Category: tech

PicPlz Sold Out: Why, Again, Are We Letting Fickle Startups Own our Content and Relationships?

I missed this last week: PicPlz is barely live as a service, and it’s already been spun off in a cash deal so its makers can be done with it.

These little mobile apps combine convenience with effortless social interaction, but the final loyalty isn’t to the user. I’m hoping that the social sharing experience for stuff like this becomes less dependent on proprietary services that try to own the social interaction. In the meantime, I’ll be trying to find more effective ways of recreating these rich experiences on platforms that let me own and control my content.

Macs get viruses. And the trojans are getting more deceptive.

For years, virus makers have been tricking people into installing trojans under the disguise of a program intended to actually remove trojans that weren’t there. They usually did so by disguising themselves as part of Windows XP – which was an obvious fake for anyone using any other operating system.

But today my boss ran into this and asked me to take a look:

Imitation OS X UI attempting trojan installation
(click image for full-size version)

Look at that imitation of the OS X Finder. Not perfect, but it’s pretty dang good! I wouldn’t expect everyone to be able to tell that it’s fake.

News of legitimate Mac trojans recently cropped up again, but it looks like they’ve gotten even more sophisticated with some pretty convincing fake Finder interfaces. People used to assume that Macs aren’t targeted for viruses for their lower market share, but it looks like that’s an even more unsafe assumption now. If you use a Mac, you aren’t exempt from being safe with your computer: don’t give it your Administrator password when you aren’t trying to install or update software. Any other time, it’s a trap!

Chrome OS reflects the future of computing, but is it premature?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVqe8ieqz10

Google’s launching the Chromebook this year, which is the first all-in bet on a computer that uses the Web as its one and only software platform.

On one hand, the concept shows incredible promise: Web technologies are now powerful enough that they’re capable of performing many tasks that had to be done using more native technologies – technologies that are exclusive to closed platforms. Platforms that come with all kinds of annoying maintenance, stability and usability issues. Now that the Web can do intense graphics, multimedia manipulation, and all kinds of productivity applications, why can’t we cut out the bloated layers of software that stands between us and our browser? That’s what Chrome OS tries to do.

But are people ready for such a major shift? A lot of the tech that Chrome OS puts front and center is bleeding-edge, and many folks probably have a more conservative idea of what they use “the Web” for and what they use “Applications” for, when the lines dividing them are becoming increasingly blurred.

Is this futuristic concept going to catch on, or will it be rejected by a market that isn’t ready to make the leap to a “nothing but the Web” computer? Personally, I’d be a lot happier if they weren’t launching it on Netbooks; radically innovative software deserves to be on innovative hardware, not 2008’s fad of cramming the IBM PC of the ’80s into as small and cheap a package as possible.

Going the “turbo Honda” route with my new computer

2011 is my upgrade year for the “main machine.” I had been spending a while trying to figure out the best fit between performance and portability, and had settled on the $2,199 15″ MacBook Pro. But I ended up going with the $700 cheaper 13″ model and investing less than half the savings in some great custom additions:

MacBook Pro internals with upgrades labeled: Crucial C300 6Gbps SSD, 8GB 1333MHz DDR3 RAM, MCE OptiBay Hard Drive bay

At the end of the day, I have:

  • 2011 Unibody 13.3″ MacBook Pro
  • Dual core i7 “Sandy Bridge” – 2.7GHz, up to 3.4GHz turbo mode, hyperthreading, on-chip integrated graphics (outperforms my 3-year-old discrete GPU, which was more than I needed)
  • 128GB Crucial C300 SATA 6Gbps SSD (solid state drive). (Crucial announced a new model the week after I installed it, grr!)
  • 8GB Corsair 1333MHz DDR3 RAM
  • MCE OptiBay hard drive bay (replaces waste-of-space DVD drive with original 500GB SATA hard drive)

I came in almost $300 under my originally planned purchase, and got the added benefits of a more portable system and a blazing-fast SSD. I simply cannot believe how much of a difference the SSD makes; I’d guess that many people would feel like their old computers were brand-new if they installed an SSD. My system boots in mere seconds, and almost all applications load instantaneously. (Big ones like Photoshop take a couple of seconds.) I was really happy that I could get rid of the DVD drive and keep my capacious media drive with me with the MCE OptiBay (though it has pretty bad shock protection and a couple of big screws that hopefully aren’t digging into the unibody’s lid.)

The only hard part is getting used to the glass-covered 1280×800 screen. There is no matte option for the 13.3″, and it’s sheer marketing evil that Apple offers better resolution on the 13.3″ MacBook Air while forcing Pro buyers up a price notch to the 15.4″ to benefit from a high-res display. The glass covering the display is… interesting. Yes, it has more vibrant colors, but it also has terrible glare, and is also a major fingerprint magnet to boot.

So I’m pretty happy with it, all things considered. I’m very surprised with just how much performance can be squeezed into a 13.3″ package- except for the requisite screen size difference, this is a no-compromise high-performance device suited to be my only PC, and it’s under 5 pounds and an inch thick. I feel like instead of paying more for a V8 BMW, I bought a cheap little Honda Civic and gave it a killer turbo while keeping the weight low.

For others looking for a new computer, I recommend:

  1. If you don’t run CPU-intensive tasks like media encoding or gaming, consider just throwing an SSD into your current system instead
  2. If you think you need the specs of a more expensive model, compare its marginal cost with that of upgrading a cheaper one.

Music, movie, and software piracy is a market failure, not a legal one

This comes as no surprise. From Michael Geist, University of Ottawa Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law:

Trademark and copyright holders frequently characterize piracy as a legal failure, arguing that tougher laws and increased enforcement are needed to stem infringing activity. But a new global study on piracy, backed by Canada’s International Development Research Centre, comes to a different conclusion. Following several years of independent investigation in six emerging economies, the report concludes that piracy is chiefly a product of a market failure, not a legal one.

Read more about the 400-page report commissioned by the Canadian government at thestar.com .

How to keep your email protected when companies don’t

I got several emails today informing me that several corporations entrusted my data to a contractor with sub par security, my email was compromised, and that they “seriously regret that this incident occurred.” (Hey, Target: nice non-apology. You have the final responsibility to your customers, even when your contractors fuck up.)

Right now, many are fuming over the fact that the spamonauts now have their emails on a “confirmed live and breathing people who need weight loss and boner pills” list. And it will happen again. It’s simply impossible to ensure total privacy of your personally identifiable information.

But me? I just laughed, hit a few buttons in my mail client, and knew I’d never have to worry about some retailer’s mistake. I have a system that over many years has saved me from people who mismanage my identity –and even given me proof positive of the responsible party.
Continue reading How to keep your email protected when companies don’t

Drive-by Mobile Tests

I went on a quick stroll through Best Buy today, and tried a lot of the devices I’ve been reading about for the last couple of months:

  • The iPad 2 is impressive if only for its reduced mass and flat back, which led many to claim that it feels totally different to hold compared to its predecessor (The white version is stylish, but I think the black bezel better complements the screen.) But for all other purposes, it’s a tiny update to the original iPad: even better for new users, while us early adopters stay current.
  • My first impression of the Motorola Xoom was nothing like that of the many tech reviewers – the hardware was solid, and the UI is at the same time surprisingly powerful and usable, especially for the first version of a totally new UI. Apps intended for smaller phones scale to tablet sizes better than iPhone apps do on the iPad. Holding the tablet in portrait orientation is actually pretty nice – I think most reviewers are just too accustomed to the 4:3 iPad. The biggest surprise, however, was that the Xoom’s browser sucks. It does tabs like a desktop browser, but beyond that, its performance trails far behind any mobile browser created in the last four years. It surprises me that an internet services company – the one behind Chrome, even – lags so far behind on mobile browsers. Continue reading Drive-by Mobile Tests