Muchas personas me han preguntado por qué hay que cambiar las contraseñas utilizadas en sus diferentes cuentas y les he dibujado panoramas catastróficos de lo que puede pasar si no las cuidan con la suficiente precaución, pero en lo personal creo que la siguiente frase abarca todas las opciones.

“Las contraseñas son como la ropa interior. No puedes dejar que nadie la vea, debes cambiarla regularmente y no compartirla con extraños”

— Chris Pirillo, fundador de Lockergnome (vía Alt1040)

Catherine Forsythe at Lockergnome writes an article talking about identity theft applied to children (full article at http://www.lockergnome.com/forsythe/2009/10/26/stealing-your-childs-identity/, Brian J. O’connor article at http://www.detnews.com/article/20091026/BIZ01/910260309/1010/5-ways-to-protect-a-child-s-ID).

I think that children are, as always and unfortunately the perfect targets for evil people.

On the other side, I’m quite sure that, though early access to IT is something desirable, on the other side, this could and should happen always with adult supervision, or, at least with limited activity possibility.

Of course you can manage to tell to young people not to do something, but is not a “bulletproof” solution.

The risk is exposing children to those risks that are not evaluable.  For me, IMHO, my little daughter will have access only through incremental steps of freedom.

This comment as a post also at http://www.lockergnome.com/forsythe/2009/10/26/stealing-your-childs-identity/#comment-40666

XX0wnsXY (Becca) is a girl gamer geek. She’s hardcore, boys, and regularly beats out her male counterparts in various games she plays. She’s been a part of our community for quite awhile now, and has contributed insights and commentary in the past when we’ve talked about various games.

Becca emailed me today, with the below review/guide for her new favorite game Aion. She took the time to write a very comprehensive piece for all of you, so I wanted to post it in full. Credit for the below goes entirely to Becca!

This is my first MMORPG (Massively Multi-player Online Role – Playing Game). (I used to be so against RPGs, but this one has swayed me). So, my review is submitted from a new user’s point of view. I would really like it if anyone with past MMORPG experience can reply and offer an experienced point of view on the game. I think the two contrasts would be interesting.

So the game is called Aion (”Eye-On”). It is, as I said, a MMO-RPG. It’s categorized as PvPvE (Player vs. Player vs. Environment). It’s been out in Korea for a year or more, and was released in the US a month ago.

The story line, in simple terms (although they go into great detail in multiple cut-scenes throughout the game, with awesome graphics):

A world of peace began to crumble after some of the race called “Draken” rebelled against the God “Aion”, and in turn, a huge battle broke out and the world was shattered in to three pieces. These events became known as “The Cataclysm” (Kat-a-Cliz-em) This created three races: “Elyos” (good) who live in “Elysea”, and Asmodians (Evil) who live in Asmodae, and Balaur -(The Draken renamed after their rebellion; not a playable race, NPC’s only, and are hostile against both Elyos and Asmodians, (which plays into the PvPvE.) who reside in the Abyss. The third piece, known as the “Abyss” is the space between Elysea and Asmodae, where both factions gain access at level 25 and begin the true PvP (Player vs. Player) aspect of the game.

You are able to choose which faction you would like to be at the start of your game. You begin your game by choosing one of the 4 classes, Male or Female; Warrior, Mage, Scout, or Priest. I, personally, chose to start as a Priest. You can customize your characters appearance greatly (from hair, skin, eye, and lip color, to extremety thickness, voice and much more).

You begin your journey in the “starter area”, which is different for each faction, of course. You level from 1-9 with simple quests that help you get acquainted with the various menu options and NPC’s. You also become acquainted with your current skills and abilities. Along with that, you become acquainted with the game’s travel systems, which are:

A Flight Transporter – Allows you to pay a fee to fly (on a winged animal of some sort, very cool looking) to your destination. The graphics are awesome during flight.
A Teleporter – You simply pay a fee and jump into a portal – and your game loads into your destination.
You can bring up your map by pressing “M”. It will give you a full overview of the area you are in, along with surrounding areas. You can press “N” and a smaller, more transparent version will appear, which is convenient while walking/flying and still needing to see where you are going. When you are grouped with other people in the same area, they will appear on the map as blue diamonds.

You will also become acquainted with Soul Healing and resurrection. Should you die along the way (and you will, believe me), you will be given the option to return to the place where you last bound your soul (You bind your soul to obelisk’s in major cities), or you can choose to wait (up to 30 minutes) and ask for someone to come resurrect you. Chanters and Clerics have the ability to resurrect. There are also resurrection stones that can be bought and acquired during quests that can be used on another player.

If you are not resurrected, you return to your bind point, and beside you will be a Soul Healer. For a fee, you will be healed of soul sickness (this makes your movement slow and you are unable to fly/glide) and you will recover your experience that you lost. The amount of experience lost depends on your level. The price of soul healing goes up the more times you die, and becomes very expensive over time, so you must be careful. You don’t have to worry about soul healing when it comes to PvP. If you are killed by the opposite faction, soul healing only costs 1 gold and you do not lose any experience. You do, however, lose Abyss Points (discussed later).

At level 9, you receive an “ascension” quest, which will allow you to become a “Daeva” (advanced humans who have tapped into the power of the Aether to gain new abilities and strengths that put them far beyond the power levels of any mortal human) and choose your subclass. The subclasses are:

For Warrior – Gladiator or Templar.
For Scout – Assassin or Ranger
For Priest – Chanter or Cleric
For Mage – Sorcerer or Spirit Master
I started as a Priest, so I chose to evolve into a Chanter. I won’t go into too much detail about the classes/subclasses, as that would take entirely too much time, but each one has its positives and negatives. I like being a Chanter, because we can adapt to pretty much any situation (I.E – we can heal, have buffs, have decent DPS – Damage per Second, and are needed in many group situations).

Shortly after you have completed your ascension quest, you receive a quest to earn your wings. Yes, you can fly in this game, which is something I hear is much different from any MMO out there. The flight ability in this game is so much fun and adds a new and interesting aspect to PvP. You will find that pre-abyss (lvls 1-24), you will use your wings mostly to glide down long hills to make your trips a little faster. There are a few designated areas where you are free to fly, otherwise you can only glide.

If you are interested in PvP before level 25, there are opportunities for this. There are temporary openings from one world to another (Elysea to Asmodae and vice versa) that allow you to go to the opposite factions world and hunt the enemy. These are known as Rifts. However, you have little chance to stay alive, unless you are grouped with other people. I found this annoying at times, because I would be trying to complete a quest in my world, and out of nowhere, comes a group of enemies and of course, I get killed. When the shoe is on the other foot however, it’s fun. Yeah Yeah, I can dish it but can’t take it. Enemies of the opposing faction show up on your radar as red diamonds. You will have to worry more about this in the Abyss.

The good thing is that rifts close after a certain number of people enter them, so they do not last forever. There are even spy quests that you can acquire that require you to go to the enemy’s world and complete a mission. They are very hard, but offer great rewards. I have yet to complete them… like I said, very hard.

Throughout your leveling experience, you will occasionally need to learn new skills/abilities. These are learned from your class trainer, and are in designated areas in the game. As you level, the price of learning your abilities goes up and can become quite costly. (At level 28 I paid over 70,000 gold for my new abilities).

Once you have bought your skill manual, it will appear as a book in your inventory (Hit I to access your inventory). Double click the book, and that skill will be learned. You can then press the letter K on your keyboard, and it will bring up a list of all of your skills. You can find your new skills and drag and drop them into your skill bar at the bottom of your screen:

Don’t worry, gold is plentiful in this game, and easily acquired. If you manage your gold right, you will have no trouble. If you do find yourself needing more, there are options to receive gold through the in-game mailing system. All you have to do is ask a friend for gold and they can attach it to mail and send it to your in-game mailbox (found at most major cities, in game). Gold is not hard to acquire through Grinding (Killing NPC enemies), either. There are also other options like selling items you have acquired via the Trade Broker (also found in major cities), or general goods merchants.

Like with many other games of this type, you can learn professions. Along with the professions, you can also Gather, which eventually evolves into Extraction. You begin gathering different plants/herbs. As you level, you receive the ability to extract the essence of an item, rather than the item itself, called Extract Vitality. After that comes Aether extraction, which is extracting from the sky (you must fly and risk falling to your death if you are not careful). I suggest leveling these things as you go. Many people say that it is not important, so I did not bother with it at first. When I reached level 20 I realized that many of the NPC’s gave quests to gather/extract an item and bring it to them. I skipped many quests and they add up! I spent many hours going back to level my gathering/extraction. Major setback, but I’m glad I did it. Definitely do this as you go.

Leveling solo is very do-able until level 20+. You will begin receiving quests that require a group. They will have the [group] prefix, letting you know to not even attempt to do the quest without more people to help. These are the most fun for me. You get to interact with other players and become an important part of the other players success. Very few of the quests you acquire are [group] quests, however they offer such great rewards, that they can’t afford to be skipped. Aion offers a LFG (Looking for Group) chat channel, which makes it easy to find people to group with.

Grouping is used for [Group] quests and instances. You can join the “LFG” Chat channel and ask for more people to help with your quest. Usually typed in this format: “Level 31 Chanter LFG Legendary Amethysts. PST (please send tell, which is just a whisper.). You will hopefully get some responses and from there, can invite people to your group (right click their name and select “invite to group”).. rinse and repeat.

One of the most menacing problems for MMO’s are the gold spammers (Those who want to sell you gold – it’s illegal, but people do buy so it keeps the gold spammers running rampant). They spam the chat with their links and make it hard for you to read any conversation going on between your legion or group. One easy fix to this is to create a new chat tab, and customize the options to allow only chat from your legion or group. To do this, open chat and right click on one of the tabs. From there you can choose “Add Tab”. Name it, and customize tab options. Voila!

At level 20. you can acquire “Stigmas”, which are basically extra abilities that you can receive that can separate one of the same class from the other. There are many stigmas that one class can choose, and that’s what makes me (one chanter) different from another. You must complete a quest to enable you to equip stigmas, but after that as you level, you will acquire more stigma slots. To view your current stigma slots, press “P” and select the Stigma tab.

Stigmas can be acquired from quests, NPC drops, or bought from the trade broker. Some are more rare than others. Each stigma requires stigma shards (can be acquired in the abyss from NPC enemies) to equip, and can only be equipped by a stigma master.

The next milestone is level 25. This is when you receive your “Abyss Entry Quest”, which is quite long, but very easy. Once you complete this quest, you gain entry access into the Abyss – the main PvP area. During the quest, you have to pick which area of your world you will access the Abyss from. Once you pick, you can enter the abyss by flying to the portal in the sky only in that area.

The Abyss offers many things, and has beautiful graphics. It offers many high experience/pay/item reward quests, and of course, it offers PvP. The Abyss can be very overwhelming at first. When you enter the Abyss, you are in a safe zone. There is an Aetheric Field around this area that prevents any enemy from penetrating. Once you venture out, you can collect quests, grind abyss enemies for high experience and abyss points (Points collected in the Abyss that when enough are acquired, you can get special items), and PvP.

Venturing out into the abyss requires flight. You can teleport to some areas, but you will have to fly a lot. There are flight rings that you will find between certain areas that you can fly through to gain flight time. You can refer to the bar at the bottom right of your screen to monitor your flight time drain. If you strafe through the rings, you can refill your bar quickly. There are also potions that increase flight time, along with equipment perks.

The ultimate goal of the Abyss is to capture fortresses from the opposing faction. I have no experience in this, but a month into the game, people are already doing it. You can see which fortresses are owned by which faction by pressing “M” to bring up the map and refer to the color key.

PvP is the most exciting feature for some MMO players. I like a little bit of both PvP and PvE. As I said before, when venturing out into the Abyss, you will run into an enemy from the opposing faction. They will appear on your radar as red diamonds, and when you are close enough to them to actually see them, their name will appear in red. They will have a rank (ie Rank 7 soldier), which is in reference to their abyss points. The lower their rank the more abyss experience they have, so beware of going against anyone too much lower than you. You are also unable to see the opposing faction’s level. Some like it this way, some don’t. Personally, I think it adds an interesting twist and requires a bit more strategy when approaching an enemy. To view your Abyss points/ranking press “P” and hit the “Abyss” tab:

As I continue to level, I learn more and more about the game. I do not have anything to compare the game to (first RPG), but I not only experience nothing but good things, I also hear good things, for the most part. The graphics are probably the best part of this game. They are absolutely beautiful. The storyline is interesting to follow, and it isn’t a total grind-fest to level. The pace is good, and the Abyss is fun.

Aion, like any other MMO (from what I’m told) has it’s problems. There are gold spammers and bots. The game has been out for a month in the US, and so far the development team has been working hard to keep them at bay. I’m not sure they will ever be totally rid of them, but I look forward to seeing what they come up with.

There are many guides for Aion out there, all of this content was written by me. All screen shots were taken in – game by me. Some sources were used for the storyline.

Very, VERY well-written and detailed guide, Becca! Thanks so much for sending this in. I have a feeling several of our gamer Geeks are now salivating to get their hands on Aion!
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Forsythe (http://www.lockergnome.com/forsythe/author/forsythe/) at Lockergnome writes an article reporting increasing warning over criminal attempts for flu crisis (full story at http://www.lockergnome.com/forsythe/2009/10/24/flu-crisis-is-a-criminal-opportunity).

I think that hasn’t been a time in human histry that was not an opportunity for criminals.

But at the same time I think that, though a real problem exists with flu spreading, sometime big Pharma companies wave on this fear to sell more. And this is a criminal offense too in my opinion.

This post as a comment also at  http://www.lockergnome.com/forsythe/2009/10/24/flu-crisis-is-a-criminal-opportunity/#comment-40470

Ron Schenone at Lockergnome writes an article telling us that Mozilla is blocking some .NET extension and Microosft is trying to reinstall them (ful article at http://www.lockergnome.com/blade/2009/10/20/mozilla-blocks-net-framework-from-microsoft-because-of-security-vulnerability/).

Seems to me that we (intended as users at different degrres of skills) are the playground of some kids trying to disturb each other.

While I understand commercial means of this move, doesn’t seem to me it’s a fair way to play.

And at least is not serious.

This comment as a post also at http://www.lockergnome.com/blade/2009/10/20/mozilla-blocks-net-framework-from-microsoft-because-of-security-vulnerability/#comment-193509

Matt Hartley at Lockergnome writes an article arguing that Carol Bartz, Yahoo CEO well known for having sold her stocks in last days, has no clear plan (or no plan at hall) for yahoo future (full article at http://www.lockergnome.com/web/2009/09/14/yahoo-has-a-plan-b/).

Is very sad, not only because Yahoo! was one of the first “icons” of the net in good old times, but mainly because is a sign that some people did not learn from problem passed in last year of suffering.

Companies are living (in the sense that are alive) places where people work, produce, earn (eventually a lot of money if they deserve this). Companies, unfortunately for some people are not cash cows to use or play with at their will risking to destroy them.

This post as a comment also at http://www.lockergnome.com/web/2009/09/14/yahoo-has-a-plan-b/#comment-155493

Matt Hartley at Lockergnome comes again over the fact anticipated by Ron Schenone a few days ago of Yahoo CEO selling stocks, while company (and investors) loose money (full article at http://www.lockergnome.com/web/2009/09/07/yahoo-investors-lose-while-bartz-wins/).

As I said before, is quite sad to see those that should be at the helm of the boat running as mices when boat sinks.

I thought that those time where ended with the financial crisis of which we hopefully are seeing some light at the end of the tunnel.

I’m wondering why this is not considered as market disruption.

This post as a comment at http://www.lockergnome.com/web/2009/09/07/yahoo-investors-lose-while-bartz-wins/#comment-154938

Ron Schenone at Lockergnome writes an article asking if Yahoo will fail also with Microsoft support (full article at http://www.lockergnome.com/blade/2009/09/07/will-yahoo-fail-even-with-microsoft-bailout/).

I think talking about Yahoo failure is a little bit too much, but is very similar to reality. Microsoft M&A is more likely to be a differed buy out, with Yahoo services, knowledge and expertise gradually migrated to Redmond’s platforms.

The sad thing is about management selling stocks and options: once upon a time captain was the last to leave the sinking ship…

This comment also at http://www.lockergnome.com/blade/2009/09/07/will-yahoo-fail-even-with-microsoft-bailout/#comment-190454

Ron Schenone at Lockergnome writes and article asking if, with an increasing number of people using Google services, Google is till able to handle the load  (full article at http://www.lockergnome.com/blade/2009/09/02/as-more-people-use-google-services-is-google-able-to-handle-the-load/). Will Knight at MIT Technology review adds some considerations on how to disconnect form the cloud (full article at http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/editors/24086)

I add a couple of points for disussion:

• on one side I think that Google like any other business is facing the problem of optimizing costs and this reflects also on having a structure dimensioned everytime ”on the hedge” with little space for errors
• on the other side I’m little bit worried on the fact that Google engineers talk about having “we had slightly underestimated the load which some recent changes”: Google engineers are human and can make mistakes, but what if the error in estimates was not slight but big?
• We are relying too heavily on network infrastructure: in other times if Google went down, we would have said ”I’ll try again later” , while everybody is now acting like the outage was the outage of a nuclear plant

This posta as a comment also at http://www.lockergnome.com/blade/2009/09/02/as-more-people-use-google-services-is-google-able-to-handle-the-load/#comment-190118 and at http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/editors/24086/#comment-213214

Matt Hartley at Lockergnome writes an aricle on possible scenarios of Microsoft and Yahoo integration (full article at http://www.lockergnome.com/web/2009/08/24/doj-says-no-to-yahoosoft/).

Seems to me that an integration between the two companies will be more a financial and opportuinistic make up than a real “industrial” integration.

Microsoft will benefits achieving a search engine (which Yahoo has been and is, despite its CEO opinion) with some market and financial problems.

Yahoo will benefit by getting fresh new cash.

That will be drained by Microsoft.

And that’s why in my opinion, Dow Jones is scared.

This comment also as a post at http://www.lockergnome.com/web/2009/08/24/doj-says-no-to-yahoosoft/#comment-154037

JFK (http://www.lockergnome.com/jfk/author/jfk/) at Lockergnome asks which is the memory installed and used in our PCS (full article at http://www.lockergnome.com/jfk/2009/08/20/how-much-pc-memory-do-you-have).

I got 4 gigs of RAM in one PC (a Dell that in Windows sees only 3.2 of them, despite PAE activating) and 2 on another one. I use all of them up to the last bit..

And though (or because) one is a company laptop they are slower than ever …

I really smile while I remember those good old times when 48kb (Spectrum) of RAM or 512kb (PC) maybe with no or 20Mb helped you feeling working with a Supercomputer.

But on a most serious side, I think we have been going towards a way of building applications and OSs are not optimized at all, having as a prerequisite the fact that memory is widely available (both as RAM and disk space).

Just one question: wasn’t a little bit more challenging building an application in 200kb?

This post as a comment at http://www.lockergnome.com/jfk/2009/08/20/how-much-pc-memory-do-you-have/#comment-594

Ron Schenone at Lockergnome and John Timmer at Ars Technica write two articles on  the fact that Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Joan Madden Monday ordered Google to reveal the real identity under which lies a blogger that offended a model called Liskula Cohen   (full articles at http://www.lockergnome.com/blade/2009/08/18/judge-to-google-give-up-bloggers-name/ and at http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/08/court-offers-guidelines-on-when-to-unmask-anonymous-posters.ars).

I think that is a fair decision: writing under a nickname is an opportunity that should not exceed in using this as a barrier for offending someone.

Each one of us has a different reason for writing under a nickname, from being too famous to being scared of something or someone, from being shy to being worried of something.

But none of this reason entitles to use this anonimity as a mean for expressing something that we would not say with our real names.

This comment as a post also at http://www.lockergnome.com/blade/2009/08/18/judge-to-google-give-up-bloggers-name/#comment-188727 and at http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums?a=tpc&s=50009562&f=174096756&m=912004401041&r=389009401041#389009401041

Matt Hartley at Lockergnome asks the question if Google should be scared by Bing (full article at http://www.lockergnome.com/web/2009/08/13/bing-should-google-be-worried/).

In my opinion the answer tho this dilemma is no. Though I agree Google isn’t responding too quicky (or not responding at all), remains by far the most used search engine, with a market share quite similar to a monopoly.

The world is changing and is changing fast, but no more than a month ago we were discussing on Google monopoly and now we are discussing if Bing could represent a threat.

Bing is an opportunity (on consumer side) an investment (on Microsoft side) and a phenomena to watch in order to understand where market is going (on Google side).

But I won’t be surprised if Google won’t move for a while and then make a sudden disruptive move (remember Android…).

This post as a comment also at http://www.lockergnome.com/web/2009/08/13/bing-should-google-be-worried/#comment-153136

Matt Hartely at Lockegnome reports an article in Techcrunch where are depicted some hipothesys on New York Times future (full articles at http://www.lockergnome.com/web/2009/08/04/newspapers-try-once-again/ and at http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/30/what-if-the-new-new-york-times/).

Though I agree on the fact that old school business model related to newspapers is over, I’m quite convinced that future of newspapers is somewhere else. As I said many times I think of something based on personalization vs clusterization and so on.

I don’t think that printed newspapers will die, though as now is happening they will be integrated with innovative media different from the web.

One last word on the concept of starting from scratch: is suggestive, but not feasible. We are talking of a big business and is not possible to “kill” to rebuild. Obviously NYT will go through a massive restructuring, but IMHO is not possibile to close and start again.

This post as a comment at http://www.lockergnome.com/web/2009/08/04/newspapers-try-once-again/#comment-152609

Ron Schenone at Lockergnome writes an article on the exit of Google CEO from Apple Board (full story at http://www.lockergnome.com/blade/2009/08/04/apple-and-google-is-the-love-gone).

Yes Ron It’s the end of a love, because of money and power.

It’s the same old story: Apple and Google went in love because both were innovative and against (or at least not for) Microsoft monopoly.

But when both of them realized that there’s no second place in Mobile Economy (Mobile, Browsers, OS,…), then a love ended.

This post also at http://www.lockergnome.com/blade/2009/08/04/apple-and-google-is-the-love-gone/#comment-187614

Ron Schenone at Lockergnome writes an article on an opinion expressed at Appleinsider on Microsoft ability to manipulate netbook prices (full article at http://www.lockergnome.com/blade/2009/08/02/can-microsoft-manipulate-higher-netbook-prices/).

In my opinion this kind of manipulation is possible and, though not auspicable, admittable.

It’s the problem not seen on customer side (on which is really awfull, because it leads to less options available and higher prices), but on company side: if I reason on this point of view, it is understandable and admittable that if Microsoft has the power to change the market situation at its own advantage and can do this without infringing the law, can act like this.

I say it again, it cinical but it’s company point of view, that as often is the opposite of the customer one.

This post also as a comment at http://www.lockergnome.com/blade/2009/08/02/can-microsoft-manipulate-higher-netbook-prices/#comment-187563

Ron Schenone at Lockergnome writes an article reporting FCC move on Apple in order to clarify their beahviour with Google and so does Chris Foresman at Ars technica (full article at http://www.lockergnome.com/blade/2009/08/01/fcc-to-apple-and-att-why-arent-you-playing-nice-with-google/and at http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2009/08/fcc-probes-google-voice-rejection-att-denies-involvement.ars).

I think that despite the fact that asking this specific question (simplified: why are you behaving like this with Google) is quite tautologic because everybody knows the answer, Apple has built their reinassance on many things (innovation, usability, trendiness) but most of all on a proprietary-strongly fortified-OS and commercial partnership.

Unfortunately Google is not among those partnership and is trying to enter the same market of the mother of all cash cows: iPhone.

FCC has the due (and so does) to permit a freedom of choice (and access to Google voice) also to Apple customers.

This post also as a comment at http://www.lockergnome.com/blade/2009/08/01/fcc-to-apple-and-att-why-arent-you-playing-nice-with-google/#comment-187533 and at http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums?a=tpc&s=50009562&f=174096756&m=709009080041&r=919001280041#919001280041

ozthech at Lockergnome tells us a story on his problems with Open office (full article at http://www.lockergnome.com/oztech/2009/07/30/how-openoffice-probably-cost-me-a-job).

I remain on my idea: I really apreciate free software, but the standard is another one and if free software is not 200% compatible with the standard, it makes the alternative a non alternative because of lack of trust.

This post also as a comment at http://www.lockergnome.com/oztech/2009/07/30/how-openoffice-probably-cost-me-a-job/#comment-8057

Ron Schenone at Lockergnome writes an article commenting the VIP transition from Facebook to Twitter, and among them the Bill Gates closing of his facebook account (full article at http://www.lockergnome.com/blade/2009/07/27/the-stars-fade-on-facebook-heading-for-twitter/).

I think that social networks are, in some way a matter of trendiness.

I can remember only one (Linkedin) that survived for more than a decade, while I see people moving from one social network to another one in different times.

This behavoiur doesn’t seem strange to me, because a social network is worth for the number of people that use it, and so if a big number of users goes to another site, other will automaticcaly follow.

What I expect for the future is this circle (open-use-find another-close-and so on) going faster and faster, leaving at a certain point only those few social networks that, for they’re nature (e.g. because are niche players, because of fidelization, because of elite admission,…) are able to maintain a well dimensioned number of users.

This post also as a comment at http://www.lockergnome.com/blade/2009/07/27/the-stars-fade-on-facebook-heading-for-twitter/#comment-187274

Ron Schenone at Lockergnome reports the opinion from John Dvorak on failed Microsoft ventures (full article at http://www.lockergnome.com/blade/2009/07/27/microsoft-why-they-are-not-going-to-fail/).

No I think Microsoft won’t fail, because is “paying” and suffering the hysteric market and moment we are living in.

Of course Microsoft is not by default a forever living company: it will depend on the succes or failure of they’re strategies, but seems to me that the big decrease Ron nd John talk about is more driven by the environment than by a structural company problem.

This article also at http://www.lockergnome.com/blade/2009/07/27/microsoft-why-they-are-not-going-to-fail/#comment-187251

Rosa Golijan at Gizmodo (http://gizmodo.com/people/RosaGolijan/posts/) and John Timmer at Ars Technica inform us on Microsoft possible decision to give European users the option on whic browser to use, instead of complete absence of a browser (full article at http://gizmodo.com/5322453/microsoft-gives-europeans-choice-of-browser-instead-of-none-by-default and at http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/07/microsoft-caves-to-eu-pressure-will-offer-browser-ballot.ars). Also Ron Schenone writes on this at Lockergnome (full article at http://www.lockergnome.com/blade/2009/07/29/eu-to-microsoft-users-need-browser-choice-but-there-is-more).

Seems to me a good thing, especially for the average user. What seems difficult to me isthat , the above mentioned average user, changes is mind and would like to make the switch in different times (means that if chooses let’s say Chrome, doesn’t mean won’t choose Opera in another moment and the switch could be difficult)

This comment also as a post at http://gizmodo.com/5322453/microsoft-gives-europeans-choice-of-browser-instead-of-none-by-default and at http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums?a=tpc&s=50009562&f=174096756&m=592000760041&r=421002860041#421002860041 and at http://www.lockergnome.com/blade/2009/07/29/eu-to-microsoft-users-need-browser-choice-but-there-is-more/#comment-187357

Matt Hartley at Lockergnome writes an article on possible Microsoft option to change the way they do things (full article at http://www.lockergnome.com/it/2009/07/23/does-microsoft-need-to-rethink-their-niche/).

In my opinion Microsoft approached the market by a monopolistic point of view.

Due to their position they were able to influence and in some way drive both technology and hardware changes.

Now market is changing and new players (see Google and Linux), are entering with a wider market share.

This, as an effect, brings a necessary shift in market and organization approach.

In my opinion Its’s not an option for Microsoft to take this challenge.

This post also at http://www.lockergnome.com/it/2009/07/23/does-microsoft-need-to-rethink-their-niche/#comment-178175

Diana Huggins (http://www.lockergnome.com/it/author/diana-huggins/) at Lockergnome gives some suggestions on how to build effective subject lines (full article at http://www.lockergnome.com/it/2009/07/23/constructing-email-subject-lines/).

I add my own one:

Avoid putting the complete mail in subject line leaving the body empty. Also if it is a small question.

This post also as a comment at http://www.lockergnome.com/it/2009/07/23/constructing-email-subject-lines/#comment-178173