Olathe-based NIC Inc. develops a most-wanted iPhone application

Olathe-based NIC Inc. develops a most-wanted iPhone application

When we think of NIC Inc. … well, truthfully, often there isn’t much of a reason to think of NIC.Olathe-based NIC is one of those companies that, when it’s doing everything right, you rarely hear about.
NIC provides the engine that powers hundreds of government Web sites across the United States.

That means you can renew your auto tags online in Kansas, register a business in Utah or license a snowmobile in Maine using a Web platform built by NIC.

So if we do think about NIC, we certainly don’t think about the Apple iPhone. But that’s changing.
NIC developed a software application for the iPhone that became an almost instant hit in the Apple App Store.

Most Wanted is a free iPhone application that feeds the phone information about, and photos of, criminals from the FBI’s most-wanted list, most-sought terrorists and missing children.

More then 30,000 iPhone and iPod Touch owners downloaded the application in its first 100 hours in the store. The application was No. 6 on the list of Apple’s most popular iPhone utilities.

The lists of missing children, most-wanted criminals and terrorists get updated from FBI databases whenever an iPhone or iPod Touch user launches the application.

Harry Herington, NIC’s chief executive, said Most Wanted was the company’s second iPhone application. The first was USA Live, an application with a patriotic theme that features an animated image of a waving American flag, kids reading the Pledge of Allegiance, a place to donate to worthy causes and stories about patriotic Americans.

Herington said that USA Live got such a good response from NIC employees that the company’s staff decided to develop Most Wanted.

So why is a publicly traded e-government company developing free iPhone applications?

“It’s a cool thing that we can have that employees can take pride in,” Herington said.

“As an ex-law enforcement officer, I felt strongly that developing and launching the Most Wanted application was the right thing for NIC to do as it directly supports two very important groups — families of missing children and law enforcement.”
 
Herington once worked as police officer in Wichita and homicide detective in Texas.

Most Wanted’s popularity has surprised the company.

“I thought it was cool, and I thought my ex-cop buddies would think it was cool, but to reach 30,000 downloads so quickly?” Herington said.

Designing for mobile handsets isn’t new for NIC. Many of the company’s government clients use NIC platforms that allow consumers to do business on their smart phones.

“We launched mobile applications back in 2002,” Herington said.

In Kansas, for instance, consumers can do anything on an iPhone that they can do on a PC — including paying their taxes, Herington said.

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Olathe-based NIC Inc. develops a most-wanted iPhone application

Microsoft releases Internet Explorer 8 RC1

Microsoft releases Internet Explorer 8 RC1

Microsoft has unleashed its first release candidate (RC1) of Internet Explorer 8 – the software that it's hoping will dominate the internet browser food chain for years to come.

Although Internet Explorer remains the most used browser on the planet by some margin, Mozilla's Firefox has slowly eaten into IE's dominance and has now taken more than 20 per cent of the market.

With the use of Apple's Safari and Opera also up, and Google Chrome lurking menacingly, Microsoft is well aware that IE8 needs to deliver, so it's hoping that the browser's improved functionality and a number of key new features can help its cause.

All about the experience

"IE8 [is] focused on how people really use the web," said Microsoft's IE General Manager Dean Hachamovitch on the IE8 blog.

"Consumers want a browser that makes the tasks they do every day faster and easier. The activities people spend their time on define real-world performance: navigating to websites, working with tabs, searching, keeping track of changing information (like traffic or an auction), and using the information from one site with another (as in getting a map).

"Everyone wants a trustworthy browser that keeps them in control and protects their safety. Developers want great developer tools, great interoperability and a powerful platform that enables them innovate.

"For some people, accessibility is crucial; for some organizations, policy, administration, and deployment are essential."

The changes from the beta version to this release candidate have been described as 'mostly polish at this point'.

Comparison

TechRadar compared the major players back in September and we were most impressed with the additional privacy features integrated into the then-beta version of IE8. These include the now de rigeur private browsing, anti-phishing and pop-up blockers, but its Adblock Pro also scored well.

Although concerns were raised ahead of RC1's release over IE8 being resource hungry and less quick to load pages than its rivals, Internet Explorer's place as Microsoft's Windows – the dominant OS by far – default browser means that it has an instant edge.

Internet Explorer 8 is available from http://www.microsoft.com/ie8, but it should be noted that it won't work with the Windows 7 beta, even though it will be the default browser for Vista's successor when it arrives.

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Fundamental security flaw in Internet Explorer

Fundamental security flaw in Internet Explorer

Users of Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7 “ far and away the world's most common internet browser – are being advised to use another browser due to a serious security flaw.

The IE7 flaw is reportedly making it very easy for criminals to obtain personal data and passwords.

"Microsoft is continuing its investigation of public reports of attacks against a new vulnerability in Internet Explorer," the company announced in a security advisory alert about the flaw.

Emergency patch prepped

Microsoft is hurriedly putting together an emergency software patch to resolve the issue, but in the meantime if you are concerned about your privacy, we can only suggest that you seek an alternative browser.

Microsoft also added that the flaw was in IE7, though previous versions of Internet Explorer were also potentially vulnerable. More on this as we get it.

Go FireFox

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Firefox VS IE

Firefox VS IE

I am safer browsing in Mozilla’s Firefox browser than I am in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. I firmly believe this to be the case. Yes, that’s right, Firefox is safer than IE.

• Lower profile target. One of the main reasons I’m more willing to trust my data security to my OS X (Mac) system is that they have a smaller market share than Windows does. This sounds peculiar to many people who aren’t familiar with security, but in the dangerous world that is the Internet, keeping a low profile can be an important aspect of staying secure.

The reason for this, quite simply, is that our attackers, by and large, write their attack code to market share, for all the same reasons that legitimate software developers most often deliver their Windows products before their Mac or Linux ones.

Now, I’m fully aware that Firefox continues to make strides in this area and is constantly gaining market share, so this argument may well eventually fail. I’m confident, though, that by then I’ll have other, lower profile choices available.

For now, finding a balance between unpopular and popular enough to be widely supported on the web sites I frequent is very much a security consideration. Today, that nod goes to Firefox for my needs. It’s very rare that I can’t use Firefox on sites that I care about.

Qualitative score: IE gets an F while Firefox gets a B+.

• Configurability. This is a tough one to judge. Like many Microsoft features, IE has a quite rich set of security features that can be configured to suit the user’s needs. Firefox, by comparison, is more simplistic in its security configuration choices. There’s a strong argument to be made for each approach.

IE manages its security via “zones”—Internet, Local intranet, Trusted sites, and Restricted sites. Within each zone, the user has a rich set of configuration options where authorizations can be fine-tuned. For example, Internet sites can be set to default to disallowing browser scripting, ActiveX, Flash, and other dangerous content. That’s the good news.

The bad news in all of these rich features is that a) by default, far too much untrustworthy content is allowed (e.g., JavaScript) and that b) the sheer vastness of the features will scare most users out of doing any substantive fine-tuning to protect themselves.

Firefox, on the other hand, is much simpler – but quite possibly too much so. JavaScript, for example, can be enabled or disabled (along with setting a half dozen or so JavaScript capabilities) for all or no sites. It’s nice that turning off dangerous features like this can be quickly turned on and off. It’s so simple that anyone could (and should!) experiment with it. But I want a little bit more flexibility than this.

Qualitative score: IE gets a B+ while Firefox gets a B-.

• Security-minded plug-ins. Now here is where Firefox starts to shine, at least for my needs. I’m a huge fan of the popular and free plug-in, NoScript (available from noscript.net). NoScript provides a script whitelisting capability in the entire Mozilla family of browsers, including Firefox.

With NoScript, I can allow individual sites that I have some level of faith in to run script content in my browser, while defaulting to disallowing scripts for all others. I find this approach to be very workable, as I only have to teach NoScript once per site I visit.

To be fair, however, some people find NoScript to be very annoying for the same reasons that I find it liberating. And it’s certainly not perfect. It provides trust per domain, not per IP. That means that, for example, I could allow (say) mac.com to run scripts in my browser, and anything within that entire domain space would be allowed to run – clearly something that I want to avoid.

I understand there are similar (and no doubt more) similar plug-ins available for IE, but I have yet to find something that suits my needs as well as NoScript does. Perhaps someone out there can set me straight on this.

Qualitative score: IE gets a D while Firefox gets an A-.

• Open source scrutiny. Ok, this one is a bit shakey, but what the heck. I’m a big fan of open source. I like the fact that the entire Firefox source tree is “out there.” While I don’t place a lot of weight in this as a security feature for most software – indeed, numerous published studies would dismiss it – I just have to believe that Firefox has been studied quite closely by a lot of people. And I’m not just talking about people directly affiliated with Mozilla.

My rationale for this opinion is that Firefox is very high profile, as open source projects go. It’s also a prime target for phishers and other miscreants (notwithstanding my statements above about market share).

The same can’t be said for IE.

Qualitative score: IE gets an F while Firefox gets a C+.

So that’s how I decided Firefox is a better choice for me and my PC users versus IE. How do other browsers fare? I mentioned, after all, that I’m now an OS X desktop user – how about Safari? I also have a few friends whose opinions I trust who use Opera. We’ll dive into those browsers at a later date here.

For now, I’m happy using Firefox with NoScript protecting me from the vast majority of nasty stuff that can happen in Internet applications. Until, that is, something better comes along.

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Firefox VS IE