Everywhere you turn your head now on the web, you see content labeled as Web 2.0. What exactly Web 2.0 is, cannot be defined as simple, but free and easy sharing are part of it for sure. Attempts to create easy, free information sharing environments were more or less of a success over the years but the way I see it, this is the direction user-sharing is going to.

I’m talking about Tubes, a software that allows you to easily share files in a secured manner. All you have to do is to download the installation pack, and the software (that runs on a .NET framework) will allow you to share content freely with who you want. In order to choose with whom you share content you use the so called ‘tubes’. Create a tube, upload content and invite friends, it’s really simple!

You can upload as much as 2GB of data per tube, and then easily synchronize the online content with your offline folder. I know it all sounds as a big commercial but the functions it provides are great and simple, just the way I like them. Sure there are some drawbacks such my concern for privacy and security given the fact that all the files shared by the ‘tube’ users are replicated on each computer.

All in all Tubes is an interesting software you might want to check out, even if you won’t be using it all day long, it just might do the trick in some situation when you quickly need to share data.

It was announced on March the 27th, so it’s a good five days away from April Fools. However, it does sound like a prank: “Yahoo! announces that it’s offering free unlimited e-mail storage starting May this year”. When I first found out, it seemed rather far-fetched, and it still does.

Basically, this means that Yahoo! is giving up one method of income, from users who payed 20$ per year for 2GB of space (and it’s losing those money from users starting May, as they will be refunded, if they want to), and it engages in the race to buy a LOT of storage space.

Irrealistic as it seems, this comes at a turning point in Yahoo!’s mail service. 10 years ago, Yahoo! Mail was being launched, a service which was capable of holding up to 4MB of mail, more than an average attachment today.

On the other hand, this might seem like a method of distracting people from GMail’s gimmick of the ever-expanding mailbox. Whether or not it will work, only time will tell. My guess is it won’t, mainly because people don’t look for storage space when they analyze possible e-mail accounts. Not unless they plan on using that space specifically to store stuff, rather than storing them on their on computer. While this might seem like a godsend for those kinds of people, it’s not. Yahoo!’s service states that abusive accounts will be suspended, however leaving their owners with the possibility of accessing their accounts and their stored data.

Instead of a conclusion, let’s look at what John Kremer, the Vice-President of Yahoo! Mail, said in his announcement:

We hope we’re setting a precedent for the future. Someday, can you imagine a hard drive that you can never fill? Never having to empty your photo card on your camera to get space back? Enough storage to fit the world’s music, and then some, on your iPod? Sounds like a future without limits.

Very optimistic words, but is it really possible? My guess is it’s not. Because Yahoo!’s Mail is not unlimited, it just means they will have to acquire an enormous ammount of extra storage space to fit the e-mails of approximately 250 million people worldwide. This is something that you can not do, with today’s technology, with your iPod.

ZenZui is the latest Web browser from Microsoft. The Redmond Company has announced yesterday the launch of ZenZui as an independent company focused on innovating Web content consumption and interaction via mobile devices.

I know, it sounds a bit weird, but its user interface uses a technology 100% developed and patented by Microsoft.

Conceived in the research lab by experts in human-computer interaction and data visualization, and refined over three years of development, ZenZui represents an entirely new way to discover and consume the mobile web. With ZenZui, your phone screen is a portal into your own customized Zoomspace, an information landscape of personalized, cached content in the form of Tiles that directly reflect your lifestyle. Using a single thumb, you fly in and out of your Zoomspace – two simple taps get you directly to any Tile. Through some clever engineering, we constantly refresh your Tiles in the background, so they’re always fresh, available, and ready to be Zoomed.

New phones launch every week, with a wild diversity of screen resolutions, input hardware, and orientation. They took this into consideration when they built the ZenZui adaptive rendering platform, which enables your tiles to work on a wide array of mobile devices and platforms, all with a consistent, intuitive, and gorgeous user interface.
Mobile browsing no longer needs to be a slow and painful experience. ZenZui: Choose your Tiles. Stop Surfing. Start Zooming.

Here’s an interesting video that proves ZenZui’s functionality. Also, Here’s a small introductory podcast where you can hear from ZenZui’s founders about the project’s inspiration and genesis. Born out of years of mobile user interface research, ZenZui is a new kind of mobile media company and development studio. This Podcast will walk you through the adventure of bringing ZenZui to life.

For the moment Google is the biggest player when thinking of search engines. But although Google has a good head-start there are lots of search engines out there trying to make it. And I think that these new search engines, that are forced to innovate in order to stand any chance, are the future.

So what can be added to a search engine that Google hasn’t added already? Well some tried more relevant ads, or advanced search features, category searching and even tabbed searching but let’s be honest, how many of them are really successful? There is even a top 100 alternative search engine chart.

But when it comes to it, all that matters is how effective is your engine and how useful are the functions you provide to your users. Practically Twerq.com is not even a search engine by itself, it’s more of an easy way to search the web using existing services like Google and Yahoo! search. And this is where TWERQ shows its best, it has some functions I’ve found quite interesting and useful at the same time, as you can see in this video:

The simple syntax it uses enables you to create relevant searches in no time at all. But the true power of TWERQ comes out when you register and create custom search lists. In this way you can search images, blogs, news, etc in the same time with only one search. It’s really helpful to configure this kind of search domains for information you need daily, it saves lots of time.

So is this the search engine of the future ? Certainly not, but I’m sure that functions like the search syntax and tabbed searching will be part of future search engines.

After a big dilemma debated here, I’ve stumbled upon an interesting topic three days ago. I understood you are not going to trust Vista with your life, but will you trust Linux?

This is another area where the two major operating systems are struggling into gaining as much terrain as possible in front of each other. It’s a commonly known fact that health care is one of the fields with a strong resistance towards IT automation. Red Hat, the biggest distributor of business-oriented Linux distributions got allied with McKesson, a well known company in the health care field. This means that Red Hat will provide the Linux core and some additional software in order for McKesson to run its applications.

On the other hand, the Redmond giant introduced a suite of health-care-focused software a week ago. Like I said health care is one of the few fields that are not using the technical improvements of IT&C at their full capacity, but Steve Ballmer, CEO at Microsoft predicted a quick change in the upcoming period of time.

“Health care is one of the greatest opportunities our company has seen in basically our 30-plus years of existence” Ballmer told 24,000 health care professionals at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems conference in New Orleans last week.

I am not going to talk about this topic further here, because health care is none of my interest of activity, but you can read the full article here.
Is the term of “Blue screen of death” ending up on a literally perceived conjuncture?

Windows Vista has passed the novelty phase and is now in the test phase. That means the new Operating System from Microsoft is carefully inspected, both commercially and technically and this is not a bad thing. But we have to remember that not all are interested in being objective when performing their analysis.

Keeping that in mind let’s take a look at all the fuss generated by the recent security alert from Symantec. Starting with the beginning, Vista is protected by three main modules, namely: driver signing, Code Integrity, and PatchGuard. This means that unauthorized software is stopped from modifying the code by controlling the accepted drivers and the allowed patches to modify the kernel. Theoretically this should be enough to keep malware at bay but Symantec says otherwise.

And what Symantec says, and let me quote, is: “Symantec researchers investigated the feasibility of disabling all three key kernel integrity technologies: driver signing, Code Integrity, and PatchGuard. Results have shown that all three technologies can be permanently disabled and removed from Windows Vista after approximately one man-week of effort.” And I tend to believe at least some of that is true.

On the other hand we have to think about all the money that companies like Symantec make by creating security software. And all that security software is created because you need protection your Operating System can’t give you. So basically the more insecure you feel the more you will buy security software. Bottom line the alarm sign from Symantec might just be a way to make buyers think they really need that last antivirus or firewall or whatever Symantec is providing.

There’s no doubt that Vista has its problems and Microsoft admits some of them, such as the fact that User Account Control has vulnerabilities. All in all Vista brings some security but the real problem is that the majority of attacks are not focused at the core software ( the kernel ) but to applications that run on top of that, such as internet browsers, and other software.

You can’t call yourself a computer expert if you haven’t tried at least once one other operating system on your own computer. Bonus points if you tried multi-booting. Either way you want to take it, I am going to share a few suggestion regarding the most popular combination of dual-OS systems. Windows and Linux. A pleasant combo, but accessed separately. By default you cannot view your files from the Linux partition while booting Linux for example.

While Windows uses NTFS or FAT(32) as a file system, Linux uses EXT 2 or EXT 3. Definitely not compatible. However, I have searched and found the following two applications that are meant to do this process way easier for the end-users.

Ext2 Installable File System For Windows
It provides Windows NT4.0/2000/XP/2003 with full access to Linux Ext2 volumes (read access and write access). This may be useful if you have installed both Windows and Linux as a dual boot environment on your computer. The “Ext2 Installable File System for Windows” software is freeware.

If you currently have Windows running and you realize that you need some files for your work which you have stored on an Ext2 volume of your Linux installation, you no longer have to shut down Windows and boot Linux. Furthermore, Windows will now be able to handle floppy disks which have been formatted with an Ext2 file system. Linux Ext3 volumes can also be accessed. Isn’t that nice?

Freeware Linux Reader for Windows
This program plays the role of a bridge between your Windows and Ext2/Ext3 Linux file systems. This easy-to-use tool runs under Windows and allows you to browse Ext2/Ext3 Linux file systems and extract files from there.

There are a number of evident merits of the program, which you should know. First of all, DiskInternals Linux Reader is absolutely free. Secondly, the program provides for read-only access and does not allow you to make records in Ext2/Ext3 file system partitions. This guarantees that the interference in an alternative file system will not affect the work of Linux later. Apart from this, it is necessary to note, that it gives you an opportunity to use common Windows Explorer for extracting data. A preview option for pictures is one more pleasant point, which is worth mentioning. While saving, it ignores file security policies. It means that it is possible to access absolutely any file on a Linux disk from Windows. The program can create and open images of Ext2/Ext3 disks.

Hope at least one of these two programs suit your needs.