RHFtech™ Write on Tech » Richard Frisch

Don’t throw out your computer yet

Richard Frisch — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 16:36:40 +0000

I do quite a bit of video production. So, I am always on the lookout for tools to make the post-production effort easier. My main tools for post-production are a beefy Windows 7 rig, running Adobe Premiere Pro CS5. I have tried many other programs. That list includes, but is not limited to: Final Cut Pro 7, Final Cut Pro X, iMovie, Windows Live Movie Maker, and Avid Media Composer. Avid Technology, Inc. recently released Avid Studio for the iPad, a video editing app, similar to Apple’s iPad iMovie, but with a simpler user interface (UI). As it only cost $4.99, I was game to play with Avid Studio on my iPad 2.

After buying and installing the app, I threw together different assets to test what the app can do. I used titles, video, photos, transitions and audio. My experiment yielded two short videos, Avid iPad test 01 and Avid iPad test 02, which I uploaded to YouTube directly from the app.

Avid Studio for the iPad is pretty good for a first version, just not good enough for two reasons. Unsurprisingly, the first reason is the app has a limited feature set. As an example, although you can add titles, you can’t change the black backgrounds to another color or use an image instead. You can’t even add a second text box to the title.

The second reason was more troublesome. The iPad’s hardware is unsatisfactory for post-production transcoding, even with short videos. Video rendering and transcoding taxes all computer hardware. The video chip and CPU in the iPad are built for low power consumption not high speed video production. It took a long time to work with the two videos I produced, even though each was only about one minute long.

I look forward to Avid Studio version 2 running on the as yet unannounced iPad 3. That should be a better experience. I don’t expect to give up my Windows 7/Premiere Pro setup anytime soon.

This got me thinking whether someone with more limited computer requirements might forgo their personal computer all together. Is it possible to discard our personal computers (PCs) and replace them with tablets?

Most everything we do with our PCs, both Windows and Macs, has an analogous app, feature or function on today’s tablets, even hardware intensive video production. Yet, after due consideration, I conclude the answer is no. We will be using PCs for a long time.

Everyone uses their computers to read/write email, to surf the web, and to compose or edit documents, spreadsheets or presentations. Tablets can do that. A lot of us use our computers to view and edit photographs. Tablets and smartphones can do that too. In fact, many of the iPad photo editing apps are superior to Windows and Mac applications in both easy-to-use functionality and cost. Tablets are great gaming machines, as are computers. Additionally, some of us consume media—video, music, and books—through our computers. Tablets can do that too.

Typing on a touch screen device is an inferior experience to using a real keyboard. Most tablets allow us to connect keyboards to them via a Bluetooth radio connection. I successfully did this using an Apple wireless keyboard and an iPad. It works fine. The biggest complaint I have about this setup is the lack of a pointing device, other than my finger. I find mice far more exact and easier to manipulate when I am using a keyboard. But I suppose we could adapt to a setup of touch screen and keyboard, sans mouse.

Storage is the single issue that will keep tablets as adjuncts to computing, rather than becoming our computer mainstay. Computers have large hard drives. We can add more storage to most computers, even notebooks. Tablets come with limited, usually fixed, storage. Most large form factor Android tablets and iPads come with 16GB to 64GB of storage. 64GB or less is insufficient for many of us to store all our photos, videos, music, documents and apps. We depend upon our computers to store the preponderance of these files. There are great utilities and services (think Dropbox) that let us sync or move these files from our computers to our tablets and back. Without these we would quickly find tablets limited and their luster would fade.

So until we have 500GB to 1TB tablets, something we are likely to see in Windows 8, due out later this year, I suggest you hold on to your computer.

Evernote – better than Post-it® Notes

Richard Frisch — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 16:25:45 +0000

Evernote is a wonderful service that lets you easily create, save, and synchronize your notes to most any computational device. I use it and highly recommend it.

The basic Evernote service is free. The company provides free apps you can download and install that run on Windows, Mac and Linux computers, and Android, BlackBerry and iOS (iPhone/iPad) mobile platforms. The service synchronizes your notes across all your installed apps. You can connect to your notes in a web browser, too. Evernote provides web browser add-ins (extensions) for Firefox, Google Chrome, and Safari, making it simple to clip information from websites into your Evernotes. You can even email notes to your Evernotes via a free @m.evernote.com email address.

Notes can be made up from text, images, and audio. You can format the text, for example, making the font bold, italic or a different color. You can share individual notebooks with co-workers, friends, family, or on Facebook if you want.

The service allows you to create multiple notebooks so that you can organize information according to your wishes. You can add metadata tags to notes. Consequently, you can add multiple labels to a single note if it falls into more than one bucket.

The free service lets you synchronize, via uploads, up to 60MB of data a month, which is quite a lot, in my experience. Evernote has a premium plan that lets you upload up to 1GB per month, for $5/mo. or $45/yr., if you need more bandwidth. The premium plan makes your notes available offline, too.

If you use Post-its® or electronic notes, I suggest you try Evernote. I think you will like it.

Who are the bad guys?

Richard Frisch — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 17:14:21 +0000

Wednesday evening, January 25, 2012, I am presenting Being Safe in a Digital World to the Cotton Club Greenwich, a Greenwich, CT group. The talk is intended to help tighten up one’s mental and digital defenses against digital data and privacy loss. My preparation got me thinking, “Who do we need to defend ourselves against?”

There are four categories of bad guys:

Criminals
Hacktivists
Businesses
Nation states

Malware or malicious software has many variants: viruses, Trojans, worms, spyware, key loggers, rootkits and others. The origins of malware can be traced back to 1962 at Bell Labs in a game called Darwin, which allowed players to replicate their code and destroy competitor’s code. The first spam message was sent in 1978 over ARPAnet, the Internet’s precursor, by a Digital Equipment Corporation employee.

Before the Internet most malware was spread via floppy disc. That era’s Malware was limited in scope and generally vandalized applications and operating systems.

Today, the Internet provides a gateway into almost all computational devices: computers, smartphones and tablets. The Internet changed the bad guys’ scope and goals. Transnational criminals use Internet-spread malware to make money via theft or through the sale of misleading services and products.

The 2010 Stuxnet worm probably used a USB thumb drive plugged into a Windows computer, rather than the Internet, as its attack vector and then migrated into Siemens firmware that controlled Iran’s nuclear weapons program centrifuges. It is thought that Stuxnet was created by agencies of nation states, the US, Israel or both working together.

2011 was a banner year for corporate data breaches. Sony was the poster child for bad server security. Over 100 million Sony customer accounts were stolen in an extended number of attacks. RSA fessed up to the theft of the private keys for its customers’ SecureID product. Epsilon’s servers were breached and millions of their corporate clients customers’ email addresses were taken. Several certificate authorities, most notably Diginotar, were cracked and fraudulent certificates were issued under their auspices. It is believed that the Diginotar crack led to executions of Iranian dissidents by the Iranian government.

Also worrisome is the placement of malware on our computational devices by the companies that sell us products and services. A 2005 Windows rootkit was spread by Sony BMG via music CDs. It infected hundreds of thousands of computers worldwide, including many US Government owned computers. More recently, the Carrier IQ rootkit was in the news. AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, Apple, HTC and Samsung admitted that they placed this spyware on millions of devices. Until Trevor Eckhart uncovered it on his smartphone, we were in the dark.

Hacktivists are groups with names like, al-Qaeda, Hamas, Anon and WikiLeaks. Their goals are political in nature. They often use distributed denial of service attacks (DDOS) to shut down the websites of their targets. Their targets tend to be organizations, businesses, governments, or high profile officials. There isn’t much we can do to defend ourselves specifically against hacktivists. Fortunately, I am unaware of hacktivists targeting private individuals.

We can defend ourselves against criminals. Antimalware software and firewalls, properly configured and maintained, go a long way to keeping us safe. It is harder to defend ourselves against other bad guys.

I believe the number one threat to our digital privacy and security is nation states. We know that China and Iran control their citizens’ access to information and these countries spy on their citizens. India is increasing spying on its citizens’ communications. India recently made noises about censoring Facebook, Google and other web-based services.

The potential for American government digital tyranny looms large. Since 9/11, the US government has used the excuse of security to greatly expand its digital spying. That spying includes warrantless searches of all American citizens’ digital communications. The recently shelved SOPA and PIPA bills would greatly expand both the federal government and large companies’ ability to censor the Internet.

After nation states, the next greatest threat to our privacy and security is large corporations, particularly the companies that sell Internet access and manufacturers of hardware that connects to the Internet. A further threat is industries, as evidenced by the RIAA/MPAA sponsored SOPA/PIPA legislation. Companies with access and influence over legislators can and do twist the laws to their benefit and against the public good.

Therefore, I am not optimistic about our future digital privacy and security. It is hard to fight nation states or to cause corporations to act responsibly, both in securing their own equipment or in leaving our rights and liberties alone.

Security on a budget, done right!

Richard Frisch — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 17:23:15 +0000

Two fun comic strips from SHI Cloud blog.

Alex Lindsay’s Manifesto against SOPA/PIPA

Richard Frisch — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 13:49:34 +0000

Alex Lindsay of the Pixel Corps posted the following on Google+:

The Manifesto…

We’ve tried to ignore the problem… I tried to ignore the problem. I wanted to ignore the politics of the internet and, in many ways, politics itself. From a netizen point of view, Democracy often seems inefficient and ineffectual. But just because WE want to ignore it, doesn’t mean politics wants to ignore us.

There are many groups who would subjugate us if they could. They would force us to pay every time we heard a song on the car radio, they would make sure we can’t speak freely about their brand or their brand of government, they would exert complete control over our online existence.

As Netizens, we naively think that calmer heads will prevail and this has often been the case… but laws like SOPA and PIPA, which could potentially make the Patriot Act look tame if used to their fullest extent… continue to be paid for by big industry and pushed through congress. These acts are not just bad, they are unAmerican and more akin to something we would see in China or Iran… not here.

How does this happen? It’s simple enough, Congressmen are paid to make laws that would oppress us. In the emerging world, this would be called “Corruption”… here it’s called “Contribution”. It’s easy. These laws are complicated and their most of their constituents don’t even know that their congressmen are involved or how these laws would affect them. The industries behind these laws are wealthy and spend lavishly on representatives willing to support them. Most importantly… there is little to no political pain for these representatives. They fill their campaign coffers with cash… if the bill fails, they keep the cash and it’s quickly forgotten. If the bill passes, they’ll get more money next year.

This needs to stop.

We can no longer expect our representatives, many of whom couldn’t write an email on their own, to represent us without firm action. We can no longer depend on OUR means of discussion – Facebook, Twitter, and Email -l to express ourselves.

We need to fight these laws, and the lawmakers that would pass them, in their back yard. We need to earn their respect, and fear if necessary. We need them to know that supporting these bills has a political cost.

We need a sort of “Internet Protection Fund”, a PAC, that is designed for a single purpose – To use every legal means to attack those who would attack us. To bring the fight to to their doorstep, their airwaves, and their TVs. We need to organize and focus the resistance.

Stop the SOPA and PIPA before they are passed through targeted boycotts, information campaigns, and letter writing campaigns.

Target those in Congress who support these bills and attempt to unseat them in the fall with internet, grassroots, TV and Radio campaigns. Congress needs to know that supporting these bills is no longer a blank check…it’s no longer safe.

We need to build our organization BETWEEN elections, build its resources, and build its capacity to defend our rights… aggressively. This fight is about to intensify as the information age matures. We need to begin to take an active role in shaping our online future.

This is not a replacement for organizations like the Electronic Freedom Foundation… without whom we will be already be in virtual chains. This is the sharp end of the stick that comes when they are not able to negotiate our freedom. These are the troops that back up the political discussions with real, tangible, action.

This is not a replacement for Anonymous. They play harder than we will. We will keep our fight within the confines of the current laws. We will use every means within those laws to express the will of those we represent but we will stay well within the confines of the current rules.

We will play by the political rules that our opponents play by… not the ones we wish they would play. We will use our skills, connections and ability to organize online but we will bring this fight to their field and beat them there.

So now what do we do?

Step one: +1 this post and pass it on. If there is enough interest, the next steps will be somewhat obvious (begin the organization structure). Comment and let me know what you think and what you would do next. If there is enough interest… more posts will follow.

Your encrypted Wi-Fi signal is easily cracked

Richard Frisch — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 21:19:45 +0000

We all knew that WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy or Wireless Encryption Protocol) was worthless. WEP can be cracked in minutes by a knowledgeable cracker. But WEP was replaced with the WPA and then by the better WPA2 protocols. (WPA stands for Wi-Fi Protected Access.) If you have an encrypted Wi-Fi network, you use WPA2 because surely no one can crack WPA2’s 256 bit encryption key!

The world was recently made aware that it is easy, if time consuming, to crack an encrypted WPA/WPA2 Wi-Fi signal when Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS) is also enabled on the router. The cracking tool is called Reaver. Setting up Reaver is a bit involved but there are published recipes that make using it straightforward. (Here’s the YouTube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1c1OIMbmb0, a primer http://lifehacker.com/5873407/how-to-crack-a-wi+fi-networks-wpa-password-with-reaver, and the Reaver code repository http://code.google.com/p/reaver-wps/.)

Security and convenience rarely mix. If you want your home to be secure you lock the doors and arm an alarm system. If you want to enter a secure house, you need the key(s) and the alarm code. That is not as convenient as leaving the alarm system off and the door unlocked.

WPS is designed to make using encrypted Wi-Fi convenient. It does that but it makes your network insecure, too. Without WPS we need to know the password or passphrase to link to a secure encrypted wireless network. WPS makes that unnecessary. There are several ways WPS can work. One way to connect a wireless device—a computer, smartphone, tablet, printer, Apple TV, Roku box, TiVo, etc.—to your router’s Wi-Fi signal is to press a couple of buttons, one on the router, the other on the device, within 120 seconds. Another method is to press the router’s WPS button and enter the router’s eight digit PIN code into the device. The PIN code is printed on a label attached to the router.

I have never used WPS to setup a client’s or my own wireless networks. I prefer the old-fashioned method of setting up an intelligent password and then using it to link a device to the network.

Turns out that was a good practice but…

If a router is WPS certified it must have WPS turned on by default. I rarely ever turned it off on the many router’s I have configured. If it is enabled it can be cracked by Reaver!

Today I use a current model Apple AirPort Extreme router as the primary routing device for my network. Fortunately, Apple does not support the push button mode of WPS on either AirPort Extreme or AirPort Express routers. Pretty much every other modern, major consumer router manufacturer does. Cisco Linksys, D-Link, Netgear, and Belkin do. Unfortunately, Cisco Linksys makes it impossible to disable WPS on most of their routers. Other manufactures let you turn it off or make it inaccessible without direct access to the router’s control software. [Edited Friday 2012-01-13 5:53am EST]

DON”T PANIC

Douglas Adams’ advice is usually good advice. It is here.

It is unlikely that your home network Wi-Fi will be cracked using Reaver or any other tool. It takes several hours for Reaver to work its magic. The cracking device needs to be in range of the router’s Wi-Fi signal the entire time. If you know how to enter your router’s configuration console and it is not a Cisco Linksys router, I recommend disabling WPS.

Spud-a-thon™ 2012

Richard Frisch — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 21:48:08 +0000

Mix one potato, a modicum of hair spray, a spark and we have…

My wife Marianne is deeply involved with the classic car community. Although an art historian by training and experience, she started on the road to “gear-head” several years ago when she became the curator/director for a classic car museum in Bernardsville, NJ. The museum had a great collection of mostly American convertibles from the 1940s to the early 1960s. Like Marissa Tomei’s character Mona Lisa Vito from the 1992 film My Cousin Vinny, Marianne can tell you whether an early model Corvette is a 1953 or 1954 version by the minor details that distinguish them.

Yet as knowledgeable as she is about car models and styling, she is a tyro when it comes to basic car technology. She had no idea how an internal combustion engine works. A car buddy of hers discovered this when trying to explain the exciting features of the Chrysler Hemi engine. He suggested she needed to learn more about engines and pointed her to Google.

Googling led to the discovery that spud guns share the same basic locomotive principle as car engines: rapidly expanding gas contained in a cylinder propels the payload, a piston or a potato. She was hooked.

We are fans of Hugh Laurie’s House TV character. There is an episode of House, M.D, which features a funny sequence between a young spud gun builder and the doctor. (You can view it at http://telee.tv/?p=30. The spud gun scene runs from 21:20 to 22:30 of the video.)

This only fueled Marianne’s fascination with spud guns. She wanted one of her own. I told her it was impractical. Our daughter’s boyfriend, who had built one with his friends, when he was younger, also threw cold water on the notion.

Woot.com is a website owned by Amazon. It features daily deals on a few, selected items. Early on the morning of December 30, 2011 I awoke to find an email from Woot.com offering to sell me a spud gun for $19.95 plus $5 shipping. I pulled the trigger and ordered one for Marianne. We were both excited and anxious to have it.

After more than a week’s wait it was delivered yesterday. We quickly unwrapped it.

Some assembly required

The spud gun came in three parts, two pieces of PVC tubing and the ignition assembly. Its total length is about 22½”. Supposedly it can launch a potato up to a ¼ mile.

It was a bit of an ordeal to put the ignition assembly into the rear tube. Fortunately, our friend Diana was visiting when it arrived and helped solve the problem. Marianne now has what appears to be a functioning spud gun. At least the ignition sparks when turned.

We found a board in the barn to use as a platform to push against to put the potatoes into the barrel. The open barrel end serves as a potato cutter, so that potatoes fits tightly in the barrel. We found another, long board to serve as a plunger to push the potato down into the barrel. We plan to buy fuel and ammunition (hair spray and potatoes) for this weekend’s field test.

If the testing is successful then Spud-a-thon™ 2012 is a go.

2011 Hardware Favorites

Richard Frisch — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 18:03:03 +0000

Below is a list of some 2011 hardware I like, listed from most to least expensive. (Prices listed are/were current as of Saturday, December 31, 2011.)

Apple 13-inch MacBook Air ($1,299 to $1,778)

My initial and continuing impression of the first and second generation MacBook Air, which was released in January 2008, was that it was an over-priced piece of crap. Sure it was thin and light weight but it was underpowered, lacked enough or properly positioned USB ports and was bested by the then generation of Windows netbooks.

Apple’s continuing improvements to the MacBook Air line over the years have changed my opinion. The third and fourth generation models were a leap forward in notebook design. I now believe it is the best general purpose notebook computer. The addition of a second USB port and moving the USB ports to the side of the case make it much more connectable. The solid state drive (SSD) makes it faster than many high-powered desktops or laptops that use spinning hard drives. It is still thin and light weight. It is still expensive. It runs Windows 7 better than most Windows computers. Battery life is good. The current models are the best yet. In 2011, Apple restored the backlit keyboard that they took out along the way and added a Thunderbolt multipurpose data and display port. If the price is not a deterrent, this is the notebook to own.

Apple iPad 2 ($499 to $829)

The iPad 2 is simply the best tablet computer. I use this device more and more nine months in. I own the lowest cost model: $499, WiFi only, 16GB model, in black.

The hardware is well thought out. The screen is easy to read. The device, although weighty, is not too heavy to hold and handle for extended periods. Battery life is superb.

The iTunes app ecosystem is great, although far from perfect. I wish we could test apps before buying them. Alternatively, it would be nice if Apple allowed us to return/rescind an app purchase within an hour or two of buying them. Most apps are good to wonderful, but there is the occasional clunker.

I bought the Snugg iPad 2 Case Cover and Flip Stand for my iPad 2, $29.99. It is superior in functionality and appearance to the more expensive and less useful Apple iPad Smart Cover, which costs $39 – $69. The 427 customer reviews on Amazon, giving the case a 4.5 star rating is an indication that this case is a winner. Apple’s Smart Cover garners a 3 star rating on Amazon and at the Apple Store.

Crucial RealSSD ($120 to $485)

A solid state drive (SSD) runs rings around a spinning hard drive in speed of data reads and writes. That performance boost comes at a price: SSDs cost more than rotational hard drives, while rotational drives have much larger maximum capacities, as much as 4TB. The largest SSDs, 960GB models, cost over $2,400 and some cost over $3,000. A 3TB rotational drive costs between $330 and $400 today.

I put a 256GB Crucial RealSSD in my main Windows 7 desktop computer, in early 2011, replacing a 1TB rotational drive. I have not regretted that decision. In fact, I wish I had done it earlier. I have lots of programs, a very large digital music collection and do lots of video production, which consumes large amounts of storage. I could not fit all my stuff on a 1TB drive much less an SSD a quarter of that size. I use 3 2TB rotational drives for data and new program installations. My machine is much faster. Fast is good.

Amazon Kindle Fire ($199)

The Fire was released in November 2011. It is a small form factor (7” diagonal), combination ebook reader and touchscreen tablet computer. If you had to pick between the iPad 2 and the Fire, pick the iPad. If you want an inexpensive, portable, color screen tablet that does double duty as a media consumption device and general purpose computer, get a Kindle Fire.

Amazon ties the Kindle to their very large and rapidly expanding digital products ecosystem, which is especially convenient and economical if you are an Amazon Prime customer. Anything you buy from the Kindle book store, any music you buy from Amazon’s MP3 store, and any videos you rent or buy from the Amazon Video store can be read, listened to, or watched on your Fire. The screen is very good. Watching video on the device is a surprisingly positive experience. (You should get a stand if you do this regularly.) Battery life is good, but not as good as the iPad.

It is WiFi only, so if you are traveling, I advise loading books, video and music onto your Kindle Fire before you leave. Storage space on the Kindle is not as robust as I would like. You are limited to about 5.4GB for media: books, music and video. There is an additional 1.2GB of storage available for apps. Amazon has a free app each day, which you can buy, download and install. One niggling hardware issue is that the power button is placed in a spot where it is easy to inadvertently turn off the Kindle when just holding it.

Apple AirPort Extreme Base Station ($179)

It’s a dual band 802.11n network router and Internet gateway device. That’s not the most exciting device in our electronics kit today. There are comparable routers from other companies that cost less and do the same or more! I know because I frequently install and configure or fix routers for my customers. The AirPort Extreme has only 3 LAN Ethernet ports, while all the others have 4. It requires special software to configure and manage. Its competitors can be configured from any standard computer attached to the router through a browser window, no special software required.

So why do I like it? In high traffic environments, like mine, it is the most dependable consumer-grade router I know. Other consumer-grade routers suffer from over-heating issues in high traffic environments. This causes them to malfunction. The AirPort Extreme Base Station is rock solid. Interestingly, the Apple AirPort Express (the Extreme’s little sister) is not as solid. It too suffers from overheating problems due to high traffic.

Logitech Wireless Illuminated Keyboard K800 (Windows) ($69.99)

I work on many computers, mine and my customers, desktops and laptops. I use a lot of different keyboards in a standard workday. So I sample many different keyboards, from many different manufacturers, such as Dell, HP, Microsoft, Logitech, and Apple. I write quite a bit so my personal keyboards matter a lot to me.

This Logitech wireless keyboard for Microsoft Windows computers has a no-nonsense design. It features a relatively small footprint, nice and responsive keys, backlit keys, great rechargeable battery life, and a switch to turn it on and off. It comes with a USB recharging cable as well. I like it much better than the older Logitech wireless keyboard that it replaced.

Logitech Wireless Solar Keyboard K750 for Mac ($59.95) (Black or Silver)

I am not a fan of Apple keyboards. They are too flat. I don’t find typing on them anything other than tortuous on a good day. I like number pads on my desktop computer keyboard, but Apple doesn’t sell a wireless full-size keyboard.

Fortunately, Logitech has come to my rescue with an innovative light-powered, wireless full-size keyboard designed specifically for Macs. It is not perfect but much better for me than Apple’s hardware. It has Apple-style chicklet keys but the finger rests are indented and rounded rather than aping apple’s flat keys. It runs off the ambient light in my office, day or night. It never needs to charge its batteries or have them replaced since it converts light into energy. It also has a handy on/off switch, which lets you turn off the keyboard when not in use.

The retractable legs are not as sturdy as I would like. I haven’t broken them yet but it feels like it wouldn’t take much to do that.

Logitech Wireless Anywhere Mouse MX ($47.99)

Most people use whatever pointing device came with the computer. If it’s a desktop Windows computer they use a cheap, limited function mouse.

If the computer is a desktop Mac, an iMac, Mac Mini, or Mac Pro they are probably using either the Magic Trackpad or Magic Mouse. With the Magic Mouse, Apple continues its unbroken tradition of never making a usable mouse . It incorporates features of both a mouse and a trackpad to the user’s disadvantage. Their Magic Trackpad is much better but I find it awkward compared to a good mouse like the Anywhere Mouse MX.

The Anywhere Mouse is a wireless mouse that communicates with your Mac or Windows computer via a tiny USB radio receiver that plugs in to the computer. I’ve had an Anywhere Mouse MX for several years that I use on my Windows desktop. I bought an additional one this year to use with my 27” iMac.

It works on pretty much any surface, without need of a mouse pad. It even works on a transparent glass surface! (I am tempted to test if it works in butter like a TV-advertised ballpoint pen of my youth. I never understood why anyone would want to do that.) It has a built-in clutch on the scroll wheel that lets you shift from frictionless hyper-fast scrolling to line-by-line navigation with a simple finger press. It lasts a long time on two AA batteries. You can use rechargeable ones if you want.

It has a convenient storage slot in the battery compartment for the USB receiver if you want to travel with the mouse. The bottom cover comes off and can be put back on with little effort. It also has a simple slide button on the bottom that lets you effortlessly turn the mouse off and on. This lets you conserve your batteries when the mouse is not in use. It has other features too, such as buttons on the side for moving forwards and backwards in a browser window. It truly is a great mouse. Over 500 people on Amazon who reviewed the Anywhere Mouse MX agree, giving it 4 and 5 star ratings.

Copy as Path in Windows 7, Vista and XP

Richard Frisch — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 15:30:38 +0000

Copy as Path lets you place a file name along with its path information into the Windows 7 clipboard. I only learned about this great Windows 7 feature in November from my friend Ed Bott’s article Ten Tricks every Windows 7 power user should know. I didn’t know that Microsoft had added this function in Vista. It does not exist in Windows XP, but keep reading to find out how to get it in XP.

If you hold down the Shift key when right-clicking on a file or folder in Windows 7 or Vista Windows Explorer you get an extra context menu item Copy as path. If you select this, Windows copies the complete path and file name into the Clipboard. You can then paste it into dialogs or documents. For example, if you simply right-click on the file 02 – Santa Clause Is Coming To Town, the only context menu copy command is to copy the entire file. But if you hold down the Shift key and then right-click, you can select Copy as path. Doing this puts “D:\Music\Jackson 5\Ultimate Christmas Collection\02 Santa Claus Is Coming To Town.m4a” into the clipboard rather than a copy of the file. You could then copy that information into a document like this one, which is what I did to get it into this paragraph.

I find Copy as Path extremely useful in two situations:

Attaching files to email.
Filling in dialog boxes launched from the Browse button in many applications.

It saves you from hunting for the file. In many instances you are already looking at the file in Windows Explorer before you launch the application or write the email.

I find myself using this daily. But I quickly grew weary of having to remember to hold the Shift key before right-clicking. Fortunately, I found a solution to make Copy as path a regular (non-hidden) context menu item, no Shift key required!

Path Copy Copy is a free Windows Explorer add-on that also works in Windows XP as well as Windows 7 and Vista. Here’s a direct link to the download http://pathcopycopy.codeplex.com/releases/view/78108#DownloadId=313146

I suggest you alter the configuration of Path Copy Copy if you install it. The default configuration gives normal users too many choices, when all we want is the path and file name surrounded by quotation marks.

After you install it:

Open Windows Explorer and right-click on a file or folder.
Select Path Copy > Settings…
Select Default Command tab.
Select Copy Long Path.
Select the Disabled Commands tab.
Uncheck everything to disable all these geeky choices.
Click the OK button.

Now the Windows Explorer context menu will always include Copy File/Folder Path as a choice.

I searched for a comparable Mac OS X solution for Mac users. Surprisingly, I couldn’t find one.

Cell carriers add insult to injury

Richard Frisch — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 13:25:20 +0000

The Carrier IQ pre-installed keylogging rootkit software has been a big item in tech security news ever since Trevor Eckhart of Torrington, CT unleashed his analysis on his WordPress blog a few weeks ago.

Cell phone carriers, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile, but not Verizon, installed this software on Android smartphones and iPhones. Cell phone manufacturers, such as HTC and Samsung, installed it on their devices, which were sold by Verizon.

This software records your phone use and then transmits it to the cell carrier each day. It can record pretty much anything you do with your smartphone, including usernames and passwords.

Our privacy has been under attack, by large corporations and the Federal government, ever since the George W. Bush administration. This governmental erosion of our right to privacy continues unabated in the Obama administration. SOPA and PIPA legislation, now before Congress, will further erode our rights.

The daily log that Carrier IQ transmits back to the carriers can be as large as 200 kb of data, 1.4 MB per week, or about 6 MB per month.

Guess who pays for that data? We do. It is subtracted from our data plan allotment. We are forced to pay for the cost of spying on us. I think this is an intolerable situation. The spies can pay for their own damn data plan and leave ours alone. I hope you feel the same.