georgestarcher.randomlings

Random ramblings from my personal side.

Two Weeks with iPad

It was two weeks with iPad as of this past weekend. Here are some of my observations.

#1 - I am keeping way less content on my iPhone than I did before moving video etc to my iPad.

#2 - I have not purchased any iPhone only apps since getting iPad. But boy have I blown some green on iPad apps of various uses.

#3 - I have spent way too much catching up on Supernatural now that I have a small tv in my hands. Yup more $$ but worth it. It's a rocking great show.

#4 - I love reading my magazines and books on iPad. Though it can be a little tedious getting pdf downloads of various Forensic and Security magazines. They really need to embrace authenticated RSS feeds. Then I can automate the download and syncing onto my dropbox account where it's easy to open the PDF on my iPad.

#5 - Developers need to get certain apps updated for iPad. 2X bites for things like IM clients.

#6 - The camera connector kit works great for photos and audio. But the iPad is NOT a true 720HD player. I can copy from my Kodak Zi8 camera onto the iPad, but not play the video till I sync it back to my Mac with iPhoto.

#7 - iPad doubles my iPhone battery life. Because I am rarely carrying my iPhone around the house any more. Heck I realized I left the house without my iPhone the other day. Then I realized it was in my pocket. I had forgotten it was even there. I was taking iPad to the coffee shop for some reading and hot tea relaxation.

#8 - iPad battery lasts a really really long time. I only have to fully charge it about every other day. And that is with watching a couple of episodes of Supernatural each night before bed.

Tech Journalists - Staring into the Abyss

I make no secret I enjoy Apple products. I got into Apple products after my experience with my first iPod and deciding that I was tired of feeling like I was still at work when I was home.  All the maintenance and effort to keep Windows based products working efficiently was too much like my day job. Most of the time Apple products just work for how I use them. Sure like any product made by humans Apple can have design issues.  Like any electronic device it will fail at some point in time.  With that said I am an information security professional.  I also spent several years out of college in loss prevention.  I am not a lawyer but clearly I have strong feelings on this whole situation.  And here they are.  

Recently a number of tech journalist sites pushed to get the documents from the Apple/Gizmodo affair released.  Specifically in relation to why Jason Chen's equipment was seized.  They have been all upset saying he is protected as a journalist from having his systems and data examined by authorities. They wanted to see in the documents how horrible the authorities are and how this abused Jason Chen and First Amendment protection he should have been enjoying.

In this case Gawker media has made no secret of their brand of checkbook journalism.  People like to say poor Gizmodo just paid for the right to examine the device.  Excuse me?  The RIGHT?  Brian Hogan was not the owner.  He KNEW he was not the owner.  Gizmodo could not reasonably doubt Brian Hogan was not the owner.  It was not his right of examination to sell.   There is no way anyone at the level of knowledge of Gizmodo or even most tech bloggers could not recognize the device was legitimate within minutes.   After all no one parts with that much cash on a maybe.  They took a look, they handed over cash and Brian Hogan handed over the device.  So lets look at that again.  Cash was exchanged for possession of the device that was clearly not the property of either party.  That is not selling a RIGHT of examination.  That is selling the device.

CNet has a good bit of coverage in the article titled "Apple spurred police in iPhone probe."  No kidding.  Their property went missing.  Brian Hogan had more than enough time to comply with California law and turn it over to the police.  Instead he set out to sell it.  Gizmodo then had it for more than enough time to turn it over to police per California law.  Steve Jobs asked Gizmodo for the device back.  Gizmodo refused to turn over what they publicly claimed was Apple's property.  They sure didn't say, sorry, now we are sure its not our property we'll go turn it over to the police in accordance with California law.  Then they can confirm its yours.  They demanded something from Apple before they would hand it over directly.  To me that sure sounds like ransom.

Apple has every right to report to police what is clearly gone beyond a lost to a stolen and then ransomed property. Of course they spurred police.  Just as if someone mugs you, breaks into your house etc you are going to report it to spur the authorities into doing something about it.

So the whole point I am trying to make?  All those tech journalists with their fur ruffled over Jason Chen.  Steve Jobs asked for the return of the device on April 19th.  Gizmodo replied electronically with their ransom demand for a device they knowingly paid to get possession of from someone clearly did not have the right to sell it.  You don't get a call from a large company CEO as a joke.  The very fact he contacted you tells you that it's real.  Gizmodo was even making it clear they thought it was Apple's property in their coverage.  The authorities seized James Chen's systems On April 23rd.  Big surprise. It is perfectly reasonable to believe the systems have evidence critical to showing motives. On April 22nd the roommate reported to authorities that Brian Hogan was attempting to get rid of electronic evidence.  So is it any surprise they moved the next day to preserve all other digital evidence from potential destruction, loss or tampering? Additionally it provides a second validation point of any information they find on the recovered evidence Brian Hogan was attempting to get rid of.

I say this to all the tech journalists who were getting all high ground about the seizure being a violation of the First Amendment.  Every action taken by Brian Hogan and Gizmodo quacks like the duck of a violation of California Law when you look at the timeline and the clearly both parties knew it was not their property.  Look at the attitude of Brian Hogan about the loss of the phone.  Look at the reply to Steve Jobs by Gizmodo.  It is all clearly showing motive of both of them. The timeline shows the authorities had valid concerns for the evidence of violation of California law when they seized Jason Chen's systems.  Look into that ethical abyss and hope you don't blink.  

Personally, I prefer the wait and see the facts attitude of real tech journalists like Andy Ihnatko and Clayton Morris.

Adobe - We <3 Whining instead of Making Good Products

 

Allow me to translate Adobe's recent post From http://www.adobe.com/choice/  I will put my translation in parenthesis.

At Adobe, we believe that the open flow of creativity, ideas, and information should be limited only (by what we implement and how freaking long it takes us to do it). (Our cash flow) thrives when people are (stuck with our) technologies that enable them to (pay us licensing to) express themselves and access information where and when they want. Everyone loses when technological barriers (and horrible security) impede the exchange of ideas (, security and reliability).

Openness (and proprietary complexity of code) is at Adobe's core. (Try parsing a PDF for malicious code or executables, sure you can read some of it in a text editor so that's open right?) Our first technology was an open standard that liberated publishing from proprietary printing systems, and soon afterward our PDF technology eliminated barriers to sharing documents (and malware) across platforms.

Adobe® Flash® (aka Trash and Crash) technology enables the delivery of content (and horrible computer performance experience) to hundreds of millions of people, regardless of platform or browser. In 2009, in partnership with Google, Research In Motion, and dozens of other companies, we formed the Open Screen Project, a coalition committed to making web experiences seamlessly available on any mobile device. (Never mind we have yet to get it shipping on actual mobile devices in the wild.)

We believe open markets that allow developers, publishers, and consumers to make their own choices about how they create, distribute, and access content are essential to progress. That's why we actively support technologies like HTML4, HTML5, CSS, and H.264, in addition to our own technologies. (Never mind its only Done just enough to simply wrap our own Flash, Shockwave plaftorms.)

As the web and mobile devices facilitate the free exchange of ideas like never before, we stand at the leading edge of an amazing revolution. (But we see that edge as a cliff and won't jump off it unless it's got an Adobe trademark bungee cord attached.)

 

Dropbox - Backing up for Authors on the Cheap

I am working on an overall backup tutorial document for podcasting authors.  But I thought I would get this segment out for some immediate benefit.

If you are an author you spend a great deal of time making document files.  Let's forget the massive audio files if you podcast your work.  Let us focus on the money maker so to speak.  Your original written work.

This works if you are on Mac or Windows.  

Get yourself a free dropbox account from www.dropbox.com.  You can also use this referral link if you are so inclined.  https://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTkyODk5OQ  The referral link just gives myself and you some bonus space because you joined via a referral. Nothing more.

I will say that at the time of this writing I use just the free level account and I move around audio files much larger than your sum total story documents are in size. A base free account with no referral bonus is 2GB of storage. I have no other relationship to dropbox.  I am considering the paid account for a reason I will cover shortly.

The dropbox is easy to setup.  You just make yourself an account, download and install the software then give it your user name and password.  Each machine you do this on it will make a folder called Dropbox under your user home folder.  Anything you put in that folder or its subfolders will automatically synchronize to dropbox and back onto the other computers you have it setup on.

Even if you have only ONE computer this is still a great idea.  Because it will synchronize your files up to dropbox.  If your computer hard drive dies completely you might lose everything else assuming you have no real backups, but you wont lose the stuff on dropbox.  So anything in the dropbox folder in your home folder is what is copied up to dropbox.

For a free account and a few minutes of your time you now have an off site backup of your written work.  You cannot beat that investment.

Why would you want a paid account?  

Besides more space for more files, the big bonus is that under the free account you can restore any file deleted for up to 30 days from the deletion.  The paid account has an unlimited shelf life.  Meaning if you accidentally deleted chapter 8 and did not notice till chapter 20 you can get it back just by logging into the dropbox.com web site, finding the file and clicking to restore it.

What about security?

Dropbox is like anything it is as secure as your password.  So choose a good one that no one will guess.  It does use SSL encryption between your computer and the dropbox service.  This does NOT mean your files are encrypted.  So it is very very unlikely anyone at dropbox could get nosy into your files.  But it could be possible.  Thus I tend to think its fine for anything except finance or medical information level of sensitivity.  They have a great reputation so far and are doing well.  I doubt they will do anything to mess with their success.

I don't want to move my files from where I save them.

You are an author, likely a stereotypical eccentric right?  So you do not want to change your habits.  That is ok.  This is a bit geekier than dragging and dropping a copy of your work into the dropbox folder.  So be prepared.  

You need to read, or have your computer savy nephew read this document from dropbox.

It will enable you to make the dropbox software think your folder with all your precious work is in the dropbox folder without actually moving anything.  Let's say you save all your work in your home folder under Documents in a folder called Writing.  Maybe each book is in its own folder under that.  Perfect!  You are well organized and this trick will work great.  

If you used the geek trick above then its automatic from now on.  Just keep making your new writing files where you always do and double check its on dropbox and you are good to go. The other option is just save/move them all there to begin with this also is automatically sync'd to dropbox. Worst case make yourself a note to manually drag a copy if your work files into your dropbox folder once a week or more.

That is it!  You have now backed up your work to dropbox for free.  No usb thumb drive to lose or hope it doesn't get corrupted.  No CDs you burned to get scratched, lost or go simply bad.  Your work is safe if your computer dies or even if your house burns down taking the computer with it.

Bonus tip.  You can make a shared folder other dropbox users can see and only the folder you share with them.  That could be a good way to share your work files with your first reviewer or editor.  Perhaps get back graphics proofs for your review and comment all without using email.

First 24 Hours with iPad 3G

It has been an interesting and fun 24 hours with my new iPad 3G. I want to touch on my experience so far. Setup:

The biggest task is getting setup. Not so much what to sync to the iPad. More of getting all the logins setup in the various applications. Email, Twitter, news reading to file syncing. First i needed to get the iPad onto my wireless network. I use a very nasty long wpa2 password. So i had to paste it into a text document and use my good reader app to sync it onto the iPad. Then it was trivial to copy paste it into the wireless settings. After that I could sync my 1password data over for all the other nasty passwords too tedious to type. It was just copy paste for each application going forward.


Power:

By now everyone knows that the iPad needs high power USB ports. So it is likely a lot of old power accessories won't work. I found my Hypermac nano battery for iPod and iPhone will not charge iPad. A pleasant surprise was that I found my Belkin travel surge adapter with two USB charging ports will work fine on iPad. That will make one less thing I have to change out when traveling. The last thing is my car power adapter for my iPhone will not charge the iPad. That is not the end of the world as I won't be using it in a car unless I am a passenger on long trips. Tip for 3G owners. Turn off the 3G radio when not using it if you want the battery life we have heard about on the wifi only models.

Audio:
My one gripe on audio. My nike earbuds will not stay plugged in. I had to use an adapter meant to use earbuds with a independent mic for iphone to get them to work. It seemed to be a short output only connector versus the longer with mic input band connector physical issue.

Books:

I have some technical books from www.pragprog.com. It was easy to download the pub format and drag it into iTunes. Then it just took a sync and my technical books were on my iPad. iBooks selection and pricing is not as good as Amazon kindle. So I have not bought anything through iBooks beyond public domain free books. The kindle reader app was not bad at all for nighttime reading under the covers last night. It has been years since I have read a good book on Drizzt the Drow elf. A PDF of Scott Sigler's Ancestor reads ok in Good Reader. Still not as nice as iBooks or Kindle for a reading experience.

That is all for now or I would be just repeating what many other folks have already put out there.

- Blogged from my iPad