updates are available for all three
Mac notebooks released in October: the new MacBook Pro, MacBook, and MacBook Air. In usual fashion, Apple didn’t provide a whole lot of detail about the issues that are corrected by the EFI firmware updates, other than to note that they “improve the stability” of those new systems.

Apple has released stabilizing updates for its new MacBook, shown here, as well as other systems introduced in October.

Several problems have been reported of late with the new notebooks, which also saw a firmware update issued earlier this year to correct a problem with the new glass trackpad design introduced with those systems. The SMC is the same part that would require a firmware update to fix the sleep/wake problems noted by some users, even though Apple doesn’t call that problem out in the release notes for that firmware.

UPDATED 3:25pm - The notes accompanying the Software Update notification explain that “this update improves the stability of MacBook computers and addresses issues with sleep-wake, USB, and device compatibility,” adding a little more information and suggesting that this batch of updates should fix some of the problems we noted yesterday.

(Credit:
Apple)

Now, if you wander onto espn.com, you would be absolved from thinking that Yahoo had broken into your bookmarks.

I am perplexed why an allegedly 60-year-old person would want to become the Largest Fontina at Yahoo.

(Credit: CC E-Strategyblog.com)

When the, um, Worldwide Leader in Sports announced it was going to ’simplify’ its web site, who might have guessed that this was code for ‘Yahooify’?

So if she’s looking for a vast Yahoo success to help clear her sinuses before she begins to issue severe orders, she should cast a happy eye at Yahoo Sports.
They say imitation is a heartfelt form of flattery. In which case, the folks at ESPN pine in pain for Yahoo Sports.

So we thought Yahoo was in a Cover-2, but really they were cornerback blitzing.

It’s almost as if someone went into rehab and came out realizing that they were not worshiped by all the members of their target sex after all. It’s as if ESPN was the Tyson who suddenly realized that Buster Douglas had knocked him to the Twilight Zone several hours ago.

But perhaps Carol Bartz has already hiked the whole of the Na Pali Coast in Kauai, perhaps she has done all the clothes shopping in Tokyo she ever wanted to do and perhaps she simply has no desire to experience flying
cars or climbing Kilimanjaro.

The clarity of the layout suggests “Ah, yes” rather than “Boo-Yah”. Even the type that delivers the latest news in the top right-hand corner bears a remarkable resemblance to Yahoo blue.

If you remember the old ESPN site, it looked as if it had been created by someone whose primary recreation was recreational drugs. A veritable cokefest of commercialization clashed with bits of news that craved to be heard over the desperate visual and aural pinball.

It’s as if the somewhat self-satisfied Mike Martz had suddenly bumped into the here’s-how-it-really-is Carol Bartz.

White House aides didn’t choose any of those questions to present to the president on the nearby screens, but Obama did acknowledge that the topic was a popular one.

The White House said that 92,927 people submitted 104,126 questions and cast a total of 3,606,824 votes.

On Thursday, WhiteHouse.gov became the latest Web site to experience this kind of deluge as part of an online town hall–and this time, it was marijuana legalization advocates who voted to push their questions to the top of the charts.

But the president–whose administration has indicated that it would effectively end raids on distributors of medical marijuana in California–said he would not support changing federal drug law that makes even possession of pot a crime. “No, I don’t think this is a good strategy to grow our economy,” Obama said, to applause from the audience.

He said online voters wanted to know “whether legalizing marijuana would improve the economy and job creation,” and joked that “I don’t know what this says about the online audience.”

Obama’s brief remarks on the topic demonstrated a weakness of the online town hall format: it doesn’t allow followup questions, which journalists used during the president’s press conference earlier this week to good effect. If that were possible, drug war foes would likely have had something else to say.

Fans of legalizing marijuana pushed their questions to the top of a WhiteHouse.gov voting system. (Click to enlarge.)

(Credit:
Declan McCullagh/CNET)

A Marijuana.com discussion thread says: “Vote for the top marijuana related questions.” NORML, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, said: “Please take a moment right now to log on the WhiteHouse.gov/OpenForQuestions and vote for the questions above, as well as others pertaining to the need to regulate cannabis. Let the President know that millions of American voters believe that the time has come to tax and regulate marijuana.”

As any major Web site can attest, any online voting begs to be influenced by special interests. CNBC yanked a 2007 presidential poll after enthusiastic Ron Paul supporters boosted their candidate to 75 percent, and the FreeRepublic.com crowd recently flooded a Web vote about stem cell funding.

Earlier in the week, some drug-related blogs had encouraged supporters to flood the virtual polls and vote for the marijuana-related questions through the version of Google Moderator that the White House chose for the town hall project. (Google uses the application internally, including for companywide meetings.)

By the time President Obama’s town hall began, questions about legalizing marijuana ranked at the top of the “green jobs,” “financial stability,” “jobs,” and “budget” sections (and came in a close second place in the health care section too). Sample question: “What are your plans for the failing, ‘War on Drugs’, that’s sucking money from tax payers and putting non-violent people in prison longer than the violent criminals?”

Oh, and during Thursday’s online town hall, the president did address topics other than marijuana and federal drug laws, including unemployment and job creation.

The Sinowal Trojan infects computers without the owner knowing it by surrepticiously planting itself onto the computer while the owner is Web surfing in an attack dubbed a “drive-by download.”

RSA FraudAction Research Lab has discovered log-in information for about 300,000 online bank accounts and 250,000 credit and debit card accounts that have been gathered by a cybercrime gang over the past three years using the Sinowal Trojan.

“This may be one of the most pervasive and advanced pieces of crimeware ever created by fraudsters,” according to a blog entry posted Friday from RSA, EMC’s security unit.

This chart shows the rate at which the Sinowal Trojan has been compromising online bank accounts since early 2006.

(Credit:
RSA) The account information has been stolen since at least February 2006, uninterrupted, and includes e-mail and FTP accounts, according to RSA.

The Sinowal Trojan has had ties to the identity theft organization known as Russian Business Network, but the hosting facilities of the malware appear to no longer be connected to that group, according to RSA.

The malicious code is typically hidden on an unfamiliar Web site, often related to porn or gambling, but can also be found lurking on legitimate Web sites, says Sean Brady, manager of identity protection at RSA.

“Only rarely do we come across crimeware that has been continually stealing and collecting personal information and payment card data, and compromising bank accounts as far back as 2006,” the blog post says. “And in addition to its longevity, Sinowal has also been evolving at a dramatic pace - its rate of attacks spiked upwards from March through September of this year.”

“This could be a wake up call for institutions and end users who have ignored the fact that Trojans are out there,” he said.

The company has alerted law enforcement and has provided the compromised account information to the financial institutions involved, Sean Brady, manager of identity protection at RSA, said in an interview on Thursday.

The Trojan is programmed to execute when the victim visits a particular banking or financial Web site; it is triggered by more than 2,700 specific URLs, according to RSA. The malware then inserts additional fields into the victim’s browser prompting the victim to type in information such as PIN and Social Security number, which the Web site itself does not ask for.

An algae bioreactor from another algae fuel firm, PetroAlgae.

Its greenhouse design–which the company will not discuss in detail–grows algae without tubes and uses an automated harvesting system, according to CEO Simon Upfill-Brown. The water in which the algae grows is recycled.

Cement makers are some of the largest emitters of carbon dioxide. With the farm, Holcim will get positive PR and take a step toward mandatory emissions cuts, Upfill-Brown said.

In the greenhouses, the algae will be fed sunlight and carbon dioxide from the Holcim cement plant near Jerez, Spain.

A 100-hectare algae farm would consume about 50,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year–about 10 percent of its the cement factory’s annual emissions–and grow about 25,000 tones of algae biomass.

The deal, which has been rumored for months, is a milestone for the 7-year-old company with roots at MIT and for the budding algae industry overall.

It hopes that by 2011, it will have a full-scale operation, which will take up 100 hectares, or about 250 acres, Upfill-Brown said.

Upfill-Brown said the company expects to raise a series C round of funding in the next month to further develop its greenhouse. It intends to seek out other project developer customers like Aurantia as customers.

GreenFuel Technologies on Tuesday is expected to announce what few in the algae fuel business can claim–a paying customer.

On top of technical challenges, a potential problem with algae ventures is falling petroleum prices, which make it harder to be cost competitive. Struggling biodiesel maker Imperium Renewables is said to have delayed an algae farming venture in Hawaii.

The Cambridge, Mass.-based company detailed a multi-year deal worth $92 million to build greenhouses that grow algae, which can be harvested for vegetable oil to make biodiesel or to make animal feed.

(Credit:
PetroAlgae)

He expects that the project developers will choose different strains of algae to optimize for different end products, be it oil or feed.

GreenFuel Technologies originally tested its algae-growing process in plastic bags with an Arizona utility. That project ran into trouble when the cost of harvesting the algae biomass was too high.

“Some people are making clearly outrageous claims. We’re at the stage where we can say we are pretty comfortable and very optimistic that we’re getting all the way there in phases,” he said.

GreenFuel and Aurantia now have a 100 square-meter prototype operating. It’s next stage, slated for completion in about a year, is a 1000-meter installation.

Updated at 4:55 a.m. PT with corrected figure for amount of carbon dioxide consumed by a 100 hectare algae farm.

In the past year, there have several companies formed to make algae for oils for fuels or pharmaceuticals. But thus far, there aren’t any companies producing algae for fuel at commercial scale.

The project developer is Spain’s Aurantia, which specializes in renewable energy. GreenFuel executives have said they are pursuing other deals with large polluters, such as utilities and heavy industry, with other project developers in different parts of the world.

In just two weeks, the annual RSA Conference takes place in San Francisco. What can we expect as the “hot topics” at this annual security love fest? I’m sure there will be plenty of buzz about securing virtual servers and cloud computing infrastructure, but this topic will likely focus on blue sky vision describing the safeguards we will need in 2012 or so. Rather than this hyperbole, I am looking forward to discussions focused on the marriage of identity and security.

Haven’t these two areas been linked forever? Well, yes and no. Security folks think of identity in terms of authentication issues like password management, role-based access controls, or biometrics. But other aspects of identity like user provisioning, fine-grained entitlement management, and single sign-on usually live elsewhere in IT. When network access was restricted to internal employees, this division made sense, but identity and security can no longer remain apart. The marriage of these two IT disciplines will take place for a simple reason–identity and security must work together to enable modern business processes.

Identity is all about who gets access to applications and data so in theory, strong identity skills let organizations get users more productive sooner than the competition. Think of identity management as the magical formula to unleash Metcalf’s Law. More users come with a cost, however–a greater number of security threats from hackers, malicious code attacks, and data breaches. Thus IT executives must balance their ability to let users into the network with proportional safeguards to keep bad things from happening.

Call it social networking, the consumerization of IT, Web 2.0, or any other market-speak term you want. To me, it is all about information sharing, collaboration, and business process improvement. IT must create an environment where users can access what they need and come and go as they please as long as they add business value while they are around. Public and private sector organizations headed down this path had better have their identity yin and security yang working together in harmony or they will either hold back the business or greatly increase security risk.