• The greatest news this week (and perhaps this year) is of course Google's launch of the browser Chrome. The news broke while I was finishing the list below, and it puts some of the items in a different perspective, particularly the one about the launch of IE8 beta 2 below.
  Tags: Chrome
• Last month, I wrote about some troubles for Google's Android mobile platform. These problems seem now to be history, with the release of a new 0.9 version of the SDK, which is expected to be quite similar to the 1.0 version running on the first phones. Google is now also improving on the communication side, with the release of a developer roadmap, which promises a 1.0 SDK release and retail phones by Q4 this year. Actually, there are already rumors floating about an Android phone by HTC, the "Dream", slated for November 10th.
  Tags: Android
• Marshall Kirkpatrick writes about feed.informer, formerly known as Feed Digest, a web service for mashing, filtering and publishing RSS feeds. As mentioned by Marshall, the site has some faults. For example, I found that the link to the Docs & FAQs page is broken. Another provider of similar services is Yahoo Pipes. For self hosting, the PHP RSS library SimplePie provides detailed functionality for parsing feeds, though there seems to be no built-in functionality for keyword filtering. SimplePie on this page compare themselves to a few competing libraries.
  Tags: feeds, RSS
• From the JavaScript/Firefox department there were reports on progress in improving the JavaScript execution speed in Firefox, leveraging a technique known as tracing optimization, hence the project code name Tracemonkey. Ars explains the basic idea behind tracing:
  

  The tracing mechanism records the path of execution at runtime and generates compiled code that can be used next time that a particular path is reached. This makes it possible to flatten out loops and nested method calls into a linear stream of instructions that is more conducive to conventional optimization techniques.

  The goal is to achieve execution speed comparable to native code, taking JavaScript performance into "the next tier", and "redefining the boundaries of client-side performance." Wonder how this improvement compares to Google Chrome's new V8 JavaScript Engine?
  Tags: Firefox, JavaScript

• Internet Explorer 8 is getting closer to official, with a Beta 2 release just being announced. It's a massive makeover according to Ed Bott, with improvements in usability, privacy, standards compliance and new features like Accelerators, which are kind of smart shortcuts that perform a task, e.g. search, on selected text, and Web Slices, which provide a kind of subscription to a part of a web page that updates frequently. It's up to the developer to slice-enable particular web pages, by adding appropriate markup. The standards compliance is of course exciting, and it will eventually make the life easier for developers. Though it will take several years, with about one third of web surfers still using IE6.
  Tags: IE8
• BackType is a new comment aggregation service, liked a lot by Michael Arrington. Comments are automatically collected around the web, and can be searched for based on people or subject. You claim your comments by creating a profile and indicating which url you use when commenting. This is my profile. I think it's a nice idea, with an open approach. Blogs can keep their comment system of choice, and still being included. No need for JavaScript solutions à la Disqus (my profile), for example.
  Tags: comments
• Fred Wilson suggests that social sites start using the concept of neighbors, which are automatically discovered people with similar interests like you, instead of relying on so-called friends or followers and the habit of befriending or follow people. Seems like a practical idea to me, not having to manually look for friends, but have them automatically suggested.
  Tags: social networks
• Marshall Kirkpatrick explains the concept of embargoes in blogging and why it generally is a better idea than exclusives. An embargo works as an agreement between bloggers and a company not to write about a new product or service until a specific time. This has several advantages, such as a broader and deeper coverage from multiple perspectives.
  Tags: blogging, PR

• Each tab runs its own process, not just its own thread as expected. This means a great deal of separation between the tabs, if one behaves badly it will not affect the other tabs. A drawback of this approach is greater resource requirements up-front for each tab, in terms of memory allocation etc., but it also means that it's more easy to do clean-up when a tab is closed, possible memory leaks e.g. will not remain.
• To handle the individual processes there is a process manager, which in part resembles an actual operating system. Details about how the process manager works and cooperates with the actual OS are not covered in the book, but there is a task manager, where you can look at the processes and the resources they are using, and terminate ill-behaving processes. Much like the Windows Task Manager.
• The web page rendering engine is based on the open source engine WebKit, which powers the Safari browser and the one in Android.
• To boost JavaScript performance Google hired a special team from Denmark, V8, to create a new effective Virtual Machine for JavaScript. Features include "hidden class transitions", which identify class like structures and perform dynamic optimizations based on that, and dynamic code generation which generates just-in-time compiled code for faster execution, probably similar to the JIT compilation in Java and .NET. The garbage collection of unused objects has also been improved, both in terms of speed and efficiency.

This news is currently all over Techmeme.

• Dare Obasanjo explains the essence of a REST-based architecture, some benefits over SOAP, and how it obeys to the architecture of the Web itself: "Don't fight the Web, embrace it." The ideas behind REST stem from a Ph.D. dissertation by Roy Fielding in 2000, and are a bit abstract and academic in their nature. But the essence seems to be to take full advantage of the possibilities offered by the HTTP protocol, such as using GET, PUT and DELETE wisely instead of fully relying on POST. For example, caching is a benefit offered by using GET.
  Dave Winer chips in, and reminds us not to forget about XML-RPC, which on the XML-RPC home page is explained as "remote procedure calling using HTTP as the transport and XML as the encoding."
  Tags: REST, web development
• Josh Catone shares some insights into why people pirate software, as compiled by game developer Cliff Harris. Low game quality and presence of DRM, are important reasons for piracy, besides the obvious reason of saving money.
  Tags: DRM, gaming
• Twitter quietly announced an important new feature to their API, as noticed by Jesse Stay. It is now possible to reply to any specific message in the past, not just to the last one posted.
  Tags: Twitter
• My recent post on ECMAScript Harmony and the future of JavaScript and ActionScript.
  Tags: JavaScript

Important new features proposed for ECMAScript 4 (JavaScript 2.0) were support for classes (object-oriented programming), packages, namespaces, type annotations and static typing. Packages and namespaces have been dropped from the Harmony project, classes will remain in some form but the status for type annotations is yet unclear.

ECMAScript (JavaScript) is an open language, supported natively in some dialect by most browsers. It propels many Web 2.0 sites, enabling features like AJAX for example. JavaScript and HTML form the basis of standards based client-side Web programming, and is generally preferred over proprietary technologies like Flash (Adobe) and Silverlight (Microsoft).

The scripting language ActionScript (specifically version 3.0), which is used in Adobe Flash, is based on an early proposal for ECMAScript 4, which kind of gives Adobe a break. However, the script is compiled to bytecode before running on the client, and a separate runtime component (e.g. Flash Player) is required. It can be expected that ActionScript is adapted to comply with future versions of ECMAScript, possibly keeping some additional features.

The latest stable edition of ECMAScript is 3 (from Dec 1999), which roughly corresponds to JavaScript 1.5, JScript 5 and ActionScript 1.0.

• The much touted security of Windows Vista seems to be worthless, according to findings by the two security researchers Mark Dowd and Alexander Sotirov. SearchSecurity writes:
  

  By taking advantage of the way that browsers, specifically Internet Explorer, handle active scripting and .NET objects, the pair have been able to load essentially whatever content they want into a location of their choice on a user's machine. [...] That's completely game over.

  The researchers seems to have found a way to compromise .NET objects, which IE assumes are safe, effectively using the objects as stepping stones for other attacks.
  Tags: security, Windows Vista

• Dave Winer has a piece about why he thinks Vista may fail, comparing the operating system to two other failed OSes of the past: OS/2 and Apple III. "Vista has the smell of death," writes Winer, outlining a few other reasons why he disapproves of the OS. The ones I particularly agree with are "5. Everything is happening in the web browser now," and "6. [...] there is no demand for new operating systems." No one actually needs grand new operating system, just keeping tuning and tweaking the existing OSes should be enough. That's one thing I like about Linux (the kernel specifically), it's (almost) from the beginning been called Linux and will probably be called that forever. It just has a version number (currently 2.6.26), which is incremented as bugs are fixed and new features are added. The only reason I see for Microsoft to release a new OS is if they come up with a complete rewrite, with all junk code discarded that has piled up through the years (cf. this highlight mentioning the current problem with Windows core architecture). This could be the promise of Midori, which is pointed out as Microsoft's future non-windows operating system, see the next item below.
  Tags: Windows Vista
• Ars technica reports on recent speculations about Midori, a coming non-Windows operating system from Microsoft. Key features of Midori are that it's based on managed code, .NET presumably, which takes the load of memory management off the developer. Further, the OS should be easy to virtualize, even allowing it to run as a separate Windows process. This would facilitate backwards compatibility, as the OS could initially be run inside a legacy Windows OS. Midori is also assumed to be well prepared for cloud computing, allowing for asynchronous API calls and making it easier to program for multiple processors. This last part is important from a performance and efficiency point of view, as CPUs get multiple cores. Multithreaded programming is a difficult and error-prone task, not well suited for the everyday programmer.
  Tags: Midori
• On a lighter note, Lifehacker featuring the How-To Geek, debunks a number of Windows performance tweaking myths. Like registry cleaning and memory optimizing, as is offered by several tools, and disabling of Windows services (except for possibly a few ones). Personally, I use CCleaner to remove temporary files, and I defragment my hard drives a few times a year, which seems to be enough to keep Windows XP reasonably fit.
  Tags: tools, Windows

• This week saw the return of Web 3.0 definitions on the table. Marc Benioff, CEO of salesforce.com, in a guest post at TechChrunchIT, proposed that Web 3.0 is about cloud computing and platforms as a service. As he writes:
  

  The new rallying cry of Web 3.0 is that anyone can innovate, anywhere. Code is written, collaborated on, debugged, tested, deployed, and run in the cloud. [...]
  For developers, Web 3.0 means that all they need to create their dream app is an idea, a browser, some Red Bull, and a few Hot Pockets.

  Naturally, as Marc mentions in passing, salesforce is a provider of platform as a service via their force.com offering. Nonetheless, I think that Mark has point in that infrastructure as a service, as provided by Amazon AWS, Google App Engine and others, is truly disruptive in that it makes it possible to launch an online business with very limited resources.
  Now, where does this new definition of Web 3.0 fit into my categorization of the Web 3.0 landscape? In part it belongs to the APIs and Web Services definition, or the Distributed Web as I proposed to call it, but it could well make up an own category among the "Other definitions".
  Tags: cloud computing, Web 3.0

• Another suggestion for the meaning of Web 3.0 was put forward by Mattt Thompson of the Yahoo Developer Network, as suitably recognized by Josh Catone. Mattt means that Web 3.0 will be characterized by browser extentions, like Google Gears and Yahoo BrowserPlus, that enhance the user experience of Web applications by providing features such as offline access. This view of Web 3.0 is focused more on the client side user experience of the Web, as opposed to the back-end infrastructure view as represented by Marc Benioff above. Not to say that the user experience is unimportant, but in my humble view, the changes that APIs, web services and cloud computing bring to the Web are more disruptive than some user interface enhancements.
  Tags: Gears, Web 3.0
• Chris Shipley of the Demo conference suggests that the Web 2.0 cycle has come to a close, and will be succeeded by the Distributed Web:
  

  This next phase is not about aggregating content or visitors to a single Web site; it's about disseminating information and applications to the users where ever they may be - another Web site, a mobile device, a consumer electronics gadget.

  In my Web 3.0 post, I proposed that the Distributed Web is characterized by APIs and web services, "signifying that a web site's content is consumed at multiple destinations through its API." Thus, while my definition is more focused on the underlying mechanisms of distribution, APIs and web services, Chris focus is more on the result of the distribution: the user's ability to consume web content and services wherever she might be.
  Richard MacManus, who first noticed Chris article, agrees to the significance of the notion of the Distributed Web, but disagrees that the "free" model of web services has ended, which also was one of Chris' assertions.
  Tags: Distributed Web, Web 3.0

• Knol, Google's Wikipedia killer, opened to the public this week. Anyone can write a Knol — "A unit of knowledge", about any subject (almost, e.g. "Bestiality" is not allowed, damn, my favorite subject ;-)). Multiple Knols can exist on a given subject, and it's up to the author to decide whether the Knol can be directly edited by other users, is moderated by the creator, or is closed.
  Interesting commentary from the blogosphere suggests that Knols are ranked high in Google searches, despite being just a day old. Also, duplicate content in Knols is ranked higher than original content on the web, which seems quite a bit disturbing. This suggests that web publishers should consider cross publishing their content to Knols, as a way to claim the ownership of their work. Also noteworthy is that links are "nofollow" in Knols (like in Wikipedia), so that no "link juice" is flowing out of a Knol. This is understandable, otherwise Knols would have been a heaven for link spammers.
  From an international perspective, it's a bit disappointing that only US citizens can have their name verified, though that may not be that important.
  Tags: Knol
• The Open Web Foundation, yet another open web standards organization, was announced this week, possibly most for the benefit of the founders. As Dare Obasanjo points out, there is already an old and well established organization for internet standards, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Possibly if you make the distinction between the Web (linked pages) and the Internet (infrastructure), the new organization could serve the purpose of handling pure web related issues.
  Tags: organizations
• There seems to be a backdoor to the encrypted communications in Skype, allowing authorities to intercept phone calls of suspects. A not too far-fetched guess is that the Swedish authorities have the key to this backdoor, in view of the infamous "FRA law", which allows the Swedish authority FRA to intercept all internet traffic passing the Swedish border, which about all Swedish traffic does, even if the start and end destinations are within Sweden. Using a secure protocol for web mail might be a good idea.
  Tags: privacy
• A story of a developer's journey (Mike Gunderloy of OStatic) from full-time Microsoft contractor to "100% Microsoft-free". Will I make a similar journey? I'm a pragmatic, so probably not 100%. Time will tell.
  Tags: Microsoft
• A new freely available collection of astonishing space images from NASA.
  Tags: images
• PlayCrafter, is a new site where you can build your own Flash games using drag-and-drop, reviewed by Marshall Kirkpatrick. The quality of the games are surprisingly high, and it is easy to get stuck playing. The games are embeddable on other sites, and there is an ad-based revenue sharing system for creators. Comparing this to my previous posts about Popfly Game Creator and Scratch, with PlayCrafter it seems to be a lot more easy to create compelling games, though you will not have the benefit of learning actual programming.
  Tags: online games

• Recent data from Hitwise shows that Microsoft has lost almost 50 percent of its market share in search from June 2007 to June 2008. In the U.S. the drop is from 9.8 % market share to 5.5 %. In the U.K. the drop is from 5.7 % to 3.7 %, and in Australia a dramatic fall from 14.7 % to 6.7 %. Google is the great winner, while Yahoo shows a minor drop and Ask a minor gain. Ask is now almost as big as Microsoft on search in the U.S. As it seems, to remain a major player in the search field, Microsoft desperately needs to get hold of Yahoo's search service.
  Tags: Microsoft, search
• Google's supposedly open mobile platform Android, loses in credibility among developers, as it was revealed this week that a few select top contestants of the Android Developer Challenge were given access, under the counter, to an updated version of the SDK. Additionally, the code was provided under a non-disclosure clause, rhyming poorly with the promise of open, though technically Google has done nothing wrong.
  There seems to be a lack of communication from the part of Google. As suggested by AndroidGuys, more frequent updates to the official Android blog would certainly calm down some hard feelings among developers. It will be interesting to see in the coming year what impact Android will make on the mobile phone market, which currently is overwhelmed, in terms of buzz at least, by the new iPhone.
  Tags: Android
• Gnip, the notification proxy service, finally hooks up to the XMPP firehose of Twitter. Does this mark the beginning of the end of the troubles of Twitter?
  Tags: Gnip, Twitter
• OStatic points to an "executive summary of Open Source", a white paper challenging 10 Open Source Myths. Some examples of myths covered: "Open source is free", "Open source equals open standards", "Open source is not for mission-critical functions", "Open source is for non-conformists" and "Open source software is lower quality".
  Tags: open source
• 5 tips on using Twitter to improve your online-reputation. Some examples: "Start conversations with notable peers", "Share valuable industry news" and "Monitor your Twitter reputation".
  Tags: online reputation, Twitter
• IPv6, the next generation internet protocol, about to replace the current IPv4 in a couple of years, might pose a security risk, writes the Wired. The problem is that it is enabled by default in many operating systems, and lots of applications may not yet be up-to-date to handle the new protocol. Affected operating systems include Windows Vista and Mac OS X. Windows XP is however safe, i.e. IPv6 is not enabled by default. You can test here which IP protocols are supported by your computer.
  Tags: IPv6, security

• Yahoo continues their open strategy with the launch of Search BOSS (Build your Own Search Service). This is a different offering than SearchMonkey, which just allowed you to enhance the presentation of the search results. The new service has quite liberal terms. It allows you to re-order the search results and mix in other results as you see fit. These are desired options I wrote about in my first post on this blog. The terms also have a no-attribution requirement, which expressively requires you not to mention Yahoo in your search offering. Still you are not allowed to use the search index data in any way you might want to. You must provide a search service, with a search box, and only query the index in response to a search performed by a real user of your service. Also, considering the current uncertainty of the future of Yahoo, building a business on top of BOSS seems a bit risky.
  Tags: search, Yahoo
• From the security department, there was much talk about a potential, yet unexploited flaw in the Domain Name System, DNS, the "address book" of the internet, which translates human friendly URLs to IP addresses. Dan Kaminsky, who discovered the flaw, secretly informed the major vendors without talking to the security community, which has spawned some speculation about the significance of the discovery. The details of the vulnerability will not be publicly disclosed until August 7. Though, it is likely related to insufficient randomness provided by the 16 bit session ID of DNS. In that respect, the vulnerability is rooted in the same problem domain as the OpenSLL flaw I wrote about in May.
  Tags: security
• Two news from the virtual world(s): Google launches a customizable and embeddable virtual world called Lively. Second Life, the hitherto largest virtual world, reported on the first successful teleportation of an avatar between two (experimental) virtual worlds. They also recorded a video of the event.
  Tags: virtual worlds
• Ars Technica writes about recent speculations about a new non-Windows operating system in development at Microsoft, code name Midori. To be released some 9 years from now, probably beyond Windows 8.
  Tags: Windows
• The new URL shortening service bit.ly, has a host of innovative features, including an API, as reported by Marshall Kirkpatrick. Dave Winer is one of the brains behind the service.
  Tags: URLs, tools
• Soon we might be able to program Flash using C, meaning a speed boost that is useful in gaming applications, for example.
  Tags: Flash
• Moopz, a FriendFeed conversation aggregator reviewed by Sarah Perez. Among the features are item threading, noise reduction and automatic summary and tag generation. Only items containing a link are considered, thus reducing the noise. First impression is that it's a useful service. (Btw. I'm jobol on FriendFeed.)
  Tags: aggregation, FriendFeed
• Josh Catone is back to blogging. Now at SitePoint, a resource site for web developers and designers, where he is running the News & Trends blog. Glad to have him back.
  Tags: Josh Catone
• Finally, a bonus video on the math theme featuring fractals, found via Brad Feld.
  

• Identi.ca, a new open source microblogging service discovered by ReadWriteWeb has a host of attractive features like support for OpenID and the OpenMicroBlogging specification, which allows for publishing of notices across microblogging services. Identi.ca builds on the open source code laconi.ca, with reportedly a number of installations across the web, building a promise of a distributed alternative to Twitter. The code may have some flaws, e.g. the core architecture more resembles a content management system (CMS) than a messaging system, though since it is open source that can certainly get fixed.
  Tags: microblogging, open source
• Gnip — ping backwards, is a new free service for data providers and consumers, acting as a proxy between the two, taking API load off providers while increasing the update notification speed for consumers. More features are in the planning as anticipated by Marshall Kirkpatrick. Brad Feld has a detailed story about his evolving partnership with Gnip and MyBlogLog founder Eric Marcoullier, from the first IM from Eric in 2004 to working as partners today.
  Tags: proxy services
• Blogged — a blog directory and human powered news aggregator. A potential Techmeme killer, had it only got rss feeds ...
  Tags: blog directory, news aggregator
• Ars Technica points to a browser wishlist initiative of the OpenAjax Alliance, "an organization of leading vendors, open source projects, and companies using Ajax". Among the most requested features of the next generation browsers are native JSON parsing, persistent connections, 2D graphics, video support and CSS features.
  Tags: web development
• Google learns to crawl Flash, for the good and the bad, after all less Flash content is something I'd rather see. Visiting a Flash heavy site usually is a noisy experience for me as the CPU fan starts spinning due to the increased CPU usage and temperature.
  Tags: Flash