Data Circle

WordPress, perhaps the most popular blogging software out there, has a new version out today, which plugs several security holes (though I’m not sure that exposing your draft posts really counts as a vulnerability) and fixes a few minor bugs.

Upgrading from any version post 2.1 seems to be pretty easy – I’ve just upgraded Data Circle, Politics Watch and Rogue Tory, all from different versions, and it took me about ten minutes in total. The CSS for the admin panel has been improved, so the fonts look a lot better under Linux. Security updates and bug fixes are of course also welcome, although these are less obvious improvements in a way because I haven’t seen the problems they cause.

Anyway, if you’re running WordPress on any of your sites, I’d strongly recommend that you download the latest release and then follow the upgrade instructions. It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes, and you’ll be protecting your site from several vulnerabilities by doing so. If this is too much effort for you, WordPress.com will keep things up to date for you, and items such as domain mapping cost a minimal amount per year.

As some of you may already have heard, the Netscape web browser software will cease to be supported as of February 2008. For those of us who can remember a time before the dominance of Internet Explorer (yes, such a time did exist, and I’m not entirely sure if things have improved since then in many ways), Netscape Navigator was probably our first introduction to the Web in all its glory—well, text with a few animated GIFs anyway. I can remember first surfing the Web using Netscape Navigator Gold at the University of Bolton (or Bolton Institute of Higher Education as it was back then), mostly looking for information about the Games Workshop universe. I also built my first web site using the Composer software which came bundled with the browser, and I don’t think it’s pushing the point too far to say that without Netscape I might not have got involved with the Internet as early as I did, or as deeply as I have now.

However, the only surprise in the announcement is that it has taken so long for AOL to realise that Netscape is no longer a viable commodity on the Web. With traffic to Netscape.com dropping like a stone and the rise and rise of Firefox making Navigator somewhat obsolete, it was only a matter of time before Netscape was quietly taken out the back and put down for its own good. Netscape pioneered something which nowadays we all take for granted (web browsing), developed and implemented core technologies such as the Secure Sockets Layer (used in most online transactions) and stood its ground against the anti-competitive practices of Microsoft for many years. It’s a shame to see it finally fall, but all good things must come to an end one day.

I feel as if I’ve just written an obituary. Perhaps I have. Here lies Netscape, October 1994 – December 2007.

Further reading

• The end of an era as AOL officially retires Netscape
• Web icon set to be discontinued

As 2007 comes to a close, I thought it would be interesting to reveal some of my predictions of what will and won’t happen in the technology sector over the next 12 months. These are only predictions and my personal opinions, so please feel free to disagree with me!

What will happen

Huge surge in demand for online video: Following the launch of the BBC’s iPlayer service, I expect all the major UK channels to follow suit if they haven’t already, and to consider making their players Flash-based so as to work on any platform, albeit in a non-free format, as the pressure starts to build from people who aren’t using Internet Explorer in Windows XP.

Crunch time for Digital Rights Management: With so many companies abandoning DRM and offering their content without any built-in software restrictions, I think 2008 will represent crunch time for this much maligned technology. It might survive beyond the year, but unless there is a major development in this area (most likely some form of court case somehow coming down in favour of DRM) I expect DRM to be on its way out in twelve months.

Victory in the format war: Either Blu-ray or HD-DVD will emerge victorious in the format wars. It’s difficult to guess which one will be the eventual winner, as the VHS vs Betamax wars demonstrated that technical superiority doesn’t necessarily guarantee success. Blu-ray seemed to have more support last time I checked, but only by a small margin, and probably not enough to put it well ahead of HD-DVD (several Blu-ray supporters are also backing the other format anyway).

What won’t happen

Linux on the Desktop: Every year since 2000 has been hailed as ‘the year of Linux on the desktop’, and every year this hasn’t happened. Whilst I’m sure the likes of Ubuntu will continue to grow in popularity and ease of use, I don’t think Linux will take a significant proportion (say 10%) of the desktop market in 2008.

Super-fast broadband in the UK: We lag far behind America and most of the big European countries in terms of our broadband speeds over here, and I don’t think this will change in 2008, despite claims from some ISPs and cable companies. The old copper cables between our houses and the local exchanges are simply not up to the job, and BT doesn’t seem to have a commercial incentive to spend the millions of pounds required to upgrade them.

Predictions from other people

IBM Reveals Five Innovations that Will Change Our Lives Over the Next Five Years – can’t say I agree with most of these, other than the green technologies issue.

Economist: Technology in 2008 – I’m fairly at ease with most of these predictions, although they’re modifying existing situations (e.g. surfing will get slower) rather than anticipating any major new technologies (which is a perfectly valid viewpoint, albeit a bit boring).

JasonSlater.co.uk technology predictions for 2008 – I disagree with the ‘Year of the Zune’ suggestion, as I think Apple’s iPod is so ubiquitous and entrenched that it will take more than a shoddy MP3 player from Microsoft to change this dominant position. Home robots won’t be the next great thing either, at least not in my opinion.

Technologies on the rise in 2008 – Not entirely convinced by the IPTV prediction, mainly because it seems to be based on faster broadband speeds which, as I’ve already mentioned, I don’t see happening in 2008. The VoIP prediction, however, I think is more realistic and something which I genuinely hope happens.

Queen launches YouTube channel

As well as being broadcast on BBC as tradition dictates, this year the Queen’s Christmas Day message will be available on the Royal Family YouTube channel, with the aim of reaching younger people and those in other countries. I’m impressed that such an old and traditional institution as the Royal Family has finally grasped modern technology and used it in a simple but effective way.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the concept, the Queen’s Speech on Christmas Day is a national tradition – at 3pm the message (which is recorded earlier) is broadcast to millions of people around the UK who all sit down after their Christmas dinner to listen to the monarch deliver a short address to the nation. It’s one of those peculiar traditions which makes us British.

This will be my last post on Data Circle before the day itself, so I’d like to take the opportunity to wish you all a Merry Christmas 2.0.

I’m afraid I’ve been a bit remiss in updating the site over the past few months, largely due to having too many other things to work on. However, Data Circle is now back up and running, and will be regularly updated throughout 2008 with my commentary on the best technology news stories that the Web has to offer. Hopefully Akismet will continue to improve its spam protection facilities, as it missed over 300 spams this year which I had to clear out manually. Having said that, it has caught over 75,000 spam comments on this blog since I started using it, so it’s definitely worth deploying.