All browsers fail at Pwn2Own, IE8,safari and sadly even firefox

Most of us our in a bubble that we use a browser that can’t be hacked… or rather we use the best browser… Well we’ve always known IE is shoddy piece of coding brought out just to keep Microsof in the race… The only reason they are still alive is cos they distribute with their OS’es…

IE8 toppler - Peter Vreugdenhil

Getting back,  in Vancouver Canada the CanSecWest Pwn2Own competition was on, and guess what the following browsers were exploited to gain access to the machines… -> IE8 (obvious), Safari (hmm, thats new) and firefox (god damn, totally out of the blue).

Most of you using chrome must be thinking, “yeah i run the best browser”, unfortunately we’ll never know because no-one tried to hack chrome this time round… As for you firefox fans, the firefox on 64bit version of windows 7 was hacked… So what about the edition on the more common x86 (32 bit ) edition.. again remains unanswered so far…

IE8 users, I’m hardly surprised, its about time you lot change to a more stable browser…

But here’s something even more interesting… They managed to hack an iphone… not a jailbroken one but a fully patched one… and guess what they were able to access.. messages.. including the deleted ones…  (Apple, what went wrong?) And apparently the hacker claims he could have got anything else he wanted from the phone…

Time for the browser creators to look up and solve all these issues.. before these are used by some on who ACTUALLY wants to hack systems…. (lucky this was jus a contest!!)

Read more about the IE exploit here.

Read more about the firefox exploit here and the iphone hack here

Fast Pipe to Asia on its way!!!

At last a chance for people in Asia to rejoice (I’m so happy)!!!! Google and group of other companies have invested about $300 million dollars in developing a super fast internet cable (laid under the pacific)…

Improvement in net speed!

Apparently this cable can supports speeds up to 7.68Tbps (Tera bits per second)! WOW… SO this means it’s not long before people in Asia start seeing an increase internet speeds…

The Unity Consortium, consists of Google,  Global Transit, Bharti Airtel,SingTel, Pacnet, and KDDI, has nearly completed the testing of this new cable.

Reports say that Google gets 20 percent of the bandwidth for its own operation. All this seems fine till you come across news which says Google is leaving China on April 10th. (This may be bad for Google and probably china as well) but from my point of view (very selfish, I know) this is great news. Why? , you ask, well mainly for the following reason

• More bandwidth from the fast pipe (under Google’s 20%) will help Google deliver faster internet access to users in other Asian countries

Here’s what Google had to say,

The need for information is a global requirement. As the economies of Asian countries continue to grow, data traffic and the use of the Internet expands. Google is a global company and is committed to providing the best quality of user experience regardless of geography.

All this apart many of us were hoping Google would become an Internet Service Provider(ISP) (and bring out something like their fiber to home project in the US) but it looks like that’s not going to happen , not right now anyway.

It’s expected that Google will formally announce the completion of this amazing project next week… When will our speeds improve? (that’s the question for which i am still searching for an answer)

Celebrity Status + twitter power = Unbelievable

The power of a tweet

It’s surprising to see the power of the web… A small tiny gesture can make millions of things happen!!! And guess what I happened to witness such an event a few days back…

I was randomly surfing the web when i noticed a tweet by Conan O’ brien –

I’ve decided to follow someone at random. She likes peanut butter and gummy dinosaurs. Sarah Killen, your life is about to change.

Well here are some facts you should know… Conan O’Brien started tweeting only toward the end of February (he has only 10 tweets till now) and the number of followers he has – 564,047 . Ain’t that huge.

Well getting back. I was curious and looked up this Sarah Killen… her followers rose from 3 to a whopping 14,78. Unbelievable isn’t it… No and that’s not all. When she said she was getting married this year, bang there are people all over the world handing out freebies… some one wants to design wedding invites etc etc.

Apparently strangers have planned her wedding entirely!!! Some one sent her an I mac!!!

This just happens to show what a one person can do with one tweet!!! About a few months back Alyssa Milano re tweeted an article from a blog and BANG the blog’s traffic shot up like crazy!!!

The LA Times personally interviewed Sarah and it can be read over here.

I’ve never witnessed any phenomenon which is quite so interesting!!! Please post your thoughts below!!!

Google converting software to Open Source?

Google - our Hero!!!

Google always does something to ensure it stays on the front page!!! Most of the times this appeals to users , sometimes not!!! But this time they have certainly succeeded in amassing goodwill (especially among the programming/open source community)

How did they do this? – Google bought reMail in mid february. reMail is application for the iPhone which allows the user to download his/her mail to the iphone and thus make all mail available offline! This app gained a lot of popularity because accessing mails became faster, cheaper and quicker!

Google first did something really funny by killing reMail (removing it from the app store). This did not affect those who had already bought the app (as it requires only the iPhone and has no server).

They brought it back 2 days ago… How does this earn goodwill u ask me??? They brought it back alright but now its open source. Yup you read it right. Google bought reMail and gave the code to the world.

Here’s what Founder(of reMail) Gabor Cselle had to day about this

As someone who is passionate about mobile email, my hope is that developers interested in making email-related apps can use reMail code as a starting point. Part of the reason email apps are hard is because you have to pay the tax of figuring out how to download email via IMAP, parse MIME messages, handle attachments, and store data. reMail has already solved these problems. If you have a great mobile email idea, I hope you will find reMail’s source code helpful in your quest.

We know that Google never does anything if it doesn’t benefit from it, but I’m seriously clueless as to how this helps them! They did something very similar to this last year, Google acquired etherpad as it was going to shutdown and made the technology open source too.

Thats twice now.  Lets keep our fingers crossed and hope to god that this continues!

Whether this is good for Google I don’t know, but I do know that the open source community has something to rejoice about! Lets hope they keep this up and convert more such technology to Open Source

Buttons – The blind Camera

I thought i knew what most camera’s looked like, or at least what their core components where – lens,the shutter, the display LCD (in case of digicam’s) until I heard about buttons…

This is something completely different, and a very interesting concept as well… Enough of the suspense, let me explain what it is.

Well, it’s a modified cell phone with one red button on it… no shutters,no lenses but it does have a screen. You use it pretty much the same way you use any other camera. Point and click. Now here’s the interesting bit with no lens how do u expect it to take a picture?

Buttons - the blind camera

Obviously it can’t take a picture, so what does it do. It saves in its memory the exact instant u snapped the picture (that’s not all) and then starts searching the net for a picture taken at the exact same time you “snapped” yours. Depending on when a photo matching the time stamp comes online the camera keeps searching the net (maybe for a few seconds or even a couple of hours).

So what do you end up with? – A picture taken by some one else (from anywhere in the world) at the exact same instant as you. The first question on your mind is probably what the hell would I do with someone Else’s picture? – The man behind this project quotes

In a way, it belongs half to the person who had pressed the button and still remembers that moment. Because of that connection, the photos are never dismissed as random, no matter how enigmatic they may be.

SO how does this work,  right now its a Sony Ericsson K750i which is running some custom software which connects to a server (specially designed for this purpose) to find the appropriate photos.

This project is founded by SASCHA POHFLEPP and more details can be found here.

I think the idea is great, but how long would some-one have the interest to use such a device are my major concerns. After a month or so most people would probably forget which photos represents what instant! Nonetheless something out of the ordinary and worth a second glance.

Facebook screws up again!!!

Royal Screw up!!

With 400 million users using Facebook (FB Stats), You’d think they would be more careful with our data!!! Nope!!! once again the social networking giant has had a major glitch!!!

Facebook users are aware that Facebook sends you mails regarding the activity on your account (messages received, comments posted , friend requests, and so on). Well the latest glitch on the Fb system caused it to send the wrong mails to the wrong email addresses. (Oh Crap!)

So what does this mean? well usually in the mail, the message you get (or the comment posted etc) is a part of the body of the mail. This means people’s messages which are private were sent to complete strangers (or in some cases even people who they might know, but the message wasn’t intended for them)…

Here is some info from the Wall street Journal

Well according a user Pablo, he received over 100 mails of peoples’ correspondence well within 1 and half hours.

Facebook had to let the users know and they issued a statement. (Hardly describes the chaos caused)

During our regular code push yesterday evening, a bug caused some misrouting to a small number of users for a short period of time

End of it all, the bug is forgotten and we continue to use these services again. But before you send sensitive information on any of the sites, just give a thought on whether it’s absolutely necessary. In the competition to be the supremo, giants like Google (buzz incident) and Facebook are slipping up which only affects the users, i.e. us and not them.

Who knows you the best? – Google???

Google knows you best

For quite some time now this thought has been lingering in my head… Who knows me best? the first few people who I thought it could be were my brothers, or maybe my mother… until i realized its probably none other than Google

First reaction – “So now the answer to my question.” Realization – “Sh*t”

Well its obvious if you think hard enough. Considering the number of Google products ranging from Search, mail, calendar, wave, buzz, blogspot, analytics, etc.. and the fact that Google themselves have said they store all information (including searches) for “personalization” or “research” its quite obvious.

In fact some time back Google CEO Eric Schmidt was in soup for making some comments about online privacy – gist of it all can be understood by one of his many statements

If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place

Leave that aside for a minute, remember way back when gmail was launched in 2004 Google was boasting about their ad system in gmail – subject based ads – which means ads based on the text in your mail, which finally implies something reads at least a few words of your mail.

How does all this fit you ask? Well lets take a quick example. I would talk to my colleagues only about work related stuff my ideas, my plans etc. Whereas with friends I’d probably talk about my next holiday etc. Now each of them knows only about one phase of my life. You go to Google and search holiday locations  and also about career prospects – WAM!!! … who do you think knows you better now??? colleague, friend or Google???

OK, by now some of you think I’m insane and tell me Google is a set of computers… but its obvious that some one at Google has access to that data… Its also a commonly known fact that the US government has for sometime now been asking Google to share its data…

I’m very late with this realization, and about a year back Gina Trapani editor of Life hacker made her move from Google to yahoo because she felt Google already knew her too well!!!

On the other hand here’s a recent article on someone complaining about Google’s privacy policy.

Maybe its about time all Google worshipers/followers/users stopped for a minute to think about this…

Does Google know too much??

The internet – Do we really know it?

It’s really surprising how many people still don’t know the basics about the internet and yet they use it everyday!!
Recently I’ve had to interact with a lot of people, on how they use the net why they use it etc.. (more like a survey)…

Here are some very interesting answers I got to a few questions…

Q : Do you have an internet connection ?

A : No… I only have google

A : Why would I need internet when I have a computer?

A : I don’t need to have a connection, it comes whenever I open internet explorer!

now that was just for starters…

Q: What web browser do you use?

A: The internet

A: Google… it’s the best… it can find anything I want

A: Umm, i use yahoo sometimes and bing sometimes

A: I don’t use any browser… why would u want to use that?… but do use google if I don’t know what I’m looking for…

Now this may seem funny… but for someone looking for meaningful data, this is just irritating!!!

but looking back here’s one I enjoyed a lot

Q : how much do pay for your internet connection per month?

A: Oh my god!!, we have to pay per month?, Dell said internet explorer was free with windows. I’m going to sue them  (and he starts dialing the dell right in front of me!!)

This just goes to show people use things everyday and still have no clue about it!!!

Shocking really…

Anyone else have any funny answers to such questions post them in the comments so that we all can have a laugh

Google Fiber – Super speed Browsing

I’m sure most of us curse the browsing speed (or download speed) we have at least 2 times a month.,… for those avid net freaks, I’m sure you always want more than what is available right now…

Guess what Google does it again… They are launching a service called Google fiber- whose main aim is to offer speeds of up to 1 Gbps… that’s 100 times faster than the American home connections and probably 500 times faster than my connection (OMG)….

This means downloading a 700mb video should take u a minimum of a few seconds and a maximum of a minute… (imagine that)…

They plan to role this out to select communities (in US i’m guessing)…

heres a clip on what its all about

Here’s what they describe their goals as

Our goal is to experiment with new ways to help make Internet access better and faster for everyone. Here are some specific things that we have in mind:

• Next generation apps: We want to see what developers and users can do with ultra high-speeds, whether it’s creating new bandwidth-intensive “killer apps” and services, or other uses we can’t yet imagine.
• New deployment techniques: We’ll test new ways to build fiber networks, and to help inform and support deployments elsewhere, we’ll share key lessons learned with the world.
• Openness and choice: We’ll operate an “open access” network, giving users the choice of multiple service providers. And consistent with our past advocacy, we’ll manage our network in an open, non-discriminatory and transparent way.

Visit the Google Fiber Site and the google blog for more details on this project….

Personally i’m ready to move to the community chosen for this project!!!!

Mysql, is it the end?

The open source community has had a bit of a shock recently… When Oracle announced the takeover of Sun Microsystems the first thing that came into one’s mind was “What’s going to happen to Mysql?”

Now a few days ago many open source enthusiasts searched the Mysql site for its previously available source code, but to no avail !

Also to note Ken Jacobs an Oracle employee and Oracle’s liaison with the Mysql community for quite a few years retired on Friday. Jacobs hasn’t stated reasons for his departure but it is believed that him not being selected to run Mysql (which is now a part of Oracle) is one of the major reasons.

Ken Jacobs

Jacobs was the man who ensured that Oracle’s takeover of InnoDB ( a storage engine for Mysql), wasn’t to try to kill Mysql.  He helped maintain the peace which existed before the takeover.

Now about the missing source code. Most technologists believe that this is temporary. (I seriously hope so). This has created quite a flutter with people jus looking through the site in repeated intervals to see if its up again!

The only consolation we may have for now is the email Jacobs sent out during his departure.

I know that there are many people in the open source community who are concerned about Oracle’s plans for MySQL. They are wrong to worry. Oracle will keep its commitments to invest in MySQL, and help grow the business. Oracle will make MySQL better. Doing so gives Oracle a presence in new markets, and the resources and investment Oracle will make should mean great things for customers, as well as the larger community.

You will find Oracle a terrific place to work! I believe it is good for MySQL (the product, the company, the people and the community) that you are now part of a software company. And a database company. And a company that is profitable, and that innovates and delivers high customer satisfaction. That’s where MySQL belongs!

Lets cross our fingers and hope to god he was right!

Edward Screven, Oracle’s Chiefo Corporate Architect will be heading Mysql, and he will reporting directly to Oracle’s CEO Larry Elison. This may prove to be a bonus point for Mysql.

We’ll just have to wait and see what lays ahead for Mysql.

I know that there are many people in the open source community who are concerned about Oracle’s plans for MySQL. They are wrong to worry. Oracle will keep its commitments to invest in MySQL, and help grow the business. Oracle will make MySQL better. Doing so gives Oracle a presence in new markets, and the resources and investment Oracle will make should mean great things for customers, as well as the larger community.

You will find Oracle a terrific place to work! I believe it is good for MySQL (the product, the company, the people and the community) that you are now part of a software company. And a database company. And a company that is profitable, and that innovates and delivers high customer satisfaction. That’s where MySQL belongs!