Saturday, May 4, 2013

Your Daily digest for Tech Geek`s Tools, Tips, Tricks and Tutorials

Tech Geek`s Tools, Tips, Tricks and Tutorials
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Redditors (and Popehat) Versus a Bus Company
May 4th 2013, 23:20

Techdirt explains the strange story of a lawsuit-happy bus company in Illinois which managed to tick off a cadre of determined redditors by calling them uncomplimentary names in the reddit forums. This all started when a bus passenger, Jeremy Leval, reported unsavory behavior by a company employee (telling an exchange student "If you don't understand English, you don't belong at the University of Illinois or any 'American' University.") and said so online. Besides the name calling on reddit, the bus company threatened the forum moderator with libel charges, and over insults posted by the bus company employees which the moderator had deleted. Further, company owner "[Dennis] Toeppen threatened to sue Leval, saying, 'The attorneys for Suburban Express are reviewing this incident with a view towards filing the appropriate legal action against this meddlesome MBA student.'" Attorney Ken White of Popehat got involved, though, and asked with good effect whether the company had fully considered the Streisand Effect. The strangest part? Toeppen's former involvement as a domain squatter.

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Google Sets Its Sights On Gaming, Hires Noah Falstein As Chief Game Designer
May 4th 2013, 22:18

MojoKid writes "Google has its hands in every other aspect of the tech industry, so why not gaming, too? It appears as though the company is eyeing a run at the gaming market by hiring Noah Falstein as its "Chief Game Designer". Falstein's LinkedIn profile has been updated to reflect his new title, which is the latest in a long career. He started out in 1980 and put in time at (the recently-defunct) Lucasfilm Games as well as 3DO and Dreamworks Interactive."

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ORBX.js: 1080p DRM-Free Video and Cloud Gaming Enirely In JavaScript
May 4th 2013, 21:21

An anonymous reader writes "According to Brendan Eich, CTO of Mozilla and the creator of JavaScript, ORBX.js can decode 1080p HD video and support low latency remote graphics entirely in JavaScript, offering a pure JavaScript alternative to VP8/H.264 native code extensions for HTML5 video. Watermarking is used during encoding process for protected IP, rather than relying on local DRM in the browser. Mozilla is also working with OTOY, Autodesk and USC ICT to support emerging technologies through ORBX.js — including light field displays and VR headsets like the Oculus Rift." Writes reader mikejuk: "The problem with all of this is that orbix.js is just a decoder and there is little information on the coder end of the deal. It could be that OTOY will profit big time from coding videos and watermarking them while serving virtual desktops from their GPU cloud. The decoder might be open source but the situation about the rest of the technology is unclear. In the meantime we have to trust that Mozilla, and Brendan Eich in particular, are not being sold a utopian view of a slightly dystopian future."

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Syria Buys Dell PCs Despite Sanctions
May 4th 2013, 20:17

puddingebola writes with a New York Times article about how mundane PCs — not just more esoteric and eyebrow-raising network monitoring equipment from Blue Coat — makes its way to Syria: "From the article: 'Large amounts of computer equipment from Dell have been sold to the Syrian government through a Dubai-based distributor despite strict trade sanctions intended to ban the selling of technology to the regime, according to documents obtained by The New York Times. The disclosure of the computer sales is the latest example of how the Syrian government has managed to acquire technology, some of which is used to censor Internet activity and track opponents of the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad.'"

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Google and Adobe Contribute Open Source Rasterizer to FreeType
May 4th 2013, 19:17

alancronin writes with this excerpt from a PC World article: "Users of Android, Chrome OS, Linux, and iOS devices may not realize it, but FreeType open source software is used to render fonts on more than a billion such devices. Not only that, but the FreeType project this week got a significant update from none other than Adobe and Google. Specifically, Google and Adobe on Wednesday released into beta the Adobe CFF engine, an advanced Compact Font Format (CFF) rasterizer that 'paves the way for FreeType-based platforms to provide users with richer and more beautiful reading experiences,' as Google put it in an online announcement on the Google Open Source Blog. The new rasterizer is now included in FreeType version 2.4.12. Though it's currently off by default, the technology is 'vastly superior' to the old CFF engine and will replace it in the next FreeType release, the project says." The article features examples of how the new engine improves font rendering; for more explanation of the CFF, see this blog post from Adobe.

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Bruce Schneier: Why Collecting More Data Doesn't Increase Safety
May 4th 2013, 18:18

Jeremiah Cornelius writes "Bruce Schneier, security expert (and rational voice in the wilderness), explains in an editorial on CNN why 'Connecting the Dots' is a 'Hindsight Bias.' In heeding calls to increase the amount of surveillance data gathered and shared, agencies like the FBI have impaired their ability to discover actual threats, while guaranteeing erosion of personal and civil freedom. 'Piling more data onto the mix makes it harder, not easier. The best way to think of it is a needle-in-a-haystack problem; the last thing you want to do is increase the amount of hay you have to search through. The television show Person of Interest is fiction, not fact.'"

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Ask Slashdot: What's Your Company's Marketing-to-Engineering Ratio?
May 4th 2013, 17:20

An anonymous reader writes "I just learned that the company I work for annually budgets ~$17,000 for non-labor engineering expenses, but budgets ~$250,000 for non-labor marketing and sales expenses. Am I just being cynical when I say that my company spends almost 15 times as much trying to convince the outside world that we make a good product, than it spends on actually making a good product? What's the marketing-to-engineering ratio at your company?"

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US Officials Rebuke India's Request To Subpoena Facebook, Google
May 4th 2013, 16:19

hypnosec writes "U.S. officials have told the Indian Government that they will not be able to serve summons to the executives of companies like Google and Facebook because they are not convinced that the content hosted on these sites can cause violence and that these summons impact 'free speech principles.' The reply comes as a response to India's request to the US to help serve papers to 11 Internet companies accused of hosting content on their sites that was meant to fuel communal hatred and violence. The U.S. authorities said that there are limitations when it comes to protection on free speech — when the speech comprises a true threat or provokes imminent violence — but in this particular case there is not sufficient evidence of either of these."

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Paul's Call To Abolish the TSA, One Year Later
May 4th 2013, 15:21

A year ago today, we noted that Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky called for the abolition of the Transportation Security Administration. It's now nearly 12 years since the hijacked-plane terror attacks of 2001; the TSA was created barely two months later, and has been (with various rules, procedures, and equipment, all of it controversial for reasons of privacy, safety, and efficacy) a major presence ever since at American commercial airports. "The American people shouldn't be subjected to harassment, groping, and other public humiliation simply to board an airplane," wrote Paul last year, and in June of 2012, he followed up by introducing two bills on the topic; the first calling for a "bill of rights" for air travelers, the other for privatizing airport screening practices. Neither bill went far. Should they have? Libertarian-leaning Paul did not succeed in knocking back the TSA, never mind privatizing its functions (currently funded at nearly $8 billion annually), though some of the things called for in his bill of rights are manifest now at least in muted form. (Very young passengers, as well as elderly passengers, face less stringent security requirements, for instance, and TSA has ended its prohibition of certain items aboard planes.) Whether you're from the U.S. or not, what practical changes would you like to see implemented? What shouldn't be on the bill of rights for airplane passengers?

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India's $20 Android Tablet First Project Completed
May 4th 2013, 14:22

symbolset writes "Though there were some troubles and worries along the way, Datawind has delivered to India's government the full allocation of 100,000 (1 lakh) 'Aakash 2' Android tablets from their first order. Priced at about $40, these tablets aren't the sort Americans would rave about: 330 MHz, 256MB RAM and so on. But for the last 2,000 units for the same price Datawind supplied Aakash 3 1GHz, 1GB RAM, 4GB Android tablets with SDHC and 3G mobile — for the same price. Such is the progress in mobile today. There was some doubt whether Datawind could deliver, so kudos to them."

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Fedora 19 To Stop Masking Passwords
May 4th 2013, 13:24

First time accepted submitter PAjamian writes "Maintainers of the Anaconda installer in Fedora have taken it upon themselves to show passwords in plaintext on the screen as they are entered into the installer. Following on the now recanted statements of security expert Bruce Schneier, Anaconda maintainers have decided that it is not a security risk to show passwords on your screen in the latest Alpha release of Fedora 19. Members of the Fedora community on the Fedora devel mailing list are showing great concern over this change in established security protocols." Note: the change was first reported in the linked thread by Dan Mashal.

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In Sandy-Struck NJ Town, Verizon Goes All Wireless, No Copper
May 4th 2013, 12:28

An anonymous reader writes with a bit from the Asbury Park Press: "'Devastated and wiped out by superstorm Sandy, Verizon has no plans to rebuild its copper-line telephone network in Mantoloking. Instead, Verizon says Mantoloking is the first town in New Jersey, and one of the few areas in the country, to have a new service called Verizon Voice Link. Essentially, it connects your home's wired and cordless telephones to the Verizon Wireless network.' So no copper or fiber to a fairly densely populated area. Comcast will now be the only voice/data option with copper to the area."

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Interview: How I Work: IDEO’s Duane Bray On Creating Great Digital Experiences
May 4th 2013, 11:32


  

Welcome to another interview in the series called "How I Work." These interviews revolve around how leading thinkers and creators in the Web world design, code and create. The goal is not to get into the specific nuances of their craft (as that information already exists online), but rather step back and learn a bit about their habits, philosophies and workflow for producing great work.

You might want to have a look at the first interview as well, which features Doug Crockford, Yahoo’s JavaScript evangelist.

Today we’ll talk to Duane Bray from IDEO, a firm that is consistently listed as one of the world's most innovative companies due to its uncanny ability to constantly come up with great ideas for its clients. Duane Bray is a partner at IDEO and heads up the firm's digital business from its New York City office.

Duane Bray at IDEO's New York City office
Duane Bray at IDEO’s New York City office

Like all IDEOers you meet, Duane Bray is unfailingly nice, with a soft, well-spoken voice. He reminds you of the kid in the back of algebra class doodling away during lecture and still acing the tests.

We recently sat down with Duane over a couple sessions to get his thoughts on Agile development, how you too can gather great user insights, tips for prototyping digital projects with clients and why he still sketches interfaces out on paper.

Q: What has you excited about digital work these days?

Duane: I’m particularly excited about the movement away from standards-based specifications towards real stuff. For us, we’ve been doing a lot more experimentation around Agile development processes and pairing up designers and developers side by side throughout the process from day one. The last thing you want to do is hire a designer who is really talented at conceptual thinking and say, “Okay, now you’re going to spend six weeks documenting everything with InDesign for the thing you did.”

What’s funny though, is when you have a designer working with a developer on weekly builds, all that stuff still gets done. But from the designer’s perspective, they are constantly making. We’ve found our teams to be super excited to be working in this way.

Certainly we’re not the first to discover Agile, but it’s made a big difference in our culture because we want people to get their ideas as real and tangible as soon as possible.

Q: How does IDEO go about getting big, breakthrough insights?

Duane: Well, for a lot of our clients, they come to us with these sort of vague questions, and they want us to help them figure that out. So, we want to start off by making sure we’re a bit exploratory — and that involves going out and being inspired by behaviors.

For example, there might be a question around new forms of video consumption online. We want to go out and find people that are representative of some extreme form of behavior. This helps us get inspired and further shapes our strategy.

One woman we found has two computers at work. One is displaying her work and the other one is displaying reality television. She needs both streams to do her job. The interesting thing is you can almost hit pause and ask her what’s going with the show and with her work and she can answer both.

So it starts to suggest, what are some of the interesting forms of literacy that are coming through our digital tools? And how might we design for this? Are there new mental models we haven’t thought about before, rather than going with industry standards?

A brainstorming session at IDEO
A brainstorming session at IDEO

Q: IDEO is famous for "thinking with your hands" via prototypes — how do you transfer this over to digital?

Duane: For me I don’t see any distinction in how IDEO designs digital products compared to our other products. We’re still going to get out there and be inspired by what’s going on in the world.

We always start our projects with some sort of investigation into what are people doing and how it impacts how they’re going to engage. And we get tangible quickly — and it's not so very different from any other prototyping process. We do group sessions to generate ideas, we sketch together, we might have someone make a mock-up on a phone or tablet to test out a behavior. What's most important for a prototype is to choose the right fidelity for the question you're seeking to answer.

Q: What's this discovery process look like?

Duane: Sometimes we’ll prototype something in the browser or on mobile to test some of these concepts out. We’ll also play around with paper prototypes because it’s an appropriate way to get client input.

But I like to find ways to disrupt the conversation when we’re talking with consumers.

For example, if something is very polished, consumers will feel they have to say they like it because it’s polished. So sometimes having hand-sketches, along with something on an iPad, we’re able to get very nice conversations going.

Prototyping is about blending that low-fidelity and high-fidelity process and blending our thinking as we go along.

Q: How would you make a case to a Smashing Magazine reader for adopting a prototyping process with their clients?

Duane: Well, the client is going to be in a better position to make more informed decisions because they are seeing things that are real. I would also argue that it isn’t a massive investment anyway and there is a better payoff down the road because you’re getting more real (tangible) early on — which means you’re going to get better input from users.

Imagine not going through that process: doing a bunch of sketches, building out a spec document, a developer builds it, you test it and people hate it.

At that point there has been such a huge investment in producing that thing. So there is actually a lot of emotional attachment now and it’s either going to be financially impossible to correct it or people will be too wedded to the idea and it’s going to be impossible to change.

Q: How do you show these prototypes?

Duane: We do a lot of live work. We’ll recruit a panel of end users. Particularly in the early stages when we’re looking for inspiration, we’ll want to be in their (the users') context. So instead of bringing them into a focus group, we might go into their homes or offices and observe them. We’ll also put stuff up on the web and blast out an SMS message and ask people to interact so we can get a more broad approach as well.

Sometimes we’ll do a hybrid of both and have our developers do quick builds and mock-ups and then go back out into the field to get more insights with a select group.

We want to know less about what percentage of people clicked on this or dropped off and more about their process of going through and using that experience. What are the specific things that are barriers and why?

At some point, when we have a much more robust build, then we’ll push it out to more people. So there is definitely an interim phase. We tend to start high touch and stay that way for a while. We’re looking for finding the emotions around why people engage or why they don’t. If we understand those, it becomes a lot more powerful in how we tune the tools.

Q: What's your experience been with Agile Development processes?

Duane: One of the things we’ve found when we’re working in an Agile process is that we can actually be incredibly fast.

An iPhone app that IDEO created for Lincoln Center.
An iPhone app that IDEO created for Lincoln Center.

To give you an example, we did a project here in New York for Lincoln Center, which was their first iPhone app, and we ran it as an Agile process. We went from kick-off to an app in the iTunes store in eight weeks. That’s concept, design and build (and I wouldn’t want to claim we can do every project on that timeline). But we had an amazing client that was able to make decisions very quickly, so we had a fast turnaround time there.

But again, it was because we were getting very real, very fast.

Q: Can you give us a step-by-step breakdown for creating this app in only eight weeks using Agile?

Duane: Sure. First, we spent half a day with our designers and developers at Lincoln Center’s campus, and in advance we created briefs about what an app could look like around different themes. We broke up into teams and every group had to go and interview people at Lincoln Center and talk to them about the theme and do a tour themselves.

We had clipboards of iPhone screen printouts, and they (the teams) had to sketch an experience and get feedback — all in four hours. It was a great way to get immersed: we talked to security guards, out-of-town tourists, locals who would hang out there, people at the information desk and we got a ton of insights.

So, we had all these amazing stories to go back and work with for honing our hypothesis on what this experience should be and we started building it. We did a detailed sketch session, prioritized the feature set, mapped out the flow, did some wireframes and then did a planning session with our development team (from Pivotal Labs). The project was so fast; there were literally just screenshots on the iPhone to simulate the flow. We were sharing it with people quickly and got to the stage where there was a build a week.

Screenshots of the iPhone app that IDEO created for Lincoln Center.
Screenshots of the iPhone app that IDEO created for Lincoln Center.

But the reality about that process is that you couldn’t do waterfall in eight weeks. I would say it’s more efficient than an old-fashioned step process.

Agile has been around for 20+ years, and we're certainly not the first to discover it but now it’s finally getting traction. Designers and developers want to spend time making stuff and getting it out there and this process is all about that.

Q: What habits or hang-ups do you see in great web designers and developers?

Duane: Well, one of the things I think that is probably the most challenging for working in this more iterative, rapid-fire way is the ability to be more open and transparent with the work that you’re doing. Sometimes as designers we want to spend some time crafting, hiding in a corner and sketching and then do the “ta-da!" But some of this new way of working requires us to move beyond that.

One of the things I’ve been thinking about is how do you encourage greater transparency of work that’s in progress? We’ve been prototyping with tools like Flowdock that allows for conversation to sit around the workflow. That is particularly important, if we’re talking about getting stuff out there really early. These are the certain things that aren’t to the nature to how a designer is trained.

There is also this thing about great developers having curiosity. Being curious about the end user you’re designing for and involving the developers in that process for insights. Being able to imagine if they’ll use the thing you’re making.

Some folks are really natural at that, and in other cases it takes a lot of work. But I think that’s where we're going — working off of blended teams with people of different skill sets.

Q: Any tips on how a small shop can get similar disruptive insights like IDEO does?

Duane: As designers it’s easy to get blinders on because we know what we know and it’s easy to get caught up in it. So, take some time to start over like you’ve never done this before. Sign up for some new tools and track your progress and behavior as an end user. There is something about just getting out to find inspiration. Look for stuff going on, whether it’s a related conference or just inviting in some experts to talk over wine and cheese at your office.

Even a small shop can reach out to friends of friends and watch them interact with some early prototypes or simply have a conversation. Say you’ll buy them drinks every other week and just show them stuff and see what you can learn from building that into your process.

One thing I do is have a screen on my phone that is just apps I would never normally download. So, we might be doing a project around, say, video, and I’ll go try every app out there and use this as a great way to learn. Projects are often an opportunity to dive deeper into a subject area you’re not necessarily interested in but you could be super-inspired by it.

Q: Now how do you capture those inspirations?

Duane: I usually have my notebook open as I’m using all these apps and I’m sketching out ideas and patterns. You start to get a feel for trends and think about different ways to accomplish the same task.

Sketchnotes in Duane Bray's notebook.
Sketchnotes in Duane Bray’s notebook.

Q: Where and how do you do your best work and not get burned out?

Duane: I usually get away from my desk. I’ll go sit up front on the couch with my laptop and my sketchbook. I force myself to move around. If you just sit at your desk you’re inclined to get into bad habits because everything is sitting around you. Some people have the zero inbox but I have 35,000 messages, so I just use the search box in email.

I’m someone who runs on intuition and not organizational processes. I have a thousand sticky notes on my desk.

But I’m pretty rigid about taking weekends off. I wasn’t always this way but I’ve learned that by being open to being inspired by stuff that has nothing to do with what I’m working on is really important.

Otherwise, you’re not grounded enough to bring something original to the table.

(cp) (ea)


© Jacob Cook for Smashing Magazine, 2013.

UK Benefits Claimants Must Use Windows XP, IE6
May 4th 2013, 10:46

First time accepted submitter carlypage3 writes "Benefits claimants in the UK are being forced to use Microsoft's now obsolete Windows XP and Internet Explorer 6 software. The Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) states that its online forms are not compatible with Internet Explorer 7, 8, 9 and 10, Safari, Google Chrome or Firefox. As if that wasn't unnerving enough, the Gov.UK website says that users cannot submit claims using Mac OS X or Linux operating systems, either." (Note: as we noted not long ago, it's not just the DWP that's stuck using IE6.)

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Antivirus Firms "Won't Co-operate" With PC-Hacking Dutch Police
May 4th 2013, 07:52

nk497 writes "Dutch police are set to get the power to hack people's computers or install spyware as part of investigations — but antivirus experts say they won't help police reach their targets. Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at F-Secure, said the Dutch bill could lead to antivirus firms being asked asked to cooperate with authorities to let an attack reach the target. So far, Hypponen hasn't seen a single antivirus vendor cooperate with such a request, and said his own firm wouldn't want to take part. Purely for business reasons, it doesn't make sense to fail to protect customers and let malware through 'regardless of the source.'"

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AI System Invents New Card Games (For Humans)
May 4th 2013, 04:56

jtogel writes "This New Scientist article describes our AI system that automatically generates card games. The article contains a description of a playable card game generated by our system. But card games are just the beginning... The card game generator is a part of a larger project to automatise all of game development using artificial intelligence methods — we're also working on level generation for a variety of different games, and on rule generation for simple arcade-like games."

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Firefox Is the First Browser To Pass the MathML Acid2 Test
May 4th 2013, 02:01

An anonymous reader writes "Frédéric Wang, an engineer at the MathJax project, reports that the latest nightly build of Firefox now passes the MathML Acid2 test. Screenshots in his post show a comparison with the latest nightly Chrome Canary, and it's not pretty. He writes 'Google developers forked Webkit and decided to remove from Blink all the code (including MathML) on which they don't plan to work in the short term.'"

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