If the relationship between Apple and Mac CPU provider Intel was any closer, the two companies might have to start labeling their record collections and discussing whether to keep the wagon wheel table. In an intriguing technology demonstration last week, it was pointed out that the in-development Intel ultrafast optical connection called Light Peak was being shown on a rather elaborate hackintosh, running good old Mac OS X. This raised an eyebrow or two, but the background story seems to be just as interesting.

Engadget reports today, based on conversations with an ‘extremely reliable source,’ that Apple is behind the Light Peak technology, with C-suite-level discussions between the two companies dating back to 2007 about the specific implementation and capabilities of Light Peak. The post goes on to suggest that Apple will be doing rapid adoption of the optical tech a year from now, with Mac introductions slated for autumn of 2010 with the new port, and a low-powered version to follow along in the 2011 timeframe with future iPhones.

With the initial specification set to transfer data at a blistering 10Gpbs full duplex over cables as long as 100 meters (and with speeds up to 100Gbps lined up for future revisions), a single Light Peak connection could replace DVI, USB, gigabit Ethernet, FireWire, eSATA and just about anything else that would connect your computer to its environs.

One cable for everything, reducing clutter and increasing elegance? You have to admit, it does sound rather Jobsian.

Thanks to Josh Topolsky and everyone who sent this in.

Developer Jonathan “Wolf” Rentzsch kicked off his annual C4 indie Mac developer conference in Chicago on Friday night with a provocative claim cribbed from Steve Jobs: He showed a slide of the AppleScript logo in a coffin and declared it dead.

As with Jobs when he declared Mac OS 9 dead back in 2002, Rentzsch was making a point to a group of developers. In this case, Rentzsch was using JSTalk, a JavaScript-based method of scripting applications implemented by Flying Meat Software’s Gus Mueller in his image-editing app Acorn, as a call to arms for developers to embrace a new system for scripting applications and to stop focusing on AppleScript.

It’s an interesting point of view, and one that was tailored to Rentzsch’s audience, since adding AppleScript support to apps is hard and professional computer programmers are comfortable with more formal languages like, say, JavaScript.

I will admit that I’m deeply skeptical of the entire suggestion, not because I think AppleScript is a great language—though I use AppleScript every day, I am painfully aware of how difficult it can be to use—but because I’m concerned that programmers might not truly grasp that their customers aren’t as comfortable writing complex syntax full of brackets and semicolons as they are.

AppleScript, for all its faults, is a language that most power users can understand if they open a script and stare at it for a while. (Its great failing is that this is basically the only way to learn AppleScript.) I can stare at perl or JavaScript for a while and still end up not quite understanding what I’m looking at. Find out more…

CHICAGO—September 24, 2009—37signals is now a $100 billion dollar company, according to a group of investors who have agreed to purchase 0.000000001% of the company in exchange for $1.

Founder Jason Fried informed his employees about the new deal at a recent company-wide meeting. The financing round was led by Yardstick Capital and Institutionalized Venture Partners.

In order to increase the value of the company, 37signals has decided to stop generating revenues. “When it comes to valuation, making money is a real obstacle. Our profitability has been a real drag on our valuation,” said Mr. Fried. “Once you have profits, it’s impossible to just make stuff up. That’s why we’re switching to a ‘freeconomics’ model. We’ll give away everything for free and let the market speculate about how much money we could make if we wanted to make money. That way, the sky’s the limit!”

Find out more…

We a proud to announce the activation of our new REST API. As a priority we converted our account validation and electronic debit mandate capturing features. We are in the process of completing the documentation. Please contact us for assistance if you require more technical information.

Account Validation
The bank account validation test will verify your customers South African ID number, Cell number, branch code and bank account number. This will greatly reduce any initial account errors. The pre check will give you the opportunity to contact your customer to update their details before submitting the debit order.

Electronic Debit Mandate Capturing
A prerequisite for the processing of any debit order is to have a confirmed debit mandate from the customer. We can facilitate this via our electronic mandate capturing feature. You submit the clients banking details and mobile number. We sms the customer notifying them of your request. The customer dials a USSD number and either accepts or declines the request. The request is logged.

Johannesburg – Computer security company Symantec said infections of a virus known as Clampi have been detected in South Africa. The virus targets internet banking users and captures usernames and passwords for banking websites.

According to Symantec, the virus was originally detected early in 2008, but infections have increased substantially since July 2009. British news site Times Online reported on Monday that the virus was spreading rapidly throughout the USA and Britain.

Said Times Online: “Once on the computer, the virus sits unnoticed until the user logs on to bank, credit card or other financial websites. It then captures log-in and password information and sends it to a server run by the attackers. They can then tell the compromised computer to send money to accounts that they control, or they can buy goods with the stolen credit card details.”

Find out more…

Recently, the popular social media website Digg released a useful but controversial product: the DiggBar, an iframe toolbar that lets users browse other websites without actually leaving Digg.com. In the last week, we’ve already discussed how the DiggBar could impact the Twitter link-sharing experience and Digg’s response to the recent criticism.

This has done little to quell the controversy surrounding the DiggBar, however. Engadget has now blocked the DiggBar. In addition, one popular article, on how to block the DiggBar, received over 1900 diggs but at the same time was buried, showing how divided the Digg community is over the feature. Some of the controversy has been over the impact of the DiggBar on SEO (search engine optimization) and traffic to people’s website.

This is all a bit of a complicated mess. So we’ve put together this article discussing the pro and con arguments for the DiggBar, especially as it relates to the user and to the website owner. After considering the pros and cons, we want to know whether you will block the DiggBar or keep it active.

Find out more…

Just hours after Twitter began removing the first cross-site scripting vulnerability that hit its site this weekend, a new modified strain has been found, and according to F-Secure, it’s not the last one we’re likely to see over the next few days.

“This is not over. There’s going to be quite a few modified Twitter worms for a day or two. Be careful in Twitter, don’t view profiles, don’t follow links. It’s beautiful outside, maybe go for a walk instead?” Mikko said on the F-Secure blog earlier today.

According to Breaking News, Mikeyy Mooney, the 17 year-old owner of StalkDaily.com, has reportedly admitted responsibility for yesterday’s attack.

“I am the person who coded the XSS which then acted as a worm when it auto updated a users profile and status, which then infected other users who viewed their profile. I did this out of boredom, to be honest. I usually like to find vulnerabilities within websites and try not to cause too much damage, but start a worm or something to give the developers an insight on the problem and while doing so, promoting myself or my website.”

Find out more…

A sea change may be coming to cyberspace with Web addresses ending in anything from .a to .z. That has businesses increasingly worried they will have to spend millions to guard their brand names.
The familiar .com, .net, .org and 18 other suffixes — officially “generic top-level domains” — could be joined by a seemingly endless stream of new ones next year under a landmark change approved last summer by the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers, the entity that oversees the Web’s address system.

Tourists might find information about the Liberty Bell, for example, at a site ending in .philly. A rapper might apply for a Web address ending in .hiphop.

“Whatever is open to the imagination can be applied for,” says Paul Levins, ICANN’s vice president of corporate affairs. “It could translate into one of the largest marketing and branding opportunities in history.”

Many businesses see more problems than profits — opportunities for scammers to exploit brand names and mislead consumers, or even attack brands.

Find out more…

Besides checking the length of a South African ID number for validation, our developer Clive Crous thought there must be an official checksum. After piecing together multiple google searches he has build a ruby class which validates our customer ID numbers. Our online debit engine is enhanced a little further.

Below is the ruby code, enjoy

Download the identity_number.rb file

1 require ‘time‘ # Used for verifying date of birth portion of ID Number
2
3 class SouthAfricanIDNumber
4
5 # The format of a normal South-African ID number is as follows
6 # {YYMMDD}{G}{SSS}{A}{Z}
7 # YYMMDD: Date of birth
8 # G  : Gender. 0-4 Female; 5-9 Male.
9 # SSS  : Sequence No. for DOB/G combination.
10 # C  : Citizenship. 0 SA; 1 Other.
11 # A  : Usually 8, or 9 (can be other values)
12 # Z  : Control digit.
13
14 def initialize( number )
15 @number = number.to_s
16 end
17
18 def gender
19 self[6] > 4 ? :male : :female
20 end
21
22 def south_african?
23 self[10] == 0
24 end
25
26 def generate_check_digit
27 odd_digits = @number.scan(/../).map{|n|n[0].chr}
28 even_digits = @number.scan(/../).map{|n|n[1].chr}
29
30 sum_of_odd_digits = odd_digits.inject(0){ |total,digit| total + digit.to_i }
31
32 combined_and_multiplied_even_digits = even_digits.join(”).to_i * 2
33
34 sum_of_even_digits_multiplied =
35 combined_and_multiplied_even_digits.to_s.scan(/./).inject(0){|total,digit|total + digit.to_i }
36
37 ( 10 – ( (sum_of_odd_digits + sum_of_even_digits_multiplied) % 10 ) ) % 10
38 end
39
40 def valid_format?
41 @number =~ /^[0-9]{13}$/ ? true : false
42 end
43
44 def valid_birth_date?
45 begin
46 return false unless Time.parse(@number[0..5]).strftime(‘%y%m%d‘) == @number[0..5]
47 rescue
48 return false
49 end
50 true
51 end
52
53 def valid_check_digit?
54 self[12] == generate_check_digit
55 end
56
57 def valid?
58 valid_format? and valid_birth_date? and valid_check_digit?
59 end
60
61 def to_s
62 @number
63 end
64
65 def []( character_enum )
66 begin
67 @number[character_enum].chr.to_i
68 rescue
69 nil
70 end
71 end
72
73 end
74

The latest rumor to circulate the Internet is that Google is in the final stages of negotiation to buy Twitter, the micro-blogging service.

Twitter sign-ups have exploded in the past year, partly owing to endorsements by celebrities and features within the popular press. Twitter would certainly be a logical choice for Google in its bid to own the Internet.

Twitter has recently been valued at $250 million although the company is yet to earn a penny. It turned down Facebook’s offer of $500 million only a few months back (although part of that included Facebook stock which has no distinct value as yet). Google’s offer will need to be good.

But what is Twitter’s real value to Google? The likely possibilities include:

News: breaking stories are often posted to Twitter first, e.g. the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, the plane crash into the New York Hudson river, and the shocking revelation that Stephen Fry was stuck in a lift.
Hot topics: Google could gather valuable marketing knowledge about the latest buzz on the net.
User base: Twitter has almost 10 million users that Google can target.
Advertising revenue: chat-sensitive adverts could appear.
Search: if Google can not monetize Twitter’s search, then no one can.
Market domination: owning Twitter makes Google bigger and stronger than before.
Google would also be able to offer Twitter the technology and expertise to scale up their operation effectively and reliably.

However, Google does not always get everything right: YouTube, for example, is yet to return a profit. There is also the likelihood that Twitter is a fad and will only remain popular until the next “big thing” appears.

What do you think? Would Google and Twitter make a good partnership? How would competitors such as Microsoft react? Can Twitter be profitable and have a long-term future?

by Craig Buckler