Ahmed Abunada’s Blog

Google announced today at the American Book Fair , it will launch service “versions of Google” to sell e-books for users of browser during the first half of next year.

Google said it would cooperate with the publishers of books, with well-agreements with digital rights, to allow for nearly half a million books through the service, readers can buy books directly from Google or from other libraries on the internet like my site, “Amazon” and “Barnes & Noble,” American .

Google plans to share profits from sales of books, being sold on “versions of Google” with publishers and libraries, the Internet, publishers will get 63%, while Google reserves by 37%, but for no regard to the “Amazon” and similar sites, the publisher gets 45% The site of 55%.

Independent researcher in both California and the Netherlands have discovered a weakness the Internet digital certificate infrastructure, which poses a threat of hackers impersonating site identifications trusted by most web browsers. In essence, hackers could make your browser believe it is on a secure website or email server while virtually undetectable phishing of your system is in progress.

The problem arises from one of several algorithms used to establish a secure https connection, known as MD5. This is not the first weakness discovered in MD5, either. A team of Chinese researchers presented the first one at a 2004 cryptology conference. In that case, they wee able to create a “collision attack, and generate two messages with the same digital signature.

The new discovery makes use of the collision method, but allows the hacker almost complete freedom in creating a rogue certification authority (CA) that will be verified by most commonly used web browsers, including both Microsoft and Mozilla. The team hopes to draw attention to this security weakness, and drive the industry to use stronger encryption methods.

The founder of Debian Linux, and former chief at OpenSolaris, Ian Murdock, is moving to a new office, but sticking to the same crowd of work associates. Murdock is moving into the role of chief strategist for cloud computing at Sun Microsystems.

“Obviously I have a deep background in Linux distributions,” he said, referencing the work he had put into the origins of Linux
since 1993. “I think this is going to be a pretty big part of Sun’s
contribution to cloud computing.”

As netbooks become more basic, and web 2.0 applications become more powerful, many innovative companies, Sun Microsystems included, foresee a convergence in cloud computing technology, where data and program information as accessed in the “cloud” of the internet.And while the cloud may be a new term to Internet users today, it is also a long-time analogy for the internet itself, which has no central location, but exists as a series of “free-floating” nodes that connect to one another.

If you stepped off the bus earlier this afternoon, and walked directly into a high tech corporate office, you’d be presented with such exciting terms as “cloud computing”, “wi-fi”, and “remote access.” Someone might even have mentioned the still vaporware Google Gdrive.

Gdrive is hyped as unlimited, unhampered data storage. It can be used to store all of your files, including images, video, and music, and can be accessed from any computer, anywhere, anytime. Wow. That is quite an attractive boast, considering that only new part of the concept is the addition of making it perfect for “cloud computing” applications. Online storage has been around for more than 10 years, long before the mobile computing boom we are seeing today was even dreamed of.

And let us take a moment and consider this new phrase “cloud computing.” I distinctly recall, in 1996, watching the innermost working of a network reduced to a set of hubs and spokes on a whiteboard. And then other networks, also in the shape of spoked wheels, were drawn. And then a big fluffy cloud was sketched in around the whole thing, and the word INTERNET was boldy written underneath.

The Internet is the cloud of cloud computing. The first cloud computing tools put into widespread use were web browsers, and by the year 2000, countless applications from file storage to online calculators and utilities were being used by people all over the world. This was cloud computing, and it hasn’t changed in many ways, even today. It has become better able to process data for you, reducing CPU intensive applications, or completely eliminating the need to install a program on your computer, because it can be opearted just as efficiently, and across a greater number of computer platforms, by keeping the program based on an Internet server.

The Google Gdrive is likely to be a fantastic addition to Google’s suite of productivity applications based in the cloud, but it is simply an old idea being presented in a new way. It is far less impressive than the productivity suite of Google Docs, but is likely to receive great acclaim becuase it is managed by the increasingly powerful folks at Google.

Got problems with low or bad signal on your mobile phone when you’re in places that have faulty mobile signal? Well, homeowners who just can’t find signal in their own homes or workers who are employed in certain establishments with bad reception can think of getting a Femtocell.

Femtocells are basically small devices that look like the routers we use to wirelessly connect to the internet that actually help improve indoor reception. They basically achieve this by making use of your existing broadband connection to repeat it and boost the average signal you receive at home.

And it looks like companies like AT&T and Verizon are making their own branded models for this signal amplifier. This means, as it actually did happen, exclusive costs for consumers who avail of this product from either company. You need to be signed up for this and that and pay this much in order to enjoy the service.

But if getting good signal in your own home is really a necessity, why not?

This portable mini-screen is more than what it seems. Sanyo’s ALBO HNV-M70 Home Network Viewer can be used for visual functions for a variety of reasons and purposes – those that we are all aware that we need and avail of every day.

This digital frame can show photos which you can load into the device through memory card. But the rest of its great features not only allow it to additionally synchronize it with Picasa online to upload even more photos, but the Viewer also lets you check your email, display attachments, and view RSS feeds from the internet right through its screen.

At US $619, Sanyo’s ALBO HNV-M70 Home Network Viewer is one really reliable portable screen, especially if you know you use the features mentioned above a lot. The entire set comes with all the nitty-gritty specifications and can be bought either as black or apple green, together with a base.