Brian's Blog

Adding New Cities to Mac OS X’s World Clock Widget

Brian — Fri, 11 May 2012 11:24:43 +0000

I live in Thunder Bay, Ontario, and for years ever since Apple came out with Dashboard I had to put up with having to use either Toronto or Ottawa as my world clock city. Finally, after having enough of putting up with Toronto, I decided to investigate if it was possible to add your own cities to the list of World Clock cities. And yes, it is possible, since widgets are just HTML and Javascript files. Here’s how I added Thunder Bay:

Open the World Clock widget package by finding it in Finder. It’s located in /Library/Widgets/World Clock. Right (or ctrl-click on it) and select Show Package Contents.
Open the file WorldClock.js, search for Toronto (or whatever city makes alphabetical sense), and before Toronto add this line:
```
{city:'Thunder Bay', offset:-240, timezone:'Canada/Eastern', id:"6166142"},
```
You can change the city name, and timezone to be whatever city and timezone you want. The ID field–to be honest I’m not sure if it has to be set to this–comes from Geonames.org. On Geonames, search for your city, select it (make sure you pick the one listed as a place), and click on the CSV link on the bottom. Open the CSV file and you’ll be able to find the ID of your city.
Finally, open the file English.lprog (or whatever language you use) and open the file localizedStrings.js. Add this line before Toronto (or whatever city makes alphabetical sense):
```
localizedCityNames['Thunder Bay'] = 'Thunder Bay';
```

Now save all the files and add a new instance of the World Clock widget. You’ll now be able to choose Thunder Bay, or whichever city you chose to add.

Mark Zuckerberg’s Hoodie

Brian — Thu, 10 May 2012 11:16:08 +0000

There was a lot of talk in thew news today regarding Mark Zuckerberg’s hoodie. There was one analyst out there who criticized Zuckerberg’s for his choice of uniform as being disrespectful to those who will be investing billions into his company.

Personally I find this kind of ironic, and perhaps even almost hypocritical considering the most valuable company in the world used to by run by a guy who wore black turtlenecks and jeans as his uniform.

Perhaps it’s just an analyst who wants to get on every news site in the world to increase his number of Twitter followers.

Anyway, I had an interesting thought about the whole hoodie thing, and it made me wonder what kind of message is Zuckerberg sending. In 2009, he challenged himself to wear a tie everyday to work, and this was his reason:

So is there any message the hoodie represents? Perhaps the analyst is right and Mark Zuckerberg is not taking the IPO seriously. Or maybe the message he wants to send is that going public won’t change who we are.

Mark Spencer’s Brithday

Plaxo Trying to Access My Google Account?

Brian — Tue, 08 May 2012 10:38:09 +0000

I got a strange email from Google this morning:

Brian,

Someone recently tried to use an application to sign in to your Google Account, [filtered]@gmail.com. We prevented the sign-in attempt in case this was a hijacker trying to access your account. Please review the details of the sign-in attempt:

May 8, 2012 8:19am GMT
IP Address: 204.15.240.72
Location: Sunnyvale, California, United States
If you do not recognize this sign-in attempt, someone else might be trying to access your account. You should sign in to your account and reset your password immediately. Find out how at http://support.google.com/accounts?p=reset_pw

If this was you, and you want to give this application access to your account, complete the troubleshooting steps listed at http://support.google.com/mail?p=client_login

Sincerely,
The Google Accounts Team

The IP address, 204.15.240.72 appears to be owned by Plaxo Inc. According to this site, there have been three other people reporting similar unauthorized sign in attempts from this email. Plaxo, what are you up to? I’ve never authorized you to log into my Google Account? Will email their abuse contact to find out what’s going on.

UPDATE #1: The phone number listed as the abuse contact on their IP address comes back busy when I call it.

UPDATE #2: Received an automated response from their abuse email address.

UPDATE #3: I believe someone from Plaxo commented on this post and referred to this blog post from Plaxo explaining what happened. I find the section on What happened? to be very cryptic and deflecting responsibility for something that did in fact happen. I find the post to be very confusing because it doesn’t answer the fundamental question of What happened?, what information was accessed? And should I really be worried about it. In any case, I’ve deleted my Plaxo account to be safe.

Why Don’t Phones Let Us Record Calls?

Brian — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 18:11:08 +0000

Fraud happens on the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) because it’s outdated. The laws and tariffs on the network were designed for an era when IP Telephony did not exist, and long distance was much more expensive than it was now. Certainly, with all the technology we use everyday on the Internet, the PSTN could be made much more secure, and accountable, but with numerous vendors and stakeholders involved any major changes would be expensive or nearly impossible to implement. However, I will propose two very simple changes that could have significant impact on fighting fraud. Here is the first proposal, and I will write about the second proposal in an upcoming post.

The first, and easiest change, is that handset manufacturers should start producing phones with the capability to record phone calls. Or at the very least, electronics manufacturers should start producing inexpensive equipment for recording telephone calls. We have the tech, and it’s much cheaper to produce than ever before. The law, at least in Canada, allows anyone to record a conversation they are apart of without the consent of the other party for their own personal reference, or journalistic purposes.

Recording phone calls, particularly telemarketing calls–both illegal and legal calls–have the following benefits:

It holds the telemarketing industry accountable. Not everyone follows proper telemarketing rules, or etiquette all the time. A recording is your silver bullet for keeping them accountable. It’s a indisputable record of events that can be shared with management, and of course in today’s society: the Internet.
It enhances law enforcement’s ability to investigate fraud. Giving law enforcement a recording of a fraudulent phone call helps them identify calling agencies, develop a profile, and more importantly it’s evidence that could be used in court. As well, recordings will allow law enforcement to better support the victim of fraud by knowing exactly what information was disclosed.
It raises public awareness of fraud, and the types of fraud being conducted. Nothing educates the public better than being able to listen to a telemarketing call. Listeners of my Unwanted Calls podcast are well aware of the tactics used by Microsoft Windows Virus scammers, and are educated by my recordings to know that their computers are fine.

If handsets with the ability to record calls were generally available on the market, more recordings of fraudulent calls would be posted on the Internet and provided to law enforcement, thus increasing the public’s awareness of phone fraud and in turn lowering it’s profitability.

Unwanted Calls – Episode#13 – Senior Management

Brian — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 16:46:27 +0000

I was this close to getting one of those Windows Virus Scammers to run a screen sharing program on their computer to give me a glimpse into their world. When I received a call from them today, I was very insistent with the operator that in order for me to unlock my computer, I needed them to run a program on their computer. The caller almost ran the program, but then hesitated and transfered me to his supervisor, who then transferred me to the “senior manager.”

I think the downfall to my scheme was the fact that I used Copilot.com. A very nice service, but the reason it didn’t work for my scheme was because Copilot.com is branded as a troubleshooting, help desk tool, and the senior manager got suspicious of it. If I had a non-branded tool, that did not make it evident that it was a screen sharing service, I may have actually succeeded in my scheme.

So, online community, do you know of a non-branded tool, or another screen sharing tool I could have used that would not have been as suspicious? It has to be something that’s quick and easy to use.

Unwanted Calls – Episode#12 – Cancun Vacation

Brian — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 18:58:25 +0000

In this episode I receive a call from a guy trying to tell me that I won a discounted vacation in Cancun. For this call, I mainly just try to see how long I can drag the call on before he hangs up on me.

The toll free number the caller gave me on the phone was: 1-888-493-8608

The number that showed up on the caller id was: 1-888-497-6838

Unwanted Calls – Episode#11 – In the Name of Science

Brian — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 21:57:35 +0000

In this episode I receive a call from someone pretending to conduct scientific research. I expose them as a marketer trying to sell a product.

Unwanted Calls – Episode#10 – Virus Free

Brian — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 20:29:58 +0000

So simply put, in this episode I pretend to do everything the telemarketers asks, except when we get to the screen that’s supposed to say I have viruses I tell him it says my computer is virus free. What’s interesting though, is before we hang up he tells me that I wasn’t “performing” what he told me to do. So I guess the result of this exercise is to always produce a negative result.

I apologize for the buzz, I had the record level set a bit too high on my recorder.

Unwanted Calls – Episode#9 – I Don’t Care About That

Brian — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 05:04:44 +0000

Yet another Certified Windows Technician. And yet again I pretend to work for the phone company. I think the guy gets pretty frustrated at me, but I manage to keep him on the line either way.

I’m thinking I need to tweak my script a bit to get more information out of caller. Does anyone have any suggestions I should make to the script?

Unwanted Calls – Episode#8 – Skytel Support

Brian — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 19:31:34 +0000

This episode is short and sweet. Essentially, I tricked the telemarketer to reveal who his phone provider is and where his call centre is located. His call centre is located in India, and his phone provider is SkyTel in India. I’ve tried calling SkyTel to report that one of their customers is sending out fraudulent traffic, but it happens to be 12:30am on a Saturday in India. I’ll give it a try again later. I did call their technical support line, but the guy just hung up on me.