Securing Your USB Thumb Drive With Voice Activation

Protecting your portable data devices has now arrived.

The days of spy technology moving into the public area has now arrived for your portable thumb drive. Many of us carry the small thumb drives in our pockets as an easy method of porting information or code from work to home or client location. I have lost a thumb drive more than a few times and wondered if anyone found it and used the information on it. There is now the technology to add a layer of security to the thumb drive as voice recognition to unlock the information contained on it. This is available today for purchase from Hammacher Schlemmer and moves things from the difficult to the simple.

There has been the ability to encrypt a USB thumb drive so that prying eyes could not get to it without an extreme amount of work. How many of you have taken the time to do that is probably a low percentage and we all believe that we are not going to lose the thumb drive. Of course, I have lost a few over the years, leaving them at some customer I have visited to do work. With this new Voice Activated thumb drive, you will now have something which is a conversation item with your customers. For a small business, this is a great way to get someone interested. In the event that the voice recognition is not working if your voice is altered because you are sick, there is an alternative method of color coded input to access the thumb drive. Some are saying there is text based input for entering your password, but below is a YouTube video demonstrating the Voicelok feature. The Voicelok site shows the set up instructions as well and there is no feature for text based input.

The current price on this item is $49.95 for the 8GB version of the thumb drive. The Voicelok drive is a unique item and one which will definitely catch peoples attention when you use it. It is an example of a solution to an existing concern to secure the data. The question which now might arise is whether this is the correct way to secure your thumb drive so that it is secure. While this does look like a great idea when demonstrated, it makes one wonder about real world use. Is this a great idea gone wrong?

It may well be. While you customers will get intrigued when you use it, is it really all that secure? All someone would need to do is listen to you saying the password in the Voice Activation Mode and now they know how to access the thumb drive. The answer to that is No because the Voice Activation requires the actual persons voice. While we have not received one of these yet, we can assume it is sophisticated enough to stop someone trying to imitate your voice. While they will not be able to use the Voice Recognition feature, there is the color based feature where they can enter a color coded sequence to gain access to the USB thumb drive. So you use that feature when there are other people in the room whom you do not want them to hear and someone still might be able to watch you enter the color coded sequence and then know how to gain access.

Now that we are getting USB thumb drives which are coming with Voice Recognition, how much longer will it be before we get an even more secure method of protecting and securing USB thumb drives? That would be in the form of using finger prints to provide access to the thumb drive. That is already being done with laptops and provides a secure method of gaining access to them based on a persons finger prints. That will probably be something which we might see next year as technology improvements push prices down.

Are you interested in a Voice Recognition USB thumb drive or would you prefer finger print access to a USB thumb drive?

Are We Safe From Cell Phone Radiation?

Updating a 2003 report, the information still does not show clear impacts from mobile phone radiation.

 
In the on going studies regarding the impact of cell phone radiation for those using mobile phones, it has been studied over the past 15 years and the most recent results are in. It appears that there has been no conclusive evidence of negative impact on us "homo sapiens" based on all the research done. That does not mean there is absolutely no impact. It is being reported that there is no negative impact which has been found from their years of research. That is not to say that use of a cell phone for 20 years will not cause any negative impact from the emissions from the phones. With that statement, it may cause some to continue to be concerned and others to not give it another thought.

The most recent report comes from the Advisory Group on Non-ionising Radiation (AGNIR) which is an independent group of the Health Protection Agency in Europe. There most recent report, which you can download is an update from their previous report back in 2003. They have continued to compile information since that time in an effort to conclusively prove the affects of prolonged cell phone usage. In particular, they have been looking at RF field exposure. This latest report does not reveal much that can be considered a radical departure from the previous reports and concludes that they need to do far more research. That is not exactly the conclusion which so many had hoped for. From a scientific perspective, there is just not enough data to conclusively prove there is no impact which might cause cancer.

As a result of prior studies, there were international guidelines published to indicate safe levels for cell phone usage. While industry groups claim cell phones are safe, not all cell phones emit the same about of RF when in use. So as a result, one particular phone may emit less than another. There may be differences between phones from the same manufacturer. As a result, you have to do your own research if you are concerned. CNet maintains a list of cell phones and there radiation levels. You may want to take a look at this list, especially the first page showing a list of the worst offenders. There are 4 Motorola Droid phones listed and 2 Blackberry Bold phones. I was surprised to learn that the radiation levels for the various models of the iPhone range from 0.75 to 1.38. Blackberry phones ran from 0.5 to 1.54. Samsung phones ran from 0.2 to 1.47.

You can see from the wide variance in radiation emissions from these phones so you need to look closely at what you are getting, especially if you are concerned about what cell phones may be emitting. This list is maintained by CNet for active phones being sold. As a model is discontinued, it is removed from the list. Even if you are not all that concerned about the emissions from the phones, you probably should take the time to look at how your current phone measures up.

The end result of all the studies which have been done to date has not proven a cancer risk to those who are using cell phones. While that does not mean that there are no impacts, it does mean they have not been able to prove a correlation between heavy cell phone usage causing cancer. The obvious conclusion of all the studies is that more research needs to be done. Since cell phones have only been around for 15 years on a wide spread usage, there needs to be more data collect to determine the impact of cell phone usage at 20 or 25 years of use.

Are you concerned about the emissions from your cell phone?

Klouchebag - Hottest Thing On The Web Mocks Klout

Measuring your Twitter Asshattery

Klout has been seen as the site for determining your influence on the web and has even been used in making hiring decisions. Too many people are taking the value of Klout way to seriously. It is about time for an anti-Klout site to emerge. Everyone seems to be talking about a new web site which is called Klouchebag.com and this looks like the anti-Klout site which is needed. This was created by Tom Scott and you can find him at TomScott.com or follow him Twitter at @tomscott.

This is taking a big swipe at Klout and how way too much importance has been placed on Klout. Klout carries too much importance on rating "people's social media "influence" based on their activity on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms". The site is taking a mocking approach to just how your importance is rated as it relates to Twitter.

The rating system being used seems to be pretty straight forward and is defined as such:

What do the ratings mean?
Klouchebag uses the ARSE rating system.

• Anger: profanity and rage.


• Retweets: "please RT"s, no or constant retweeting, and old-style.


• Social Apps: every useless checkin on foursquare or its horrible brethren.


• English Usage: if you use EXCLAMATION MARKS OMG!!! or no capitals at all, this'll be quite high.

Too many people seem to feel that Klout is critical to their importance and the ability to get hired or get a promotion. They may be right about that, but Klout is playing a bigger role than it should and we should not be so serious about things. Tom Scott has a sense of humor. The goal should be to have a lower Klouchebag score so that you are less than the asshat you are. If you look up Scott at his TomScott Twitter account on Klouchebag, it returns a ranking of 100. Pretty hard to get it that high and is a great joke. There are probably others like that and should put a smile on your face.

But... but my Klout score is important!
No it's not. It's like search engine optimization, only for yourself. Ignore it. Concentrate on making amazing things, caring about the people around you, and not being a douchebag. If you do that, then you'll soon realise that it doesn't matter one jot what an algorithm thinks of you.

Given just how successful this has been spread around the web, he might be able to expand this site even more to provide additional parody for everyone to enjoy. Here is the Klouchebag rating for TechieDIY. Looks like we retweet too often, but at least we do not misuse English.

This is a great parody site and you should take a look at your Twitter rating on klouchebag.com. You can browse around and look at rankings for other Twitter accounts and have some great fun. Just don't take it too seriously.

Brandcast Helps You Target Your YouTube Audience

With no fanfare, Google opens Brandcast to the public.

 
Google has very quietly opened up their Brandcast product on the web with no official announcement or fanfare. There is nothing on the Google blog about it either. This may be because they are still working on the process and while there is obvious structure on the site, a number of things are not the way they should be, along with errors when clicking on several areas of the site. You can see Brandcast.com for yourself and see the general structure. There is not much behind it. The URL of "http://www.brandcast2012.com/" does not match what we would have expected such as "http:\\brandcast.google.com" or something to that effect.



We would not even know about this had not The Next Web made everyone aware of the existence of this site. The intent of Brandcast is to help you determine the best ways to target and reach your audience with your brands. This is all on top of YouTube. Video sharing has become a great way to reach your audience.

Why should you care about Brandcast?
That is really the question as to how it is going to benefit you. You need to attempt to reach your target audience with a product and doing that via YouTube advertising is often unclear. It does not matter what your product is, but you need to associate it with Brand recognition. With a brand, you need to then market that brand so that people know who you are and why your brand is important to them. Google started laying the foundation with Adwords for videos last fall so that you could place your ads and manage them as well. Of course, this is only of value if you are targeting a large geographic area as YouTube videos are not constrained by geography.

Since Brandcast is a site which assists you in targeting your audience, it is going to be a resource once they have added some depth to it. It currently has 3 main groupings to the site and is fairly intuitive as to how to navigate it. The 3 main groupings showing up right now are YT Original Channels, Find you audience and Marketer Resources.

Under YT Original Channels, you are shown a series of 19 categories which obviously may changes as other categories are reflected. These are tied to YouTube categories. All of these have nothing under them and return an error in loading the page as this is obviously a work in progress for Google. But they do provide you with an idea as to how this site might be beneficial to you.

The Find your audience group has under it a break down of potential target audiences which you might what to advertise to and is not complete. They have Teens, Men 18-34, Females 18-34, Adults 18-34, Men 18-49 and Adults 18-49. They are missing Females 18-49 for some reason and should be correcting that soon. There is nothing under any of these age groups and clicking on any of them returns an error. But you do see how they are showing you the audiences which you would most likely what to target. The under 18 market is one which spends a lot of time with YouTube and will more than likely end up here.

The last section is for Marketer Resources and under that you are displayed 3 items of View More Content, Follow Us On Google+ and Research Request. The View More Content takes you over to YouTube and shows "This channel is not available:. The Follow Us on Google+ takes you over to YouTube for Marketeers on Google+. The Research Request displays a screen to fill in your information and email address so they can contact you later.

Exactly how this will play out for other than the medium to large business has yet to be determined. Much of that is because there is a lack of published information as to how things are going to be working and we are making assumptions based on what we are seeing here. We can expect to see much change over the next week.

The YouTube Brandcast is reportedly to be announced on May 2nd at a press event in New York. Expect to hear more about this in the coming weeks from Google.

DropBox Facing Competition From Google Drive

Giant Google enters cloud storage against popular Dropbox.

 
Dropbox has been the big name when it comes to cloud storage of information which can be shared among a variety of devices. It is the name that most people think of when asked about file sharing in the cloud. They have seen a lot of growth and because of that growth, it creates interest in the market space from other players, some of whom are very big. In the 1990's, any small company who developed a product which ran under Windows had to pay attention to what Microsoft was doing. If their product became too popular, Microsoft would often create a competing product which had devastating affects on the company. Dropbox has held their own very nicely against the likes of Amazon (Cloud Drive), Windows (SkyDrive) and others in the market. Dropbox is the leaders in this market segment and has shown their capabilities as a great file sharing product.

Enter Google Drive
Google has been rumored to be working on a competing product and today it is big news. It is not exactly ready for prime time as going to the Google Drive page shows "Your Google Drive is not ready yet". This looks much the same as when they started off with Google+ by attempting to generate excitement by limiting the number of people who could connect initially. Not exactly the best way to launch a product. This sounds much like a David and Goliath story where Google is seen as the Goliath as they are huge and anything they release has an impact on the market. Just how well Dropbox can defend themselves as David remains to be seen. Google Drive could be a big product.

That does not mean they will be successful, just they will make a splash. Google+ is a perfect example as many thought they would have radical growth and have a major impact on Facebook. It would appear the same may happen here. Sure, Google has a lot going for their product with all the other integrated products they have such as Google Docs. That may be the one weak point for Dropbox as Google enters the market. But that could be a weak point for Google as their bundled services are difficult to unbundle.

Dropbox is known for their maximum compatibility across a large number of platforms and devices. Others in the market and now Google Drive do not offer that compatibility and is a big strength for Dropbox. Whether Google Drive will achieve the ability to operate across a broad spectrum of devices is unknown.


Dropbox Standard
Dropbox has become the standard for what cloud storage should be when using it as a file sharing environment. That is not going to change and in light of Apple's iCloud, they have done well in maintaining their presences. With Google Drive coming out, we expect Dropbox to maintain their leadership role in the marketplace.

For some, pricing is always an issue and the various pricing models have a variety of options across the various products. The entry point is what often makes the most difference. Google Drive gives you 5 GB free while Dropbox gives you 2 GB of free storage. The big question is what product are most people more likely to start with. Given the Dropbox method of getting more disk space when you get your friends to join Dropbox, gives them an edge over their competitors, including Google. It is the market mass which will help them continue with this latest competitor entering the market place.

Google Drive could become a huge product, but it is too early to know just how much of an impact they might make. For now, Dropbox remains the market leader and probably will for the foreseeable future.

Smart Phones For Visually Impaired (Blind) Individuals

Concept phone may be an excellent example of providing feature phone to the blind.

 
We do not think very often about how technology is very challenging for those you do not have the ability to see. That presents possible roadblocks to those who cannot see for reading and sending emails. The problem has always been the ability to provide a readable surface from which the braille characters can be variable and changeable. It would be that ability which would open the world of smart phones to the visually impaired. We now have a concept phone from Yanko Design which is an international company in creating new design concepts. They have now produced one which will open a whole new world to those who are blind.

The device is being called the DrawBraille and consists of two parts. The first one has 5 rows of buttons, specifically braille buttons. They are buttons which can be raised or lowered so that the person can determine what is being said. The second part of the phone is what we would consider to be a touchpad, but one which most would have a big problem in trying to read. This concept device looks very good and one which does not seem out of norm with current smart phone designs.

It is true that those who are visually impaired can use voice commands to perform various functions and Siri on the Apple does provide that. But there are times when everyone wants to do something and not let everyone around them know what they are saying. This is where this concept phone would be perfect. It even has 5 dots on the right hand edge of the case which is where the owner can check on the battery status of the phone. Battery levels is something which all smart phone owners are concerned about.

Since this is a concept phone, it is an unknown if it will ever make it to market so that the visually impaired can take advantage of it. At the moment, there is no information about plans to manufacture the device. We can hope that it is something which could be brought to market this year.

Here is a video from Yanko Design showing the concept phone.

Use Strong Passwords to Protect Yourself Online (Infographic)

One of the easiest and most common methods criminals and hackers use to gain access to online accounts is by cracking easy to guess passwords. Conversely, one of the easiest ways you can protect yourself is by using strong passwords. Strong passwords are long passwords made up of letters, numbers and special characters that don't follow a pattern. See the infographic below:

[caption id="attachment_2468" align="aligncenter" width="553" caption="Click for full image"][/caption]

The problem with strong passwords for most people is that they are impossible to remember. And the experts recommend that you not use the same password twice, that you have a different one for each account!

Currently I have over 700 unique, strong passwords for all my online accounts. How do I manage all these strong passwords? It's actually quite easy, I use a software tool called RoboForm.

RoboForm manages all my passwords for me so I don't have to remember any of them. It also generates strong passwords for new accounts. It even fills my information in forms so I don't have to type. So, now there really isn't any excuse anymore for not having strong passwords.

For more information about web security we have just released a new 37 page guide on how to better protect yourself and your websites. Topics include:

• Password creation


• Password management


• Free programs to protect your computer


• How to spot computer infection


• Spotting online scams


• Securing your Wi-Fi connection


• Internet Security best practices


• Properly backing up your website


• Basic guide to website security


• Securing your WordPress website with plugins

You can download the book in PDF and ePub formats here: Web Security Guide

New WordPress Version Now Available

WordPress version 3.3.2 has been released.

Automatic, the developers of WordPress have released the latest version of WordPress as a minor one to correct some bugs and issues with the current version 3.3.1, That version has been very stable and reliable. Following is the actual announcement of the latest version from WordPress.org and of note is the security enhancements to external libraries.

If you hare hosting your own WordPress site, you can upgrade your site from the administrator panel inside of WordPress. For creating new sites, the new version is available at WordPress or if you are using a hosting provider to host your site, their cPanel interface should provide you with the latest version to create your new WordPress site.

From WordPress.org new site comes the details for the latest version.

• Three external libraries included in WordPress received security updates: Plupload (version 1.5.4), which WordPress uses for uploading media.


• SWFUpload, which WordPress previously used for uploading media, and may still be in use by plugins.


• SWFObject, which WordPress previously used to embed Flash content, and may still be in use by plugins and themes.

Thanks to Neal Poole and Nathan Partlan for responsibly disclosing the bugs in Plupload and SWFUpload, and Szymon Gruszecki for a separate bug in SWFUpload.WordPress 3.3.2 also addresses:

• Limited privilege escalation where a site administrator could deactivate network-wide plugins when running a WordPress network under particular circumstances, disclosed by Jon Cave of our WordPress core security team, and Adam Backstrom.

• Cross-site scripting vulnerability when making URLs clickable, by Jon Cave.

• Cross-site scripting vulnerabilities in redirects after posting comments in older browsers, and when filtering URLs. Thanks to Mauro Gentile for responsibly disclosing these issues to the security team.

These issues were fixed by the WordPress core security team. Five other bugs were also fixed in version 3.3.2. Consult the change log for more details.

In another part of the information, WordPress has already started working on the next version of WordPress 3.4 Beta 3 which is available for download if you are so inclined.

Are You Planning For Mobile Payments?

Mobile Payments are coming and should be part of your business plans.

Early last year, the expectation was that we would have a number of new phones coming out in the 4th quarter which had Near Field Communication (NFC) chips contained in them. Google was pushing their Google Wallet along with a number of competing methods for handling them to make mobile payments, such as ISIS which is backed by Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile. It was really expected that Q1 of 2012 was going to see a growing acceptance of Mobile Payments.

It is coming, but maybe not as quickly as was hoped, but it is going to be a growing item. At the moment, there is still a fight going on as to what standards to use here in the US for Mobile Payments and that may continue for a while. The sooner that everyone is able to start using mobile payments, the sooner some standards are going to come into play. If you are running a small business, you need to start planning for this eventuality if you have not already done so. At the moment, Point of Sales (POS) devices are being installed in retail stores so that they can take advantage of NFC enabled phones and credit cards that have special chips embedded in them. These are read by the POS device and processed. Those who would be processing the payments are still forming and getting organized. That does not mean that people are not using mobile payments because they already are.

While larger stores should have the new POS devices installed by the end of the year, smaller businesses are going to have to consider installing them as well because that is what the future holds. In a recent study, it is estimated that by 2020, cash will be replaced by mobile payments. That is 8 years from now and would mean that in a few years, widespread adoption of mobile payments will have taken place. But what if you are not a business which has a store front?

We have all heard about the Square device you can attach to an iPhone or Android smart phone and it will be a card reader for a credit card. If you do not have a store front, you need to be current on technologies which could benefit your business. I would suspect that by the end of the year Square will be creating a device which will plug into your phone which will act as a POS system where people can make mobile payments. This is coming and it is just a matter of time before it does.

While this year has not started out as strongly as was expected for NFC enabled devices, they are coming. We expect to see the next Apple iPhone coming with an included NFC chip. Other new Android phones are coming here in the next few months which will have NFC chips. As more manufacturers include the NFC chips, the demand for using them for mobile payments is going to rise. While 2012 was supposed to be the year for growing acceptance of them, it will more than likely start in the 4th quarter. 2013 will see a growing number of people using their smart phone for making payments. And with that, small business need to take advantage of technology to meet the needs of their customers. Missing those opportunities could mean that your competitor may get the business.

Depending on the size of your small business, now is the time to start considering how you will be utilizing mobile payments for your business.

Does Instagram Purchase Help Facebook's Bottom Line?

Instagram has not made any money when Facebook bought them, so how will it add to profits?

 
With the purchase of a large and growing following of Instagram, it makes one wonder what the strategy is for Facebook. Given that Facebook is very close to going public with their IPO, what are they considering to do with Instagram so that it can add to the bottom line of the company? Up until this point, Instagram has not made any money and the reported numbers continue to grow. While it may be difficult to believe some of the user numbers being reported by Facebook and Instagram, it is obvious they are big. Instagram reported their new Android app had 5 million downloads in the first 6 days making them ever more successful. And yet they have no revenue they can report on.

There seems to be a history of past purchases by companies who have invested large amounts of cash to acquire a photo sharing site. You can think of Google and the purchase of Picasa back in 2004. There is Yahoo and their purchase of Flickr back in 2005. Neither of these can be considered as purchases which added significantly to the bottom line. But, these are web based solutions and that is where the difference lies. Instagram is a mobile app which has deep roots in smart phone usage. The web based interface offers one very little information as to its real value.

And that may be the primary reason for Facebook to buy Instagram. Facebook already has a large following of people who post pictures on their Facebook page. But the mobile aspect of activities has been lacking and this may be exactly what they need. Instagram already has hooks into Facebook, so the purchase is not going to change anything immediately. But again, we have to go back to the question of whether Instagram is going to help the bottom line?

The best answer I can give is not exactly. It is not going to have a direct link between monetizing the product and adding revenue to Facebook. What this will do for them is deal with some of the Facebook limitations which other social media sites have been very good at. As an example, Pinterest has gained a lot of interest as a new social networking site through the use of pictures. These shared pictures has moved Pinterest up in prominence and is currently being ranked as the 3rd most popular social networking site in the US. Only Facebook and Twitter rank higher.

This may be one of the primary reasons for Facebook to buy the company to fill in some of the areas where they are lacking or less than successful with what they are currently doing. The whole idea of using pictures as a medium of communications has taken off and looks like it will do nothing but continue to grow. While Instagram is more of a photo sharing site, moving it to Facebook to use its features making it similar to what Pinterest is doing would not be that difficult.

There are a number of possible things Facebook can do with Intagram as the medium moves more from text based to images being posted. It would seem the old adage of "a picture is worth a thousand words" may really apply to the true value that Instagram brings to Facebook.

Does Your Android Phone Battery Last All Day?

Battery life on 4G LTE Android phones is deteriorating.

 

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The idea of having a smart phone which holds a charge for several days of normal usage is starting to look like something from the past. The poor performance of batteries has been a growing problem, especially 4G LTE phones, such as HTC Thunderbolt of last year. It seems that things have gotten worse of the past year which does seem to correspond to the introduction of 4G LTE by Verizon here in the US which has been followed by AT&T. Much of the reported problems seem to be associated with that introduction. But the problems can be considered to be much bigger than that.

Smart phones have continually gotten more complicated with bigger screens and features which all by themselves is going consume battery life. There are some key items to be aware of which could impact your smart phone life and here are a few of them.

Wireless Carrier Connection
For your smart phone to be of much value, it must have an always on connection so that you can receive phone calls, SMS text messages and communicate with the Internet. While that is necessary, there are potential battery drain problems if your phone is struggling to find a connection. When one is traveling in areas that have less than excellent coverage you can expect you smart phone to be working overtime trying to find a usable wireless connection. That activity is going to put a drain on your phone. That situation has existed for years and is nothing new other than the 4G LTE connections. Those are not wide spread and can cause your battery to drain much faster as the phone tries to find a 4G LTE connection. That assumes you own a 4G LTE capable smart phone. If you have a 4G LTE phone and are in an area that does not have the coverage, turn over the 4G LTE capabilities.

WiFi Connection
With the growing smart phone market of the past few years, the issue of data usage has prompted wireless carriers to create tiered data plans to attempt to restrict the extremes of a few. One solution which has been created is for your smart phone to switch between your wireless carrier and a WiFi connection if one is available. That offloads the data access from the wireless carrier to a local WiFi device. If you smart phone can use a WiFi connection, it will continually look for a WiFi connection. That takes power from the battery to perform that search. If you are moving about, it will be having to look more frequently for WiFi access points as you leave the one that your smart phone had found. If you do not need WiFi, turn it off.

4G LTE
The new 4G LTE phones are themselves a battery draining item. The vast majority of these phones have a radio chip which has been essentially glued on the top of your existing radio chip and as a result will consume more power in its activities. That situation looks like it will be resolved as new phones entering the marketplace now have the 4G LTE chip embedded into the processor and therefore are far more efficient. For those of you who already own a 4G LTE phone, you are not going to get any relief in this area. If you are in an area where there is no 4G LTE connectivity, turn it off.

Bluetooth
Another source of battery drain is your bluetooth connection. That is generally due to your phone having to scan for bluetooth devices and then try and make a connection with those devices. While the battery consumption of bluetooth is probably very small, when you add it up with everything else, it may be another of the items to turn off to conserve your battery life. So, if you do not need bluetooth, turn it off.

Apps
It seems that the apps that you download are a potential source of problems with battery drain. That is especially true of "free apps" which quite often consume power trying to figure out where you are located so they can then display appropriate advertising. We already know that games consume a lot of power and can be associated with the intense graphic performance needs.

GPS apps are a huge battery drain such as those that perform mapping functions. A review by Engadget of the Galaxy Nexus and Google Navigation had the phone draining faster than the car charger could charge it back up. As with any app, some are going to consume your battery faster than others.

Social Media
One of the biggest consumers of battery life can be attributed to Social Media. The check in apps, such as Foursquare, can be a big drain on battery life. The biggest reason for this is that they are continually checking for updates, much in the same way that your smart phone checks for mail and other items. You get enough of these kinds of items doing that and they add up. You should probably check those that perform periodic updates from the Internet and increase the frequency they do that so it is less often. That will help your battery life.

Solutions
Solutions for these are many and this is only a list of some of the ones that can drain your battery. Listening to music is another one that can drain your battery. In terms of tools you might use, there are a number of them out in the market to try. As an example, CurveFish has a number of apps which can help you identify your problem areas and then turn them on and off as needed. There are many other companies out there who offer similar solutions.

Whether 2012 is going to be the year where we finally get a minimum of 24 hours battery life out of 4G LTE phones under everyday usages is an unknown as there are a number of factors to improve battery life. One is the OS which can improve how things use up the battery and Ice Cream Sandwich is reportedly helping in that area. Unfortunately, the roll out is very slow for Android 4.0. You might see much improved batteries coming out this year which by themselves could give us a few days of battery life. For now, the solution is to just put in larger batteries into smart phones.

Hopefully, you have other solutions than listed here and can share them.

WordPress Dominates For Blogging Web Site

Hitting higher trending with big popularity for WordPress.

 
WordPress has been growing in popularity for years. Five years ago, we were more focused on Joomla because of everything that you could do with it. It was very customizable, but the problem is that it took more than what most people would be able to do. With Joomla designed for a more technical person, we decided to shift our focus to WordPress. We already were familiar with it and believed this was the future for Small Business web sites. And the idea has proven itself with the great simplicity in WordPress and all the additional items and features which can be added. The numerous templates and plugins for WordPress continue to grow with the ability to find just about everything you need to create and maintain your WordPress site.

In a very recent survey conducted by Royal Pingdom, they discovered that of the top 100 blogging web sites, almost 50% of them are running as a WordPress website. Most of these are self hosted which is what we have been focusing on for years. 9% are hosted by a company with the main one being WordPress.com. The chart from Royal Pingdom tells the real story and we are providing it here:
 

The top 100 are based on those listed on Technorati who has been maintaining lists for years to show them ranked for the top 100 blogs. These numbers continue to change every day and we can expect to see WordPress increasing in the next survey which is done. We know that there are a large number of news web sites that are run under customized versions of WordPress and eventually some of those customizations leak out for use by everyone else.

While you may not be writing a blog, the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) provides you the ability to easily set up a web presence to represent you or your small business. If you have not set up you business web site, now is the time to consider doing just that. You can make your site as simple or complex as you like, but you should really consider starting out simple if you have not created one before. There are several different considerations which you will need to make and some of that guess work has been taken out by downloads which we are providing. If you do not want to have WordPress.com host your web site, here is a guide to finding a hosting company. There are a number of reasons why you might want to host your own WordPress site. Most of the hosting companies have cPanels, which are control panels and we have provided a tutorial on cPanels for your use.

We have a number of other articles of interest on our site related to WordPress which may help you in getting your site set up. Once you have your site set up, you are going to need to consider adding plugins to add features to your site, such as giving people the ability to contact you by adding a plugin called Contact Form 7. This is just one of the many contact form plugins you can add to your site. The area of plugins is one that can be discovered over time.

With WordPress continuing to grow, we believe that it is the correct platform for you to start a web site on for your business. It eliminates the need for high priced programming talent to give you an immediate presence on the web and there are templates which are available on the web to add a look and feel to your web site. The better templates come with associated costs, but can make your site look as good as some of the very popular sites.

If you are not using WordPress for your web site, you should take a look at it.

Reversal Of The Oursourcing Trend

Recent financial reports from a large India outsourcing company show a cloudy outlook.

 
Here in the US, outsourcing is considered almost a dirty word. This is especially true given the current fiscal crisis being experienced here and around the world. One of the biggest concerns people have is over the high unemployment and the length of time it takes many to get rehired, if they are able to do so. Some have been looking for over a year while others take any job they can get. More often at a lower rate of pay or part time just so they have something. With this being an election year, it places even more emphasis on the employment picture than it normally would. With all of that, people are taking a hard look at companies which outsource overseas for their services. A growing trend is to outsource your services to a foreign company which comes to the US to handle the outsourcing contract and bring people in from overseas to do the work.

In news being reported today, Indian outsourcing giant, InfoSys, is reporting that the future for outsourcing is not looking as bright as it has. The potential for a shift in outsourcing seems like a very real possibility. InfoSYS has cut its outlook previously and the future outlook still does not look as bright as it once did. For the very large outsourcing companies, 2012 is going to present a challenging year. It could well be that here in the US, we are finally beginning to see a reversal in the steady stream of companies outsourcing to companies overseas.

The bigger question is whether the outsourcing companies will recover after the election is over next year and the US economy begins to recover. An accurate answer to that would require a crystal ball, but the current trends in the US seem to indicate a population which wants companies to keep the jobs in the US. But even that is not clear cut as you might think. There is a big difference in the company keeping the jobs in the US or a company outsourcing to an overseas company which comes to the US to handle the outsourcing contract.

In another report about outsourcing, it appears that the outsourcing companies are operating on US soil, but continue to bring in workers from overseas to perform the work functions, all the while paying them from India and avoiding US taxes. That trend has been going on for years, but with the new restrictions on H-1B visas, new ways of bringing help in from overseas has emerged. A whistle blower is reporting visa fraud for InfoSys here in the US. According to the report, it seems that InfoSys moved to using B-1 visas according to whistle blower Jack Plamer.

According to him, InfoSys has been bringing workers over under the B-1 visas which are designed to let foreign workers come over for training or consulting. Mr. Palmer has indicated they brought people over as employees and paid them from India, thereby bypassing them having to pay US taxes and paying those individuals much less. Mr. Palmer has been locked out of all computer systems and interactions at InfoSys, but is still an employee sitting at home. His job prospects are not good after being identified as a whistle blower.

He is not the only one reporting these allegations. Another person at InfoSys here in the US is Marti Harrington who is reporting a similar story about the company. This has started a US investigation of the company and the B-1 utilization which these outsourcing companies are utilizing. This is early on in the investigations, but you can bet they will become part of the campaign trail discussions to protect US jobs.

There will be much more to this story in coming months. Jack Palmer has filed a civil lawsuit against InfoSys which is scheduled for trial in Alabama during the summer. If InfoSys does not want certain things appearing in the court record, they will be settling with him to protect themselves. In the mean time, this is going to be another show down on visas for foreign workers coming to the US and we can hope that there is finally meaningful reform.

Skype Growth Continues To New Highs

Skype achieves 40 million concurrent users.

Skype continues its growth this month and it is obvious that Microsoft has pretty much let the company run the ship. That is evident in the continuing reports of records being broken for the number of users on Skype at the same time. They have been making announcements this year and it continues to be positive information.

Skype seems to have a unique way of presenting things that is far different than what you might expect to hear from other companies. In their blog making the announcement of 40 million concurrent users, they seem to attempt to put things into perspective in a unique way. This is definitely not your average PR announcement.

Between three and four millennia ago, sometime between 2000 BC and 1000 BC, the world's population stood at 40 million people. Early civilizations like the Egyptians, Phoenicians and the Minoans focused their trading efforts on the sea, building centers of commerce all along the Mediterranean. Letters using these early peoples' alphabet took weeks or months to travel on the sea or overland by boat, horse or foot.

Well, the world certainly has changed a lot since then. Today, we have seven billion people on Earth, and there are centers of commerce almost everywhere. With changes in technology and mechanized forms of transportation, letters (surprisingly) still takes days to get from person to person, while email takes just seconds.

But one of the biggest changes is one we reached today - when 40 million concurrent users were signed onto Skype all at once. This is a massive new milestone for a simple piece of software that helps make meaningful connections a cool part of people's lives every single day.

Skype Premium
This comes after Skype released their Skype Premium product and we have produced the Skype Group Guide for your reference. Skype's future did not look as bright a few years back when Google Voice came out and Google was offering free phone calls. Skype has made a number of changes to improve their services and the result is evident in the numbers. The move to take advantage of business conferencing needs has been very positive for Skype and will result in revenue expansion for them this year.

Whether you need to take advantage of the Skype Premium feature depends on your needs. For those who do not need to collaborate with associates on the web, you probably are not going to need the additional services which they provide. But if you could use the following features, then you should consider it.

• Group Video Call


• Group Screen Sharing


• No partner advertising


• Live Customer Support


• Unlimited calling to a country of your choice

The no partner advertising and unlimited calling to a country of your choice make this interesting to consider. As usual, there are limitations. For the moment, pricing is $9.99 per month, or $4.99 per month if you pay for a full year. The pricing is competitive and the features for collaboration are worth looking at. These items are similar to those offered by competitors WebEx and Go To Meeting.

So the obvious question is how long is it going to take them to break the 50 million concurrent users? Given they hit 35 million on March 5th, that would tend to indicate they will achieve the 50 million mark by June.

Will Instagram Remain Independent Or Within The Walled Garden?

With the $1 Billion purchase, will it remain free or be caged?

The really big news this week is the purchase of Instagram by Facebook for what could be considered a huge premium. That is because the revenue being posted by the company is non-existent and brings back memories of when Google purchased YouTube. But that was a long time ago and much has changed in this Web World that we all belong to. The numbers for Instagram have been what one would consider to be off the charts. With the launch of their Android app, they achieved 5 million downloads in 6 days, which is big numbers. All from company which has no profits to show.

Instagram is enjoying the biggest week in its existence. The company, already riding high on its iOS success, launched its Android app and captured 1 million downloads in its first day and unless you live under a rock, you will know that yesterday, Facebook came in and bought the company for a cool $1 billion.

Will Instragam Remain Independent As Microsoft Did With Skype?

This is the big question. Facebook does not have a history of purchasing companies and then leaving them alone. They do the exact opposite and integrate all the functionality and features inside their walled garden. This requires you to be a "guest" of Facebook and log on to gain access. This is the more likely situation which we can expect to see on the purchase. In the Blog post from Mark Zuckerberg, there are no guarantees being made with what the future may hold for the extremely popular service.

For years, we've focused on building the best experience for sharing photos with your friends and family. Now, we'll be able to work even more closely with the Instagram team to also offer the best experiences for sharing beautiful mobile photos with people based on your interests.

Facebook has spent a lot of time and effort for sharing photos and with the Instagram team, they are going to be offering even better experiences by further integrating those features into Facebook. Instagram as it stands today may not go away, but Facebook is going to get the lion's share of the quality improvements. There is nothing in the blog which clearly states that Instagram has a long term future or not. If other sites start leveraging Instagram for their use, Facebook is going to be quick to stop that from happening. And with that, Instagram as we now it today may go away.

This large purchase of a company is a strange one as Facebook is on the verge of their IPO in the next few weeks and since there is no revenue for Instagram, Facebook will not get immediate benefits from the purchase. As a result, this has caused some to question whether there is a Tech Bubble here and the future implications are that is is one. The picture industry is still recovering with the bankruptcy of Kodak and they were a long established company. Instagram is a very young company which is still exceeding expenses over revenues and it does not look like that will be changing in the immediate future.

Given that YouTube has been a heavy use with computers and tablets, Instagram is a completely different model. Its best usage is with a smart phone and there in it is much different than YouTube and make the comparisons far different. Assuming that Instagram remains as highly popular as it currently is, the bigger question is what is Facebook going to do with it remains as an unknown. Given that the primary focus of Instagram is for mobile devices, it could be one area which Facebook wants to improve their processes on. Time will tell as to exactly what Facebook has in store for this most recent acquisition.

Given past history with Facebook and their walled garden mind set, it is more than likely Instagram for the future will be included inside of Facebook. What do you think?

Girls Around Me - Why Is Everyone So Surprised?

With the revelation of the "Girls Around Me" app and the open API for Foursquare, it seems that many are up in arms about what has been shown by iFree as a "stalking" of women. While there may be safety concerns which are legitimate ones being raised, the bigger issue here is one of privacy on the web. Or to put it another what, the lack of concern about providing details about an individual or their activities. The privacy concerns of a few are raising major concerns about personal information, such as when Facebook lets personal details leak out. While I agree that we need to be very concerned about what can be found about us as individuals on the web, I am part of a minority. Most are not concerned about the information that they put up and provides information about them. It seems that a large group of people is very surprised by what they are seeing by the "Girls Around Me" app.

If you are putting your personal movements on the web, why are you surprised someone is reporting on it?

While iFree has defended their app, it has been shutdown by Foursquare for a violation of their policies. While this very specific situation may be correct to be stopped, there is a much bigger issue at hand which most just seem to ignore in their daily lives. That is the willingness to provide details on the web that they would not make public to the world around them. Facebook has been a tremendous example of how willing people are to reveal information about themselves to friends as to what they are doing. If they "Friend" a lot of people, then everyone knows what they are doing and where they are going. Much of this is public as most do not take the time to truly lock down their Facebook accounts the way that they should.



Then you add in the Foursquare app that so many are willing to "check in" to show where they are at and you have the opportunity for others to gather information. This is exactly what iFree has done. They have aggregated information from Foursquare and Facebook to show who you are and where you are at. While their app focused on the female population, this kind of aggregation could be done on just about anyone. It just takes some coding and effort to make this happen.

Do you think that the government is not doing the same thing?

You bet they are. There is nothing to stop them from using readily available information such as Foursquare and Facebook to gather information about you and where you are. It is becoming all to easy for that to happen and the population at large is more than willing to add information about their daily activities to feed the web. Facebook information has been talked about for years and the most recent issue is employers asking for Facebook passwords in interviews or on the job. But the bigger problem is that everyone is more than willing to reveal almost anything about themselves on the web.

The big attraction on Foursquare is to get badges and so many participate in it. There is also twitter will you get play by play information from so many. You combine the two and you have too much information. Many have tied the two together which creates a dangerous combination. They have set things up so that when they check in, it Tweets about where they currently are. Tweets are generally available and so if someone wanted to track you, it would become very easy. You would not need an app to do that, only "follow" the person who checks in and tweets about it. Jealous partners would know exactly where you are at.

Even worse are those who might be stalking as talked about earlier. It is getting much easier for those activities. Then there is the aspect of someone burglarizing your home while you are out because you tell everyone where you are at. Even if you do not use Foursquare, but put information on Facebook while you are on vacation, you are setting yourself up to get hit. There is just too much information available online.

The concept of "Big Brother" watching you was a concern 30 or 40 years ago, but of late has become a non-issue until something happens such as this. The problem is that few people really change their day to day activities and continue on as normal.

We should not be surprised if we see more of these kinds of things being reported.

Facebook Password Issue - Asking The Right Question?

There is a lot of talk about asking for Facebook passwords, but there is a bigger question to be asked of the employer.

 
There have been a lot of stories lately about employers or potential employers asking for a persons Facebook password so they can log on to that persons account. This has been tied to getting hired or even keeping your job so that the company can essentially "break in" to Facebook and see what you written and what you are doing. We have had Facebook weighing in on the situation along with the US Congress looking at possible legislation to stop this activity which is going on. And it is continuing. Here is the question that I believe should be asked when you are asked for your Facebook password.

What is the company policy on sharing passwords?

There are very few companies that do not have a password sharing policy. And in a lot of cases, it is grounds for termination, if not outright termination. So why is a company asking an employee or a potential employee to violate a company policy regarding passwords. They can sugar coat the request all they want, but the reality is they are trying to get you to violate a company policy. Do they really understand what they are doing to undermine the company policies they have worked long and hard to create for the purpose of protecting the company?

If a manager comes to you a month later after you have given them your Facebook password and wants your password to log on to a system, are you going to give it to them. With this action by companies, there is an increased possibility people will turn over the password because the company has shown the company policy isn't really all that critical to the company. It is critical that companies understand the impact of placing continued employment or possible employment on violating a company policy. As a condition of employment, requiring me to give up a password reduces the value of using passwords in a company.

The security of any and all passwords should be held in the highest regard.

There are lots of reports of these kinds of things going on. In some cases, people refuse to give up their Facebook password such as Kimberly Hester a teachers aid in Cassopolis, Michigan who refused. As a result, she was fired from her job. Yet, if she had given up a password to a school system, she probably would be fired as well. This particular one is being talked about, but there are far too many beyond this one being reported and is becoming a very dangerous trend.

All of this is probably going to continue in other methods. Such as asking the person to friend the company so the company can then look around. Others may ask the employee or potential employee to log on to their account and then give the keyboard to the employer or their representative. In this later situation, what is the company policy about logging on to your computer and then giving the keyboard to someone else to go through and look at your computer? If the company would object to that activity in their own systems, then why is it they are asking you to let the company do something they would object to you doing as an employee? That is the real issue.

Why are companies asking employees or potential employees to do something that I can presume is against company policy?

Mobile Fusion From RIM Might Save Company

RIM may have just pulled a rabbit out of the hat to save themselves.

So much of the news regarding RIM has been down right bad and the future for the company was looking very bleak. Their decision to focus on the Enterprise business first and then the consumer business has been seen as the exact opposite of what they should be doing. Smart phones have been a consumer driven business for the past few years and where the money is at. Apple has proven that beyond even their best expectation. With all changes at RIM and the really bad quarterly report, it really did look like it was too late for them to turn things around.

That is until today. RIM has come out with something which can be considered bold and it is called Mobile Fusion. This is something they have been working on for a long time and have done an outstanding job of keeping things secret about it until they were ready to roll it out. This single product which is for their Enterprise clients let's IT departments manage Blackberry devices. But it is so much more than that.

This lets IT departments manage phones which employees have selected to use at work. This means they can control Apple iPhone's and the wide selection of Android phones which are out there. All of this from a single program and not multiple programs to be maintained. This is big news for the corporate world. There are options for the pricing on this of either $99 per user or $4 per month per user. This provides further potential business for RIM and there is integration with Mobile Fusion and Blackberry Enterprise Servers which is a critical feature. All of this fits nicely around security which is a key concern for the Enterprise business that RIM is committed to supporting.

"For businesses and government, managing a mix of mobile devices on any scale is chaotic," Alan Panezic, vice president of enterprise product management and marketing at RIM, said in a statement. "BlackBerry Mobile Fusion allows organizations to manage a mixed environment of devices in the most secure, simple, and cost efficient manner possible. It also means that businesses and government do not have to move to the lowest common denominator on security for all the devices they need to manage."

Blackberry Balance In a product talked about last year, the Blackberry Balance for their smart phones fits in nicely with the new model of letting employees have their own phones with a business side to them. The Blackberry Balance set up allows personal and business communications to be isolate from each other and if necessary, the business side of the phone to be wiped by IT personnel remotely. This protects the company and allows employees to use their phones for personal use. That is common place in business, but few smart phones have the ability to isolate each side so securely.

This one would have been great to release in the fall of last year and could have potentially held on to the value of the company. We can assume that it was not ready for full release until today and this information is going to be talked about for a few weeks to gauge the impact to the market. It would appear that this looks like it is the exact thing that RIM needed to do for integration of various mobile devices to operate under the security umbrella in corporations. We can expect to see them improving this as the tablet market continues to grow.

It looks like RIM may have just snatched victory from the jaws of defeat.

You can read information from the Blackberry Business Blog.

Android 4.0 ICS Numbers Increase

ICS numbers increase from 1.6% to 2.9%.

Since Google announced their most recent version of the Android OS, the numbers do not seem to reflect what one would expect to see given all the features which are included in Ice Cream Sandwich. In the latest report from the Android Developers site, they are providing the current distribution numbers for all Android versions as of April 2nd and represent the previous 14 days of active mobile devices running which version of the Android OS. You can view the information for yourself at Android Developers site

Last week, I talked about the Android fragmentation which continues to be a problem with Google and all the various version of the Android OS which are operating out there in the world. The numbers are staggering when you look at Android 2.2 and 2.3 with an understanding that Ice Cream Sandwich has been out since October. That 5 month window makes things questionable regarding the roll out of Android 4.0. That is even if you assume that it really was not moving to market until the end of November because of delays.



While the increase from 1.6% to 2.9% is a notable increase, it makes one wonder what those numbers really represent. Given that Google has announced Android 4.0.4 last week, we can assume that things may not be all that great. It seems that there are a large number of Galaxy S2 owners who are unhappy with having to wait to see Ice Cream Sandwich released 3 months after the Galaxy Nexus arrived. Some are still waiting while some are getting the upgrade.

So what do this numbers actually represent. With all the new phones which are being purchased, in particular the Galaxy Nexus, how many are new phones versus upgrades to existing phones. We know that the Galaxy Note is still waiting for Ice Cream Sandwich and it is supposed to arrive in Q2 after previously being promised in Q1. Obviously the collection method is not breaking out the actual devices and if they did, might reveal a much different picture than what this looks like on the surface. If this is 50% new phones, then the upgrades to existing phones is very poor.

Another question is whether this is an official release from a manufacturer or instead a rooted upgrade from leaked source which people are using. While a lot of Android users have the ability to install an unofficial version of Ice Cream Sandwich, there is a good size group who do not have the ability or do not want to take the risk. There is no way to know at the moment just how much of the numbers represent mobile devices running an unofficial version of Android 4.0 on a manufacturer's device. That will probably never be known. But for many, it is the only way to get Ice Cream Sandwich installed in a timely manner. For some, they may never see an official upgrade to Android 4.0.

All of this is troubling to see and is what I would consider a very slow roll out of Android 4.0. Google's model of Open Source is a good one, but the time to get an upgrade to smart phones is one that has people complaining about the longevity of their phones. If we assume that recent reports of it taking up to 8 months to get a complete roll out, it potentially means some people will only see a single upgrade of Android before they decide to trade in the phone. That is because the requirements for newer OS's from Android require much better hardware which quite often is not supported. That is the case right now for a large number of mobile device owners.

Google is approaching a cross road where they are going to have to make some decisions as to how they are going to improve the roll up of updates so they happen far more frequently than they do. If we assume the 8 month roll out being reported, a new Ice Cream Sandwich phone purchase in April is not going to see Android 4.0.4 for potentially 8 months. With the rumors of Jelly Bean coming out in Q3, that would mean they potentially would not see Android 5.0 until 2013. That is just too long and if Google cannot resolve this situation, they are going to lose market share to other phone OS's who can roll things out much faster.