Google’s bread and butter is search and advertising. While that will likely not change for some time, Google seems to be looking for ways to converge some of its services into a kind of super offering. One such case is Google Domains; hosting, DNS, mail and registrar services all on Google’s infrastructure. For a cost. Here’s what the service currently offers and a first look at what you can expect from this invite-only offering.
As a blog that runs on WordPress, this site is bound to the glorious options that are presented by this tool; but also many of the limitations. I’ve worked with WordPress in a number of ways, but one that seems to be most tricky is its internal linking. Out of the box, WordPress won’t offer you the ability to show internal elements (such as images) with a relative URL.
Things have changed with us offering stuff like free software. This may not be the only thing we provide in the future, but as a blog, and the face of a business, I really wanted to start encrypting information on this site.
In any business, some form of competition is a way of life. Any company with clients will have to compete with the need for growth and profit, the difficulty in satisfying customers, and even internally. Over the years, however, I have learned that there are more dangerous threats to technology service companies than those mentioned. In an industry that moves so fast, and depends so much on the prevailing wind of customer choice – two challenges stand alone against the strength of a company: Disruption and Erosion. Let me explain.
Bad design can creep into any process, whether small or the much larger Twitter. I was thrust upon this when I (rather innocently) changed my phone number – but forgot to turn off Twitter’s “login verification” process first. There is no way I could have known, but my specific use case of Twitter, coupled with a phone number change, locked me out. After much consternation, I understood Twitter’s two-step process is broken.
Microsoft has had an interesting history with creating versions of Windows Server that might fit into different verticals. You might recall the horrible Windows Small Business Server version for an example of how you can’t just slap a bunch of products together and make a good product. What Microsoft tends to do is create limits on products that can do more, instead of taking limited products and giving them more options. Nowhere is this more evident than Windows Server 2012 Foundation edition. Read on to see why you might not want to implement this version.
In a very unexpected move, Google has announced the purchase of streaming service Songza. For the time being, they appear to plan on keeping the service intact, though that will likely change in the future. They’ve even made an interesting Google version of the Songza logo.
Last week Amazon announced a new Android-based phone named “Fire Phone”. This ultra-super-secret phone was probably an inevitability, but until it was announced, nobody really knew for sure. If you thought this was shades of Facebook Home, you would be right. I thought I’d take a look at what’s good, and what’s bad about Amazon’s announcement.
I was interested in this time-tested idea of how “broken” commenting systems are. Dave Winer is also talking about this, and as you might expect, I mostly disagree with him. The thing is, commenting systems are not broken, they just suck. We may currently have the best we can get from the text-based system, but the work should be spent on making them suck less.
If you do intend on looking for a reasonable alternative to TrueCrypt’s features, finding the right tool may be a challenge. I’ve decided to install and quickly test a few of the freely available encryption tools to see if they’re worth looking into as a replacement.