gVeloper.com

Another Mac Bundle for Sale

2011-05-21T09:25:00.002-04:00

And this one has Path Finder.

The Productive Macs bundle is for sale for $29.99 and contains TextExpander, Path FInder, Socialite, Houdahspot, Today, Keyboard Maestro, Blast and Mail Act-On. The sale continues for another 10 days. Check it out here: http://gveloper.com/Blog/index.php?id=930950440909522667

Path Finder alone would make this bundle worth it.

Chloe's ABCs

2011-04-22T20:49:00.001-04:00

The ABCs as told by my cat Chloe:

A is for All the food that should be in my dish
B is for Bone dry, like my dish is right now
C is for the Cat food that should be in my dish
D is for Dish.... Duh....
E is for Everything that should be in my dish right now
F is for Food... Which if your were paying attention, should be in my dish now...
G is for Grub, which I want... In the dish...
H is for the Hole, which my dish kinda is, without food
I is for Irritated, which I am, because of the dish thing...
J is for Just feed me
K is for Kitchen, where my dish is
L is for Love, which I will express toward you, post dish-filling
M is for Mine... Like my dish
N is for Now, which is when I'd like food
O is for Only, as in the only thing I want
P is for Pantry, where the food for my dish is
Q is for Quite, which I vow not to be until the dish is filled
R is for Really really hungry
S is for Steak, which I see you wish to eat in peace, while I wait for my dish...
T is for Trust, which is what I had in you... For my dish...
U is for Unfortunate, which is what the consequences of not adequately filling my dish are.
V is for Vicious... What I can be... If need be...
W is for Where is my food?
X is for Ex owner.....
Y is for WHY????
Z is for Zero... Which is what you are if you don't pay attention to the dish...

She loves me... Deep in there somewhere...

Cloud, Legacy/Local or a Combination?

2011-03-19T15:39:00.000-04:00

This is not just a topic of debate for businesses and large enterprises, but also for your personal data at home. Do you use your local ISP's email, downloaded via POP3, or do you use gmail/yahoo/hotmail? Do you keep all your digital photos on your hard drive or do you have a flickr/picasa/photobucket/snapfish account? Do you use Google Docs, Zoho or Microsoft's Office Web Apps? How about Facebook/MySpace/Twitter?

What about online backups like carbonite? or File synchronization services like dropbox, box.net, etc? or file sharing systems like cloudApp?

The real question I'm asking is: how much control have you actually maintained over your data? Do you know where it's all at? Or how many people have access to it?

I'm not saying there's necessarily anything wrong with having your data spread out, either... but it is food for thought.

Here's an even scarier thought: you may know which companies you trusted with your data, and where their headquarters are, but... do you know in what country their datacenters are in? or who they outsourced your data to? You may have laws that protect your data in the US, but what about Brazil? Europe? Southeast Asia?

Some have said that it's old fashioned to think of your data as your own, or of the details of your life as private any longer. And perhaps all of the above is just part of the a massive paradigm shift in computing, culture and privacy. Perhaps it's an unpleasant (pleasant?) side affect of progress.

Be informed.

MySQL Management on a Mac

2011-03-18T16:17:00.000-04:00

By day I do a lot of work with very large databases. By night, I work on smaller databases all the time, many to do with minotaur. One thing I really like about Microsoft SQL Server is The SQL Studio. Of course, this is a product limited to 1) the windows platform and 2) MS SQL Server. So what are the best options out there for MySQL database management for the mac? I've found two options.

1) Navicat for MySQL for Mac

The light version of Navicat is available in the mac app store for free. It does not contain the visual view builder and other advanced features, but this is a VERY good option for mac users. You can design tables, write functions, save queries, write views, etc etc etc. It is a very mac-like experience even though it is a cross-platform application; they obviously took time to work on making the experience for mac users very fluid.

2) MySQL Workbench

The official GUI. A while ago, I would have never recommended it, but it has been through so much development of late that it is stable, fast, the experience is pretty fluid, and it works very well on the mac. The biggest advantages here are that 1) it's the same interface that your windows and linux colleagues will see and use, which provides for a better better collaborative experience and 2) it has all sorts of system management options. Oh, also... it's free.

Right now, I'm using both. I haven't figured out how to save queries to the server in workbench like I can in Navicat. Navicat is still a better mac-like experience and feels more optimized to me. Workbench though is a lot fuller featured, is the official GUI and is what a lot of your colleagues will be using, if they use a GUI at all (and no, phpMyAdmin does not count).

Why use a GUI at all? Well, if your asking that, I'm probably not writing this article for you to begin with... I tend to think in parallel. I think and work on many different tasks at the same time and swap between them really quickly. Therefore, a proper GUI with plenty of tabs in windows works best for me, especially when it comes to analytics. I find I can keep my train of thought better.

Any other/better packages out there?

Must-See Podcasts

2011-03-17T15:43:00.000-04:00

When I get home in the evenings, I catch up on the world through podcasts. I have my main iMac downloading them throughout the day as soon as there is an update for any of them. Then I usually watch them on my Apple TV, because using the Apple Remote on my iPad and iPhone, I can play a video playlist on my AppleTV, something you can't do straight from the interface. I have a smart playlist called "Unwatched Videos" which is just a smart (always updating) list of all the podcasts I haven't watched yet. I also watch in other ways, since not every podcasts is available in iTunes.

So what are the podcasts I think are must-see?

1. ScreenCasts Online - Yes, it's a paid subscription, but this is an absolute must for any mac user. Each week (or every other week) Don McAllister publishes a tutorial on a different mac application.

2. CNET - All HD Videos - Subscribe in iTunes, search for "cnet all hd videos" and subscribe to the all hd videos feed - this is basically every hd podcasts and video release that cnet makes.

3. webbeat.tv - geek news - web

4. geekbrief.tv - same company as webbeat - geek news - gadget

5. The Hacker News Network - All security news, tool updates, upcoming cons, and color commentary in one place.

6. The IGN Daily Fix - All the gaming news you need.

7. AppAdvice Daily - face it, the app store changes too much to keep up. Let AppAdvice do it for you and tell you what's hot.

8. The Apple Keynotes feed - search in iTunes for "Apple Keynotes" - this feed is updated with an hd video of each apple keynote talk, shortly after the talk occurs.

9. The Best of YouTube - Maybe you're not interested in the Numa Numa guy, or double rainbows, or chocolate rain... but your friends are and it's part of current culture, whether you like it or not. Rather than spend all your time surfing through mindless dribble in an attempt to understand, watch only the best videos, filtered down for you, laugh, learn and sometimes even be amazed at what the rest of the world does in their spare time.

10. YMPNow - Not available (that I know of) in iTunes, subscribe to the youtube channel instead. I love the format of this one, concise, informative and always a "say-what?" story at the end. The format reminds me of Qwiki.com (who I am hoping comes up with a daily podcast)

So there's a few. I'm sure there are more, and would love to hear about your favorites in the comments of this article.

Multiple Ecosystems

2011-03-16T15:48:00.000-04:00

Following on with yesterday's article on my complicated network here, I wanted to write a bit about dealing with a heterogeneous network with multiple internal ecosystems.

I have windows machines, macs, game consoles, media devices and everything in between, and I imagine that part is fairly normal. But I have more complete ecosystems than that.

On the Apple side, I have desktop macs, a MacBook Air, an iPad, and iPhone, an Apple TV, etc.

On the Windows side of the house, I have desktops, laptops, severs, and a full windows domain, exchange server, share point, etc.

I also am a tester of the Google Cr-48 ChromeOS netbook, and several other proprietary systems.

So... How do they all fit together? How do you make them play nice so that you don't spend most of your time fixing incompatibilities? This is a very important question, and there is more to it than just the technology. There is more to achieving network harmony than just making the devices talk to each other, you need to find out where they fit in your life and in your workflows. And sometimes you'll find that they simply don't, at which pint you have two options: if this is your hobby and you enjoy tinkering and making things work no matter what, you keep the device and play, but if you know you need to focus more on life and less on the technology that surrounds it, de-complicate your life and get rid of the pieces that don't fit. This is the basis of my post yesterday.

The Apple ecosystem works together very, very well. iTunes does a fantastic job, especially with home sharing, of bringing your content to each of your many devices. All the devices see each other and talk to each other with no problems and you get the sense that each piece of the puzzle was made for the next.

The windows ecosystem works daily well. When you join the workstations to the domain, all the resources you get on one machine, you get on the others, and as long as you are smart about your network shares, etc, it works well. Microsoft Office and Exchange are great systems.

And speaking of exchange, that's my first tie-in. My macs and iDevices all talk to exchange so all my email, calendar, and contacts are kept in sync, no matter the platform. I suppose this could even be true on my Linux boxes if I used Evolution. This also the first problem with the Cr-48. The other components of my various ecosystems ares built to work together, even if it was a reluctant process originally. ChromeOS is more centered on google services which would rather you migrate your infrastructure to google than sync with your existing infrastructures.

Next is network shares. Everything understands SMB, so windows shares are king. My main storage is a windows share, but I have a pogoplug and
other dlna based systems as well. This means that all my documents, and especially my media, on this devices is accessible on my game consoles and other tv-connected devices. Even my new router has a USB port for connecting a storage device to share out to your computers and dlna devices.

When mail, contacts, calendars, and documents are all accede no matter which device you are logged into, that's the bulk of your compatibility issues. The rest is workflow and harmony.

Workflow is very important. I use some mac-only applications for development and graphics. I use those applications because they work for me. It's important to find the apps that work for you, and build around them.

Harmony is also very important. Once you know the require pieces of your workflow, each component you add needs to have harmony with those required pieces. In my case, I know I need to work from a mac some of the time, so given the choice of media boxes, I know I need something that works well with those macs. That let me to use the appletv instead of say, the roku or boxed box, but those can be made to work well for you as well, each with different strengths, strengths and weaknesses.

The point with harmony is that regardless if you can technically make something talk to something else (compatibility) if it takes more work than it's worth to use that compatibility, or if it disrupts the workflow or even the consistent feeling of your device ecosystem, then it's not worth it.

So Compatibility, Workflow and Harmony are my key areas for making heterogenous technology work for you in one environment.

Replacing my Core Router

2011-03-15T16:20:00.000-04:00

I have a network layout that's probably a lot more complicated than most households. That's because I have my machines, game consoles, appliances online next to corporate boxes, work machines, next to my lab machines, next to live malware analysis units.

So last year when it came time to replace the aging Symantec SGS firewall/router, I looked at other enterprise-grade gear. After doing a lot of research that took way too much of my time, I figured I wanted something with content filtering, in-line antivirus, antimalware, etc. of course I'd need the lab and malware machines excluded from this, but I wanted to protect the others.

After reviewing several vendors, I settled on sonicwall, and proceeded to purchase a TZ 210W. This is a great little solution that would probably be great in a normal small office environment, but in my crazy hybrid home/office/lab environment, I've run into several issues.

First, the game consoles and other devices are more and more requiring the use of UPnP on your network to open holes to the outside world to enable to-way communications. Of course, this is kinda scary if you have corporate information on a network, so you'd not want UPnP on an office network.

Second, content filtering got in the way far more than I thought it would... Nothing would stream without going through the filters first so I had issues with large downloads, and things like YouTube video streams. Of course, you can exempt file types and internal ip addsses, but it felt like I was excluding the whole network.

Third, throughput was designed for security, and an office environment. My cable modem at home gets greater than 20mb/s from my provider, and any UTM appliance slows down throughput, so I ended up turning off most of the UTM services, even the ones I thought were really cool.

Fourth, I had some wifi incompatibilities with this box and ended up having to have a second acess point. To be fair, I started a support ticket on this, but never got around to calling them back and working with them.

Now none of this is the fault of sonic wall or the device, but I am just finding it hard to use enterprise-grade equipment at home without serious tradeoffs.

So I started researching prosumer-grade gear. I looked at the NetGear WNDR3700 and the Lynksys E3000, and all the variations of the NetGear. I looked at all the Chet reviews and amazon coments and I decided on the WNDR37AV.

Before the unit came in though, I was standing in line at BestBuy and saw a box for the Linksys E4200... doh! Ompetely forgot about that one, because I had only just seen the review video for it. When I got home I looked up all the stats, and sure enough, it was way better and fixed the flaws in the E3000 that made me go with the netgear. So I went back to best buy the next day and picked up the E4200.

So far, my throughput is greatly improved. I have some wifi issues to work out, but already it is better than either of the old access points. It has enough port forwarding capabilities for me to keep everything running here, and I think it will work long term. Especially since all my game consoles and other appliances a finally happy again.

So I'll send the WNDR37AV back when it shows up from amazon.

Filter Bubbles

2011-03-14T17:15:00.000-04:00

Continuing with the TED video from yesterday, today's video is on "filter bubbles". This is a very real problem with very high consequences. This is why I go to both google news and other online sources and still watch news broadcasts, read newspapers, etc... Until online media stops deciding what it thinks I want to see vs what I need to see, we cannot consider ourselves informed or well-rounded based on those sources of information alone.

While this research is fairly common sense to some of us, I wonder how little the mass population of the internet stops to think about what they're not reading, what they're not seeing and what they know nothing about.

Design Similarities

2011-03-14T16:18:00.000-04:00

I like spotting design inspirations in every day items. There have already been comparisons of the iPad 2's smart cover to Japanese bathtub covers, but today I noticed yet another similar item, also in the bathtub.

iPad 2 smart cover:

Bath mat from Bed, Bath & Beyond:

The Birth of a Word

2011-03-13T17:49:00.000-04:00

The above video from ted.com is truly amazing to me. I work with data in large databases continuously and am always amazed when I or my team discovers a new metric that we can trend from the simplest data sources and be able to see some new data that we previously thought was completely irrelevant to the original data source and now can see very clearly and trend and graph it appropriately.

But this... well, this takes all of this to a whole new level. And listen and watch how not just words but ideas and influence spread.

iPad 2 and the Future of Computing

2011-03-13T13:31:00.001-04:00

So of course I went out and braved the lines on Friday. Unfortunately I had listened to all the critics out there that said nobody would be getting the iPad 2 and the lines were real short all across the country and non existent at the third party resellers. So I found a Best Buy that was on the list. When I walked in, I saw a line, no big deal, I head toward the line only to realize that was actually the finally phase of a line that wrapped Galway around the inside of the store.

Amazingly, the guy that was going through the line handing out the vouchers had enough iPads for us all. Although I originally wanted a black 16gb wifi-only model, that was sold out as was the 32, so I went with the 16gb, since I have not filled my current 16 up. In fact, the only Eason my 32gb iPhone is overflowing is all the HD video I've taken, everywhere I go. I trust I probably will not be using the iPad as video or event still camera very often, given it's size and the stares it would inspire...

That said, it was not a smooth launch. Lines were unnecessarily slow, and as is par for the course with Best Buy and other big-box retail, there were more blue shirts standing around than there were doing anything about it.

While in line, the gentleman in front of me called around to local target and walmart stores, all we sold out.

While I had thought about bringing my iPad 1 along to play with, I had convinced myself there wouldn't even be a line and I wouldn't be waiting long enough to do anything with it. Which is a shame, because before I left I had downloaded GarageBand. That and a set of earbuds would have gone along way.

So speaking of GarageBand... This truly is a killer app. I've had a lot of fun already. I like GarageBand on the mac, but to be honest I rarely ever open it anymore, unless I need it for a project. But bringing it into a touch interface is a little magical. This weekend I'm keeping a post-surgery cat entertained in a small room that she can't hurt herself in, so the iPad is aleady getting some serious use.

And I am sure I will get good use out of iMovie on the iPad when I figure out the best way to transfer videos from the iPhone to the iPad. I see there are some good solutions in the app store now, and pretty inexpensive.

So what does all this mean? I think the whole everyday computing paradigms are shifting. I'm writing this blog post on an iPad, not a computer and I don't feel like I have any less ability to edit or be creative. I have more flexibility than my iPhone, just because of the size of the screen. I can also type about as fast as I can on my desktop machines.

Google is testing ChromeOS, opera is adding an app store, mobile platforms are taking over the world. Apple may be on to something by calling these "post-pc" devices. We are migrating to simpler platforms, not full desktop environments for the consumption and now even the creation of online content.

I think we are about to see this trend cross over into our main desktop environments as well. While OS X represents a lot of things, and after seeing all the changes that have been leaked from the developer builds I feel like Apple has downplayed the true significance of this revision. But the overall theme of the update is a return to simplicity. Gestures instead of keyboard shortcuts, clean lines, gentle animations, full screen applications that aren't just a full screen window. These are all things that instead of pulling you into the OS, pull you into what you are doing on the OS, by getting out of your way.

OSX 10.7 Lion

2011-03-01T15:35:00.002-05:00

So I'm not at this time an Apple developer, and don't have access to the beta. And that means I'm not under an NDA to talk about my perspectives of the new OS as I understand it from all of the media coverage available on the net.

I am very interested in how the new version will advance the security of the platform. From what I have seen, there are a few new features that are of interest to security professionals:

Whole disk encryption
Centralized internet account management (your google login can be saved by the system and used to set up mail.app for example)
A new privacy preference pane - centralizes various privacy settings - also a setting to send Apple anonymous usage information.
WebKit 2.0 - What security changes could be in store for safari from this?

The best and most complete writeup and video I've seen on it was put together by engadget and is available here.

Every time I see another writeup or video and learn a little bit more about the new version, I like it more. From changes to the overall interface, the enhancements in Mail.App, the open/save dialogs, mission control, and all the gestures (somebody is going to have to make a good cheat-sheet pdf of those), I am excited about not only Lion, but the future of user interfaces.

Facebook Account Security

2011-02-18T15:00:00.000-05:00

If you haven't seen this yet, you should follow the instructions here to secure your facebook account and sessions:

In your account settings, under account security, hit the "change" link.
Make sure you check the boxes for "browse Facebook on a secure connection (https) whenever possible" and "when a new computer or mobile device logs into this account - send me an email"
click save

Scroll down and review all the active computers and mobile devices. Click remove on all duplicates, and machines you aren't using or haven't used in a while (don't worry, the worst thing that will happen here is you'll have to log in again from these devices"

You're good to go.

Blogging on the Cr-48

2011-02-16T19:00:00.002-05:00

So far I haven't found a blogging "app" I like for the Cr-48. Since gveloper.com's backend is actually on blogger, I can at least just use the main blogger site to add a new article. (I use RapidWeaver to design the frontend and RapidBlog to tie in to the blogger backend)

I'm not really a fan of the Blogger admin site, and it's no good if I don't have a connection, so the search continues for the perfect blogging app for the Cr-48

Preferably it would have:

Offline mode (some places, even verizon can't get a signal)
Multi-backend compatibility (blogger, wordpress, joomla, etc)
Rich editor that takes advantage of available screen real estate
Notes and drafts capabilities
Lightweight, fast, must have a snappy interface
MUST be reliable - no spending three hours working on a blog post only to have it try to save and woops, there goes everything... At least the blogger backend auto-saves the current article every few seconds or so.

I would like to be able to sign in to several of my (unrelated) properties from one single application and be able to have one consistent workflow between them.

The search continues.

Using Google's Personal Blocklist Extension for Chrome

2011-02-15T20:04:00.000-05:00

One of the biggest annoyances with Google searches of late is the onslaught of irrelevant results. And it's not that the text on the found pages are irrelevant to your search terms. For example, searching for technical issues, say sql optimization, sometimes leads to 50 sites reposting the same article. And all of these sites keep you from seeing results from sites that could actually help you. Google has now provided a way to filter out these sites from your results.

First you'll need to download the new extension here.

Next, run a search on Google. In this case, I've searched for "mssql substring"

Now, one of my biggest annoyances in search results is that site listed second to last, experts-exchange.com. Often times I'm searching for an example of syntax or methodologies, this site pops up, but it's a useless result as it requires a paid subscription to view the answers (yes, I know there are other ways to view them).

But now, I can just filter that site completely from my search results by clicking the appropriate link under the result:

Clicking this link will add experts-exchange.com to my personal blocklist and remove it from future search results.

And now you will see the results from the same search no longer includes results from that site:

To edit/modify the blocklist, click the personal blocklist button that the extension installed:

Clicking on that button will produce a popup that will allow you to edit/remove entries

And that's it. With this new tool, you'll be able to remove those paid sites, mailing list archives, etc etc from your search results, and hopefully have much more productive experience.

If this format of article is helpful to you, drop me a line in the comments.

24hrs in the Dev Channel on the Cr-48

2011-02-14T18:33:00.000-05:00

First off a shout out to all the great people in the Chrome Notebook Pilot google group. That group is extremely active right now and a great source of information for the Cr-48 community and anyone who is interested in ChromeOS in general. As part of one of the threads there, I've built a Google Reader bundle of quite a few blogs of Cr-48 users. You can see the bundle and subscribe to it in Google Reader if you'd like by clicking here. It is a dynamic list, and I am trying to keep it up to date as I go and as more blogs get posted to the threads I'm watching.

Ok, so let's get to it. Yesterday I switched to the Dev channel from updates. I've been using the system plenty since, so how did it go?

In a nutshell: awesome. While I would never recommend bleeding-edge code like this for mainstream users, I am not a mainstream user, and I'm finding that most Cr-48 owners aren't either. At least not the ones active in the various Cr-48 communities.

So a list of some noticeable changes:

1. Flash 10.2 - Insane difference. Flash video is actually useable on the Cr-48 now because of this. Updating to the dev channel is not the end of the story here though. After you update, you'll need to go to chrome://plugins and expand the flash player plugin entry. You'll click disable on the 10.1 version and leave the 10.2 version. Also go to chrome://flags and turn on GPU accelerated compositing. Be very careful in flags though. The dev channel contains a few flags that if you turn on, you could kill your installation.

2. You can turn on the ability to use a GSM SIM card and use data from a GSM provider (thanks hexxeh).

3. The experience is snappier. This could very well be because of the GPU accelerated compositing though.

4. The dev channel is using the 10.x Chrome builds. That's nice, all the advancements in that line are here.

5. The brightness adjustments now have an onscreen display

Haven't noticed any changes in pages that improperly rendered before, but I haven't tested many yet, either. I have not had any stability issues, but some people had volume control issues after this update.

Again, I can't stress enough how much better an experience flash 10.2 is on this box than 10.1 was.

The trackpad on this box is still the worst part of the experience, and I hope they can do something with drivers.

Hacking the CR48

2011-02-13T12:59:00.000-05:00

There is so much information out there on ChromeOS and the CR48 that you can get info on pretty much anything you want to do. The problem is that the information is scattered across forums, mailing lists, community pages, blogs etc, and getting all the information for a particular task you want to do can be a task in and of itself.

Anyway, I wanted to switch to dev mode on the CR48, as well as switch to the dev updates channel, to make sure I get the latest features, at the expense of some stability. But as a user in the Chrome Notebook Pilot google group said, that's what we're here for.

So, switching to dev mode was simple, I thought. Pull out the batter on the cr48, and along the sidewall of the battery cavity is a piece of black tape. Remove the tape and expose the switch. I moved the switch to the other position, got greeted by some scary warning screens and no obvious path forward, switched back and erased all my settings and data. Oops.

But, after doing some reading, I had left out an important step. After you flip the switch, when you are confronted with the first scary screen, press ctrl+d to enable dev mode. You wait for a timer to tick down to allow you to back out, then the switch to dev mode begins. It will take a few minutes. Then the unit will reboot. Hit ctrl+d again when the warning screen comes back, then you will boot up in dev mode.

The biggest advantage here is that if you jump to a crosh shell by hitting ctrl+alt+t (for terminal) you now have a "shell" command. This drops you to a real linux shell on the device. A simple "sudo su" and you've arrived.

http://www.chromium.org/poking-around-your-chrome-os-device
http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-information-for-chrome-os-devices/cr-48-chrome-notebook-developer-information

Now to change to the dev update channel so you get more bleeding edge updates.

Got to the wrench icon
Click About Chrome OS
Click "More Info"
Change the channel from "Beta" to "Development"
Click "Check for Update"
Wait for Eons...
Reboot when prompted

Dow you are in dev mode with dev updates.

One extension suggested in the google group was "Service Pages for Google Chrome" - it will give you access to a ton of settings and information inside Chrome.

There's still a lot for me to learn and figure out on this thing, but hopefully this is helpful to someone.

Comodo Antivirus for the Mac

2011-02-12T10:45:00.000-05:00

Well, I am excited. While I have been using Sophos antivirus on my macs since they announced its availability for free, one of my favorite security suites on the PC has released a public beta for the mac: Comodo Antivirus.

Comodo's website is here

You can download the mac beta here

and you can watch languy99's review/demo below:

I have been running it for a day now, and after an update, the full scan found some questionable file samples I had squirreled away on my hard drive. I've installed it on my primary workstation, a macbook air, and so far I see no performance degradation, but we'll see in a few days what I think. I am glad they are using an interface very similar to their windows suite.

So far, it is looking like when this is a polished/completed project, it will be an awesome security tool for the mac community, and I'd like to thank Comodo for working on it!

Design Changes

2011-02-04T23:10:00.000-05:00

So I made some design changes, finally adding a decent custom header, unifying the font and color schemes, etc etc. One of the layers in the logo banner was made using an interactive art project. If you haven't seen Escape Motions' "Flame" experiment, be sure to check it out here. It is a very fun project for adults and creative kids alike. I often go back to it to make abstract backgrounds for use in layers of complex graphics.

The RapidWeaver theme I'm using is not an in-house theme, but a very beautiful, very versatile theme called R MADA by NCD Themes.

As the home page says, this site is a sandbox, where I try out new techniques before applying them elsewhere in my work.

So please let me know what you think.

ChromeOS and Ethernet Dongles

2011-02-04T16:58:00.000-05:00

Just for the record, the CR-48 does recognize the same WII ethernet dongles that the MacBook Air does:

So there is an option other than WiFi and 3G for connecting with a CR-48

ShmooCon 2011

2011-02-04T16:25:00.000-05:00

ShmooCon was pretty good this year. It did start snowing early on Friday, making a few people nervously saying "Not Again!!"

The talks were pretty good as well. This year I tried to follow along in real life, making sweeping changes to Minotaur as speakers mentioned better ways of doing things. As a result, the collection engines are better now, but will be much better when all of the changes have been completed and more of the ideas gained from this conference have been implemented.

If you are interested in this field, Dave Marcus from McAfee gave a FireTalk on OSINT (Open Source Intelligence) and basically pulled all the important details of a persons life based on the information from just one screenshot. You can check it out on Vimeo.

Using Social Networks to Find, Profile and 0wn Your Victims! (by Dave Marcus) from theprez98 on Vimeo.

Also, be sure to check out Johnny Long's update from Uganda:

Shmoocon 2011 from Johnny Long on Vimeo.

More videos should be posted soon, so keep checking the usual sites (youtube, vimeo, etc)

Rovio Woes (and the fix)

2011-02-04T15:12:00.000-05:00

So a while back I picked up a WowWee Rovio from a deal on Woot. Problem was, it was an early revision with a terrible power supply that eventual died. Even when it was working, it didn't work well. The battery did not last very long even when it had been charging for days.

So then I ordered an Altex MW122A

All the sudden the battery charges correctly and lasts a good long time. Long enough to drive around the house a few times, chase the cats, and return to the base station and dock for a recharge.

And that really was it's main purpose, to check in on the cats.

Google Chrome OS CR-48

2011-02-04T14:23:00.000-05:00

So I was driving up to the house a couple nights ago on my way home, and there was a package at the door. I couldn't remember what I must have ordered, but enough packages come to the house with things I'm building or playing with, I didn't think much of it. But when I opened the box and saw the box inside, I had a pleasant surprise.

Inside was the unmistakeable box of a Google CR-48 ChromeOS Notebook. I registered back in December along with probably millions of other people. I even wrote a rather thorough collection of reviews and information on the device and posted it on NovCon here. When I didn't get one by early January and all news of people getting them in the mail had dried up, I just figured I didn't make the list. Turned out I was wrong.

So some quick notes:

The trackpad is very hard to use, especially until you understand some major differences between it and the macbook trackpads. When right clicking, it is necessary to lift your thumb from the pad, and only press with those two fingertips. Click and drag is very very hard and usually results in your cursor just staying in one position without moving. If you double-tap, hold the second tap and drag that one finger, it works for text selection, but it is far less intuitive (or useful) than the way selecting text on a macbook trackpad works.

A simple terminal can be had by typing ctrl+alt+t

You switch between the terminal and any open sets of tabs (windows) by using alt+tab

Customization options are minimal

Flash is really choppy

The hardware, other than the trackpad, is really nice, but that's not really the point as the notebook is not really reference hardware, more like dev hardware.

The fact that it is a laptop that boots into a web browser and very little else sinks in very quickly, but then doesn't seem like all that foreign of a paradigm. The simple fact is that my web browsers are what I use most of the time on my other laptops anyway. At least while I'm just surfing or doing basic work at home.

Navigation Apps for iOS

2011-01-23T14:49:00.000-05:00

One thing I miss from the android platform is the wonderful maps application, with built-in turn-by-turn directions, and especially the voice search features. Now granted, the navigation was often wrong and diverted my way off course for no apparent reason, or would take me past a destination, only to tell me to make 3 left turns to get back to that area and then "I've arrived".

I have been trying out quite a few navigation applications on the iPhone. I started with the free solutions of course, but I have a couple of issues that narrow down my choices. I live in a fairly new community that's not on a lot of maps. I also go to places that are fairly recently constructed and are not on these maps either. So if my home and my destinations are not on the maps, it is a non-starter for those applications.

That being said, there were some applications that were entertaining at least. The best of these was Waze. Unfortunately, Waze didn't know my neighborhoods and many others, but getting points for driving around in these places was an interesting social aspect I had never considered in this family of applications, and the traffic reports that came in live from other users were accurate and timely. Unfortunately, for routing on trips, it was not useful.

After reading a lot of reviews, watching a lot of youtube videos, and general research, I decided to try out Navigon. By far, it's the best interface I've seen in a navigation application, it knew my neighborhoods, and was easy to read and so far the routes have been direct and intelligent.

I bought the lifetime traffic module, and while initially I didn't see many alerts, now I get good traffic alerts and am automatically re-rerouted to avoid these events.

The panoramic 3d view is an additional cost, but is worth it in my view. It is a nice touch that the screen mimics the horizon, and the eye candy doesn't detract from the readability of the road/city names.

MySQL and storing IP addresses

2011-01-17T13:11:00.001-05:00

A while back, NovCon posted an article about storing IP addresses as integers, both to save space as well as be in a more indexable format. Well, it turns out MySQL has these functions already built in:

INET_ATON()	Return the numeric value of an IP address
INET_NTOA()	Return the IP address from a numeric value