Lion security issue(s) 1.0

Since yesterday I just posted about how secure OS X Lion is, today I took a look around for possible flaws and security issues and guess what I've found. Passware Kit Forensic is a software for passwords recovery, and the last version can retrieve passwords from a Mac OS X Lion computer in a few minutes, regardless of password lenght. The software uses the content that is stored in the system memory and reads it via Firewire. This means that login passwords that are stored in the system memory, even when the computer is in sleep mode or locked, are used to get possibly unauthorized access to a system.
The recommendation to protect yourself from this vulnerability is to simply turn your Mac off and not let it sit in sleep mode on your desk (which seems to be rather common sense to me).
Here Don Resinger from Cnet explains the whole thing in detail.

The King of the jungle

OS X Lion has been out for almost a month. When it came out different opinions arose on the net, people were confrotning pros and cons and even mentioned "hidden features". Now you all know that I am a Linux lover, but I have to stress the true reason why I suggest to upgrade to Lion: security. One of the moste heard complaints about Lion involves the lack of support for PowerPc applications, but if you're familiar with Unix shell commands here you can find how to overcome the issue.
For what it concerns me, I love it!!!

The Google+ experience

When we think of Social Networking it's difficult not to think about Facebook. I've heard very different and interesting perspectives about what is the best platform between Twitter and Facebook and I came to the conlcusion that there's no such thing as a "best platform". They both can be very useful, depending on the purpose you're using them.

Still, I always thought that the concept of friendship in social media platforms is pretty standardized. Basically on Facebook every member of your network is equally your friend, a situation that is very far from reality. In real life you may want your best friend to know how much your boss is pissing you off and what a dumbass he is, but you surely don't want your boss to know that.

The new answer to the human need to socialize is brought you bythe Google giant, its name is Google+.

Google announced the project launching yesterday on its official blog and I strongly invite you to go there and to take a look about it. Until now 3 are the features that stand apart from previous social networking experience: Sparks, Hangouts, and Circles. The first one is a feed of the content you're really into, so when you're available, there will be always something to watch, read, or share. Hangouts is a video conference systems that lets your friends know you're free to hangout for a video chat. Then comes my favourite: Circles. It allows you to put different friends together, you can organize your relationships into groups such as "saturday night friends", "soccer friends", "colleagues", and so on. This helps users sharing the content they want just with the people they want.

Here you can take a look at the presenting video:

Now, I am a social media person and I actually can't wait to try Google+ in order to review it right here, but I will leave my last question for you. Do you think that this new patform is going to compete and somehow to contrast Facebook networking structure? Or is it just the same old thing with some new sparkling features? Tell me what you think.

Music of the Future

The music business is almost collapsed. After Napster came in, everybody seems to have an interest in fighting the piracy. That to me seems just as stupid as trying to build a house using marshmallows instead of wall bricks. So, in order to survive, major record companies have to build real celebrity phenomena that would clearly put the music content aside, to push the image of the artist before his/her message. Look yourself around, artists are being always more provocative and graphics of their albums are so eye catching and sparkling it seems to look at a jewlery advertising. Of course, that is an understatement and therefore should not be the focus of my thoughts.

Instead I was about to ask myself and to ask you, my dear readers, what will be the music of the future? Well, the ones among you who are starting to know my personal preferences through this blog will understand why the answer for me could be just one:

algorithmic composition and generative music.

To be very brief and simple, it is computer generated music. Nothing very new actually, but something that is getting more and more interesting. Basically it is software based, just as the majority of music that's recorded nowadays, but it is the software that autmatically generates melodies, notes intensity and tone, leaving the user the possibility to slightly modify them. Any change the user does will affect the algorithm that generates sound, resulting in changes in the melody, tone and/or pitch of the played note. But I'm probably getting too much technical here so...

Let's try to let your immagination run free for once in a lifetime, would you mind?

Ok then. Now imagine computers being able to compose listeneable music, generated via algorithms. Algorithm generated music is already a reality and I think this is a new, future perspective to music. Innovative players and music artists wouldn't no more be forced (and that is already happening) to get a diploma and to become experts of their instrument(s). That's what I love about technology, that it "steals" an exclusive knowledge to make it general and available for piotentially everyone. It will be a new way of making music that could cover all of the previous genres (there are a lot of researchers experimenting with algorithmic composition and acoustic instruments out there) and even create new forms of sounds and rythms.

These are just a few examples of what can be done today.

Modern and future algorithms are and will be more focused on making listeneable music and THAT (to me) is the real new music frontier.

Stay tuned!

Microsoft vs. Java

I' ve been a little bit busy lately but I'm still surfing as usual. Next posts will cover more network analysis, communication and branding related topics. But, until then,  I was just surfing following trails of bits when I had the chance to get to this very funny video. Just to start the day with a smile :-) Check it out!!

Wi-Fi, Art and Light

Immagine you're driving with your car in the heart of the city. You need to check your mails and messages but you don't know the right spot with a strong wi-fi signal. Wouldn't it be nice to have lights sourrounding buildings that indicates different intensity level of the Wi-Fi network(s) nearby? You think it's science fiction, don't ya? Well, it is not.

Those lights bars that you see are showing the signal intensity and peaks. This project explores the invisible terrain of WiFi networks in urban spaces by light painting signal strength in long-exposure photographs. A four-meter long measuring rod with 80 points of light reveals cross-sections through WiFi networks using a photographic technique called light-painting.

This beautiful work has been conducted by Timo Arnall, Jørn Knutsen and Einar Sneve Martinussen.

I suggest you also this video right away:

XPS funeral

Hi again folks!!

First of all sorry for my absence during this month but you'll understand the reasons behind it pretty soon. This will be a very small post that will give you an idea of why I haven't been here for a while. Please the image I'm about to show has strong visual content so it should be viewed just from an adult public:

That was my beautiful Dell XPS M1710 who just died on my during one of the moment in my life in which I needed it the most. 

If any of you needs more chipset gore, here you go:

I'm now waiting for a new laptop that should be delivered within some days but I'll still keep in touch with you. Thank you for keep on following this blog even when there's nothing really new on it.

Communication + Unity = Community

I have already mentioned social browsers in previous posts and I am aware that some of you already know what they are about, but there is still a vast majority of people that think the only purpose of such tools is to manage contacts easily. That is not the case of RockMelt.

This social browser not only allows you to use and manage Facebook and/or Twitter with less effort, but it really gives you the feeling of being part of something. It's not just because of the graphic interface and its perfect balance among eye-catchiness and functionality. It's not just because of its features, and certainly is not because it's "the new thing".

I've seen many "new things" vanish after few months, especially on the web. But, you know, every now and then somebody understands that social networks will not only be more and more accessible, they'll be the gate to the future web. In fact, when an user opens the RockMelt browsers, he/she automatically logs in Facebook/Twitter.

This shows how much the future Internet generation will be based on building and communicating community values, and that is why virtual social networks and the community concept will be more and more relevant at a personal level as well as at a business level. Organizations of various size are struggling to figure out the best way to be present on social networks. They are forgetting that it is not  just about being there, but it's about building a community.

Last year's best social media campaigns

Great presentation about the best social media campaigns of 2010 and how they worked! Take a look!!

The 20 best social media campaigns

View more presentations from Palio.

Future is now!

A very interesting presentation about the future shape of social networks. Here the terms "future" refers to a 3 years old presentation, but it's still nice to see how things that were thought as new tendencies (such as social browsers, you can check one right here) are now becoming more and more the standard of present social networking in general.

If you want to check what's going on from a general perspective, you should definitely look at this one!

futurethink: Future of Social Networks

View more presentations from futurethink.

The Wizard of OS

First of all, Happy New Year Folks!!

I wanted to excuse myself for being absent for such a long time, but I've been pretty swamped lately. I will be until the fourth of February actually.

Coming back to the topic of this blog, technology and social media in general, I have to say that I've been experimenting on Ubuntu during these last days. Let me say that I've never experienced such an OS before, it has every feature you could look for, it gives you full compatibility with the two major OS around (you know them, come on...), and it is completely open source as the majority of you may already know.

Above: Ubuntu's desktop GUI

I was discussing yesterday with a friend of mine, he pointed out that it is impossible for a free OS to be better than what the industry offers to customers. I can perfectly see his point of view, but it is a common mistake (at least in informatics and technology in general) to think that what you pay for has more value that what you don't pay for. It's not like that, nowadays the best technology is the one you can build and share. Profit making corporations can't understand this logic, GNU philosophy is a far horizon to them and they're looking at it like nomads lost in a desperate desert of ideas.

Accept that the new technologies of today and tomorrow are and will be built by a community of users, that the only way to improve knowledge is by sharing. Today it's possible to share real time thoughts and the bright minds of our world are not going to let this opportunity fade away.

To everyone among you my readers (no matter how small the number may be) who are not aware of what Ubuntu is, I strongly advice to take a look what this community is doing.

Be brave. Be part of the conversation. I'm sure you all got something to say. Share it.

What's the Message again??

Thoughts and insights about new Facebook Messages System. Not yet released but still big rumors (read publicity) about it...

Take a glance at:

Facebook Messages' Foggy Functionality

What happens in Cambridge DOES NOT stay in Cambridge. (Fortunately)

I don't know how many of you are informed about what Nokia is doing in terms of R&D. They told me that this project is not that new as I thought it was, so some of you may have already heard about it. I still want you to check on how nanotechnologies will combine with mobile phones in the near future. The aspect that obviously makes me passionate about it is that future technology will adapt to people's life, instead of having people adapting to technology!

Now I will put my enthusiasm aside and let you judge for yourself...

First post. Take me to the station please

Welcome everybody!!
This si my blog and there's not that much to say about me except that my name is Gabriele and that I love technology in general. I had my first experience with an IBM AT when I was 6 or 7 years old, it was my mom's PC and didn't lasted very long after I grabbed it! I am fascinated, amazed and tricked everytime something new aboout technology pops out. Of course, it has to be special. I was born in 1980 and it's easy for me to relate with new products, but I think technology and its beauty should be accessible for people of every age. Often devices are still less intuitive they could be and often those ones that are more user friendly offer applications, features and software that have no sense to exist. So my feeling and hope is that we would witness a new technology approach to human beings, that will generate a new approach by human beings to technology. As the video shows, some have already started. :)



Stay tuned!


G.