Matt Hopkins » Technology

How to create a good, strong, random but memorable password

Matt Hopkins — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 13:32:44 +0000

The world is moving to the cloud and so securing your accounts and personal data is more important than ever. In fact, it is essential. The step in this process is to make sure that your passwords are “strong”.

The Wikipedia definition of a strong password is:

Password strength is a measure of the effectiveness of a password in resisting guessing and brute-force attacks. In its usual form, it estimates how many trials an attacker who does not have direct access to the password would need, on average, to guess it correctly. The strength of a password is a function of length, complexity, and unpredictability

The problem is that most people are generally terrible at picking passwords – certainly at picking “unpredictable” passwords.

So here’s my approach for selecting passwords for people that I am sure will help you too.

We’re going to use the PCTools.com Random Password Generator for a lot of this.

1. Once we connect to the site above, let’s select the following options:

The options are:

Password Length – this should be at least 8 characters long – but not more than 10 characters if you want to make easy to remember (which we do)
Show Phonetics – this can be useful but not essential.
Include Letters – we absolutely want passwords with letters in them
Include Mixed Case – although not essential, adding mixed case can really strengthen a password and so I would recommend that you use this option.
Include Numbers – this will help strengthen your password to and does not simply mean replacing “O” with “0″ (oh with zero)
Include Punctuation – this setting will totally wreck the “easy to remember” element of this process and so I leave this setting switched OFF. We can always add punctuation after – manually.
No Similar Characters – this is a useful option to have switched ON so that we don’t get 1′s and l’s which can be confused and impact its memorability.
Quantity – we want to have the largest number of passwords to choose from, so bump this up to the highest number – 50.

Once you have these settings correct, then press “Generate Password(s)” and see what your options are:

As you can see, this is just a quick excerpt from the list of passwords. What I do is scan the list looking for passwords that are completely random and odd.. but ones that you could remember. These are usually ones that have a nice distribution of vowels to create combinations that could be words.. but aren’t.

For example, here is one that I would select from this list:

So as you can see - spava6AN - is a completely random password. It includes mixed case, a number and should be relatively easy to remember.

Let’s try it in a useful too called “How Secure is My Password“:

As you can see – this password would take a “standard” desktop PC using a “brute-force” methods to crack passwords – 10 days to do so!

What’s also nice about this tool is that it also points out an element that might be missing from your password – in this case it doesn’t have any symbols or punctuation that can really help strengthen your password further.

Let’s add an exclamation mark (“!”) to the end of our password – spava6AN! - and try it in the same tool to see what we get:

And there you go – now your password would take 12 years to crack just using standard technology.

So – please change your simplistic passwords to something more secure and use the approach outlined here to help make them easy to remember too.

How to auto tweet and create your own Twitter bot

Instagram: the what, where, how and why of Instagram

Matt Hopkins — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 16:29:26 +0000

Instagram is a new social network for sharing pictures – basically, it is like Twitter for photos but with Facebook’s like button. It launched in October 2010 and already has over 5 million users (in only nine months). It has had more than 100 million photos uploaded at a current rate of 860,000 per day. Instagram is very hot and so, so cool.

It primarily exists as a free app for your iPhone and is very simple to use. Take a photo or load one that you took earlier, apply a preset filter to give it a more stylized or retro look and then share it. All photos are uploaded to the Instagram network but it has full social integration allowing you to also post to Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, Flickr, email, etc.

Instagram is a fully-fledged, stand-alone social network and not just a Twitter client. You create a profile. If you like someone’s photo, you can follow them and their new photos will appear in your “feed” (like a twitter stream). If other’s like your photos, they can follow you too. You can tag photos with hashtags to help categorize them and comments are allowed on the photos too.

You can find new people to follow either from looking at the “Popular” feed which constantly updates with photos that have a lot of “likes”. You can also search for photos using keywords and hashtags. Don’t underestimate how addictive this can be.

You can upload photos as is (aka “Normal”) or you can apply filters that can make your photos look spectacular. There are 15 filters that you can apply that change not only the colors but also add borders, scratches and other touches that liven up what may otherwise be dull or a bit flat. There are many photo purists that hate this feature – as they believe Instagram is destroying the photos and actually taking a step backwards in photo-evolution, but personally I think it’s pretty great.

The key to Instagram’s success is two fold – first, simplicity. Sharing photos has never been easier and the one click filters add a whole new dimension. The second reason, is the API. Instagram exists in only two forms currently – the iPhone app and an API. I believe that providing the API and limiting what functionality and apps that they provide natively is actually accelerating their growth. There are gaps in functionality – and so other people are creating sites and apps to plug those gaps. For example, there isn’t a web interface on Instagram’s own site – but there are number of 3rd party sites such as web.stagram.com that are good if not better than what Instagram would have provided themselves. There are also gallery and slideshow apps (both mobile and desktop) that display your Instagram feeds, services that will print your photos, and dozens of other applications being developed to support this platform. All of this within nine months of launch.

Its not just techno-consumers who are getting on the Instagram express. Businesses, brands, celebrities and studios are all starting to realize that this is a different angle to social networking.. the visual side. Television and film studios are starting to use Instagram in a controlled way to show “behind the scenes” experiences. Musicians are using it to promote and document their tours. Many businesses are experimenting with Instagram by promoting their products and services with contests and competitions.

Twitter (Google+) is great for networking and streaming textually. You can of course share photos on Twitter. But the Instagram experience is entirely visual. It is a completely different dimension to the other social media tools currently being offered. Documenting and sharing your life experiences pictorially – especially in the way that Instagram provides – is captivating and addictive. If you haven’t already so, try it.. I think it’s going to be big.

How to auto tweet and create your own Twitter bot

How to auto tweet and create your own Twitter bot

Matt Hopkins — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 22:10:48 +0000

If you are building a business and are perhaps too busy to be manning TweetDeck 24×7, then augmenting your real social media activities with the help of a bot may be just what you need. Or perhaps you want to build a new twitter account that curates and auto-tweets specialist content. Either way, here’s how you can build your very own Twitter-bot.

I have tried a number of systems and techniques, but have found the following approach to be the most effective. On the surface, it appears to be overly complex – mainly because it uses three different sites to achieve its aim. But its not as complicated as it may appear.

Overview.

Here’s the sites we use and why:

Feedburner - http://feedburner.google.com. If we use Yahoo Pipes directly with a Twitter search, it will access the Twitter servers too frequently which will result in errors and timeouts. Feedburner only updates a feed either every 30 minutes or when notified with a ping. This means that we can be kinder to Twitter’s servers and will have more consistent data.

Yahoo Pipes - http://pipes.yahoo.com. We use Yahoo Pipes to clean up the results we get back from Twitter. We eliminate spammy tweets, remove replies and retweets, and reformat the results so that we can retweet more easily.

Twitterfeed - http://twitterfeed.com. We use Twitterfeed to actually post/tweet the “cleansed” Yahoo Pipes feed. You will note that you can tweet results directly from Feedburner but I don’t like this as a solution for two reasons. First because we can’t clean up the feed like we can in Pipes and second because you have to link a Twitter account to your Google account, which we may not want to do.

1. Finding the Source.

For the purpose of this example, let’s say that we wanted auto retweet any tweet that mentions the London Zoo. So, we are going to search Twitter using their search.twitter.com interface with the following query:

“london zoo” OR #londonzoo -source:twitterfeed -filter:retweets lang:en

This query is saying – give me the most recent tweets that mention “london zoo” or the hashtag “#londonzoo” but ignore any tweets published using twitterfeed (remove the other bots like we are creating) and ignore any retweets (we only want the original tweets) and only give me those in english.

At the top right of the twitter search site, there is a link that says “Feed for this query” – if you click on that, you will get the following link which is your search results as an RSS feed.

http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=+%22london+zoo%22+OR+%23londonzoo+-source%3Atwitterfeed+-filter%3Aretweets

2. Creating the Twitter Account.

If you already have a Twitter account, then skip ahead – otherwise you will need to create a dedicated Twitter account for your new bot. For this post, I created a new account called LondonZoobot (@LondonZoobot).

3. Setting up Feedburner.

Setting up the Feedburner feed is very simple.

1. Go to http://feedburner.google.com and create an account / login.

2. Copy and paste the URL for the Twitter search from the step earlier into the box where it says “Burn a feed right this instant” and press “Next”

3. Change the Feed Title to something more friendly – we’ll name ours “London Zoo Tweets” and press “Next” the press Skip for the next steps. Your feed should have a url something like http://feeds.feedburner.com/LondonZoobot

That’s it for Feedburner..

4. Setting up Yahoo! Pipes.

Yahoo! Pipes does the bulk of our work and so this is the most complicated part. We’re going to basically run our new Feedburner feed through a series of filters to re-shape it. We’re going to eliminate potential spam tweets, remove any replies, and then add “RT @”+username to the front of the tweet so that we can easily retweet the information in the next step. It looks scary, but as with all things – its easy when you know how.

1. Create a new pipe by clicking on “Create a pipe” on the menu.

2. Drag the “Fetch Feed” box from the left side panel onto the Pipes grid and enter the URL for your new Feedburner feed (e.g. http://feeds.feedburner.com/LondonZoobot). This box is going to load your source RSS feed so that we can “clean” it.

3. Expand the Operators menu on the left and drag the “Filter” box to the Pipes grid. This box is going allow us to remove any tweets that we wouldn’t want to retweet – for example – anyone mentioning a RT (should be eliminated in our Twitter search – but just in case) and any other words such as bad language or spam signals. Add a few lines in the filter box, so that it looks like this (be sure to select items that match “Any” instead of “All”):

You can add more of these as time goes by to make sure that you are retweeting better quality tweets by filtering out the garbage.

4. Drag another “Filter” box from the left hand side to the Pipes grid. We are going to add another filter that blocks any replies so that we are only ever retweeting original messages (this is “belts and braces” really). It should look like this (note the “Matches regex” operator):

5. Now we’re going to tell Pipes to loop through each item in the RSS feed and add the Twitter account (Author) to the front of each tweet. This is so that we can mention them in the RT a bit later. So – drag a “Loop” operator from the left hand side to the Pipes Grid. Then expand the “Strings” section from the left menu and drag a “String Builder” object to the center of the “Loop” box. We want three lines – so press the “+” icon a couple of times – then.. select “item.author.uri” in the first line, then a space (” “) in the second line, then “item.title” in the third line. We are replacing the title field in the RSS feed with Author URI + ” ” + item.title. It should look like this:

6. Almost there – this last step is simply going to add the “RT @” to all of the newly created titles. The actual “item.author.uri” is a url – something like “http://twitter.com/authorname and so we are going to replace all “http://twitter.com/” we find with “RT @”. To this, expand operators on the left side and drag a “RegEx” box to the Pipes grid. Set it to look like this:

7. Now join up all the pipes by dragging from the circle at the bottom of the first box to the circle at the top of the next box and so on. It should now look like this:

8. Save your Pipe (press Save at the top) – and name it something useful – “LondonZoobot”

9. Final step – run the pipe (select “Run Pipe”) and then get the link for the RSS feed for this process by selecting “Get as RSS”. Should be something like - http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=6139c8dd57b3d08c1b6d9d0ad2375b69&_render=rss

5. Setting up Twitterfeed.

We use Twitterfeed to get the set of “clean” tweets from Yahoo! Pipes and then post 1-5 of them, every 30 minutes automatically.

If you don’t have a Twitterfeed account, create one.. they’re free, then login.

1. Select “Create New Feed”

2. Give your feed a name.. “LondonZoobot” and then copy and paste the RSS url from Yahoo! Pipes (e.g. http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=6139c8dd57b3d08c1b6d9d0ad2375b69&_render=rss)

3. Select “Advanced Settings” so that we can tweak the feed just a bit more

4. Change the update frequency and number of tweets – I would suggest you leave the defaults as 30 minutes and 1 tweet at a time (otherwise it becomes too spammy).

5. Change PostContent to “Title only”

6. Click on “Continue to Step 2″

7. Now we are going to tell Twitterfeed which Twitter account you want to tweet to. So – before you go any further, make sure that you are logged into the Twitter account that you want to use (on another browser tab)

8. Select Twitter.

9. Select “Authenticate Twitter” – and then “Authorize App” when you go to the Twitter site.

10. Click on “Create Service”

11. Click on “All Done”

That’s it! Check out the auto tweets we just created here: http://twitter.com/#!/LondonZoobot

You now know how to auto tweet by creating your very own twitter bot. There’s a lot of steps in this I realize, but give it a shot – its not that difficult when you get stuck in.

I need a Kindle to go with my iPad

Matt Hopkins — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 20:46:53 +0000

I love my new iPad. It goes most places with me these days and fits nicely in between my laptop and my phone.

I read a lot. When I say a lot, I mean several hundred blog posts per day, a couple of books per month, never-ending magazine articles, and lots of news. The iPad is the perfect device for me because of this. Perfect until I take it outside that is.

The iPad is unbelievably terrible outside – in any sort of bright conditions. Once the sun starts to shine, the only thing you’ll be reading are the wrinkles on your face. It quickly becomes a very expensive mirror. (The perspective is usually not very flattering either)

The Amazon Kindle is not an iPad. It is not a tablet computer. It is an eReader. It uses e-Ink and it is excellent in bright conditions. You can’t watch YouTube videos or play Castle Wolfenstein on it.. but you can read books, blogs, and magazines by the pool or on the beach. Take that Apple.

When I go on holiday, my iPad will come with me of course. But I would love to be able to read outdoors and so am seriously considering an Amazon Kindle device.

Amazon offers its Kindle book reader as software too. There’s an app for both the iPad and iPhone. The nice thing about this (actually, the awesome thing about this) is that they can be synchronised. So if you purchase a book from Amazon for the Kindle, it will be available on all Kindle platforms – Amazon’s Kindle Reader, the iPad or your iPhone. When you read a book, you can set bookmarks and these will also be synchronised.

This means you can start reading your book on your iPad while on the plane out. Continue reading next to the pool on your Kindle. Finish up on your iPhone while siteseeing. Same book. One purchase. Multiple devices. Nice.

So, I am thinking about an Amazon Kindle (but not the bags full of chargers required to travel with so many devices).

The iPad – My first impressions

Matt Hopkins — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 16:08:43 +0000

My new shiny iPad was delivered last Thursday (one day early) and so with five days of working with it, I thought I’d share my experiences and views.

Love at first sight. It was heavier than I expected.. but in a good way. It feels solid. Expensive. How could you not love it’s design.

Initial hiccup. It was delivered to the office, and I wanted to switch it on and take it for a spin right then – but alas, it has to be first connected to a computer and synchronized with iTunes. My iTunes account is on my home PC and so I had to wait until I got home.

This whole initial connection point confuses me. Why does it need to be connected to a computer to work – or to be registered? Isn’t it being pitched as a netbook/laptop replacement for many, many people. I know at least a dozen folks who need.. NEED… this device. But they don’t have a computer.. that’s why they need it. All they want to do is surf the web, watch YouTube, keep up to date on Facebook, etc. This is the perfect device for them… but they would need to go somewhere first to connect to a pc and create an iTunes account. It surprises me… and I hope Apple change this soon.

Its now plugged in and synchronizing – unfortunately, I made the mistake of setting it to sync with my photos. I have a lot… like 19,000.. my life in photos. This process took three hours to “optimize” and then copy to the iPad.

It wasn’t all lost time, as I was able to download and install all the apps I had been reading about since the US launch – ready for when I could finally get my grubby mitts on it.

iPad delivered at 10am on Thursday morning; it’s now 6:30 pm and I can finally play… and wow.

The screen is beautiful and bright. Video is clear and crisp. Surfing the web has never been better. Reading blogs, news, etc.. (my main justification for its purchase).. is perfect. I am sold. No regrets. No buyers remorse. I am now an Apple fanboy.

There are now three types of apps in the app store – those designed for the iPhone specifically; some for the iPad only, and what they now call “universal” apps that work on both platforms.

For me, the iPhone-only apps are inferior on the iPad. Yes they run, and if you have no alternative then use them.. but I deleted most of these from my iPad. The other two – universal and iPad only seem so much better. Perhaps its the resolution – but the vast majority are excellent. I’ll review all the apps I am currently using in another post.. but I would certainly recommend buying/upgrading or even changing to iPad specific apps.

I am now trying to understand how best I will use this device; where it fits.

I have taken it everywhere with me over the past few days.. most of the time unnecessarily (as I have my iPhone).. but I wanted to see where and when I should use it.

Currently – it serves me best as an intermediate device. I walk around the house with it. When we are cooking dinner, I am reading the news on it. When we are watching tv, I am reading the news on it (used to be done on my iPhone). Visiting my mother-in-law’s house.. I can busy myself and not be looking at my watch every 5 mins (happy compromise for my wife).

I should also mention that my wife loves this device too. She is a self-proclaimed technophobe and resists all things “high-tech”. But she loves it and so we may be sharing it for a while.

I took it to the office today but didn’t really use it. I imagine that it will be more useful on the road – when with clients or travelling; for now, my laptop will be my primary office computer.

My office is only a few miles from my house; however, at one point this weekend I wished for a longer commute so that I could use the iPad more effectively.

It is easy to see why it is selling so well. Those cynics and critics will fade away. It is a new type of device. Possibly more for its design and implementation than basic concept. After all, Bill Gates tried to introduce tablet pc’s years ago – but they were not like this and to be fair, perhaps the market wasn’t ready for it at the time. Either way, my iPad is wedging itself in between my iPhone and my Laptop and who knows where that will lead.

If you were to ask me if I would recommend this device, I wouldn’t hesitate.

How to Setup the Sky+ iPhone App

Matt Hopkins — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 16:41:31 +0000

The Sky+ app for the iPhone is one of my favorites. It seems beyond the realms of possibility to many people when I show them. It’s usually followed by a quick download from the AppStore.. and then a “what now?”. So I thought I’d write this setup guide to make it a bit easier to explain.

In order to get the Sky+ app working on your iPhone, you need to first create a Sky “iD”. Sky needs this so that they can associate your Sky+ box at home with some sort of username and password. It is also used by the iPhone app to make a connection.

1. Creating a Sky iD account.

You create a Sky iD account on the MySky.com website – mysky.sky.com.

On the left hand side, you will see a log in box. Simply click on the “Sign up now” option and register with your name, address and Sky account details as requested. You will also choose a Sky iD and password – this is what you will use in the next step.

2. Activating Remote Record

Once you have your Sky iD, you need to sign up for Sky’s “Remote Record” service. This is done on another website (not sure why not enabled within the MySky.com site): www.sky.com/remoterecord

Simply login with the Sky iD and password you created in the last step and then follow the instructions for linking your Sky+/Sky+HD box (whichever you have).

3. Sky+ iPhone App

You’ve done everything you need to link your Sky account to your Sky+ box, so now simply enter your Sky iD into the iPhone app and select your broadcast region.. and you’re done.

One of the most useful and impressive iPhone apps on the market.. have fun.

How to change your Twitter name and keep your followers

Matt Hopkins — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 17:00:32 +0000

In a world where personal branding is increasingly more important, the user name you select for your Twitter account is more essential than ever. What happens if you decide that your Twitter name no longer reflects your brand identity?

Changing your Twitter name is a simple task but you need to be careful and ensure that links in all your previous messages (tweets) do not become “orphaned” by this change.

Here’s a quick guide on how to change your Twitter name, keep all your followers, and prevent any disconnect in your existing tweets.

1. Log in to your Twitter account and select Settings

2. In the “Username” box, enter the new Twitter name you want (it will tell you if a particular name is unavailable). You will need to confirm your password in order to make this change.

It’s as simple as that to change your Twitter name – you have now retained all your followers. Easy right?

The problem is with any links out there to your old Twitter profile page (e.g. www.twitter.com/myoldbrand/) or links to your old account (e.g. @myoldbrand) listed in previous tweets that may appear in content searches for Twitter.

This problem is also simple to fix – all you need to do is now create a new twitter account using your old twitter name (e.g. myoldbrand).

1. Log out (“Sign out”) of Twitter

2. Now create a new account by clicking on the “Sign up now” button

3. Fill in the form and enter your previous Twitter name as your username (it has now been released following the steps above)

4. You will need to use a different email address – you can use an email alias for your existing email or you may need to create a GMail account for this purpose.

5. Once you have saved your account, update your profile settings with the URL of your website.. and make one tweet that ensures that people viewing your profile will know that you have “moved”. Something like:

This is my old twitter name. Please follow @MyNewBrand instead.

That’s it – your done. You have changed your Twitter name, kept your followers and created a place holder so that none of your old messages and other promotion efforts have gone to waste.

Online backup providers – a winner at last

Matt Hopkins — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 19:23:58 +0000

I’ve been using online backup services for a couple of years now – both personally and professionally. I often find myself disappointed with one or more services and end up switching every six months or so but I think that I have finally found a keeper.

During the past couple of years, I have been using the following services:

Data Deposit Box – www.datadepositbox.com. This has been my mainstay for business use for a couple of years. Its main advantage is the ability to set up and administer multiple users. The majority of other online backup solutions seem to be aimed at individual use and are not great when you want to have a single billing account but also be able to keep your user’s backups separate and private. Data Deposit Box does this well.

Its biggest disadvantage is cost. As the pricing model is based on capacity.. when you have multiple users, this can start to stack up pretty quickly. Unless their pricing structure changes, I will continue to look for a better, more cost effective solution that allows me to use multiple and separate user accounts. No luck so far.

DropBox – www.dropbox.com. This is a nice service that offers a “briefcase” style of data sharing. I have been using this in business as a simple, peer-to-peer replacement for file sharing. Any file place in the “drop box” gets replicated to all other “sharers”. It works well but is not ideal.

Capacity. All the files being shared are copied onto your local computer (although this can be tweaked a little). This means that all users need to have the available disk space to maintain all the copies of the files being shared. This can be problematic.

Pricing. Dropbox works on a freemium model – you get 2Gb for free, if you need more – then you need to pay. This is fine for one or perhaps two users.. but if you have a company with 10 or more users this pricing can quickly become prohibitive (10 users @ $120 = $1200 per year). This is especially true when you combine this pricing model with the capacity issue above – that 2Gb freemium model is the total capacity for all shared users; in today’s world, this limit can quickly be reached.

Mozy Backup – www.mozy.com. Mozy is a decent choice for home backup. It has a number of benefits that includes unlimited capacity for a reasonable monthly fee ($5 per month). This price is per computer and so will raise the price if your household has a number of PC’s or you are a small business. But for the price is fairly reasonable. My main issue with Mozy is the performance.. it is slow to backup and so slow that I think it reduces the benefit completely – this is especially the case if you are trying to back up large amounts of data to ensure that you can take advantage of the “unlimited” offer. This was my backup provider of choice for personal use until LiveDrive.

LiveDrive – www.livedrive.com. LiveDrive works a bit like the other two providers.. it offers online backups like Data Deposit Box (and other similar providers) and it also offers a “briefcase” model similar to DropBox. There are a couple of key differences that make LiveDrive a clear winner for me for personal or SME use.

Unlimited Capacity. LiveDrive costs £4 per month for backup onle and £10 per month for backup+briefcase.. but the price is not based on capacity.. you are provided with unlimited storage capacity for this fee. This quickly becomes a clear winner when compared with most other providers.

iPhone App. The LiveDrive iPhone app is fantastic and pretty much seals the deal. All of your backup files are available to you on your iPhone – in a readable/playable format. You can browse your letters and other documents and read them directly from your iPhone. If you back up your music – you can play it on your iPhone (streamed). If you backup your photos – you can view them and create slide shows on your iPhone. It is truly impressive and simply trumps everything else currently on the market.

In summary, I would highly recommend that you start using an online provider for both your personal and business use. There are many providers on the market and I have briefly reviewed a handful. For personal use, I would highly recommend LiveDrive – especially if you are an iPhone user..

UPDATE 4-Feb-2010: After comments to this blog, I really investigate the security of LiveDrive and was left unimpressed. There appears to be no security on their servers – and so despite you files being stored behind “enterprise grade” firewalls, there was nothing but policy protecting your files from prying eyes of employees etc.

I love their iPhone app – and will use LiveDrive for photos and music, but any and all personal and/or confidential files have now been removed from their servers and I have moved to Carbonite to satisfy this need which appears to be an extremely secure and reliable provider.

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My top three favourite (new) gadgets

Matt Hopkins — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 15:02:38 +0000

I like gadgets – always have, always will – and 2009 has been a bumper year for gadgetry in my house.

Here’s my top 3 list of gadgets (so far):

1. iPhone. I can’t believe that I put up with Windows Mobile for as long as I did. My new iPhone 3GS is one of my favourite gadgets of all time. Not only can I look at websites in all their glory, I have dozens of little apps that do everything from keeping me up to date with facebook, linkedin and twitter to providing mobile wikipedia access. It also allows me to make phone calls, but it is more of a pocket computer than a phone to me. If you do not already have one, get one.. and forget about all the wannabe’s – there really is no rival to this device in my opinion.

2. Sonos Digital Music System. I had been using an old Netgear music streamer for the past five or more years but recently replaced that with the Sonos system. It does what you would expect in terms of streaming music from your PC – but… it allows you to play the same music in different rooms, it has built in access for Last.fm (a great service by the way) and other online services. It also allows you to connect to radio stations all over the world. The controller is graphical and wireless and a bit similar to an iPod. The ultimate capability was the iPhone app.. so I can now control music throughout my house with my iPhone – a device, unlike the standard controller, that I usually have on me. Excellent product – I just wished that they could integrate Spotify somehow.

3. Samsung LED TV. This is the thinnest TV that I have ever seen and so it is a true flat screen. It also has a great mounting bracket that hangs like a painting.. which emphasizes its “flatness”. The LED pitcture is also sharp – far less blurring on fast action compared with my plasma.

Now a TV is not normally a gadget for me.. even one as cool as this one. But the TV has some nice gadget features:

Wi-Fi network access. The TV can connect to the computer in my office and stream music, photos and video.
Yahoo TV Widgets. This is pretty neat. You can have weather forecasts, news, and even watch YouTube directly on the television if you want.
USB drive access. Plays photos, music and videos from an external hard drive. Just plug in the USB device (stick or drive) and play the last episode of Heroes you recently downloaded.

Can’t wait to see what arrives next…

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My New Personal Organizer Tools – Palm to Web 2.0

Matt Hopkins — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 14:35:56 +0000

I like to think of myself as an organized person. I started using a paper-based DayTimer® back in the late 80′s. I used hand written task lists – meticulously updated on a daily basis.

In 1994, I got my first PDA – a Palm Pilot. It was awesome.. and I kept with variations of the Palm all the way until late last year. Originally, I preferred using the Palm Desktop software to access my information on my laptop and synchronised religiously but eventually moved to Outlook.

Windows Mobile killed the Palm Pilot for me I think in terms of organisation. It was slow and clunky – I had to start taking hand written notes sometimes as it was faster than switching on my phone and loading the task management software. Although I did love the ActiveSync and the link with Outlook – that was a godsend for sure.

Its a brand new world. I now have an iPhone (best gadget ever!) which created some challenges in terms of time management. The primary issue is that the iPhone does not have a task database and therefore does not support Exchange Server synchronization for tasks – only email, contacts, and calendar. The only choice therefore is to use a third party task manager/organiser.

If you wanted to continue using MS Outlook for your tasks, then you would also need to find some software to sync Outlook with the third party or use an intermediary app with your exchange server.. anyway, the basic message is that it starts to get complicated.

I decided to throw everything up in the air, look at the current market and start again.. rather than try to bolt on to my existing systems. When I looked at the current Web 2.0 services that are available – I was amazed, impressed and could not believe that I had been so blinkered by Microsoft technology for so long.

For me, personal organisation (especially from a PDA) requires the following set of functionality: tasks/to-dos, calendar, email, contacts and notes. As you can see – all of these elements are currently in MS Outlook in one form or another. They were also all available in the original Palm Pilot.

As my email, calendar and contacts are still managed via Exchange Server and Outlook – my primary requirement was for a new task list manager and note organiser. I tried a number of products/services, but settled on the following and am extremely pleased with both:

Toodledo. Task Management. www.toodledo.com. This is a web-based task management system that has everything you could possibly need. The web interface is easy to use and extremely powerful. There are plenty of tools available to import or synchronise your tasks with other devices too including an excellent iPhone App. I started off using it alongside Outlook – but have more or less stopped using Outlook for task management now and relying completely on the web and iPhone app. Works very well.

Evernote. Note/List Management. www.evernote.com. I think that note taking and list management is an underutilised function with PDAs. I used to use it a lot with the Palm Pilot – lists of goals, shopping lists, notes on gift ideas, topics for meetings (regular and future) etc. Evernote is very useful and has revitalised my list making.. it has a superb web interface and an iPhone app.. so very easy to use. I tried Google Docs for this previously – but you cannot edit these documents on the iPhone and so it quickly became less useful. Evernote also allows you to share a list (or group of lists) with other people. For example, I share a folder with my wife and we have a grocery shopping list that we can both update during the week.. easier than paper.

I think that I am slowly weaning myself away from an Outlook-centric model; if I can find a replacement for public folders in Exchange server, I can see it being replaced pretty quickly.

So if you have been using the same mechanism for managing your time / tasks for more than five years, I would strongly recommend that you take a fresh look at the tools and web services that are now on the market.. you will be pleasantly surprised.