Creating a backdoor for your vulnerable Google account

Google wants us to put a massive amount of data into their hands. In my case, gigabytes. Photos, thousands of blog postings, massive amounts of email, Google Checkout records ...

All tied to a userid and a password.

A few crummy bytes.

One day our mad vulnerability will seem quite loony, like the days kids used to rattle around the backs of station wagons.

So what happens if you lose control of your Google account?

Well, you're in deep trouble. For the few who will take advance action, Google Operating System has some tips:

Creating a Backup for Your Google Account

...For Blogger, add the backup account in the blog authors section ... The account should have admin privileges so that you can create, edit and delete posts...

This is all stopgap stuff. Google needs to put a biometric infrastructure in place bloody soon now.

Novatel combo USB modem and flash drive

I hadn't heard of this one.

The Pogies: Envelope, Please - New York Times:

...For $60 a month, you can enjoy the ultimate geek luxury: high-speed wireless Internet. Not just in hot spots, where your laptop is tethered to a 150-foot wireless bubble — but anywhere you can make a phone call.

You just need a cellular modem. You can get one either as a card for your laptop’s card slot, or a U.S.B. stick that resembles a flash drive.

Novatel’s idea: make a cellular U.S.B. antenna that actually is a U.S.B. flash drive. The new Ovation U727 ($80 from Sprint, $150 from Verizon, with two-year contract) lets you install a MicroSD memory card (up to 4 gigabytes) — yet it’s even smaller than its predecessors...

Nice.

Adam (tidbits) Engst's guide to iPhoto Calendar creation

Good for birthday gifts as well as solstice events: Making iPhoto Calendars as Holiday Gifts.

Wish I'd thought to make one this year, maybe next year.

Buying a portable document scanner for OS X? Start with the drivers

Scott Gruby authors some document management tools for OS X. In response to a comment I wrote on his blog he mentioned some document scanner drivers he likes:

Scott Gruby’s Blog : Quality HP Software: "I’m quite fond of the drivers for the Syscan DocketPORT 465 (same as the Pentax DS Mobile 600). They’re simple and get the job done; it is up to the scanning application to come up with the interface instead of building it into the driver."

I think any hardware review should begin with the drivers. Drivers define real world functionality, and badly written drivers can make the entire OS unusable.

I'm disappointed, but not surprised, that this hasn't caught on anywhere. No computer review site I'm aware of starts hardware reviews by discussing software drivers. Sigh. The world really needs a few more rebels.

If MacWorld, for example, would filter products based on drivers, no HP product would ever get more than 1 out of four stars, and Canon products would never get more than 2 stars.

Of course that wouldn't help MacWorld's advertising budget, would it?

Got a domain name idea? Don't try it in the address bar!

Inevitably, there's an industry based on stealing domain name ideas then reselling them back to the creator at a premium.

It's hard to know how big a problem this really is, but this article mentions the selling of "Non-eXisten Domain" (NXC) data:

Stealing domain name research

... It is such a strong urge to type the domain name into the address bar and see what website comes up. Most users think perhaps there is already a company using the name and this will be a quick end to the question. Wrong! This is the most dangerous thing to do. Internet Service Providers (ISP) sell NXD data. You may be asking yourself “What is NXD data and how does that effect my domain research?” Non-eXistent Domain (NXD) Data is a response the DNS system tells the asking computer if resolution on an IP address fails because the domain doesn’t exist. Yes, ISPs sell this data. I personally talked with a representative that gave me her business card and quoted me a six figure number for access to their NXD data. These domain name research companies actually buy this data and register those domains to see what generates money. Their hope is that if people at one ISP represent 1/5000th of the Internet, they might receive 5000 visitors a month from all the other ISPs around the world according to that ratio. So by testing a theory with DNS, people are telling these companies what domains to ‘taste’. Ironically, this type of behavior will have a chilling effect on direct navigation which actually hurts the domain parking industry as a whole...

I suspect the problem is overstated, but I'll personally avoid testing out my domain ideas through the address bar ...

Expose: hold down option key to show window title

Years after Expose came out, I'm still figuring out how best to use it.

Proof positive my brain is turning to stone.

I'm getting there though. I can see the point of this tip.

Leopard tip roundup: Expose cheatsheet, thumbnail slider, video Quick Look - MacUser

Exposé is super handy when it comes to getting a bird’s-eye view of all your open windows—in fact it gets my nomination as one of the most life-changing features of OS X—but it can sometimes be hard to tell at a glance which window you want. Sure, you can mouse over any window to get its title, but you don’t want to have to do that to every window to find the one you want. Turns out there’s an easier way in Leopard: hold down the option key while you’re in Exposé and it’ll overlay the titles for every window.

Heck, I'd forgotten about the mouse over feature in 10.4!

BTW - rule of thumb in the OS X world -- always try the option key to see what it does.

iPhone and iPod video - an essential guide

AppleInsider | Using iPod & iPhone Video Out: Background and In-Depth Review is a unique and essential guide to the surprisingly complex world of iPhone and iPod video output. I know I don't follow it all, but the bottom line is that Apple's new connector strategy may not be driven only by a desire to own the revenue stream from cable peripherals. It's a messy world out there!

Incidentally in the past ten years I picked up an Apple component video out connector. I think it might have been designed for an iBook! Turns out it works with my old iPod, but only if I swap the RCA video and sound connectors (the color codes are wrong). Diliger tells us that camcorder manufacturers gave us the pin order variation:

Apple's iPod headphone jacks had to remain compatible with standard headphones, so Apple reversed the odd pin order used by camcorder makers to deliver a headphone jack that worked fine with regular headphones, but could also deliver video output when used with the iPod AV Cable. Camcorder cables could be used by simply reversing the order that the RCA connector ends are plugged into on the TV side.