Babatunde Adeyemi's Blog

The Perils on VC Funding by David Richards

2012-02-11T09:23:00.000-08:00

Spot on

Taking venture capital too early can ruin you, because rather than creating a business plan for a marketplace, you are creating a business plan for a VC. It's just not good for business. Don't get me wrong, venture has a part to play in growth for businesses that require bringing a chip to market, something that can cost a minimum of $100m. However, venture capital doesn't always have to have a place in early start-up business.

Hackers release Symantec source code after extortion attempt fails

2012-02-11T08:39:00.000-08:00

Hackers that claim to have stolen the source code of Symantec's pcAnywhere software have attempted to extort $50,000 from the anti-virus firm, in exchange for keeping the code offline.

However, after negotiations broke down, the group uploaded the source code to The Pirate Bay. It has also released a log of the email exchange with Symantec -- but the virus-hunting firm has said that the emails were a sting operation, with law enforcement officials posing as a Symantec employee.

The email exchange is from January 2012 and kicks off with a hacker called YamaTough -- spokesperson of Indian hacker group Lords of Dharmaraja, which is affiliated with Anonymous' Op AntiSec. He's talking to a Symantec "employee" named Sam Thomas -- actually a law official, says Symantec.

At first, Thomas wants assurances that the hackers actually have their code. Thomas suggests uploading it using FTP. Yama thinks this is a trick -- "If you are trying to trace with the FTP trick it's just worthless," he says. "If we detect any malevolent tracing action we cancel the deal."

Yama threatens the anti-virus firm. "We have many people who are willing to get your code. Don't fuck with us."

The hacker asks Symantec to name a price. "How much do you consider enough to pay us in order to work all the issues out?" Stalling, Symantec asks how the money transfer will be made. Yama suggests payment processor Liberty Reserve, though "wire transfer to a bank account in Lithuania or Latvia is also an option."

"What assurances can you provide that once we pay, you will actually destroy the code and not ask for more money?," Thomas asks. "None of course," Yama bites back. "If we were really bad guys we would have already released or sold your code."

Symantec tries to make a smaller payment of $1,000 through PayPal to keep the hacker happy. Yama says no: "we can wait till we agree on final amount." So Thomas comes back with his final offer: "We will pay you $50,000.00 USD total." That's about £32,000.

The security software outfit suggests paying $2,500 a month for the first three months. If Symantec is convinced that the hackers have destroyed the code, and make a public statement to say that the hack was all a lie, the firm will pay over the rest.

Not good enough, says Yama. "I am afraid we have to cancel the whole deal because our offshore people wont let us securely get the money because they wont process amounts less than 50k a shot."

Yama has noticed that Mr. Symantec has stopped using his "@symantec.com" email address, and has adopted a Google Mail address. "Say hi to FBI agents," Yama says, perhaps twigging that this is a sting operation. "We are not in contact with the FBI," Thomas assures the hacker.

With negotiations breaking down, Yama says "we give you 10 minutes to decide which way you go or the two of your codes fly to the moon -- pcAnywhere and Norton Antivirus."

"We can't make a decision in ten minutes," says Thomas. "We need more time." The hacker group then proceeded to release a 1.27GB file as a torrent.

Symantec has said the version of the source code in the hacker's possession was from 2006, and no longer posed a threat to its customers even if the source code was released. After the hack was made public in January, the firm instructed its pcAnywhere users to disable the product but it later declared it safe to use after offering free upgrades.

As for the hacker, YamaTough said he never intended to take the money. "We tricked them into offering us a bribe so we could humiliate them," the plucky young hacker told Reuters.

Source

The Cardiopad: an African invention to save lives

2012-02-11T08:32:00.000-08:00

A young Cameroonian engineer has built the first fully touch screen medical tablet that could soon save many African lives. He first has to find the necessary funding to mass-produce the device.

Read more

Double Fine Adventure shatters Kickstarter record with $750,000 raised in first 24 hours

2012-02-09T12:59:00.000-08:00

We recently just blogged about Elevation Dock which has just broken the record of being the very first million dollar Kickstarter project, but another project is in the offing and is set to shatter Kickstarter's record, having raised $750,000 in the first 24 hours. The project in question is Double Fine Adventure, a classic point-and-click adventure game.

Tim Schafer and Ron Gilbert are legendary game makers from the golden age of PC gaming, having created classic LucasArts adventures such as Maniac Mansion, Secret of Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle, and Grim Fandando. But in the era of Angry Birds, publishers weren’t willing to take a risk on a new project from the duo. As Schafer put it in the Kickstarter video, publishers would laugh in his face if he asked for the fund to do an old school adventure game. But legions of fans are always asking for it, and offering to pay. So they turned to Kickstarter, hoping to raise $400,000 and offer fans a chance to watch the creative process, pitch in ideas and even star as characters in the game.

The project still has 33 days to go, and so far it has raised more than double of what was pledged. “Additional money means it can appear on more platforms, be translated into more languages, have more music and voice, and an original soundtrack for the documentary, and more!” the team wrote in an update after passing their goal by a wide margin.

Full draft of the Ruby on Rails Tutorial, 2nd Edition, is now available

2012-02-09T00:16:00.000-08:00

A full draft of the Ruby on Rails Tutorial, 2nd Edition, is now available. This draft includes previously unreleased versions of Chapter 10, "User microposts", and Chapter 11, "Following users".

The new edition has eleven chapters, whereas the first edition had twelve, with a bonus Chapter 13 on Rails 3.1. Since the new edition is based on Rails 3.2, the bonus chapter is superfluous, and the new has_secure_password method allowed further consolidation from twelve chapters down to eleven.

Source

Rice Uiversity Announces Open Source Textbooks

2012-02-09T00:02:00.000-08:00

According to Inside Higher Ed:

Using Rice’s Connexions platform, OpenStax will offer free course materials for five common introductory classes. The textbooks are open to classes anywhere and organizers believe the programs could save students $90 million in the next five years if the books capture 10 percent of the national market. OpenStax is funded by grants from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the 20 Million Minds Foundation and the Maxfield Foundation.

While open-source materials are nothing new, a series of free self-contained textbooks designed to compete head-to-head with major publishers is. Instructors building a class with open-source materials now must assemble modules from several different places and verify each lesson’s usefulness and accuracy.

The new textbooks eliminate much of that work, which Baraniuk thinks will be make the free materials more palatable to professors who have been reluctant to adopt open-source lessons. In the next five years, OpenStax hopes to have free books for 20 of the most common college courses.

OpenStax used its grant money to hire experts to develop each textbook and then had their work peer reviewed. The process has taken more than 18 months and will go live next month with sociology and physics books. The only cost to users comes if an instructor decides to use supplementary material from a for-profit company OpenStax partners with, such as Sapling Learning.

Two introductory biology texts, one for majors and another for nonmajors, are slated to go online in the fall along with an anatomy and physiology book. Students and professors will be able to download PDF versions on their computers or access the information on a mobile device. Paper editions will be sold for the cost of printing. The 600-page, full-color sociology book is expected to sell for $30 for those who want a print version -- those content with digital will pay nothing. Leading introductory sociology texts routinely cost between $60 and $120 new.

For students struggling to buy books that sometimes cost more than their tuition, OpenStax editor-in-chief David Harris said it’s hard to overstate those savings. Community colleges catering to lower-income students have been among those most enthusiastic about the new materials, suggesting to Harris that the open-source books could help increase access to higher education.

Elevation Dock Breaks Kickstarter's Fundraising Record

2012-02-08T23:37:00.000-08:00

Elevation Dock is a simple to use, quick undocking dock for your iPhone made from beautifully precision-machined solid aluminum and it comes in a gorgeous set of surface finishes, setting a new bar for quality and something that looks really good on your desk.

Not only is it expertly crafted, but it is also a record-breaking product — record-breaking before it has even shipped. That is because the Elevation Dock has broken the all-time Kickstarter fundraising record. The design firm behind the iPhone dock is called Elevation Lab, and was started four years ago by a fresh-out-of-college guy named Casey Hopkins. For the past four years, Hopkins has been working with a number of startups, helping them with the designs of their products. Although this paid the bills and was rewarding – Hopkins described it as “a feeling like no other to see something you made sitting on a shelf somewhere” – Hopkins decided that contracting out wasn’t enough.

The Elevation Dock started out with the plan of only creating one for personal use, that would sit on Hopkins’ desk but that was not to be, as his friends and family all wanted the dock, so off to market he went. The problem with bringing a hardware product to market is one many startups face. To normally bring a product to market, it would cost at least $100,000 up front, and that is only for the first run of the product prototype.

After seeing the LunaTik project take off on Kickstarter, Hopkins realized that the fundraising site would be perfect. Not only would it be an excellent marketing channel for a virtually unknown design firm, but it would also negate all of the risks associated with an untested product.

So far with Kickstarter, Hopkins has seen success that he didn’t expect. While his original funding goal was $75,000, he has now gone far beyond that. Just north of $964,000 as at the time of writing this post and it still has 61 hours to go, making the Elevation Dock to surpass the LunaTik record of $940,000.

Hopkins mentioned that he has thousands of messages to go through, with hundreds of companies contacting him to help them with their designs. However, Hopkins currently has plans on shipping 10,000 Elevation Docks before moving on to his next project which he declined to elaborate on what they are.

With the success so far, the one thing he is waiting patiently for is a call from Apple’s Senior Vice President of Industrial Design, Jony Ive telling him well done.

Java Magazine - January/February 2012 is out.

2012-02-06T13:51:00.000-08:00

The January/February 2012 issue of Java Magazine is out and you can read or download a copy here.

For Java to remain relevant in the age of cloud computing, the standards need to evolve to meet new deployment and management requirements. This issue takes you inside that process to learn how Java EE 7 will accomplish this goal.

Free course on developing iPad applications from CMU's HCI institute

2012-02-01T21:52:00.000-08:00

Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is offering free lectures on 'Developing iPad Applications' on iTunes U — bringing the top-notch instruction of CMU's Human-Computer Interaction Institute (HCII) to learners far and wide.

The course is co-taught by CMU Assistant Professor Niki Kittur and a team of top industry developers, this project-based course will focus on the design and implementation of iPad applications that help users visualize and make sense of large data sets.

Bridging theory and practice, the course will give students:

a basic background in visualization;
understanding of the cognitive processes involved in transforming visual representations into mental representations, insight and discovery; and
instruction on implementing these techniques in real applications for the iPad.

The software engineering topics taught will focus on the latest technologies available in the newly released iOS 5.

For those interested in following along, object-oriented programming experience is recommended.

Watch the course on iTunes U or on any iOS device with the free iTunes U app.

Ruby on Rails Tutorial, 2nd edition (updated for Rails 3.2)

2012-01-30T21:31:00.000-08:00

Michael Hartl’s free has helped a lot of people to learn the voodoo that is Rails and Michael is currently updating his ebook for Ruby 1.9 and Rails 3.2, and of course, the update is still available online for free. This initial release consists of the first five chapters, and each week he plans to release 1–2 additional chapters until the full book is out. You can sign up for the Rails Tutorial News Feed to be notified when new chapters are ready.

The second edition includes many new features:

Fully updated for Rails 3.2 and Ruby 1.9
Coverage of the new asset pipeline
Behavior-driven development (BDD) with Capybara and RSpec
An introduction to Cucumber for writing client-friendly tests
Syntactically Awesome Stylesheets with Sass
Better automated testing with Guard and Spork
Rolling your own authentication with has_secure_password

GTBank is becoming more innovative

2012-01-30T21:12:00.000-08:00

One of the newest solutions from GTBank is the 'SKS Teen Mastercard', which enables you to send money to your teenager anywhere in the world. With this, GTBank is trying to create compelling solutions for teenagers between the ages of 13 and 18 which will enable them to also have their own Mastercard which can be used worldwide.

Good one on that GTBank.

Free “Starling” book from O’Reilly

2012-01-29T06:47:00.000-08:00

O’Reilly has just released a free book on the Starling Framework written by Thibault Imbert. This is essentially an updated and enhanced version of the getting started PDF that he wrote around the time of the release. Here is the abstract:

Starling is an ActionScript 3 2D framework developed on top of the Stage3D APIs (available on desktop in Flash Player 11 and Adobe AIR 3). Starling is mainly designed for game development, but could be used for many other use cases. Starling makes it possible to write fast GPU accelerated applications without having to touch the low-level Stage3D APIs.

Most Flash developers want to be able to leverage GPU acceleration (through Stage3D) without the need to write such higher-level frameworks and dig into the low-level Stage3D APIs. Starling is completely designed after the Flash Player APIs and abstracts the complexity of Stage3D (Molehill) and allows easy and intuitive programming for everyone.

Thanks to Thibault for creating a great beginner resource for Starling. You can also check out Lee Brimelow's video tutorial on Starling at gotoAndLearn.

Is Femi Fani-Kayode any Different?

2012-01-28T07:42:00.000-08:00

A fellow encountered this with Femi Fani-Kayode yesterday on Facebook:

Adegbesan Adekoyejo:

Very well said, i want to begin to look at you as the new because u still look young and you are very intelligent, however i am odds with that reasoning, perhaps because you served under another wasteful government where the vice and the president exposed their dirty linen in public. I am not one taken to sycophancy sir, i also suspect we might see you in 2015, or maybe not. Are you able to tell us using the luxury of your facebook page what you achieved as Minister of the Federal Republic during your tenure and why the allegations against you are not true. I am sure we have so many like me who will like to know sir. That said, excellent piece as always!

Femi Fani-Kayode:

@Adegbesan, young man, this posting is not about me but about our country and in any case who appointed you as the judge over me or anyone else? If you want to know about my achievements when I was in public office four years ago please go and ask your father (if he is still alive) or go to my website and read up on it. Meanwhile I have nothing to prove to you and neither do I care what u think of me or the government that I served. Do yourself a favour and think about what is happening in your country today and where it is heading rather than obsessing about me and what I may or may not do in 2015. Even though you are still very young make your own contribution to national affairs and try to focus on the message of others rather than being fixated on the messanger. I assure you that your problems in Nigeria are much bigger and greater than FFK or OBJ. We have had our time...let's see what you will do with yours.

Adegbesan Adekoyejo:

@FFK, thanks for sending me to my Father and that was such a good way to answer an innocent question. Did i strike a wrong nerve? I do not judge people but allow them to serve to us their achievement in service, i have not accused you of any ills, but the questions i asked will still come up in the future. Nigeria is boiling at the moment and we all know and should work towards ensuring it does not disintegrate for which i see you clearly do, that said, tough questions await you in 2015, regardless you are such an intelligent man and i enjoy your write-ups but was that reply intelligent?

At this point, another fellow, Ajayi Sunday Joseph commented:

@FKK, well scripted sir. I love you so much. but you are too hard on Adegbesan.

Two minutes later, Femi Fani-Kayode deleted the post.

Five minutes later, he deleted me as a friend on Facebook. - Alhaji Oshine Oyedeji

What do you think of Femi Fani-Kayode before now, and right now?

Neurotechnology Develops Biometric Technologies for Low-Power Android Devices

2012-01-11T08:48:00.000-08:00

A software development and algorithms developer for biometric, voice and object recognition technologies, Neurotechnology has expanded its biometric technologies offering to include the VeriFinger Embedded SDK, the VeriLook Embedded SDK and the MegaMatcher Embedded SDK (software development kit) for finger biometrics, facial biometrics and multi-biometric systems, respectively.

The latest embedded biometric technologies developed by Neurotechnology have been designed specifically for mobile platforms such as compact, low-power devices like handheld computers, smartphones and tablets. These advanced products incorporate the same algorithms as the PC counterparts of MegaMatcher, VeriLook and VeriFinger, thus ensuring AFIS (Automated Fingerprint Identification System)-level accuracy in terms of recognition quality and usage.

With a 1 GHz processing speed, it hardly takes a second for VeriLook Embedded or VeriFinger Embedded to process and identify face images or fingerprints. The initial release version of MegaMatcher Embedded includes both VeriLook and VeriFinger biometric algorithms. Subsequent versions of the MegaMatcher will include voice and iris biometrics as well. The embedded technologies require the same biometric templates and API as their PC counterpart, thus enabling easier and faster migration to embedded applications. They support Android operating system version 2.2 or higher. Neurotechnology will also enable support for WinCE and ARM Linux operating systems.

The software development manager, Pavel Cuchriajev stated that since mobile platform support is crucial to biometric applications, the new embedded product line has been developed to support the Android platform. Cuchriajev added that this new feature opens several opportunities for development of end-user biometric solutions.

VeriLook Embedded, VeriFinger Embedded and MegaMatcher Embedded are available as a software development kit that can support web-based or stand-alone biometric solutions for devices running on the Android OS.

Huawei Unveils the World’s Slimmest Android Smartphone

2012-01-11T08:46:00.000-08:00

Huawei unveiled the Ascend P1 S, which it claims is the world’s slimmest smartphone.

Running on the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich operating system, the Ascend P1 S is only 6.68mm thin; in comparison, the Motorola RAZR is 7.1mm thick and the Samsung Galaxy S II is 8.49mm thick. In addition to its super slim form factor, the Ascend P1 S is also the fastest and most compact smartphone in its class, with a dual-core 1.5GHz processor with 1GB of RAM.

The Ascend P1 S boasts a 4.3-inch Super AMOLED touchscreen display with HD resolution of 960×540, toughened with Corning’s Gorilla Glass for extra durability. For imaging it comes with a back-lit 8MP camera and a front facing 1.3MP camera.

Read more

Amazing Newsletters to Subscribe to for Web Designers/Developers

2012-01-04T21:55:00.000-08:00

Listed below are newsletters you can subscribe to get once-weekly top stories of the week for Javascript, Web Design & HTML5:

The US Says Goodbye to IE6

2012-01-04T21:45:00.000-08:00

Time to pop open the champagne because, based on the latest data from Net Applications, IE6 usage in the US has now officially dropped below 1%!

Good riddance to bad rubbish!

Web browser, Frontend and Standards Feeds to Follow by Paul Irish

2012-01-04T21:39:00.000-08:00

Paul Irish recently created some feed bundles that you can follow in Google Reader. While a lot of conversation has moved to Twitter and G+, hugely useful information is still published regularly to blogs.

It's easy to click through and subscribe in Google Reader. There is also OPML files if you want to take them elsewhere.

JavaOne 2011 Videos Now Available for Viewing/Downloading.

2012-01-03T00:53:00.000-08:00

Oracle and Parleys are working together to bring a lot of JavaOne 2011 content online for you to watch/download.

A total of 48 sessions are currently publicly available on Parleys.com, and have been viewed over 75,000 times already.

You can find all the content in the Java > JavaOne 2011 space on Parleys.com.

The Inside Story Of Tech's Hottest Startup

2012-01-02T00:42:00.000-08:00

Here’s that rare Steve Jobs story that has never been told, about the company that got away.

Jobs had been tracking a young software developer named Drew Houston, who blasted his way onto Apple’s radar screen when he reverse-engineered Apple’s file system so that his startup’s logo, an unfolding box, appeared elegantly tucked inside. Not even an Apple SWAT team had been able to do that.

That company is Dropbox. You can read the full post at Forbes.

Prettify your Google Android Emulator with these Nexus S & Nexus One Skins

2011-12-31T07:42:00.000-08:00

Heiko Behrens recently created high-quality skins for Samsung Nexus S and HTC Nexus One for use in the Android emulator. Every Android Developer knows that the emulator by default comes with an ugly looking skin that looks more like something from the 90s when you compare it to the look of the Android phones out there.

He was able to create the skins with their native screen resolution at a superb image quality. They offer a glow effect when hovering over the hardware buttons, render a subtile drop shadow on both orientations and come with smooth corners on every edge. However, the outstanding feature of this set of skins is the fitting overlay image that can be put on top of the actual emulator screen. The skins were based on the great work of Alexander Gillis.

To download the skins and to read instructions on how to put them to use, read more on his blog.

Mozilla Firefox has been given a new Lease of Life by Google

2011-12-31T07:26:00.000-08:00

Google will pay Mozilla almost $300M per year in search deal, besting Microsoft and Yahoo to be the default choice in Mozilla’s Firefox browser, a huge jump from its previous arrangement, due to competing interest from both Yahoo and Microsoft. Google is committing close to a billion dollars to bankroll a browser which is a rival to their own browser.

At $300 million a year, it’s just about three times the size of the last deal ($128M) they signed with Mozilla back in 2008.

That high price might have stemmed from the bidding war between Google and others (Microsoft & Yahoo) and from subsequent anti-trust issues. When it was originally reported that the Google/Mozilla search deal had expired, I thought the end might have come for Firefox, but that is not to be the case any longer with Google's new deal of almost $1 Billion they just signed with Mozilla.

Congrats to you Firefox on the new lease of life.

Not all Nigerians are scammers

2011-12-30T15:59:00.000-08:00

Sure, we do have a lot of such bad eggs in this country, but not all of us are scammers.

If you can't see the white of their eyes, don't dare to offer any form of assistance to them, else you'd be scammed. And don't be desperate for any reason.

It's the bad eggs that spoil the broth. Never knew we have so many of the such scammers from Nigeria in Malaysia & Singapore right now.

To reduce the scourge, the penalty needs to be much more than just deportation. Deportation isn't sufficient enough to scare scammers from doing their thing. Get that!

Video: When Apple’s Siri Kills People.

2011-12-22T12:09:00.000-08:00

If Apple’s hands-free assistant Siri one day turned against the human race and transformed into a freakishly evil killing machine, well, that would really, really suck. However improbable, that hypothetical situation is exactly the fodder Rooster Teeth Productions used to create the “Siri: The Holiday Horror Movie (Trailer)” clip below.

The clever spoof shows Siri taunting, attacking and killing a group of friends who all received the iPhone 4S for Christmas. At one point — in its familiar female voice — Siri quips, “Life has no meaning. It’s true, you’re alive and then you die, you die, you die, die, die, die … ” After that, all hell breaks loose.

Hilarious, but come to think of it...

Google Launches Android Training for Aspiring Developers

2011-12-22T10:36:00.000-08:00

It seems that two can play at the same game Microsoft began months ago in trying to pull more developers to the platform. Google’s Android team has just launched some online training sessions to help aspiring developers create their own magic.

Android Training is the name of the program, and so far it includes as many as 11 general sections, 34 lessons to help you get started. We’re not really sure how much of a developer you already have to be in order to not have a hard time following through these courses, but for a free price tag, you can’t lose.
Reto Meier, part of Android Developer relations, said:

“From designing effective navigation, to managing audio playback, to optimizing battery life, these classes are designed to demonstrate best practices for solving common Android development problems. Each class explains the steps required to solve a problem, or implement a feature, with plenty of code snippets and sample code for you to use within your own apps. We’re starting small and this is just the beginning for Android Training. Over the coming months we will be increasing the number of classes available, as well as introducing over-arching courses and sample apps to further help your development experience.”

Head on over to Android Training to get started.