Techno Crafts

From Desktop Users to the Couch Surfers

by Saurabh Kumar on Feb.15, 2012, under Internet/Web

There was an era when a web browser was one of the most important element for any web product, a lot of effort were taken to determine the ergonomics of a web site or web application, taking care of the cross platform compatibility, user experience management etc. these were few things which was always on the prime focus of the architects. The users were majorly the desktop users.

This gave way to another era where the users used other mobile devices to browse and use these applications, and then these products focused on having the mobile version of the sites, these mobile versions were light weight application providing complete or limited functionality of the product. These mobile sites were not very rich in UI but they did the work of keeping user attached to them self because they were mobile and could be used any time on the go. The product which failed to adapt to this change suffered a setback.

Introduction of palmtops, tablets, aneroid based phones and any other kind of smart phone have already captured the market and by 2013, Gartner analysts predict that mobile devices will overtake PCs as the most common Web access device worldwide. And that has to have an impact on all facets of the enterprise, this will give rise to an Era of Mobile Apps. Do remember that the browser is not the only channel for the customers. With the Android and iOS penetration, many customers prefer to have an App in their mobiles or tablets to access the product.

Going forward, it will be Smart TVs that will become a frontend inviting the couch surfers to use your product. Today, you expect your TV to come with several general video-streaming services (Hulu Plus, Netflix, YouTube), a few video-on-demand rental services (Amazon Instant Video, Vudu, CinemaNow), Internet radio from Pandora and Rhapsody, social networking through Twitter and Facebook, an array of special apps for sports and photos, and sometimes even a full Web browser. So the base line for making a product which reaches to the masses is to make a version for all the available platforms. Another factor for the success for the web applications will be its scalability factor, develop your application as a Platform rather than categorizing it as a product.

While talking about mobility of products how can we forget the “Cloud” factor? Sit in many meetings today and watch as more professionals type away on a tablet nearly as regularly as a laptop. As individuals want their one device to do it all, the natural expectation will be having access to important business applications from any device, anywhere in the world, without disruption.

In future we will end up in an Era where we find us connected to the web 24×7, while travelling our vehicles will be connected to the web providing us a platform same as our desktop and mobile devices, while running on a tread mill we will find a touch screen display which will allow us to check our emails, social networks etc. even while you are in a loo you will be able to tweet .

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The Survival Strategies – #WikiLeaks

by Saurabh Kumar on Dec.08, 2010, under Internet/Web

The troubles began for Wikileaks when Amazon which hosted its servers in the US, withdrew services saying the site was breaking its terms and conditions. They continued when EveryDNS, the domain name firm which allowed the Wikileaks.org address to be translated into an IP address, withdrew services. Without it, the .org site was effectively shut down.

EveryDNS said that it had terminated services because web attacks aimed at Wikileaks “threatened the stability of the EveryDNS.net infrastructure which enabled access to almost 500,000 other websites”. But despite losing many links in its supply chain, Wikileaks remains defiantly online. So how has it avoided the noose that the US government seems determined to make for it?

“It has moved stuff to Europe where things are out of the reach of the US government,”

Who owns the Wikileaks domain names?

It has created additional IP addresses, the raw information internet routers use to find content. And it now has some 14 DNS servers which do the same job that everyDNS refused to do. It will be harder to take Wikileaks down because they are using so many domain name servers. Anyone wanted to shut them down would have to target companies in 14 different countries.

Within hours of having its .org address cut off, Wikileaks moved to a Swiss address .ch, which pointed to an IP address in Sweden with servers located in France.

Wikileaks has effectively weaved itself a complex web of suppliers and it seems even the domain name companies are confused. One of its providers, easyDNS, issued the following statement.

“There is some confusion around control over the wikileaks.org domain and who has it. To be honest, it turns out we are not dealing with actual Wikileaks people on the backend, but third-parties who are coordinating a DNS effort for them, including the initial fallback domain, wikileaks.ch,”

“If it is legal in Sweden, we will host it, and will keep it up regardless of any pressure to take it down,” it said on its website.

In France, Wikileaks is hosted by provider OVH and in recent legal wrangles the web provider revealed that it only realized it was doing business with the whistle-blowing site after reading press reports. It also revealed how easy it is to get a web service up and running.

Web attacks

Wikileaks has also been the victim of so-called distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. Such attacks bombard the site with requests for information making the site hard to access. Some have speculated that the US government could be behind the attacks. Unfortunately it can be virtually impossible to identify the actual source of a DDoS attack because the attack itself is mounted by tens or hundreds of thousands of computers.

These “bots” are ordinary computers that have been commandeered without their owner’s knowledge or consent, often through a computer virus. So if a government was hell-bent on stopping Wikileaks, could it simply block access?

In France it seems the attempt is not running that smoothly. French industry minister Eric Besson called for Wikileaks to be banned from French servers after the site took refuge there last week. But a court in Lille has declined to force web provider OVH to shut down the site.

The site itself is only part of the problem for those determined to silence Wikileaks. One of its biggest allies in the wake of it losing its .org address was micro-blogging site Twitter. Wikileak’s Twitter page responded immediately by publishing the site’s IP address and alerting people to the mirror sites that popped up quickly after .org went down. To date, there are over 500 of these mirror sites.