Notes from a wireframe world

Version 1of TwitterBrite finally got it’s release today. Other than a strange and silly little bug that makes it look like it’s broken (and that should be fixed soon) it done.

While you can’t yet buy adverts on it (well you can’t the back end works, their’s just no way to access it yet), you can buy the application it’s self for just £25.

But whats more dear readers, since I love you all so much, I’m going to offer it to you at half price. All you need to do is use the coupon “HP50” when you buy it and you can get the pro version for just £12.50

As you may well know, Google recently pulled out of the Chinese market, due in no small part to the Chinese’s hacking of Google’s servers.

Flowers for Google

Well since this blog isn’t currently blocked by china I thought I’d reprint China’s rules on Google reporting.

—- Official Chinese reporting rules —–

All chief editors and managers:

Google has officially announced its withdrawal from the China market. This is a high-impact incident. It has triggered netizens’ discussions which are not limited to a commercial level. Therefore please pay strict attention to the following content requirements during this period:”

A. News Section

1. Only use Central Government main media (website) content; do not use content from other sources

2. Reposting must not change title

3. News recommendations should refer to Central government main media websites

4. Do not produce relevant topic pages; do not set discussion sessions; do not conduct related investigative reporting;

5. Online programs with experts and scholars on this matter must apply for permission ahead of time. This type of self-initiated program production is strictly forbidden.

6. Carefully manage the commentary posts under news items.”

B. Forums, blogs and other interactive media sections:

1. It is not permitted to hold discussions or investigations on the Google topic

2. Interactive sections do not recommend this topic, do not place this topic and related comments at the top

3. All websites please clean up text, images and sound and videos which attack the Party, State, government agencies, Internet policies with the excuse of this event.

4. All websites please clean up text, images and sound and videos which support Google, dedicate flowers to Google, ask Google to stay, cheer for Google and others have a different tune from government policy

5. On topics related to Google, carefully manage the information in exchanges, comments and other interactive sessions

6. Chief managers in different regions please assign specific manpower to monitor Google-related information; if there is information about mass incidents, please report it in a timely manner.

We ask the Monitoring and Control Group to immediately follow up monitoring and control actions along the above directions; once any problems are discovered, please communicate with respected sessions in a timely manner.

Additional guidelines:

– Do not participate in and report Google’s information/press releases

– Do not report about Google exerting pressure on our country via people or events

– Related reports need to put [our story/perspective/information] in the centre, do not provide materials for Google to attack relevant policies of our country

– Use talking points about Google withdrawing from China published by relevant departments

—- End of Rules —-

OK so what does this all mean? Well, I think China is concerned about the effect Google’s pull out will have both to their own citizens (i.e. making them more aware of China’s censorship methods) and other companies (i.e. Microsoft). To do this they are controlling the source of the news, This same line of thinking also explains why it is discouraging investigative reporting — a key pillar of journalism in the western world and online media is being strong-armed as well. The key to this point is that websites cannot have any media or stories that “have a different tune from government policy.”

It’s clear that things like the rows of flowers that Chinese citizens put in front of the Google logo sends the wrong message to its citizens, and China’s relying on the media to clean it up and tow the line.

No Flash support.

Yep thats right, right in the middle of Apples show case event of the year, this screw-up. The iPad’s browser doesn’t support flash.

As TechCrunch pointed out

“But the device features browsing as a key element, and there are going to be plenty of people trying to access their casual Flash games and Flash-based video sites, only to be met with that frustrating icon. “

Ports.

Err… one, the iPad’s dock, yep thats right no USB connection, no Micro SD connection, unless that is you buy an additional bit of hardware. How nice of Lord Jobs. Instead of building in two industry standards, users are forced to buy extra items with their new iPad. It’s not like the these standards are large and would take away from the oh-so-important design.

Functionality

As one commentator put it,

“There is nothing new or revolutionary about this device, it’s just a very large ipod (not even iphone since you can’t call with it).”

nuf said.

So of course fanboys and wannabe will buy it, but for the rest of us? Throes of us who have to earn money and don’t worship SJ? I really think very few people will buy it.

I’d much rather have an xt2, at least that supports multi-tasking.

Firstly Happy new year!

Sorry it’s been a while, however I’ve been busy writing code for a new project called TwitterBrite. It’s a twitter client for windows, that similar to applications like hootsuite allows users to post RSS feeds to twitter and search it for useful people to follow, however it solves one of the major drawbacks I see with hootsuite, that of security.

Hootsuite is a purely web based application, if something goes wrong with it (for example it starts re-posting old RSS entries, or spamming your followers with direct messages) their is nothing you can do about it, sure you can login and terminate your account, but as happened to a couple of services last year, what if you can’t login?

Control is I believe one of the biggest stumbling blocks for company wishing to access the power of social media, the what if something goes wrong argument.

Anyway as part of this project, I’ve been working on a .net based DLL that provides an interface for the Bit.ly URL shorten (which TwitterBrite will use) you can download it and a, hopefully useful, read me file from us here.

P.S. The DLL isn’t open source, however if you want the code, drop me a line. If you’re a business and want to keep it close source, I’m willing to sell it, providing I get a free life time upgrade/resell permissions for my products, if you’re interested in making it open source, that fine as well, just as long as you can show your going to move the interface forward.

If you’ve got a jailbroken iPhone, be careful: a worm has broken out in Australia that targets owners who have not changed the default password after installing SSH.

The worm’s behavior is hardly amusing: it changes your background to a photo of Rick Astley, then looks for other phones on the network to infect. The exploit could easily be used by hackers with malicious intent for more nefarious purposes.

If you have a jailbroken iPhone and you’ve installed SSH without changing the default password (from “alpine”) you need to do so to avoid such attacks. If you have not jailbroken your iPhone or iPod Touch and installed SSH, you are not affected.

Sophos writes of the exploit:

SophosLabs is analysing the worm’s code, which suggests that at least four variants have been written so far. One of the attributes of the latest variant (labelled the “D” version) is that it tries to hide its presence by using a filepath suggestive of the Cydia application.

The source code is littered with comments from the author suggesting the worm has been written as an experiment. One of the comments berates affected users for not following instructions when installing SSH, because if they had changed the default password the worm would not have been able to infect them.

If you have been Rickrolled in this rather nasty way fear not. There is a relatively simply way to remove the virus, using whatever file system browser you fancy and look for the following files

/bin/poc-bbot
/bin/sshpass
/var/log/youcanbeclosertogod.jpg
/var/mobile/LockBackground.jpg
/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.ikey.bbot.plist
/var/lock/bbot.lock

if they are their you need to delete them, and re-boot your iPhone (remembering to change your SSH password), if however they are not on your phone, you have “Version D” of the virus installed, it is a little more sneaky as it pretends to be the iPhone App Cydia. In order to fix this veriant you need to delete the following files and then re-install Cydia.

/usr/libexec/cydia/startup
/usr/libexec/cydia/startup.so
/usr/libexec/cydia/startup-helper
/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.saurik.Cydia.Startup.plist

So let’s hear it Apple fanboys for the secure iPhone!