December 16, 08 by Mr.Q
With the official release of version 1 of Google Chrome, Google’s browser is now ready for prime time after 14 weeks of being in beta. With the quick adoption rate, claimed to be over 10 million active users worldwide, comes the equally growing concern of user’s privacy. With each installion, the browser creates a unique identifier that can be used to tracker user’s browsing habits. This is nothing new if you’re one of those people that are currently using Google toolbar.
Chrome has been praised for its speediness and unique features, like the ability to run each tabs as separate process, so if it crashes, only that tab need to be restarted and not the whole browser like the majority of browsers out there.
Concerns about what Google Chrome does with user data already spawned SRWare Iron, a browser based on the Chromium source code that strips various features like error and crash reporting, as well as the unique user identifier assigned to each install. If you’d prefer to run Google’s version of the browser but are still concerned about your privacy, you can also download and run UnChrome. It’s a free application that checks to see if you’ve got Chrome installed and then replaces the unique ID assigned to you with a null value.
So now that you’re (relatively) safer, give Chrome a try, if you haven’t already, and see how it fairs against your current browser of choice.
January 05, 08 by Mr.Q
In a move that surprises noone, China is cracking down on video hosting websites. Under new regulation, effective Jan 31st, sites that provide video programming or allow users to upload video must have a permit and be either state-owned or state-controlled. Permits for video hosting sites will be subject to renewal every three years and operators who commit violations may be banned for up to 5 years.
China claims the new censorship is to control the country’s “social stability” and “reputation”. Words are Youtube has been blocked, and its chinese clones such as Youku and Tudou will be restricted soon, if not closed down completely. These new regularations are simpliar to the previous ones imposed on websites (Wikipedia is blocked since last year) and news portals. More regulations are likely to come as the communist country trying hard to plug the holes in the bucket that is the Internet.
December 02, 07 by Mr.Q
Anyone who ever run a website knows that searching for a good, available domain name to use is a time consuming process. This is compounded by the fact that the internet is now littered with countless, contentless sites. Their only purpose is simply to display ads and/or to resell it to someone else. While this act is still legal, it has crossed the line from virtual real estate investing into more of the form cybersquatting. To put it into perspective, let’s take an example.
You have an idea for a project (or a personal website) that you need a name for. It used to be that you think up a cool name first and then you can register a domain name for it (or a similar variation of it). However, it’s almost impossible nowaday to do that. Now, the process is reversed. First you have to secure a domain name before you can do anything else because, chances are, whatever you thought up is already taken. So, you took some time to search for the name. The one you wanted … nope, taken. Hmmm, how about this variation … nope … how about this one … no go. Through the process of trials and errors, you finally come to an available domain. Ok, it’s not what I wanted … but at least it’s available. Let’s try to see what else is still available. After some more time, you came back with a list of available names that you think is do-able. Since this is a name you will be using from now on, and the one you going to tell your friends about … you thought it’s a good idea to sleep on it … think it over alittle more … before picking one from the list. So, the next day (or serveral days later), you come back to register that domain. WTH (or WTF, if you preferred) … it’s been registered! It was still available yesterday, what happened? You quickly run a registrar check on the ’whois’ for that domain. It’s registered to some random registrar … and the date registered was …WTH (again) … yesterday??? Going to the site itself, you found out that it just has a bunch of ads, and on top of it is the line … This domain is for sale.
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