Gearing up for Privacy

The issue of Privacy is one of the major concerns in the web today. The most common of such concerns centered around the user data having to live in the cloud with the potential for it to be exposed, stolen or misused by external elements (including the service provider). In this post I share my thoughts on how some of the emerging technologies can help address some of the concerns.

Emerging technologies such as Google Gears, Microsoft Sync Framework and Microsoft Volta provide programming paradigms around online/offline synchronization and an execution context. As you may already know Google Gears opens the possibility of the synchronizing content with browser plugin to provide seamless offline experience of online content. For example services like Google Reader and Zoho Writer leverage this today in their offerings. Microsoft Sync Framework opens the possibility of data synchronization across any device and data format. While Microsoft Volta promises to decoratively allow developers to execute content both online and offline.

As stated earlier the concern of the user data having to live in the cloud can be eliminated by architecting applications to load data locally. The web essentially becoming a platform for software delivery while data may be securely stored locally. The user has the choice of storing data in a medium of his choice, for example in USB drive or local hard-drive or just online. Technology support for encryption capabilities to securely store content should be just a matter of time.

Also the service providers wanting to provide data-sensitive contextual user services/experience may leverage paradigms provided by Volta. This will ensure that any user concerns around Privacy are addressed as well.

As the concept of web as a platform continues to grow so will the user's concern of Privacy and data security. Emergence of technologies and their application in creative ways may help address such inevitable concerns.

UPDATE:

Related:
Google Gears Enabled Sites

Google Reader Helper for Firefox

Google Reader is one of the most popular web services and I personally use it everyday. One of the features that I miss using a RSS reader is the ability to view comments. In this post I would share a simple hack to help with this issue and to more importantly serve as a proof-of-concept for possibilities around web application extensions. It is written on a framework called Chickenfoot for Firefox that I recently stumbled upon.

What is Chickenfoot?

Chickenfoot for Firefox is itself a Firefox extension that puts programming environment in the browser's sidebar that allows you to write scripts to manipulate the web pages. Chickenfoot is a superset of JavaScript and puts the user in control of writing quick extensions to web pages. There is a detailed quick start tutorial of Chickenfoot here and the extension can be installed from here.

Google Reader Hack

While reading a post in Google Reader there will be only one expanded view of the post which lives under the <div> with id='current-entry'. This hack leverages this to identify the post that user is currently reading and loads that page in another tab automatically. If you're interested in quickly checking/leaving a comment for the post, then you can switch to the other tab and do so immediately without having to click and wait for it to load.

Once you have installed Chickenfoot, download the script here and open Google Reader on Firefox and start the script. If you're familiar with JavaScript then it should be self-explanatory.

Conclusion

Chickenfoot programming paradigm could be used to enhance web experience for user's convenience. Also the intersection of Chickenfoot with concepts like Programming Collective Intelligence will fuel greater innovation by allowing user to be more in control of the experience.

Resources

Chickenfoot For Firefox

Chickenfoot Blog

Google Reader Helper Script

Technorati tags: firefox, google, technology