BillDay.com

MIT’s Technology Review has an interesting article on Internet storage services entitled “The Internet is Your Next Hard Drive“. The article espouses the notion that, among other things, networked file sharing will improve in lock-step with bandwidth increases to the point that we may not have a hard drive in our computer at all, instead using a network repository for file I/O.

I wonder if the author ever heard about the Fallacies of Distributed Computing? Fallacy numero uno renounces the incorrect belief that “The network is reliable”. This fallacy has a way of rearing its ugly head as soon as you start having computers with no local disk drive. Never mind “Latency is zero” and the other distributed computing false gods on the list. No local hard drive over the open Internet is bad engineering for the foreseeable future.

Nonetheless, some of the networked storage services mentioned in the article are great options for certain users needing more storage than they can afford to buy and maintain themselves or distributed file sharing for geographically dispersed groups.

For rentable storage on a large scale, I’m intrigued by things I’ve been reading recently about Amazon S3. Basically, S3 lets you use Amazon’s big ole bit bucket for your own applications. They maintain the storage, you go forth and harness massive data using their REST or SOAP interfaces. All apparently for low rates compared to DIY. As Tim O’Reilly notes, these Internet scale services are changing the very definition of what is, and isn’t, part of The Platform.

On a much smaller scale, network file sharing services can be a boon to distributed workgroups. Example: I’ve recently started using FolderShare for remote work. It’s a bit awkward to set up, but once it’s configured it operates automatically. FolderShare replicates files in a user specified directory to other properly invited and authenticated users’ systems. This happens “invisibly”, in the background, providing the illusion that everyone with access to your network shared folder (hence the name, hah hah) is using the same hard drive on their own machine, or at least their LAN.

Security is an obvious concern anytime your key bits are flying through the ether. FolderShare seems to be doing the right things to address it. First, FolderShare is a peer-to-peer system, so (hopefully) your bits only live on the systems of the people you trust and invite into your group. Second, all comms are authenticated and encrypted using AES over SSL in an attempt to secure the pipe. Seems well thought out and executed.

FolderShare is very handy for small workgroups that need to share files over the Internet. Heck, you can even use it to share files between your own systems (work desktop, a laptop, and a home PC, for instance). As much as I hate to admit it, it quickly becomes a necessity. See, I can say something nice about Microsoft after all. Well, at least about something MS acquired.

Is Internet storage in your present or future? Talk amongst yourselves.

[Tip of the hat to GigaOm, O'Reilly Radar, and digg]

Filed under “know thy enemy”:

Prabhaker Mateti has published “Hacking Techniques in Wireless Networks“. This is an excellent overview of wireless network attacks including a wireless LAN overview, sniffing, spoofing, probing, and more.

The section on access point weaknesses is particularly interesting because the subject doesn’t seem to get as much coverage as many of the other topics. Also worth noting, and heeding, are the best practices, and within that section, the links to software tools (if you want to know what somebody else can see and do with your WiFi network, check these out).

You might also want to check out this additional article on hotspot hacks.

[Via digg]

Nokia Q2 numbers are out. In a nutshell:

• NOK shipped 78.4 million phones in Q2 2006 compared to 60.8 million units in Q2 2005
• Smart phone (Nokia Multimedia unit) revenues rose 37% to 1.89 billion euros ($2.36 billion)
• Average selling price declined to 102 euros ($127) from 105 euros, due to large volumes of cheap phones in emerging markets
• Sales rose 22% to 9.81 billion euros ($12.24 billion), from 8.06 billion euros Q2 2005
• Net profit up 43% to 1.14 billion euros ($1.42 billion), up from 799 million euros Q2 2005
• Global market share of 34%, down 1% from Q1 2006 but up from 33% in Q2 2005
• Gains in market share in Europe and Asia offset by loss of share in North America, South America, the Middle East, and Africa

Compare the above with Motorola’s results released the previous day:

• Motorola shipped 51.9 million cell phones in Q2 2006
• Sales in the cell-phone unit rose 46 percent to $7.14 billion, nearly two-thirds of the MOT total
• Shipped 50 millionth RAZR V3 this week (RAZR line launched Q4 2004)
• Sales rose 29% to $10.9 billion, from $8.4 billion in Q2 2005
• Net profit increased 48% to $1.38 billion, up from $933 million in Q2 2005
• Increased its global market share to 22% in Q2 of this year, up from 13% eighteen months again
• Motorola has enjoyed 7 consecutive quarters of market share growth, based largely upon the longevity of RAZR’s success

One has to wonder how Nokia’s withdrawal from CDMA development will affect things in coming quarters, especially with Motorola delivering some very interesting EVDO devices and doing everything right to support them (check out their Q Wiki). Clearly the short term trend is Moto gaining ground on Nokia. Whether or not this will continue and Motorola will retake the world market share lead it lost in 1998 is debatable. What’s clear, however, is that MOT and NOK are both pulling away from the rest of their competitors.

Is mobile handset design and marketing now a two horse race?

David Pogue recently blogged about a vision of flash drives “of the future”:

you’d carry around your whole world–not just documents, but programs, settings, e-mail, the works–on your keychain. You’d just plug in to public terminals whenever you wanted to do work.

The only problem with David’s vision is that his “flash future” is here today, in the form of U3 enabled USB flash drives.

U3 drives work just like any other USB drive for data storage and retrieval. In addition they implement the U3 Hardware Specification and a U3 Device API which enables properly packaged Windows applications to execute from within the U3 container. Everything about the apps, including their configuration settings and any personal data generated during execution, resides on the U3 drive. Docs, check. Programs, check. Settings, email, any other bits that you’d need to run your apps, check check check. This enables you to unplug from your PC at work and reconnect to a terminal in the airport, a partner’s laptop at a conference, or anywhere else you can find a system with a USB port. Your apps, configured the way your like them, everywhere.

It all sounds very mobile Java-esque, only I’ve yet to see a cell phone or PDA the size of my thumbnail.

Security is an obvious concern anytime you start carrying around “your digital life” in a tiny little key fob. You could lose the drive (the “I spend half of my life looking for my keys” phenomenon). There are also data security concerns, not the least of which is whether or not a savvy attack on a host computer’s memory might be able to ferret out critical data at runtime. I’d want to dig into the specs before I put anything too terribly sensitive on one myself. And one of the biggest potential problems I see is not being able to find anyone willing to loan you a system and trust (yes, the ‘t’ word surfaces again) that your little USB thingy really does have antivirus software and will keep things clean.

Nonetheless, for many people this could be a handy solution to the problem of having bookmarks and address books and files scattered between at work, home, and laptop computers. If you’re not quite willing to put everything online a la del.icio.us and Yahoo Mail, this just might be workable. Especially since U3 goes much farther than just bookmarks and email. Click here to see a catalog of U3 apps ranging from Mozilla and Skype to OpenOffice and EditPad, and even some games and photo apps and podcast software to boot.

How did we get all of these apps? A developer forum and kit, silly! Click here to get the full details or here to read the dev blog.

David goes on to discuss a reader’s comments that such devices could be a boon for school children since they could allow each student to cheaply carry their books, school work, MySpace bookmarks (oops, not that) wherever they were. In theory this could also cut down on the number of computers required by said USB-toting students. As other readers’ comments point out, though, kids would probably be bad about losing their drives.

I’m convinced the better scenario is for someone like my mother: A PC at work and one at home. Checks email and browses the Web. Edits a document once in a while. Values having the same environment and tools on each computer, and would prefer one archive of docs that’s always available. Not really a Web 2.0 kind of person. U3, we have a winner!

Right now many major USB drive manufacturers are making U3 drives. You can actually get one for pretty cheap if you shop around. In fact, I just bought a SanDisk 1GB Cruzer Micro with U3 last weekend for $20 after rebate. Not bad.

Heck, for that price, maybe I should outfit my Mom with one too. Sure would save me a lot of “Bill, can you help me with my computer” problems…

I like to travel and take pictures in my gratuitous free time.

Sun and Nokia didn’t give me a lot of free time, but they did give me travel. So I did my best to squeeze in a camera or two and take as many pics as possible while out and about in the big beautiful world.

I’ve been meaning to blog the best of these pics for some time now, but just haven’t found, you guessed it, time to do it. Fear not, though, because today I finally allow the small but mighty Flickr badge to fulfill its promise on top of my sidebar, thus ensuring my latest and greatest pictures are available for all to see. Thank goodness for Web 2.0!

Up next on my to do list: Find the time to take more pictures. Blog about a photo now and then. I promise I’ll try, I really will.

I’m a big digg fan. (No, not that one, this one.)

Like a moth to a flame, I’m captivated by the real-time view of what’s being dugg by the world digger community. Most of the stories that the community pops to the top (”Recently Popular” in digg speak) are worth a read, especially for tech heads like me.

I’m a big enough fan, in fact, to do something I’ve so far resisted doing with other social networking sites: I’ve added “digg this” links to the bottom of my blog entries. Fellow diggers, digg on!

There’s lots of twttr lovin these days. Om Malik’s talking about it and others are digging it. But doesn’t dodgeball have twttr beaten before it’s even had a real chance to get its twitter on?

As I wrote in my comments to Om’s post:

I am a big fan of the power and viral nature of SMS-based services (see recent post in my blog about good old 4INFO).

That said, what’s the differentiator for twttr? Isn’t it basically dodgeball-lite? As best I can tell, it lacks the “you’re in proximity to peeps” feature of dodgeball, which IMO is killer. Granted, twttr works anywhere in the states or Canada, whereas dodgeball is currently limited to certain cities (unfortunately, not including mine). But that’s a problem that dodgeball can address, and then where’s twttr?

I must be missing the innovation on this(?).

Curious? Check them out yourself with short codes ‘DODGE’ and ‘TWTTR’. Socialize, txt nation!

CNN has reminded us all that starting next month, US passports will be RFID-enabled.

Engadget has a nice discussion and good linkage on the subject. The State Department’s spin is here. Both are worth reading for the security conscious among us.

While I’m a fan of RFID in many retail and transit scenarios, I’m very glad my passport isn’t due for renewal anytime soon. It reminds me of an anti-skimming patent application I helped file way back when I was at Sun. Only in that case, the primary threat we were addressing was stealing credit card information old fashioned ways, whereas this time around a thief could literally swipe all of the key quantifiable components of your citizenship and identity from a good distance away, never even touching your or your e-passport. Bruce Schneier and many others are justifiably concerned.

If you have a US passport due for renewal anytime soon, you might consider submitting an expedited application early to try to get an old fashioned un-wireless. Hopefully the inevitable issues will be hammered out, and any redesigns complete, before my turn comes up.

Whatever you do, make a mental note that now would be a good time to stop flipping through your passport to show off visas in tourist hangouts…

Nokia will report its Q2 numbers next Thursday, July 20th.

Early reports are for strong growth:

Nokia, which has revamped its product portfolio since 2004, when it lost market share to rivals with more popular designs, is expected to report strong sales of its N-series multimedia phones, such as the N70.

Good news for smartphone, and NOK, fans.

4Info.net is a very useful mobile service that’s been around for a while, but I haven’t written anything about it B4 (sorry, couldn’t help myself). A recent business trip begat a hotel stay, which begat a USA Today at the door, which per the paper’s deal with 4INFO begat this post.

What the heck does 4INFO do? As they say on their site:

4INFO is a free Mobile Search service that allows you to access information and downloads at anytime, from anyplace.

I’ll have to Look Into why “Mobile Search” is in caps, but anyway, its a handy way to find all kinds of things while on the run. Most searches work over SMS (code in at 44636, or ‘4INFO’), or you can use their WAP interface or downloadable application to get the maximum goods. I love their range of services, especially those which I use on the spur of the moment such as price comparison and movie showtimes.

You can also set up a number of useful alerts. Example: 4INFO can text confirmation of a Fedex or UPS delivery of your choosing. Note that alerts and SMS service currently work only on major US carriers, but the WAP interface works anywhere that WAP works. Get the full skinny from the 4INFO FAQ and their corporate blog.

Competition? Check out Google SMS (code 46645, ‘GOOGL’) and Yahoo Mobile Search (code 92466, ‘YAHOO’). 4INFO claims it’s better geared for mobile search for a number of reasons; click here to read them all.

My take? Bookmark all three and use what works best for you.

Wired News has posted an article on the growing number of colleges replacing student landlines with mobile phones.

The article notes:

With nine out of 10 college students carrying cell phones — and many of them using traditional landline phones rarely or not at all — schools are seeking ways to maintain a line of communication while deploying technologies they believe students want and need.

Some colleges are abandoning the wires and phone jacks in their dormitories. Many of those systems, formerly a source of extra revenue for institutions, now operate at a loss.

As a replacement, some are introducing their own cellular services and handsets customized to connect students with campus services and information, while adding security and instructional tools.

Some of the new services enabled by and for an all-mobile student body are compelling. At Montclair, for instance:

Students can use the phones to get real-time alerts and information from the university, check class assignments, learn about specials at campus restaurants, or track the location of school shuttle buses through Global Positioning System technology.

There are a great many corporate services and sites (internal company portals especially) which should be available on every employee’s cell phone but aren’t properly mobilized yet.  I wonder how long it will be until the average business does for its workforce what universities are doing now for students?  Or is that what students are doing for universities?

[Tip o' the hat to Engadget Mobile for the story link and Moto-Belushi]

Fox Sports sums it all up in Bobby McMahon’s “All you need to know about the World Cup final“.

Allez Les Bleus!

Google Earth Blog has pulled together several useful weather and storm tracking tools. Recommended for GE users.