2018 Shell Jewelry weblogs

The new iPhone 2.1 firmware will apparently improve the iPhone 3G's GPS performance.

If that’s the case, it would alleviate some of the concerns raised by David Pogue in his review of the iPhone 3G about the GPS capabilities, that the iPhone couldn’t be used for turn-by-turn navigation. But while that would be a nice improvement, that’s not the main concern on the mind of iPhone 3G users.

Posters in the growing thread on Apple’s discussion board complaining about iPhone 3G signal issues were excited by the possibility that the new firmware update might correct their problems. Apple has not acknowledged any issue with the iPhone 3G’s ability to maintain a connection to worldwide 3G networks, but complaints have been pouring in about a higher-than-usual frequency of dropped calls and weak signals in areas that accommodate other 3G phones without problems.

A new firmware update for Apple’s iPhone 3G is said to include improvements for its GPS functions, but it’s not clear whether that software will do anything to correct the
iPhone’s reception issues.

GearLive reported Thursday that Apple has provided a beta version of the firmware, which is being called iPhone OS 2.1 beta 1, to developers in its program. The new software is said to provide additional features for developers who want to use the iPhone’s built-in GPS chip.

(Credit:
CNET Networks)

As of this moment, it doesn’t appear that anyone has uncovered any networking-related fix in the new firmware, but it hasn’t been live for very long. If anything pops up, we’ll let you know.

All the while, developers across the globe are wondering why they thought Apple would do the right thing, given its history.

Android can be a refuge. Developers shouldn’t forget that.

But if they defect to Android and the Android market becomes a real powerhouse, the whole game will change. Suddenly, Apple will need to take notice and realize the error of its ways.

That number may seem high, but given the outcry from developers, I’m willing to bet that the number of applications denied could be much higher. Once again, Apple won’t spill the beans.

It might be a long-shot and Apple may not even care that Android is taking its leftovers, but it’s worth a shot, isn’t it? For developers who invested their time and money into an application that they thought was worthwhile, being rejected by Apple is difficult. But they need to realize that Android is out there and available if they’re willing to put the time in and create the app on that platform.

Let’s see if I can capture the main points. First, Apple announced that the first iPhone wouldn’t have third-party apps. It took almost a year for the company to come around and finally let third-party developers create apps for its follow-up. But once that happened, all hell broke loose.

So what can developers do? After investing time and money into an application only to be told by Apple that it’s not admitted into the App Store can be a bitter defeat. But now that Android is finally shipping in T-Mobile’s G1, why not jump to Android?

And if enough developers do create Android apps, it’ll force Apple to take notice and hopefully change its ridiculous policy of keeping basic and useful information secret, while making it more difficult than it needs to be on developers.

First, developers repeatedly made claims that Apple’s excessive restrictions were out-of-hand, only to be followed once the App Store launched with a few notable removals from the store, including Nullriver’s NetShare and Box Office.

There’s always one other option for rejected developers: they can try to go it alone and offer their apps themselves. That will work for, oh, about 10 minutes until Apple finds it and shuts it down.

But the main problem with developing for Android is that the hardware isn’t uniform. Some Android-based phones will sport touch-screens, while others will not. That makes developing applications far more difficult, considering the possibility of dealing with a wide array of hardware. But then again, who cares? Rejected iPhone app developers can still create touch-screen Android apps and for those that don’t have a touch-screen Android phone, well, they’re out of luck.

Of course, this doesn’t come as a surprise to those of us who have followed Apple all these years. The company has always been suspect of third-party developers and has consistently failed to do the right thing even when it’s faced with a PR firestorm. After all, if the mainstream doesn’t pay attention, who cares?

Quite a bit has been made lately over Apple’s treatment of developers who want to create apps for the
iPhone and
iPod Touch. The company has consistently played games with developers by keeping them in the dark and ensuring that each time an app is rejected they’re given as little information as possible.

Since that time, Apple has stayed quiet on what it takes to gain entry into the App store, the company has given poor reasons why it won’t accept apps, and now it’s believed that Apple’s rejection letters are covered under its non-disclosure agreement, which means developers won’t be able to help each other gain admission to the store.

For all its troubles, the App Store is still being flooded with applications: Russell Beattie found 450 new applications in the store in just one week.

Check out Don’s Digital Home podcast, Twitter feed, and FriendFeed.

But perhaps the most compelling reason why developers should defect to Android is because it will finally wake up Steve Jobs and company. Right now, I don’t know why Apple should even care about all these developers crying about their beloved apps. The way I see it, they need Apple; Apple doesn’t need them.

But it’s that kind of mentality that could get Apple into trouble. Sure, it worked fine for the company with
Mac OS X and it has every right in the world to stop apps from getting into its store if they’re undesirable, but that doesn’t stop the onslaught of complaints that Apple is acting in a way that’s more than a little “wrong.”

Unlike Apple’s draconian policies, Android is an open platform and Google and the rest won’t spend time trying to stop as many third-party developers from producing apps for the platform.

Inspired by people like Zuckerberg and Digg founder Kevin Rose, who also spoke at FOWA, and encouraged by how inexpensive it is to build on the Web these days, they see the recent wave of Web innovation as self-propelled. If you can’t found a company because the venture capitalists are getting picky, at least build an iPhone app. Who cares if Adobe’s not hiring?

“There is not and cannot be a simple method (to innovation),” Simon Wardley said in his talk. Nor is steering a company, or even a great idea, through the worst economic conditions since the Great Depression.

Entrepreneur or employee?
But it’s unlikely that developers were concerned by the lack of employment opportunities; a job at AOL or Microsoft, or even Google, isn’t what today’s Web kids want anyway. That’s not surprising, considering most of them belong to a digital generation that has been characterized by entrepreneurial self-promotion.

He’s right. It’s a risky industry. In a city like London or New York, especially, many of these bright young developers and engineers likely turned down then-lucrative jobs in the financial sector in order to pursue the more volatile path of entrepreneurship or freelancing. They are already living lifestyles that many of their peers would deem excruciatingly difficult.

LONDON– Britain’s normally gray capital was unusually sunny this week. So were the attitudes of Web developers gathered here for a conference while, across the pond, Wall Street was in full panic mode.

That’s not to say reality wasn’t an uninvited guest to the festivities.

Digg’s Rose proudly announced in his address to FOWA’s attendees on Thursday morning that his company is hiring new engineering talent. But in an interview with CNET News later that day, Rose said everything is tougher now, from finding investors to easily affording company expenses.

This wasn’t some cloistered retreat of idealists. While FOWA is a small conference compared to bigger confabs like the Web 2.0 Expo or Demo, it pulls in big tech sponsors: AOL, Microsoft, Facebook, MySpace, Adobe, Sun Microsystems, all of whom want to reach FOWA’s audience of young Web developers. Last year, the tech world went wild over Web platforms–packages of code released to companies and developers so that they could build their own widgets and applications to run on social networks like Facebook and MySpace. Now the industry has seen the platform craze extend to mobile phone software, like the
iPhone, and new development platforms for downloadable desktop software, like Adobe Air and Microsoft Silverlight.

There was only off-hand talk about the global economic crisis that was also unfolding, in part, just a few train stops away in London’s financial district. But people walking these halls all share a fervent belief in the power of their own ideas: Innovation cannot and will not stop, financial crisis be damned.

“By the time we have all the information necessary to make a perfect decision, that decision is generally worthless,” Wardley said. “Opportunities need to be seized.”

Click here for ongoing coverage from CNET News, ‘Tough times for tech’

Kevin Rose: "A lot of the advice going out there to start-ups right now is to pare back a little bit and get into a mode that you can survive in."

“Starting a company is hard. Period. Exclamation point,” said Michael Galpert, founder of a New York-based image-editing start-up called Aviary, in a talk about how to build a company outside Silicon Valley.

Google engineer Kevin Marks, who helped build the OpenSocial platform, pointed out that the lean years of 2001-2002 brought forth many of the start-ups that have proven to be both innovators and powerful market forces in the past half-decade. “If you look at when the dot-com bubble burst, a lot of the companies that are speaking (at the conference) today grew out of that,” Marks said. “What you tend to get in the quieter times is people coming up with these things…Flickr is a great example.”

None of the big companies on the FOWA show floor seemed to be looking to actually hire new developer talent. A representative at Microsoft’s booth, speaking to me over the din of the Guitar Hero stations that the company had set up, said he doubted anyone was hiring and estimated that the market for developer talent in London had probably dropped by five or six percent. A representative at AOL’s booth wasn’t sure if the company was hiring or not, but said they were really only there to drum up interest in properties like Goowy and Truveo among the developer community.

This is where the Darwin effect comes into play, as some entrepreneurs readily compare the current financial crisis to the original dot-com bust in a good way–that it might have a positive effect on the industry by separating quality start-ups and ideas from a long, candy-colored, vowel-free parade of Web 2.0 silliness. Being part of the business had become almost too easy, a fact easily illustrated by the loads of goofy widgets that flooded Facebook’s developer platform and soon generated a vocal backlash.

A bright-eyed pack of several hundred aspiring Web visionaries descended upon London’s Excel conference center for the semi-annual Future of Web Apps (FOWA) conference. Eager developers trawled the show floor’s booths for stickers that they promptly stamped onto their (overwhelmingly Apple-manufactured) laptops. One pack of young men strolled around in straw sombreros. Another trio passed some time in between lectures by tossing around a Frisbee with the Yahoo Developers Network logo on it.

If you looked at the conference’s array of sponsor booths, you’d think the tech economy was booming like it was in 2006. AOL was handing out pamphlets about developing on properties like social network Bebo and widget-maker Goowy; Sun Microsystems advertised its “Startup Essentials” program with, somewhat incongruously, a mechanical surfboard. Perhaps the biggest piece of showmanship came from MySpace, which hawked its U.K. developer program with one of London’s iconic double-decker buses parked on the show floor, covered in MySpace regalia and playing nightclub-worthy electronica from a set of D.J.-style turntables inside.

(Credit:
Caroline McCarthy/CNET News)

Conference host and consultant Simon Wardley reminded the audience at a talk about innovation that this industry is never easy and that uncertainty is a perpetual hallmark. When you come up with a novel idea, it won’t be novel for long.

A few companies with executives at FOWA were interested in hiring developer talent. Those companies tended to be independent but established companies that had either a stable revenue stream or a healthy cushion of venture capital to last through difficult times–and often, they are run by the very same people who subscribe to the idea that innovation can live through, and even thrive in financial disaster.

Mark Zuckerberg (right): "Some of the best companies have been built in down economic times."

Survival of the fittest
Recordon and Rose, in their belief that sound business practices and useful services will survive, sum up the general of the freewheeling, free-thinking world of Web developers, where there’s a heavy temptation to put a positive spin on the financial crisis. Their reasoning? Starting a business and making it last is always hard, and when a bull market flush with venture cash makes it easy, that’s not a good thing. Many at FOWA argued that even in the best of times, the culture of Web 2.0 development should be a sort of Darwinism, albeit a very happy Darwinism covered in stickers with the logos of Bay Area geek brands like Flickr, Digg, and Laughing Squid.

And entrepreneur-turned-investor Julie Meyer of Ariadne evoked a quotation from Sir John Templeton that says to “invest at the point of maximum pessimism.” Encouraging entrepreneurs to get venture rounds completed and to use the cash wisely, Meyer said, “Entrepreneurs are always investing at the point of maximum pessimism. That’s what they know how to do best.”

But then, there’s that pesky “reality” thing again. Many of the developers, as well as designers and consultants also present at the show, spent the Web 2.0 boom swimming in lucrative freelance contracts, and a few admitted that they’re now doing the unthinkable and searching for full-time employment. “From the freelance perspective, things are tough,” said Suw Charman-Anderson, a London-based consultant who has been a freelancer for ten years. “If someone offered me a job, I’d have to think seriously about it…It’s been a very quiet summer for me, and the (client) interest I’m getting now, I’m getting interest from India. Their economy seems to be a bit more robust.”

“Start-ups that don’t have traction and don’t have that kind of hockey-stick-like growth on Alexa or Compete or whatever are going to have a really difficult time raising an additional round of funding,” Rose said in the interview. “I think that a lot of the advice going out there to start-ups right now is to pare back a little bit and get into a mode that you can survive in.” Frugality has always been crucial to Digg, said Rose, who had worked at several start-ups during the dot-com boom.

“A lot of people have asked (whether) the recession will impact certain things. I think the answer is probably that a major recession will impact everyone in some way, but traditionally I think some of the best companies have been built in down economic times,” Facebook founder and entrepreneurial icon Mark Zuckerberg said in his keynote address on Friday evening. “If what you’re providing is value to the end users…that lasts.”

But here’s the problem with this crisis-be-damned idealism: it will not always play out as well as every optimistic developer hopes. Many of the ambitious young techies who are convinced that they have the wherewithal to make it through the financial crisis are going to be in for a nasty surprise. That VC pitch spree might come up fruitless. That social-advertising-based business model might not turn a profit.

“I don’t believe in good work, I believe in excellent work at a start-up company,” Mahalo founder Jason Calacanis said in a talk about “entrepreneurial insanity” on Friday. “Start-ups are like the Tour de France or the Olympics, but in any team sport if somebody’s not pulling their weight, they pull the whole team down.”

“Companies are seeing that they really need a Web presence and so many have embranced blogs for that,” said David Recordon, head of open platforms at Six Apart. “I don’t think that’s something that businesses will neccessarily cut if money’s becoming tight.”

(Credit:
Caroline McCarthy/CNET News)

It’s not, however, simply a way to make money. It’s also a way to better define and feed community.

But no, in that the intent and scope of proprietary lock-in is dramatically reduced with open source, even in models that employ some proprietary “frosting” to their otherwise open-source components. Red Hat’s “lock-in” is the continued value of its supported and the proprietary service it embeds into RHEL, JBoss, etc. through certification, bug fixes, etc. that make its binaries more valuable than simply downloading alternative versions of the software from the web.

Dana Blankenhorn suggests that add-ons make good business sense for Acquia and other open-source vendors, and he’s dead-on. Zimbra climbed to $20 million in just two years on the back of a successful add-on strategy to its open-source Microsoft Exchange killer. SugarCRM is doing well with such a strategy, too.

commentary

It’s a tightrope, as Funambol’s Fabrizio Capobianco will tell you. But it’s perhaps an easier, cleaner one to walk than a completely open-source model, at least where the aspiration is to become a public company.

It’s actually much cleaner to tell the market, “Listen, 95 percent of the product is open source and we add commercial extensions or proprietary services for a segment of our community. Most of you won’t need these. For those who do, here’s how to pay for them.” So long as the principle by which features are reserved for the enterprise release is clear and transparent, it enables the company to feed and foster its unpaid community base without reservation, which in turn creates a stronger community.

Don’t get me wrong: I continue to believe that open source is the best way to build new businesses and new markets. It’s just that I’m starting to feel that I’ve been wrong to suggest that all software must emphatically be 100 percent open source, all the time, in every situation. If adding a hint of proprietary software to a solution is done in such a way to encourage a purchase but not compel long-term lock-in, I’m no longer convinced that this is wrong. If it puts food on the table without putting anyone out, where is the harm?

Does this mean that open-source businesses are really no different from proprietary software businesses? Yes and no. Yes, in that they involve some element of “proprietary” that gives the buyer a clear reason to purchase.

SugarCRM’s John Roberts has been saying this for years, and Marten Mickos of MySQL (now Sun) has been suggesting this strategy for the past year as MySQL looked for ways to strengthen its revenue while keeping its community strong. The two need not be conflicting strategies.

All of which is my way of coming to grips with hybrid business models that I’ve long disdained. Savio is right: all models are hybrid at some level. Red Hat doesn’t give away its binary distribution of RHEL. JBoss had the proprietary JBoss Operations Network. MySQL has never been a charity: it has deployed a dual-license model and charged for support and other services. And so on.

Seem counterintuitive? Perhaps it is for those companies like Red Hat, Acquia, and others that are built to harvest preexisting open-source communities (Linux and Drupal, respectively). But for companies like Zimbra, MySQL, etc., an add-on strategy enables a vendor to focus wholly on delivering a quality open-source project while simultaneously creating a robust, scalable business.

In fact, they’re complementary. It’s actually quite difficult to distribute a 100 percent open-source product and monetize it at the same time. Support doesn’t scale. Determining how to make a “community” release compelling while also selling an “enterprise” release without selling “just support” is tricky.

With Red Hat, the company is always one click away from CentOS, and a few clicks away from SUSE. With MySQL, even with a proprietary Workbench there’s no real lock-in to prevent a customer from jumping to Oracle. And so on.

Open source offers real differentiation. But it also, to make money and hence feed more open-source developers, also may build add-ons, as Dana suggests. This isn’t a bad thing, I’m increasingly convinced. It’s a way to make many more good things.

According to the MacRumors report, the application will “presumably” allow people to play back their iTunes audio with the help of Wi-Fi.

Use iTunes 7.7 to sync music, video, and more with iPhone 3G, and download applications from the iTunes Store exclusively designed for iPhone and iPod touch with software version 2.0 or later. Also use the new Remote application for iPhone or iPod touch to control iTunes playback from anywhere in your home–a free download from the App Store.

Such an application would add momentum to Apple’s unveiling of its iPhone software development kit in March.

The application is described in information included with the iTunes 7.7 pre-release version that was made available to developers on Thursday.

Apple is working on an application aimed at letting people remotely control iTunes in the home via their
iPod Touch or
iPhone, according to a report on MacRumors.com.

The report offers these details from the developers pre-release version, based on the “Read Me” area of the iTunes installer:

The impact of the green chemistry movement is substantial: The winners of last year’s EPA Green Chemistry award program have prevented 200 million pounds per year of hazardous substances, he said. Since the program started, over 1 billion pounds of hazardous substances have been kept out of the environment.

“We recognize that there is an incremental nature to green chemistry. You can’t take a year or two and make the chemistry industry completely benign. It’s really a question of what is greener,” he said.

BOSTON–To many people, the term “green chemistry” is either a contradiction or a fancy name for long-held sensible chemistry practices.

A company called Battelle, for example, developed a binding agent for printer cartridges that is made from glycerin, a by-product of biodiesel production. The process means that it has a cheap feedstock and lowers the energy production needed to make the toner binder.

Venture capitalists, including famed investor Vinod Khosla, have made green chemistry one their investment themes. In many case, green chemistry companies make better materials, such as Hycrete which makes a water-resistant concrete that is more durable.

All chemical products won’t become benign overnight but they can get greener, even taking small steps, said Rich Engler, the program manager for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Green Chemistry Program.

Engler gave an overview of green chemistry at the CTSI Clean Technology conference here on Monday, where he said that most of what qualifies as green chemistry is focused on reducing the amount of hazards that chemicals introduce.

In general, the focus of most green chemistry techniques is choosing renewable feedstocks that obviate the need for hazardous compounds, Engler said.

“Green chemistry is pollution prevention at the molecular level,” he said.

Engler said that investing in new innovations costs chemical companies more. But there are a number of financial benefits, including cheaper and recyclable raw materials and less regulatory burden.

In another case, Columbia Forest Products has started using a wood adhesive that uses a protein found in ocean mussels. The company uses soy flour rather than formaldehyde to make its adhesive.

(Credit:
www.phasers.net)

Time travel. Come on, Einstein, get real. Seriously, I read a paper in Scientific American the other day about a new approach to quantum relativity that, unlike prior attempts, does a decent job of predicting the observed characteristics of our universe on both quantum and cosmic scales. And they did it by introducing causality into the equations. So much for the laws of physics being indifferent to time travel. That doesn’t mean it’s impossible, but it does take some of the wind out of its sails.

Lately, I’ve been wondering how close we are to achieving some of the scientific “miracles” that had previously belonged solely to the realm of science fiction. Advances in nanotechnology, biotechnology, and other fields are certainly making lots of exciting things possible in the laboratory, but that’s just the beginning.

Colonizing a second planet. I watched a special on the History Channel the other day called “The Universe: Colonizing Space.” It was both encouraging and discouraging. The good news is that NASA is working on a program to send humans to Mars for an extended stay and eventual colonization. The bad news is that they want to test everything out on the moon first, which means it’s not going to happen for a long, long time.

U.S. Air Force Capt. Drew Goettler demonstrates prototype laser weapon

What I’m interested in is early academic, defense, medical, or even hobbyist applications. Remember, that’s where computing and communications started, and look where we are now.

(Credit:
U.S. Air Force)

Well, those are a few that came to mind. If you’re like me, you read about this stuff from time to time and wonder why we’re not further along. What’s your pet fantasy technology, and where is it today?

Like many of you, I’m a geek, and it extends well beyond my interest in technology. I still read an occasional science fiction novel and look forward to the release of superhero and James Bond movies.

Invisibility. On August 11, researchers at the University of California at Berkeley reported a giant leap forward in invisibility cloaking. Using newly developed nanomaterials, scientists were able to successfully bend light around 3D objects, albeit not quite at visible wavelengths yet, though they’re getting much closer. The first application for this technology is in telecommunications, so Harry Potter and the Klingons may have to wait a bit.

Here are six off the top of my head. And yes, some of them are out there, but my goal was to leapfrog all the usual stuff, like virtual reality, robotics, and the like, which I’ve written about previously. Some of it may surprise you.

Kirk and Spock wield their phasers

Handheld laser weapons. In late 2005, the U.S. Air Force demonstrated a prototype nonlethal, green-laser weapon. It’s big and heavy, and intended to be used for crowd control or to temporarily blind an enemy, but hey, it’s a start. And yes, I know there are lots of lasers in use out there; I’m talking specifically about handheld weapons. Why? Because, I believe this inevitable transition will drive advances in energy beam technology that might be used for who-knows-what applications.

Commercial human space travel. Richard Branson’s Virgin Group and Paul Allen’s Mojave Aerospace Ventures recently announced a joint venture to take tourists up into space for about $200,000 apiece. I guess that’d be fun, but I’m thinking more along the lines of mining asteroids and stuff like that. You know, commercial business. Perhaps the technology developed for colonizing Mars could help in that endeavor, as well.

Human bionics. In April, I wrote a post about Bluetooth implants that got some attention. My half-serious thinking at the time was more along the lines of implantable gadgets, but now I’m wondering about human bionics such as electromechanical organs. The first applications already exist in the form of artificial hearts and bionic ears, and there’s a long way to go, but I see this as a field that will explode over the coming years.

There’s actually a lot of customization available so that the sidebar can be customized separately from the message body, for example. Custom colors are an option, too, which is carried over from Labels. However you decorate your Gmail, you’ll be stuck with the multicolored Gmail logo, so theme-obsessed aesthetic ascetics are out of luck.

(Credit:
CNET Networks)

Google’s thrown in a slight change to Gmail’s Themes option. Users can now select their own colors for background, links, tabs, and text.

The feature can be accessed from the lower-right corner of the Themes page, once you’ve activated Themes in Gmail Labs.

Some users we talked to yesterday in our Ask the Editors about Chrome reported seeing the problem in Google’s browser, too. This solution should work there, too.

Adobe has just updated the Flash 10 beta for Windows and Mac, and with it comes the resurgence of the bug that installing the earlier beta fixed. There doesn’t seem to be a given reason as to why the old beta is no longer viable, but it does work.

The ongoing problems with Flash freezing in Firefox 3 after two seconds of playback resemble nothing less than a game of hot potato. Or perhaps watching two parents have a screaming match, with us regular ol’ users playing the part of the sobbing kid that cries, “Why can’t you two just get along?”

Interestingly, some of the cases where the old Flash 10 beta would fail to fix the problem–like CNN–now work. Nevertheless, nothing would be more preferable than a permanent solution, but as Rafe adroitly points out, the culture clash between Mozilla’s open-source and Adobe’s closed doors is as likely to be a part of the problem as the code SNAFU itself.

Install this latest version of Flash 10 beta the same way as before to solve the problem. Download the install file, close
Firefox, uninstall the old version of Flash, install the new one, and then restart your browser.

Bruce Potter, founder of the Shmoo Group, talked about “malware detection through network flow analysis.” He said he will be releasing some software at the conference. He argued that network administrators can examine data flowing both ways on the network to help identify where the attacker is coming from. Software expected in August includes an updated version of Psyche that will have an Ajax-based interface.

He gave a few examples of a NMAP scripting engine, fixed-rate packet sending, enhanced version detection, and improvements to performance and accuracy.

Nathan McFeters and John Heasman talked about “Beyond document.cookie.” In August they’ll be joined by Rob Carter in talking about Web 2.0 same-origin policy attacks and other Web 2.0 vulnerabilities.

Shawn Moyer, CISO of Agura Digital Security, and Nathan Hamiel, senior consultant for Idea Information Security and founder of the Hexagon Security Group, previewed their talk “Satan is on My Friends List: Attacking Social Networks.” They said they’re not just talking about worm attacks such as Samy back in 2005. They’re talking about user-generated applications and content–are they creating new attack surfaces? They will also have demonstrations and screen captures to share in August.

Fyodor Vaskovich, founding member of the Honeynet project, talked about “Nmap–Scanning the Internet.” The author of NMAP recently scanned the entire Internet–the WorldScan Project–and will present his results. This allows him to verify and refute various assumptions about which ports to use for scanning. Also, he said, it forces him to improve NMAP.

“The Webinars will be much more than that,” Moss said. In the future, he hinted, Black Hat will publish an editorial calendar, with a new Webinar at least once a month. Moss said that if successful, future Webinars might also include online training.

After a short question-and-answer period, Moss said the next Webinar will be held “in about a month” and offered an e-mail address (subscribe-webcasts@blackhat.com) to subscribe for updates.

Jeff Moss, founder and director of Black Hat, on Thursday moderated the first-ever Black Hat Webinar, previewing five presentations to be given at the security conference in Las Vegas in August.

Moss said he was pleased that more than 1,000 people attended and admitted they were “expecting maybe a few hundred.” Black Hat has already implemented RSS feeds, Twitter, and even a LinkedIn group.

During the one-hour broadcast, speakers gave 10-minute previews of five presentations expected during the Black Hat briefings in Las Vegas, which will take place August 6-7.

Steve Reavey, Katie Moussouris, and Steve Adegbite, all of Microsoft, talked about “Secure the Planet! New Strategic Initiatives from Microsoft to Rock Your World” or the shorter title “Has Microsoft lost its mind?” Among other things, they said they will talk about how Microsoft approaches a security update within Office, from vulnerability disclosure to patch. Microsoft will also be hosting a two-day “Defending the Flag” training just prior to the public part of Black Hat on August 2 and 3, and again on August 4 and 5, to show administrators how to attack Microsoft products to gain insight to how their networks are secured.