.

Apple TOUCH iPod, iCache and Firefox’s milestone.

In the “bet you didn’t know Google did that”, it has just been revealed that Google is changing its policy on cookies expiration date. Originally, all Google cookies were set to expire in 2038, which meant that they could track all your search histories and countless of other movements you do on any of the Google properties for at least 30 years! Imagine being tracked for 30 years! How inaccurate a picture you’d get about a person’s trends since things you did in college could be part of your “profile” long after you’ve left the beer drinking binges contest behind or you’ve long given up on that sporty expensive car you wanted to own when you were in you twenties. Thank God they’ve changed their policies recently to have their cookies expire just 2 years after they’ve been placed - for a better “profile”of where you are now in your life, I hope.

One of the bigger news for this week is all about the cell phone; from Barack Obama’s clever use of the new cell technologies to reach as many constituents as possible to Apple reducing the price of the barely 3-month-old iPhone by $200. First, Obama is credited for grabbing and easy-to-remember branded short code (62262 - which spells o-b-a-m-a) for text messaging and his site offers ring tones and wallpaper downloads, compared to the Republicans candidates who so far have not embarrassed the technology in any meaningful ways. With more and more young adults using the technology, it is not difficult to understand why the Democratic agenda resonates louder and deeper with young voters in the US. On another hand, my fellow blogger Jon Percepto attended the Apple announcement of their new iPod Touch and the reduction in their iPhone prices. Read his post and view the pictures taken that day inside the Apple store in New York.

Still on the cell phone front, a post on the InformationWeek’s blog discusses the various differences in cell usage etiquette between the US and our friends across the pond. Seems that this blogger’s visit in London recently was marked by the fact that there “was virtually none of the shouted conversations that have unfortunately become difficult - if not impossible - to avoid in the United States.” From the comments left on that blog, it seems that the majority of travelers agree with his point, reporting seeing cell phones everywhere in Europe, but “very little in the way of heard conversations.” Even discreet signs stating firmly “that cell phone use was off-limits were scrupulously obeyed.” I know for experience that using my cell phone in the streets of New York city is an exercise in auditive boot camp, marked by my shouting, constantly angling the phone for “better” reception, and usually texting my thoughts. Achieving this quiet nirvana in the US won’t begin before the call quality from the major service providers increase tremendously. When it comes to clarity, i never think of my T-Mobile cell phone.

Anybody who knows me long enough quickly discovers that I hate carrying things in my pocket. My cell phone is a clam-shell tiny Motorola phone that I can carry without fearing the bulging side pants; my wallet consists of a money clip that can only accommodate 3 credit-sized cards while remaining super thin for my jeans. The recently introduced iCache (http://www.icache.com/) seems to be one answer to my plight. The $99 device, as thin as a Razr phone, will go on sale early next year. To use it, users will register their cards on the company’s website (this is the part that I still have concern with - why couldn’t the registration happen via some kind of USB interface with the user’s computer only? - and upload the info into the iCache). At the cash register, you activate the iCache with your fingertip on the biometric strip. This then activates a list of the cards registered on the iCache screen. All you do is scroll through the list and pick the one you want to use. From the iCache then pops out a plastic card, the size and shape or a regular credit card, with the data of the card you’ve chosen temporarily loaded on its magnetic stripe. You swap the card in the card reader terminal at the store where you are and pop it back in its place. Once in, the data of the card that you just used is automatically erased. It all sounds great for less-bulk people like me, but since the iCache doesn’t display your credit card’s information, what do you do when you conduct your purchases online? You still have to find the original card. I only wished the iCache had a way to display all those numbers, even the security pin in the back, still protected by requiring a thumb swipe on the biometric strip.

In the latest Business 2.0 magazine (september 2007), I was elated to read on page 21 about “software that writes itself.” It’s a feature about the release in the Fall or Charles Simonyl’s latest pet project: Intentional Software. You remember Simonyl as the Hungarian immigrant who developed the first word-processor, Bravo, at Xerox PARC, headed the development of Word and Excel at Microsoft and recently took a trip to the International Space Station aboard a Russian Soyout vehicle for a cool $20 million. As a web application developer for more then 10 years, i have always used a similar approach in developing any web-facing application. My cPak application framework - in development for the last 6 years - promotes the same practices: any set of processes that can or will be repeated get defined in XML as a series of “connections” that essentially duplicate an original process while applying any rules, database constraints and user priviledges declared in the XML file to the new process. This approach has proven its merits over time by supporting quick web prototyping and development for such web interfaces as the NYU EDR (the NYU Hospital Electronic Data Repository), the Mount Sinai Lab reporting system, the FIU and Miami Dade College STS (pre-college programs student tracking system), numerous lightweight and easily adaptable websites (a complete list can be seen at www.burken.com) and an interface to the Wordpress installation that powers this hosted blog service.

Questions they may ask on your next interview:
1 - How much should you charge to wash all the windows in Seattle?
2 - How many golf balls can fit in a school bus?
3 - Why exactly manhole covers are round and not square?
Find the answers to these at the bottom of this post.

Blade-designed USB flash drive - the Apacer Handy Steno. Finally! The design of the Apacer is such that the actual accessory sits at a 90 degree angle right after the USB connector (see image). A USB accessory that fits flush with my laptop. For a while now, everyone around me has been buying those flash thumb drives - even my mother got one very recently at the urging of my 6-year-old nephew. Me, on the contrary, I’ve been reluctant to get one (I carry a small USB multi-card-reader and just plug in whatever card I’m faced with. For my own data, my trusted 2.1lbs Averatec laptop does fine in my backpack.) However, I have accumulated almost 5 USB Wi-Fi access kits over the last 6 months. They are handy for when I am fiddling around with old desktops and laptops trying to install Ubuntu or revive any old computer in general. Having those USB Wi-Fi kits make network setup a breeze since they are almost always recognized by any recent operating system. Nowadays, I don’t have to string any long 25 feet Ethernet CAT6 cable from my router to wherever I happen to have the new computer placed. Even while sitting on my couch, I can still tickle with an old laptop on my lap with the freedom provided by the USB access card. Living in New York, I can pretty much repair, fix or fiddle with any installation on location by just hoping quickly onto one of the many free Wi-Fi access points that blanket the city. My one MAJOR gripe: those USB thinghys are always designed in a rectangular shape. More things proturbing out of the sides of my laptop that I have to watch for when I move, maneuver or change spot. The laptop industry had finally adopted an all-compacted and tucked-in design that made laptop handling pretty much straigh-forward. Now I am back to watching where I move or swing my laptop. I hope they can adopt this blade-design to USB Wi-Fi network cards soon before I hurt myself or one of the current sticking-out ones that I am amassing.

Happy milestone to Firefox. September 7th marked the 400 million download of Firefox according to the Mozilla Foundation. Launched on November 9th, 2004, it took Firefox nearly one year to reach their first 100 million downloads. I was one of those early adopters as I had been complaining about the bloat of Internet Explorer 6 and beyond, and as a developer of web applications, it made more sense to code for a platform-compliant browser while agreeing to sacrifice some functionalities that were IE-only. Over the years, I have stayed with Firefox, converting everyone that rely on me for computer advice to switch to that browser. I would even hide the IE icon on computers that my friends or family would have me rebuild for them, and make the Firefox browser available from so many places within the OS. With the serious adoption of Linux in every aspect of my business (computers and music production), and the introduction of a couple of Macbooks to the business network, it made more sense then ever to get everybody standardized on Firefox. It’s a strategy that works and makes for easy transition to whichever computer we happen to be sitting in front of to do any kind of work related stuff. However, for the last 8 months, I have been keeping a secret browser on my main desktop and my development box: K-Meleon. I still have a lot of issues with the layout, the interface design, their bookmarks concepts as groups, and other minor gripes about this browser, but boy, does it load fast and does it display things quickly. On a few occasions, I have had about the same amount of tabs opened to similar pages on both firefox and k-meleon. Switching to Firefox from any other software took some noticeable seconds. Switching form tab to tab seems quicker in k-meleon, specially after the browser has stayed opened for hours. As has been reported before, Firefox can be a huge drag on available resources after any prolonged use. I usually reset Firefox’s nimbleness and quickness by restarting the application. Can’t remember ever having done that with k-meleon. Now if only k-meleon adopted a standard interface UI, or Firefox fixed that resource hoagging, the race is still out when it comes to the browser I use the most. Just for disclosure, my development box houses Firefox, Safari, IE 7 and K-meleon.

Answers:
1 - approximating 10,000 city blocks, 600 windows per block, five minute per window, $20 per hour, that’s about $10 millions.
2 - assuming the bus is 50 balls high, 50 balls wide and 200 balls long, that’s 500,000.
3 - a square manhole cover, tipped at an angle, can fall through the hole.