My Internet Notebook

WSJ.com Pundits Discuss the Internets Future

Ms. Esther Dyson: The big challenges in the future will be limiting distribution of that information (security, privacy, confidentiality, etc.) on the one hand and filtering it out on the other (not search, but data-mining, exception-reporting, spam filtering, friend recommendations, behavioral targeting and the like). The big questions are who controls the filtering: individuals, organizations or governments? Will it be done transparently?

Mr. Vint Cerf: The Internet reaches only about a billion users so there are another 5.5 billion to go. It is beginning to include a good deal of information in many languages, but the domain name system needs to be outfitted with a similar capability. Access speeds are increasing but in a very non-uniform fashion. Business models for supporting various parts of the Internet are also in flux with new models being tested almost daily. Mobility is a component of the Internet that is plainly of increasing importance and will drive a variety of new applications. Entertainment media will be augmented with Internet counterparts with results that may not be entirely predictable but which will almost certainly have an interactive component missing from the traditional media. A plethora of “things” will become Internet connected and managed. There will be inventions for the use of the Internet that will come from academic and user settings to surprise us all when they appear, as they have in the past, in unexpected ways — propagating through viral advertising. There’s an Internet in your future, resistance is futile.

Google’s acquisition of Measure Map will become part of their free ‘Web Analytics’ service.

Measure Map measures and provides visitor activity numbers in a sort of dashboard format so you can easily tell how many visitors, links, posts, comments you have had in any given time period. What’s interesting though is that I think Google’s web analytics can already track visitors and links. It is probably the posts and comments feature that prompted this acquisition. Or maybe it is just buying the team’s “user experience” skill.

A CNet article on Google’s purchase of Writely:

In the area of Web applications, the last two years have seen an explosion in Web services aimed at consumers or small businesses. These services, many of which are still in beta, span many areas and companies. Here’s a sampling:

• Online Calendars: One of the more active areas, with offerings from 30 Boxes, CalendarHub, Trumba, Joyent, Kiko, Planzo and Spongecell.

• Productivity application suites: Full-blown applications bundles offered by the likes of HyperOffice, gOffice and ThinkFree.

• E-mail and collaboration: Examples include Goowy, Zimbra, Meebo (Web-based instant messaging) and Jotspot (hosted Wikis).

• Project management and personal organizers: AirSet, 37Signals.com, Zohoplanner and Stikipad.

• Multimedia social software: Includes sites like the popular Flickr photo sharing service, Riya (photo search), You Tube (video sharing) and Podbop (music podcasting).

Why the sudden boom in Web 2.0 companies? There are a few reasons, both technical and business related, say investors and analysts.

More people have high-speed Internet connections, making applications such as photo, music and video sharing feasible. The underlying software to build Web services is being upgraded as well, lowering technical barriers that existed only two years ago.

More Web developers are using a programming technique known as AJAX, which stands for Asynchronous JavaScript + XML. The end result of using AJAX is interactive Web pages and sites that can automatically refresh information from a server. Overall, it makes for a better user experience, say developers.

Enabling the curl extension on my PHP IIS installation is simpler than I thought.

After some googling and finding some good posts (such as this one http://www.tonyspencer.com/mt/archives/2003/10/curl_with_php_a.htm), I realized that since I manually installed my PHP5.0 with the windows zip package I already have php_curl.dll in my php/ext directory. All I had to do to run curl is just two steps:

1. uncomment the line that has extension=php_curl.dll
2. restart IIS web server

You can use phpinfo() to verify before and after you enabled curl.

Btw, if you are relatively comfortable with IIS and web server in general, you should always use the manual installation of PHP (http://us2.php.net/downloads.php).

Company News | Reuters.com
Backed with $9 million in funding by Bain Capital and Ignition Partners, La La Media works like an online music co-op by enabling members to trade physical CDs they own for physical CDs they want.

La la founders argue that, unlike underground online file-sharing services, which have been sued for copyright infringement, La la is protected under an exception to the U.S. Copyright Act. They contend that the owner of a CD can transfer a legally acquired copy without permission or payment of additional royalties.

A member will pay $1 to La la for facilitating the trade on receipt of a disc from another member, plus a 49 cent shipping charge.

La la said it will set aside 20 percent of its trading revenue for recording artists.

Other Web sites, such as Peerflix and BarterBee, are also enabling consumers to swap used merchandise.

Peerflix allows members to legally trade DVDs, while BarterBee lets people swap between multiple media, such as DVDs, music and games.