Facebook’s ambition

Recently there was some news in regard to Facebook interested in making its status update system more robust and accessible through APIs for developers and presumably users.  This is a direct shot against Twitter and their own system of micro-blogging.  The question that comes to mind though is the sense of community between services and if there is a brand loyalty or do people just see these tools as a means to an end.  I think the majority of people do in fact use these services to stay in contact and if their contacts  aren’t on a particular service then it won’t catch on in that social circle.

 

With that said, both have an immense following with Facebook currently around 200 million users with Twitter being much less than that but growing by leaps and bounds and attracting many from the mainstream.  Facebook of course using its leverage on its other social networking features and user base will try to capitalize on the market, but does that necessarily mean that it will push out Twitter?

Windows 7 thins its product lineup

Well maybe, it depends how you look at it.

• Windows 7 Starter
• Windows 7 Home Premium
• Windows 7 Professional
• Windows 7 Enterprise
• Windows 7 Ultimate

Starter will be available with new PCs but is very crippled (no glass, can only run 3 applications at a time, etc.).  Home Premium and Professional will be the major push for retail and the average user while Enterprise will provide features for businesses and Ultimate will include everything but won’t be marketed as extensively as Home Premium and Professional according to Microsoft.

So what we have here for the average consumer is really a choice between Home Premium, Professional, and Ultimate (for those who really need to have it all).  Which really is the same number of versions that you had with Vista when you think about it (Home Basic, Home Premium, and Ultimate).  From the way Microsoft is talking though I suppose their marketing campaign will differ though to simplify the apparent choices.

It’s important to remember than unlike Vista, each version of 7 supersedes the previous, lower version meaning that as you move up from Starter you will always be gaining features never losing what you had from the lower tiers, which is a very smart move.  I just hope Microsoft is as smart with their pricing as they haven’t yet released that information.

The UAC Debacle

As I’m sure you’re all aware (if you’ve been following the very popular Windows 7 beta) there has been some issues with how Microsoft is handling UAC (user access control) in Windows 7.  Initially they wanted to lower the default alert threshold so users wouldn’t be bothered when changing settings for Windows since it was a major complaint with the way Vista operated with UAC.  Then in an outcry from the security-conscious testers/observers Microsoft bends to their demands for it to be more like Vista (more secure but more alerts) considering malware on the system could lower or disable UAC and not prompt the user—leaving the system open to run anything without the users consent.

It just seems that Microsoft can’t please everyone and the user base can’t agree what they collectively want from the vendor.  Personally I feel that Windows should be as secure as possible and the user needs to adapt to the world in which we live where security is a survival trait—we can’t remain to be lazy and naive about real threats that exist and no Mac OS X isn’t the solution.  Apple handles their version of UAC the same way (high alerts) and they have already proven that they aren’t immune to attack.

Google takes a break

This will be a short one but for about roughly an hour this morning for some people (I was only affected around 20 minutes) Google search results were listed as malware and would only display Google’s warning page upon clicking.  The results were still accessible if you adjusted the URL, however hardly convenient if you are doing any serious searching.  In the meantime I know I got use out of Live Search, which picked up the slack as I’m sure it did for many others around the world or another alternative.

Windows 7 and shortsighted people

Increasingly I’ve been reading more and more about Windows 7 and how it has grabbed the attention of even the staunchest Apple advocates such as Walt Mossberg, David Pogue, and Leo Laporte each conveying that they not only feel it is better than Vista but that they haven’t found any show-stopping flaws.  Leo Laporte even goes as far on his podcasts to promote a campaign to release Windows 7 now since in his experience he has evaluated it as shipping ready quality.

While it is widely held that Windows 7 is an improvement over Windows Vista I am prompted to point out that just because you feel it’s ready doesn’t mean the company writing the code should listen and obey.  Microsoft understands what went wrong with the way Vista was handled and has made drastic improvements in how they organize and deploy their efforts for 7.  This alteration in work ethic has lead to this very good beta product, but remember it is only beta.

I am very excited to see 7 launch but not at the expense of Microsoft bending to those vocal proponents and sacrificing more time for testers and the coders at Microsoft to smooth and polish the product. 

With that said, no amount of testing will ever make a perfect product and keeping a product in a perpetual testing phase in hopes that it will make it better is foolish.  Windows 7 needs to be released this year, but not just yet.

Trojan on Mac OS X - Massive Infections

I read this one over at macworld.com. Evidently some less than noble individuals placed a pirated copy of the new iWork 09 online, which was downloaded over 20,000 times. This turned out to be a Trojan horse that asked for the users' password and proceeded to install itself. This has been confirmed as an in the wild threat but fortunately the infection does not spread.

Security through obscurity is a phrase that has been used for years to describe the Mac platform in general and I tend to agree. The real question is how Apple will respond to threats such as these considering as their platform grows in popularity they will start to face the same problems that are affecting Windows users. The difference is Microsoft has had decades of addressing these problems and hardening Windows from a multitude of attack vectors, while Apple has seemingly skated by (getting back to that obscurity thing). I won't bash Mac users on this one, but a sense of humility would be nice in regards to security at the very least and in this area they could learn a lot from Microsoft.

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This site will be the commentary and opinion on stories and topics in the technology and video game industries. My background in Computer Science as well as many aspects of video game development will hopefully provide more substance for all the readers here, especially over the majority of postings on the Internet.

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