One for the Road

Final Blog

This will be my last blog post for IS 449. You can really appreciate blogging because it creates questions and answers. Professor Drake encouraged us to stay on top of our blogs and with the blog counter created by Matt Mager , it made it a fairly accurate way of keeping up with you blogs and also your comments.

The hardest part for me was creating a blog making sure it had relevance to it. Any one of us can type on for days about hobbies, interest, concerns or general issues, but to write a blog pertaining to class or IT related news can be difficult at times. I read several blogs that helped me and my group for our iteration. With this being a writing intensive course, blogs are a major factor of your grade. This shows the importance to not to get behind with blogging.

For all my classmates who are graduating , I wish you the best of luck and hopefully EMU has prepared you for the workforce. Professor Drake I wish you continued success as you guide the youth who earn for higher education. I hope that everyone have a blessed and safe Holiday.

Best Wishes,

Justin Gantt

Iteration 3

Iteration 3 is finally over with. I personally like to thank each member from IJAM for all there hard work put into the project. I have learned how difficult it is to bring what you image to reality. We envisioned our website to work a certain way and ran into several obstacles.

In a perfect world, group projects would be no problem.There would be no conflict, no slacking, everyone would contribute and things would run smoothly according to schedule. But it's no such thing as a perfect world. I was lost for the last part of iteration 3 and tried to help out in any way possible for the team. After a email to our group Ivaylo shared with me the how difficult it was for everyone in the group and needed my support to work with other parts of the project.

Ultimately things worked out and the project got done to the best our ability.I do have to mention the other groups project looked and functioned very well. I really felt the mountain bike group was over the top and they did a hell of a job. The way they incorporated Wikipedia with Google maps was impressive. Lastly, I can't forget the sister group to IJAM which is called IRAM dating service check it out!!

Group Iteration 3

The semester seems to have come to a quick and screaching halt. Don't get me wrong, its nice to be done, but it seemed like it snuck up me. My group has finally finished iteration 3. Our original idea for a music concert orientated sited seemed simple enough though it grew harder as the semester moved on. Our largest initial difficulty fell into the category of the inability to find suitable API's. While there were many many available, most we came to find out where going have a financial attachment that came with them. In the end we fell into similar standby API's that many of the others in class had chosen to use and master as well.

The class as a whole was a great instrument for every step we took in trying to succeed with this project. In hindsight, i feel like we put too much effort in to being imaginative and to create that masterpiece in our minds. As the end drew near we realized that while we had many creations to use for the flash there was little or no working substance to our project.

This reminded me greatly of project management several of us took the semester before. Our scope had creeped and we had to struggle to make it limping through the finish.

If i could change something other than the book we had used, we have all spoken in class about that before, i would suggest now a different learning structure for the course.

Pre-established compounding projects similar to what we had already done, but with API's chosen by the professor, with more tangible turn ins and benchmarks. But i can only speak for myself, one who always he will always walk the longest distance the lease allows.

SpyBOT

Many of you have given your own opinions of on different ways to protect your computers and files. Many spyware software packages are more reactive as compared to proactive. SpyBot is a program i have adopted for main years.

I guess the main reason i gave SpyBOT a try was because it was free. Over time it has grown to become a main staple of my pc protection setup. As mentioned before, unlike many other spyware removal packages they are mostly reactive. Able to scan your machines and remove malicious registry and cookies.

SpyBot was the first program i have found that lets you install Immunization patches. These patches create permanent versions of temporary files that known malicious programs use to block or slow your Internet connections as they use your machines as email spam centers.

The only issue i have found is one I have found similarly with any other Anti-spyware program. Some benefitial changes you attempt to add to your system can put it to a halt. SpyBot offers a complete reversal setting for any of the changes you make as well as the ability to back up your registry quickly and efficiently.

School Provided Anti-Virus

As many of us work our way through school we look for every means to keep a dollar in our pocket. Being we are all IS major, many of us spend the majority of their on either school or their home computers. Recently, after having my personal anti-virus expire, i was feeling less than eager to kick out another $49 for another years subscription.

Many of you don't know that Eastern has a partership with Mcafee to keep the school and its students pc's clean. Free Anti-virus . You can get access to the free 2 year subscription to Mcafee Corporate Edition. I greatly like the corporate versions of many kinds of software. I find them cleaner and with less flash in the pan. They tend not to be the most initially user friendly, but after some use often open up features you would of not had access to before in a retail copy.

The only downside is at this time the do not have a wholy compatible version for Win 7. Many users have simple installed the vista version with ease. Over time this creates system instability issues and improper firewall blocking by Win7 as well as incorrect file quarentine. Until the new compatible version becomes available there is always Panda!

Create a Weblog in 15 Minutes

Ruby on Rails (RoR) is an open-source web framework. What really caught my eye about this programming option is that it boasts "In 15 minutes, we go from scratch to complete weblog engine with comments, ajax, an ATOM feed, an XML and JSON API, tests, an administrative interface, and much more!' This is curious to me because any program I've written has taken me hours. While this sounds great, I would probably still use a blogger service such as this one but the idea of creating one in 15 minutes from scratch, sounds appealing from a programming perspective. Here's a link to the video for creating a web log in 15 minutes (requires Quicktime): http://media.rubyonrails.org/video/rails_blog_2.mov

For those of you who enjoyed the Head First book, they've even written one on rails: http://www.headfirstlabs.com/books/hfrails/

Based on cruising the Internet there is quite a bit of documentation out there to help get you started. The api documentation provides an explanation of every class and functionality. It appears to be very thorough. It's a domain-specific language for having Web applications talk to databases.

RoR is a programming language which will help get you to agile web development. It was sited as the "poster-child" of dynamically typed languages (compared to Java for example).

As this is my last post I just wanted to say that it's been a pleasure blogging with all of you!

Group Iteration 3

Well, I can say that we are almost there. We have the major APIs working, but still run in some bugs. Overall our group came from a long way, since we had limited knowledge in programming. The biggest issues we had was with the pointers on the google mapls, we could get only one. Hopefully by the iteration tonight we will be fine.

I found out while I was working on the ebay API that after you create an account they offer you a full set of develping tools. That is how I learned how to set up the API. It was really nice because I learned some really usefull tips.

Overall we understand the underlying idea of the progect and the techonology behind it. It is that we do not have the final touches. On the other side I do think that we had a really nice idea about the project, just could not fully implement it. Hopefully what we have is enoegh to get us a good grade.

Windows Defender

An IT friend of mine recently commented on a Windows virus protection tool saying that it's very good. It's called, Windows Defender and is included in Vista and Windows 7 operating systems. In my history of using virus protection tools, the one tool I have used for the last four years which has not hindered system performance is a German product which you can download for free, called Avira. I've been virus free since using it. While McAfee is the only other product I have experience with, I found that it really slowed system performance and comes with an annual cost.

Windows Defender is also a free program and is light weight. It evolved from another product which was developed by Giant Company Store called Antispyware. Microsoft purchased this product in 2004 and hacked away at it to enhance it and be competitive in this space. They released a reengineered product in 2006. I'm not a big fan of Microsoft these days but this doesn't look like a bad product.


There are two features which Microsoft is proud of in this tool but I don't see how this is different from other tools. They are

1) Software Explorer

2) Real-time Alerting

These features alone do not impress me but I'm willing to try it out. Avira does throw advertisements dialog windows at start-up and I experience some slowness with this tool but nothing significant. I'm willing to try something new though, why not? Has anyone out there used this tool or appreciated any of it's features over other tools?

HP swooping in on Sun customers

Hey guys this is a really cool article that I came across

Hewlett-Packard has certainly benefited from the uncertainty over Sun Microsystems' future, and now it's lined up a few partners to help win over more Sun customers.

In light of Oracle's failure thus far to seal its takeover of Sun, HP announced on Tuesday that it has teamed up with Microsoft, Novell, and Red Hat to offer further incentives to Sun customers.

HP reported that during the 12 months ending October 31, it scooped up more than 350 customers from Sun with offers of specialized services and support, and financial incentives through its HP Complete Care program. Now, the company said, it has enhanced this program with the help of its new partners to give Sun customers what HP is selling as "peace of mind."

HP said its new Complete Care program will offer such benefits as a 50 percent discount on Novell's Suse Linux Enterprise Fundamentals training, 25 percent off Red Hat Global Training, and greater support through its Migration Competency Center in France.

Thanks to its new partnerships, HP said, it can also offer customers the flexibility to choose from among server operating systems, including Unix, Windows Server, Suse Linux, Red Hat Linux, and even Sun's own Solaris.

Oracle announced its intent to buy Sun in mid-April, but concerns from the European Commission and other parties over an Oracle-owned MySQL have stalled the deal. Recent promises from Oracle to preserve and protect MySQL seem to have eased EC concerns. But each day the deal remains unfinished, Sun customers likely wonder whether they should take their business elsewhere.

A recent IDC report showed that Sun had suffered a 35 percent drop in third-quarter sales year over year, compared with much smaller declines for rivals HP and IBM.

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Bing on the iPhone

After reading Ahmed’s article What if IBM and Apple Merge?!,
I found an article posted yesterday, “Microsoft’s Bing app debuts on iPhone”

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-10416266-75.html?tag=newsEditorsPicksArea.0 href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-10416266-75.html?tag=newsEditorsPicksArea.0


Seeing as though Apple owns iPhone and Microsoft owns Bing, I thought it was ironic.

This free app’s description on the iTunes store is: "Make decisions and get where you need to go with Bing. See the Bing daily image and related trivia on the home screen. Search maps or the Web with your voice--even say an address. Use Image Search and flick through previews. Download Bing today to find stuff nearby and get there fast."

Some of its features include easy access to voice search, tips and tricks on the home page, it offers the ability to add pushpins and save locations called “Locate Me” and it can show multiple locations on its map.

Although this is not the first app Microsoft has put on the iPhone, it goes to show how popular the iPhone is and will be.

The noscript tag

BLOGGER UPDATE:
Hey guys, I wanted to update everyone on the blogger bug that was making the comments count incorrect. They fixed it!!! I don't know what was done, but the comments have been accurate for the past week now, and I've been closely monitoring everytime I make a new comment and the numbers are all correct! This means no counting by hand! I hope everyone can make use of my application and if not, that's fine, but I know it has saved some people a lot of time. It kind of just became a challenge for me to do at one point. I started doing it, thinking it'd be cool, then I hit those problems and it became something I needed to figure out! lol

Anyway, the reason I'm posting is to talk about the noscript tag. The noscript tag is a tag used in HTML when JavaScript is disabled or not supported by a browser. This tag is very important in our class because everything we're dealing with is AJAX, so it's all JavaScript-based! If a user visits one of our AJAX-based sites without JavaScript enabled on their browser or with a browser that doesn't support JavaScript, they will not get any results. All the visitor would see on our sites would be the static information within the HTML. Obviously for sites like ours that are developed 100% around the use of AJAX, our sites pretty much become useless then. This is where the noscript tag comes into play.


The noscript tag allows the browser to display alternate information when/if JavaScript isn't enabled/supported. Using the noscript tag is extremely simple. All you need to do is type . Unfortunately, if JavaScript is disabled/unsupported on our sites, the noscript tag still won't give the results we want, but it will at least inform the user that they need to either enable JavaScript or find a browser that supports it if they want to experience the full effect and purpose of our AJAX-based websites.

The majority of the time, the text you place between the noscript tag is what determines whether or not a visitor stays at your site, or just gives up and goes somewhere else. A few important points you may want to consider in the noscript tag are to try and type as much relevant content as you can related to the thing the user is trying to view (in the case of this class, that would mean listing some sort of related information to the API the JavaScript is attempting to access) and telling the user that JavaScript is necessary to properly view this site. Sometimes it's a good idea to give short instructions to the user on how to enable JavaScript on a few popular browsers in case they aren't aware it's disabled and don't know how to re-enable it.

What if IBM and Apple Merge?!

After blogging about how Google can take on Microsoft and vice versa, I was interested in the writer of the article, Rob Enderle. I followed his articles and came across another interesting "what if" discussion on the merger of IBM and Apple. Even though chances of such a merger is really zero to none just because both companies have redundancy in products as well as in customers, a look at the similarities and differences of both giants would not hurt. In the following paragraphs, a discussion of how the two companies could benefit from each other if they do merge will take place.

Lets take a look at the similarities of both IBM and Apple. First, just as Apple has Steve Jobs to lead it successfully through its life cycle, IBM is successfully lead by Sam Palmisano who has managed to reward IBM with often the strongest profitability. Second, Both companies has solid bases for carrying business and gaining global attention; IBM focus on its intellectual property base in system cooling and analytics and energy management. Similarly, Apple focus on its rich operating systems and differentiated product line. Third, Both companies try to ignore price competition and concentrate on product value. Lastly, they both have loyal customer base that consists of different groups from individuals to organization and government sectors.

Moving on to the differences; While Apple inserts customer voice on its marketing strategies, IBM fails to do so. Most of IBM top products serve as back end products that has no apparent advantage to many customers. On the other hand, integrated marketing and products development is perhaps the biggest success factor for Apple. Second, IBM is known or having high end products that usually gain wide satisfaction of customers whereas Apple fails to provide the equivalent quality due to different customers' perceptions. Lastly, IBM does not solely depend on Sam Palmisano because it has a strong structure, however, Apple pretty much runs on Steve Jobs; whenever he's sick, Apple stocks go down and vice versa. In conclusion, If both companies looked at each other strengths and weaknesses, they will be able to enhance their presence in the market which eventually means more customer satisfaction.

Design Patterns

In one of the last classes, we talked a bit about design pattern. Design pattern is "is a general reusable solution to a commonly occurring problem in software design". It is not specific code but it describes the solution to the problem. This makes it compatible with different programming languages.

Design patterns became popular after the release of the famous book "Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Orientated Software" by Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, and John Vlissides, which are usually only known as the "Gang of Four (GoF)". This book describes Design Patterns and the advantages of using them as well as that it gives examples of 23 classic design pattern.



Design Pattern are usually described with their name and classification other names, a description of the goal and the reason why using it, scenario or context in which this pattern can be used, class / interaction diagrams, participating classes or modules and the way they interact, results, side effects or trade offs that can happen while using this pattern, a description of the implementation as well as a sample code, real usage and related pattern.

I think that everybody who wants to have some knowledge in programming or software development should have worked with Design Pattern. Using well-known code reduces the costs for development, reduces errors and makes the code easier to maintain.
Luckily, I gained some experience through my first software development class with the following Patterns: Singleton, Factory method, Facade.

Microsoft Stealing Webcode??

It seems weird to think that such a large company that employs some of the most tech savvy programmers would steal code from another company, but that is what Plurk is accusing them of. Plurk is a social networking site that claims to be "a social journal for your life". They claimed this week that Microsoft of intellectual property theft. Microsoft China recently introduced their own microblogging service called Juku, which Plurk claims is mostly code from their service. Microsoft admitted that it could have code from their site, but blamed it on an independent vendor.

You can read the blog post by Plurk that shows some similarities in code and design. Below is one of the pictures from that blog.


Even though Microsoft shut down the Juku site, at least temporarily, Plurk isn't completely happy with that. They believe that Microsoft is just placing the blame on an independent vendor so that they will not have to be responsible for the so called stolen code. This is not the first time in recent weeks that Microsoft has placed the blame on someone else. Last month they were forced to remove a Windows 7 media and administration tool from the Microsoft Store site after a violation of the GPL.

Basic Web Design

I know we are almost finished with this class but here are some key points for designing websites in the future, of course containing mashups. Impressive, well laid out, fast loading and easy to use are all terms that describe a perfect website design. In order to attract a prospective visitor and maintain their interest in your site, it is vital to think about why users go there. The homepage is a customers first opportunity to form an immediate opinion about your website and determine whether or not they want to proceed any further. The main objective should be to design a webpage that is not only appealing to the eye, but also is easy to use.

Usually a homepage allows visitors to perform one of several different functions which may include reading the news, searching for information, watching videos or buying products. If you have too many links a customer can become easily overwhelmed and decide to abandon your site and search for another. One option to address that problem would be to use drop down menus which appear in a much cleaner format. Using "calls to action" through images, buttons or text links will also help a customer to easily navigate their way through your website. One of the key points to remember is that "less is more," when it comes to choosing font styles. In order to improve readability and add a sense of professionalism to your webpage design try not to incorporate more than three different font sizes.

Color is also another very important part of webpage design. Depending on what you are trying to project to your audience, webpages can contain many different colors. While designing our website, VacatioNation, we chose to apply the aqua blue color which normally projects the feeling of restfulness, relaxation and calmness and fits perfectly when thinking of vacations.

This was just a brief overview of the many different options you may want to incorporate into your own website design that will improve the functionality and enhance the overall look. There are also plenty of website tutorials online that may aid in the development of your next website.

Web Surfing

There is a lot of controversy brewing lately over the actions of Google regarding an individual's web activity. First of all, based on your prior web searches, Google is now ranking websites for you when you perform the same search the following time. In other words, if you had chosen to search for “jewelry,” the results would be displayed and you would choose the suitable choice. The next time you performed the same search, instead of the results being displayed based on “adwords,” they will be structured according to the websites you last visited when searching this same topic. This new practice takes place regardless if you are logged in or not, and Google considers it to be more of a helpful tool rather than a nuisance. This video explains this process further in depth.

In addition, the little cookies that are on the Google website also allow perspective companies to strategically place ads based on your web profile of user activity. This new cookie based personalization feature does allow users to opt out, but because of the value we place on our time and the lack of knowledge needed to execute this process, more than likely this won’t occur. Many have commented that they fear users will not discover new sites if they are continually ranked in order based on past preferences. One more thing that Google frequently does is to place search results of companies that they are in partnerships with, without disclosing that information. Google claims that they never manipulate data but some, think otherwise.

The bottom line, in my opinion, is that Google needs to take into account how others perceive what they are doing and ensure their customers that they are committed to providing them best service possible. It would be very easy for a current Google customer to switch to another search engine and not think twice about it! Who will win and who will lose is the biggest question now. I hope you have a moment to decide what you think about this new feature.

Chrome gaining more users

According to computerwold.com chrome has surpassed Safari in terms of worldwide browser usage. So what does this really mean? With the launch of chrome for mac and linux users it has moved into the number three spot. Net application, which monitors web usage said that between December 6-12 seen an increase of .04% . That pushed moved chrome pass safari with total of 4.4%.

Chrome was designed for people who live on the web. People searching for information, checking email, shopping or just being incognito!!!!!! Chrome wanted to re-think what operating systems should be. Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that was initially be targeted at netbooks.

3% is a large number of points in the real world but a relatively small fraction when it comes to internet explorer. It will be a long time before any browser to come anywhere near IE % usage, but the competition creates a better web experience for all users!

Iphone software development class

At the University of California Davis a professor is teaching a Iphone application development class. The professor wanted to teach a class that was relevant and could also keep the interest of students. There have been several universities that offered software development classes, but the first for U of C Davis. The only prerequisite for the class is students were to have their own iphone, ipod (touch), or Mac that can run SDK( Software Development Kit).

The break down of the class consisted of the first 5 weeks learning SDK and some C language. The following 5 remaining weeks students were to split into teams of 2 and worked on their applications. The end of the semester brought some cool new apps, like how to tune a piano and maps of the university campus.

Professor Drake even talked about how big the application programing for cell phones are right now. With application being and open source we've only scratched the surface of whats yet to come with phone applications.

Most Hacked Software

Forbes magazine recently posted an article about the year's most hacked software. Believe it or not it was not Microsoft, but Adobe. According to iDefense, 45 bugs were found in Adobe reader software this year opposed to only 14 last year. Most of the more common Microsoft programs dropped in number of bugs found. Experts believe that one of the things that make Adobe a good candidate for hackers is because of the large number of users who have Adobe reader. They also explain that the complex code causes the potential of having a high risk of flaws.



Adobe is aware of these problems with their software being targeting so they have recently decided to require a quarterly patching cycle, an idea taken from Microsoft. Adobe has decided to take a more proactive approach to finding and fixing bugs.

Some of the other companies that made the most hacked software list were Internet Explorer, Firefox, Adobe Flash, Apple Quicktime, Microsoft Office, and Windows. Cybersecurity research frim Qualys was one of the companies that Forbes used to do find out the most vulnerable software and their chief technology officer, Wolfgang Kandek, states that "wormable" quality to Windows bugs means they remain his top priority.

Some people believe that if they are only using trusted software that they will not be vulnerable to many of the bug you read about in the news, but really it is the most common software that we use that causes the hackers to be able to get into our system.

Yipe - Emich group web server

It’s a little late in the semester to post about this but it may help future IS449W students especially if Professor Drake finds this useful and decides to point it out. I was actually going to blog about this a long time ago but with everything else going on it seems to have slipped my mind. Anyway, I don’t know how many know that there is another emich server that can be used for group web projects.

The nice thing about this server is it allows every group member to have access to the group site rather than having one member use his/her people.emich.edu site. I suppose that could also be a downside because one member could potentially overwrite what someone else has done. However, I did not find that to be a problem when I last used yipe.

This site seems to have all the information contained on the people.emich.edu page but it is more to the point. So, if you know what you need, software wise, you can just go to yipe.emich.edu and download it: filezilla, Winscp, Fugu, putty, MacSSH etc.




The people.emich.edu site is a little less to the point and doesn't seem to have all the download links that yipe has.

Various Software and Utilities

Already a lot of people have blogged about various software to help you develop our sites and projects for this class, but in this blog I am not going to focus to much on any particular software. Instead give some links to some helpful sites that I have used during the course of this class or that I found interesting and may have some use to my fellow classmates.

Here is one that just rolled into my inbox this week. The has a whole host of good app’s for not just development stuff but also regular utilities to help you out in everyday life. Now I will admit I have not used all of these, s o with anything found on the internet, use at your own risk. http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ScottHanselmans2009UltimateDeveloperAndPowerUsersToolListForWindows.aspx

This next one has some great articles, tutorial guides and very helpful forums for web development stuff. Pretty much every web language is covered in some detail here. I have used this site some, gotten some tips and some ideas. http://www.webreference.com/

Need some help with javascript? Or just want to learn it? This site has a great browser-based tutorial that is interactive and very informative. I got some great help from the guide while working in this class and hope it will help you too. You can download the entire web-book and use without needing access to the internet. It starts off pretty basic, geared towards the beginner in programming, but goes in depth into good programming practices and advanced topics. http://eloquentjavascript.net/

Ebay vs Craigslist: the Follow up

Browsing the Internet, I came across a cool article that talks about who to believe; Ebay or Craigslist. It is extremely hard to figure what is really going on just because this is a superior management ownership issues that perhaps involves secret information that could not be revealed in a week. No one denies that Ebay was seeking ownership of Craigslist; mostly because they bought stake of 28% on 2004. In the following paragraphs, I'm going to elaborate more on Ebay's point of view as well as Craigslist's point of view.

Starting with Ebay point of view, the former CEO Whitman stated that the move was mainly made because Ebay wanted to increase their share of the pie. According to Whitman, concerns about the relationship between both companies rose when Ebay founder Pierre Omidyar became frustrated with Craiglist. Her argument was that really no one ever dislikes Omidyar; when he's not happy with someone, this could also mean that who ever gets under his skin is probably doing something annoying.

Ending with Craigslists's point of view, Newmark and Buckmaster stated that Ebay betrayed them and that especially Whitman broke promises that she had given earlier to Craigslist when she started playing with their confidential data allegedly related to their hit website Craigslist.org. The concern in Craigslist rose when Ebay began creating their own classified website, oddly enough named Kijiji. Whether the right is on Ebay or Craigslist, it would not really change a thing because the launching of Kijiji changed the perspective of Classified websites. The real question is, how is this trial going to affect the ownership of Craigslist.

Antivirus Scamming

I'm sure we have all came across a pop up window that claims that it is scanning your computer for viruses and then claims you have one. I have never trusted these pop up scanners because I never know where there come from and since I have an up to date antivirus running on my computer I always figure its some sort of scan to get people to spend money. Well recently the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center issued a warning stating that a majority of these are in fact scams. They state that "At best, the software is subpar. At worst, it could result in viruses, Trojans and/or keyloggers being installed on the user's computer". It is estimated that by the FBI that victims of these scams have lost more than $150 million.

The FBI recommends that you do not click on these pop ups and should in fact close your browser immediately and possibly your computer. You should also run your antivirus to make sure there is nothing on your computer.

Security FAQ's website lists ways to help you identify fake antivirus programs:

• Fake anti-virus software will often find more suspicious activity on your computer than those programs that are made by legitimate companies.
• The number of pop-ups you see will increase drastically, even when you are not connected to the internet.
• After installing the fake anti-virus program you may notice that your computer slows down drastically due to the amount of junk that has been installed onto your system.
• You may also find that your default homepage has been changed and now points to the scammer’s ‘official-looking’ site.
• Words on websites are now underlined and now hyperlink to undesirable locations, such as adult sites.

Of course the best possible way to prevent these scams is to never use any of these sort of antivirus programs and use only the one you have installed on your computer.

Cloud Computing Attack!!

It did not take long for the fears of many to come true. Since the launch of cloud services, people have been referring back to the issue of security and whether cloud computing can survive hackers' games. According to the article, one of the cloud based Amazon EC2 (elastic compute cloud) sites was compromised by hackers as the command and control (C&C) operation site. the hackers used the site to spread the Zeus banking Trojan (a password stealing email scam that aims not to only steal your password but also your financial data). In the following paragraphs, a clearer look at Amazon EC2 cloud based service's issues will take place.

The virus was first discovered when security researchers at CA were running a check up on spam; they then came across one with a URL for a malware called xmas2.exe. After examining the executed file, it became evident that the file contained Zeus Trojan which was hosted by Amazon web services housed by Amazon EC2. Once the virus was discovered, Amazon paused the activity o the files serving the botnet. Amazon representative mentioned that this kind of attacks hurt the reputation of cloud computing, however, it is always possible to have these attacks whether you have cloud computing or not.

Another issue occurred this passed Wednesday was the outage of one of Amazon's data centers. The outage lasted for several hours and made consumers unhappy. Furthermore, the whole backup component of a redundant supply had failed; this caused some of the facility's servers to fail to perform which ultimately means failure to retrieve information and instances needed by both the employees and their customers. In conclusion, I think that these issues are random and they could happen to any other type of infrastructure and not just cloud based services and data centers. Therefore, I think that people should not rush to conclude that cloud computing is totally insecure and is vital to attacks.

Iphone user are clogging up the network

This is an astonishing fact! 3 percent of smartphone users are consuming 40 percent of the network capacity. At&T wants its customers to use less wirless data because it's clogging the network. AT&T's head of wireless,said "the wireless operator is considering incentives to get consumers to reduce their data usage."

They plan to gives incentives to encourage phones users to use less data usage.

The video and the audio features on the phone are the culprits for the data usage becoming clogged. The iphone uses more data than the standard phone. It has gotten so bad at&t had a program application that allows users to report service problems. By AT&T having a 3G network , people were accessing more data and clogging up service.

At&t is looking into reducing phone plan serivices in order to free up the network. This isn't the answer to the issue. It's more like a band aid. AT&T is asking the Federal Communications Commission to find more spectrum to auction off that can be used for wireless data services. With the creation of the cell phone with applications, it will be extremely hard to find more space. Teen's are purchasing more phones thus getting more apps and clogging more space in the network. This reminds me when they were running low with IP address.

Google Vs Microsoft: competition assumptions

It is fairly obvious that Google and Microsoft are one if not the most successful companies of all time. It is also clear that the two companies are not very close friends and therefore, they try hard to take on each other. I have ran into this cool article that highlights a suggested strategies on how Google can take out Microsoft and vice versa. The article starts by pointing out how to kill key competitors (major key competitors to be exact); three main factors to consider when trying to hurt your competitors are Patience, perseverance and last but not least destroying the opponent image by manipulating trust. The secret to being patient is to allow the opponent to do most of the work for you. In the following paragraphs, a brief look at how Google can take out Microsoft and vice versa will be highlighted.

Google can take Microsoft out for a couple of reasons. First, Microsoft image has been declining over the years and it has been effecting its ways of attracting key employees. Google has also been working on destroying the public image of Microsoft by pointing out as evil. Second, the fact that Google is very successful in its search engine had put Microsoft on the race to be match that; this has sucked many of Microsoft resources which could potentially bring down their profits. Lastly, Google can gain the available government trust that could help them win most of the local and international departments. This will also pressure Microsoft to respond with lowering its prices and increase its quality. As a result, Microsoft net income could get hurt pretty bad.

Microsoft can take Google out for a couple of interesting reasons as well. First, just like Microsoft, Google's image has been going down hill. It does not really effect its revenue as much but it could protect Microsoft. How? Simple enough, people don't want to replace an evil corporation by another. Second, Microsoft can focus on improving its search engine which is already happening as well as trying to capture the advertisement segment, which Google depends on heavily. There are many reasons but these are the main two. In conclusion, Google and Microsoft battle would go on for a long time and personally I think it would be hard to determine the winner!

Office 2010 beta, Outlook, meet Facebook

The just-released Microsoft Office 2010 beta shows Microsoft's vision for integrating Office with the greater Internet. Most notably, it introduces a potentially powerful Outlook feature that can combine your e-mail with social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn.

Also on display is the Web-based version of Office, another way Microsoft is trying to make sure that Office is no longer the island it has been for too long. However, that is marred somewhat by the lack of some important features in the Web-based version of Office, such as the ability to create charts in Excel.

Like the previously released Technical Preview, the beta also incrementally improves Microsoft's best-selling Office suite, putting the Ribbon at center stage as the default interface for all Office applications, powering up individual apps with tools such as built-in video editing, and including a variety of productivity enhancers, such as a better paste operation.

One of the most significant changes to Office is not an interface change, but a feature that could dramatically improve the way people connect with others and share information. Called Outlook Social Connector, the new feature has a twofold purpose: to track all of your e-mail and other history with each specific contact, and to extend Outlook's reach beyond Office to the Internet and social networking sites.

When you're reading an e-mail message to or from someone, the Connector appears at the bottom of your message in its own separate pane. The pane displays a history of your communications with that person in Outlook -- e-mail messages, attachments exchanged, meetings scheduled in Outlook, and so on. You can see all these items in one big list or click a tab to view just one type -- for example, just e-mails you've exchanged with that contact -- then click an item to go directly to it.

Using Skype to battle cell phone dead zones

Is the cell coverage in your area not up to par? Whether you happen to have steel walls or live where there are no cell phone towers or trees cleverly disguised as cell phone towers, some of us must deal with the reality that, while we own arguably the most innovative gadget in recent years in the iPhone, we may not have had the best carrier to accompany it. One way to address this "bag of hurt" is through the Skype [iTunes link] app.

If you don't already have the Skype app, download it -- it's a free download in the App Store. Next, you'll need to make sure that Skype stays online when the screen is locked. This is accessible via the Skype app preferences within the iPhone's main settings page. After this is enabled, the Skype app continues to run in the background and maintains a Wi-Fi connection even after the sleep/awake button is pushed -- or if it's set to automatically lock after a given time interval. Second, because Skype requires a Wi-Fi connection to make and receive calls, you'll also want to make sure that whatever cell phone dead zone you're at also happens to have a Wi-Fi connection.

This workaround obviously isn't without its weaknesses. Assuming that most of those calling you would prefer dialing a phone number instead of your Skype user name, you'll likely need a separate phone number. One option is SkypeIn, which marries Skype to a real phone number. The service costs $18 for three months or $60 for a whole year. And if you happen to have a Google Voice phone number, directing your calls to your SkypeIn number is an option. Alternatively, you could forward all of your iPhone calls to said Skype number whenever you anticipate a cell phone dead zone -- say, before you enter your house, if you have bad reception there. This is accessible via the Phone preferences within the iPhone's main settings page. Doing this, you won't have to give out multiple numbers to your friends and family.

One of the other drawbacks of this alternative is that while an audible indicator (a ringing noise) is present when you're receiving a call, a visual one isn't. In other words, you may need some cat-like ears to know when you're receiving a call.

A seamless solution this is not, but it nonetheless provides a possible workaround until more cell towers are built in your area, or until a push-based solution is available for Skype.

Open Source Office Suite

As I am trying to figure out what to Blog about, for my final Blog, I realized that I don't have a word processing application on my laptop. I usually do my work on my desktop which has Office 2007 but I just felt like vegetating in front of the Television. So, I decided to go to openoffice.org and download the office suite. This is yet another Free open-source application and it is mostly, from what I found, compatible with Microsoft's Office suite.


“OpenOffice.org 3 is the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers. It stores all your data in an international open standard format and can also read and write files from other common office software packages. It can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose. (OpenOffice.org)”




Open Office is included with the Linux Distribution that I use and is also supported on Mac OS X and Windows.

I am seriously considering switching to a Linux desktop, with Open office, after I graduate since I will not need to worry about being compatible with Microsoft after that.

Google vs Work at Home Scams

Since I blogged about Ebay vs Craigslist, I thought I would score a home run and post about another law suit. This time it is the significant, Google. Randomly enough, It filed its law suit last Monday which is the same time Whitman the former Ebay CEO took stand. Pacific WebWorks was the victim this time along with many unidentified companies. One can imagine the reason behind filing such a suit because of the deceiving behind the fake sources such as articles, website and blogs. I myself was getting interested in one of these and mainly because it was under the name of Google. In the following paragraphs, an in depth discussion of the Google case and the work at home scam will be taking place.

It is a noticeable fact that money is attractive, let alone fast easy money. The work at home scams is one of the most popular successful scams. What is a work at home scam? As quoted from the suit

"This action seeks to stop a widespread Internet advertising scam that is defrauding the public by misusing the famous Google brand. The scam victimizes unsuspecting consumers by prominently displaying the famous Google mark, by suggesting sponsorship by the plaintiff Google Inc., and by urging consumers to obtain a kit supposedly showing them how to make money working from home with Google."

The scammers make money by either asking their victims to purchase an instant access pass or a supposedly cheap kit that will help them generate fast money. After the victims purchase the pass or the kit with their credit card, they also get charged a monthly fee that could be as high as 80 dollars.

Following up the case, Pacific WebWorks has not commented on the suit yet which most likely suggest that Google was right. According to Google search quality engineer, Jason Marrison, Pacific WebWorks is believed to be the head operator of the chain. One of the most effective factors upon the success is not only the Google brand but also the level of persuasion used in these websites. For instance, scammers use fake blogs that contain affectionate success stories and "laughter after suffering" stories; These all trigger the victims to correspond with the pop add or the website. One of the issues worries Google is the enormous number of available scams that limits Google attempts to filter off its search engines. As mentioned earlier, WebWorks has not responded to press yet so a conclusion should not be drawn yet. All we have to do is wait!!!

Ebay vs Craigslist

Top management at it's peak is what can be resembled out of the Ebay vs Craigslist trial. Many might assume that it is just a case. Well, they might be right only if Ebay was not one of the largest online corporations that generated 8.5 billion of revenues in the year of 2008, and only if Craigslist was not the top US online classified site. According to the article, Ebay sued Craigslist for lowering its ownership stakes by around 4 percentages making Ebay owners of 24.85 percent of Craiglist. It did not take Craigslist much to respond; a month later, Craigslist sued Ebay for trying to take over Craiglist ownership so they can use Craigslist "secret success recipe" and launch its own classified site. In the following paragraphs, A closer look at the trial and comments of trial participants will be highlighted.

Whitman , who was the chief executive officer, took the stand on Monday saying that Ebay only reason for buying Craigslist stakes was to eventually gain full ownership of Craigslist. By doing so, Ebay can keep competitors in the house. It was revealed also by Whitman that Ebay had paid 32 million dollars or its stake in Cragslist, but then realized early on that gaining complete ownership over Craigslist would not be possible. The main rationale for Ebay case was that Craigslist's co founder and chief executive officer developed a coercive plan to lower its stake. On the other hand, Craigslist main rationale was that Ebay never mentioned that it was going to launch Kijiji, which was operating in the US by 2008.

Ebay explanation about not mentioning the launch of Kijiji was that Ebay had not closed the deal with Craigslist at the time and therefore retained from giving out this kind of sensitive information. Furthermore, Ebay founder Pierre Omidyar said that he did mention to Craigslist that Ebay plans to strongly enter the classified online market. What's interesting about this is the difference between these two corporations; Ebay is a huge corporations with hundreds of employees whereas Craigslist is a small privately owned company with maybe 25 employees or so. This makes one think how creativity and hard work can change lives. The trial would most likely go for a week and all we can do is wait!

Course Wrap-Up

Well, just like everyone else, I am wrapping up my work for this semester. For IS449W, I found this to be my most enjoyable class this semester and one of my favorite classes taken in the past five and half years at Eastern. It sure would be nice if the department could apply a few more courses like this to the curriculum. The amount of hands on work programming, using different languages, incorporating different services etc. was really rewarding and challenging. I envision a network class where you actually have to configure a network with your classmates, a database class that actually functions on a server and has a web front-end, and a security class where we develop networks/programs and learn different techniques to expose their weaknesses. It would just be really nice to have some of our other courses modeled off of this one. I think we all learned a lot based on the methodologies used.

Another nice thing about this class were the other students involved. We all apparently learned a thing or two on our way to this class and it shows in everyones work. I was really impressed with both the group projects and individual projects. Some were entertaining (Justin), others were really helpful (Matt), some made me thirsty (James) and some looked really sweet and made me jealous (Mountain Biking Group). Nice work everyone, it's been a pleasure taking classes with you over the past few years. If you want to stay connected, find me on LinkedIn.

Thanks to Matt, I also noticed some people are running kinda low on blog posts. Here's some ideas if you are lacking in creativity today:

• Sarkozy Goes after Google
• Real-Time data in Google Search
• Ebay vs. Craigslist
• FTC discussion consumer information rights

That should help you get the wheels turning. And yes, I like looking at Reuters for my news sources. Thats it for my 14th post, I'm done!!!!!!!

Amazon.com Brick and Mortar Shops?

More and more brick and mortar stores such as Walmart, Target, and others are investing in online technology allowing online purchases to be shipped to the purchaser's nearest store for local pick up. So how does an e-commerce giant like Amazon respond?

According to the website TimesOnline.com, Amazon, in response to the growing customer demand for site to store shipping from brick and mortar retailers, appears to be secretly searching for high profile properties to setup brick and mortar shops of their own. Techflash.com also sees Amazon's brick and mortar presence as a great way to show off the Amazon's kindle reader. Quoting a source from Maximumpc.com "When Amazon was just selling books and CDs that fitted easily through the letterbox it was fine to be a web-only business, but now it has branched out into everything from children's bikes to electricals it believes it could boost sales by having stores that offer a collection point for shoppers. It will probably be an Argos-sytle operation," said a source familiar with Amazon's proposals.

Depending on the markup of products for shipping to the respective stores and the cost of products being stocked in the store, I think this is a win win for consumers and Amazon. Not only does Amazon increase their business by expanding their business model but the customer gains a very respectable retailer in their community. Not to mention the creation of jobs within a jobs starved economy. With a net work of $59.1 Billion, Amazon definitely has the resources to compete in a retail market.

IBM and Supercomputers

University of Illinois plan to build the world fastest supercomputer is underway and this time IBM is at the rescue. Sometimes during the next year, IBM is going to launch its new processing chip that will factor into building this potential supercomputer. The supercomputer center located in the university is known for hosting the magnificent HAL 9000 supercomputer. The name of the new supercomputer project is the IBM Blue Waters Project. As expected, the new project is going to take place in Urbana, Illinois which was the same host for the HAL 9000. The new computer would be able to perform huge numbers of complicated calculations in no time. In addition, the supercomputer is expected to perform 10 times faster than the fastest existing supercomputer. The launching of the actual supercomputer will be sometime during the year of 2011. In the following paragraphs, a brief presentation of the supercomputer components and enhanced features will take place.

Supercomputers contains a big number of microprocessors integrated together to work on complex operations. The name of the potential chip is Power7; this chip take on many features of the flagship Power chip (a chip used in one of the fastest supercomputers in the world, The Roadrunner supercomputer). One powerful feature is that it integrates eight processing cores into the chip; each core with the ability to take upon four tasks which eventually make the chip a virtual 32-core processors. In addition, instead of using the static RAM memory, IBM implemented a new technology called E-DRAM which limits the number of transistors to 1.2 billion instead of an expected 2+ billion transistors for the static RAM memory. One thing to mention about this chip is its speed; it is not yet decided whether to use a a 3GHz or 4GHz which is slower than the latest Power6 chip which was operating at a speed of 5GHz.

The Blue Waters Supercomputers is funded by the National Science Foundation. IBM goal is to potentially hook 16,384 Power7 chips together that supposedly could bring performance to 16 petaflops. However, IBM continues to say that realistically the supercomputer could bring about 10 petaflops but will work with 1 petaflops on software applications. This supercomputer is said to attract big companies with massive performance needs such as Boeing, GM, and Ford. Interestingly enough, IBM plans to embed the Power7 chip in selected commercial products. This basically means that Intel would have to get its weapons ready for battle.

Supercomputers have been evident for a long time but with technology reaching its peak, it seems that more in more are interested in developing them. The more competition, the better products are going to be and may the best processor win!

Google Wave Update

Colin posted about Google Wave earlier this semester, but recently Google made a change to help the collaboration site better. In an article in ITNews, Google announced that it purchased AppJet which makes the EtherPad, a real-time workgroup collaboration application. EtherPad is described as a "Web-based word processor that allows people to work together in really real-time".

EtherPad:


Unfortunately, current EtherPad customers are upset because they don't believe Google Wave will be as good as EtherPad. Customers who have the "professional" edition will be able to export their files into zip files and if they are using a "starter" edition they can export into various formats. The web based application will only be operating until March of 2010. Because of this you can no longer create EtherPad accounts with AppJet.

I think this is a smart move for Google. Their Wave has not been completely released, so it makes sense to acquire a company that has the online collaboration already figured out. Hopefully they can create an online word processing application for Google that will function the same way as EtherPad.

Microsoft and Yahoo Teaming Up Against Google

We all know Google currently reigns supreme in the search engine market, and recently Microsoft has introduced its own revised search engine called Bing. But where do the numbers really fall? According to Net Applications Google currently holds 84.91%, followed by Yahoo at 6.22%, Baidu (one I personally had never heard of before) at 3.28% and Bing at 3.26%. These numbers are pretty shocking and it makes sense that a couple of the largest competitors of Google would want to team up against Google.

Microsoft and Yahoo are teaming up with one another in the search engine market in the fight against Google. The deal first announced to the public on July 29, 2009 would join the two companies’ services; Yahoo search will utilize the Bing search engine and Yahoo will offer advertising for Microsoft products on its site. This is a ten year agreement that will combine the two companies resources in the search engine market in hopes of gaining sizeable market share from Google.

Both parties feel this will free up resources from other areas of development and allow them to offer new and exciting options to the public. It has an added benefit to advertisers as they will get combined advertising on both Microsoft and Yahoo search pages, allowing them not to have to choose one or the other. Microsoft and Yahoo had originally hoped to have the agreement finalized by October of 2009, but due to some unforeseen delays are now targeting July 2010. But ultimately the deal needs to be accepted and approved by the department of justice for anti-trust reasons.

This deal could pave the way for other combined services from the two companies which overall is a benefit to the consumers. And could drive Google harder as it continues to increase it’s offerings to the public.

Google Dictionary and Translated Web Search

Google continues to add to its line-up of helpful software tools for everyday use with Dictionary and Translated Search this week. These two new offerings from Google while not anything new breakthrough wise, will help keep web traffic on their site and help farther their “one-stop” resource for all things on the web.

Google Dictionary is a feature rich dictionary that can be accessed through Google’s search page or directly here. Dictionary is not just for those of us using the English language, but offers it in 27 languages including most western European, Chinese, Arabic and Korean. You can also translate individual words from one language to another. Links to other dictionaries such as Wikipedia, Princeton University and others are included so the user can cross-reference the definition with other sources. “Google's word definitions page is full of useful information including an International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) pronunciation guide, synonyms, standard definitions, and usage examples.”

Translated search is a new feature that allows the user to search foreign language websites using the English language. They had a similar option before that would convert a foreign sites webpage into English, but this new option purposely searches only foreign sites bases on a search declared in English. This new feature has been added to the search options panel found on their search page. “Once you've got your translated search, a box at the top of the results page tells you what language the results are being translated into and what language the results are being translated from. You have the option to add other languages to expand your search; Google supports 42 choices.”

Cyber Monday

Has Cyber Monday beat out Black Friday this year.

For the last couple of years I have always wondered why people feel the need to stay outside all night in the cold, just to save a few bucks. I realize some of the deals are great ($400 for a 42 in Plasma), but especially with the Wal-Mart worker getting trampled to death last year, I just cannot see the need for all of the hassle.



Well those times may be changing. I found a report on CNNMoney going over the sales on Cyber Monday. The sales grew 14% and customers bought 30% more items per order from last year. The most popular online companies on last Monday were jewelry and clothing retailers.

One example of a deal was the 8GB iPod Touch for $158. Also Zhu Zhu pet hamsters were a hot seller, at $9.99 each. Wal-Mart also offered 150 specials on certain items like televisions, digital cameras, and MP3 players.
Through out the day 4.3 million customers per minute shopping visited web sites in North America.

For more information pertaining to Cyber Monday, visit the following website.

http://money.cnn.com/2009/12/01/news/economy/cyber_monday_shopping/index.htm

Google Chrome Developer Tools

There happens to be a developer tool built into Google Chrome that helps you debug your javascript, manipulate the DOM, and check the performance of a webpage. Of course at this point, most of us are wrapping up our work on our projects, so the discovery of this tool might not help anybody immediately in this class, but some of the features could help you down the road.

The Google Chrome Developer Tool functions a lot like Firebug does for Firefox. With this tool you can breakdown the code of a webpage, manipulate html, css, and javascript codes, and test the speed/latency of your code. Below you can find a video showcasing how to use the developer tool to manipulate your code.




My favorite feature of the devtool is that you can check the speed of your application. They call this feature "Profiling and Optimizing". It allows you to record a page as it loads and then tells you which part of the code is using the most resources or taking the longest. If your code is taking a long time to load, you can use this tool to troubleshoot the problem. You can also create stops in your javascript code to troubleshoot problems as well. Essentially, it functions just like putting an alert box in your code. The benefit of this tool is that you don't have to keep uploading new iterations to the server. You can perform all of your testing without touching your real code, thus saving you from having to rework a page after over-testing it. The video below demonstrates this functionality.



After a bit of use, I like the Chrome Developer Tool more then Firebug. It is easier to work with then Firebug and I find it runs lighter and faster then Firebug too. I think it would be a very useful tool for us to use in our presentations of our projects, since we can display the functionality of the site as well as the underlying code without any hassle. Anybody else agree?

Final Individual Iteration

Well, I see some poeple have really fancy things for their iterations. Unfortunatelly, I am not one of them. I went with the minimum requirements. Actually I did not have much time to work on the bugs I was getting, so I decided to go with just plain xml RSS feed.

As you will see I kept what I had from the last iteration which was pulling name and time from a blog. the only thing I changed on is that I segmented it better where I put some spacing and also included more information. It is nothing fancy, but I hope this part would be safficient to get me through this iteration.

Another, item that I added was a RSS feed from the website called indeed.com. I mentioned in my last blog that this is a tool searching for jobs, that incorporates all job sites, meaning that throught indeed.com you can actually search simultaniusly in sits like monster, and dice, cereerbuilder. What I did is that I preset the search requirements for an IT job with yearly salary over a $100 000 in michigan. You would be surprised but there were quite a few. So I did try to pull just listing and the description for the particular RSS, but I kept having different error. So i have decided to have something working rather than something does not display anything with errors. So this is what I have.