London police launched on 25th of February a new advertising campaign. Posters and TV ads are urging Londoners to turn in people who might be taking pictures of CCTV cameras.

"Thousands of people take photos every day.

What if one of them seems odd ?

Terrorists use surveillance to help plan attacks, taking photos and making notes about security measures like the location of CCTV cameras.If you see someone doing that, we need to know.

Let experienced officers decide what action to take." 

Other posters target households:

"you see hundreds of houses every day. What if one has unusual activities and seems suspicious"

as well as mobile phone users :

"Thousands of people have mobiles. What if someone with several seems suspicious?"

What's going on in London ? Is the Metropolitan police not busy enough ? did they become completely paranoiac ? or do they need some budget increase ?

Where is this so famous British phlegm ?

As a response, many people have already redesigned the posters to point out the absurdity of them. Some samples are available on BoingBoing.

Tags: 2008, advertising, ATT, attack, blog, camera, civil liberties, counterterrorism, CTU, design, february, fon, ia, ict, im, King, lan, launch, location, london, mobile, mobile phone, nomadcom.net, officer, paranoia, PDF, phone, photo, photographers, Photography, picture, police, post, posters, public, security, snitch, suspect, terror, terrorism, uk, USA, user, wp, www, XP

Back online after few days on Chinese Mountains I discovered lots of interesting informations about Internet disruptions which occurred earlier this month and impacted more than 90 millions Internet users. Outages were due to up to cuts on up to 9 submarines cables located, for most of them, around the Arabian Peninsula.

"I Love Bonnie" published on the 12th the excellent "The Submarine Cables – A Complete Guide to the 2008 Internet Outage". The post contains tons of informations and links and provides a detailed review of the events. Media coverage can be found on Renesys site. Steven M. Bellovin professor at Columbia  University analyzed the possible causes of these outages.

Some also speaks, indeed, about conspiracy  

Tags: 2008, access, blog, cable, ces, columbia, disruption, event, Flickr, ia, im, Impact, internet, internet access, lan, LED, nomadcom.net, online, outage, photo, post, review, sco, submarine, Telecommunications, university, user, wp, www

Toshiba will soon start production of 2 new interesting products which may find their way into future mobile/portable devices.

First are the new SATA SSD (Solid State Drive) drives on 1.8' and 2.5' formats. According Engadget 32, 64 and 128 GB will be available. Speed announced is read 100 MB/s while reading and 40 MB/sec writting.

With such capacity, traditional mechanical hard disk will slowly disappear from portable devices. With no moving parts, a solid state drive largely eliminates seek time, latency and other electro-mechanical delays and failures associated with a conventional hard disk drive.

The second interesting product announced by Toshiba is the so called "Super Charge ion Battery" (SCiB) which is at this stage not intended for portable devices but for industrial systems and electric vehicles.

SCiB Major Characteristics

• Safety : SCiB adopts a new negative-electrode material that offers a high level of thermal stability and a high flash point electrolyte. Its structure is resistant to internal short circuiting and thermal runaway

• Long-life cycle : Capacity loss after 3,000 cycles of rapid charge and discharge is less than 10%. SCiB batteries are able to repeat the charge-discharge cycle over 5,000 times which is equivalent to more than 10 years with a once-a-day recharge-discharge cycle.
• Rapidly rechargeable : Safety characteristics of SCiB allow recharge with a current as large as 50 amperes (A), allowing the SCiB Cell and SCiB Standard Module to recharge to 90% of full capacity in only five minutes.
• High power (practical capacity) : The SCiB has an input-output performance equivalent to that of an electric double layer capacitor.
• Temperature : Extreme temperatures supported with sufficient discharge at temperatures as low as -30°C.

SCiB batteries will first be available on the market in March 2008 with the following specifications:

• Nominal voltage  : 24VDC
• Nominal capacity : 4.2 Ah
• Size : 10x30x5 cm
• Weight : 2 kg

Perhaps these batteries will also find other field of application,  but for portable devices they will need to become lighter and slimmer..but batteries that get charges in  five minutes are definitively very attractive for mobile users. 

What do you think ?  

Sources: Engadget Toshiba 

Tags: 2007, 2008, 24, api, arc, art, ATT, batteries, blog, capacity, ces, CTU, delay, failure, fast charge, find, flash, fon, hard disk, hdd, ia, im, lan, laptop, LED, light, minutes, mobile, nomadcom.net, portable, power, rechargeable, safe, safety, SCiB, Solid State Drive, SSD, technology, toshiba, user, vehicles, wp, www

TGV tests Wi-Fi + satellite link in three TGV trains on its Eastern network. If the experiment proves successful the new service should be generalized, from 2009, to all 52 oars network East.

With combines effort of satellite link and wireless network, in locations, such tunnels and train stations, where the satellite link cannot be established, the wi-fi network takes over to maintain the access to the Web without interruption.

French railways company SNCF previously conducted unsuccessful test using GPRS data network before launching a 2 years research and preparation program to implement this dual solution. Among technical difficulties to overcome are these related to 320 km/h TGV trains speed which causes instability and vibrations. 

The project is done in a partnership with Orange(France Telecom mobile operator), Capgemini, Alstom Transport and Eutelsat.

SNCF will put on board of its TGV a dedicated Web portal providing information about destinations, weather forecast, News, traffic information as well as a real time tracking service. From a technical point of view, TGV trains are fitted with a server where all portal content is loaded prior the journey in order to minimize bandwidth consumption due to its high cost. The tested system has been designed to provide simultaneous web connection for 14 per cent (50 users) of the total capacity of each TGV train (350).

The business plan is not defined yet, but the widespread of the system on TGV Eastern Europe network would represent an investment of 120 millions USD over 4 years. First price estimation given by SNCF Passenger service would be a flat 4-5 USD to access the Web portal during the whole journey and a 4-5 USD per hour to access the Internet.

A very interesting project and definitively a real challenge to maintain permanent web connectivity during a train journey at more than 300 km/h where the 16'000 volt power line running over the train may also create some electro-magnetic interferences and without mentioning all micro interruptions of the satellite link each time the train pass under a bridge or when dense foliage is found within the satellite's line of sight.

Any reader who already had the chance to test the reliability of the service ?

More infos (in French): Journal du Net, CNet France.

Tags: 2007, access, arc, art, blog, bridge, capacity, ces, connection, connectivity, consumption, CTU, design, europe, forecast, ia, im, internet, internet access, King, lan, launch, location, mobile, Mobile Communications, mobility, network, nomadcom.net, power, project, reader, real time, reliability, satellite, search, sncf, telecom, tgv, traffic, train, user, web, wireless, wp, www, XP

As previously announced on this site, Adobe released earlier this week, Lightroom 1.3 as well as Camera Raw 4.3.

At the same time Adobe Labs offers a public prerelease of its Software Development Kit (SDK) Lightroom 1.3 export. This kit allow developers to enable communication with Lightroom 1.3 and 3rd party tools, web sites and devices. More plugins will certainly available soon on Lightroom Exchange site.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 1.3 Export SDK comes with two very useful plugins: 

• FTP Export
• Flickr Upload.

Once dowloaded and uncompressed, plugin modules have to be installed on your computer on locations where Lightroom can find and load them.

• Windows XP: ..\Documents and Users\username\Application Data\Adobe\Lightroom\Modules
• Mac OS: ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom/Modules
• Windows Vista:..\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Lightroom\Modules

I just quickly tried the Flickr upload module and found it easy to use and indeed very convenient as it avoids to export files on a local folder and then upload them using Flickr Uploader page or tools.

Something tells me that these plugins will become very popular  

Tags: 2007, adobe, art, blog, camera, camera raw, ces, communication, computer, development, event, export, find, Flickr, im, install, lan, LED, light, lightroom, location, nomadcom.net, pda, photo, plugin, press, public, quickly, raw, release, sdk, user, vista, web, windows, windows vista, wp, www, XP

I found the article below on "The Register" site and asked myself the following question: 

If connecting to Internet using an open and unsecured wifi access point is considered as a crime, why authorities do not apply the same principle to other services (mainly electricity and water) we often use without any formal agreement of the owner ?

 " More than half of computer users have illegally stolen Wi-Fi connections, according to The Times – but only 11 alleged offenders have been arrested in the UK, as the police seem to think those deploying Wi-Fi should be more careful about securing their connections.

The data was collected from a "Have Your Say" survey on the website of security-specialist Sophos: apparently 54 per cent of the 560 people who responded admitted nicking bandwidth from insecure Wi-Fi routers.

This might say more about Sophos customers than the general population, and extrapolating the results to every computer user in the country is probably a crime against statistics: so that's exactly what The Times has done.

…

Anyone caught stealing a Wi-Fi connection can be fined up to a grand, even if it's left unsecured, so make sure you ask nicely next time you're looking to log on, and if the person next to you has never stolen a Wi-Fi connection then we have to assume that you have. "

What is your opinion about accessing open wifi ? Do you think it is a crime ?

Source: The Register

Tags: 2007, access, agreement, art, blog, ces, computer, connection, connections, crime, customer, electricity, enforcement, free, ia, im, internet, internet access, King, lan, law, list, MIT, nomadcom.net, police, population, security, services, statistics, survey, the register, thief, thieves, uk, user, water, web, website, what is, wifi, wireless, wp, www

8th of November: World Usability Day "Make life easy" 

Swiss UPA, the Swiss chapter of the Usability Professional Association proposes to ease access to free public wireless networks using a specific sign ((o)) that would help users to detect easy to use wireless networks. 

Today, before getting online using a wireless device, users have first to find an user-friendly wireless access point and then try to connect to it.

The user has to detect which wireless networks are available from his location and check if they are public and free of charge. Often wireless network names do not inform the visitor if the access to the network is free or not. The wireless access point might not be protected but once connected users are redirected to a page where they will be invited to purchase access rights.

Swiss UPS also highlight the fact that once connected to a free and public wireless network, it is not uncommon to reach an authentication page before getting access to the Internet. This procedure has 2 main disadvantage:

• Some authentication pages cannot be completed when using a Smartphone or a PDA.
• Some services such email, Instant Messaging, VoIP, etc… do not require the use of a browser and users cannot pass easily through this authentication method.

To make users' life easier, Swiss UPS proposes to include at the beginning of the SSID (Service Set Identifier which broadcasts the name of the wireless network) of public and free wireless networks the  following distinctive sign:  ((0))

Usage of the sign ((o)) is free and open to all individuals, collectivities and organizations which operate a WiFi network respecting  Swiss UPA usability charter.

More about Swiss UPA (in German), UPA International (English) and about World Usability Day

Source: Canard WiFi 

Tags: 2007, access, art, blog, ces, ergonomic, find, free, ia, im, International, internet, IT World, lan, light, location, network, nomadcom.net, online, pda, phone, public, services, smartphone, swiss, swiss upa, Telecommunications, upa, USA, usability, usage, user, wifi, wireless, world, wp, www

Searching the web, I found several online photo editors, and among there some which provide the possibility to upload your photos directly to your favorite site where you can share them.

It was not a surprise to discover that sites such Flickr and Facebook are the most integrated with these online photo editors, closely followed by Picasa and Photobucket. If all online photo editors propose basic editing tools such resize, crop, color balance, etc.. it's difficult to find one which propose all available options. Some tried to be as close as possible from Photoshop, proposing layer tools or distortion tool.

Fine tuning and precise corrections are difficult to obtain but at the opposite these tools, specially when you can edit an already published photo, give you the possibility to adjust your photos from any computer without having to purchase/install software on computers.

My 3 preferred ones are:

• Splashup (formerly Fausto) which is certainly the most complete one. Photoshop looks alike, so you feel comfortable with only if you have some knowledge about Adobe products. Loading a photo may be very slow from time to time (my ISP fault or are they victim of their success ?)

• PicNik which proposes an user friendly interface and does not require Photoshop knowledge. Advanced editing tools, touch-up tool, frames etc.. are only available with the Premium version which cost 25 USD/year. This editor seems to be the easiest and fastest editor available.
• Phixr is a simple one but fast and well integrated too with most usual image sharing sites but not providing preview of the photo you want to edit is a real problem if you do not have title on your photos.
• Some other solutions to may want to give a try : Cellsea, Pixer.us, Snipspot, Fotoflexer, Pikfix, Fanstudio, Online Phototool,  Flauntr, Fotocrib, etc..

  Soon, Adobe will also release an online version of its flagship software "Photoshop". Adobe Photoshop Senior Product Manager John Nack published on his blog earlier last month few lines about "Photoshop Express".

My 1st post about Flickr tools is here

Tags: 2007, A700, adobe, arc, blog, book, bt, ces, computer, computers, editor, facebook, fauxto, find, Flex, Flickr, fon, google, ia, ict, im, install, knowledge, lan, LED, nomadcom.net, online, online editor, phixr, photo, photo online editor, picnik, post, post processing, press, release, review, sco, search, share, sharing, simple, splashup, touch, user, web, wp, www, XP

As mentionned on the 20th of October on this site, the City of Geneva and FON have officially announced a joint project to provide WiFi access to the city’s residents and visitors.

A website FON-Genève has been created and residents willing to share their Internet access are invited to complete the registration form to reserve their Fonera (the FON wireless access point) available soon for collection at the Geneva City Hall.

Geneva FON wireless access point : Live Map 

Let's hope that Internet users will play the game and Geneva will become a real connected city and communes of the canton will soon follow.  

Tags: 2007, access, art, blog, ces, community, europe, fon, fon geneve, fon movimiento, fonera, free, game, geneva, geneve, HP, ia, im, internet, internet access, IT World, lan, launch, live, map, Mobile Communications, network, nomadcom.net, project, share, suisse, switzerland, user, web, website, wifi, wireless, wp, www

The world of data storage is constantly moving. With more and more data to store and carry, the market propose some interesting solutions.

Time to upgrade ? 

• What is the capacity of your USB stick already? Patriot Memory proposes a 32GB (150x writting speed) USB key for about 580.- USD.

• Western Digital has released a Scorpio 2.5'' SATA hard drive with 320 GB (transfert 300 MB/s) capacity for 290 USD.
• Harsh living condition? I-O data proposed HDMC a 2.5 x 2.5 cm hard drive with up to 12 GB capacity which is shock and water proof. Price 180 USD.

With the possibility to carry-on such storage capacity (e.g 32GB USB stick) could we imagine to have computers installed only with operating system and let's say "standard application" and let users to connect removable media that contains not only their personal data but as well their user profile as well as their usual software (individual software licence vs. per computer ones) ?

What do you think ?

Tags: 2007, blog, capacity, computer, computers, configuration, digital, flash, hard disk, hdd, ia, im, install, IT World, lan, LED, memory, mobile, nomadcom.net, personal data, release, sco, storage, upgrade, usb, user, user data, water, what is, world, wp, www