Proprietary Vs Open Source

Loads has been written about benefits of using Open Source software Vs proprietary ones, or about how the open source business model works - but this article from John Carrol, "Proprietary drives the software economy" is the best one I have found so far. A bit old, but still definitely worth the read!

power law

First time I heard about "power law" was 2 years ago, when I started getting some interest in the Internet Market - I was about to start commercialising our CMS, and did a bit of research about Internet companies, and the way they are valuated. It turns out that most of analysts reckoned that Internet companies valuation relies on Power law. The Internet ecosystem works in a way that just a few websites collect most of the pie. Sub ecosystems such as blogs obey to the same law - the A-List bloggers get most of the links, and therefore monopolise the traffic.

And I am more and more convinced that it is true - but does it mean that you don't stand a chance to get a nice slice of the pie if you come in too late? Don't think so. This law can also be broken "very easiliy", and anybody joining in the game can claim a big slice of the cake too - a new blogger can raise to the star status within months for instance. If I was putting more time on this blog, linking more, socialising more around it, checking for grammar mistakes, finding more interesting stuff to say or creating better links baits, posting more regularly, etc .. I would probably stand a chance to make it take off in the Technocrati charts.
But am I interested in putting all this hard work into this blog? certainly not. My laziness and tendency to reject all aspects of socialising through Internet (strange though how much I am passionate about setting these things up!) are far much bigger than my ego..

So, galide will probably never hit the charts unfortunately for me. But with a meeting with investors next week, I will have to convince them that Jazar can!

Fifa most wanted

Cannot really avoid the world cup, can we. Here we go, a
fine selection of pictures!

standard for mobile content

big web players such as Google and big mobile players such as Nokia have joined force to draft practical guidelines about publishing mobile content -

It is a great initiative, provided the poor experience we currently have while browsing the web with mobile handsets.

Will definitely keep an eye on it, since we are about to release our first site supporting mobile content.

The threats of Ajax

Ajax is an excellent piece of technology to improve user experience, and make online applications behave like desktop ones.

Ajax basically bridges the gap beetween client side and server side - it uses javascript (a client side language) to communicate directly with the server in real time, without having to reload the page, and send a direct request to the server.

What does it mean in terms of threat?

It means that a hacker can use client side attacks to get control of the server, hence the whole network linked to it.

The threat is real, and has already been experienced by high profile websites such as myspace which had to shut down the site to address the issue in 2005.

So, before releasing new Ajax features, developers need to be made aware of the threats specific to this technology. Javascript has got a lot of security holes, which were not too much an issue as long as the language was only use on the client side - but with Ajax, it now provide the ideal gateway for new worms or other types of attacks targetting the server.

The hackers will probably concentrate their efforts on online managed security application - they usually like to take the piss..

On the other side, online applications venders will argue that it is easier to address security issues, since they just have to release fixes on the centralised server. desktops application on the other end need to get updates downloaded directly to their computer. But I don't think they really have a point here - if you use Norton anti Virus for instance, you already get updates automatically from a centralised server, and delivery issues are not real issues.

We have started doing some Research & Development in order to integrate ajax to our content management application - but since the use of a funky UI is not our selling point, we are definitely going to be very cautious and conservatives in terms of new developments in this area, and make sure that all new Ajax features we develop are bullet proof.

Some blogs

Some blogs/sites I have been reading recently:
http://www.456bereastreet.com/
http://www.accessify.com/
http://simon.incutio.com/