Exo-flud or the Expanding Internet

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4988qaCvvM

Ruby On Rails REST Resources

An interesting read, good for beginners as well:
http://www.rubyrailways.com/great-ruby-on-rails-rest-resources/

The Top 10 Ruby On Rails Blogs

http://www.rubyrailways.com/the-top-10-rubyrails-blogs/

Integrated Circuit Patents (copyright issues)

As lots of other inventions in the world, many are not eligible for patents. Patentable things must be useful, novel and unobvious. Same applies to IC industry. After reading the agreement on IP at my company, it was interesting to find out that numerous integrated circuits do not meet the requirement of novelty, hence, not patentable and not protected. Even though a lot of effort is taken to design an IC, it is not necessarily unobvious.

That puts IC companies in a place where they are not protected against their circuits being copied. With modern technologies, even the resin protected chips can be scanned and replicated. This becomes a real issue when selling to countries that do not have IP laws.

On the good side, there is Integrated Circuit Topography Act that can protect not patented IP. If Company B patents what was previously registered with IC Topography Ministry by Company A, the latter can file a patent infringement case against Company B and be successful.

Conclusions are: be careful when selling chips or other IP to countries that have weak patent laws, and also cautious when filing a patent to avoid IP infringement with another company.

Ralph Baer - the inventor of console games

.. is an American inventor who was designed, implemented, and most importantly, patented, the modularized circuit board that was sold to Magnavox and later became a part of the first interactive gaming console that used a TV as a screen. In 2006 he received a National Medal of Technology for his invention.

[wikipedia]

SarbOx Agreement

Recently, at my workplace I had to sign the SarbOx conduct agreement. After numerous scandals with large corporations in the last decade, companies are trying to protect themselves by making employees sign it.

From Wikipedia.org:
"The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, also known as the Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act of 2002 and commonly called SOX or Sarbox; is a United States federal law signed into law on July 30, 2002 in response to a number of major corporate and accounting scandals including those affecting Enron, Tyco International, Peregrine Systems and WorldCom. These scandals resulted in a decline of public trust in accounting and reporting practices. Named after sponsors Senator Paul SarbanesD-MD) and Representative Michael G. Oxley (R-OH), the Act was approved by the House by a vote of 423-3 and by the Senate 99-0. President George W. Bush signed it into law, stating it included "the most far-reaching reforms of American business practices since the time of Franklin D. Roosevelt."

Live Coverage of gPhone Mobile OS

As posted on www.Engadget.com

Working at Google before and after IPO

Blogoscoped's post talks about experience of working at Google before IPO and after. Read here.

New iPhone models by Fall 2008?

With Apple's goals to ship 50 million iPhones by the end of 2009, the author of this blog suggests that several new models should come out by Fall 2008 the latest. There are rumors that there'll be a lower end model without the touch screen capability and a higher end one. Read the post here.

I've been thinking about getting iPhone or even iTouch for myself for a while now. Without flash memory, the 16 gig limit for the top of the line $450+ iTouch does not attract me that much. The phone part can justify itself. However, the iTouch has to have something more to justify my investment.

What I need in a PDA device:

• Internet access (free wifi is great)
  
• Storage (I like photography and it would have been nice to be able to show pictures to friends without the need to erase the old ones to free up space for new; with 1-3 Mb Mp3s, it might be harder to manage. Hence, the bigger the better)
  
• Organizational software
  

Hence, a few points against iTouch (for me):

• Vancouver, BC is not a wireless city (yet), especially if you go outside of downtown area
• There is no expandable memory. SD slot would have been nice.
  
• There is no todo or calendar software. It's ok when you are online as many online tools can take care of that. However, if you are not connected half of the time, what's the point? Reminders can be easily missed. This will be fixed with time with the new software add-ons coming out.
  

and a few Pros:

• Controlling computer and other devices at home will be really easy with the new iTouch - much better than with a cell phone. Hacking iTouch or iPhone must be a pleasure
  
• Touch screen is awesome. It beats the lack of memory. I am really tempted.
  

Just these two points above are enough to convince me to buy the "i". I do not care about YouTube or iTunes. The first one most of the time is for time wasting. And the second one can be done from your home computer just as easy. But the hacking and remote control parts can open up the new horizons. More on this later.

Saving Tab Space in Firefox

Another useful Firefox plugin that lets one minimize space common tabs take in the browser. Displaying just an icon for GMail, or any other website is enough! Saving tab space with FaviconizeTab.

Direct Link

FPGA Optimized Soft Core Processors

Based on Programmable Logic Design Line article titled "Actel and ARM announce the Cortex-M1 soft processor core" (March 19, 2007)

ARM processors are widely used in the industry with applications ranging from automotive systems to wireless networking. The recent addition to their family, the 3-state pipeline Von Neumann Cortex-M1 processor, is developed with FPGA implementation in mind. It can execute Thumb code from previous generations of ARM processors (ARM7, ARM9 and ARM11), as well as compatible with the newer members of ARM's processor family - Cortex-M3, Cortex-A8, etc that support 32-bit Thumb-2 system instructions. Fast, and optimized for various FPGA devices (including Xilinx, Altera, Actel and QuickLogic), it is designed to take less FPGA fabric and produce less power.

Short history:
ARM7 - 1993, 3-stage pipeline (supports both, 32 and 16-bit ARM and Thumb instruction sets)
ARM9 - 1997, 5-stage Harvard memory architecture (32-bit RISC)
ARM11 - 2002, 8-stage Hardware memory architecture (32-bit RISC)
Cortex-M3 - 2004, 3-stage, high-performance, low cost (32-bit RISC)
Cortex-A8, 2005
Cortex-R4, 2006, 8-stage

SmartLinks Test

Testing SmartLinks...

Jack Johnson

Aerosmith

Rene Gruss

GOOG

RIMM

Fix your iPod, Mac, iPhone yourself!

If your iPod is broken and run out of warranty, do not worry yet. Some problems can be fixed yourself fairly easy. The following website provides parts and tutorials how to change screens, batteries, hard drives, cases and sensors.

Replacement parts for Macs, iPods and iPhone: http://www.ifixit.com/

Wi-Fi Location Tracking using RF Fingerprinting

In addition to Closest Access Point and Triangulation methods used find Wi-Fi device's location that I've mentioned earlier here, there is another method - RF Fingerprinting. Cisco's Wi-Fi Based Real-Time Location Tracking: Solutions and Technology white paper describes the method in detail.

The difference of RF Fingerprinting from Triangulation method lies in the database with which the possible locations are compared to. The signal levels detected from a Wi-Fi device are still found using multiple access points as in Triangulation. Then the combined signals are compared with the database that contains power levels of each point on the map. The database is usually calibrated by measuring power at different locations.

RF Fingerprinting takes into account such factors as reflection, attenuation, and multi-path, which can create uncertainty in other techniques.

Related:
GPS and Wi-Fi combination: link

Hacking DWL D-Link Router

Low Quality video shows how D-Link router's configuration file can be downloaded without authorization. The config file contains user name and password. Watch on YouTube.

Hacking WEP tutorial (with video)

I have not tested it myself as I did not need it, but here it is, the tutorial - and it's supposed to be not bad. Anthony D. from cyber-knowledge.net even posted a video tutorial.

Other links:
Hacking WEP (FBI demo: hacking WEP in a few minutes)
Essential Wireless HackingTools

VoIP over GPRS or EDGE/EGPRS

Wouldn't it be possible to use VoIP over GPRS or EGPRS that is already supported by cell phones, thus, minimizing the number of minutes used from a regular plan?

I think technically it should work, since in both networks, data and voice 'calls' are made simultaneously using different time slots. So, if using one time slot per voice call is OK (that's what everyone is doing when calling), using the remaining time slots for data (one or more if paid for more) should allow encoding VoIP packets and transferring them via data channel.

The problems that need to be solved here are: (1) mobile hardware/software to allow fast packet creation and extraction and (2) cost effectiveness of this method. Cell phones are quite fast these days with majority of new cell phones and hand held devices supporting video decoding and even streaming over fast data connection (i.e. iPhone over WiFi). That means that hardware is fast enough to be able to packetize the voice. The second problem can depend on the data plan that a user pays for. Does it make sense to pay more for data and squeeze more minutes from a mobile plan over data channel? I think unlimited data plans can solve these problems.

Data plans are usually quite pricey. However, just last week Virgin Mobile in Canada announced Unlimited data plan option for just $10 on top of a regular cell phone plan. That should push other providers in Canada to decrease their rates soon as well!

References:
$10 Unlimited Data Virgin Mobile plan: link
Easy explanation of GPRS and EDGE: link

Spectrum Analyzer to Hunt Wireless VoIP Interference

WLAN is using the unlicensed frequency bands, which are shared among numerous applications including some cordless phones. In this article, Cognio's Spectrum Expert frequency analyzer is tested in action by Mike Outmesguine, the president and founder of TransStellar Inc. (and the author of the book I had the chance to look at, "Wi-Fi Toys - 15 Cool Wireless Projects For Home, Office, and Entertainment").

Outmesguine examined his Wi-Fi network and observed a slowdown when multiple cordless phones were turned on. As they were fighting for the same spectrum with Wi-Fi, the speed of the connection decreased. Spectrum analyzer showed the increased power coming from the phones. The speed was restored once the phones were turned off.

Read the article here

iPhone in Canada

Again, supposedly insider information. Read here and here.

If the price for iPhone will indeed be $799, there's no way I am buying it! iTouch simply as a gadget would be a better option for me then. I have a feeling though that it's an old political trick of overshooting (originally used by ancient Romans). Intentionally raise the expected price high, and then offer it at a better one, making buyers happy to have the lesser of two! Romans used it for interrogation to make the victim accept the lesser of two evils.

I think the strategy worked quite well before when Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO, offered a $100 discount towards future shopping at Apple Store to those who bought iPhone early. That's only after dropping iPhone's price by $200 after 68 days following its release. Consumers were happy even though they lost $100!

Rumors of upcoming gGoogle mobile platform

There are rumors that Google might be working on a mobile platform and a phone. Check it out here.
Google Mobile Service in UK: here
Picture of how the phone could look like: picture

Mobile AJAX

Opera Platform: Mobile AJAX Widgets. Read post here.

How to mitigate 802.11n interference with PC peripherals

An article describing 802.11n standard and ways to avoid interference with other devices working in the same frequency range, like Bluetooth, WiFi and Zigbee.

by Wireless Net Design Line [ Article link]

RFID Overview and Signal Analysis webinar

Webinar (available online until July 25, 2009)

Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs

This a great video course on computer programming provided for free by MIT. Previously, it was exclusively available to HP employees.

Course link

Book Link

Online version of the book

User Interface Design for Programmers

Interesting article about designing UIs: link

Increasing Popularity of FPGAs

FPGAs are becoming more and more popular with every year of their existence. Previously slow and ignored by system designers working on speed-hungry applications, the newest FPGAs are reaching 600 MHz internal clock speeds. Altera announced it's Stratix III 65nm device at the end of 2006 (link). Xilinx Virtex 5, also 65nm, runs at around the same clock rates (link). Their ease of use, inexpensiveness and availability of read-on-your-own reference material on the internet makes them attractive not only to system designers, but also to students and DIY enthusiasts with a wide variety of applications.

From my experience in semiconductor industry I see that these devices create a serious competition for ASIC manufacturers. They caused at least one project to be canceled during the last year at my company. Companies choose to pay more for flexibility of re-programmable FPGA, rather than investing into a faster ASIC. With the increase of capacity and speed of FGPAs, ASICs will play a less important role then they did years ago.

As an interesting example of FPGA use, Pete Finnigan's security blog mentions that they could be used for faster password cracking. Read it here.

The low price, availability of development boards and easy to use integration software packages make FPGAs attractive to a wider range of users, interested in projects, for example, requiring custom hardware acceleration of simulations. One of my friends used FPGAs for neural net simulation during his Master's. FPGAs really speed up functional computations. A function that lasts hundreds of cycles in software can be computed in few clock cycles given that enough logic gates are used.

More and more FPGA fast prototyping software packages become available on the market. For example, LabView's FPGA kit allows a quick assembly of a system out of precoded optimized blocks ready to be wired together with a few mouse clicks. Even without prior HDL knowledge, one can add hardware accelerated functionality to their designs with ease, using these tools and FPGA development kits.

Numerous learning resources are easily accessible online for free. Xilinx has eLearning section and a quick Google search would reveal dozens of other sources of learning information. Check out www.fpgafromscrtach.com for a step-by-step guide of designing an embedded system on Virtex 4 FPGA.

Related links:
FPGA Design Tutorial from Scratch
Xilinx eLearning

FPGA vs. Microprocessor, Programming Comparison

Here is an interesting entry I found on Zeemz Blog about FPGA vs. Microprocessor programming comparison.

He's referencing Design and Reuse's article from March 2004.

FPGA Design Tutorial from Scratch

Check out this cool step-by-step tutorial that guides you through the process of designing embedded system on Virtex 4 FPGA. Steven Andersson from ZooCad consulting, with 15 years of ASIC design experience, is working on this project for a year on his own time and blogs his experience.

I'd love to put my hands on something like this in the near future.

Tutorial Link

Xilinx Free E-learning courses

Related articles:
Embedded.com
Programming Logic Design

Last.fm

Check out the newly found wigit from Last.fm on the right of the page. I've added a few of my favorites by Rene Gruss, including The Red Room and Bellatrix.

Last.fm is a free online service that seamlessly creates a personalized internet radio that streams the songs that you want or similar to the ones you selected. The radio learns your preferences. One can "love" the track or "hate" it, so it never appears again.

It's one of the sites of Music Genome Project.

Unfortunately, Pandora is not accessible from Canada without a proxy.

Near-invisible UI improvements

The newest issue of EDN magazine had and article explored near-invisible user interface improvements. While a user is spending time with the system, he/she might not mention little modifications done in the background by a team of developers.

"...expert foley (sound effects) is invisible to a movie viewer, until the foley is either missing or implemented poorly." [read it]

That reminds me the words of Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, during StartupSchool conference held in March 2007 at Stanford, who have mentioned that they are doing little improvements to the site every day. Small patches of code are constantly added seamlessly improving the user experience.

Online Organizer

This is an update to my previous online organizer post about www.stikkit.com. After using it for a few months, I found out that some of the features were still buggy. Send sms reminder feature did not work with my Vancouver Rogers number.

One of the things that I really wanted to see with this software is the ability to clean up your emailbox just by forwarding emails to StikkIt (allowing you to safely delete the email) and letting the tool parse the keywords to add reminders, phone numbers, links, etc. However, it is not there yet. Email forwards just get appended to a particular note, but without the ability to merge it with the main one or, more frustratingly, to modify the forward.

I believe it will reach the perfection in future. In the meanwhile, I am moving to Google Notes, which also has the feature of sharing it with others, but no text parsing (making sense of text that makes StikkIt so attractive).

Conan in Intel's Headquarters

Conan O’Brien visits the Intel headquarters in Santa Clara.
(Conan): It's the SMT package!
(Kids): Yay!

Essential Wireless Hacking Tools

Article by Daniel V. Hoffman from www.ethicalhacker.net, mentioning the following topics:

• Finding Wireless Network
• Attaching
• Sniffing data
• Protecting
  

There are many more articles on this website. I am definitely checking it out later.

http://www.ethicalhacker.net/content/view/16/24/

Doppler Effect related

Java applet demonstrating motion of a sound source and breaking sound barrier at Vsource/Vsound = 1: http://lectureonline.cl.msu.edu/~mmp/applist/doppler/d.htm

I found this visualization to be really useful in understanding the concept

New WEP cracking record

60 seconds to crack WEP of a wireless network (read article here)! I remember back in 2005 when I've heard about WEP cracking for the first time when FBI's agents publicly demonstrated the cracking process. They broke the protection in 3 minutes by sniffing RF packets for long enough to be able to decode the key. Now, 60 seconds is an improvement!

That's another reminder to be aware of vulnerabilities of WiFi. And as one of the reasons, unless situation really requires it, I am trying to stay away from enabling my wireless network. I keep it disabled almost all of the time unless someone with a laptop comes to my place and specifically asks for access. The main reason is to prevent some sneaky grandfathers who live in my building from breaking into my network. ---> see pic on the right.

FBI demo: read it on Slashdot
I think they've used Air Snort or some other tool or a combination of them, I cannot recall now.

Critical Windows XP path for WiFi (not automatically updated)

As suggested by linksys.org and originally by Wi-fiplanet.com. It enhances support for WPA2.

The patch can be downloaded from here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/917021

Remembering Names

Yet another cool life tip from 43folders.com - remembering names

Nanotech: New World record - SFU beats MIT's smallest book published in 2001

Previous record: MIT: 5 x 5 mm
New record: SFU: 0.07 x 0.1 mm

read here

Online Organizer

Now, that's the online tool I was looking for. Stikkit.com is an organizer, really easy and intuitive. Nothing needs to be installed, meaning you can use it anywhere where there's internet. What I found useful is the support for various email keywords. Forwarding your friend's email to your Stikkit account's address and adding a few words will automatically tag and format the note.

Trip planning demo

Password "recovery" in Windows

to be finished

Easy password reset in Linux (using Grub)

Another passwd reset post: link

It's being almost a year since I've finished university. Back then I've had a dual boot system on my laptop, using Linux and Windows XP 50/50 percent of the time. Since then I went for a Eurotrip with my friends and moved to Vancouver exploring numerous local mountains and the beautiful land of BC and coastal US. It's been a good four to six months before I've decided to log back into my Linux partition only to find out that I forgot the password that I have changed during one of the last exam days, when I was pushing as much of academic stuff into my head as possible. The only thing that I forgot to do is to memorize the pass. I have tried all the possible combinations that I thought I remembered, but no luck. So, I let it go deciding to come back and recover it later, when I conquer Spanish classes and some training at work that I was busy with on my spare time.

Later in the previous sentence happened to be another four or so months. I've had enough of Linux at work and didn't feel like spending more precious time at home installing something not so user friendly and adapting it (i.e. building/compiling entertainment soft) for home entertainment. I like Linux, don't get me wrong, but it's still sometimes a pain in the butt when something does not work when you need it soon and you know you can do it much faster just by rebooting back to Windows.

In any case, recently I have registered for Wireless Communications course through online program at Stanford, and began spending much more time at my home's laptop than before for obvious reasons. A quick search in the newsgroups has revealed that changing Linux's password is a matter of a few minutes! Even the learning part was trivial, requiring just a few logical steps.

I have tested this on my Ubuntu distribution. From the links below, it looks as even a fewer steps are required for SuSE.

1. Reboot the computer
2. At Grub loader's menu, select the usual line you are using for starting Linux and hit 'e' to edit it.
3. In the appeared boot steps menu, edit the line that contains kernel reference, adding 'init=/bin/bash' to it.
4. Hit Enter to finish editing the line and 'b' to boot to Bash shell.
5. Now, assuming that you don't have RW access, type the following in Bash: 'mount / -o remount,rw'.
6. Use 'passwd' to change root's password, or 'passwd lomtik' to change password for user named lomtik.
7. You are good to go. Reboot and use the newly set passwords!

Now I can say: "Esto es muy fácil!" with a smile on my face : )

Cell Phone Hacking

Recently I have become really interested in cell phone modifications. Here is an interesting video: http://www.break.com/index/cell_phone_hack.html

Cool Tools

Here is another set of useful online tools that I came across this past week. First - somewhat randomly, unusually for me by following a commercial link.

1. QIPIT - Online jpg scanning tool with email and fax capabilities. It allows taking a pic of a document, whiteboard, notes, etc and sending it, already scanned (color and b/w) to email or a fax number. This tool has proved to be really useful the same day. JPG has been emailed to copy@qipit.com with email of a friend who the doc was supposed to be delivered to. Qipit scanned it and delivered both to my friend and myself as a backup in PDF format. PDF files are also stored on the server. Check it out: www.qipit.com
2. ScanR. Similar alternative for mobile phones, which I have not tested yet: www.scanR.com
   http://www.getjar.com/products/6744/scanRScanCopyandFax
3. RDM++ - remote desktop via cell phone. I did not like the idea of third party server storing info about your computer, but that's their implementation (I might be wrong as I have not spent too much time on their website). I'd look for something else. Nevertheless, here's the link: http://www.shapeservices.com/en/products/details/rdmhow
4. GMaps. Really cool mobile tool for your cell phone. That's what I was thining of building myself one of these days. I'll definitely come back to it later and check it out. http://www.getjar.com/products/6949/MobileGMaps

Easy online sync tool to backup and synchronize your files

Wicked! Check out this flash demo first: http://www.getdropbox.com/u/2/screencast.html

So far they are in private beta: http://www.getdropbox.com/

GUI Design

As suggested by my friend Alex S.: "it's about user interface design, and it's one of the best articles I've ever read" http://worrydream.com/MagicInk/

Homemade Nuclear Fusion Reactor

I just came back from the club, partying it up with a some friends from work. A few pages were still open on my laptop that I was planning to shut down for the night. Being all myself, I didn't want to just close it, and gave it a few more minutes of attention. Here is what I came across.

Home made fusion reactor by a 17 year old. "Pumps, deuterium source, neutron bubble dosimeter? Check." http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2007/03/high_school_stu.html
Full report: http://discovermagazine.com/2007/mar/radioactive-boy-scout


...and if you need to get some deuteruim gas for your next fusion experiement ; ), check out "deuterium oxide" following this link: http://unitednuclear.com/chem.htm, from which you'll be able to get "pure deuterium gas" for just $10!

Web 2.0

What is really a Web 2.0 that everyone is talking about? Here is the article by Tim O'Reilly: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html

Paul Graham's essay: http://www.paulgraham.com/web20.html

Revision3 Online Shows

I've got a bit addicted to some of the shows on this website. I don't watch too much TV myself, so by addiction I consider one or two broadcasts a week from the following website.

Tech, comedy, music, etc Online TV Show - http://revision3.com/
Example: Cracking open the iPod

Remote control of PC using Sony Ericsson k790

Last night I was watching one of the episodes from Seinfeld from Season 9. I could not stop laughing at the scene when Kramer pretended to be a "wealthy industrialist, philanthropist and a bicyclist" just to get into the washroom of a $1.5 mil apartment that was put up for sale. I was having my dinner at that time and did not want to stand up from the couch to rewind it back. However, I did anyway.
Sitting at work during lunch the following day I was thinking of a way to add a remote control functionality to my PC with minimal expenses. My cell phone has a Bluethooth and an infrared port. There must be a way via software!
A quick search revealed that my SE k790a has the HID (Human Interface Device) feature and all I need is HID profile supporting soft. Here are a few links I found that are worth checking out:

Sony Ericsson Developers Zone: http://developer.sonyericsson.com/site/global/home/p_home.jsp
VIAO Zone remote control: http://atinyblip.wordpress.com/vaio-zone-remote-control/
Salling Clicker (commercial soft): http://www.salling.com/Clicker/windows/devices.php

For future reference:
http://www.macncell.com/index_html/archive/2006/08/22/sony-ericsson-k800--k790i-cyber-shot-camera-phone-using-it-with-the-mac

Online Picture Editing

Online picture editing tool allowing you to save directly to your computer, Flikr or WebShots: http://snipshot.com/