Secure Browsing from Mobile and PC ( Tor ,PeerNet, WasteAgain)

While Tor remains the tool of choice with pseudo-techie hacker wannabes , there is enough juice and smoke and mirrors on the market to confuse your average Joe.

For a secure browsing experience on Mobile – do NOT use either Apple or Windows OS

Use Android  and this app called Orbot in particular

Installing Tor with a QR code

Orbot is easy to install by simply scanning the following QR code with your Android Barcode scanner.

Android QR code

Installing Tor from the Android Market

Orbot is available in the Android Market.

ENTER PEERNET

If you have a Dell PC, well just use PeerNet to configure and set up your own network around the neighbourhood. This is particularly applicable if you are in country that is both repressive and not so technologically advanced. Wont work in China or USA.

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/network/p70008/EN/vista_7/peernet.htm

What is a peer network?

A peer network is a network in which one computer can connect directly to another computer. This capability is accomplished by enabling access point (AP) functionality on one of the computers. Other computers can then connect to this computer in the same way that they would connect to a physical AP. If Internet Connection Sharing is enabled on the computer that has the AP functionality, computers that connect to that computer have Internet connectivity as well.

A basic peer network, which requires no networking knowledge or experience to set up, should meet the needs of most home users and small businesses. By default, a basic peer network is configured with the strongest available security (see How do I set up a basic peer network?).

For users who are familiar with wireless networking technology, advanced configuration features are available to do the following:

Change security settings (see How do I configure my peer network?)
Choose which method (push button or PIN) computers with Wi-Fi Protected Setup™ capability can join your peer network (see How do I allow peer devices to join my peer network using Wi-Fi Protected Setup technology?)
Change the DHCP Server IP address (see How do I configure my peer network?).
Change the channel on which to operate your peer network (see How do I configure my peer network?)

 If you are really really in a need for secure browsing (like you are maybe a big hot shot in the tech world), I suggest go over to VMWare

http://www.vmware.com/products/player/

create a seperate Linux (Ubuntu for ease) virtual disc, then download the Tor Browser Bundle from

https://www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser.html.en for surfing and a Peernet (above) or  a prepaid one time use disposable mobile pre-paid wireless card. It is also quite easy to delete your virtual disc in times of emergencies (but it is best to use encryption even when in Ubuntu https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EncryptedHome)

IRC chat is less secure than you think it is thanks to BOT  Trawlers- so I am hoping someone in the open source community updates Waste Again for encrypted chats http://wasteagain.sourceforge.net/

What is “WASTE again”?

“WASTE again” enables you to create a decentralized and secure private mesh network using an unsecure network, such as the internet. Once the public encryption keys are exchanged, sending messages, creating groupchats and transferring files is easy and secure.

Creating a mesh

To create a mesh you need at least two computers with “WASTE again” installed. During installation, a unique pair of public and private keys for each computer is being generated. Before the first connection can be established, you need to exchange these public keys. These keys enable “WASTE again” to authenticate every connection to other “WASTE again” clients.

After exchanging the keys, you simply type in the computers IP address to connect to. If that computer is located behind a firewall or a NAT-router, you have to create a portmap first to enable incoming connections.

At least one computer in your mesh has to be able to accept incoming connections, making it a “public node”. If no direct connection between two firewalled computers can be made, “WASTE again” automatically routes your traffic through one or more of the available public nodes.

Every new node simply has to exchange keys with one of the connected nodes and then connect to it. All the other nodes will exchange their keys automatically over the mesh.

App to App Porting

I often wonder why bright, intelligent software programmers go out of their way to write turgid and lengthy words in documentation, do not make  step by step screenshot/slides for Tutorials, and practically force everyone to reinvent the wheel everytime they create a new platform.

Top of my wish list for 2012-

1) Better GUI  for APP CREATION-

example-A GUI utility to create chrome apps something similar to Android  App creator http://www.appinventorbeta.com/about/

2)  Automated Porting or Translation-

An automated appsot app for reading in an iOS app (or iPhone app) and churning out the necessary Android app code. This is similar to translating blogs from one blogging platform to another using Python at http://code.google.com/p/google-blog-converters-appengine/

 

but the woefully underpowered http://wordpress2blogger.appspot.com/ currently allows only downloads less than 1 MB, while WordPress itself allows 15 MB export files.

3) Better interaction between cloud and desktop apps

example – (google docs and libre office)  or webcams to (google hangouts and google voice /youtube)

Are we there yet? Not appy enough !

 

 

Blogging Stats

Some statistics on blogs by the people who host them-

1) Tumblr

http://www.tumblr.com/about

12,917,771,050 TOTAL POSTS
34,669,313 TOTAL BLOGS
42,559,168  POSTS TODAY
2) WordPress
66,286,719 WordPress Sites in the World
I found no stats by Blogger or by Drupal but by using Google Trends.
From Google Trends-
blogger 
3.00
drupal 
1.00
sharepoint 
2.20
wordpress 
3.6
tumblr 
2.20

Statistics on Social Media

Some official statistics on social media from the owners themselves

1) Facebook-

http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics

Date -17 Nov 2011

Statistics

People on Facebook

Kindle as a Tablet for 109$ and how to order it if you in India

I was just blown away by the price and functionality of the Kindle, including the browser and in built Wi-Fi- ( though the 40$ leather bag was a bit sneaky as an accessory, I mean seriously, dude)

And unlike some media technology companies (like Hulu,Spotify , even some Youtube channels)

who offer products to Asia only after a delayed lag, it is just as easy to order Kindle sitting from India.

Thank you Amazon!

 

and lastly some art to help prod those people who offer beta sites for limited countries  even in this age.

Credit- Paul Mutant

http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulmutant/4992725876/

Research on Social Games

Social Gaming is slightly different from arcade gaming, and the heavy duty PSP3, XBox, Wii world of gaming.  Some observations on my research ( 😉 ) on social gaming across internet is as follows-

There are mostly 3 types of social games-

1) Quest- Build a town/area/farm to earn in game money or points

2) Fight- fight other people /players /pigs earn in game money or points

3) Puzzle- Stack up, make three of a kind, etc

Most successful social games are a crossover between the above three kinds of social games (so build and fight, or fight and puzzle etc)

In addition most social games have some in game incentives that are peculiar to social networks only. In game incentives are mostly in game cash to build, energy to fight others, or shortcuts in puzzle games. These social gaming incentives are-

1) Some incentive to log in daily/regularly/visit game site more often

2) Some incentive to invite other players on the social network

A characteristic of this domain is blatant me-too, copying and ripping creative ideas (but not the creative itself)  from other social games. In general the successful game which is the early leader gets most of the players but other game studios can and do build up substantial long tail network of players by copying games. Thus there are a huge variety of games.

However there are massive hits like Farmville and Angry Birds, that prove that a single social game well executed can be very valuable and profitable to both itself as well as the primary social network hosting it.

Accordingly the leading game studios are Zynga, Electronic Arts and (yes) Microsoft while Google has been mostly a investor in these.

A good website for studying data about social games is http://www.appdata.com/ while a sister website for studying developments is  http://www.insidesocialgames.com/

As you can see below Appdata is a formidable data gatherer here (though I find the top App – Static HTML as both puzzling and a sign of un corrected automated data gathering),

but I expect more competition in this very lucrative segment.

 

 

PiCloud gives away 20 free compute hours PER month

Announcement from PiCloud- (and this is apart from the 5 hours free that a beginner account gets)

http://www.picloud.com/

 

Starting this month, all users will get 20 c1 core hours worth of credits each and every month.

 

  • If you ran out of your original 5 core hour credits, you can come back and play around some more!
  • If you have minimal computing needs, this means that you can now use PiCloud regularly without even having to enter a credit card.

 

Looking for more? Don’t forget, we’re giving away $500 worth of credits as part of our Academic Research Program. Applications are due this Thursday, October 27th