Do you know what really annoys me? I go on Facebook, I see a friend posted new pictures, I start looking through them only to realize there are about 200 of them, uploaded right off their camera. Rather than calling it an “album” I’d refer to it as a “pic dump” (as in crap, not to be confused with a random set of funny pictures).

It’s fairly easy to make the difference between a pic dump and a collection of memories that people actually enjoy looking through. All it requires is some awareness and minimal effort. Let me break it down for you:

Taking a picture

Take your time. Digital cameras enable us to take thousands of pictures, at practically no cost. The advantage is we can take multiple shots, varying the settings, to make sure we get at least one right. In reality most people just hit the shutter button and hope for the best.

So for maximum effect, take the time to

• check the focus is on your subject,
• make sure you don’t cut any heads or feet (if you think nobody will notice, think again!),
• avoid polluting your picture with trash cans, road signs and the such.

Sorting through your pictures

I can’t stress this enough! Sort through your pictures.

• Delete doubles. Nobody wants to see 15 versions of the same pictures where it takes half an hour to spot the difference between them.
• Delete blurry pictures. I know, sometimes it’s hard, especially when it’s the only photo you have. Keeping them is still not worthwhile.
• Rotate your pictures. This one really is a nobrainer! How can you expect people to look at your pics when you don’t even bother to rotate them?!

When you are done with this first quality check, you can start over and sort out the pictures that are irrelevant. I can’t really give you advice on this, because it’s pretty personal what you consider relevant and what not. When in doubt, just ask yourself whether you would want to see that picture or whether something would really be missing if it weren’t there.

Generally a good size for a photo album is 50, give or take 15. If you have more, you can try to split the album and further categorize it.

Uploading your pictures

Before uploading your pics you should resize them, in order to decrease upload time and avoid wasting bandwidth. Until recently the maximum image size for Facebook was 720px for the large side, but apparently they changed it to 2048px.

No matter what size you choose for your pictures, here is a great tool you can use: IrfanView Thumbs. It is free, light-weight, easy to use and a real allrounder, I’ve been using it for years. I’m sure Adobe Lightroom and iPhoto are great too, I just haven’t had a chance to try them out yet.

At first, Twitter used tinyurl.com as its default URL shortener, replacing it with bit.ly in May 2009. The Twitter client HootSuite uses ow.ly by default.

Twitter also launched its own URL shortener: t.co, but it’s only used for internal Twitter links, maybe it will go public some day. Other websites such as WordPress (wp.me), Facebook (fb.me), foursquare (4sq.com), YouTube (youtu.be) and the New York Times (nyti.ms) started shortening their URLs too.

The major drawback that comes with the use of URL shorteners, except from SPAM and link manipulation, is link rot. Rotten links are dead links, that point nowhere, because the page doesn’t exist anymore. This is all the more annoying if millions of tweets rely on it.

Don’t fool yourself, the risk is real! Since URL shorteners often rely on exotic TLDs (top level domain; ex.: .co – Colombia, .ly – Libya, .me – Montenegro, .ms – Montserrat, .nu – Niue) they underlie the jurisdiction of the country the TLD is assigned to.

A prominent example is vb.ly which has been shut down in October 2010. In fact it was seized by the Libyan web authorities for not being compliant with the law of Libya. A Libya Telecom spokesman stated that

“Pornography and adult material aren’t allowed under Libyan Law … Therefore, we removed the domain.”

Another example is u.nu, which was shut down in September 2010. kl.am had to discontinue its activities too, because it couldn’t cope with the SPAM and the related costs anymore.

When the vb.ly case became public, IT experts advised people to be more critical about bit.ly, as it might face the same problems sooner or later. But nothing happened. Twitter still uses it as its default URL shortener.

I won’t argue that URL shorteners are essential nowadays, but which one shall one use? It needs to be as short as possible, safe and reliable.

This is where Google comes in! A couple of months ago, it launched goo.gl. First it was only usable with Google services, but in October 2010 it was opened to the general public. I don’t understand how this could stay unnoticed…

I don’t know what you are going to do, but I will start using it as of now! I am confident that Google has the necessary cash, skills and influence to meet the requirements of a quality URL shortener. As the .gl domain belongs to Greenland, I believe there won’t be any problems.

Further reading:

Shorter is Sweeter: A Look at URL Shorteners
http://www.geeks.com/techtips/2010/a-look-at-url-shorteners.htm

Exhaustive List of URL Shorteners
http://blog.go2.me/2009/01/exhausting-review-of-link-shorteners.html

Comparison of popular URL shorteners (old)
http://searchengineland.com/analysis-which-url-shortening-service-should-you-use-1720

URL Shortening Wars: Twitter Ditches TinyURL For bit.ly
http://techcrunch.com/2009/05/06/url-shortening-wars-twitter-ditches-tinyurl-for-bitly/

About kl.am and u.nu
http://raventools.com/blog/kl-am-closes-its-shell
http://u.nu/unu-discontinued

Google opens URL-shortener Goo.gl to public
http://articles.cnn.com/2010-10-01/tech/google.url.shortener_1_google-maps-google-news-web-addresses?_s=PM:TECH

What is this all about? I used to procrastinate, a lot! Fortunately, I finally got myself to use my time more efficiently. I won’t lie to myself, or to you, by claiming that I live up to my full potential, but I’m getting there. In this post I will share my experience and try to give you some advice on how to manage your time more efficiently, in order to achieve the goals you set your mind to.

I have a lack of motivation until I have a lack of time.

This phrase used to describe me pretty well and if it sounds anything like you, I suggest you keep reading. The purpose of this post isn’t to give you some foolproof 10 steps self help advice, I merely want to share what I found out about myself and what worked for me, if it’s any use to you so much the better.

I’m an engineering student majoring in information systems, so my experience comes from multiple assignments, projects, best practice principles for engineers and internships. Although the advice I will give below is directed to students like me, I will try to keep it as general as possible, so it will apply to students in other fields or even to people who have already entered professional life.

Why do I feel frustrated?

As anybody will tell you, the first step is to ask yourself some questions to get to the source of the problem, so let’s try to answer this one.

I will not talk about frustration caused by people you work or live with, an unmet need for recognition and the like. I want to talk about personal frustration, caused by you getting in your own way. Let’s suppose you are motivated and have goals, but aren’t able to reach them. To me this seems like a pretty good reason to feel frustrated.

Frustration is merely the gap between your achievements and your expectations.

To assess this problem, there are two, actually three, solutions: you can lower your expectations or try to increase the number of achievements, the third solution being a combination of both. Personally I couldn’t get any satisfaction by accepting the status quo, so I asked myself the following question:

Why can’t I achieve my goals?

This sounds kind of harsh, so let me rephrase: why doesn’t my to-do list stop growing? The easy explanation is that you add more items than you can work off during a period of time, but you didn’t need me to figure that out, did you? The good news is you already have a to-do list, if you don’t: make one!

It’s important to have a to-do list because it helps you remember the stuff you got to do, plus it’s motivating to cross off items while you work through it. If you find your to-do list isn’t getting any shorter, or worse, if it is ever growing, you either got too much on your plate, or maybe you just need to manage your time more efficiently.

What can I do about it?

Avoid all-nighters

I used to think I need the just-before-deadline-pressure, it turns out, I don’t. When a prof once told me there’s no point in sprinting just before the finish line if you missed the start, I just laughed. Actually it feels not that bad to know you got some slack in case something doesn’t work out as planned.

Let me be more specific: if you can pull an all-nighter to finish your project on time or to study for an exam and still can get a good grade, that’s awesome. As a result you’ll think that’s just the way it works for you, well at least that’s what I thought, but couldn’t you do even better if you finished ahead of time?

If you do, you can use the spare time to get some rest or go over the material again to make sure you’re really ready.

Caffeine cannot replace a good night’s sleep.

I’m not saying all-nighters are all bad, sometimes you just don’t have a choice, but they should be the exception, not the rule.

If you do it from time to time to fix some last minute problems you encounter although you planned ahead, it’s fine, you do it once, submit your work and get some sleep. If, on the other hand, this is your strategy to study for a series of exams, you might get into serious trouble.

In my experience, spending the night on energy drinks to cram for finals isn’t worthwhile. The next morning, you will have forgotten most of the stuff you studied and you will have a hard time concentrating because you are exhausted.

Sometimes it’s more beneficial to just skip the parts you had no time to study in detail and get a good night’s sleep. By making this sacrifice, you will be able to bring your A-game and do well on the parts you know, instead of doing moderately to poorly on all parts.

Of course, I encourage you to start ahead of time so you won’t have to make this kind of trade-offs.

Break the circle of procrastination

As I wrote in the introduction, I tend to procrastinate. It’s definitely a problem, if not the root of all problems.

When you procrastinate, work keeps piling up. When you finally want to conquer that mountain, you don’t know where to start and end up doing nothing at all.

Actually I’m wrong to compare it to a mountain, because it’s pretty easy to climb a mountain (in theory): you start at the bottom and work your way up to the summit. With a pile of work it’s different, it’s more like a plate of spaghetti you need to untangle.

In an ideal world, you don’t procrastinate, you do everything right away. It’s good to try to change your habits and stop putting things off, but how do you proceed if you end up having too much on your plate?

Define checkpoints

This is where the to-do list comes in, it helps you to define priorities according to the deadlines or other criteria. You might have multiple to-do lists, a professional one and a personal one, for example.

Once you’ve done that you can start working through it. I think the best way is to define what you want to achieve before you start. If you just dig into it and try to work off as much as possible, you will feel lost soon.

Let’s say you want to do tasks 1 through 4 on Monday, 5 and 6 on Tuesday, number 7 on Wednesday and so on, you will be a lot more satisfied. The reason is you know where you are going and you can reward yourself once you’ve completed the tasks you got to do.

Preheat the engine

I made the experience that starting by the top priority task isn’t always the best way. If you really don’t feel like doing it, there is no point in wasting your time staring at your screen, switching to your favorite internet site every couple of minutes. You will end up feeling guilty because you did neither make progress with your work nor take a real, relaxing break.

Sometimes it’s best to start by something you like to do, once the engine is running it’s easier to go on with the more important, less pleasant tasks. For example I am writing this post because it has been on my to-do list for a long time and I really want to do it, not because I don’t have anything more important to do.

The key is to be consistent, instead of “working” during 3 hours while checking your mail / your texts, getting a snack, tidying up your apartment, or whatever it is you do, focus for an hour and a half, then take a real break which you can enjoy, because you won’t have to feel guilty.

Don’t fall for the dark side

I’ll just slip in a quick word about the internet as a source of distraction. I used to waste my time checking Facebook, Twitter, newsfeeds, entertainment sites… and when I didn’t, I felt like I was missing out on something. The truth is, these sites are fun, if checked occasionally. Once you try to keep up with the flow of information it becomes a full-time job and you don’t need another job, do you? The internet is like a spring: you can drink from it when you are thirsty, but you can neither turn it off, nor soak it all up.

Divide to conquer

This well known principle in engineering merely means you need to split big intimidating tasks into smaller, more manageable chunks. As I said before, you need to take baby steps and set yourself small goals you can accomplish easily in the time given.

Also I suggest you refrain from starting a lot of things at the same time and not completing any of them. Of course, sometimes you will have to work on multiple projects in parallel and it’s a good way to use your time while you are stuck waiting for something (opening hours, feedback from colleagues, information, money… you name it).

What I’m trying to say is make sure you complete one task, one chunk of work, before attacking the next one. I once read (don’t ask me where, I don’t remember) that we humans get frustrated if we don’t complete our tasks and it seems pretty logical to me: if you pile up half-done work, you get the feeling you haven’t done anything and you got more and more stuff to think and to worry about.

On the other hand, if you complete one task, you can cross it off, on paper and mentally, and stop thinking about it. In the long term you will be a lot more satisfied.

Accept help

It’s good to try to figure out things yourself, but don’t waste your time on it. If you are stuck or really running late, don’t be afraid to ask for help or delegate tasks (if applicable).

Mens sana in corpore sano

A healthy mind in a healthy body. I know this one is old, but actually the Romans were right. If you want your mind to work at maximum capacity you need to stay healthy. The brain is part of your body and in order to work, the whole system needs to be healthy.

I know I sound like your mum, but make sure your diet is balanced and you get enough sleep.

I recently had back problems because I spend too much time sitting. Don’t lock yourself in, getting out for a walk or a quick workout helps you free your mind and loosen up your muscles.

The early bird, catches the worm

Another proverb that has been around for centuries… If it means you shouldn’t waste your time, I agree (cf procrastination), but if it means you should start your work day early, I don’t agree that much.

It’s a question of interpretation, you could also say the early worm gets eaten by the bird. So who are you? The bird or the worm? It doesn’t matter.

What I’m getting at is that it doesn’t matter whether you are an “early bird” or a “night owl”. If you don’t have to comply with a schedule you can’t change, you should work whenever you are the most productive. For instance, I’m not really a morning person. I prefer to go to bed late, sleep in, get up late and work until late in the night. If you prefer to work in the morning, that’s fine too.

A last word

If you follow all of the above (or most), you can allow yourself to sleep well at night. Why? If you honestly do your best, you can relax because there isn’t anything more you could have done. So get some rest, because you deserve it and you need it.

Be patient with yourself, changing habits needs time. Progress, no matter how small, is a sign you’re getting in the right direction, so keep up the good work.

If after some time, things still don’t work out for you, you need to make a change. If you keep on working harder than humanly possible, you have to make a decision. It could mean giving up some things, or being less hard on yourself, getting a different job or quit some hobbies… that is up to you to find out.

It requires courage to accept your own limits, but at some point when you find them and can’t push them any further, you need to ask yourself what is really important to you, what makes you happy and focus on these things.

Feel free to comment if you agree / disagree with some of the things I wrote, if you want to share what works for you or just want to point out things I forgot to mention.

After some research I found a video tutorial on YouTube. If you aren’t too clumsy it is pretty easy and fast to do, all you need is a #00 Philips screwdriver, a T6 Torx screwdriver and something to pry the case open (I use a metal guitar pick). Note that these screwdrivers are a good investment if you’re into hardware hacking, because they are used for pretty much everything from hard drives to cell phones.

When I was done disassembling my phone, I didn’t notice anything particular so I put it back together. Unfortunately the screen stayed blank, even after a second and third attempt. You could say I literally screwed up. I put the phone in a box under my bed, where it stayed for the next few weeks.

The other day, I dug it out to see if I could get my contact list back or if it was really dead. Sony Ericsson provides a tool to update your phone’s firmware using a DCU-60 data cable (if you’re lucky, you got one with your phone); of course all data in the phone memory will be erased during the process, so I had to find some other means, but at least I knew that it’s possible to put the phone in “flash mode”.

Several hours of Google searches and forum posts later, I had all I needed: XS++, a tool to backup the GDFS and ReadContacts 1.6.5, to extract the contact list in CSV format. I used this tutorial, which explains the steps pretty well, illustrated by screenshots. I don’t have one for ReadContacts, but it is really straightforward, you only have to click a button. Please note that you need special USB drivers to connect your phone in flash mode.

XS++ is a great tool, cudos to the developers! It can also be used to reset the phone lock code if you happen to forget it. Although I did it for my W810i, I’m sure it works with other phones (SonyEricsson and other brands), so don’t give up on your data, zombie mode is always an option

BTW if you need spare parts (LCD, case, cam…), let me know

This advertisement is a short video clip to promote Tim Hortons coffee. The target audience is the altruistic North American coffee drinker who cares about sustainable, social development. The clip is embedded in the “Community & Goodwill” section of the company’s website. The main claim is that people should buy Tim Hortons coffee because it improves the living standard of South and Central American coffee farmers, especially in Guatemala. Figures and testimonies are used to support the claim; they are supposed to be credible because the people who speak have the authority to do so. Furthermore the argument is supported by strong, appealing pictures which speak for themselves. The use of pathos, ethos and logos is balanced although the pathos is prevalent because it’s essentially used with pictures and people respond better to images than to oral information.

I don’t buy it because to me it’s pretty obvious that they are tooting their own horn to make the company look philanthropic. From a public relations point of view the advertisement is very effective because it is well balanced and tends to creates strong emotions. Nonetheless people should keep in mind that it is a billion dollar company that is trying to use the “think green” attitude to sell their products.

The CEO of Tim Hortons explains that they are selling a lot of coffee so they want to give something back to the communities who produce the coffee. In practice this means providing the local population with know-how, education, health care and materials. One farmer says that his dream is to become a successful businessman and that Tim Hortons helps him to achieve his goal. Furthermore a social worker explains that specialist doctors and the treatments are really expensive and that thanks to Tim Hortons people get the care they need. They also explain that government provided education doesn’t go beyond 6^th grade and that Tim Hortons enabled students to take their studies further by providing the material. Each claim is supported by a sequence of images proving the effect of the measures taken by Tim Hortons. The authority of the CEO and the testimonies of the farmer are used as support.

The strategy is to make a claim and support it by giving facts and using images as proof of the positive effects Tim Hortons’ partnerships present. This works pretty well as long as the audience isn’t too critical. One of the main fallacies is that pathos is used as a substitute for real facts. The facts provided aren’t given in a context and the only evidence we have is the word of the CEO, this might be a wrong appeal to authority. Also the testimonies might be faked because the people just might say what they are told to say because it’s part of the deal. We are told that over one million people in Central and South America rely on coffee farming to provide for their families. Four years after the start of partnerships Tim Hortons has improved 2000 lives. How did they actually improve the lives and is this really a lot? We are told that at the end of the day they have a bigger income. How much is a bigger income and is it a fair income compared to the retail price of Tim Hortons coffee? According to their annual report, Tim Hortons turnover in 2008 exceeded $ 2 billion and the net income was $ 285 million. How much of this actually flows into partnerships? The problem is that the figures are neither transparent nor judged by an independent institution.

The advertisement uses a lot of pathos. For example they talk about people’s dreams, show babies with big dark eyes, smiling children… There are even some “spontaneous” close ups on a sign on which a farmer is writing “Biodiversidad” (biodiversity), a Tim Hortons baseball cap and a “Love” sticker on scales. This makes a lot of suggestions to the audience without being too obvious. This clearly appeals to the audience’s sense of empathy and makes them want to be part of the “good cause”. Ethos is used to give the claim credibility, the CEO seems like a nice guy, he is the highest representative of Tim Hortons, so by induction Tim Hortons is a “nice” company which deserves to be supported. The local social workers and farmers live there so their testimonies are legitimate. Finally logos is used by interspersing some figures which give the campaign a professional, scientific touch.

At first sight the clip is pretty convincing because the appealing images are well-balanced with facts and testimonies, but once you take a second more critical look at it, the façade starts to crackle. It looks like these partnerships really are pacts with the devil. Tim Hortons does not do it out of pure philanthropy. By educating the farmers they ensure they get the quality they need, and since they provide the population with healthcare and education they can get exclusive contracts and dictate the price. They promise to turn coffee farmers into successful businessmen; is that really what they want or are they just using false promises to motivate the farmers? The trademarked “Making a true difference” indicates that they are just using the partnerships to polish up their public image. I’m not saying that what they are doing is evil, it just might be more beneficial to the coffee producers if we bought coffee from independent organizations, e.g. the Fair Trade label, rather than supporting Tim Hortons and its partnerships.

Here are some screenshots in case Apple fixed the bug in the meantime (and hopefully they will soon):

A week ago, a friend told me there was an exploitable security vulnerability on Apple’s website, which enabled users to tamper with the page by modifying some parameters. The bug on the global site was quickly fixed, but it’s still present on the UK site and other localized versions.

Note that this really is Apple’s UK website (apple.com/uk) and not a replica. This is possible because the artist name, album name and tumbnail URL are passed as GET parameters (this means they are appended to the URL using the following syntax: http://www.foobar.com?param1_name=value1&param2_name=value2) which are poorly sanatized. This practice is called XSS (Cross Site Scripting).

Here’s the complete URL: http://www.apple.com/uk/itunes/affiliates/download/?artistName=your+room+tonight&thumbnailUrl=http://epicanthus.files.wordpress.com/2007/05/ucla_undierun_chicks_crop.jpg&itmsUrl=http://www.hotasianchicks.com&albumName=half+dressed+hot+asian+chicks+to+come

Wow, that was fun, but can’t that be dangerous? Yes, it can!

After some testing and analysis I figured out that the artistname parameter doesn’t escape HTML tags. I tried injecting a <script> tag but it wouldn’t execute. I was able to use a <div> container with an onmouseover event-handler to work around the problem.

Note that you can’t directly append special characters to an URL, you need to URL-encode them first. In order to do so you can use one of many websites or write your own using the encodeURIcomponent JavaScript function.

I created an invisble <div> container with a higher z-index than any other element on the page (this means it is the foreground layer) of the same width as the website. When the user moves the mouse, the onmouseover event is triggered executing the JavaScript it includes. You can virtually put anything in there. Thanks to DOM you can access any element of the site by its ID using the getElementById function. As a proof of concept I replaced the content of an entire <div> container, using the innerHTML property.

This is the “value” used for the artistname parameter:

<div style=”position:absolute;z-index:31337;width:3000px;height:2000px;margin:0;padding:0;left:0;top:0;overflow:hidden;” onmouseover=”javascript:document.getElementById(‘looking’).innerHTML=’<p>There could be virtually ANYTHING here e.g. phishing site, malicious JavaScript…</p>’;”></div>

After URL-encoding it, it looks like this:

%3Cdiv%20style%3D%22position%3Aabsolute%3Bz-index%3A31337%3Bwidth%3A3000px%3Bheight%3A2000px%3Bmargin%3A0%3Bpadding%3A0%3Bleft%3A0%3Btop%3A0%3Boverflow%3Ahidden%3B%22%20onmouseover%3D%22javascript%3Adocument.getElementById(‘looking’).innerHTML%3D’%3Cp%3EThere%20could%20be%20virtually%20ANYTHING%20here%20e.g.%20phishing%20site%2C%20malicious%20JavaScript…%3C%2Fp%3E’%3B%22%3E%3C%2Fdiv%3E

This is the complete ready to use URL:

http://www.apple.com/uk/itunes/affiliates/download/?artistName=Apple+%3Cdiv%20style%3D%22position%3Aabsolute%3Bz-index%3A31337%3Bwidth%3A3000px%3Bheight%3A2000px%3Bmargin%3A0%3Bpadding%3A0%3Bleft%3A0%3Btop%3A0%3Boverflow%3Ahidden%3B%22%20onmouseover%3D%22javascript%3Adocument.getElementById%28%27looking%27%29.innerHTML%3D%27%3Cp%3EThere%20could%20be%20virtually%20ANYTHING%20here%20e.g.%20phishing%20site%2C%20malicious%20JavaScript…%3C%2Fp%3E%27%3B%22%3E%3C%2Fdiv%3E&thumbnailUrl=&itmsUrl=http://www.google.com&albumName=a+XSS+exploitable+website

Still sounds all techie and boring? Well in practice this means that a malfeasant person could remodel the whole site, e.g. inviting the user to log in to sign up for the chance to win a Macbook Air. Since the attacker has the full control over the content of the site he can send the login information to his own server to gather iTunes login data he could use to buy music on behalf of the user. This is commonly referred to as Phishing.

What makes it dangerous is that it doesn’t only look like Apple’s website, it is Apple’s website. Although the modification is not permanent and requires the user to open the prepared link, it is likely to fool a lot of people!

How can you protect yourself? Never be careless about your user information! Instead of using the link that was sent by you, you should go to the base page (apple.com) and follow the links to navigate to the page you are looking for. This principle is pretty easy and it doesn’t only apply to Apple’s website but everyday internet situations.

As a web developer there is one important thing you need to know: NEVER trust user input! This means you need to sanatize all user inputs before using them in your scripts or putting them into your database. In PHP there are a couple of handy functions which do the job for you, such as mysql_real_escape_string and htmlentities, you just need to make sure you use them in the appropriate context.

What makes it special is that even serious media channels rely more and more on social networks content such as Facebook, Twitter and Youtube. It’s getting difficult for governments to oppress their peoples.

Apperently the Iranian government is expelling foreign reporters or not extending their visa to prevent them from spreading the uncomfortable truth. Furthermore they are banning any report on the situation.

Those days this is getting hard to achieve as most people own digital cameras and cellphones. Although the government is throttling datastreams to prevent uploads to Youtube, a lot of videos leak through.

Dictatorship like governments are facing hard times as they actually have to hear the voices of the repressed because the whole world is watching.

By now it should be clear that Web 2.0 and social platforms are more than tools of self-dramatization.

I really enjoy the team spirit, everybody’s getting along pretty well. On breaks there’s a lot of chatting and cracking jokes. We took the initiative to have lunch with the other trainees from the Welcome Day on a regular basis, on Monday we had our first meeting. I have to admit our timing wasn’t perfect: since it was raining there was hardly anyone eating out and at 12:30 the company restaurant was overcrowded. We ended up being 8 persons, crammed around a round table but it still was still.

At the moment I’m working on several projects which are mostly webbased applications. I started by extending the local intranet to include new features like FAQ and a newsfeed on a new piece of software. Even though it wasn’t planned I decided to recreate the page from scratch, rebuilding the layout by writing sleek, easy to maintain code. As we are working a lot with databases and Microsoft based software I had to step into Access and ASP. The knowledge on (X)HTML, CSS, PHP and MySQL I acquired over the last years while working on personal projects made the process somewhat easier.

Yesterday I started working on a customized webform. The support needs to inform different endusers about issues concerning the applications they use. The goal is to dynamically generate a mailing list which is the combination of several user inputs to make the process more user-friendly for the support staff. The form includes 4 dropdown lists whose content depends on the previous selection. After some research I decided to use AJAX, a webtechnology made popular by Google Suggest. The advantage is that it’s cross-browser and that you can modifiy parts of the page’s content by making database queries without reloading the whole page.

Bottom line my work is quite challenging but really interesting since I learn a lot about people’s interaction at the workplace and it’s also enriching from a technical point of view.

The Fins developped a robot snake able to climb pipes for inspection and maintenance. The Israeli military picked up the idea to build a similar device to be used at war.

Yesterday I saw a video of an auto-targeting sentry. This proof of concept is a paintball gun mounted on an arm controlled by a pretty elaborate piece of software: the sentry is able to autonomously identify its target. The video is as impressive as scary.

The question is how far should we take the technical opportunities. Surely these robots can be put to good use to find victims of natural catastrophes or hostage situations, disarm bombs, fix hard to access equipment… but it could also lead to a scenario which reminds me of landmines: it’s easy to use and the consequences are devastating.

Warfare is becoming less formal as conflicts often take place in urban areas and the enemy can’t be easily identified by their uniforms. This bares the risk that there will be an even more important amount of civil fatalities.

On the other side decision makers evade the direct confrontation because they can rule over life and death without “looking the enemy in the eye” as they simply push a button.

Technology is great if applied wisely, so even nowadays ethics is an important topic.

A hotspot to call your own Financial Times

[...] [T]he MiFi Intelligent Mobile Hotspot, combines cellular and WiFi technologies to deliver wireless networking almost anywhere, removing the search for a public WiFi connection. [...]

The MiFi, from Novatel Wireless (www.novatelwireless.com), generates a personal broadband WiFi hotspot around the device, that can be accessed by up to five WiFienabled devices at once.

The MiFi device is small, thin and light and works with a 3G cellular broadband data connection that provides the final link bet-ween the device and the public internet. [...]

Setting up the MiFi is easy and involves plugging the device into a Windows or Mac PC using the USB cable, which turns it on and installs the drivers and connection software from the network operator and authenticates the device.

There are two ways to use the MiFi – either as a”tethered” cellular modem using the USB cable, or as a mini WiFi hotspot. In my tests using a Windows PC, a MacBook Pro, an iPod Touch and my BlackBerry Curve 8900, the MiFi worked flawlessly, delivering a surprisingly speedy WiFi connection up toabout 35ft. It also supports a range of security options including VPN (virtual private network) connections. My MiFi came with an internal re-charge-able battery that lasted just over the four hours promised (40 hours in standby).

MiFi is the smallest and easiest-to-use personal hotspot device I have found because it requires no other hardware and configures automatically. In addition, its handy size and weight mean it can easily fit in a shirt pocket.