Extending the lifespan of your iPhone

Posted by on April 12, 2012 2 comments

Whenever I buy a device, I always consider its lifespan. It is not as easy as it sounds since if 1 component fails, the whole device becomes useless. We will now look at a little trick I am applying to my iPhone in order to extend the battery life.

I have always been told that one needs to let the battery completely drain before charging it again, a process termed as recalibration by Apple. It is to get all the ions inside of the battery to move but it is not always a convenient process to do. A full recharge takes almost 3 hours to complete. 3 hours of downtime/limited mobility is not something everyone can afford. Here is what I do to keep it under control.

  • While researching cases for my iPhone 4 S, I was quite disappointed with the choices. The good ones are quite expensive and I do not really know what would really protect my phone. The only one I was considering had an integrated battery pack. I like the idea. Walk around and let your phone charge while being in your pocket. Drive around and your phone will not run out of juice and will keep giving you the directions that you desperately need. There are multiple companies which produce these kind of cases and I went with the cheapest one I could find online. An important point to remember is the extra weight; so I was still debating whether the added weight would ruin the hardware design.
  •  I downloaded a free app to manage and monitor the charging process. There are many similar apps; try them and post your reviews here or on AppStore. I use BatteryDoctor+ (the link is just to give you an idea and there should be an English version available for download) and so far I am happy with it. It keeps track of your charging history and also gives you handy tips. One of the best functionality is that it estimates the usage time left with respect to which functionality is on.

I will detail a few case scenarios to explain how to make everything works together and the added perks to having a battery case.

Case 1; I am leaving home in 1 hour but my battery is near to 0%. I will be needing internet connectivity from my phone and that will drain my battery even more.

Solution: I remove the battery case from my phone and charge both at the same time. That effectively doubles the charging rate. So when I leave the house, I can put on the case which will have some juice.

Case 2; I want to do a full recharge cycle but cannot afford the 3 long hours.

Solution: To perform a full charge, you need an uninterrupted charge for about 3 hours, depending on your battery. What I do is put the case on and let it charge.The last stage of an assisted charge (by an app) is more time-consuming than power-consuming. So during the last stage, the flow of power to your battery will be greater than the flow of power from your battery. For my iPhone, the last stage takes about 40 minutes to complete. With this trick, I can save about 40 minutes of downtime and still do a full charge since the charge will remain uninterrupted and will only drain a small amount of power from the battery case.

Case 3; I am at a friend’s place and I do not have the iPhone cable.

Solution; My case has a microUSB interface which most Android phones uses. The Blackberry Playbook also uses the same cable. Therefore the chance of my friend having a cable which I can use is significantly higher.

 

Please remember the added weight if you decide to buy a battery case.

Linux server

Posted by on April 4, 2012 No comments

I know it might be a bit of an overkill but with the number of devices increasing, I thought it would be a good idea to set a server up. I am still in the research phase and here are what I found out so far.

  • I chose Linux because so far Linux has not failed me. It is probably harder to set-up but it provides me with the option of upgrading my server’s functionality if there is need to. And yes, it is for free too. No need to get any kind of license nor will I be restricted because I did not pay enough money. The fight is between Debian and Ubuntu, although they are similar in many ways.
  • I also decided to run it on a Virtual Machine(VM). There are numerous advantages to having a VM and I am sure there are many good articles covering the topic. The only problem is that my 4 year old Macbook will not be happy about running a VM. I have not yet looked at which VM solution I will use but so far, it looks like the freeware one from Oracle is the best choice.
  • The host machine will be either Linux Backtrack or Mac OS X. Backtrack might sound weird but the security freak in me wants to analyze the traffic. OS X because then I know I would use it more often.
  • What is really holding me back at the moment is that my computers are old and I already decided I am going to use a VM for the server. I am waiting on the appropriate piece of hardware to come out.

More to come later…

The future of SSL certificates

Posted by on April 4, 2012 No comments

I have been asked for IT advice many times in the past, with the most common one “I want a computer that will last. Which one should I get?”. Things changed. Things are happening. Whenever I tell someone that their device are not so secure, there are many possible reactions that I get. Usually they do not want to understand and just want to get it fixed. It is a bit hard to explain to a user that although there is a very expensive anti-virus on the device, there is still a big possibility that one can get hacked on a network level.

Below is an extract from an article I just read from SC Magazine

 “It is the most widely-deployed security protocol in the world, and it secures trillions of dollars in transactions, but sometimes it feels like we are trying to apply bandages to a very leaky dam,” Skoudis said, speaking of the SSL model.

I could not agree more with what he said. Applying bandages to a very leaky dam is the perfect analogy. From my time in uni, I would like to believe I have a fairly good knowledge on this topic. The biggest problem, according to me, is that people do not really understand what it is; they know they should look for the padlock sign and that is it for the average user. I distinctly recall my lecturer asking us “why do we trust the CAs? What gave them the special power of vouching for your identity?”. I kind of felt stupid. One might argue that there are laws behind it. I am no lawyer but even so, it would be more of a passive response. Is it not better to not let the thief steal rather than chasing after him?!

I remember seeing an article about how to hijack an SSL session. I did not read it and I will not affirm that it is impossible, probably hard but not impossible. With all the hacking going on around the world, I cannot wait to see any new alternative to SSL.

Why is diagnosis so hard and how it can help you be happy

Posted by on March 1, 2012 No comments

Diagnosis is regarded as one of the toughest aspects of modern medicine. I am no subject matter expert but I can safely assume it is. In IT, diagnosis is also very much present and I will explain why diagnosing a problem can be indeed prove to be very challenging.

To be able to diagnose one needs, not only a good knowledge of the intricacies and complexities of the system, but also, the ability to ask the right question at the right time. When it comes to computers, one of the toughest cases to diagnose is a frozen computer. This condition can be caused randomly by either the hardware or the software. The first question that I would ask myself is what state the computer was in when it froze. Already, I need to have a very good knowledge on how computers operate. If the computer froze while the user was surfing the web, my first guess would be that the problem is software-based. Why? Because the sound made by a computer system when it is turned on is called the Power On Self Test (POST) and that short beep sound is indicating that the hardware components passed the POST test. Following that assumption, testing with another OS or booting in safe mode would be the next logical step.  Again, diagnosis is complex. Different people have different approach towards it. One’s diagnosis can also be affected by past experience and observations too. One good tip for efficient diagnosis is to always question the base case (the assumptions) whenever a dead end is reached. What if the POST test was wrong? How reliable is it? Are there other tests that I can perform? Can I observe any input and/or any output? Is there any log available? What if I change this piece of hardware? I can remove a crucial hardware component to test if the POST is as reliable as it should be. The possibilities are endless but regardless; this is merely an example to illustrate how complex it can be.

Let us try to apply this in a real case scenario. My mate, let us call him Bob, is looking for a job and he is not getting any positive responses – no interviews, not even a phone call. Based on a job description (input), he decided to apply (action) for the job by sending his documents (output), which are, in turn, the inputs to the company’s HR departments. Following the data flow, there are 3 possible explanations for his failure; his documents are not good enough, the HR system of the company is inefficient (for example losing his application), or simply, he is not  good candidate for the company. If this situation is recurrent at every company he applies to, a syllogistic analysis indicates that his application documents are the problem here.  In other words, we can narrow down the cause to his documents because the documents are the only invariants/constants here.

The main takeaways from the above scenario are applicable everywhere in life. Here are simple diagnosis tips that can make you happy (I am going with the assumption that happiness is the ultimate goal of life):

  1. Identify the relevant criteria, that is, figure out what makes you happy! This may sound like a simple and easy task right now but doing this properly is crucial. We are much more affected by the society than we think we are and we do not all share the same aspirations, perceptions or ways of life.
  2. Next, measure/gauge the input(s). This is the toughest part because it is hard to measure how much you are actually contributing to that project. How much is too much?
  3. Measure the output. This section is fairly simple once you figured out how to measure your input.

 

Using your own infrastructure

Posted by on February 10, 2012 No comments

A few years ago, I had trouble to explain to the management why hosting a website on the local area network would be better than to host it on some free servers. The eternal question still is “Why does management not listen to the IT people?!”

I like to use a business approach to many things; I did so for this blog. In my research analysis, many told me “I already have a blog”. It is the same, except that it is not. Building your own blog/website involves much more design and management. There is no problem using a free service provided by an IT company but by doing so, you are just a blogger and that is fine. Not everyone is into web design/development. What about the laws?

On some level, I have always found law to be unfair. I know it does not have to be fair, only legal. IT giants get sued over things that are very petty to the IT world. It takes so much effort and time to build IT systems and yet technicalities ruin it. Back to the subject, file servers are common these days. Cloud computing is the future, maybe already the present. IT giants are already providing reliable cloud services but users need to be more careful with the terms and conditions. Does the company have any rights on my files? What happens if my files are not available any more? I am a bit paranoid but these questions are good ones.

If you have the necessary infrastructure, why not build the service and own it?! Or you could pay a lawyer to review the terms and conditions of a third-party service for you.

The concept of time

Posted by on January 27, 2012 No comments

The concept of time has always been a mystery to me. Excuse my ignorance but whoever thought about the concept of time must have been really insightful. I am without a doubt no physicist but as an observant, it is quite fascinating to see all of what time can do.

I am tempted to say all but I will go with most; most of the things around us are based on time. Time affects the electricity we get. Time ages us. We cannot see time but yet strongly believe in it and we never question it anymore. Based on two interesting concepts that there is a devolution occurring and that as time goes by, we only get richer and more intelligent, does that mean we are going backwards? That is not such a strong statement to make but there are questions to be asked here.

As a kid, I have always pondered whether time goes slow or fast and today I have decided that it is neither slow or fast. Everything is subjective and there is no point of comparison for time. So what changes our perception of time? Is that related to particle-wave duality?

 

Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), is it the final blow to kill piracy?

Posted by on January 18, 2012 1 comment

The digital war now revolves around SOPA. This article would have been the part 2 of an article about the devolution of people, which is not a new topic. So let us start with the end instead of the beginning since the news are focused on it. Before writing, I would like to state once more that this is merely my own opinion.

Only a few days ago, I realised that some people do not take piracy as seriously as they should. They think that downloading is okay but that it is the distribution which is not okay. In all honesty, I do not know the laws in charge but my logic tells me both are wrong. I even came across people telling me streaming is safe. They cannot catch me because I am not sending anything. You are! You are sending many request packets every second. So if there is to trace the route back to you, it is very possible. As a musician, it is quite discouraging to put all the efforts required to produce an album for no reward. Instead, you might incur a loan! Tough life! That is my reason against piracy. Not every person has creativity and they should be rewarded, enough for them to consider producing as a decent money-making job.

I know there are poor people who cannot afford software: I am one of them and then decide to install freewares instead to then further realise that it is taking too much time and effort and regret my decision of not buying the commercialised software. Is software overpriced? I can only say it takes dedication to produce a good piece of software. Why are we not unhappy to pay for hardware but when it comes to software, nobody wants to. I will admit that there are bad software available but now there are trial periods. Companies did identify all of this.

All in all, I am more than 50% against piracy but the reason I dislike SOPA is because it is targeting the wrong people. First of all, China was long criticised because of its censored Internet. Either somebody is a bit hypocritical or maybe simply China was right all this time. The IT giant Google will be affected with SOPA. Apparently Google is not doing enough to stop piracy. Google is a search engine and providing its customers with neutral results is why I would stick with such a search engine. What does SOPA want Google to do? Reduce the efficiency of the best search algorithm to enable Hollywood to increase its profit? Wikipedia, the most useful and largest collection of information I have ever seen, would be brought down. Isn’t SOPA targeting the people/services which makes the Internet as awesome, useful, and meaningful as it is at the moment?! For years and years, people developed security mechanisms to become more and more secure and yet till today, there are still many hackers and the money involved in hacking is comparable to the money involved in illegal drug traffic. People will find a way to do the sharing: maybe a new and parallel version of the Internet. I have never seen any campaign to promote the understanding of arts such as music or writing.

” Only the development of compassion and understanding for others can bring us the tranquillity and happiness we all seek.” -the Dalai Lama

People who do not understand how hard it is to produce music are not willing to pay for it. These people should be the target of SOPA. Of course, nobody is interested into teaching the insignificant peon but aim to sue IT giants.

So where to now? I always thought people are too dependent on technology now. I do have a smart phone which I do not bring everywhere but I only have it because it is either adapt or perish, right? The Internet might slide to a level our intelligence would deem too low for the all mighty humans to use. Realise that you do not need a social networking website’s reminder to remember your wife’s birthday, nor a 24 hour connectivity to a mobile phone when you are a student. Are we ruining another wonderful creation… AGAIN?! Cheers to our devolution

 

My perception of passwords

Posted by on January 16, 2012 2 comments

I always had an interest for security since high school and I have always thought that passwords would fade away. And I was wrong. My reasoning was that I needed a better protection than a password. Passwords are just string of characters. Imagine working hard your whole life to save up money and then you lose it because of a password. That would be quite unfortunate. It does not entirely surprise me that I was wrong. What else could we use?! No one would buy a body scanner in order to log onto his computer and I can only assume that it is quite hard to design the proper algorithms to make it work.

Back to the main topic, using passwords as a form of authentication has evolved and is fairly secure. You have your mixture of characters and most web applications do not accept weak passwords. Apple even prevents you from entering the same character thrice; I wonder how much data mining was involved before that rule was concrete. One-time passwords are becoming more and more popular. Many hints are available online. How is that working out for an individual?

I know a few hacking ways that can stiff sniff my passwords. The only thing that comfort me is that there is would be no real reason for a hacker to hit me; there are much bigger fish out there. Every website has a different database, consequently the number of passwords one has to remember is quite large. My passwords are so complicated that I can only remember a few of them and I ended up with a little database file on my computer, which I decided to protect with a password (there is also a very similar alternative solution which is a program that collects your passwords and provide you with a master password). The master password now needs to be secure, ideally more secure than the others since it contains the key to so many other services. Good logic but what if I forget the master password now. The reason I created it was because I could not remember the other passwords, which were weaker. Does my backup need backup too?!

Data Management, can we cope with it?

Posted by on January 6, 2012 No comments

Comes the festive end-of-year period of 2011, I dived into my usual routine; backup!!! As you most probably have read, backup is quite essential, no matter what kind of technology one is using. I usually start by cleansing the data; remove what I do not use or will most likely not use in the future. I also consolidate the metadata of any file I choose to keep. As I expected, it becomes more of a challenge every year.

A few years ago, I asked myself if we, as end-users, are using technology as we should. People do not appreciate the years of effort behind building the infrastructure. It would not be an exaggeration to say that we are abusing of technology and we are starting to feel the downside of it. I would like to focus on a few data management problems an individual might face and potential solutions.

  1. It is not only size which is increasing but also the number of formats and standards, although it is more of a long-term problem. In the current world, this applies more to video files from our own cameras. Manufacturers could have discussed the designs together but they have not. It is an ego thing. This is just the tip of the iceberg; formats also have different quality. Ideally, I would like all my pictures to be of the same format and most importantly of the same quality. I understand that it is hard to maintain a standard on quality since technology is forever evolving and quality also depends on the format in this case. In a world where technology had reached its peak, I could simply use a filter to standardise my files but then I would lose my raw data. What I did was to pick a quality high enough that I would not notice a big difference should it be of higher quality and at the same time have a decent file size.
  2. Duplicates are bad. They take space and can confuse some indexing file system. I see no use for them. I used the Unix utility Duff to detect the unwanted. I admit tutorials would be nice to have. I could not find a remove functionality and realised that you have to be quite proficient with the terminal in order to remove the duplicates. Also, I did not run the extensive test and I found that it missed duplicate music files. I can only assume that metadata affects it.
  3. Quality of backup is often ignored. What if you so happen to need to make use of the backup?! Is the wanted file easily available in the same folder as other similar files? What if the backup fails? The answers are very simple; make a good folder hierarchy and check the status of your medium. Making a good folder hierarchy can be quite simple. Just browse the Internet until you find a website with a good one and mimic the structure. I am aware there are many utilities available for backing up data but I am sceptical to use them. What if the virus is backed up too?! These utilities often push the backup into one single file, which if damaged is most likely unrecoverable. If I were in a corporate environment, then I would use these utilities. I can still manage as an individual. Your backup can be lost too. Assuming you are smart enough to buy a branded hard disk drive, there are utilities available to check the status of your hard disk. As a general rule, I would recommend replacing the hard disk every few years. There are also tapes that can be used instead of hard disks but the infrastructure can be expensive.

Hope this helps…

 

Mauritius Interaction revival

Posted by on January 5, 2012 No comments

Here is a prototype of the MI recreation. We are looking for volunteers for the project.

MI was a social networking website which targeted mainly adolescents in Mauritius. While it did not have as many functionalities as the social networking websites have nowadays, it was quite unique. I am sure many would agree with that statement.

This prototype is quite different from the original but it does have a modern look. Credit goes to Kirsty.