Firefox 6 is here, now what. Mozilla’s rapid release development cycle for Firefox is getting a bit out of hand as it seems that every 6-8 weeks they release a new full version of their browser which causes difficulties in enterprises. Even their Rapid Release Calendar looks insane.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for keeping up with security and performance bugs and making their browser (and all other software) as stable and secure as possible, but when it causes difficulties for businesses to test their applications and services then it makes me wonder whether Firefox is enterprise ready. I’m still in favor of sticking with it, but Chrome is looking better each day.

On the other hand, according to Mozilla’s release notes Firefox 6 is faster (especially with their Panorama feature); address bar now highlights the domain of the website you’re visiting (feature that Chrome and IE9 have had for some time) and is more secure. One of the new security features allows users to configure website permissions by typing about:permissions” on the address bar and then configure settings such as pop-ups, data storage, cookies, location sharing and passwords.

In short, improvements are great, but it looks as if the version numbers are slowly becoming meaningless while potential testing overhead is not taken into serious consideration.

Post from: Milos Topic

Firefox in the enterprise – is it ready and does it care?

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This past weekend my wife’s iPhone was stolen from a store in Secaucus, NJ. While in store, she placed it down to try on a pair of shoes and then moved an isle down to take a look at another item which was long enough for the phone to “disappear”. Once she realized that she was missing her phone it was too late. The phone was gone, it was nowhere in sight. We traced our steps back and looked everywhere, I called it several times, but it was nowhere to be heard either. Then I remembered that I installed Find My iPhone on both phones and have tried tracking it from my phone. After a couple of failed attempts to locate the lost (stolen?) iPhone it finally displayed on a map, it was somewhere in the parking lot. We ran out to try and get a better location when all of a sudden it started moving. Its next stop was a Walmart parking lot in and this time we were able to narrow it down to within a few parking spots. Unfortunately, several cars were leaving that area as we arrived and the phone was on the move once again. Here’s where the fun really begins.

After a brief detour to fill my car’s gas tank and to drop my wife off to enjoy a sunny day by the pool (no sense in both of us spending time on this potentially useless chase) I was back on the trail of the stolen iPhone. Now, the app was showing it to be at a church’s parking lot in Fairview where it actually stayed for quite a while (at least it felt that way considering I was refreshing the screen every 30 seconds). This was good news as it gave me time to catch up, but as I was within a few blocks of that location, it started moving again – this time, heading back down towards Route 3. If you are familiar with that area (Fairview and North Bergen) you know that quite a few streets are one way which made my tracking a bit more difficult, but I finally caught up to my “blinking dot” in Union City, NJ.

License plate is obscured to protect the not-so-innocent

At a particular intersection, the app was showing the phone right in front of me (and as I remembered seeing this Volvo leaving Walmart’s parking lot) it all made perfect sense – I found him. The driver (who I also recognized from Secaucus) fed a parking meter and walked into a bar. So did I…

Bar where we had our chat

After a brief conversation (where he tried to come off as a good Samaritan) he was very apologetic and accommodating in returning the phone to me. It was in the trunk of his car under a bunch of towels and blankets – luckily none of them could interfere with the GPS signal.

iPhone recovered!

While the search lasted a bit longer, the actual conversation was very quick. Within a couple of minutes of arriving at the GPS location I had my wife’s phone back. All in all, a very happy ending to this escapade (for me at least).

In short: If you own an iPhone (or any other iOS device) make sure you install this app now. As you can see, it can be very useful in getting your stuff back.

Approximate path traveled by the iPhone - Secaucus to Fairview to Union City (NJ)

Find My iPhone app (along with Google Maps app) was instrumental in recovering the stolen iPhone, but I would like to see it further developed to include the following:

• Real-time updates as the phone moves
• Show both devices on the map, my current location and the location of the device being tracked, then provide directions – similar to their (Google) Maps app

Post from: Milos Topic

How I tracked and recovered a stolen iPhone

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Geotagging and location based services are all the rage these days. While they are very useful at times, these features should not be taken for granted nor should they be enabled on all of your devices and applications. Certain parts of your life are meant to be private and they should remain that way. Geotagging every move online for all to see could pose serious security and safety concerns.

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Geotagging your life online? Be careful.

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Flash is dead and here’s why. Last week, Adobe released Wallaby, a tool which converts Flash files into HTML5 to reach more (mobile) devices. When the creators of Flash are providing free tools to convert their proprietary format into an open, standards friendly alternative (HTML5) it’s safe to say that Adobe Flash is on its way out.

It all started with Apple refusing to allow them onto their iOS (used by iPhone and iPad) and this banishing of Flash is slowly propagating onto other platforms as well. HTML5 is taking over and if it was a movie character with a theme song I think that “Anything you can do I can do better; I can do anything better than you” would be a perfect fit. HTML5 is flexible, capable and reduces necessary “double development” for primary and mobile versions of websites since technically (for the most part) you can use the same code.

The web is meant to be open, collaborative and innovative which makes Flash past its useful life, while HTML5 along with several other languages continue to propagate across internet at incredible speed.

By the way, if you know who made the clever photo above please let me know so that I can properly credit them.

Post from: Milos Topic

Flash is dead, HTML5 considered prime suspect

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Most technology services used at work, school, or home are looked at by users as commodity services, similar to water and electricity, they are simply expected to be available and work properly. When it comes to network; access to websites, chat services, e-mail (from both computers and smartphones – iPhone, Android, Windows based phones…) along with many other services are simply expected to work. People outside Information Technology (and sadly a few who are part of it) don’t understand or care, nor should they, how all these things work.

On the other hand, what happens when these services fail, when you can’t go online, or your computer doesn’t print; or even worse, you deleted a file by accident/your computer is constantly crashing and is infected with some type of malware. Who do you turn to and how well do they perform? Is your local team overworked or maybe they don’t work hard enough? Are they knowledgeable and responsive; can they help you with other non-standard questions, concerns and ideas? How helpful is your IT team, are they aware of your needs or are they more of a “dictatorship” (as the graphic above suggests) when it comes to what can be used and how? How responsive are they to your technical issues?

I’m always interested in streamlining and improving the things we do and support every day while at the same time finding additional resources to get involved into bringing new and interesting services to our clients. It is very important for IT staff to be valuable and contribute to the overall goals or otherwise they should be replaced, even outsourced*. If you work with a tech team of any kind (work, school, home…) please take a few minutes of your time to share what your experience has been and how they could improve.

* What can or should be outsourced and where (local vs. offshore) is a topic worthy of separate discussion at great length.

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How reliable and responsive is your local IT team

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About a week ago I noticed (as I’m sure many of you did) a new feature of Google Search, Social Search (BETA). It basically leverages your Google Profile and the information you provided to expand your search into online posts of those you consider friends, followers, etc. While this is another great advancement coming from Google inline toward the “ultimate” goal of semantic search this could potentially cause privacy concerns for some.

Let’s say you have posted an article and didn’t share it with your Twitter followers (for any number of valid reasons), this new search feature could find it and make it available to them anyway. What if you don’t want this to happen? Well, segregating online content is becoming increasingly difficult (but not impossible thanks to Robots.txt and a few other techniques) due to search engines so it is important to remember that once you post something online it’s there for ALL to find and see.

Overall, I think that unifying search across all of your social networks will be a positive experience for most, but keep in mind that “Results from your social circle” will most likely include EVERYTHING you post online under one of your online identities/profiles.

Once online, always online (and now indexed and nicely organized as well)

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Google social search

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Internet is filled with dozens of online backup/storage services which provide different levels of functionality, reliability, security and space to users. In order to cut through some of this clutter here are four online services that I have used and found to be reliable, functional and secure.

While putting this short list together I focused on three requirements:

1. services had to provide a FREE option
2. even that free option needed to be SECURE*
3. and it should be available to both major OS platforms, Windows and Mac

While I didn’t focus on their support for mobile clients and saw those options as bonus features most of these services also work on mobile platforms (some with native apps) such as Android, Blackberry and iOS.

So without getting into details on what I like (or don’t) about each of these services here they are (in alphabetical order):

• Dropbox 2 GB free
• Mozy 2 GB free
• SkyDrive 25 GB free
• SugarSync 5 GB free

If you know of other FREE and SECURE online backup solutions please leave a comment and share your thoughts.

* While security is always questionable and could be discussed at great lengths, these services provide default encryption to all users which is a step in the right direction.

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4 FREE and SECURE online backup services

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This past weekend a friend of mine got engaged, and while immediate families were informed of these great news that same day (hour?) the rest of us were finding out gradually over the past couple of days. However, the notification to the masses happened today as she changed her Facebook relationship status to engaged. Almost immediately the news spread like wildfire across the internet, across the world. People were calling, texting, e-mailing her within minutes of that status change. It is wild to even think how powerful the social networking sites are in spreading the word; their impact is instantaneous for better or worse. The moment you announce something it becomes available to dozens, hundreds, thousands,…of people across the world who happen to find you “interesting” in one way or another.

For the sake of pure comparison of the advancement of technology and services, let’s go “back in time” some 20 years to 1991 (if you really think about it, this wasn’t that long ago). Imagine if this same event occurred in 1991, how would you find out about it if you lived in another state, country, on another continent? 20 years ago there were no online social networking sites, no Facebook, no Twitter, no [insert your site of choice]…average person had no online social networking concept. In 1991 masses were first introduced to the web browser a piece of software we all use today without giving it much thought. That same year, Internet reached 1 million users which has grown to close to 2 billion today (more on Internet 2010 in numbers). It’s only been 20 years and look were we are today and try to imagine where we will be in another two decades, in 2031 (maybe we will finally see those flying cars and jet-packs). Possibilities are endless.

Until then we get to use and enjoy what’s available to us today: a simple selection from a drop down menu, clicking on a “save” button which informs everyone and frees up time which can be used to look at that ring again and begin planning the wedding. Amazing!

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Social networking travels fast

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Recently we have witnessed an amazing turn of events for a man who was homeless and now has a job and a house all thanks to his amazing voice, good people and the power of internet.

While this is the latest example which left a powerful impression on me, it is not the only one where technology (alongside good people) helped spread the word quickly and eventually provided assistance to those in need. I love this particular story, it made me smile, made me feel good about people and their compassion for a fellow human in need. Stories such as this one about Ted Williams are fairly rare, but I hope that will change considering that people helping each other should be the norm, not the exception.

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The power of internet

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Finding that perfect balance between business and technology can be a challenging process. Aligning them together where they are useful to one another, productive and most of all on the same page has proven to be the key to success for many organizations. It’s simple, in order to maximize return on technology investments, organizations must align IT decisions with strategic business goals.

Now, we have all heard that all old, outdated and inaccurate statement that Information Technology (IT) is a cost center. While at times, this certainly can be the case, I would like to respectfully disagree and here’s why. Irrespective of the business/industry you are in, today, you need technology to be more productive, responsive, available and well informed and as such IT is enabling and helping people do their jobs better. Disagree? If so, imagine how productive would your work day be without technology?

Having been in IT for over a decade I have seen both sides of this negative, adversarial environment where business and IT are competing instead of collaborating towards a common goal, organizational success. To be fair, most IT personnel is of a unique sort (I know, I’m one of them) and at times we transgress our responsibilities and by doing so impose on the business side and their goals and objectives. This is absolutely the wrong way to go about it (unless you are an IT company of course) as IT employees don’t have the full grasp and understanding of business objectives and strategic plans. Conversely, I attended meetings where business executives have enthusiastically stated that, “business* will drive technology as that’s the only way it makes sense.”

NO! That’s the not the solution either. Business and technology need to be partners, not competitors or in subservient positions to one another. They need to work collaboratively early in the process (or project) to benefit from each other’s strengths while at the same time minimizing weakness that both sides certainly have. Us vs. them approach needs to end and we need to realize that we are all in this together and that the difference between success and failure of our company, organization, project or idea is directly correlated to how well we work together.

* replace business with a more applicable term (revenue, ROI, market, education, pedagogy, research agenda…I heard them all).

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Business & technology are partners, not competitors

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