Practical Technology

for practical people.

August 8, 2012
by sjvn01
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How to use Google two-factor authentication

Do you really think security is too much trouble? That no one is ever going to bother with your accounts? Ask former Gizmodo employee Mat Honan if he feels that way after his accounts and devices were wiped clean. That could have been you, and it could have been worse. There are several ways to try to protect your online accounts and one of the more important of these is two-factor authentication.

Two-factor authentication is ancient IT technology. If you’ve ever worked in a shop that required you both to show an ID card and enter a pin to go through a door, you’ve used it. As the name suggests it requires you to both show you know something, typically a password, and have a unique item that identifies you. On the Web, two-factor authentication typically requires you have both a password and a phone with its unique number, which can be used as the item.

Since Google played a role in the Honan case and almost everyone uses some Google service or the other–and Apple doesn’t support two-factor authentication—let’s go over how to turn on Google’s version of two-factor authentication:  two-step verification.

How to use Google two-factor authentication. More >

August 7, 2012
by sjvn01
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How to watch Internet TV across borders

Living in the U.S., one of my greatest regrets is that I can’t watch BBC video with iPlayer . If I were living in the UK, I’d feel the same away about not being able to watch shows on Hulu But, with a Web proxy or a virtual private networks (VPN)s and an Internet Protocol (IP) address in a country where the content is available you can watch these shows.

All of these services block you from watching video by simpling checking to see if your IP address is in the “right” country. Your IP address, under today IPv4 Internet, can place you to a particular neighborhood, so it’s trivial to see if you’re in the proper nation. But, if you use a Web proxy or a VPN with an IP address from the authorized region you’ll look to the video Web servers like you have permission to watch the video.

How to watch Internet TV across borders. More >

August 7, 2012
by sjvn01
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The Birth and Rise of Ethernet: A History

Nowadays, we take Ethernet for granted. We plug a cable jack in the wall or into a switch and we get the network. What’s to think about?

But it didn’t start that way. In the 60s and 70s, networks were ad hoc hodgepodges of technologies with little rhyme and less reason. But, then Robert “Bob” Metcalfe was asked to create a local area network (LAN) for Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). His creation, Ethernet, changed everything.

Back in 1972, Metcalfe, David Boggs, and other members of the PARC team assigned to the networking problem weren’t thinking of changing the world. They only wanted to enable PARC’s Xerox Altos (the first personal workstations with a graphical user interface and the Mac’s spiritual ancestor), to connect and use the world’s first laser printer, the Scanned Laser Output Terminal.

It wasn’t an easy problem. The network had to connect hundreds of computers simultaneously and be fast enough to drive a very fast (for the time) laser printer.

Metcalfe didn’t try to create his network from whole cloth. He used previous work for his inspiration.

Continue Reading →

August 7, 2012
by sjvn01
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Microsoft is pushing users and vendors to Macs and Linux

What is Microsoft thinking? First, the company decided that it was going to compete with its own partners of decades in the growing tablet market with its Surface tablet. Then, it decided that it’s going to force feed Windows 8 users its “Metro” interface. Can they really be surprised when their partners and customers start to turn their back on them?

Microsoft has always been a “my way or the highway” kind of company and it worked… when they have a lock on the desktop. That was in the 90s and 00s, it’s the twenty-teens now and the desktop is no longer the center of the computing universe. Now, we use tablets and smartphones as well and we do much, sometimes most, of our “desktop” work on Web sites and with cloud-based applications.

I know it, you know it, and now Acer is reminding Microsoft that they know it as well. Acer CEO JT Wang said that Microsoft competing with its partners  “will create a huge negative impact for the [computer hardware] ecosystem  and other brands may take a negative reaction. It is not something you are good at so please think twice.” Acer’s global PC operation chief Campbell Kan added Acer was debating whether to “find other alternatives” to Windows.

Microsoft is pushing users and vendors to Macs and Linux. More >

August 6, 2012
by sjvn01
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SPDY: Speeding Up the Web

Portland, OR: Chris Storm, owner of EEE Computes, a Web consulting business, and author of The SPDY Book, had a message for all Web developers and designers at the O’Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON): “HTTP is antiquated and obsolete.”

HTTP, the Web’s fundamental protocol that’s used by all Web browsers and sites, “hasn’t been updated in twelve years,” says Storm. “The last time HTTP was updated, Bill Clinton was president and there was no Ubuntu Linux,” he points out.

That might be fine, if HTTP was fast enough for today’s Web, he asserts; but it’s not. Strom says we need a new protocol that can deliver Web pages and sophisticated Web apps faster and more reliably. That protocol is Google’s SPDY.

SPDY: Speeding Up the Web. More >

August 6, 2012
by sjvn01
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4G isn’t fast enough for tablet and smartphone users

In theory, a 4G connection will give you up to 100Mbps (Megabits per second) speeds. Right. The reality is, on a good day at exactly the right spot, you may see 30Mbps 4G download speeds. Usually, though, you’ll do well to see speeds above 10Mbps and,  according to an end-user survey by Keynote Competitive Research that’s not fast enough.

In a survey of 5,000 U.S. smartphone and tablet users, Keynote found that “while expectations vary somewhat depending on the platform – desktop, smartphone or tablet – they are definitely increasing (PDF Link). In short, user expectations no matter the device are for very fast performance. Many sites, especially on smartphones and tablets, continue to be slow and disappoint consumers on a regular basis. Bottom line: Keynote’s research shows that the ‘expectation gap’ for performance has tightened considerably across platforms, and vendors ignore these increased expectations for blazing fast performance at their own peril.”

When it comes to “frustrating mobile Web experiences over the past two months, two-thirds of smartphone users cited ”Web pages slow to load.’


4G isn’t fast enough for tablet and smartphone users. More >