I have been reading some interesting blog posts with suggested security measures for mobile devices, laptops and online.

1. Lessons I Learned When My Laptop Was Stolen – On http://lifehacker.com
2. How to Track and (Potentially) Recover Your Stolen Laptop or Android with Prey – On http://lifehacker.com
3. How To Protect Your Login Information From Firesheep – on http://techcrunch.com

The posts are really worth reading, and also the comments on them. In case you want to use this post as a bookmark for future reference, like I do, here is a list of the solutions mentioned in the posts above.

1. TrueCrypt – data encryption
2. Prey Project – track and (potentially) recover stolen laptop, Android or iPhone
3. Force-TLS Firefox addon – force selected websites to use HTTPS

Technorati Tags: Android, data encryption, Firefox, firesheep, force-tls, https, iPhone, laptop. mobile, prey, Security, stolen laptop, stolen phone, tracking

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The “There’s an App for that” claim for the iPhone makes me cringe. How many of the Apps we have in our mobile devices do we actually use?

I am not  a good exmaple to start with as I am not an early adopter of anything technical and I tend to stay away from what the crowd goes for, so any Apple device is a no go area for me. I have though not too long ago acquired an Android powered device which I really like. I have browsed the Android App store up and down and tested a number of Apps, some cool stuff but I only keep the ones I actually use.

Here is my humble short list of favourites

• Gmail App (native to Android)

• Peep (for Twitter)
• Facebook (on the mobile browser)
• Orkut (on the mobile browser)
• Google Maps (use it a lot in conjunction with GPS)
• Google Calendar sync (native to Android)
• Music player (native to Android)
• File Browser
• gStrings (Guitar tuner)
• Youtube (native to Android)
• Droid Locator
• A couple of games
• Daily Sudoku (Embarrassing I know, but great for calming my ADHD)

How overloaded is your mobile? What are your must have Apps?

Technorati Tags: Android, Apple, Google phone, HTC, iPhone, mobile apps, there's an app for that

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I am deeply shocked at audible.com for not having an app for Android. They claim that “the Android media player does not allow playback of our titles“… right.  Anyway they are now attempting to get the ball rolling for an App for Android in 2010. There’s a signup for upcoming  beta testing on their website and I urge every Android user (or user to be) to sign up and put a little bit more pressure on them.

Android is a great mobile platform and companies like Audible.com (an Amazon associate) are stalling its growth with short sightedness.

UPDATE from comment by JP White: “A Beta Audible app is now available for Android devices.  Read more at
http://wp.me/pCOs1-aw“

Technorati Tags: Amazon, Android, Android App, audible books, Audio books, Beta, Google

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Why has no one thought of it before….. ? You may ask. But someone now has.  The XMLVM project was created by Arno Puder and his team at San Francisco State University.  What it does is provide a bridge between disparate compile-time and run-time environments — in a word cross-compiling, as described by  Frank Ableson on the Linux Magazine website. 

XMLVM serves as an umbrella for several projects. For all projects, a Java class file or a .NET executable is first translated to an XML-document. Based on the XML-document generated by the front-end, various transformations are possible. (extracted)

The possibilities are immense, but I think it will really take off in the mobile market with Applications being able to run cross-platform from Android to iPhone and so on.

Technorati Tags: Android, Development, iPhone, Mobile, Programming, XML, XMLVM

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A developer team on venturebeat.com has reported that they can get Google’s Android to run on netbooks. Long before Andoid was released there were rumors about its use not being restric to mobiles. The Venturabeast team claim to have made it work on a EeePC 1000h within 4 hours as reported by the Linux Magazine online.

“The largest challenge was to adapt the ARM processor optimized code to the x86 architecture of the Intel Atom processors. Fortunately the Google team could take some guidance from previous work they had put into it. And they didn’t need drivers in that the 2.6 kernel code already contained the necessary modules. “

Google claims to have created the first open, free mobile platform but many would say they were the first to launch, apparently OpenMoko was idealized long before the Android but sadly it’s still on its development stages. If only some big names like Google had put their power behind them!

Technorati Tags: Android, EeePC, Linux, Open Source, OpenMoko

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