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Survey: Internet Access a Fundamental Right

Paul Lilly — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 08:40:07 -0600

Quick question: Is Web access a fundamental right or a privilege? If you think the Internet is a fundamental right, then you're in the clear majority, according to a new global survey conducted for the BBC World Service.

In a poll of 27,000 adults spread out through 26 countries, four out of five respondents described Web access as a right, and that number was even higher in South Korea and China. About 78 percent of respondents said the Internet gave them greater freedom, while half said the Web should never be regulated.

At the same time, some 65 percent of respondents in Japans said they didn't feel safe expressing their opinions online, a sentiment shared by pollsters living in South Korea, France, Germany, and China.

Other areas of concern include fraud, violent and explicit content, and threats to privacy, but none of these diminished the overall feeling.

"Despite worries about privacy and fraud, people around the world see access to the Internet as their fundamental right," said Doug Miller, the chairman of GlobeScan which conducted the survey. "They think the Web is a force for good, and most don't want governments to regulate it."

Murphy's Law: Steam, Meet Facebook... and its New Best Friend, Open Source

David Murphy — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 10:00:06 -0600

Life, it seems, is never fair for any developer. Just ask the gurus behind Valve's Steam service. For the past many years, Steam has existed as the dominant digital-download platform of choice for gamers worldwide. While a few improvements have been built into the actual application one uses to access the Steam service, the program in question has remained relatively unchanged in its design for a good chunk of its recent existence. Which, in itself, is a polite way to say that it's been ages since an actual upgrade brought a new look, feel, and functionality to the Steam client.

Ask, and one receives: Valve's finally uploaded a beta of the latest user interface upgrades to Steam. And while that's all well and good from a "progress is awesome" perspective, it's still left some of the more thoughtful critics in the gaming community scratching their heads. And these heads are connected to their mouths, which seem to have a straight-shot down to their fingers: "It's ugly!" cry some. "I wish it could do [feature!]" scream others. "Loud Noises!"

As I think of the many different "platforms" on the Internet, I'm reminded of just how closed-off the Steam application is for conventional tweaking. Some of this is mandatory--there's only so much Valve wants you to be able to access for fear of somehow disrupting Steam's security techniques and gaining access to the vault of unlocked, free-to-download titles. Take a moment to wipe the drool off your keyboard; I'll wait.

What's stopping Valve from incorporating other open architectures into its service, however? What about Web-wide login protocols? Authentication for third-party services that could offer spin-offs of Steam's built-in stats-tracking? Heck, what about some customized user interface support?

Some might say Steam is too big to be able to successfully navigate open-source and open frameworks. To that, I say hogwash: If Facebook can do it, so can Valve!

As CNET's Caroline McCarthy writes, Facebook has been taking a decent amount of flak for its lack of a desire to participate in the open Web--a platform where information is freely exchanged through the use of common protocols for access; where no wall separates one platform from another and generalization, not specificity, is the driver of future innovation and success. And although Facebook has balked its way into the process, the company has nevertheless made significant strides to participate more in the universal Web, not just the Facebook Network.

While much of its development has been centered on real-time strategies, brought forth by projects like the open-source Tornado Web server and the open PubSubHubBub standard for real-time information authoring, Facebook's increased devotion to open-source has also been a matter of necessity. Simply put, open-source solutions allow the site to scale better (and more rapidly) than commercial solutions. That's kind of a big deal when the company's serving in upwards of 400 billion page views on a monthly basis.

So, obviously, there's a case to be made that Steam--a lesser service in scale--could very easily tap into the power of the open Web to further the development of its platform. Just imagine the possibilities: add-ons and tweaks that build additional functionality into the client, transforming it from a hub for launching video games into a high-priority source of information of all kinds. Or, better yet, open authentication protocols that you can use to accentuate your Steam statistics through normal browsing or online game playing. At the very least, this could be a way to interact with your Steam friends and groups via third-party services.

In short, it's not about the service--it's about the expandability. The more Facebook weaves its tendrils throughout the Web, the more users far and wide become tied into its platforms and protocols. For a platform that's one-half downloads, one-half community... Steam doesn't really have that kind of an effect on the greater Web. Open-source is the key to its expansion but, more importantly, a great ticket for users to finally be able to customize the service to their liking.

Don't force changes on the community; let them dictate how and when they use your service--including its "ugly" interface.

Web App of the Week: Tunesbag

David Murphy — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 16:50:14 -0600

Problem: You have a ton of awesome jams on your iTunes / Zune / Windows Media Player / multimedia organizer of choice, but you don't always use the PC that contains your ultimate rock collection. What do you do? There are a few answers, but all require some software setup in order for you to be able to access your music from afar. You could use Hamachi-based networks to access a shared iTunes library; You could also set up your primary machine as a radio server, which you can then use to stream your files via an easy-to-operate, Web-based interface!

Still, that's a lot of work. There has to be an easier solution, right? There is. It's called TunesBag, and it offers the same functionality you'd otherwise get by building your own Internet radio station the hard way. Although the service is limited to one GB of music for free accounts, that's still a hefty amount of rocking out for your average listener. And uploading, playing, and categorizing music using TunesBag's Web-based interface couldn't be easier--or faster!

Here's how it works: Sign up for the free service and you'll be given one gigabyte of space to upload music to. You can either dump your files into your TunesBag... bag... using a Web-based upload tool or a desktop updating client that integrates nicely with iTunes, Windows Media Player, and Winamp libraries. You can also email files in if you have no other recourse for getting that song you just downloaded into your Cloud-ish library.

From there, you can create playlists of your online library and sort through songs using a number of different criteria. It's analogous to a stripped-down version of iTunes' organizational scheme. To play a track, just click on it. The included player on the Web page will start blasting your music. If you want to shuffle your tracks, just hit the randomize button. As well, you can also search for more jams from the artist and rate the current song you're listening to all using the controls on your TunesBag page.

Simple, easy, efficient. While it would be awesome to find a way to automatically synchronize your library with TunesBag, I'm not going to complain about a Web-based player that takes all of five minutes (plus uploading time) to set up!

Each week, Maximum PC picks a new free or shareware download as its favorite of... the week. Have a nifty application that you can't live without? Twitter David Murphy @acererak with your latest suggestions.

11 Best Greasemonkey Scripts that Actually Work with Chrome

David Murphy — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 22:00:00 -0600

One of Mozilla Firefox's bigger advantages over Google Chrome has just been wiped away and, dare we say, Google Chrome has actually one-upped its rival in terms of overall usability and ease-of-installation. We're referring, of course, to Greasemonkey. You might have heard this name echoed across tech and tweak sites far and wide. As well you should have--the functionality you can achieve by this upgrade to your surfing experience is simply unsurpassed in its depth or scope by any conventional add-on or extension.

It's quite simple, really. You install Greasemonkey to gain access to a gallery of add-ons that benefit your browsing experience just as much as your favorite official "add-ons," if not more. By add-ons, we mean "scripts." In its conventional format, Greasemonkey is a browser add-on that grants you the ability to automatically integrate new Javascript-based modifications to a site whenever you load up the page. You don't have to design these modifications yourself--a huge gallery of scripts (more than 40,000!) have already been written for a wide swath of functions and locations. Consider Greasemonkey scripts to be analogous to extensions for Greasemonkey--itself an extension for your main browser.

Or, at least, for most browsers--Google Chrome doesn't force you to install a separate extension in order to access this huge body of customized tweaks and modifications. You can thank Aaron Boodman for that. He created Greasemonkey back in 2004 and, as luck might have it, now works at Google as a software engineer. The whole point of that short story is to give a little bit of background for Chrome's interpretation of Greasemonkey scripts. It's rather ingenious, really. Chrome automatically converts these hunks of Javascript into browser-suppoted extensions, which gives you the ability to install, uninstall, and configure your Greasemonkey scripts just as easily as you would a normal extension. You don't need a separate add-on, nor do you even need to restart your browser to fiddle around with all the scripts you want.

And by "all the scripts you want," we mean, "most of the scripts you want." Not all Greasemonkey scripts work perfectly in Google Chrome. The running estimation is that roughly 20 percent of what's out there is currently broken for Google's browser. That's not great news for a person who's easily frustrated by failure. However, here's where Maximum PC comes into the picture. We've run through a large swath of awesome Google Greasemonkey scripts to achieve two key goals: to see what works and to see which scripts, of the 40,000+ available, are awesome tweaks for your browser. That said, here's a list of 11 excellent Greasemonkey scripts that you should put at the top of your must-have list, depending on your browsing preferences:

Inline Google Player

This one's a Lifehacker original and, if you find yourself often searching for new jams on the Web, a complete lifesaver. The premise is simple. Whenever the script detects a link to an MP3 file on a page, it'll throw a little "Play" link after the actual hyperlink. Click on "Play," and a small Flash-based streaming player will appear. Preview your tune. Decide if you like it. Rock out.

Download it here!

Yays! (Yet Another YouTube Script)

We, like most people, enjoy watching videos on Youtube. But what we don't enjoy is waiting for these videos to buffer, and especially when the playback catches up to the end of said buffering. When we want to watch cats chasing each other around, we want it in its full, uninterrupted glory. The Yays script makes this possible... and more! You can now toggle whether you want Youtube videos to autoplay or not, and you can also select a default quality setting for said videos--no more paused playback or 360p videos when you can instead be watching a full, uninterrupted, 1080p stream.

Download it here!

Remove Facebook Ads

Annoying advertisements, especially those related to Mob-based Facebook games or hints of things to come (are YOU getting married! Buy a RING TODAY!), are often a source of laughter--and complaints--on good ol' Facebook. Install this script and you'll never be prompted to "CHECK OUT THIS NEW ENERGY DRINK" or "HEY ARE YOU PREGNANT" ever again.

Download it here!

Greased Lightbox

If you find yourself often searching for images on the 'net, then this script should increase the awesomeness of your conventional experience to a great degree. Instead of jumping to normal HTML pages when you click on picture links--like on Flickr, for example), Greased Lightbox slaps these images into, well, a lightbox. The background of the page you're viewing fades down and the image you're looking at appears in the center of your screen. You can then use keyboard commands to scroll through subsequent images and increase or decrease the size of the picture you're viewing.

Download it here!

Secure Connections on Sites

This one's simple -- when you hit up a particular site on this script's list (like Amazon, Facebook, or Paypal), the script will automatically force your browser to use the more secure https:// version of the page.

Download it here!

BugMeNot

Little is more annoying than when you've gotten yourself all emotionally invested to read an article online only to find that the site hosting said article won't let you through an imposed gateway without registering for a free account. Grumble. BugMeNot adds a little menu to the login pages of sites like this, allowing you to pull up a login and password from BugMeNot's archives instead of having to submit your own info.

Download it here!

LookItUp

What the heck is that? It's a fair question to ask yourself when you stumble across a word or phrase you simply don't recognize. This occurrence might normally result in a trip to an online dictionary or Wikipedia, which would require you to open up a new tab in your browser, go back to the original tab, copy the word, go to the new tab, load up the appropriate site, paste the word, et cetera. Psh to that process, I say. With LookItUp, you can simply highlight words and use keyboard hotkeys to automatically pull up what you've selected in a sidebar of various reference sites.

Download it here!

Virtual Keyboard Interface

Worried that you might be surfing the Web or typing up information on a compromised machine? Virtual Keyboard Interface adds a clickable keyboard below any text field on a Web page. Use your mouse to do your typing, and you'll spare yourself the wrath of an angry keylogger!

Download it here!

Multi-Column View of Google Search Results

Alright, widescreen enthusiasts. If you're sporting a huge monitor, you might be frustrated by the typical wasted space you see in a given Google search result. This script fixes that by allowing you to split Google search results into columns. Change back and forth between one, two, or three columns by using the hotkeys alt+1, alt+2, or alt+3!

Download it here!

Chromium RSS-Feed Detection

Does the site you're browsing have an RSS feed? If the site's layout is poor, good luck finding that little orange icon that represents your ability to subscribe to said site's updates. This script aims to fix that by placing an RSS icon in a little drop-down display in the upper-left corner of Chrome. If you see this, congratulations--you're one step away from accessing the RSS feed you seek!

Download it here!

Helvetwitter

We know how much typical Maximum PC readers love Twitter (read: none), so here's a special one that might just get you back into the service. If you're tired of Twitter's color-filled interface and just want a simpler way to read what's going on with your friends and/or random strangers, grab the Helvetwitter script. It strips everything out of the Twitter interface save for the essentials: names, Tweets, and a box for updates. Instead of a ton of colors, you get three: white, black, and red. This is Twitter minimalism to the max.

Download it here!

David Murphy (@ Acererak) is a technology journalist and former Maximum PC editor. He writes weekly columns about the wide world of open-source as well as weekly roundups of awesome, freebie software. Befriend him on Twitter, especially if you have an awesome app or game you're dying to recommend!

Murphy's Law: Adobe Flash's Fightin' Words

David Murphy — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 16:30:00 -0600

Zinnnng!

It's been nearly a week since I last reported about Apple's reluctance to allow its users access to the Flash platform. Apple--and Steve Jobs himself--has reportedly claimed that the instability of Flash was the driving factor behind Apple's ripping of this app straight off of its mobile devices (including the brand-new iPad) in favor of an HTML5-based solution for interactive content.

Although Adobe seemed to be letting Jobs' alleged tirade against Flash earlier this week go unanswered, ‘twas not meant to be. Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch has since responded in the company's official "Executive Perspectives" blog. I'm not much of a betting man (nightmares of CES losses haunt me to this day), but perhaps you are: Just which way do you think Lynch points the finger of blame for Flash's absence on--quote unquote--"a recent magical device."

Here we go again!

Everyone Loves Flash

For what it's worth, Lynch does correctly address the big watershed moment that Flash adoption currently faces. This almost seems like an contradiction in itself--if Lynch is to be believed, Flash currently runs on 98 percent of connected computers and powers the whiz-bang content of more than 85 percent of the Web's top sites. Obviously, Flash is big.

Keep in mind, however, that these statistics are primarily concerned with computers accessing the Web. Call them what you will, but devices like the iPad and the iPhone don't fit this description. Unlike a computer, you can't exactly go installing new frameworks and architectures on a closed device like the iPhone. Depending on the manufacturer and/or the limits of the underlying technology, you simply don't have the kind of support to freely download and install executables to expand your core functionality. These closed products aren't thumbing their nose at the open-source world. It's just how they're built.

To Adobe, it's not up to them to create a more open framework--that already exists by virtue of Flash's extraordinarily wide audience. Flash is the standard for video. Nobody's arguing about Flash, yet everyone seems to be split into camps supporting either the Ogg Theora or H.264 formats of HTML5. This still isn't sufficient of enough cause to kill either format in favor of the other. Lynch sees a concurrent future for both Flash and HTML5, provided other companies do their part to make the Web an "open environment," as he phrases it.

"We have shown that Flash technology is starting to work on these devices today by enabling standalone applications for the iPhone to be built on Flash. In fact, some of these apps are already available in the Apple App Store such as FickleBlox and Chroma Circuit. This same solution will work on the iPad as well. We are ready to enable Flash in the browser on these devices if and when Apple chooses to allow that for its users, but to date we have not had the required cooperation from Apple to make this happen."

Them's fightin' words.

Steve Jobs Does Not Love Flash

Will Steve Jobs ultimately care? No. Will Apple let an allegedly buggy application ruin the performance of its devices, when the very marketing behind said devices relates to their impressive usability? No. Will Flash open up its player for anyone to fork at will? No--nor can they, given that they can't openly distribute the codices the player uses.

Is there a solution? Well... no. In fact, many believe that this is the dying argument, the last puff of exhaust hanging in the air after the HTML5 van has sped off into the sunset. If the Flash player is truly as convoluted and buggy as Apple claims, why would the company want to step back and reinvent the wheel if it can instead pave the way forward with a truly open framework for content delivery?

Flash might exist throughout the future of the Web, but I don't forsee a future where Apple and Adobe go prancing around 1 Infinite Loop hand-in-hand. But when it comes to other devices--especially the true "computers" I talked about earlier--Flash has gained enough of a head start to keep it as the prevailing protocol for years to come. And if the company was to opt to phase out the closed Flash player out in favor of an HTML5/Javascript solution... well, that'd be a real zinger indeed.

Web App of the Week: PDFmyURL

David Murphy — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 13:00:11 -0600

By now, you've surely checked out Mark Soper's excellent guide for creating PDFs by using a multitude of applications, editing steps, and detail settings. If not, you owe it to yourself to give the article a scan so you're as well-versed as he when it comes to transforming ordinary files into these kinds of feature-packed super-documents.

As he correctly puts it, Adobe ain't the only game in town when you're trying to turn the contents of something you're looking at into this trusty, cross-platform format. Let's go one step further. Installed programs aren't the only way to create a PDF, period.

If you're on a new computer (or, for that matter, your boss's computer), you might not want to fire up the ol' Adobe installer just to be able to gain the right to transform your screen into a PDF. And sure, there are plenty of freeware opportunities out there that will allow you to print to a PDF. But that's still too many steps in the process. It's 4:59 on a Friday: You want to make a PDF, hit the power button on your PC, and be able to drink one-third of your "it's the weekend" celebratory iced tea before your monitor goes black. What are you going to do?

If the answer is "cry," then you have failed this exercise. But let it not be said that my heart is two sizes too small. For a little Web app exists--conveniently called PDFmyURL--that does exactly that. Provided the subject of your affection is a Web page of any size, shape, or extension... you will be able to transform it into a downloadable PDF as fast as you'll be able to finish reading the rest of this sentence.

How does it work? I almost feel bad explaining this due to its complete and utter simplicity. Here goes. Go to the Web site. Enter a URL into the box. Click the fancy, Prince-like icon to the right. Wait. Download the file that appears in your browser. Cheer. That's it.

Of course, there's a little more to the Web app's feature-set than that. If you click on the "advanced options" box, you'll see a crap-ton of different commands that you can append to the end of the URL you've inputted to further customize the end product that's created. In a perfect world, PDFmyURL would offer these tidbits as checkable boxes or adjustable menus. Suffice, there's a whole ton of functionality in this seemingly simple Web app that's just waiting to be explored. But, until then, be sure to grab the PDFmyURL bookmarklet so you, too, can have insta-PDFage at a moment's notice.

Every Thursday, Maximum PC picks a new Web App as its favorite of the week. Have a Web App that you can't live without? Twitter David Murphy @acererak with your latest suggestions.

Google Reader Upgraded to Track Pages without RSS Feeds

Pulkit Chandna — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 22:45:03 -0600

Google Reader now has the ability to provide custom feeds for the sites that don't have an RSS feed, making it possible to track changes on such pages using any RSS reader. The Google-created feed is composed of snippets of page changes. However, site owners can disable such feeds by opting-out of the service. Feeds can be added by entering the URL of the particular page you wish to follow in the "Add a subscription" field.

Apparently, the feature was not developed by the Google Reader team but another set of Google developers. “At Google we're always looking for ways to take advantage of work being done in other parts of the organization. So when a team approached us with a way to follow changes from websites without feeds, we jumped at the opportunity,” Google's Liza Ma wrote on the official Google Reader blog. Though there are other services that offer the same functionality, it is a useful little feature that should please Google Reader users.

Web App of the Week: Support Details

David Murphy — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 13:46:57 -0600

This week's Web App of the Week isn't so much for you, but your friends, family, and users. If you ever tried your hand at Web development--doesn't have to be professional, even amateur Web creation will do--you'll know that the strangest of problems can pop up in the strangest of places. A little CSS misstep here, a little HTML coding boo-boo there, and your perfectly constructed three-column layout has somehow crafted itself into a Tumblr page. And it's blinking. And it's hacking off your grandmother who just wants to see pictures of your recent family vacation.

Of course, you're going to email your somewhat-technological-savvy grandmother and ask her what the problem is. And you're then going to tell her that you don't see the problem on your own Web browser. You're going to ask her what Web browser she's using, and she's going to tell you that she has no idea. And she also won't know her operating system, her current version of Flash, or even the size of her screen. She won't be able to tell you if JavaScript is on or off and she certainly won't know how to find her own IP address no matter how many times you tell her how to work the "ipconfig" console command. There goes your remote connection option.

But that's okay. Like that one insurance advertisement featuring the guy with the soothing voice, your grandmother, user, friend, or angry forum commenter will be in good hands with the Web App Support Details. Send said person to said app, and the site will pull up an easy-to-read listing of all their Web-related statistics, including:

Operating System
Web Browser (and version)
IP Address
JavaScript status
Cookie status
Screen Resolution / Browser Size
Color Depth
Flash version

You can then instruct the user to export their details as a CSV or a PDF, or email you the statistics directly from the main screen of Support Details. While this web app might scream, "newbie," remember that not all computer users are as well-versed in tech knowledge as you and I, faithful Maximum PC reader. With Support Details, you'll never have to walk someone through the process of figuring out their configurations ever again: Just send them the site!

Every Thursday, Maximum PC picks a new Web App as its favorite of the week. Have a Web App that you can't live without? Twitter David Murphy @acererak with your latest suggestions.