A Benefit of a Cloud-based Service: Immense Scalability.

Recent hack-ins into Google infrastructure are definitely disturbing. While we can imagine all kinds of preventive measures — intrusion detection systems, intrusion prevention systems, borderless security, etc. — Google's introduction today of a method of detecting suspicious account activity is a highly useful one. It enables every account holder to detect any suspicious activity in his/her Gmail account.

Thanks to the fact that Gmail is cloud-based, every Gmail user gets this feature instantaneously. With apologies to my fellow Frenchmen: Vive la Scalability.

Microsoft has done some good things for the web browser industry too.

For all the flak that Microsoft has had to take in recent weeks on IE6, it was heartening to learn when Crockford, Yahoo!'s JavaScript Architect, mentioned yesterday that it was Microsoft's contribution to the Document Object Model, that all HTML elements were made script-able, that has provided lasting value so far, for the browser platform.

A couple of other noteworthy points:

1. "With Ajax, the source of innovation shifted from the browser makers to the web developers. Ajax libraries."
2. "Ultimately, we should seek to replace the DOM with an Ajax-influenced API."

Crockford is an engaging speaker who sprinkles his talk with very effective humor. This particular talk was how the Ajax technology came about. You can review all of his talk, including video & transcripts, on the Yahoo! User Interface Blog site.

As I have listened to Crockford on the 4 out of the 5 sessions so far, I cannot but come away with the feeling that many of the mistakes of the past would not have been committed in the latest specification.

The future of web-based applications is definitely brighter.