Adam DesAutels

First iPhone Virus Strikes – Are You At Risk?

Thomas Petty — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 23:21:14 +0000

It was reported last week that some iPhones in Australia were infected with the so-called “ikee” virus. Some people woke to find the wallpaper on their phones changed with an image of the 1980’s singer, Rick Astley. The image also had the words, “ikee is never going to give you up”. The virus is actually a type of worm that then scans the iPhone network for other vulnerable phones to infect, thus propagating itself through the network.

Are you at risk?

The only phones that were attacked were those that had been modified with “jailbreak” code to unlock the restrictions that Apple puts into the operating system. There is an underground network of programmers who have written software that allows you to install a modified version, or “patches” to the operating system. It frees your phone from AT&T (in the USA), thus code-named “jailbreak” software, and allows you to install applications that aren’t approved by Apple.

By installing a special type of software called SSH (Secure SHell), phones with jailbreak code on them are vulnerable to being hacked if the user didn’t bother to change the root (administrative) password to something else. The default SSH iPhone password is “alpine”, and the virus scans the phone network for phones that haven’t had their password changed.

Fortunately, this virus wasn’t a destructive one. The author even notified hacked phones via text message that their phone had been hacked because it isn’t secure.

A Moving Target

Apple has been trying to stay ahead of the “jailbreak” hackers ever since the first generation iPhone came out. That phone’s operating system was reportedly “very easy” to crack. Apple continues to patch their iPhone operating system with regular, free updates to try to stay ahead of the hackers, but it’s a very difficult moving target.

There has been an ongoing debate about whether Apple should continue to control it, or make it more “open” to allow anyone to modify the operating system and installed programs. After all, we all have computers that allow us to install whatever we want whether we have approval from Microsoft or Apple. Some people say it’s like having Ford tell you that once you buy their car, you can’t repaint it, buy rims or muffler mods, or use any fuel but “Ford-approved gasoline”. It’s unclear if the protections are to protect AT&T’s revenue stream and Apple’s other preferred carriers, or if there are security protections in place “for our own good”.

There are lots of open-source examples, Linux being one of the most successful versions of UNIX. As thousands of programmers continue to modify the code, they collectively make it stronger and more robust. DotNetNuke is another version of the .Net Web platform that is completely free. It continues to grow and get more secure.

Draconian Control or Complete Freedom?

Personally, I think there’s a balance here. After all, this is America, right? We all know that the Mac is a very stable operating system that has been remarkably virus and problem free. But we’re free to install applications, make modifications, and we can hook it to any network we want to – wireless or wired. (By the way I’m a Windows PC myself.)

As our phones become smarter and more network-enabled, it’s clear that the lines blur between our PC or Mac and a mere “phone”. After all, they are Wi-Fi-enabled, have an IP address just like my PC, and scan for wireless networks whether I’m in the office, at home or at Starbucks. We feel that we should be free to do with our computing devices what we want.

I saw one (albeit unsubstantiated) post that said that France has multiple carriers upon which the iPhone will work, and they have a 40% market share of the phones. In the USA, the iPhone accounts for 10% of the users.

It would be an interesting exercise for Apple to actually work in tandem with the folks who are jailbreak coders and have the best of both worlds. Pay them to help build a rock-solid operating system, but give the users (us mere mortals) the freedom to choose between carriers, applications (approved or not), and do what we want with our own personal devices without having to sign up for a two year contract.

Meanwhile, I will keep my non-jail broken phone with my AT&T contract, because that’s what I can get. Somehow I don’t think my liberties are being trampled upon too severely.
What are your thoughts?

Read more from Thomas Petty at: Bay Area Search Engine Academy and on Twitter

Thomas Petty is President of the Bay Area Search Engine Academy. He teaches SEO and internet marketing classes in the San Francisco Bay Area and Sacramento, California.

October 23, 2009 -- Nokia Sues Apple Regarding iPhone Technology
October 26, 2009 -- Google Social Search
November 1, 2009 -- Top 5 “I’m a Mac” and “I’m a PC” Commercials (video)

Bathroom Scale Tweets Your Weight

Thomas Petty — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 12:09:29 +0000

It’s a new world, baby, and our appliances are becoming Twitter-aware. Withings has a WiFi-enabled bathroom scale that will tweet your weight, calculated body mass index (BMI) and lean and fat mass to the world.

The upside to this $159 sleek bathroom scale is that it will track all your weight in an online system that even comes with an iPhone app. That’s quite handy so you don’t have to deal with transcribing your data into a pesky spreadsheet and generating graphs for yourself. It’s all online for you to track, monitor and chart over the long haul. Very nice.

But should I be telling the world about my weight? My first visceral reaction to this is, “Why do I need to broadcast to the world the most intimate daily details of my life, like my weight? Honestly, how could anyone really care?” Just like the TV commercial with the dad tweeting, “I’m sitting on the back porch.” Who the hell cares?

The reality is that no one really cares what I weigh or that my BMI went down a point. But, looking at their blog just today, there was a comment from someone who has been encouraged by their friends because of the tweets from their scale. So maybe that’s a good thing.

But do our appliances need to be communicating to the world like this? It seems that Twitter is the universal communicator, because you can now connect your phone to Twitter and then to your Facebook account with all your friends, LinkedIn with all your business contacts, and well, the thousands of followers you have on Twitter. Should my toaster tweet that the toast is popped up? This of course would then show up on Twitterific on my iPhone. Maybe I care about my toast being ready, but does the rest of the world?

Reverse Voyeurism

Voyeurism comes from the French word “voyeur”, which means “one who watches”. I call this phenomenon “reverse voyeurism” because we allow the world to watch the intimate minutiae of our lives. It’s all online, and why should our weight, sex lives or anything else be any different?

Yes, this intimate, super-connected world of ours allows us to instantly communicate at any time with anyone, many of whom we’ve never met and never will. Google Wave even allows you to watch as your friends type letter by letter and backspace over mistakes. Google is busy gobbling up all this massive amount of data in its index, until one day, they will have all the data they need on each of us to become a Star Trek reality.

“Computer, can you please tell me what Thomas Petty weighed on September 23, 2009?”

Personally, I would be hard pressed to pay $159 for a scale that will tell the world what I weigh (I can do that myself for free). I recently lost 25 pounds (after months of working at it), and I felt that was a milestone worthy to share with my friends on Facebook. I think they would have become very tired of endless tweets about my fractional daily loss over several months to the point that it would have all been lost in the noise.

What are your thoughts?

Read more from Thomas Petty at: Bay Area Search Engine Academy and on Twitter

Thomas Petty is President of the Bay Area Search Engine Academy. He teaches SEO and internet marketing classes in the San Francisco Bay Area and Sacramento, California.

November 10, 2009 -- Twitter Retweet Beta
October 29, 2009 -- Twitter Accounts Getting Hijacked
October 28, 2009 -- Is Twitter Being Used for Terrorism?

Twitter Retweet Beta

Adam DesAutels — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 21:22:04 +0000

WOW! It is about time. Twitter is currently beta testing the option to retweet messages without having to copy and paste the message into your update window. Why did they wait so long to test this feature? I refreshed one of my Twitter accounts today to find a special little message waiting for me. Strangely this is an account I just started and only has one follower. Don’t know how much retweeting I will be doing from this account.

“We’ve just activated a feature called retweet on a very small percentage of accounts in order to see how it works in the wild. Retweet is a button that makes forwarding a particularly interesting tweet to all your followers very easy. In turn, we hope interesting, newsworthy, or even just plain funny information will spread quickly through the network making its way efficiently to the people who want or need to know.” – Biz Stone

Twitter Retweet Screenshot

November 12, 2009 -- Bathroom Scale Tweets Your Weight
October 29, 2009 -- Twitter Accounts Getting Hijacked
October 28, 2009 -- Is Twitter Being Used for Terrorism?

Will Google Be Your Phone Company?

Thomas Petty — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 23:18:23 +0000

We all know that Google has some amazing tools, all available at no cost, like:

Google Analytics – Web analytics for everyone
Gmail – free e-mail that connects to all our e-mail accounts
Google Docs – Web-based office software
YouTube – free video sharing
Google Wave – the next gen communication tool

Their latest new tool, available by invitation only by the way, is Google Voice. Google wants to help you with all the phones we’re tied to, and give you one phone number for everyone. They launched Google Voice in March, and just last week expanded its capabilities to allow you to use your own phone number, rather than having to get one of theirs. Google Voice uses VoIP (Voice over IP) to provide free or low-cost phone calls through a unified phone number and system.

Click here to view the embedded video.

If you sign up to use your own phone number, Google Voice provides you with:

Voicemail – available via the Web or your phone
Transcription – your voice mails are transcribed and sent by e-mail or SMS (text)
Custom Greetings – Your mom would get a different greeting, than say, your boss
International Calling – discounted calls to overseas locations

However, if you decide to go with one of Google’s phone numbers, you get a lot more bang:

One Number – Anyone can reach you through one single phone number. You can set it to ring one phone, all phones (home, work, cell, etc.), or different phones based on who is calling (like your Mom or your boss)
Free SMS – You can send and receive (and store) text messages free of charge online
Block Callers – Got a pesky neighbor? Send them straight to voice mail every time
Record Calls – Store your important calls online
Conference Calling
Screen Callers – Hear who’s calling you before you answer

Google has developed applications to use Voice with your BlackBerry or Android. What about the iPhone, you ask? Well, they developed one for the iPhone too, but Apple pulled it from the shelves. The official reason is that it had too many similar features to the iPhone. However, there is speculation that AT&T had some influence in this, since the Google Voice app allows you to send free SMS messages and get discounted overseas calling, circumventing AT&T’s for-charge service.

In the end, Google is trying to expand adoption by now allowing people to use the service without using a Google-provided phone number. Like Gmail that has been widely adopted, this system too may become widely adopted, despite alleged meddling by AT&T. As an innovator in free tools, Google has a long track record with extremely useful free tools, that put paid services to shame. After all, they are in the information business. By giving away free tools that gives them complete access to your Web sites, online documents, videos, e-mail, and now voice mail, I wonder when Google will actually become self-aware.

Read more from Thomas Petty at: Bay Area Search Engine Academy and on Twitter

Thomas Petty is President of the Bay Area Search Engine Academy. He teaches SEO and internet marketing classes in the San Francisco Bay Area and Sacramento, California.

October 27, 2009 -- Google Expands Analytics Capabilities
October 26, 2009 -- Google Social Search
October 26, 2009 -- List of “Google Blog Sites”

Top 5 “I’m a Mac” and “I’m a PC” Commercials (video)

Adam DesAutels — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 13:44:21 +0000

Okay, so I have way too much time on my hands! I spent this morning looking at the “I’m a Mac” and “I’m a PC” commercials. All I can say is that Apple has been busy! There are some pretty funny ones so I thought I would share a few with you.

The Mac commercial “Trust Me” is my personal favorite.