Productivity501 » Technology

Capsul8 – Preview for Productivity501 Readers

Mark Shead — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 20:08:43 +0000

When you get a newspaper, you can cut out an article and come back and read the same thing later. It doesn’t change after you read it. The web isn’t like that. The article you read today, may not be around tomorrow or the version that is here tomorrow may be very different from what you have today.

Capsul8 is a startup that solves this problem by giving you a simple way to take a snapshot of a web page and collect these snapshots into a “capsule” where each web page is a different “chapter” that you can easily navigate through and share.

Some of the capsules listed on the Capsul8 home page include:

A collection of web pages paying tribute to Steve Jobs.
Articles about the artist known as Bansky.
The front page of the final publication of News of the World along with its Wikipedia entry and other news stories.

Capsul8 captures the html and images from a web page, so even if the site changes or is taken offline, you have an accurate view of what it looked like when you added it to your capsule. It currently doesn’t snapshot videos and flash media, but it will embed them. So a YouTube video will still show up unless it is taken off of YouTube.

In playing around with Capsul8, I thought of a few use cases that would be helpful to me:

I try to keep track of what people see when they search for my name. I could create a capsule for each search engine and add a snapshot every year. Then I could easily walk through them to see how they changed over time.
I wish I could go back and see how Productivity501 has looked over its many iterations. I can do some of this through www.archive.org, but it doesn’t always work.
When Productivity501 gets mentioned in the press or on another website, it would be nice to capture that in a way that wouldn’t disappear in the future.
I occasionally run across a website with a funny mistake on it. Right now I’ll just take a screenshot, but I could see using Capsul8 for this type of thing.

The service is still in beta and while you can browse the public capsules the actual service is invite only. Capsul8 has graciously offered to give 100 invites to Productivity501 readers that want to check it out. You can sign up with the form below. (If you are reading this in an email or feed reader, you may need to click through to Productivity501 to use the form.)

Influence

Mark Shead — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 02:52:31 +0000

Much of what it takes to do anything in life comes down to influencing human behavior. Solving the technical issues is often the easy part. Getting people to use the solution is what takes the real effort.

This is important to recognize because it isn’t how we are trained to think. We are trained to think that if you build a better mousetrap, everyone will want one. That is simply not true.

Lets say you are trying to solve the problem of sickness in a remote tribe. After visiting it is obvious that sanitation is a big problem. You bring in a work crew, build public toilets and feel like you’ve accomplished something, but you haven’t. You may have solved the technical problem, but the big question is “will people use the new toilets?” The real problem is influencing human behavior–not just implementing some technology.

The same thing is true in your workplace, social circles and family. Assuming you have reasonable good ideas, the real barrier is your ability to influence those around you.

I was talking with our assistant city manager and she mentioned that they were going to try to go to a paperless system. She talked about how they were trying to pick out the technology and make sure it would do everything that they need. I offered to sit down and go through some of the things I have seen that cause paperless projects to fail. Years ago before the technology was any good, paperless projects might have failed because they simply didn’t work. That isn’t likely to be the problem today. The real barrier is going to be getting people to use the system.

The old woman who has always worked in the water department may not be very excited about the new system. If you botch the influence side of things, it doesn’t matter what great features your document management system has–it isn’t going to give you what you want.

Seeing how important influence is can make a profound difference in how you approach problems and in how successful you are in life. Looking back, some of my greatest failures came when forgot to pay attention to the people side of solutions. Some of my greatest successes came when I did.

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Digital Signature & Encryption

Mark Shead — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 13:09:05 +0000

In the past we’ve talked about how to scan your signature to help go paperless. In this post, we are going to look at the fundamentals behind sending truly encrypted emails and documents that can be verified with a digital signature. The idea is to show you the concepts so you understand what is going on behind the scenes to make a secure communication channel over email.

So why spend the time on this? As we switch to doing more business over the internet, secure communications are going to become much more important. Even if you don’t have a use for encryption right now, you probably will over the next 3 to 5 years (if not before). There is a lot of value in understanding why email encryption is secure–even if you don’t understand all the complicated math behind it.

I find it frustrating that so few people and businesses use email encryption and a digital signature on their emails. If businesses would use encrypted emails, they could just send me a PDF of my bill instead of requiring me to login and download my bill from their website. Many of the processes that currently require printing on dead trees and then using dead dinosaurs to transport sheets of paper through the mail could be done electronically if more people would use encryption. This article is me doing my little part to help raise awareness of how encryption works. If you want to help save paper and think this article is useful, please pass it on to someone else.

Encrypting a Document

To use a digital signature or encryption you must have a digital id also known as a digital certificate. A digital id/digital certificate used to do two things. First, it can be used to do email encryption or encrypt files so that they can only be read by the person they are intended for. Second, it can be used to “sign” or place a digital signature on a document to guarantee that it arrives in the same state it was originally sent and no one has added or changed things.

A digital id or digital certificate consists of a public and private key. Your public key is shared with everyone. Your private key is kept private. These keys are text documents full of what appears to be random numbers and letters, but with the proper algorithm, these numbers and letters have a very unique property.

If you take a document and run it through an algorithm with your public key, you get back an encrypted document or an encrypted email.

Once it is encrypted, the public key can’t be used to decrypt the document. The process is one way so it doesn’t matter if other people have the public key, they can’t read the document.

To decrypt the document you must have the private key. If you give the encrypted document to an algorithm with the private key, you will get back the original document.

An Email Encryption Example

Lets start with Tom and Suzie. They want to communicate securely to keep Hitler from reading their messages. They are going to use email encryption to communicate.

First Tom, sends Suzie his public key. This usually happens automatically when Tom sends Suzie a normal email message. Their email programs handle sending Tom’s key and recording it on Suzie’s side of things. When Suzie sends Tom a regular message, Tom gets her key as well.

Suzie takes Tom’s public key and uses it to encrypt an important message. Then she emails the encrypted message to Tom.

But wait! Hitler intercepts the message by infiltrating Suzie’s ISP and breaking into her email. He now has the encrypted email message that Suzie sent to Tom. Hitler also has Tom’s public key that Tom sent to Suzie. However, no matter what Hitler does with the public key, he can’t decrypt the message. The only thing that can decrypt the message is the private key that Tom keeps safe. Email encryption prevents Hitler from reading the message–even though he has a copy of the email that was transmitted over the internet.

When Tom gets the message from Suzy, he takes his private key and uses that to decrypt the message. He can now read Suzie’s email. It doesn’t matter who else gets a copy of the email that Suzie sent. Email encryption insures that Tom is the only one who can unlock it as long has he doesn’t share his private key. If he wants to reply to Suzie, he simply uses her public key to encrypt his reply and sends it back to her.

Signing a Document with a Digital Signature

With an understanding of how documents can be encrypted, we can look at how to “sign” a document using a digital signature. This is very different than a scanned signature that merely attaches an image of your written signature to a document or email. An encrypted document does three things.

It guarantees that the document was actually sent by the sender.
It guarantees that the document wasn’t modified in route.
It guarantees that no one else can read the document.

For a lot of communication, item three isn’t necessary or even desired. For example, if I want to send a message out to 25 people, chances are pretty high that it isn’t extremely confidential. In fact, sending a separate message to each person encrypted with their public key might be quite a burden. However, I still may want each recipient to be guaranteed that the document came from me and that it wasn’t modified in transit–we want to put a digital signature on it that says guarantees who sent it and that it wasn’t modified.

Outside of signed email, I may want to post a message on a website that can be read by the world where anyone can check to make sure that the message hasn’t been changed from when I wrote it and confirm that it was truly written by me. A slightly different example of this is when a company posts a piece of software or a patch for existing software. The people who will download it want some way to know that they are getting a legitimate file and not a virus that was posted by hackers to trick people.

This is where signing a document (or file) comes into play. Signing a document (applying your digital signature to it) guarantees the first two items on the list, but does it in a way that allows anyone to read it. People can verify your digital signature without getting a digital id or digital certificate for themselves.

This can be difficult to explain, so I am going to simplify the math a bit. My version won’t be nearly as secure as what is actually used, but it will give you a good general idea of how it operates.

Checksums

First, let’s talk about checksums. A checksum is a simple way to send an extra piece of information along with some data that can be used to make sure that the data is the same on both sides. In human terms, this is kind of like asking someone to repeat a number back to you over the phone. While repeating information back works fine for short numbers, it could be a bit troubling if you have large amounts of data. So we create a short cut. Let’s say that, for some reason, I’m trying to give you the values of 100 checks over the phone. I’m reading them from Excel and you are typing them into Excel. In the end, we want to make sure that we didn’t miss anything. I could have you repeat all the numbers back to me, but that would take a long time. Instead, I might ask you to give me the total. If your total matches my total, then one of two things happened:

We successfully transferred the numbers verbally.
We made some mistakes that perfectly canceled each other out.

Since option two is pretty unlikely when dealing with a large list of numbers, we can assume (with a reasonable degree of certainty) that we didn’t make a mistake.

Computers use checksums in a similar way. Back in the days of modems, computers would send an 8 bit byte where the last bit was a checksum. So, the computer might send a binary message that looked like this:

01101010

The first 7 bits contained the data: 0110101. The last bit is the checksum was used to tell if there were an even or odd numbers of ones present in the data. In this case we are using a 0 to say that there are an even number of ones. If the receiving computer got a byte where the number of even bits and the checksum bit disagreed, it would ask for that data to be sent again.

This type of approach reduces accidental errors. However, it does nothing toward preventing someone from intentionally changing the data. If you wanted to change the data en route, it would be simple to flip the checksum bits to match whatever you wanted to send in the data. We need a way of generating a checksum type value that is hard to fake.

Hashes for Digital Signatures

In simple form, a hash is an algorithm (or set of steps) that you can run a piece of data through (text, a file, etc.) and get out a number that represents the original. You can’t recreate the original from the number, but for most practical purposes you can use that number to represent the input. In other words, it will be very difficult to find another input file (or text) that will produce the same output.

Let’s construct a simple hash of the following text:

The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy hound.

Our hash is going to be created by multiplying the number of letters by the number of words.

38 letters
9 words
38 x 9 = 342

So now if I send you this message, I can include the number 342. You can do the math on the message you receive and it will give you a pretty good idea if the message is the same as what was sent.

Obviously, this type of solution will only protect against unintentional changes in the data. If someone changes the email in route, they could just as easily change the number “342″ to match whatever the hash is for their modified message.

If we want to protect against this, I can send the hash value through a different channel. For example, I could send you the message via email and then call you on a secure phone line and say, “the hash value is 342″. That way if someone wanted to modify the message, they could only change it to something that produced a hash value of 342. (In our very simple hash algorithm, this would be hard, but doable. With the complex hash algorithms that are actually used, it would be impossible, for all practical purposes.)

Obviously, it is inefficient if I have to call you up on the phone. We need some way to put a secure channel in the email. If I try to encrypt the hash number with your public key, the message is only readable by you–I might as well just encrypt the whole message. If I encrypt it with my public key, then I’m the only one who can read it–not particularly useful either.

But look what happens when I encrypt it with my private key.

We now have the value 342 encrypted in a way that can be opened by anyone with my public key. Since my public key is the only thing that can decrypt that value, it guarantees them that I was the one who originally encrypted the number 342.

If someone wants to change the message and change the hash value, they would have to be able to encrypt it with my private key.

So, when you send messages signed with a digital signature, the hash value guarantees that the message hasn’t been changed. Encrypting the hash value with your private key allows anyone to verify that the hash value, itself, hasn’t been changed using your public key. This is normally handled automatically by your software, and it will give you a warning if you get a message where decrypting the hash value produces a different number. The encrypted hash value is added as a small attachment or added to the bottom of the email.

Conclusion

And there you have it. You now understand encryption and digital signatures better than 99% of the population. If you are interested in starting to use email encryption, I recommend getting a free set of certificates from Thawte or Comodo. (Thawte may be canceling their free program, so Comodo may be the better choice.) The setup process is fairly simple and they have instructions on how to get various email clients configured.

As I said before, this article is me trying to do my part to help society move from paper to digital. If you want to help, please take a few minutes to share this with someone else.

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More Efficient Emails

Mark Shead — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 04:00:22 +0000

When working with businesses, one problem I see over and over again is people who don’t know how to write an efficient email. For example, I was helping a business put processes into place to streamline their help desk. Some of the requests that were coming into the tracking system just boggled my mind.

My English 101 classes years ago spent a lot of time explaining that authors need to think about the reader. It doesn’t matter what you write–it matters how the reader understands what you write. Unfortunately, people forget this when writing emails. Here are some of the emails I’ve seen (with names changed to protect the innocent and guilty parties):

My computer doesn’t work. Help!!!!!
– Jane

Regardless of how talented, help desk personnel aren’t going to be mind readers. Jane hasn’t given them any information that is useful.

I can’t get to my folders.
– Sue
What folders can’t you get to?
– Help Desk
Yes.
–Sue
I’m afraid I don’t understand your response. I can probably find them or restore them from backup, but you’ll have to tell me what you are looking for. What folders are missing?
– Help Desk
(three days pass)
Do you still need help with this? Did you find the folders? If not let me know what folder you are looking for so I can help.
– Help Desk
They still aren’t there.
– Sue
Ok can you tell me what was in the folders? Maybe if I know what they were used for I can help you find them.
–Help Desk
I guess there isn’t anything we can do about it. Such is life…
– Sue

I felt bad for the help desk employees. They were trying ever so patiently to help Sue, but she seemed incapable of giving them any useful information. Even when asked for it in different ways, it doesn’t even appear she is reading the emails she is responding to. (Had I been the one on the receiving end of the “yes” message, I would have been tempted to responded with “42″ or something along those lines.) These examples all involved a help desk, but the same thing happens in all kinds of email exchanges.

When you write an email, do your best to reduce the number of back and forth messages. If it is something you can’t adequately explain in a message, consider using the phone or meeting in person. Skill in writing email is the same as any type of writing. Your ability to define what information you want to convey and then compose text that successfully puts that information in the mind of the reader is what determines your level of email writing skill.

Here are some tips that will help you write more effective, efficient emails:

Write from the reader’s standpoint - Make sure you pay attention to the knowledge and experience level of your reader. Define unfamiliar acronyms and use their language.
Include necessary background information – I will often write a short email asking a question and then at the bottom add additional background or clarifying information. For example, if I’m writing to someone who is new in their position, I may include a bit of background history explaining the current state of affairs. By putting it after my signature, they can continue reading if they have questions, but it does not make my message overly long for people who are already familiar with everything that is going on.
Anticipate questions - As you compose your email, keep asking yourself “what questions will this statement likely prompt from the reader?” Sometimes this may lead you to add another sentence that will clarify your meaning. Sometimes it may prompt you to add an attachment of related information. In some situations, it might even make sense to put a FAQ (frequently asked questions) at the end of your message.
Keep messages short – Long messages tend to get ignored. Try to keep your message short. If it needs to be longer, be sure the first paragraph gives a good summary. I’ve found that writing a one or two paragraph message, my signature, and then the bulk of supporting data (after my signature) helps increase the chance that they will read the first part of my message.

I anticipate that some people will look at this and say, “This is crazy. If I tried to do this, it would take forever to write a message.” First, be smart about this. Not every email requires the same level of detail. Second, consider how much longer it will take to try to clarify your position in subsequent messages. Communicating in a way that produces fewer questions and less confusion to your reader means fewer interruptions for both of you in the future. It is easy to underestimate how much time it saves to do things right in the first place.

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How to Create a Scanned Digital Signature

Mark Shead — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 15:17:45 +0000

If you like this article you might also enjoy our post about how to use your signature to sign documents in Acrobat. We also have a number of other articles about going paperless and one on Digital Signatures and Encryption that might be useful.

If you want to create a scanned electronic version of your signature, there are several ways to do it. The “right” way would be to send your signature to a company that will create a truetype font of your entire signature so you can print it at any size and still have the beautiful vector drawn lines.

The easy way to do it is to scan in your signature and remove the background. If you make it large enough and scan at a high enough resolution, you don’t have to worry about it looking bad when it gets printed.

I’m going to walk you through the “easy” way. I’ll be using Photoshop simply because you probably know someone who has it and wouldn’t mind doing this for you. I’m sure you can do it with other programs as well.

Note: When people talk about “digital signatures” they usually aren’t referring to a scanned version of your handwriting. Digital electronic signatures are an electronic way to prove that someone signed something even if the end product is being transmitted through a network where malicious people may try to tamper with it.

1. Sign a piece of paper

This is harder than it sounds because you’ll be very critical of the way it looks. I suggest signing with large letters. When you shrink it down, it will look better. I used a blue gel pen and got decent results. Sign a piece of paper several times and then scan it in. This will give you some options to choose the best looking image.

2. Scan the paper

You probably want to use a high resolution for best results. I wouldn’t go below 600 dpi.

3. Crop down to the best signature

You also may need to straighten the image at this point so it is level and will line up with horizontal lines on paper.

4. Use the magic wand to select the area around the signature

5. Invert the selection and copy

6. Paste the signature into a new document with a transparent background

7. Use the magic wand to remove any white still left inside letters.

8. Save the image in a format that supports transparent backgrounds.

I’d suggest using PNG. It can be imported into Acrobat, supports transparency, and doesn’t have problems with “artifacts” like some other formats. You don’t want to use JPEG because of the artifact problem.

So what can you use your scanned digital signature for? Here are some suggestions:

Email Signature – I’m not a big fan of using an image in an email signature, but I know a lot of people think it gives emails a nice personal touch. If you do decided to use this in your email as an electronic signature, be sure to send test messages to several email programs to make sure that it looks the way you expect.
Digital Signature Representation – Acrobat can support digital electronic signatures using public key infrastructure. They also allow you to attach a digital representation of your signature–so there is an actual signature on the document even though the real legal weight is being handled by a bunch of numbers behind the scene. This is particularly useful if you are sending a document with a digital signature to someone who may not be particularly technology savvy. They may not understand how the digital signature works, but they will have a signature that they recognize when they print the document out.
Signing Faxes – This is one of my main uses for a scanned signature. I can receive a fax, sign it and fax it back without ever printing the document out.

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AT&T DSL Only Option

Mark Shead — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 17:00:31 +0000

AT&T is offering DSL without requiring phone service. This is sometimes referred to as “dry dsl” or “naked dsl”. For about $29 per month, you can get 3.0Mbps down and 512Kbps up high speed internet connection. This also gives you free internet service from AT&T’s wireless access points across the US. This service would normally cost $39 per month, so if you need it, this can work out to be a very good deal.

In my area of the country they also offer 6.0/768k internet service for about $34 per month. This is what I used before we bought a house that is a few hundred feet from where AT&T offers service.

This “DSL without phone service” package has been around for awhile, but it isn’t something AT&T usually markets very heavily. It sounds like they were forced to offer this as a condition of some merger. I know a lot of people who don’t have a normal land line telephone that have been stuck using a cable modem because the combined cost of a phone line plus DSL was greater than the cable modem charges. The new service offers these people some additional options.

If you can’t find it on their website, you may have to call and ask about it. They tend to downplay this option because they make a lot more money by selling you bundled services with phone, internet, and television for one price.

If you are using cell phone or IP phone for voice and Netflix, Hulu or Amazon for television, being able to get a data connection without needing to pay for extra telephone or cable services that you don’t use can save a lot of money.

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TIP: Logging Instant Messaging

Mark Shead — Tue, 31 May 2011 15:00:00 +0000

I do a lot of business over instant messaging. Often, these chat sessions have important information that I need later. I used to copy out any important info into a separate file, but now many of the chat clients let you log your instant messaging. Some operating systems make it easy to search through your chat sessions to find a bit of information when you need it.

If you use iChat, here is the configuration window where you can save the chats (it is at the bottom of the image). Notice you can also open the folder directly from this window.

If you use the web version of Google’s chat product that is integrated with Gmail, you can set it to record your chats and make them available when you search your email. The box to change this is under the chat tab in the settings:

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The Two Types of Technology Users

Mark Shead — Wed, 25 May 2011 15:00:01 +0000

Every year, a new slew of gadgets promises to solve all of our problems. Manufactures are constantly adding more features in hopes of getting us to upgrade. I’ve managed technology for an institution that had a large “gadget budget”. Employees were able to request pretty much anything they wanted as long as there was a slight chance that it might in some way make them more effective at their jobs.

I noticed that some people seemed to use the technology very well and it seemed to make a big difference in their productivity. On the other hand, there was another group of people who never seemed to get much of a benefit out of their tools. What was odd, is that the ineffective group usually had newer, faster, shinier, more feature rich gadgets than the effective group.

Over time, I began to see that the difference between the two groups was fundamentally about how they approached technology. One group would spend time thinking about how they, personally, worked and what areas were slowing them down. When they came to talk to me, they usually had a very good definition of the problems that they were looking for technology to solve. We would sit down and find a more effective way of accomplishing their current activities. Sometimes it involved a new PDA or piece of software, but often it involved learning how to use a feature of something that they already had.

A typical email from someone in this group:

I’m having trouble keeping contacts both in Outlook with on my cell phone. I’ve been setting aside a few minutes every morning to make sure they are up to date, but invariably I end up missing an important contact that I need when I’m on the road or that my assistant needs when I’m out off the office. Is there anything we can do to make this work smoother?
–Joey

The second group generally spent more time at Best Buy looking over the latest PDA’s and cell phones. They also tended to talk with friends to find out what they were using. They would find out about a new feature and imagine ways that they could use it in their work. They would usually approach me looking for a specific device so they could do something that they weren’t currently doing.

I was talking to Ted from XYZ Corp. the other day and he showed me his new Z9000 digital personal assistant. He had some pictures of his kids at a ball game on it that he could show as a slide shows. I was thinking I could really use this when making sales calls because I could scan in product photos to show clients instead of just describing it to them. Can you get a Z9000 for me?
–Bill

If we buy Bill a Z9000 and get Joey setup with some type of automatic synchronization system they will both be very happy. Bill will scan in photos each week and put them on his new PDA. Joey will keep his phone synced with Outlook. Everyone is happy right? Yes, but revisit in two months and you will find that Joey is still using the syncing software, but Bill has stopped putting photos on his PDA.

Why is this? Weren’t they both happy with the solutions? Yes, but there is a fundamental difference in how they both approached technology. Joey wanted a solution for something he was already doing. He had a system in place that he was using, but he was looking for a way to make it better. Bill had found a way to use technology for something he wasn’t already doing. Joey had started with a problem while Bill had started with a feature on a gadget.

When Bill heard about the Z9000 he imagined having it. He imagined pulling it out of his pocket and showing it to people. He imagined how using it would make him a super salesman. He imagined ways that he could use each one of the features. He imagined how much better his sales presentations would be if he could show photos on his Z9000. In effect Bill found a solution and created a problem to solve. Joey found a problem and then located a solution. Joey is already in the habit of syncing his contacts manually. His solution just requires him to do what he did before, but in a way that is more efficient. Bill’s solution requires him to learn a new habit, so it doesn’t actually save him any time. He is now doing something that he wasn’t doing before.

There are times where learning a new habit is the perfect solution to a problem. However, if you find yourself starting with a solution or product feature and working back to a problem, it is a good indication that you aren’t going to end up with something that increases your productivity.

This article was originally published on 9/20/2005 on www.productivity501.com.

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Nexus S 4G Sprint Android Phone Review

Mark Shead — Tue, 24 May 2011 15:00:59 +0000

Sprint Nexus S 4G by Samsung

Switching phones is expensive, so I try not to do it very often. The cost of phones isn’t that bad, it is the time investment required to get a new device setup, the important data transferred over and learning how to use it. I’ve been using an old Blackberry Curve for years, but when it started randomly shutting itself off, I finally decided it was time to go ahead and get and updated device.

In this post I’m going to review the Nexus S 4G and cover some of the technology decision points I made along the way to selecting it. Most of the reviews I’ve seen concentrate on the technical specifications of the Nexus. This review of the Nexus S is going to be focused more on how I’m using it and whether it seems to integrate well into how I want to actually work. If you want to read the technical specs, take a look at one of the many other Nexus S 4G reviews on the web. The Nexus on Sprint is fairly new, so there aren’t that many hands-on reviews, but there are many reviews that look at the specifications.

Platform Choice

There are 4 primary smartphone platforms today:

iPhone
Windows Mobile
Blackberry
Android

I have had a good experience with Blackberry, but over the past few years they keep changing their strategy when it comes to their operating system. I wanted a device that I could write code for. Not knowing where RIM is going made me decide against the Blackberry.

The iPhone looked like a nice platform, but it isn’t available on Sprint and the required dataplans from Verizon or AT&T are much more expensive for much less service that what I’m getting right now with a family plan on Sprint.

I have heard a few good things about Windows mobile, but it doesn’t seem like it s as well developed as IOS or Android at this point. Also it looks like any type of development would be tied to using the Windows operating system and all of my primary computers use either OS X or Ubuntu at this point.

So that left me with Android. On the plus side of things, Android seemed like an ideal platform if I get to the point where I want to write mobile code. It is open and with fewer restrictions than the other platforms. However, as I looked into it more I found there were really two categories of Android devices.

Google vs. Carrier Android

Google develops the Android operating system and makes it available to carriers. Carriers (like Sprint, Verizon, AT&T, and T-mobile) can then customize the operating system that gets put on their phones. Sometimes this means adding in their own programs and sometimes it means taking out features that they don’t want you to use or locking down certain features that they want you to pay extra for. With these types of smartphones, updates are handled by the carrier. This means that when a new version of Android comes out, the carrier will get it from Google, add their modifications and then push them out. The problem of course is that older smartphones don’t get updates for quite some time if at all.

The other type of devices are Google phones. These are the Nexus series of smartphones. They don’t get their updates from the carriers. Instead updates come from Google using Google’s version of Android. This gives you a few advantages. First of all you get updates much more rapidly. Second you are on a device that is likely being used for the development process for the OS, so in theory it should be more stable. Third, you don’t have the carriers messing with the code and taking things out before it gets to you.

Based on this I went with the Nexus S 4G. The other device I was strongly considering was the EVO, but there were things I wanted my phone to do that would require breaking into the phone on an EVO that would work out of the box with a Nexus.

Nexus S 4G

The Nexus S 4G usually costs anywhere from $129 to $589 depending on what type of contract you are dealing with. Current Sprint customers whose phones aren’t still under a 2 year contract should be able to find the smartphone from $149 to $199. The best deal I’ve seen for new customers is $99 from Amazon.

The best deals are for people moving to Sprint from another carrier. If you are in that position, you may be able to get some rebates or VISA gift cards from Sprint for making the change.

Keep in mind that good deals on cell phones simply mean you are paying for the device over the life of the contract. If you damage or lose your phone while you are still under contract, you’ll have to pay full price for another device.

Review of Nexus S 4G Screen

The screen on the Nexus S 4G is an Active Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diode display (AMOLED). The big advantage of AMOLED displays is that they can produce a very good image with minimal power usage. The disadvantage is that they can be a bit difficult to see in direct sunlight.

Compared to my old Blackberry the AMOLED screen looks amazing–as long as I’m inside. Once I get outdoors the Nexus S screen is a lot harder to see, but still usable.

Another interesting feature of the Nexus S screen is that the glass slightly curves toward the user. It is a very slight curve that is supposed to help with usability and make it more ergonomic. Personally I think it is more marketing than substance. There might be some advantage in a wrap around monitor at my desk, but on a 4 inch screen held in my hand, I don’t think there is a huge difference. However, I’m coming from a blackberry with a physical keyboard so they whole touch screen experience isn’t what I’m familiar with. Someone coming from another screen based smartphone might be in a better position to judge.

I’ve seen quite a few reviews knocking the AMOLED display because it isn’t a Super AMOLED display. Since most of these are from review sites that focus almost exclusively on specifications, it makes sense. However, I think that most practical users won’t notice anything lacking.

The only thing I’ve noticed that I don’t like about the screen is that it seems less sensitive to touch around the edges. So when I try to push an onscreen key at the very bottom of the screen it sometimes doesn’t recognize my tap. It is possible that I touch the edges of the screen differently than the center so it may be my perception more than reality, but it is something that is noticeable and I’ve heard other people mention it as well.

Keyboard on the Nexus S 4G

Having used a physical Blackberry keyboard for years, my first reaction to the onscreen keyboard was intense hate and loathing. However after a few days of using the onscreen keyboard, it became bearable. I talked to some friends and they said to give it about 4 weeks at which point I’d wonder how I ever could type on the Blackberry.

My first instinct was to “undershoot” the virtual keys. The raised keyboard on a Blackberry, you end up typing closer to your “tumbtip” than you do on the virtual keyboard. So when I would try to hit one key, I’d often hit the key below. This took a few days to improve, but if I had of been aware of the issue at the very beginning it probably would have been less frustrating when everything I typed came out wrong.

The built in keyboard software does a moderately good job of figuring out what you meant to type even if you accidentally click on an adjacent key while typing a word. For example, if you try to type the word “testing”, but instead of an “s” you type a “d” and end up with “tedting” the software will understand what happened and change it to “testing” when you hit the space bar. I have found that it isn’t nearly as accurate if you get the first letter wrong. Also it seems to only handle predictions one word at a time so it doesn’t use the previous word to help predict the next.

Across the top of the keyboard is a list of everything that the phone thinks you might be trying to say and it highlights the one it is going to use once you press the space bar. You can simply click on the word displayed at the top as a short cut in order to skip typing out the rest of the word.

One thing I really miss about the Blackberry is the ability to push and hold a letter to make it a capital. You have to push the shift key and then select the letter to make a cap. Pushing and holding a letter with give you an alternate set of characters to choose from. For example, to type a comma, you click and hold the period. Up pops a menu showing a comma, apostrophe and a few other characters to choose from. The top row of letters can be held in order to select a number. So tap-hold on the letter q will produce the number 1. (This is probably why the tap-hold doesn’t work for capitalization.)

Like the Blackberry, double spacing will get you a period which convenient and saves a bit of time.

Review of Nexus S 4G Battery

The battery life on the Nexus S is reasonable for normal use. I charge the Nexus S 4G at night, use it during the day and have 25% to 50% charge left at 9pm. Granted I’m not spending all my time fiddling with the phone and I’m not making long telephone calls. However, the battery life is nothing compared to the Blackberry where I could charge it and go two or even three days without running out of power.

There is a power button on the side of the Nexus S 4G. When depressed quickly it turns the display off using an animation similar to the flash and shrinking down to a bright line that you’d get when turning off a CRT based television or monitor. Pushing and holding the power button allows you to choose to actually power it off or put it in “airplane mode” with the wireless features disabled.

Using the Nexus S as a hotspot will drain the battery quickly. On a recent road trip, my Nexus had been unplugged since 7am and put in hotspot mode around 8:30. By 11:30 it was down to 16% so I plugged it in to the car charger. This isn’t out of line with what I’d expect from my Mifi device though, so it doesn’t seem too unreasonable.

There are third party batteries that offer more capacity. The stock battery is 1500 mAh, you can get another one that is the same physical size with 1750 mAh. If you are ok with having a thicker phone there is another option with a bigger battery and custom fitted battery cover with a 3500 mAh capacity. At first I thought this would make it too thick, but the device is thin enough that it might not be a bad trade off if you need the extra battery life.

By the way, I’m not using any of the software designed to make the battery last longer. So my results are probably what a naive user will get just using the phone out of the box.

Memory – Nexus S Review

The Nexus S 4G has 16 Gigs of built in storage and no slot for an external memory card. I’ve seen a lot of reviews complain about this limitation. I never filled up my Blackberry’s 4 GB card, so I don’t think it is that big of deal for me. 16 Gigs will go a long ways for the way I expect to use it. Still a better camera and better video playback capabilities will probably mean I’m going to fill up the memory a lot more than I have on any of my previous phones.

Near Field Communication – Nexus S 4G Review

The Nexus S supports Near Field Communication or NFC. If you take off the back cover, you’ll see a black area on the battery cover a bit smaller than a business card. There are two wires that come out of this that touch contacts on the device when the cover is in place. NFC allows you to place the sensor on (or very very close to) an NFC tag or tag reader to exchange information. You might think of it as a two-way, slightly more private QR code reader/emitter.

An example of NFC in use are the credit card machines where you “wave” your card in front of it instead of using the magnetic swipe. In theory you might be able to run an application from your cedit card company in order to use your Nexus S 4G as a payment device rather than a physical card. I say in theory because I don’t know of any company that will let you do this today. (Although it is rumored that Citibank will have an application out later this year for their cardholders.) Also keep in mind that Google has a payment service called Google Checkout, it is possible that you may one day be able to pay for gas using the Checkout service which would then charge your credit card.

What you can do today is very similar to QR codes. By waving your Nexus over a NFC transmitter you can load someone’s contact information or open a website. There are some companies that are using NFC in your phone to allow you to open locks rather than having a dedicated security card.

I’m sure someone could write an entire review about what can be done with NFC. For the purposes of this review the current answer is, “not much”. This may change in the future, but I couldn’t find anything readily available where I could test it for this review.

Cameras – Nexus S 4G Review

The Nexus S 4G has two cameras. A 5M camera on the back and what appears to be a VGA quality camera that faces the user when the user is looking at the screen for video conferencing. In playing around with it briefly the camera doesn’t seem particularly responsive. There is enough of a lag between when you push the on screen button and when a picture is actually taken that it is hard to catch what ever you are photographing unless it is posing, a sloth, or a snail.

I’ve had quite a few pictures turn out blurry, but it seems like the camera may need something brighter than normal room lighting to get reasonable pictures. The software does make it easy to take a picture and then share it on Facebook or other services. I realize that this isn’t a lot of detailed review information about the camera. The phone is still fairly new and I’ve only taken a dozen or so pictures before writing this review. Hopefully this will give you enough information to know what to watch out for if you are considering the Nexus.

Review of Form Factor

The Nexus S 4G fits nicely in your hand and is reasonably thin without feeling flimsy. The curved screen is nice, but not a huge differentiator. I was originally concerned that having it curved might stress or break the screen if it had too much pressure applied to it on a flat surface. It is small enough and the curve is slight enough that I don’t think that will be an issue. Also it turns out that the screen is flat with the glass curved on the outside, but the flat back of the glass is against the screen.

On the bottom of the phones is a USB port and a headphone/mic jack. It is still comfortable to use with the headphones in place, but the USB cable kind of gets in the way of holding the device in a landscape position.

I havent’ dropped it yet (and hope not to), but I think it would be nice if it had a strap like a camera. It is somewhat slick to hold. Maybe a strap and a bumper case. I know the case exists, but I haven’t seen any type of strap.

The back cover snaps on and there isn’t a button to take it off. You just have to pry it off. This isn’t to bad–most of the time you won’t be taking it off–but it does make the phone feel a little cheaper. On the other hand, I’m glad you can physically get to the battery.

Port / Connections Review

Without getting too deep into a technical/specs review, the phone has a USB and headphones port on the bottom as mentioned above. The USB port is used for charging and can be used to transfer data to and from the device. It appears that it might be used for wired tethering to get internet access although I can’t review that feature.

If you pry the back cover off (which feels like you are breaking the phone) you’ll find three connectors. One is for the NFC antenna built into the back of the case. The other two appear to be for the GPS and radio antenna. I’m not sure exactly how you would use these, but I suppose there could be an optional back cover that would give you access to these in order to boost reception. If you are using your Nexus for tethering in an RV or something, these ports might come in very handy to help make sure you are getting a good signal.

One thing I miss from my Blackberry is a charging cradle. My Blackberry had a cradle I could drop it into for charging that touched the external contacts and didn’t require inserting a small USB connector into a small slot where you can bend the pins or break something off. I didn’t realize how much I liked using the cradle until I had to plug the Nexus into the cord on my bedside table. I think there is some type of cradle for the Nexus that I can’t review because I haven’t seen it, but it looks like it just helps you align the device to slide the pins into the slot.

Android and Software Review

In this section fo the review, I’m going to talk about the Android OS and software. On one hand this should probably be its own review because most of these things aren’t specific to the Nexus. On the other hand, The Nexus S 4G is pretty much a stock Google phone so there are some differences between what you’ll get with it and what you’ll get with a carrier controlled Android device. Also since I don’t have a lot of experience with Android on another device, I’m going to be reviewing it as someone coming from a Blackberry–not looking at the differences between it and other Android smartphones.

Gingerbread on the Nexus S

The Nexus S 4G comes with Google Android Gingerbread 2.3 installed. This is the newest version of Android designed for smartphones (the 3.x line is designed for tablets). It seems to work well and is reasonably polished although there are some little user interface issues where I think they could learn something from Blackberry. Simple things like selecting a contact to email or text are a little more clunky than they really need to be–not extremely bad–just not as smooth as what you get with the Blackberry OS. Part of this is because the Blackberry OS was originally designed to be navigated with a clickable scrollwheel. This design constraint forced them to really put a lot of extra effort into designing their OS for ease of use.

Generally navigation in Gingerbread on the Nexus S is done by clicking on the screen to move around and using the back button to get out of something. There is also an option or properties button that will usually bring up a contextual menu for what ever you are trying to do. In many situations clicking and holding on an item will bring up a contextual menu for that particular object.

Usability Review

Overall I’d say the usability is good. The issues I’m running into may be partially because there is a better approach that I haven’t found yet. For example, it might be a lot more intuitive to select a contact and then the option to send them an email rather than opening an email and trying to add a contact to the to field.

One thing that makes usability a hard thing to review is that you can customize a lot of aspects of Android using software. I mentioned on Facebook that I was having problems getting used to the keyboard and got half a dozen suggestions on alternative keyboards I could install. This level of customization can be great, but it makes it hard to review because if you don’t like something or it feels out of place you can probably change it.

The main page seems to only display in a portrait orientation. I tend to use the device mainly in landscape (wider than tall) position. This means that the front screen an menu are usually sideways for me. This isn’t a huge deal, but it explains why I see a lot of people turning their smartphones back and forth.

Tethering

Google Android supports tethering where you can use your device to connect to the internet. This can be done using wifi where your phone becomes a mobile hotspot or via a USB connection. Most carriers will turn this functionality off or charge you more for it. However, it worked fine out of the box without any added services on the Nexus S 4G from Sprint. T-Mobile which has been selling a version of the Nexus S for some time also has tethering/hotspot enabled and it hasn’t been turned off. Sprint reps said that the tethering will be turned off in a coming update, and will require a $29 per month fee to enable it. I’m not sure if they can turn it off though because the updates appear to come from Google rather than Sprint.

My guess is that they may start watching how much data you are using and forcing you to sign up for the $29 plan if you are using more data than what they think you could use without tethering. The phone is still pretty new though and the jury is still out on what Sprint can do to modify or restrict it.

The $29 per month fee wouldn’t be bad if you use it all the time. Having it open where it can be used without a fee is nice if you only need to hop on the internet once a month when your AT&T DSL is down or you are on the road.

I can’t review the 4G tethering because I haven’t been in a service area to try it. The 3G tethering works as well as my Mifi card seemed to work and it is very convenient and easy to enable. It does consume a lot of battery though.

Wifi tethering is supposed to allow you to connect up to 6 devices and you have the option to leave it open or enable security so your laptop will have to authenticate before connecting.

3G speeds seem to be in the 1Mbps range for downloads and 200kbps for uploads with two bars of signal. It appears to be very sensitive to signal strength so a better signal might give higher speeds. 4G speeds are allegedly 5 or 6 times that.

Google Account / Google Apps Integration

One of the really nice things about Android Gingerbread is the Gmail/Google Account/Google Apps integration. You give it your Google Account (or Google Apps account) and it can automatically setup the following:

Remember all the applications you’ve installed and reinstall them if you wipe your device.
Connect to your Gmail (Or Google Apps) email.
Connect to Google Reader
Connect to Google Voice
Sync your Google Calendar
Sync your Google Contacts

The nice thing is that (for the most part) you simply give it your Google Account and it takes care of getting you into all these services without requiring you to log into each on individually.

One feature that I was pleasantly surprised to see was the ability to add multiple accounts. So if you have a Google Apps account for work and a Gmail account for your personal email, you can add both accounts to the operating system. I’m not sure how all of this works, but it is something that could make your life much easier to keep the same personal and professional app capabilities on a single device or if you are trying to share the phone with a spouse.

Corporate Integration

While I didn’t test it for this review, Gingerbread has support for synching with an Exchange server.

Google Navigation

Google Navigation uses the infrastructure behind Google Maps to provide you with GPS capabilities. You can do some interesting things like use GPS with the Street View interface and have it show you where you are with a photograph as shown below. This is cool, but not necessarily the most useful feature–you can already see what everything looks like by looking out the window. It could help with knowing where to turn by showing an arrow pointing to the right exit, but I think the computer view is a bit more intuitive.

Google Navigation is supposed to offer routing based on live traffic. I was testing it while driving through Dallas along side of my older Garmin that doesn’t have the traffic service enabled. The Nexus tried to send me through a closed road while the Garmin by sheer luck sent me around the closed road. Later on I looked at Google Maps and it has the information saying that the road was closed, so I’m not sure why it tried to send me down it. One theory is that Google is getting the traffic information based on other users and ignoring any government provided data about closures. If this is the case then a closed road may look like one with little or no congestion. I’m hoping that this isn’t the case and my experience was just a fluke, but it wasn’t a good first impression.

The voice on Navigation leaves quite a bit to be desired, and the speaker seems tinny compared to the Garmin. Not a huge deal, but there was a pretty noticeable difference when using them side by side.

While Navigation on the Nexus S has some neat features, I don’t think it will replace my dedicated GPS any time soon. There are some other navigation programs you can buy, but the free Sprint Navigation (also known as Telenav) does not appear to be available for the Nexus S 4G.

Google Reader on the Nexus S 4G

I ran into an odd issue with Google Reader. When I logged in on the Nexus S 4G, I didn’t see any subscriptions. It turned out that in Android I was logging into my Google Apps account and on the web I was logging into my Google Account that had been created with the same email address. I had to fiddle around with my Apps account in order to get it fixed, but it looks like it is just a side effect of the way they are transitioning the single signon infrastructure.

Reader lets you read RSS feeds. Having access to a mobile reader makes it easy to catch up on your reading when you have a few minutes of downtime. Previously I’ve used the mobile web version of Google Reader on my Blackberry. The Android version is much nicer and much easier on the eyes. You can read a feed on your phone and then pickup where you left off on your desktop computer using the web interface.

Android also has a program called Google Listen that will download media from feeds you are subscribed to in Google Reader. This gives you a simple way to listen to podcasts while managing them through the same interface you use for the rest of your feeds.

I had previously used the mobile web version of Google Reader on my Blackberry. One of the immediate differences I noticed was how much easier it was to read the two comics I subscribe to (Dilbert and XKCD). The Sunday version of Dilbert on the Blackberry required a lot of guessing and eagle eyes to read the text on the Blackberry. On the Nexus S 4G it is easy to read.

Google Talk

Talk is an instant messaging, video conferencing and computer to phone call application. In the past I’ve mainly used it on my computer for instant messaging. However, I was pleasantly surprised with the video conferencing capabilities as a mobile replacement for Skype. The front mounted camera works reasonably well and voice quality was good.

There were a few oddities I noticed. The aspect ratio of your image changes depending on how you hold the Nexus S. Also the image of yourself can easily obscure the face of the person you are talking to. It is easy to turn the phone in a way that makes your image small where you can’t see the other person very well. This isn’t a big deal, but is something you have to think about the first few times you use it.

The speaker phone works ok, but you’ll probably want to use a headset of some type to get better quality.

Google Voice

Google Voice was originally a startup called Grand Central. There idea was to offer you a permanent telephone number that you could then point to any number you like. Google bought them and rebranded the service as Google Voice. I have had an account from back in the Grand Central days and it works very well. We can give out a number to my family that rings my Nexus, my wife’s Blackberry and our house Ooma number. If we are at home we can answer it on our home line, but if we are traveling it is easy to get ahold of one of us without going through lots of numbers and voice mail.

The problem with Google Voice was when you placed outgoing calls. Your calls would come from whatever phone you were using, so people would capture that number and call you back instead of using your Google Voice number. Also if you sent text messages from your mobile they would have your mobile’s number, but if you sent them from Google Voice they would have your Google Voice number.

Sprint and Google partnered together to fix this problem. Basically if you have a Sprint cell number, you can either take your Google Voice number and apply it to your mobile or take your Sprint number and make it your Google Voice number. That way you have the same number on your phone as you have on your Google Voice account.

I’d recommend holding off on this transition because it was very problematic for me and took about 6 hours on the phone with their technical support to get things straightened out in a few weeks. However, once I got someone familiar with the product, they got it set up right and it seems to be working great. Here are some of the capabilities:

I can send and receive SMS messages from the Google Voice application on my phone or from my desktop using the web interface. (It is much faster to type messages on a full keyboard at my computer.)
When someone leaves me a message, it notifies my phone and I can play it and read a transcribed version from Google Voice (on the phone or on the web).
I can reroute my calls to another number. For example to a land line if I’m somewhere without service or trying to conserve minutes.
I can route different callers in different ways. For example, an important client will always ring my mobile while someone who always calls my cell phone number to get ahold of my wife can be routed to the home.
Voicemail and transcriptions can be set to send me emails or SMS messages or just viewed in the Voice application.
You can set calls to ring your Talk account so you can answer them without using your cell phone.

You can do the Google Voice integration with any Sprint device, but the Nexus S 4G gives you the Google Voice application so the voice mail and texting seem to be integrated with your other notifications.

A couple problems I’ve found:

I thought the Google Voice software was supposed to keep SMS messages synchronized regardless of whether they were sent with Google Voice or with the built in SMS functionality. It seems like messages sent with the built in SMS don’t show up in Google Voice. Which wouldn’t be a big deal except…
The Google Voice app can’t send a text message unless you have data access. Instead of letting you type the message and then just queuing it to send when access is available, it will just fail.
Voice mails aren’t always transcribed and I haven’t been able to find a reason some are and some aren’t.
The quality of transcription depends a lot on the person speaking. Some people are perfect. Some give you enough information to tell if you need to listen to the message right away or not. Others are completely incomprehensible.

One other feature of the Sprint/Google Voice integration is that international calls are handled by Google Voice instead of Sprint. Generally Google Voice’s rates are much much lower than what you’d normally pay through Sprint.

Review of the Nexus S 4G as an eBook Reader

The Nexus does support Kindle software and Google Books. It also support Overdrive checkouts which will let you checkout books and audiobooks from many public libraries if you have a card. While I haven’t had a chance to fully review how well it works by reading a long book, here is what I’ve found so far:

Overdrive support seems to work fine.
Kindle support with the Kindle App
Google Books has many free books and books for purchase.
Books purchases appear to be a bit more expensive than paperback versions
Books App lets you flow to fit the screen or see the original scan of a book.
Page navigation is reasonable and fast.
Typeface is easy to read and you can adjust font, justification, spacing, etc.

Conclusion of Nexus S 4G Review

Things I like about the Nexus S 4G:

Nice screen
Battery life is usable (but still not as good as Blackberry)
No restrictions or charges (yet) for tethering
Stock Android with updates from Google instead of Sprint
Wifi for faster access when a network is available
Google Voice integration
Video conferencing capabilities with user facing camera.
Supports streaming videos from Netflix
Supports watching Amazon streaming video (doesn’t work quite as well as Netflix though)
LastPass integration works well
Excellent integration with Google Accounts/Apps
Easy to navigate normal non-mobile versions of websites
Supports Overdrive checkout from public libraries
Good integration between the web version of apps I use on my desktop and the mobile versions for Android

Things I don’t like about the Nexus S 4G:

No card slot to expand the memory
Flimsy back cover that you must pry off
Screen doesn’t seem as sensitive around the edges
Sprint is charging an extra $10 per month for smart phones
Reception seems slightly worse than with Blackberry Curve
Speaker phone sounds like the speaker is undersized
Mic is on the bottom of the phone. If you hold it wrong people can’t hear you.
USB cord makes it hard to hold in your hand when it is plugged in
Screen isn’t very easy to read in bright sunlight
Camera response seems sluggish
Voicemail notification from before Google Voice was active seems stuck on.
Keyboard takes a bit to get used to. (but I’m improving)
Camera has a fixed aspect ratio–I prefer wider pictures.
I didn’t see a way to remotely wipe the device like you can with a Blackberry.
No built in screen capture utility. (Makes it hard to get screenshots for a review.)

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Making Room On Your Hard Drive

Mark Shead — Wed, 18 May 2011 15:00:08 +0000

I remember when I first started looking at computer catalogs back in the late 80s. There was a 540MB hard drive for sale that I found fascinating. It seemed like a limitless amount of storage and I remember dreaming about what type of huge business you could run with that amount of storage space. Of course now that is even less data that can fit on a single CD rom and many programs come on multiple DVDs now days.

No matter how big of hard drive you have, you’ll eventually be able to fill it. There are two ways to clean out unnecessary information. One is to go through, folder by folder, and clean out what you don’t need. This is the “correct” way to do things. However, in the digital world, not all files are created equal. You can easily spend an hour deleting hundreds of files, only to discover that you’ve freed 50 MB of space off a 200 GB hard drive.

The most productive way to clean your hard drive is to figure out which files are taking up the most space and start there. Unfortunately, most operating systems don’t make it very easy to figure out where your big files are. If you use something that is based on Unix (like OS X), you can use the “du” command to figure it out, but that isn’t very user friendly if you want to deal with things through a GUI.

There are two solutions I’ve found. One is for Windows and the other is for OS X. Both have free and paid versions.

Treesize Free

This is the windows program. The free version gives you an easy way to see the size of your folders and drill down to see the size of subfolders and files. One thing I really liked about it is the way it shows a graph of each file or directory in the tree view. I was also impressed with how fast it worked. Just the other day, one of my client’s hard drives was filling up to the point that they could no longer back things up. I was able to measure about 200 GBs of files in just a few minutes and point them to 3 users who were using over 50% of the drive space.

The paid version gives you a bunch of extra features. It lets you export information in XML, create graphs, and archive old files. It will also let you search for files that are duplicates of each other. It includes a shell extension that will give you access directly from Windows.

You can download Treesize from Jam Software here.

OmniDiskSweeper

This is the program that I use for OS X. It works basically the same way, but it doesn’t seem to be quite as fast as Treesize. There used a free version and a pay version that would let you delete folders and files directly from the app. However, Omnigroup now makes the paid application available for free.

You can download OmniDiskSweeper from Omni Group here.

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Excel Transpose Trick

Mark Shead — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 17:40:00 +0000

This one minute video shows you how to take a list of items in a column and copy it to a row. It is pretty simple, but when you need it this can really save you a lot of time.

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Skill vs. Better Tools

Mark Shead — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 16:17:48 +0000

I have been doing quite a bit of programming over the past few months. Last night I took a few hours to see if I could find some better tools. I tried out a different programming environment and tested some tweaks to Eclipse (the program I currently use for programming). My goal was to see if I could find a way to get my tools to help autocomplete certain parts of the code I was typing into the web templates. For example, if I start to type ”

I found a few things that look promising, but I couldn’t find anything that worked automatically out of the box. I started wondering if it was worth spending those hours looking for a better tool. What if I had of spent two hours in just practicing? By “practicing” I mean coming up with some sort of exercise that I could repeat over and over for two hours to help make myself faster at programming those particular parts of the code.

It is easy to invest hours in finding a new tool that might make us marginally faster and overlook the real gains that are possible from increasing our skills at a particular task. I’m not saying that looking for better tools is always a bad thing. However, it is easy to invest a lot of time in a new tools, while overlooking the very real return on investment from increasing our skills. It is easy to focus on the tool rather than the benefit it provides.

Switching tools isn’t free. It takes time to find a new tool and it takes time to learn it. For example, if I switch my programming environment, it is going to take quite a while for the time saved from programming faster to offset the time lost in re-learning everything else.

I have seen people convinced that they would save so much time by getting a new computer program, PDA or smartphone. They go through life thinking that each new piece of technology is a silver bullet that will finally solve their problems–completely oblivious to the amount of time they invest switching from one device or one piece of software to the next. Their fundamental problem isn’t their toys I mean tools. Their problem is their skill set. In reality improving your skill set may not be any harder than trying to learn to use a new tool, but the difficulty of learning a new gadget or software is often masked by “new toy syndrome.” Something can seem exciting and fresh simply because it is different and because you “won”. In the corporate world “winning” might be a matter of convincing your boss that you are important enough to warrant a $500 investment in the latest phone. At home “winning” might involve convincing your spouse or yourself that you are important enough and your time is valuable enough that the new fancy gadget is worth getting.

This feeling of “winning” makes it easy to overlook just how much time you are investing in something new. This feeling makes it seem like you are investing less time that you would have in increasing your skill to get the same level of benefit.

Speech recognition software is a good example of this. Here is a story to show what I mean.

Bob’s job has evolved to the point where he has to do a bit of typing. It really isn’t that much typing, but Bob only types about 18 words per minute. Since he is slow, he hates typing and even though it doesn’t take up that much of his day, his dislike for the task makes it seem like it takes forever. At a family get together his cousin tells him about some new speech recognition software and Bob is intrigued.
Back at work he talks his boss into buying $250 worth of software and microphones. Bob works on training the software and starts trying to use it in place of typing.

Eventually Bob is going to realize that talking into the computer doesn’t really make him as fast as he had hoped. He will either continue using the speech recognition software because it is marginally better than typing for him, or he will decide he (and his co-workers) hate computer transcription even more than he hates typing and go back to the 18 words per minute hunt and peck method.

Of course, Bob could have invested the same amount of effort/money into learning to type better. If he had, he’d now be typing 40 to 50 words per minute and have acquired a very useful skill.

There are a lot of wonderful technological tools available to us, but the search for new tools can often distract us from investing in developing the skills and discipline that will bring even greater benefit.

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Lifehacker Password Hacked

Mark Shead — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 20:53:26 +0000

You’ve got to appreciate some of the irony in that title. Lifehacker is part of the Gawker group of websites. Some hackers got into their system and downloaded their database and source code. They also ran some scripts agains the database and were able to find nearly 200,000 people who were using passwords that weren’t very strong.

I had an account on Lifehacker from years ago. Since I didn’t consider it a huge security issue I used a simple five letter, single word password. Since it was easy to break this password, my username, password and email address was part of the roughly 200,000 released in decrypted form on the web.

I panicked just a bit when I saw my password on the list. Fortunately I’ve been using 1Password so I was quickly able to search through all of my logins and identify where I had previously used that password. It turns out it wasn’t used in many other places–mainly on things where I needed a quick account and wanted a password that I’d be likely to guess again.

So I was able to quickly change anything where I might have been at risk. Still it shook me up a bit and made me take a closer look at my password strategy. Ten years ago I used 3 different passwords. I had one for banking and websites where the risk of losing my data was high. I had another for things like email accounts where the risk was moderate and a third for sites like LifeHacker where the damage of someone logging in as me was minimal.

However, the real risk wasn’t that someone would login as me to make comments. The real risk was precisely what happened with LifeHacker–someone got into the website, discover a bunch of users passwords and then use those passwords to get access to their other accounts on the internet.

In the past five years I’ve taken a bit of a different approach to creating passwords. Whenever possible, I try to create a unique random password for each website I need a login for. That way if something happens like what happened with LifeHacker, the hackers will only have access to the site they hacked–something they probably have already in order to get the passwords in the first place.

How passwords are stored

If you want to understand how to create a secure password, it is worth taking some time to understand how passwords are stored on modern web applications.

Had I used a longer password that wasn’t a word in some language, the hackers probably wouldn’t have been able to get my password. LifeHacker stored their passwords as a hash (basically a type of one way encryption). When you login, LifeHacker’s servers took your password, ran it through the hash function and then compared it to what they had previously stored. If the values match, then you can login. If not, then you don’t have the right password. As you can see this meant that LifeHacker didn’t have to keep a copy of each users password on their server. However, you can get dictionaries of common words mapped to their hash value. This is how the hackers were able to get my password–they simply looked for a hash.

Here is an example. First lets create a hash of a common password “qwerty”. We do this using the following command at the OS X command line:

Desktop  $ echo "qwerty" | md5

a86850deb2742ec3cb41518e26aa2d89

The hash is that long string of numbers and letters. This is what gets stored instead of your password on the server.

How to break hashes

The hash process isn’t reversible. There isn’t an easy way to take a86850deb2742ec3cb41518e26aa2d89 and “decode” it. However, “qwerty” if a fairly common password. If one were to take a dictionary of common words and run them through the hash process they could create a database of all the hash values for common passwords. ”qwerty” is a common password–common enough that someone probably has it listed with its hash value on the internet. So if we do a google search for:

a86850deb2742ec3cb41518e26aa2d89

We are going to find a number of results–most are showing that a86850deb2742ec3cb41518e26aa2d89 is the md5 hash for the word “qwerty”. This is how the hackers were able to break my password–even though all they had was the hashed value.

Safe passwords

Hopefully that explains why using a password that can be found in a dictionary is a bad idea. So how do you create passwords that can’t be broken in this way? You need to use a password that the hackers aren’t going to be able to find in a list of common words. Also the longer the password, the safer you are.

So a password like:

gorilla

is bad, but a password like:

dkfje&KPiOudkfje(*(3!

is good. While that last password is secure, there is one little problem. Can you spot it? Right. It is nearly impossible to remember. A simple solution is to use a password that combines a number of words. Here are some good passwords:

TheGorillaAteSoup.OhMy!
mydoghas1flea!
bob.can’t.run.8.miles.

Picking a pattern is another good method. These passwords look random until you try to type them. You basically remember the pattern on your keyboard.

a’s;dlfkgjh
%TGBnhy6
zxcvxcvbcvbnvbnmbnm,nm,.m,./

Use different passwords

Even if you use a secure password, you don’t want to use the same one on every site. Tthere are other ways for hackers to get your password. Some times hackers will install keystroke loggers on public computers in order to capture passwords people are using. If you have a secure password, but use the same one on all of your logins, you might login to check your facebook messages at a library and later find that someone has been assessing your banking. I have logins for over 400 websites. There are some techniques I can use to remember a different password for each site, but it simply doesn’t scale to 400 logins.

Thats where software like 1Password, LastPass, or RoboForm comes in handy.

1Password

I have been using 1Password for several years. 1Password lets you create a random password whenever you need it and it keeps track of your username and login for each website. When you return to a site, 1Password logs back in for you. You have a password on 1Password that gives you access to all of your other passwords.

The passwords generated by 1Password are long and random. You can edit the settings to try to make the passwords easier to pronounce if you are trying to remember them or let it make them completely random and very long.

1Password is very nice, but it works as an application with a handful of plugins for different browsers. This works pretty well, but you really need an ubiquitous tool if you want to be able to keep all of your passwords secure. Otherwise you end up using simpler passwords on things you need to access often and from different locations. Often these are the very things you want most to protect.

What frustrated me with 1Password is that I couldn’t use it on my Blackberry or my Linux computer. As long as I stayed on my mac it was fine, but if I tried to use another machine things got a bit more tricky.

LastPass

This week I’ve started looking at LastPass. While 1Password is an application with some plugins, LastPass seems to be entirely plugin based and they have a great deal of cross platform compatibility. The interface doesn’t seem quit as polished as 1Password, but this is probably because they are making it run on a bunch of different platforms. Also LastPass offers synching between different devices so everything stays up to date. Any decryption is done on your local machine so your passwords are only stored encrypted in the cloud.

One interesting feature of LastPass is their security audit that will show you how secure your passwords are overall. You can even have it show you all logins that share a password so you can easily identify the places where you need to bolster your security. Another feature that looks useful is the ability to share your password with others.

LastPass is free for its basic version which will do all that most people need. You can pay $1 per month for extra features like Blackberry support.

Conclusion

Take the time to think about your password strategy. Mistakes are going to happen and you want to make sure you are in the safest position possible if your password for a site somehow gets discovered like mine did.

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Your Online Footprint

Mark Shead — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 16:05:33 +0000

The CEO of Google has suggested that once you leave college, you may want to change your name to distance yourself from all the dumb things you did as a younger person and can’t erase from the Internet. Of course if you change your name, you won’t be associated with any of the positive things you did either.

What does your Internet footprint look like?

I’m not sure we are going to see a bunch of people changing their names, but I do know that a lot of people are dealing with an online PR problem. If you haven’t searched Google for your own name, you really should. Ask yourself, “if a prospective employer, date, graduate school, business partner or life insurance underwriter saw these results would it help or hurt my chances?”

Be careful what you post

Obviously the best way to control what shows up on the web is to be careful what gets put up in the first place. Do you really want your name associated with a heated forum argument about drug legalization? Or a better question….10 years from now, will you want your name associated with that argument?

If that seems a bit far-fetched, lets say you are studying a new area of technology and learning a lot by asking questions in forums. Five years from now, you may be an expert on the subject, but if someone searches for your name are they going to see you asking a bunch of silly beginner questions?

Here are some tips for controlling what gets put on your permanent online record:

Ask yourself, “would I mind if this came up on the first page of the search results for my name”. If not, then maybe you should put it online–or at least not under your full name.
Consider using a fake name or just your first name. If you want to participate in online interactions, but aren’t sure if you want it associated with your name, consider doing it under an alias that isn’t going to be found when someone searches for you.
Don’t assume you can delete something. Even on your own website, once something is posted it may be on the Internet for good. There are things I posted to my website in 1998 and then thought better of that I cannot wipe from the Internet.

Even things that you don’t mind people knowing need to be run through a filter asking, “Do I want everyone in the world to know this–forever?” I heard a story (that I haven’t been able to verify) that illustrates what I’m talking about. Bill Gates gave money for a building in honor of his mother and it was named after her maiden name. A few weeks later, his credit cards were hacked. Keep in mind that any one piece of information you post online may be harmless, but you need to see it in the context of all the information that is available about you.

Using two online persona’s can be a simple way to separate the things that you want associated with your name (your brand) and the things that you don’t. It doesn’t necessarily mean you are trying to hid something, but if someone searches for your name, it might be better for them to find your resume and other professional work as the top results rather than pages and pages of arguments about the back story in World of Warcraft.

If you put all your online activities under your real name, you may find you have very little control over what shows up first in Google. You don’t want to clutter the search results with pages that aren’t important that may outrank pages that are.

Plan your online profile

In the same way you need to be careful to control negative or potentially damaging online footprints. You can actively create a positive online profile. Here are some ways to do that:

1. Create multiple profiles under your name

A simple page at a number of different websites that functions like an online resume can be a useful way to build up your online presence. Be realistic about how often you plan to update. An online resume may only need to be updated once or twice a year. If that is all you have time for, don’t make it look like a blog, update for a month and then abandon it. Some sites that might be worth creating a small website on are: WordPress, Blogger, LinkedIn (public profile), Twitter (if you plan to update regularly), Tumblr, About.me, chimp.mp, Google Profile, public Facebook page, etc.

2. Get your own domain

Your own domain will cost $10 to $30 per year. Chances are it will rank high for your name and gives you a permanent home on the Internet regardless of what free services come and go. Try to get something as close to your name as possible.

3. Interlink your profiles

One of the best ways to push your websites to the front page for your name is to interlink them. If you have a WordPress.com site, be sure to link it to all of your other websites and vice versa. I’ve gotten to the point that 9 out of the first 10 entries for my name are about me and are on sites that I control. Most of this was done simply by interlinking my different blogs and websites.

4. Post what you want people to see

Simply having your sites up doesn’t really help you much. You are going to need to write about things that you want people to associate with you. Think about the types of things a prospective employer would consider “good signs” when they search for your name. If you work in management, a few essays, thoughts or posts on management theories would probably be helpful. If you are a software developer, some code examples, discussion of different programming languages or a write-up about your experience on a particular software project might be useful.

5. Check to see what others are seeing

One guy was having a terrible time finding a job. Every time he got called in for an interview it would go exceptionally well, but then he’d never hear anything back from the company. When he called in to check they had given the job to someone else. Finally he did a search for his name on Google. To his horror he found that the first page of results were about the trial of a child molester that shared his name.

Assume that prospective employers are going to search for your name and if you have some situation like the guy mentioned above, be sure to be proactive with something like:

When you do a search for my name in Google you are going to find a lot of articles about someone who has the same name, but is now in prison. I just wanted to let you know that isn’t me.

You might even consider using your middle name or initial in most of your online footprints if you have an extremely common first and last name and let people know that if they want to look you up online to search with your initial so they will get the results about you instead of others.

Keep in mind that some search results are different depending on where you are searching from. It might not be a bad idea to have some friends in various parts of the country do some searches for your name and see if anything problematic comes up.

6. Get rid of bad content

If despite your best efforts there is something in the search results that is embarrassing, there are two ways to deal with it. One way is to fill the web with enough other popular content to push it down in the results where it is less likely to be seen. The other is to get it removed–or removed as best you can. It is going to be impossible to remove a popular embarrassing picture of yourself from the Internet. No matter how hard he tries Michael Phelps isn’t going to be able to get rid of his drug picture. However, Phelps has so many other pictures on the Internet that you have to go really deep into the results to find the embarrassing photograph when searching for his name. You can do something similar by creating sites, profiles and photographs for yourself at various websites and resume services. It may take some time, but it is possible.

Sometimes people overlook the simplest method of getting content off the web–asking the person who posted it to take it down. If it is someone who hates you, this probably won’t work. Some people actually hire firms that “clean the web” by contacting people who posted things embarrassing to their client and getting them removed either by asking, paying them money or threatening lawsuits.

Obviously the best action is to avoid having negative things published about you in the first place, but that isn’t always possible.

7. Don’t forget about current employers

Don’t forget that your current employer may be watching your online profile as well. I have seen companies seriously look at letting one of their top managers go because he kept updating his online resume and indicating that he was looking for new job offers. I’ve seen other people who were fired because they called in sick, but posted on Facebook that they went fishing–forgetting that their boss was one of their online friends.

Conclusion

Taking a bit of time to think long-term about the footprints you are leaving on the web may save you years of grief down the road. You don’t have to be terrified about privacy issues–just use a little common sense now so you don’t regret what people are reading about you in the future.

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SpiderOak Storage and Backup Review

Mark Shead — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 19:52:39 +0000

SpiderOak offers a service similar to Dropbox. However, where Dropbox seems to be concentrating on ease of use and simplicity, SpiderOak seems focused on creating powerful software with many different options. The downside is that SpiderOak isn’t something you are probably going to have your grandma setup for herself. The upside is that it lets you do all kinds of things that aren’t possible with DropBox.

DropBox gives you a folder that you can sync across computers. This works well and provides a very simple mental paradigm. ”I put something in the folder on Computer A and it shows up on that folder on Computer B. Spider Oak lets you backup arbitrary folders and lets you specify certain folders that you want to sync. For example, you can tell SpiderOak to backup all of your documents to the server and keep your music folder synced between your laptop and desktop.

In addition to backing up specific folders, SpiderOak lets you backup files by type. So you can backup all your music, all of your movies or all of your emails based on what type of files they are–not where they are stored on the computer.

Security

Files stored on Spider Oak’s servers are encrypted on your local computer and stored encrypted on the server. This means that Spider Oak can’t see whats in your files or even what your folders and files are named. They had a lot of requests for web access, so they have created the ability to access files through a web browsers. This is done by storing your password in memory to decrypt the files and send it to you over your web browsers SSL connection. Once your session is closed, your password disappears from memory. This is much less secure than using the client where the entire file is encrypted and decrypted locally and Spider Oak recommends against using the web interface for highly sensitive data. Still, those pictures of your company picnic probably don’t represent a huge security risk. The web browser access may be very convenient depending on what data you are storing.

Sharing

SpiderOak lets you share documents through “Share Rooms”. Basically you create a share room that has a SpiderOak URL. and a password. You can then add items to the share room, so you can share one folder from your PC and another from your Mac, etc. Users can download files by clicking on the download link on the website. When you update files in a local folder that is being shared, it automatically updates the share room with the new version of the file.

Pricing

Spider Oak offers 2 GB for free (same as DropBox) and 100GB for $10 per month. The 100GB option is half the cost of DropBox. For $10 per month, Dropbox gives you 50GB of storage.

Also see:

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Productivity501 » Technology

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38 letters 9 words 38 x 9 = 342

Conclusion

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How to Create a Scanned Digital Signature

1. Sign a piece of paper

2. Scan the paper

3. Crop down to the best signature

4. Use the magic wand to select the area around the signature

6. Paste the signature into a new document with a transparent background

7. Use the magic wand to remove any white still left inside letters.

8. Save the image in a format that supports transparent backgrounds.

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Near Field Communication – Nexus S 4G Review

Cameras – Nexus S 4G Review

Review of Form Factor

Port / Connections Review

Android and Software Review

Gingerbread on the Nexus S

Usability Review

Tethering

Google Account / Google Apps Integration

Corporate Integration

Google Navigation

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Google Talk

Google Voice

Review of the Nexus S 4G as an eBook Reader

Conclusion of Nexus S 4G Review

Making Room On Your Hard Drive

Treesize Free

OmniDiskSweeper

Excel Transpose Trick

Skill vs. Better Tools

Lifehacker Password Hacked

How passwords are stored

How to break hashes

Safe passwords

Use different passwords

1Password

LastPass

Conclusion

Your Online Footprint

Be careful what you post

Plan your online profile

Conclusion

SpiderOak Storage and Backup Review

Security

Sharing

Pricing

Also see:

38 letters
9 words
38 x 9 = 342