LookIt

Charging for sending email

If you let out a loud groan when you saw that title, we are in full agreement. If you didn't let out a loud groan, go read this excellent summary, with which I am in full agreement.

Google is spamming

Folks reading this blog know that I'm a big fan of Google. Well, that's true most of the time. It is not true this morning because Google is now actively spamming. That's really unfortunate just before their IPO announcement.

Last night I got two invitations to join Orkut. Again. Both came from people who had asked me to join a long time ago. I just verified that at least one of them didn't re-ask (and I believe that he isn't at all active on Orkut). The invitation says nothing about it being a re-invitation, and starts off saying "[someone] invites you to join his network of personal friends at orkut.com." The word "invites" is in the present tense, not the past tense.

Yo, Google: stop spamming. Thanks!

If this had been a real emergency...

Lots of news sites covered how Microsoft's servers were swamped with April's security patch release. I tried it on Thursday, and still had problems getting through. What few, if any, of the new sites pointed out was that the patch was only 3.1 megabytes. Normally, big Microsoft patches are over 10 megabytes. So, what will happen to users when the next big, important Microsoft patch is large? It would be grand if someone was studying their patterns of how often they try before giving up on a patch.

Less about Gmail

The Center for Democracy and Technology sums up the outcry about Google's new mail service, Gmail, quite well: "Moreover, it is important to note that most of the privacy concerns associated with Gmail are the same as or similar to concerns posed by other similar services, albeit heightened because of the magnitude of what GMail is proposing." See the full CDT report here.

All the complaints about how Google is doing something wrong miss the point: Google is doing it openly, as compared to AOL, MSN, YahooMail, etc. Further, Gmail's terms of use, privacy policy, and program policies documents are much easer to read and understand than those of the (future) competition.

And the ads supposedly related to the messages can sometimes be humorous. I complained to the support team that Gmail has problems with Safari, and they replied nicely, saying "we are committed to making our product available to as many people as possible, and supporting as many browsers and platforms as possible". (Mac users: when was the last time you heard such positive intentions?). The "related" ad was "Java Error? Fix It Now"...

ICANN's proposed new TLDs

ICANN has asked for input on its new "sTLDs". The first "s" there stands for "sponsored", meaning that the new TLDs are supposed to only take registrations from people, groups, companies, or organizations with something in common. The precise definition from ICANN is "a clearly defined community ... which can benefit from the establishment of a TLD operating in a policy formulation environment in which the community would participate."

The proposed new TLDs are:

• .asia -- This is probably the strongest of the proposals. The sponsoring group has many leaders from the Asian ccTLD community, it is clearly set up for a particular group, and many members of the group want to be associated with the group (that is, they want to emphasize their Asinaness). This is also probably the best way to get internationalized domain names (IDNs) deployed on a large scale. It is not clear how the names will be assigned; will they be "china.asia" or "sony.asia" or both? Still, a good solid proposal.
• .cat -- Probably a bad joke. As anyone who has watched ICANN knows, the "s" part of "sTLD" will likely evaporate in a few years if the sponsor can't make money. Witness the strict rules that ".name" was originally under, that then turned into mush. Anyone who believes that the folks sponsoring ".cat" really only intend it for Catalonian probably don't know ICANN's history or think that the sponsoring agency have never heard of cat-lovers. Give these folks their second choice (.ctl) and see if they just evaporate.
• .jobs -- Yeah, now there is a focused TLD with a purpose. Every company that currently has a domain name but wants to show which jobs they offer will need to buy a second domain name. Counter-proposal: all companies that are offering jobs instead create a URL of http://www.theirdomainname.com/jobs. Easier, cheaper, and more flexible.
• .mail -- This is lame on so many levels it is hard to know where to begin. First, check out their application. "N/A" and "TBD" for sponsor information? How re-assuring. The folks putting this forward have a track record of laziness and immaturity, and have given legitimate anti-spam organizations a bad name.
• .mobi -- "Individual and business consumers of mobile devices, services and applications" is not a well-defined community, particularly as that group continues to expand. There is no need for the domain name of a device to say "I'm mobile"; that's about as useful as "I'm red". Even if you did want to name it that way, the "mobi" label should go at the left of the domain name, not the right.
• .post -- Should be as popular and useful as ".museum" and ".aero".
• .tel (Pulver) -- Just plain silly. What is described is already available as e164.arpa, which is just as ugly but much more useful.
• .tel (Telnic) -- No defined community, no discernible direction. "I use a telephone" is not a good enough reason to register a new domain name.
• .travel -- This one is marginally interesting. It has a high chance of becoming the next ".museum" and ".aero" (and possibly ".post"), but it at least has some good mnemonics to it. "www.california.travel" is more sensible than "travel.california.us", but only slightly so.
• .xxx -- Sounds like "create-a-ghetto-with-built-in-mafia". Give every country whose politicians are supposedly anti-pornography (read: everyone) a perfect excuse to say "all objectionable material can only appear on web sites whose domain names end in .xxx" and see what happens, particularly who gets rich. Seen from the consumer's side, it is unlikely that anyone looking for pr0n is going to say "hmmm, I wonder if this site actually has what I want because it's TLD isn't .xxx". And do you really think that some pr0n provider registering "wetyoungvirgins.com" is going to think "oh, wait, I'd better register that in .xxx instead so people know what I'm offering"?

Summary: Go for .asia and maybe .travel. Skip the rest. And think about my old proposal on reforming the root as a way to get rid of this mess.

Killer

When I used to go to the disco (yea those many decades ago), when a new song came on, I'd try to listen to the lyrics to know whether or not it was cool to dance to it. If I had heard this song, I would have probably laughed so hard I would have wet myself, which was as uncool then as it is now.

Three positive views on Google

Jason Kottke points to, and expands on, a great artlcle by Rich Skrenta about what Google can do with its huge hardware and software base linked to its collection of web content and use habits. Jason says "give everyone cheap hardware that uses Google as the OS". A couple of months ago, I had a different proposal that Google simply replace Windows with a simpler and safer OS that has obvious links to the Googleverse. All three ideas play on a few concepts that people in the Wintel mentality have forgotten:

• Users want their daily tasks to be easier and safer
• Everyone likes free, particularly when it is replacing something that is costing them $50-$100
• People are perfectly willing to give up "privacy" for a better computing experience

Some folks will call Google "evil" for this. I couldn't disagree more. It's evil if you have to use it, or if it is foisted on you in a hidden fashion. It's brilliant if you get to choose and there are other options but everyone wants this one. I predict that, if Google continues on the current intellectual trajectory, everyone will want this one.

Wrong kind of security

David Coursey talks about not being able to reach the Internet from Microsoft's campus. He says "Perhaps Microsoft's passion for security (long in coming as it was) could be expressed in more useful manner: One that doesn't cancel out my ability to do all these things Microsoft keeps telling people it enables them to do."

But that's exactly Microsoft's security problem in their operating system and applications. They make the act of safely doing regular things so difficult or confusing that people turn off or ignore the security. 99% of users have no reason to be getting executable code in mail, but the steps needed to do prevent that are too confusing to typical users, so they just keep getting them and trying to remember not to execute them. Few Word and Excel macros need to read data from anything other than currently-open documents, but detecting whether a loaded macro does this is nearly impossible for typical users.

The user interface for security needs to be simpler than the user interface for the OS and applications. Otherwise, it will be avoided. Microsoft knows this but prefers to say "we gave you the security options: if you don't use them, it's your fault".