Jimiz.net – Jim Becher on the web

I seem to use google reader more and more. Instead of going directly to a site I end up reading the post in GR (google Reader). Some of the major sites I follow

Lifehacker.com
switched.com
digg.com (not so great any more)
techcrunch.com
makeuseof.com
engadget.com
gizmodo.com
blogmaverick.com

It does not seem like I open the sites that much any more. Twitter is the same, I can’t remember the last time I actually opened twitter.com in a browser.

I have recently purchased a road bike. I have been looking for an alternative to running. Not that I don’t enjoy running but when you run 5 miles or greater after a while it gets repetitive. I attempted to use my mountain bike and do some miles on the road but it was not working too well.

After some research I ended up going to my favorite bike shop in Grand rapids – FreeWheeler

I’ve put a few miles on my new bike, but realize that I need some bike shorts. Somehow my bike shorts that I used on my mountain bike got wrecked in the drier. It is amazing how fast you can go on a road bike.

http://wwj.cbslocal.com/2010/07/08/dangers-of-free-public-wifi/

If this article is news to you, please take the time to learn how to be secure. If the idea of doing more work to be secure scares you then please take the time to do a few minor things. Understand that when using public wifi (anywhere you don’t know who’s wi-fi network you are using) do not do anything that you would not want the person sitting next to you to see. Example: don’t do banking, online purchases, or share any personal information.

The reason you would not do these activites is you do not know who is listening or watching. It is releativley simple for a hacker to intercept (“man in the middle”) your information as you are using the wi-fi network. The interception happens because of the wi-fi you are using is available to everyone around you.

If you do intend to use public wifi please use a VPN or some other method to secure your information.

I have been watching a lot of soccer. My Tivo has been working overtime. Because the games are during the hours I work, I’ve been watching them in the evening. It was good to have a break today from watching games.

I am disappointed to see the US out of the tourney. We did well to make it to the second round. I hope to see soccer continue to grow in the US, and I hope that the success of our team will further that.

One element of this world cup that I keep getting asked about is instant replay and referees. Many people who know I am a soccer fan are asking why there is not instant replay in the games. The unique element of soccer is the continuous running clock. The games are 90 minutes with a running timer. I’m not sure how you would add instant replay and address that rule.
The reason for people asking about instant replay is just the amount of poor refereeing. I don’t think I have seen as many poor officiated games as in this world cup. I’m not sure why so many poor calls or matches have been determined by the ref.

I do think some type of change is needed, but I am at a loss as how to get better ref’s other than the referee themselves.

As an avid soccer fan this has been a great world cup so far. Lots of goals, lots of action and news. So far I have seen great play, fantastic failures, bad ref’s, and great goals.

6/23/2010 USA vs Algeria 10:00 AM EST.

Can we make it to the 2nd round. We need a win. Thanks to ESPN3 and a few iPhone apps, I have been able to hear or watch a lot of games.

It looks like apple is shipping / delivering the iPhone 4 before June 24th.

Maybe this is a good faith gesture for all the issues that surrounded the pre-order of the iPhone 4. No matter what the cause or the reason, this is great to see a company hit a deadline and also come in early.

It is amazing how reliant you get on internet access. Over the weekend a few things happened with our family and the need to communicate and send messages. I realized that I have become dependent on being able to either just pick up a phone or have some type of communication.

Because of the location where we were the cell signal is weak. If you go outside you are ok, however in a rainstorm it is a bit difficult to go outside and have a conversation.

In the end I was able to get the wifi back up (we get wifi from a very long distance repeater – high wind can cause some interference). Used a few tools to forward calls and in the end my favorite google voice to make a few calls.

The difficult part was anticipation of not having WiFi and missing the worldcup games on Saturday. (Thank you ESPN3)

I take technology for granted. As much as I would love to say that I could get along fine without some forms of technology I would struggle.

As a huge soccer fan, I can’t wait for the Cup to start. For all those in Grand Rapids area, I’ll see you at some of the local places for the games. Here is a good schedule.

http://worldcupgr.com/sa_2010

I was reading my twitter feeds and ran across a post from an individual at rackspace that was responding to an interview of why they liked working there. (NOT for the money) He referenced this great video regarding Motivation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc&feature=player_embedded#!

It is interesting that Money only motivates so far. I have found that in the tech industry this is true. People love a challenge, they love credit (praise) and they love ownership. I agree that money needs to be part of the equation, but not the full motivation.

So what gets you up every day, and motivates you to head to work.

Lifehacker had a great article on tools / ways to help friends with tech support. I realized when reading this that I do most of the things they suggest but also have more tools. Just thought it was a good post to share.

http://lifehacker.com/5529299/how-to-troubleshoot-your-friends-computers-from-far-away

I am getting ready to head out on a trip and want to take some movies on the plane for the kids to watch on the iPad. I also plan on putting video on my phone and my wife’s iPhone.

There are a ton of applications and tutorials on the web that would like you to purchase a 30 dollar tool to do this. I have found that two free tools can work most of the time; DvdDecrypter and HandBrake.

First you need to decode the DVD to a local file. I recommend DVD decrypter (you may have to search for a good download – I won’t go into the reasons) Here is the location I used http://www.dvddecrypter.org.uk/

I set the file with these settings:
1. Select Mode from the menu then IFO.

2. Select Tools | Settings then select the IFO Mode tab. Change the drop down under Options | File Splitting to NONE.

3. Change the Stream Processing on the right Tab on the main menu. Select only the top Video file and the top Audio (only check two boxes) you don’t need the subtitles.

4. Now you can select the destination for the output file. Destination and browse for your folder. I use a folder called DVDrip.
5. Run the Decrypter. It may take 15 – 30 min depending on your computer.

You have now created one video file from the DVD a VOB file. You will use this file to convert the video into a format that will work on the iPhone or iPad.

Now you will use a tool called HandBrake (http://handbrake.fr/)
This converts video into many formats.

1. Select the source VOB

2. Select your output destination
3. Select your new format from the right side. I chose iPhone & iPod touch

Then select Start.

Depending on the size of the video expect this to take anywhere from an 45 min to 2 hours. Once you are done you will have a Mp4 file that you can add to iTunes and view on your iphone / iPad

For many years developers have been using the User-Agent element of the browser to detect what web browser a person is using. This is very useful for designers when they are looking to make a very functional site in older browsers or add new technology (IE 6 )

In my last post I looked at the portscan of an iPad. Today I decided to look at he header information.

I opened up wireshark (packet sniffer) and watched the iPad traffic.

If you look at this information it has some interesting bits. It does identify the actual device ‘iPad’ in the user-agent string. A developer could read the string and look for the iPad or even iPhone user-agent to target these devices.

Here is copy and past from yoyo.org to read header info from the web for my iPad.

Host: pgl.yoyo.org
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; U; CPU OS 3_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/531.21.10 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.4 Mobile/7B367 Safari/531.21.10
Accept: application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,*/*;q=0.5
Referer: http://www.google.com/search?q=view+browser+headers&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&client=safari
Accept-Language: en-us
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
Connection: keep-alive

I think it is interesting that in the string it also has OS 3_2 like Mac OS X.

Here is the header information for my iPhone.
Host: pgl.yoyo.org
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7D11 Safari/528.16
Referer: http://www.google.com/m/search?oe=UTF-8&client=safari&hl=en&aq=0&oq=view%2520browser%2520head&aqi=g1-k18d1t0&fkt=3393&fsdt=14019&q=view+browser+headers
Accept: application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,*/*;q=0.5
Accept-Language: en-us
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
Connection: keep-alive

Continuing my security theme, I decided to see what the iPad looks like on a network. Can you ping it, what does nmap say about it, does OS detection work, are there any open ports?

To test this I used both my iPhone (jimiz-phone) and iPad (jimizIP) connected to my wireless network.

The first thing I did was lookup the MAC address. There are many ways to do this but I like to use (www.coffer.com/mac_find/) It answers with Apple Inc
7C-6D-62 (hex) Apple, Inc
1 Infinite Loop
Cupertino CA 95014
UNITED STATES

I then ran 3 different OS detection tools: Nmap, zenmap, and xprobe2. NOTE: Zenmap is really just a GUI for nmap but it does clean up the OS detection. All three tools did a good job on calling out the OS as MAC

Nmap: iPad (It detected the iPad as OS X 10.5.6)
Interesting ports on JimizIP.jimizhome.com:
PORT STATE SERVICE
62078/tcp open iphone-sync
MAC Address: 7C:6D:62:C7:FA:17
Running: Apple Mac OS X 10.5.X
OS details: Apple Mac OS X 10.5 - 10.5.6 (Leopard) (Darwin 9.0.0b5 - 9.6.0)

Nmap: iPhone (it detected the iPhone OS)
Interesting ports on Jimiz-Phone.jimizhome.com:
PORT STATE SERVICE
62078/tcp open iphone-sync
MAC Address: 00:26:B0:67:18:B3 (Unknown)
Running: Apple iPhone OS 2.X
OS details: Apple iPod touch audio player (iPhone OS 2.2)

Zenmap: (both iPad and iPhone) detected both devices as an iPod Touch iPhone OS 2.2 – Screen Capture

Xprobe2: iPad (OS x 10.4.1)
[+] Primary guess:
[+] Host JimizIP Running OS: "Apple Mac OS X 10.4.1" (Guess probability: 100%)
[+] Other guesses:
[+] Host JimizIP Running OS: "Apple Mac OS X 10.4.0" (Guess probability: 100%)
[+] Host JimizIP Running OS: "Apple Mac OS X 10.3.9" (Guess probability: 100%)

Xprobe2 iPhone (OS x 10.4.1)
[+] Primary guess:
[+] Host Jimiz-Phone Running OS: "Apple Mac OS X 10.4.1" (Guess probability: 100%)
[+] Other guesses:
[+] Host Jimiz-Phone Running OS: "Apple Mac OS X 10.4.0" (Guess probability: 100%)
[+] Host Jimiz-Phone Running OS: "Apple Mac OS X 10.3.9" (Guess probability: 100%)

Each OS detection package did a pretty good job in showing it is an apple product. Nmap was able to identify the iPhone. I am guessing as the nmap OS database get’s updated it will also detect the iPad.

One interesting item that did show up is that port scan showed that port 62708 was open on both the iPhone and iPad. I did a little looking and it is the iphone-sync port.

Overall it looks like both devices are fairly secure over the wifi connection. It is always amazing to see what information your devices leak out (MAC address, open ports, OS detection, and user info)

As with any new device you wonder if you got the right version The iPad has 3G version is on it’s way. I opted not to get 3G. So far it has been great. I have used my iPhone as a tether, to have wifi at all times. The MyWi application is great. You just setup your own hotspot.

http://www.rockyourphone.com/index.php/mywi.html?feat=y

This is a good option if you are unsure of which option to get

So far the iPad has been a great hit in our home. From remote access, browsing the web, email and movies. I have only good things to say about this device.

Inside the comfort of my own home I know my connection is safe. However, when I venture out to public wifi or a coffee shop, I cannot be a comfortable with the network security. When using my laptop at a public wifi I normally use SSH or a VPN to secure my connection. I will show you a quick how-to on using VPN on you iPad to get a secure connection when using a public hotspot.

To use a VPN client on your iPad you will need a VPN server somewhere. I use DDWRT as a vpn server at my home. It has a built-in PPTP VPN server. The iPad supports (PPTP, IPSec, and L2TP).

Thankfully the iPad has a built in VPN client. To access the settings for this you will need to go into settings | general | network.

Under your network settings you can find vpn connections. In this section you can turn on vpn, view the status of a connection, add a connection or edit a connection. We will be adding a connection:

Next you select “Add Vpn Connection”. Select PPTP, L2TP, or IPSec. For each type of vpn you have different options:
PPTP:

L2TP:

IPsec (cisco):

Once you have setup your vpn connection you only need to go back to the setting page (network / vpn) to enable the vpn connection. You then can view the status and be connected or browsing through your VPN tunnel. In the image below I can connected to my home VPN and have an IP of 192.168.2.200.

Happy secure browsing. Remember to still take precautions when in a public location and using any type of secure sites.