woblog » Ed

Beeline Bicycles are rolling! (sorry)

Ed — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 14:02:52 +0000

We’re proud to announce the launch of the new Beeline Bicycles eCommerce site last Thursday (2008-08-28). Beeline Bicycles are Oxford’s premier cycle shop, and they now have an online presence to extend their reach far beyond their shop on Cowley Road.

The new site integrates the Contented content management system with a bespoke eCommerce and stock management module. With over 2000 products available to buy, the first orders are already landing – check it out for yourself…

Google “Chrome” – now they have a Browser…

Ed — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 11:03:10 +0000

After years of unfounded speculation, it appears that Google is actually getting into the web browser market. Later today they plan to release a Beta version (it’s always a Beta with Google) of “Chrome“. In a rather cute move, they have also published a cartoon explaining what it’s all about.

Aside from the standard ‘Faster!’, ‘Simpler!’, ‘Safer!’ claims, it looks like Chrome will make each browser tab a separate process, add offline support through their ‘Gears‘ software, be cross-platform, and make it easier to run as an application without a URL bar. Why should you care? This will potentially allow webapps to behave more like regular applications – sitting on your desktop, and working even when not connected to the internet. If an application or site crashes, you won’t lose your other pages, and you will have a better idea what caused the problem.

On the other hand, some might say it also positions Google to become the new Microsoft, with users using a Google browser to access the growing range of Google applications (gMail, Docs, Talk, Calendar etc) instead of the Outlook and Office. We’ll have to wait and see.

…And in the spirit of unfounded speculation, hype, and tinfoil-hat suspicion, here is a classic story by Cory Doctorow about what might happen if Google really became all-pervasive: Scroogled

Doing real harm, virtually

Ed — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 15:06:42 +0000

Script kiddies hit a new low over Easter, when they hacked the forum of the nonprofit Epilepsy Foundation to trigger a Javascript trojan and flash images at visitors.

There is little point lambasting whatever attention-deprived individual perpetrated it (they were lucky the consequences were not more serious) or fanning the wild conspiracy theorising. There will always be people will to do this sort of thing, and me-too copycats won’t be far behind. The important thing is to learn from this. Sadly, there is very little in the way of clear advice – and it all involves tweaking specific animation and javascript preferences. This just isn’t something you can reasonably expect all users to be able to do… and if they did, then they would quickly find a lot of sites stopped working properly. Does anyone have any recommendations here? Perhaps browser plugins that offer whitelists of sites where security has been thoroughly evaluated?

There is a full writeup on Wired. You can see the technical overview by SecurityFocus and more general advice on photosensitivity on the Epilepsy Foundation website. I also recommend this opinionated, but highly informative, post on practical measures you can take.

(Incidentally, Opera seems to have trouble working out how to wrap lines in this edit window)