Facebook has been receiving a lot of flak lately due to the recently deployed redesign of a user’s News Feed, the default or home page of a user upon logging in. A number of people have created groups petitioning the return of the “old” Facebook, claiming that if they wanted a Twitter-like interface, they would have used Twitter instead. However, just to clarify some things, the new Facebook News Feed is something more akin to Friendfeed, which is a micro-blogging platform that also took a page from Twitter, but does more. Friendfeed aggregates a user’s social network updates, including Twitter, Facebook, Plurk, Google Reader, and blog feeds, among others. With Friendfeed, users can comment on posts and feed updates, and they also have an option to “like” them. The major difference between Twitter and Friendfeed is the 140-character limit. Now, this “like” feature is what Facebook copied from Friendfeed, and Friendfeed copied the “like” feature from Twitter’s “favor” feature. So you see, Facebook did not copy Twitter. Facebook copied Friendfeed, which copied Twitter somewhat. Or at least, that’s how I perceive it. And it’s not just me.

Personally, I like what Facebook did to the News Feed. For me, it was easier to use than the previous design, although I wish it had the auto-update feature of Plurk, which notifies you when there are new updates to your timeline, or in Facebook’s case, the News Feed. Facebook’s notification system is limited to the kind where someone comments on your status, tagged you in a photo, or shot you with mayonnaise in the face. Plurk notifies you if any of your friends have updated their status or responded to one of your or your friends’ updates. It may not be easy, but it is doable.

Since the deployment of the new design, there were a few minor tweaks in a Facebook user’s News Feed, like the “People you may know” and “Requests” sections are now above the “Highlights.” There will be more changes and tweaks in the News Feed, as Facebook has expressed, one way or another, that they will be taking into consideration the feedback and input of their users. This may not be a good idea, according to TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington. And I agree with him.

Facebook is a free service. To demand something from a free service is not really my cup of tea. Whatever they decide to implement, if I like it or I hate it, it doesn’t really matter. The bottomline is that it’s really my choice if I want to continue using the service or not. And it is yours, too.

To each their own, I guess.

After reading an interview of one of the winners, Charlie Miller, of this year’s PWN2OWN hackfest, I realized how vulnerable Apple’s OS X is. Sure it is *NIX-based, and inherently secure, but it doesn’t mean it IS secure out-of-the-box. Firewalls and Antivirus programs are simply not enough to protect one’s OS. If a bug is found and exploited in one of the applications, the whole OS is screwed. An operating system is only as secure as the applications running on it.

In the hackfest, contestants try to hack different browsers by finding bugs and exploiting them as proof of the bug’s existence. As the Internet becomes more ubiquitous and applications are moving to the cloud, browsers are becoming a more critical application, and it is only logical for hackers to try and hack into the system by exploiting a browser’s vulnerabilities.

In the interview, Charlie Miller stated that Safari on a Mac is the easiest to exploit, and Firefox on a Windows PC is the second hardest. The hardest application to exploit was Google’s Chrome, partly because of Windows and partly because of the Sandbox framework(?) Google used in developing Chrome. Safari on a Mac was easiest because of Mac OS X. I’m not faulting Apple for releasing an unsecured OS. OS X is secure, don’t get me wrong. However, part of the OS is the browser, in which Apple “forgot” to secure Safari, which makes OS X vulnerable to attacks as well. And with all the money in the world, Apple could have secured the OS a whole lot better. Even if almost all viruses are targeted at Windows-based machines, there’s still the off-chance that one of them will be targeting OS X, or other operating systems for that matter. And as I’ve mentioned before, more and more applications are moving to the cloud. Viruses or other malware don’t have to run on the system itself. There are websites that embed scripts that try to download and execute malicious code without the visitor even knowing about it.

Having a secure operating system, however, is not enough in preventing attacks. No matter how secure the operating system, and the developers can only do so much as to warn everyone of every single virus there is out there, if the user is stupid enough to download and execute a virus, there’s just no way of preventing a virus from infecting a system. It’s time for people to start wisening up and prevent user-initiated errors. This, in my humble opinion, is the most dreaded type of calls, and is abhorred by tech support.

Charlie Miller also mentioned in the interview that Google’s Chrome and the way they developed the browser was the next evolutionary step in developing future browsers. Although Chrome was based in an open-source software dubbed Chromium, Google made it sure that Chrome is future-ready. I recently tried a pre-alpha version of Chromium, not Chrome, on my Linux install, and although it looked almost the same as Chrome, I doubt it is as secure. Preliminary tests regarding speed (in executing javascripts) were amazing. There were a number of critical things that don’t work, like setting options, navigating opened tabs (tabs were invisible), and saving bookmarks (it was non-existent). And there was no support for Flash, yet. It was like Lynx with a graphical user interface. But it did pique my curiosity, and I am eagerly awaiting Google’s release of Chrome’s Linux version.

As for me buying a Mac in the future, it will only happen when I have extra, and I mean EXTRA, cash laying around. And that would be in about N years. Maybe by that time, a Mac netbook has been released.

A brief background of Adobe AIR
AIR is Adobe’s way of merging the web and the desktop by letting application developers distribute their, well, applications without thinking about the platform. Applications developed using AIR runs on all platforms, and I mean ALL platforms. For Adobe to release AIR and making it available on all platforms makes the company admirable, almost noble, in my eyes. What makes them look like evil pigs is that they don’t want to release their other applications, specifically Creative Suite, in a Linux-flavored version, though I don’t know why or how it can be so hard to do since OS X is Unix-based already and they have a version for the said operating system. For me, this is another revenue stream Adobe is deliberately neglecting. I mean, we all know operating systems such as Windows and OS X costs a pretty penny, and Adobe software is not different. In not-so-good times, people are looking for cheap, or free, alternatives. A free operating system is a godsend for bargain-hunters, and free software more so.

Remember the Task
Remember The Task is an AIR app that lets you add, edit, and mark tasks in your Remember The Milk task list. As you may well know, Remember The Milk is a web app that lets you manage your tasks. It is far better than GMail’s Tasks feature, though I hope that someday, GMail’s Tasks will allow importing and exporting tasks between the two web services, and vice versa. However, if you have added the RTM gadget in GMail, the app essentially lifted that same gadget and simply put it on your desktop. Simple, familiar, and super-useful for those wanting to deviate from the browser every once in a while.

MePing
Ping.fm’s web service, which lets you update social network services with your status updates and microblog posts, is something I consider very indispensable. It makes it very easy for me to update all my social networks in one go. MePing lets you use Ping.fm’s web service without a browser, and so far, it is the better looking AIR app that I have seen amongst other Ping.fm-related AIR apps. The only thing lacking in this AIR app is a notification that tells you that your message has been posted. Another feature that might be a good addition would be the capability to post videos, in addition to uploading pictures and adding geolocation information. Those familiar with Ping.fm’s service will surely be comfortable using this AIR app.

twhirl
twhirl is one of the apps I immediately launch after logging in on my desktop. It has support for various microblogging services like Twitter, Friendfeed, and the Twitter-clone Identi.ca, among others. It basically helps me keep up with the various updates on services I currently subscribe to. Other services that I wish twhirl adds in the near future would be Facebook updates, which resides in a walled garden, and Plurk updates, which doesn’t have an official API. If twhirl adds those two services, which is when hell freezes over, there will be no need for me to log in to those services using a browser, except for account settings-related reasons.

Primarily, I use Ubuntu as my weapon of choice. I seldom log in to my Windows install. These AIR apps help ease the transition from using Windows to Linux for those wanting to save a few bucks with their operating system, at least, in my opinion. Hopefully, Adobe’s AIR let people break away from proprietary operating systems and consider better and cheaper alternatives. “It doesn’t run on Linux” shouldn’t be used as an excuse. Not anymore.