Paul O'Flaherty

What People Don’t Get About The iPad

Service or Computer?

Let me preface this post by saying that I will not be buying an iPad (not in the foreseeable future anyway). I own an iPod Touch and that is the end of my Apple affiliation.

I’ve been reading all the complaints about the iPad: No flash, no multitasking, it’s just a big iPod Touch, it’s a fanny pad sanitary towel in disguise etc…

What nobody seams to realize is that the iPad, just like its baby brethren the Touch, is not a computer (not in the traditional sense), it is a service.

It’s much like a TV. You can turn it on and watch or play what you like, but that’s it. You can watch channel 1 or channel 27 and you can install more channells (applications) when you take a bigger sattelite or cable subscriptions(the App store).

The iPad is not meant to be a desktop, laptop, netbook replacement.

It’s a stylish little one trick pony for people who like to be locked in and like to do one thing at a time.

Do You Know Where Chuck Norris Is?

Where am I?

A bit of a laugh for Saturday. I just couldn’t resist posting this!

Go to Google.

Type “Where is Chuck Norris” into the search box.

Hit the “I’m feeling lucky!” button.

Enjoy

SourceForge: Nobody Is Asking Why Now?

Bound by the law?

Sourceforge is now blocking access to sites from Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria.

Since 2003, the SourceForge.net Terms and Conditions of Use have prohibited certain persons from receiving services pursuant to U.S. laws, including, without limitations, the Denied Persons List and the Entity List, and other lists issued by the U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Industry and Security. The specific list of sanctions that affect our users concern the transfer and export of certain technology to foreign persons and governments on the sanctions list. This means users residing in countries on the United States Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanction list, including Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria, may not post content to, or access content available through, SourceForge.net. Last week, SourceForge.net began automatic blocking of certain IP addresses to enforce those conditions of use.

In all the commentary I am seeing, nobody has asked the very simplest and perhaps most obvious of questions: Why now?

These terms have been in place for nearly 7 years now. (The Entities list has existed since 1997)

Lets forget for the minute that one hell of a lot of the software hosted by Sourceforge is developed with the help of, or even entirely by, people living outside the U.S.

Lets also bear in mind that SourceForge has claimed that this is because of the “transfer and export of certain technology” to foreign persons and governments on the sanctions list, yet doesn’t give any details about what this technology is?

Surely everything on SourceForge can’t contain dangerous technology? Why not just restrict the programs which contain those technologies?

Not to mention the fact that everybody knows that any idiot, never mind some evil axis human overlord wannabe wouldn’t be able to use a proxy or Tor to get past the IP filtering!

Or is there something more at play here?

Google and China perhaps? Did the U.S. government pay SourceForge a call and “politely” remind them that these laws exist? Maybe because the government wants to show that it is willing to enforce it’s laws and send a subtle hint to China that the hacking of U.S. companies and theft of their I.P. might get them added to these lists?

I find it very hard to believe that the guys at SourceForge have had a sudden moment of conscience and, out of the blue, decided to comply with laws that have existed for almost 12 years and to their own terms and conditions which they have ignored for the past 7 years.

When Will The Web Stop Being U.S. Centric?

I’ve given out before about the fact that America and American internet users are not the end all and be all of the web.

In fact, if every single internet user in North America were to shuffle off this mortal coil simultaneously then the internet would loose less than 1/7th (one seventh) of its user base.

Just compare the numbers for 2009 as posted by Royal Pingdom and ask yourself why people look to America and the U.S. market for everything when even the European market has almost double the users?

1.73 billion – Internet users worldwide (September 2009).

18% – Increase in Internet users since the previous year.

738,257,230 – Internet users in Asia.

418,029,796 – Internet users in Europe.

252,908,000 – Internet users in North America.

179,031,479 – Internet users in Latin America / Caribbean.

67,371,700 – Internet users in Africa.

57,425,046 – Internet users in the Middle East.

20,970,490 – Internet users in Oceania / Australia.

Privacy Isn’t Binary. It Isn’t Yes Or No

Tell or Don't!

You’ve got  real life friends so you know that privacy is never a simple “yes or no”, “tell or don’t tell” matter.

There are things that you tell your spouse or best friend that you wouldn’t tell anybody else. There are things you would say to some friends and not to others. When you are out a party there may be pictures that you would let your friends and your brothers see, but would result in a serious ear bashing from your mother.

I’ve always been a strong proponent that our online activity is an extension of our offline activity. That online relationships mirror the dynamic and complex relationships that exist in our offline lives.

Believing that, I find it counter-intuitive to have social networks like Facebook push us further and further into a binary way of thinking about privacy. Essentially boiling privacy down to a “post it or don’t” issue. Forcing us to treat all of our online “friends” as equals.

As much as we may not like to admit it in front of our friends, we know that even our offline, real life, friends are not equal in our eyes. That is why the terms “best friend” and acquaintance exists.

Instant messaging clients, with the exception of ICQ (or at least it used to be when I actually used it), do the same thing. We are either online or off. Visible or invisible. Not a case of  visible to some and not to others. We’ve all put our phone on silent from time to time to “ignore” that call from a friend or family member. Or simply turned it off. While we might not want one person to know we are online, or available to talk, we might and sometimes do desperately need other people to know we are available to talk and that we want to talk. Skype are you listening?

With social networks, instant messaging and almost every other form of online communication pushing us into a binary way of thinking about privacy, we have to ask ourselves if that is what we really want? Would we stand for it, or be able even to successfully get through our lives if privacy in real life was dual choice only?

Tell everyone, or tell no one?

Shouldn’t we be pushing for finer grained control and groups rather than simply eradicating privacy? Or do we want  everyone to be burdened with a lot more secrets and worries that they would never be able to get off their chest and for confidentiality to cease to exist?

Remove Lady Gaga from Google And Other Search Tips

Search Better!

It can be very frustrating to click through page after page of results on Google to to find the result you were searching for.

Contrary to belief of many “non-geek” types the issue is not with Googles result but rather with how we search for them. A lot of us search for just one word when we search, I know I do, and the differences between searching for “car”,  “honda”, “red car” and “red honda civic” are substantive.

If you tried searching Google for the terms above I’m sure you’ve already figured out that the more descriptive you are the better the results will be, but being descriptive is not the “end all and be all” of efficient searching.

Google (and most other search engines) accept a lot of search commands, or operators, which you can employ to further narrow the results.

For example, earlier today Sara was searching for “romance” while researching material for Everyday Love Stories. Much to her chagrin she kept getting results involving Lady Gaga, so I suggested using the “minus” operator to remove Lady Gaga from the results (now if only that would work from the air waves).

romance -”lady gaga”

There are a lot of operators which work on most of the major search engines such as: wildcard (*), OR, phrase search (“phrase”) etc…

If you you want to make your searching more efficient and by extension your day more productive a good place to start is Google Search Basics help page which lists a lot of the operators and explains their usage.

Happy searching.

A Good Place To Host Podcast MP3’s

That’s all I’m missing to start podcasting again.

With a little help from Sara, I spent tonight getting my podcasting rig working and set up for properly recording podcats over Skype (or any input) and it looks a heck of a lot better than it does in the picture below now that I’ve tidied all the cables away.

Once I’ve located a good place to host the MP3’s for the show, then I’ll start cranking out the podcasts again.

Any recommendations for a good host?

Getting the gear set up

WWWBing.com – No That’s Not A Typo

I love it. Patrick McAuliffe from Kerry (check the whois) registered wwwbing.com and has it redirecting to Google.com.

Simple, genious and I love it.

I am wondering two things though:

First, how did Microsoft not own that already? I thought it would be obvious to most people that when you own a major search engine (or any site) that you also buy as many of the typical typos variations as possible.

Second, how long before Microsoft tries to get a hold of it and take it down?

UPDATE: 22/02/2010 – It looks as if Microsoft has already had the domain moved to their control.

Facebooks Privacy Changes Help To Criminalize Us All

A right to think?

You might not think it was possible to be arrested for a joke you made on Twitter, but that is exactly what happened to Paul Chambers.

He was due to fly to Ireland on January 15th but after the extreme bad weather on January sixth which resulted in the closing of the airport he was to fly from, he jokingly posted the following:

You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!

We’ve all done it. We’ve all said and though things similar to this, but for Paul Chambers it resulted in being arrested by police to whom he had to explain what Twitter was because “they’d never heard of it”. It resulted in having to pay to be bailed out, being suspended by his employer, having his laptop, iPhone and home computer taken away and he is still waiting to find out whether or not he will charged with conspiring to create a bomb hoax.

It’s overkill, it’s ridiculous, it displays a complete misunderstanding of the law (by the police no less) and it is about to become the “norm” in our society.

Everyday we make statements such as the one Paul Chambers made. While watching a match on TV – “I’ll kill him if he doesn’t score”. Parents – I’m sure you’ve said “I’ll kill (enter child’s name here) if he’s late home” and other such things.

We do it on blogs,  on social networks and we do it in our day to day conversations. If you need convincing just do a search on twitter for “I’ll kill” or “I’ll blow up” and watch the comments scroll by.

What people and police don’t understand is that expressing the desire to do something does not mean that we *will* do something.

I have a desire to throttle Hugh Grant. I can’t stand they guy. I’ve expressed that desire verbally and in writing a number of times. However, expressing the desire to do something does not mean that I would, have or will. I have (apparently) the ability for rational thought, for self control and to know the difference between right and wrong.

Just because I don’t have much money and say that I would love to “rob a bank”, it does not mean that I will do it or ever had any real intention of doing it. I know it’s wrong and desire aside, I will be driven by my own moral compass. Or to put it another way I know it’s wrong so I won’t do it!

As I said, these types of arrest are about to become the norm rather than the exception.

As governments and law enforcement agencies continue their futile attempts to crack down on terrorism (lets be honest, if you want to do it they can’t really stop you until it is too late) they continue to disregard the difference between “thinking about doing something” and actually “doing something”.

While arrests like these are becoming more common place, we continue to be ourselves, to use social networks and forums, expecting to have the right to think what we want. At the same time companies like Facebook continue to make our previously private data open in the name of data-mining, page views and advertising revenue, providing law enforcement agencies, which are supposed to be protect us, with the means to criminalize use because we choose to think and express ourselves.

To quote civil libertarian Tessa Mayes, an expert on privacy law and free speech issues:

Making jokes about terrorism is considered a thought crime, mistakenly seen as a real act of harm or intention to commit harm.

The police’s actions seem laughable and suggest desperation in their efforts to combat terrorism, yet they have serious repercussions for all of us. In a democracy, our right to say what we please to each other should be non-negotiable, even on Twitter.

Google Is Just Saber Rattling And Won’t Pull Out Of China

All talk?

David Drummond, SVP of Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer for Google, just dropped a very provocative post over on the official Google blog.

Normally a post of this nature would go pretty much unnoticed (except by the tin-foil hat wearing security freaks) as it details an attempted attack on Google and a number of other companies operating within China.

What makes this post truly interesting however is the tone of the post, which, to my mind at least insinuates that the Chinese government were themselves responsible (or at least played a part), without ever coming out and actually making that accusation.

While that was provocative enough, the real sensationalism was to be found in this bold statement:

We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.

Wow, it sounds like Google is going to pull out of China. After all we know the Chinese government won’t back down, so what choice will they have?

To be honest, it’s all saber rattling. Google is trying to put pressure on the Chinese government, a regime that it knows doesn’t even generally bow to the massive weight of global political and public opinion.

In fact, Google is so aware of this that they provided themselves with a back door within their statement:

and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law

I’m confident that the settlement will come, one way or the other, and there are a number of reasons for it.

First and foremost there is the financial situation. Simply put, the amount of money Google will lose.

In Q2 of 2009 there were 338 million internet users in China and Google was the search engine of choice for 23.7% (about 80 million) of those users in Q3. That’s more users than North America which had 246.8 million users.

Add that to the fact that the Chinese market is growing rapidly as internet penetration is only 26.9% (or 1 in 4 people are online) compared to the saturated US market which has 74.2% (or 3 out of 4 online) penetration.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that there is too much at stake to walk away and too much potential for growth.

Could Google really walk away from that? Could they honestly allow their market share in China to be eaten up by Baidu (the number 1 search engine in China) or to allow Ballmer to walk Microsoft in there and expand their market share? Or even better have Ballmer cut some sort of a deal with the Chinese government?

Sara, Steven Hodson and others have pointed out that Ballmer wouldn’t walk into that hornets nest. I think he would. What is there to lose?

Microsoft already operates Bing in China so it won’t be as if they can be demonized for pushing into the territory.

The digiratti may get up in arms about it, but who in the real world listens to them? Once they leave the geek twitter/blogosphere they have no real influence over the masses, no matter how they may delude themselves. Lets make it very clear-being famous in the blogosphere is nothing but an ego trip. It comes with no power and you won’t be recognized if you walk into the average pub.

Mainstream media will pick up on the story, but they’ll likely focus on the fact that Google is pulling out and not who is staying in. Even if they did, you can be sure Microsoft would have an army of PR experts ready to be on the tube and tell everybody how they’re trying to do the right thing, by sticking it out and fighting for the Chinese peoples right by providing them a service, working with the government and trying to affect change. Not like childish Google who couldn’t take the heat so took their toys home to play in their room alone.

The number of activists who may give out about Microsoft (and others) staying in China will be many, they will be loud, rant and rave on twitter, get their backs up and shout from atop their high horses, but very few of them will do anything about it.

Only a very minute percentage will actually bother to stop using Bing, or to not buy a Microsoft product and even their outrage will be short lived before they go back to their old habits.

Most will forget what they were angry about after a few days, and the real world will have forgotten about it within 24 hours of the mainstream media miking it.

The bottom line to a company like Microsoft would be an increase in revenue from the Chinese market that would far, far outweigh any potential loss or fall out from the few malcontents who actually do something about it rather than just rant on twitter and blow hot air on their blogs.

Public opinion can be a wonderful thing, but it only works as long as the public pays attention. In this day an age the public has an attention span that can be measured in minutes. The next time Angelina and Brad adopt, that Madonna farts or Obama stares at a girls ass, it will all be forgotten about.

The Chinese government has a stubborn streak and disregard for international opinion that is beyond legendary and Microsoft are definitely not above doing something that may not immediately be popular in order to gain a long term advantage and the public is too wrapped up in dealing with their own economic woes and miserable lives to really care who is providing search results to the Chinese.

Finally and above all, Google is not a public service. They are a business and their primary responsibility is not to their users but to their shareholders. Leaving China would not be in their shareholders best interest.

Google are testing the waters to see if they can get a concession. It would take some serious brass balls to pull out of the Chinese market and give their foothold over to competitors. Brass balls, which for all Google has done in the past, I think are more like two rolled up socks stuffed down the underpants.

They may look impressive from afar, but they don’t hold up to scrutiny.

Bloggers You’ve Got 10 Years

According to this graph the death of blogging is predicted for 2020. That only give you 10 years to become a multi blogging squillionaire! You’d better hurry!

The chart is tongue in cheek but I wonder how many of it’s “predictions” will become reality.

Countdown to extinction?

(Click the image to see the chart full size.)

There are two predictions that I have a problem with:

1. The extinction of “A Good Nights Sleep” in 2040 – That died with the invention of curry, alcohol, women, work… society in general!
2. The death of “Cher” in 2050 – That woman has so much plastic in her she’s likely to exist until the planet itself is consumed by the expansion of the sun.