Archive for the 'IT & Internet' Category
Oh, mobile browsing – one of the hottest topics these days isn’t it? Now that all the cool kids and their grandmas have Internet access on their mobile gadgets (90% of the population has mobile network coverage!), we can take a look at how they’re using it, where, and what should we expect from the future. Click the infographic below to learn more.
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The News of the World scandal has turned a spotlight on telephone security. Surprisingly, it’s often easy to hack into phones and voice mail because owners make it easy. Owners often don’t enable or update their security.
“People buy expensive phones and rarely take a good look at its security features,” says Stephen Pearson, managing partner with High Tech Crime Institute in Tampa, Florida. He says that people who fail to setup a passcode on their phone “are fools and asking to be victims”.
Smartphones are, of course, much more than just mobile phones. That makes you more vulnerable if your phone is compromised. Voice messages, e-mail, texts and more are all accessible.
According to Pearson, it’s not difficult to hack into voice mail if stored on the phone. It’s more challenging if stored on a service provider’s server, but possible if the phone is breached first. News of the World staff used various methods to access phones. In many cases it was easy because users had not changed default passcodes such as 1111.
One tactic uses was for a reporter to call a target’s mobile phone, and while they were on the line another reporter would also call the same number. That directed the second reporter to the voice mail, whereupon a default code was entered to listen to messages.
As I wrote in my article “Password” is not a good password, the user is often the weak link. Learn your phone’s security features. Set a good passcode that can’t be easily guessed. And keep your phone physically secure, not leaving it unattended in risky situations.
As I reported in a recent post, late next year the flood of new domain suffixes will begin, due to recent decisions by Internet body ICANN. To commemmorate what may soon be seen as “the good old days” of 22 top-level domains (not including the country-code domains), I thought it would be interesting to see a breakdown of the currentl most popular domains.
Toronto newspaper Globe and Mail has created a graphic illustrating the relative popularity of these most-used domains:
Dot-com will soon have plenty of competition. Under new rules approved this week, top-level domains could be almost anything, such as .guitar, .tofu and .halibut.
ICANN, the Internet body overseeing domain names, voted to open up the top-level domain system to new name applications. No longer will generic top-level domains be restricted to current suffixes such as .com and .net. Applications for new names will be accepted beginning Jan. 12 next year, with the first approvals likely by the end of 2012.
Before you rush to apply for .johnsmith or .beekeeping, know that it won’t be cheap. The application fee is US $185,000, plus an annual fee of $25,000 once the domain is active. That makes it likely that new names will be tied to large companies, organizations or industries.
Price tag aside, this is a huge sea change to the domain name system. Up to now, top-level domains were limited to 22 widely used suffixes such as .com and .org, plus the larger group of 250 country-specific domains such as .ca and .uk. Branding for corporate or personal identity was achieved by registering an appropriate second-level domain, such as coke.com or sally.ca, at a relatively low cost. Under the new system, branding can be in the top-level domain itself, but at a high cost.
Japanese electronics manufacturer Canon says that it plans to apply to register top-level domain .canon. I would expect other large international brands, such as Coke, Sony, Apple, to register their company names early. What will be more interesting will be to see what non-corporate names are registered.
Today I received the following e-mail message:
Subject: Don’t miss The Free Five-Course Breakfast Day
From: “Your McDonalds”Hello.
McDonalds invites you to The Free Supper Day which will take place on 23 June, 2011, in every cafe of ours.
Free Day’s menu!
– Honey Mustard Snack Wrap (Crispy)
– Chicken McNuggets
– Premium Bacon Ranch Salad with Crispy Chicken
– Cinnamon Melts
– McCafe Wild Berry SmoothiePrint the invitation card attached to the letter and show it at the cash desk of any of our restaurants.
Every manager will gladly take your card and issue you a tasty dish of Free Day.
And remember! Free Day is whole five free dishes!Thank you for your credence.
We really appreciate it.
The e-mail includes an attachment: Invitation_Card_90206.zip
Now, I did not fall for this. My B.S. meter is very good, and I can always spot scams even when others are certain they’re legit.
Just look at the language in the message. There are grammatical errors and generally awkward language, frequent signs of Asian or Russian spam. The name of the event changes, from “Free Five-Course Breakfast Day” to “Free Day”. McDonald’s would be consistent with their promotion name. “McDonalds” is spelled without the apostrophe, which McDonald’s would never do.
The attachment contains a virus, a typical nefarious payload of such messages.
In spite of what to me are obvious signs of a scam, this will fool many recipients. I have no doubt that, if this is sent to the same number of people, this could be as big as the Anna Kournikova worm. Too many computer users are uncritical and gullible. And, a free meal will sound good to them. I hope the virus dessert is equally tasty.
Surgeons at Sunnybrook hospital in Toronto, Canada, are using video game technology as an aid in surgery.
Using Microsoft’s Xbox platform and the hands-free Kinect controller, surgeons access medical images such as X-rays, MRIs and CT scans, without having to touch anything. Not only can many images be quickly accessed, but surgeons no longer need to touch a keyboard or mouse which always added some risk to sterility.
“What this was able to do is take away that last barrier and remove the mouse, remove the interface… and now I just give it hand signs”, said Dr. Calvin Law, a surgical oncologist. “We’re able to control the computer without actually touching anything.”
“You’re always concerned to a degree that every time you move away from the operating table, every time you have to go to another area, you always put your sterility at risk a little bit,” Law says. “There’s nothing like minimizing the risk to absolutely as low as possible.”
Previously, when using a conventional mouse and keyboard, a surgical team member had to scrub out to access the computer images, then scrub in again to return to the surgery. This could add as mush as two hours to a long operation. This time is now saved with the hands-free Kinect system.
The system was created by a first-year surgical resident who is also an electrical engineer, an engineering friend, and a computer engineer. The Kinect camera sensors capture movements and gestures, and two computers and some custom hardware recognize the user and translate gestures into image access commands.
I’m surprised. I thought Google would have listened to the backlash and stopped annoying its users. Last month I wrote about the banner that appears at the top of Google’s search results page, saying:
Come Here Often? Make Google Your Homepage, and two choices: Sure or No Thanks.
Google’s own help forum is filled with complaints about this banner. Last month a Google representative responded, alleviating concerns that this was a virus. She stated that it is a Google promotion, but over a month later Google still has offered no means of disabling the banner or at least preventing it from repeatedly reappearing even to users who clicked “No Thanks”.
Google has dropped some clangers in recent years, gradually eroding their “do no wrong” image. Usually after a consumer uproar, the company backtracks somewhat and removes or softens the offending developments. In the case of this banner though, to date Google appears undeterred. Maybe we need to be more forceful and, as some critics have suggested, stop using Google products for a while. Google, if you’re listening: get rid of this banner! You’re ticking off loyal users.
Sometimes you need to print a document without being connected to a printer. This process is often referred to as using a virtual printer. There are many scenarios when this would be necessary:
- You’ve completed a document and spent time making small adjustments to printing options until it looks perfect in the Print Preview. You don’t want to go through all that again once connected to a printer, so you want to print it now to save that state.
- You plan to e-mail a document to someone to print it, and you want to know exactly how it will look. You don’t want that recipient to have to adjust printer options or mess up your settings.
- You want to send a document to someone who does not have the software required to view it.
- You’re using an application that lacks a Print Preview command. You want adjust things to get the print output perfect before wasting any paper.
For all those situations, the solution is to use a virtual printer.
I used to print to file, which creates a .prn file. That .prn file can then be printed by using a free utility that interprets .prn files. That worked well, but required the printer-connected computer to run the free prn utility. For an infrequent recipient, that may not be convenient.
I now use PrimoPDF, which prints to a PDF file. Once installed, from within any application choose the regular Print command and then from list of available printers select PrimoPDF. It’s that easy.
There is a surprising number of options for this free utility. For example, when printing there are five quality profiles:
- Screen – smallest files, images suitable for on-screen viewing
- Print – larger files, photos retain high quality for printing.
- eBook – medium files for web and office, with compressed images.
- Prepress – largest files, preserving source image quality if possible.
- Custom – allows individual selection of options for colour, PDF version, resolution and more.
You can specify what document properties PrimoPDF writes to the metadata of the pdf file, and password protect the file.
There are other virtual printer utilities, but I can recommend PrimoPDF. It works well for me.
Text editors don’t get much consideration. Some use them infrequently, when viewing ReadMe files or other such short documents. Others use them more often, but may use Windows Notepad because it comes pre-installed.
Windows Notepad is a basic text editor that has been part of every version of Windows since 1985. If you rarely use a text editor, and then only for quick, minimal editing or viewing, Notepad may be fine. For anyone who works with text files often, such as .html or .php files for web site creation, log viewing, config file checking, or just quick note taking, Notepad proves inadequate. Plus, the font used by Notepad is ugly and awkward to read. For an alternative, I recommened NoteTab.
Unlike Windows Hotepad’s single open document limitation, NoteTab allows multiple documents to be open concurrently with a tabbed interface. Its viewing options and user interface are highly configurable, including toggle word wrapping, text statistics such as word count, multilingual spell check (in Standard and Pro versions) and a favourites menu.
Clipbooks are code-entering or text-string entering shortcuts grouped by use. They are user creatable and editable. The installation comes with several clipbooks, and others are freely available from the developer and other users.
For those of us who create or maintain web sites, the included HTML and CSS clipbooks are terrific. The HTML clipbook allows single-click application of commonly-used tags and many less common tags. The clipbook is editable: I edited some HTML clips to match my own coding standards, and added clips for special element structures I used on my sites.
Other NoteTab features include:
- customizable toolbar
- ability to install on a USB flash drive for portability
- font selection for display
- support of UTF-8 and Unicode
- HTML tag stripping of text blocks
- convert text case
- search and replace
- extend functionality with scripting
- customizable menu shortcuts (in Standard and Pro versions).
In fact, there are far too many features for me to do them justice in a brief review. The Pro version is programmable, and includes syntax highlighting, multiple undo/redo, line numbering, toggled display of non-printing characters, and more.
NoteTab includes a command to change Windows file associations to automatically launch NoteTab when opening .txt and other text files such as .htm, .php, .log. Windows 7 blocks this command, so for Windows 7 just use the standard Windows method to change file associations.
Three versions are available: Light; Standard; and Pro. For many of you seeking a better alternative to Windows Notepad, the free NoteTab Light may suffice. I bought the Pro version, and am glad I did.
An active community provides discussion, tips, free scripts, clipbooks and other enhancements. I’ve found the developer’s tech support to be responsive, and the community to be friendly and very helpful. One community member worked with me to create an FTP clipbook that uploads changed files direct from within NoteTab to my web site without having to separately launch my FTP software.
Take my advice: ditch Windows Notepad in favour of the superior NoteTab.
This is the second episode in a the infographic series WebHostingBuzz started last month, aimed to inform & entertain developers, designers, geeks and infographic addicts alike. In this piece we’re taking a look at the history of the the most trafficked websites, as reported by Alexa, Wikipedia and Archive.org Click here to see the full size version. Enjoy and let us know what you think!
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