[Updated 09/16/2011]

As a WebOS fan, I’ve been following the rise (kind of), abrupt and sudden fall, and finally the launch of the now defunct TouchPad by HP.   I certainly wanted one when the product was launched, but felt them a little pricey.  Then, came the sudden announcement that the product was killed a mere seven weeks into its life.  At that point, I no longer desired one.  Then, like a great mystery, the plot turned once again.  Now, they were $99 and like an apparently very large portion of the US consumer market, I wanted one again.  I was one of the unfortunate people caught in order limbo thinking I had one, only to have my order abruptly canceled a few days later.

So, here I am.  On the outside looking in. I’m not going to use this space to rail on the shortsightedness and lack of vision by HP. That would just be too easy.  Instead, I’ve read a fair amount of articles on why you should or should not buy one.   There are a number of them out there for your reading pleasure, but I’ve especially got to thank Bill Palmer at Beatweek for his heavy handed post that thrashed the idea of buying a TouchPad altogether.  I hope that a great many people read his article.  It will make it that much easier for me to pick one up.  In response to this post, I’m going to give you ten reasons why a $99 TouchPad is a great pickup (if you can get one)

1. By adding the Kindle App, you get more than a Kindle for less than the price of a Kindle.  Email, browser, games, etc.  That would probably be enough, but wait.  There’s more………
2. A FREE 50GB of storage at box.net.  That’s a $19.99 value that can be shared amongst your family.
3. Flash!   Despite what they’d have you believe, HTML5 is not yet all the way here.  So, when you are ready to lose Apple’s Interent training wheels, you can reach for ‘that other pad’ and experience the rest of the Internet.  There are a lot of well done Flash sites out there.  It would be a shame to miss some of them.
4. It’s a great way to un-tether from your computer.  What do most people use their tablets for?  Checking email, Twitter, Facebook, surfing the web, etc.  The TouchPad does all of that.
5. WebOS is a great operating system.  It is easy enough that all but the most dense among us will be able to start using it productively right away.  Also, despite it’s limited lifespan in hardware, HP is still actively developing the operating system.  They really want to license the os (good luck), but if need be, they will sell it.    That would be a lot more difficult if they shuttered the project and fired all of the engineers that work on it.
6. The Android community is very actively working on a port.  For the more technically inclined among us, you’ll be able to to run Android on some dandy hardware within the coming weeks.  Where else are you going to find an Android tablet on this kind of hardware for $99?  That’s right.  Nowhere.  For the even more geeky, there is an active project that’s porting Ubuntu Linux to the pad.  Both the Android and Ubuntu projects are currently booting from a USB stick.  Therefore, you could ultimately have your choice of three operating systems on the same hardware without any of them interfering with the others.  Where else are you going to get that?
7. You are NOT running a big risk of getting a virus.  This is just silly. Like I said before, the operating system is still actively being developed.  Any security holes that would crop up will be addressed at least for the near term, and that’s all we’re really looking at here (see note 10). Additionally, WebOS is Linux.  It springs from the same tree as the Android and is a close cousin to iOS.  While not impervious to malware, because of the nature of Unix/Linux it’s just a lot harder to pull off and there’s just less malware out there for the platforms.
8. If you want to get your kids a netbook, this would make a nice alternative.  There is a document editing app called Quick Office that comes with the TouchPad and Picsel Smart Office should be available within a few weeks.  It’s a great machine for simple homework and research.
9. App developers are still actively writing apps for WebOS.  It is true that many have jumped ship and some may never return, but the fact remains that HP will wind up selling about a million TouchPads before they close the books on it for good.  That’s a million potential software buyers.  Somebody is going to meet that market even if it’s only a niche.  You won’t have the volume of apps that are available for the iPad or the Android tablets, but you WILL have options.  The second part of this is, there WILL be accessories available.  This pretty much matches my point above.  A million devices is simply going to be too much for some manufacturers to resist.  Going back to the days of Palm, WebOS fans are rabid and they will buy.  With a million devices in the wild, there will be more WebOS fans.
10. The lifecycle of the TouchPad is going to be about the same as it will be for any other tablet.  Apple already has an end of life in mind for the iPad and iPad 2.  Don’t believe me?  Ask any iPhone 3G owner how their phone is doing.  Planned obsolescence will take the iPads out every two to three years.  You’ll be tossing out your TouchPad about that same time.  The only difference will be that you spent 1/5 to 1/8 for the TouchPad (assuming you are fortunate enough to land one for $99) and probably a lot less for apps over the course of that time.

The TouchPad may be discontinued, but it’s far from dead.  It’s a limited life appliance just like all of the other tablets on the market.  Spending $99 and using the device for two years will be money in your pocket.  Two years from now, iPad and iPad 2 owners, as well as current Android tablet owners will be actively looking to replace their tablet with the latest and greatest just like you.  The only difference is, you’ll be money ahead.

To Mr. Palmer, please write a few more scathing articles.  You’ll be doing the rest of us a favor.

Simon Howden / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Apple has announced a sudden reversal in its development conditions for its mobile devices today.  Back in April, Apple announced that the only development platform that could be used to create apps for its mobile devices was the Apple SDK (software development kit), which only runs on a Mac.  Fortunately, Cupertino has had a change of heart.  It is now just fine to develop apps with other development platforms, provided the apps don’t download any code.  Time will tell how badly the ‘no download’ condition will hamstring developers, but this is a move in the right direction.

Apple says that it has “listened to our developers”.  I’m not quite sure who they were listening to back in April when they pulled the plug on third-party development platforms.  Perhaps what they heard as they listened this time was the footsteps of developers heading to less restrictive platforms such as Android?  Regardless, it’s a win for pretty much everyone.  Adobe wasted no time in responding with glee because developers can now develop for iOS with Flash Professional CS5.  Note, that doesn’t mean that Flash will work in your web browser on your iOS devices now, it just means more sales for Adobe’s development platform.  Ultimately, it’s a win for users.  More developers will be able to develop for iOS devices now, and that means more apps for users of the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch.

In addition, Apple has announced they are publishing guidelines for how the app store review process works.  This is designed to give developers a better idea of how the review process works and presumably a better shot at getting their apps approved.

Related: Mobile Crunch

What are your thoughts on this?  I’d love to hear your comments.

The BatteryBar icon easily shows 3:17 remaining on the battery compared to the standard Windows icon.

Clicking on the BatteryBar icon changes it from percentage of charge / discharge to a runtime / charge time format in hh:mm.

Hovering over the BatteryBar icon provides a wealth of information.

When hovering over the BatteryBar icon, a popup appears with additional information including the percentage of battery wear, which will be particularly useful for road warriors who will want to have advanced notice of impending battery doom.

BatterBar with the laptop running on battery.

BatteryBar comes in a free and a paid version.  The free version contains all of the features listed above and should work well for most users.  The paid version is inexpensive and comes with some extra features such as graphing of battery profiles.   BatteryBar is light on resources and offers up necessary information in an easy and straightforward manner.  BatteryBar is available for Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7.  The free version can be had here.

Filed under: Technology ]]> http://mhousefl.wordpress.com/2010/09/04/a-better-battery-gauge/feed/ 0 mhousefl laptoppower BatteryBar_ss4 batterybar_ss1 BatteryBar_ss3 http://mhousefl.wordpress.com/2010/08/29/usb-generated-infections-on-the-rise/ http://mhousefl.wordpress.com/2010/08/29/usb-generated-infections-on-the-rise/#comments Mon, 30 Aug 2010 03:04:07 +0000 Michael House http://mhousefl.wordpress.com/?p=455 Continue reading →]]> IT security company Panda has announced that 25% of the new worms in 2010 were designed to be spread via USB device.

What does this mean?

A growing number of computer infections are taking place via USB devices such as thumb drives, external hard drives, mobile phones, portable music players, etc.  These infections take place silently when the device is plugged into the computer via the autorun process in Windows.  While computer worms are still mainly spread via email, this report indicates that a newer method for spreading malware is gaining significant momentum and once again gives us cause to remain vigilant when it comes to computer security.  Of course, before you can get infected by a USB device, that device first has to be infected somewhere else which means this is something that is much less likely to come from your phone or mp3 player (unless you loan it to someone) than it is from an external hard drive or thumb drive.

What should I do?

First, never trust a foreign device.  If you don’t know the origins of the device, consider it hostile.   USB thumb drives are extremely cheap these days.  So cheap that many are given away as schwag at trade shows and expos.  How easy would it be for a bad guy to accumulate a bunch of these, infect them, then ‘lose them’ outside of targeted businesses or homes?  When an unassuming employee comes along, they pick it up, plug it in, and suddenly there’s a corporate infection for the IT department to deal with.    If this is an as of yet unidentified piece of malware, a considerable amount of damage could be done by the time it is found out.  If you find a USB drive, throw it away or hand it in to your IT department.  If you absolutely must know what is on it, boot up from an Ubuntu Live CD and check it out.  That will keep you from getting the infection.  If you are in an environment that requires you to swap flash drives with people, downloading the free USB Vaccine from Panda is a good move.  This will disable the autorun feature for USB devices in Windows.  Just be warned, it will stop the autorn feature from working with external CD drives as well.  But, if you are in an environment that uses flash drives, it’s worth the inconvenience.   Of course, following these steps is essential as well. Above all, be vigilant.  If for instance, you loan the compact flash card from your camera to someone, it could come back with malware on it.  When you plug your camera back into your computer, you’ve got it.   Treat every USB device like it’s a flash drive.  Treat every flash drive that’s been out of your possession as suspect.

The interview is a business meeting between two parties.  The potential employer being one party and the prospective employee being the other.  You are negotiating a business arrangement.   I’ve been on both sides of the table, interviewing potential hires and being grilled by a hiring panel.  Regardless of which side I’m working from, I want to be able to look that person in the eye as I dialog with them.  I want to read their body language.  I want to get a feel for whether I want to do business with that person.  If you are looking for a job, don’t go in with an attitude of just hoping that someone will hire you.  You’ve got to have an attitude that you  bring something to the table that a potential employer wants.  You have to know what you bring to the party and be prepared to communicate to them why you in particular will solve the problem they have.  In essence, you are a business owner and the service you are selling is you.  In order to do that, you need to be able to get a read on them, and they need to be able to see the message you are delivering.   That is just not as effective over the phone.  When I’m interviewing for a position, I want to see the next place I could be working.  Is the environment nice?  Do the employees look like they are genuinely happy to be there or do they look like they’ve just had an injection of pickle juice?  Is the place well kept?  These are things that must be seen with ones eyes.

As a manager, I’ve never been a fan of the phone screen.  Again, I want to look that candidate in the eye and see what they are made of.  I want to see how they carry themselves.  I want to see how they react under stress.  I want to know the things that I can’t know in a phone call.   Often the best candidate is not the most qualified candidate.  The best candidate is the person that will best fit in the company and help solve the problem at hand, as perceived by the person doing the hiring.  The best candidate is a complex decision that involves many factors and discarding potential candidates over a phone call is a great way to ‘let the big one get away’.  Now, granted there are exceptions.  Before you spend the money to fly someone across the country (or possibly across the globe), you should do some initial homework.  A tough look at the résumé and a phone call would be wise.  Also, if you’ve got a very large applicant pool, then maybe some simple filtering would be good, but in most cases, the résumé and cover letter are going to tell me whether I want to see this person or not.

As someone familiar with both chairs, I prefer to drop the phone and head straight to face to face dialog.  Trying to establish candidacy over the phone short changes both parties.  Lets go back to using the phone in the proper way.  Let’s use the phone to set up a face to face meeting.

See also, CrunchGear.

Francesco Marino / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

NFC World is reporting that Apple has picked up NFC (Near Field Communication)  expert Benjamin Vigier as their new mobile commerce product manager.

What’s that all about?

Near Field Communication is close range wireless technology that allows two devices to transfer data at close range (about 10cm), which basically means you tap them together to move information.  Apple’s hiring of Vigier along with a fistful of NFC patent applications would indicate that Apple is looking to add this technology to a future iPhone, perhaps even the next iPhone.  TechCrunch is reporting that Apple is already testing hardware from NFC hardware leader NXP.

What does that mean to me?

Short term, it should mean that you’ll be able to pay by tap and go with your phone at Apple partners through your iTunes account.   Of course, we’d imagine that the Apple Store would be first in line.  Go in, grab your new MacBook Pro, fire up the checkout application on your phone, tap your phone on a pad at the sales counter, and walk away.   The technology could be used anywhere from coffee shops and newspaper stands to big box retail to about anything you can buy with a credit card.  People could exchange business cards with a simple phone tap.

Longer term, imagine smart shopping carts that cross items off your list as you put them in the cart.  How about avoiding the lines and tapping your cart to checkout?  I would imagine it will take some convincing to get retailers to start ripping out their checkout counters, but that’s the kind of stuff that is possible with NFC.

Conclusion.

Apple won’t be the first to bring NFC to a mobile phone.  There are already a handful of phones that are equipped with the technology.  But, Apple will bring a ease of use to the equation and some big backing.  With 150 million iTunes accounts, the momentum should be there to get retailers on board.  Of course, you can expect Android and the rest of the phone world to step it up as well.

Personally, I’m not excited about paying by phone.  I don’t find paying by credit/debit card or cash to be an excruciating process.  NFC should be faster, but by how much?  If I have to pull up the app on my old 3G, it could actually be slower.  However, this is the future and I do see some other interesting uses for the technology.  If you embrace it, be sure to check out my post, Personal Insecurity and lock down your phone.

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Courtesy of Flickr

In a report by security company M86 Security, organized crime is using a new trojan variant called Zeus v3 to infect unsuspecting web surfer’s machines, then steal their online banking credentials.  Once the credentials are obtained, they are then used to drain your account.  This is a very sophisticated and organized attack.  It’s not something that the kid down the street who hasn’t come out of his basement in three years is capable of pulling off.  M86 has posted an in depth whitepaper on the matter which can be found here.   The report is both fascinating and disturbing.

For those who don’t wish to commit the time to understand all of the fine details about how the attack works, I’ll lay out the short version here.  First, the bad guys infect legitimate ad servers.  These are machines that serve the advertisements to websites you regularly visit.  From there, the infected servers start pushing out the trojan to computers visiting LEGITIMATE websites.  The trojan is delivered via advertisements through the infected ad servers.  That’s really the beauty of delivery.  They deliver the payload to infect your computer through regular websites because the advertising on them comes from somewhere else.  The ad servers are infected the same way your home computer gets infected.  Somewhere along the line, a vulnerability wasn’t addressed.  This can happen for a number of reasons.  The operating system wasn’t patched, a firewall rule wasn’t enforced, etc.  Once the trojan is delivered to the home users computer, it simply waits until the unsuspecting user logs into their bank account via a web browser.  That’s when it sends the credentials to a command and control (C&C) server.  Later, after it analyzes the information (bank name, country, etc) the C&C server communicates back to the victim’s computer and has it initiate a bank transfer.  It will drain the victim’s account, siphoning it off and covering tracks along the way.  Then, to put the cherry on top, when the victim logs back into their bank, the traffic is diverted to the C&C server where a fake statement is generated, thereby fooling the user into thinking they have money in their account.

This is a brilliant and complicated scheme.  The money trail is like following a single noodle through a bowl of spaghetti.  Thus far, attacks have primarily been on UK bank accounts, but don’t let that make those of you outside of the UK feel good.  This could very easily be perpetrated elsewhere.  To compound the matter, this particular attack seems to be very good at getting past the major virus scanners.

That’s the bad news.  The good news is, we can make it very hard to fall victim to this type of attack.  If you don’t bank online of course, you are immune.  If the benefits of online banking outweigh the risks, you can still protect yourself.  First, you should be following ALL of my advice in my recent post Lock Down!.  This alone will dramatically reduce your chances of infection by the trojan.  Another option is to switch to a Mac or use Linux.  While not immune, these operating systems are much more difficult to infect because of their Unix heritage and because they just aren’t as popular as Windows.  Windows is the low hanging fruit for virus writers.  Linux has become very easy to use and most versions of it are free.  I have my computer setup to give me a choice of booting to Linux or Windows.  That’s pretty easy to do.  Third, you could use a boot CD as I described in my post A Temporary Solution for your online banking activities.  While not as convenient, you won’t be at risk of infection.  This is the safest option next to just not banking online at all.