The new Facebook Terms of Service

Sorry about the lack of links in this blog post, its was written offline

So, Facebook fsck'd up, and then reverted to the old Terms of Service. I'm glad to see that wasn't enough, since lots of people actually ended up reading the previous Terms of Service, that were already bad enough.

The most offending - for me at least - on any version of Facebook's TOS was the "blank contract" clause, a clause unfortunately seen in lot's of Terms of Services, and that basicly say "you're agreeing with this but you shouldn't even bother reading this stuff, because we can change it whenever we like and you automaticly signed the new terms".

Fortunately, it seems, a new set of terms is being drafted and scheduled to replace the old ones by the 29th of March. Now in a phase of discussion (with their users only, so those who don't have a Facebook account because they don't agree with the actual terms - probably the most critics about them - don't have much chance of voice their worries about the new Terms), this terms (until further re-draft, which might happen thanks to the comments being submited by Facebook users) replace the previous "blank contract" clause with this:

12.1 We can change this Statement so long as we provide you notice through Facebook (unless you opt-out of such notice) and an opportunity to comment

12.2 [...] we'll give you a minimum of seven days notice

Unfortunately, I still think this is hardly acceptable. You are warned about the new terms in the service, and if you don't act in seven days, even if you didn't read your Facebook messages in that period, you are automaticly accepting the new Terms.

With this, further discussion about other items is more or less irrelevant, since even if all the rest is acceptable, there's no warranty that one month after you sign it, the Terms are still the same. Remember: this isn't acceptable in any "paper contract" you sign, how come should it be acceptable in an online contract?

Anyway, let me highlight some other items in that Terms that should worry you...

2.3 For content that is covered by intellectual property rights (like photos and videos), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub.licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use, copy, publicly perform or display, distribute, modify, translate, and create derivative works of ("use") any content you post on or in connection with Facebook

3.2 You will not collect users' information, or otherwise access Facebook, using automated means (such as harvesting bots, robots, spiders, or scapers) without our permission

4.5 You will keep your contact information accurate and up-to-date

5.6 You will not use our copyrights or trademarks (including Facebook, the Facebook and F Logos, FB, Face, Poke, Wall and 32665) without our written permission

6.2 In the event you change or deactivate your mobile telephone number, you will promptly update your account information on Facebook to ensure that your messages are not sent to the person who acquires your old number

Sorry Facebook, to get me as an user, you still have a lot of work to do.

The broken Web

I have several computers, almost all of the time I'm using one (or several) or three: an HP laptop that with a 1024x768 resolution, the EEE PC 701 with a 800x480 resolution, and finally my BlackBerry 8100 and its way smaller screen. I use them to do everything I use computers for, including surfing the web. The experience is far from perfect, and here are some reasons why:

The web is about content, not displays

Please stop that really old mantra of "nobody uses 1024x768 anymore". I've been listening to that for a while, even if the biggest resolution I have on this three devices is exactly that one. Also, the argument isn't new: I remember at least the "nobody uses 640x480" and the "nobody uses 600x800" arguments, and I'm pretty sure that the thing didn't start there, but in other arguments like "nobody sees only 80 columns anymore". The biggest mistake here isn't to think that nobody uses 1024 while I still do. Nor trying to predict the smallest resolution out there. The mistake here is that the web is about content, not displays. Regardless of what you might think or want, a website is meant to be read by whoever crosses with it, using whatever device he's using. Your website must be visible, readable and usable by every device, with every resolution. It's not hard, and it doesn't mean you should ditch planning your website layout and make it into your CSS files. On the contrary, it means that you should treat content as content and put it in the document layer, presentation as presentation and put it in the presentation layer. But it also means that your presentation can't be made in a "if users are reading this in a 1024 screen", or "if users are reading this in a mobile device", but instead, "if users are reading a paragraph", "if users are reading a caption"...

One Web

Like I said in the previous item, your website should be platform-agnostic. But that doesn't only mean that I should read your website well in every resolution, it means that I should be able to read your website with every browser, in every device. One web, several ways of reaching it. So, remember this next time you're thinking about making a mobile version of your website: if you're planning on do it, you already did it wrong. See, your website should be readable everywhere. That means that if your website is well made, I can read it well in my mobile device without the need of going to a mobile version of it. On the other hand, if you're making me go to another website -- a mobile version -- you're not only stopping me of seeing the website I want to see, giving me a trimmed-down version of the real thing, you're actually making me see another webiste, with all the implications that might have. Remember, if your website doesn't look good in a mobile device in the first place, you already did something wrong...

The Web is The Web

The Web is The Web: nothing more. It's made of standards, composed by a set of documents written in a certain language. You have HTML, XHTML, CSS, Javascript, several formats for images and other objects... and that's it. The Web is just that. The web isn't made of "plugins" or "third-party applications". The web is made to be seen by a browser - any browser. So remember: if you have, for instance, flash in your website, the content must be 100% acessible by a browser without a Flash plugin. I'm serious: it's not my fault if I can't see your website in my mobile phone just because it full of flash. You chose to use a plugin that isn't available to every browser, in every platform, so you have to give an alternative for those visiting your website without that plugin. Oh, and spare me that "you don't have flash, get it here" messages, because you're just making me doing a couple of steps and going to another website where they'll tell me "your platform isn't supported". It's not my fault as a web user, and it's not their fault as a plugin provider: it's your fault as a content publisher.

What else?

There are tons of other things in the web that makes it as broken as it nowadays is. But for now, please think about this three. I bet that with those solved, my web experience would get a lot better.

Thoughs on Opera Mini 4

For frequent readers of this blog there's no surprise on the fact that I am a fan of mobile computing: I use a cheap mobile phone (Motorola E1 Rokr) as a modem, SSH client and as a web browser. To do so I use a simple setup: the mobile' stock functionality to work as a modem, MidpSSH as a SSH and telnet client (BTW, if you know of any alternative to this one that lets you choose the port instead of assuming the default ports for this services, I appreciate), and Opera Mini as a mobile web browser.

I use Opera Mini as a web browser for the cellphone since more or less one month after I got it, and I was kindly surprised by it: it obviously surpasses the poor browser that comes stocked with the cellphone. At last years' XTech I talked with an Opera guy working on Mini and talked about some flaws I thought it had, but I was happy with the browser, and, as I told him, I believed Opera Mini would be the mobile browser of choice (Opera Mobile isn't for me, like any other non-free_as_in_beer browser) at least until the Mozilla Foundation didn't start a serious effort in the field. At the time I was using Opera Mini 2, which was quickly replaced by Opera Mini 3: a not-so-major improovement in terms of usability, and with a change that I didn't like: the default search engine (that can't be changed) is Yahoo! Search (which - sorry - I can't get used too, as I also talked about earlier on this blog, regarding to search I'm addicted to Google). But, overall, it was a nice update, and I started using the mobile browser more and more... And relying on it for a great number of things.

Opera Mini 4 promises a cool few number of things. I've tried the first beta but it was too unstable, I've tried the second beta but, while better, was still worse (in terms of stability/usability) than Opera Mini 3. One cool thing Opera guys decided to do was to make Opera Mini 4 another application and not just another version (which lets Opera Mini 3 cohexist with Opera Mini 4 in the same mobile phone), and each time another beta version comes out you'll be prompted to upgrade (I hope they'll do this until the final version is out). I wasn't using Opera Mini 4 much, but...

This past week I started to really need to use a ill designed web application that didn't work on Opera Mini 3. Opera Mini 4 beta 2 was having some issues, but since it prompted me to upgrade to beta 3 I did it, and not only it solved my problem (now I can actually use that application, even if some stuff doesn't work) but it solved most of the problems I had with previous versions.

Opera Mini 4 comes with a really nice set of features, like "web view" vs. "mobile view", landscape view (gives you an horizontal screen instead of a vertical one) and fullscreen, giving you more active area and content displayed. I decided that that's what I really wanted/needed, so I decided to ditch Opera Mini 3 and starting to use Opera Mini 4. Well, now I have a bigger problem: Opera Mini 4 is completely useless for some of the websites I visit the most with Opera Mini 3, I only know it when it is too late, and I'll need to restart the browser if I stumble across one of those websites. What makes it worse is that it happens because Opera Mini 4 misses one Opera Mini 3 critical feature: the division of pages in "mobile view".

Let me explain: when in mobile view we're viewing stuff as Opera Mini 3 did. Opera Mini 3 seems the amount of data to display, and if it is more than a certain value, it breaks that content into several pages. That makes you able to load a webpage with hundreds of Kb's of data, because it will load just the first set, and then when you go to the next page or the previous page it loads that set. That actually means that not only navigation (while in a set) is quickier, but, more importantly, it means that you can load a 1Mb page because it will split it in chunks with certainly less than 100K each and display each one at a time. If you try to load that page in Opera Mini 4 what will happen is that you'll browser will try to load all that 1Mb of data... and make your cellphone run out of memory.

So, dear Opera Mini coders, can you please give me that wonderful feature back? Please? If you don't do it I'll have to keep being a user of both Opera Mini 3 and 4... And pray that you don't decide to take Opera Mini 3 out of air for when I switch to another cellphone.

The Beauty in Standards

( HTML + CSS + DOM and JavaScript ) = beauty web

Never mixup any of those layers... Never do stuff like
<a href="javascript:...">
or
<a href="#" onclick="...">

Now, with Ajax... You should use "Hijax", his recently created buzword. It's basicly adding one more layer to the "old" HTML+CSS+DOM&JS model, making it Hijax = HTML -> CSS -> DOM + JS -> Ajax. Basicly, you hijack the requests and use AJAX...

OK, now he said for the first time something I don't agree (twice in a row): first he said that something that fallpits in the definition of "web chat" (he was talking about Meebo or any web IM) can't degrade gracefully (meaning that you couldn't do a chat app without AJAX). Not only I disagree, I can even give an example: HCL uses Aardvark, which means that if you are AJAX-enabled you do it AJAX-style, but if you're not AJAX-enabled you'll still be able to use it. Second, he said that in those cases people should use something like Flash... But if you do it you're excluding people then you're doing something broken (as he said himself).

...

OK, I said it on the microphone. He basicly agrees with me, but gives me another example: video-editing. The thing is... if you're doing that kind of app, why do it an webapp? It's useless as an webapp! Is it the "you don't need to install or update" thingie? 'cause if it is, you can actually do it without using a web browser.

Tuesday afternoon on Web 2.0 Berlin 2007

A Conversation with Neil Holloway, Microsoft Europe

Microsoft doesn't get advertising potential in IPTV, and are talking about closeminded methods of using IPTV to enhance advertising... I really see a big market here.

Microsoft doesn't get mobile computing and mobile web.

Microsoft doesn't talk about the Facebook deal.

Microsoft will buy 20 to 30 companies until the end of the year, most of them web 2.0. The statement came in the form of "we don't want to be the 2nd or the 3rd, so we'll buy and buy"...

First thing "good" (for them) I've heard is already after the schedule and as a response to a question. Microsoft wants to generalize their XBOX platform to be a "media platform" (XBOX, Media Centers, IPTV...)

High Order Bit: Introducing Ginger

Ginger is basicly the upcoming version of Netvibes... They're now betting in aggregation of social networks data and widgetise the web using standards (maybe creating some for social widgets?)

Creating Passionate Users

Awsome presentation... Tells you about why does your "help" of "FAQ" or "User Manual" doesn't usually help, people aren't in a "I want to learn this" mood, but in an WTF mood, thinking they're stupid because they can't do what they want with that stupid application... And how to understand the people in that mood and how not to make them have that feeling.

Interviewing Adegga

Adegga [1] is a new Web 2.0 social network, made by a team of three Portuguese guys, and - as the name says - it is all about Wine.

Currently in private beta, I'm lucky to have an account there, and am already a regular user. Remember when I said that I wish there was a Last.fm for books [2]? Well, Adegga is Last.fm for wines.

So, instead of reviewing it, I did something different: here's an interview I made to one of Adegga's folks, André, and if you feel like trying it out, just leave a comment here and I'll send you an invite! :-)

---

First and foremost, please tell us what Adegga is, in your own words.

Adegga is an online service that help people discover and choose wine by sharing their wine opinions with other people they trust. By creating a personalized watchlist people can "follow" what their friends, favorite producers and wine shops are doing. Adegga also helps people organize their wines by keeping track of wines they taste, make a wishlist or organize your home cellar. For searching for wines and checking prices no account is needed.

What gave you the idea of creating this service?

A few years ago the three founders, André R, André C. and Emídio, started enjoying wine together and sharing their opinions. A few months later André R. while reading the the book The Long Tail designed the idea that would become the project Adegga and invited his 2 friends to build it.

There are other wine (or more generic beaverages) social networks... Why should someone use Adegga instead of one of the alternatives?

There are 3 main reasons that can make people choose Adegga and not other social network:

• Watchlist. Adegga lets you build a personalized watchlist so that you can keep track of what people on your list are choosing and tasting. You can add friends, wine bloggers, producers and just about anyone else. You can also add wine producers and wine shops to your personalized watch list so that you keep track of when a producer releases a new wine or a wine shop makes a promotion.
• Wine prices: Adegga gets wine prices from shops around the world and puts them directly on each wine page. This makes it easy to check availabilty and price for any wine.
• Profiles: Being a social network Adegga build a profile page for each producers. Besides all the information about a producer you can also add this producer to your Watchlist and follow what he is doing. Wine shops get their profile too.

What's the revenue model planned for Adegga?

Wine shops pays us to have all their wine prices appear on each wine page with a link to the direct wine page in the shop. Moreover, they can be featured on some pages like the homepage. We will have more special stuff for producers and wine shops in the future.

You also created AVIN, an "ISBN for wine". First of all, congratulations for such a nice idea, I really liked it. Yet... What are the plans you have to turn AVIN widely used, and thus making it useful?

It's very easy to search for books online. You can search by name but also by the ISBN. The same is not true for wines. There's no code to use when you want to search for a wine. Another problem is that each time a wine shop wants to setup a new shop they need to build by hand their own catalog. With the AVIN we want this database to be open so that anyone can use it. We'll publish it under a creative commons license over at www.avin.cc. When this type of data is available and an API is in place all types of creativity can surface. We haven't officially launched the project. So there's not much more that I can say for now.

There's, at the moment, no API to access and munch over Adegga's data... Are you planning to do one in the future?

There's already API working. It's a REST API. The next few weeks we will release it with basic capability to support the launch of our blog / site widgets.

Adegga is at the moment in a closed beta. When do you think the website will be open to everyone?

We decided to do a public beta for 2 reasons. We want to be able to provide a good quality of service and that 's is only possible when all servers are in place and all code is bug free. That's not the case for now. Another things is that we want to grow organically and try to listen to what people using Adegga are asking. We currently have no date to open the registration to everyone.

You decided to do Adegga using PHP... Can you please tell us why that choice?

When the team started Adegga we discussed 3 possibilities. Perl, PHP and Ruby. We had previously worked together in other projects using PHP. That fact together with the fact that PHP5 is a very flexible language and with a powerful community made us decide to use PHP. Moreover, PHP5 supports object oriented programming and works brilliantly with Smarty, out templating system.

Adegga is Copyright (c) 2007 LifeStreet... I know that you left your previous job to create Adegga. Is LifeStreet the company you've founded to have Addega as a product? Do you intend to have more LifeStreet products other then Addega?

Adegga is owned by 3 people and it is in part legally supported by LifeStreet. LifeStreet was founded by me (André Ribeirinho) to support all the projects I'm involved.

Which other public projects are there on LifeStreet?

LifeStreet focus is now on Adegga, nevethless there are 2 other projects that are in the works but still only as proof-of-concepts. No date yet for them to become public.

Do you have any final words to our readers?

Adegga is only starting. There are many things we want to do. We have some very interesting and useful features coming out in the next couple of months. If you love wine join Adegga and enjoy the ride.

Thanks for the interview.

André

[1] - http://adegga.com
[2] - http://tinyurl.com/2bzmgc

Mobile Firefox

Two years ago I was talking with some Opera folks about browsers and the rising of the mobile browsing market. I told them that, while I was an Opera Mini user, I was really sad with that fact, because I would rather use an Open Source browser. We further discussed about the state of MiniMo: a project that few of you will remember but that stands for "Mini Mozilla", had two developers, and then only one. Of course it never went far. What surprises me is that today I'm reading about Minimo dyeing... and Mozilla creating a new project: Mobile Firefox. YAY!

Now, the not so good news: they're aiming to a minimum requirement of 64Mb of RAM. Now, that's really a lot more than Opera Mini requirements... And more than what my actual mobile phone has :-(

Read the announcement at http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/schrep/archives/2007/10/mozilla_and_mobile.html.

Amazon opens DRM-free music store

And to end the day, news that Amazon finally open it's DRM-free music store [1].

What's good

• Songs cost between 89 and 99 cents, meaning that the most expensive mp3 file there is at the same price and never more expensive than a DRM-encumbered file on iTunes. There are also albums as low as costing only $4.99.
• The store is to be used by Windows, Macintosh and Linux users, and not only Win and Mac like the iTunes music store.

What's bad

• So, I went to the store and it said to me that they wanted to recommend me some music. I clicked there and the result was a "Sorry, we have no recommendations for you in this category today." So, do you have it or not?
• You can buy mp3 tracks, but to buy full albums you need to install the Amazon MP3 Downloader [2]. Worse than being forced to use a standalone application is that it is not available yet for GNU/Linux systems...

Their catalog surprised me (negatively) both by choice and price, when searching for Indie records stuff. Yet conclusions about that, and the overall success of this new music store can only be taken when the first figures start coming out.

Oh, BTW, here's the link to the store [3].

[EDIT:] Despite some people are saying, the tracks and albums are taggen in US dollars, like everything else in amazon.com, but that does not stop you from buying them. The concept of buying the same thing by $.99, £.99 or .99€ depending on where you are is just silly, and people are only used to it thanks to Apple. BTW, since the EU is aiming to sue Apple also because of that, it wouldn't really be wise for Amazon to go the same route. For those don't understanding why I'm talking about this, remember that at this moment 1 U.S. dollar = 0.710378632 Euro, meaning that in Europe the tracks are way cheaper.


[1] - http://tinyurl.com/3cz4h8
[2] - http://tinyurl.com/yo679f
[3] - http://tinyurl.com/2gdkkn

Is Google getting evil?

If you read my posts about Google [1] you'll see that I keep writing about the general feeling of distrust on Google: not only I'm feeling more and more bewildered with the possibilies they have with the data they collect, but I also see that the feeling is getting generalized. Cory Doctorow wrote a short Sci-Fi novel [2] called "Scroogled", were he envisions a dark Google in a not-so-distance future. The frightning thing about the story is that it is really possible, just a matter of them wanting or not to "do no evil". Now, today Vitor wrote [3] about a new "feature" that "frightened him a bit", and I can't but ask... Where should they stop? Are you also getting afraid of Google?

[1] - http://mindboosternoori.blogspot.com/search/label/Google
[2] - http://tinyurl.com/yudbmh
[3] - http://tinyurl.com/23mkey

Selling Music on Social Networks

On Reuters there was a piece where they were saying that labels are eyeing social networks as retailers, which isn't really news to me: I've been seeing this countless times, an effort made by both bands and/or labels in different kinds of promotion and profit. It's not small the number of record labels with a MySpace profile, but what's really interesting (and cool) to see is the number of record labels betting on social networks like Last.fm, showing that they have at least a glimpse of what they're doing. Also, it seems that major labels are seeing a bad side of DRM: besides the technical issues of implementing it, social networking users simply don't want DRM in their tracks, so an artist selling in those networks DRM'd files is in a clear disadvantage in relation to other, DRM-free, artists. I don't really like Snocap (I'll write about that in a later post), but Snocap's Rueff said something in conclusion that I want to quote:

"Social networks are the (peer-to-peer) networks of the future [...] They're this generation's MTV. If you want to be at a point of sale at the highest point of desire and consumption, be where the fan is."

Oddly, Gooveshark guys didn't like what they read: their first post about the Reuters' article basicly states that turning social networks (and services that float around them like Snocap) is a model "where your own network's members make a little side money for yourself, but a boatload of cash for your corporate overlords". They keep going, saying that "with more innovative services like Grooveshark out there, where you can not only make money off of your music but be part of a social network in the process? Who would deny that opportunity?". This quite amuses me, since the "innovative service" that Grooveshark presents is, basicly, the same as this Social Networks. Snocap, AmieStreet, GrooveShark, they're all the same concepts: bands sell, fans sell, buyers pay, a boatload of cash is supposedly made. What makes GooveShark different?

But they didn't stop here: a second article called "Damn Those Myspace Window Shoppers" was written. The writer quotes a study from EMR and Olswand saying that "More than half of internet users surveyed by Entertainment Media Research and the law firm Olswang said they surfed social networking sites such as MySpace and YouTube specifically to come across new songs.", but then tells us, without any kind of source, that "most of these people love to discover new music knowing full and well that they will ultimately dip from the illegal pool of music downloads to obtain the freshly discovered music". First, we don't know if that's truth, then there are no sources telling if illegal downloads contribute for sales increases or decreases - it surely depends from person to person but I doubt that they can find an imparcial source saying that it decreases sales, which should be good for them since GooveShark's business model depends on that. Then, he keeps randomly ranting, talking about how "added value" is needed, but saying that CD's give few or none (where's the extra value in digital music bought on GrooveShark?), even if "CDs had vastly superior sound compared to cassettes or records" (sorry mate, but vinyl records have way better sound!).

The conclusion? Well, there's really no directly related conclusion to take from this post. Finaly record labels are discovering the potential of the web and the turndowns of DRM, which is good. In relation to GrooveShark's comments, I just have to say that while it's preety important for a start-up to be close with their readers, using several ways to achieve it including mantaining a blog, a blog makes an image of that startup. Writing articles like these (and others) only contribute for people taking GrooveShark less and less seriously.

What is Web 3.0?

One year ago we were discussing wether Web 2.0 was or not a bubble waiting for the right time to blow. A couple of months ago several folks started using the Web 3.0 term, but all of them failed to create a better deffinition for it than the one for Web 2.0. Furthermore, each one using the term was defining it its own way, so there is really no consense on what Web 3.0 is.

The conflict of definitions is clear: Wikipedia's entry on Web 3.0 starts with Web 3.0 is a term that has been coined with different meanings to describe the evolution of Web usage and interaction among several separate paths. These include transforming the Web into a database, a move towards making content accessible by multiple non-browser applications, the leveraging of artificial intelligence technologies, the Semantic web, or the Geospatial Web., but maybe more important than that to analyze it is that the discussion page for that article has three times more text than the article itself.

My take is that Web 3.0 shouldn't be considered the same as the Semantic Web or the Geoweb. Those two terms were coined before the wide use of the Web 3.0 term, so if the Web 3.0 was just that, why wouldn't people refer to it by their names? I think (yet I might be completely wrong) that the idea of saying that Web 3.0 is the same as the Semantic Web was brought by this NY Times article, and if it is then it's relevancy is turned into nothing when you note that it was written by John Markoff. OK, OK, instead of dissing the article because of its author, you can instead check this article criticizing NY Times' one. But the term really appeared as a synonym of Semantic Web (if we ignore the sarcastic references to the term), they're also and already trying to coin Web 4.0... So let's stop this rush of wanting to increase the Web's "major version number", and see what Web 3.0 could be. Web 2.0 is a new web, in the sense that it is social, contextual, data-driven and focusing on its users. Web 3.0, to deserve that name, has to be such a big paradigm shift as that one.

Other thinkers of the Web 2.0 world have different definitions for it, tho, one of them being "Web 3.0 = Music 2.0 + Games 2.0 + Web 3D", and I don't doubt that, while that is an ugly definition, this one isn't far from truth. Maturing Web 2.0 will bring us Web 3.0, that will come naturally. Other definitions come, and this one is probably the nearest to my own vision of the future of Web: R/WW writer Sramana Mitra defined Web 3.0 with this formula: Web 3.0 = 4C + P + VS, or, in words, Web 3.0 is a mashup between Content, Commerce, Community, Context, Personalization and Vertical Search. Of course that this isn't an widely accepted definition, and R/WW even did a contest for definitions of Web 3.0 after that definition was posted and used.

But, more than finding out who said what, or what people say Web 3.0 is, the simple definition will never change from "the web we'll have in a couple of years". With that in mind, comes my own concept of Web 3.0, mashing up definitions from others.

Web 3.0: A web where the concept of website or webpage disapears, where data isn't owned but instead shared, where services show different views for the same web/the same data. Those services can be applications (like browsers, virtual worlds or anything else), devices or other, and have to be focused on context and personalization, and both will be reached by using vertical search.

So I've waited some months, to let the water boil down, and now I want to know: what do you think Web 3.0 is?

Another day of links

Yup, I've been busy.

Links for today:

• If you want to test the "Second Life on a browser" client, this is the working link.
• Finaly I've found something written from a Virtual World's guru telling what I've been trying to tell people for years now: MUDs and MMORPGs are the same thing.
• cog is now officially the new TPF Community Relations Leader, congrats!
• When IP laws go into Virtual Property, stuff like this happens. It will be an interesting case to follow, since it might set a precedent.
• Today there's going to be a Lisbon.pm Tech meeting...
• ...which I'm not going to attend, since I'm going to see a Dead Combo concert.

I'm posting this at so early today, since I don't think I'm going to get the time to write something bigger than this, so I'm telling you those two things happening today in Lisbon with enough time to attend to one of them... If you decide to go to the Dead Combo gig, feel free to come to me and say "hi".

Planeta DebianPT

There's a new Debian Planet out there, this one for Portuguese folks: Planet DebianPT. This new planet simple aims to aggregate Portuguese folks that are in any way related with Debian. This blog is now being agregated there, and if you think that your blog should also be, just read this.

Unfortunately I don't blog about Debian as much as I wanted to (must get some more time for that...), but I have a couple of things that I want to talk about, so maybe I'll use this as an incentive ;-)

Bug 245609 – Mozilla not getting certificate issuer from Authority Information Access CA Issuers

Some people alerted me on a "bug bounty" for Firefox (even if the issue is with Mozilla Core and not on Firefox): the Portuguese Ministry of Justice will pay a 1000 Euro reward for those who fix this "bug". What's the catch?

Well, first of all, this is not a bug. It is correctly tagged as a RESOLVED as INVALID enhancement, and it is. It could be, if anyone cares to do so, a VALID enhancement, simply by changing the context: something like "there's nothing that can happen wrong if we emulate the behaviour of the other browsers, and it would be better for users", explained, would suffice.

Now, the problem is that the message that announces the bounty says:

But somehow that doesnt seem enough to justify the problem.
First because it seems really stupid for Firefox not to
implement something that all other browsers implement and just
saying "lets wait till the standard is clear".
Second because its not a solution if you just say "reconfigure
the server and make sure that the intermediate certificate is
served". The other browsers dont need that.
Third because even if you install the certificates locally
in your browser, the problem continues. It seems to be
related to a possible problem with comparisons of fields
encoded in UTF-8 in one certificate and encoded in quoted
printable in others.

Well, if you're trying to convince those who maintain a piece of software that they should implement an enhancement, you shouldn't start by calling the actual behaviour as "really stupid", specially when that behaviour is RFC compliant, thus not a bug. Then, the problem, as described in the bug page, isnt that "the standard isn't clear": if you actually read the RFC's, you'll see that the https server has the obligation to send a complete certificate chain.

Now, IMHO the target should be "have the issue properly solved", so, since the issue is that, by RFC, the https server must do something that isn't doing nowadays, then having a "bug bounty" over Firefox isn't helping. If the target is to have Firefox with the same behaviour as the other browsers, then it would be nice to have a proper enhancement request submitted and aprooved, and only after that a "patch bounty" for an implementation of the solution. I could do some more work on this issue - heck, I could even go after that bounty. Presented the way it is, I'm just not interested: seems to me that the solution proposed is ignoring the fact that the target website is broken since it is not complying with the standards involved. Supporting a broken web by changing the behaviour of one web browser is plain blindness, specially because you can't garantee that (1) every browser acts the same way, and (2) in five years you have a major browser out there that implements everything well but still does not support broken cert chains.


Useful links:
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2246.txt;
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2459.txt;
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3280.txt;
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4346.txt;
http://tools.ietf.org/id/draft-ietf-tls-ssl-version3-00;
http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/tls-charter.html.


From RFC 4346:

certificate_list
   This is a sequence (chain) of X.509v3 certificates.  The sender's
   certificate must come first in the list.  Each following
   certificate must directly certify the one preceding it.  Because
   certificate validation requires that root keys be distributed
   independently, the self-signed certificate that specifies the root
   certificate authority may optionally be omitted from the chain,
   under the assumption that the remote end must already possess it
   in order to validate it in any case.

Designing for the Web with mobile devices in mind

Paulo Silva has an excelent introduction to the "W3C Mobile Web Best Practices". Since I find this an extremely important issue, and mostly disregarded, I took the liberty of translating his article from Portuguese to English. All kudos should go to him for the article, my job here is merely that of translation.

Those that nowadays produce web content must have in mind that lots of the accesses are made from mobile terminals, like cellphones, PDAs and such other devices, where limitations are big.

To reflect that, W3C has being compiling the “Mobile Web Best Practices” that gather a set of techniques to make the mobile devices experience more joyful.

MWBP Working Group's work can be followed at http://www.w3.org/blog/BPWG/ and the first documents are already available:

Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0 - Basic Guidelines document

“specifies best practices for Web content when accessed from mobile devices“

MobileOK Basic Tests 1.0

“defines machine tests based on the Best Practices to help identify Web content developed with mobile devices in mind; these tests fits in the larger mobileOK marks scheme“

At the moment there's a beta “validator” that, for curiosity, I used to test http://m.gmail.com with the following results. It's important to note that, besides being beta, this “validator” implements only 34 of the 60 directives.

I take the opportunity to leave you a link to a set of articles from Roger Johansson about developing content for mobile devices.

Flash usage

This image was taken from my blog's statistics. What about it? Well, it's just a reminder: For every 20 visitors you have, one of them can't see your Flash content!

Is Web 2.0 with usability or not?

BBC quotes Jakob Nielsen, while he says, basicly, that Web 2.0 is with a creepy lack of usability. People are more interested in doing fancy things than actualy making them work well. And... Not only I agree with him, but also am having this discussion with several people in the Web 2.0 world for more than two years. Of course that telling this also pisses a lot of people, and we got a R/WW post saying basicly, that none of that is true, and that Web 2.0 has a lot of usability. I'm sorry, I'm not going to use this space to bash anyone, to talk about who's right and wrong or doing publicity to 37signals. I'm just going to pick some examples to show what I mean with lack of usability.

1. Have you ever tried to post a comment in TechCrunch using Opera Mini? Well, you can't...
2. ...which reminds me the whole issue of "mobile versions" and "mobile portals". When you need to do a web version of your web application to run in some browsers (mobile or not), you sure usability problems. Remember, a mobile device is also a computer with an web browser.
3. YouTube was a given example of usability by R/WW. Excuse me? IMHO the only way you can use YouTube in any Operating System besides Windows, Mac OS, Linux and Solaris (like any BSD, for instance) is by downloading the video (using something like youtube-dl or a GreaseMonkey script), since it heavily depends on Adobe Flash, which licence does not permit its use in any Operating System other than those refered above;
4. XHR. You know? XMLHttpRequest, that thingie most use in an AJAX implementation. While I think there are great things that are achieved with this, XHR is still NOT a standard (see status and help changing it), and so several web browsers does not support it. Using it is taking usability off your web application.
   
5. Another example of bad usability is taken from an example of "good usability" given on R/WW: NetVibes. You say they have great usability, but their website says:

   We currently support Mozilla Firefox 1+, Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 and 7, Opera 9.02, Safari 2+.
   

   I'm sorry, but if you only support some web browers, then you do not have usability.
   

Now, I could be hours ranting about this, but I think that it's kind of useless. People are still exited with Web 2.0, so excited that they don't really care. And while they don't care, you can tell them whatever that they won't listen to you.

If you're a Web 2.0 developer and really care about usability, please, PLEASE, prove me wrong. I would love to see, for instance, more people working with W3C.

Web Music Services for bands - revisited

I've talked about this before, but the social web is developing fast and well, so there are news on the field... So let me revisit the topic, and talk a little about the "new web music services for bands".

I'm going to list five services that can help bands promote themselves, and fans to easily access to their favourite bands and even help them. Here they are:

ReverbNation is a newcomer on this blog. Basicly, ReverbNation started last October as yet another music social network, in the vein of services like PureVolume. The thing is that since they started they didn't stop adding new features, some of them really cool for artists. But what makes them start this list is a feature that they don't yet have but will do in July: an ad revenue sharing program for their artists, called “Fair Share”. With this, fans are giving to their artists money each time they visit the artist webpage and specially when clicking in the ads presented there. Alternative sources of incoming are allways cool, right?

Then, another newcomer. Poptopus isn't a music social network, or something that lets bands have pages. Instead, they make widgets with songs submited by artists, and that widgets contain ads. That means that a blogger, for instance, can have a music player with songs of his choice in its website, and the revenue from the ads in there are splited between the blogger, the artist of the tracks presented there, and Poptopus, of course. Once again, yet another source of incoming. Their closed beta is going to start soon.

Then, we're back to those I've already talked about. GrooveShark is getting bigger and better day by day, even if still in Alpha. I'm still swapping e-mails with them and plan to have a new blog post about it soon enough, but the concept is good: a legal p2p music network where you're paid to share and artists whose tracks are shared too.

SellABand also keeps going on, and are, at least, a very successful case of an indie label - after all in less than an year they've managed to launch several bands albums and compilations, besides organizing events - for instance. Here listeners pay to give the bands a chance to release an album, and after they can make money out of it.

Last.fm continues to be awsome, a great way for a band to expose themselves if well exploited. They're experiencing a boom of users now that Pandora is enforcing their users to be located in the United States, yet there are rumours of Viacom wanting to buy them which are no good news.

Also, I'm curious about two new services that might be quite interesting: We7 and Playable. When more info on those are announced, I'll surely let you know...

Spokeo.com has relaunched as Hypeit.com

Here's an e-mail everyone with an account in Spokeo.com recieved:

Dear Spokeo/Hypeit users,

We have refocused our site from a social news reader to a community
centered on sharing interesting stories.  Everyday we discover great
articles, photostreams, and videos from ordinary contributers.  We
invite you to join our quest to discover more and more amazing content
outside of main media.

We have changed our name to Hypeit.com to reflect this new focus.  The
functionality of Spokeo.com has been are retained and improved.  Your
data is still closely protected.

If you have imported an account, we now require ownership verification
before May 11th.  This will prevent others from improperly hijacking
your profile.  All unverified content ownerships will be deassociated
on May 11th.

Thank you for all your support.  If you have any questions, feel free
to contact me at harrison@hypeit.com at any time.

Sincerely,
Harrison

eefoof turns VuMe

Last year I wrote about a new social web site called eefoof, where I said that it was both an exciting concept but also criticized it a lot in several things that they should have addressed before having the exposure they had. One year later, we can see in eefoof's website:

First off, I just want to say thank you for your continued support of the site. I started eefoof.com with the belief that it should pay to be creative — now we're taking eefoof to the next generation of media sharing. We've listened to your feedback and we have a cooler interface, faster load times and easier uploading. To help us launch our version 2.0, we have a whole new name:

Introducing VuMe.com ("view me"). It's easier to pronounce and easier to remember. VuMe is now a one-stop media posting site for video, audio, photos and blogs.

Here are some of the features you can expect. A user blogging platform, a faster/higher-quality transcoder for video/audio, a sleek AJAX upload interface, and many more additions to the site to make everything accessible and convenient. No matter what kind of media you post - video, audio, images or blogs - you'll get paid for it, based on the traffic it generates. After all, if we make our money from advertising, so should you.

At VuMe.com, we have an ongoing commitment to share our success. As we generate money, so will you. That's just one of the many differences that makes VuMe stand apart. Here's to our mutual success on VuMe.com. See you on the site!

Since I was quite critic on the service, but pointing out what was IMHO wrong about it, they've sent me out an e-mail, from which I'll post some "can be public" quotes:

First off, I just want to say thank you for your continued support of the site. I started eefoof.com with the belief that it should pay to be creative Ñ now we're taking eefoof to the next generation of media sharing. We've listened to your feedback and we have a cooler interface, faster load times and easier uploading. To help us launch our version 2.0, we have a whole new name:

Introducing VuMe.com ("view me"). It's easier to pronounce and easier to remember. VuMe is now a one-stop media posting site for video, audio, photos and blogs.

Here are some of the features you can expect. A user blogging platform, a faster/higher-quality transcoder for video/audio, a sleek AJAX upload interface, and many more additions to the site to make everything accessible and convenient. No matter what kind of media you post - video, audio, images or blogs - you'll get paid for it, based on the traffic it generates. After all, if we make our money from advertising, so should you.

At VuMe.com, we have an ongoing commitment to share our success. As we generate money, so will you. That's just one of the many differences that makes VuMe stand apart. Here's to our mutual success on VuMe.com. See you on the site!

Promising, it seems. While I was writting this, tho, Paula registred and is now facing so many "Oops, we had a little problem" messages that turns VuMe quite unusable... Maybe they still didn't get it right?

For eefoof I wrote:

they should had risk more and not only wait to get a more-beta less-alpha application, but mainly not to make the apliccation in such a raw-state to be widely reviewed (by being digg'ed and /.'ed)

Twice in a row? I don't know - She registred from scratch and is using Safari, I'm using Iceape and migrated my eefoof account to the new VuMe.

OK, I've tracked down that bug:

If you use that checkbox...

Oops! It looks like there is a problem.

* MDB2 Error: no such field in query:
_doQuery: [Error message: Could not execute statement] [Last executed query: UPDATE users SET bio = '', email = 'marcos.marado@sonae.com', comment_notify = '1', location = 'Portugal', website = '' WHERE id = 'MindBoosterNoori'] [Native code: 1054] [Native message: Unknown column 'comment_notify' in 'field list']

Another bug: I've tried to upload a song, and when it ended, I've got a blank page telling:

wget --spider "http://tc1.vume.com/audio/process/38/brixwEX6Yq/" > /dev/null &

WTF? Hmm, seems still in alpha stage to me... Maybe next year?