Firstly Happy new year!

Sorry it’s been a while, however I’ve been busy writing code for a new project called TwitterBrite. It’s a twitter client for windows, that similar to applications like hootsuite allows users to post RSS feeds to twitter and search it for useful people to follow, however it solves one of the major drawbacks I see with hootsuite, that of security.

Hootsuite is a purely web based application, if something goes wrong with it (for example it starts re-posting old RSS entries, or spamming your followers with direct messages) their is nothing you can do about it, sure you can login and terminate your account, but as happened to a couple of services last year, what if you can’t login?

Control is I believe one of the biggest stumbling blocks for company wishing to access the power of social media, the what if something goes wrong argument.

Anyway as part of this project, I’ve been working on a .net based DLL that provides an interface for the Bit.ly URL shorten (which TwitterBrite will use) you can download it and a, hopefully useful, read me file from us here.

P.S. The DLL isn’t open source, however if you want the code, drop me a line. If you’re a business and want to keep it close source, I’m willing to sell it, providing I get a free life time upgrade/resell permissions for my products, if you’re interested in making it open source, that fine as well, just as long as you can show your going to move the interface forward.

It’s oh-so enticing: you find a copy of a brand new game like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 on a pirate site and the temptation to download it is too strong.

Well, that temptation may have cost up to 1 million users of Microsoft’s Xbox Live the ability to use that service. According to a report in InformationWeek, Microsoft has banned as many as a million players from Xbox Live for altering their consoles in order to play pirated versions of games.

This week, Activision’s new Call of Duty was released, and InformationWeek speculated that because pirated versions of the game appeared on various sharing sites in advance of the release, the game’s developer may have exhorted Microsoft to enact the bans.

“Xbox 360 consoles are equipped with digital rights management technologies designed to detect pirated software,” InformationWeek wrote, “but some players have successfully ‘modded,’ or modified, their machines to circumvent DRM protections.”

Even if someone has been banned, their Xbox will still play offline games, InformationWeek said. But it’s not at all clear if the bans are permanent or if Microsoft will allow those who have been booted from Xbox Live to return at some point down the line.

In a statement Microsoft said: its “commitment to combat piracy and support safer and more secure gameplay for the more than 20 million members of the Xbox Live community remains a top priority. All consumers should know that piracy is illegal and modifying their Xbox 360 console violates the Xbox Live terms of use, will void their warranty and result in a ban from Xbox Live. We can assure you that if an Xbox Live member follows the Xbox Live terms of use, purchased a retail copy of Modern Warfare 2 and played the game on an unmodified Xbox 360, no action will be taken.”

And on the Xbox support page, Xbox Live Director of Programming Larry Hryb, aka Major Nelson, has addressed some of the circumstances that could lead to a player’s being banned.

“Players who find their Gamertags banned from Xbox Live have wound up in that situation due to violations of the Xbox Live Terms of Use,” Major Nelson wrote.

“The Xbox Live team monitors players for not just cheating, but also for things like threats, racism, profanity, and just being an all around poor sport and ruining the game for others.

“When a Gamertag comes up as violating our policies for online behavior, the person who owns that Gamertag is punished by being banned from the service. Keep in mind, this isn’t just a ban on a particular game. This is a ban on the Xbox Live service as a whole, so you won’t be able to go online at all during your ban. Initially, you may be banned for a day, a week, or depending on severity, permanently! Kiss that $50 goodbye.”

From CNET

I’ve complained a number of times about the attitude of some web professionals towards throes who are stuck using IE6 (or 7 or for that matter 8). The convert or your a moron attitude, will always fail to win converts, especially when the people your calling morons have no choose about what browsers they are stuck using.

Thankfully people are starting to lesion and start thinking how throes people who are stuck using old out-of-date browsers can still access high performance websites like Google wave.

First their was the “Hay IT” campaign which still used the same bully boy tactics but at least was targeting the right people.

Now Google have released Chrome Frame a plug in for IE 6, 7 or 8 on the PC (If your using Linux or a Mac and are using IE… then maybe you are a moron… as your default browser will be better) that will allow you to experience the power of a standards complaint web browser without having to upgrade yours.

Chrome Frame won’t over write IE and the Chrome engine is only called if a special meta tag is found on the web page, and it’s unknown if throes IT departments who won’t allow users to use a good browser will allow people to install Chrome Frame, but at least it’s a step in the right direction.

It started as a joke, Microsoft has been banned from selling word… ha ha ha how we laughed, Word the cornerstone of Microsoft office, which is of courses the cornerstone of Microsoft non OS business, how can Microsoft be banned from selling word.

But it wasn’t a joke, Yesterday a court rules that M$ had just 60 days to stop selling word and pay some small Canadian company $240Million.

It appears Microsoft infringed some patent that this Canadian company had, something about saving documents as XML.

But of course we laughed, this type of thing happens all the time small companys try it on with bigger ones, hoping to cash in on some idea they never got round to doing anything with. Microsoft will appeal and it will all be sorted out.

Microsoft even said so themselves, “We are disappointed by the court’s ruling. We believe the evidence clearly demonstrated that we do not infringe and that the i4i patent is invalid. We will appeal the verdict,”

Then the bombshell that stopped us laughing

“We saw [the Canadian companies product] some time ago and met its creators. Word 11 will make it obsolete,” said Martin Sawicki, a member of Microsoft’s XML for Word development team, in an e-mail to a colleague. “It looks great for XP though,”

The product not only existed, and was making money, but Microsoft where aware of it. The e-mail may as well have said, “Don’t worry were Microsoft, we can screw over who we like”. It is not surprising then that the Judge ordered Microsoft to stop selling word (or as is likely to release a patch that will stop the functionality that falls under the patent, from working.)

this could be really disastrous for Microsoft. Do you want to open your .docx or .xlsx file you saved last week? Well sorry you’ll need to install OpenOffice to do so!

OK I stole the title, but it neatly sums up the communication problems that appear to plague any attempt to more the corporate world to the web. Fundamentally this issue comes down to one question.

Who control what happens, and why?

In the world of the web i.e. designers, developers, start-ups etc. The one using the application is paying the bills, I choose to use facebook and twitter, but not MySpace. However the corporate world is anything but that. Their your told (for the most part) what app to use, someone has picked the office package you use, the account package or the web browser, you may not like it, but you can choose. This leads, when the corporate world and web world collide, the web world to make unjustified assumptions about the corporate world. Surely you will use our brand X, it’s much better and cheaper than your current brand Y. Which of course it is, however the people we talk to tend not to be the right people to talk to, we talk to who we think has the power, the end-user.

MicroSoft figured this out sometime ago. They didn’t sell the best operating system, but they sold it to the right people.

Vs.

Which a consumer would you buy? Now as a manager, yep sorry, it true, Steve Ballmer wins every time. Why because look at all the wonderful thing you can get for free, even a program called “Terminal” (Did anyone ever use that for anything?). And what more your companies on a budget, and Windows is only $99. If your not a techie manager (and most arn’t and don’t care. Get used to that fact) then why would you choose anything other than windows?

Now fast forward a few years, to 2009, and two campaigns organized by the web world. The first is death to IE6 and the other is Google’s attempt to place it’s self as the new PIM, it’s Going Google campaing.

First Death to IE6.

The site it’s self asks you to install some code on your site re-directing users, or warning them at least, that IE6 is a rubbish browser, and they need t upgrade to use the site. It sounds reasonably, IE6 is a flawed browser and has a number of security holes that will never be fixed.

The most strict version of the warning displays the following dialog box and redirects the user to a web page asking them to upgrade their browser,

This of course works well for your average home user, however most users of IE6 are stuck on corporate machines, so place yourself in the shoes of a non-techie (yes again most are, learn to deal with it), who see this message and is then re-directed to a site asking them to do what they can’t do, i.e. upgrade their browser.

thankful most people are coming to terms with the fact that this tactic doesn’t work with the users who use IE6, and are stuck in the corporate world. However a new tactic has developed which is just as useless in the world of the corporation, and highlights the problem web people have with understanding the needs of the corporate world, and that is the “Hay IT” which has the same problems as the other bad example, Going Google.

The problem with both Hay IT and Going Google is, yet again, the web world doesn’t quite understand how the corporate world thinks. Both campings ask users to put pressure on the people making the decisions to change their way of working. However all thats likely to happen is both campings will see annoyed IT staff (who don’t have a say in what browser or PIM a company uses) react badly against both the products and those up-start users who presume to tell people how to do their job’s

In other words it’s likely to have a negative effect

However all is not bad for Google, their new software, I think by accident, said the magic words every sysadmin and corporate world IT guy loves to here. It was said by Stephani at the 09′ IO conference.

At one hour ten minutes, the magic phrase “If Peter and Milton made a privet reply that wave would never leave acme’s server closet.” was said. This may seam to the web world a small thing but the fact a business can own that the information, and ensure that data doesn’t leak out of their company, data which could lead to law suite etc. Is whats going to make Google wave a credible alternative to e-mail for the corporate world.