I’ve been playing with electronic picture frames for almost two years. I started with a Ceiva frame two years ago, because it was capable of placing a phone call (modem) to pick up photos, and this frame was for a relative who doesn’t have access to any Internet services at all. It seemed like it would be perfect. It functioned well, held about a hundred photos (I bounced against its capacity, but it wasn’t annoying at all), and the only problem for me was the yearly fee for the dial-up service. But it meant that I could upload photos and within 24 hours they’d appear in the frame on the other side of the US. (If you’re like me, you write a paper letter once a year, to that rare relative who hasn’t yet gotten an email address—so sending photos electronically is a breeze compared to printing out those photos and writing a letter.) Continue reading to see what has happened in the last two years… [Read more…]
Adobe Reader under attack again
Adobe Reader is one of the most oft-used programs in the world. (Probably next to MS Word and other word processors.) And we all think it’s safe because it just reads a document format and displays it.
To our surprise, we learned earlier this year that the Adobe Reader processes JavaScript that can be embedded in its PDF documents. Once again, here in December 2009, another vulnerability allows JavaScript can be exploited to turn a PDF into a malicious piece o’ stuff.
The fault won’t be fixed until mid-January 2010. Big companies have long turnaround on fixing software. Yes, they have to test to be sure everything still works after they make a fix – but meanwhile we can’t safely open PDF documents unless we have JavaScript turned off.
The attack vector is to send a poisoned PDF file to intended target individuals, purporting to be “From: a friend” and hoping that they’ll open the attached PDF thinking that it’s safe. Wrong again. You won’t be caught by this, will you?
The Real-Time Web – Indeed!
Unbelievable how much time it takes to keep a “live” blog functioning properly when you’re working with new software.
It’s after 1:00am and I’ve just finished wrestling with the day’s blog entries. Reformatting them to make them look better, and making sure that the feeds of more than a dozen geeks are coming in and being handled properly. (And here and there a little bit of editorial work.)
I’m afraid this is what is known as the Real-time web. [See LeWeb] [Read more…]
Building out infrastructure for a Traveling Geeks tour
The Traveling Geeks are at it again. This time the destination is Paris for LeWeb and some other tech meetings.
Organizing a tour for 15 geeks was a nightmarish task for TG Co-Founder Renee Blodgett, who worked for weeks to put this one together – much shorter lead time than for previous tours. And her co-organizers Eliane Fiolet and Phil Jeudy, plus two web developers, did a heroic job.
The online developers were tasked with creating the new web site, but I came in for the last few weeks to preside over one of my (current) specialties – ensuring that we can mash information together in real time. Here’s what it required and what I learned: [Read more…]
Visualizing data helps us find opportunities
I had run into GapMinder some time ago, but was reminded of it when I encountered this talk that Ola Rosling[1] gave at Gov 2.0 Summit[2] that really makes it clear how the visualization of data — especially visualizing data over time — can give us valuable insights into trends in the physical and social world(s). Their Trendalyzer software is used by Google…as you’ll see in this presentation. [Read more…]
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