Jimiz.net – Jim Becher on the web

What a great idea, use the best tool in your tool box to make a device better. I keep velcro in my toolbox. I have a roll of it, sticky back velcro, and some that you would use as wall mounting.

This video just shows how to use the tools you have (velcro) to make some thing better. It makes me ask the question, why did I not think of that.

http://lifehacker.com/5549039/reinvent-your-ipad-or-other-tablet-with-velcro

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.

I’m always looking for a great stand for my iPhone or iPad. At work I use my phone as mechanism to communicate and also listen to music. At home I use my iPad to watch videos and show pictures. There are a lot of DIY or cheap stands you can make, but I wanted one that was inexpensive and would work for both the iPad and iPod.

Here is the stand I chose for work. It is good looking (Unlike some of the DIY editions) – I ended up purchasing this one from officemax for 1.99 it works great with both the iPad and iPod.

For home I was able to get a cheap 1.99 picture frame holder made out of acrylic. I was unable to get a link to their online site but I will take a picture of it. It allows me to charge the iPad by having the cable attached to it.

This just shows how a little discovery goes a long way. Instead of purchasing an expensive stand from Apple, I was able to spend 4 bucks.

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 recently read the article from Steve regarding flash on Apples iPhone, iPod, and iPad devices.
http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/

I think he has some interesting comments. I really do like the idea that rollovers are dead or not needed. The idea that touch or some other input may be needed is a very good point. Have you ever tried to use a flash site with just a keyboard.

I have also heard other arguments regarding security of flash from the podcast “Security Now”. However, with any application there are security concerns.

The one I am really interested to hear more about is battery life. How can an application consumer more battery life than another. Are we saying that video uses more than a book reader. I would say that the action of the application vs the application is the cause of battery life. Video uses more battery (cpu too) than reading a static page.

If I was a device owner I would also argue the closed source proprietary concept of flash. However, apple also has that same type of situation.

Overall, I think Steve is making a great stance. From what I read, he is saying let’s look at open standards for the web. Not a player that is used for the web. He does not deny that apple has a closed source operating system or device, he is just saying that protocols or web applications should be open.

I was reading my daily RSS feeds and came across this headline.

“More than 10% of all PCs worldwide now on Windows 7″. (http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windows7/archive/2010/04/22/more-than-10-of-all-pcs-worldwide-now-on-windows-7.aspx)

It stood out and made me interested. That is pretty amazing, since Windows 7 has only been out for a few months. Considering the volume of users that have a PC that is huge number and to get to 10% this quick is just outstanding. I have been lucky enough to use 7 for quite a while at home, but still use XP at the office.

I am continually amazed at how people upgrade and update their home PC’s. Not many of the people I know who are not technical would even be able to tell you how to upgrade their OS. In fact, most of the people I end up helping with their tech problems just purchase a new PC rather than upgrade the OS.

I wonder how many of the sales are tied to a new PC? I would even love to know what the numbers were of people upgrading from XP or Vista?

I get 4 magazines. Linux Journal, Wired, Inc, and Money Magazine. I really enjoy each. Inc has so much information and ideas it makes me both excited and angry when I read it each month. Money always gives me ideas and motivation to keep saving and how to continue to invest. Wired Magazine is just to keep up with trends and get some fun reading. Linux Journal is just a true love. No matter what I am doing, I enjoy reading LJ, it has so many cool ideas and gadgets.

This week while traveling I read the most recent copy of Wired. There was an article about Radio Shack. How it has changed it’s name, image, and what it sells. What I found interesting was how the franchise is changing what it’s focus is. They are moving away from hobbyist and moving to be a mobile device seller. The basis for this change is that the margin and the sales commission on a cellular phone is great money.

The change in focus means that the Do It Yourself hobbyist and tinkerer loses out. The “Shack” as they are re-branding themselves are continuing to drop inventory of the items that people have known them for. Soldering irons, transistors, circuit boards, and connectors are going away to make room for cellular accessories.

This is very sad for me to hear. After reading the article it sounds like most of this change has already happened. The article focused on one small shop that is ignoring the change and catering to the core customers that radio shack has had for years. This shop happens to be right down the road from Make (makezine.com). The “Shack” is exactly the type of shop that readers of Make, Popular science, and DIY require to do projects. The trend these days is to use and throw away. If your printer breaks, I’m guessing you are not going to spend any time trying to fix it. You will probably just junk it and buy another one. That is what most people do these days, no one tries to fix anything any more.

I realize that retail is changing, but a Radio Shack that does not carry a connector or soldering irons is really not that useful to me. If I need mobile accessories or a mobile phone, I’ll get that over the internet. I could order most of the supplies I need (connectors, circuit boards, etc..) online but is always costly to ship and also make sure I have the right size. I am sad to see a store like the Shack change.

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

Here are some great basic money mistakes. If you are in any way questioning these items please email me so I can explain. I am not a financial planner or even a consultant (I work in IT). However, if you don’t understand why these are bad, I am offering to take the time to explain them and answer questions.

Here is the original link from USAToday (http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/basics/2010-04-19-personalfinance19_ST_N.htm?csp=usat.me)

1. Raiding your 401(k)
2. Walking out on a mortgage (Please understand the major financial issue behind this)
3. Ignoring the card balance (Dave Ramsey)
4. Debt-wipeout scams (don’t be a sucker)
5. Co-signing a loan (Stay away)
6. Payday loans
7. Reverse mortgages
8. Trying to stiff Uncle Sam (it is not worth it)

These are some pretty simple mistakes to avoid, some are done because people are under stress to pay things or get out of a bad situation. Just please remember how important it is to understand the financial decisions you make

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)

There are a lot of articles about printing on the iPad or iPhone. I have not found too many great solutions. I was reading an article on the ipad today and wanted to print it out for reference.

After trying a few apps I landed on using the HP iprint application. You are only able to print photos with this app, but I just took a screen shot and printed it. Not a great solution but it worked. I can see a great opportunity for a nice inexpensive print app.

I did try active print but it had too many things to configure

In the future I will just send the item I want to print to my email

The iPad is like any other device, it has your data on it. No matter if you use it at home or out in a coffee shop. You need to make sure that your data is safe. The iPad like the iPhone allows you to lock the devise from use with a 4 digit passcode.

To enable locking your screen you need to go to Settings | general | Passcode Lock

Select Turn Passcode On

You will then be asked to enter a passcode. You have to enter this in twice

You then have an option on Require Passcode (Immediately, After 1, 5, 15 min or 1, 4 hours). I use immediately.

It never hurts to add one more level of security. A passcode is a simple way to keep others out of your info / mail / information. I have set the auto-lock to 5 min on the iPad.

Today I had the need to go to MSDN and look up some information. I have not directly gone to MSDN for a while. when I opened up the site I got this banner bar across the top

It offered me the advise that I should use IE8 instead of my current browser (Firefox). The reason is that IE is Faster, Safer, and easier. I was amazed, I did not know IE8 was safer.

Then when I went to the root of MSDN I got this advertisement (POP over)

I find it hard to believe that IE is better than firefox, but I guess Microsoft thinks so.

— Update —
I just got another site with a different advertisement for ie8. This time I was using chrome.

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