Web review

Post updated at 13:50 (GMT+1) on June, 17th 2009 – Now Windows 7 RC1 is public and available to everyone.
As anticipated by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer at CES (Las Vegas), Windows 7 first public beta is now available for free download.
Windows Vista users are free to get and install it on their computers as update.

The download is Beta licenses are limited “only” to the first 2,5 million of users.
This version will expire on August, 1st 2009.

At this moment, official pages don’t seem to offer the link to start the download. (Windows 7 official site – Post on Windows 7 official blog), but… leggi tutto »

Short answer:
Because of spam.

Long answer:
Do you know that e-mail comes from the early ’70s?

One upon a time… only militar people – and then univerities – had access to the Internet (aka ARPANET), and nobody thought that one day anyone will connect to each other with one, unique, world-wide network, without fines. So e-mail protocol was understandably invented without any protection to prevent sending unwanted informations. leggi tutto »

I just encountered a little bug in Google Reader, that I use everyday to read some feeds. One of them (Downloadblog, a nice italian professional blog about technology) is marked in bold, having one unread item, but if I click on it, Reader tells me that it doesn’t contain any unread item.

The fun part of this bug is the message I get if I click on the “All items (1)” link: “Your reading list has no unread items.” that, in the italian version of Google Reader is: “L’elenco Ancora da leggere non contiene elementi da leggere.“. Translated in english it sounds like:

“The Unreaded list doesn’t contain unreaded items”
компютри втора употреба

I recently received an e-mail from the team of Google Adsense, that invited me to partecipate to a simple survey about their advertising service. I cannot speak about contents of this survey, as required by their terms… anyway I have to highlight an interesting point I noticed:

The scripting language used for the survey is MS ASP.Net! You can check this in the screenshot attached to this post: the extension of the Survey’s start page (and, as I checked later, in the survey process)  is .aspx.

It impressed me because, as all we know, Google is usually very far from Microsoft technologies an, in general, from commercial software solutions. Which is the reason to use .Net for a simple survey script?

Today, as promised, Microsoft launched its new project: some days ago it took an obscure domain, opensourcehero.com, that pointed to http://www.microsoft.com/opensource/heroes/default.mspx with a black background and a cryptic senstence: “{Forge} New Powers” and a reference to the launch date: “February 27, 2008“. Now the site is open and the mistery is unleashed.

“{Open Source} Heroes Happen Here” (a bit long as title?) presents some featured developers that became “heroes” because of their prolific programmer profession. It’s strange and a bit ironic that they all uses proprietary technologies from Microsoft (Visual Studio, Windows Server platform…).

The site allows users to ask the “Hero Hack Pack”, a bundle of “free evaluation” software to introduce new people to MS developing.

Microsoft’s idea of the Open Source scene is very bizzarre: why an open source “hero” should develop his free software with proprietary platforms?

“Ops, we did it again”.

It seems that Googlebombing is still working, even if Google announced stronger filters to avoid it.
Many italian bloggers decided to link “merda” (the italian word to say “shit”) to the official italian tourism portal (Italia.it), after they knew that this modest government site costed 42 millions of Euros.
So, if you are Googling for “merda” from Google Italia today, you’ll get Italia.it as the very first search result: nuts to SEO experts

I don’t know if tomorrow it will be the same (and if this result is worldwide), so here’s a screenshot for the history
Another very funny element is the sponsorized link on the right (“… that we’re not”), featuring RItaliaCamp, the antagonist and no-profit site, born to re-think Italia.it in a social, collaborative and useful way.

Versione Italiana dell’articolo

Google Calendar has (finally!) reactivated SMS notifications for Italian cellular operators.
You’ve just to go to Settings -> Notifications and enter your mobile phone number, to receive the verification code (it has to be entered on the same page to activate notifications).

Thank you Google!

PS: and about other countries? Are there other nations where SMS notification were deactivated?

I’m not used to shout and accuse companies, but tonight I discovered something that I didn’t like about Microsoft.
After a lot of delivery problems for Hotmail users (I manage some sites that sends e-mail notifications to registered people… of course it isn’t absolutely not spam), I contacted the support for webmasters: I had several discussions with Microsoft employees, trying to find a solution. Finally, they told me:

… “Many legitimate mailers and marketers have qualified and joined this “white listing” program to improve mail deliverability and decrease email from being filtered to the Junk E-mail Folder. Sender Score is a third party program, administered by Return Path. Sender Score (www.senderscorecertified.com) is the only White Listing service to which we subscribe.”

So I went to Sender Score website to subscribe to the program. They say that “90 days of mailing activity is required for each IP submitted for accreditation“. Ok, it’s normal… but a few of rows below I see the registration steps:

1. Read and agree to the Sender Score Certified Email Standards
2. Read and agree to the terms and conditions of the Participating Sender Agreement
3. Complete a short self-assessment form
4. Pay an application fee

… a “fee”? To legitimate my e-mails? This is strange… ok, but how much? Let’s see pricing:

So they’re asking webmasters (also for non-profit organization!) to pay at least 400$ only to be “sure” that their e-mail will go directly into Hotmail customers’ inboxes. In other words… if you pay, they can “turn a blind eye”.

I don’t know how do you call it, but as everybody knows… here, in Italy, we are very conscious of what is “Mafia”.
Does Hotmail asks web sites to pay a “pizzo”?

After less than 10 days after my order, today I received my FON Router
I spoke about the FON network some days ago on this blog, highlighting their interesting offer: 5 Euros (or 5 USD) for this nice Wi-fi router, and the possibility to get access to the worldwide FON network, to have free Wi-fi internet everywhere.

My Fonera is now running, you can see my active Hot Spot welcome screen on maps.fon.com, entering this address:
via Vittorio Veneto, Bordighera, Italy

Here there are some pictures of the box that I took with my cellular phone this morning… look at the “Hotspot sticker” ;)

The FON Website launched an interesting promotion, for the first purchase of any user: they’re sending “La Fonera“, a little Wi-fi Router, for 5$ or 5€ (shipping cost is 8$ for USA and 10€ for Europe).

“La Fonera” is a FON router and it allows to join the FON network; it connects to your existing modem or router, with an ethernet cable, and it gives two Wifi streams: the first one is private, for personal navigation, the second is shared, available for any other FON user that is close to you (you can adjust the available bandwidth for the two streams).

FON users can use others’ Wifi spots everywhere, without paying anything (for example when you’re on holiday with your notebook). Access is restricted throught a personal login/password, so FON can inform authorities in the case of abuses.
Users can navigate a World map to discover where’s the nearest FON Wifi spot (you can also download a part of the map to your GPS device).

Joining the FON network is the key to get free internet access everywhere.

If you’re not interested in mobile internet you can also choose to give Wifi to others, and to get paid from FON (they will share with you money they get from FON users that, on the contrary, don’t give out Wifi, but they pay for using it throught others’ FON spots).

http://www.fon.com