Computer need fixing? Read this first

The next time you drop your computer off with a computer repair shop, you might want to think twice before you leave your personal data on the machine.

Henry and Roma Gerbus of Chicago took their old computer down to the Best Buy near their home to drop off for disposal since they were replacing it with a new machine. The Geek Squad, the repair center located inside Best Buy stores, had promised to drill holes in their drive to render it useless. A few weeks later, the couple received a call from a good Samaritan who informed them that he bought their old hard drive at a flea market for $25.

Instead of destroying the drive as promised, someone from the retailer sold the drive, data intact, at a Chicagoland flea market.

Luckily, the man who purchased the drive at the flea market was not a malicious user, and instead erased all of the Gerbus' data after informing them that he found their drive, but it could have gone much worse. Besides just pictures and documents, your computer's hard drive can contain financial records or references to your Social Security number. With this information, someone could easily steal your identity.

Geek Squad has claimed that issues like this are a rare occurrence, which I'm sure has some validity. I don't think every single Best Buy in the country, or every Geek Squad agent, is breaching customer privacy and trust, but there has been enough chatter on the Web to make me skeptical of recommending them to anyone needing computer services.

Consumerist.com, a blog that documents stories of large corporations not meeting customer expectations, has received countless horror stories from unhappy Geek Squad customers around the country.

Beyond customer accounts, Consumerist has also received tips and tell-alls from former Geek Squad agents relating how they snooped through customer computers to find private documents, pornography, music and other types of data.

Consumerist editor Ben Popken wanted to see if there was any validity to these horror stories, so in June he installed software on a desktop computer that tracks every mouse click made by a user.

He then loaded the computer with photographs of attractive young women in bikinis.

He took his computer to several Best Buy stores and successfully tracked a Geek Squad agent browsing through the files on the computer, inserting his personal thumbdrive and copying the files he was interested in to the drive.

Jason Hohler, the owner of Budget PC in Newburgh, says that his company does not interfere with a user's personal data.

"We initially scan the computer for child pornography, and report any we find to the police. But beyond that, we don't touch the customer's data."

Obviously, this isn't something that occurs in every instance when a customer takes a computer to Geek Squad or any other retailer, but it is enough to make you think twice before you drop your computer off with a complete stranger.

If you want to take steps to protect yourself and your data, just take some extra precautions before you send your machine in. Whenever I need to send one of my Macs to Apple for repair, I make sure I back up my hard drive and remove any personal or financial data. You should do that if you're worried about a support technician snooping through your photographs and documents,

Justin Williams is a local blogger and the owner of Second Gear, a local Web and software development firm. He can be reached at justin@secondgearllc.com.

Originally published in the Evansville Courier & Press

OpenID simplifies recalling online passwords

During the day I have to remember several logins and passwords for the services and stores I use.

Gmail, Twitter, Amazon and most other sites on the Internet have a unique login and password they use to associate your information with their store or application. While applications such as 1Passwd for the Mac or Password Manager XP for Windows can help ease the online identity management frustrations, it would be ideal to have a single login that is used by all the sites you browse on the Web.

That's what the OpenID initiative is aiming to do.

OpenID is a new technology that makes it easy for you to log in to a variety of Web sites and services using a single login and password. Instead of verifying your identity with a specific site such as Amazon, a company instead passes off the authentication to an OpenID server.

OpenIDs aren't in the same username format you are most likely used to. Instead, OpenIDs take the format of a Web address. For example, if I want to log in to my Vox account, instead of logging in with a username or my e-mail address, I use my OpenID, which is carpeaqua.myopenid.com.

Microsoft has a similar technology called Windows Live ID that it uses for Hotmail, Xbox Live and other services, but it has yet to gain adoption because of security and privacy concerns. Giving all of your information to a company such as Microsoft and letting it track your every move on the Internet is not something many people would be comfortable with.

One of the great things about OpenID is that it is not owned by a single corporation or governing body. In fact, anyone can implement an OpenID server and allow users from around the world to authenticate against it. By allowing anyone to be an OpenID provider, you are able to choose who hosts your identity based on security and reliability.

The advantage companies have for implementing OpenID versus a standard login and password system is that it lowers the barrier of entry for new users to try their services.

Instead of signing up for yet another account, they can use their OpenID authentication and allow the service to pull in information from their ID. In order to use your OpenID on a site, that site must first implement support for the technology.

Companies such as AOL, Six Apart and Yahoo have implemented support for OpenID, and others such as Digg and Microsoft have pledged to support it in the future. 37Signals, a Chicago-based Web application firm, offers several Web services that support OpenID.

You can log in to its Basecamp project management or Highrise contact management applications using your OpenID, and it will be authenticated against each of the services automatically. Along the top of the browser window, a black bar appears that lists each of the Basecamp and Highrise accounts you have authenticated against your OpenID.

The best place to get an OpenID in my opinion is through MyOpenID.com. MyOpenID allows you to easily create an OpenID login for free that is usable by any site that supports the protocol. If you are an AIM or AOL user, you already have an OpenID. You can log in to any OpenID supporting site using the login of openid.aol.com/yourscreenname and your AOL password.

OpenID is still in its infancy and has yet to gain mainstream approval. The only way it can gain more widespread support is if you tell companies that you want them to support the platform.

Justin Williams is a local blogger and the owner of Second Gear, a local Web and software development firm. He can be reached at justin@secondgearllc.com.

Originally published in the Evansville Courier & Press

Pownce service offers way to have fun with friends

I am an avid Twitter user, but whenever I try to explain the micro-blogging service to a non-tech hipster, I usually get the same response: "What's the point?"

Trying to explain the idea behind posting what you are currently doing in 140 or fewer characters and then passing that around to all your friends' mobile phones just doesn't resonate with some people.

If Twitter feels too limited or you want something with a bit more functionality, the newly released Pownce service might be for you. Pownce is the newest brainchild from Silicon Valley golden boy Kevin Rose. Rose is the same guy behind the social news site Digg.com and Internet TV company Revision3.

Rose and three friends have been building Pownce in their spare time over the past few months as a fun way to send different types of information to your friends.

Rose's main role with Pownce is adviser, because he still puts most of his time and effort behind building Digg. But having his name attached to the project has given it instant credibility.

Like Twitter, you are able to share what you are doing with your friends and the rest of the Pownce community, but beyond that, you can also share files. If you have a song or video you'd like to share with a group of friends, Pownce allows you to upload it to your account and it will be available for download to whomever you delegate.

With Pownce's free account, file uploads are limited to 10MB, which is about the same size as most Web-based e-mail accounts. A Pownce Pro account ($20 a year) allows you to upload up to 100MB files. You can also use Pownce to share Web links and events you are attending around the country.

The biggest difference between the two micro-blogging services is how your updates are shared.

With Pownce, you have the option of sharing each message, file, link or event with the entire Pownce community, only your friends or just a single person.

Pownce also lets you group your friends into sets. For example, if everyone in your office were using Pownce, you could privately share files and links among one another using the service rather than each other's crowded e-mail inbox.

Twitter, on the other hand, takes an all-or-nothing approach to privacy. All of your updates are public in Twitter unless you set your account to be private.

With a private account, your Twitter updates will be exclusive to your friends list.

Ultimately, Pownce and Twitter's feature sets will be compared as you determine which service is right for you. Pownce's feature set in terms of what types of data you can post is currently superior to Twitter, but unlike Twitter, Pownce is available only via the Web or the Windows or Mac OS X desktop client. Twitter, on the other hand, allows you to send and see updates via the Web, your cell phone or instant messaging client.

You can also use a third party client such as Twitterrific (Mac OS X) or Twitteroo (Windows).

Pownce is currently an invite-only service. I have a few invites to distribute, so if you're interested in trying Pownce, e-mail me.

Justin Williams is a local blogger and the owner of Second Gear, a local Web and software development firm. He can be reached at justin@secondgearllc.com.

Originally published in the Evansville Courier & Press

New iPhone is great, but a few things could be improved

Our long national nightmare is over. After six months of hype and speculation, the iPhone has been released and, according to analyst predictions, more than 700,000 people around the country are forming their opinions of one of the most hyped technological devices in history. Like thousands around the country, I camped out all day June 29 to pick up my iPhone and have been using it since then.

In a nutshell, it's worthy of the hype.

Rather than investing more words in praising the iPhone's gorgeous design, beautiful user interface or awesome feature set, I want to take a look at what is missing or wrong with Apple's new phone. While you would have to pry my iPhone from my cold, dead hands, I won't deny that there are things about the device that are driving me up a wall.

First is the speed of AT&T's EDGE network. The iPhone uses EDGE to get on the Internet when a WiFi hotspot isn't nearby, but it is incredibly slow rendering complex Web pages such as the Courier & Press' site. It can take anywhere from one to three minutes to get the page to completely render.

In other parts of the country, AT&T boosted the speed of the EDGE in preparation for the iPhone launch, but Evansville didn't make the cut, it seems.

If you want to plug your iPhone into your car's auxiliary port or have a specific set of headphones you like to use, you might be frustrated to find that the iPhone's recessed headphone jack won't fit many headphones without the purchase of a $10 adapter from an iPhone accessory maker.

On the software end, the iPhone is missing several key features that you may be using on your existing cell phone. The absence of a checklist application is frustrating when Apple includes such an awesome calendaring application on the iPhone. Third parties such as Ta-da List from 37Signals hope to alleviate this by offering an iPhone version of their free Web-based checklist application.

The iPhone is unable to transfer files to and from your Mac or PC via Bluetooth. The only way to transfer data to the iPhone is via iTunes, and even then you can't transfer things such as PDFs, Word or Excel documents.

If you want to carry around portable versions of documents you might need, the current solution is to e-mail a copy to yourself and keep it in your e-mail, since iPhone supports viewing of PDFs, Word and Excel documents.

Custom ringtones are not currently supported by the iPhone. The device bundles several tones ranging from a Marimba to a classic telephone ring, but you can't transfer your own to the iPhone. Support for custom tones may be coming based on evidence uncovered by Engadget.com showing several hidden icons in iTunes related to the creation of ringtones.

Rather than selling ringtones separately, it would be nice if Apple allowed iPhone users to trim any song in iTunes into a ringtone.

Probably my biggest annoyance with the iPhone is the lack of cut, copy and paste for working with text. Not being able to copy the contents of a text message or e-mail someone sent me and paste it into another message has become tedious. Ideally the iPhone would let me highlight text with my finger and then hold my finger down on it to select whether to cut or copy the content.

There's a chance some of the missing functionality can be added to the iPhone in the future. Unlike with other phones, Apple is able to update the software on the iPhone through its connection to iTunes.

Even with these annoyances, I can't stress enough how great the iPhone is. It's obvious that Apple invested years of research and development into its first foray into the cell phone market. I'm already looking forward to buying my second iPhone.

Justin Williams is a local blogger and the owner of Second Gear, a local Web and software development firm. He can be reached at justin@secondgearllc.com.

Originally published in Evansville Courier & Press

Caution is never watchword of fake CEOs

CEOs of multibillion-dollar companies are by their nature reserved with their comments.

Everything they say in public is analyzed and could have an effect on the company's stock price. A recent Internet trend is giving these CEOs a voice — even if they aren't the ones behind it. Anonymous writers have set up fake blogs for CEOs, musicians and even other writers to give readers a look into what the subject might be thinking but doesn't want to say.

One of the most popular (and entertaining) of these fake blogs is Fake Steve Jobs. While the real Steve Jobs is usually reserved in his public comments when being interviewed by the press over any of Apple's products, Fake Steve makes no qualms in declaring war on "Frigtard" journalists, discussing his personal meetings with Al Gore or U2 lead singer Bono, or using his platform to make fun of the first guy waiting in line for an iPhone last week.

He mocks the appearance of Wall Street Journal technology columnist Walt Mossberg by referring to him as Goatsberg and uses several posts to "hypnotize" the Apple faithful into believing everything coming from Apple is glorious and without fault.

Fake Steve Jobs isn't the only CEO with an anonymous alter-ego. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has also become the target of the Fake Steve Ballmer blog. Ballmer's weblog discusses his relationship with Bill Gates, attacks the anti-Microsoft media and pan Apple's iPhone. Fake Ballmer's blog doesn't have nearly the popularity and traction of the Fake Jobs blog, however.

Fake Steve's diatribes have become water cooler talk in the offices of many technology firms in Silicon Valley and among other bloggers. In a recent poll conducted by Business 2.0 magazine, Fake Steve Jobs ranked No. 1 in a poll of the most inspiring, informative and infuriating tech media stars. Real Steve Jobs came in at No. 3.

More impressive than the comments of other bloggers and pundits is the discussion about Fake Steve's site between the real Steve Jobs and Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates at last month's D Conference in New York. Jobs announced that he was a reader of his false counterpart's writings and found them funny. Gates also made a public announcement that he was not the writer of Fake Steve's blog.

Fake Steve Jobs recently signed a deal with De Capo Press to publish his book, "Options," in October. The title is a nod toward the stock options scandal Apple and real Steve Jobs were involved in during the first half of 2007. In his book, Fake Steve plans to have his cross hairs on Silicon Valley, Hollywood and the U.S. government that made his real-life counterpart's life hell for so many months.These fake weblogs are the high-tech equivalent of a George Bush parody on "Saturday Night Live."

Part of the allure of these types of blogs is the mystery and intrigue behind not knowing who is actually penning the material. Whether Fake Steve Jobs will have the same traction when he is eventually unmasked remains to be seen.

Until then, namaste, Fake Steve. Namaste.

Justin Williams is a local blogger and the owner of Second Gear, a local Web and software development firm. He can be reached at justin@secondgearllc.com.

Originally published in Evansville Courier & Press