Cobb on Technology

Happy New Tech Year

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Cobb) — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 21:04:00 +0000

Just a quick post to say that most of my technology-oriented blogging in 2012 will be happening over on the ESET Threat Blog.

I am enjoying being part of the ESET research team which extends from Singapore to Slovakia, through the Netherlands to the UK, on to Montreal and Buenos Aires, then San Diego, which is where I am located these days.

This international distribution of research resources provides exceptional ability to gain insight into emerging threats to data and systems, notably but not only in the computer virus arena. And the depth of talent in the group is outstanding, producing in-depth technical analysis of malware (malicious software) and the things that purveyors of this stuff get up to, always with an eye to defeating the bad guys and protecting as many honest Internet users as possible. Here is a page of recent and relevant resources.

iTunes - Podcasts - DEFCON 3 - Feat. Me

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Cobb) — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 03:12:00 +0000

If you are into hardware and software experimentation you might have noticed, with some amazement, that 2012 is the year of DEFCON 20. That's two decades of hacker convention fun and games. I missed the first two but was invited to speak at DEFCON 3 which was held August 4-6th 1995 at the Tropicana in Las Vegas. So I was delighted to encounter this link recently: Past speeches and talks from DEF CON hacking conferences in an iTunes friendly m4b format. I took a listen to my session (on Why Hacking Sucks) and was pleased to find it still sounded pretty sane. A helpful interaction is how I would characterize it, at least for me.

Will Christmas Kindles Torch the Internet and Evaporate the Amazon Cloud?

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Cobb) — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 08:39:00 +0000

I got an Amazon Kindle Fire from my wife for Christmas and I'm a bit worried about the effect on the Internet. I should explain that I got my Fire a few weeks ago because my wife and I like to give each other digital gifts before Christmas Day so that by the time Christmas Day arrives we have said devices fully configured and can actually play with them (I got her an iPhone 4S).

The problem I see is that Amazon has been selling about one million of these Fire things a week and many of them may not be fired up, so to speak, until Christmas Day. Here's what happened after I fired up my Kindle Fire: It gave me instructions on how to put my music in the cloud, and store it there for free, and those instructions were very easy to follow, so my laptop was soon engaged in uploading 6,471 files. Engaged as in "I need to spend several days trying to do this."

When it was done, those files added up to over 30 gigabytes of data, sitting in the cloud somewhere, ready for me to listen to them at the tap of a screen. Now imagine 2 million people getting a Fire for Christmas and accepting that invitation to put their music in the cloud. Suppose they each have, on average, 20 gigabytes of music. That's 40 million gigabytes or 40 petabytes added to the cloud and Internet traffic on Christmas Day. I hope Capacity Planning at Amazon.com has been doing some planning. And those folks who manage the tubes, they better be ready to put out some fires.

Mac OS X Help: Specifying criteria in Spotlight

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Cobb) — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 07:34:00 +0000

I just updated this post with a Mavericks screenshot, but the basic point holds true for the past few versions of OS X: the Spotlight search tool on Macs can be very powerful, but a surprising number of people don't seem to know how to tap that power (and for a long time that included me).

Apple has a good basic article on Spotlight. Remember that you can always press Command+Spacebar to pop up Spotlight. And you can use the Spotlight pane in System Preferences to change these categories around, their order, and even which categories appear.

You can type calculations into Spotlight and find that 256*2-680 is 168.

You can get the definition of a word by typing it into Spotlight and then checking the Look Up section of the results.

Enjoy!

CyberMonday SmartPhone Shopping Tip: Avoid CA, MA, RI, and maybe others

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Cobb) — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 23:54:00 +0000

This is a quick tip for anyone looking to buy a new iPhone or other smartphone this holiday season:

Don't buy in California, Massachusetts, or Rhode Island.

If you are in one of those states and can cheaply get to another state, or happen to be passing through another state on business or to visit family, you can save $40 or more if you purchase your phone out of state.

Why? The answer is in small print at the Apple store and--possibly in different words--on some mobile provider sites:

In CA, MA, and RI, sales tax is collected on the unbundled price of iPhone.

In other words, you might be getting a great deal on the phone but these states charge you sales tax as though you did not get a great deal, and that's a bum deal.

Consider that the Apple iPhone 4S series has unbundled prices of $649, $749, and $849 for the 16MB, 32MB, and 64MB models respectively. That means a sales tax of 7.75% on the 16MB 4S you buy from AT&T or Apple for $199 comes in at $50 versus the $15.42 you were probably expecting. That's sticker shock if you have not been through this process before.

RIP: The Golden Age of Unlimited Internet, It's Been Capped

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Cobb) — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 00:50:00 +0000

The golden age of unlimited Internet is over, capped usage is now the norm. Alas for uncapped bandwidth, uncapped bandwidth is no more, and this has serious implications for everything from programming to data security and economics.

Soliloquies aside, the pleasure of making a prediction that comes true--I have said for some time that all bandwidth will eventually be capped and metered--is often undermined by the reality of what one predicted. (For example, about every new form of data abuse I have said "Typically, this is going to get worse before it gets better" and I am, sadly too often, correct in that assessment.)

I have written extensively about bandwidth capping in the context of both satellite Internet service and 3G Internet service. I have lived with daily bandwidth caps in the 400 megabyte range, courtesy of HughesNet's premium $80 per month satellite service. I have lived with the AT&T MiFi 3G cap of 5 gigabytes a month or 166 megabytes per day (for $60 per month). Apparently I am now going to live with the 200 gigabytes per month cap of Cox Cable Preferred Internet Service, currently $40 per month.

Of course, it is clear that 200 gigabytes for $40 is a better deal than 5 for $60 or 12 for $80 (if you multiply the 400 megabytes per day that HughesNet 'gives' you by 30 days you get 12 gigabytes, but in reality you seldom get 12 gigabytes because you keep daily use below that, worried that you will exceed your cap, which costs $10 to reset every time you blow through it with a big download or streaming audio/video).

What is wrong about Cox Cable's cap, and I have to use wrong rather than a softer touch like "questionable" or dubious" or "unfortunate," is that Cox Cable does not disclose its cap before you contract for Cox service. I know this because I just went through the labyrinthine process of getting Cox Cable service in San Diego. While everyone from Cox with whom I have spoken has been very polite, friendly, and helpful, nobody said "That comes with a 200 gigabyte per-month cap and we reserve the right to charge you more money if you go over that."

Nobody. Not the first time I placed my order, nor the second time I placed my order because the first order went astray. In other words, Cox had ample opportunity to mention the cap and the consequences of exceeding it. They did not. Given the otherwise articulate and engaging nature of the service personnel that Cox puts on the line, I tend to assume they are trained not to say anything about the cap.

So, the cap is here. It is not disclosed. And next I fear, it will be reduced. Once we are all hooked on whatever bandwidth consuming activity floats our boat, be it streaming video, audio, online gaming, hi-def photography, video calls, or something as yet not deployed, the bandwidth providers will start clamping down, shrinking the cap and raising the rates. So here are some potential implications:

Using the Internet will cost more in the future, not less. We will pay per gig, not per month.
Deployment of any security services that use bandwidth will meet resistance or get turned off if people are paying per gig.
The rich will get more Internet than the poor (and of course the poor will get poor and the rich will get richer, a golden rule pretty much everywhere, from the USSR to the US of A).
Programs that use bloated code or content will be penalized by bad reviews.
Apps that are coded efficiently and elegantly will prevail.

I recently had the honor of speaking to a group of computer science students at the Jacobs School of engineering at UCSD. One topic we got into was the need to keep code lean. I mentioned to them a very interesting article that was mentioned to me by my good friend (and computer scientist extraordinaire) David Brussin and written by someone in Australia who also has to deal with bandwidth limitations, Troy Hunt.

The amount of 'bloat' that Troy found in iOS apps will surprise many, but it really wasn't a surprise to me. Why? Because my wife and I have used an iPad on a capped--and thus closely monitored--satellite Internet connection for over a year. We know how far the needle jumps when you add an iPad to your wireless Internet device mix. I fear the time will come when we pay dearly for that, by the megabyte.

p.s. Just noticed this report: Sprint is slowly but surely killing unlimited data

Quick Tip: How to Change the IE8 Default Search Provider from Bing to Google or Other

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Cobb) — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 00:26:00 +0000

This tip is for the relatively small number of people who are running Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 and cannot seem to change the default search provider, that's the one found in the Search box at the top right of the program window. By default this is Bing but I prefer Google.

I recently ran into a problem trying to change this on a system I was using. The process for making the change that was described in the Help for IE8 did not work, but after some digging I found something that did work for me. It is actually a service provided by Microsoft. Basically, you go to the following web page and follow the instructions labeled "Create Your Own" on the right (this can be used to add just about any search engine as your default):

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/searchguide/en-en/default.mspx

You may need to close IE8 and then reload it for the change to take effect. Of course, you might ask why I didn't just upgrade from IE8 to IE9, but this was not my computer, just a computer I was using. However, I would agree there are some good reasons to upgrade to IE9, as described by my brother, Mike Cobb, in this article: Is Internet Explorer 9 security better than alternative browsers?

Not Happy With AT&T? The network of possible reasons is expanding

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Cobb) — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 23:02:00 +0000

As a consumer, few things annoy me as much as TV ads extolling the virtues of something that is currently not working right, like AT&T's 3G data service. About this time yesterday I went to the AT&T web page that tells me how much of the 5 gigabytes-per-month 3G data plan on my MiFi wireless access point I have used. Simply going to this page is a fine example of how to: A. annoy your customers, B. tarnish your brand. Why?

1 .The Mobile Hotspot MiFi 2372 data device for which I paid $100 is treated like a cellphone in all AT&T literature (it is not a cellphone) so I have to log into a secure page to find how much of my $60 per month 5 gigabyte data allowance I have used, even when I am connecting from the device itself.

B. The first thing the page says is that information about my minutes is not available. Duh! This MiFi device has no minutes, it just has data. The info about the data usage is below the fold. This gives me zero confidence that AT&T knows what it is doing when it comes to mobile data services.

C. I have to do this any time I want to check my usage, which is sometimes multiple times a day because AT&T keeps sending me emails warning that I am about to go over my limit even when I am nowhere near my limit. (But they will charge me if I go over the limit).

D. I get logged out of the data usage page after a few minutes "for security reasons" which means that I cannot leave the page on the screen and monitor usage in real time. (Speaking as a CISSP, I see no reason to consider my data usage protected information, and no reason for my provider to deny me constant access to it.)

Even HughesNet, the satellite Internet service provider whose service levels and bandwidth caps I have lambasted in the past, does a better job of keeping me informed, in real time and with little effort, of my bandwidth usage relative to their daily cap.

This might sound like an obscure issue with a niche product, but I believe it is the shape of things to come. Bandwidth caps are the norm for 3G and soon 4G and maybe for other services too. Consumers of capped bandwidth need ways to monitor their usage to avoid additional charges. Putting on my marketing and branding cap I would say that cynical consumers will assume that those providers of capped bandwidth who make it tough to monitor usage are hoping to rake in the extra fees for going over the limit.

Now here's the real kicker: The usage page was down yesterday. That's the page that tells me how much data I have used. And it remains down 24 hours later. Today I got another "High Usage Data Alert" email from AT&T but had to place a voice call to check my usage. It took the AT&T person who assisted me several minutes to figure out what I meant by "How much data have I used?" Then she told me I had nothing to worry about because my monthly usage cycle had started over today, the 12th. To which I replied: "Yes, I know that is what is supposed to happen, but I just got a warning message, at 4PM today, the 12th, telling me my usage was high."

To which she replied "I apologize for that, it was sent because you were nearing your limit yesterday."

This rendered me temporarily speechless because I couldn't decide which aspect of the absurdity I wanted to highlight first. So when she asked "Is there anything else I can help you with?" my response was simply to ask when the web page would be coming back. Her reply: "They're working on it but we have no exact time."

And then I turned on the television to see an AT&T ad about the amazing "network of possibilities" with AT&T data networks. I suppose one possibility is that AT&T may get a clue about how to deliver useful and accurate data to its customers in a timely fashion. Designing a more practical 3G MiFi/WiFi device might also be a possibility. Watch this space for a review of the Novatel 2372, the first device to inflict a five colored LED on color blind computer users.

Give Back a Bit: Fixing the "Read More" problem in Blogger posts

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Cobb) — Sun, 15 May 2011 18:47:00 +0000

I just found a problem in Blogger with the Read More jump feature, then I fixed it thanks to some helpful souls out there on the internets. You can see the thing I'm talking about if you view this post on the home page of the blog. The first part of the post appears on the home page of the blog but the rest of the post is not visible until you click the link that says "Click here to read the rest of the story..."

This was just not working on this blog before I fixed it today. The link, referred to as a jump and often denoted by More or Read more, did not appear, so there was no easy way to get from the home page to the rest of the story (you couldn't even see that the rest of the story existed).

Apparently this problem exists with some Blogger templates and not others. Using Google I found a solution and it is listed below the jump on this story. I wanted to thank the person who wrote the fix but his blog seems to have disappeared, so I am repeating the fix and thanking "swathipradeep," whom I assume is Swathi Pradeep, for coming up with this code and sharing it.

If you are having this problem with your Blogger blog then here is how you fix it (instructions created by Swathi Pradeep):

1. Back up your template code by downloading it: Go to the Design tab and select Edit HTML, then click Download Full Template. Save to your hard drive. This allows you to get back to the original template if something goes wrong.

2. After backing up your template, click the Expand Widget Templates check box (or tick the tick box if you're a Brit). Now scan your HTML for the following snippet (I used the Ctrl-F shortcut for Find):

<data:post.body/>

Once you've located that code, paste the following snippet directly below it:

<b:if cond='data:post.hasJumpLink'> 
<div class='jump-link'> 
<a expr:href='data:post.url + "#more"'><data:post.jumpText/></a> 
</div> 
</b:if >

As I have said before and will probably be saying again: I feel like I don't give back enough when it comes to the zillions of tech tips like these that I need/find/use to do my work/play. So I'm going to try to do better. I came up with GeeBaB as an acronym for Give Back a Bit and I will endeavor to geebab more useful tech learnings in the future.

Ironically, I ran into a problem trying to present the above tip because of Blogger's rather primitive display of code text. How did I get around the problem? I read about a dozen web pages offering solutions and decided the best one was these boxes to display code, as described in this post at BlogKori, Thanks!

Satellite Internet Service: Amazing technology but not broadband (and why that matters more and more)

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Cobb) — Fri, 06 May 2011 15:36:00 +0000

A new report on satellite Internet service has just been published by the Rural Mobile and Broadband Alliance, or RuMBA (clever name, huh!). This free whitepaper, full of table, illustrations, and extensive references, is worth reading if you are:

A nerd or geek like me
Ever wondered how this satellite Internet thing worked
Have an interest in computer security
Live in a rural area
Care about the future of rural America
All of the above

Disclaimer: I wrote this paper (all 22 pages of it) in my spare time, as a way to help rural communities like the one in which I live. So there is an agenda in my plugging this white paper, but no financial incentive. RuMBA is a not-for-profit group (and for the moment I'm a fairly unprofitable person).

As I say in the paper, the fact that satellite Internet service works at all is a major technological achievement. I just have a problem with the idea that satellite Internet service is being touted in some quarters as a way to provide rural communities with access to broadband.

I don't want to give anything away, because I really do want people to read this paper, but satellite Internet is not and can never be a substitute for proper broadband service. By "proper broadband service" I mean something that can support a data center or at least deliver a high-availability, low-latency, uncapped connection at speeds of more than 10Mbps.

Satellite might have a role to play as the connection of last resort for people living in truly remote areas far from paved roads and other infrastructure, but I see no good reason why homes and businesses that already have telephone service should not also have broadband connectivity. For example, it makes no sense to me that a village on a state highway less than 50 miles from the capital of New York should not have broadband, especially when it is just a few miles from the nearest broadband connection point and already has a fiber optic cable running right through it. And there are hundreds of examples like this.

As a technologist who also pays taxes I am also very concerned that the federal government has seen fit to give tens of millions of dollars of broadband stimulus money to satellite companies who clearly, according to the definitive and categorical conclusions of this 22-page report, do not deliver broadband.

If you agree with me that broadband access is important for farming families and the people who live in rural areas to support them (doctors, nurses, teachers, merchants, and so on) then please bear in mind that things are only going to get worse if we don't act now to deliver genuine broadband to these folks. Every metric out there points to a coming boom in Internet video and other rick media as a way of interacting with consumers, businesses, schools, and healthcare providers. If communities are hurting right now because they only have dialup or satellite, and I believe they are, there are really going to be hurting a year or two from now.

For example, a Cisco report last October indicated that the average traffic over a broadband connection increased 31% in the previous 12 months, generating 14.9 gigabytes of Internet traffic a month. If that trend continues, and a recovering economy strongly suggests it will, the average traffic number will reach 20 gigabytes a month by the end of this year, way more than most satellite Internet users are allowed (without substantial added cost or inconvenience).

BTW, there is a lot of information on this subject over at the Rural Mobile and Broadband Alliance website. I encourage you to check it out. You may also want to follow RuMBA's founder @HandemRuMBA on Twitter and tune in to the Rural America Radio Show on Blog Talk Radio

Queer Codes? All about QR 2D barcodes

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Cobb) — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 21:48:00 +0000

Have you noticed more of these strange symbols lately? These are QR codes or 2D bar codes. They store information, a lot of information. Whereas a regular barcode that is made up of lines can store 30 numbers, a 2D QR can store 7,089 numbers!

I happen to know this because of a great article on the subject that I just read: Top 14 Things Marketers Need to Know About QR Codes by fellow Search Engine Watch columnist Angie Schottmuller. This article appears in the April 26 issue of Search Engine Watch and they bill it is as: "a great crash course on tools, tactics, and best practices to confidently help you jumpstart a 2D barcode marketing campaign." And I agree wholeheartedly.

The article is also a good general introduction to the technology and why people are using it. Since one goal of this blog is to make technology more accessible I thought I would highlight Angie's article for that reason. And that makes one less article I have to write, which is good, because I know that someone, at some point, is going to ask me: Stephen, what's a QR code? Now I can simply point them in Angie's direction.

The Iron Chip: A good example of "biology meets computer" via microarray

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Cobb) — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 17:32:00 +0000

Got to love hyperlinking. It takes you to so many interesting places. Like this lecture on a common genetic disorder which also explains how chips called microarrays can be made to detect biological substances, like proteins.

This one hour video-taped lecture from one of the world’s leading experts on the subject, Professor Martina Muckenthaler, PhD., Head of Molecular Medicine at the University of Heidelberg is a real geek-treat. What is particularly like about this video is:

a. the professor’s superb pedagogical style as she leads her audience of university students from a simple introduction to hemochromatosis to a detailed explanation of its mechanisms at the molecular level, followed by the technology she has been developing to perform her research.

b. the English subtitles, which are very well done and a great example of going the extra mile to share knowledge and information.

Even if you watch just the first 15 minutes you will get a good sense of why the world needs to know more about haemochromatosis (the British English version of the spelling is used in the subtitles). Hemochromatosis is not easy to explain and I'm speaking as one who has spent a lot of time trying to explain it (mainly because my wife has it). So I was delighted to encounter this video in my ongoing ferreting out of useful information about this debilitating, frequently misdiagnosed, and potentially fatal condition.

Every person needs to do as much self-education as possible when it comes to their health. For example, if you have learned through genetic testing that you have mutant alleles of the HFE gene (C282Y and H63D) then this video will help you understand what that means.

To watch the video, click the image above or use this direct link (http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1136907) which I encourage you to share. There is also a paper here on the technology of microarrays. And Wikipedia has an entry on DNA microarrays that I found quite helpful.

Capping the Net: AT&T T-Mobile deal spells bandwidth caps, captive users, and rising costs

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Cobb) — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 02:27:00 +0000

IMHO: If the AT&T purchase of T-Mobile goes through we will see a new era of rising prices for bandwidth, the expansion of bandwidth caps and captive users. I have been saying for some time that the future of the 'net is looking bleak, at least from the point of view of the average user.

The days of cheap and seemingly limitless bandwidth are coming to an end. Maybe not tomorrow, or even this year, but the writing is on the wall and it says you will have to pay a lot more for bandwidth, and you will pay by the gigabyte. No more all you can eat for X dollars per month. Try 5 gigabytes for $50 and $50 a gigabyte for overage. No rollovers, no exceptions, unless you opt for the platinum plan, a mortgage payment priced top tier of connectivity affordable only to the few.

The golden age of surfing without thinking about the bandwidth you are burning, the salad days of unlimited movie watching over the web, through your Xbox and onto your HD flat screen? It's about to end. Get ready to sit around the hearth and reminisce about the good old days of unlimited data plans and all the online gaming you could eat.

Melodramatic? Only time will tell. Set a reminder to check back here in 12 months (I use the calendar on my iPhone). But before you bet against these dire prognostications, checkout Stop the Cap, a great website that I've been watching for some years now. The have a wealth of material on many aspects of broadband pricing, service levels, and telecom lobbying:

Many companies in the broadband industry are engaged in a high-priced lobbying campaign to manufacture a “bandwidth crisis/exaflood” or “shortage,” suggesting that consumers are abusing their broadband connections at such a rate it threatens the integrity of the Internet and its distribution platform...[but]...most of the companies complaining refuse to open their records to independent verification “for competitive reasons.”

If you do visit Stop the Cap you will see where I got the inspiration for the graphics in this post. Anyone who wants to raise awareness of cap-creep and other net-farious telco activities is free to re-use or link to my images. However, use of these images by any telco without written permission is prohibited. (Okay, so it's highly unlikely anyone from AT&T or T-Mobile or Comcast or Time Warner or Verizon is going to read this, but I'm just saying, you've been warned, right.)

API Pop-Up Box Bug in Twitter Seems to be Fixed

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Cobb) — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 15:53:00 +0000

I hope I am not speaking too soon, but the Twitter bug that has been bugging me for the better part of a year seems to be fixed. Twitter is no longer asking me to log into the Twitter API (for the record I have never had anything to do with the Twitter API, apart from trying to get rid of that login box).

Since I had complained so much, I felt it was only fair to let people know of this incremental improvement in Twitter. Not that all is well at Twitter, according to this Fortune magazine cover story. But one good sign might be this quote from Jack Dorsey, cofounder and former CEO of Twitter, is now back on baord as Executive Chairman of product (development, improvement, completion, or whatever):

"We're just humans running these companies."

Some might say that quote should be on the wall of every C-level office in techno-startup-land.

Twitter's New Interface Still Has Issues (API Pop-Up Box Asks Me to Log In)

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Cobb) — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 22:12:00 +0000

So, if I was running a social media service like Twitter, one which faces stiff competition, I would place a priority on fixing bugs. After all, if there are other places where people can share what is going on in their lives without bugs, people will tend to share there instead. Which is why it makes no sense to me that Twitter has had a known bug in its new web interface for about a year now.

This bug randomly pops up a dialog box asking for User Name and Password. If that wasn't bad enough, the box seizes focus and suddenly appears over the top of another browser window, which is annoying to say the least. However, that's not quite as annoying as the statement on the Twitter site saying "We are still in the preliminary stage of identifying the causes of this problem."

Great! Six months or more of complaints and you're still in the preliminary stage of finding out what the problem is? What other company gets to treat its customers like this? As a CISSP the headline statement that "Your account is not being phished/compromised" is particularly worrying. I mean a. How do you know? b. What a great scam. Here's how a bad actor intent on stealing user names and passwords could proceed: Create a phishing box that looks like the one that Twitter claims is not a scam. People Google the problem and get assurance from Twitter that this is not a scam, and the scam cheerfully carries on.

For about 15 minutes some 15 days ago I thought the bug was fixed, but n-o-o-o it came back, and it is ugly. It makes the new interface impossible for me to use in Firefox. I'm not going to switch browsers just to use the new interface. It should work in Firefox, which has more users than Twitter. So I am still using the old version of Twitter, which is not a huge inconvenience, but now Twitter has started telling me "You’re using an older version of Twitter that won’t be around for much longer."

Great! Who would have thought this was a good business plan: Introduce a new version, discover and document bugs, fail to fix them, then make people use the new version. Just in case you think this is me being dumb or curmudgeonly, check out this page where Twitter cheerfully documents the bug as though it was of little concern, and more than 100 people describe their frustration with this ongoing problem.

I was going to supply my own comment but Twitter was over capacity last time I tried. IMHO this is not a sustainable business model, unless the point is to drive Twitter traffic to other interfaces or other social media services such as Facebook (which has never told me it is over capacity and has, despite an awkward interface, relatively few bugs).

2 Butt-Saving SaaS Keystrokes You Need to Know to Avoid Losing Your Online Work

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Cobb) — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 22:25:00 +0000

If you use a computer in your work you have probably noticed that more and more of your time at the computer is spent with a SaaS, as in Software as a Service. And I bet there have been times when that SaaS has bitten you in the @ss...in other words, it has lost the work you were doing. This blog post offers a simple technique that enables you to recover when that happens, whether at work or at home.

The classic example of a business SaaS is Salesforce.com, widely used for the important task of tracking the people with whom you do business. You don't install the Salesforce software on your computer you connect with it through a web browser. The same is true of Google Docs. This is software that lets you do word processing and create spreadsheets and presentations, but it "lives" on Google computers, not your computer.

In fact, blogs like this one are also SaaS. The software that lets me edit and present this blog post is on a Google computer and I operate that computer via a web browser. Even Facebook and Twitter can be considered examples of SaaS, particularly when it comes to trashing your work. What do I mean by that? Here's a scenario to which many can relate:

You spend time crafting a paragraph of words that are being typed into a text box in a web browser. You then click Save or Send or Submit or Update, whatever the button is called for that particular page. And nothing happens, or something happens but it's not good, the page reloads and your carefully crafted paragraph of words has disappeared. Sometimes there is an error displayed, like "Server Error" or "Authentication Failed" or the polite but infuriating: "Sorry, we cannot complete your request at this time." The point is, polite as the site might be, it has lost your work.

So how do you recover from this? I make it a habit to use two keystrokes right before I click Save. These keystrokes are: Ctrl-A and Ctrl-C in Windows; Apple-A and Apple-C on a Mac. These two keystrokes select All the contents of the text entry box and Copy them to the Clipboard, that slice of computer memory you use to copy things from one place to another. Then, if the SaaS that I am using somehow loses the contents that I just asked it to Save, I still have them, preserved in the Clipboard.

I have a second, more advanced strategy for serious work with a SaaS. If I am editing a particularly long piece of text, maybe a major blog post, I use Ctrl-A followed by Ctrl-C, as above, then I switch to an open document file that is local--for example Notepad or TextMate or even OpenOffice Writer--and press Ctrl-V. That pastes the contents of the Clipboard into a document that is independent of the web browser. If the SaaS crashes I still have my work. I could take that a step further and press Ctrl-S for Save after pasting into the document. That enables the work to survive a computer crash, should the SaaS behave really badly.

The whole process can be carried out very quickly, particularly if you are comfortable with the Tab commands for switching applications. So on a Windows machine where you have Firefox and OpenOffice Writer running it would go like this:

Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C while editing the SaaS text box in Firefox
Alt-Tab to switch to OpenOffice
Ctrl-V and Ctrl-S to paste the text and save it.
Alt-Tab to return to the SaaS in Firefox
Execute Save/Submit command in the SaaS

If you are using a Mac the sequence is the same but the keys are even easier:

Apple-A, Apple-C while editing the SaaS text box in Firefox
Apple-Tab to switch to OpenOffice
Apple-V and Apple-S to paste the text and save it.
Apple-Tab to return to the SaaS in Firefox
Execute Save/Submit command in the SaaS

Having lost more typing than I care to remember due to browser-based applications failing to save as instructed, these preventative keystrokes are second nature to me. When the work is a series of paragraphs I may save to the clipboard as I go. BTW, as an added bonus, saving to a local document file is a handy way to keep a record of your work (for example, I write a lot of comments on blog posts and some blogs just seem to lose them or fail to approve them, casting my well-chosen words into the ether, but I have a record of them in my local files).

The risks to your SaaS are not all equal. Some applications that involve extensive text entry perform periodic auto-saving (in the case of Google Docs I find the auto-save is actually too frequent). And a lot of work in programs like Salesforce consists of small pieces of data entered in a series of fields or indicated by radio buttons or checkboxes. These tend to be saved more reliably. It is in places like a "Comments" or "Notes" section that you can spend a lot of time getting your words right only to find you have to write them all over again (unless you used the preventative keystrokes described above).

AT&T Apple iPhone 4 Launch More Proof Big Companies Mess Up Big

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Cobb) — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 01:49:00 +0000

Tried to pre-order an Apple iPhone 4 lately? I just went to the AT&T web site which proudly proclaims "iPhone 4 This changes everything. Again." Apparently it does not change the tradition of Apple messing up product launches and AT&T failing to deliver on its promises. There's a big button that says "Pre-order Now" but when you click it, you find you can't (the message is "Pre-orders for iPhone temporarily suspended").

Facebook Tool Might Help With Privacy Settings and Awareness

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Cobb) — Tue, 04 May 2010 01:03:00 +0000

Using Facebook means sharing personal information with at least some people, but Facebook sometimes makes changes to the way sharing works. Knowing exactly what you share and with whom can be hard to figure out. And at least some of your information is visible to everyone, even people who don't use Facebook, thanks to something called the Graph API. Confused? Fortunately, someone created a web tool that shows you what the Graph API reveals. Here's a sample of my Facebook information, as revealed by this tool:

How revealing is this? In one sense it is no revelation at all. It's no secret that I like Stagecoach Coffee. I've blogged about their great French Toast more than once. But in this screen shot I cropped the full report which shows I like a lot more than just these three things. Frankly, I was not aware that people who are not "on" Facebook could see this information and I am probably not the only person sharing this false assumption.

There are some potentially serious implications. What if you "like" something that is not liked by your boss or perhaps a prospective employer? Maybe you like the idea of legalizing marijuana. Some people could read that the wrong way. "Like" is the new Facebook term for "Fan" and maybe, perhaps a few years ago, you "fanned" some crazy stuff. Do you even remember all the things you fanned? (I had totally forgotten some of my likes).

So, my hat is off to Ka-Ping Yee, the Google.org software engineer and UC Berkeley graduate who created this little application that could have some big implications. (In that sense, he's a good example of a "white hat hacker," a gifted technologist who has shown us some of the pitfalls of a particular technology.) For example, thanks to Graph API you can check out people on Facebook without being logged into Facebook. You can just plug in their Facebook ID and look around. You can even enter random names and ID numbers. Some information is protected by privacy settings, some is not. And the reports that Ka-Ping Yee's web page displays contain live links (e.g. the report above shows a live link to the Stagecoach Coffee page) so you can just click your way from one piece of data to the next.

All of which is a little worrying when you factor in something I have blogged elsewhere, namely Facebook's founder Marc Zuckergerg's alleged indifference towards privacy. The various privacy missteps that Facebook has taken since its inception, and the difficulty many users have trying to keep up with changes to the way Facebook handles privacy settings, tend to add credence to the claim that Mr. Zuckerberg does not care about privacy. Consider what happens when you want to change your privacy settings.

Facebook makes you go through a two-step process if you want the most private of settings. When you want something to be visible to Everyone or Friends of Friends all you need is to select from a pull down list. But making something visible only to yourself is not visible as an option. You have to go through an extra step and choose Customize to see that choice.

That suggests the interface designers are not keen for you to get restrictive with your privacy. Of course, it could be a simple design flaw, but Facebook users are likely to be sensitive to such things these days, particularly when they learn that none of the settings can hide your "likes" from the Graph API and the outside world.

(If I have this wrong, please leave me a comment and let me know. I changed the privacy setting for "Things I Like" to "Only me" but they are still visible to the Graph API, as seen here: http://zesty.ca/facebook/#/stcobb/likes.)

Mac Mini RAM Upgrade Tips

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Cobb) — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 22:49:00 +0000

I just upgraded the RAM on my Mac Mini and it has made a big difference to performance so I figured I would share some tips on this type of upgrade. (So many people share helpful information on the Web I've been feeling guilty that I have not done more sharing myself, so hopefully this will help make amends.)

Ironically enough, my first tip is to watch someone else's video of how to do a Mac Mini RAM and hard drive upgrade (it may make sense to do both upgrades at once--you have to take the thing apart in both cases, pun intended--but you don't have to do both, the video is helpful either way). This is the best video I saw during a fairly extensive review of what is out there. You can find it here on Vimeo.

I suggest you watch the video and, if you still feel like going forward with an upgrade, consider the tips I have written up here before you start (unfortunately, hardware can be more difficult to work with than it appears in such videos).

My second tip comes after you separate the outer case from the innards: Get a magnetic to use with your screwdriver. I use a magnetic hook. You attach the magnet to the metal shaft of the screwdriver so it will pull the screw out of the hole when I lift the screwdriver (helps to keep screws getting lost inside the case or on the floor). (These magnetic hooks are Neodymium and coated with soft plastic so they don't scratch. They have a holding power of about 9 pounds and I use them for hanging up key rings. You can order them here.)

Third tip is to mark the corner that requires a screw that is longer than the other three. I marked this on the optical drive cover with a thin Sharpie.

My fourth tip concerns removal of the 2-wire power connector as shown in the video. Do this very carefully, prying the black connector out of the socket. do NOT pull on the wires as they may be brittle (I ended up breaking one and fixing it was a pain). I think the key to getting this one right is using good lighting and possibly a magnifying glass.

Next up is the pulling the drive unit out of the innards, so to speak. You need to do this with care because there is a ribbon cable that wires the drive unit to the innards and it must not be strained or disconnected.

Complicating matters is an edge connector that must be pulled out, which means you do need some force to get the two parts apart. Then you will need to support the drive unit while you perform your RAM upgrade. The video glosses over this but the solution is very simple, just place the outer case under the drive unit.

Here you can see the drive unit on the case with the innards exposed ready to proceed. But first, I suggest you carefully place the whole thing on a tray of some kind and take it some place you can blow off the dust with an air can (or suck off the dust if you have a computer vacuum).

What looks like mold growing on the unit in the picture is dust. The fan unit is likely to be full of dust as well. Blow this out carefully, in a well-ventilated area. No point opening the case without performing this bit of preventive maintenance (Mac Minis are known for being super quiet but mine had started to make some noise--this cleanup returned it to quiet mode).

The video has good instructions on changing the RAM. My machine had two 512 megabyte memory cards and I simply replaced the top one with a 2 gigabyte card. This gives me 2.5 gigabytes total and seems to make the Mac Mini work a lot better (programs load faster than I'm not getting so many delays when running multiple programs at once).

Final tips concern re-assembly. Be careful that you thread the BlueTooth antenna cable the right way or it could get pinched. Also make sure that the wires crossing the ribbon cable do so neatly, within the fold of the cable. Finally, as recommended in the video, test things before you put the outer case back on. This has been a habit of mine from my earliest days making PCs out of cloned motherboards. The cover doesn't go on until everything checks out, otherwise you jinx things!

Well, that about does it. One final tip is to make sure you have access to the video while doing this. I downloaded it to my Windows laptop so I could watch it while the Mac was in pieces. Good luck with your upgrade!

Technology for Haiti's Recovery: OLPC reaches out to G1G1 supporters

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Cobb) — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 23:11:00 +0000

If you've been reading this blog for years (and some people have, seriously) then you may recall how excited I was when the One Laptop Per Child program starting shipping its cool XO machines to developing countries. Back at the end of 2007 my wife and I participated in the Give One, Get One program which resulted in tens of thousands of XO laptops being donated to places like Rwanda, Ethiopia, Mongolia, and Cambodia.

Referred to as G1G1, program participants paid for the purchase of two XO machines, one of which was donated, the other sent to us for exploration, edification, etc.

Well, after the earthquake in Haiti, OLPC put out a call to all G1G1 supporters to ask for any unused XO machines to be donated to Haiti. Below is the email sent by Nicholas Negroponte, the OLPC movement's founder and driving force. Obviously Mr. Negroponte knows geeks pretty well. We were excited to get our laptop. We checked out the software and began to experiment with it, but then real life got in the way and "Do stuff with the XO" moved down the things-to-do list. I suspect many G1G1 supporters can relate to that. So, we are sending our XO to Haiti, per the instructions in the email, happy to think that in some small way this will help with the rebuilding of the country and the shaping of its future.

I am blogging this and including the email because I know something about geeks as well. Some of use go through email addresses like...hmmm...words fail me here...but my point is, you might not be getting email from the address you supplied when you participated in G1G1 program. And you might have missed this:

Dear G1G1er,

At the end of 2007 you participated in the Give One Get One program of One Laptop per Child (OLPC). Thanks to you and others like you, 75,000 laptops went to Rwanda, Ethiopia, Mongolia, Cambodia, Oceania, the West Bank, and Haiti.

An additional 75,000 laptops came into the USA as part of the "get" side of the equation. In some cases those laptops have since been put into closets for one reason or another.

We are gathering additional used XO laptops to send to Haiti. If you or the child to whom you gave the laptop is no longer using it, we appeal again to your generosity and ask you to send it to the address below (even if it is broken).

OLPC FOR HAITI c/o Exel

615 Westport Parkway #500

Grapevine, TX 76051

75% of the schools in Port-au-Prince have been destroyed in the recent earthquake, but by good fortune, none of our Haitian team was hurt. They have spare parts and OLPC technical staff and teachers, and stand prepared to deploy these XOs.

Because of the XO's unique features (sunlight readability, solar powered, water resistant, drop proof), it is also an ideal tool for relief work. If your XO is in use, please ignore this email. We only want your broken or unused XOs.

Sincerely,

Nicholas Negroponte

Neat Facebook Fan Hack

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Cobb) — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 15:38:00 +0000

Not really a hack, more a clever strategy, the point of which is to hide certain information on Facebook until a person "fans" your page.

From the John Haydon blog. Will be trying this out soon on Facebook pages I run for Dare Not Walk Alone and Fighting Hemochromatosis.

Happy New Year!

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Cobb) — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 05:09:00 +0000

Wishing everyone a great 2010. May none of your technology fail after the warranty period ends.

The Cost of Windows 7

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Cobb) — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 22:03:00 +0000

I just wanted to highlight a good blog post I read today in Information Week about the way Microsoft prices Windows upgrades.

Under the clever headline "Microsoft's Non-Family Values" blogger Dave Methvin lays out the logic behind charging $120 to upgrade a single Windows XP or Windows Vista machine to Windows 7. After all, Apple only charges about $25 for an OS upgrade (and offers attractive "family" pricing for multiple licenses). Not surprisingly the answer to "Why does Microsoft charge so much?" boils down to "Because it wants to and it can." The reason Microsoft wants to is the alliance--some would say "unholy alliance"--between hardware makers and Microsoft.

Basically, if it costs $120 and a bunch of hassles to get your old notebook running Windows 7, and a new notebook can be had for $400 with Windows 7 installed, there's a good chance you will opt to buy the new notebook, which helps the hardware makers--keeps the production lines moving and the cash flow coming--and helps Microsoft justify the huge fees it charges the many different computer makers who need the rights to install Windows 7. Of course, that $400 notebook is usually an under-powered teaser model and the PC makers hope you will go for the $1,000 models once they get you in a buying mood.

A good example is my own Sony VAIO that I bought new with XP installed about 4 years ago. No way is Sony going to support Windows 7 on that machine. Sony wants me to buy a new machine. Period. (And if the refusal to support Windows 7 is not incentive enough, Sony apparently has a backup plan that consists of making the fan get so loud and annoying I am forced to retire the thing or lose my sanity.)

Unfortunately, unholy alliances being what they are, Microsoft can't offer a $20 per PC upgrade deal even if it wanted to. The hardware makers would scream foul. They would lose out on sales of new hardware AND face demands for drivers and support and all the related hassles that hardware makers hate to deal with (mainly because they are expensive).

How ironic that I have a reliable 4 year-old computer that delivers entirely adequate performance under Windows XP or 7 yet is a dissappointment to the company that made it. Reminds me of the car industry.

Beware the Impression of Speed in Windows 7

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Cobb) — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 01:21:00 +0000

I am still exploring Microsoft Windows 7 on the Sony VAIO notebook I bought a few years ago and, like many people checking out Windows 7, I am still getting an impression of improved speed. But this could be dangerous. I suspect the need for speed is driving a lot of Vista and XP users towards Windows 7 but the question you need to ask is this: How long will it last?

Any experienced Windows user knows that fresh installs of past versions of Windows were pretty nippy compared to two-year old install. Sadly, a machine that has been running the same Windows 2000, XP or Vista install for two years is likely to be slowed down by a hugely bloated registry and all kinds of DLLs and taskbar apps and startup items and such, even if you've been using a registry cleaner and optimizer.

A new Windows machine is bound to seem faster, as is a new install. This is particularly tricky for XP users because you can't upgrade XP to 7, you have to do a fresh install of Windows 7. And when you do that you wipe the slate clean, so to speak, and things sure do seem faster. The big question is: How long will that last?

I'd be interested to hear from anyone who has answers to that. Is there anything in the design of Windows 7 that would lead us to hope it remains fast? Just click on COMMENTS below to share your thoughts.

Web Site Building Bits and Tips

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Cobb) — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 21:05:00 +0000

Just a quick post to share some links you might find helpful if you are building a new web site. I've been helping several folks with their web site aspirations lately and came across these, in no particularly order:

First, how about a menu? It is pretty easy to create a nice top level menu using css and an unordered css. The tricky bit is a drop-down menu. That link will take you to a very simple but effective design which requires very little code.

If you are familiar with jquery you can use it to create a menu like the one on the left. The html/css/js code for doing this is available from this page, linked here. But what if you want to sketch out a complete web page design with menus and page elements?

For this there is a tool called Mocking Bird that you might want to check out (works best on a very broadband connection). Another new tool that might be worth looking into is: www.wix.com. It's a web site that let's you build a web site that uses Flash (like Mocking Bird, Wix is an example of an application delivered as a service, in other words, Software as a Service or SaaS, just like Salesforce or the marketing product that I've been working on: Monetate).

With these two web design apps you can create pages or edit templates using a web-based interface. As with many SaaS offerings the feature set is continually evolving so I suggest you check them out rather than rely on my giving you a snapshot of their capabilities.

When you are designing web pages, the grid approach can be very helpful. Here is an article on grid-based design that I found useful, full of links to related content (I am finding Smashing Magazine a good resource in general, for everything from WordPress themes and buttons, to coding tips).

The ability to draw a design on a grid and then have an application generate the required CSS is a huge boon to web site developers. Here's an article that has links to 15 ways of accomplishing this. (What a difference these would have made when I first started messing with CSS layouts.) Another solution, not on the list of 15, is 960 Grid System. As the name implies, 960GS simplifies designing around a width of 960 pixels, which is a common choice these days for page width.

Finally, for this post, I want to mention XAMPP, software that let's you test a lot of stuff on your Windows laptop or desktop before putting it on a Linux/UNIX web site. With XAMPP you get the ability to run Apache, MySQL, PHP and Perl (the AMPP). Of course, this then gives you the ability to install WordPress on your Windows box which is very handy when developing sites in WordPress. Fro Mac OS X users there is similar functionality in MAMP.

Happy page building!