Top 15 Web-Based Services

Here are, in my humble opinion, the top 15 web services out there. There are a lot of factors that went into how I determined what to put on this list and how to rank it. Here are a few: How revolutionary is this service? How handy? How versatile? How reliable? How are they run? etc.

1. Gmail (Hosted Web Mail)
2. LibraryThing (Social Book Indexing)
3. Blogger (Blogging)
4. Craigslist (Community Classifieds)
5. Fotki (Photo Hosting)
6. Google Analytics (Web Stats)
7. You Tube (You Tube)
8. Google Book Search (Book Text Search)
9. Delicious (Social Bookmarking)
10. Google Maps (Mapping)
11. Google Reader (Feed Reader)
12. Facebook (Social Network)
13. Listal (Social Listing)
14. Google Calender (Calendar)
15. Title Trader (Book, etc. Trading)

P2P Bust in Japan

An author of a P2P software has been convicted in Japan. The charges revolve around copyright infringement.

However, the accused was not found guilty of "copyright infringement", but rather "enabling copyright infringement".

I think that decision is problematic. There should be a large and well-defined distinction between doing something and building something that might conceivably allow someone to do something. Isamu Kaneko did not force the users of his software to use it illegaly. It is quite conceivable that those users could have chosen to use Isamu's software legally. This sort of court decision is exactly what is needed to stifle innovation and punish those who produce popular (and free) software. Isamu's product had half a million users.


Here are some things to consider:

1. The software itself is not an infringement nor is it illegal.
2. The software does nothing that many other similar packages couldn't do.
3. There is no feasible way for such a general purpose file sharing program to reasonably detect what is copyrighted and what isn't. It just handles chunks of data.
4. The software does nothing to enable infringement that is fundamentally different than what your typical FTP or Web Client/Server does.

If it can be proven that the software does not in and of itself break any laws, I believe it is illegitimate to attempt to charge the author of it. While it may not correspond exactly, the basic principles involved are somewhat akin to MP3 player producers being sued because some of their users use illegally downloaded MP3s on the devices. It is patently silly. In almost in any context, this sort of charge would be so silly that the judge would laugh. However, somehow when it comes to coprights on the internet, many convictions for this sort of things seem to be able to happen.

The sort of logic employed here is very twisted, sort of akin to the Guilt By Association Fallacy. It goes something like "Joe broke the law with X. Fred made X. Therefore Fred broke the law". If X, in and of itself, is not an infrigement of the law, there should be no case against Fred. It is not totally unlike saying: "Joe murdered someone in MondoShoes. MondoShoes are produced by George. Therefore George is guilty of murder." This sort of reasoning would be ridiculous even in regard to murder, which is obviously of more gravity than copyright infringement. The software in question was really just a "transport" (hence the analogy of shoes) that the person used to commit the copryright infringement. The P2P software is really expendible in this matter, so there is no sane reason to blame the person who wrote that softawre. The people who are hosting and downloading the copyrighted products are the real "movers" in the act of violating copyright law.

Thankfully saner decisions have prevailed in these sort of cases in U.S. and Canada courts.

Internet Security

"Not having anything to hide" is not a good excuse for not taking strong security measures while using the Internet and submitting information to web pages. There are many good reasons why you shouldn't necessarily trust your Internet Service Provider's pledge to secure their services.

Suprise Suprise

The recent vote from the U.S. House of Representatives is bad news for the future of the Internet. The proposed revision to the currently debated Act would have helped to ensure the neutrality of the Internet, but alas it was voted down. Even large companies such as Google, Amazon, and Ebay are very concerned about the impact the Act will have. The old communication giants and other entities fighting against Internet neutrality don't necessarily like these new upstart companies (such as Google), and there is no doubt that in the future anti-competitive measures could be used against Google and other companies such as Ebay or Amazon.

The creator of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee warned that this could be the beginning of a "dark age" for the Internet.

Internet Neutrality

One of the foremost aspects of the Internet as we know it is that it is neutral. By this I mean that it is free in the sense of being independant from any particular governing agency. It exists as a free medium that can be used in many different ways by many different groups.

Tim Berners-Lee (who invented the technology of the World Wide Web) has said that the neutrality of the Internet is "essential to our society". He goes on to state that "It is the basis of a fair competitive market economy. It is the basis of democracy, by which a community should decide what to do."

Unfortunately, though, this neutrality of the Internet is highly endangered. Two votes are going to happen in the near future. One is in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the other is in the Senate. They could have major ramifications on the control that phone and cable companies can exert on the Internet. One such particular company is AT&T. These monopolies are essentailly lobbying to get control to say who gets access to high-speed pipes on the Internet, and also which particular content gets priority. This has obvious ramifications, but the worst ones are possibly the subtle but dangerous changes it would make to the culture of the Internet. It would change the very environment of the Internet, and could quickly polarize things and cause a very unfair and manipulative playing field.

The First Amendment principle which has always so strongly applied to the Internet could potentially be squashed out due to commercial interests. If you are an American citizen and feel you would like to find out more about this, or if you would like to take action, please go here.

This is an important reminder that the freedom we have traditionally enjoyed in the Western Hemispehre will not be maintained by status quo. There are too many forces working against it. It needs to be asserted and defended.

Google Reader!

I spend a lot of time on the computer for work, to communicate with many people, and also many of my hobbies and interests involve computer usage to some extent. I also read a number of blogs.

This can all be time consuming. However, I found a little-known service that helps a bit! Google has a (still beta) service which basically gives you a nice interface to keep track of various XML site feeds. These feeds basically provide "Google Reader" with a list of content, and then Google Reader determines whether anything is new since you last checked. In Google Reader you define a list of sites you want to have on your list (in my case a list of blogs), and it combines all of their articles into one place. I can read them right from Google Reader and when I view any one of them, they are marked as "Read" and are hidden. You can also "Star" articles to give them some persistence (works the same way that "Stars "work in Google Mail).

So, instead of going to 15-20 Blogs to determined whether there are any new articles, I go to one place (Google Reader) and see my list of articles. This, in my mind, is very nifty.

Of course, this doesn't only apply to blogs, but basically any site that is syndicating its content through an XML feed. Unfortunately, some blogs may not offer an XML feed--but most do, even when run by people that are not very technologically savy. The reason being, most large blogging services provide it by default (ie. Blogger.com, by default, provides a feed with each blog at the path http://blogname.blogspot.com/atom.xml).

The service isn't exactly bug-free or refined, but it really has a lot of potential!

Related Tags: google, internet, computers, blogs, rss

A Worthwhile Project!

Years ago, I discovered Project Gutenberg, a great project offering thousands of online ebooks, mainly older public domain classics. After ignoring it for some time, curisoty compelled me to return. Thankfully, not much is new, besides the design and more ebooks! If only more people knew about it and contributed to it!

I've already read the text of "Common Sense" by Thomas Paine, and have also worked through part of a book of Mark Twain's letters. I've put a hold on my e-book reading momentarily, but I'm sure I'll return soon.

The site hosts a plethora of works by well known authors such as H.G. Wells, Albert Einstein, Mark Twain, Jules Verne, Plato, Jack London, G.K. Chesterton, William Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Charles Dickens, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and some less well-known ones too!

We should be greatful about the geek ethic of nurturing projects that benefit the community. This is not unique to the Internet, but this sort of culture seems to be thriving online! There are many great projects such as this one, Wikipedia, archive.org, ibiblio.org, and others that are paving the way towards free-flowing non-commercial streams of information, putting content in the hands of those who might not otherwise be able to access it. That is what Mr. Gutenburg's invention was all about. It shook the world mightly, particularly Europe, by enabling the Bible to eventually reach the hands of the common people.

For those interested in checking it out: http://www.gutenberg.org/