Today, our focus is on a potential Identity Theft vector I ran across today. The following events took place at a local AT&T Wireless store.

Thursday, April 10, 2012. 10:30am.
I needed something from the AT&T store, so I drove down to the local AT&T store that is close to where I work. Upon arriving I was greeted at the front door, and had my name put on the customer service wait list. Fortunately it was pretty early in the day so I got right up to a rep to discuss what I needed. Below is how the conversations went.

Conversation with AT&T Customer Service Representative

me: Hello, I replaced one of my phones with a new one, and it takes a micro sim instead of the normal sim, so I need to get a replacement.

CS REP: Absolutely, no problem, can I please have your phone number.

me: Sure.

*not having it memorized because I use Google Voice, I reach in my pocket and pull out a post-it note with the number written on it and proceed to read it to the rep right off the post-it note*

me: It is 408-***-****.

*Rep does some typing and clicking on the computer*

CS REP: Thank you, I will be right back.

*Rep goes into back room for around 2-5 min and then returns*

*Rep scans the new SIM card and proceeds with some more clicking and typing*

CS REP: Do you have the phone with you?

me: No, I don’t have it with me right now.

CS REP: No problem.

*A little more typing and clicking on the computer, and the rep walks around from behind the counter and hands me the shiny new SIM.*

CS REP: You’re all set, thanks for choosing AT&T.

*I leave the store*

Aside from the oddity of it being a very good customer service experience at a cell phone store, you may have noticed that I was never asked for a single bit of detail about the account! I not only was asked for just the phone number on the account, I didn’t even know the number and had to read it to them from a post-it note. The entire time I was talking to the rep, I kept thinking the next thing they ask has to be something to confirm this account is mine. Nope, not once. Could this happen again, or did all the stars just happen to align right for me that one time? Not sure, but I would imagine it wouldn’t take much in the way of social engineering to do this again.

This isn’t exactly identity theft as we are used to hearing about, but nowadays your cell phone is rapidly becoming your identity, and if someone gains control of it, you could be in real trouble. Think about things like 2 factor authentication that sends your OTP codes to your phone.

Hope you enjoyed this little story, and let me know if you have had similar experiences.

I will be sending a note to AT&T about this matter, not to get anyone in trouble, but just to remind them to be vigilant with customer data.

So what were the negatives? So far I haven’t found any negatives. The camera is amazing! The quality of the build is top notch, the feature set is massive, and the price was very reasonable. I got the NEX-5N body, 18-55mm lens, and an additional 16mm f/2.8 lens for right at $800. That is a good bit less than retail, but who pays retail!? :) If you rely heavily on strobes for your shooting, then this camera is not for you, as it does not have a traditional hot shoe or a wide variety of high output flashes.

“Why didn’t you get the NEX-7??” Well, right about the time these new cameras and lenses were going to be released, the terribly devastating flood happened in Thailand. This is where the majority of the NEX line is made, so many of the lenses and the NEX-7 were delayed. As of this writing, the NEX-7 is still not widely available and neither are many of the lenses. Overall, the NEX-7 does have features I very much want, like dual user assignable control knobs. But, with a body price tag that is nearly double that of the 5N, I am not 100% sure it is worth it. The NEX-7 has the same size sensor, but is 24MP vs. the 5N having 16MP. I don’t really need or want 24MP, so the 5N was the best fit for me.

Almost forgot to mention one last awesome feature of the NEX series. The NEX cameras use the Sony E-mount lenes. But, and this is a big one, the NEX line can use ANY of the Sony Alpha A-mount lenses as well! Want to use a giant 70-200mm f/2.8 lens? Go right ahead!

Amazon Link: Sony NEX-5N

Here are some example photos I took to demonstrate the various lenses. All the photos were taken on a tripod (using the glif+).

Standard shot using just the iPhone 4S.
 

Same shot using the Wide Angle lens in the ōlloclip.
 

Same shot using the Fisheye lens in the ōlloclip.
 

2 Macro shots. 1) The “O” key on my keyboard. 2) A $20 bill.

http://www.olloclip.com 

I set out to try Safari and Firefox for a full 30 days with no other browser being looked at during that time. I tried Safari first, and then moved to Firefox. Here is the short version of the results.

Safari
Pros: Bookmark sync with my iPhone and iPad.
Cons: It handles tabs weirdly, just couldn’t get used to it.

Firefox
Pros: Has pretty good syncing across multiple computers, and an iPhone app.
Cons: MEMORY LEAKS!!!! OMG! It was not uncommon for this thing to use over 1GB of memory! WTF!?

Winner: Chrome!

As I write this I am using Chrome again. I really don’t have any complaints about the browser, it really just feels like it is doing it right.

What do you think?
(flame me for the BB comment below. After that, tell me how good your blackberry is at email!) :)

After going back and forth between various phones and platforms following the demise of WebOS, I ended up with an iPhone 4. This of course meant I would be using iOS. After about 6 months or so I was starting to get the itch to work on creating an app for my phone again. After doing some research about iOS development, I decided to start out my adventure using the Titanium IDE. This meant I could not only build apps for iOS, but also build an Android version of the app as well with the same codebase.

The best part of building this app was that it was built by both myself and my wife! We started a new company to develop software and attacked our first app! Our first app was completed in about 2 months in-between work and life. We had a lot of fun building and learned a ton as well. Now that our first app is in the iTunes App Store, we are working on a few updates and new features for it. After that, we are going to begin our second app!

I have been really happy with the workflow and feature set of Titanium so far; no major issues at all. We will definitely be using it for our next app as well!

The above describes me perfectly. I found this app a couple weeks back and have been in love with it! The app does one thing and does it VERY well. The point of the app is to be an interface to your music player that is car friendly. It is perfect for this!

The design of the app is very polished and beautiful. The controls are super car friendly with no small buttons to try and focus on hitting. The control is done through various swipe gestures. One flick to go to the next song, one flick to go to the previous song, and a simple tap on the screen to pause/play.

It looks like the way this app works is by becoming an extension of the “iPod/Music” app on your iPhone / iPod Touch. This most likely means that it will only work for music that is local to your device, at least for now.

Overall this app is exactly what I want in a car control system for my music. Check out some screenshots below to see the interface.

iTunes Link: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cartunes-music-player/id415408192

1) Drag the image you want on top of the iOS simulator (green plus symbol)
2) This will launch safari and display your image.
3) Click and hold on image until prompted to save.
4) Save image and it will now be in the “Saved Photos” album.

Hope this saves someone else a little time.

They have quite a cool setup nowadays though. They now take your computer, and plug in an ethernet cable and netboot the machine. I am unsure at this point if the netboot server is local to each Apple Store or perhaps it is calling to the mother ship. I am going to research this further and see what I can find out.

Once booting, it asks “Do you have the customer’s permission to run this?” and you hit yes, a few OS 9 looking progress bars go by, and it automatically runs through a complete systems diagnostics and gives you a summary read out of all the system’s components.

Here is a quick photo I took of the laptop after it finished running the diagnostics.

You can see that the summary is saying the battery is indeed bad. It also has a warning on the hard drive, this is due to the hard drive not being the stock hard drive but an upgrade.

I would love to have this tool at work running on a server for troubleshooting systems. Hell, I would love to have this at home for troubleshooting!

Going to do more research on this for sure. If you know anything about this setup, please comment below!

January 29, 2008. Apple announced the MacBook Air. It was nothing short of amazing! Thin, light, and beautiful. I got one shortly after release and loved it for about 2 weeks. The machine was absolutely perfect until you tried to do any real work on it. Because of its size, it had to sacrifice on power.

Jump ahead through 2009 and into 2010 where there were a few spec bumps and model changes, such as adding an 11″ model. You now had a 13″ and 11″ model with new unibody styling. When you hit July 21, 2011 we saw the launch of the newest versions of the MacBook Air. On that date, it became time to consider an Air again because the game had changed!

This new MacBook Air is better than the first generation in every way. It is thinner, lighter, and the power of the machine has grown to abnormal heights considering its size. As you can see from the specs below of the machine I bought, you would be hard pressed to say this machine wasn’t a 17″ tank of a “mobile desktop” notebook. However, this machine is anything but! It is a super sleek ultra portable that has more horsepower than the 2 year old, 15″, top of the line MacBook Pro that it replaced.

With the dual-core i7 (giving you 4 threads), the 256GB SSD, and 4GB of memory, this thing absolutely screams!

If you have been thinking about an Air since the beginning, or even if you bought one of the early models and felt burned, trust me when I say, it’s time to take a second look. This thing will out perform your expectations in every way.

The mind blowing specs of my new machine
Screen size: 11.6″, 1366 × 768 (16:9)
Weight: 2.38 lb.
Processor: 1.8 GHz (i7-2677M) dual-core Intel Core i7 with 4 MB shared L3 cache.
Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 3000 processor with 384MB of DDR3 SDRAM.
RAM: 4 GB of 1333 MHz DDR3 SDRAM.
Hard Drive: 256GB Solid State Drive.
Dimensions: 11.8 in wide × 7.56 in deep × 0.11 in to 0.68 in high.
Ports: 2× USB 2.0 Port | 1× 3.5 mm headphone jack | 1x Thunderbolt Port

Retail Price: $1,649 +tax

(Of course this review is based solely on the specific configuration I purchased; this in no way means every model in the line is equal to my glowing review)

The simple version:

You used to pay $9.99 for DVDs by mail.

Then, Netflix decided to add a feature to their service: streaming video. This service was absolutely free to paying customers. I have to believe this was because the streaming portion of their service was in a form of “beta” and not charge worthy at the time.

Fast forward to today; They changed their pricing model to the following..
$7.99 for DVDs by mail ONLY.
$7.99 for streaming video ONLY.
$15.98 for DVDs by mail AND streaming video.

Really, what people are complaining about is a $2.00 DECREASE in their bill for their same original service they signed up for (DVDs by mail).

I admit, they may have not labeled the streaming service correctly from the get go and caused this unnecessary backlash, but come on guys, it’s not as if you are now forced to pay Netflix $16 a month. You can get your same old DVDs only, or streaming only, or even cancel entirely if you are so outraged.

Fact is, things cost money. If anything, the streaming is probably more costly to Netflix than the DVDs by mail.

Lasty, everyone keeps throwing around this “60% increase”. Yes, it may be a 60% increase, but of $9.99.. The only reason everyone is so outraged at the “60% increase” is because a “$5.99″ increase doesn’t sound like a giant outrageous number.

Please let me know what I am missing (if anything).

Well, I went to see it in person, and after trying very hard to keep my expectations very low, I was still somehow disappointed. It pains me to say it; I want WebOS to survive in the worst way, but sadly this launch (if you can even call it a launch) did nothing but further weigh WebOS down from getting off the ground.

Hardware:
Since I mentioned weight I guess that is a good place to start with describing the new tablet from HP: heavy! The Touchpad feels like a massive brick compared to other tablets on the market. The hardware in general seems very poor in both quality and design. It feels as though very little time was put into hardware design. The speaker holes feel rough, sharp, and unfinished. The “home” button feels extremely awkward and poorly designed for being the only interface button on the device. Design wise, it is basically a giant iPhone 3G, which came out in 2008.

If it weren’t for the spec sheet saying it had a dual core processor, you would thing it was running a single core around 1.0GHz or less. For being a dual core 1.2GHz, it felt sluggish.

The screen left a lot to be desired as well. It felt very dull as far as color reproduction went and not very clear.

Software:
WebOS is still a solid and well designed OS. This new 3.0 version is great, but doesn’t feel as snappy and fluid as it should. My only concern is that you don’t immediately have access to the entire WebOS catalog of apps, since all apps must be re-written to work on 3.0.

As the title states, if HP would have sold this device at a loss to get people amped up and excited for WebOS, that would have been huge. Hell, even at $199 it would be a no brainer for everyone to get one, if for no other reason than just to try it out. If you don’t put WebOS in people’s hands, no one is going to just discover it on their own, sadly.

One last note about this “launch”. I say launch in quotes because HP continues to half ass the release of these new devices. When the Veer came out, no one knew it was out. The stores that were selling it, barely knew it even launched. This was no different: you heard nothing about it, and saw nothing either. You might have just happened to see the display for it sitting in between its competitors, the iPad 2 and Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1; both of which are far more polished and the same exact price point.

At this point I am definitely saying do not buy the Touchpad, and WebOS is officially on the back burner (apparently HP feels the same way).

I currently have 30+ photography related apps on my phone. Here are a few of my favorites in no particular order.

I am back to Verizon now. I now have more bars than I know what to do with! It was easy to leave the carrier, but leaving the Nexus S was going to be hard since there were no phones that could match it, until I caught wind of the Samsung Charge. Slated to arrive on April 28th, it was of course delayed, for whatever reason, until May 14th. Today is May 14th. I have the Samsung Charge now.

Overall the specs are basically identical to the Nexus S. The Charge has a larger Super AMOLED Plus screen, and the addition of hardware buttons below the screen. I quickly installed Launcher Pro as the Samsung UI wasn’t doing it for me. The phone feels snappy and looks pretty good, having similar styling to the Nexus S.

Once I get it rooted (so I can remove the preinstalled crapware) it will be a great Verizon alternative to the Nexus S for me. (until the next awesome Verizon Android phone comes out!) ;)

Side note to Verizon: Concerning this “droid” campaign you have going on right now, CUT IT THE F*** OUT!!! IT IS TERRIBLE!! NO ONE WANTS A PHONE THAT LOOKS LIKE IT IS GOING TO KILL THEM!! It is loud, obnoxious, and damages the android brand HEAVILY. Please stop. Stop it. Do not do it anymore.

*UPDATE* I have returned the Samsung Charge to the Verizon store. Fortunately within 14 days, since it seems the return period is 14 days, not 30. This phone was the victim of Verizon branding and Samsung’s terrible interface makeover. The Charge was a great phone hardware-wise, but was completely ruined by the software tampering. Samsung’s Touchwiz interface is nothing short of terrible! Had this phone been running the “Google Experience” version of android it would have been much better off. The other major factor in the return was the HORRIFIC battery life. I was having the phone die on me before hitting noon. Completely unacceptable. On a side note, when I was returning the phone the Verizon rep flat out told me that the 4G was the reason the battery life was so incredibly terrible. Back the phone went. On to the next. My next phone may surprise many of you. :)

The size and feel of the device was very solid, but after getting past that, it kind of fell apart. We found the UI to not be very intuitive or discoverable. After figuring it out, however, the UI did offer some nice visuals.

After that, it was time to find out what kind of applications this thing had to offer. This was a source of disappointment. It seemed like every time I launched an app, Twitter, Facebook, and so on, it was simply just launching the browser and taking me to the website of those services.. I would assume there are third party applications in their catalog that are native code, this demo unit just wasn’t loaded with any.

Finally the price. At $499, $599, and $699, I am not really sure you are getting your moneys worth. If you are a die hard blackberry user and this thing integrates with that experience for you well, then great, otherwise I would say hold off.