Logic Bound

Flash Cookies Gaining Steam

2009-09-20T10:26:00.002-06:00

In my original post about LSO, I tried to give a brief update on what they were and how to block them. Since that time, their use has become more invasive, and Adobe's tool reached the point where it just doesn't work for day to day use.

I got very frustrated with the Settings Manager that Adobe provides. The key reasons are:

It doesn't integrate with my browser (Firefox)
It doesn't always save my preferences
I have to go back to it and manage each site's data regularly

A couple of days ago, I just got fed up and went looking. At the time of my last post, there wasn't much out there to help manage this problem. Today, there is, so I wanted to share what I found.

First of all, if you want some general education on LSO and what they are for, please see this website.

Next, if you want to be proactive about keeping this data off of you computer, you need to be using Firefox along with the BetterPrivacy extension. If you aren't using Firefox yet, you should be. Not because it's faster, not because it's open source, or any of that jazz. Use it because it is flexible and extensible by the open source community. Without that capability, the ability to remove LSO data would probably not be possible at this time.

Home Media, Part 2 (Storage. No, firewall.)

2009-04-09T21:46:00.001-06:00

For starters, I need more storage. My main office computer is a Mac Mini hooked up to a 20" flat screen. It's got an 80g drive which filled up last year sometime. At that point, I went with an external USB enclosure with a 500g drive. It was fairly cheap (thanks Newegg!) and allowed me to move my iTunes library off to another drive, which freed up my primary volume considerably.

At 500g, I had way more space then I needed. I decided to partition the drive in half and give Time Machine a try. It was incredibly simple and easy to setup. Just the way I like it! On top of that, I felt moderately better that I was backing up important documents, photos, and home video.

Anyway, back to the point. I need more storage. I would like to start moving my DVD collection online so that I can stream it downstairs to the PS3. I'm pretty lazy and this would save me some trips up the stairs. Furthermore, I get kind of tired of swapping disks in the PS3 from playing games to watching DVDs.

So, because I'm not only lazy, but also cheap, I started looking around at the spare equipment that I had stored up in the office. I just figured I'd repurpose some existing equipment and fire up Linux and Samba and be done with it. There are probably enough parts lying around to build about 3 pc's, but it's all pretty old stuff. I have 2 working pc's, one of which is a Windows gaming machine that powers down randomly. The other is my firewall which runs Debian at the moment.

The firewall it is. But, before I repurpose that box, I need a different firewall. (I know this is a long ways from storage, but bear with me) I decided to upgrade my wireless access point to be wireless access point/firewall. The excellent DD-WRT package made this very easy in addition to adding some nice QoS functionality that I wasn't using before. I won't go into all the details of how to do it, because I believe that it is documented well elsewhere. Definitely drop a comment if you have some questions about it. I can go into details of my setup in a future post.

Before I closed out the firewall project, I ran over to Shields Up to verify the firewall settings were sufficiently hiding me from portscans. Yep, all good! Everything comes back "stealth". Now... where was I?

Home Media, Part 1

2009-04-02T21:31:00.003-06:00

I've been watching the home media craze from a distance. My friends are buying media servers and media extenders and networked TiVos and on and on. But, I just haven't jumped into it. I have been quite satisfied with my DirecTivo with a modded hard-drive for extra capacity. It's not HD. It's not networked. It is years old and it just keeps working. I have all the movie channels and I do the occasional RedBox. Life is simple.

Unfortunately, that doesn't last forever. Now, I'm itching to do something different. I have some growing storage needs on my home network. I've got a PS3 that I use to play me some Call of Duty with my 10 year old friend and some guy named A_Trillion_Ninjas. I've got a growing sensitivity to risk and how my data backup strategy is working out.

I've just got this growing laundry list of fun little projects that take about 5 times as long as they should. The more I thought about it, the more they all became related.

I thought I would share my adventures here. Maybe you can relate. Maybe you think I'm an idiot. It's all good...

More Email Redirection

2008-04-06T14:35:00.003-06:00

I've written before about some of my email behaviors. I thought I would share some more with how I manage personal email and how I got bitten by it this month.

I have used a personal domain name for quite a few years now. These are sometimes called "private label" or "vanity" domains. There are a number of reasons why I do this. It used to be because I ran my own mail server, but any more it's probably just a matter of branding and the ability to choose any email address I want.

When Gmail became available (my oldest message is dated October 2004), I signed up for an account to see what it was all about. I liked it so much that I wanted it to become my primary email application. I quickly moved my personal email over to my new Gmail account and configured my personal address to forward to my Gmail address. This allowed me to respond to mail regardless of which address it was delivered to. The ability to set a custom From: address meant that I could still have messages that I sent from my Gmail account be marked with my personal domain address which provided some consistency for those who pay attention to where messages come from.

I operated in this fashion for a few years. I ultimately got bored with configuring my own SMTP server and started using a webhost to do this for me. I went through a couple of services before I found one that I liked for the amount I was willing to pay. Recently, Google started up another service called Google Apps. This is a free service that will host your personal mail and web space among a few other things. They don't have as many features as some other places, but the price is right.

I switched my personal domain over to be hosted by Google Apps about a year ago now. The experience has been pretty good, although not perfect. Now that my personal domain email actually lived on Google's servers, the dilemma that I faced was whether or not to maintain my @gmail.com address and continue to use the Gmail application.

As for my main inbox, I prefer the Gmail application over the Google Apps mail application for my personal domain. The main reason is that the public Gmail application seems to get new features long before they release them to Google Apps. A secondary reason is because many of my friends already have my Google Talk login (@gmail.com) and I don't want to go through the hassle of getting them all to change. :)

Once that decision was made, I configured my personal address, once again, to simply forward all mail to my @gmail.com address. This works well except for the way that Google has chosen to implement a forwarding mail alias. I say alias, because on other webhosts (and, indeed, in Sendmail itself) it is quite easy to create an alias that merely forwards everything to a real mailbox. Google's Apps offering does not offer that functionality. You have to create a real mailbox for every address that you want. Then, if you want it to forward mail, you must login to the mailbox and configure it to forward mail to another address. This means maintaining another username/password as well. I don't really like this approach, but, let's face it, it isn't painful enough to make me switch to another webhost.

Now that you have a background (hopefully, you aren't just plain confused) of how my personal email ultimately flows to my inbox, I will share with you how this approach has let me down over the past few weeks. It all comes down to spam; where should it be filtered?

Google does a wonderful job fighting spam. I rarely see spam in my inbox anymore. It is just something that hasn't been an issue for quite a long time. One of the very common methods that mail providers use to ensure that they don't incorrectly mark a message as spam is to check to see if it is from a person in your address book or contacts list. They assume (correctly) that if a person you know is sending you a message, it probably isn't spam. Well, for me, that breaks down.

Recall a couple paragraphs ago, that I have an actual mailbox for my personal domain address. All this mailbox does is forward to my @gmail.com address. However, since it is a mailbox and not just a forwarding alias, Gmail checks all messages coming to that address for spam. This approach is fine, I suppose. Although, it would be perfectly acceptable if they just forwarded the spam messages and let my @gmail.com address handle it. Since I never login directly to that address, I obviously don't manage my contacts there. Therein lies the problem. I realized yesterday that a few of my messages from dear friends of mine have been getting flagged as spam because I don't have any contacts listed in that mailbox. These messages hit the spam folder and never get forwarded to the @gmail.com address that I monitor.

This has been happening only for the last few weeks, which leads me to believe they have done something to get more aggressive lately, or (sinking feeling) I just don't have anything in the spam folder older then the last few weeks and this problem has been happening all along.

My short term fix for this is to export my contacts from my @gmail.com account and import them into my personal domain account. I don't like this approach because it is a high maintenance solution, but it will have to do until I get some time to research this further.

Feel free to comment if you are using an interesting approach to email and let me know what you do and don't like about it.

iPod Touch vs. Zune

2008-03-23T13:20:00.000-06:00

In one of my earlier posts, a friend of mine commented that I would probably regret my purchase of the iPod Touch and should pick up a Zune. He knows how to get to me. Normally, I just write off his Microsoft-loving comments as gibberish. But before I did that, I figured I should actually go out and see what the differences are. Honestly, I had no idea what the Zune could or could not do. I've just never really cared about the Zune.

A Google search later, I am looking at a comparison of features between the iPod Touch and the Zune. Most of the features are really pretty much the same. Screen size, weight, battery life... (yawn). There is a couple of areas that stood out though. Turns out they each have something the other does not: The Zune has a FM tuner. The iPod Touch has the Internet.

Which one would you choose?

Wake Up

2008-03-14T18:09:00.000-06:00

I access my home computers from over the Internet all the time. Because of this, I typically leave them on 24x7 so that I can always log into them. Yeah, this uses some power, but the convenience of it has always been more important to me. I knew about wakeonlan capability, but just never took the time to figure it out.

After I read this write-up, I decided to bite the bullet and give it a try. Turns out to be way easier then I thought. You should give it a try!

I ended up using a different utility then the ones suggested in the article though. Since I tend to log in via ssh, I needed a utility that will work via command line. This one works nicely on my Mac (cuz OS X just comes with PERL out of the box). I also grabbed it on my Debian system with "apt-get install wakeonlan".

One thing to note, it will be easier to use this if you happen to recall the ethernet address of all your home machines. I could tell you that I have all mine memorized, but I would be lying. Instead, I just created a quick notebook on Google and stored them all there.

My machines now have power management settings enabled. They will enjoy a well deserved rest tonight. Give it a try and let me know how it goes...

The Magic Touch

2008-03-01T16:44:00.005-07:00

I got an iPod Touch the other day. Yes, they've been out for a while now, big deal. Some of my friends will tell you that I am afraid of new technology. They are liars.

At any rate, I got a used one from my cousin who recently upgraded to an iPhone. If not for that, I probably still wouldn't have one. I played around with it for about 4 hours last night and I'm just blown away by the possibilities in this little device.

However, I don't necessarily like it for the same reasons that Apple has intended. Sure, the screen is beautiful, and the form factor is nice. Problem is, I have a perfectly good iPod that plays music and video just fine. And no, I really don't need to watch it sideways. That isn't the reason that I like the Touch. The reason I like the Touch is twofold; the wi-fi capability, and the full web browser.

I carry a laptop for a living. It is a heavy beast and I have a bag full of accessories to go along with it. It certainly has its place, but I find that I won't take it into a coffee shop or some other place with wi-fi access because it is just to painful to lug it around, boot it up, and log in just to check my email or catch up on some RSS feeds. Sometimes, I feel like these guys.

Enter the Touch. It fits nicely in my laptop bag or in my pocket. It is flash based, boots immediately, and has a fully capable web browser. Take that, add in the excellent applications provided by Google, and I have a very powerful device that can replace my laptop in a lot of scenarios. Gmail and Greader are apps that I use daily. Both are quite usable on this handy little device. Next I will have to try creating one of these posts with it!

Do you have an iPod Touch or iPhone yet?

The RSS Web We Weave

2008-02-05T22:10:00.000-07:00

I ran across this just now. I'm not sure that it is something that I would use as I tend to just use my brain to filter out crap I don't want to read (hence, I don't click on it). However, I have mentioned here before that I'm a fan of AideRSS. As I thought about it some more, I guess you could called AideRSS a kind of filter. By using AideRSS, I depend on "the community" to filter out some crap for me.

What made me write this post however, was thinking about how many levels of indirection an RSS feed might pass through by the time I read it. Using my own feed as an example, I write it on Blogger, then I "burn" it with FeedBurner. There's one. Then, someone might use AideRSS to get out my "best" posts. There's two. Next, they might run it through FeedRinse to cleanse out the content they find objectionable. There's three. Now, that it's clean, they might do God knows what with it after running it through Yahoo Pipes. There's four. And that is before they even see it in their aggregator, which may have another set of tags, virtual folders, or searches. Wow....

The Windows guys won't get this, but those whole idea just parallels so well with the philosophy of the *nix operating system.

Write programs that do one thing and do it well.
Write programs to work together.
Write programs to handle text streams, because that is a universal interface.

Mobile phone usage analysis

2007-12-29T14:05:00.000-07:00

I mentioned earlier that I am using the Tmobile "myFaves" plan. This plan allows me unlimited calling to five numbers and 300 minutes to all other numbers. Now, there are two, maybe three, people that I talk to regularly so they instantly went into my "faves". For the remaining slots available, I want to make sure that I am getting the numbers in there that I talk to frequently. Since I'm allowed to make changes once per month, I have been going through a quick spreadsheet analysis to determine which numbers I am using the most and ensure they are in my "faves".

To do this analysis, I first downloaded my call records from Tmobile's website. They offer the ability to download in a CSV format making it easy to import into your favorite spreadsheet.

I, then, created a pivot table on my call data. (If your favorite spreadsheet cannot do pivot tables, then get the free OpenOffice application.) To create the pivot table, I simply highlight the data, drag the "minutes" column into the main data space, drag the "numbers" column into the left-hand row space, and click "done".

Once the pivot table has aggregated all my minutes by number, I then highlighted that dataset, sort descending by minutes, and I now have a nice list of my most frequently used numbers!

Using the top five of these numbers, I go back to Tmobile's website (which has timed out my login. Nice.) and "manage" my "faves". This has been a very useful activity taking about 10 minutes once per month. This activity really saved me last month when a friend that is on my list of five changed their phone number. I updated it in my phone's contact list, but did not remember to update my "faves" until just now when I looked at the data. It would be nice if Tmobile would aggregate the data in this way, but I suspect it is not in their interest for me to have a finely tuned "fave" list.

Local Shared Objects (aka: Flash cookies)

2007-12-16T12:11:00.001-07:00

Just when you thought you were protecting your privacy by preventing cookies being stored on your computer, The Man has found another way to do the same thing.

The Man's new trick is called "Local Shared Objects" (LSO). LSO describes the capability of Adobe's Flash software to store information on your computer without you knowing about it. Furthermore, other websites can access this information to understand more about you and places that you have visited before.

Adobe provides a tool to give you control over how LSOs are stored on your computer. I highly suggest that you check this out and alter the default settings for your computer. To use the tool, log onto the Settings Manager, and jump over to the "Website Privacy Settings Panel".

You will likely see a long list of "Visited Websites". As soon as I saw this, I immediately hit the "Delete all sites" button and then thought about taking a picture. Oh well...

Browse through each of the tabs along the top. If you are like me, you will be appalled at some of the default settings. (Why yes, actually, I would like third parties to access my webcam!) For example, the default setting on the "Storage Settings" tab allows every website to store up to 100KB of data on your computer! Move that slider to zero, pronto.

Next, head on over to the "Global Storage Settings Panel" and un-check the option to "Allow third party Flash content to store data on your computer". This is supposed to prevent any future storage of LSOs on your computer. I will be watching mine closely to see how it works.

I supposed we should be grateful that The Man (Adobe, in this case) provides the Settings Manager in the first place. I just wish the defaults for this kind of stuff were in favor of my privacy instead of the other way around.

Oh, and don't forget to load up the Settings Manager on every computer you use. Yes, it is too much to ask to only do it once.

Take back your email address

2007-11-25T12:31:00.000-07:00

How many times a week do you get prompted for an email address while you are surfing the ol' web? Once? Three times? Multiple times a day? It probably depends on what kind of surfing you do, but it seems that every site wants your address these days. They assure you that they won't sell it or rent it to anyone else, and I'll actually giving them the benefit of the doubt that they honor this promise.

Yet, when you hand it over in order to get some free download or other wares, the marketing campaigns begin. I'm not necessarily talking about spam, although that is certainly something to be concerned about. No, I'm referring to the continuing stream of "special deals", coupons, and other crap that companies want to send you.

Here's another scenario that gets to me regularly. I need to purchase a hard to find item. The big stores that I usually do business with don't have it, so I have to Google for a niche website that carries it. While I'm glad to have found the item in question, I now have to give my address. Now, I do want to get things like shipping notices and order confirmations, but I don't want all the stuff that comes after I've received my order.

So, there's the problem. Now, for the solution. To key to preventing someone keeping your address longer then you want them to is to use a disposable address! If the address they have no longer goes to my primary inbox, then I have no problem at all with them keeping it on file for as long as they want. :)

The great folks over at spamgourmet have provided a service that does this. To use this service, you need to create a login and give them your primary email address. (I know, I know... don't worry, this is the last time you need to surrender your "real" address) Once you have a login name, you are ready to go. Next time you are asked to provide an address, you just follow a pattern. The pattern looks like this:

label.number.login@spamgourmet.com

In the pattern above, you would replace the text "label" with a unique string that is meaningful to you. I usually use the name of the company or website that I am filling out. (This gives me the added advantage of knowing if they did sell their email list to another firm.) Next, you replace the text "number" with a number, either numeric or fully spelled out. Finally, you replace the text "login" with the login name that you created when you originally signed up and keep everything else the same. Here is how it might look:

bestbuy.6.michaelscott@spamgourmet.com

The number in the middle is really the interesting part of all this. Basically, the way that this works is that Best Buy (in my example) will send email to the spamgourmet address. Spamgourmet will then forward the email to my real address if I have received less then 6 messages to the spamgourmet address. Once, I have received 6 messages, then spamgourmet will no longer forward them. They call this "eating" my spam. Next time I actually want to buy something from Best Buy, I login to spamgourmet, search for my bestbuy disposable address, and tell them I want to receive 6 more messages. Easy!

To show how much of an impact this has made for me, I'll publish my stats. These are provided by spamgourmet. "Your message stats: 1,428 forwarded, 18,458 eaten. You have 149 disposable address(es)." This gives me a ratio of almost 13 messages "eaten" for every 1 that I've actually received. Wow...

Oh, and did I mention that spamgourmet is free?

Upgrade your Wireless Router

2007-10-27T17:56:00.000-06:00

Today, I upgraded my wireless router. Not because it was broken, but just because it was there, you know?

When Linksys was its own company, it did a very cool thing. It based some of its devices on the Linux operating system, which made it very easy for enterprising young folks to do the same. Fast forward a few years and now you can take a third party operating system and place it on your Linksys wireless router.

I've been reading about the excellent DD-WRT package for some time now. This afternoon, I found the time to give it a try. (Actually, I was just running out of excuses to do yardwork, and this fit the bill nicely.) In less then an hour, I had downloaded the software, flashed the router, and re-configured it to use my existing SSID and network information. While, it doesn't compete with Apple's 300, it does have quite a few interesting features. It brings a lot of new ideas to the home broadband router area. It can update your DDNS information, host your PPTP VPN session, provide a full SSH management login, and keep its time current with any NTP server. My favorite feature is probably the ability to increase the power of the radio so my devices downstairs can get a better connection.

Anyway, let's just say that I'm impressed. I've even considered using it to replace my custom-built Debian firewall that currently guards my home network. If you want to give it a try, it supports much more then just Linksys, so visit this page to see if your device is supported. If yours isn't and you are ready for an upgrade, you can pick up the very nice Linksys WRT54G for around $50.

Connect to your home network (SSH)

2007-10-20T12:15:00.000-06:00

In my last post, I discussed how I keep track of my home IP address so that I could connect from "outside", whether I'm at my parent's house, traveling, or in a coffee shop.

Now, if you are going to connect from the typical open wireless access that you will find at a coffee shop, then you should be thinking about the security of the information you pass to your home network. It is incredibly easy to eavesdrop on your web session on an open wireless network. There are, as always, multiple ways to connect home securely. I will show you a couple of different ways to do it.

From here on out, this post will reference a Mac system that is connected directly to the Internet without any sort of firewall in the middle. Next week, I'll do a similar post for those of you gutsy enough to connect your Windows system directly to your external connection.

On my home system, I have configured the SSH server to allow traffic from my internet connection. I can then connect to that from a Windows, Mac, or *nix system. When making the SSH connection, I choose the options to allow tunneling. This allows me to then connect to my home system while "tunneling" through the secure SSH connection.

From the Mac system that you are currently sitting at, the command you would use to do this is (all one line):

ssh -L 5931:localhost:5900 username_on_home_system@my_home_system.dyndns.org

By running this command, you are attempting to login to your system at home using an account named "username_on_home_system". Once you authenticate successfully, you instruct SSH to connect port 5931 on the system sitting in front of you to port 5900 on your home system.

Once you have successfully made this connection, then you can use a remote desktop application like RDP (for Windows) or VNC (for Windows, Mac, and lots of other systems). I use VNC on my home system, so that is why I chose the port number 5900 when connecting SSH. To connect to my home system, I use a VNC client like Chicken of the VNC and configure it to connect to the local systems sitting in front of me.

It may seem odd to be trying to connect VNC to the system that you are currently sitting at, but keep in mind that the SSH program is going to forward anything you send to your local port 5931 to the port 5900 on your system at home. If you've done everything correctly, you should be looking at your home desktop, and it will be completely encrypted while doing so! Now, you can launch programs on your home system just as if you were sitting there.

I hope you find this helpful. It can be complicated, but your privacy and security are well worth taking the time to figure it out. If you have questions, leave a comment for me and I'll do my best to help you out.

Connect to your home network (Dynamic DNS)

2007-10-14T12:10:00.000-06:00

Ever been at work or at a friend's house and wanted to log into your home connection? Know the IP address off the top of your head? Well, if you're like me, then you probably don't remember it. Even if you write down your current address, it will likely change on you by the time you need it.

To make this easier, your ISP will assign you a dedicated IP address. This will allow you to always have the same address and make it easier to connect to your home network. Problem is, they will want to charge you a monthly fee for the privilege.

Fortunately, there is a free service available to make it possible to get by without a dedicated address. The concept is called Dynamic DNS and the website that I use that offers this service is called DynDNS.

Basically, the way that this works is that a central party keeps track of your computer's IP address. By downloading a special client to your computer, you can configure it to send an update to DynDNS whenever its address changes. This allows you to use DNS to easily recall the exact address that your home computer is using at any time. DynDNS is easy to setup with the hardest part being choosing which of the 80 domain names that you want to use.

This should allow you to find your home network on the Internet. Next, I'll cover how I securely connect and encrypt all communications to my home network.

Part 2, SSH

Run a Windows application on your Mac

2007-10-07T10:20:00.000-06:00

I decided to try out a product called Parallels the other day. I did this because I love my Macs, but I also love Quicken for Windows. I had heard about Parallels from a number of places, but figured now was the time to give it a try.

After installing it and installing Windows XP as a guest VM, I got to really see what was so special about this product.

The feature of Parallels that I really liked is called Coherence. With the Coherence feature enabled, it becomes very seamless when running a Windows application on your host OSX operating system. You no longer have to "swap" between the two operating systems. You can now have the Windows shell natively embedded into your OSX environment. For a peek at what this looks like, check out the image below.

It is really a powerful, clean way to implement better usability of the guest environment. You can even go farther with cross-launching applications between the two environments, but that just isn't something I'm all that interested in. My goal is to use Quicken for Windows on my Mac and this Parallels is a great way to do it!

The drawback... Have plenty of physical memory. The Mac Mini that I was running this on has 1G of memory and that was just not quite enough for a pleasurable VM experience. Swapping back and forth between the guest environment and the host environment was very noticeable and almost unusable. I'm very familiar with VM technology, both at home and at work, so I'm confident that this was not a problem with Parallels. It just takes more then 512M of memory for each operating system (the guest and the host) to run smoothly, and any VM product has to deal with this.

Backup Gmail Data

2007-10-01T16:07:00.001-06:00

I ran across an interesting post the other day about making a backup of your email that is hosted by Google. The original author did a good job with instructions, so I won't repeat them here. I will note that I needed to a couple of things differently to make this work on my Mac.

First of all, fetchmail was already available on my Mac. (Don't you just love that OSX is really Unix? I do.)

Secondly, when configuring the .fetchmailrc file, I added a couple of things:

and wants mda "/usr/bin/procmail -d %T" - The default behavior of fetchmail is to try and forward the mail that it downloaded to your systems SMTP service. In my case, I had never intended for my desktop machine to receive mail directly, so this was not enabled. The first time I ran fetchmail, it choked and died at this step. By adding the "mda" option, you direct fetchmail to deliver the mail locally to your default system mailbox. This will be a file that matches your username in the /var/mail directory. You can view it with a texteditor or by using the command 'mail' when you are in the Terminal.

keep - I added this keep option so that I don't need to use the "-k" option when running the fetchmail command. Not sure why the original author didn't do this.

Okay, so my .fetchmailrc file looks like this now:

poll pop.gmail.com with proto POP3 and options no dns
user 'you@gmail.com' there with password 'itsasecret' is 'YourOSXUsername' here and wants mda "/usr/bin/procmail -d %T" options ssl keep

Upon running fetchmail, it downloads a few hundred messages at a time. My Gmail currently has about 1800 messages, so this will take a while to download, but that's fine. My intent here was to get a copy of my mail on my own hard drive just in case my relationship with Google ever fell through. I'll schedule this nightly via cron and in a week or two, I'll have a copy of everything.

Wading through the onslaught of RSS feeds

2007-09-13T10:18:00.000-06:00

If you don't know what a RSS feed is, you should. (I'll wait while you follow the link and read up on it.)

Okay, so now you know what RSS means, but why is it such a big deal? For me, RSS is rapidly becoming the tool that I use to keep up on all the latest information. Whether it is news, new products, weather, or tips on how to save money, RSS feeds are what I read. By subscribing (at no cost) to RSS feeds, I am able to load up a single page in my browser and view new content from a multitude of websites. This is an incredible timesaver as I no longer have to actually go out and visit each website every day. I don't have to bookmark all of those sites, nor do I have to sit through a bunch of graphic-intensive ads as each website loads into my browser.

As I wander through the Internet each day, I invariably stumble across content that I like and may want to read more about in the future. When this happens, I look for a feed that I can subscribe to. If you are a Firefox or Safari user, the existence of a feed will be highlighted for you in the address bar of your browser. If not, just scan the page for words "subscribe", "rss", or "feed". You can also look for a little orange icon somewhere that is the accepted symbol for RSS feed.

Once you choose to subscribe to a feed, then you will need an application known as a "feed reader" or "aggregator". You can find lots of them out there, but I would recommend Google Reader as a good place to start. It's easy to use and accessible from whatever computer you happen to be on.

As you start collecting a few feeds, you will invariably come across one that has "high traffic". This means that they post new content many times throughout the day. This can be overwhelming if you have many feeds to browse or if you haven't checked your feeds for a few days.

I have recently ran across a tool that helps with this problem. It is called aideRSS. This is a great tool and even comes with a nice training video that shows you how to use their site. By using this tool, you will be able to add a filtered feed to your reader instead of the original one that you were interested in. This allows you to only spend time reading content that aideRSS has noted as popular.

The main drawback of this approach is that you won't be the "first" to read the new content and/or comment on it. If that is important to you, then you should retain the original feed subscription. For me, personally, I am content with a delay before I see the content when it means that I'm going to be viewing content that the community has already voted as popular.

Take a few moments, check out aideRSS, and let me know how it goes.

Switching Cell Phone Providers, pt 5 (Customer Service)

2007-09-01T13:30:00.000-06:00

The last aspect of this whole evaluation I wanted to look at was their customer service. I have heard raves about Tmobile's customer service. I have called them a total of two times so far. They are certainly the friendliest company that I have dealt with. I was very impressed.

My second call to Customer service was to actually port my Cingular number over to my Tmobile account. After getting through the ARU, I spoke to the initial operator who validated my info and then transferred me to a more technical staff member for the number porting. He walked me through each and every step and about how long it would take. My expectations are well set (should be all done by tomorrow) and I'm ready to go.

At this point, I would have to concur with others that I've read from and talked to. Tmobile's customer service really is great!

Switching Cell Phone Providers, pt 4 (Website)

2007-08-25T12:55:00.000-06:00

Next test, the website. I wanted to see how easy it was to navigate and manage my account. The other thing that I really needed to know was how I could manage my 5 numbers.

Anyway, since I am using a non-"faves" enabled phone, I wanted to see if I could manage my list of 5 numbers through the website. Sure enough, I can and did. That question answered.

The other thing that I liked about the website is that it shows you how many minutes you've consumed for the month. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear to give detailed information on call data. Perhaps, it will after a monthly statement is generated.

Part 3, Plan | Part 5, Customer Service

Switching Cell Phone Providers, pt 3 (Plan)

2007-08-18T12:41:00.000-06:00

Before I started searching for a plan, I needed to know what type of usage I would need. I was abler to pull my last 6 months of usage records from my current Cingular account. A quick analysis showed that I used about 400 minutes a month and sent/received 110 SMS messages. Turns out I was buying a lot more then I was using.

I got signed up on the base "myFaves" plan with Tmobile. This plan offers unlimited (again, within context) calling to 5 numbers. For all other numbers, 300 minutes.

I now have a Tmobile plan with a temporary number. At least, that is what they called it. I had told them when signing up that I would either cancel the plan or roll my existing Cingular number over. I got the phone home and immediately removed the SIM card and plugged it into my existing phone. Ah, the beauty of GSM... I already own a SLVR which I really like. The free phone that came with the plan was a nice, pink Miami Ink RAZR. Needless to say, that's just not my style.

Anyway, 5 minutes after I got home, my existing SLVR was up and running on Tmobile's network. By the way, the perfect way to evaluate two services is to actually use the exact same device. The Mythbusters would be proud of me. I immediately phoned a friend and walked through the house to see what the service was like. First impression was good. I definitely have some dead spots in the house on Cingular's network. Now, does this alone mean that Tmobile is better then Cingular? Not really, it just means that there is likely a Tmobile tower closer to my house then a Cingular tower.

Over the next week, I continued to check the bars on my phone (which isn't foolproof) and called friends and family from different locations. Overall, in my area, I got just as good, if not better, service with Tmobile then with Cingular. That aspect of my evaluation is looking good.

Part 2, Coverage | Part 4, Website

4 Things To Think About If You Must Use WEP

2007-08-11T14:28:00.000-06:00

Okay, if you've read my previous posts, know how to use WPA to secure your wireless network. For some, this will not be an option. If you absolutely must use WEP, let me give you a few things to keep in mind.

#1) Use the longest password possible. At least 128 bit. This won't buy you much security, but it will mean that someone looking to crack your password will have to sniff more traffic. This means they have to be connected for a longer period of time before being able to discover your password.

#2) Disconnect the devices connected to your wireless network when they aren't in use. If you have a computer that you leave on all the time, it is constantly "checking in" with your access point. This conversational traffic is exactly what a malicious person needs in order to collect the right information to crack your password. If you are like me, you don't like powering down your equipment every day. In this case, just access your wireless configuration on your laptop and disable the connection. When you are ready to use it again, just enable it. Easy.

#3) Use a firewall. If you don't know what this is or how to configure it, don't worry. There are lots of resources available on the 'net. I may also do a basic writeup on it if there is interest. Basically, you want to keep your wireless network separate from the rest of your home network that has your other computers on it. If someone were to access your wireless network, you don't want them getting to your internal resources.

#4) Be smart about the type of data that you transfer over your wireless network. Assume that some stranger is going to get a copy of it and ask yourself if it is something that needs to be more private. Is it something that you would write on a postcard and send through the post office? If so, it's probably okay for use on your wireless network.

Use WPA instead of WEP, pt 2

2007-08-02T21:38:00.000-06:00

Lesson #2) Fine. I'll use the instruction manual. What should I be looking to do? Great! Look for instructions on how to connect to the administration function of the device you are setting up. This will usually be accessible on a private address in the 192.168. range. This means that you plug it in and then use your browser to access a special address that is given to you in the instruction manual. Once you have accessed this function, you should be looking for a security section. This will give you options on what kind of wireless security you want. At the time of this writing, most devices give you three options: open, WEP, and WPA. You want to choose WPA. (Specifically, referring to Pre-Shared Key or "Personal". The Enterprise level is not within the scope of this blog.)

The setup of WPA is really not any more difficult then WEP. Which is what makes it frustrating for me to see people still using WEP. There are probably a handful of situations in which folks may still want to use WEP. Most of these being to support older equipment that was purchased before the WPA protocol was developed. We will cover approaches to using WEP safely later.

Lesson #3) Choose a good password. Good passwords are difficult for humans. They are hard to remember, hard to come up with, hard to type. This is unfortunate and typically leads most people to choosing bad passwords. Bad passwords are short and easy to remember. They are things that can be found in dictionaries or on your myspace page (birthday, dog's name, friend's name, etc). When thinking about a good password for your wireless network, you have one thing going for you; you just don't have to type it very often, if ever. Most modern devices allow you to enter the password one time and it will retain it.

When choosing a password, you want to make it as long as possible and as random as possible. WPA allows for a password of up to 64 hexidecimal characters. I know what you're thinking, how am I going to type in a 64 character password? Don't worry, I will walk you through the approach that I use in a bit. You won't have to type a thing. The point here is that you want the longest password possible. It doesn't make any difference on your day-to-day computer use, but it does increase the time needed for a malicious person to gain access to your network.

Now, to get a random password, you need a thing called a "password generator". With OS X, you can create one using the Keychain application. If you are a Firefox user, there is an excellent extension available called SecurePassword. If neither of these are an option for you, there are a few of them available on the web. My favorite website for this is GRC. GRC's password generator will build the perfect password for WPA merely by accessing the link above. They provide a 64 character hexidecimal password along with a 63 character alpha-numeric one. Either one will work for WPA, so let's choose the alpha-numeric one since it is more human-friendly. When I accessed the site, this is the password that I received:

lKAg0kImzxZ3HdDrlojUaUCXfInGNBXbMai4V7Afz2uh9nMNiByqaCfD3KMXqlD

Don't let this scare you. Just highlight it and copy it into your computer's buffer (ctrl+c or Cmd+c). Open up a text editor and paste (ctrl+v or Cmd+v) it into the text editor. Do a quick File|Save and you've got your password (and you didn't have to type a thing). Now, back to the wireless device we were configuring... You've selected WPA and are prompted to enter the password or the "pre shared key". Just switch back to your text editor, copy your random password, and paste it into the password field. Now, look for the save button and you are done with your access point configuration! Once you hit save, your device will probably restart and anyone currently connected to it will be dropped. They will also not be able to re-connect without your new random password.

Lesson #4) Configure only the computers that you want on your wireless network. Your next challenge is how to get that new password to your laptop so that it can access your wireless network. There are, of course, a number of ways in which to do this. The one that I propose is called the sneakernet. Put on your tin foil hat with me and find a blank disk or USB thumb drive. This password isn't something that you want to leave on your computer, transfer to your friend via email, or post on a website. Ever. You must maintain strict control over this password. Find a disk... floppy, CD, DVD, ZIP, whatever. My preference is CD these days. You want something that will be accessible to most types of computers. Remember that file you created with your text editor? Move it to the disk.

Now, take the disk and insert it into the laptop you want to access your wireless network. Open up the text file, highlight the password, and copy it into your buffer. Now, open up your computers wireless configuration and find your network in the list. Hopefully, it will say "secured" or something to that effect. When you select it, it will prompt for a password. No problem! You just paste the new password into the both fields and you're done. If done correctly, your laptop is now authenticated to your wireless network and you are all set. Just take out the disk and repeat the procedure on any other computers that you want to have connected to your wireless network. Friend of yours is visiting and wants to get their email? Hand them the disk. Just make sure you get it back. :)

Use WPA instead of WEP

2007-07-27T21:56:00.000-06:00

Okay, folks, it is time once again to review the state of today's wireless 802.11 (also known by the marketing term, WiFi) security. This has been documented time and time again, but it has recently became clear to me that it apparently isn't sinking in. One of my goals with this blog is to try and educate friends and family, so I thought I would write something up that is in plain English and implore you to think about your wireless situation at home.

I was recently on vacation in a small town in Idaho when I fired up my laptop and found no fewer then six wireless networks within range. A couple of things surprised me about this. The first being that there were six(!) networks in my immediate vicinity in a town with a population of 4,000. I am not used to seeing this kind of coverage in the smaller mountain towns that I've visited. The second, and probably more, surprising aspect of this was that all of them were secured! That's right, none of them were set to allow open access, nor did they have the all-too-familiar network name "linksys" or "default".

Unfortunately, they had all used WEP as the means for securing their network. This is horribly insecure and merely serves as a means to keep the honest people honest. Perhaps, that is all the owners were after, but I would like to encourage you to go a step farther in securing your own home network. It's really not that hard and will take 10-15 minutes, tops. If you haven't already, please read my post regarding the dangers of using WEP.

If you are still reading, then perhaps I've convinced you to convert your network from WEP or open to WPA. If that is the case, read on...

Lesson #1) Do not buy an access point (also known as "router", "wireless hub", or just plain "wireless"), take it home, plug it in, and just start using it. This is what we would call the "default" or open access. It comes with an instruction manual for a reason. Use it! :)

Next Lessons...

Why WEP Should Be Considered Bad Form

2007-07-20T20:56:00.000-06:00

If you have a wireless network at home and you've either left it open (unsecured) or you have secured it using the WEP option, this article is for you. If you have wireless and you have no idea what the preceding sentence means, you need to read this and my follow-up entries on how to secure your wireless network.

If you think WEP is good enough for your wireless security, let me educate you on how incredibly simple it is to bypass. One would need the correct hardware (an Atheros based wireless card - $50), the correct software (available over the Internet - free), and be near enough to your wireless network to pick up a signal (also free). Once all three of these are in place, it takes less then an hour (in some cases, far less!) to come up with the password that you used to supposedly secure your network. At this point, they are on your network. Mostly, they will just be interested in accessing the Internet for free. Mostly. If this doesn't scare you, it should. If you have other computers on your home network that have your financial information on them, this should scare you very much. Kudos to you for choosing to secure your network instead of using the default "open" network. Unfortunately, using WEP isn't much better then just leaving your network open.

Perhaps you are one that doesn't care if someone else uses your network to access the Internet? While that is altruistic and very generous of you, it does leave you open to risks. For starters, most ISPs specifically forbid the sharing of your home Internet service in their terms of service. You can argue how the "Man" is trying to squeeze more money out of us all by doing this and you'd likely be right. But that doesn't stop them from disconnecting you if they feel that you've infringed on the agreement that you submitted to when purchasing their service. Furthermore, these types of companies believe that is a violation of federal or state laws and may seek action against you.

If the risk of the Man disconnecting you isn't enough, think about what kinds of bad things can be done online and will be traced back to your home address. Accessing child porn, probing government networks, and communicating with known terrorists are all things that will raise flags with your federal government and your ISP. From what I've read, it is a legal grey area on whether or not you could be held liable for this. (How believable is your defense of "It wasn't me. Someone must have used my wireless network.") Is it worth the hassle?

Now, I'm really not the doom and gloom type. The chances of this happening to you are small, but not impossible. If you live in a sparsely populated area, the chances of one of your neighbors wanting to break into your network to conduct malicious activity are slim. If it isn't one of your neighbors, but a stranger instead, then ideally you'd notice a car sitting out on your street with a person inside using a laptop. If you live in a larger city or a densely populated area, there are many more people available and interested in using your network. If you are in an apartment building, you would never even see that this is happening.

http://news.com.com/2100-1039-5112000.html
http://money.cnn.com/2005/08/08/technology/personaltech/internet_piracy/?cnn=yes
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,122153-page,1/article.html

Switching Cell Phone Providers, pt 2 (Coverage)

2007-07-16T12:29:00.000-06:00

Okay, so I start researching Tmobile. First off, I need to learn about their coverage. I check out their website to see if they have a coverage map. I was impressed on two fronts. First of all, they offer a method to search on an address basis, so that you can drill down exactly. Secondly, they offer a view of how strong the signal is, not just whether or not there is one. I found this encouraging even if I might have a lower signal on a particular search. I like it when companies are just upfront about things.

My next dilemma is figuring out how to test the service without getting locked into a contract. (side note: I hate the fact that every company out there wants to lock you into a two year contract.) A friend of mine pointed me to Costco. Probably wouldn't have occurred to me to check there, but I swung by after work one day to take a look. They have a small kiosk where they offer phones and plans from multiple providers. The really cool thing about this is that they have worked out some deal with each provider where you have two weeks to change your mind and get out of the contract. This was my perfect solution!

Part 1, Intro | Part 3, Plan