Ron Guest

If you haven’t dry roasted peanuts at home you should. Delish!

The Wii Trance

Happy Elephant

Blue Angle

Eyes on Daddy

Modern Thinker ?

Little brother doesn’t want to be left out

One proud daughter

The article from TechCrunch details the findings of a British developer who inadvertently discovered a great way to exploit expired domains to gain access to a person or company’s email accounts and other online services. This very simple technique, which requires no hacking at all, can easily yield access to Amazon accounts and banking services. Google and other companies really need to raise the bar to make it more difficult for people to claim email accounts and service accounts.

Security Breach: Here’s How Expired Domains Expose You To Embarrassment And Theft.

Fire!!! Nah, but junior liked seeing the truck

What’s keeping me going

These days she reads to me at bedtime:)

It is good to know there is a Bluetooth solution to the odd lack of GPS functionality on Wifi-only iPads. The device is a great size and the review is pretty positive. But at $99 list it would make more sense to buy a Wifi+3G iPad model instead. However if you bought the Wifi model not knowing GPS didn’t work I suppose this would be a slightly cheaper solution than  trading up to a 3G model.

Getting GPS on a WiFi iPad with New Sky.

Flowers for my wife - happy Mother’s Day!!!

Nice write up on CNET about the agencies and they tools they are likely using to gather up and crack the data on Bin Laden’s computers. If extreme care was taken by the terrorists this could be an extremely difficult job. But maintaining absolute security of data over long periods of time is extremely difficult. The human factor usually provides some easy doors for cracking even encrypted data so I suspect they can process the data pretty quickly.

Bin Laden’s computers will test U.S. forensics | Privacy Inc. - CNET News.

I needed to spend some time last night exploring the source to the library that comes with the SparkFun WiFly device. In the process I discovered why it wasn’t possible to use the library’s code to join a WiFi network if the SSID has a space in the name (even if you used a $ substitution). It is not quite the fault of the library code as the root cause is that one form of the join command on the chip won’t accept a space/$. The good news is by changing the code in the library slightly I could get the $ substituted SSID name to work just fine. I’ve posted details on the SparkFun forum.

My current annoyance is that the Arduino's official Ethernet library derives from Stream but the WiFly library derives from Print meaning third party libraries and code that work with Ethernet can't be used with the WiFly without quite a bit of work. I need to dive in further to understand if the WiFly library could be modified. I'm not sure why the library's author deviated in such a fundamental way from the standard library. 

Junior used it for first time today. All by himself. Happy days for mom and dad.

As I previously mentioned I got a WiFly shield from SparkFun in order to connect my Arduino to the Internet. It is a nifty little board but I immediately ran into problems getting it to join my wireless network. I’ll skip the fits and starts in my journey to diagnosis and troubleshoot a solution and instead jump to my conclusion.

But first some relevant bits about my WiFi network. I’m using WPA for security and my router publishes two SSIDs. One is the main network and another is a “guest” network with limited access and a different SSID. The main SSID has one space in the name while the “guest” SSID has two and is longer. In fact the “guest” SSID is 26 characters in length.

I initially tried to connect the WiFly to the “guest” SSID using example code included with the WiFly library. This failed with no error - in fact the example code hung at the point where it called “join”. After sending commands directly to the chip I found I could not join when using the “guest” SSID name. However I could join if I did a “scan” command and then sent a “join” command specifying the index number in the scan output. This was my main clue that the SSID name was the problem. Conclusion: either 26 characters for the SSID is too long or the chip cannot handle two spaces in the SSID name.

I next tried to join the main SSID using the example code and this too failed. However in this case I could successfully join this SSID by sending the commands to the chip and so I could conclude one space in the SSID was no problem (you do substitute a $ for the space). Reading the source code for the WiFly library I found a “TODO” comment to support spaces and hence I’m confident the library does not support spaces. I added code to set the SSID, bypassing the library’s code, and could then use the library to execute the join and access the internet successfully.

The code I used was a snippet from a post by Gary on this SparkFun Forum thread. If you have questions feel free to comment. In spite of the problems with the library, and potentially the chip having limitations on the SSID, I think this is a nifty little shield and I’m anxious to start some new projects involving connectivity.

Google published very interesting research on how smartphone usage effects users shopping habits. After using their smartphone to search, for example, 68% pay a visit to a business and 53% make a purchase. Retailers take note - you better have a mobile strategy…

Google Research Shows How People Use Smartphones to Help Them Buy Stuff.

Would love to see what must be one heck of a revenue hockey stick in the business plan that makes these kind of losses acceptable. Either that or they’re playing games about how they allocate costs and revenues between Online and their other units.

CHART OF THE DAY: Microsoft Keeps Burning Hundreds Of Millions Online.

Seriously, who doesn’t know Apple and the Google gaggle are kicking RIM’s butt? Late quarter cuts in guidance mean things are seriously headed in the toilet. Somehow don’t think the Playbook will save them either.

RIM cuts guidance for May quarter - MarketWatch.

Sony has finally come clean on the full scale of the breach in the Playstation Network. It is enormous in scale and more than just an inconvenience to gamers. The hacker was able to get everything needed to launch identity theft on 70 million, yes MILLION, users. I’m in the business of enterprise IT including security and the majority of the breaches I see are the result of unpatched systems or lax administration. The breadth and depth of this baby shows the fundamental design of the Playstation Network had one, and like a whole list, of critical security flaws. Far too much information was exposed than necessary. Companies need to learn to not cut corners on the secure design of systems that store our critical information. No amount of patching will fix these kind of design flaws.

I'm glad I don't use the Playstation Network. And encourage you to do as I do - never let a merchant store your credit card info for future use. For sites that insist on storing one, such as those that do auto-renewals, I simply obtain a one time use number from my credit card company. The number has a dollar limit just enough to cover my purchase and will expire in a month which provides additional protection. Since the credit card number isn't my real number it is of little use to a hacker. To avoid the inconvenience of always having to type in my credit card info at merchants I use regularly I find 1Password to be invaluable (and it does a whole lot more to help secure your information).

Update: Personal Data of 70 Million Sony Customers Exposed in Hack.

As soon as I got my 11” MacBook Air, some months ago now, it was obvious carrying it in any of my existing backpacks or bags would look ridiculous. Rather like my 2 year old walking around in one of my shirts. I was seriously disappointed when I hit up Google to start my search for a case that would meet my requirements. They weren’t very complex: thin and sized for the 11” MBA, modest amount of padding to protect the diminutive baby, a small pocket to hold my essentials such as a 2 factor USB fob, earphones and so forth. Oh, and it had to be something a male would generally be comfortable carrying. Particularly on Etsy I found a few interesting cases but they were way too feminine in design for my taste. Most cases I found were either nothing more than a slipcase (no pocket) or were too bulky (basically small versions of a backpack). Somewhere in my digging around someone praised this Targus case and since my local BestBuy had it in stock I checked it out.

The Targus slip case is made of neoprene and sized for notebooks of up to 12”. In practice the 11” MBA has a nice snug fit along the width of this case. I was originally concerned that the height of the case was a couple inches more than that of the MBA. In practice this is actually a nice little feature as it provides a fairly secure grip (almost like a handle). The pocket is a great size. Mine contains a 2 factor USB device, two USB thumb drives, a small pad of paper, pen, earphones and my Bluetooth earpiece.

I’ve carried the case around a lot over the past few months and it shows no signs of wear. Although not as cool looking as I’d prefer (an identical case made of leather would be so much nicer) the price and functionality are fantastic. I can easily recommend it if your needs are similar to mine.

... Sarah Perez's op-ed on ReadWriteWeb pretty well sums up why I don't have any Android devices yet. They seem to perpetually be behind Apple, for my use cases (and maybe not yours), and about the time they're close Apple leaps ahead again. I've used an iPhone for several years now and, if for no other reason than a constant desire for change, would like to change platforms. The rumors regarding a new iPhone seem to point to only a modest update later this year. If so that may be enough for Android to do some major catching up and finally make me consider a change. On the other hand in the tablet space I think Apple is so far ahead I don't see anyone catching them in the next 12 months. And maybe therein lies the cause of the predicted modest update to the iPhone - Apple could be pouring the resources into rapid innovation of the iPad instead.

Consumers Don’t Want Prototypes (They Want iPads).

I live in an area where tornados and severe thunderstorms are a regular occurrence. Staying aware of these threats should be a basic part of life but used to entail either being glued to a weather broadcast on TV or constantly checking radar/warnings on a website. Sure, there are sirens outdoors but they can only be heard indoors under ideal conditions. However advances in weather radios and a new tool for iPhones provide a much better proactive notification solutions.

For homes the top solution is a Weather Radio with S.A.M.E. technology. These radios will “wake up” and sound an alarm if a threat occurs and, most importantly, allow you to specify exactly which dangerous conditions will generate the audible alarm. This is key because without it minor alarms can wake you in the middle of the night for no good reason at which point you turn it off an lose the value of having one in the first place. We’ve had one for a few years now and it has been reliable in alerting us including several times when we were unaware severe weather was a risk.

More recently I discovered an iPhone app call Weather Alert USA that does much the same thing. It costs a few dollars but is worth it since it means you will get alerts even when running errands, at a sporting event and so forth.

It’s always good to keep your eyes and ears open when weather threats are around but these tools help ensure you and your family are not caught off-guard.