Mozilla pushes browser-based alternative to passwords
Mozilla is promoting a browser-based alternative to usernames and passwords for website logins.
Browser ID offers a decentralized system for user identification and authentication along the same lines as OpenID. To use BrowserID users first have to create an account with Mozilla. After this users would be able to use the technology to enter websites that support BrowserID simply by entering their email address.
Developers can add support to the technology by adding links to a JavaScript library and hooks into a JavaScript API and verification service, as explained in a blog post by Mozilla here. Read more...
Why Google’s Search plus takes away more than it adds
Search should not be a social network. Nor should it have an agenda. But changes pushed out by Google last week are driving in uncomfortable directions.
Google has rolled out a new feature called Search plus Your World, currently available for users of Google.com who are using English and signed in with a Google profile. The feature, which defaults on but can be toggled off via a switch at the top right of the screen, displays social search results based on a user's Google+ contacts and photos shared via Google's online photo-sharing service Picasa.
This new feature specifically does not promote search results from alternative social network services such as Facebook and Twitter, although content from these rival services can still appear among search results - but only if it's specifically relevant to what you're searching for. Google+ data appears regardless of whether you're seeking it.
The big, uncomfortable point here is that Google is treating its own social content differently from the social content of some of its rivals' services. Google appears to be promoting content from its own services simply because it can - rather than because it's the most relevant and therefore useful result for a user's search query.And here's an example of Google promoting its own content over content from a rival social service - when running a search for the word "Twitter" with Google's Search plus Your World feature switched on the result is accompanied by a prominent promotion box (see below, right) that contains a series of Google+ users. Not exactly what you'd call relevant for a search for "Twitter"! Read more...
Apple, Amazon and Google take lazy punters hostage
Would-be monopolists have a new tool to claim control over the unsuspecting masses: sloth.
In the offline world, big vendors must go to extensive ends to ring-fence consumers into concentrating their spend with those vendors. Think vertical integration, price fixing and other monopolistic means. But in a heavily digitised world, Apple, Google, Amazon, and others are creating de facto completely legal monopolies by making it brain-dead easy to use their products.
Is this a problem?
Google, for one, says "no". The company's plausible defense against claims that it unfairly monopolises search comes down to one sentence: consumers are always "one click away" from using a different search engine. As Wharton professor Eric Clemons argues, however, this argument isn't as airtight as Google would have us think, because Google does all sorts of things through partnerships and other means to undermine the substance of truly being "one click away" from an alternative. Read more...
Gmail now ‘viable alternative’ to Microsoft, says Gartner
Google's Gmail is now a viable alternative to Microsoft Exchange Online and other cloud email services, according to analyst house Gartner, which said the enterprise-focused cloud email package is gaining momentum among commercial organisations with more than 5,000 seats.
Matthew Cain, research vice president at Gartner, said while Gmail's enterprise email market share currently hovers around one per cent, this accounts for half of the market for enterprise cloud email. Read more...
The iPad takes on manufacturing
First it won accolades as the next killer consumer device. Then it slipped into the backpacks and briefcases of white-collar information workers, and in some cases it's becoming a corporate-sanctioned alternative to the laptop.
Now the Apple iPad -- and, to a lesser extent, emerging competitors in the burgeoning tablet market -- are starting to pop up on the plant floor and in distribution centers and warehouses, promising to wring efficiencies and cost savings out of industrial operations by offering mobility and real-time data visibility to workers in manufacturing.
"When Apple created the iPad, the [manufacturing] industry had a sort of wake-up call ... that mobility is not only relevant for people outside the company, but also for those inside the company who have information needs and are not tied to their desk, but are tied to their asset," says Pierfrancesco Manenti, a manufacturing analyst at IDC Insights.
"With a relatively small investment, companies can re-create the whole information-on-the-fly scenario that was nearly impossible before unless they made enormous investments in PCs, cable networks and ruggedized PCs." Read more...
Adobe Acrobat Ten Suite: Your Alternative to Creative Suite?
There was something a little different on tap with the Acrobat release this time around – Acrobat Suite. This is the newest member of the Acrobat family and aside from a very slight annoyance at yet another Adobe edition to sort through, we think this is an incredibly useful and appropriate combination of tools for Acrobat users.
In fact, if your job entails things like frequent presentations and customer facing materials, but you don’t need the other bells and whistles in the full blown Creative Suite, Acrobat Ten Suite could be a cheaper alternative to Creative Suite. Read more...