BONJOUR L'ESTONIE

Phil Wolff's 37 sketchy 2008 Skype predictions

Posted by Phil Wolff

In 2008...

More than a dozen Rich Presence services will come to market.

Alex Iskold : "Implicit applications, which monitor our habits and automatically infer our likes, will rise." But Skype will miss out on this, despite having enormous volumes of tremendously useful data.

eBay will hire a leader for Skype from outside the family. Finally.

Skype reorganizes, shakes things up. Twice.

Small layoffs and founder departures during the year and before Xmas 2008. Again.

Skype will publish APIs for white page directory services to their 550 million user accounts. No traction until their third major release in Q3.

Skype will publish APIs for yellow page directory listings, promoting Skypenomics.

Clinicians will use Skype for telemedicine.

An executive with power will threaten to move Skype's engineering from Tallinn.

Blu-Ray and situation in Estonia

I will start with the fact that HDM market is very very very extremely small in Estonia, but I've visited some stores lately and I have seen :

Some stores have started selling Blu-Ray movies. Selection was quite small (Die Hards, Eragon, X-Men, The Simpsons Movie, Speed, etc.). Didn't see any HD DVD movies, 'tho some of my mates have seen them.
Some stores have started selling music Blu-Rays. Selection was quite small (Elton John, NIN, Incubus John Legend, ABBA, etc.). Saw only one HD DVD - NIN.

Some stores have started selling standalone Blu-Ray players (BDPS300, etc.). I have not seen any standalone HDDVD player here.

Some stores have started selling Blu-Ray devices/burners and blank discs for PC's. I have not seen anything like that for HD DVD and only player I have seen is addon for X360.

And: Sony has put estonian subtitles for some of the UK releases lately. Also some other European releases have estonian subtitles. I have not seen any HD DVD with those.

So if you ask me, Estonian retailers prefer Blu-Ray over HD DVD.

Estonia to merge state, citizen portal

The Estonian state portal is planning to merge the former State Information portal and Citizen portal to create a single integrated service, reports Epractice, with the access to information on the new portal depending on whether the user is a citizen, entrepreneur or state official.

“Technically, the portal has been constantly renewed, but this change will certainly not go unnoticed by users,” State Information Systems Development Centre Development Adviser Riho Oks stated adding that new state portal will help coordinate the information provided and services offered by various state institutions.

The technical capacities of the portal will help state institutions to provide eServices without being obliged to spend large sums on the development of technological solutions. Through the portal, citizens will be provided with the opportunity to submit electronically forms and applications to state institutions and receive e-mail or SMS notifications.

The new portal has been designed by Markus Kasemaa and funded by the EU’s Structural Funds. It was developed and administrated by the State Information Systems Development Centre. The majority of the state portal’s services are currently targeted at citizens. Users are able to check their personal details and access other registry services on more than 20 national databases.

The state portal’s environment provides an opportunity to create e-mail addresses with the suffix @eesti.ee; complete and convey official forms to state institutions and local municipalities and sign documents. Besides, it provides access to information systems like the Forest Registry.

The State portal grew out of an eCitizen project launched by Estonia in 2002.

Estonia's CTO speaks out on cyberattacks

Tom Espiner

* Speaking to ZDNet.co.uk at the RSA Conference Europe 2007 in London, Mikhel Tammet, director of the Estonian communication and information technology department, said he believes forces within the Russian government may have initiated and sponsored attacks against his country's critical national infrastructure earlier this year.

In May this year the Estonian critical national infrastructure (CNI) came under sustained cyberattack from perpetrators whose identity remains unknown. However, Tammet said he suspected the forces behind the attacks to be linked to the Russian government.

"It was a political campaign induced by the Russians; a political campaign designed to destroy our security and destroy our society," said Tammet on Tuesday. "The attacks had hierarchy and co-ordination."

Tammet added that, while it was not possible to put a face to the attackers nor to prove any direct connection to the Russian authorities, all previous attacks with a political aim emanating from Russia had their roots in government action.

"It's been that way in Russia for centuries," said Tammet. "The attack was 50 percent emotions, 50 percent something else, but we can't define what that something is. There was an organisation behind it, but we can't [definitively] say if it's the government or criminals, or both."

PM pioneers latest E-stonian mobile technology

By Mike Collier

TALLINN – Estonian Prime Minister Andrus Ansip has started using the Mobiil-ID service, which enables the user of e-services to safely verify their identity with a mobile phone, log on to an internet bank and supply a digital signature. The Mobiil-ID service is an analogue of the ID-card in a mobile phone.

In a government information release, the prime minister said he uses the electronic functions of the ID-card every day and recommends everybody else do the same.

“It is very simple and convenient,” said Ansip after using the service for the first time.

At the moment, almost 1 million people in Estonia have an ID-card, but there are only around 90,000 users of its electronic functions. A sudden increase in the number of card users appeared after e-voting in March and as a result of the activities of the Computer Protection 2009 initiative.

A pan-Baltic cooperation project, the aim of which is to establish a common digital signature standard, has also been launched on the basis of the Mobiil-ID.

“In everyday life this would mean, for example, that the Lithuanian Prime Minister signs a document, e-mails it to the Estonian Prime Minister, for example, who can check whether the digital signature on the document is valid, signs the document digitally after checking, and e-mails it back to his colleague,” said Andres Aarma, coordinator of Computer Protection 2009.

ISP : Wireless : If it works, who cares how ?

TALLINN - There are no less than six different systems a computer user can choose to access the Internet in the Baltics.

But to the average user, the jumble of acronyms and system names is meaningless. “They don’t care how the Internet gets to them, as long as it gets to them,” says Veljo Haamer, editor of the wifi.ee Web site. If they did care, they might be overwhelmed by the choice.

Estonia offers all the wireless systems available in the rest of the world, plus a few extra. It’s miles ahead of its Baltic neighbors, which have only just started to catch on to the wireless craze.

Hackers evaluate Estonia attacks

Black Hat attendees say the barrage of distributed attacks offers tips on how to handle cybersecurity.

Jaikumar Vijayan

A series of online attacks that seriously disrupted Web sites belonging to several banking and government organizations in Estonia earlier this year may have been perpetrated by a loosely organized, politically motivated online mob, a security researcher suggested Thursday at the Black Hat 2007 conference.

The attacks hold several lessons about how large-scale Internet attacks can unfold and the responses that may be needed to deal with them, said Gadi Evron, security evangelist for Israel-based Beyond Security. "The use of the Internet to create an online mob has proven itself and will likely receive more attention in the future," following the Estonia attacks, said Evron, who wrote a postmortem report on the incident for the Estonian CERT.

A New gomputer game in Estonia

Beau Monde Network, an Estonian organization creating computer games will present its latest work - DarkSide Tetris : The Second Block - on March 23rd, 2007. The presentation will take place at the ETC 07/Experiment 2007 double tournament on March 23rd. DarkSide Tetris is a skill game which follows the standards of classical tetris games, but adds a multiplayer opportunity. The player can compete with computer controlled opponents or with friends online. The game is freely downloadable from the webpage http://darkside.bmonde.net/. "The game is easy and gripping" says Kert Kivaste who has proven himself to be one of the best tetris players in Estonia. "At the same time it does not turn boring thanks to the two gametypes and multiplayer option."

Altiris lance son service externalisé Software Packaging Factory à Tallinn

Pour faciliter la préparation des applications pour Windows Vista. Optimisation de la distribution des logiciels, des migrations Windows et de la productivité des équipes informatiques.

Altiris, Inc. (Nasdaq : ATRS), pionnier des logiciels de gestion orientée services, annonce le lancement du service Altiris Software Packaging Factory, s’inscrivant dans son engagement à fournir des solutions complètes, de haute qualité, afin de contribuer à réduire le coût de gestion des environnements logiciels complexes.

Des centaines voire des milliers de logiciels applicatifs sont aujourd’hui exploités dans les environnements informatiques des entreprises. Il est donc naturel que la gestion de ces logiciels puisse mobiliser une part importante du temps et des ressources du service informatique d’une entreprise. De fait, les modifications, mises à jour, installations et les conversions de logiciels sont les principales raisons de l’augmentation du nombre des incidents informatiques, selon 73% des personnes interrogées dans le cadre de l’enquête « Best Practices and Salary Survey » réalisée par Help Desk Institute en 2005*.

Firefox jagab kasutajate paroole laiali

* Senini turvaliseks peetud Mozilla Firefox veebibrauseri paroolihalduris avastati ohtlik turvaauk.

Paroolilekke võimaluse avastas juhuslikult Chapini Infokeskuse omanik Robert Chapin, kui ta oma MySpace’i suhtluskeskkonna kontosse sisse logis, kirjutab Inquirer.

Probleem seisneb selles, et Firefoxi paroolihaldur täidab automaatselt antud alamdomeeni piires olevate lehtede paroolinõuded oma mälus olevate andmetega, ilma et sellest kasutajat teavitaks.

Kogemata kombel avastas Chapin, et keegi «kalamees» ehk kuritegelikke paroolivarguste veebilehti loov tegelane, kelle leht imiteerib mingit teist lehte, oli sokutanud lehe login.myspace.com nii osavalt kasutajatele ette, et enamik ei märganud pettust.

Samuti ei hoiatanud pettuse eest Firefoxi uues versioonis olev anti-phishing moodul ning brauser täitis viksilt lahtrid kasutaja logimisnime ja parooliga, mis olid ehtsa MySpace konto jaoks. Chapini raportiga saab põhjalikumalt tutvuda bugzilla veebilehel.

Toimetas Veiko Tamm