The British journalist and filmmaker Sean McAllister was in Syriashooting a documentary for Britain’s Channel 4 about the underground there. A few he had worked with were concerned about his general lack of care about his communications and protection of the identities of those in the underground he was working with.

In October, McAllister was detained by Syrian security agents. Well detained he could hear the cries of prisoners being tortured in nearby rooms. He was interrogated and had all of his electronics seized and searched.

Upon hearing that security forces had McCallister a few individuals who had been in touch with, including the main source of the article, immediately fled fearing the brutal Syrian regime now had information that put their lives at risk. Others in McAllister’s electronic records, like one Omar al-Baroudi, were never heard from again.

The article uses the example to point to the need for journalist and the organizations that employ them to become more aware of how to protect their digital information. I hope this stark example will encourage everyone with a smartphone to consider protecting the information on it and information available to it.

If not, please consider the potential embracement of a malevolent or mischievous individual finding your smartphone and posting to Facebook or Twitter on your behalf (though I would understand that it would be nice if someone update your Google Plus account).

It’s not just your data

Your smartphone does not simply have some of your most private information, such as recent phone calls, social networks and E-Mail archives, it has my information too. If your information isn’t enough to convince you to protect the data on your smartphone then please consider the contact information from others that your smartphone contains.

Also consider the information your smartphone could have access to. Following a link in an E-Mail is the only proof of ownership of an account that most sites require when recovering a password. More sophisticated sites with higher security often require more, but would a quick E-Mail to the contact labelled “Mom” in your smartphone about how to spell the name of the street your grew up on yield results?

What you can do to protect the contents of your phone

The best news in all of this is protecting the contents of your smartphone is not that hard.

The type of storage based encryption that can prevent a thief from popping the drive out of your phone and reading it like it was a camera card on another machine is standard on Blackberries, recent iOS devices and is an option on almost all Android-based phones. I don’t know much about Windows Phone 7 Series Phones, but I suspect they are protected by the box they were shipped in.

That said, the most sophisticated encryption won’t protect the contents of your smartphone if all a nefarious individual needs to do is power your smartphone on.

PUT A LOCK CODE ON YOUR SMARTPHONE

Adding a lock code is a huge leap in security over nothing! Even a simple code or Android pattern. If you add a simple code and back that up with the auto erase feature found in the same area of most smartphones you have “good enough” protection. “Good enough” protecting will keep someone who found your phone from pretending to post as you. All iOS and recent Android-based devices backup almost everything on your smartphone to a combination of your computer or “the cloud” and can safely be wiped at any point.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation & SafeMobile.org

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is always a great source for such matters, and they have Surveillance Self-Defense Guide ssd.eff.org/your-computer/protect

safermobile.org/ is a web site that generally helps people use mobile technology more securely. They have tutorials about how to encrypt the data on your phone and store passwords securely. It’s worth investigating. They even have a guide for journalists.

Here’s my geeky and productive way to start off the 2012 Formula 1 season: Textexpander shortcuts for Formula 1 driver names.

I’ve blogged about Textexpander before: mattclare.ca/blog/2009/08/28/textexpander/ In short, with TextExpander installed on your Mac you can type short key-commands, like “ddate” which is automatically replaced with something like Thursday March 15, 2012 saving keystrokes and looking things up. I store handy E-Mail responses or marking responses in TextExpander shortcuts as well as things like HTML elements and other filler text.

There is also the compatible MS Windows option: PhraseExpress.

For the 2012 Formula 1 season I’ve taken the Formula 1 timing and scoring three letter short code abbreviations and turned them into a Textpander group. This should help me bang-out my tweets, blog postings, gripes and other comments about F1.

Here is the TextExpander Group for you to either download or subscribe to.

Signed with TextExpander……
Matt Clare
Educational Technology Support Specialist,
Centre for Pedagogical Innovation (formerly CTLET) www.brocku.ca/ctlet
Part-time Instructor,
Interactive Arts and Sciences

One part of the season that always gets me excited is entering my team, ZERO Racing, in Mitch & Brooke’s Fantasy Racing competition. I’m encouraging you to as well.

All you have to do is pick a team name and then a driver from all of six groups provided. The only prize is respect, and you should probably check back once and while to see how you’re doing, but if you let me know your team I’ll be sure to give you credit for besting mine.

Something else to look forward to is the new look I donated in the form of pictures and CSS to Mitch & Brooke’s Fantasy Racing. I hope to see it applied soon — once the guys are done starting the season etc. Here’s a preview:

So far I’ve found my laptop to do all I need it to, but laptops have a limited battery, they can be less than portable and have the visual barrier of a vertical screen. My phones, specifically my iPhone, is too small to refer to and interact with while teaching.

Here’s my reflections from teaching with a tablet:

• I like the form factor – back to when all I’d use was paper notes…. well someone else teaching a class would have.
• The portability does allow me to be more engaged with my students both with with my location in the classroom and the removal of the laptop/monitor barrier.
• I can’t take notes as fast, but the notes I do make just sound less jundgemental than the clicity clack of a keyboard

Here’s the strangest reflection:

• When I refer to my tablet for something I feel like Moses reading a decree from his tablet. I feel as though each fact should be prefaced with “thou shalt..”. Perhaps its the read-only or consumptive not creative nature of the whole tablet form factor that makes my notes read or feel like decrees?

Here’s my Twitter feed for 2011:

I think the insight there is that I use twitter to get a hold of Giulia a lot.

As my ThinkUp installation at mattclare.ca/thinkup gains way more data than my previous archives had I think 2012 will bring with it some real insight.

I recently wrote Burlington Hydro about the about the remarkably poor instructions for logging into the PeakSaver Online Control Centre. The number of issues with the process really does make Burlington Hydro and the PeakSaver program look foolish.

The issues stem from me attempting to log into the online control centre with credentials I had saved but no longer work. It would appear they stopped working after my thermostat was replaced in the summer after it was damage by our child — an experience that was very good and left me impressed with PeakSaver’s responsiveness. My opinion has since changed.

Apparently the new thermostat meant a new log-in, no one told me this, but it was simple to deduce. Here are the three major problems the experience highlighted, with the benefit of information from a phone call on Thursday December 15.

1. Login page for PeakSaver Control Centre

   When you don’t enter your password correctly at rscdr1.rodanpower.com/login06.html the logo changes from BHI’s to PeakSaver’s
   

   When you follow the Forgot your password link you are presented with a form

   

   I filled out that form at least a 1/2 dozen times. I never got a response. I’d put my phone number in the notes, ask if anyone was receiving these, no one ever got back to me in any format.

   PeakSaver and Burlington Hydro would be offering better service if this link wasn’t even there, because I’d call immediately and not wait for a never arriving response.

2. The account instructions to sign-in to the online control centre are incorrect on the Burlington Hydro web site, and I know how to correct them based on my Thursday December 15th phone call.

   At www.burlingtonhydro.com/your-home/conservation/peaksaver.html it should read:

   The letters BUR followed by Your Account Number. Note that there is no dash in your User Name as there is in your Burlington Hydro account number.

   

3. When I finally called on Thursday December 15, 2011 I was asked what my username that I was given was, I suggested what I thought it was based on www.burlingtonhydro.com/your-home/conservation/peaksaver.html (which I now know is misinformation) and mentioned that at some point I had updated it to a different username. I was told both that the account information was wrong, and then given the correct formula noted above, and told that you can’t change your username. The gentleman I spoke to was correct about the format of my username, but one can change their username
   

I also asked the gentleman I spoke to on Thursday December 15 about the “Forgot your password?” form and why I hadn’t received a response. The gentleman then asked when I had filled it out, my answer was “Once this morning, once last night and during the day, once last week and a few times in the summer” he apologized. I further alerted him to the misinformation at www.burlingtonhydro.com/your-home/conservation/peaksaver.html and asked him to do what he can to improve that experience, I’ve since asked the same of Burlington Hydro.

There’s my rant, but I also hope it corrects the record for someone who Google’s there way away from www.burlingtonhydro.com/your-home/conservation/peaksaver.html and I also want to revoke my endorsement of the PeakSaver program.

I wanted to quickly write about the TMSoft White Noise app.  It has to be quick both because there isn’t much to say, other than it’s free or cheap and because our baby may be up from his nap soon.

I bought the full iPhone app before there was an iPad and before we had a baby in a fit of insomnia.  I’ve used it to try to fall a sleep our tune out those around me.  It works well for both and the audio samples provided are very good and you can combine them and set timers.

Since our baby has arrived we first discovered how much liked the oven exhaust fan.  I then realized that I had a portable version of “oscillating fan” in my pocket in the White Noise App.  It’s been great to both sooth our child and drown out other noises that might wake him.

TMSoft have since expanded their lineup.  I have a copy on my Android tablet.  My wife has the free version on her iPhone and I have the desktop version available from the Mac App store on my computer at work – airplane noises seemed to work well to drown out the noise of colleagues to write reports etc.

Here’s the places that I’ve found TMSoft’s White Noise application at:

• iOS Free App
• iOS Full App
• Android Web Store Free App
• Android Web Store Full App
• Mac App Store Free App
• Mac App Store Full App
• Blackberry version
• Windows Phone 7 Series Phones
• TMSoft’s website

My Flickr photo set at www.flickr.com/photos/mattclare/sets/72157628184149659/with/6416075347/
the results are posted at rallyscoring.com/results/2011/TallPines/index.htm

The Southern-Ontario race track Mosport recently transitioned from Don Panoz’s ownership to a new ownership group.

They’ve got some great plans for the place and will hopefully be able to give the place the attention it needs and perhaps do some needed updates.

One update that I feel is needed is more slow corners to promote passing.

The track consist of a lot of long high-speed turns which only really provides for passing with modern high downforce cars like F1 cars and the top classes of ALMS. Road cars and other racing series tend to do almost all of their passing in breaking zones or out of slow corners and are forced to follow each-other through most of Mosport’s corners.

I propose a chicane or “S” in place of what is now turn 8 and some of 9. Turn 8 is at the end of a long straight and is a sweeper with some banking, it doesn’t slow cars that much of the straight and does not provide for the changes in running speed that promote passing. Further, I’ve seen street cars and lower formula cars have moments overcooking it into that corner — thankfully there’s generous run-off.

By adding a chicane or “S” cars will be forced to break down to a slow enough speed to negotiate the turn. The need to get the breaking point right and the opposite direction corner could promote passing through this section and on into the start/finish straight. Further I’d added a “kink” after the new 9 both to respect the current layout of the in-field terrain (as best as I can remember) and keep drivers worrying about their positioning relative to the corner and other drivers.

What’s more is the current turn 8 area has no stands, moving turn 8 forwards and adding more corners would provide an excellent spectator area.

I’m no Hermann Tilke, but that is probably a good thing.

Here are some pictures of turn 8:

You can view the current track in Google Maps - Google Earth - OpenStreetMap

The original source for track map:
Pittenger Will, Mosport International Raceway. (2008, July 20). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 03:13, November 6, 2011, from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mosport.svg

To accommodate this I added my Facebook, and then Twitter status to my web site as the constant “first blog post”. This sort of worked, but still didn’t provide an ideal summary of information.

I’ve tried again, this time focusing on mattclare.ca. There’s a little more of a summary of of the blog, focussing in the titles and images, with some teaser text.

Further I’m hoping to write more on the blog, and more pictures etc.

One thing I still refuse to do is narrow the focus of my posts, that will still range from server admin, to ed. tech. to F1 and fatherhood.

Here’s hoping.

My short take is that the service looks useful for recreating an isolated web space that respects the need for private on-line areas student privacy and publisher copyright suggest. It’s not as open as I had hoped, but it is more real-world collaborative than any other LMS I’ve used.

My quick assessment, with updates from Tuesday October 18, 2011 4:51 PM:
Positives:

• Private – both in web isolation and in student records
• Private but easy to add others
• Free to add to an Google Apps domain – good option to those already using Google Apps versus other LMSs
• Has document collaboration powered by Google Docs
• Easy to use
• Simple link to publisher content
• UI is polished, including maximize option for all content

Negatives:

• Standard Cloud control concerns
• Unless your institution is paying for a commercial LMS licence the migration costs will likely outweigh any transition costs
• Configuration of items is often done through a Moodle style view/modify (edit) metaphor – can’t say I’m a fan – but so many instructors want a “student view”
• Crude controls of public (rest of the web) versus private, biased to private
• It’s infrastructure, not an innovation
• The menu structure and/or list of tools appears to be extensively cached – is this the return of the turn of the millennium Perl based tools and I need to “publish” something somewhere? – kidding
• There’s no logout button?

Also, you can add other participants via their E-Mail address, but no E-Mails are sent and there otherwise seems to be no way for them to access the OpenClass without being part of the Google Apps domina?

Time may refine my thoughts.

Anyone can learn more about OpenClass, please visit us on the web: www.JoinOpenClass.com. If you have a Google Apps domain you can add it to your domain through the market place.

Here are some screenshots:

My top-five Research In Motion jokes about their streak of poor products and refusal to attribute their current situation to their unconventional Co-CEO model:

1. Research In Motion is said to be losing so much money now that Gary Bettman and the city of Glendale are interested in investing.
2. At RIM our motto is “The buck stops here… and over there.”
3. At RIM we know that “Those that learn from history repeat it”. In fact, this is exactly how we pitch our products to our CEO, an then repeat for our CEO.
4. RIM’s mistake with the Blackberry Playbook was underestimating the overlap between tablet consumers and people that use E-Mail.
5. Do you know why messages are so secure on a Blackberry? No one uses it.

Best of luck to a Canadian innovator…. that could use some good luck.

www.flickr.com mattclare’s Storm Wednesday August 24, 2011 photoset

Here are a few pictures of lightning from the storm that came through Burlington Wednesday August 24, 2011.

One thing I often cite is how few unique words are in the song. I finally ran the numbers:

AWOLNATION’s four minute and twenty seconds song “Sail” has 85 words, but, only 36 of those words are unique!

Here’s how those 36 words break down:

Here’s the PHP script I used to do the analysis mattclare.ca/~mclare/blog/sail.phps

Over four months ago I ordered a WoPad from PandaWill.com, so far I’m glad to have the exposure to the Android platform, and for some tasks the larger screen works well. But, the bottom line is it does not replace what any of the Apple iOS devices do.

The Device

The best part about the WoPad is that with express shipping it costs less than $200.00 Canadian. The free Android operating system that Google provides allows seemingly random manufacturers to assemble a collection of hardware, add the Android OS and suddenly have a tablet for sale.

The WoPad offers a capacitive screen or pressure sensitive. I won’t consider anything without a capacitive screen to be a modern tablet, so I ordered the capitative screen so that I wouldn’t look like a cafeteria worker trying to punch-in a trays worth of food into it. That said, the WoPad’s capacitive screen is slow to respond, that or perhaps it’s ability to process touches is very slow, but more on that in a bit.

The WoPad also has an SD card reader, standard headphone jack, standard USB connector for external media, a mini-usb connector so that the WoPad itself can be an external drive. There’s also a micro-HDMI port (I have yet to test) and it’s non-standard power connector – however it will trickle charge off of the mini-USB cable.

Android

The first thing I did when I received my WoPad was ask a colleague to “root it” and install the latest Android ROM that the WoPad would could support.

The ROM he used was based on this thread over at SlateDroid.com www.slatedroid.com/topic/14507-wopad-froyo-custom-rom/ Using these steps www.slatedroid.com/topic/12854-how-to-flash-a-rooted-rom/

If it weren’t for my keenness to get the latest ROM it would have never needed to be connected to a computer. A challenge Apple’s “peripherals” have yet to overcome.

Once the Froyo/Android 2.2 ROM was installed the quick setup that all Android 2.2 and later versions of Google’s mobile OS provide is one of the best parts of the experience — if you already have a Google account (or a few) it’s easy to get all of your mail, contacts and calendars on the device.

Android’s widgets are kinda’ cool and the simulate depth between the apps and the background when you scroll is very well done – innovation not imitation! The apps available are OK, but still not as mature as iOS. That said, the geekyness of apps available on the Android platform gives a better selection of tools for copying/syncing files over SSH, or remote server control, or monitoring the hardware itself.

One thing that I really appreciated: The Formula 1 live timing and scoring app is free! It’s free on the web too, but on iOS it’s ~$40/year and bundled with track with GPS-based track positions of all the cars. market.android.com/details?id=com.formula1.twothousandelevenapplication&feature=search_result

Lastly, I installed the Beansoft Thumb Keybaord market.android.com/details?id=com.beansoft.keyboardplus which really improved the tablet’s usability and compliments the in-between-tablet-and-phone size more than the stock Android keyboard.

The Bad

The processor is very slow.

The biggest issue is I can’t tell why the key responses are so slow; the keyboard, the sensitivity of the touch screen or the the slow processor. In any case, it does limit the WoPad as an input device.

The wifi is also an issue. I find myself not using it as much as I had hoped because it doesn’t not connect to WPA2 Enterprise WiFi networks and occasionally has issues with standard WiFi networks that use first-web-page authentication. This rules out it being the Evernote-based tool I wanted for work.

Not surprisingly, without the network, there isn’t much to do with this tablet. There is the Google and Amazon book stores… but as an individual not captivated by fiction I haven’t used them too much. I am excited about the Economist app for Android.

Summary

I’m happy to have the WoPad in my life. It is a good device for reading articles and other documents, however when it comes to modifying documents it’s far too slow — in fact when it comes to anything other than reading articles, its slowness becomes an issue.