Yahoo announced today that it’s letting Zimbra run amok, improving its Yahoo Mail with offline access. CNET’s Stephen Shankland has a good review of how this impacts Yahoo Mail users, as well as some warts that remain.

The ironic thing for me is that despite berating Zimbra for a year to develop an offline version of its excellent software, I almost never use it anymore. E-mail for me has become a tab in my Firefox browser. Sure, if I get on a plane then I’ll use Zimbra Desktop, but even with how much I fly (125,000-plus miles each year), that’s still only 1 percent of my life). I almost never need it.

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It’s a pretty significant move since it means that Zimbra is now reaching more than 250 million people, instead of the “mere” 11 million that it was touching before. That’s even more than the number of people currently using
Firefox. Next time your mom asks what open source is, you can tell her “Zimbra” or “Firefox.” She’s likely to appreciate the value of open source (and the job you do) between those two examples.

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For as long as some have been talking about “The Year of the Linux Desktop,” I’ve been hearing the same thing about “The Year of Embedded Linux.” My first open-source company was Lineo, an embedded-Linux vendor. I used to preach the gospel of embedded/mobile Linux.

But its “year” never came. As with Godot, we’re always waiting for Linux to own mobile and to own the desktop. And despite Linux Foundation’s Jim Zemlin preaching that embedded Linux’s time has come, I’ve become a bit too jaded to lend much credence to the next big announcement about how it’s really, truly, definitely here this time.

Mark’s Ubuntu is making serious in-roads with the mobile market
by helping to define and drive an entirely new class of device, the ultra-portable/sub-notebook. In this market, Mark isn’t introduced in trying to steal market share from Novell and Red Hat; rather, he is attempting to create new market opportunities for all.

Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of Ubuntu, however, may have finally cracked the code.

The web, in short, perhaps gives vent to our less desirable traits, but it also affords an avenue to demonstrate the nobler side of our natures, which I believe prevails with most people.

So, thank you, Brad, and thank you, Bethany, for taking the time to demonstrate the other side of the web.

I posted a week ago about the problems with web anonymity. In a nutshell, people say things on the web under the cloak of real or imagined anonymity that they’d never say to someone’s face. At least, not if they hoped to have friends for long.

The web, however, lowers barriers to conversations that I (and others) would never have. Intriguingly, one of the people I chastised for making negative comments (though his comment really wasn’t all that bad) apologized in the comments section of my blog. More intriguingly, a friend of his, Bethany, went a step further and IM’d an apology to me tonight. She proved to be a sweet, generous person, and any lingering ire I might have felt toward Brad dissipated.

Well, tonight I experienced one of the joys of web anonymity. I’m not a super-social person: I get on a plane and pray the person next to me doesn’t want to talk. If he/she does, I glower at them until they think better of it. In this way, I’m sure I miss out on meeting lots of great people.

What are the odds of that happening offline? You’d never be able to apologize to the person that you cut off in traffic because you’re almost certainly never going to see them again. Online, everyone is a stranger…but also a potential friend.

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The Denon AH-NC732 noise-canceling headphones, with accessories

(Credit:
Denon)

Denon entered the headphone game just last year, but for a freshman competitor, the company had a lot to offer. Most of the models we auditioned–both full-size home headphones and travel-friendly in-ear models–ranged from good to excellent. Now the company is expanding its offerings with a noise-canceling model. The AH-NC732 On-Ear Noise Cancelling Headphones offer a lightweight (160 grams), acoustic optimizer (said to offer deep bass), and compact hard case. A single AAA battery is needed for the active noise cancellation, which counteracts ambient noise with an inverse soundwave. In other words, the new Denons look to be targeted directly at the similarly styled–and very popular–Bose QuietComfort 3s. Look for the Denon AH-NC732 On-Ear Noise Cancelling Headphones to hit in August for $300–a cool $50 less than the Bose.

(Credit:
Turtle Beach)

Turtle Beach has just unveiled its latest surround sound headset for the
Xbox 360. The Ear Force X4 offers a wireless connection to the 360 (thanks to a separate base station) and it doubles as an Xbox Live communicator for chatting during multiplayer games (the microphone and headphone-to-controller tether can be removed during solo gameplay). The Ear Force X4 delivers full Dolby Digital and Dolby Pro Logic II surround decoding, and the standard optical digital and analog stereo inputs mean that it can be connected to virtually any other audiovisual source beyond the Xbox 360.

While previous Xbox-centric Ear Force models–the Ear Force AXT and Ear Force X2–have suffered from excessive wiring requirements and other design flaws, we’re hoping the X4 will be more in line with the Ear Force AK-R8, an excellent surround headset for the PC. The $200 Ear Force X4 is now shipping; look for a full CNET review soon.

It’s about connecting any device to any network from anywhere at anytime.

“This will be the next phase of the Internet,” Cisco CEO John Chambers said at an event on Monday previewing a keynote address he will be giving Tuesday morning at the GSMA’s Mobile World Congress here. This is the first time ever that Cisco, the leading supplier of IP infrastructure equipment in the world, is addressing the cell phone industry in this forum.

In many ways it’s fitting that Cisco, the company that has essentially helped build the Internet, would be turning toward mobile. And it’s this focus on the network that has shaped Chambers’ views on what mobility really means.

“Most people talk about mobility in terms of a device,” he told analysts and reporters Monday. “But the challenge is to think of mobility as the ability to connect any device to any content at any time, anywhere in any mode. It really goes across a combination of networks.”

Chambers said that applications and the information that users are trying to access are what should be mobile, not the device itself. And it shouldn’t matter whether the information is accessed on a wireless network or over one that is wired.

He said a hybrid approach is the most likely way to address consumers’ needs. In some cases, a wired broadband network will be the best choice, while in other cases a wireless infrastructure will serve consumers’ needs better.

One thing is certain: Cisco doesn’t see a single technology as the answer. Chambers said the company would keep its options open as it evolves its wireless and mobile strategies. For example, even though Cisco recently paid $330 million to buy the WiMax start-up Navini Networks, it doesn’t mean the company will push only WiMax solutions. In fact, he pointed out the danger of getting into a religious technology battle.

“You can’t fall in love with one technology over another,” he said. “There are lots of people who would have told you that ATM to the desktop was the best solution. But it was fast Ethernet that won the day.”

I just spotted DataSync’s news that it now offers full Blackberry BES sync support for Zimbra and SugarCRM. I no longer use a Blackberry, but for those enterprises (like mine) that use SugarCRM and Zimbra, this will no doubt be a big benefit.

For those who have been frustrated by NotifyLink (Hear! Hear!), the product is still in beta but promises to be better than the mostly lame NotifyLink service:

Zimbra is currently in “beta” BlackBerry support mode, however we have had a very solid response over the past 30 days in our test environment. We’ve decided to offer this service commercially because of the overall stability of the system.

Even though it isn’t 100 percent solid yet, it’s a massive improvement over NotifyLink’s software (which regularly angered DataSync and our users). So in light of the move forward, we’ve decided to pull support for Notify and move our users exclusively to BES.

If someone can report on whether it works as advertised, please let me know. If it does, it will be a great addition to to the Zimbra/SugarCRM arsenal.

For Your Imagination, or FYI as they like to be called, produces the Web shows DadLabs and Break a Leg as well as an interview series about Gotham start-ups called NextNYers and a live music series, Live at FYI.

But in the New York tech community, FYI is known just as much for its office, a spacious loft in Chelsea that hosts many a digital-media industry party.

Microsoft has an idea for keeping children safe online: create “digital playgrounds,” sites where visitors have to prove their age using digital identity credentials.

The idea was detailed in a paper Microsoft was set to release early on Wednesday as part of its Trustworthy Computing initiative. The concept builds on a notion called “End to End Trust” that Microsoft first proposed in April at the RSA Security conference.

The company is tackling the challenge of how to make the Internet safer not just for children, but also for adults wanting to conduct business, make transactions, and communicate with the confidence that the people they are interacting with really are who they say they are. A big concern is how to add more identity authentication without compromising the privacy of the people involved.

“I started thinking about how we identify people in the physical world three years ago, when my wife had a (baby) boy,” Scott Charney, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for Trustworthy Computing, said in a recent interview. “I was in the delivery room, and out he came, and the doctor said, ‘What’s his name?’”

“It occurred to me that all identity is based on social custom and derivative identity. Parents name the child, and the name is put on the birth certificate,” which then becomes the irrefutable proof of that person’s identity, he said. “We haven’t done that on the Internet.”

Microsoft proposes using existing identity verification systems, such as schools that register children for classes, post offices that verify identities for passports, and motor vehicle agencies that issue drivers’ licenses, to help create digital credentials that people would use online.

“For example, I could produce my driver’s license, stick it in a card reader, and prove it’s really me,” Charney said.

Under the scenario related to children, digital identity “cards,” or credentials, could be based on either national identity documents created at birth or on identity documents schools use to determine age and identity for school registration, with parental permission. The data could be limited to age and proof of authenticity, and the credentials should be encrypted and require use of PIN numbers.

The Microsoft paper, entitled “Digital Playgrounds: Creating Safer Online Environments for Children,” acknowledges that attempts at creating children-only online environments haven’t quite taken off and cites the kids.us domain as an example.

“But there are reasons to believe that age-limited online services could be appealing,” the paper states, mentioning that some sites might want to use age authentication as a feature to attract parents who want to keep their children away from predatory adults and teens who might want a more discreet experience than most dating and social-networking sites offer.

Interactive Web sites could be categorized into three areas: “general audience,” for all ages, and “children only” and “adults only,” both of which could require proof of age. The paper provides no specifics on how adults-only sites would authenticate, though it’s likely that they would use the same digital credential system envisioned for children’s sites.

Microsoft submitted its digital-identity approach, as outlined on its Web site, to the Internet Safety Technical Task Force, led by Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, as well as to the European Commission, which is looking at online age verification concepts.

Digital information card infrastructure, such as Windows CardSpace or the open-source Higgins project, could be used in conjunction with the in-person proof.

Improving user authentication on the Internet isn’t something that can be realized anytime soon, Charney admits.

“We’ll get there, but it will take time,” he says. “People work (on issues) for years and years, and suddenly, like a snowball rolling down the hill, it takes on critical mass… We’re at the pushing-the-ball stage.”

Some of the nicer features include being able to view and send any native file types. This includes music, so if you’ve got a bunch of tracks stored on iDisk, you can stream them from the app. Movies work as well, although they have to be formatted to play on an iPod or iPhone.

Apple says that some files over 20MB won’t load, although I successfully managed to get a 198MB MPEG4 movie file to stream in. Things that require downloading, however, such as documents and photos, are capped at 30MB–even when you’re on a Wi-Fi connection. The application must first download those types of files to your device before you can even see what they are. This process is made faster by a cache you can adjust to allow for more local storage, all the way up to 200MB. Not included in that cache are audio and video files, which are simply streamed, meaning that you’ll need to be on a solid connection for the entire listen or watch.

As nice as the local cache is, it’s a long ways off from offering users the chance to manage files locally as some other iPhone storage apps have done. You cannot download anything back to your device from the app, save for photos, which can only be saved using the iPhone’s screenshot feature–not the superior copy and paste. There are also no previews before or after you’ve downloaded something to view locally, which means you better have named your files properly.

I applaud Apple’s efforts for giving users a first party way to access their files, it’s just too bad it offers so much less than third parties have provided. Besides local file downloading, I would love to see omissions like copy and paste, and quick visual previews offered. It would also be fantastic to let users copy a file from the app into a mail message without having to use the built-in e-mailer, which wraps each file in MobileMe branding.

MobileMe iDisk for the iPhone weighs in at 2.2MB and requires users to have an active subscription to MobileMe, along with an iPod Touch or iPhone running OS 3.0.

The good:
• Lets you quickly access files you have stored on your iDisk in a native application.
• Streams in audio and video, letting you bypass file size restrictions.
• You can view files in portrait and landscape modes.
• Your log-in is saved between sessions, so you don’t need to re-enter your user name and password.
•You can view files your friends have stored online if you know their MobileMe user names.

The bad:
• Certain files are capped at 30MB–even over Wi-Fi.
• There are no visual previews of what photos, videos, and docs contain.
• No way to save files for offline viewing. There’s a local cache, but as soon as a newer file needs some space, old files are removed.
•Copy and paste doesn’t work.