Well, it’s holiday time again and many of you will be traveling or enjoying a cup of coffee at the local barista trying to get away from the crowds. As we live in a hyper-connected society, you might feel the need to check the shipping status of that last minute gift or see if Aunt Susie sent another e-card.

Free public access wifi connections are a wonderful thing. Easily hook your laptop or phone up to the network and you’re surfing away in a holiday bliss. Not to burst your bubble, but there is a black sheep out there that you need to take precautions against. Its name is Firesheep and it’s out to take over your accounts.

Firesheep is a plug-in for the Firefox browser that allows the user to see anyone on an unencrypted wifi connection who logs in to a number of websites including many day to day sites like Gmail, Facebook and Twitter. The user just sits back, waits for someone to login to a supported site. They will get a notification that a site is available and all they have to do is click one button to login to your private account – as you. This is very serious when it comes to your email as it is usually connected to your bank account.

A little history
Many websites have an encrypted login for the user but once the user has entered their name and password they are sent to an un-encrypted site. The browser uses cookies to store your “session”. All Firesheep has to do is look for that cookie being sent over the network and make a copy. Once it has it, it can pretend it’s you. The method used by Firesheep is not new. There have been a number of software packages that use this procedure for years. However, Firesheep is the first to make it point and click easy.

So what do I do?
The easiest thing would be to not use open wifi for anything important. That’s not always going to be possible, however. If you are using Firefox as your browser there is a plug-in called BlackSheep that sends out a number of fake session cookies and crashes Firesheep. Also, if you have access to a corporate network, using a VPN (virtual private network) tunnel will encrypt all your data. And, if you are using Gmail make sure to change the setting to “always use https”.

It’s easy to get paranoid that everyone is trying to steal your data. Most people are just checking their email or enjoying their cup of coffee. Just take a few precautions and be aware of what is out there and we’ll all be enjoying the New Year soon.

I’ll admit it – I’m a geek. I enjoy implementing new technology before it becomes mainstream. I canceled my cable service about a year ago and I haven’t looked back. It has been replaced by media servers and streaming systems that give me more choices than I ever had before. I’ll go over some of those choices and show you just how easy it is to get started.

The Revolution is Here
We are on the brink of a media revolution and it’s probably not what the media industry wants to hear. For decades we consumed video content by what was given out to us at the time. We could go rent a movie but for the most part it was easier to watch what the cable or satellite provided. Now we have the opportunity to watch what we want, when we want it. Streaming and on demand video is changing how we view and perceive our entertainment. While the technology is still in its infancy, there are plenty of ways to integrate the new systems or maybe replace your old one forever.

Stream Baby Stream
For the average consumer the biggest change is the ability to stream video on demand to where ever you are. Services from Netflix, Amazon and Apple can bring content to you at a fraction of your monthly cable bill. And with the convenience of starting and stopping anytime and watching on multiple devices, it just gets better. With new hardware hitting the streets you are no longer limited to watching just on your computer screen – from your phone to flat screen TV, you’re covered.

What Do I Need to Get Started?
The hardware is everywhere and sometimes it can be hard to figure out what you need. To start you’ll want at least a basic broadband connection – the faster the better. Once connected you need to figure out what service provides the best options for you. By far Netflix is the leader at the moment. At as little as $9 a month you can stream an unlimited amount of content and their library is getting better each day. Both Amazon and Apple have new release TV and movies and rent on a pay-per-view basis.

For the hardware you have more options. Many TVs are coming out with Netflix integrated in them. If you don’t have that, a small box about the size of an external hard drive will take care of all the heavy lifting for you. Roku was the first to provide a set-top box for Netflix to your TV. Since that time they have included Amazon and other providers. Their new XDS box will provide 1080p high-def video and play back content from a connected USB device. Western Digital has come out with their WD TV Live Plus that not only has Netflix support but can stream just about any type of video file from your local network or USB device. If you are in the Apple ecosystem the new version of the Apple TV might interest you with support for Netflix and pay-per-view from the iTunes store. All these devices are very affordable with prices ranging from $99 to $120.

What are the Downsides?
As with anything new it takes a little getting used to. You have to think a little bit about what you want to watch. You don’t just turn on a channel and watch whatever is on. Live sports are still very limited if available at all, so if you are a sports fan you might want to keep the cable. Also, first run content such as recent movies and TV shows come at a premium. If you enjoy talking about last nights show at work you might be out of luck.

Despite the slight growing pains, this is the future. It won’t take too long before most video is delivered this way and the new technology has made it easy to integrate in to your existing infrastructure, whether you decide to cut the cord or not.

A Note on Google
The new Google TV is coming out soon and this looks pretty exciting. Although I’m not too impressed with the first piece of hardware announced, there is real potential. Once the remote is simplified and you have access to Android applications on your TV, this could really take off.

I’ve written a lot about social networking lately; both my skepticism and how I finally broke down and joined the surge. Just a little while ago I came to a realization: none of this is new. We’ve all heard the phrase “there’s nothing new under the sun” but when it comes to services like Facebook and Twitter, isn’t that something new? Let me explain.

Time for a trip in the “wayback” machine
One of the biggest complaints about social networking is the loss of privacy. I’m right there trying to limit my exposure to the outside world. Social networking is still a form of voyeurism, but let’s be clear, privacy is a new concept.

Go back 100 years. If you lived in any kind of city or town you knew everyone around you. Even in a large metropolis you would know about the personal lives of the butcher and grocer in the corner shops. In small and medium sized towns there were no secrets. It wasn’t until after World War II that we started to isolate ourselves and felt that we had a right to privacy.

60 years ago saw the expansion of the suburb and the rise of the box store. We could travel and do our shopping without anyone knowing who we were. That brought about mail order and then e-commerce. Today, I can sit at the side of a lake and order a new hard drive on my phone – never talking to anyone. We have the capacity, with our advanced communications, to be more disconnected than ever before.

You can’t stop human nature
So, what happened? We don’t want privacy! Millennia of human culture have created a social beast. We found a way to be heard. By creating virtual neighborhoods we reaffirm our humanity. We set boundaries for ourselves and establish cultural expectations.

So what have I learned?
From a business standpoint, creating a connection with your clients creates loyalty. Not only does it hold you responsible to your clients but they have a greater sense of responsibility to you. It’s not a bad thing to share a personal side in your business. We are creating the new corner store. Mom and Pop haven’t been driven away, they have just gone virtual.

Some of you have been putting the social business in practice for many years and some of you may just be stepping up to the plate, but now more than ever, we need to embrace our social side to survive. It’s a new day in the old world.

To replace Flash, Apple has put their weight behind H.264 video. Google supports H.264 in YouTube (the largest source of web video) and Microsoft has also said that they will support H.264 in the next version of Internet Explorer. The problem is that Mozilla (the group behind Firefox) has said they won’t support it because H.264 is not an open source codec so they won’t put it in their product (also open source.) Stalemate! It became a waiting game to see who would give in first.

The Wait is Over
Today Google announced that they will open source the VP8 video codec (something they acquired when they bought the video codec company On2 earlier this year.) This is a very nice codec with compression results similar to H.264. Google is calling the new format “WebM” and bundling it with two other open source projects for audio and a file format container.

Microsoft, Mozilla, Opera, Adobe and many others have come out today saying they will support the new format. That big silence right now is Apple – no word yet from them.

What’s Next?
It will take some time to get momentum behind WebM but I’m hopeful that this will solve the stalemate problem in web video. The major hurdle is hardware decoding. Most mobile devices have hardware support for decoding H.264 video. This greatly improves performance and battery life. Right now there is no support for WebM (as it was just announced today.) However, it’s important to look at a development timeline. IE9 isn’t expected until some time next year and that is the majority of the browser market share. You can expect at least another year before IE9 is the dominant browser. That gives us two years to get hardware acceleration in mobile devices. If you consider that the average lifespan of a smartphone is 2 years (the contract term before you get your next discounted upgrade), your next mobile device will probably support the new standard.

It really is a good day to be a web developer.

Integrus Architecture was in need of an update for their aging website. Requirements centered around a clean, structured UI and intuitive navigation. With the design from Anderson Mraz and the programming expertise of Miller Consulting, they have achieved their goal.

Technology: PHP, XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, JQuery

Today I want to get on my soapbox. I hope you will forgive me if I stray out of the tech realm just a bit – although most of what I will talk about is related to technology in our lives.

Oh those spying eyes…
Most of you have probably heard and maybe even followed what has been happening in the Lower Merion School District in Philadelphia. For those of you who haven’t here is a quick refresher. It seems that the school district issued MacBook laptops to all its students. These were mandatory and could not be substituted with a personal laptop. A piece of “security” software was installed on the laptop so that if it was reported stolen a photo could be taken with the built in webcam of the person using the computer. This software would be remotely activated by the IT staff at the school. The problems started when one student was called in for disciplinary action for “inappropriate behavior at home.” The student was shown pictures of himself at home as proof of indiscretion. (At this time we do not know what those pictures entailed but the student has said it was of him eating some Mike & Ikes that were mistaken for drugs.) A class action lawsuit was filed and the FBI and every civil liberties group known to man are now involved.

It doesn’t matter what you think of class action lawsuits or whether you think the student is trying cover up something that he did wrong. The fact is you should be scared silly that a government entity is taking pictures of people in their own home without a warrant or proper procedure. Even the manufacturer of the software involved has said that you should not take the recovery of stolen equipment in to your own hands. If the laptop had been reported stolen (reports indicate that it had not been), the information should have been turned over to the police.

Security?
This is just one case of the troubling trend of sacrificing our liberties for security. We are afraid of bombs on planes so we chemically test baby formula before it can go on a plane. We take off our shoes because one person tried to light theirs. We except the fact that much of our email is being analyzed by the government because we think it will help catch some bad guys. And last but not least in the next couple of years you will be essentially photographed naked before you get on a plane with the new full body scanners that are now rolling out to the airports.

We have given up so much so that we can feel safer. We don’t even really know if it has made us safer or just given the illusion of safety to placate us.

Gimee, gimee, gimee
What is even more disturbing may be that we are willing to sacrifice our liberties for “stuff”. I will be the first to admit that I am in the same boat. I have subscribed to many “free” services from Google and as we all know this is really just selling our personal information.

Some of the parents in the Lower Merion School District have come out and said that they don’t care about the webcam access because their children get a good education. I’m sure it doesn’t hurt that their kids are given a free laptop too. For so many things these days we are willing to give up our choice and our privacy just because someone will give us something.

At what point in time do we say enough is enough? And for that matter, how do we say it? What form will it take? I won’t venture a guess but the time will come when we have to decide what is more important to us, freedom or security.

With the rise of communications, our ability to keep track of other people has become greater and our desire to do so is insatiable. Every second is filled with email, Twitter, cell phone calls, Facebook posts and customer satisfaction surveys. We have seen the rise of socially acceptable voyeurism.

Where do you stand?
For a number of years I’ve seen my time slowly taken away by a constant surge of communication demands. Don’t get me wrong, this is of my own doing. I decided to start a business and I chose technology as my focus. I have also chosen to limit my exposure. I am the last person I know that doesn’t have a data phone. I have resisted, with a passion, getting a Facebook account and I just don’t get Twitter.

I know these things can be helpful from a business perspective and I know they can help you keep in touch but at what point is it too much.

Digital Peep Show
Almost every day we talk about privacy. You are sent a new privacy policy from your bank, or someone feels like their privacy has been invaded. The straight fact is that we have less privacy today than we did a decade ago. With our own personal privacy disappearing we find ourselves searching out for others that we too can watch. All you have to do is look at the popularity of reality – or “unscripted” – television to see what I mean. The wall between personal and public life has come down and now we feel it’s our right to know everyone’s dirty little secrets.

On Facebook, not only do you see what your friends are saying but you see their friends too. You accept an invitation to be someone’s friend when you don’t even really know them because it makes you feel more important when you have a bigger list of people that you can watch. With a Twitter account you feel obligated to tell the world when you are having a cup of coffee because you have people that have said they want to watch you.

Next month five reporters in France are being isolated for a week with only Twitter and Facebook access to see if they can still report the news. I can only imagine how wildly distorted your view of the world will become when this is your only source of information.

Caught in the Trap
Now, it’s time for a little bit of honesty. About two weeks ago I signed up for both a Facebook and Twitter account. Why did I do it? I have friends that I haven’t seen in ten years that my wife talks to on Facebook and I have clients that have asked if I have a Twitter account. It has come down to my own personal need to be a voyeur – at least the socially acceptable kind.

This last week I spent two days out on calls and didn’t get to check in to my email and I was starting to go in to withdrawal. The fact is that I’m hooked on the data line and I can’t disconnect. So, think about me as I go shopping for a data phone.

Johnston Printing and Anderson Mraz Design required an updated look for their joint magazine project PROOF! Miller Consulting provided programming and domain setup for the new “sub” site.

Technology: PHP, XHTML, CSS, JavaScript

If there is something that you need done the odds are that Google has a service for you. Lets take a look at some of these services and see just what might be in it for you. I don’t intend to get in to everything. There is just too much to talk about in one article and it’s a constantly moving target, as we just saw this week with the $750 million dollar acquisition of AdMob.

It All Starts with the Search
There is no doubt that Google dominates the search market. The fast and accurate results that you get from a Google search has set the industry standard. But search is just the end to a means. Ad revenue is where it’s all at. You don’t get a stock price of $570 without revenue. Without the search, nobody would be buying ads, and the more eyes you can get to view your ads the more money you can make. For the most part you could say that almost everything that Google puts out will drive this business model. It improves the search, drives more traffic, or increases the number of people viewing ads.

Do you use Gmail?
One of the most popular products that Google offers is Gmail. Google wasn’t the first to the table with web based email – Yahoo and Microsoft had their products long before Google did – but there is little doubt that they stole the show with Gmail. With a faster interface and more storage than what other people had, Gmail accounts were hard to get when they first came out. Now anyone with the need for a non-work, web based email address can get one.

The real benefit of Gmail comes to those of us with domain names. If you have a domain name that all your email goes through, you can attach your domain email to Google and use them as the server. This allows all your email to show up from your domain but still take advantage of Google’s superior anti-spam filters and web based interface. If you don’t like the web interface, you can use your desktop email client and pull your email using POP3 or IMAP. The ability to get my email anywhere, on any computer makes this a must have service for me – I switched over to Google this last spring.

Know your Customer
In the business world you have to know who your customer is. As business moves out to the web, this becomes even more important. With Google Analytics you can keep track of some of the most valuable information about your website visitors. Do you want to know where in the world they came from? What computer/browser platform they are using? What pages did they visit and how long did they spend on each one? How about what search phrase they used to get to your site? These are all things that Google Analytics can do for you and with an easy to understand user friendly interface.

I Can Hear it in Your Voice
One of the newest services out of Google is Google Voice. You may have heard all the noise back and forth between AT&T and Google regarding this product. Google claims that AT&T has blocked the Google Voice iPhone app and AT&T is upset that Google doesn’t have to conform to the regulations (and costs) that they have to.

So, what is Google Voice? It’s really a new way of looking at you phone service. Many of us now have two, three and even four phone numbers. Most of us have voice mail to catch the calls that we miss but what if we could have one number that could reach us at any phone we were at. That is what Google Voice is all about. You can tell Google to have your friends ring your cell phone and your business contacts ring your work number. You can even have it ring all the phones at once and you pick up the one you happen to be at. If you are talking on your cell phone and want to transfer to one of your other phone, it’s as simple as dialing a few numbers.

That’s just the surface. You can setup custom messages for each person calling you. You can set people up in groups such as friends, work and family and each one gets different treatment – including going straight to voice mail. And speaking of voice mail, Google can transcribe it and send it to you via email or SMS message. To close up the missing link in this service, just this week Google bought a voice over IP service. This may bring full end-to-end voice service from Google.

So What Else is There?
I haven’t even touched on things that we take for granted such as YouTube and Google Maps as well as Picasa, Google Docs, Google Earth, Chrome, Blogger, SketchUp, the list goes on and on.

In the future we may see Wave – a completely new integration of email, instant messaging and interactive work flow – take up speed. Google services will continue to grow and each one of them will give us an opportunity to determine its own value in our lives.

Don’t be Evil
Google’s motto is “Don’t be Evil”. With all this data at their fingertips many people say that they know too much. Has Google gotten so big that they can’t help but be “Evil”? What is your privacy worth? Are you willing to give some of it up for ease of use and free services? That is a question we all should ask every day whenever we give out our personal information. For me the answer is “yes, a little bit.” But you always have to be careful with what you do give out – there is no such thing as being anonymous any more.

I get lots of questions on what is the best way to backup your files. Should you put everything on a second hard drive? External USB or Firewire? How about Network Attached Storage? Off site storage? Everything here has it’s advantages and disadvantages. Today I’m going to talk about everyone’s favorite words “free” and “easy”.

The Cloud – What’s That?
The latest buzz words out right now are “Cloud Computing”. Don’t let it fool you, we’re not talking about rain here. Very simply it means putting your “stuff” on the Internet and this is where “free” and “easy” come in when we’re talking about file backup.

There are lots of services that provide online file storage but probably the easiest to use and the most cross platform compatible is Dropbox. The good news is that if you have less than 2 GB of data to backup (such as documents and photos) it’s free. Once you install Dropbox, you get a folder that automatically syncs it contents to the Dropbox servers. All connections are secure and the files are stored encrypted so that only you can allow access. If you want to sync the files between two computers all you have to do is install the software on another computer and sign in with the same user. If a file is edited on one computer the changes are instantly uploaded and synced with the other computer. Say goodbye to transferring files home on a USB thumb drive.

Advanced Training
But that’s not all – it slices and dices and makes Julienne fries. No, really there is so much more that you can do. Let’s say you are working with a group of people and you all need to have access to some files. You can send out an invitation and allow those people to collaborate with you. There is also a public folder for items that, for lack of a better term, you want to make public – just keep it clean people. One of the best uses is to keep a fully up to date password database available on all your computers. Using software like KeePass or KeePassX you can store your password database in the Dropbox and you never have to worry about maintaining multiple databases.

In Closing
There are many more things that you can do but I’ll leave that up to you. The basics are that Dropbox provides an offsite backup of your important files with little hassle and no cost. If the 2 GB limit is too small for you, there are premium accounts that offer lots more storage.

The goal is to not have a panic attack when your hard drive fails.