Mobile Stuff

Apple’s day-old iPad 2 may have a defect with backlight bleed. Also, the post hints at iPad 3 later in the year with Retina display. Guess that’s two good reasons to wait another round! At the same time, the curious folks over at AnandTech have been taking a detailed look at iPad 2 GPU performance. At least things look good there. Think I’ll still wait, though.

Also on the mobile front (yes, I consider iPad a mobile device, unlike Facebook), Android devices recently had a malware infection that led to Google stepping in to remotely kill the malicious software. This led to the article in my Twitter feed on walled garden technology. Basically, it points out that the prolific growth in Android and iOS based devices is essentially giving to large corporations (i.e., Google and Apple) a big red button they can push at any time to shutdown, among other things, the primary source of Internet access for a great many people.

Twitter is not s-m-r-t

Twitter is also building their own walled garden after letting everyone play in the backyard until now. It was announced that the company would prohibit any new third-party clients for the insanely popular Web service. You can even say that it was this playing around by third-parties creating great, usable Twitter clients that allowed the company its meteoric rise.

This kind of protectionism is never received well on the Interwebs. Even DHH chimed in and a very thoughtful open letter to Twitter by Fred Oliveira. He definitely seems like he has a mind for this kind of stuff, so my recommendation is that Twitter consider his points. He also mentioned Twitter’s other recent major kerfuffle, the #Dickbar, so bonus points to him. Also you can follow Fred as @f on Twitter. That’s pretty sweet!

Politically Infographic

Brief intermission on the tech news. Here’s an infographic (albeit, not a very fancy one) on tax breaks for the wealthy vs. federal programs on the chopping block. It’s on the Internet, so believe at your own risk.

The Good of Google

Co-founder of O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, Bryce Roberts, talks some about Google and Facebook at their best and worst. He uses the Crisis Response team as an example of Google doing one of the things it is good at: “use technology to organize information in a time its most needed”.

Google also is looking to build a better boss. As one would expect, they used lots of data to come up with Eight Good Behaviors (and some pitfalls) to guide managers. Reading about their process is as interesting as the actual output of their effort.

Here are the rules, in order of importance:

1. Be a good coach
2. Empower your team and don’t micromanage
3. Express interest in team members’ success and personal well-being
4. Don’t be a sissy: Be productive and results-oriented
5. Be a good communicator and listen to your team
6. Help your employees with career development
7. Have a clear vision and strategy for the team
8. Have key technical skills so you can help advise the team

Being I’m a manager of people and teams myself, this great stuff. I advise anyone in a similar position to make sure to read this one.

On Bellwether Events

The first panel on the first day of the 2011 South By Southwest conference talked about unleashing employees to create empowerment in the workplace. This coincides well with Google’s rules for managers, but probably a lot more difficult for organizations with a lot of history and process at their backs. Sounds like time to break some molds!

TED is another big conference at the forefront of a lot of today’s thinking on technology, science and art. Edward Tenner provided this brief glimpse into becoming a TED speaker.

Crazy-Busy

People are always looking for ways to streamline how they do work, myself included. Jill Konrath, author of SNAP Selling, shares some ideas to avoid feeling crazy-busy. Nothing groundbreaking here, but this kind of stuff is always a good reminder. Here’s the quick list:

1. Pick the “One Thing”
2. Put up a Barricade
3. Dump Your Ideas

Entrepreneurship

Earlier in the year, Google released it’s Panda update to reduce the influence content farms have in search engine rankings. Itinerant entrepreneur, Robert Dempsey, notes that only impacted the content farms themselves but also a lot of affiliate marketers who relied on links from those sources. He claims the war is on for affiliate marketing. He even has some suggestions on how to be ready for it. Short version: make blogs with original content added over time.

If you try to keep up on Hacker News in any way, there’s usually some new start-up announcement on the front page at all times. There’s been a lot of talk on the process of starting a start-up. One of those methods is known as Lean development. Jared Brown talks about  how Lean Startups Rule in his latest post. In related news, I’m going to go see Steve Blank in Ann Arbor talk about such things later this month.

Web Applications

Pinboard recently received massive attention as a replacement for the ailing Delicious service. A case study for simple systems has been made in demonstrating how their servers handled the massive spike when it was first announced Yahoo! was killing Delicious. Apache FTW! Here’s Pinboard’s own account of that fateful day.

ReadWriteWeb announced that NowJS is a new remote procedure call module for NodeJS to more easily enable real-time web applications. I keep putting off finding time to play around with NodeJS, but seeing this kind of stuff pushes me more and more.

I’m a huge fan of Instapaper. If I don’t have time to read an interesting article, I click one button to send it off to Instapaper and I can easily read it later. One of its best features is that when I go back to read the article, all the crap is removed and I get to read the article in a consistent and clean manner. Turns out the magic behind that austere look has a ton of work behind it in article text extraction from HTML documents. I’ve been looking at cooking up my own idea with similar behavior, so this is good stuff for me to hold go through. (I just read the post not all of the links in it.)

The End

Whew, finished! Lots of stuff from that informative Twitter feed of mine. Did you read any of these yourself? What was your favorite? Post a comment and let me know!

http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,2048138,00.html

Some of it honestly sounds like it’s straight out of the sci-fi series by Peter F. Hamilton I’ve been reading lately, so I’m interested to see what people think. Enjoy, and see you in 2045 when we all get assimilated!

p.s.- Apologies if I’m years late to the Singularity party and everyone I know is bored of discussing it. If that’s the case, who has the signup sheet?!?!

Jill has been keeping the family back here in the States updated as much as she can. She has a good network of people there – both Egyptian and other expats – who had been keeping an eye on the volatile situation. Things were most concerning when the Internet was down and phone use was sketchy. But today she sent out a much more celebratory message about what’s going on in Cairo along with some photos. With her permission, I’m posting what she shared with us…

Dear everyone,

I just returned from being out in the streets and words cannot even properly express the jubilation and elation that is in the air and visible on everyone’s faces and audible in their voices. It was like a massive parade. We walked as far as the bridge that runs directly into Tahrir (Liberation) square, but decided not to try to make it all the way down into the square (too crowded and smelly, from what I was told…), besides the celebration was in full swing on both sides of the bridge and filling the streets leading up to that area. Groups of people chanting “Hold your heads up high, you’re Egyptian!”, “Goodbye son of a thief”, and “The youth changed (or brought down) the system (regime)”. Entire families, including young children were out singing, dancing and waving Egyptian flags. (I dare say the people selling Egyptian flags in the street had quite a profitable day here).

Obviously everyone is waiting to see what comes next, but at the moment people are simply celebrating the fact that they were able to change the future of Egypt, and that their voices, for perhaps the first time ever, were heard and made a difference. One of the most amazing things (and respectable, in my opinion) about this revolution is that it was carried out in the name of PEACE. And while the road ahead remains a difficult one, their is hope in the hearts of everyone here that a democratic Egypt is possible. It will be interesting to see what happens in the coming days.

I have attached a few (bad) photos which do NO justice to what I actually witnessed/experienced. I was wishing for a much more sophisticated camera lense and flash at the time…oh well, if you want good pictures, then go to Al Jazeera to see them.

It’s nice that the energy in the air has turned positive! We were all holding our breaths after Mubarak’s disaster of a speech last night.

This has all been a bit of a crazy whirlwind experience but it is exciting to be witness to such a momentous historic occasion.

Hope all is well with you all, thank you all for keeping me (and Egypt) in mind these past few weeks. Look forward to catching up with you all soon.

-Jill

p.s.- I should also note that “son of a thief” is an insult to Mubarak, not his parents. It works much better in Arabic than in English… there were also lots of “long live Egypt” chants as well.

As Jill alludes, Egypt by no means became the pinnacle of open democracy immediately after this latest news. With reins handed over to the military, it will be very interesting to see how (if) converting to a democratic leadership actually occurs. I’m sure the world will continue to watch events (history, even) unfold.

Here are some pictures she sent us of celebrations going on around Cairo…

In the beginning

Let’s start with some background. Woot debuted in July of 2004. News traveled fast through the Interwebs about the cool, new one-day-one-deal site. I don’t know exactly when I found out about it, but I officially signed up and made my first purchase a few months later in October of 2004. I bought a blazing fast 8x DVD-ROM drive – not burner – for $13.99 (thanks Gmail for the archives!).

From that first introduction, I’ve purchased additional woots at least a couple times a year. Anything from ear muffs to an MP3 player to a desktop computer (the one I’m using now, in fact). Never had a problem or expectations not met. Woot had been good to me.

I also like to think I’ve been pretty good to Woot. Totaling up all my Woot acquisitions, I calculate having spent $1775.80 over the past 6 years on their site. Not massive by any means, but that’s certainly a good chunk to throw at one place that sells one thing at a time and usually has them quite discounted. In other terms, my 6 years of Woot purchases could have paid for roughly 3 years of high-speed cable Internet. That’s a whole lot of Internets!

My point being, I’ve willing paid Woot a lot of money for things that are very far from being the necessities of life. Not that Internet access is itself anywhere near being a necessity of life, but definitely something I use a whole lot more on a day-to-day basis.

(Frankly, this whole ordeal is very much an extremely first-world problem, but an ordeal I want to share, nonetheless.)

Things take a turn

So, all of that brings us to Cyber Monday of this year. Woot started one of their exciting Woot Offs for the occasion. Basically, instead of one deal for the whole day, they sell a single item until their allotted quantity is out, then they put up another item. I can’t remember the specifics, but at one point on Tuesday with the wootoff still in progress, I realized that their raiment site, shirt.woot!, was offering a few bucks off any of their top 25 shirts. $12 for anyone you wanted with free shipping. I found a great t-shirt for a yet-to-be-revealed recipient as part of the gift exchange with my siblings-in-law for Christmas. Perfect!

Honestly, it being November 30, I didn’t even consider the date and shipping times for something that was needed with roughly 3 weeks to go. We leave for Montana tomorrow (Dec. 19), but I didn’t even consider that to be an issue.

A series of horrible events

You know where this is going, but here’s the timeline. I ordered the shirt and successfully paid on Nov. 30. I received my confirmation/receipt email that day. My credit card shows it was charged on Dec. 1 for the order.

Woot generally takes a few days to actually ship purchases, and I knew that. No big deal. I didn’t actually get my shipping confirmation and tracking number until Dec. 6. Again, not concerned. It was traveling by SmartPost, so FedEx would have it most of the way with last mile delivery by USPS. This has worked beautifully in the past. No worries.

It was on Dec. 16, I actually registered that the shirt still hadn’t arrived. I looked up the tracking number and found out that the first entry by FedEx doing anything with the package (usually indicates when they first get their hands on it) was just 2 days before. The expected delivery date to be Dec. 20. The day AFTER I leave town. Ack!!!

The art of “how not to help”

I promptly typed an email to Woot describing the situation and indicating that I’m a bit more than miffed. I also noted that this was an intended Christmas gift that I would not have in time for my trip.
I get a very detailed and caring response from Woot:

I’m sorry, we had to print this design. Unfortunately, since it’s currently in transit, there’s nothing we’re able to do.

Really? That is all the more you care to provide when I’ve very clearly expressed my frustration. “Nothing” should NEVER be an answer to a customer complaint. At best, you’re going to alienate a random customer and probably not entice them to make another purchase. Much worse, you’re going to incite that customer into being more upset and making a bigger deal out of the situation. Guess which one I am!

Stee-rike 2!

Well, as satisfying as that response was, I was going to let that be the end of it. Oh, no. I indicated that the original response was unacceptable and need real options to resolve my situation. Over 24 hours after that email to them, I still hadn’t heard anything, so I fired off a reminder. Finally a reponse arrived this morning. It was the same line of “nothing we’re able to do” but with more words. I was kindly reminded of the delivery date and provide another link to the tracking number on FedEx.com. No kidding! I know the delivery date. That’s the whole point of my complaint! <SCREAM!!!/>

I would have taken any number of options besides “nothing”. Send out a new shirt to the Montana address I need it at and I’ll send back the other one when I get there. Offer to reroute the existing delivery to the new address. I don’t really care. Just SOMETHING would have been a sign of caring.

Strike 3, you’re out!

I’d also put a comment out on Twitter mentioning @woot and the poor experience. That was entirely dead air. Why even bother to have the account? At this point, my only recourse(s) for resolution was to go outside Woot to see what could be done. I still have an active tracking number with FedEx. They have real people on phones (pretty sure Woot doesn’t). Turns out that SmartPost doesn’t have any means of re-routing the package so it has to go to the USPS then out to the original destination (my office).

Woot received a final email expressing my severe disappointment with how this has been handled. Then I actually went through the trouble of totaling up all my previous purchases to see what my 6-plus year history with Woot has amounted to. That $12 shirt is less than 1% of my total purchases over the course of being a Woot customer, let alone the combined total of anyone reading this or who’s seen my tweets or Facebook posts. But to me, being it was a specifically chosen gift for someone else, that shirt is clearly worth well more than $12. And I won’t get it in time to give it to someone else. That sucks.

Socialnomics 1, Woot.com 0

And now I’m writing this massively detailed blog post indicating my frustration and the poor experience provided by Woot. That’s exactly what you don’t want happening as a company try to stay at the top in this high socially networked world we live in (aka, Socialnomics). I’m by no stretch a massively connected person, but between unique Twitter and Facebook connections that will at least see a link to this post, at least 300 people have the chance to see this. If even one of you chooses not to buy something from Woot because of this post or my other tweets, they’ve likely already lost the $12 it would have cost to make things right. That seems like a really stupid move.

Sure, I probably haven’t been a flawless customer in this exchange. Perhaps I should have been thinking more about delivery date way back in November. Maybe I just ended up having my situation reviewed by people on a bad day. I get that, but I don’t blame any individual for what’s happened including myself. Woot had the option to help one of their earliest customers and they failed.

We ARE on a break

At this point, I won’t be visiting Woot for a while. I’m not doing this to reach some sort of estimated dollar amount of reparations. Just general principle of having such a bad taste in my mouth form this. But, I’ve always enjoyed the snarky product descriptions and the neat, random offerings, so I’ll probably go back someday. But now I need to go find a Christmas gift for someone. Our plane leaves in exactly 24 hours.

Merry Christmas!

As we move into actual development, there have been some conversations over the technology stack we should use. Specifically, I was asked to make a comparison between PHP with MySQL and Ruby on Rails with a NoSQL option. The perception being that Rails and NoSQL was better, more scalable and certainly cooler than using PHP with MySQL.

Being I’m supposed to be the lead in this area, and seeing it as an opportunity to share knowledge, I did a bit of research to come up with decent backing for my thoughts. I  realize this has been discussed many times before, by smarter people than I, but the end result of my response seemed worth sharing with a wider audience. So, here it is with some minor modifications from the original…

Concerns on scaling… just wait for it

These are somewhat valid, but most software engineers would likely say don’t scale until you definitely need to. It will be obvious before it becomes an emergency/Twitter fail whale state. At the same time, you still need to be lined up for scaling before the very moment it becomes crtitical. DHH recommends not building web apps on Access “databases” in order to be at least somewhat prepared to scale.

All of Ruby on Rails, PHP (using a Web framework similar to Rails), MySQL and NoSQL data stores have options for adding scalability to them. It really comes down to whether or not that foresight was even remotely in consideration at the start of the project. If you’re reading this article, then you likely have that notion in hand. So I wouldn’t be concerned about preventing your systems from scaling when/should the need arise.

I’m fairly certain that Ruby vs. PHP is of negligible difference in performance as far as scaling concerns. Adding Rails on top of Ruby and some framework on top of PHP might make a greater difference, but I still couldn’t find much that was decisive regarding that kind of comparison. On the data side, even if you begin with MySQL as a relational database, it’s very doable to convert that to a NoSQL solution in order to gain added performance. Twitter didn’t abandon MySQL until it reached 50 million tweets a day! That’s nothing to say of its reading/surfing/non-tweeting traffic that was also putting demands on its systems.

This was a good thread on stackoverflow regarding some Ruby vs. PHP scaling:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2742580/scalability-of-ruby-on-rails-versus-php

Quoteable line: ”But keep in mind, that the need for scalability is something most of us wish they had, but really don’t.”

Ruby vs. PHP… FIGHT!

That kind of heading is often considered trolling for a flame war on just about every web development forum in existence. There will always be religious wars between people who prefer one language over another. I really try not to get steeped in those. However, I’ve been using PHP quite regularly for over 10 years at this point, and have only done a few things in Ruby over the past few years. So, in general I just know the ins and outs of PHP more than Ruby. In my book, neither one is really vastly superior to the other. I personally tend to lean towards PHP just because it’s more familiar to me. I know I can dig in faster and deeper rather than reminding myself of all the Ruby syntax to do the same thing (even if it is prettier). Do note, Rails does not come into the picture at this level. Additionally, code in any language can be written well and readable or downright crappy. That’s up to the people creating the application.

There are plenty of large, high-availability applications as examples of either language. Twitter, I think, still runs on Ruby. WordPress.com and Facebook use PHP.

Web frameworks… Can we fight now?

This is where Rails comes in. But there are also dozens of frameworks for PHP that to provide very similar functionality as Rails. Frameworks offer common web application functionality/structure instead of having to create it yourself. In the case of Rails, it allows the ability to use a very common development pattern known as the Model-View-Controller pattern (MVC). MVC gives you the ability to separate concerns (data, front-end/design, business logic) so that you’re not changing the file with all your business logic in it just to update a CSS font, etc. That’s a good and rather vital thing. However, since tons of frameworks offer this ability, there still isn’t a clear winner in this category. It still ultimately comes down to developer preference. No fighting necessary.

I’ve actually most recently been working in a newer framework that brings in an added layer to MVC (called HMVC for Hierarchical MVC). That’s called Kohana and it’s for PHP. I see HMVC offering even more ability to scale specific parts of applications, and so far everything I’ve done with Kohana has just made sense to me. I’ve been rather happy with it. It’s lightweight, but still powerful. It does what you want it do without so much black magic that you can also move it out of your way when you need more customization. But that’s just one lowly web developer’s opinion.

Here’s an article on being able to scale nicely with HMVC using Kohana:
http://techportal.ibuildings.com/2010/02/22/scaling-web-applications-with-hmvc/

You can do many, many other things to help scale PHP and Kohana. (Side note: that’s probably one of the most ridiculously thorough answers I’ve seen on Stack Overflow.)

Don’t use your platform to sell your app… it’s not as cool as you think

One other thing is I prefer to not have particular technology be a selling point for any web application. Sure, it can be something for über geeks to muse about when a web app reaches some level of ubiquity. Beyond that, users do not and should not care one bit about what language or framework or database a web app uses. As long as it solves their problem or pain, that’s all they need to know.

A final thought is that over-advertising the specifics about a web app’s platform can sometimes just invite hackers to take advantage of known exploits for the particular technologies involved. That’s perhaps one of the most important reasons to keep platform discussions internal to an organization. Safety and security first!

Conclusion

I could probably cover a few more points, but I’m trying to keep this from being a full day’s reading. Basically, I still believe there is no convincing technical reason to go one route or the other. Both languages with a suitable framework can very handily accomplish all of what most even modestly successful web applications aim to achieve, let alone a brand new site. If you run into any concerns about performance along the way, I assure you that will very much be a fantastic problem to both have and solve.

All that said, my personal inclination would be to go the route of PHP with a good framework (Kohana fits that bill) and MySQL. It’s more of a “leveraging existing knowledge” thing than it is a “better than the other” thing. But I’m always up for discussing more in-depth reasons to pursue other options.

So, do you agree with my assessment? Or does this not sit with you for some reason? Either way, let me know what you think!

Then, out of lazy Sunday curiosity, I started checking into Cholula’s brand online. It was nice to see they have a decent looking website and some cool “wearables” in their online store. However, their marketing site is entirely in Flash (navigation, forms, content, etc.), the baseball caps have sizes (WTF?) and they have no social networking presence, at least not anything actively operated by them. Apparently I’m feeling semi-activist today, so I chose to write them a letter with a laundry list of my thoughts. Here it is…

Hi, there. First off, I absolutely LOVE Cholula Hot Sauce! I was first introduced to it a few years ago and it was tasty from the first time on. Lately, I’ve been using it on just about everything possible and we need at least one bottle in our house at all times. So thanks for making such an awesome product!

Second, I’ve been a bit bummed that Miejer, the largest grocery chain in Michigan (in size of the stores and number of stores), hasn’t been carrying Cholula – at least the one closest to me. I’ve had to go to other stores (usually Kroger) just to get my Cholula fix. And then today, while crusing the aisles at Meijer, they had it on the shelf! Even though we have an unopened bottle at home, I bought another one just to reward them for stocking it (plus it was on sale). So, I definitely think you need to give Meijer credit on your Store Locator for carrying it now. Plus, you’re missing some Kroger stores in my zip code on your interactive map, so it’s due for an update anyway.

Third, seeing your web site for the first time today, it looks great. Simplistic but very tasteful… just like your hot sauce! However, the entirely Flash-based site is really annoying to be honest. Having  the little loader pop up every time I want to go to a different page gets old real quick. Not to mention, if I’m trying to tell others about Cholula while at a party, out at a restaurant, etc., people can’t look up the site on their iPhone, iPods, iPads, etc. With the mobile Internet device audience rapidly expanding, you may want to do something to address that. Just in case you didn’t realize, this is what your site looks like on my iPod Touch (it’s identical in functionality to an iPhone except the phone part):

http://bit.ly/bhWLmV

Again, the site looks great, but having it in all Flash is becoming more of a liability these days than it is an asset.

Along the same lines, you should really get your brand on Twitter and/or Facebook. You’re really missing an opportunity to connect with current and potential fans by not creating a presence there. Social commerce is the new way to create a loyal base of  customers. If you’re not in there creating your brand, you’ll either be left behind or someone will fill in the gap. See what the parody of BP’s PR department is doing at http://twitter.com/bpglobalpr as an example of what happens when an company doesn’t work to create their own name in the social networking realm. Actually, it looks like some variations on your name have already been swept up on Twitter. Not sure if you have someone on this yet, but you really should. Heck, I’d even be willing to help get things started if you don’t have anyone who is expert level at that kind of stuff.

Finally, I’m also interested in ordering a Cholula baseball cap (more promoting to others!). I can’t quite decide on red or black yet (red seems best tho), however my biggest hang-up was on the sizing. Why no One-Size-Fits-All option like every other hat I have? Are they fitted hats or something? I like them a lot but I have no idea what size I need to get. Is there actually a difference? I’ve just never really seen hats come in S, M, L, XL sizes to know what size I need.

So, again, Cholula is AWESOME, AWESOME stuff. Keep up the great work making a fantastic product that I love recommending to others. Especially up here in the northern Midwest, where the notion of hot sauce is usually some extra black pepper in our ketchup. But you’ve made a believer out of this guy from Scandinavian heritage. Thanks!

Sincerely,

Blake Nyquist

I suppose I should have devoted any activist tenancies to something much more meaningful to the world. I hear there’s a an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and there are children in need of clean water all over the globe. However, other than giving money to some charity (which we do a bit of already), I usually can’t contribute anything based on my knowledge and experiences. Providing substantive feedback to Cholula about their online brand is something that I could use my background to create, so I did.

Being I sent this out on a Sunday, I certainly don’t expect an immediate response. However, I’m very curious to see if there is any kind of reply at all. If I do get anything back, I’ll add it in the comments.

Have you ever taken time to provide a boatload of feedback to a large company that may or may not care? If so, how, why and what was the result? Also, have you ever tried Cholula® Hot Sauce? Isn’t it amazing??!!? Submit a comment with any of your thoughts on this stuff.

This really was one of the cooler assignments I’ve had to do so far for my Master’s program. I was required to go wardriving in my neighborhood and write-up my findings on “conducting the wireless survey,” which is just PC-speak for wardriving. So without further adieu, here is what I submitted for the assignment, with some minor edits, plus a bonus mention of a possible business venture/idea.

A couple other things to mention before starting in on the meat of things…

• This certainly isn’t ground-breaking research into the world of wireless network security. Other than the statistics from my survey, all of the information here has been widely known for some time. In fact, I could very well even have made some errors in my statements. Please let me know if I did by leaving a comment.
• I’ve added some more info via links at the bottom of the article. Feel free to check those out if you want to know learn more about wireless networks and/or wardriving.
• Until the end of post, the headings below are just the questions that needed to be addressed as part of my assignment. I could probably make them sound better for a blog post, SEO, etc., but I didn’t. Deal with it.
• In case you happen to be interested in copying my content for your own use, please don’t. I’m posting this here after the assignment deadline so at least no one from my class can plagiarize, but I really hope that won’t happen for any subsequent sections of the class or any other reason. Feel free to use it as information, but don’t do a copy+paste on it for your own purposes.

Describe your survey area in a short paragraph.

The area survey covered an approximately 2.7 mile stretch of the northern portion of the Groesbeck Neighborhood of Lansing, MI. The survey was conducted by driving the route shown below.

The path can be followed by a combination of the arrows and letter-based “destinations.” (The starting ‘A’ is behind the ‘G’ towards the lower right.) The survey included driving through the two noted apartment complexes indicated on the map, as well as on Lake Lansing Road, which has several businesses along either side.

Open VIStumbler on your mobile computer and determine how many wireless access points are found in your survey area and how many are active. Include a screen shot of the VIstumbler screen showing most of the found access points.

The screenshot does not indicate any of the active access points from the survey due to safety concerns of creating a screenshot while driving. However, several of the APs were noted as active while conducting the survey. A full screenshot of all the APs detected during the survey can be viewed at:

http://www.screencast.com/t/YTA1YWMx

How many access points did you find?

A total of 156 access points were detected while conducting the survey.

What percentage, or number, of the wireless access points was unsecured?

Of the access points surveyed, 39 (25%) had no security setup at all.

What percentage, or number, of the wireless access points was secured by encryption? (WEP is displayed even if it is secured by another method.)

The remaining 117 (75%) of detected access points had at least some form of encryption. The breakdown of encryption types is as follows:

Please recommend what the users should do to their wireless access points.  Include recommendations for securing the access.

In order to ensure proper security for a wireless access point, some form of adequate encryption should be turned on in order to gain access to the network. Adequate encryption no longer includes using wired equivalent privacy (WEP). Using WEP for wireless security can be cracked in minutes, allowing malicious attackers to easily gain access to the network. At a minimum, WPA encryption should be used, with WPA2 providing the highest grade of wireless encryption for general residential use. In either case, Personal WPA/WPA2 encryption using a pre-shared key (PSK)/personal mode requires a pass phrase of at least 20 characters to ensure adequate protection from cracking.

A final note is that if the user is not making use of wireless connectivity for their home network, either the wireless transmission from the router should be turned off or the AP should be entirely shutdown. This can be done either on a temporary or permanent basis.

What can the owner do to maintain open access and protect their home networks from this open access?

There are some methods of obfuscation that can be put to use on home networks in order to prevent light attempts to gain network access while maintaining an open access point. The first is to hide or not broadcast the service set identifier (SSID) for the AP. Any client trying to gain access to a wireless network needs to know the SSID in order to connect. However, the SSID, even if it is not broadcast, can still easily be discovered. Secondly, wireless APs can often restrict access to devices with approved/known MAC addresses. Any device without an approved MAC address will be rejected from authenticating on to the network. Again, any sophisticated attacker would be able to readily discover an approved MAC address and spoof it in order to penetrate the network. Just about any contemporary access point should have software that allows both of these features.

There are slightly more rigorous methods of protecting the network with an open access point. Using a virtual private network (VPN) is one of those methods. With a VPN connection, security is independent of the transmission path. Even if an attacker has gained access to the network, it would not be able to decrypt any of the traffic across the network. Another method would be to use a separate virtual LAN (VLAN) for the wireless devices. This would prevent any wireless connections from being able to communicate with any other devices outside the VLAN. This would allow any switched/hardwired connected devices to remain free of traffic interception from the open wireless network. Both of these methods usually require more sophisticated AP management software than what is typically provided by home use AP manufacturers. One recommendation would be to replace the AP’s firmware with DD-WRT software to enable this functionality. See http://dd-wrt.com for more information.

Amazing Business Idea!!!11oneone111

After seeing so many open/unprotected wireless networks lying around my ‘hood, I think there is a business opportunity for someone to improve the security situation. Chances are there would be a bit of education involved in getting people to understand the importance of proper security on their network and the risks of not using decent encryption. However, in the interest in making sure my neighbors are adequately protected from anyone wishing to get access to their networks, I think it would be worth the effort… for a small fee, of course.

Additional Information

As mentioned above, I used VIStumbler as the software tool of choice for conducting the survey. It works on Vista and Windows 7. It’s older cousin, NetStumbler is what I used a while back on Windows XP. If you need something for Mac or Linux, try KisMAC or Kismet respectively. There also plenty of other free wireless survey tools.

There are certainly ethical implications of wardriving that you should be aware of before attempting to detect wireless networks. If you really get into it, you should learn warchalking to share your findings with others.

As noted above, hiding the SSID for your wireless access point is NOT an adequate form of protection from attackers. Be careful and make sure to protect your data, privacy and sanity.

Has anyone else gone wardriving recently? Share what you found in your neighborhood by making a comment below. Thanks for reading!

Okay, I’ve got everything recorded in the appropriate posts as notes from the most excellent TEDx Lansing event today. It was a really great day with fantastic presentations. Tons of good thoughts and ideas for Lansing and all of Michigan. I certainly wasn’t perfect in recording things, whether omissions or inaccuracies, but I did what I could.

At some point, I’ll finish processing my overloaded brain and create some sort of reflections on the whole event. For now, this is just a one post to rule them all for the separate sessions. You can jump to anyone you’d like. Just click on “Session #” to see my notes. (I was going to use my original post for this, but that’s so two days ago now.)

Session 1

• John Hill – Affiliation Nation: Powering Up TEDx Lansing’s Interconnectivity
• Justin “Bugsy” Sailor – Road tripping: A journey of people
• Sam Singh – Seven Continents, Seventeen Months
• Allie Merrick – ARTiculation, the Art of Speaking

Session 2

• Bob Fish – Random Entrepreneurial Thoughts
• Erik Qualman – The Future of Social Commerce
• Patrick Retzer – Lifelong Learning from 10,000 Feet
• Ross Emmett – Innovation is an Act of Love

Session 3

• Bryan Ritchie – Dismantling the Shark Cage
• Karl Gude – Visualizing Information
• Mark Wilson – Fair Sins and Virtues
• Dirk Schweitzer – Genetic Genealogy
• Chip Brock – Mass Confusion: The LHC Challenge

Session 4

• Betsy Miner-Swartz – Be a Hero, Will You Save a Life Someday?
• David Murray – Michigan, Leading the FutureMidwest Movement
• Rory Neuner – Creating a Livable Lansing
• Matt Dugener – The Thing About Cheese and Underoos

Which presentation did you like or hate? For those not there, any you wished could have seen? Just post a comment here or on the specific session post. Let me know!

Links to the other sessions: Session 1, Session 2, Session 3

In this session:

• Betsy Miner-Swartz – Be a Hero, Will You Save a Life Someday?
• David Murray – Michigan, Leading the FutureMidwest Movement
• Rory Neuner – Creating a Livable Lansing
• Matt Dugener – The Thing About Cheese and Underoos

Be a Hero, Will You Save a Life Someday?

Presenter: Betsy Miner-Swartz

http://www.giftoflifemichigan.org

Betsy Miner-Swartz is a communications specialist with Gift of Life Michigan, Michigan’s only designated organ and tissue recovery organization. She is working to grow the Michigan Organ Donor Registry through statewide promotion of organ, eye and tissue donation.

Before her role with Gift of Life, Miner-Swartz was a newspaper reporter and editor, earning state and national awards for her work at the Times Herald in Port Huron and the Lansing State Journal.

Having lost her father to pancreatic cancer and mother to ovarian cancer, Miner-Swartz is intensely aware that each day is a gift. She’s extremely proud, motivated and grateful to work in a field that literally helps save lives every single day.

In Wyoming 79% of drivers are  registered organ donors. National average is 42%. Michigan is 25%. Michiganders now need to be in the Michigan Donor Registry. Michigan has 3000 people on organ donation waiting list.

No one is too old to donate. Had 90 year old kidney donor and 103 year old tissue donor. One donor can save up to 8 lives. 9 Michigan heroes saved 39 lives.

Real quiet in here. Ultimately positive but extremely sad stories to share. Got to be rough to deal with seeing this type of thing all time… But the flip side is those who received donations. They got a second chance on life  because of those heroes.

A lot of us do a lot of great things, but we often only get one chance to save a life. Organ donation is how we can do that.

Michigan, Leading the FutureMidwest Movement

Presenter: David Murray

http://www.themurr.com/
Twitter: @davemurr

David Murray is the director of Social Web Communications for re:group and enjoys helping businesses value the digital landscape and showing job seekers how to use social media to find new careers.

Murray came back to Michigan in 2008 after 10 years away and immediately went to work organizing Detroit’s Social Media Club chapter. As member of iDetroit, he has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal online and has been featured in David Meerman Scott’s blog Web Ink Now and his book, “The New rules of Marketing and PR.” He is also co-chair of FutureMidwest, a conference inaugurated earlier this year.

FutureMidwest was to re-educate our region.

“When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” – Yogi Berra

Moved back to Michigan from Arizona. Re-connected with a lot of people. People drive Michigan’s pride and passion. Out of state people saw and recognized this at FutureMidwest. Need to connect the hubs (Detroit, Ann Arbor, Lansing, Grand Rapids, Traverse City, etc.). Michigan needs to reclaim its brand.

Michigan = Opportunities

Dave lost his job 3 times since coming back to Michigan, but again, it’s not about the jobs. He was waiting for someone to have SXSW type conference Michigan. It didn’t happen. So, they did it. Huge attendance, blew out expectations.

Strangers are the true metric. Didn’t recognize half the people there. People need to move their small businesses into the digital domain.

Michigan is old. It is a bunch of separate communities. Need to extend digital handshakes to reach out to others. That will create the connections we need.

Passion attracts passion. Use this to rebuild Michigan. If you want limitations, all you have to do is ask for them. Just use your passion. Allow other people to participate.

Tear down your garden walls.

Creating a Livable Lansing

Presenter: Rory Neuner

Twitter: @rory_neuner

By changing to more walkable communities, we can reshape this region and encourage healthier, happier, safer, more sustainable and more affordable lifestyles. Rory Neuner has become integral in this pursuit and sees the potential in everything — even a simple sidewalk — a plain, yet key component to improving so many of the region’s problems, ranging from obesity to poor social connectivity.

Through Neuner’s attempt to change a culture of inactivity and childhood obesity she is creating networks with leaders in more than 20 states to find solutions to these issues. For more information, visit the Safe Routes to School National Partnership.

In Lansing, Rory is an active member of the Walk and Bike Lansing initiative. She’s also responsible for getting Lansing on the League of American Bicyclists‘  list of Bronze-level Bicycle Friendly Community Winners. She is co-founder of the Michigan Complete Streets Coalition, a group several Michigan organizations working to pass a statewide complete streets law that would improve the design and engineering of Michigan streets and roadways.

Other presenter’s make her point easier. Michigan is in the midst of a change. TEDx Lansing is about moving us through that change. Need to broaden our horizons.

Livability is a key component of that transition. It’s made up of:

• Design
• Transport
• Community
• Economy
• Sustainability
• Health
• Education
• Safety

Livable communities are walkable communities. Transport/mobility allows us to get to places, connect with others and partake in commerce.

Automobiles take up a lot of space. It’s hard to create density without talking about how we re-shape our environment

Success in the knowledge economy requires we rethink our environment.

Mobility = Options. When you wake up in the morning, you should have 3-4 options on how you get to work. This isn’t a zero-sum game and it’ss about the freedom.

40% of a trips we take in this country are 2 miles or less. Can we change?

[DOH! Netbook finally died after a full day of typing. Cutting over to the Notes app on my iPod... whew!]

Emerging Leadership

• Complete Streets
• Public Transit
• Many others…

The narrative for Michigan continues to be in the economic side, but we also need to think about the built-in environment.

In this session:

• Bryan Ritchie – Dismantling the Shark Cage
• Karl Gude – Visualizing Information
• Mark Wilson – Fair Sins and Virtues
• Dirk Schweitzer – Genetic Genealogy
• Chip Brock – Mass Confusion: The LHC Challenge

Dismantling the Shark Cage

Presenter: Bryan Ritchie

https://www.msu.edu/~ritchieb/

Bryan K. Ritchie is a professor of international relations and political economy at Michigan State University’s (MSU) James Madison College. His research and teaching focus on the political economy of innovation, entrepreneurship, technological development, skills education and training and social capital. He has received numerous teaching and research awards and has been published in several academic journals, newspapers, blogs and websites. He is the author of “Systemic Vulnerability and Sustainable Economic Growth: Skills and Upgrading in Southeast Asia,” and “Relationship Economics: The Social Capital Paradigm and its Applications” .

Ritchie is an entrepreneur. Prior to his academic career he started and managed multiple companies in the computer industry. He has also held management and consulting positions at numerous firms. Ritchie is an associate director for MSU’s BioEconomy Network and co-directs the Michigan Center for Innovation and Economic Prosperity. Ritchie received his Ph.D. from Emory University and his MBA from Brigham Young University‘s Marriott School of Management.

There are still sharks in the water, but things are changing. Institutions need to change. Michigan has created more wealth for more people in our history as an empire.

People are benefiting from the status quo. Not the most important reason these institutions persist. They persist because we think the way they tell us to think. Need to change our thinking in order to change our institutions.

Six ideas

Old Thinking: More jobs equals stronger economy

Jobs are not the positive. It’s the types of jobs that matter. Jobs that could go away are useless compared to jobs that are going to last.

Current Reality: Jobs are an outcome, not a cause

New Thinking: Create entrepreneurial and innovative enterprises

Economic hunting – trying to attract companies to your area. Usually through lowest cost of labor.

Economic gardening – ways to create incentives to establish and grow.

Taxes don’t matter. Simply a cost towards the bottom line. What we tax and regulate needs to coincide with what we provide in the community as value.

Old Thinking – Maximizing security and monimizing risk with long-time employment with big firms

Current Reality – The global econonmy and the rapid change in tech has made stability and security an illusion

New Thinking – Create institutions that absorb the negatives (risks) from change and do not punish failure (In Florida, if declared bankruptcy on a business, your primary residence is not at risk.)

Cool cities are also outcomes, not causes. Make it easy for people to try (in a calculated way) things.

Old Thinking – Education beyond high school is a luxury good that most do not need to make a living

Current Reality – The new break-even economic point for education is now a bachelor’s degree

New Thinking – Education = risk taking. Be creative in the environment

Old Thinking – Organized albor is needed to balance workers needs and rights with demands of management

Current Reality – technology is driving needs for higher skills

New Thinking – Labor must champion productivity and skills upgrading

Work needs to be an institutions of learning as much as if not more than an institution of earning

Need to foster ent. in a broad sense. New things anywhere and everyway. This is a culture change. Get involved in the policy process… how we create a new economy, not where the next 1000 jobs come from. Own the debate, lots of sloppy ideas. Make politicians know they have to do what’s right.

Search for pearls of economic development and growth.

Visualizing Information

Presenter: Karl Gude

http://visualeditors.com/gude/
Twitter: @karlgude

Karl Gude has been visualizing information for news organizations since the late 70s and is one of the few visual journalists who has worked for newspapers, news magazines and wire services. Until recently he was the director of information graphics for Newsweek, a position he held for more than 10 years. He has also worked for the Associated Press, United Press International, the New York Daily News and the short-lived National Sports Daily.

Gude has visually covered seven presidential elections, a slew of wars, terrorist attacks, natural disasters, sports, business and countless medical and scientific discoveries. He led a Newsweek team of graphics reporters during the attack on the World Trade Center and later mapped the progress of U.S. soldiers as they headed toward Baghdad. He has charted the ups and downs of the U.S. economy and used statistics to illustrate how Enron executives lied to stockholders.

Gude teaches information visualization for Michigan State University‘s (MSU) School of Journalism and provides consulting for news and government organizations.  A collection of Karl’s infographics, personal drawings, paintings and even children’s books can be found on Flickr.

Tea cup and a fire hose, that’s all I have to say. Awesome start!

“Information gushing at your brain like a fire house pointed at a tea cup.” – Scott Adams

Video of it happening courtesy of the East Lansing Fire Department.

Lot of bad news on the Internet. Way more information about the world than you ever knew before. Get grief fatigue. Can’t care anymore. Brains not wired to absorb constant pain. Need to move on. It’s only going to get worse.

Originally was just Enc. Brit. as the entire collection Western world. Internet has exploded what that is. But our brains aren’t going to grow. News editor told you what you were going to get. Lots left on the cutting room floor. Now, we’re the editors and control.

Unfortunately, it’s all crap out there. We’re not just consumers, we’re also the producers. We write words, words, words, words.

SHOW IT!

Notice it, get it, scan it… fast! You’ve got five seconds. Need to stop them in their tracks. Words are dense. Ouch!

Words are important, but even a document can be scannable. Breaks, headlines, bullet points. Pour it into wordle.

But I’m not an artist! Or a computer scientist! No problem, there are rules and tools. And there’s technology! It’s hard. But it’s really easy, kinda cheap.

Free, easy – documents, charts, drawings

We’re all right-brained in some ways. What can you visualize? Look for opportunities in your message, think about design, then use visual tools. Use things to compare and associate and flow or relate and explain the real world and locate.

So instead of contributing to this… crap, look for opportunities to target visually.

Fair Sins and Virtues

Presenter: Mark Wilson

http://mark-wilson.org/

Mark Wilson revels in all dimensions of the world’s fairs and is especially intrigued by the combination of optimism and promise they offer and the unflattering mirror of society they reflect. Wilson’s presentation explores 150 years of the sins and virtues of the world’s great expositions.

When not immersed in the world’s fairs, Wilson is the associate director of the School of Planning, Design and Construction at Michigan State University (MSU) and has an academic background in economics and geography. His three primary interests include the planning and politics of mega events such as the world’s fairs and the Olympics; information technology, cyber geography and the relationship between technology, people and places; and the role of non profit organizations in community development.

Wilson is committed to international education and has developed or participated in study abroad programs in numerous countries. He has also participated in US Pavilion programs at the world’s fairs in 1993, 1998 and 2005. Wilson serves as chair of the International Geographical Union’s Commission on Global Information Society. Please visit his homepage at www.mark-wilson.org.

We forget that world fairs still existing. We think they are meant to show us the past. Really, they show us what already exists. Sometimes they show us things we don’t want to see.

Little bit of a history lesson on the first world fair. Look it up on the Internets.

World Fairs show us optimism. The Eiffel Tour was an example of this. The Washington Monument was example of this. General Motors was an example of this with Futurama in 1939.

World Fairs show us hubris. Show how other populations are worse off.

Aesthetics is another virtue. Whistler’s Mother an example of impressionists. Barcelona chairs. The Space Needle in 1962.

Wrath is another aspect of World Fairs. 1901 President McKinley was assassinated by an anarchist at the fair.

Lust also is a sin of the fairs. Midway in Chicago was created to attract more people to the fair.

World Fairs are more about the past than the future, and more about sin than virtue.

Genetic Genealogy

Presenter: Dirk Schweitzer

http://www.dirkschweitzer.net

Dirk Schweitzer is a  German native and a chemist by training. He is working on establishing a green economy by replacing oil-based products with sugar-based products.

Could get crazy with this genetic geneology stuff. Yup, he’s explaining chromosomes. I could be lost shortly.

Yea, that was a lot. Tons of stuff about genetics. I listened, but sure didn’t recording much. Whew!

Mass Confusion: The LHC Challenge

Presenter: Chip Brock

http://www.pa.msu.edu/~brock/
Twitter: @chipbrock

Raymond “Chip” Brock is an elementary particle physicist. He trained as an electrical engineer and briefly worked in the engineering industry. Brock obtained graduate degrees in experimental and theoretical physics from Carnegie-Mellon University. Since, he has spent the last 30 years exploring the “inside of the universe” as a professor of physics at Michigan State University. His research takes place at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Illinois and the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland. He frequently gives guest lectures about scientific results and the future of particle physics.

Brock chaired the Department of Physics and Astronomy from 1994 to 2001. He is an American Physical Society fellow and author of more than 200 scientific publications. He is the recipient of numerous MSU research and teaching awards and has served in numerous national advisory roles. He currently serves as the elected chair of the American Physical Society’s Division of Particles and Fields.

Brock researches electroweak particle physics, which entails performing experiments studying light and heavy particles. After years of preparation Brock and his MSU colleagues have launched the most ambitious physics project of all: The gargantuan ATLAS experiment at CERN.

LHC is 27km/17mi in circumference. 10,000 magnets. Interest is in the beiginning of the universe. Recreates that moment 40,000,000 per second.

From this we’ve realized we’re confused about mass. 2 big ideas:

1. Mass is energy.
   1. E  = mc^2 is one equation. But today we get 2:1 offer.
   2. m = E/c^2 is the other equation.
2. Nature is clumpy – stars, earth, buildings, people. Energy has ways it likes to clump. Way to study those clumps is to “bang” stuff together.

Elementary in nature – things with no smaller parts: electrons and quarks… we think

Mass of a proton is greater than sum of its parts. It’s the things that hold those parts together: gluon is that field of energy that holds them. Energy that provides mass.

Quarks share same properties except one: mass. The action is in the vacuum in understanding mass. Start of universe was a tiny ball of energy 13 billion years ago. No mass in those particles moving at the speed of light. Then the magic temperature occurred and the vacuum got full… with the Higgs Field. The Field has Higgs particles (boson) in it. The Higgs Boson’s job is to grab onto other particles. It gave those particles inertia, which is mass.

Andromeda galaxy has dark matter that holds stars at the outer edges together. There must be a dark matter particle.

ATLAS is a very large detector. Much of it built at MSU. Tracks everything that happens inside the LHC.

In 20 years, we’ll study more about the origins of the universe than we do down.