Earthling

What are all of the ways you check for and receive new information during the day?

Information overload came up as a suggested focus for group discussion on Monday night at the Social Media Club Atlanta meeting, and I've had it on the brain again since then. Something about this time of year turns my thoughts to that subject. Looking back at the Earthling archives I wrote back in February of last year:

I'm willing to bet, though, that the pang of information overload is something that edge cases and mainstream internet users probably share. At some point, I bet that we've all felt overwhelmed looking at search results (no matter how organized), deciding what to read and what not to read on a particular morning, or simply figuring out where to begin.

It's hard to battle the glut until you know where the glut lives. I think it would be satisfying and useful to be able to create a fairly comprehensive picture of all those sources we tune our brains to each day. This afternoon I put together a short questionnaire to try to cover all of my own usual information sources, to help take a fresh look at what we can do to minimize and control the glut of input. I then asked the questions of myself, and wrote down the answers. It was helpful to get it all out and as I wrote, I saw some obvious things I could be doing that would save time and duplicated effort. It's like a little spring cleaning for your information consumption habits.

I'd like to add to the list of questions, and also find a way to weight them to come up with some kind of scoring that would help compare results from person to person. Visualization tools would be neat too. And I'm going to look around for statistics that already exist about the extent to which each one of these sucks up our time. Am I missing any important areas? Do you know of any other tests like this out there I might look at? I'm guessing Lifehacker.com and 43Folders might have covered something like this. Feel free to take the quiz yourself in the comments, point me to similar projects, or make some suggestions about the shape of it and what I'm missing.

The Questions So Far:
(updated)

1. How many phones and answering systems do you have?
   
2. Is one of them a Blackberry, Windows Mobile Smartphone, Treo, Sidekick or the like?
   
3. How many e-mail accounts do you have?
   
4. Do you read stuff via an RSS aggregator?
   
5. Which web sites do you visit directly each day?
   
6. How many IM clients are you logged in to during the day?
   
7. How much and what kind of mail do you receive via USPS mail?
   
8. Do you watch television daily?
   
9. Do you use a DVR?
   
10. Do you subscribe to a daily newspaper?
    
11. How many individual magazine issues do you receive each month?
    
12. Do you listen to the radio just about every day?
    
13. Anything else? What are the usual sources of extra and overflow?

I've published my own answers below in the comments.

Posted by dave coustan at 2:58 PM |

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Liuzza's on Bienville was packed when Ken and I got there on Friday night. We had chosen Liuzza's for a number of reasons, not the least of which was my having never experienced the Frenchuletta, a Muffaletta-ish sandwich served on a huge piece of french bread. It was interesting to see what it was like on a Friday night at a neighborhood restaurant in a part of town still very much in the thick of coming back to life. It was packed, loud, and full of good cheer. When we got there, both rooms were completely full and we ended up waiting outside with our beverages for our guests to arrive.

Liuzza's On Bienville

We were soon joined by local bloggers Alan, Karen, Maitri, and Becky. We shared some excellent food (Frenchuletta is highly recommended) and talked about the daily issues that come up there, technology-related projects like how to get video off of TV and on to the web, and the specifics of EarthLink's Wi-Fi project in New Orleans. Sitting down with the four of them and hearing about all of the votes and decisions and meetings and legislative sessions that have become the bread and butter of their everyday life made us realize how different resident life is there now from any other city. It's not just the physical space of the city that's different; it's all of the new concerns that come with trying to have a voice in the city's current and future development. It's trivial by comparison, but I have a hard enough time making it to my own neighborhood association meetings in Atlanta once a month -- if I lived in New Orleans there'd probably be meetings I'd feel like I should attend several times every week.

Continue reading "Frenchulettas, The Magazine Canyon, and Wi-Fi"

Posted by dave coustan at 3:48 PM |

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As both a resident of Atlanta and an employee of EarthLink, I'm excited to announce that we've been chosen to build, own, and operate the City's new municipal Wi-Fi network. The network will be similar in model to what we're building in other cities, including retail residential 1 Mbps up/down service, open access for competing providers to sell over our network, small business support with T-1 replacement services, and programs to help bridge the digital divide. There's more information about the city's RFP process on the Wireless Atlanta section of AtlantaGA.gov.

In addition to the possibilities it opens up for cheaper broadband bills, more efficient city services, and many more places to connect from wirelessly, I think the network will help foster the sense of online community in our city, along with upcoming events like Social Media Club Atlanta and SoCon 07. For a blog's-eye view of Atlanta, check out Metroblogging Atlanta and Outside.in's Atlanta section. I'm working on compiling a more specific list of my favorite Atlanta-oriented blogs including all of the people I read each day. Send along your suggestions and I'll add my favorites to the list.

Posted by dave coustan at 10:40 AM |

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Ken Womack from the Search team and myself will be heading down to New Orleans for a couple of days. Ken's doing some research around the local search and portal services in our Municipal Wi-Fi markets. I'm going to help plan some future EarthLink Wi-Fi events, reconnect with friends and colleagues, and hopefully meet some new ones as well. We'll be grabbing dinner at Liuzza's on Bienville on Friday night at 7 p.m. along with whichever bloggers and geeks can make it on the short notice. Feel free to stop by and say hello.

Posted by dave coustan at 4:58 PM |

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When you drive a bright orange van tricked out with technical gadgets. you tend to get noticed. Map data provider Tele Atlas had one of their crazy mapmobile(Mobile Mapping Services, or MMS) vans parked between two of the main halls at the Las Vegas Convention Center at CES. I stopped by to take a look. It turns out that intrepid mobile mapper/driver Ashwin Balan is an EarthLink Wi-Fi subscriber on our network in Anaheim. Being that he's a member of the extended EarthLink family, I'd hoped he'd share some stories about pulling the orange van in to a drive-in on a date, but no such luck. I'm told it's just used for data gathering.

Among other functions like gathering points of interest, street positioning, road signage, and slope and elevation, it can create a full 360-degree digital view of the road. This all happens while the van travels at normal road and highway speeds.

Ashwin explained that the van is used for special projects, where there's a call for highly specific and fresh mapping data in a particular area. I asked for some examples of special projects that use this data, and he said one potential application is the ability to have your car headlights automatically turn in anticipation of your route, to illuminate your way as you go. Another use of the van is so that Tele Atlas can check out areas in need of updating or a closer pass as highlighted by users via the map feedback page on their site. According to the company, they've made over 9.3 million updates from the field since 2001.

Continue reading "The Tele Atlas Mobile Mapping Services Van Up Close"

Posted by dave coustan at 2:24 PM |

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I gave the Fun Friends Panda to RIch A., manager in the EarthLink VAS (Value Added Services) group and asked him to enlist his daughter Claire to try it out and share her thoughts. Claire put it through the paces with her favorite (non-functional) cellphone, the Disney Princess Cinderella phone. This is her report:

• "Cute and cuddly. Squishy."
  
• "Looks like Mei Lan" (from Zoo Atlanta)"
  
• "Kids will love this, Grown-ups will not."
  
• "Better than the Cinderella case."

At the conclusion of Claire's tests (dinnertime), she left the phone/panda combo on the sofa. Caesar the family dog expressed his interest in performing some additional tests, and Rich gave the phone cover (sans phone) over to him for further evaluation.

Caesar reports that Fun Friends are pretty tasty

Rich gave Caesar a new rawhide to evaluate and he quickly lost interest in the panda. As of the end of the weekend, the panda was again safely out of Caesar's reach and in use as a cover for Claire's Cinderella phone.

More photos from the field test here.

Posted by dave coustan at 3:34 PM |

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A few other technologies I saw at ShowStoppers, and then links to the previous articles:

• I tried on the stylish Jawbone noise-cancelling bluetooth headset, and also managed to get their representative to demonstrate how it looks for Earthling readers:

  
  Far less geeky than your average bluetooth headset

  Some people are dead-set against wireless headsets of any kind. But if you're willing to sport something in your ear, you'd be more fashion-forward and less geeky wearing this one. There's no flashing blue light, it's reasonably sized, and it has a certain industrial chic thing going for it. It has a little bump that sticks into the side of your jaw -- I tried it and you can't feel it there -- and that helps it to distinguish your speech from background noise and selectively amplify the former. The noise filtration feature was developed for military applications at DARPA and is pretty impressive. They're currently for sale at some Cingular stores for around $120, and Jawbone.com is offering an interesting promotional deal on silver, black, and red models: "We are currently taking preorders for those headsets and will offer free ground shipping (US only) to any customer who emails their name, address, and color preference to buy@aliph.com by January 20th."

Continue reading "ShowStoppers Round-up"

Posted by dave coustan at 3:53 PM |

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Packet8's new video phone device caught my eye as I walked past it.

Testing the Tango

It's called the Tango, and it functions as both an ATA for Packet8 service (that small box you plug your phone in to for VoIP services like EarthLink TrueVoice and Vonage) and a video phone. It can be used to make video calls to other Tango owners or users of the Packet8 software client, or standard voice calls through a regular phone attached to it. With the prevalence of applications like iChat, Skype, Yahoo Messenger and MSN Messenger, video chat itself is not groundbreaking, but to me the Tango offers a glimpse of what SIP-powered desktop appliances will soon be able to offer in terms of interface and interoperation.

I don't think the Tango works this way yet, but think about a similar device that could automatically detect the best available communication stream, whether voice, video, or both (and via VoIP, standard landline, or cell, or even connect to SMS and e-mail). Instead of initiating every call by dialing numbers, you'd rely much more heavily on an address book shared across your devices, and then when you wanted to reach out you'd pick the person instead of typing the number. Building blocks for that world exist right now, but they're mostly computer-centric and don't tie back in to home, desktop, and cellphones much. It's neat to me that the Tango moves video chat off of the computer and ties it in to your 10-digit phone number, while still offering regular phone functionality. It seems like those smart multi-mode desktop SIP communication devices are likely to be much more prevalent in the coming year.

The Tango will cost around $250. More product details in the press release.

Posted by dave coustan at 1:03 PM |

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The press on hand really seemed to take to these plushy Fun Friends cellphone "costumes".

Plush bling

CES is overrun with free schwag giveaways and handouts, so journalists learn to be very selective with what they'll pick up. At ShowStoppers, I saw lots of people walking around with FunFriends-adorned cellphones on their hips. That has to mean something, along with the gallery of stars cuddling up to them on their site. I brought one home. Maybe this is the new face of bling.

Posted by dave coustan at 4:43 PM |

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It's going to take me quite a few entries and time to get through all of the things I want to highlight from CES. I was originally going to publish one superlong blog entry from each venue, but that got long and I think I'll instead present a snippet or two in each entry. First I'll focus on what I saw at ShowStoppers.

ShowStoppers is a separate multi-exhibitor press event held at several major conferences thoughout the year. It was held on Monday the 7th at CES, and this was my first year attending. It definitely made it easier to talk to lots of exhibitors at once, and helped me to be more selective on the show floor. All of my photos from there are in this Flickr set.

OQO Model 2

One of the neatest gadgets I saw at the whole show was the OQO Model 2 ultraportable XP/VIsta computer with its slide-out backlit keyboard. It's around 5" x 3" and 1" thick, and weighs under a pound. Everything from the screen to the keyboard and input devices to the standards it supports (EV-DO, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth) all seem pretty solid. Engadget really liked it. I think one commenter there put it well when he said it would make an excellent second computer -- especially if you 're a professional who wants a fully functional but tiny PC to take with you on the road.

The whole idea of a second computer for the road used to be unfathomable unless you were a serious nerd, but in this machine I'm starting to see it. I'd rather have this with me than even a 12" laptop. A lot of that comes down to the usability of the keyboard and ease of navigation. I have trouble using Smartphones for real typing, and I won't use a Tablet PC unless it has a hardware keyboard. I tried the OQO out for browsing and typing and felt like I could get real work done on it. There's a really nice zooming feature that helps you jump from scanning a large page to seeing an item in detail, and touch-sensitive scroll strips and a small stick on the keyboard to help with navigation.

You can get the full specs here. It starts at around $1500. Dynamism.com is taking pre-orders, and the OQO store currently says they'll be shipping in 8-12 weeks, but I've also seen unofficial estimates that put it more in the 4-6 month range because of the demand it already has to catch up to.

Apparently you say it like you spell it -- "Oh Queue Oh".

Posted by dave coustan at 2:58 PM |

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Update: I stand corrected. I guess there really is an Apple Software Update For Windows, and this pop-up isn't social engineering or adware. Hard to believe that something this vague is legitimate, but I guess it is. It sure is odd looking. Moving this from bests to thoughts.

I have to offer this thing a best in the social engineering category.

This is what seems to be a fake and adware-ish pop-up window that appeared in my Windows XP session while I was running Parallels (and VirtueDesktops) on my MacBook Pro. As you can see, it purports to be an OS X system message but it's wearing the native clothing of Windows XP. If you're a Mac user, this is very bizarre looking, and it can take you a full beat to figure out what exactly you're looking at. So did the adware purveyor sniff out my exact setup (running WinXP but on a Mac laptop) and serve me this because they wanted to confuse me into clicking it? It's pretty clever, and it almost worked.

Posted by dave coustan at 8:45 AM |

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I just uploaded a video of Samantha Murphy's excellent performance at the CES BlogHaus to my Blip.tv video collection. From now on, you'll be able to see all of the videos I upload at earthling.blip.tv, and you can subscribe to a separate RSS feed of just those as well.

See this image on Flickr or the video

I'm experimenting a little with compression and file sizes. The clip of Samantha's performance is much bigger, higher quality, and less compressed than the previous clips I've added. Drop me a comment and let me know how it works for you. Too big? Just right? I can always replace it with a smaller file.

Posted by dave coustan at 1:57 PM |

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Is it extremely clever, vaporware, hard to explain, or a little of each?

While I was at CES, I read about the WildCharger wireless device charging system, and stopped by their booth at the Sands to check it out in person. Basically it's a flat pad that plugs in to the wall, and you put your devices in specially designed cradles and lay them on top of it to charge them.

Neither CrunchGear nor Gizmodo managed to offer a satisfying explanation of how the thing works. Both say that it runs off of the principle of induction, but what does that mean to a non-engineer?

I tried and tried to get the WildCharge folks to explain it to me in person, but other than "induction," they didn't make it easy for me to understand. Hoping that HowStuffWorks founder Marshall Brain was on the show floor as he was last year, I called him to ask for some help in extracting answers. Turned out he wasn't there, but he pointed me in some good directions.

He said to focus on how much power the thing offers, and what you have to do to your devices to make them work with it. He figured it probably works like an "inductively coupled RFID tag", which is a tiny metal coil antenna attached to a microchip that can communicate with a computer scanning system when it passes by. There are more details on that in this HSW article. Marshall said that somehow there must be a similar antenna that you attach to your gadgets, that then can receive signal via the pad.

Read on for more.

Continue reading "How Does That WildCharge Thing Work?"

Posted by dave coustan at 3:21 PM |

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What happens when nerds who don't rap meet nerds who do? On Wednesday night at the Seagate/PodTech CES BlogHaus, Geek Entertainment TV's Irina Slutsky emceed and a couple of nerdcore rappers performed along to their upcoming Nerdy South releases. I captured a couple of the performances on my tiny Casio Exilim, and have uploaded them to Blip.tv. They're a little big to embed, so I 'll just offer links for now.

Check the first one out over here. That's Robert Scoble bobbing his head in the background. Another one is on its way shortly.

Update: here's the second video, which was actually the first performer. The audio is a little low to start, but it gets better throughout the clip.

Posted by dave coustan at 4:40 PM |

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Yesterday as I was packing up and heading back from CES, EarthLink announced that we'll be offering free Wi-Fi access in the 15 square mile proof of concept area in Philadelphia at 1 Mbps up/down through January 21, 2007. I wanted to follow up today to show anyone who hops on the network in Philly how you can share feedback about your experiences with us. You'll find a feedback link on the landing page you arrive at on the network, in the bottom row:

The link leads to a short survey and an area to add your freeform thoughts as well. We'll look to your feedback to help fine tune the network and service as we continue to build it out.

Posted by dave coustan at 3:50 PM |

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I'm hopping on a plane back to Atlanta shortly. Yesterday I saw some more neat things at the Sands including that Wildcharge device I was trying to track down. The details are still a little mysterious but I spoke to the booth folks and got a little more out of them about it. When that didn't answer all of my questions I called Marshall Brain from HowStuffWorks, and he helped me figure out some of the missing pieces in the explanation. I'll write all of that up when I get back. I spent much of the evening at the BlogHaus again, where I saw some old friends and met more of the PodTech crew and a whole slew of bloggers, industry folks, and some nerdcore rappers. I'll have photos and more video soon too. I'm beat.

Posted by dave coustan at 12:51 PM |

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While I'm out here I'm also field testing a new Casio Exilim EX-770 digital camera. It's about the size of a thickified credit card, and has been very useful to have on the show floor. I read that it can take 30 fps MPEG-4 video, but I was skeptical as to how it would turn out. I'm pretty impressed so far:

Click To Play

That's a heavily compressed version of what I shot, but it still holds up pretty nicely. The camera can fit an hour of footage on a 1 gig SD card that you can pick up for $15.

Posted by dave coustan at 2:35 PM |

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I think it's easier to stay on top of all of the CES news while not actually attending the show. I get regular updates from Ken back at EarthLink HQ for things I ought to take a look at. And I get the sense that though I've had the opportunity to try things in person, ask questions, and choose what it is I want to investigate, he's got a better breadth of knowledge than me because he's had time to be in front of a computer reading blog coverage. Kind of a funny exchange:

Ken: "...something like a Mini or the new Sony thingy."
Me "What's the new Sony thingy again? i guess i need to go find that today."
Ken: "The little media center computer that looks like a Roomba. actually, i'm assuming that it's Media Center-powered. Would seem stupid for it not to be, as it's clearly a living room device."
Ken: "So is it easier for me to know what's at CES because i'm not there?"

Yeah, I think it is. Out here in the CES jungle, you're relying on your wits, attention, and power of discernment to pick out how to spend the time you have. Some bloggers do a really great job of it, and even manage near-live coverage of the stuff they're seeing. Robert Scoble did a video walkthrough of one of the exhibition halls, to give you a feel for all of the constant competition for your eyes and ears. It's impossible to fully convey what it's like to fend off all of those stimuli and try to keep your wits about you, but it's worth looking at if you've never attended one of these things.

Similarly to my exchange with Ken, this morning while trying to catch up on my RSS feeds I found out from another blog that I missed the WildCharge device charging platform at the Showstoppers event I attended a couple of nights ago. It charges all of your gadgets when you simply lay them on top of it. Sounds dreamy -- I'm going to seek it out this afternoon.

Posted by dave coustan at 12:58 PM |

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Thanks to a loaner laptop and Wi-Fi access, I'm at the PodTech/Seagate BlogHaus suite at the Bellagio, taking a break from the show to go over my notes, meet the fellow BlogHausers (some of whom are currently gathered around the Apple iPhone keynote) and hopefully upload some more photos. Watch this Flickr set here for my latest photos. More soon.

Posted by dave coustan at 6:49 PM |

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Even here at CES, lots of people are watching Apple announce the new iPhone/widescreen iPod device over at MacWorld. You can catch the tail end in text updates here.

Posted by dave coustan at 12:48 PM |

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We released our new Protection Control Center version 2.0 last week, and a few of you have commented here on Earthling with installation or scanning issues. I received the following update via e-mail from product manager Ben Kaplan last night:

"A few of you have mentioned that you’re having problems upgrading to the new Protection Control Center 2.0. We apologize for the problems you have encountered and have a fix that will solve the problem.

If you're experiencing an issue where after you’ve installed 2.0 your computer will not scan, you will need to do the following: Please un-install PCC from your add/remove programs menu and then re-install from http://csupdate.earthlink.net/win/pcc/elnk_pcc.exe. This will re-install PCC 2.0 and should solve your problems.

Please keep in mind that PCC 2.0 has the following system requirements:

Processor:

Personal computer with Pentium-compatible processor 500 MHz or higher

Operating System:

Microsoft® Windows 2000 Service Pack 4, Windows XP SP2 (Home, Media, and Professional, Admin rights required for the latter)*

Memory:

256mb Minimum, 512mb Recommended

This is update is very large (32mb) and requires Microsoft .Net Framework. If you don’t already have the .Net Framework, it will download automatically. Most Windows users (approx. 90%) already have it installed on their systems. A normal upgrade will take anywhere from 5-10 minutes depending on how fast your computer is so please be patient. The benefits of this upgrade are definitely worth your time. Again, sorry for the inconvenience.

Please take the time to re-install the application from: http://csupdate.earthlink.net/win/pcc/elnk_pcc.exe.

If the steps listed above don't resolve your PCC 2.0 issue, please feel free to call 888-EarthLink or visit http://support.earthlink.net/ for more assistance ."

Posted by dave coustan at 10:21 AM |

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I'm headed to the airport shortly, and through Thursday I'll be at the Consumer Electronics Show(CES) in Las Vegas, catching a glimpse of what we'll all likely be watching, listening to, talking at, texting on, brushing our teeth with, and obsessing over in the world of technology this year. The show itself officially starts this morning west coast time, but lots of new product announcements have already made their way out into the world via early press conferences. CES coverage is hard to avoid this week on tv and the web, but follow the CES 2007 tag at Gizmodo and Engadget's dedicated CES index for a steady stream of news from the show. Robert Scoble's CES tag on Scobleizer is also a good one to follow. Here's an aggregation of all of the coverage from bloggers who plan to spend time at Seagate and PodTech's Bloghaus. I'm going to try to get there this afternoon.

Send any pointers to things to check out or anything you want me to see right away during the day to this e-mail address: earthling at myhelio dot com. It'll be tough for me to keep up with comments and regular site e-mails for the next few days but I'll get to them as quickly as I can.

Last year I lugged my laptop and other equipment with me wherever I went, hoping to do lots of on-the-spot blogging. The schedule is so frantic and things are so congested throughout the show that for the most part I still ended up waiting until nights and the return home to write up things I saw. This year I'm going old-school -- each day I'm only going to carry with me an empty backpack, a pen and notebook, a small pocketable camera, and my Helio Drift. There's an overwhelming amount of show to see. Expect sporadic updates throughout the week, with more reflections once I get back.

Posted by dave coustan at 6:41 AM |

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The following statement is attributed to Donald Berryman, executive vice president of EarthLink and president of the ISP’s municipal networks unit:

“Today, EarthLink and the City of San Francisco reached agreement on the terms of the contract to build a citywide wireless network.

This agreement catapults San Francisco into a leadership position in wireless technology: the network ensures universal, affordable wireless broadband access for all San Franciscans, especially low-income and disadvantaged residents; and through the Mayor’s digital divide program, children and students will have the digital tools to ensure that they have access to everything that the Internet has to offer the growing minds of the City’s promising future.

Other advantages of having a citywide wireless network include improving the efficiency of the City’s government; stimulating private investment into developing tools and applications to take advantage of wireless technology, and providing more consumer choice and competition for broadband services than what exists today in the marketplace.

We look forward to working with the Board of Supervisors to gain approval of the agreement so we can begin building out the network in 2007.”

If interested in scheduling an interview to discuss the term of agreement and next steps, please contact these representatives from the ISP’s public relations firm, Text 100: Nicole Fachet, 212.871.3950 nicolef@text100.com; or the company’s lobbying firm in San Francisco, Singer Associates: Adam Alberti, 415.227.9700 adam@singersf.com.

Posted by dave coustan at 7:03 PM |

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I am deeply saddened by the passing of EarthLink’s President and CEO, Garry Betty, due to complications from cancer. EarthLink’s founder and Helio CEO Sky Dayton put together a heartfelt tribute blog for your and our thoughts, photos, conversation and information at gbetty.earthlink.net. Please consider sharing your memories and photographs there. Thanks to the engineers at Ning and EarthLink for helping to pull it all together.

Memorial arrangements are being made at this time, and Garry’s family has requested that those wishing to pay their respects do so with a donation to The Garry Betty Foundation in lieu of flowers. Donations can be sent to:

The Garry Betty Foundation
c/o EarthLink, Inc.
Level A
1375 Peachtree Street
Atlanta, GA 30309

Update: The foundation's site: www.garrybettyfoundation.org is now online as well.

There’s additional information in the press release.

Update: Garry's family has announced that the visitation will be Friday, January 5, 2007 from 6-8 p.m. at H.M. Patterson and Son, Oglethorpe Hill Chapel, 4550 Peachtree Rd, NE, Atlanta, GA 30319.

Posted by dave coustan at 10:29 AM |

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Sorry to start 2007 off with a less-than-cheery blog entry about bugs and exploits, but my morning reads all seemed to slant towards security issues.

Each day in January, the Month Of Apple Bugs project is seeking to highlight a bug affecting Mac OS X or third-party software that runs on it. They published their first bug report yesterday, an exploit relating to QuickTime. PC World's Robert McMillan interviewed the project's leaders via e-mail. Their stated goal is to ""stomp smugness" about Apple-related security issues, which doesn't seem like a bad idea, both to raise awareness and to reduce the global smugness index.

From there I ended up at this list of prominent hackers' new years resolutions including LMH from the aforementioned Month Of Apple Bugs project. Resolution #2 is kind of frightening: " Write an exploit for an embedded device -- VOIP phone, router, firewall, or switch. " and #5 is one I can agree on: "Lose weight by leaving more mobile devices and laptops at home."

And on the Gmail front, a Gmail vulnerability discovered late last week would allow other websites to host a script that could potentially access a Gmail user's contact list if they were logged into their Google account at the time. Due to some swift action by Google's security group, initially this morning it appeared to be fixed, but ZDNet blogger Garrett Rogers posted the following update today: "The problem is only partially fixed. The vulnerability exposed through video.google.com has been patched up, but there are other subdomains where the problem still exists." So far this is a *potential* exploit in the sense that I haven't read any reports of its use out in the wild for mailcious purposes.

Posted by dave coustan at 2:28 PM |

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