- TraceKit (GitHub) — stack traces for Javascript exceptions, in all major browsers.
- SCADA Manufacturer Starts Own Anti-Malware Project — perimeter protection only, so it doesn’t sound to my inexpert ears like the whole solution to SCADA vulnerability, but it at least shows that one SCADA manufacturer cares.
- Platform Competition in Two-Sided Markets (PDF) — The economic effects of multihoming are fascinating. (via Tim O’Reilly)
- Silicon Valley Straps on Pads (WSJ) — SF 49ers hiring tech people to do what Harper Reed did for Obama. Interestingly, the tech people are the ones who must see what can be done, though they’re slowly working on the rest of the org: [W]ith scouts “what we found is we have to push them to dream even more, because usually it’s like, ‘OK, we can do that for you,’ and it’s done overnight.” Now, he says, scouts are far less shy about seemingly impossible technological requests.
"platforms" entries
The software-enabled cars of the near-future (industrial Internet links)
Ford's OpenXC platform opens up real-time drivetrain data.
OpenXC (Ford Motor) — Ford has taken a significant step in turning its cars into platforms for innovative developers. OpenXC goes beyond the Ford Developer Program, which opens up audio and navigation features, and lets developers get their hands on drivetrain and auto-body data via the on-board diagnostic port. Once you’ve built the vehicle interface from open-source parts, you can use outside intelligence — code running on an Android device — to analyze vehicle data.
Of course, as outside software gets closer to the drivetrain, security becomes more important. OpenXC is read-only at the moment, and it promises “proper hardware isolation to ensure you can’t ‘brick’ your $20,000 investment in a car.”
Still, there are plenty of sophisticated data-machine tieups that developers could build with read-only access to the drivetrain: think of apps that help drivers get better fuel economy by changing their acceleration or, eventually, apps that optimize battery cycles in electric vehicles.
Drivers with Full Hands Get a Backup: The Car (New York Times) — John Markoff takes a look at automatic driver aides — tools like dynamic cruise control and collision-avoidance warnings that represent something of a middle ground between driverless cars and completely manual vehicles. Some features like these have been around for years, many of them using ultrasonic proximity sensors. But some of these are special, and illustrative of an important element of the industrial Internet: they rely on computer vision like Google’s driverless car. Software is taking over some kinds of machine intelligence that had previously resided in specialized hardware, and it’s creating new kinds of intelligence that hadn’t existed in cars at all. Read more…
Four short links: 17 December 2012
Javascript Traces, SCADA Security, Platform Economics, and Sport Tech
Four short links: 12 October 2011
Google Platforms, Securing Software, Interactive Design, and Building Proverbs
- Steve Yegge’s Google Platforms Rant — epic. Read it. (updated with new link)
- Guidelines for Securing Open Source Software (EFF) — advice from the team that audited some commonly-used open source libraries. Avoid giving the user options that could compromise security, in the form of modes, dialogs, preferences, or tweaks of any sort. As security expert Ian Grigg puts it, there is “only one Mode, and it is Secure.” Ask yourself if that checkbox to toggle secure connections is really necessary? When would a user really want to weaken security? To the extent you must allow such user preferences, make sure that the default is always secure. (via BoingBoing)
- Ladder of Abstraction — a visual and interactive exploration of design that will delight as well as inform. (via Sacha Judd)
- On “Build It And They Will Come” — I wasn’t saying “build it and they will come”—I was saying “don’t build it and they can’t come”. Wonderfully captures the idea that success can’t be guaranteed, but failure is easy to ensure. (via Ed Yong)
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Which social gaming companies are hiring
Disney's announced purchase of Mountain View gaming startup Playdom, follows on the heels of EA's purchase of London-based Playfish last November. Based on active users, Zynga remains by far the biggest online social gaming company. But what other independent companies are growing? To see which companies are expanding, I used our data warehouse of online job postings to detect recent hiring.
Where Facebook's half a billion users reside
Facebook announced that they now reach 500 million active users (just five and half years after launching). But where do these half a billion users reside? Refreshing my post from February, the share of users from Asia continues to rise and now stands at 17% of all Facebook users. Over the past 12 weeks, Facebook added over a million active users in fourteen countries, including 5 in Asia and all three members of NAFTA.
Google's New Marketplace Has over a Thousand Apps
One week into its public launch, the Google Apps Marketplace has just under 1,500 (enterprise) apps. Combined with Salesfore.com’s app exchange (also with over a thousand apps), enterprises interested in moving to cloud apps have an increasing number of software tools to choose from.
1 in 4 Facebook Users Come From Asia or the Middle East
Asia’s share of the more than 400 million active Facebook users recently surged past 15%. With a market penetration of 1.7% in Asia and Africa, the company has barely scratched the surface in both regions. While the company continued to add users in Southeast Asia, there were an additional 2.3 million users from South Asia over the past 12 weeks. In fact according to Alexa, Facebook has already overtaken Orkut in India.
Apps for Army Launches – The Hybrid Enterprise?
The Army launches Apps for Army. Contest or harbinger of the hybrid enterprise that combines planning and emergence under one roof? Apps for Army looks to uncork the Army's cognitive surplus and let soldiers start solving their own problems in code without the personal risk of going off reservation to do it.
Check Mate: Apple's iPad and Google's Next Move
There is an axiom that the biggest game-changers often result from ideas that, at first blush, seem easy to dismiss. So it goes with yesterday’s launch of the iPad, Apple’s entry into what they call the ‘third category’ of device — the middle ground that exists between smartphone and laptop. Why is the iPad (seemingly) so easy to dismiss? Well, for one, it is an evolutionary device when conventional wisdom suggests that it needs to be a revolutionary device to find a wedge into a new market. In this instance, conventional wisdom is just plain off base.
The Google Android Rollout: Windows or Waterloo?
Watching Google's rollout of Android to date, including this week's announcements around the Google-branded, HTC built, Nexus One phone, I am left with two conflicting thoughts. Is it the beginning of their assent into Windows-like dominance or the fortnight of their 'Waterloo' moment?