Video: Discussing the Challenges of the Internet

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At the Berkman@10 conference at Harvard, I had a chance to speak to some of the many attendees and speakers at the conference about the challenges facing the internet today and in the near future.

Phillip Hallam-Baker, author of the dotCrime Manifesto, says stability is the missing ingredient in the Internet in the fight against Internet crime; Kathy Higgins, Educational Technologies, Dept. of Education, N.H., sees a shift to more use of social networking and community voices gaining traction; and Dr. Jim Morris if Carnegie Mellon University comments on the battlegrounds forming for the soul of the Internet.

Click here to see the video of these interviews at Berman@10 about the fate of the Internet.

Can You Digg the New Flock Browser?

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The makers of the Web browser Flock like to refer to their product as "the social Web browser". And it's probably a fair description, as the main focus of the free Firefox-based browser is to make it easy for users to follow and use social networking and media-sharing Web sites.

But one of the problems with Flock is that it is only social for some social networking and Web 2.0 sites, which means that, for example, if you rely on LinkedIn or MySpace instead of Facebook, then Flock may not be all that social for you.

Of course, the makers of Flock realize this, which is why the main new features in the recently released Flock 1.2 are focused on adding support for new sites and services.

Protecting Your Site from Google Hacks

Most people understand that if there is information visible on the Web, then Google knows about it. But what about the information that many people think is invisible? Chances are, Google knows about that too.

That's because many Web sites, including big corporate sites, expose much more information than they realize. Everything from customer credit information to administrator passwords has turned up in Google searches.

In corporate Web security, this is clearly a serious problem. But many companies pay little attention to it because they don't know how to perform the Google hacks that can find this sensitive information. Until now of course.

GoolagScanner is a free open-source tool from the Cult of the Dead Cow that makes it possible for Web site administrators and security personnel to quickly perform tests to see if their sites are exposing sensitive information to complex Google searches. The tool is mainly based on Johnny Long's Google Hacking Database, which lists all of the potential Google hacks (or googledorks, as he calls them) that can be used to find sensitive information on Web sites.

Don't Waste Good Security Practices

Stop using anti-virus and patch management systems! They don't work and they are a waste of time and, worse, a waste of money. OK, I'm kidding. I would never say that.

But John Stewart, Cisco's chief security officer, would. At the AusCERT (Australian Computer Emergency Response Team) conference in Australia May 19 to 23, Stewart essentially said money spent on anti-virus and patch management is completely wasted.

Now, it's true that using anti-virus and patching systems is really just the most basic first step to security and shouldn't by any means be seen as a complete security solution. But saying that it's a waste to even use anti-virus and patch management is sort of like saying it's a waste to have locks on the door of your car because any serious crook can get by them.

Just as leaving your car door open with the keys in the ignition is an invitation to any passing thief, unpatched and unprotected PCs are an open invitation to any viruses or malware passing by, even ones that are old and would be easily stopped by patching and anti-virus. Just because your company could still fall prey to more advanced malware and bad guys doesn't mean you also want to have all your systems polluted by things that could have been easily prevented.

Video: The Future of the Berkman Center and the Internet

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At last week's Berkman@10 conference I had the chance to sit down with John Palfrey, Executive Director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

In this interview we spoke about the conference itself, some of the changes happening now at the Berkman Center, and about the future of the Center and the Internet.

Click here to watch my video interview with John Palfrey.

And while I had the chance to do some interviews at the Berkman@10 event, I also had the tables (or camera) turned on me and was the subject (along with many other attendees) of a video interview.

Click here to see my response to the question, what is the future of the Internet?

OLPC Provides First Look at the XO 2.0

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At a special One Laptop Per Child event held today, May 20, at MIT, OLPC Chairman Nicholas Negroponte provided a first glimpse at the next generation of the XO laptop.

The XO 2.0 takes a radically different approach from the current version of the XO laptop. This version is designed more as a e-book reader than as a traditional laptop.

No working model was displayed by Negroponte, but in photos the XO 2.0 was seen as a smaller sized (about half the size of the current XO) right and left pane e-book that could be used in multiple modes, including as a tablet and as a laptop. (Click here to see images of the XO 2.0, some of which were photographed from a presentation so I apologize for the quality.)

The 10 Biggest Hurdles to Innovation

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Get a group of technology workers together and it is pretty much a certainty that if you ask if innovation is the life blood of technology that everyone will agree.

After all, innovation is what keeps our jobs interesting and challenging and is what creates the new and exciting companies that enable the jobs of tomorrow. Without innovation, claims about the death of IT would have been spot on instead of way off.

But while everyone will pay lip service to innovation, there are many both inside and outside of technology circles who actually work hard to stop or at least slow innovation. That's because while innovation may be good for most of us, for some special interests and companies it is mainly seen as a threat to their profitability or even existence.

So what are the biggest hurdles that innovation faces today? I've put together this list of . Take a look at let me know what you think the biggest threats to innovation are.

Live from Berkman@10: Politics, Innovation and the Internet

Just starting to wrap up day one here at the Berkman@10 Conference. The second session of the day was hosted by center Executive Director John Palfrey and focused on politics and the Internet.

John brought in lots of the distinguished members of the audience to talk about the effect of the blogosphere on politics and elections and the efforts to censor the Internet in many parts of the world. One interesting site mentioned was opennet.net, which tracks censorship of the Internet around the world.

This was followed by a session that included Berkman professor Yochai Benkler and Jimmy Wales, of Wikipedia and Wikia.

The focus of this session was cooperation, specifically focused on issues such as crowdsourcing and community-built resources, with Wikipedia being the prime example.

Live from Berkman@10: The Future of the Internet

Here I am live at the Berkman@10 conference at Harvard, an event that celebrates the 10th anniversary of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society and also is looking at some of the key issues facing the Internet today.

Jonathan Zittrain, a co-founder of the Center, just finished a talk on the future of the Internet. Not surprisingly, the talk was based mainly on his book, titled (surprise, surprise) "The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It."

The main arguments that he is making is that demands for security and reliability on the Internet will lead to a lockdown of systems and Internet access that will result in an Internet very different from the one we have now, one lacking the freedom and transparency of today's Internet and also one that would be much less of an engine for innovation (especially for individuals).

Welcome Your New IP Masters

It's good to know that when our country is threatened that our lawmakers will jump into action to protect us, leveraging resources and spending money to form giant new bureaucracies and establish White House-level positions to combat this major threat.

What is this threat that Congress has put such a high priority on? Is it fixing our disaster preparedness so tragedies like Katrina don't happen again? Could it be a bulking up of our health system to protect the citizens against a possible pandemic?

If you picked either of those options, or any other so-called commonsense threat, than you clearly have your priorities out of whack.

No, this threat that the U.S. House of Representatives has overwhelmingly chosen to battle against is copyright protections, anti-piracy measures and stopping those pesky college kids from downloading MP3s.