s1LX

20 popular and easy to guess passwords!

// January 30th, 2010 // No Comments » // Tech News

If you want to protect your online accounts from hackers, rule number one is to select strong, hard to guess passwords.

However, a recent report by the guys at Internet security firm Impervia, suggests that Internet users are still relying on the same kind of predictable passwords that they used a decade ago.

Password strength

Impervia released a list of the top 20 passwords, which were found when RockYou.com was hacked last month.  According to Impervia, these were strikingly similar to the passwords used on Hotmail.com, when that too was breached almost 20 years ago!

Starting with the most commonly used, the 20 most popular passwords were:

1. 123456
2. 12345
3. 123456789
4. Password
5. iloveyou
6. princess
7. rockyou
8. 1234567
9. 12345678
10. abc123
11. Nicole
12. Daniel
13. babygirl
14. monkey
15. Jessica
16. Lovely
17. michael
18. Ashley
19. 654321
20. Qwerty

It’s clear for all to see that many people are still using predictable strings of letters and numbers and names as their passwords.  Obviously, if you are using ANY of these, it’s a good idea to change it for something stronger; to avoid the risk of a brute force attack.

Password tips

A pdf on the Impervia website gives some more detail AND some good advice on how to build strong, memorable, passwords.

Image credit: The English Guy

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Finland offer 100 meg broadband to everyone

// January 25th, 2010 // No Comments » // Tech News

The government of Finland has just announced plans to offer a 100 megabit broadband connection to every home and business in Finland!

This follows on from their declaration last year; that a broadband Internet connection is a human right – and that every home in Finland will have a minimum 1 megabit per second connection.

100 megabit connection by 2015

The plan is for every home or business is to be within 2 kilometres of a super fats, 100 megabits fibre connection.  Whilst some homes will need to face the cost of that last 2 kilometres of fibre, it’s an opportunity that’s a pipe dream (sorry for the pun) for most of us.

When you consider that the population of Finland is under 6 million, yet its population is spread over an area that’s roughly the same size as the UK and Ireland combined, this is quite a project.

Well done Finland

I applaud the Fins for aiming at such a lofty goal.  I also hope it encourages (or shames) other governments to start investing in the kind of broadband infrastructure that people and businesses need.

Photo: Mauroguanandi

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The Tech News Blog moves to Headway

// November 6th, 2009 // No Comments » // Tech News

As regular readers will notice, the Tech News Blog has changed a lot this week.

Originally, the blog was on the Thesis theme; which is one of the cleanest looking Wordpress themes on the planet. However, I found Thesis way too hard to adapt and modify myself.

For a few months, I tried using a glossy looking theme, but it looked way too glossy; like a technology website (CNET / ZDNET) – rather than a tech news blog (Scobleizer / LouisGray.Com)

Whilst I wanted the clean simplicity of Thesis, I needed a theme that gave me 100% freedom to design, tweak and modify the blog myself – without having to learn HTML/CSS or hire a expert.  So, I decided to use Headway (I’m now an affiliate) instead.

On Thursday, I added the Headway theme to the blog and in less than 30 minutes, everything was ready!

You know what?  I’ve often spent twice that long looking for how to make one change to a blog, than it took me to configure this whole blog using Headway.  The design you see right now may not be what you personally like, but I assure you it’s exactly the way I want it to look – with zero compromise.

Quick overview of Headway

I am not going to bore you with an insane list of what this theme can do, so here’s a tiny example of things that I was able to do in less than 60 seconds.  Nothing I have done here required me touching the code – it’s all drag and drop baby!

• With 2 clicks of a mouse, I can change where the top navigation menu sits; either above the header, below the header or turn it off and have it some place else completely.
• I can also add drop down menus to the navigation bar.
• Oh, and I can drag the navigation buttons into whatever order I want.
• I can change the size / dimensions of the blog in seconds.
• In seconds, I can resize any content area, simply by dragging it across the screen with my mouse.
• The same is true of the sidebars.
• Plus, I can make sidebars look totally different on each page. For example:
  • Imagine you have a page on your blog, which sells your services. The sidebar for that page could be an animated list of testimonials.
• I can change the header image in seconds. No FTP access required and as with everything else in this list, no need to touch the CSS either.
• As far as I can see, I can change the colour of everything / anything in seconds.
• Simply by pointing and clicking, I can change the font, font size and font colour of text.
• I can also change the colour of hyper-links to anything, in just 2 clicks.
• I can add a new header image in seconds, without even using FTP!
• I can set the blog to automatically send each new post to Twitter, as soon as it’s published.
• There’s stacks more things I could add here.

If you are a blogger and want full control over your blog, using drag and drop – you need to check out Headway(affiliate link.)

Full disclosure

Headway is the first theme I have ever been an affiliate of and the first product I have ever promoted on this blog as an affiliate. It’s simply amazing and has transformed the way I blog.  It’s also saved me hundreds, by being able to do everything, in minutes, myself.  As you will have seen, I give full disclosure when I link to an affiliate site. It may look weird, but I believe in total transparency.

If you want to take control of your blog and get great, professional results (without having to wait for or pay for professional help), I strongly recommend you take a good look at Headway.

Check the video’s out by clicking the banner below!

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Twitter.com about to get stickier!

// November 5th, 2009 // No Comments » // Tech News

I was reading this post on mashable earlier, from one of my favourite tech bloggers, Jennifer Van Grove.  It’s about a new ‘tweet notification’ feature that Twitter are planning to add, for people who use the Twitter website to tweet.

Twitter business model to include advertising?

This got me thinking.  In recent weeks, Twitter has made a number of significant improvements to the functionality of the main Twitter website.  Most recently we saw the addition of the superb Twitter Lists feature, but Twitter are ALSO working on a new retweet feature too.  These improvements have one thing in common; they render web-based apps like Tweetdeck and (my favourite) Seesmic Desktop less and less essential.

Both Tweetdeck & Seesmic Desktop are superb apps, but they are also a lot more resource hungry, than simply using a browser to access the Twitter website. Now that users are able to get all the core functionality direct from Twitter.com, using their favourite lightweight browser – There’s less motivation for NEW Twitter users to bother installing the aforementioned Twitter apps.

The Twitter team are actively, suddenly doing everything they can to make Twitter.com stickier.  Obviously, this keeps MORE new users on Twitter.com.

Here’s why I think these recent moves by Twitter are so interesting, from a business model point of view.

Twitter’s business model puzzle

One of the biggest challenges Twitter has had to deal with, is how to turn the popularity of the service into an effective business model.  A big reason that this has been such a challenge, is that only a small percentage of tweets are sent via Twitter.com.  As a result, Twitter gets just a small percentage of the ‘eyeballs’ it could have; rendering Twitter.com far less attractive for potential advertisers.

I believe the recent introduction of Twitter Lists, project retweet and now the new ‘updates’ feature,  show that Twitter is focusing hard on developing a key part of their business model around advertising on Twitter.com.  As I mentioned some time ago, Twitter users in some Asian countries already see small banner ads on Twitter.com.

Conclusion

Whilst many longer term users will want to stick with their favourite Twitter desktop apps, there’s less and less reason for new desk-based users to want to use them.  This should see a significant increase in the number of people using Twitter.com and as a result, transform the site into a more attractive platform for future advertisers.

Very few users of Twitter are likely to object to ads, particularly if they are somehow targeted around the user’s tweets, so they are relevant.  Maybe Twitter users with an objection, could opt to pay a fee to have these ads removed; like wordpress.com do for their users.

What do you think?

BTW: You can follow me on Twitter here @s1LX.com

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Friendfeed’s Paul Buchheit confirms no more features coming to Friendfeed!

// October 21st, 2009 // No Comments » // Tech News

Friendfeed’s Paul Buchheit has just confirmed to me that the next ‘big’ new feature coming to Friendfeed, will be the last.  This comes a day after Buchheit issued a confusing statement about the future of the platform he co-founded.

Here’s what Buchheit just told me, in full:

Jim, there may be a few new things, but as I said, the team is mainly working on fb platform and openness, so it’s unlikely that there will be any big new features of ff (except maybe one that I’ve been thinking about for a while…).

So, whilst reports of Friendfeed’s imminent death seem to be premature, Buchheit’s message suggests that the platform is no longer being actively developed.

This news is of little surprise, coming just weeks after Friendfeed was acquired by Facebook in a multimillion dollar buy-out.

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Friendfeed’s Paul Buchheit talking in riddles over future plans

// October 20th, 2009 // No Comments » // Tech News

As long time readers will know, I have been a champion of Friendfeed for quite a while.  I have almost two and a half thousand subscribers there and have connected with some amazing people.

Friendfeed after Facebook’s acquisition

However, following Facebook’s acquisition, Friendfeed has been left to gather dust. Certainly, many of the users I used to connect with, have either left Friendfeed or hardly use it now.  Take Robert Scoble for instance.

Scoble is the most followed or ’subscribed to’ user on Friendfeed.  Here’s what he said recently;

“I can’t keep focusing on a site that isn’t getting developed. Sorry. That’s not what I do.”

Friendfeed co-founder Paul Buchheit talking in riddles

Scoble is not alone! Last weekend, a number of other high profile users started openly debating its future.  This was Friendfeed’s opportunity to kill the rumours.  Instead, a PR-Speak message was left by Friendfeed co-founder Paul Buchheit.  Sadly, Buchheit has raised more questions than he answered.

Here’s what he said:

There was a lot of chatter about the future of FriendFeed this weekend. The short answer is that the team is working on a couple of longer-term projects that will help bring FriendFeedy goodness to the larger world. Transformation is not the end. Consider this the chrysalis stage — if all goes well, a beautiful butterfly will emerge

Friendfeed users ignored

After that comment, Buchheit was obviously asked to clarify what on earth he was saying – ya know, in English!

Sadly, he declined.  In fact, at the time of writing this, he’s not replied to a single question.  It’s worth remembering here that most tech commentators saw Facebook’s acquisition of Friendfeed as a ‘talent grab‘ – a way to buy great quality people. Few people believed Facebook had any interest whatsoever in the Friendfeed platform.

For example, is his reference to “bring FriendFeedy goodness to the larger world” saying, as some suggest, that they are exclusively developing Friendfeed as an ‘add-on’ for Facebook (the larger world) now?

Equally, these riddles and the silence that followed, are of no help to the developer community, who have asked if they should still be investing their time, developing apps for Friendfeed.  Again, no reply.

Friendfeed – Not so ‘friendly’ any more

It’s sad that many of the users that Paul Buchheit (and his colleagues) are now ignoring, are the same Friendfeed users, who helped him build the platform’s user base – A platform they have reportedly sold for tens of millions of dollars.  Way to treat your users guys!

Whilst I now spend hardly any time on Friendfeed, I’m NOT deleting my Friendfeed account.  I am going to keep my fingers crossed and hope for the best.  Who knows?  Like most people, I have no idea what Buchheit was talking about and the future of Friendfeed remains to be seen.  It is still an amazing platform.

Do you speak Buchheit’s language?

I’ve spoken to half a dozen people about what Buchheit has said and none of them could agree as to what his actual message was.

What’s YOUR take on this. Get in touch!

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Balloon boy hoax, CNN and Twitter

// October 18th, 2009 // No Comments » // Tech News

So, as most people realised within 30 seconds of hearing the unlikely balloon boy story, it was a hoax.

Balloon boy was a non-story from the start

The father’s decision to call a TV company on thinking his child was missing in a weather balloon, rather than the emergency services, sounded strange and should have alerted CNN that this was a publicity stunt from the very start.

Image Credit: The Daily Telegraph

Then, when the networks find out within minutes, that the father was also a contestant on a reality TV show, (and that he had his children performing on Youtube), it seemed even more like a publicity stunt from someone obsessed with being famous.

The odds of there ever being anyone in that balloon were close to zero.  BUT this did not stop CNN covering the event live – AND let’s face it, there’s plenty of REAL news happening right now.

Why broadcast the balloon boy story when it was so flimsy?

A few years ago, stories were researched before they were broadcast and that’s the first we would know of them.  Today, every time a big story breaks, it’s picked up on Twitter first and the news companies / TV networks are left playing catch-up.  This is BAD NEWS for the networks, as it means they no longer get all those valuable viewers / listeners to advertise to.  Remembering, advertising revenue is what funds the networks. (Excluding The BBC here in the UK.)

Whilst Twitter is a super fast way of getting breaking news, it has one well-known, massive weakness – It’s extremely unreliable as a news source.  You hear of a celebrity dying, (like Jeff Goldblum recently) and you know there’s a good chance that he’s probably water-skiing or in the gym training for a marathon.  Like most people, I’ve lost count of how many disasters I have seen on Twitter as breaking news, which never actually happened.

That’s why whenever a big news story breaks on Twitter, the first thing most intelligent people do, is check to see if the news networks are confirming it. The news might break first on Twitter, but like the boy who cried wolf, we never know if we can trust it or not.

News outlets playing to Twitters strengths

The strength of the established news outlets and TV stations is their highly trained staff, their network of contacts and their researching skills. However, rather than play to their strengths, the news outlets and TV stations are trying to compete with Twitter on speed – a race that they can not win, if they want to remain a trusted, reliable source. That’s why we can expect to see more balloon boy non-stories in the future.  From here in, I think I’m going to refer to this speed over facts bullshit as ‘ balloon boy journalism.’ (You saw it here first folks!!)

I’m hoping that this dumb-ass story isn’t the starting pistol, as the news outlets take their places for a ‘race to the bottom’.  Yes, there has always been political bias in the news and yes, the news outlets have often got things wrong.  However, focusing on speed rather than facts is hardly going to improve the quality and reliability of the news we watch or hear.

Balloon boy journalism plays into Twitters hands

If this really is a sign that the news outlets are going to focus on speed, rather than facts, Twitter could become our most valuable news outlet.  At the moment, the only thing Twitter has over the traditional news outlets is speed.  However, if the news outlets become just as unreliable, no one will bother checking a story out via their TV, radio or the website of one of those currently, trusted outlets.

People will see a story break on Twitter and stay there, until it’s either called out as a hoax or confirmed as a fact.  After all, as in the fake Jeff Goldblum death story I mentioned earlier, many TV stations report Twitter hoaxes as facts anyway.  Surely, for the news outlets to compete and survive, they need to play to their strengths and spare us more balloon boy ’stories’?

What do you think?

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Someone PLEASE turn off the Live Blogging hosepipe!

// October 15th, 2009 // No Comments » // Tech News

Once again, hundreds or maybe thousands of people, attending the SAME event at the SAME time are ‘live blogging’ the SAME content to (mostly) the SAME people.

So-called ‘live blogging’ was once a useful practice, where a small number of people attending an event, would send key messages via Twitter, to their targeted followers.

Live blogging Blog World Expo #bwe

However, today – when almost every attendee at these events is tweeting everything they hear, live blogging has become (at best) a nuisance for Twitter users.  The deluge of duplicate messages coming from is week’s Blog World Expo #bwe is the latest example.

At one point yesterday, I saw the same Tweet on my screen 7 times in around 3 minutes.  Yes, of course I unfollowed the culprits!

Live blogging from the gurus

There is something REALLY funny, about listening to the worlds leading ’social media gurus,’ spraying the same hosepipe of identical information to their followers.  After all, THESE GUYS are the self-appointed experts.   Their inability to realise how pointless it is, to tweet the exact same ‘news’ as the guy sitting next to them is laughable.

Maybe they need to read their own books on how to use Twitter, (great value at just $9.99! with coupon code #bullshit.)

Live blogging does still have a place, as was very powerfully demonstrated at a number of recent, under-reported world events.  But to sit in an air-conditioned exhibition venue, surrounded by thousands of people already tweeting every point made by every speaker is insane.  If these people REALLY want to provide something of value, surely it would be better to write a blog post, based on THEIR unique understanding of what they discovered?

Am I being unfair here?

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Autistic UK hacker loses latest appeal

// October 10th, 2009 // No Comments » // Tech News

Gary McKinnon is to be sent by the UK government to the United States for trial, following the failure of his latest appeal against extradition.

McKinnon has a form of autism, which his legal team and doctors claim will lead to “disastrous consequences” for his health, including possible psychosis and suicide; if he is extradited.

McKinnon admits accessing the United States military computer network, though has always claimed this was to find proof of alien fuel technology.  Prosecutors claim his access caused close to a million dollars worth of damage; which has bee hotly contested by McKinnon’s legal team.

The 43 year old hacker faces up to 60 years in prison if found guilty.  His case has been championed by human rights groups and a number of celebrities, including; Bob Geldof, Chrissy Hynde and Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour.

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The Federal Trade Commission: Bloggers must declare freebies

// October 5th, 2009 // No Comments » // Tech News

FTC to fine bloggers who fail to declare payment / gifts for posts

The United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has finally acted to let consumers know that the reviews and testimonials they see on many blogs are only given, because the blogger is getting paid or ‘gifted.’  Although bloggers will still be able to accept money or goods for reviews and posts, they will soon be legally bound to let the reader know. Full FTC press release:

For blogs like this, that offer full disclosure and do not accept any payment for posts, this means we finally get a level playing field; at least within the USA.

Bloggers failing to declare that they are taking money or freebies for writing reviews / posts, could soon be fined up to $11,000.  Whilst this may stop a few smaller blogs writing undisclosed posts for PR firms, it’s hardly going to stop the big blogs – which are rewarded very highly for the coverage they give certain favoured brands.

The FTC and Twitter’s Controversial SUL

Will bloggers on this list NOW have to declare it in their Twitter-related posts?
This raises a question about the highly controversial way that Twitter has randomly ‘gifted’ certain bloggers with (literally) hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of traffic, via their Suggested User List or SUL.

I assume this means that blogs, like my personal fave tech blog (mashable.com) will now have to declare, in each post they write about Twitter, that Twitter gifted them a place on Twitter’s Suggested User List?  After all, in mashable’s case, this gift from Twitter has gained them ONE AND A HALF MILLION new followers since they joined it and (apparently) a huge surge in traffic.

For blogs like mashable, traffic equals money.  This massive increase in traffic dramatically increases their advertising income and as such, is of enormous financial benefit to them.
BTW: Why I love mashable.

Who will the FTC’s decision really hit?

This effort by the FTC is a nice try, but I don’t think it will work, because consumers tend to read the best known blogs.  I can’t see the A-List bloggers suddenly revealing to their readers, all the; gadgets, flights, software, invites, hotels, licenses, VIP passes, hardware etc that they have been ‘gifted.’

However, I can see some poor bastard kid, with a small blog, getting busted for writing a review of some $30 game, because he or she was given a free copy of it to review and they didn’t declare it.

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