Standardization efforts for the next version of JavaScript have taken a sharp turn this month, with some key changes in the Web scripting technology’s direction. JavaScript creator Brendan Eich, CTO of Mozilla, has helped forge a consensus on how to proceed with the direction for JavaScript’s improvements. “JavaScript was sitting still. It was stagnant,” he says.

The fundamental reason to update JavaScript — whose standard hasn’t changed since 1999 — is to handle the heavy demands being placed on it. Although the language certainly has caught on for Web application development, it was not envisioned for the workloads now demanded of it by developers, Eich says. “They’re using it at a scale that it wasn’t designed for.”

The biggest change in JavaScript 2’s direction is that the ECMAScript 4 project has been dropped. That change resolves a long-simmering debate as to whether ECMAScript 3.1 or ECMAScript 4 should be the basis of JavaScript 2. (ECMAScript is the formal name for the standard, vendor-neutral version of JavaScript.)

This decision at the ECMA International standards group overseeing the JavaScript standard unites the EMCA International Technical Committee 39, including Eich, with Google and Microsoft around the “Harmony” road map. (The committee and Eich favored a major revision to the ECMAScript standard, while Microsoft and Google opposed such grand plans, Eich says. “Microsoft [in particular] started working on a much smaller improvement to the last version of the standard,” an effort that is now the core of the ECMAScript 3.1 plan, he says.)

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PostPath is best known as a drop-in replacement for Microsoft Exchange. Unlike other would-be Exchange competitors Scalix and Lotus Domino/Notes, which use a Outlook-compatible Mail Application Programming Interface (MAPI) on the client PC, PostPath actually reverse-engineered Microsoft’s MAPI and Active Directory (AD) protocols. This means that, from the network and Windows PC’s viewpoint, PostPath actually appears to be an Exchange server.

While PostPath is the only Exchange challenger that has used reverse-engineering to challenge Microsoft, its approach may be adopted by other open source companies. When the European Commission forced Microsoft to open up the Common Internet File System (CIFS) and AD protocols, it also forced the company to open up the MAPI protocols.

An open source project called OpenChange is now working with Samba using this information to build open source implementations of Microsoft Exchange Server and Exchange protocols. No commercial open source business is currently following up on OpenChange’s efforts, though, according to Sarah Radicati, CEO of The Radicati Group.

The SF Chron has a list of seven good, lesser-known sites for online investing advice and info.

Invest in Value: Benjamin Graham, considered by many to be the architect of fundamental analysis, coined the term “intrinsic value,” which he defined as the present value of a company’s expected future cash flows. He then looked for stocks trading at a discount to their intrinsic value, which he termed the “margin of safety.”

The bigger the margin of safety, the better. Invest in Value ( www.investinvalue.com) calculates the margin of safety for most stocks. You can use it two ways. Either enter a ticker to see the margin of safety for a stock that you pick, or use the screener to see a list of high-margin-of-safety stocks.

TickerSpy: Have you ever puzzled over a stock’s big up or down move that’s seemingly without reason? Usually such a move is triggered by a news report or analyst upgrade or downgrade that you didn’t see. You can usually find the news or analysts rating changes that you missed on TickerSpy ( www.tickerspy.com). The site depends on its users to post links to relevant stories about each stock. Surprisingly, that strategy works. TickerSpy doesn’t replace Yahoo, my favorite source for news headlines about my stocks, but it’s good for filling in the gaps.

321energy: As we’ve seen in recent months, energy prices affect everything. Successful investing requires Read the rest of this entry »

Noticed anything strange in your clipboard lately? There’s a new Flash-based attack percolating across the web that can inject potentially dangerous URLs into your clipboard, which you might then inadvertent paste into your browser’s URL bar.

Adobe has acknowledged the attack and says it is investigating a fix. In the mean time, exercise caution when copying Flash data to your clipboard.

It would appear that the attacks are apparently quite sophisticated. Security research firm Sophos reports that, “if the professional looking sites that are being used to distribute this fake alert malware are anything to go by, the criminals behind it are very organized.”

The company goes on to say that the attackers are “using aggressive techniques to infect victims as well — for example large spam campaigns and compromised web sites.”

That means just because you trust the site, doesn’t mean it hasn’t been compromised.

We’ll be sure to let you know when a fix or Flash upgrade is available.

[Sourced Via WEbmonkey]

Google on Friday announced the release of Gears Geolocation API, a platform designed to provide Web sites with location-based information without the aid of GPS.

The new API has already been used by two third-party developers to create apps for Windows Mobile. European travel site lastminute.com used the platform to develop an app for locating nearby restaurants, while social discovery engine Rummble created an app that lets users find nearby locations recommended by friends.

Geolocation API can use GPS, cell-tower triangulation, or your computer’s IP address to find your location. It’s currently available for Internet Explorer, Firefox, and IE Mobile.

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