Digging the past of the Internet

This week I came across one very interesting web site. I was listening the TWIT (This week in tech‚ with Leo Laporte and John C Dvorak) and one guy that was invited to the show was the founder of this site. When he told the features‚ I said: " no way‚ some one can index the Internet historically"‚ but yes‚ he did

The site is www.archive.org. It contains a bunch of interesting web site‚ dating from 1996 up today. If you want‚ you can give a try in some of them. I suggest google‚ and microsoft‚ but be afraid to test other things. Even my very old page in geocites is available there.

Very interesting Security device

Today while listening to "Security Now" podcast, the guys mentioned about Yubikey, and I went out on some google search about it. Look very interesting and promising. The designs they developed is really nice indeed.

From the developers:

"The Yubikey is a new authentication solution, designed for the mass market of web 2.0 applications. The user inserts the YubiKey in any computer with a USB port on any platform or browser – no client software install needed – then press the YubiKey button to generate a one time passcode.

The secret behind the YubiKey is the fact that the little device is actually a USB keyboard. But with only one button and designed to do two things: To generate the user’s unique identity and a one time pass code that only works the very second it’s used. Every time the user presses the button it generates a new pass code."

More information can be found at:

http://www.yubico.com/products/yubikey/

Costumers tracking

Well after reading the latest news from the times:

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article3945496.ece

It raised some concerns to me:

- If they detect were you are, they can correlate this data with the CCTV system, and also the shops can correlate your IMEI with you credit card, and so on. Data minig is really powerfull in this cases.
- If this technology is really deployable, don't hey have to at least inform users? So you can turn off your mobile to avoid being tracked.
- If this technology goes to the wrong hands, what would impede people of selective killing others? Something like Bruce Scnheier's idea on road side bombing triggered with RFID passports.

The thing is that, here in the UK people don't often carry their (RFID) passport arround, but for sure, everybody carry at least one mobile.

Really scaring.

iAlertU

Today I installed the iAlertU software in my Macbook. Really nice piece of software and it really works as promised.

It is interesting how they managed to use the sensor that detects movement in the Macbook (to avoid problem with the disk when you move it in hibernation), and made it an alarm detection system.

It integrates smoothly with Leopard and if you have the iRemote, that you can use it as you use your car's alarm, to enable it remotely (around 10ft distance)

The link:
http://www.slappingturtle.com/home/

GPS things

I just changed this week my old sat-nav system that was based on the TOMTOM for smart phones (I Have an E61i) and a bluetooth GPS receiver. Although good for the price‚ I felt the need to move on to something better.

The cons of the above system are that you can not receive calls while navigating‚ (actually you can‚ but it switches to the phone. It is a nice security feature also)‚ your mobile battery is killed within hours‚ and you need always two charges in the car‚ one for the BT GPS module and other to the phone.

After some researching‚ I went to a Garmin Nüvi 300T. Garmins is producing GPS to a varied range of uses since ever‚ and its GPS to the sat-nav market is really good. Even though everybody talks very well about tomtom sat-nav devices‚ about its interface‚ I decided for the Garmin simply because it is broader in coverage and their traffic detection system is truly the best technological solution.

They use a technology called TMC‚ and from their web page:

"FM TMC Traffic
Our FM traffic receivers receive TMC digital information (where available) on traffic and road construction tie-ups. Your compatible Garmin unit uses this information to minimize trip delays.

In most areas, depending on the service provider, TMC traffic broadcasts are continuous — there's no waiting for scheduled traffic news updates or random alerts. Because traffic broadcasts are received via a "silent" FM data channel, you can still listen to music or news programming on your car radio without interference from incoming FM traffic data transmissions."

The good things bout this sat-nav system are that their maps are cheaper and have more coverage than TOMTOM‚ and they use TMC instead of the tie up system TOMTOM makes you pay monthly.

Cool links:
http://www8.garmin.com/traffic/fm/index.jsp
https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?cID=134&pID=339

Using SVN on a mac in graphical interface

I found this software that seems to work graet to what I normally do:

"SvnX is an open source GUI for most features of the svn client binary.


It allows you to browse your working copies, spot changes and operate on them but also to browse logs and revisions of your repositories !"

http://www.lachoseinteractive.net/en/community/subversion/svnx/features/

How I (apparently) solved my Macbook wifi problem

Well, going on my mac odyssey, I decide to go for extreme things to solve what apple didn' t. After some research (again, I spent more 5 hours in this), I realised that most people complain of this after Mac OS updates, so I took the DVDs that cam with my Crapbook, and formatted it. I started from scratch to see what was going on

Well apparently the problem solved, but I am now afraid of applying any update that comes from Apple. The Other thing I also realised is that you should never save your wifi connection data in the airport configuration. The best thing is to type every time the password to join the network. It is working on 9 of 10 time I connect now.

The problem I had was basically the macbook dropping more that 60% of the packets when pinging my wifi router on a distance of 30cm.

Mac = Crap

Well, lots of people will see this post and get outraged, but it is sadly true. I will explain my impressions and show what happened to me.

First, I saw lots of people migrating to a Mac, because it is a Unix, good hardware, blah,blah blah. Then I decided to give a try. I bought a Macbook, and my problems started.

The macbook worked really OK for 2 days (yes, 2 days = 48 hours), than it started to have problems with my wifi connection at home. The important detail is that I have other 5 equipments running smoothly in the AP, and the AP is top of range which cost me £140, that is much more than an airport extreme.

I then plugged it on the cable and started an arduous search for solutions. They ranged from software trick up to philosophical thins.

The result was, that after two weeks fighting, I took my macbook to the apple store here in Cambridge. They promptly said me that I would have to change my airport card, and that this usually solves the issue. The things is that after 5 days without the computer it came back with the exact same problem. They also confessed that this is a known issue and that they don't have a solution yet. Probably I will have to way for an OS update to fix this.

What made me really sick with apple is that this problem is recurrent, and I saw in forums a lot of people having problems with Macbook and access points. The brands of the APs normally were Linksys (this means cisco), netgear and belkin. This means to me about 40% of the AP market, according to Google trends.

My real deception was that I was expecting something really good from apple, and what I got was just another crappy PC, packed with a fancy OS and plastic. The thing is that no matter what you buy these days, you will get more of the same.

How to delete Access point in the Nokia S60 3rd Series (n93, e61, etc)

If you have the problem that you mobile just tells your out of memory when trying to delete the Access Points configuration, execute the following procedure:

1. go into the built-in mail application (hit the letter icon on the keyboard)
2. get into the mail settings (Options --> E-mail Settings --> Connection Settings)
3. Then select "Incoming e-mail" or "Outgoing e-mail" doesn't really matter which one.
4. Then scroll down to the "Access point to use" field and select that
5. Select "User defined"
6. Then you have all of your wifi access points listed here, you can, add more, edit existing ones, or delete them. If you want to be able to get to the access point settings via the traditional method, rather than the method listed above, then you need to remove some access points. I don't know how many, but I slimmed my access points down to 18 and I can now get into the access points settings without getting the "out of memory..." error.

Wii - My impressions

Well finally I bought a Nintendo Wii. I just realised that I lost a lot of time. It is a great platform with a lot of different things for you to do. I bought the Wii together with the wii sports, wii play and guitar hero.

Guitar hero is by far the best game I have seen for a long time. Really amazing.

Now I am waiting (for have some money) to buy a a Wii Fit, since that with the wii now I can burn lots of calories, but I think that having the Wii Fit will help me to burn even more.

Another must have for you wii is a modchip. When my Wii arrived I just knew that I would modify it. I waited one week and bought the modchip. Normally my concerns were about voiding the warranty in a brand new console.

The guys behind these modchips are evolving a lot. Now you can buy any modchip (that fits you wii version/model) and solder it in a flat cable, and then later stick this flat cable in the console. You can de-modchip your wii any time you want, but take it out. Then no warranty is voided because you actually haven't modified the wii, you are just using an accessory :)

A tip is have the magic tree-wing screwdriver.

Back to Track and Macbook wifi problems

Well this post is to come back to track with the blog, but also to tell about my new experiences, now with a real macintosh( Not the hackintosh as before).

The first two weeks were horroble, I dicovered an imcompatibility with my WIFI router. After calling apple' s support and draytek (my router brand) support, I solved the problem by myself.

Here are the discoveries:

- The macbook/macos x has a problem of not working very well with short preamble WIFI configurations, so, put your wifi router always in Long preamble. It makes your connection slower, but it with still exist. This means a lot better than before :)

- Change the following parameter on your Macbook

sudo sysctl -w net.inet.tcp.delayed_ack=0

This will make the TCP stack behave differently, making you not waiting for delayed/lost packets that your not that realiable wifi connection will bring.

Well this solved my problems. I hope this post can solve someone else.