Soft District

Facebook is the best proof one can get on how fair could be the Internet as a business environment for starters. Why am I saying this? Well, take a few students, a good idea, countless hours of work, and then give this some time to grow... in our case, it all got as high as over 500 employees and an estimated revenue of $150 million. Well, nothing's perfect, so Facebook can't be either. Despite its share of problems, Facebook is doing a lot to improve everyone's experience on the site, so now I will move on and tell you about the latest Facebook news. Are you ready?

One of the best things about Facebook is that virtually anyone can create applications for it, but this can also be considered to be a problem, as it always happens with third party developers - while some Facebook applications are great, others are not that great, with a few being nothing else but abysmal.

The good news is that today, Mark Zuckerberg, the mastermind behind Facebook, said he's expecting for programmers outside Facebook to play a key role in making information and entertainment easier for everyone to access and share. In the last 14 months, since Facebook opened itself to third parties, more than 30,000 applications have been designed, with the most successful of them being used by millions of users.

Obviously, those behind these applications are not starving, since Facebook estimates the creators of the most used applications raised no less than $200 million from venture capitalists.

Now, the main problem is to remove abusive applications and keep Facebook clean of any malitious code that may be launched into the wild using it. There is also a plan of rating the applications, so "Every developer involved with Facebook is going to either walk out of here elated or scared to death," as Sean Parker says.

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Still having Xbox 360 problems on your mind? Well, did you ever wonder how it would have been if Microsoft allowed third parties to create applications for this platform? I know it may sound like a crazy idea, but this is happening as we speak! This is as close to software as can be, so today we're going to talk about the latest Xbox 360 news here, on SoftDistrict, probably for the first time. Anyway, if you want to know more about Xbox 360 games, you should pay a visit to PlayerzBlog. Now, let's digg in!

While today's decision may cause additional Xbox 360 problems for a lot of people, including those Microsoft, "democracy" is the keyword in the software industry these days, and opening the Xbox 360 to third parties is expected to expand the number of games for the platform, making it more attractive than it is now. Since it would be nothing new under the sun to see a platform with more games going higher than its (usually better) competitors, I guess it's only a matter of time and luck now, because third parties can make things better, but sometimes they can also create a big mess.

According to Chris Satchell, chief technology officer for Microsoft's interactive entertainment business group, "Not only are we democratizing game development with Xbox LIVE Community Games later this year, but we're creating an opportunity for aspiring developers to start their careers on the world stage."

Do I really have to point out that Microsoft decided to offer independently produced Xbox games via the Xbox Live Community just in time for the holiday shopping season? Don't get me wrong - it's just marketing, and I have nothing against it, as long as users also have a benefit, and this winter may be probably one of the best ever for Xbox users, if not the best so far!

The tools behind this initiative are already available, and the XNA Game Studio was downloaded over 1 million times, but has also seen adoption in "more than 700 universities," according to XNA General Manager Boyd Multerer. "For some perspective, the incredible creative community we've unleashed worldwide is more than 25 times the number of professional developers in the industry," he concluded.

So, Microsoft is dreaming to get support from entire legions of passionate game programmers, and the idea of having a "YouTube for games" starts to get a shape.  For now, I wouldn't bet on Xbox yet, but today may become a day to remember, either as a spark for a brilliant future, or the spark for a big fire, one to top all Xbox 360 problems we had to face so far...

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If someone asks me about the online payment service to use, I would answer "PayPal" without any hesitation, but things weren't always this way for me. In the past, when I had no access to PayPal, being able to work with E-Gold proved a real life saver. I know I may have been lucky, but I had no problems with E-Gold, unlike others. After all, it doesn't matter if we talk about E-Gold, PayPal or another similar system because, in the end, it all gets down to user attention and experience on the Web, when talking about protecting one's own money. Today, news about a new E-Gold fraud reached me, and the most interesting part is that the heads of this company are being the ones accused!



The long story made short looks like this: E-Gold decided that its transactions management approach, by using the price of gold as a reference, does not make them a financial institution. The bad part is that the US prosecutors didn't buy that, and filed charges of conspiracy to engage in money laundering, as well as conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money-transmitting business, indicting three of the company's directors last year, and now the guilty pleas, submitted yesterday, could prove to be extremely expensive for them, and E-Gold's users.

While Douglas Jackson, E-Gold's principle director, could end up in prison for 20 years, the two others can go as bad as 5 years in prison and $25,000 fines, but the worst part is that the company could get $3.7 million in fines, possibly leading the entire online payment service to a sudden end, but let's hope it doesn't get that far...

On the 21st of July, Douglas Jackson posted on the E-Gold site an article entitled "A New Beginning," explaining some things, but it seems this may be too little, too late, at least for him. For those that were used to use E-Gold for not-so-clean deals, here's the most relevant part:"we acknowledge that e-gold is indeed a Financial Institution or Agency as defined in US law and should be regulated as a Financial Institution. E-gold Ltd. has submitted an application to FinCEN to be registered as a Money Services Business and will be seeking licensure in all states that require it. Most importantly, working in conjunction with US government agencies, we will be exerting every effort to bring e-gold into compliance with US law and regulation as quickly as possible."

Need I say more? "No matter where you are, who you are, we're watching you. Beware!"

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The fact that blind people can use computers is nothing new, but when you say "computers for the blind," it usually gets down to expensive screen-reader software, and so these people are somehow "tied up" to their home computers, since public PCs in hotels, libraries or Internet cafes don't have this kind of software installed. Well, that was true until a few days ago, when a free Web-based application for the blind was released, with the goal of making this world a better place for them. That's simply great, if you ask me, so let's find out more about it, shall we?

Developed by a computer science graduate student at the University of Washington, Jeffrey Bigham, WebAnywhere "requires no special software to be installed on the client machine and, therefore, enables blind people to access the web from any computer they happen to have access to that has a sound card."

The best part is that, according to its creator, this application is able to run on "on any machine, even heavily locked-down public terminals, regardless of what operating system it is running and regardless of what browsers are installed."

In the end, this program may be only the beginning, but I found it extremely handy that, with its help, virtually all computers connected to the Internet can be turned into computers for the blind, and since WebAnywhere is open source, everything looks great, don't you think?

For now, there are still some keystrokes required to move around Web pages, but Jeffrey Bigham made a big step for the blind with his application. All I can hope is that others will step in and give him a hand, since professor Richard Ladner, his faculty adviser, is hoping for a commercial search engine to use WebAnywhere as a module.

All in all, we may move from computers for the blind to "webpages for the blind," and I must repeat this is simply great, making information easier for everyone to find. After all, computers can do so much, but interaction with those with visual impairments is still far from being perfect just yet.

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If you ask me about Heaven and Hell, all I can tell you for sure is that I love Black Sabbath's song, and I am also crazy about some of those many covers recorded and released by various bands, including Overkill, Solitude Aeturnus or Enola Gay. I know, you may say this has nothing to do with the software world, but I must tell you it has a lot to do, because hackers are considered to be the demons of this world, and a recent court decision just turned Netherlands into a "hackers' heaven," if we exaggerate a little!

I know those waiting to read about the facilities in Heaven, especially wireless access, will be disappointed, but I can't give you the accurate description of heaven, because there's no human able to do that, but if we talk about Netherlands, here's the story...

Earlier this summer, London Transport's Oyster Card was hacked by Dutch researchers, who turned a laptop into a mobile card lab, and scored a day's worth of free rides. So far, so good. They did it for the sake of science, of course, and now, a Dutch court gave them permission to publish details on how they did it, disregarding the protests of the chipmaker involved, although this wasn't just some small company, but a Philips spinoff, called NXP.

The tragicomical part of the story is that these cards are used around the world for both public transit and building security, and I am sure somebody will have to spend a lot of money to make things right, and that must happen really soon. "Driven by a sense of social responsibility, the University immediately and confidentially informed the Dutch Government as well as the manufacturer (NXP) of the results of the independent research on the Mifare Classic Chip. Since March, the researchers have deliberately withheld further details of the imperfections of the chip in order to give those involved, including NXP, the opportunity to take the necessary steps. Publication of the scientific article was anticipated in October 2008 and in June the article was sent confidentially to NXP so that NXP could ask for a legal opinion," said the University behind the researchers involved in the whole deal.

Well, at least they did it for "the greater good," and now NXP has enough time to solve its security issues, I guess. Since even the Dutch government's buildings were protected by the smartcards system hacked earlier, I guess Netherlands could be used as a description of heaven for hackers...as long as they don't do it with bad intentions! ;)

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