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Continuing in the vein of bringing new technology and functionality to its army of open-source users, today SourceForge is announcing implementation of OpenID. OpenID is an open-source single sign-on technology that allows an individual to jump between online accounts without re-entering a username and password each time. That’s handy. Even better, they’re doing it the right way: They’re starting by accepting OpenID log-ins, not providing them. This follows nicely in the spirit of the open-source community. Many big name companies have declared OpenID support, but often only as Identity Providers. Meaning, they’re happy to extend their user log-ins, but won’t accept OpenIDs created elsewhere. What’s open about that? (Google’s Blogger is a major exception.)

If there’s been one knock against them, it’s that their infrastructure is just average, not the latest-greatest. That may be changing. This past year they’ve added wikis and other functionality that helps with collaboration around projects. There’s also Marketplace, which allows you to buy and sell related products and services.

From the SourceForge.net Community Blog: “It’s bringing us back in touch with fresh Web (2.0) technology; as a decentralized open-source standard, it’s a perfect fit for us–it allows us to streamline more user interaction and participation with our site, and hopefully more for the whole OSS community.”

For more information, go to: http://alexandria.wiki.sourceforge.net/OpenID

A great many open-source projects and companies have started on SourceForge.net. There’s currently about 176,000 registered projects and 1.8 million registered users. Sure, not all of them are active or essential software, but if you want to build an open-source project, it can be a great place to get up and going. You may not go to SourceForge directly very often, but if you download open-source software, it’s often sitting on SourceForge servers.

In recent research published in Production and Operations Management, Deishin Lee (Harvard Business School) and Haim Mendelson (Stanford Graduate School of Business) teach would-be business executives how to “Divide and Conquer: Competing with Free Technology Under Network Effects.”

Having given in to gravity, America’s elite graduate schools are taking on open source.

It’s nice to see that $48,921 in Stanford MBA tuition going to a such a worthy cause.

In that case, the commercial vendor does well to enter the market with a compatible product and then invest in new product features to make its product compelling even though it costs more–a strategy sometimes known as “embrace and extend.” In this case, being “open” (or compatible) helps the commercial firm tap into the network created by the free product. Then, the commercial firm must compete by out-innovating the free product.

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But what to do if the open-source product gets to market first?

(T)he ideal scenario for the commercial vendor is to bring its product to market first, to judiciously improve its product features, to keep its product “closed” so the open-source product cannot tap into the network already built by the commercial product, and to segment the market so it can take advantage of a divide-and-conquer strategy.

The professors argue that:

More intriguingly, despite open source’s still-small market share relative to the Microsofts and Oracles of the world, it’s surely meaningful that professors from the world’s elite business institutions are turning their attention to figuring out how to beat open source. If it weren’t a threat, there would be no market for research like this.

Several banks and credit card companies have also beefed up security to their Web sites by using pictures as a way to verify identity. Some Web sites require users to click on an image after they’ve signed in with a username and password to authenticate access.

The company claims that its new software will make a smartphone 37 times more secure than using a simple four-digit personal identification number.

PINoptics software allows users to set a pass code using images rather than numbers. The images are randomly placed on different numbers or letters each time someone logs in. Users push the correct image sequence to get access to the device, rather than the same number pattern. This makes it more difficult for anyone watching a user log in to figure out the PIN simply by watching which keys are pressed.

(Credit:
PINoptic)

As smartphones become increasingly popular, experts warn they could be targets for hackers. These devices provide access to corporate networks, e-mail accounts, and sometimes corporate data. Stolen smartphones can also provide criminals with plenty of information to steal personal identities. And because they’re made to be portable, smartphones can be lifted easily from pockets or purses or even left behind in taxi cabs or some other place people might travel.

In fact, PINoptic claims that a hacker would have to watch someone enter their login at least 10 times before being able to crack the code.

A company called PINoptic says it has a new picture-based security mechanism to make smartphones more secure.

Currently, the most popular way to secure a smartphone is using a four-digit PIN. But all hackers have to do is watch someone punch in their PIN to learn the pattern.

I recently visited Kerner Optical–the stealthy special-effects unit that split off from Industrial Light & Magic a couple of years ago.

A recent James Cameron presentation provided some hints on what might be coming, but as some readers of this story observed, he stopped short of getting into any real specifics. Make no mistake, just like Kerner and others, Cameron has a lot invested in the 3D world. Still, I viewed his talk as more of a “heads-up and be prepared for what’s coming” sort of thing. And something is indeed coming. But before we get into that, a brief caveat.

Among other things, Kerner is now focused on developing disruptive technology for a broad range of 3D applications. Without getting into specifics (because I can’t) or technical gobbledygook–which you can get by checking out the company’s research website–this stuff goes way beyond the current state of 3D movies, video games, virtual reality, and TV.

Of course, there are hurdles to overcome: hardware, software, display, power, eye fatigue, and communication bandwidth. It won’t all happen overnight. But it will happen. And unless you’re a really old fart, it will all happen in your lifetime.

Some of the more advanced forms of the technology are already being used in scientific and medical research. And you know what that means. If there’s a big market for it, the technology will eventually come down the cost, size, performance, and power learning curve. And the next thing you know, it’ll be in your living room.

Retro 3D glasses

Remember, we’re not just talking about computer graphics, virtual reality, and displaying 2D content in 3D. We’re talking about actual 3D data acquisition and display, and without the funky glasses. We’re talking about the potential to visually immerse and interact with 3D versions of the Web, computer applications, games, TV, and, of course, movies. And let’s not forget communications. This will take personal and business communications and conferencing to a whole new level. Add sensors and the visual experience can become physical as well, i.e. full immersion and interaction.

The new stuff bears about as much resemblance to Creature from the Black Lagoon with the funky glasses as the consumer electronics and entertainment world of today resembles what my folks had back in the early ’60s: a transistor radio, a hi-fi record player, and an 11-inch black-and-white TV with six whole channels of content.

Based on what I’ve seen, this isn’t hype. It’s the real thing.

Some time ago, I wrote a post called “Top 10 technology flops” where I essentially trashed over-hyped technology that was destined to change the world and, well, didn’t. So the last thing I want to do is overhype this.

In fact, you can read an entire history of 3D film-making here, and none of that technology is part of our current day-to-day lives. That said, I’m here to tell you that the 3D technology being developed today isn’t your father’s 3D technology.

Moreover, this new generation of 3D technology has the potential to be more disruptive than the introduction of the television set. You see, we currently spend a good portion of our waking lives communicating via two-way voice and viewing and interacting with flat video images. When you bring 3D imaging into the picture (no pun intended), the way we work, learn, play, shop and communicate changes. That covers a lot of ground.

One of the benefits of being a consultant is that you sometimes get to see really cool stuff before it hits the market.

If you have rugrats running around the house, bumping into and chewing on everything in sight, they will almost certainly raise their children in a computing and entertainment world that isn’t reduced to a flat image. They will interact with objects and people thousands of miles away as if they’re right in front of them.

“A 3 percent churn rate is not something we’re happy with,” he told the Journal.

For the second quarter, Vonage reported it had lost $6.9 million, compared with a whopping $23.2 million loss during the same quarter a year ago. The company also increased revenue about 11 percent to $227.5 million.

On the positive side, the company slightly reduced its churn, or the rate at which people leave its service, to 3 percent from 3.3 percent the previous quarter. This is an important metric as Vonage must hold onto every customer it can.

But the positive gains in the company’s financials came at a price. During the quarter, Vonage added only 2,080 new subscribers. A year ago, when the company was still marketing heavily on TV, it added 56,691 during the quarter. In total, Vonage has 2.6 million subscribers as of the end of the second quarter.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Marc Lefar, the company’s newly appointed CEO, said the top priority for the company is to push the churn rate even lower. He told the Journal he is reviewing the company’s customer relations operations to see where it needs to improve.

Internet telephony provider Vonage is struggling to attract new customers, as the company is forced to spend less on advertising.

When it comes to churn, Vonage is near the bottom compared with other service providers, such as wireless operators. It’s better than low-cost wireless operator MetroPCS, which had about a 4.5 percent rate of turnover during the second quarter. But it’s not even as good as beleaguered wireless operator Sprint Nextel, which had a churn rate of 2 percent during the second quarter. And it’s much worse than strong wireless carriers, such as AT&T, which has a churn rate of 1.6 percent and Verizon Wireless, which has a churn rate of 1.1 percent.

(Credit:
Pioneer)

EMI, one of several music labels that filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against XM in May 2006, is withdrawing from the complaint. Terms of the settlement were not disclosed.

With the settlement, EMI is joining Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group, which in December also reached a settlement with XM. Last February, Sony BMG and XM also settled.

EMI Group is the latest major music label to reach a settlement with XM Satellite Radio over the Pioneer Inno device, the companies announced Tuesday.

The Pioneer Inno

The initial lawsuit stems from XM’s Pioneer Inno, which has the capability to record and store music delivered over satellite radio. EMI, along with other major music labels, had contended that the device could violate their copyrights.

The outages and slow performance are due to “popular” members of Twitter with many followers who “tweet” a lot all at once, according to Twitter. Because of that, the company says will put some limits on what some users can do, but it should not be noticeable.

Ruby is a scripting, or dynamic, language, which means that it can be slower than Java or C for some applications. The trade-off is that in general it’s faster to write code with. Rails, meanwhile, is a Web development framework optimized for speed.

Twitter performance problems have brought heaps of scorn from the busy Web 2.0 digerati. That has prompted the company to disclose more technical details like today’s Q and A format blog.

We’ve got a ton of code in Ruby, and we’ll continue to develop in Ruby with Rails for our front-end work for some time. There’s plenty to do in our system that Ruby is a great fit for, and other places where different languages and technologies are a better fit. Our key problems have been primarily architectural and growing our infrastructure to keep up with our growth. Working in Ruby has been, in our experience, a trade-off between developer speed/productivity and VM speed/instrumentation/visibility.

Many people have questioned whether choosing to write the application using Ruby on Rails was a smart move and whether Twitter should shift to a different Web development technology.

Are Twitter’s performance problems due to flimsy engineering or the choice of Ruby on Rails to build the application?

In the Twitter developer blog on Thursday, an engineer said that Ruby on Rails still rocks as a Web development platform. The service’s woes are due more to a creaky architecture, he said.

Ruby still makes sense for much of what Twitter does–essentially sending messages around the Web–but the company has left the door open to using other languages. The Twitter developer blog says this:

We have some limits, and we’re adding more. Legitimate users should never notice them, but these new limits should help mitigate the worst case failures and attacks.

The Ryan Haight Online Pharmacy Consumer Protection Act would ban the sale or distribution of prescription drugs over the Internet without a valid prescription. In order for a prescription to be valid, it must be issued by a practitioner who has examined the patient in person at least once.

Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., introduced the bill into the House in June, and the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Wednesday unanimously approved it. Matching legislation passed in the Senate in April.

The bill is named after Ryan Haight, an 18-year-old who died from an accidental overdose of Vicodin, Valium, and a trace of morphine, which he acquired with prescriptions over the Internet.

Online pharmacies will face stricter regulations under new legislation Congress is considering.

Certain information would be required to appear on an online pharmacy’s site, including a statement of compliance with U.S. laws and information about the business such as the qualifications of the pharmacist in charge. The bill also increases the penalties for the illegal distribution of certain controlled substances.

The Drug Enforcement Agency, the Food and Drug Administration, eBay, and the Federation of State Medical Boards have voiced their support for the bill.

The legislation provides an exemption, though, for “telemedicine practitioners”–that is, practitioners (not pharmacists) communicating remotely with the patient or the health care professional treating the patient.

“A large number of individuals are obtaining their prescription drugs over the Internet through rogue Internet pharmacies,” Stupak said. “Several of these illegitimate sites fail to provide information about potential adverse side effects, effectiveness, and even where they are located.”

Under the proposed law, online pharmacies would have to comply with pharmacy licensing laws in each state in which they do business. They would also have to notify the Attorney General and relevant state boards at least 30 days before beginning to sell or distribute prescription drugs online. If in a month an online pharmacy dispenses 100 or more prescriptions or 5,000 or more dosage units of prescription drugs, that pharmacy would be required to report to the Attorney General the quantity of each controlled substance it dispensed each month.

After you download the scripting engine, click View > Sidebar > Chickenfoot (or press F8) to open the Chickenfoot Script Editor. Enter the script in the top pane of the sidebar, and click the Run icon to activate the script for the current page. You can also run scripts by copying and pasting them into the editor, or by clicking the sidebar’s Open icon and navigating to the .js file. By placing the scripts in the Triggers window, they will run as soon as the target page opens in Firefox.

Run a Chickenfoot script that changes the "Google" image on the site's home page with the image of your choice.

Chickenfoot was developed by MIT’s User Interface Design Group. It’s similar to the Greasemonkey scripting extension for Firefox, but its scripts tend to be simpler and easier for nonprogrammers to customize.

Tomorrow: top online scanners and speed testers.

A silly example of a Chickenfoot script is one that changes the image on the Google home page. First you copy the script from the Chickenfoot site, and then you paste it into the Chickenfoot script editor, swap out the image-source URL for the one of your choosing, and click the Run icon. Gone is the universally recognizable “Google” icon, and in its place is whatever image you chose. Not especially practical perhaps, but a neat little trick nonetheless.

(Credit:
Chickenfoot)

Any task you perform on the Web can be automated by writing a script. But you don’t have to know how to use Javascript or some other scripting language to create your own custom scripts. The Chickenfoot add-on for
Firefox makes it easy for nonprogrammers to devise scripts that do their bidding.

Another Chickenfoot script places an icon at the end of URLs that lead to a PDF download or anywhere other than a Web page. But the real power of Chickenfoot scripts is in customizing those in the various Chickenfoot libraries.

Keep in mind that malicious scripts can wreak havoc on your system, so be judicious in your use of scripts from unfamiliar sources. Likewise, Chickenfoot may be susceptible to cross-site scripting (XSS), so the developers recommend that you create a separate Firefox profile for Chickenfoot, and use the scripts only on sites you trust.

As an aside, I continue to be impressed at how Zimbra treats non-Microsoft platforms as first-class citizens (along with Microsoft). Firefox is the same way. Both allow you to run on the
Mac, for example, without losing any functionality that you’d find in Windows/IE.

Of course, Zimbra was testing for how these browsers perform with the Zimbra Web application. Your mileage may vary with other applications. In fact, I’d love to see a wide range of tests for different sites and applications. Who’s next?

Which is the world’s fastest browser? According to Zimbra,
Safari runs fastest, though it didn’t beat out
Firefox by much. Both Safari and Firefox were roughly twice as fast as Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 7.

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It’s called great code. Weak developers write code that limps on anything but Windows. Great developers write code that ports well to diverse platforms.