Live Mesh – initial thoughts

Experimenting with the tech preview of Live Mesh was a curious experience – my first reaction was a mixture of “that’s cool!” and “so what?” – the kind of private techie moment where you do something pointless but technically impressive. So I ended up remotely controlling the laptop on my right from the netbook on my left and filmed it and er… blogged it and er…. so what?

Well the “what” isn’t very developed yet, but the thing that really jumps out at you (and the reason I sound a bit, surprised, in the vid) is how easy it is – this is consumer grade technology. Give a 7 year old a Windows Live id and administrative permissions over their equipment and they’d have it meshed in about 10 minutes per device – *that* easy – you just keep clicking “ok” until it works.

So I’ve got my Mesh now – big deal. What can I do with it? Well, I can connect into my work PC from anywhere and sync any files that I have access to on my local desktop to anywhere. As an experiment I logged into my work machine via the Mesh, browsed to a network location that contains the most confidential files I have access to (network config stuff) and tried to sync it – no go: the server they’re hosted on isn’t part of my Mesh. So I copied the folder down to my desktop (Mesh has allowed me to log-on authenticated to the domain) – right clicked, and bingo.

Cool – I work remotely, I can never know when I might need this information so I’ll add it to my Mesh, problem solved! Except. I set up the EeePC that’s part of my Mesh in a rush. It’s like my personal machine isn’t it – not connected to the domain, so……. I didn’t set a password on it ;) Boot it up – hit return and you’re in (not now of course, but you get my drift).

In security terms I think of this as “leakage” – there’s no intention to distribute the information outside it’s proper audience, it just ends up in places where it’s no longer protected by the mechanisms that we put in place to keep it restricted – and once it’s “free” of those restrictions you’re just trusting in luck to keep it safe.

Of course this isn’t new – pod slurping – usb keys – staff taking home or printing out confidentially supplied information all produce the same potential for leakage, but it seems to me that Live Mesh raises the bar a bit and challenges what I’ve always thought of as a security principle, which is:

“if remote access becomes trivial, then local access controls become meaningless”

These are initial thoughts because I’m still trying to understand the pragmatic utility of Live Mesh in a Cloud based world. I can see that it’s Groove v2 – but I never “got” Groove. I can see that as a domestic technology it will make it easy for people with Windows Live ID’s to share files in “private” (but why wouldn’t you just put your pictures on flickr?) and I can see people having fun with remote access “just because they can” but apart from that?

Bottom line is that I think it’s toxic to Microsoft’s enterprise security model – if there is anything that is going to convince you that storing precious information in a stand alone file format that can be copied willy-nilly around the globe is a bad idea, it ought to be this. Put your *secrets* in a safe place – and that safe place is the Cloud, not the Mesh.

the web is becoming automatic

One of the things about putting an output (rss) on your web-presence is that people can do helpful/interesting/surprising things with it. This is a trivial example, but Andy Powell at Eduserve wanted to make an easy way to subscribe to all the blogs nominated for the Edublog awards. A few technical glitches later he realised that he could plug it into Tony Hirst’s OPML Dashboard and produce a single page that lists the last 5 posts by all the candidates. Easy-peasy – and as he said, cool.

The results are in, and no surprise Dy/Dan won best new blog: you should read him, he’s on fire.

via eFoundations.com

back to high-school

Cool – I’ve no idea why/how, but this thingy-me-jig rates my blog as being high-school level reading. That’ll do me.

students 2.0

Can’t say it looks *that* International to me: 6 from the US and one each from Scotland and Korea – and I’m not that sure I think of students as being particularly “silent” – and surely I’ve seen some population figures that question the majority bit – and the music was a bit luke warm and…. but I shouldn’t be churlish. I know I’m going to stick it in my reader come Monday: good luck to ‘em.

In the left corner…

reCAPTCHA

You know those funny squiggly words that some sites use when you sign up with them, to confirm that you’re human? Well I didn’t realise that they’re not just there to protect sites against spam-bots – they’re also being used to help Computers learn how to read Old Books.

10 steps to Web2 loveliness

1 – Think up a new password.

You’re going to need it. You can’t do Web2 without signing up to a ton of stuff and it helps if you’ve got a password where you can think – “Web2! – thats….. b2telishus” or whatever. Not the same as work. Trust me – in 18 months time you’ll be glad you made the distinction.

2 – Get a Google account.

Now. Go here and sign up. If you don’t have one already jettison the feeling that it’s all moving too fast and just get on the wave – it takes about 60 seconds. (and once you’re on the wave….things look different).

3 – Get a blog.

Now. Go here, or here or here. If you don’t have one already…. whatever, I said that already, but you get my drift. At some point when you’re signing up it will ask you if you want your blog to be “public” or “private”. Check “private”. (This means you can play in peace – no-one goes live from Day1).

4 – Get a reader.

Now. Go here or here or here. If you don’t have one already jettison….repeating myself again. Just do it. Now.

5 – Pause.

You’ve done all the easy bits – now it’s time to think about content/purpose. This is the good bit, because once you’ve got all the tools sorted out you can start thinking about what you really want to say, (and what you really want to learn).

6 – Say what you want.

There are 2 clear rules in blogging:

1. Talk about what you know – what you’re passionate about.
2. Be your own authority (My blog – my rules)

7 – Find the Motherlode.

Whatever field you are expert in, someone has already blogged it – which means there are exemplars on-line now, who have already gone through steps 1-6 above. Find them.

8 – Don’t be afraid to share.

No-one expects a blog to be full of unique/original content, it’s not that egoistic. Even if 150,000 people have already blogged a presentation/post/service it’s ony boring to post it if your friends have already been there.

9 – Read your peers.

It’s not a one way thing – that’s why you need to get a reader.

10 – This page intentionally left blank.

jisc report quotes jello biafra shock

Skimming through a JISC report on web2.0 – “What is Web 2.0? Ideas, technologies and implications for education” [pdf] – I come across a quote from Jello Biafra, erstwhile leader of the Dead Kennedys:

‘We don’t hate the media, we become the media’

The report looks worthwhile – I’ve only had time to skim it as it’s 60 pages long, but it comes across as a surprisingly thorough overview of not just the technology but the foundational principles (wisdom of crowds, data on an epic scale, folksonomies etc.) and has some good links in it. Who ‘d have thought they had it in them.

Zentation

Zentation is an on-line service that allows you to add a video track to a pre-existing Powerpoint presentation. You host the Video on GoogleVideo, upload your presentation to the Zentation site and then synch the two together. As an example, this is a presentation given by the Head of IT and Media Services at the University of Wales in 2006 (and yes, he should have taken more effort over the sound quality).

IWMW 2006: Developing A Web 2.0 Strategy 30:05 Talk by Michael Web on ‘Developing A Web 2.0 Strategy’ by Michael Webb at IWMW 2006 event.

via Read/WriteWeb

Shift happens

 

Widely blogged presentation about Web2/futures. I’m sceptical abut some of the facts and it has the stink of xenophobia hanging over it (to me), but the line-graph’s speak to the point.

My favourite quote is from Einstein:

“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”

via The Fischbowl