It was only a matter of time before somone was going to ask the final "what if" question for Internet users.

I'm sorry, but you're dead. Now what happens to your gigabytes of online data, Websites, automatic payments, and "virtual money"?

A new category of online services is emerging: A "Last Will and Testament" for Internet assets. It's just the start, and perhaps we'll see businesses producing "daemons" or "after-death worms" delivering payloads that represent your interests in perpetuity.

That's right, as you settle into your final resting place you too can have that peace of mind at Legacy Locker. Legacy Locker is a "safe, secure repository for your digital property that lets you grant access to online assets for friends and loved ones in the event of death or disability".  What's really blowing my mind is that there is a part of me that is whispering that this isn't such a bad idea.

Mark Van Pattern has written a piece on PBS's MediaShift titled, "How the Focus on Print Hurts Our Newspaper Site".  His story is a common story I hear time after time from those in the newspaper business.

It's definitely no tangled bureaucracy, but even within this simple system you find conflicts holding the website back. The problem is that the different people in that system just have different priorities. As general manager, I want to see both a strong online presence and continued healthy print circulation. In contrast, the managing editor doesn't want to "hurt" the print edition by making the online edition too strong, fearing that it could tempt subscribers to abandon print.

Ultimately, this conflict is what's holding our online edition back. Without a full commitment from the managing editor, the website will never reach its full potential.

The digital age remains to be a dillemna for newspapers.  Newspapers either have to ballance their resources between print and online media or put more focus on one over the other.  I think it becomes even more difficult for publications when they find a large readership online yet the higher revenue remains on the print side.  Although it may take some years, I still say that eventually online media will beat old media.  It is just a matter of time.

I was a huge fan of Amy Stephen's Open Source Community.  The site's mission was built on a desire to be a "place for those of us interested in open source solutions and community issues".  OSC shared a similar goal of mine in which I have a strong desire to bring people together from competing Web CMS projects, products, and organizations and compare perspectives (though I have interest in propriety systems as well as open source).  Unfortunately OSC went offline last April with only a promise to be back up sometime in the future.

I will be taking the site down sometime tomorrow evening and will likely be down for awhile. It could be a week - maybe two, but one day, it'll be back! Thanks!

Recent discussion here at CMSReport.com brought the whereabouts of OSC back into question.  I personally don't know when OSC will ever be back online.  However, I think perhaps the better question might be, if you liked OSC.org what other sites should be considered?  That is a very hard question to answer.

By now you've heard of Google's new Chrome browser which is currently in beta.  But did you ask yourself, why would Google want to enter the Internet browser market?  There are a number of reasons to why Google may have developed this browser, but I believe the explanation given by an article posted at CNET's Webware is the most likely reason.

On the Web, a site that responds a few milliseconds faster can make a big difference in people's engagement. It's for this reason that Google believes its new Web browser, Chrome, is a project worth investing in rather than a footnote in the history of the Internet.

Chrome, Google said during its Tuesday launch event, is much faster at showing Web pages than the most widely used browser, Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Google's hope is that performance will open up the bottleneck that chokes the speed and abilities of today's Web-based applications...

...Why speed means money
Google benefits materially from fast performance. First, when it comes to search, Google discovered when its search page loads fractionally faster, users search more often, which of course leads to more opportunities for Google to place its highly lucrative text ads. Second, a faster Web application foundation means that Google's online applications for e-mail, word processing, spreadsheets, and calendars can become faster and fuller-featured.

Mozzila released the final version of Firefox 3.0 today and you can download it at Mozilla.com.

Available today in approximately 50 languages, Firefox 3 is two to three times faster than its predecessor and offers more than 15,000 improvements, including the revolutionary smart location bar, malware protection, and extensive under the hood work to improve the speed and performance of the browser.

While I've been talking about Firefox 3 since late 2006, I have to admit that I haven't been into Firefox 3's development as much as I did with Firefox 2.  While there were some bumps on the way with the alphas and betas, Firefox 3.0 is definately a well polished product (I'm using it as I write in this post).  My first two impressions of Firefox 3 is that it is fast and that I don't quite get the awesome bar .

It looks as if Laura Scott, pingVision, had some free time on her hands. There are reasons free servcies on the Internet are free. Laura wants you to start asking yourself, "why?".

Is the future really free?

It seems we've entered an age where there's a land-grab happening for personal data and attention time. Look at all the web start-ups backed by venture capital. They aren't investing out of philanthropy. There's value there. YouTube is "free" but Google paid over a billion dollars for it. Why?

Here's a hint: It's not about the Tube. [Read more at Laura Scott's Blog]

Personally, I'll need to read her post a few times and soak in on the information from her excerpts. Some things to think about...

Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.14 is now available.  The update is a security and stability release and this explains why Firefox users might have been seeing more crashes than usual.

Fixes for security problems in the JavaScript engine described in MFSA 2008-15 (CVE-2008-1237) introduced a stability problem, where some users experienced crashes during JavaScript garbage collection. This is being fixed primarily to address stability concerns.

I knew something wasn't right with my favorite Web browser.  You can download the latest Firefox (and Thunderbird) at Mozilla.com.

Gadgetopia pointed their readers to a site with a number of screen captures for how the Internet looked like in 1996. Almost a year ago, I posted a screen capture of the first site I did in that era. I'm somewhat pleased that the appearance of my site was no worse than the sites of well known companies. The author brings up the point that you have to consider the technology back then to why sites looked the way they did.

In their defense, the technology was different in
1996. Although Internet Explorer 3.0 could run Java applets and
inline media, Netscape Navigator could not, and in any case nobody
felt comfortable doing anything more complicated than making a few
animated GIFs.

Most people who were quite active on the Internet in the 1990's shouldn't be surprised with the way the Internet looked back then. I can easily recall the controversy of whether to design sites for 640x480 or 800x600 screens. We were simply limited in how we designed our sites by the technology we were using. However, what was our excuse for not providing better content than what we did?

Rich Hoeg, eContent, purchased himself the Nokia N800. The N800 is a linux based handheld Internet tablet with functions similar to those of Apple's iTouch. I'm not sure either device is for me, but I've been in a little bit of an anti-Apple and anti-Windows funk lately...that I felt it worth mentioning here. Rich Hoeg has this to say about the N800:

I've created a short screencast
which demonstrates many of the features found upon the Nokia N800.
However, here are a few of the reasons I chose the Nokia over the iPod
Touch:

• Open Source Platform and Software
• Bluetooth and Wifi Enabled
• Embedded Microphone (Skype anyone?)

The practical result of these three facts is that the capability of
my Nokia N800's is constantly expanding as developers create new
software for a platform which is not locked down (i.e. like Apple). The
fact that is was cheaper than the iTouch did not hurt either (about
$220 U.S.)...

The rest of Hoeg's discussion about the N800 can be found in his article, A Geek's Toy ... For Anyone! The Nokia N800.

Yesterday, I talked about CMS Report's five most read articles that were published in 2007. Today, let's talk about seven of our articles that remained at the bottom of the dog pile. Listed below are Seven Great CMS Report Articles that you few people read.

1. A review of ReviewBasics
2. Introducing Facebook to the Boss
3. United States students continue to fall behind in IT education
4. Saying Goodbye to Old Media
5. Thunderbird 2.0
6. Virtually impressed with Microsoft
7. Getting more work done through less innovation

Most of the articles listed above were read less than 1000 times. Yet, in my opinion, the articles are some of the better articles I wrote in 2007. Hey, some of the stories even have pictures (something I rarely do on my site). Perhaps you could make it one of your 2008 New Years resolutions to read the articles?

I felt fear, awe, and even some admiration when I read at CNET about the latest social engineering attack dreamed up by those ingenious Russian hackers.

Those entering online dating forums risk having more than their hearts stolen.

A program that can mimic online flirtation and then extract personal
information from its unsuspecting conversation partners is making the
rounds in Russian chat forums, according to security software firm PC Tools.

The artificial intelligence of CyberLover's automated chats is good
enough that victims have a tough time distinguishing the "bot" from a
real potential suitor, PC Tools said. The software can work quickly
too, establishing up to 10 relationships in 30 minutes, PC Tools said.
It compiles a report on every person it meets complete with name,
contact information, and photos.

Then again, there is one particular flaw when it comes to pulling identifiable information in an online dating forum. The flaw? It's a dating forum. I fear that this bot may find out that I'm a CEO of a multi-billion dollar company who likes to fly to the coast on weekends so I can sail one of my many yachts. Oh, I'm also still in my 20s, a chick magnet, and a full head of hair remains on top. Hopefully, the bots will not find this truthful information about me. Hmm, the feelings of fear, awe, and admiration I once felt for these hackers aren't so strong afterall.