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More Secure Browsing Over Wi-Fi

Charles Hamilton — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 19:00:51 +0000

In recent days, a new tool called Firesheep has become available that can “sniff out” the login information that’s being sent over wireless networks. Such tools have always been available, but this one makes it easy for anyone to collect other people’s private data.

I’m sure that you, as a web professional, know that it’s important to use a VPN or to encrypt your connection by using https:// whenever you can. But this might be a good time to remind colleagues and friends. And there are several ways of forcing secure connections.

With Firefox, you can use:

HTTPS-Anywhere, an add-on that comes pre-configured with rules for over two dozen popular sites, including Facebook and Twitter. You can add your own rules, but you’ll need to edit an XML file.
Force-TLS, an add-on that has a much simpler way of adding sites to connect with securely, but it doesn’t come with any pre-configured sites.

As far as I can tell, these two add-ons coexist gracefully, so you may want to have your less web-savvy colleagues install both. That way, HTTPS-Anywhere can take care of the popular sites, and others can be added to Force-TLS (using Tools-> ForceTLS Configuration).

With Chrome, you can use the KB SSL Enforcer or Force-SSL add-ons. There doesn’t seem to be an equivalent add-on for Safari yet.

For mobile devices, you’ll want to use a VPN. There are a number of VPN apps available for iOS and Android.

How do you keep your web browsing secure?

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Eye-Fi Explore Video: Photo and Video Uploads With No Cables

Samuel Dean — Tue, 19 May 2009 23:00:35 +0000

Last year, I wrote about the Eye-Fi card, which has gone on to win numerous technology awards. It’s an SD card that has Wi-Fi integrated, so that you can wirelessly send photos you take directly to your PC or Mac, and they’re even automatically saved to a folder that you pre-define. I’ve been using it for over a year now, and it’s a great hassle-saver for all the types of work that I do with photos online. Recently, I upgraded to a better version of the card, the Eye-Fi Explore Video. In addition to wirelessly uploading photos in a completely hassle-free way, it does wireless video uploads to a PC or Mac, and geotags photos, showing where they were taken. Here are more details on why this is an essential card to have if you work with photos and videos.

The Eye-Fi cards have become very popular, and although the Eye-Fi site shows a list price of $99.99 for the Eye-Fi Explore Video card, you can find it online for under $90. The integrated Wi-Fi on the card allows you to wirelessly send your photos and videos to Macs or PCs, but you can also now use the card with thousands of hotspots, for uploading pictures to photo sites, blogs, web pages and more when you’re on the go.

The new geotagging that Eye-Fi Explore does is achieved through GPS and other technologies, and the geotags are a reasonably accurate way to keep track of where you took photos, although not perfect in every case. You can use Eye-Fi Explore with most digital cameras; there is a compatibility list here.

The original Eye-Fi card was a great find for me. With the additions of video uploading, geotagging and hotspot compatibility, Eye-Fi Explore Video is even more useful.

Have you used the Eye-Fi Explore Video?

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Bluetooth 3.0 Days Away, Billed As a Major Improvement

Samuel Dean — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 23:00:07 +0000

Have you ever had the frustrating experience of buying a device or computer that you’ve really had your eyes on, only to find out that a much improved alternative is available only days later? If so, you’re not alone. It’s a common complaint that I’ve heard from both savvy web workers and casual users. If you’re in the market for any type of Bluetooth-enabled device — and Bluetooth is a key component in many types of hardware — this may be a good week to delay your purchase for a few days in anticipation of next week’s announcement of Bluetooth 3.0.

The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) has confirmed that it will announce the arrival of and specifications for Bluetooth 3.0 next Tuesday, April 21st. It’s expected to be a major improvement over existing Bluetooth technology.

This next generation of Bluetooth wireless technology has been one of a group of wireless technologies predicted to usher in many new kinds of applications. Ultra-wideband and Wireless USB are competitors, but Bluetooth is far more prevalent than those technologies now, and the next version will pack a serious punch.

The Bluetooth 3.0 standard is expected to deliver short-range wireless speeds of up to 480 Mbps, and a really notable advancement is that it will allow devices such as cell phones and digital cameras to switch to compatible Wi-Fi connections (sharing them, not taking them over) for large transfers of data. According to the Bluetooth SIG, this will allow for applications such as wirelessly transferring entire collections of digital photos from cameras or phones with performance and reliability comparable to what you get using Wi-Fi now. You should be able to work wirelessly in new ways with many other types of rich media as well.

In other words, if everything works as advertised with Bluetooth 3.0, it will be much more desirable to have it in your new device than previous generation Bluetooth. There’s the rub, though. The Bluetooth SIG hasn’t yet made clear whether external upgrades will be available for existing devices, or whether new devices based on Bluetooth 3.0 will arrive along with next week’s announcement.

I’ve covered Bluetooth for a while now, and expect that a large number of devices incorporating the new technology will be announced next week, following the pattern of previous Bluetooth announcements. For that reason, especially if you depend heavily on wireless technology, keep your eyes out for the details on Bluetooth 3.0 next Tuesday.

Are you looking forward to Bluetooth 3.0?

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Coping with FON-liness

Imran Ali — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 13:00:30 +0000

Only the FON-ely...FON-liness Of The Long Distance Runner. Yes, I had a whole bank of puns to title this post. They’ll all aptly tragic in telling the tale of a promising piece of web worker infrastructure that has in essence become a network of very lonely and isolated hotspots…

I first came across FON at O’Reilly’s Emerging Telephony 2006 conference, as then company evangelist Ejovi Nuwere outlined a vision of a global wifi network built from the grassroots, owned and operated by its users. Ejovi explained that users installing a FON hotspot would be able to earn revenue from its use or, if they agreed to charge no access fee, use every other FON hotspot at no cost when travelling away from home.

A few months later I recieved a complimentary La Fonera router, becoming the 4089th ‘Fonero’ (currently there are 671’363 users). A few days ago, I switched off my La Fonera, packaging it for an eBay bidder that paid just $17. Now the thing is, none of those 671’362 other Fonero’s hotspots were in places I where I needed connectivity…

FON showed great promise, attacking the fragmented wifi hotspot market and placing pressure on 3G broadband providers by harnessing the energy of the very people that would benefit from its service. The promise of a disruptive user-owned global wifi network was a large part of the company’s marketing, playing on the iconography and language of revolution. With $22m in funding from Google, Skype and venture capitalists, the company seemed poised for success…so what went wrong?

Mobile broadband providers have wised up with 3G plans and hardware available for as little as $20/month here in the UK. Also users have a plethora of reasonable HSDPA and Wifi options. Though, incidentally, O2 won’t be letting UK iPhone 3G users use their phones as modems to the 3G network!

FON-liness! FON is not where you need it despite their partnerships with telcos and municipalities, I’ve yet to find a FON location when I needed one. Airports, railway stations, gas stations are well served by national wifi providers. These are the location owners FON needed to align with. I’m not going to need broadband parked up outside some guys house, but I’ll need it waiting for a train to London.

Crazy ass distractions at FON labs with the development of Gmail uploaders, URL squeezers and Facebook status tools are an unneccessary waste of resources. 20% time is only valuable when the other 80% is making a real difference to the business. It also indicates to investors that the founders are bored with the core business of the company.

Basic hardware has been a constant frustration for Foneros, with the inexpensive La Fonera lacking many features common to Linksys, Belkin and other cheap routers (like more than one port!). Indeed, FON missed a strategic blunder in failing to convince those very manufacturers to add FON-like capabilities to their products out of the box. It can be argued the FON’s firmware is its core asset and proliferating that – agnostic of hardware – was a keystone strategy.

In 2006, I argued that my employers, Orange UK, could partner with FON to create the world’s largest hotzone. My superiors convinced me that if Orange wanted to do that, they could simply upgrade the firmware of all their domestic hotspots – without FON. FON’s potential role as a organisation that could enable roaming between multiple wifi networks was sadly unexplored.

So sadly the promise of FON’s $5 wireless router and it’s community-grown network is almost irrelevant. However, Web workers have many more options available to them. Take my advice and eBay that La Fonera…I’ll be putting that $17 towards an Airport Extreme :)

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Open Thread: Do You Use Other's Wi-Fi?

Jason Harris — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 22:00:55 +0000

We’ve all been tempted to do it. Here’s the familiar situation: having a few spare minutes, you open up your laptop to do some work, then you’d like to get online. So you look at the list of available Wi-Fi hotspots and you see an open one think, “I wonder if I could just quickly send this email off?”

Using other’s Wi-Fi is a common occurrence, according to the Register. Some Internet enthusiasts feel you’re doing humanity a favor by leaving your home wireless connection open for passers-by to use. However security experts and opponents of this practice warn against subjecting yourself to legal troubles if a stranger uses your Internet connection for illicit activity. In some instances, people have been arrested for utilizing Wi-Fi that wasn’t theirs.

What are your thoughts? Is it ethical to steal Wi-Fi? Do you leave your wireless connection unlocked for anyone to use?

(photo credit: Flickr user dana~2)

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