Are there Fictitious IP addresses?

A recent rant from a friend of mine about the utterly wrong representation of IP addresses in a science/tech show on Austria public TV (ORF) made me think.

What worries Martin, is that they use internet addresses like 156.284.632.715, which are obviously fake, because the are not made of 4 8bit values (octets).

I really like to defend the ORF in this case[1]: as with car license plates or telephone numbers, it could be considered a breach of privacy to pick one that exists for real. So you have to revert to numbers that do not exist in reality.

The US, for example, have reserved the part of exchange code 555 for such fictitious telephone numbers, meaning that you can pick any 555-xxxx number without running the risk of bothering anyone or being sued over it[2].

Not sure how it is done with license plates, but since they tend to be centrally registered, I guess there is a range of numbers that can freely be used in fiction.

However, with IPv4 addresses being on short supply anyway, one would have to revert to IP addresses that 100% cannot by owned by anyone (else), like 127.0.0.1 oder 192.168.x.y.

You would be kind of safe from a legal perspective, but nor from Martin's rants.

Had the ORF shown 127.0.0.1  or 192.168.1.1 to actually be resolved through DNS, Martin would still have ranted about it. Not because the IP address is wrong, but rather because the name used would never be resolved to this address.

So, Martin, this is an OK use of "wrong" or rather "fictitious" internet addresses, not an "Epic Fail" as you say.

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[1] I very rarely do so.
[2] at least in the US

4G - Which is it?

I'm a bit confused now; both LTE and WiMAX seem to be labelling themselves 4G...
But which one is it really?
Any idea?

Facebook Phone ?

So the last 10 days or so saw a lot of rumors, denials, half-hearted confirmations and semantics about a Facebook phone.

Current state: they are obviously not manufacturing the hardware (what a surprise) but teaming up with INQ mobile to integrate facebook into (or rather:onto) the software stack.

Does it make sense to have a Facebook feature phone?
Not to me.
The Facebook apps for the various smart phones are powerful enough. Just to have your (phone) contacts synced with facebook[1], does not require or justify a Facebook feature phone. Much less the crappy Facebook chat.

Does it make sense for Facebook ?
Sure  - Three words:

mobile.
ad.
revenue.

As I'm saying, the are a (only) marketing platform...

I rest my case, your honor.

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[1] if you want that at all - I don't.

Moleskine Covers for iPhone and iPad

I don't know... to me this is a cultural clash:

Moleskine introduces two new hybrid tools designed for making it easier the simultaneous use of paper, phone and internet utilities: a Smartphone Cover compatible with iPhone 3G and 3GS, and a Tablet Cover, iPad compatible. Both Covers are combined with blank notebook pages. They are conceived as analog-digital ultra-portable workstations for the contemporary nomads.

The analog darling embracing the digital darling...
How strange.

Enabling Multiple Google Calendars for iOS

Found the following tip recently:
iPad Quick Tip: Enabling Multiple Google Calendars: Apple:

quick version: if you go to http://www.google.com/calendar/iphoneselect you can select which of your Google calendars will be visible on your iXxxx (iPad, iPhone, iPod, ...)

Previously I had to manually copy/paste the various caldav URLs from Google to the iXxxx, which is quite cumbersome.

This here is a lot easier.

Feeding the iPad

The top use of my iPad is reading the tech news - through RSS feeds.
There is an excellent RSS reader for the iPad called Reeder.
Here are my favourite bullets about Reeder:

1. makes full use of iPad geometry
2. uses Google Reader as the feed list;
   not only import, but actually works with it; so everything I read on my iPad is automatically marked as read in Google Reader; perfect way to stay in sync
3. easy to step through articles.
   there are scroll buttons on at the left edge in the middle of the screen; I first wondered, why they had been position there, but once you get used to holding the iPad in landscape mode, this is exactly the position where your left thumb is... tricky,ey ?
   Scrolling is a lot more convenient this way, then with the mouse or the J / K buttons in Google Reader
4. it's a lean back experience.
   This - to me - is new for news consumption via feeds and I really prefer it over the laptop / desktop experience.
5. You can easily (one click) save/share articles to Delcious, Twitter, email, ...

Quick summary: perfect feed reader on the perfect news device.

Got my iPad

So I got my iPad yesterday...

No - actually I got it Tuesday, but I managed to hold back until yesterday evening to unbox and activate it.

Cool device... great form factor. Super fast (compared to an iPod touch or Galaxy S)
A weird mixture of lean-back browsing (like TV) and lean-forward browsing (like PC).

Still amazing how many apps are only available in the iPhone/iPod compatability mode... and not yet optimized for the iPad.

But those who are (optimized for the iPad), like the internal Mail app, or the excellent imdb app, really make great use of the touch interface on the "big" screen...
Keyboard is a lot better and more easy to type on than on the iPhone/iPod...

Can't wait for the iOS 4.2 Update.
 
Stay tuned for more.

Cisco to buy Skype?

TechCrunch rumors that Cisco might acquire Skype right before their IPO.

If they really do, that'd make for quite interesting Linksys boxes with Skype built in... Just add your Skype Phone, or TV, ...
Skype by Cisco on Linksys by Cisco ...

Then you'd no longer need to have your PC running to place or receive Skype calls - or video calls.
Bad for the Telcos...

I like it :-)

Fantastic error message

You just have to love digg for this error message:

Facebook vs Identity - again

Well, it should read "Facebook vs Privacy - again"... but the point I want to make is, that Facebook could have been an Identity platform.
In a way they are... not only in a way, if you go and count the sites that allow you to login with your facebook account. But that only makes them an Identity provider.

An Identity platform needs more than just a secure single sign-on.
For example authorization: you should be able to finely tune who has access to what. That's why the social graph (or your address book, if you will) is so valuable. Facebook does have most of the data and means to enable proper authorization: who can see my wall-posts, who is allowed to contact me, ...

It would have been easy to extend from there.

But with Places they once again proved that they rather go the pure marketing platform way, instead.

1. Places is mostly opt out. It is somewhat (but not fully, it seems) enabled by default, until you disable it.
   Not a good default - privacy-wise.
2. Other people (your friends) can check you in at any place they want.
3. You can't control your places. Anyone can check in at your home...[1]

This is all good and fine for a geo platform (like foursquare)... but not for an identity platform

To Facebook (the company) it seems more important to publish stuff about you (and make money from the ads) than to have you properly manage your identity. That's fine, too, but that makes them a marketing platform only...

Sorry.

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[1] different issue, I know, but it still troubles me.

How to get Thunderbird attachments as read/write...

This has been bugging me for years now... ( I guess ).
When I double click e.g. an OpenOffice attachment in Thunderbird, the document is then opened as read-only in OpenOffice.

There's 1000+1 reasons on the web why this is a) intended and b) good... but I still did not like it.

Some (short) analysis revealed, that Thunderbird is actually setting the read-only attribute of the attachment, so OpenOffice was not to blame.
Easy to google from that and find a really good tip here:

One has to set the configuration value browser.helperApps.deleteTempFileOnExit to false [1]

E voila... Works fine now.
No unintended side effects so far.
--
[1] you might have to create it...

ProfiMail for the E71

Thanks to the hint of a colleague, I installed ProfiMail for the E71. Well, I needed the hint, because I never intended to install yet another 3rd party app on my E71...first of all, because this never increases the stability of the phone, and secondly, I thought it would only be cumbersome...

I couldn't have been more wrong.

ProfiMail (v3, 3.28 to be more specific) has everything you want from a professional mobile email client.

• full imap/imaps support.
• "push" email... well, it's "only" IMAP IDLE but thats good enough for me[1]
• multiple accounts
• full folder support on IMAP, and it allows you to move an email message from folder to folder.
• user interface is very OK
• proper attachment support
• proper address book support

Seems like the creators actually use it themselves or have a good feedback process... it's the little things like the feature to check mail on startup and immediately go to the inbox when you start the email client...

Access to it is quite easy, if you map the application to the long-press of the Messaging one-touch-key, then it's just one (long) press on the envelope button, and there you go.

I seem to prefer it over the built-in iPod/iPhone mail client... but that's probably only because of the physical keyboard... which I stll prefer over the virtual touch keyboard.

--
[1] and it's enabled on my mail server...

Surprise

Today I finally managed to get my eCard to work as a citizen card ("Bürgerkarte") with more than just the federal tax online aplication ("Finanz Online").
I could - for the first time ever - access the federal pension plan application (PVA) as well.

It was not easy, and I really don't know what I did differently with the (I guess) 3rd approach, but it finally worked.
And now it seems to work stable, i.e. I could access the site and authenticate with my eCard a second time...

After only more than half a year of struggling.
Amazing.

Now that this is done, and now that I know my future pension ... it's time to retire :-)

Tab Candy for Firefox

There is a new Firefox add-on in the works called Tab Candy, that will help you to organize your tabs into quite powerful and dynamic tab groups:

• Lightweight Grouping... simply drag & drop
• Only the Tabs You Want... once you open a tab group, you only see the tabs from this particular group, all others will be hidden

See the demo/concept video here.

An Introduction to Firefox's Tab Candy from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

(I'm not sure I follow Aza on all the future steps and developments in the second half of the video.)

To me, the need to organize your tabs, group them, prioritize them, hide "inactive" tabs is just another way of saying how important and dominant web-applications  and the browser has become... It is no longer a tiny window into the world of the internet, that does a little HTML rendering... it's become the universal client.

One more quote, though, from Aza's post:

Tab Candy is made entirely with HTML, Javascript, and CSS. There is no native code—just the open Web. That is how powerful the web has become.

Looking forward to it.

iPad Available in 9 More Countries This Friday

Can't hardly wait... I guess I'm gonna get one...

iPad Available in 9 More Countries This Friday: "Apple’s iPad will go on sale in Austria, Belgium, Hong Kong, Ireland, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Singapore on July 23."

via mashable

Digg4 alpha is out

I just got invited to the new alpha of Digg4 ... which finally introduces a friend-based news feed, i.e. I can see the storied that were digged by my social network.

So I know have two dimensions of filtering my digg/news feed.
a) by category (as before) like "Business", "Sports", ...
b) by my social network...

Probably the most usefuly type of curation in this century.

Who needs sorting anyway...

Well apparently mobilkom austria[1] does not... at least not in their online shop:

8 - 3 - 5 - 2 - 1.3 - 12

maybe this is a code to a secret message ...
--
[1] sorry, A1 Telekom Austria as of today

Microsoft's Kin is dead

The Kin will be discontinued and never make it to Europe.

So what?
Is anyone really surprised by this?

First of all, Microsoft never had a good track record with or mobile phones (and their operating systems) nor generally with hardware...

Secondly, a pure social network phone that's cluttered with status updates, tweets and stuff does not make any sense. A phone is still a phone, and not a social network beeper or pager.

If I consider my social graph - any of them, be it Facebook or on Flickr or on Xing or on Twitter - I'd panic if I'd get all their updates directly on my phone.

So lets grieve for the Kin...
Then again.... No, let's continue to ignore it.

Backslash ...

via xkcd

Odd limits on the E71

In the last couple of months the limitations on my Nokia E71 started to really annoy me.
Today's incident:

When I added my new corporate email account[1] (and did not delete the old one) I wanted to enable Automatic email retrieval[2] - of course.
To my great surprise, I could not...

Turns out, you can only have 2 email accounts with automatic retrieval enabled.
A limitation I don't understand at all.


Totally time for a new handset... preferably one with proper reception... :-)
--
[1] new because Oracle bought Sun and as of today I am 100% Oracle
[2] you know, the one that cannot be set to 1 hour...