"Wireless hotspots are changing the way people work. These wireless local area networks (LANs) provide high speed Internet access in public locations—as well as at home—and require nothing more than a notebook PC with a wireless card. From coffeeshops to restaurants, airports to hotel lobbies, hotspots are ubiquitous. They are the de facto connection method for travelers and remote workers to access the Internet, their e-mail, and even their corporate networks."
Ever see the movie Groundhog Day? Well, I feel like I’m re-living a past event.
I learned that Palestinian officials have decided to begin daylight saving time on Thursday, March 26, 2009, and expects to maintain DST until September 27, 2009 as noted here (in Arabic).
I learned a couple of years ago (and noted here) that the period of DST in Palestine often differs from Israel, the time of change is different each year, and provided with short notice.
As noted in a prior post, our product teams are moving to a regular rhythm to update their products and services to reflect these time changes. (For each update release, Microsoft accepts change requests up to a few months prior to the release date.)
We’ve also updated our page on Microsoft’s Policy in Response to DST/TZ Requests, providing recommendations in order to achieve more seamless transitions to new DST and time zones policies. We suggest that governments should provide the following when considering changing DST or making adjustments to time zones:
Ample advance notice (1 year or more) of the planned change.
Official published confirmation of planned changes to DST or time zones.
Concentrated efforts on promoting the change to the affected citizens.
Important note for governments: Let me note that in support of these types of changes, we provide guidance and Microsoft’s Policy in Response to DST/TZ Requests. It’s important for countries and territories to work towards seamless transitions to new DST and time zones policies, providing ample advance notice (of a year or more) with published confirmation of planned changes. In addition, we suggest that entities considering the changes consider implementing changes at the next clock tick after 01:59:59 rather than at 00:00:00. Making the change at midnight can impact daily systems, such as back ups, data pulls or other automated tasks.
Thanks to several folks who forwarded this information including Alexander Krivenyshev who maintains the private http://www.worldtimezone.com site.
"Every year Microsoft puts on a bash for Web designers and programmers in Las Vegas called Mix. At this year’s conference, the company focused on its new Internet Explorer 8 Web browser, reviewed here, but it also took a not-too-subtle dig at Steve Jobs, with a send-up of prima donna executive antics. The company rolled a video before Microsoft corporate vice president Scott Guthrie took the stage at the conference, showing Mr. Guthrie in the hours before his speech having his hair done, working out in a disco ballroom and getting a tattoo that said “Thug Life.” At one point in the video, a bewildered conference producer barks that Mr. Guthrie has to make a wardrobe selection, when a clothes rack filled with dozens of identical long-sleeved red polo shirts drifts by."
Software geeks to tackle energy efficiency in the home – TechFlash: Seattle’s Technology News Source by John Cook on March 20, 2009 – "Three former workers from Amazon.com, Microsoft and aQuantive are working on a new startup company called Evoworx to help people reduce energy use in the home. Backed with less than $500,000 in angel financing, the team includes former Microsoft program manager Aaron Goldfeder and former Amazon.com and Pelago developer Leo Shklovskii. Co-founder Karl Siebrecht, the former president of aQuantive’s Atlas unit, serves as chairman. What do a bunch of software and digital media geeks know about residential energy efficiency?"
stevenberlinjohnson.com: Old Growth Media And The Future Of News: "The following is a speech I gave yesterday at the South By Southwest Interactive Festival in Austin. If you happened to be hanging out in front of the old College Hill Bookstore in Providence Rhode Island in 1987, on the third week of every month you would have seen a skinny 19-year-old in baggy pants, sporting a vaguely Morrissey-like haircut, walking into the bookstore several times a day. That kid was me. I wish I could tell you that I was making those compulsive return visits out of a passionate love of books. While I do, in fact, have a passionate love of books, and bought plenty of them during my college years, I was making those tactical strikes on the College Hill Bookstore for another reason."
Pulver: Time to reboot the communications industry – March 20, 2009 By Doug Mohney — "Scorning the status quo of PSTN and mobile phone call quality, industry pundit Jeff Pulver says he is on nothing less than a mission to "reboot" the communications industry around high-definition communications–regardless of how a call is made. "Just because someone at AT&T defined [voice calls] as between 300 and 3000 Hz means we have to settle for that sixty years later?" Pulver said. "[WTF]? We have technology, we can make it better." Pulver described his efforts to rally all the stakeholders in high definition communications–including voice and video–as a "quest." While he may sound a bit like Don Quixote at times…"
Streaming Live With Scott Guthrie, Jeff Atwood and Twitter : Jeff Sandquist from Friday, March 20 2009 – "Once again for Mix, my team worked on what we call the live experience. Since PDC 2003, we’ve been working on ways for the folks at home and those attending in person can make a connection to the event. With this work we’ve streamed the keynotes live, published breakout sessions for on demand viewing, filmed behind the scenes videos for Channel 9 along with some humorous ones and even overlaid Tweets tagged #MIX09 on top of the live keynote player on the web site and on the big screens in the keynote halll via our Flotzam screen saver."
Why Microsoft Continues to Chase Internet Search – Bits Blog – NYTimes.com by Saul Hansell, Mar 20, 2009 – "If you are making something that is growing and profitable, why throw billions at something else that has kept losing money and market share? That was the last question I had for Steve Ballmer, the chief executive of Microsoft, when he came by The Times Thursday. I wrote earlier about most of our conversation, which was about the company’s plans to offer computing services from its network of data centers to corporate customers. While I wondered about the complexity of Microsoft’s software design, it has the advantage of a strong position in the corporate software market, which it won over the last 10 years. But I asked Mr. Ballmer, why bother with trying to catch up to Google in search when it looks as if the enterprise market has much better potential return given the risk? He flatly rejected the premise of the question."
Report: Improper use of Deep Packet Inspection could be Internet game-changer | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com – "There are legitimate uses for a technology called Deep Packet Inspection. But it’s the “improper” use of the technology that prompted Washington-based Free Press to release a report this week entitled: “Deep Packet Inspection: The End of the Internet As We Know It.” In a nutshell, DPI allows Internet Service Providers to monitor Internet traffic in their pipelines in real-time and use that data to deliver targeted advertising, control the speed of access to Web-based services or impose tiered pricing models for light or heavy users. That’s the “improper” use that’s made the technology controversial. The legitimate usage would fall in the lines of routing traffic to make sure that emergency services – such as a 9-1-1 call over a VoIP service – isn’t slowed down by a large number of people streaming a March Madness game. In its report, Free Press explains how DPI works"
The Top Smartphones by OS – Reviews by PC Magazine – March 20, 2009, by Jamie Lendino — "There are the smartphone enthusiasts, and then there are the true fans. While members of the former group surely have a preference, in most cases they’d be open to switching camps if a cooler phone came along on another operating system. (Millions of folks jumped on the iPhone bandwagon without so much as a glance back.) True fans, however, stick with their OSs through thick and thin, either for practical reasons—like a large investment in third-party apps—or simply for the bragging rights. Whether or not you subscribe to any particular allegiance, it’s important to know your options. After all, there could be a much better device you’ve never even considered. To help you out, we’ve rounded up the highest-rated phones in each OS category."
Microsoft proud of its first ‘post-Gates’ OS, Ballmer says 2009-03-20, By Elizabeth Montalbano, IDG News Service – "Ballmer hints that he and colleagues were limited in their ability to make certain technical decisions at Microsoft while Gates was there By Elizabeth Montalbano, IDG News Service, March 20, 2009 — "Windows 7 is the first Microsoft OS developed away from the watchful eye of Bill Gates, and the technical leaders who built it had to adjust to life at the company without its co-founder and former chief software architect, CEO Steve Ballmer said Thursday. "We have a lot of people who are stepping up and growing in new ways," Ballmer said, speaking at the McGraw-Hill 2009 Media Summit in New York. "There’s no question about that. I’m growing in some new ways. Some of the senior technical guys are growing in new ways. "
Researcher cracks Mac in 10 seconds (Computerworld) By Gregg Keizer, Computerworld, March 19, 2009 — "Charlie Miller, the security researcher who hacked a Mac in two minutes last year at CanSecWest’s PWN2OWN contest, improved his time Wednesday by breaking into another Mac in under 10 seconds. "Five New Year’s Networking Resolutions for 2009 – read this white paper. Miller, a principal analyst at Independent Security Evaluators, walked off with a $5,000 cash prize and the MacBook he hacked."
Privacy group to FTC: Google’s cloud is unsafe | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com – "A Washington-based privacy group wants the Federal Trade Commission to launch an investigation of the cloud-computing services offered by Google – including Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar and others – to ensure that they are as secure as Google promises they will be. "Specifically, the matters stems from reports earlier this month that a software bug in Google Docs publicly exposed documents believed to be private. The company said the glitch affected one-half of one percent of the documents stored online. "The Electronic Privacy Information Center pointed out in its petition to the FTC that Google uses language in its marketing statements that suggest to users that their documents are safe and secure and that users can "rest assured that your documents, spreadsheets and presentations will remain private unless you publish them to the Web or invite collaborators and/or viewers."
A password vault is as mandatory as anti-virus Posted by Adam O’Donnell, 18 March 2009 — "We all need to get out of the mindset that our primary e-mail address combined with a single universal password are our credentials for the world. "Having a strong and diverse password everywhere is mandatory now. It is as mandatory as running anti-virus on a PC and having a working set of backups. Like backups and anti-virus, if you don’t have a strong and diverse password that is different on every website you visit, you have no right to complain if you get compromised because someone took down the one-stop yak shop. It is your own damned fault."
Also from ZDNet is this on Adobe swings and misses as PDF abuse worsens "After more than two weeks (months?) of inexplicable silence on mitigations for a known code execution vulnerability in its Reader and Acrobat product lines, Adobe has finally posted public information on the problem but the company’s response falls well short of providing definitive mitigation guidance for end users. [ For background and a timeline on how *not* to handle incident response, HD Moore’s blog post is a great start. ] Adobe’s response simply confirms what we already know and reiterates that turning off JavaScript will NOT eliminate the risk entirely. However, the company does not offer any definitive suggestions or workarounds, instead pointing to a list of anti-malware vendors blocking known attacks. Here’s what we have from Adobe…"
One-year-old (unpatched) Windows ‘token kidnapping’ under attack – "Exactly one year after a security researcher notified Microsoft of a serious security vulnerability affecting all supporting version of Windows (including Vista and Windows Server 2008), the issue remains unpatched and now comes word that there are in-the-wild exploits circulating. The vulnerability, called token kidnapping (.pdf), was originally discussed last March by researcher Cesar Cerrudo and led to Microsoft issuing an advisory with workarounds. Five months later (October 2008), Cerrudo released a proof-of-concept in an apparent effort to nudge Microsoft into patching but the company has not yet released a fix. Now comes word from the SANS ISC (Internet Storm Center) that the flaw is being used in a blended attack against an unknown target…"
Apparently Dell forgot it was a recession (ZDNet.com) – "As I sometime am inclined to do, I’m going to head a bit off-topic (the topic being educational technology) and take a stab at Dell’s Adamo laptop. Fellow blogger, Larry Dignan, gave a fairly measured assessment of the “MacBook Air Killer” this morning, ultimately asking if the market was really ready for this product. My answer? NO! Are you kidding me? A $2000 laptop so fashion-conscious executives and yuppies can sit in first class or at Starbucks comfortably typing on their uber-sleek laptops?"
At SXSWi, how much should big media be listening? | The Social – CNET News – "With panels and discussions every year about social engineering, hacking, remixing, and culture jamming, South by Southwest Interactive is the must-attend conference for geeks who want to shake things up. Maybe that’s why the many panels at the conference about the future of media–from print to broadcast to music to film–were tinged with the message that fast, often radical change is necessary. With panel topics like "How Copyright Law Failed The Digital Age," "New Think for Old Publishers," and "Old Media Finds New Voice Through Twitter," this year’s SXSWi promised to offer a blunt take on some longstanding stalwarts of the media industry that now lie in states ranging from evolutionary flux to full-out crisis mode."
The round up wouldn’t be complete without a look at Cutting the Cable on Cable TV with the Help of Apple and Amazon especially as we cut the cable ties in our own home – "A recent apartment move provided eWEEK Labs analyst Cameron Sturdevant with an opportunity to cut the cable on cable TV. He used Roku, Netflix, Amazon, Tivo and Apple to free himself. He still uses high-speed cable and pays a premium price NOT to have cable TV bundled with the service. It was a battle royale to get the cable provider to even admit it had an Internet-only plan. Even with the premium price, over the year he’ll still save money and have the pleasure of purposely watching plotted content. He’ll also be using an over-the-air HD TV."
Alltop Gets a Custom Feed Reader March 16th, 2009 | by Jennifer Van Grove — "This year’s SXSW Interactive festival marks the one year anniversary of Guy Kawasaki’s official launch of Alltop, and since its debut the service has transformed from a site with just a few categories to a resource that now houses over 31,000 feeds on 550 different topics. "It wouldn’t be a monumental birthday if Alltop didn’t have big news, so thankfully Kawasaki does not disappoint with today’s big reveal of MyAlltop. MyAlltop makes it easy for users to save any of the feeds they find interesting on their own personalized page."
Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable « Clay Shirky – "Back in 1993, the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain began investigating piracy of Dave Barry’s popular column, which was published by the Miami Herald and syndicated widely. In the course of tracking down the sources of unlicensed distribution, they found many things, including the copying of his column to alt.fan.dave_barry on usenet; a 2000-person strong mailing list also reading pirated versions; and a teenager in the Midwest who was doing some of the copying himself, because he loved Barry’s work so much he wanted everybody to be able to read it. One of the people I was hanging around with online back then was Gordy Thompson, who managed internet services at the New York Times. I remember Thompson saying something to the effect of “When a 14 year old kid can blow up your business in his spare time, not because he hates you but because he loves you, then you got a problem.” I think about that conversation a lot these days."
And this article with a tip of the hat to my friend Beth as she ventured down to the SXSW Roundup: “Moms Who Tech” in the WSJ By Rachel Emma Silverman, Associated Press, Mar 16, 2009 — "I attended an interesting discussion Sunday on “Moms Who Tech” at the South by Southwest Interactive conference here in my hometown of Austin, Texas. The conversation was led by Beth Blecherman, a mom of three boys who also runs the blog Techmamas.com, which discusses parenting and technology. "
As Mobile Data Grows, People Want Wireless Carriers To Buzz Off by Om Malik | Monday, March 16, 2009 — "No one really gives two hoots about carriers’ attempts to sell mobile applications via cellular phones. And yet, they keep trying and trying. Maybe a recent survey by Zogby (commissioned by Skype) would help persuade them to leave selling of mobile apps to those who know how to do it. Folks like Apple, RIM and maybe Nokia.
Zogby, a market research firm polled 3,000 mobile users in four markets — US, UK, Spain and Japan, and came up with some interesting findings.
62% do not yet view their mobile device as an extension of their computer.
Only 23% feel that they have more or the same level of control over their mobile device as they have over their computer.
70% have never downloaded an application to their mobile device.
67% want to be able to choose their mobile applications for themselves, rather than have their carriers choose for them."
The rumours abound with this on the guess on Windows 7 public RC and also noted by Gregg Keizer in his article Report: Microsoft plans Windows 7 release candidate for May (17/03/2009) "Microsoft Corp. will deliver a release candidate of Windows 7 to the public in late May, according to a report from a noted Windows Web site. Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC), the next slated major milestone for the under-development operating system, will be made available to the public the last week of May, said Neowin.net today. Prior to that, Microsoft will wrap up an "escrow build" of the release candidate and offer it to a small invitation-only group of testers near the end of April, said Neowin, citing information from a Russian-language Web site and sources within Microsoft’s Technical Adoption Program, which gives large corporations sneak peeks at pre-release software."
An update on some of the recent daylight saving time changes around the world coming this year to Morocco, Pakistan, Syria and Tunisia in 2009…
It’s been a busy time, reflected in fewer than normal postings on this blog, but happily it’s due in part (when it comes to time) that there has been little to report in the area of changes to DST and times zones.
In past years, the move from Winter to Spring in the Northern Hemisphere would signal a change to clocks in much of Canada and the States. But as you may know (unless you’re an hour late to all your meetings) that the US and Canada "Sprang Forward" a few weeks ago: March 8 marked the arrival of Daylight Saving Time.
So here’s a look at some of the changes we’re evaluating and how they would be included in future updates in various DST & time zone product updates (with provisions for semi-annual as needed as outlined here).
Morocco: As noted last year, once again the kingdom of Morocco plans to observe daylight saving time in the country, beginning on Sunday, May 31 at midnight, and ending on Thursday, August 20 at midnight. Not surprisingly, this coincides with the start of Ramadan. (I believe that Egypt will likely make similar changes, but we have no confirmed change in that country.) You can find more information on these changes on marweb.com and this post on medi1sat.ma.
Pakistan: Last May (2008), we learned of a change to the observance of Daylight Saving Time in Pakistan that could impact customers using local time zones, including entities engaged in business in or with the region. Unfortunately, due to the short notice at which the change had been announced, Microsoft was unable to provide updates (hot-fixes) to support the implementation of DST and referred people to this post on the changes for more details.
For this year – unfortunately once again we don’t have any clear communication on changes in 2009. Through news reports, we estimate that we will learn more at the beginning of April. Once we receive an official notification, we will look at how to bet address the changes.
Syria: We have reports that daylight saving time will begin in Syria on March 27, 2009 at 00:00:00 this year according to many sources, this article in the Syrian Arab News Agency (English), and this article from alwehda.gov.sy, the government site. Guidance will be posted shortly on mitigating the changes in the country.
Tunisia discontinues DST in 2009: Recently we learned that Tunisia will no longer observe daylight saving time beginning in 2009, as noted by the Tunisian press agency here. Daylight saving time had been observed since 2006, beginning on the last Sunday of March, and ending on the last Sunday of October.
As noted in a prior post, our product teams are moving to a regular rhythm to update their products and services to reflect these time changes. (For each update release, Microsoft accepts change requests up to a few months prior to the release date.)
We’ve also updated our page on Microsoft’s Policy in Response to DST/TZ Requests, providing recommendations in order to achieve more seamless transitions to new DST and time zones policies. We suggest that governments should provide the following when considering changing DST or making adjustments to time zones:
Ample advance notice (1 year or more) of the planned change.
Official published confirmation of planned changes to DST or time zones.
Concentrated efforts on promoting the change to the affected citizens.
Important note for governments: Let me note that in support of these types of changes, we provide guidance and Microsoft’s Policy in Response to DST/TZ Requests. It’s important for countries and territories to work towards seamless transitions to new DST and time zones policies, providing ample advance notice (of a year or more) with published confirmation of planned changes. In addition, we suggest that entities considering the changes consider implementing changes at the next clock tick after 01:59:59 rather than at 00:00:00. Making the change at midnight can impact daily systems, such as back ups, data pulls or other automated tasks.
Once again, I was asked not once but twice today for I was asked today for a couple of restaurant recommendations, and with a tip of the hat to my old friends and definite foodies at Rogers (loveAureole), I offer a few tips for those heading off to Vegas this week for the event, recycling the bits in the blog post "Surviving CES in Las Vegas: A few helpful hints".
And here are a few articles of interest that bring a little more colour to the Mix experience:
Everything you should know about MIX09 – Ars Technica. Emil Protalinski noted that "MIX09 may be in March, but we have the details on the conference for you a bit early." By Emil Protalinski | Last updated January 22, 2009…
"Always hosted in Las Vegas, MIX is an annual conference for developers, designers, and enthusiasts who are interested in discussing Microsoft’s latest web-oriented products and services. MIX09 will be the fourth chapter of MIX, held from March 18-20 at the Venetian Resort Hotel Casino in Las Vegas. Scott Guthrie, corporate VP of Microsoft’s .NET Developer Division, will be making the two hour keynote speech on Wednesday at 9AM. This will be the only keynote at the conference, which is a bit surprising if you take into account that last year’s edition had two keynotes and five separate speakers."
What Windows Azure is… and isn’t – Ars Technica – "Ars learns a little more about Microsoft’s cloud computing Azure architecture thanks to a chat with Steven Martin, Microsoft’s senior director of Developer Platform Product Management. By Emil Protalinski | Last updated March 15, 2009 9:31 PM CT — "I recently had the opportunity to chat with Steven Martin, Microsoft’s senior director of Developer Platform Product Management. He’s responsible for developer technologies including Silverlight, .NET Services, Oslo, ASP.NET, IIS7, Windows Server 2008, and Windows Azure. With MIX09 coming up later this week, we focused our discussion on the last one: Windows Azure, the hosted suite of services Microsoft revealed at PDC in October 2008. The Azure Services Platform is part of Microsoft’s cloud effort, which also includes Microsoft Online Services."
Microsoft Mix ’09: Fewer sheep to be thrown, more business apps shown | All about Microsoft | ZDNet.com, Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 6:55 am, Mar 16, 2009 — "If you’re tired of Web 2.0 conferences where “Throw a Sheep” apps reign supreme, Microsoft’s Mix ‘09 might be a breath of fresh air. "Microsoft execs are on tap to talk up more of what’s coming in Silverlight 3, ASP.Net 4.0 and Expression Studio 3.0 at this week’s Las Vegas confab. A new Azure cloud-computing Community Technology Preview (CTP) also may be on tap. And many company watchers are expecting Microsoft to announce on Thursday during the morning Mix keynote that Internet Explorer 8 (IE 8) is as done as it’s going to be and will be released to the Web. "But business uses of Microsoft’s Web-centric technologies are getting a surprising amount of attention at this year’s Mix. These sessions caught my eye…"
Microsoft to highlight Silverlight 3 technology | InfoWorld | News | 2009-03-16 | By Paul Krill – "Mix09 conference features developer and designer offerings from software giant By Paul Krill, March 16, 2009 — "Microsoft will tout at the Mix09 conference in Las Vegas this week its planned Silverlight 3 rich Internet application technology along with a host of other developer-related offerings, according to the conference Web site. "Other efforts to be pondered at the conference include the planned Visual Studio 2010 IDE, the Azure Services Platform for cloud computing and Expression Web, for building Web sites. "Mix09, which begins on Tuesday, is billed as an event for developers and designers, with an emphasis on Web development and design skills. While Microsoft representatives declined to comment on specific announcements planned for the event, an industry analyst focused on Microsoft said he anticipates news about Silverlight 3 as well as other developments from the company."
InternetNews Realtime IT News – Silverlight 3 to Headline MIX09 in Las Vegas – March 13, 2009 By Stuart J. Johnston – "At next week’s MIX09 conference in Las Vegas, Microsoft officials plan show off the latest and greatest technologies and products for designers and website developers. "Near the top of the list will be the first public demonstration of Silverlight 3.0, Microsoft’s streaming media technology. Other likely featured technologies include Internet Explorer 8 (IE8), and Windows 7. "The event, hosted at the glitzy Venetian resort, is in its fourth year."
