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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According to the BBC technology website, Apple claims to have fixed a hole in iTunes that allowed it to sync non-Apple devices. Interesting that this comes out as a lot of iPhone competitors are on the market and some of them like the Palm Tre do sync with the iTunes library.  Thanks to Apple if you live in a mixed enviroment you are now stuck.  Isn’t this what people would call the “drug dealer’s technique”? You give them access to it, get them hooked and make them buy more and more. I have always been unimpressed with Apple’s rip-off marketing strategy and even more with the cultish behaviour of its users but this is a new low.

Apple tried to keep cool about it with this (lame) statement…

“Apple does not provide support for, or test for compatibility with, non-Apple digital media players” and warned that “newer versions of Apple’s iTunes software may no longer provide syncing functionality” with them.”  extracted

Maybe it’s time to switch to something like Song Bird, the open source competitor to the iTunes that syncs with most devices, including iPods.

Technorati Tags: Apple, iPhone, ipod, itunes, media player, Palm Tre, Song Bird

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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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