In our spare time [ha!] we’ve teamed up with a pretty cool advertising agency on a not-for-profit (yet) side project that lets you share your spare desk with interesting individuals who might need it.
The way we’re developing this compact web application is slightly different to how most web apps are born (i.e. absolute secrecy) : we’re planning and discussing everything about the project on a public blog, welcoming comments and input from anyone who’s interested.
Right now we’re telling the World about it and gathering views, advice, and expressions of interest. So if you’re interested, have a read and get involved.
Adaptive Path, who do great work in experience strategy and design, are working with Mozilla on a project called Aurora. It’s a concept for a future browser which itself is part of a wider collaborative project which Mozilla is running called the Concept Series.
The Concept Series is encouraging everyone to get involved with producing ideas, prototypes and mockups for future directions in browsing and the web. Definitely one to keep an eye on and get involved with.
The web based bookmarking service Delicious launched its new interface and architecture last night and at first glance it is a huge improvement. It seems to have gone well and not died under the load, unlike when last.fm launched its new design.
I’m on the move soon. I was checking out the site for Britannia removals.
Their regional branch map location page thing features photos of Britannia packing boxes nestling somewhere in each region. It’s not cutting edge design, it’s very much web 1.0 but it made an otherwise pedestrian set of pages that bit more entertaining. I found myself clicking round the regions to look at the other pictures (shame they’d missed some out).
I particularly liked the North East region page where they’d made it look like the Angel of the North was stood on a Britannia box.
Sandwiched between my ever increasing list of bookmarks you’ll find a link to my new secretary, her name is Sandy. When I first heard about her, I wanted her, which makes the URL iwantsandy.com quite appropriate
Basically once you’ve registered for free, you can email Sandy with a message along the lines of ‘remind me to send Max a birthday card on 12th March, she’ll read it and send you a reminder email at the appropriate time the good thing is she can remind your friends too.
The BBC and other main stream media websites have been covering this issue today.
Dan Kaminsky found the issue 6 months ago and has managed to get the world’s biggest companies to work together to issue patches and fixes.
The “Issue” in question is a serious vulnerability in the world’s DNS system, as yet unpublished, which essentially meant that your requests for websites could have been redirected at will by hackers.
I’m desperately trying to highlight that this issue has been fixed, or is being fixed… and trying and not turn it into a Daily Mail style hackers-are-going-to-steal/knife-your-children post.
Dan Kaminsky’s niece manages to explain the issue rather well..
Getting back to Dan and his efforts. He was also able to convince Yahoo to publicly ditch an unpatchable system (BIND 8). Yahoo are the world’s biggest user of BIND 8 so this is a massive undertaking and highlights the seriousness of the issue.
Dan Kaminsky has not yet published the issue and to quote directly from his website he is asking for 30 days to get this in place.
…But I also want my family to be able to use the Internet in peace. I’m not asking for forever. I am asking about thirty days. I’ve done everything in my power to get the patches available, no matter the platform….
The family part of the quote in my mind cements the seriousness of the issue he has found.
He is also asking fellow security experts/hackers to not to try and figure out the issue and concentrate on fixing existing issues…another quote:
And so, I ask the open research community…assume I found nothing! Assume this is nothing but a stunt….
The last person to leave the internet please turn off the lights…
