I just discovered another handy Google feature, automatic reverse look-ups of phone numbers. If you type 555-555-5555 or (555)555-5555 (replace 5’s with real numbers in a telephone number to try this — I have to explain that in case the University of Kansas Financial Aid Department is reading this — see prior story today) into the google search box and hit search, it will return the owner of that number together with an offer to draw a map to the address associated with it using Google Maps, Yahoo Maps or Mapquest. It will then continue on to show pages containing that phone number as you might expect.

Yet another nice feature at Google.

Reports are beginning to circulate as of late last week and continuing this week that Google will start an on-line payment program to compete with Paypal. That is good news, if it is true, for consumers. We personally like Paypal and find it to be fair and easy to deal with, even though others will tell stories of difficulties (usually from earlier in time). However, any time there is competition that is a good thing.

We recently wrote about a Paypal initiative to allow payments by buyers without leaving the merchant’s site. So Paypal continues to think agressively about how to improve and expand services. Competition usually keeps both tools sharper in my experience, unless the product is of a type that having business split increases operating costs (example something like utilities with expensive distributions systems). The nature of this could lead to a price drop for the service and cause each of them to think of ways to improve and expand the service offered.

So once again I say, go Google!

The University of Kansas attempted to notify 119 students that their failure to pass even a single class may make them inelligible for continued financial aid. Unfortunately the person in charge of the project gave each student on the list the names of all other failing students. As a result, Kansas will have to undergo an investigation of the privacy breach it created or itself risk loosing federal government aid.

The list reportedly included one woman who asserts she failed exactly one class, after receiving 200 hours of passing grades and a masters degree, according to USA Today. Her excuse is a good one, her daughter contracted pneumonia so she had to divert her attention.

This however raises several issues regarding email. We need to be very careful with addressing, the reply all button, getting a similiar name from our address book, etc.

I one single slip by a third party processor, one in each seven US Mastercard Accounts was exposed to possible identity theft as detailed at Security Focus. Fortunately the amount actually compromised will be much less. What makes this different than many other similiar glitches is that it exposed information for multiple branded cards issues on different financial institutions and organizations. Issues like this will continue to grow.

The day is coming where greater checks, perhaps pin numbers confirmed via independant routing for example will have to become common-place on purchases. Likewise with the advent of automated fingerprinting identification, I think prints or other equivalents must soon be required for the issuing of credit. Merely having my personal information and card numbers cannot be sufficient to allow access to my accounts or the granting of new credit.

A Microsoft event called “Blue Hat” was held between Microsoft, their software engineers and the hacker community for the purpose of testing the security of their Windows Operating System. Apparently only minutes after allowing hackers onto the network, a Windows laptop was caused to join a malicious wireless network to the apparent dismay and anger of the Microsoft engineers. This is the story detailed by ZDnet’s Ina Fried.

It should be noted that the “hackers” that would respond to a request from Microsoft would be classed as “white hat” hackers, meaning they don’t use their power to the detriment of others and are usually called security researches. Black hat hackers, the bad sort, would not want to draw attention to themselves by revealing themselves to a company that would be quiet happy to sue them for past transgressions.

Microsoft managers are said to be happy at the shock and anger of their engineers, mostly because they have been trying to engender that response themselves with limited success. They didn’t say however, whether they were happy that their security measures failed in so short a period of time. It is also interesting to note that Microsoft hasn’t publicised their “Blue Hat” meeting. One wonders if they would have sang it from the rooftops had the result had gone the way they probably expected.

According to this article at TheRegister. The US Navy is looking to standardize the second biggest network (after the Internet itself) on a Linux distribution. Apparently that amounts to 250,000 local servers and approximately the same number of remote servers. If a deal like that was to go to Novell or Redhat, it could single handedly make that distributor the biggest Linux distributor in the world (a place currently occupied by Redhat). Apparently Chris Christopher of the Navy’s Program Executive Office for Information Technology told ComputerWorld that they already have a significant Linux presence on their network along with most every other Operating System released in the last 15 years. Hence the need to standardize.

If the Navy standardizes on an Open Source Linux distribution, it would alleviate the worry about vendor lock-in which it seems is one of their more significant concerns. This concern is lessened somewhat by Linux because of the openness of the data formats in that one vendors distribution could take the place of another with minimal effort. The same cannot be said for companies like Microsoft who appear to have based their business on being hard to migrate away from, all the while touting interoperability in the press. That difficulty to migrate away from has resulted in much press from Microsoft’s “get the facts” campaign as being another reason why it’s better to stay with Windows. Obviously they never mention the fact that they themselves are the reason it is more difficult to migrate to another non-Microsoft platform.

Microsoft has long received criticism for using proprietary undisclosed file formats to lock your data away where you can’t get it without Microsoft’s products or licenses. The problem with that approach is that the data belongs to you, you should not have to rely on an outside party for access to your own property. Anyway, to try to address this concern, Microsoft released the specification schemas for Office 2003 which will be the default file format for the version of Office due out next year. The release is “royalty free” meaning that you need not pay Microsoft for the use of the schemas. The problem is that the license is designed to exclude Microsoft’s biggest competitor GPL licensed Open Source programs. In short Microsoft requires that any software that is able to read/write to their format attribute that code to Microsoft, it seems that even if it doesn’t contain any of their code and is instead just an implementation of the bare essentials required to access them it must still attribute to Microsoft in the code.

There are some in the Open Source community that believe that there may be no enforcable rights that Microsoft can claim in the new license and that licences may not be required in this instance, but that is an issue probably best decided by lawyers. The fact is that if the license is required, it is not compatible with the GPL, which is the licence that the vast majority of true Open Source software is released under.

The fact that Microsoft is trying to lock out GPL developers is hardly surprising as they are doing something very similar in the EU as part of their punishment for being found guilty of anti-competitive practises in the European Union. They were told that they must make their server protocols available to competitors so as to improve interoperability but have again done so in a manner that locks out their biggest competitor, GPL licensed software.

The only truly open document standard at this time appears to be the OASIS XML OpenDocument format used by StarOffice/OpenOffice. This file format is completely open and can be adopted by anybody with a desire to do so, including Microsoft. But don’t expect them to support it any time soon as to do so would lessen the impact of their own less open format and make it easier for people to swap to competitive Office suites and Microsoft would apparently prefer not to compete on price and features if they don’t have to. It should be noted that Microsoft’s XML based file format is NOT currently approved by OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards).

I dream of a world where any text document/spreadsheet/presentation/database can be opened and saved by any Office application suite and that the only reason to choose one over another is the feature set and price of that Office suite. I suspect however, that Microsoft will be one of the last to join that party and will only do so when they are forced to by declining market share. Governments have become much more aware recently of the need to keep their information in non proprietary formats, so Microsoft may be pressured (by sales or the lack thereof) to comply sooner then expected. Governments make up a fairly significant portion of Microsoft Office sales.

You can get a more detailed look at the issue by reading Eweek’s write-up of the problem.