Webware

The debate over whether you should follow everyone who follows you on Twitter has raged on ever since the popular microblogging service gained traction. Some say following everyone eliminates the real value Twitter provides--connecting with others of similar interests. Others say that following everyone actually provides more value.

But if you consider some of the finer points of following everyone who follows you on Twitter, I think you might come to the realization, just as I have, that following everyone is not just a responsible move on your part, it's good of the entire community.

Nope, there aren't rules, but there is etiquette

There aren't any rules forcing you to follow your followers on Twitter, but that doesn't mean it's not the right thing to do.

If someone has found you compelling in some way, shouldn't you give them the benefit of the doubt and follow them back? It's not like you can't block them in the future if you think their tweets are inappropriate.

To me, Twitter is all about the community. And by signing up, that community has made the conscious decision to interact and share interests, ideas, and personal information. If someone follows you, they're saying, in effect, that they want to hear what you have to say and care about your ideas.

I don't see anything wrong in following them as a gesture of appreciation and confirmation that you're willing to hear what they have to say, as well. After all, if you want to become a part of the community, isn't it only right that you hold up your end of the bargain and give them the same respect they've given you?

(Credit: Josh Lowensohn/CNET Networks)

The 'noise' argument holds little water

Whenever I discuss my reasoning for following everyone who follows me on Twitter, I invariably receive the same response from those who disagree: "following everyone is too much trouble and you can't find all the conversations you actually want to engage in."

Rubbish.

I currently follow over 2,400 people on Twitter and I've never had an issue finding really interesting and relevant information. Sure, some of it has nothing to do with me--discussions about grilled cheese sandwiches, for one--but there's quite a bit that my followers discuss that I'm interested in. I'd say that more than 80 percent of all the updates that flow through my stream are worthy of discussion. And I don't think I'm unique.

Lock company Schlage is launching Schlage Link, a suite of products to allow over-the-Web control of a home's locks, lights, and thermostats. It also integrates with Webcams.

Use your mobile phone as a key.

(Credit: Schlage)

The new lock is the centerpiece of the system (as we would expect from a lock company). It can be opened by key, with a four-digit code, or through the online and mobile sites. The lock can also alert its owners via a mobile message when it's opened or tampered with (when incorrect codes are entered multiple times in a row).

An online control center lets you program the system to turn on lights when someone enters the house or at certain times, to send your phone photos of your doorway when a door opens, and so on. You can enable and disable specific codes as you wish--useful to give service people access only at certain times, for instance.

There have been several similar home-control and DIY security systems to hit the market in recent years, and none, to my knowledge, has gotten much consumer traction. Schlage General Manager Dwight Gibson thinks that the well-known Schlage brand will help this product succeed where others have failed.

I'm somewhat skeptical, not just because history teaches that having expertise in one technology, i.e. locks, doesn't always translate into another, i.e. Web services (Fortunately, Schlage has a partner, Crayon Interface, in this venture). But I also believe the Schlage product is overpriced. The starter kit with one lock set, one light module, and the home network connector box, costs $299, and the network access costs $12.99 a month. The hardware cost is within the realm of reason, but the monthly fee is usurious, in my opinion.

Sill, if you don't mind shelling out for the hardware and then continuing to pay for Web access, this could be a very useful product for anyone who would like better management of their home's security.

In an effort to make Google Reader more approachable, Google has put out a series of help videos that show people how to use it. There are only two clips to start out with (posted below) which cover basics like adding and reading feeds, and using the tool's sharing features. Google says future videos will cover some of the more advanced features.

Google's efforts are notably overshadowed by YouTube users who have taken it upon themselves to create screencasts similar to the ones made for last year's YouTube help video challenge. How-to site ExpertVillage in particular has 16 different clips, while Web guru Ed Dale has put together a three-part, half-hour series about how to use it.

One thing to note is that Google's videos cover some of the changes made since the redesign in early December. See also our Newbie's Guide for Google Reader, which despite being written in late 2007 is still remarkably up to date.

I've put the second how-to video after the break.

Russian-language Firefox users will see a new default search provider soon: Google rival Yandex.

Mozilla currently has Google set to be the default search engine in Russian Firefox, but it concluded that Yandex was the better choice, according to a blog post by Mozilla General Counsel Harvey Anderson on Friday.

"Over the past few months, we have listened to feedback, talked with our localizers, studied the trends of our Firefox Yandex builds, and reviewed the Yandex user experience. All this activity led us to the conclusion that our Russian users really wanted direct access to the Yandex search services in official Firefox RU builds," Anderson said.

"As a result, we're planning on setting Yandex as the default search provider for the Firefox 3.1 Russian locale builds," he said. Version 3.1 is due in coming weeks, after a third beta version is released and tested.

Mozilla gets the vast majority of its revenue through a partnership under which Google shares revenue from search ads. In 2007, that was $66 million of Mozilla's $75 million total revenue.

Details on the change can be seen in the Mozilla bug tracker, which specifically refers to "the new business arrangement between Mozilla and Yandex in Russia."

Showing signs that it's working to meet requests for new developments to its Chrome browser, Google on Friday said it hopes to release versions for Mac OS X and Linux by the first half of the year, and it released a new version Wednesday that paves the way for the most requested feature: extensions.

Google has high hopes for Chrome--in particular, the Internet giant wants better performance, so browsing the Web is faster and Web-based applications are more powerful. Now Google is filling in some missing pieces Chrome needs in order to attain wider usage.

Brian Rakowski, Chrome's product manager, said the company wants to release Chrome for Mac and Linux before the first half of 2009 is up.

"That's what we've been hoping for," he said in an interview Friday. "Those two efforts proceeding in parallel. They're at the same level of progress."

The Mac and Linux versions are up to the level of a basic "test shell" that can show Web pages. But a test shell is pretty raw.

"That team now is able to render most Web pages pretty well. But in terms of the user experience, it's very basic," Rakowski said of the Mac version. "We have not spent any time building out features. We're still iterating on making it stable and getting the architecture right."

In an unscientific CNET News survey from November, a Mac version was the second most common barrier to getting people to switch to Chrome, trailing only faster performance. Eager beavers can monitor Google's Chrome for Mac progress and install the Mac test shell.

Extensions en route
Another major missing piece of Chrome is a framework to handle extensions, optional features that can be downloaded and plugged in to customize the browser. Extensions were one of the early advantages that helped Firefox blossom, it's the top-requested feature for Chrome, and it ranked third in the CNET survey of Chrome barriers.

But a new cutting-edge version of Chrome, 2.0.156.1, gets support for some "Greasemonkey" scripts to customize the browser, a move that lays the groundwork for extensions, Rakowski said.

"We have user script support. That's a baby step," he said. As Chrome develops, Google will "expose more capabilities, then expose containers where can you have your own toolbar-like thing. You'll see it evolve over time."

Google promised an extensions framework when Chrome launched, and more recently, Google outlined its Chrome extensions vision.

Counting Chrome
Google released Chrome 1.0 in December, just three months after the software publicly debuted, and the company is working hard to maintain a fast development pace. Wednesday's version, though not for the general public, is the first to sport the version 2 number.

Also updated with the new version is Google's Chrome release structure.

Before, Google let people subscribe to two Chrome update channels: beta and developer. The first was for relatively well-tested versions; the second for programmers, Web developers, and people with more curiosity and a higher bug threshold.

Now there are three Chrome channels: stable, beta, and developer preview.

Most folks will just use the stable version, which Google expects to update roughly once a quarter, Rakowski said. "The beta channel is now what the developer channel used to be," he added, with newer features but still a reasonable amount of testing. Newest is the developer preview channel, where code will be frequently updated and much more raw, and where Google expects some features to fail and be withdrawn.

Google expects to issue new developer preview versions roughly every couple weeks and new beta releases roughly monthly, Rakowski said.

Major new features
Version 2.0.156.1 includes many new features besides Greasemonkey support. Among them:

• Autocomplete, so Chrome can remember what you've typed into Web forms and enter them again. "A lot of people asked for that. It turns out it's more complicated than it seems on the surface," Rakowski said.

• Full-page zoom, so that using Ctrl+ and Ctrl- to increase or decrease elements on a Web page works better. Before, only text grew or shrank, but now other elements do, too.

• Browser profiles, so you can set up a browser configuration with particular settings such as bookmarks and cookies.

• The ability to import bookmarks from the Google Bookmarks site.

• Autoscroll, so clicking a mouse's middle button, then moving the mouse, lets you slide around larger pages. This is handy for panning around large images without constantly zooming in and out.

• Faster Safe Browsing, a feature to issue warnings about sites that may conduct phishing attacks or other malicious behavior.

• Under the hood, the update gets a new version of the open-source WebKit engine for converting a Web page's descriptive HTML and CSS code into the page displayed on a computer. Chrome's current stable release uses the same WebKit version as is used in Apple's Safari 3.1, but the new Chrome developer preview uses WebKit 528.8, which is faster and supports features such as CSS canvas drawing for 2D shapes such as lines on maps or custom-generated charts.

• An update of Chrome's V8 JavaScript engine from version 0.3.9.3 to 0.4.6.0. JavaScript is used for more elaborate Web pages, and the new version is faster, Rakowski said.

Missing from the new version is support for automatic discovery of Web site subscriptions through RSS and Atom "feed" technology. Google has mapped out feed support; the company plans to add it in the version 2 time frame, Rakowski said.

Video aggregator Veoh has released into beta a new browser plug-in that inserts video results into search pages from Google, Yahoo, YouTube, MSN Live, and Ask.com. Results show up in a strip on top of your results. Unfortunately, there's no way to close the strip that I could see, but the results can be useful. If you believe, as Veoh CEO Dmitry Shapiro does, that "video should be everywhere," this extension will work well for you. Get it on labs.veoh.com.

Shapiro also believes that the real problem with video search, and search in general, is "discovery:" People can easily find sites and pages if they know what they are looking for, but finding new content directions is still hard. So the Veoh plug-in also uses the company's collaborative filtering technology to display keywords related to your search above the video results. Unlike many other "related search" products that give you good options to narrow down your search, the Veoh suggestions can go off in other directions, but can be quite helpful.

In one test, Veoh gave Google a run for its money.

For example, I did a Google search on "Thomas," and the Veoh video hits were related to Thomas the Tank Engine (which is what I was looking for). Related search terms at the top were mostly other children's shows I had never heard of, and were good discoveries for me. Score one for Veoh.

Clicking on video from the search strip pops it up over the search results page, and plays it.

A Turkish court has sentenced Maksym Yastremski, the alleged "Maksik" hacker, to 30 years in prison for attacks he allegedly perpetrated on Turkish banks, according to reports.

Authorities believe Yastremski is also the mastermind behind the T.J. Maxx credit card theft debacle in 2007 and various other attacks around the United States. The 30-year prison sentence isn't punishment for any alleged attacks in the United States.

In other news, RocketLawyer, a company that provides free online legal information and forms, raised $2.09 million from information compiler LexisNexis, according to an SEC filing. RocketLawyer is now just $1 million away from its stated goal of raising $3.09 million, which it plans to use toward improving its infrastructure and expanding the service's reach.

iMergent, a company that provides e-commerce software for small businesses, announced on Friday that it will reduce its work force by 25 percent due to the impact the recession is having on the small to midsize enterprise market.

After the layoffs are complete, iMergent's will have a total staff count of 250, but its CEO, Steve Mihaylo, did say that it expects its operation and profit potential to remain constant through the first quarter of 2009.

Facebook's iPhone application has been updated to version 2.1, the company reported Friday. The social network says the update improves the app's stability and has corrected inaccurate time stamps for time zones around the world.

More importantly, sync time is much faster now, and Inbox loading has been enhanced to improve the overall experience. The update is available now, but it requires iPhone firmware version 2.2.

Google's Chrome development team has offered a status update of its work on the company's young open-source browser.

The most significant changes, according to a Chromium Development Documentation posting on Thursday, include the following:

• New version of WebKit.
• Form autocomplete.
• Import bookmarks from Google Bookmarks.
• New network code.
• New window frames on Windows XP and Vista.

Although Chrome was just unveiled in September, Google uncharacteristically took it out of beta in December. But while the label may be gone, the company wants to keep that eternal flame burning in the "never-ending Beta test and a continuous feedback loop" via items such as automatic update channels:

With Google Chrome, we want to release fewer features more often instead of making you wait 12 months for the next Major Dot-Oh Release Jam-Packed With Features. We can get your feedback faster, fix things faster, and release new improvements as soon as they're ready. We want Google Chrome to stay nimble so it can keep pace with changes in the sites and web apps you use.

Early adopters can subscribe to one of three update channels:

• Stable channel, which delivers features and fixes only after they've been tested. This is the default channel when someone first installs Chrome.
• Beta channel, which delivers features from the Dev channel that are "stable and complete" but "may lack the polish one expects from a finished product."
• Developer preview channel, which is "where ideas get tested (and sometimes fail). The Dev channel can be very unstable at times, and new features usually require some manual configuration to be enabled."

Palm's plan for application development on the new Palm Pre will help determine its fate.

(Credit: Palm)

Defying expectations, Day 1 of CES was not dull. Palm stole the show with a new and important product. And last night, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer made an interesting announcement about Windows.

Here are the Webware-related CES highlights from the first official day of the conference:

• The Palm announcement at CES--a new OS and new hardware--was everything people had been hoping for, and more. Palm WebOS looks solid, and the UI looks fun and easy. The device, the Pre, is pretty slick, with both the pebble-in-the-stream smoothness of the iPhone and a slide-out keyboard. One thing that's less clear: how will developers get their apps into the hands of users, and how will Palm (and Sprint, the Pre's launch carrier) ensure reliability of the apps? Also, can Palm still attract developers? Shortly after Palm's press conference, I spoke with CNET News' Ina Fried about the announcement.

• Ballmer also spoke with Fried and said the tech economy is in the middle of a "reset."

• LG revealed even more about its impressive suite of stream-enabled audio-visual gear. Panasonic announced Internet content for its plasma TVs.

• Wednesday night, I got a look at a demo (video link) of Yahoo Connected TV, a new platform that will enable viewers of new televisions to pop little content widgets up over their programs.

• My favorite Internet toy, the Chumby, got grown-up supervision through a partnership with Samsung.

• Is Skype the recession-proof phone company? The VoIP provider is doing well right now.

• In the "we'll just pretend that Palm didn't just steal our thunder" department, INQ claims it's the world's first real social mobile company

• Scariest news of the show: Ford trucks are getting LogMeIn remote PC access. Can't wait to meet one of these barreling down the interstate.

Previously: Webware wrapup for CES Day 0.