Apple iPhone is coming…

Telstra has released some preliminary information about its roll-out of the Apple iPhone, come July 11 2008 (it’s official launch in Australia).

While the price of the phone in Australia is yet to be confirmed, Telstra have disclosed what they’ll be charging punters for the 8gb and 16gb models, respectively.

View the news story on smh.com.au

Many of you may know that the price of the iPhones is expected to be very reasonable compared to its competitors, as per Apple’s philosophy to make their product as affordable as possible to the masses.

All things being equal, I think I’ll be lining up on July 11. 

Rob

Inspiring interface designs

While there’s an ever-increasing focus on web usability and accessibility in today’s web design, it’s great to see web designers splashing out and producing graphically-rich, beautifully composed web interfaces.

Of course, we know it’s technically possible - with perseverance in some cases - to produce well-coded interfaces that are also visually rich and beautiful; but it’s not always the done thing, even today. In essence, this is why I find it impressive when designers do make an effort to make their web interfaces compliant and inspiring.

To that end, I wanted to share a link with you, provided by Russ from the Web Standards Group. It is an online showcase of the latest web interface design trends for 2008, compiled and hosted at www.webdesignerwall.com. It features some very colourful and vibrant designs which is encouraging to see, and hints at a possible ‘retro-lution’ just around the corner.

Check it out: http://www.webdesignerwall.com/trends/2008-design-trends/ 

Personally, I find myself currently gravitating towards the ‘handwritten notepad’ styles.  Which designs do you fancy?

Rob

Reality check: face time or Facebook?

In a recent opinion piece in The Canberra Times, ABC TV Journalist and author Virginia Haussegger talks about the Facebook craze and the concept of ‘Facebook friends’.

Virginia expresses her views about the site’s use of the term ‘friend’, and how Facebook could be potentially devaluing what it means to have, and be, a real and sincere friend.

“Facebook has contorted the meaning of ‘friend’. And it has butchered the value of friendship,” she says.

“Now everyone can have plenty of cheap and easy friends, where the friendship requires no more effort than a ‘click to confirm’.”

I take Virginia’s point, and this is essentially true on the surface; but I’d like to think that a good percentage of Facebookers approach the issue with a healthy dose of perspective and common sense.

I certainly agree that there are several ‘hardcore’ Facebook junkies who live and die by the cyber-identities they’ve cultivated on Facebook and similar sites like MySpace. Similarly, I agree that some Facebookers - perhaps the more cyber-dependent Generation Y population - would carry a somewhat distorted view of what true friendship really means, through their continual and feverish acquisition of ’Facebook friends’.

However, speaking for myself and most of the people I interact with online, Facebook represents a quick and easy way to interact with a variety of people at once, and locate old friends and work colleagues. And, the more popular Facebook becomes around the world, the more effective it will be to expedite these functions.

In terms of the ‘Facebook friends’ convention, I can’t say I agree with Virginia that Facebook has “butchered” the ideal of friendship. In the end, it’s obviously a matter for users to ascertain whether the people listed in their Facebook friends catalogue are real friends or not. While Facebook is guilty of providing the platform for interaction, it ultimately can’t be held accountable for people’s own delusions or misconceptions about who their real friends are.

I’ve no doubt that some folks can become misguided in cyber-space when it comes to what’s real and what’s not. Surely, though, most of us can appreciate that sites like Facebook aim to make life a little easier from a social networking perspective, and that they are still an eternity way from being a holistic substitute for conventional face-to-face interaction in the physical world.

So, which is more real - face time, or Facebook? 

For me, both are real. I think the key is understanding the limitations and defining characteristics of each, in order to keep everything in perspective and maintain useful and effective communication with others. 

Rob

Play nicely, kids: bullies in cyber-space

It’s rather timely, given my recent post on cyber-crime, that I caught a TV segment on 60 Minutes last night on cyber-bullying. I’ve recently watched similar documentaries on this subject, but this one prompted me to write.

Despite what the law makers would say, I regard all types of bullying as criminal acts. After all, bullies are generally mean, heartless, cunning, cruel and calculating individuals who don’t seem to see a problem in causing grief to others. In my book, this is just as much a crime as shoplifting or other forms of violence.

For example, one could imagine that it would take a bully just as much time, effort and malice to orchestrate a cruel bullying campaign as it would for them to plan the theft of a DVD from a music shop. In fact, I’d think that bullying takes a much more sustained effort, and can be a far more lengthy, calculated and vindictive activity that specifically targets an individual or individuals. Bullying also costs lives, and can have severely damaging physical and psychological effects for those who have the misfortune of being victims.

Not only that, there are obviously certain forms of bullying that are classified as criminal matters - for example, mental and physical assault.

Honestly, it’s a wonder how many forms of bullying have remained immune to legislation when the outcomes are often so tragic and unnecessary. Bullying may be difficult to police in a practical sense, but so are many crime types, although it hasn’t precluded them from legislation.

Thank goodness for those caring school teachers, parents, guardians and friends who have each delivered their own respective blends of support and guidance to young victims of bullying in days gone by. I’d like to think it’s helped them to overcome the adversity and get on with their lives. Problem is, it’s not as easy to provide this kind of protection to children in the online world - and when you think about the characteristics of the internet medium, it’s not hard to see why.

Unfortunately, another sinister consequence of our increasing reliance on the internet is cyber-bullying. Of course, the capacity for online bullying is severely magnified by the ease and popularity of e-communications between individuals and groups, particularly via popular social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook.

Not unlike the prognosis that lies before the commercial and government sectors in regard to cyber-crime threats, several children and young adults are now facing a future of online victimisation at the hands of their most valued communications medium - the internet.

So what can be done to stop cyber-bullying when children are using the internet more every day? As parents, how do we even know if our kids are being exposed to this cruel act? 

In my days at school, A bullying incident would have seen me come home with a shiny bruise on my cheek and a story about how someone named Biff had ganged up on me in the canteen line. It all seemed much more transparent back then. At least, with traditional face-to-face bullying, it was limited for many kids. It essentially stopped when the school bell rang, and the victim would usually be free of it until the next school day, or maybe even longer than that if they were lucky. 

With cyber-bullying, the offender behaviour appears to be extreme and unrelenting…and quite frankly, it’s disgraceful. I’m going to sound like an old timer in saying this, but if today’s heartless and thoughtless bullies spent as much time studying their Calculus and Geography as they did scheming vicious bullying assaults, the internet would be a more enjoyable and safer place for our children. Open those books kids, learn how to treat others with courtesy and respect, and stop the villainy.

It’s bad enough that young internet users have to stay vigilant against various forms of cyber-crime, let alone deal with the despicable act of cyber-bullying…and getting back to the legalities of bullying, can anyone tell me how bullying a child to suicide is any different than stabbing or beating them to death?

Just because cyber-bullying isn’t a physical act, doesn’t mean it isn’t damaging or deadly. Play nicely, kids, please.

Rob

The menace that is cyber-crime

The rapidly expanding internet world provides massive benefits to modern societies and organisations. Over the past decade, the business and government sectors have been able to enjoy many internet-generated benefits such as email and multimedia communications, an information-rich World-Wide Web and several online tools, applications and associated innovations. 

However, equally as evolving in that time has been the ambitious criminal world, and it seems to have moved quickly to adopt and exploit the internet in a multitude of unlawful ways.

In recent years, law enforcement agencies around the world have taken significant steps to combat various forms of cyber-crime such as identity theft, online fraud, online sex exploitation, cyber-stalking, digital piracy and security and privacy breaches. Part of their strategy has been to work collaboratively and transnationally to combine expertise and resource levels, in an effort to catch or deter the perpetrators of such crime types. 

Unfortunately, it would seem that cyber-crime does not buckle to many traditional policing methodologies. Before the internet, criminals carried out their work in a predominantly physical capacity. Nowadays, the internet allows criminals to act with a high degree of speed and anonymity,  affording them the ability to execute a plethora of online crimes and cause significant disruption. 

Even despite the diligent efforts of law enforcement agencies and internet companies, there still seems to be an unrelenting growth of online criminal networks around the world that pose a significant threat to our businesses and communities.

In chapter eight of his 2007 book CyberCrime, Australian author Nigel Phair explores the online nature of today’s communications - particularly in terms of of e-commerce.

 “Global commerce is totally reliant on interconnected computers and networks that fully support voice/sound, video and data at very quick speeds”, Mr Phair says.   

“The internet is not only a connected system - it is also dependent. This means that attacks focusing on one part of the internet may affect others such as online communications.”

Nigel’s book (which is an excellent publication and well worth the read) goes far deeper into the subject, but these statements help to sum up the fundamental nature of our interconnected - and very vulnerable - internet world.

Then there’s this reminder from Graham Cluley, a senior technology consultant at Sophos who was recently interviewed in an e-news article by The Independent’s UK news website in March 2008:

“Anything which has storage capacity and can be plugged into a computer could now be carrying a virus.” 

Not a surprising statement, but still considerably daunting as we increasingly find ourselves using a variety of different hardware types that are compatible with our computers - namely iPods, memory sticks, portable hard drives and GPSs, just to name a few.

In its e-news article, The Independent also quoted Lord Broers who is currently leading a UK government committee to address e-security:

“The Government should do a better job in gathering data on internet crime and fraud,” Lord Broers said.

“And we have to shift resources into this sort of policing.”  

Lord Broers’ comments may only be isolated to the UK, but they still bare some testament to the notion that cyber-crime is ahead of the game.

If this is true, then it’s hardly good news - particularly given the internet’s increasing popularity around the world. In Australia alone, over 75 per cent of the population are now connected to the internet (statistics as at Dec 2007). Needless to say, the internet has become the preferred and, in many cases, single channel of trade and communications for businesses and users alike.

The global adoption of e-commerce and e-communications has, if you will, sealed the fate of the modern business world. Today’s commercial and government environments thrive on the efficiencies and cost-savings of the internet - and with that, they also assume the risks and threats of the cyber-crime menace. 

Essentially supporting Lord Broers’ thoughts is a hair-raising article on the US-based Information Week website, published in September 2007. The article features McAfee CEO David DeWalt, who says that cyber-crime has become a $105 billion business that surpasses the global value of the illegal drug trade.

The article also highlights that - despite measures to improve internet governance and policing around the world - today’s cyber-criminals remain up to the task, and businesses stay at risk of fraud an other damaging crimes. 

Looking over the fence for a moment…my blue collar, migrant Italian father-in-law absolutely hates the concept of the internet along with many other modern technologies. He refuses to understand and embrace any of it; in fact, he hates anything with a power cord that’s not meant for a building site.

However, he is also one of the very few people I know who probably won’t ever need to worry about cyber-crime…at least not if he has a choice! He’s quite happy handing bank notes to a human over a counter, getting his daily news from the newspaper, discussing the town gossip over a glass of Ginger Beer at the local RSL club and storing his documents on top of the fridge or under his pillow along with his stash of greenback. 

Can we blame him, though?  I used to mock my beloved father-in-law for his ignorance and old-fashioned ways, but I wonder if all our reliance on the internet is going to be worth it in the long run?  

I think we all hope that internet security will continue to be addressed and improved by its governing bodies, governments and key business sectors.  But what if it stays behind the game, at the hands of smarter, more persistent and well-connected online criminals? 

Personally, as much as I am a fan of cyber-space, I don’t know if I’d be prepared to put my identity, finances and assets under that kind of threat. I accept that I may not actually have a choice in the future, but I am slightly concerned about it. I also contemplate what online life will be like for my kids who will be old enough to use the web in just a few years; we know that it will afford them unprecented levels of interaction, engagement and efficiency, but at what cost? 

Rob