I’ve got something (ringing) up my sleeve

Tuesday, August 31st, 2010

I don’t know about you, but when I leave home I have a little mantra I say to myself to make sure I haven’t forgotten anything.

Yours will vary of course, but mine goes – wallet, phone, cigarettes, keys, lighter, Oyster.

It tends to ensure I have everything to keep me going throughout my day without a massive panic and, of course, the wallet (and perhaps cigarette) is there in case of emergency.

I don’t think it will be a shock to you that I manage to put said items into a bag to carry. I can’t say I have a classy Chanel handbag or anything – I actually have a freebie netbook bag that does the job fine – but I manage to carry everything around without concern or thinking to myself: “If only I could carry these things within my clothing.”

No, I didn’t think you had gone through that process either, but guess what? This is the key selling point of a new product set to launch in the UK.

For us women who don’t have the luxury of multiple pockets for all our bulky gadgetry, we will soon be able to eliminate the need to carry our mobile around at all by having one built into another female staple – the little black dress.

Oh, I wish I was joking. The M-Dress will reportedly keep your SIM card under the label and use ‘special gesture recognition software’ to establish when you lift your arm in order to answer the call.

“The M-Dress (Mobile Phone Dress) was designed after our research showed that very often phone calls are missed because mobile phones are quite awkward to carry, especially for women, that have garments with small or no pockets,” read the website of London-based designers, CuteCircuit.

“To allow women to stay connected while remaining stylish, CuteCircuit designed the M- Dress. A mobile phone in its own right but built out of soft circuitry.”

Let me start by saying – if we want to talk stereotypes of women – there tends to be a bag involved somewhere. As I previously mentioned, I may not fall into that category, but I have seen enough episodes of Sex and the City to know women like bags as much as they like shoes, dresses and painfully unsuitable men. So, no matter how small the bags are, the phone will fit.

Secondly, research. They really researched this? I am sure many people would have said they didn’t get in their pocket in time to answer a call before but how many said the answer was implanting it in their sleeve? I am guessing very few.

Thirdly, I have to question stylish. Nothing wrong with the dress at all for looks, it is just a sleek little black number. But how is one expected to look stylish when they are walking around talking to their wrist or unable to lift their arm for fear of drop calling somebody in their phonebook?

I get that the future will be full of quirky little tech objects that will soon become old hat for many, but I truly cannot envisage a Saturday night on the tiles with all the women wearing the same dress just so they didn’t have to splash out on a bag to keep their mobile in.

But for those of you who are interested, it is set to be released in the shops from next year.

Sorry, got to go, my wrist is ringing…

The Big Hacker Conspiracy

Tuesday, August 31st, 2010

Is there a big hacker conspiracy happening right now inside your business? Research coming out of the DEFCON hacker convention suggests there is…

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aTV Flash, almost essential

Sunday, August 29th, 2010

Our biggest complaint with the otherwise excellent AppleTV is the limited number of video formats it will play. Our Mac Pro spends many hours converting films into a format our AppleTV can use.  The conversions often take as long as the recording takes to play, which can mean all night sessions. We also want to stream BBC iPlayer videos so we were we were keen to try aTV Flash. (more…)

Bloody Foreigners in Online Visa Scam

Sunday, August 29th, 2010

The Daily Mail readers who have arrived here expecting to find more fuel to feed the immigration debate will be bitterly disappointed, because in this case it is they who are the bloody foreigners at the centre of the story.

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Hacking the cloud

Saturday, August 28th, 2010

Cloud security is a hot potato, but to be honest much of the media hype is pretty half-baked. Securing data in the cloud isn’t that much of a huge leap from securing data anywhere else, or so you would think. Yet a new survey carried out from amongst the good, the bad and the ugly attending the DEF CON 2010 hacker event in Las Vegas would seem to suggest that those who would access your data without permission see the cloud as something of a sweet shop ripe for the raiding right now.

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Are tobacco firms circumventing ad laws using web?

Thursday, August 26th, 2010

Tobacco companies have not always been seen as the most innocent of corporate bodies, so perhaps it comes as no surprise researchers have suggested cigarette makers are using the web to get around advertising regulations.

Tobacco companies deny using the internet to promote cigarettes, while YouTube has said it does not accept paid-for tobacco advertising, as reports have noted.

The New Zealand-based researchers suggest they found some professional looking videos on YouTube that in some way promote smoking.

Now, I had a quick poke around on YouTube and, using some basic key terms, couldn’t find too much evidence of the researchers’ claims. On Facebook there are a couple of webpages related to some tobacco brands, but they could easily be user made.

Nothing looked like it was designed by a high-class marketing team. Of course, the researchers may point out to me that the tobacco companies are being clandestine in their approach.

I would also question how these adverts are being accessed, however. Are they being thrust in front of online users? I haven’t seen any evidence of that and I spend far too much time on the web. Are people actively looking for them? I don’t know anyone sad enough to carry out such searches and hope to never meet such a person.

Nevertheless, if cigarette companies did ever get around the law by advertising on the internet in some way, would it really shock anyone?

Let’s face it, the internet has provided a new home for wrongdoers, as well as a range of morally dubious content from disturbing carnal acts to ladies who inexplicably place cats in bins. Where would you put online cigarette ads, if they did exist, on the scale of internet evil? It wouldn’t be anywhere near the top of my list.

Regardless of whether tobacco firms have been able to circumvent regulation or not, it is obviously not as difficult to get away with naughty stuff on the web as it is in the corporeal world.

The question that that I’d like to know the answer to is this: are some/many big businesses taking part in the online criminal world and if so, to what extent?

At the third stroke, 91.9 percent of your email will be crap. Beep, Beep, Beeeeep!

Thursday, August 26th, 2010

Spam has long since stopped being a problem for me, mainly because my email service filters it out of view. However, that does not mean that spam itself is not problematical, and hugely so if the numbers from a new report are to be believed.

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Adam and Jane and BT Broadband speeds

Wednesday, August 25th, 2010

No blocking doesn’t mean they are your real friends Mark…

Tuesday, August 24th, 2010

I like to think I have long left the days behind me when it would be a contest to see who had the most friends on social networking sites.

Back in the humble beginnings of MySpace, when I was in my teens, there was stiff competition. Don’t get me wrong, I was a bit of a loser and all my friends had way more buddies than I did so I never bothered to take it too seriously. However, the ones who were winning in the friends count definitely took pride in their so-called achievements.

Nowadays Twitter is the enemy. The battle for the most followers gets masses of press coverage for no apparent reason and, on a more personal level, most of us keep an eye on our follower to following ratio.

But Facebook? Now, this was a social network that never got me caught up in trying to get people to read my inane babble.

Unlike MySpace and Twitter, where those befriending you are often unknown, Facebook has always been dedicated to those I know in the flesh, people I regularly want to contact and those I want to know about.

Yes, this means I have had to ignore a few people along the way, and I have even got round to blocking some of them, but I felt happy with this balance of social networking conduct.

Today though, it seems there is one person I can never stop from invading my profile, no matter how hard I try.

Several reports today have shown Mark Zuckerberg, founding friend of Facebook, cannot be blocked from your profile and trying to do so will just produce an error message.

What’s wrong Mark? Have you been turned down by prospective friends just one too many times on your own site? Did you have similar experiences to me on MySpace and have your friends laugh at your relative unpopularity?

Look mate, I understand how painful it can be but stamping your foot around like you own the place… OK, bad choice of words, but stamping nevertheless is a tad childish don’t you think?

Plus, I am sure after the Facebook movie comes out and all the girls realise how loaded, I mean lovely you are, you will be flooded with friend requests.

In reality, reports have suggested Facebook stopped the ability to block him after it was used as a method of protest against privacy disputes, but to me this is also childish. How can you promote a network of people coming together to share thoughts and ideas but then try and stop them when they act on it?

I admit, I have never had a notification telling me Zuckerberg has added me and, especially after this blog, I find it very unlikely it will happen. However, whatever the reason for stopping people blocking him, I think it is ludicrous. You made the rules Zuckerberg, now live with the consequences.

But if you want to save his pride, perhaps just de-friending him would be the best start? I didn’t think so…

Why the bean counters are wrong

Monday, August 23rd, 2010

In 2009, according to a global security study by Symantec earlier this year, some 75 percent of organisations had experienced a ‘cyber attack’ of some sort. If you think that is a little surprising, not to mention downright concerning, wait until you read this bit: the report also reckoned that 100 percent of enterprises had suffered a ‘cyber loss’ last year. OK, the definition of cyber loss is pretty broad, but nonetheless when you are looking at theft of IP, credit card data theft and personally identifiable customer data losses (and those were the top three in the report) which turn into bottom line financial losses some 92 percent of the time, then it’s more than a little worrying don’t you think?

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