I am not sure if it is an unfortunate coincidence or a sadistic prank by fate that three popular figures of the IT industry who died this month were all pioneers in their respective fields. If you don’t know who Steve Jobs is, I may be able to understand but you would have to be living under a rock to not know of his sad demise. While Steve Jobs died, after a long fight with pancreatic cancer, on 5th October 2011, exactly 1 week later a greater legend breathed his last.  Dennis Ritchie the creator of Unix and the C programming language was found dead in his home on 12th October 2011.  As if the loss to the digital world wasn’t devastating enough, 12 days later, on 24th October, John McCarthy, the inventor of LISP and the  concept of Artificial Intelligence, logged out of the world.

Steve Jobs, founder of Apple Inc  which introduced path-breaking products like Macintosh,iPhone and iPad was a visionary and a genius combining artist perfection and latest technology to build awe-inspiring consumer products.  No wonder the web is over-flowing with obituaries to him.  However, Dennis Ritchie and John McCarthy were scientists, hence not very popular with the global consumer community which now means everyone online except the programmers still typing in code into the dark-as-death consoles of Unix terminals. May be I am exaggerating it a bit but I wonder if anyone can dispute the fact that the contribution of Dennis Ritchie to the computing world was incalculably greater than, its acknowledged. After all he was the creator of both C programming language and Unix. Most, if not all operating systems including Unix,Linux, OS X and most likely, Windows were made using C programming language and half the operating systems including OS X were built upon Unix architecture. C  is  not just an old language from which most modern languages such as Ruby and Python are derived,  it is also one of the most powerful language that continues to be popular even in its pristine form.  And in the programming world Dennis Ritchie’s continues to  be a legend. Tim O’Reilly the founder of O’Reilly Media in his post has called for dedicating 30th October 2011 as Dennis Ritchie Day..

Here I must confess that prior to the news of his death, I didn’t know much about John McCarthy. I was familiar with the name of course and we  all know what Artificial Intelligence means. I presumed the term to have been of ancient origin and I wasn’t completely wrong making that presumption, scientifically it meant a very abstract concept,food for futuristic movie makers and fiction writers. What I did not know is that it was John McCarthy who coined the term “Artificial Intelligence” and sought to implement it by making “intelligent machines”.  He created the second oldest high level computer language, LISP, which continues to be associated with AI strongly.  Interestingly, John McCarthy doesn’t seem to have done much in the field of Dennis Ritchie nor did the latter venture into McCarthy’s field.  However, some of his conceptual contributions to general programming,  through LISP include, conditionals (if-then-else), Garbage Collection ( imagine garbage collection in 60s! ) and a whole list of contributions which can be found here

However, Compatibility Time Sharing System , his association with DARPA which later led to creation of the Internet, and concept of Artificial Intelligence are considered McCarthy’s greatest contributions. Finally, I think John McCarthy was one of the earliest bloggers, sharing his thoughts through web pages dating back further than 1995 .  So when John McCarthy died on 24th October, he became the third member of the triad of visionaries who revolutionized computing and influenced are lives immensely. I would like to humbly pay tribute to the geniuses and I believe all Mindfireans  feel the same way.  Let me remind you one more time that Tim O’Reilly has called for dedicating this Sunday as Dennis Ritchie’s Day.

Author: Danish Ahmed

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Google+ may not be turning out the “Facebook-Killer” many predicted it to be, but as of yet it has been sailing smoothly. Providing API for developers was the next logical step and sure enough,yesterday it released Google+ API. Be it Facebook,Twitter or even Foursquare, nearly all successful social services provide development platform to facilitate developers build apps which eventually contributes to the success of the service. In fact Google is one of the earliest providers of Web APIs such as Search APIs,Google  Maps API. This would definitely  provide a boost to the 3-month old project which is now beginning to see decline in popularity after a period of rapid growth.

Google+ Platform blog makes it clear that initially they would be providing public data only in read-only mode which implies that nothing complex should be expected out of it at the moment but the developers are as excited as they should be at the prospect of taking programmable web  further.  To get data from the server you need to send HTTP Request with API method as URL parameter, the REST Server returns queried data in JSON format which can then be formatted and served to users.  Further, Google+ API team provides open-source libraries for popular languages and frameworks such as .NET, Java, PHP, Ruby, Python, GWT and Objective-C  to work with. A list of the latest Google+  APIs available can be found  at https://developers.google.com/+/api/

However,before developing, it would be necessary to register the applications.   Google+ API supports OAuth2 authentication to let the server identify the user and provide relevant data. While the same thing can be done to retrieve public data using profile’s  numeric id, using OAuth2 to identify yourself to the server would help you use the identifier “me” instead of the rather longish numeric id. Alternatively,if you wish to use API key instead of OAuth2, you can  procure an API key here  https://code.google.com/apis/console/

If you just want to try out how these APIs work ,  but don’t have much time to spare, you can check out this example page https://developers.google.com/+/api/latest/people/get#try-it The screenshot below is the output of a HTTP request with the following parameters:

userId- me
fields – aboutMe,currentLocation,displayName,organizations,tagline

Note:  When trying the above given example make sure you have authenticated using OAuth and have switched to Private Access mode

SOURCE : http://googleplusplatform.blogspot.com/2011/09/getting-started-on-google-api.html

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As most of you would be aware Facebook’s promised awesomeness turned out to be a one-to-one video chatting feature. Now is that really innovative ? It is something  that has already been introduced since almost a decade by companies now vanished. Of the barely surviving companies, ICQ introduced video chatting in 2007. In fact, for some inexplicable reason, I always feel ICQ was precursor of Twitter in a way. Going back to video-chatting, the much-touted Google+ Hangout feature isn’t the first group video chat either. I remember at least one service, ICU , which had similar features, then Yahoo Messenger + Public Chat + Group are so similar to the phenomenon that is now termed as Social Networking.

So why is it that they failed in the long run (or we would be using them now)  ?
Are the trends in Internet Technology cyclical too as it is in nature if we were to take an philosophical or theological  perspective ?
Or are they like the evolutionary cycle, best explained by Darwin in his theory on natural selection. The weak perish the stronger ones survive. 99.99 percent of  all species to have evolved on earth are now extinct. So it seems a little bit of both- services on Internet that are not strong enough to retain users go bust and are shut down but the ideas are not. They are recycled and presented again to the consumers in a different form and on a more evolved platform.  The strongest and the most innovative services survive but there is always one that becomes bigger than others and continues to dominate until the next tough kid on the block challenges its hegemony; the cycle starts all over again.  I wonder if one could call it Internet’s own Cyclic Redundancy Check !

Let us go back a couple of decades when notebook meant a a collation of identical (preferably blank)  papers 0n which something could be written using pen or pencil etc, to look at pattern on which the industry has evolved. 1980, a little known software company, Microsoft, was awarded a contract by IBM to provide OS for its upcoming product, the IBM Personal Computer. The computer industry giant  believed that money lay in hardware alone,  software was just an accessory. However, Bill Gates saw the future differently and used IBM as its launching pad for its operating system DOS and later Windows. At the  same time Apple Computers was busy cloning a PARC Alto GUI  but Microsoft emerged the biggest player in the IT industry in a matter of years. Its numerous ethically questionable policies such as arrangements with leading OEMs to bind its software with their hardware and thus force it on consumers and its unwillingness to separate Internet Explorer from the OS  drew lot of criticism and even law suits in which the Court found it guilty of monopolizing PC software industry and practicing anti-competitive means thus validating the public perception that “Microsoft is evil”.

However, neither public perception nor judicial verdict affected Microsoft as much as the arrival of GNU and Open Source Software Movement did.  Linux, an OS created by Linus Trovalds and a group hackers collaborating through newsgroups caused it far more damage than any other competitor could imagine.  It was a classic David Vs Goliath contest as was the next contest that Microsoft faced when Google emerged as a competitor. Microsoft had begun by not directly competing with IBM but doing something entirely different, so did Google. It didn’t target the core industry of Microsoft, which were in its OS and browser, instead Google developed its own core competence in an area which was going to be crucial in the next step of industry’s evolution- the search engine. It started off with a blank web page, a text box and a button in the center and a powerful algorithm on the server side, once it had acquired a solid userbase, it went on to monetize the service by introducing innovative concepts such as Adsense and AdWords.  Google’s slogan “Don’t be evil” was a direct attack on Microsoft but it didn’t take long to overtake Microsoft and become Goliath itself not just revenue-wise but also ethics-wise.

New Web 2.0 services like Twitter and Facebook, especially the latter remarkably resembles Google in its infancy. It doesn’t pose a direct threat to the dominant player’s core area (Google search), it is rather trying to get into the dominant position as the next stage in the evolution of the Web arrives – the Social Web. History has this uncanny habit of repeating itself and the IT industry has seen it too.  As the paradigms have changed so have the fortunes of Internet companies, the established companies have found it difficult to reconcile their business strategies with the emerging trends, startups on the other hand have been able to dictate the trends.  Looking at the history, Facebook seems to have the edge but Google is unwilling to relinquish given the fact that it has enough resource to not only retain its position but also do what no other entity has been able to – control the Web.

The important question at this point would be, does Google know what is required of it ? Web 2.0 services like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn have started with very simple but innovative functionalities, building user-base first and adding more functionalities around them.  Google seems more determined in adding features first and adding users only in batches.  Social Web doesn’t work that way, you go to the site where your most friends are. However,some may argue Google doesn’t really require to build its user-base since it already has the largest user-base and has promised to give access to everyone by 31st July,the assumption here is that everyone or most users logging into Gmail or visiting Google search would be naturally exposed to Google+. But let us not forget that Microsoft search engine was second to none before Google arrived, it already had a monopoly on browsers but still most people used MS Internet Explorer to search on Google.com.  The only way to know for certain if Google+ can dethrone Facebook is by waiting till at least mid-August, provided, Google has given access to everyone by July 31st as promised.

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From the looks of it, Google‘s latest foray into social web, in the form of +1 button might end up with same fate as  its predecessors. In case you are unaware,it is the button at the top with +1 caption which according to Google official blog is digital shorthand for “this is pretty cool“  is the search engine giant’s reply to Facebook “Like”. The fact that Google replies with a sentence like “this is pretty cool” to Facebook’s four letter “Like”  may give us a rare insight on the mindset prevalent within Google’s team.  The 2 character button itself  may conform to the Web 2.0 trends,the descriptive sentence makes one wonder if  they have embraced Web 2.0 with all their hearts or are just going along with the tide. This would also explain why Google continues to fail in getting a foothold in Social Web.  Anyway, I am getting ahead of myself  the pertinent to ask at this point of time is whether +1 is really going to be successful or not.

The first part, which is adoption by webmasters was never difficult to guess. All popular websites have already added it as have we. In fact, I added +1 button to my personal blog the very first time I came across the news of its launch. After all, “when Google says do this, it is done“. Especially when it has been made clear that the clicks would affect the search results.  But is it going to work out ?
Google seems to have overlooked some simple questions.

What is the incentive for the user to click on the +1 button ?

The earliest implementation of a mechanism to let readers bookmark web pages online as well as vote and tag it was made by Delicious. But Delicious is a folksnomy service,  Digg, a service  launched a year later would serve our purpose better in understanding the concept of recommending pages.  Consolidation of articles at Digg helped determine which articles had been most submitted and thus were most popular with readers. What it basically did is crowdsource task of determining the quality of articles to the general public. According to concept of the Delphi Effect or Wisdom of the Crowd, people tend to  make better and more rational decisions collectively, rather than individually. It allowed readers to digg or bury articles with single click, the article with the most number of “diggs” was pushed to top of the heap, a mechanism far more reliable than algorithms that search engines used.  For the average Digg user, the site provided opportunity to come across quality content without looking for it. Serendipity has been an important factor in the evolution of the web, services like Digg and StumbleUpon took it to another level. But it was open to exploitation by interest groups which is why Digg introduced secret algorithm but it was really the addition of social networking features that secured Digg its place.  However, its user base was at no time even comparable to Google’s user-base, neither was it intended to.  In fact, Google search benefited from Digg’s service in its quest to deliver the most relevant content as result to search queries.

Facebook on the other hand has emerged as an adversary of Google, and the latter has not only acknowledged it but has also tried to counter it. Yet they are not on the same level, the very natures of the either services are a generation apart, Google is the search engine giant, Facebook a social networking behemoth. I  liken using search engines to looking up dictionary or directory whereas social media is like newspaper or magazine.  However, currently there is not enough filtered,categorised data to make really make social media be seen as we see newspapers today.

Facebook Like button was meant to add any content on web to already existing social networks of users,the incentive  is addition of value to a user’s social graph. Google intends to use its profiles service as the incentive but asking users to update their Google Profiles after introducing +1 button is like asking the tail to wag the dog ! Of course, Google can compile information from  its services like Gmail contacts, Buzz, Orkut,Latitude but it would be called analytics and involve gathering user’s personal information and using it to deliver more relevant SERPs and Ads. But then that may raise privacy issues and more importantly it would in no way be “social”. At this point it may be prudent to ask why should “social” be such a big deal ?

Is there a big difference in the influence that my Gmail contacts have over me and the influence of my Facebook and Twitter friends have ?

Speaking for myself, most of my Gmail contacts are people I knew beforehand . They include my family members, friends, people I am in close proximity with in the physical world ( connected by chance not choice), their preferences,likes,dislikes had no role in me adding them to my contact list. On Facebook and Twitter it is different, apart from the usual contacts, most friends I have made on these networks are people who share the same interests,personality traits,thoughts as mine or people I look up to.  Take Mashable for instance,I am likely to value what it has to say on social media much more than what my web 2.0 savvy cousin has to say.

Coming back to the point, lacking an  incentive +1 button may not work out as a competitor to Facebook Like button. Ironically, the Mashable’s first article on the feature  Google’s Answer to the Facebook “Like” Button: The “+1” has been tweeted 4611 times, Liked by 3219 people but has only 93 +1′s ! Now, may be the people weren’t aware of this feature which is why it got so few hits. So I checked out the latest post and found that it has been tweeted 1582 times and had 380 Likes as opposed to 27 +1‘s. Interestingly, if you closely look at  TechCrunch articles, you can observe that after the announcement the number of +1 got for each article seems to have been declining with time which suggests that the readers may have lost enthusiasm gradually.

But it is not just the prospect of failure that use of +1 indicates, there is also the threat of the move back-firing and hitting Google where it hurts the most- the SERPs.  Facebook has the advantage of  having banished anonymity from its ecosystem,in fact its official policy that a user has to agree to when creating an account prohibits the user from providing false information. For practical purposes too, it is very difficult to maintain multiple accounts. Google on the other hand has no such restrictions, as a matter of fact, last year it introduced a feature to allow the user to  sign-in to multiple accounts in the same browser session. Most likely, this feature may not be available with +1 but creating even dozens of Google accounts and logging in from different IPs is not such a big deal.

So +1 may open the floodgates for spammers and black hat SEOs, very much similar to the large scale spamming  that Digg faced forcing it to reinvent itself and add several social networking features. In fact, if a counter-spam mechanism has not been built in, it could adversely affect the search results which is the foundation upon which the giant edifice called Google stands.  What I find confounding is why Google chose to release +1 button in the period between the launch of  its new PageRank system Panda 1.0 and Panda 2.0, which also accompanies more than usual tweaking of its algorithms and has stirred up a storm with many sites suddenly seeing their traffic plummet. Impact of Panda is something that deserves a separate post. What I am curious about is what the impact of +1 would be in this scenario ,is there more than meets the eye. Would Google’s resolve to penetrate social web affect its search capability , its core competence ?

Update

Just a few hours back after publishing this post which clearly takes a critical view of Google’s social web efforts, I noticed  the bar on top of my iGoogle page go black and sleek and the web buzzing with Google latest attempt to dethrone Facebook – Google+
Check out TechCrunch post on Google+ The introduction of +1 makes much sense now. For the record, my post had ended with a question mark,too many things were/are going on at Google at the same time to understand them in isolation. Though Google+ is being rolled out in a gradual manner, giving access to a limited number of users with no fixed timetable (remember Wave ? ). I must admit that this products seems to be much better then one could expect from Google but if can take on Facebook is a matter of debate (and time). And for me, another post

Google+ not only links togather all existing services, it also unleashes new applications such as Circles (group contacts into categories), Hangout (Find new friends in friends of friends through group video chats, virtual tweet-up) , Instant Photo (photos,videos from phone uploaded automatically), Sparks (app that fetches blog posts,videos etc of keywords you specify and stores them for  leisure ), Huddle (group chats).  The interface seems to resemble that of FriendFeed and a bit of Wave. So that’s it for now, you can check it out interactive introduction here and also submit your email  address if you are lucky enough to not get 404 error

So has Google finally found the weapon which can help it regain its position and more, or will this end up as yet another blooper ? What do you think  ?

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90% of innovation in automobile industry is driven by electronics and software according to IEEE New York Monitor. It is not surprising to find that all leading software giant,IBM, Microsoft,Google and Cisco have plunged headlong into the automotive sector. The major development seems to be centered around the concept of ECS – Electronics and Control Software to make commutation less hazardous and free of traffic snarls. Although GPS-based navigation systems,smartphone apps with real-time traffic updates are already in use,traffic congestion haven’t decreased. In fact, a study reports that an average American spent 34 hours in traffic,costing $808 in 2009, the total loss caused by gridlock was placed at $115 billion!

Although the study cited above was conducted in the USA,the finding can be related to other countries too,which explains why automobile companies are going for complex software to make cars safer and more efficient. Automobiles that can be managed with the help of smartphone apps (such as Chevrolet Volt whose energy level can be monitored by a smartphone app ) are already in use. Microsoft and Toyota are collaborating to network Toyota cars with Microft’s Azure cloud computing platform to bring telecommunications and GPS data, multimedia content and battery management capabilities. If features like streaming music and infotainment in general are introduced, can social networking be far ? Especially after the success of location-based social apps like Foursquare and Latitude which are really helpful when you are in a new city and chances are, when you are entering a new city, you would be in your own car. Apps that quickly find your places of interest or locate your friends and create best routes to reach them would be cool.

As a matter of fact, Ford did test run a tweeting car, a Ford Fiesta with cloud connectivity to explore how car safety and efficiency can be enhanced with cloud connectivity. The cloud-based car apps on a road trip labeled “American Journey 2.0 was able to to tweet, use Foursquare to locate nearby restaurants, gas stations and parks and even auto-blog (pun strongly intended).

Audi Autonomous TTS LA

However the latest frontier is that of vehicular communication or cars that “talk” to each other and with the grid and autonomous/ semi-autonomous cars. Many automobile companies are at various stages, developing these “autonomous cars”. German researchers have developed a car that can be controlled by thought while Virginia University students have developed a car that the blind can drive. Audi show cased its autonomous vehicle technology by letting its robotic car TTS successfuly complete a race to a peak through a rough terrain and of course, without a driver at the wheels.Volvo’s S60have been part of the first successful road train or platooning setup where the semi-autonomous cars have been programmed to follow the lead car by monitoring its speed,direction and distance.  Google’s autonomous cars that use artificial intelligence software to mimic human behavior have accumulated 14000 miles and are some of the best examples self-driving cars.

But large scale implementation seems more likely to be  on the lines of the Ford model that uses wi-fi signals to talk with other cars and has shown crash avoidance system using wi-fi signals,emitted 10 times a second and GPS data to communicate with the other car 900 feet away. In contrast to the current crash avoidance systems that use radar and require a a straight line to detect hazards,wi-fi and GPS mechanism provide a 360-degree visibility and are hence considerably advanced.  With the ability to communicate with other vehicles as well as  surrounding infrastructure, these “intelligent cars” can make commutation far more safer and efficient by sharing real-time data on traffic,speed,weather condition etc.  In fact the US Department  of  Transportation believes that that vehicle-to-vehicle communication has “potential to save a lot of lives” and has launched the Connected Vehicle Technology Challenge.

Of course, every new technology brings with it, its scope of being misused or exploited. How well the security measures are implemented would be crucial not just from the individual/ owner’s perspective but  from the social perspective also. Last year we saw attack on real time systems in the form of the worm called Stuxnet. One of the most sophisticated cyber-attacks in the history of computing, the Stuxnet worm was successful in sabotaging one of Iran’s nuclear plants and was one of the first instances of such a sophisticated  attack targeting industrial software. Though not identical, parallels can be drawn between the systems on the role software plays in both and the damage that can be caused by subverting it.  Apart from that, there are also threats of rogue hackers breaking into networks and causing havoc. In March 2010, more than 100 of drivers found their cars unusable or honking after a disgruntled former employee thought of taking revenge by abusing the web-based vehicle-immobilization system normally used to get the attention of consumers delinquent in their auto payments.  This was just an example, a terrorist or a psychopath is unlikely to be contented with that, the likely scenario is nightmarish.

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Sidejacking, a technique of hijacking web sessions of other users in the network, has suddenly gained much attention on the Internet, thanks to a new Firefox extension Firesheep.

In a sidejacking session, the attacker sniffs data packets of the transactions over the network and steals cookie which the attacker can then use to impersonate the victim on the site the user is currently logged in. Even if they have encrypted login pages, unsecured HTTP sites use cookies to identify you during the entire session and this is what the attacker exploits. An attacker with certain tools can steal the cookie during transaction and use it to make the server treat the hijacker as the legitimate user. This vulnerability has existed since a long time but exploiting it was never so easy nor was it as alarming.

Firesheep, a Firefox extension released last week makes sidejacking easier than logging into your own account !!! All a user needs to do is install it in Firefox, the interface appears as a sidebar with a button labelled ”Start Capturing” In the capture mode, Firesheep monitors network traffic and when another user in the network logins to sites which Firesheep knows to be insecure such as Gmail, Facebook,Twitter,  the user’s name and display picture is shown in the sidebar. Double-clicking on the picture logs you into the particular site and into the account of the targeted user. In case, the targeted site is Facebook and the user is John Doe, the attacker is also logged in as John Doe which gives her/him control over the account that the legitimate user has.  It is alarming to not that in the first day, more than a hundred thousands downloads. Facebook,Twitter and Gmail have come to play in all spheres of our lives,just anybody using a particular tool, gaining complete control over our accounts is a nightmarish thought!

However, not everyone of us is at risk,not from Firesheep at least. This tool is intended to work on insecure open WiFi connection which is becoming very common in cafes,airports, campuses etc. So, when connecting to WiFi that are not password protected, we should make sure that we are using HTTPS protocol rather than HTTP protocol which sidejacking tools like Firesheep exploits. TechCrunch explains in detail how to prevent Firesheep from hijacking your web session.

Author- Danish Ahmed

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Microsoft chief software architect, Ray Ozzie is retiring from the company, Steve Ballmer announced. He has been one of the key visionaries and high profile leader since 5+ years at Micosoft. The role of chief software architect was created for Bill Gates, after his exit, Ozzie came to acquire covetous position. Now as Ozzie quits,  Ballmer says Microsoft will not look for a replacement and would instead eliminate the job itself.

And by the way, he has no further job plans at this time, according to CNN Money

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