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The Free Software Foundation (FSF) last week launched a campaign against Microsoft Corp.’s upcoming Windows 7 operating system, calling it “treacherous computing” that stealthily takes away rights from users.

At the Web site Windows7Sins.org, the Boston-based FSF lists the seven “sins” that proprietary software such as Windows 7 commits against computer users.

They include: Poisoning education, locking in users, abusing standards such as OpenDocument Format (ODF), leveraging monopolistic behavior, threatening user security, enforcing Digital Rights Management (DRM) at the request of entertainment companies concerned about movie and music piracy, and invading your privacy.

“Windows, for some time now, has really been a DRM platform, restricting you from making copies of digital files,” said executive director Peter Brown. And if Microsoft’s Trusted Computing technology were fully implemented the way the company would like, the vendor would have “malicious and really complete control over your computer.”

The result is that Microsoft could do things like Amazon.com, which last month went into customers’ Kindle e-readers and deleted illegally-sold copies of novels such as George Orwell’s 1984 , he said.

“This is treacherous computing,” Brown said.

Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The group, best-known for overseeing the General Public License (GPL) used by most open-source software, including Linux , will hold a rally at noon in Boston Common, where it will unveil a 12-foot-tall art installation depicting Windows 7 “being trashed,” Brown said.

The group is also sending a letter (available at the group’s Web site) to top executives at Fortune 500 companies that argues their companies would benefit ethically, technically and, in the long-term, financially, from switching away from Windows and Microsoft Office to free alternatives such as Linux and OpenOffice.org.

Founded in the mid-1980s by hacker-activist Richard Stallman , the FSF argues that free software and source code is a moral right. It takes pains to distinguish itself from the open-source movement, which advocates sharing of source code but tolerates charging for software.

Both groups, however, view proprietary software vendors such as Microsoft, Adobe Systems Inc., and Apple Inc. as the enemy, Brown said.

Even with DRM, users running Windows PCs still maintain more freedom and privacy than those who foolishly use cloud computing services such as Google Docs and store their data there.

“That is the ultimate giving-away of your freedom,” he said. “That’s not a software freedom issue, it’s a stupidity issue.”

While Brown acknowledges that many Fortune 500 companies base their businesses around proprietary business models similar to Microsoft, he also points out that most of them, at least regarding software, are more consumer than vendor.

“Large corporations spend an awful lot of money on software. They face numerous software audits and more vendor lock-in than you or me,” Brown said. “Do you think they would rather be driving on a freeway, or always be paying on toll roads?”

“I’m not expecting an instant wave of companies switching off XP to Linux,” he said. “But we would like get that debate going. Hopefully, some will re-evaluate and say no to Windows 7.”

More than half of all adult Internet users in the United States either visit or maintain a profile on at least one social networking site, according to a new study conducted by Forrester Research.

Where IT pros do their social networking

In its latest survey on social technologies, Forrester found that 51% of online U.S. adults utilize social networking sites such as Facebook or LinkedIn, a large increase from the 25% of users who reported using social networking sites in 2007. Forrester says that the surge in social networking for online Americans “reflects the appeal of Facebook, as both press coverage and invitations from friends suck more of us into social networks.”

Facebook is the most popular social networking site with 250 million active users and 120 million who log on daily.

Forrester conducted its survey online in May by questioning more than 4,700 Web users between the ages of 18 and 88. The firm used data collected from the survey to classify Internet users into six different type: “creators” who create and publish their own content such as blogs, videos or music; “critics” who post reviews or comment on others’ online forums or blogs; “collectors” who use RSS feeds; “joiners” who visit or maintain profiles on social networking sites; “spectators” who utilize podcasts, videos and blogs but who don’t interact with others; and “inactives” who do none of the above.Forrester says that the growth of users who consume social media such as podcasts, videos and blogs has grown almost as dramatically as social networking Web site users. The survey classified a full 73% of online U.S. adults as spectators, a big increase from the 48% that it classified as such in 2007. Additionally, the number of users who consume no social media has fallen from 44% in 2007 to 18% this year. Looking at age demographics, Forrester expects these trends to intensify in the coming years.

“We now see that participation among those under 35 is nearly universal,” writes Forrester analyst Josh Bernoff at the Forrester Interactive Marketing blog. “Soon, if you’re online, you’ll almost certainly be consuming social technologies…Marketers, if you’re not doing social technology applications now, you’re officially behind.”

The one group of social networking users that has not grown rapidly over the past three years, however, has been the creators who post their own content online. According to the survey, just 24% of American Web users are classified as creators, up from 18% in 2007. Forrester analyst Sean Corcoran, who authored the report on the survey, says that creators have a certain temperament that many Internet users don’t share, thus limiting their potential expansion.

“It really comes down to whether you want to be a publisher or not,” he explains. “It’s going to be a smaller group than most of the rest.”

With the arrival of the Bing search engine and the Microsoft-Yahoo search partnership, it’s been a hectic summer for search — not that you’ll see market leader Google sweating.

With a united front building against its cash cow search business, Google is playing it cool.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt said back in June about Bing: “I don’t think Bing’s arrival has changed what we’re doing. We are about search, we’re about making things enormously successful, by virtue of innovation.” For the most part Google is ignoring Bing, at least publicly. Google has not made any outward strategic moves that imply worry about Bing or the Microsoft-Yahoo partnership, other than to state that it’s bad for innovation and competition.

Indeed, the Microsoft-Yahoo partnership will face the scrutiny of antitrust regulators and some experts question whether the partnership will be approved.

But if the partnership does pass legal muster, the search wizards in Mountain View will have a legitimate threat on deck. Microsoft has the money ($100 million is being spent on Bing marketing) and Yahoo has the users (98 million Yahoo Mail users in the United States, four times as many as Gmail). Both companies have the technology.

Google’s plan, according to an upcoming Time magazine feature story, is to keep on innovating in search and let Microsoft mass market the heck out of Bing. But here are three reasons why quietly innovating may not be enough to keep the tenacious Microhoo at bay.

Microsoft Has Deep Pockets and Dogged Commitment to Search

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has made it clear that Microsoft’s foray into search is not a flirtation, it’s a marriage. He said at Bing’s launch in late May: “Bing is an important first step forward in our long-term effort to deliver innovations in search.”

Microsoft has said that it plans to spend 5 to 10 percent of its operating income on search over the next five years, a number that works out to be roughly $10 billion per year.

From the outset, Microsoft pointed all its guns at Google with Bing, working to make its interface warm and colorful and structure its search results into categories, as opposed to Google’s minimalist interface and long list of links. The subsequent $100 million ad campaign for Bing has focused on how it is more organized and user-friendly than Google.

So far, Microsoft’s investment in Bing has paid off. In June and July, Bing’s market share increased nearly a full percentage point, from 8.0 percent to 8.9 percent.

In our previous post SEO Considerations When Redesigning a Website we touched on how to mitigate the ill effects of changing your website domain or file names by using 301 Permanent Redirects. Here we will give you instruction on how to set up this redirect on both Apache and Microsoft IIS web servers.

The “301 Permanent Redirect” is the most efficient and search engine friendly method for redirecting websites. Situations include:

• To redirect an old domain name to a new domain name – normally in the case of re-branding
• When you have several domain names pointing to one website but are only wishing to promote one domain name
• When access to your website is possible via multiple URLs such as http://domain.com/ or http://www.domain.com. It is preferable to select one and 301 redirect the others to the one you have chosen. This is referred to as Canonicalisation.
• Merging two websites together and want links to outdated URLs to be seamlessly redirected to the corresponding page on the new site.

Here is Google’s webmaster guideline on 301 redirects: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=93633

Apache Web Server
 
The Linux Operating system most commonly uses Apache web server. There are a number of methods of redirect available:

.htaccess Method

If you have sufficient access to the web server then the very best method of redirection is the creation and upload of an .htaccess file as this gives you the most flexibility and control:

Apache .htaccess Single Page Redirect
You will need to create a file named .htaccess (no extension), add the code below to the file using a text only editor and upload it to the root directory of your website:

RewriteEngine on
Redirect 301 /oldpage.html http://www.example.com/newpage.html

Apache .htaccess Canonical Redirect
Again you will need to create a file named .htaccess, add the code below to
the file using a text only editor and upload it to the root directory of your website. The code below will redirect all visitors accessing http://domain.com to http://www.domain.com:

RewriteEngine on
rewritecond %{http_host} ^domain.com [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [r=301,nc]  

Control Panel Method

If you have Administrator access to the cPanel then this is another method of redirection but you may find that you are limited with the types of redirects that you can do, for example the Plesk control panel does not allow for 301 redirects.

cPanel redirect

Log into your cPanel, and look for “Redirects” under Site Management
Put in the current directory into the first box
Put the new directory in the second box
Choose the type (temporary or permanent) temporary=302 and permanent=301
Click “Add” and you’re done

On Page Redirects

In instances where you are only wishing to redirect one or two files and perhaps don’t have the server correctly configured for an .htaccess file or where you do not have sufficient access to the web server such as in a shared hosting environment, you can use on-page redirects.

Read more info on both PHP and ASP redirects.

Microsoft IIS Web Server

IIS supports the requirement for 301 redirection and all necessary changes can be made directly through the Control Panel. 

Administrator Mode

If you can log into the Windows 2000 (or higher) server and access the desktop, then this is the best method to carry out redirects in a Windows environment. The example below is based on the IIS 6.0 platform.

• Choose Start / Setting / Control panel / Administrative Tools / Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager
• Click the cross that is next to the computer to drop down the list of the configured folders within IIS.
• Next you need to drop down the web sites folder; this will display all the website that have been configured in IIS.
• Locate the domain that you wish to setup the 301 redirect on. When you have located this domain right click on it and select properties.
• On the tabbed menu above click home directory. Once you are in the home directory pay close attention, you do not want to mess with any other settings this could result in your website not being displayed.
• Select ‘A redirection to a URL’
• In the redirect website box: Enter the website address that you want the site to direct to. Once you have done this, your website will forward but it still has not been set correctly, you must click a permanent redirection to; by checking this button you are telling the server that you want the redirection to be permanent.

On Page Redirects – See Below

On Page Redirects – More Information

PHP Single Page Redirect
In order to redirect a static page to a new address simply enter the code below inside the index.php file. This code must be located in a script that is executed on the server before the page content starts:

header(“HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently”);
header(“Location: http://www.newdomain.com/page.html”);
exit();
?>

PHP Canonical Redirect
The code below will redirect all visitors accessing http://domain.com to http://www.domain.com. This code must be located in a script that is executed in every page on the server before the page content starts:

if (substr($_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'],0,3) != ‘www’) {
header(‘HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently’);
header(‘Location: http://www.’.$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST']
.$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']);
}
?>

ASP Single Page Redirect
This redirect method is used with the Active Server Pages platform. This code must be located in a script that is executed on the server before the page content starts:

<%
Response.Status=”301 Moved Permanently”
Response.AddHeader=’Location’,'http://www.new-url.com/’
%>

ASP Canonical Redirect
The code below will redirect all visitors accessing http://domain.com to http://www.domain.com. This code must be located in a script that is executed in every page on the server before the page content starts:

<%
If InStr(Request.ServerVariables(“SERVER_NAME”),”www”) = 0 Then
Response.Status=”301 Moved Permanently”
Response.AddHeader “Location”,”http://www.”
& Request.ServerVariables(“HTTP_HOST”)
& Request.ServerVariables(“SCRIPT_NAME”)
End if
%>

These are some of the methods available to ensure you preserve your Internet footprint when updating your site content.