Software application development
This blog is intended to provoke discussion and exchange between like minded software application developers, engineers, architects, project managers - and keen hobbyists too.
Sunday 30 September 2007, 4:08 PM
Glorious, Glorious Spam
Sniffing around for a topic of interest this weekend I came upon an e-mail informing me that Network Testing Labs (hang on a moment, I’ll come back to these guys) has found that in head-to-head testing, McAfee's single-appliance Secure Internet Gateway is eight times more effective at blocking malicious web sites, six times more effective at blocking spam and more than four times more effective at blocking malware than a combination of Barracuda Spam Firewall and Web Filter Appliances.
So these lab boffins looked for the ability to identify and block malware such as viruses, spam, phishing attempts, keystroke loggers, browser hijackers, adware, rootkits, dialers, data miners and Trojans.
The labs collected a suite of 200 malware samples and moved the samples to an isolated network designed to simulate the Internet. McAfee’s products blocked 198 instances of malware and let two pass undetected. In contrast, the Barracuda products blocked 190 instances of malware and let 10 pass undetected.
Now then, Network Testing Labs performs independent (it says here) technology research and product evaluations. Personally I’ve never heard of them and I was unable to research them on the web as they are quoted by so many sources that have benefited from positive “independent” reviews that I could not find their home page. Makes you wonder doesn’t it?
…and another thing, if they can be specific enough to gauge a security gateway as exactly eight or six times more effective than some other solution – how can they use a “simulated” environment to produce these results? This is like using a bathtub to simulate the ocean’s tidal movements isn’t it? The gargantuan size of the web itself means that we can never truly “simulate” it, surely now.
Wednesday 26 September 2007, 5:30 PM
The great space race
Rumours abound in technology circles this month that facebook is Beta trialling an online storage facility. Although there has been talk of this open Beta service being free, the company has declined to comment on an extended official level.
If the rumours prove to be true, given the technology’s early stage of development it is widely recommended that users back up their data on a secondary trusted source.
This whole hullabaloo comes at a time when Microsoft is offering a variety of ‘spaces’ for file sharing, photos and suchlike as part of its Windows LIVE portal. Not to forget Google Documents and Flickr for file sharing of course.
With so much of this virtual storage being free, you have to stand back and ask what the business model must look like for the companies pushing these innovations. Will they be reliant on online advertising or some other revenue stream if the service delivered to the users themselves is provided without cost?
Even if my Safari browser won’t support some of these new offerings, it’s clear that the space race continues to run apace.
Tuesday 25 September 2007, 1:48 PM
Is follow-the-sun all good news?
A good many of us regularly work with contacts in every corner of the world and are constantly pursued by the new ‘follow the sun’ attitude to global 24-hour contact. Personally, working left to right (so to speak) I am regularly connected to Jerry in Seattle, Mike in Ohio, Terry-Lynn in Baltimore. I then connect to my fellow Brits and other Europeans. After that it’s Bashar in Dubai, James in Hong-Kong and finally the guys I know over in Sydney before finally rounding up with Tony in Tasmania. Actually, they wake up in reverse order to that don’t they – but you get the point.
On paper, we’re supposed to be able to “leverage” (sorry, that slipped in) this global network and all work together to create a sum greater than the parts. New collaborative workgroup tools enable us to work in new virtual worlds at any time of day anywhere in the world. Online document sharing is out there on Google and workers everywhere are quite used to the new ‘always-on’ mantra that we must all chant.
But is it all good news I wonder? I asked my pal in Tasmania, Tony Stevenson, from MKD Software whether he found his remote location and time zone challenge a good thing or a bad thing.
“Personally I'm a strong believer in developing the art of 'time lag' communication,” said Tony. “Of course this means that you send off an email at 5 pm your time, it instantly arrives (or as close to instantly as possible) on the recipient's computer at 2 am their time (or whatever time it is in their time zone) and then you wait for a reasonable 'time lag' period to elapse before you expect a reply. I like this as it gives me time to think about what I'm going to say when they eventually get back to me!”
Of course we’re able to keep constantly connected as a result of the wide proliferation of broadband connectivity – a reality compounded by the plethora of handsets such as the BlackBerry that keep those of us with cyber-dependency happily satiated.
So with that in mind – I asked the RIM guys exactly what they thought. "Advancements in mobile technology now mean people have greater freedom of choice as to when and where they want to work. Users can also maximise productivity during fixed office hours giving them more free time to enjoy life outside of the office. Furthermore, it's not just about staying connected via phone or email. Mobile applications from CRM and SAP, to cameras and fitness calculators are helping people to make the most out of their work and personal lives, wherever they are," said Tyler Lessard, Director of ISV Alliances, RIM.
So is follow-the-sun all good news? For the most part it has to be, just don’t expect any sleep.
Sunday 23 September 2007, 2:39 PM
How to check up on your ISP
I’m sure most of us here in the UK have worked out that 5pm in Britain is the same as 9am in Silicon Valley and that’s why the web sometimes just seems to plod along at that chosen hour. Millions of British school kids have started to play online games at the same time as the Californians have barely blown the foam off of their iced-latte cappuccino mocha wotnots and check their e-mail.
OK, so most of us know that – why then, do I never hear about suggestions for a solution to this situation? If there are intelligent global load balancing theories, then I’m sorry, but I’ve missed them.
This predicament was brought home to me this week as my TalkTalk ISP service engineer Adrian (his name as well as mine) and I were playing around with the decibel level down my local line to try and improve my broadband connection. We got talking about it and he pointed me to a great site to test your connection speed called http://speedtest.net/ - lo and behold, my eight megabyte broadband was hovering somewhere around the 2.5 mark. To his credit, Adrian managed to up it to 3.6 and I was a happy customer.
I asked a contact at Microsoft about this and he (Ian Moulster, Product Manager for .NET Platform, Developer & Platform Evangelism) said, “There are plenty of the ‘test your connection speed’ sites and they can be a useful way to see what kind of speed you actually get compared to the advertised speed. Of course, there are many factors that can affect connection speed – but what speed-test sites can't really tell you is where the bottlenecks are.”
“If you're having trouble with a specific site you can try a tracert: spin up a ‘cmd’ window and type ‘tracert’ followed by the URL of the web site you're trying to contact eg "tracert www.bbc.co.uk". You'll get a blow-by-blow list of the servers being negotiated and the amount of time spent getting through each, from your machine to the web site you're trying to contact which can sometimes point to specific delays. Try it for a UK-hosted site vs a US-hosted one for example,” added Moulster.
It's also interesting just to see how many servers your information packet goes through on it's way to the destination. This is the reason you should never send confidential information unencrypted across the net, whether by email or a web page. You never know where that information might pass through on its way to the destination.
This is clearly a problem here in the UK, back in August the BBC.co.uk web site reported on a Which? study on this very topic saying, “There is a huge gap between advertised broadband speeds and the actual speeds users can achieve, research has shown. A survey by consumer group Which? found that broadband packages promising speeds of up to 8Mbps (megabits per second) actually achieved far less. Tests of 300 customers' net connections revealed that the average download speed they were getting was 2.7Mbps. Which? has called on regulator Ofcom and Trading Standards to launch a fresh investigation into UK broadband.”
So what point am I making here? Maybe I’m saying that the web is far from perfect yet and there’s still so much to be done. Maybe I’m just letting off steam. Ah yes, well, that’s what a tech blog is for now and again after all.
Thursday 20 September 2007, 8:26 PM
Public Sector Programming Prowess or Paralysis?
I have to admit that in a former life I spent a year working in a media publicity role with a division of the Department of Trade & Industry that shall remain nameless. Now, I could never be a civil servant so I have to admire what they do on the one hand. On the other hand, I have never in my life seen so many ‘tea and biscuits’ meetings hosted to discuss precisely nothing at all. It’s a different planet I tell you. It’s not so much a matter of, “Am I needed at this meeting?” But more of a, “Well, I’ve been invited and they do have those jammy ones.”
So with that ever so slightly cynical thought in mind, this week I met up with business analytics software company Applix to hear about their solution for Westminster City Council. I put my views to UK-based VP for Applix EMEA Martin Richmond-Coggan. He assured me that for the type of business analytics solutions his company is proffering, councils like Westminster are seeing a three month turn around time – a time span that reflects and compares favourably with projects in the private sector.
The story is that in March 2007 eighteen initiatives to improve life in the heart of London were outlined to help form the ‘One City’ programme that aims to make Westminster the best governed city in the world by creating strong communities, supported by excellent council services. Westminster City Council brought in Applix’ integrated, one platform solution to unify Westminster’s disparate data and help underpin their ‘One City’ initiative
Although Cognos recently announced that it will acquire Applix for the tidy sum of US$339, Richmond-Coggan is bullish about the positive future prospects for Applix under the Cognos banner. Indeed, Rob Ashe, chief executive of Cognos, said that the deal represented "a terrific strategic fit" for the company.
So did the meeting change my mind and lift me out of my cynical dungeon? Answer: a bit. Westminster City Council is clearly pleased with the results of the first stage implementation so far, but it is still early days so they plan to review in three months and decide on extension plans.
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