Four short links: 18 January 2010

Google Wave Uses, Open Data Reddit, Crypto Flaw, and Foursquare for Good

  1. On How Google Wave Surprisingly Changed My Life — mandated in his small company that non-critical emails be turned into waves instead. Saw: more resolutions to arguments, less rehash of old territory, conversation gained structure and could be referred to afterwards, remote employees able to participate even when timezones prevented real-time. I’ve been looking for the use case that says “this is what Google Wave is really good for”, and this is a great start. Note: small # of people, and in a company, so critical mass issue easily overcome.
  2. Open Data and APIs on Reddit — a new subreddit created just for Open Data and APIs.
  3. Smart Meter Crypto Flaw Worse Than Thought — poor seeding of the pseudorandom number generator in various chipsets, including those heavily used in embedded networked applications such as smart meters, means those devices are trivially insecure. (via Hacker News)
  4. Foursquare is Changing Our World (Mashable) — Foursquare was perhaps the first to change our day and night life experiences into a social competition to essentially answer the question, “who has the most interesting life?” In fact, one key side effect of playing the game is that it inspires users to lead more active and interesting social lives. While this may all sound superficial and silly, the implications of social location gaming are quite significant. One of the many reasons that O’Reilly invested in Foursquare–glad to see someone noticing. (via timo on Delicious)
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