Martin Gordon's Blog

When I first saw the headline that the Opera Browser is headed to the iPhone (later confirmed as false), I joking thought that Opera would be releasing a JavaScript web browser that ran in Safari. On second thought, I realized that a JavaScript browser could be used to bypass proxies by requesting pages from the server and passing them to the client via AJAX.

A quick Google search reveals one JavaScript browser called Accent JavaScript Browser, but it was released in 2001 and says it only runs in IE. A quick test of the browser in Firefox on the Mac shows that it doesn't work too well and that the buttons are only a proxy for the client-side JS functions. I also found another "browser", but I couldn't get this one to work in Safari or Firefox.

So far I'm 0/2 on working AJAX browsers. If a working one did exist, would it even be possible to use it for bypassing proxies? I have no need for this functionality, I just thought that it could be a pretty neat loophole.

Technorati Tags: JavaScript, AJAX, proxies, Opera, security, web browser

Saw these come across my RSS reader today and just had to share.

“Whenever there is a hard job to be done I assign it to a lazy man; he is sure to find an easy way of doing it.” -Walter Chrysler

[via Signal vs. Noise]

I personally prefer being called "selective" instead of "lazy", but I don't feel like justifying that just now ;-)

When a new Mac Pro that Apple advertises as “the fastest Mac ever” doesn’t make the cut for the Macworld Expo keynote, even the more jaded among us start salivating.

[via Justin Blanton]

I couldn't have said better myself. I'm not as big a rumor monger as I used to be (you could say I'm too "selective" to keep up with the 95% of pure speculation that exists out there), but Justin sure nailed it. The new Mac Pro is simply awesome, but I doubt I would ever buy one because I don't need it. For most people, these are just nice to look at and dream of owning for no good reason. That said, Apple has trumped CES for the second year in a row. Last year it was the iPhone at the keynote and this year it was a stealth update to the Mac Pro. Does this say more about Apple's Reality Distortion Field or about the sorry state of consumer electronics? Is a high-end workstation really more exciting than pretty much everything at CES? The fanboy in me wants to say the latter but I really think it's the former. In any case, I think Gizmodo has the right idea: these Mac Pros are just the tip of the iceberg.

Technorati Tags: laziness, quotes, 37signals, Apple, Mac Pro, CES, Macworld

TechCrunch is reporting that Paramount, one of the last major studios on the HD-DVD side, will be announcing that it is switching to Blu-ray. This leaves Universal as the sole studio in the HD-DVD camp. I haven't been keeping up with the details of the format war, but I imagine the PS3 might have had something to do with it. Knowingly or not, people bringing home PlayStation 3's this holiday season were also bringing home Blu-ray players. With a much larger installed base of Blu-ray players, Sony had more leverage in negotiations with the last hold-out studios. I wonder how different things would be if the XBox 360 had HD-DVD built-in instead of as an optional add-on, given that it had a year (and effectively a two-year) head start.

I personally wouldn't go out and buy a PS3 just for Blu-ray support, and in fact was thinking about buying an XBox 360 because I like more of the games and because of the XBox Live (and Arcade) experience. That said, I wouldn't go out and buy any other Blu-ray player either. I doubt I would buy any Blu-ray movies since Netflix has been working wonders for me and on top of that, I would favor digital distribution over physical distribution at this point. I think many others do too, which makes me wonder if this was a war worth fighting over.

Technorati Tags: Sony, Blu-ray, HD-DVD, PlayStation 3, XBox 360, digital, high-definition, movie studios

Inside Microsoft has exclusive details on the next major release of Windows Mobile. As expected, Microsoft has taken notes from Apple and Windows Mobile 7 will feature touch controls and motion sensing technology. Reading the notes from the document raises a bunch of issues regarding Microsoft's take on this-gen (for the iPhone) and next-gen (for everyone else) phone OSes:

• It seems to be meshing too many interaction paradigms - in addition to the new touch/motion controls (flicking to scroll, tiliting and shaking, etc), they're also leaving in button controls (the old Windows Mobile menus everyone loves to hate) and finally "[a] stylus will be required on devices meeting certain screen size, orientation, DPI and resolution marks." Three interaction paradigms makes for a steep learning curve and a lot of energy wasted by users when they have to remember to switch input methods because an action can't be performed in the current interaction mode.
• Shaking to wake up your phone? Definitely not as classy as sliding to unlock.
• The phones will use the camera as the motion sensor. I can't see how well this will work in a dark room or when the camera is obscured, such as when you're holding it in your hand.
• It's coming in 2009. This should be out mid-2008 at the latest if Microsoft has any hope of stopping the iPhone juggernaut. By 2009, Apple will have had a two year lead. Competing with the 2007 iPhone in 2009 makes Microsoft look foolish and reactive; similar to how they looked when Vista was released to match features with an Apple OS that came out two years prior.

So while it's nice to see that Microsoft is actually doing things to advance it's mobile offering (unlike Palm), again, my criticism of Microsoft's efforts boil down to too late and too complex. This report makes it seem as though they're making Windows Mobile 6+1 by bolting on iPhone features to a broken UI instead of doing what they should be doing: starting from scratch and developing a consistent and enjoyable user experience.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, mobile, Windows Mobile, user interface, Apple, iPhone, Palm

Note: I shamelessly stole the title and source of this post from one of John Siracusa's tweets.

Neil Pomerleau does a great job of predicting the MWSF 08 keynote that takes place a week from this Tuesday. Instead of a bulleted list of predictions, he wrote what Steve will say and how he'll probably say it, complete with photos from the event. His predictions are pretty sound, and while I'm not entirely convinced we'll see a subnotebook or tablet, the level and credibility of the rumor is at about the same as iPhone rumors were last year the weeks prior to the keynote. That said, if I had to choose, I'd pick the subnotebook. The iPhone's largest criticisms are the lack of 3G and the on-screen keyboard. People were getting along well enough before full QWERTY keyboards appeared on cell phones. I don't think Apple would offer a no-keyboard computer as it's subnotebook solution (i.e., the long-awaited 12" PowerBook replacement).

A 12" notebook that's under an inch thick with a solid state drive sounds very reasonable, but I'm pretty sure it will have a keyboard. There's simply no software support: desktop OS X is meant for pixel-precision, meaning our fat fingers would be hitting multiple targets on the screen; iPhone OS X seems too limiting to justify a most-likely >$1500 purchase; and a new in-between OS X would begin with zero software support and further fragment Apple's and third-party developers' efforts.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Macworld 2008, predictions, rumors, MacBook mini, OS X

Mr Scoble is making headlines again, this time for getting kicked off of Facebook (now he's back in, although I wonder if someone not as high-profile been given the same luxury?). He got caught scraping data off of Facebook using a feature of Plaxo Pulse, a competing social network. I'm all for data portability, but this of course raised the question of who actually owns the data in your social graph.

Clearly what came out of this is that it's no one's data but Facebook's. It's clear they control access to it, so there's nothing stopping them from keeping it from you. After all, Robert wasn't just restricted from accessing the data he was scraping, he was also restricted from accessing his own profile, including photos, videos and other content that no one would argue he doesn't own. And it's in Facebook's interest to make it their own. Their top two (only two?) competitive advantages are closed access and momentum and the former drives the latter.

Facebook is being pulled from opposite sides by the push for open access and by the necessity to ensure privacy. They get in trouble for not doing enough of both even though the means to achieving both are often at odds. To that extent, there are three levels of open access Facebook (or any social network, for that matter) could offer while maximizing privacy for those who require it:

My Data
First things first, let me pull my own data out - my list of favorite music, my photos, my videos, etc. I let the network borrow it and I have a right to take it back (and take it with me). Furthermore, all of this is stand-alone data and does not reveal any information about my social graph. My pictures might reveal other people in my social graph, but tagged friend data is explicit revelation of that shared data and doesn't come along for the ride at this level.

Our Data
Second, let me pull out my links. This is shared data, but since the existence of the link is usually public knowledge and doesn't reveal any real identifying information other than your name, letting me take this data with me is probably okay in most circumstances. It would be safe, though probably unpopular, to make this shared data opt-out instead of opt-in.

Your Data
Finally, there's your information. This was the stuff Scoble was pulling out en masse and rightfully got in trouble for. I can take your favorite movies to my Netflix buddy list or your work info to my LinkedIn network, but only if you let me. Here's the kicker though: I have to let you have my data too. I shouldn't be able to post your pictures on HotOrNot (or explicitly say you're you in one of my pictures) unless I give you the ability to do the same.

Facebook doesn't currently let anyone do any of this. It's easy enough to get away with grabbing my own data, although it comes out in a non-standard format. Pulling out my links is a still quite trivial, though somewhat useless given the current state of things (meaning I can't do much with just your name and there isn't much to do even if I could). Robert proved it's feasible but risky to pull your data. For all Facebook knows all 5000 of his friends would happily let him have their email addresses and birthdays.

It's clear that a solution that maintains privacy and provides open access exists, I came up with one in less than an hour (though admittedly implementing it is a huge task). The problem isn't that a creepy old (just kidding on both counts :-p) blogger wants to wish me a happy birthday. The problem is that under the guise of protecting privacy, Facebook continues to block open access to data that wants to be free when all they're really doing is protecting their business model.

Technorati Tags: Facebook, open standards, business model, privacy, data, social networks, social graph

43Folders had a post about re-evaluating one's online commitments, something I've been trying to work on for a few months now, ever since the Media Fast Experiment I did back in September.

Google Reader is perhaps my most time consuming "commitment" and so it's the one I'm scrutinizing the most. Since starting over yesterday, I've read close to 300 items, have 60 unread, of which I'll read 20 or so. Over 10% of the content that comes passes through my brain is content I don't want. I've become especially adverse to the big group blogs that put out 10+ posts a day of things I'm only tangentially interested in. I'd much rather follow 5x more personal blogs and have more varied and more authentic posts, even at the same volume.

I also want to eliminate Digg from my life. Most of the stories I read on Digg are mildly entertaining but ultimately mindless. The community is fairly bottom-of-the-barrel in terms of intelligent conversation and the comment system itself doesn't help any even there was good conversation.

On the flip side, I'd like to spend more time on Flickr. My Flickr usage pattern has me posting a ton of photos over a concentrated period of time. Part of the reason is that most of my photography has been from vacations and I'm too OCD to leave gaps or upload them out of order. Now that that's slowed down a bit (I have <100 photos from South Africa left to post), I can go through my backlog of random shots and start uploading those in less quantity but far more often. Hopefully with more frequent posting I'll be more likely to participate in the great community that exists on Flickr.

As I said yesterday, I'd also like to spend more time blogging. With this post, I'm 2 for 2 which puts me on pace for 366 this year :-) Along with more blogging, comes more participation. I hope to do a bit more connecting with my audience via posts and connecting with other bloggers via comments and link love. The same goes for Twitter. I don't want just more tweets, I also want more conversation.

To reiterate what I mentioned yesterday, it's all about producing (and participating) more and consuming less. Just a warning: posts here might be a bit repetitive over the next week while I force this stuff to stick.

Technorati Tags: blogging, commitments, producing, participating, conversation, community, consuming

I found myself starting a lot of blog posts with "It's been X days since my last post…" followed by some excuse as to why I hadn't posted anything in a while. It's really a shame how little I blog considering how much time I spend on the computer, so in 2008 my goal is to produce more and consume less. I've written around 330 posts in the 3 years I've been blogging, which is about 100 posts a year (though only 70 in 2007). My very lofty blogging goal for 2008 is to double the number of posts here by posting something at least once a day. Here's #1 of 365.

Technorati Tags: blogging, goals, 2008