Henk van de Goor's Bloggers@large

Many of you might not know it, but today marks the 20th birthday of the Internet. Back in 1988 at 14:28 exactly, Piet Beertema, sysop for the Dutch CWI in Amsterdam, received the first intercontinental e-mail, send over a half-open network. Until then the Internet had been a purely US network, used by exclusively by universities and the US Defense. Indeed the term "Internet" has been used since 1974, but if you look at the timeline of the Internet, it wasn't until 1988 that it really started to span the globe. But Internet really took off after the invention of a tool to organize information on the internet using a graphical interface, called a "webbrowser". Tim Berners-Lee invented the online equivalent of hypertext in 1989 and some years later the World Wide Web really began with the introduction of the "Mosaic web browser" in 1993. This was a graphical browser developed by a team at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (NCSA-UIUC), led by Marc Andreessen. Mosaic was eventually superseded in 1994 by Andreessen's Netscape Navigator, which replaced Mosaic as the world's most popular browser.

After that it is all history.

There is finally something exiting happening again in the universe of the Net, now that Google has launched Chrome. As I wrote, I installed it on my PC right away to discover how fast it really is. Also, as was to be expected, there where a couple of nice bugs found right after the launch and a few of them killed the whole "stability" story behind Chrome. To their credit, these bug have been fixed already by Google.

Anyhow: if you want to hear about the story behind Google Chrome, here is a video from Google in which they give you the details on it's conception and the whole idea behind it.

If Google keeps up the good work with Chrome, I'm quite sure it may become my default browser!

So, why the heck would we need yet another browser to surf the Internet? Isn't it enough that we have Opera, FireFox, Internet Exploder and a couple of dozen other totally obscure browsers (including Netscape)? Well, Google now has also launched a browser of their own, called "Chrome". Thus was announced by Google just yesterday evening. My biggest beef with these kind of 'innovations' is the fact that IT (and therefor the Web) thrives on standards. Without standards there is chaos.

Just compare it to driving: there is a good reason why we all agree to drive on just one side of the road. If people suddenly would decide to drive wherever they like, it would be mayhem and chaos.

If you know anything about developing for the web, you probably know what a pain in the butt it can be to make your website compliant with each browser. Luckily most clients (companies) only want to pay for optimizations for maybe two browsers: Internet Explorer and Firefox (or Internet Explorer and Safari).

Also: forget about my comment about standards: most companies Microsoft just does not stick by the (web)standards anyway. This has been so since the dawn of the browser. Each browser has its own weird quirks and as a developer it can drive you crazy trying to fix this. Anyway: maybe Chrome will set the new "standard".

So why would we need another browser then? Well Google tries to explain this by publishing some silly comic.

In this document Google starts by saying: "First, browsers need to be more stable". Now, I don't know what browser they are using, but mine (Safari, IE 7) hardly ever crash. Firefox sometimes crashes, but that's usually my own fault for using so ridiculously many plug-ins.

So stability seems to be a non-issue to me to be honest.

Second, Google states that browsers need to be faster: "they need to start faster and load pages faster".

Again this seems like a non-issue to me: how fast your browser starts up, heavily depends on how fast your PC is. Firefox starts real quick on my Quad core Dell XPS, but real slow on my Eee PC (900 Mhz core solo). No surprise there. How fast it can render pages depends on the page. I say we need better designed webpages. Last but not least: how 'fast' your bowser is also depends on your connection to the Net.

Finally, Google states that "browsers should be more secure". Well, let's put it this way: "some" browsers should be more secure; specifically Internet Explorer. Although, Firefox has it's fair share of critical security bugs as well.

It seems to me this is one valid reason so far. By running each tab in a kind of 'sandboxed environment' I'm sure the Google browser can potentially be more secure than others (now watch the first security holes pop-up this week).

Another valid reason I see is that the current Web 2.0 depends heavily on Ajax. And sometimes your browser doesn't handle this too well. So I'm sure there is room for improvement there. And Google Chrome more or less promises this.

Another thing Google has going for Chrome: they use the same webkit as Apple does for Safari. As I understand it Chrome scores better than Safari in terms of compatibility (Acid 2 and Acid 3), so Apple might benefit from this as well. Heck: maybe Apple and Google will strike a deal and Apple will just exchange Safari for Chrome.

Last but not least why I predict Chrome is going to be a succes, is because Google is behind it. Google is good. Google is (still) hot. So far almost everthing Google touched has turned into solid gold. I see no reason why this new venture will not succeed.

Update: I installed Chrome beta and so far it looks good. It's a lot better already than Safari on the PC. Try it yourself: http://www.google.com/chrome/

This tip is for those of you that are in Europe and can't connect to US websites to watch streaming videos because they block your IP-address because it's European. If you want to enjoy streaming, full length TV-series from the US from websites like www.fancast.com, www.abc.com and www.fox.com but get denied, just download this tool called Hotspot Shield. Hotspot Shield creates a virtual private network (VPN) with a proxy server that is located in the US. By doing so, your PC is suddenly virtually located in the USA! And presto: you can access all content from those pesky websites!
So If you want to watch The Bionic Woman, Late Night with Conan O'Brian, Survivor, Big Brother USA etc., this your chance! It's a hassle free installation and it works great for me.

If you are anything like me, you're probably on the move a lot. And you probably work both on a laptop and a regular PC. Sometimes you notice that you left some files you were working on, on your PC at home. You could use Remote Desktop to log on to your PC, but unless you use the slow sharing option that Remote Desktop offers you can not access your files. The best way to handle this is to setup a safe VPN (Virtual Private Network) connection. That way you become part of your own network again and can access everything from any loaction as if you where at home.

But if your are not some IT-guy or tech-addict it's a lot of work to do that. For a while there has been a program out there called "Hamachi" (From a company called "LogeMeIn") It claims it solves that problem by using some propietary technology and delivers a so-called "zero-config" VPN connection.

Using the program enables you to access your network at home or even setup a network just for sharing files (iTunes) or - and this is off course a really cool application - setting up a network for network games. The cool thing is that currently the software has a free version (for personal use with some limitations) but is avaliable for different platforms: Windows, OS X and Linux.

Reviews are mixed about performance and other issues, but overall it seems like a product that needs to mature a bit. There is just one big problem that I can think of and that's of a very technical nature:

When you first log into the program, you get an IP address in the 5.0.0.0/8 subnet -- yes, a public, routable, full blown, IP address. And it's yours, Hamachi guarantees that no one else will get this IP address. This address will be used to reach the computer that this instance of Hamachi is running on using the encrypted network.

The networking type of people reading this will ask the obvious question: Who the fuck do they think they are distributing IP addresses like that? Right now this shouldn't be problem, since the 5.0.0.0/8 subnet is reserved, no one in his right mind would use it. Oops! That's the problem: once another wild kid decides to use that subnet for their own killer application, problems are going to happen.

If Hamachi want to go legit, they'll have to take their protocol to the IETF, ISO or another standard publishing body. Once they do that, the chance that they'll get the 5.0.0.0/8 subnet for their protocol is very slim. That means that you'll have to use another IP address for the "standard compliant" version of Hamachi. Each user will need to reconfigure all of their programs to use the new IP. A nightmare is looming...

(quote from: GFK's Palace, Software review: Hamachi)

In short: it's actualy a clever 'hack' as the reviewer in the above article puts it. Nevertheless: I think I will go give it a try soon and let you know how good or bad it is...

As of today, Joost ("Juiced") has become a publice beta, instead of by invitation only. I found out about Joost in January this year, but didn't get a test account until April. I have looked at the technology and the way Joost works (it's peer-to-peer technology, just as Skype and Kazaa) and though the technology behind it is interesting, it has been the lack of content that keeps me from using it daily. Too many networks try to keep their programs from being available outside their country, which is stupid as the Internet does not has any borders.

With the internet you have (potentially) a chance to watch TV from virtually any country without having a sattelite dish in your backyard. So why can't I watch American TV in holland, using the internet (Joost)? NBC has started some new TV-series like a remake of the '70's series "Bionic Woman"; I very much would like to see them. Now I just downloaded the season premiere episode (in HD format), but why isn't there some service that allows you to see this abroad? Long story short: get rid of the frontiers and please give us more content.

I have been using Joost for a month now and I must say that - even though I like the idea and the technology - it is not as exiting as I hoped it to be. The reason? Well, to be honest: there is nothing on! Sure, if you go to the channel list you will see they added a lot new channels (new version 0.10.2), but come on, the content itself has stayed the same mostly! So for over a month the same old documentaries, movies etc. have been playing over and over again. Well, that is NOT my idea of "TV the way you want it". A another fine example: Joost has added a "news" channel with the latest release: Reuters. Well, the only thing showing there is literally a MONTH OLD "news". Excuse me?
Right now the people behind Joost are probably focusing on getting their technology to do what they want it to do. Bottom-line is that, for Joost to become a success they need to make the right content available. I think that if they want us to help Joost become better and keep us interested, they need to inform us more of what is going on behind the scenes in terms of what content they are trying to ad.

So at least we know we have a reason to keep watching.

And, on a final note: make content available WORLDWIDE not just in certain regions! Joost is about getting content that is NOT available in your region! Otherwise I can just turn my TV on and watch the same old crap that I have access to anyway!!

The content is out there: just make it available...