Q. Seriously, is it really a risk to use the free WiFi at the coffee shop? Is anyone REALLY spying?

A. Seriously? Yes.

I was in Raleigh-Durham working on a WiFi-enabled client site a couple of years ago when the security director leaned against my desk and asked me who ‘TigerBear83′ was.

My blood ran cold - it was my GMail password.

His employees regularly run sniffer software to make sure that employees are following security protocols and clearly, I’d failed the test.

Sniffer software is easily found (freeware versions are all over the web) and there are legions of hackers who spend hours nursing lattes and data trolling at WiFi hotspots.

Bottom line, public WiFi has no built-in protection. The security of your data is a a do-it-yourself proposition. A fact too many users are blithely unaware.

Will this change? Yes. But at this moment in WiFi’s evolution, the technology is just not there yet.

The safest option you can take to send/receive sensitive information is to get thee a patch cable and plug in. A secure, hard-wired network connection is your best port in the storm.

But before you give up coffee altogether, let me say that there are some security measure you can take to minimize risk on a public WiFi. The effectiveness of these measures is equivalent to whispering your private information versus shouting it across the movie theater.

The best up-to-date instructions I found on protecting yourself were at About.com, written by Mary Landesman. I recommend her post here.

The soundest advice I can give youon the subject - assume that anything you send & receive on an open WiFi can be seen. So never type anything on an open WiFi connection that you wouldn’t tell a stranger on a bus.

Q. I took your seminar years ago and you said if I spilled something on my keyboard and disabled it, I could run it through the dishwasher. I thought you were nuts. But now the situation’s come up and I was wondering…

A. Am I nuts? Yes. But that’s besides the point.

Over 10 years ago, I spilled Diet Coke on my keyboard and killed it dead. No knowing any better (which is usually the preface to every great discovery) I borrowed my neighbor’s dishwasher and ran it through - figuring I had nothing to lose and a keyboard to gain.

It worked. And it’s worked several times since then.

A new keyboard is cheap and easy to get these days but if you want to attempt a last life-saving procedure then run it through the dishwasher on a cool, unheated, short cycle. Make sure the keys are facing DOWN and don’t use any soap or detergent.

Afterwards, let it dry on a towel or a rack for at least 48 hours - until it is truly bone dry through and through.

Unconvinced? Well, Nell Boyce at NPR did it recently heard about this and tried it out. Read about her experiment here.

Just promise me you won’t try this on your optical mouse.

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On Fridays, MoGo Mobility’s Elizabeth will seek to answer your MoGo (and non-MoGo) technical questions.

Elizabeth is a professional writer & geek with most of the last decade spent in senior management at a leading global IT provider. Thousands have attended her seminars in the US & Canada on subjects ranging from basic TCP/IP networking to high-end data storage solutions.

Got a question? Ask Elizabeth.

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Ipevo has rolled out its next generation Skype phone. Coming in at under $45, it is slim, easy-to-use and has a handy-dandy little feature that’s causing some serious buzz.

The feature?

With the touch of a button, you can record your conversation in real-time to your computer’s hard drive.

Skype is a phone-over-Internet service. Calls between two Skype phones are usually free with calls to a regular ‘land-line’ often incurring some kind of fee. This handset has separate hot buttons for making free calls on the Skype calling service and for Skype Out calls to regular phones.

Overall, using Skype instead of the traditional phone line can mean huge savings - especially for people who make a lot of global calls during peak hours. And the technology means that the calls are much clearer and free of the little bugs that made many early ‘Voice Over IP’ phones clunky to use.

Many companies like Ipevo are taking advantage of Skype’s popularity to markets its peripherals and tools.

This is the first one to take advantage of the direct-connect to your computer system with this little Spy vs. Spy enhancement…

With the Ipevo phone, you can save conversations as MP3’s once you install the necessary drivers. Then, with a push of the button you can save the contents of your call to a manufacturer asking for changes to your order, or of your relative’s story about a meaningful time to your family, or any other important conversation.

With MP3-to-text software, it’s just another step to build a transcript of the call.

It’s another ‘the future is now’ moment.

Before you go out and buy that cloak and dagger, though - remember, secretly recording calls is illegal in many states. To make sure these laws are followed, Ipevo has configured a warning alert to appear on the screen of the other person’s computer (for Skype calls) or a beep to be regularly heard (on calls to regular to phones) during recording.

The phone is compatible with PC using Windows XP or higher and Macs with OS X 10.4 or higher (although the drivers for recording calls using a Mac haven’t yet been released).

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Talk about news man, this is like Apple and Microsoft joining forces and combining their technology for all the world to use.  Oh wait, I guess they kind of already are doing that, Mac’s running Windows and all.  Well, we really don’t need to get into a Mac vs. Windows debate on here, so I’m going to do the right thing and TOTALLY change the subject back to the purpose of this blog post!

So, the story is, Bluetooth and rival tech Wibree are going to join forces to bring the wireless technology to devices that, up to this point, were far too small for it.  With this joining of proverbial hands, gadgets like “watches, heart rate monitors, pedometers and pill boxes,” will be able to wirelessly communicate with other Bluetooth devices and everything will be all happy and in-sync. The possibilities, dear friends, are endless.

The idea that our Bluetooth devices are going to continue to get smaller, use less power and require less charging is, well, exciting.  What’s even better is, I am writing for a company that is at the forefront of Bluetooth innovation, and to be honest I could not be happier.  Come check out MoGo, you won’t be sad you did.

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We’ve had a flurry of interest on Tyler’s piece, prompting the MoGo Think Tank to extend the topic into a second day.

So, wondering if wireless electricty is for real?

It is. In fact, it was over 6 months ago that the news first began to go public with the advances being made in transmitting electricity safely without cords.

Last November, the BBC did a piece based on some findings by a group of physicists at a school near and dear to my heart - the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

They interviewed MIT’sAssistant Professor Marin Soljacic , who talked about what spurred the research:

“There are so many autonomous devices such as cell phones and laptops that have emerged in the last few years. We started thinking, ‘it would be really convenient if you didn’t have to recharge these things’. And because we’re physicists we asked, ‘what kind of physical phenomenon can we use to do this wireless energy transfer?’.”

Thus, the race to invent Wireless Electricity (or “WiTricity” as the MIT folks call it.)

The first innovation is Low-energy transmission. It’s a way of sending a limited amount of power, via RF (radio frequency). Just like tuning into that station that always plays those soulful Robert Johnson licks in the car, this technology is broken down into two pieces: broadcast and reception - an A to B exchange of information (in this case, power).

Two months after the BBC piece, a company called Powercast introduced their system of Low Energy transmission at a January conference. The company plans to apply it to a number of products that will come to market this year. The “Powercast System” is only available for gadgets with low power needs (maximum: 6 volts) - but these are many. Including: LEDs, computer peripherals, wireless sensors, and medical implants.

6 volts, though? Wasn’t enough to float the Soljacic Team’s boat.

They’ve innovated something called Evanescent Wave Coupling. By February, Dr. Soljacic and his partners were ready to publish their findings; “Efficient wireless non-radiative mid-range energy transfer“.

Simply put…

Uh, there’s no ’simply put’ in this breakthrough.

Basically, electromagnetic waves are transmitted (tunnelled) from point A to B, where they are translated back into the form of electricity that is commonly consumed. Again, with limitations. First in the amount that can currently be effectively transmitted (about enough for 100 watt light-bulb) and distance (about 7 meters).

These limitations are not expected to stand, however.

Want the actual math? See Quantum Tunneling, which has the formulas.

Want the applications in your technology? A non-dying cell phone? A perma-charged iPod??

Hang on, there’re coming….

PS… curious about Tyler’s Tesla Reference? Read here for the quick lowdown.

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Tesla, somewhere, is absolutely spinning in his grave.  You think you’re a mobile warrior now?  Ha.  Just wait until the day comes (and folks it could be a lot sooner than any of us think) when you never have to carry another charger again.  Think of the day you never have to find another electrical outlet to plug in one of your 30 gadgets…when that day comes, all that will be possible because the electricity will be sent to that device Wirelessly.

That day actually came recently as a 60watt light bulb was lit wirelessly from a distance of about 2 meters.  That’s right, no wires, no cords or cables, just some magnetic fields and boom, let there be light.

So what does this have to do with Bluetooth, well, everything.   Think of the implications this could have when no cords, cables, wires or outlets are ever needed again.  Bluetooth is one technology that is helping to show us how that life Might be.

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I’m going to start off this post admitting something:  I am not a woman.  I have never been a woman, and I have absolutely no plans on becoming one at a later date.  That said, I’m going to need all you women to chime in on this one, tell me if what I found is true, false, blasphemy or pretty darn accurate.

That said, I just found an interesting article via Gizmodo and the New York Times that claims that in order for all these new, high-tech gadgets to truly appeal to female customers they need to go beyond “cute,” and “pink” and become not only much easier to use, but smaller as well.  That’s right, they (in this case a marketing group) found that to truly appeal to women, the gadgets have to be easy to figure out, accessible immediately, and smaller in size.  All that’s going on in the back of my brainpan while I’m reading this is, “Man, MoGo is genius,” because not only are the gadgets small, they are extraordinarily easy to use, they work right out of the box, and they make life as simple as possible by erasing the wires, the cords and the bulky accessories to tote around with them.

Personally, I’m going to agree with Gizmodo on this one, sex has nothing to do with people wanting products that are easier to use.  Who wants to sit around and read 300 pages of a manual written in 30 languages just to figure out how to connect your mouse to your computer, or your headset to your cell phone?  Yeah, no one, that’s who.

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Earlier this week, I wrote a synopsis of Google Gears based on industry and what Google itself said about the product in its forums in press-releases.

I told you we would continue to follow developments on the topic as they occurred.

And today, one occurred.

I tried it.

I suppose attempted to try it would have been a better phrasing. .

My personal system is a Mac, on which I use Mozilla’s Firefox as my browser.

Whoops.

Go to the Google Gears Messageboard and you will discover the first major product glitch: Google Gears does not play well with Firefox, Opera, or Safari.

Some may chuckle and call that a ‘feature’ and not a ‘bug’. But this is a pluralist society, people. A product that doesn’t work on Mac’s most common surf-apps is cutting out a very desirable demographic (and I’m not just tooting my own horn, here.)

So I wheeled my executive chair to the other side of this partner’s desk to my partner’s shiny Wintel PC .

Lo! And Behold! Google Gears for Google reader does, in fact, work as advertised.

If you want to see screencaps and a great post on the experience - check out Rusty Brick’s post over at Search Engine Roundtable.

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Here’s five quick and easy solutions to protecting your laptop and its data from prying eyes and sticky fingers. These are suggestions meant for the most common and blunt security threats; shielding yourself from worms, spam, and spies (oh my!) are posts for future days.
Without further ado…

1) Before you leave, Disable Auto-Logon.

I know, it’s convenient to be able to power up your laptop and have it automatically go into your system.

But this is a major invitation for a security breach. So when you travel, disable it.

How? If you’re running Win2000 or WinXP, Microsoft has the following instructions:

- Go to START and select RUN
- In the script box, type “control userpasswords2″
- In the dialog box that appears, make sure that ‘Users must enter a username and password to use this computer’ is checked
- Click ‘OK’

Instructions for other Microsoft operating systems HERE.

2) Along those same lines? Use Strong Passwords.

Although this seems obvious, the truth is that we are creatures of habit. Which is why so many of us STILL aren’t using strong passwords regularly.

So go ahead. Change your login password right now. If you need to write it down and put it in your wallet, feel free. The point is is to make it hard for a thief and/or hacker to get at your data.

Unsure what a “strong password” is? Wikipedia has a good definition, here. Unsure if you can create one? There is a random strong password generator here.

3) Lock access to your laptop.

Your car and house have keys, shouldn’t your laptop? Securikey is a system (about $130 at MacWorld) that gives you two USB ‘keys’ to lock your laptop. You install their software (works for most Mac and PC systems) and from then on, you have to provide a password AND have one of the USB keys in the laptop’s port before you can access your system.

The USB keys are pretty durable and designed to hang on your key-chain.

4) Lock your laptop.

We all know a co-worker or fellow road warrior who has stepped away from whatever temporary office they’ve been using only to come back and find their laptop gone.

A simple $40 laptop lock would prevent about 90% of these thefts.

So go ahead, buy one. (like Kensington’s). It takes up very little room in your bag and can mean all the difference.

5) Use a privacy screen.

I can’t tell you how much proprietary and private information I’ve been exposed to over the years in various coach seats at 15,000 feet.

40% of those surveyed, like me, will admit to seeing what they are not meant to from time to time. The rest? Well, maybe they have portable blinders.

Privacy filters for laptops run about $40 - $125. If you’re like me, you’ll soon get in the habit of leaving it on all the time, even back in the home office (because prying eyes can be anywhere.)

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Listen up all you young people out there, cause this one is aimed right at you.  I do not know if you are aware of it or not, but Father’s Day is literally right around the corner.  With only 12 days left to get your shopping done to honor the man who brought you into this world (well, half the battle…actually probably a lot less than half, giving birth has to be like 80% of the actual work), I figured you might need some help.

That said, I just found something that’s absolutely perfect for all your Dad’s that are tech-heads, geeks, nerds, gamers or any combination of the two.   That’s right, it’s perfect Father’s Day Gifts for your Geeky Dad.  I have to admit, I must be a little bit of a big geek because some of these products excited me!  We’re talking everything from Duct Tape Wallets, to Microcontroller Tie Tacks, to Solar Powered Messenger Bags.  If it’s techy, if it’s geeky, you need some of these little bad boys.

Head over and check them out, and when your Dad is pumped on Father’s Day, head back over here and let us know how it went!

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Obvious Statement #147: Your web-based apps stop working when your drop your Internet connection.

But… what if it didn’t have to be that way?

Last week as the worldwide Google Developer Day 2007 kicked off, Google officially announced what had been its worst-kept secret - Google Gears is here.

Google Gears is an extension that allows developers to enhance their web-based applications (like Google Reader, see beta here) so they work even without web access.

Simplistically? It’s open-source multi-platform JavaScript Application Programming Interface (API) that lets Web applications work offline by creating a local cache on your hard drive .

Yes, before you say it, the desktop traditionally is Microsoft territory.

But Google Gears is more than another David-wannabe with a slingshot and a sharp rock. Already, Gears has a lot of support behind it: Adobe Software, Mozilla Corp., and Opera Software all made statements of support.

No one is arguing that traditional desktop applications have their place. The code does not yet exist to make a product like Adobe’s Creative Suite, especially the industry-standard Photoshop, effective as a web-based app.

But for the standard corporate user, managing desktop applications can be a hassle. Even if you are using a product - like Lotus Notes - that lets you work offline or online, you still have to synch and organize as you move between laptop and desktop, or during hardware upgrades. “I think the growth of the Internet has really reflected the difficulties people have running desktop software,” Chris DiBona, open source programs manager at Google told InformationWeek.

What does Google Gears mean right now? Not much beyond a way to make it easier to bring today’s industry news with you onto the airplane.

But looking at the horizon, expect an evolution. Google has word processing and spreadsheet applications that will soon be available to you for both online collaboration and as an offline tool.

Now that developers have their hands on the code, we’ll stay on top of the products and innovations as they are released.

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