Jam today

Interesting Technology Review article.

A startup called eJamming claims to have solved some of the problems that have plagued musicians who jam together online. According to the company, its software, called eJamming AUDiiO, is able to let musicians collaborate in near real time with musicians halfway across the world. Additionally, the software simultaneously records each musician, combines and synchronizes his or her input, and creates files with CD-quality tracks, says Alan Glueckman, president and chairman of eJamming.

The main problems with remote jamming are bandwidth and network latency (the amount of time it takes a data packet to travel from source to destination). eJamming seems to have tackled the first with a new compression system, and the second by using P2P technology to put musicians in direct touch with one another rather than being linked through a server. Neat if it works.

Economist: cyberwar reassessed

Good piece pondering the implications of the assault on Estonia.

Even at their crudest, the assaults broke new ground. For the first time, a state faced a frontal, anonymous attack that swamped the websites of banks, ministries, newspapers and broadcasters; that hobbled Estonia’s efforts to make its case abroad. Previous bouts of cyberwarfare have been far more limited by comparison: probing another country’s internet defences, rather as a reconnaissance plane tests air defences.

At full tilt, the onslaught on Estonia was also of a sophistication not seen before, with tactics shifting as weaknesses emerged. “Particular ‘ports’ of particular mission-critical computers in, for example, the telephone exchanges were targeted. Packet ‘bombs’ of hundreds of megabytes in size would be sent first to one address, then another,” says Linnar Viik, Estonia’s top internet guru. Such efforts exceed the skills of individual activists or even organised crime; they require the co-operation of a state and a large telecoms firm, he says. The effects could have been life-threatening. The emergency number used to call ambulances and the fire service was out of action for more than an hour.

For many countries, the events of the past weeks have been a loud wake-up call. Estonia, one of the most wired nations in Europe, actually survived pretty well. Other countries would have fared worse, NATO specialists reckon…

IMHO, this is a really big deal. I can’t understand why governments appear to be paying so little attention to it. And I’m astonished that it has taken so long for an attack to materialise. Years ago I wrote that Saddam Hussein should stop wasting his efforts on WMD and hire some hackers instead. I guess he didn’t read the Observer. Just as well, maybe.

Another use for Twitter

From Ethan Zuckerman

When I saw Alaa a few weeks ago in Doha, the first thing he did was grab my computer, log into Twitter and, as he put it, “let everyone know I’m still alive.” This is a good thing to do when you’re an activist who routinely gets detained or arrested. Alaa’s Twitter feed includes updates for his compatriots every time he goes to the police or to a demonstration so he can let people know where he is… and if they don’t here from him, perhaps they need to reopen the FreeAlaa blog.

Twitter is also potentially useful for activists organizing a demonstration, as it’s a lightweight mass-SMS sending system, which lets you warn your fellow activists where the police are and what path they should take. Probably not the purpose the designers had, but an excellent use nevertheless.

Blog valuations (contd.)

I blogged recently about the Cyberwire valuation of this and various friends’ websites. One I forgot to feed into the calculating machine was Ray Corrigan’s splendid blog about IP madness. Ray, however, fed it in and was delighted to discover that his blog is worth over $70 million. I’m ashamed to say that I thought he was making this up, so I repeated the calculation just now.

The result? Ray’s site is apparently worth $76,785,151. I expect he’s already ordered that yacht. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.

Microsoft invents fat (finger) controller

From Technology Review

Retrieving the stylus for a personal digital assistant takes time. But for detailed work, a stylus is usually better than a finger. Microsoft researchers believe that they’ve found a better way to activate tiny targets, such as a name on a contact list or a street on a map.

Microsoft’s solution, called Shift, allows users to employ their fingertips to select pixels in a new way. First, the user presses a finger on the screen over the area of interest. Holding down her finger activates the Shift software. A detailed view of the area of interest appears nearby on the screen, in a pop-up window on top of the original image. With slight movements of her finger, the user can guide a pair of crosshairs over her desired target within the pop-up window and then make her selection by lifting her finger off the screen…

BBN back in the network design business

Aaah!….. a blast from the past. Tech Review reports that Bolt Beranek and Newman have got the contract to rethink the network design.

NEW YORK (AP) — A government contractor that played a key role in the Internet’s birth will oversee efforts to redesign the network from scratch.

The National Science Foundation announced Monday that BBN Technologies Inc. will get up to $10 million (euro7.5 million) over four years to oversee the planning and design of the Global Environment for Network Innovations, or GENI.

Many researchers want to rethink the Internet’s underlying architecture, saying a ”clean-slate” approach is the only way to truly address security, mobility and other challenges that have cropped up since the Internet’s birth in 1969.

The NSF already has been funding several projects at universities and elsewhere through Future Internet Network Design, or FIND. It has been pushing to build GENI as a testbed for researchers to explore clean-slate ideas without damaging the current Internet.

Much of the work on GENI so far has been conducted by professors and other researchers. Naming BBN brings a full-time staff to the project, said Larry Peterson, chairman of computer science at Princeton University and head of the GENI planning group.

”They have a track record in large government projects of this sort, and they are very much committed to working with the research community to build the experimental facility we want and need,” Peterson said of BBN…

Footnote: Hmmm… That AP report isn’t entirely accurate. Although BBN played the central role in the design and implementation of the ARPANET, I don’t think it had any significant role in the ‘internetworking’ project that followed from 1973 onwards.

Intel steals a march on OLPC

Cute, isn’t it? Wonder if Bill Gates put them up to it. (He’s been very rude about the One Laptop Per Child project in the past.) Anyway, Intel claims to be shipping this gizmo to the developing world. According to the blurb:

Classmate PCs are rugged and include features that are commonly found in today’s mainstream PCs (such as storage and built-in wireless), and are capable of running mainstream applications including video and educational software. These PCs are equipped with unique functions such as a water-resistant keyboard, an integrated educational feature set that allows teacher-student and teacher-parent collaboration, and an advanced theft-control feature using a network-issued digital certification. Intel works in each market with local software, hardware and communications companies that manufacture, distribute, service and support these Intel-powered classmate PCs.

Translation: these devices run Windows and are designed to (a) wean poor people onto Microsoft software and (b) make piracy difficult.

Over at OLPC, Nick Negroponte is not amused.

There are various differences in both the hardware and software, but Professor Negroponte believes the main problem is that his machine uses a processor designed by Intel’s main competitor, AMD.

“Intel and AMD fight viciously,” he told CBS. “We’re just sort of caught in the middle.”

Professor Negroponte says Intel has distributed marketing literature to governments with titles such as “the shortcomings of the One Laptop per Child approach”, which outline the supposedly stronger points of the Classmate.

Mr Barrett [Intel’s CEO, Craig Barrett] told CBS: “Someone at Intel was comparing the Classmate PC with another device being offered in the marketplace. That’s the way our business works.”

He dismissed claims that Intel was trying to put OLPC out of business as “crazy”.

“There are lots of opportunities for us to work together,” he said.

According to the BBC report, “Intel says it already has orders for ‘thousands’ of Classmates, which currently cost over $200 (£100).”

Here’s a thought. And another one, and another one …

This morning’s Observer column

PG Wodehouse wrote the best evocation I’ve ever read of what it’s like to be totally astonished. He describes the expression on the face of a chap who ‘while picking daisies on the down line, has just received the 4.15 in the small of the back’. Well, I saw that expression this week. It crossed the visage of a friend who is a grizzled veteran of the print business, a man who was once deputy editor of one of our more disgraceful national newspapers. No more cynical observer of human depravity can therefore be imagined. But he was, for an instant, genuinely taken aback…