This is something I learned from Nirvino.com, the iPhone wine rating app.
I thought I would be put off by it, but if you approach it in a smooth and non-pushy way, it’s a great way to get more ratings for your app. All of the ratings were positive.
I looked at the Linkedin, Flickr, and Facebook iPhone apps to see how secure they were.
When you log-in your password is safe and protected with SSL:
Frame 1 (78 bytes on wire, 78 bytes captured)
Ethernet II, Src: AppleCom_94:9e:c2 (00:16:cb:94:9e:c2), Dst: D-Link_4a:41:9c (00:0f:3d:4a:41:9c)
Internet Protocol, Src: 192.168.0.102 (192.168.0.102), Dst: 8.17.171.32 (8.17.171.32)
Transmission Control Protocol, Src Port: 49891 (49891), Dst Port: https (443), Seq: 0, Len: 0
However, let’s say that you view your list of contacts on the LinkedIn iPhone app:
You’re basically giving away your contacts to the hacker at the cafe who is taking advantage of the fact that you’re using WiFi.
Here’s the scoop on the iPhone Apps.
Flickr: Password Secure, Data not
Facebook: Password Secure, Data not
Linkedin: Password Secure, Data not
Gmail: Password Secure, Data Secure
Hushmail: Password Secure, Data Secure
Hushmail even has an option to turn off security, but why would you? 🙂
Here’s a list of tweets you’ll most likely read at SxSW 2010:
I think SxSW Interactive is an awesome event. It’s one of those few tech conferences where if you make a friend there they stay your IRL friend for quite a long time.
Also it’s a great place for making complex deals in a really easy way. Think of the pieces that it takes to launch a major Internet app with mobile, web and video pieces. You can get those stake holders in one place at SxSW, and hammer out a huge deal with 2 days of face time.
Wow, I’ve just finished some work for a creative technology agency I work for, and am taking a break.
Today was a pretty awesome day in tweeting.
Here are tweets I liked:
At a San Francisco ad agency, I’ve seen an office of well over 600 people in December of 2008 shrink to an office of less than 140.
I got to visit the office on Thursday and it felt like a beehive where the queen bee has left and only hangers on are busy milling about.
How did I survive? (Just to disclose: I am no longer part of the Ad Agency and have found work at a Creative Technology Agency.)
I was the last hire at the SF office in December 2008. It wasn’t until an ex-MySpace executive got hired in November 2009 that the hiring freeze ended. However, there were still additional cuts. I was invited to a lunch where I was told that we were the last folks remaining in December and that there would be no more cuts.
Here’s what got me through that rough year:
This is a pretty awesome book that gives a realistic look into how normal people act when they get into organizations of a certain size. This is the kind of book that will wake you up to the aggressive and covert competition that your office mates engage in to get ahead. I didn’t read this book to get ahead though. Historical forces demanded something more basic: survival.
Here are some helpful hints the book gives:
I think one of my biggest challenges is the last item and its the sort of thing you learn through a mentor.
On the off chance things went really bad and I found myself on the street, I got this book:
This is a no non-sense guide to do exactly what you need to do to survive. I’ve found greens and picked berries in the woods, and also made a lean-to. The book has a waterproof cover and the pages can survive a rain and dry out without getting brittle.
A brilliant insight just came to me:
Achieving true market prediction means having the capacity to create and predict the behavior of an artificial intelligence.
Here are the reasons why:
1. The description of AI from Caprica suggests consciousness can be built given a sufficient amount of recorded on-line activity.
2. If you know how the parts of a market works, you can know how the whole works.
3. A person is a part of the market.
4. How a person interacts on-line is part of a market, e.g. people build and use a system for products use.
5. An AI can imitate on-line market behavior such that it’s indistinguishable from a person.
6. If the program allows for predictive behavior, then you can predict a part of market behavior.
7. Since you can predict the part, you can predict the whole.
8. Therefore, in order to predict how the market will work, you need an AI.
This implies that the more AI-like or better your modeling, the more you can predict how the market will behave.
If AI proves to be un-predictive behavior, then perfect market prediction is impossible. (It might just be quantum in nature.)
If AI proves to be impossible, then perfect market prediction is impossible. (See the Chinese Room Argument.)
Bad things happen:
My Twitter page @mostlylisa has been hacked and deleted. It’s GONE!!! I am currently catatonic. Please help me restore my account, it’s like, my meaning in life.
Much love to whom ever helps me!
PS. If you miss me like I miss you, you can always be my Friend OR Fan on Facebook. I know it’s not the same, but it’s all I have now. *hold me*
It only took twitter about 3 days to recover from this.
Is there a faster way?
First let’s look at the current options:
BackupMyTweets required too much info to get it working. No, you cannot have my gmail password.
I’ve tried Tweetbackup and they get kudos for using OAuth to make it easy to back your tweets up.
The 3rd option, begging Twitter, simply can’t scale and will only work for those few elites close to Twitter or popular enough. There isn’t a consumer solution.
How do we solve the problem of social media backup?
The great thing is the problem is:
Once again, if you haven’t already, use BackUpMyTweets.
I’ve been using j.mp for two weeks now and it’s filled the void that tr.im left after going out of business.
Long Live j.mp.
Your team will sabotage your career worse than any other nemesis at work, if you let them.
Here’s what you need to know to protect yourself and your company from sabotage:
Who’s popular? Yeah, I know. It sounds like highschool, but like then it’s still in important and socially real factor that’s now kept track of on social media sites.
What is your team’s weakness as perceived by those outside? By the team itself? A good manager can appease the two.
Whose skills are the most respected? Yup you have to get along with this douchebag, if she or he is one. Just create enough space between the two of you.
Any others?
This is just a quick summary of what it was like implementing Amazon’s EC2 in an enterprise environment.
1. You’ll need to write your own LDAP plug-ins to interface with any access control lists. E.G. where I work WordPress is used for corporate communications so an LDAP plug-in had to be written to make sure the right people saw the right information.
2. Migration can be expensive if you’re using EBS on the first go. On windows, and I’m not sure why, it can cost about $50 to migrate 2GB of data into EBS. In linux, it happens at a fraction of that cost and as advertised.
3. Windows can be very expensive. Although they say it’s 12 cents per hour per small instance beware of hidden costs like authentication services and SQL server. With both, you are using a server at the cost of $1.35 / hour, which IMHO could be run cheaper with just a small linux instance and do the same thing at 10 cents per hour.
I’m pretty sure that with the right Amazon EC2 set up you could run a cluster of servers for a Fortune 500 company for under $1000.00 (one thousand dollars) per month without the CapEX costs associated with new hardware.
If you have any more questions about Amazon EC2 in the enterprise I’d be happy to answer them. Please ask them in the comments below.