[words & pictures]

• Bank holiday weekend, so I must be laid up with tonsilitis!! Typical #

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• Wondering what the chance is of invoicing the little scrotes who put a hammer through my car window last night!!!!! #

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• Good friends good wine = bad head!! #

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• I have succumed to iPhone goofiness!! #

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• just been playing with the TwitterBar addon for Firefox - totally awesome! #

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Now that the worst kept secret of the year is public knowledge its got me thinking about what applications I would like to see on the new 3G iPhone

Firstly, I haven’t yet got an iPhone Whilst being impressed with the first model, and the several friends I have who do own one have yet to say a bad word about it, I felt that several things that I wanted were lacking.

GPS

The major consideration for me was GPS, both for navigation, location findings and geo-tagging.

The last iPhone software update added location finding in an all be it simple fore, but true navigation was missing. This looks like it is now available with the 3G iPhone and it will be interesting to see if the rumours that TomTom and others will bring their products to the App Store.

Currently you can use applications such as Geophoto or HoudahGeo to insert the location a photo was taken in to the files IPTC fields. This does however rely on you having a compatible GPS device that will record your travels.

I would be particularly interested in an application that records your GPS location to a log so you could load this on to your Mac/PC and geo-tag photos taken on your camera (as opposed to the iPhone which will be automatically geo-tagged so I am led to believe)

This feature is of particular interest when you upload you photos to sites such as Flickr. You can browse the global map and see photos from the areas they were taken.

Privacy issues aside (you don’t really want to record your home location when photographing the un-boxing of your new iPhone/computer/TV etc!) this is a really fascinating way of exploring places or creating visual diaries and prompts for your self.

Games

Whilst its easy to be dismissive of games and gaming, many a time I’ve found myself waiting in a train station for a delayed train, or outside a supermarket whilst my wife just ‘pop’s in for some milk. Its at times like these that taking your phone out and having a quick game of Poker or Golf. No mean feat on a screen 2"

The iPhone takes this to a whole new level. Whilst it is currently possible (and legal) to use any number of freely available WebApps you can only do so much with what is effectively a web page. The demos of Super Monkey Ball, Enigmo and Cro Mag Rally demonstrates what you can achieve when you develop and application that has access to all the features of the iPhone

Just watch the demo of Super Monkey Ball and you can start to see the possibilities of being able to interact with the iPhone’s Accelerometer. Its not hard to see a huge number of games being released within the first few months in time for Christmas.

Blogging

TypePad announced that they would have a free blogging tool available at the July 11th launch to post to TypePad hosted blogs. Again, it will only be a matter of time before other 3rd party application will allow you to blog to other sites.

Part of the problem with writing a blog (and I am as guilty as many) is having the time and discipline to actually add to it. Days become weeks and weeks become months, at which point you look at what you last posted and invariably think of starting from scratch with new and better intentions.

The other part of the problem is access to a computer. At work, its probably best not to be caught updating your personal site, and at home… Kids, housework, shopping, bills, taking various children to/from parties/friends/A&E/Brownies/Football/Ballet all get in the way of sitting down and writing.

Even if you do find the time you then run the risk of being accused of sitting all night at the computer and ignoring the wife!

Now if I can stop playing all these new games I could actually use the time waiting in train stations or outside supermarkets more constructively.

Again web based applications such as iPhoneSlide already exist which enable you to create a simple post, but a more feature rich application would be the perfect partner for your iPhone

RSS

The final application that would make my iPhone wishlist is a good RSS reader. I currently use the rather awesome NetNewsWire on my Mac and its sister application FeedDemon on the PC. Apart from being very simple to use with a number of use features both applications use Newsgator to keep my feeds in sync. This means if I add a new feed on my Mac, the next time I log on from my PC it will be available and vice versa.

In addition to this when not at one of my own machines I can still see all my own feeds using the web based service at NewsGator. Therefore the news that NewsGator were releasing NewsGator Mobile for iPhone was music to my ears. Looking at a preview seen by Ars Technica its a sight for sore eyes as well.

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When you see the iPhone version next to the Blackberry version for example, you begin to appreciate just how much better the iPhone display environment is.

So whilst I’m still a little miffed that the iPhone camera is a rather limited 2 mega-pixels and that it can’t shoot video, on the whole the addition of 3G and GPS with the ability for developers to create proper applications means that I will probably be spending the next couple of weekends on eBay trying to raise enough money for one.

(Did I mention the eBay application?)

• why is it when you forget to bring your lunch to work you can go all day without eating, but when you remember it, you finish it by 10am? #

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Just a quick post because I wanted to test this new Video Embedder plugin for Wordpress. If all goes well you should be able to watch a fascinating video show the universe at a macro and micro level.

As we march ever forward to the government nirvana of universal identity cards and biometric controls on all lifes necessities (passports, hospitals, shopping?), it’s reassuring to know that the proposed measures will all be for the good of the individual and not as otherwise argued for the good of the state.

All the current raft of proposals are aimed squarely at making life easier and safer for all us. I therefore only out of passing interest include the two links below.

The first is a request to collect the Prime Ministers and Home Secretary’s fingerprints (not there actual fingers I hasten to add!) . Apparently this bunch of scaremongers want to highlight how easy it would be to actually collect biometric data from our glorious leaders. What this could hope to achieve one can only speculate (and I will further down this post).

These are indeed trying times and we need to support our Prime Minister and his able Home Secretary, Wacky Jacqui Smith through these troubling times.

Wacky Jacqui has in particular had a couple of bad weeks. The idiotic well received idea of forcing paedophiles to register email accounts with the government, a proposal so unworkable that it suggests that whoever thought of it does not know that you can have more than one email address is one of them.

The other being the ‘gaffe’ that all these databases containing all this collected information for our safety would be “unhackable” as they would all be kept offline. Firstly, to say something is unhackable is like providing a red rag to a bull, and secondly if this wasn’t a gaffe, then end users of the card would not be able to validate themselve against records kept in the database, therefore rendering the whole shebang worthless.

But even if for the sake of argument these databases were ‘offline’ and ‘unhackable’, it still doesn’t prevent someone obtaining biometric information from you (as shown below) or volunteering personal details with or without the aid of bribes.

Wanted Poster! A call for the UK Prime Minister’s fingerprints: “Wanted Poster! A call for the UK Prime Minister’s fingerprints

06/04/2008

Privacy International and the UK’s NO2ID have launched a campaign to show the dangers of the collection of fingerprints into central government databases. We are offering a reward for the first person to collect and submit the UK Prime Minister’s and Home Secretary’s fingerprints.

Around the world, politicians are now calling for the mass fingerprinting of foreigners. The UK is relatively unique in that the Government is calling for the collection of all ten fingerprints of all citizens and residents and placing them into a single centralised database for wide access by police, and other government agencies. The Government is clear that it wants to treat all citizens as though they are criminals, having promised the police that they can trawl through the fingerprint database for forensic purposes.

Following recent data breach scandals, including the loss of 25 million records on British families, we are not confident in the ability of the Government to secure this information. In fact, even the Government’s advisors, including the recent report for HM Treasury by Sir James Crosby argues against the collection of unique biometrics; but the Home Office insists that it will continue along this hazardous path. As fingerprinting systems expand to enable people to secure their computers, possessions and even homes, the centralisation of biometrics will increase the risks of breaches.

Building on the great work from the Chaos Computer Club in collecting the fingerprints of the German Interior Minister (see Der Spiegel and the Register articles (both links off-site)), we are campaigning to raise politicians’ awareness of the dangers of collecting this type of biometric data.

The poster is also available in higher resolution formats including PNG, PDF and jpeg.

”

(Via .)

Wanted Poster! A call for the UK Prime Minister’s fingerprints

 

The second link is for one that most dangerous piece of confectionary ever to grace the sweet shop counter, the Gummy Bear. This benign looking piece of gelatin can actually be used as an anti-terrorism counter measure or by evil lurking gangs of identity thieves.

With years of practice (or 5 seconds via Google /a>) you could effectively bypass the whole fingerprint portion of the biometric security measure and render billions of British taxpayers money worthless.

Less scrupulous members of society than myself, may also put these pieces of information together and attempt to produce false government ministers IDs.

» Gummi Bears Can Also Fool Fingerprint Scanners » Blog Archive 
 Alice Hill’s Real Tech News - Independent Tech: “Gummi Bears Can Also Fool Fingerprint Scanners
By Alice Hill
RealTechNews

About 6 months ago we ran a piece on how a finger made out of Play Doh could foil many retail fingerprint scanners. Not to be outdone, a Japanese cryptographer named Tsutomu Matsumoto has found that Gummi Bears make an even better fake fingerprint, and are the cornerstone of a do it yourself fake fingerprint lab that require bears, a digital camera, and a PC. According to Mastsumoto, the gelatin used to make Gummi bears can be poured into a mold to make a finger, and this fake finger was able to fool scanners 4 out of five times. Not to be outdone, using the fumes from superglue, Matsumoto was able to highlight a print from a drinking glass and photograph it with a digital camera, and then imprint the high res print on the gummi bear finger using a photo sensitive printed circuit board he picked up in a hobby shop. And it worked - so well that cryptography experts are recommending that these systems go right back to the drawing board.

Using PhotoShop, he improved the contrast of the image and printed the fingerprint onto a transparency sheet. Here comes the clever bit. Matsumoto took a photo-sensitive printed-circuit board (which can be found in many electronic hobby shops) and used the fingerprint transparency to etch the fingerprint into the copper. From this he made a gelatine finger using the print on the PCB, using the same process as before. Again this fooled fingerprint detectors about 80 per cent of the time. Matsumoto tried these attacks against eleven commercially available fingerprint biometric systems, and was able to reliably fool all of them. Source: The Register

We Say: No one mentioned that using the gummi bear method, you can not only ‘eat the evidence’, you get to enjoy a nice little candy snack in the process.

Alice Adds: While this story is not new, it is interesting to note that nothing has been done yet to fix the problem.”

(Via .)

» Gummi Bears Can Also Fool Fingerprint Scanners » Blog Archive 
 Alice Hill’s Real Tech News - Independent Tech

 

If you wanted to take it to its natural conclusion, with the creation of national DNA databases you could potentially clone your very own government minister. All you would need is access to a recently used Scotch glass, a gummy bear and one of those CD’s containing everyone in the worlds data that the government seem so able to protect.

That however would be pushing the boundaries of absurdity t0o far…

I was queueing in my local supermarket over the weekend as we all do when I couldn’t help overhear the conversation between two employees.

The first was on the checkout and whilst scanning goods was chastising her friend who stood beside her. Both seemed completely unaware as to the existence of the five or six shoppers in the queue.

Checkout Girl: U meanz yous got noone at hum whos no ur pin!!! 

Friend: na 

Checkout Girl: Nutter! 

Friend: you int spose 2 let any1 no is ya!! 

Checkout Girl: but spose ya lose it like now. 

Friend: I na i na but i’ze never forgotten it before. If I try it again it’ll have me card.
 

Checkout Girl: wot uz ganna do then? wot about tonite? 

Friend: got £10 till payday!! 

Checkout Girl: thatz 2 weeks!!!!! 

Checkout Girl: shud do what i does girl. ma mum and ma sister no my pin, coz i use my birthday, 1808, can’t forget that cannae 

Quite aside from the terrible English on display I was immediately struck by how happy these two were to discuss in front of stangers how they chose their pin numbers, even going to the point of one girl letting us know when her birthday, therefore her pin is.

I don’t know why I was surprised though, at work you can walk pass any number of salespeople desks and find the obligatory post-it not stuck to the side with various passwords written on it.

It also reminded me of an article (see below) that talked about a survey carried out asking members of the public for their passwords. It concluded that 71% would, for the bribe of a chocolate bar, give a stranger their computer account details. This along with the amount of information people are will to put up about themselves on social networking sites such as mySpace and Facebook only demonstrates the lack of understanding that most people seem to have about personal security.

Staff reveal passwords for a chocolate bar | OUT-LAW.COM: “Staff reveal passwords for a chocolate bar

OUT-LAW News, 20/04/2004

A survey of office workers at London’s Liverpool Street Station found that 71% were willing to part with their password for a chocolate bar. It’s the third annual survey of its kind and seems to confirm that office workers are still not information security savvy…………..

(Via .)

Staff reveal passwords for a chocolate bar | OUT-LAW.COM

 

This doesn’t bode well for the introduction of the National Identity Card as proposed by HM Government. The massive series of inter-linked databases with multiple access points (councils, police, probation, immigration, courts, business?) containing an ever increasing array of data on each and every individual and their activities in the UK will potentially be breached for the price of a Kit-Kat.

Makes you wonder what a key worker would be willing to share for the price of a holiday, or a car, or……