Technology
Entries related to technology.
Exploring IPv6
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 10/14/2008 - 10:44The Internet is running out of addresses and something needs to be done. At least that’s the idea behind IPv6, the next generation of the Internet Protocol. So, as a sort of day off for Columbus Day, I spent the day exploring IPv6 and here’s what I found.
First, let me explain a little bit about how the Internet works. There is this thing called the Internet Protocol. Basically, it is how messages are sent from one computer to another. For example, I might send a message from my laptop up to a Webserver somewhere saying, send me the webpage I’m looking for. Of course to do all of this, you need addresses, and, as will everything else on computers, it boils down to numbers.
Camera Modding - Canon SD 1000
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 10/05/2008 - 12:39Some video game players like to modify their video games, a practice known as ‘modding’. There are many different approaching to modding a computer game, and it possible to apply some of these to other digital devices as well. Last night, I modded my camera.
I have a Canon PowerShot SD 1000. It is a small but powerful little camera, and some Canon camera users have gotten together to create CHDK, free software to modify how your Canon PowerShot cameras operate.
I first heard about CHDK last May when I still had a PowerShot SD 410. It wasn’t clear if I could get CHDK to work with the firmware on my old camera, so I never got around to testing it. Later, my old SD 410 died, and I upgraded to the SD 1000, which clearly works with CHDK.
However, it wasn’t all that simple to get CHDK working on my camera. The way CHDK works, is that you install some files on the memory card which changes the operation of the camera. The SD 410 used a Compact Flash (CF) memory card that I could plug into my HP C 3100 printer, and the memory card would act as a disk on the computer the printer was connected to.
The SD 1000 uses the Secure Digital (SD) memory card. I have an eight gigabyte Secure Digital High Capacity (SDHC) card. Unfortunately, the printer cannot read the high capacity card. I can connect the camera, with the card to my laptop using an USB cable. However, the driver doesn’t allow me to place the sort of files I need in the appropriate directories.
However, I also have a Motorola RAZR V3xx cellphone. I’ve put two gig microSD card in the Razr, and have an adapter to use the microSD card as a regular SD card, and that card works in my printer.
The first thing that I did was put a file named ver.req in the root directory of the memory card. Ver.req is an empty file that tells the camera to allow the user to do a Version Request to determine the firmware version in the camera. My camera was running version GM1.02A. This version on an SD 1000 camera can run the Allbest build #50.
So, I downloaded that build, unzipped the file, and copied the files into the appropriate locations on the memory card. Then, when I started up the camera in playback mode and went to the menu, which had a new option and the bottom of the list to do a firmware update. When I attempted to do the update, it asked if I wanted to update from firmware version 1.0.2.0 to 1.0.1.1. It is worth noting that CHDK does not really update the firmware, and instead runs as a memory resident program, so this is safe to do.
With the update installed, the camera works basically the same as it did before, except that there are new options on the display and new functions that can be run. As an example, it displays how charged the battery is. That, in and of itself, makes the program worth it. It provides many options for overriding settings. For example, you can use higher shutterspeeds, ISO settings, use the zoom while filming video and even read text files off the memory card, play a few games, and run any scripts you’ve written.
I haven’t written any scripts yet, nor have I tried taking advantage of any of these new features yet, but I look forward to it.
Since this is a memory resident program, you need to reactivate it each time you start the camera. This is nice since it makes it less likely for you to turn the camera into a brick. For me, right now, however, it has a downside. I can only use the new features when I’ve taken the microSD card out of my cellphone and placed it into my camera. In addition, you need to be careful about moving the card from the cellphone to the camera. In some cases, the memory card will end up locked. To avoid this, it is best to turn off the cellphone before removing the memory card.
So, the next step is to get a new SDHC reader so I can install these files on an SDHC card. If this works, I’ll start using the features all the time.
It is pretty satisfying to be able to install some extra software and get new features on a digital device that you have, especially if it is open source and extensible. Now, if I can only find ways of doing this for my Motorola RAZR V3xx, my 2001 Toyota Prius, the Scientific Atlanta Explorer 4200 set top box, or many other random digital devices around the house, I can have even more fun.
Entrecard For Sale
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 09/27/2008 - 09:21Entrecard users are all talking about Entrecard being for sale. In some of the posts some details emerge. Let’s look at the Entrecard model and try to make a little more sense of offering. In many ways, Entrecard is like BlogAds with a little bit of MyBlogLog thrown in. It is like BlogAds in that the user places an ad on the site and receives compensation. It is like MyBlogLog in that it is community based and you can see who visited you and return the visit.
Each time a user clicks on an Entrecard, they receive a credit, as does the person whose card is clicked on. A user can click on up to 300 cards for every blog that they have in the system. There is also a limit to the number of clicks that can come from a single IP address. Currently, there are 3 million such clicks a month. In addition, to place a card on another person’s site, you need to buy an ad slot. Currently, the price rises exponentially based on the number of ads in queue. Unknown sites cost two, four, eight, or sixteen credits. Well know sites go for thousands of credits. The person whose site the ad runs on gets 12.5% of the revenues.
Identi.ca, OpenID and XRI
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 09/22/2008 - 19:25Recently, there has been an interesting question about user nomenclature in federated micro blogging systems. By micro blogging systems, I’m talking about sites like Twitter, Plurk, Rejaw, and Identi.ca. Right now, Identi.ca is the only one that truly supports the ability to subscribe to be subscribed from other micro blogging systems, although there are some sites that that facilitate exchanging messages between different micro blogging systems.
So, the question of nomenclature: How do you refer to a person on a remote micro blogging system? Typically, users are referred to with an at sign prepended to their username. The problem is that @bob might be one person on one system and someone completely different on a different system. So, to clarify, people have been kicking around ideas of how to refer to people at other systems.
Personally, I like the format @username/system e.g. @ahynes1/identica Concerns are to keep the name short. After all you only have 140 characters to deal with in an SMS message and putting in full qualification can eat up valuable message space. Others have suggested using the at sign as a separator between the username and the system, e.g. @ahynes1@identica To me, that looks cumbersome and kludgy. On my cellphone, where spacing is harder to differentiate, I would be confused about whether this were to the user ahynes1 on the identica system, or to two people, ahynes1 and identica.
Another reason I like the @username/system format is that it fits nicely with XRIs which fit nicely with OpenID 2.0. @username/system is an accepted shortcut to xri://@username/system which can be accessed via the http protocol as http://xri.net/@username/system The at sign is an indicator of a company, which isn’t great. Registering a company in XRI costs $55/year, which is pretty excessive. Nonetheless, I thought it would be nice to register @ahynes1.
A long time ago, I registered =aldon.hynes. I never ended up using it much, other than for some software testing and as a forwarder so people could send me email without knowing my current email address.
As OpenID 2.0 came along and started supporting XRI logins, I found that I could login to identi.ca using =aldon.hynes. I thought that was pretty cool and changed my OpenID delegation to point to my XRI registrar. Unfortunately, many sites do not yet support XRI based OpenID logins, but it seems to be growing.
So, to test things out a little bit, I registered @ahynes1. Initially, I was going to use 2idi.com, since that is where I have =aldon.hynes registered. Unfortunately, for some reason, they wouldn’t take my credit card, so I checked out some other services and found that 1id.com took Paypal and would gladly take my money.
The next step was to set up a few forwarders. I set up @ahynes1/identica to point to http://identi.ca/ahynes1 and @ahynes1/twitter to point to http://twitter.com/ahynes1. So, for any microblogging site that takes @username/system and uses it as an XRI reference, at least my name will resolve in both Twitter and Identica.
With that, I then tested an added benefit. Would @username XRI references resolve properly in OpenID? I logged into Identi.ca as =aldon.hynes and added @ahynes1 as a valid alternate OpenID. So, now I can log into my Identi.ca account by using the OpenID @ahynes1 Pretty cool.
Now, there are people that have voice concerns about XRI. Why do we need XRI if we already have URIs? For me, XRIs are how we identify resources. URIs specify a transport to get to the resource. So, =aldon.hynes, or xri://=aldon.hynes identifies me. http://xri.net/=aldon.hynes is how to get to my identification information over the http protocol. Nice and clean in my name.
The other issue is pricing. $55/year is very steep for registering an XRI corporate domain. I can register a corporate DNS domain for something like $10/year. If XRI is going to take off, the pricing structure will have to change. At $12/year for an individual I-name, it is still a tad expensive, but a little more reasonable.
So, Identi.ca, OpenID and XRI work nicely together. It will be interesting to see where things go from here.
Gov. Palin's Personal Email Hacked - An Analysis
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 09/17/2008 - 17:31Over the past couple of days, reports have started top filter out about a group of people successfully hacking Gov. Sarah Palin’s email. The report raises lots of interesting questions and requires a little background.
Major media outlets didn’t have a lot of information about Gov. Palin when it was announced that she would be Sen. John McCain’s running mate. As people dug in, one story that received some attention was the $100,000 investigation into alleged abuse of power by Gov. Palin in actions to get her sister’s ex-husband fired from the State Police. This investigation has led to the subpoenaing of Gov. Palin’s emails.
As a general rule, emails of elected officials are considered part of the public record and are subject to Freedom of Information requests. However, many people have separate email accounts that they use for personal business, or perhaps sometimes, to keep sensitive work related messages off of the work servers.
In the case of Gov. Palin, it was her personal Yahoo! Account that hackers claim to have compromised. A small amount of information has been released from the claimed attack, and none of it appears particularly incriminating.
So, what do we make of the claimed attack? One question is whether or not people believe that the attack actually happened, or if this was a carefully created hoax. Everything released so far looks probable, but it is unlikely that we will ever know for sure.
Another question is who did the attack and why. Reports are that the group ‘anonymous’ is claiming to have done the attack. The group first came to fame for obtaining and releasing information about the Church of Scientology. Given their propensity to attack notorious groups with extreme religious beliefs, it is easy to see how they might target Gov. Palin. However others claim that the group anonymous is also known for attacks on high profile women. This might provide a different motivation for the attack.
What are the privacy issues involved with the attack? First, I think it is fair to say that anyone who uses email, especially email service like Yahoo or Google needs to keep privacy issues in mind. Whether or not the attack actually happened and whatever the legalities or justifications of the attacks, email remains fairly susceptible to being read by people other than the intended recipient.
How do we understand the privacy issues? To the extent that the emails in Gov. Palin’s Yahoo Account is considered part of the public record, it may be an inappropriate method of gathering public information, which might even raise issues about whether or not the information can be used in an investigation or legal proceeding. This could also explain why the only information released so far is not particularly incriminating.
Yet what are the larger aspects of this? Will it get more people focusing on the privacy issues around email, or what emails by Government officials should be considered part of the public record? Will it get more people looking at the issues of whether or not Gov. Palin abused her power in her efforts to get her sister’s ex-husband fired? Given the geeky nature of the latest developments, it may catch a lot of attention of technology oriented sites, but we’ll see if it goes beyond that.
