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Securing Your Private Wireless Network

It has been all over the news lately that corporations and even government computer systems have been broken into. While this is happening, sensitive data is being stolen and leaked onto the Internet or used to distribute company secrets. This is the nightmare of every head of network security in the world at this time as well as for home users and telecommuting workers all around the globe. When careful attention is paid to trends in the news and through specialty publications that focus solely on network security, there is a far better chance of keeping protocols up to date and avoiding any significant breaches. Within this article, the focus will be on Wireless LAN security and the various pitfalls and methods currently in use that has proven to be reliable.

Closed Networks

Most networks will be a closed system of one flavor or another. It can be a home network where a user does personal banking or a telecommuting employee whose laptop is like the best friend and travelling companion. The most common example of a closed network is a home network or a small organization or company network. It is those that we will be focusing on in this article. When configuring this setup, the most effective point of security will be the access point itself. Through the access point, there is access to options that will govern how information is sent and received and at what level of encryption. There are a few options available to ensure this; some are more effective than others. There are some methods of network protection like WIPS that will require more physical hardware.

They are:

• MAC address screening
• Using a Wireless Intrusion Prevention System
• Use of a Captive Portal
• Use of a secure VPN

MAC Address Screening

The best option is to require MAC address screening and to disable ESSID broadcasting entirely. The combination of these two precautions makes the network connection itself difficult to detect by outsiders let alone to initiate information theft. This option does not require the purchase of additional hardware or software and is configurable through the router gateway itself. This is the most popular choice and will be the option that most people require without additional steps. There are those individuals and organizations whose networks require more security though and the following options are available to them. Most often these options below are used by those who conduct work from home or for those who telecommute and may be anywhere in the world.

Use of a Wireless Intrusion Prevention System

In a nutshell, a wireless intrusion prevention system (also known as WIPS) is simply a network device that scans the wireless signals for unauthorized access point and then begins the process of locking them down and sending a notification through an instant messaging (IM) system or a pop-up or page to the currently on duty network administrator. This is an additional piece of equipment and the cost can vary from couple hundred dollars to many thousands, depending on the size of your network. Most private residences and networks will not have this protection unless they tend to work from home and are in a high security IT-related field.

Use of a Captive Portal

This is a fairly common approach taken by small businesses who either offer wireless access for its customers only, or for those who sell wireless access by the hour, day, week etc, like hotels. A captive portal turns the web browser into an authentication site that all traffic is driven to before having access to the entire network in order to provide authentication through a guest password, receipt number or payment type and only when those forms of identification are met, will a user have access to the entire network. This security will most often be seen at hotels, coffee shops and other places where customers might spend a usable amount of time with their laptops while enjoying the location they are at. Many city parks now have such wireless access, in fact.

Use of a Secure VPN

The use of a virtual private network, or more commonly called a VPN, is found most often with telecommuting workers who need access to the company’s entire network and applications, but on a secure line. Think of a VPN as a secret passage way through the World Wide Web, which protects the user from eavesdroppers and those who would virtually pick your pockets by stealing bits of private and valuable data while the user exchanges information between your network and your personal mobile computer.

In the past, companies would spend lots of money to lease telecommunications lines in order to ensure that their network was shut off from the internet. With the resurgence of VPN (for it is decidedly much not new technology) companies have the option to cut costs significantly, take some of the weight off of their likely over-worked IT network administration team and offer their workers a bit more in the way of flexibility when it comes to the location in which they choose to work.

When all is said and done, network security is becoming one of the world’s hottest topics because of how fast technology is moving along. In some cases, it is developing faster than there are ways to be found to protect one’s self from the privacy shredding changes that are being made. From cell phones having tracking and GPS abilities that make your information available to the manufacturer to programs that track your usage under the guide of a “customer experience improvement” program, there is no dearth of new learning available for those who choose the career of network security professional. There is also much to learn for the small corporate and home users.

When choosing a method of wireless security for a closed wireless network, the options are out there. Making certain that the settings are correct and hardware is installed right should fall to a network security professional. This will ensure that slight mistakes do not make your network open to those who would relish the secrets that your network will share with its users. Once implemented, you can be rest assured that the information shared on the network will remain safe, and out of the hands of those who are no better off than they should be.

IRC: The Longest Standing Chat Protocol

On our personal computers, we have AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger, Skype and perhaps, if you are one of those users who has friends on all of those networks, a multi-messenger program, like Trillian or Pidgin.  On our phones, we have mobile versions of these, or we have proprietary messaging software such as Blackberry Messenger.

We live in a world where the ability to be connected to others instantly is so important that we are bombarded with ways to do so.

IRC: the program that helped the world communicate in real time

In 1988, an avid Bulletin Board Service (BBS) user was inspired to replace the chat function on the service called “MUT” or “MultiUser Talk” with something a bit more elegant.  From that moment of inspiration came IRC, for “Internet Relay Chat”.

During its early days, IRC was used primarily for group discussions held in real time.  Through the use of a client to reach the server, the user chooses a nickname to go by in the channel (chat room) that they choose to be in.  Most IRC servers do not require that you register an account, however most offer the option so that your nickname will not be taken by another user.

When a user connects to a server, they then choose a channel or a chat room in which they want to participate and from there go on to meet and speak with others from around the globe. Initially IRC was a plain-text only service, however as time went by and new client programs were created, this became more of a standard although not a hard and fast rule.

Common and historical uses for IRC:

• Common chat about topics with groups of people: Usually each channel will have a topic assigned to it by the person who created it.  It is generally considered rude to break away from the topic unless the room is designated as a hang out rather than a discussion room (don’t you wish some days on the Internet that rule was still respected?).

• File Sharing: Some of the first file sharing activities originated on IRC through its transfer protocol called DCC (Direct Client to Client) transfer.  Users would enter a room and through the use of automated “bots”, which allow users to set up profiles and list what files they had available for sharing, they would then send a private message (PM) to the user who had files which they desired and negotiated a transfer.

• Government uses: A little known fact is that in the early ‘90s both the US government and the Russian military had critical uses for IRC.  The United States used it during the Gulf War to securely and quickly send information about ongoing conflicts.  The Russian military the next year used it to report on their coup, otherwise silenced by a Russian media blackout.

IRC in today’s information superhighway

Other chat services have followed it throughout the years, but IRC has remained a favorite for the technologically astute because of the flexibility of the code used to communicate and share files across the net.   For example, IRC was one of the first protocols to be ready for the jump to IPv6.  Users are the base of the IRC experience, creating scripts and bots that host user profiles, play music in the channel, handle notes as if they were e-mail from user to user and even play games.

The channels became one of the first real examples of the Internet, becoming a world onto itself.  While not flashy and filled with bright colors like some chat programs now available, and certainly not offering web cam chats or voice chats, the atmosphere keeps bringing people back.  Even in this day of Flash everything and phones that do everything but read your mind (is there an app for that?), IRC still today pulls users back into its simple, elegant world.

Servers, Channels and Services

So, are you ready to go explore the world of IRC? Excellent! Allow me to give you a short guide to the spoken and unspoken rules of this ancient place:

• IRC is not anonymous. Do not expect that you are impervious to attack or information phishing while on IRC. While some servers do mask your hostname, not all of them do, and once the message leaves your keyboard and goes out into the open chat room … it’s there. Anyone can log it, save it, edit it, etc.

• Choose an intelligent handle or nickname. A nickname that states the interest that brought you to the server in the first place is always a good choice. For example, you join #Dalnet and enter a room named “Pastry as Art” which you gather from the title is a room about the art of creating pastry. Using the nickname of “Ladyfinger1972” would not be unheard of. You enjoy eating and/or making ladyfingers and the 1972 might be your birth year, or the year you graduated culinary school. On the other hand, use a nick name like “BigBadBear”, and you’ll start hearing the chuckles.

• Do not accept DCC’s from those who you do not know and trust! A DCC is a file transfer and can contain any number of viruses which would do bad things to your computer. You may start to notice at this point that some of these rules apply everywhere on the net.

• Be polite. Read the rules of the room if they are posted and generally behave in a way that shows that you have respect for others who are sharing the room with you. This is one rule that doesn’t apply so much on the rest of the Internet; maybe this is what brings people back.

• Last but certainly not least: do not send private messages without making sure that the recipient is OK with being PMed. They might be busy, or they might not want to talk to you at all. Don’t force yourself on others.

IRC was created to facilitate communication between people all over the world in order to share information about their hobbies and interests. While its command-line interface may be increasingly foreign to a world that’s even phasing out mice and keyboards for touch screens, it’s not hard to learn. There are many great servers out there, ranging from those aimed at teenagers and their interests, to adult dating sites and colleges who have rooms for their students to gather and converse about last night’s lecture. More than twenty years after its introduction there is still something for everyone! So, kick back, log in and have a nice chat!

Future Uses and Growth of Cloud Computing

We live in a day and age where technology is advancing so fast that just ten years ago we could not have foreseen the technological advances that we enjoy today. Certainly we have seen plenty of retina scanning and fingerprint scanners in the movies and in science fiction books. Now, however, we see fingerprint security on personal laptops and just about everyone knows what encryption is and uses some form of it. So, when this strange phenomenon called “Cloud Computing” came into the public eye, it set imaginations running and people began asking questions about what it was and what is it capable of.

A large part of the problem in accurately describing cloud computing is that there are many different definitions that are all technically correct. It is application deployment, decentralized office applications, customer service management solutions, storage and much more. Today, I want to focus on the three most popular uses of cloud computing: Cloud Storage, Cloud Hosting, and Software as a Service.

Cloud Storage

This is really a simple idea that can be made complex when you put too much thought into it. At the end of the day, cloud storage is off site backups and storage that can be accessed from any computer or cellular with an Internet connection. It lets the user share large multimedia files across several locations with several people at the same time, all without needing a laptop or a flash drive. Most cloud storage services also allow for multiple users to access the account, such as in cloud services like AVG’s LiveKive which assigns a separate file sharing link to whomever you wish to share with.  The link accesses only the files that the administrator designates. Some of the most popular cloud storage services are:

Amazon Cloud | http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/

This Amazon product allows you to store your documents and applications as well as e-books bought in Kindle format.  It also allows you to upload your music to their service and no matter how much music there is, you have unlimited space that does not go against your quota for photos, movies, documents and other file types.

DropBox | http://www.dropbox.com/

DropBox allows you to upload your files to their service through a downloaded client that will allow you to simply drop files into a folder that it then synchronizes with your files online.  It also allows for sharing by creating folders that get shared with specified users through their email.

AVG LiveKive | http://www.avg.com/us-en/avg-livekive

AVG is well known for their virus and firewall software, and now they’ve entered the cloud storage game by offering their service as a backup solution.  LiveKive also allows you to have your backed-up data shared between authorized users and devices.

Having an off-site non-physical backup location is an attractive option for those who worry about their external drives falling to their death when a cat runs across their desk. In order to make the most use of cloud storage and be certain of your backup integrity, a recommendation of on and off site storage and redundancy is recommenced by experts.

Cloud Hosting

Cloud hosting is fast becoming the web hosting solution of choice, especially with e-commerce merchants. Instead of being limited by the space and utilities of a physical web server, those who use the cloud to host their shops and take payments and orders through it find that they can scale their server space to meet their needs without paying for unnecessary utilities or running out of space and having to make the hard decision of which items and services need to be cut from their enterprise.

Cloud hosting can save businesses the expense of not having to negotiate higher bandwidth caps or purchasing new software and hardware in order to keep up with the flow of traffic that their site produces, since most pricing schemes are per-use. More and more hosting companies are moving towards this form of hosting in order to expand upon their current infrastructures and to offer their clients more competitive pricing.

Software as a Service

Here we come to one of the newest but most well known implementations of cloud computing. Software as a Service (SaaS) is an invaluable service for companies who have employees who need their information at a moment’s notice and on the go. SaaS involves the access of applications by users at any time from any location.

One excellent example of SaaS is Salesforce, the ever popular customer management program. It keeps track of all contacts and sales pipelines as well as customer service inquiries so that, no matter where you are, you can reach the information at your fingertips through laptop, desktop, tablet or cell phone. The information is kept in an organized fashion and each installation of Salesforce is customized to the client’s needs so there is very little bloating that makes similar traditional programs so annoying to use and complex to understand. It also allows for far better oversight for employees who spend a lot of time away from the office.

Other similar software would include the Google Docs suit and Microsoft Office 365 where individuals can create accounts and store their documents, spreadsheets, .pdf files and more on the cloud and edit them whenever they desire, from any location. Also, these services offer options for collaboration and sharing at different levels of security. A document can either be only visible to others or they can have read/write access. At the top of the access list, the user can read and write as well as delete and invite others to share and assign privileges. These types of software are becoming more popular as more companies and other organizations take their enterprises to the cloud, working with a population that is spread out all over the city, if not the world.

The Future of Cloud Computing

These are only some of the uses that cloud technology currently supports. When it comes to the future, it is obvious that this will become the way of life for those who rely on vast amounts of data and require portability across systems and devices. Cloud services offer a less expensive and far more versatile experience for users to work with their information and to provide services for others on short notice. Also, it decentralizes data storage which will assist the users in feeling far more secure about their data and give one more tool against corrupted hard drives and other accidents of nature. As time goes on, it is certain that the cloud will become integrated with just about every type of activity that takes place on the Internet.

Popular Music Streaming Websites

In this world today, it’s unbelievable sometimes how many things we take for granted. One of the ones that I think we should be most appreciative of is how readily-accessible music is. Among the many “When I was your age” lessons that’s already taking root is how just 20 years ago, you had to wait for songs on the small handful of radio stations available, or else buy an expensive CD or tape.

We’ve now gone so far to the opposite extreme that we can’t picture it being any other way. Almost every song ever recorded is now available somewhere. Sometimes you have to (*gasp*) pay $0.99 for it if it’s truly rare, assuming you want to listen to it legally, and listen to it now. Most of the times, you don’t. Usually, it takes not even a minute to find it and start playing it. If you find it on YouTube, it may even come with a wonderful little music video that someone took it upon themselves to make for free. Have I mentioned again that we’re spoiled?

Down by the stream

Knowing how many users are going to download music for free and needing a way to rope them back in, companies offering streaming music services are now common. The peace of mind of never having to worry about piracy charges combined with the ease of use many of these services offer, typically makes the slight annoyance of advertisements and occasional fees worth it for a lot of people. This, in turn, has resulted in a proliferation of streaming music web sites.

If you’ve never sat down and just let the web sing to you, then you could use a good pointer towards the best services. Here’s a quick summary of some of the most popular music streaming web sites out there:

1. Pandora | http://www.pandora.com/

One of the first music streaming sites is still one of the most popular. It is populated by 80 million users, who push it to a ranking of 346^th most popular site on the web according to Alexa.

What makes Pandora so popular? Likely it is because of the site’s elegant design, ease of use, and intelligent style-matching algorithms. The user can create “stations” that are based around a set of like and dislike criteria. Pandora then attempts to play songs that match your criteria based on what other users listening to the same thing have listened to. You can also click on a song and it will tell you exactly why that song was listed.

Downside of the service is that while you can pause a song, you can’t rewind or repeat a song, or even repeat an artist. It’s sort of like a real-life DJ that way. It also implemented a limit of 40 hours of free streaming per month, before a near-revolt caused them to relent last month to a more reasonable 320 hours.

2. Grooveshark | http://grooveshark.com/

Grooveshark boasts no small following either, having passed the 35 million user mark in May of 2011. It is also a very loyal following: one online poll rated this as the most popular of all streaming music services.

The design could be part of the reason. Grooveshark gives you freer reign in creating the type of playlist you want, with a nicely done drag-and-drop interface. Grooveshark also lets you upload your own music to add to the communal library, which might be the largest of all sites with a massive 22 million songs (it’s a great place for mash up seekers). You can use a free account, or you can register an upgraded account, which you can use to remove ads and listen to Grooveshark on your phone.

3. Last.fm | http://www.last.fm/

Last.fm is the social networking hub of music streaming. Instead of just a simple page with a list of songs like on many streaming sites, the site is filled with options for listening and finding new music, artist and song information, and data about who else likes your favorite songs and artists. It also works with you to exchange information back and forth between local music listening applications like Winamp, and with other social media sites. All of this does give it a more corporate feel, but it compensates for this with a gigantic library of 12 million tracks.

4. Spotify | http://www.spotify.com/

As opposed to the above sites, Spotify runs as a stand-alone application instead of through your browser. It’s been a popular streaming service in Europe, but is now rapidly expanding.

Part of this is because of its partnership with FaceBook. You are shown in the main window which of your friends are online listening to music, and you can update your FaceBook feed with what you are currently listening to. Combined with its recent US launch (it was mostly confined to the UK before), this is one of the fastest rising choices.

5. Rdio | http://www.rdio.com/

Rdio is the choice for listeners who are interested in expanding their musical horizons. While, like a lot of the services, you can just use it as a personal DJ, its strength comes from the fact that it is heavily designed around using your friends’ lists to influence yours, combined with its extensive library of 9 million songs. It is also available for just about every smart phone platform, despite being one of the newest offerings. Do note that it is subscription-only, but it is ad-free.

6. MOG | http://mog.com/

MOG is one of the best choices for the person that is just listening for themselves. It lacks the social networking aspect of most of the other choices. Making up for that is the free 12 million song library, an easy-to-use interface, and the fact that the songs are streamed to you at 320 kbps. Mobile apps for MOG are available for both iOS and Android.

7. Slacker Radio | http://www.slacker.com/

Rounding out our list is one of the best overall packages around. Its best features are reserved for its paid service, though its free service does offer unlimited streaming. The interface is attractive and simple to navigate, and songs are available for immediate playing. The subscription accounts let you play entire albums on demand, and offer a host of customization options.

What’s next?

I suppose we should close that by pointing out that Google is getting into the game with “Music Beta by Google“. They just can’t leave anything alone, can they? By the way, Music Beta is currently only available in the United States. Stay tuned!

How to Start Your Own Social Networking Site – And Keep it Up

If it exists on the internet, chances are someone has made it easier for you to do the same thing yourself.  Social networking is increasingly included in this rule.  As it becomes a world onto itself, it’s becoming easier for individual users to create their own islands within it.

If you’re tired of FaceBook, Twitter, and all of the other sites that you can name as well as we can, you always have the option to just go it at yourself, and create your own place to share LOLcats pics and YouTube videos.  Like all such endeavors, it comes with its own caveats and warnings ahead of time that should be heeded.

Know why you’re doing it

Perhaps more than most other types of internet endeavors, you need to think clearly about exactly why you are doing this.  With so much of the world already taken by existing networks, you’re not going to get people running to your new one just because it exists.

If you want to have any reasonable hope that your network will go anywhere, it needs to be a place that services a type of community that isn’t well-served anywhere else.  Here are a few examples:

Business and artistic guilds and communities that need to maintain strong ties to one another.

• Social groups that are, if not marginalized, perhaps at least specialized enough that they could benefit from the special attention that someone who understands them can give.
• Religious groups that would benefit from the safety of an environment in which they know they wouldn’t be judged.

Know where you’re doing it

If you’ve gotten that far, then your next question is where you are going to setup shop.  Included in the question of “where” is “how”.  There are two main routes you can go here.

One way you can do this is to find some social networking software, load it onto your web hosting account, fire it up and handle the administrative back-end yourself.  There are a number of key advantages to this approach.  You will have every customization option at your fingertips, especially since many of the packages that you’ll find are open-source.  You’ll have full access to the network’s back-end at all times in case of a problem.  All of this means, though, that it could be a lot more work.  You may get some help from your web host if you run into technical difficulty, but don’t count on it.

The other method is to setup a network that is a part of larger social networking super-site.  There exist web sites where you can create your own social networking home from within their larger community.  The advantages of this approach are that their setup tends to be far easier, and you have the support of people who know how to run these specific networks backing you up.  The disadvantage is that you are also that their mercy.  If they decide they don’t like your topic for whatever reason you could be shut down on a moment’s notice.  You are also beholden to their tech support, which in some cases didn’t promise any impressive response times.

If you want it easy

All that said, here are a few places in which you can pursue the latter option and let someone else do the heavy lifting:

• Ning – Ning is by far the largest of these services that you will find.  Operating since 2005, its servers host more than 90,000 networks.  That size though comes with a price … literally.  Last year Ning removed all free social networks from their site.  Granted, their lowest level account is a mere $2.95 a month.  Still, they’re done a lot of other things to send the strong message that they are heavily focused on their bottom line, such as removing all adult sites and removing the search feature until user pressure forced them to reinstate it.
• SocialGO – A smaller network, but one with a rich list of features.
• WiserEarth – A good home for networks designed around a social issue.  Be sure to look at their terms of service: they are very specific about what kinds of groups do and don’t qualify.

If you want to do it yourself

If you are ready to be bold and dive into the nuts and bolts of setting this up yourself, here are some of the software packages most commonly suggested:

• Buddypress – This open-source WordPress plug in has a lot of fans.  It is free, easily customizable with addons and templates, and some hosts actually support one-click install for it.
• Kit Social Platform – Formerly known as “KickApps”, this is one of the more respected of the professional (meaning, not free) solutions.  It works off of your own domain, comes with an API and developers kit, and is available for a 14-day-trial from distributing company KIT digital.
• Elgg – Elgg has been around for a long time, and has been a popular choice for most of its existence.  It is described as being both full of features and simple to use.

I’ve set it up: now what do I do?

First, obviously, you need users.  Don’t measure yourself by FaceBook.  If you have 100 or so users, that’s a success.  Remember, unless you’re trying to run this as a business (not something we would advise given the competition), your goal is to support a community.  Every single person that you do this for is one more victory.

Once they are there, you simply need to help keep the community’s blood flowing.  One web site suggested that it was akin to a dinner party: you need to provide the space, the atmosphere, and then a few seeds of conversation.  From there, you step back and let it happen, nudging it from time to time when necessary.

It’s your baby: nurture it

That last part is mandatory: you have to keep an eye on it at all times.  The number of ways that it can devolve into something not worth most of its members’ time because of a few bad apples is countless.  Also keep a close ear out for what features you may want to add on to help boost the community’s discussion effectiveness.  Finally, make sure that you encourage users to write you about any technical problem they see, no matter how small.

Don’t be too intimidated.  This is work, but it’s work others have done, and you can too.  Even if all you make is a small home for a few people that need it, the reward

Memory Engineering: What is this new Trend?

As with all trends on the World Wide Web, we have a plethora of new terms used to describe new ways of organizing your on line and off line lives. Newest to this assemblage is “Memory Engineering” term coined by Clive Thompson, who is a writer for the popular technology trend magazine Wired. It is becoming less of a trend, more of a utility used by professionals, students and homemakers alike. It takes on many forms, from applications for your cell phone, to websites that connect your vast social network presence on line to photo and music play-lists that are kept and meticulously stored in order to bring back memories from a week, month or year ago. With the shortening of attention spans worldwide in every single age group, this new utility will assist the user in keeping a track record of their lives as they appear on the World Wide Web.

OK: Sounds neat, where do I go in order to sign up for one or many of these sites? Well, first of all you need to define exactly how you would like your on line life to be tracked. Do you prefer to have an all-in-one solution that includes your FaceBook account, Twitter, Tumblr, WordPress Blog and your favorite RSS feeds (as well as many other options)? Or are you only wanting to keep track of a few specific things, like just your FaceBook and Twitter since you are not connected to every single social networking site on the planet (yet)?

From there you need to consider if you would prefer an application for your cell phone as well or prefer to access all of this through your main computer only. I know, it sounds like a lot to consider when it comes to social networking options. However, the more thought that you put into the initial choices, the less spread out your on line life will be in the end. Is that not what we are trying to accomplish? Never fear, we have taken some of the guess work out of the situation for you, and below you will find some information about the most widely used sites.

Memory Engineering Sites and Applications Review:

• 4Squareand7YearsAgo: This service is essentially a sister service to the well known geotagging social networking application and website, 4square. For those unfamiliar with this, 4square is a website and cell phone application that allows you to “check in” to different places through the cell phone application and share the locations of places that you have ate, drank, visited, etc… with friends who are on your friends’ profile and through other services that you may connect, like Twitter and FaceBook. By using your “Check ins”, 4squareand7yearsago compiles a list of exactly where you were and where you checked in as well as any notes and to-do list items that you may have logged on that day. In the morning, it will send you a nicely presented email showcasing your movements that day. It becomes an amusing and potentially helpful record of your movements and creates a deeper memory of the time for your enjoyment (or other, less positive emotion, depending). This service requires a 4square account to work and the application installed on your cell phone to facilitate checking in.

• PastPost: PastPost is essentially 4squareand7yearsago for FaceBook. It does the same exact things that the above service does, just only with FaceBook. It gathers your information, your likes, notes, status updates and other shared items and puts them together in a well-presented, easy-to-read email going over your experiences a year ago on that day. This service does not require you to have any applications installed on your cell phone thanks to FaceBook’s well-developed website.

• MemoLane: Here we make an entry into the multi-service platforms for memory engineering. MemoLane allows the user to link several services such as: FaceBook, Twitter, Tumblr, WoodPress, Rss Feeds, 4square, Last.Fm and many more. However, unlike the above services, MemoLane offers far more options of what to do with your information. Touting itself as a “Time Capsule”, it allows you to share your history as well as to work on “stories” which you can invite your friends to assist and collaborate with. Also offered, which is a large bonus over the last two services, is a search option. You can search your own “memos” (as the service calls your entries), other users and also stories created by your friends and family. It does in effect create a “time Capsule” effect.

• Daily Review: Daily Review is expressly for Amazon’s Kindle e-reader. The Kindle allows you to take clippings of your books, either to make notes on or to keep for later because they are good quotes. Daily Review allows you to take those clippings and have them shared across your network of friends as defined in your Kindle user settings. It also allows for you to review and recommend those books and clips via twitter right from your kindle. While this is by far the most limited of the services offered, it does serve a rather specific niche that has not been touched at all. The world of the avid e-book reader is large and diverse with many interests and preferences. Of course, this means that this particular service is limited to those who use either the free kindle computer or cell phone reader or who own an actual kindle. While this is not as large a group as those who use FaceBook and Twitter, it is still a rather large contingent.

Privacy Concerns

Thankfully, all of the above listen services have customizable privacy settings so that you can choose what is seen by everyone, what is seen by friends and what is private. Not everyone is going to want to share their past with the entirety of the Internet and there is be some people that for whom this is a very private endeavor.

In conclusion

Memory engineering is a new and interesting way to keep track of your life and remind you where you were and when, as well as allowing you to share those experiences with friends and family. In some cases, it can be useful for crafting a biography, such as in the case of using memo lane where stories are a feature of the program. This is a trend that I believe will be seeing much more attention as time goes on and will change the way people interact with the internet and keep track of their lives and memories. Truly, we are becoming life bloggers.

What is Tor? A Closer Look at The Onion Router

It’s been a hot topic in the news for years now.  Privacy on the Internet is something that users not only want but expect, even if they know they shouldn’t.  So much of our daily activity resides there.  From our entertainment and paying bills to shopping for gifts, clothing and bulk household items, Internet service has become a utility, not just a frivolous addition to your cable TV package.  With so much activity going on in the strange in-between world of the Internet, there was bound to develop an underground.  Much like in your day-to-day world where the world’s secret places thrive, there is an equivalent world on the Internet where anarchy is king and the rules are few.  One of the ways you can get to this place is called Tor.

In the Beginning:

Tor was once an acronym standing for “The Onion Router” which was a reference to how the program layered and encrypted the users on the network; it became its official name in early 2006.  Tor began as a project of the United States Naval Research Laboratory for reasons that to this day are shrouded in mystery.  When it came to be funded through the Electronic Frontiers Foundation (EFF), it ceased to be a military endeavor and took its first breaths as an independent project.  It is currently run by “The Tor Project”, an educational 501c3 devoting its time and services to developing a web browser designed to preserve anonymity on the Internet.

The gritty details

Let’s get a little more technical and see how this works.  Tor protects the user by taking the outgoing signal and bouncing it through various relays across the globe. In order to do this however, one must download and install a Tor browser package which is available on the Tor Projects homepage.  The browser itself is very pared down and as no-nonsense as it gets, allowing no scripts to come through that you do not by hand approve and no cookies to be saved so that your information remains private.

When you visit a website, it sends out the signal to the first relay and that relay encrypts it which sends it along to the next for further encryption, and so on.  By the time it reaches its destination, often hundreds of relays have been used to get there.  This still usually happens in a matter of seconds, making Tor browsing not that much slower than using your normal services.  The browser itself is set up to access a different type of web page called an “unindexed site” or a “hidden service”:  these are web sites that are invisible to everyday search engines.  They achieve this by using public encryption keys and 16 character hash tags followed by the pseudo-top level domain marker “.onion”.

Doesn’t make sense?  That’s the point: to most browsers, it’s not supposed to.  Normal web browsers cannot decrypt the information produced by a .onion service or page.  When a user starts the Tor/Onion browser and enters in a .onion domain address the information going forward to the first relay gets encrypted and sent forward to the next relay.  Because the next relay in the line cannot tell from where the incoming connection came, the user is effectively protected from any attempt at traffic analysis.   Even if someone could either decrypt one node or get some legal order to release the data, it’s one of dozens or hundreds of nodes.  In summary, the traffic is effectively impossible for anyone to trace, even the people who themselves take part in it.  There’s literally not a single person on the planet who could trace a request made through Tor.

Oooh, this is intriguing!  What can Tor be used to reach, then?

In a word: anything.  This is the Internet unchained, the picture that many of you probably had of it when you first heard of it.  This also includes all of your “normal” sites, though naturally browsing Sesame Street is not going to be the first idea that comes to mind.  What does come to mind is all of the stuff that you imagined must exist somewhere out there on the Internet, if only you knew how to find it.

It is at this point, then, that we have to issue more than just a typical warning, and state that there is no, we repeat, no endorsement of any activity through this article.  Truthfully, we know a lot of you will be naughty.  That’s the reality, and we can’t stop it, no matter how stupid it might make you.  But we can tell you that these things are underground for a reason.  You investigate any of this at your own risk, and that’s not a risk we want to see any of you take.  Are we all clear?

Tor in the News and the future of anonymous usage

The development of Tor is not an isolated phenomenon.  While it may have been a military project initially, it’s still true that there is a higher push for privacy on the Internet as time goes on.  Tor is a somewhat accidental response to it, but it’s nonetheless one that answers this call.

That being the case you would think that Tor would be in the headlines more.  It has instead attracted oddly little attention.  A branch of the collective Anonymous used it recently to infiltrate a child pornography web site.  It was the subject of governmental ire for giving access to a network that they couldn’t reach (ironic, no?).  It was also cited as a tool that was used by Egyptian rebels in their recent insurrection.  Despite these isolated incidents, though, this pathway to the electronic underground remains mostly as invisible as the sites that it accesses.

It’s hard to say what this all means.  One thing we can say is that the technology is solid.  One renowned security expert accessed a black market selling just about every manner of illegal goods, to try to find a security weak point anywhere whatsoever in the process.  Shockingly, he could find none.  Think for a moment about what that would mean if that were to remain the case and become more publicly known.

There’s really only about one thing we can say for certain regarding the future of Tor and its relationship to web security: it’s going to be mighty interesting.

Google’s Galaxy Nexus and the Ice Cream Sandwich: A big player arrives

Let’s get it out of the way, first of all.  Just about every article that you read about the new Android software is going to throw at least one cutesy pun in about the name.  So we’re putting in our veto now: no food jokes here.

More than in most cases it would really miss the point.  The Galaxy Nexus and the Android 4.0 operating system it utilizes, also known as Ice Cream Sandwich, looks to already be a major entry in the phone and tablet wars.  This is no minor release.  There is every reason to believe that this might be even bigger than all of the hype says it is.

Riding the cresting waves

Part of what makes this debut so important is that it turns on the turbocharger for a number of trends that were already flying high.  Possibly the biggest of these is the Android operating system.  Its initial release was a mere three years ago, and the 3.x Honeycomb versions were only released this year.  Today there are an estimated 190 million Android capable devices in use, with another half million activated every day (that’s about 8 every second)!

Part and parcel with that is the supernova that is Google.  This company is simply on fire.  Name just about anything related to the internet.  At this point, either Google has their own version of it, or they’re working on it.   It’s clear from the various news releases that there is going to be monumental support for both this operating system and this device.

What makes Ice Cream Sandwich so special?

The primary design goal behind Android 4.0 was to create an operating system that could work equally well on tablets on phones, eliminating fragmentation.  Given how ubiquitous this would make it, Google put immense redesign effort into just about every aspect of it.  While it is described as still being intuitive to 3.0 users, even the compacted list of features and improvements is far too long to list.

Where do we start?  Perhaps the interface is best.  The physical buttons have been replaced with virtual ones.  This creates a lot of versatility, as the phone uses a hefty 1280×720 resolution, and the icons can be moved all around.  An even better, and long overdue customization, is the ability to disable any application, including pre-loaded ones, so long as its functioning is not an integral part of ICS itself.  To pretty things up further, Google debuts a new font with this OS called “Roboto”.

A slew of minor improvements and ideas follow this.  Many of them, unsurprisingly, are to the Gmail interface, which now contains an offline search, the ability to swap between multiple conversations with specific gestures, and two-line previews.  Chrome also comes with some new toys such as “Request desktop site”, which will load your bookmarks and settings from your PC.  Stepping out of the Google-specific stuff, the user can make a new folder by simply dragging one application over on top of another, there is a “Recent Applications” icon, and you can access apps directly from the lock screen.

The fancy stuff

The lock screen is a good segue into one of the most talked-about new features: facial recognition unlocking.  The phone lets you unlock it by simply showing your face.  Purportedly in tests this had to be slowed down because it was working so fast that it ran the risk of convincing users that the lock was never on in the first place.

While this may be one of the most talked-about features, though, it so far isn’t the most well-received.  A demo of the feature failed (it was claimed later that they used the wrong person), and many users expressed doubts about the value of this service, especially since the phone includes alternate unlocking mechanisms.

What might be a little more exciting is the improved communication between phones via a new feature dubbed Android Beam, which makes use of Near Field Communications (NFC) technology.  Two phones tapping this within short communications range of each other are able to easily send data back and forth between them.  Adding to the improved voice recognition software is now voice typing, allowing the user to type by talking.  Lastly, the People app will load data from social networking sites for any contact that you enter.

What about the phone itself?

With all of the advancements in the OS, it might get missed that this is also a high-quality phone.  It certainly has some strong specs: a dual-core 1200MHz processor, 1G RAM, 3D graphics accelerator, just about every type of connector you might want, 32GB internal memory, an accelerometer, a gyroscope, a compass and a barometer are all on-board.  This phone is loaded.  On the downside some early reviews state that the responsiveness of the phone is merely par for the course, and lags behind some competitors.

The camera also boasts some upgrades.  It takes a standard 5 megapixel pictures with LED flash, auto focus, digital zoom and records 1080p video at 30 frames per second.  More advanced is that it boasts zero shutter time, and can take panoramic pictures.

Is this really that big?

While no one can tell the future, the amount of buzz this phone is generating is only equaled by things that start with a lower-case “i”.  Android is staking a serious claim in the operating system world: just recently AT&T increased its selection of Android-capable phones to 19, shattering its promise at the start of the year of 12 for 2011.

This has resulted in a cacophony of rumors over which new and old devices are going to be equipped with ICS.  For upcoming products, the talk seems to state that just in November alone we’ll start seeing more devices capable of running it.  For older ones, Google has promised to try to make it adaptable to some more recent phones, but stressed that they are going for quality over quantity.  Current smoke says that if your phone is more than 3 major device introductions removed from this one, don’t get your hopes up.

Google right now is thundering down the information superhighway, picking up speed at every turn.    From everything we’ve seen, the release of the Galaxy Nexus and Ice Cream Sandwich could potentially be one of the major events in the current phone and tablet revolution.

The Case of the Overzealous Security Guard

Just last week, I had an interesting experience with a web host that I use (as always, names of the guilty withheld).  It highlighted some of the things that I’ve talked about in this column about customer service, security, and employee empowerment.  It wasn’t that big of an issue, but it was a reminder of how little problems can easily cascade, eventually resulting in lost customers (which I considered becoming before they fixed the problem).

Let me hit rewind and go through the play-by-play.  I think there are some important lessons to be reminded of here.

The prosecutor’s case

I was attempting to setup a common CGI package on my account. I went on for a while and ran into problems that I knew meant that there was something wrong with either their servers or the installation process.  The host’s online help docs didn’t get me anywhere, so I went searching around the net.  With a little Google mojo, I found a good lead.  There was a configuration file that needed to be adjusted.

The problem was that it wasn’t clear exactly how it was supposed to be adjusted.  I tried just about everything obvious.  Nothing worked.  Finally at a standstill, I threw in the towel.  I dropped an email to their tech support.  They had an online submission form, but it went to the email that the host provides, which I’d never used or redirected.

The defendant’s case

I received a reply back pretty quickly.  It stated that since my address wasn’t the primary email address for the account that, per their security procedures, they would have to contact the address that was, and see if this was a valid address to offer tech support to. From that point on it was mostly smooth sailing.

Well, gee, that doesn’t sound all that bad.  So where’s the problem?

The cross-examination

There were a few of them.  First of all, even though it was true that I wasn’t writing from the contact address on file, I did include in my email to them the domain name that I was working on, and two forms of customer ID numbers that you can only get from within the account.  Furthermore, I pasted in the entire error message that I was getting, again something that proves that I was already in.  Given all of the information that I gave to them, it would have been trivial as well to check through their logs to see that I was, indeed, doing the work on this site that I said I was.

In short, it should have been clear that I already had full access to the site.  One could counter that this doesn’t necessarily mean that I didn’t hack into it.  There are problems with this response as well, though.  For starters, I could just as easily hack into someone’s email as I could their web hosting account, so how would that have been de facto more secure?  Additionally, if I really did hack in and wanted to contact them for help, why would I have “tipped them off?”  There were certainly ways to write them that wouldn’t have.  I could have actually used the in-house contact form.  I could have just changed the contact email address once I was in there.  On the other hand, it’s common for multiple people with different addresses to be working on the same account.

The verdict: guilty of misdemeanor

In the end, this only resulted in a short waste of time for us, but what if that time had been critical?  It was, in truth, something I was trying to setup quickly, and the delay was quite irritatingly timed.  The greater problem, though, was that it was unnecessary.  The amount of assumptions that you would have to make to conclude that I was an intruder is too high to be easily plausible.

Of course, no web host wants to take unnecessary chances on security.  So maybe was there another way?  Yes: the host could have responded to my request with the necessary technical information, then dropped a separate note to the email address on file telling them of the conversation and verifying with them that I was indeed authorized to be working on the site.

The sentence: make your security more dynamic

This approach would accomplish multiple things.  It would, of course, let me continue working on the site immediately.  On the miniscule chance that I really was a bad guy, it would still let the account holder know about it.

It would also have another subtle advantage on this note.  If I were truly a hacker, and I got an email saying “We’re going to check on you”, that would be my cue to cause whatever damage I was meaning to and get out of town.  Instead, using the above approach, you can keep a quiet eye on them to see exactly what they are doing.  This approach would have been more secure.

This goes back to the inherent deficiency of unbending rules.  We mentioned in the past that it’s better to cut your employees some slack and given them the room to make judgment calls.  This is a great example of why.  A single tech worker given the room to think about this email could easily have come to the above correct conclusions.

On the other hand, if you make your security procedures rigid to the letter, you hand the people who really do want to cause damage a road map telling them exactly how to get in.  If your procedure is dependent partially on well thought-out rules and partially on “common sense”, an intruder will have a harder time penetrating it.  Meanwhile, the entire tech world is filled with people who have been locked out of their own accounts because of overly strict security doors that they lost the key to.

A co-worker I once had summed it up eloquently: “Laziness and security never go together.”  A hard set of rules that you apply in all cases, even the most ridiculous, is lazy.  Some workers may want to fall back on being that lazy, but that does no one any good.  The sentence in this case is to teach your workers a bit more about how to spot the little things that signify that something is wrong, and then gives them the free hand to react to it intelligently, based on the specifics of each situation.  It’s a little time invested for a lot of reward.

Competition in Social Networking: The Rise of Google+ and the Status of FaceBook

It’s been seen all over the tech world news, people are increasingly displeased with FaceBook and their questionable privacy practices  as well as their increasing addition of new features without even a previous statement giving the user the opportunity to choose if they wish to implement them at this time. It has also been a well-known fact that, generally speaking, Google has not gotten the hang of social networking, just yet.

Thankfully, those days are now over. When Google announced its newest social networking initiative, Google+, most people were, of course, skeptical. After all, Buzz shared all of their contacts information and their own publicly and angered their users to no end. It also brought the company under an oversight committee with the FCC for the next 20 years. So on June 28^th 2011 when a limited field trial of Google+ was announced on the official Google blog, there were those who were generally not that interested or impressed. However, as time went by and invitations were beginning to circulate, an amazing thing occurred: IT was proclaimed that Google finally got their user-friendly privacy laden social networking engine!

Spam Infested Walls and Poorly Managed Groups

The timing of this release could not have been better, truly. During this time period, FaceBook had begun making improvements to how the social networking giant handled everything from personal details and security to how friends lists were displayed, and there were very few users who were satisfied, let alone happy with the changes. Their news feeds were being dominated by those applications that now had free reign to post on friends’ walls crowding out the actual status updates with games like “Fish-ville” and “Sims.” Users were also finding that their groups were being attacked and changed, a move that made it impossible for the group leader to interact with their group members no matter how long the group had been in existence without beginning again from moment one and re-inviting them to join the group.

Many users had been asking for the option of further defining their friends groups so that updates could be further managed. While FaceBook made a move to have options for showing a particular post only to XYX friends list or to exclude XYZ person or group of friends, it was clunky and the rules must be set for each post. Google+ learned much it seems from the problems that FaceBook has been facing. With a neatly streamlined interface, users are given “circles” of friends that are user defined. When posting, you are given a prompt to choose which circles you wish to share this with, or if you want to share it publicly, with all users.

Profiles, Interests, and User Choice

Another feature of Google+ that users find to be a better executed version of a FaceBook feature is how interests appear. On FaceBook, in the sidebars of your page, there are listings for interests such as: actresses, movies and establishments. There is the option to “like” them, adding a listing in your profile of goodness only knows how many listings. From the most inane like “sleep” and “food” to the names of bands and movies, your profile becomes cluttered with this mess! Taking a lesson from these oft voiced issues, Google+ Created what they call “sparks”. These are user interests and, when searched for and chosen, only the ones that you mark specifically are added to your sparks file and you receive updates on your news feed for only those that you chose.

Chat and Archiving

When it comes to chat, Google+ uses their ever stable G chat which rarely, if ever, freezes or otherwise disrupts the browser of the user, and saves conversations within your G mail in a special folder meant for them. Unfortunately, FaceBook seems to not yet understand the need for a stable chat engine or for easy archiving of said conversations. Regularly FaceBook chat will freeze a user’s browser and messages get stashed away in your in-box, making it impossible unless you have an excellent memory to tell a conversation from an in-box message.

Also, a much clamored-over feature that FaceBook users have been rallying for is Video conferencing and group chat. While these features are now available on FaceBook, Google+ was launched with them available and working without any freezing or slowing of your system or even distortion of sound.

Privacy

FaceBook has been charged with many privacy issues, especially lately, including:

• Data mining: Where information is gathered about a person through their website usage and used to advertise other services to them. The information gathered is often sold to a third party.

• Customization Issues: FaceBook only allows for plain text to customize your site, unlike some of its more popular contenders. Due to this however, innovative minds have begun creating and using hacks to customize their sites, causing others to become infected with their hacks (usually Java Scripted) and slowing down their system.

• Lack of live support: In our 24/7 lives, customer service that is live and reachable at any time around the clock is crucial. Especially since FaceBook sells credits for its widely-used games, questions about billing are sure to arise.

Google+, while in its infancy, is working out the kinks as they go along.

• Privacy: Google+ is fueled by your Google profile which in its default settings is 100% search-able.

• Service Linking: Google is fond of linking all of its services to create a suite of programs that can be used together or separately. Be certain of what Google products are being drawn upon when you sign up and begin posting.

• Copyright: A not well known clause in their terms of use make anything that you post using Google+ the property of Google and can be used in any way that they see fit. This, as I am sure you can imagine, makes some waves.

In conclusion

While FaceBook and Google+ both have their flaws and their upsides, it is being shown now that what was once the product or service on every person’s lips, there will always be new innovations in social networking. It has become such a large part of how to communicate with our loved ones, coworkers and friends that seeing more streamlined and more secure services will be the path that any and all social networking sites must take if they wish to survive. Google+ is here to stay. However, so is FaceBook, as they will eventually serve two different demographics. Our prediction is that Google+ will become the social network of the 20-30 something business people while those younger and older will gravitate towards busier FaceBook.

The Qwikster Debacle – What we can Learn from it

Nothing reminds you so quickly of the fact that even CEOs of major corporations are human than when they royally screw up.  When they come right out and admit it in short order, you really wind up dropping a lot of whatever agitation you feel at their six-or-seven-figure salary.  Suddenly you just want to forget it all, take them out somewhere and buy them a beer.

Maybe I’m letting my nice-guy side show a bit here.  Some of the angriest Netflix refugees would surely say so.  That does, though, seem to be about where a lot of the Netflix community is after the cancellation of the fascinatingly wrong-headed disaster known as Qwikster.

How did such a beloved company fall so far so fast?  And what do we have to learn from it?  Let’s go to the instant replay.

The quick and dirty summary – and it’s both

Following a July 2011 price hike that was huge and poorly received (even as price hikes go), Netflix made the decision to branch off its DVD business from its streaming business.  Netflix would still handle all streaming content.  The DVD side of their business would be split into a separate company called “Qwikster.”  A blog post from Reed Hastings, Netflix CEO, first apologized for the company’s bad communication, and then gave a brief summary of the coming changes.

Despite the fact that there seemed a genuinely contrite tone in his post, reaction to the announcement was swift and toxic.  One user responded with the comment “I’m afraid your letter will go down as the oddest suicide note in history.”  Perhaps having seen it, Hastings, in turn, remarked three days later, “In Wyoming with 10 investors at a ranch/retreat. I think I might need a food taster.”

The bad press and worse customer reaction piled on unmercifully.  Whatever reasons that there might have been for the change from an internal perspective, customers could see no immediate way that this benefited them, and a lot of ways that it didn’t.  Customers would have to keep two separate accounts with separate information.  When you rated movies on one service it wouldn’t show up on the other.  This just seemed to make everything more complicated for no good reason.

This is the end

Finally, not a month after the initial announcement, Netflix issued their surrender.  In a contrastingly curt note, Hastings announced that the changes would be scrapped.  User reaction to this was split.  Some were just so agitated by everything that had happened that they weren’t in the mood to applaud much of anything.  Others appreciated that the company was listening to their customers, admitting to an error, and changing course.

What fallout will come from this whirlwind remains to be seen.  One minor unknown is the fate of by-mail video game rentals.  This was originally packaged as one of the few new benefits to Qwikster.  Whether or not it will still happen is undetermined.

The bigger question is whether or not Netflix will survive this collapse.  Estimates are that the price hike alone lost them 1 million of their 25 million customers.  There’s no word yet on how much lower they might go now.  Message boards are filled with users declaring their departure, but this is, of course, an unscientific metric.  Still, even after the reversal, Netflix’s stock continued to drop.

Why did they even think it was a good idea?

Using our 20/20 hindsight, it seems hard to think of any reason in favor of this.  Much speculation surrounded the initial decision.  Some of the theories included:

• Licensing issues – Movies are licensed separately for different formats.  With a company that handles more than one, sometimes access to one license is used as leverage against another. Splitting the companies would prevent this, and help Netflix show more diverse streaming content, a constant customer complaint.
• Streaming costs – One related theory suggested that a split would reduce Netflix’s streaming costs, by reducing the number of users who could potentially pull from it.  Again, a price drop would result in greater selection.
• Subtle murder – Some believed that Netflix wanted to find a way to kill off its DVD business entirely while making it look like something else forced them to pull the plug.  Splitting the business would be all the cover they needed.

In truth, though, the main problem with this attempted maneuver is that, whatever the reasons for it were, it was something meant to benefit the company and not the customer.  One commentator pointed out that if they had actually worded it this way, they could have gotten away with it.

The lessons learned

They didn’t, though, and what’s done is done.  Let’s use this, then, to look at some of the lessons we can learn from this debacle.

• Communicate with your customers – No, really, communicate at all times.  Customer bases around the world have been begging for this for years.  They perhaps don’t realize that a little goes a long way. Maybe this incident will reinforce that point.
• Remember that your customers are not helpless – An arrogant company can convince themselves that they can change whatever they want, and their users will learn to love it.  Remember how well that worked for New Coke?  For that matter, even Facebook is feeling the pinch from pushing their “innovation” a bit too far.
• Don’t be afraid to admit your errors – This is the one thing that Netflix got right.  Yes, he got some “flip-flop” heat for backtracking, but those people got jumped on themselves.  Admitting that you are wrong and that you’re listening to your customer base can only do you good.

It remains to be seen whether or not Netflix can rebound from this pair of dueling blunders.  This isn’t a very forgiving economy right now.  Making timing worse is that a crowd of competitors is set to jump into the streaming market, whether or not Netflix falls.  Even Blockbuster, who Netflix themselves pushed down the ladder, is getting into the act.

There are a lot of loyal users who still hope that Netflix can pull themselves out of this mess.  If so, maybe someday they’ll really be able to share a drink with Mr. Hastings and laugh about it all.