Insert clever tagline here

After the collective techno-orgasm everyone had this morning, its time to have a cigarette and think about things. One of the longest technology rumors has finally come true, and the company that originally passed on the idea of an “iPhone” now will have their own model that operates on their network. So should you line up in February and get your very own? Maybe. Honestly, Verizon customers have waited this long it would be in their best interest to wait longer. The iPhone released today is an exact copy of the AT&T iPhone 4 with a CDMA chipset rather than GSM. This means that it is a phone that is already halfway through its lifecycle, which historically has been one year between iPhones. Assuming that the next iPhone follows suit, it should be released this June. Recent changes to Verizon’s upgrade policy will lock you into your next phone for 20 months. This means when Apple trickles down its newest wiz-bang, must have feature this summer you will not be eligible to put it in your pocket until October 2012 (Unless you pay full retail). Another thing to take note is that in usual form-over-function style, Apple has chosen not to include Verizon’s new 4G LTE hardware because the “chipsets force design changes [they] wouldn’t make.“. In Q1 and Q2 of this year, Verizon is releasing a selection of devices that will operate on their new network, which is the fastest of the 4G-labeled networks in the US.

Bringing the iPhone to Verizon is a good thing for all Verizon customers. It brings a great deal of exposure to Verizon’s network, as AT&T has had in the last few years. Verizon has also said that they have taken extra care that their network can support the coming onslaught of new customers with data hungry iPhones. Improvements to their network to support this demographic means improvements for all Verizon customers. This should mean increasingly better data coverage, call quality, and overall level of service.

In closing, be smart about the choice you make in the next month. Explore your options when it comes to contract, so that you aren’t penalized for being an early adopter. Or just wait and see what happens this summer. Apple isn’t disclosing if the two US iPhone models will be on the same release cycle, so there may be a Verizon iPhone 5 this summer or it may be another year.

Recently a developer released an extension for Firefox called Firesheep. It was released to demonstrate the poor security model on many popular websites, and how a user’s information could be “sidejacked” while on a public wifi access point. Basically a website encrypts only the initial login, but does not protect the session’s cookie after that. Someone on the same network, using Firesheep, can intercept that session cookie and allow them to do anything the user can do on a particular website. On an open wifi hotspot the cookies are basically shouted through the air, making these attacks extremely easy.

Currently, Firesheep is available on PC and Mac (Linux is coming soon), and requires Firefox version 3.6.12 or newer. Firefox 4 beta is not supported.

While at my local Starbucks, I fired up Firefox and Firesheep on my Mac to see what it would do while I surf the web.

If I double click on any of the entries, I’m quickly logged into the service as that user. Easy enough.

Hopefully the various web sites affected by this will take notice and implement safeguards to prevent their users from falling victim to this type of attack.

Never trust a geologist from Portugal.

Just like many other people, I have browsed craigslist looking for a good deal. Recently a friend of mine mentioned he was looking for a new car, so we started browsing the Cars & Trucks section to see if there were any bargins to be had. I quickly came across a deal that just had to be too good to be true:

A 2006 Chrysler 300C SRT-8, in what looks to be very good condition, for only $3800. It must be my lucky day. The advertisement lists “Nevada” as its location, and the only method of contact is by email. If you notice the background in the pictures, it looks very green to be Las Vegas. Also, the entire ad appears to be one big image file. Clearly there is something sketchy going on, and I’m sure this isn’t the first advertisement like this on craigslist since they have banners and warnings all over their site about fraud.

However, craigslist warns about people shipping cars and clearly the advertisement says that the car is in Nevada. So I thought I’d have a little fun and contact the “seller” to see what’s going on here. I jumped over to gmail and created a new account. Name: Ross Jefferson, Email: rossylovescars@gmail.com. Then I used my new account to contact our seller, making sure to use wording verbatim from the posting.

After only a few minutes, I received a response.

His email raises all the classic craigslist scam flags. A price that is too good to be true, he is in Portugal but the car is in Detroit, he will pay shipping, and he would like to use eBay as an escrow service (despite the fact that the car isn’t being sold on eBay). Someone seriously shopping for a car should stop here, delete the email, and flag the craigslist post. I’m interested in seeing what would happen if I play along so I continued to chat with “Daniel”. I copied the VIN number he provided and came across something interesting on a google search.

It looks like all the pictures in the ad were scraped from a legitimate car sales site, complete with other information about the car. I emailed Daniel back to see what he would say.

Daniel quickly replied.

It seems like the transaction would go through very easily. eBay would handle the payment, he pays for shipping, and if I don’t like the car I send it back. In order to keep the conversation going, I needed to provide him with a shipping address. I didn’t want to use my own, so I came up with the next best thing.

It was interesting and a little scary that there was actually someone on the other end reading my emails and replying. At first I thought that this was all some automated system replying with standard responses. But when I asked a question, I actually got a response.

Just as he described, 3 hours later I received some very official looking emails from “eBay” about my new purchase.

I was welcomed to eBay Motors and they reiterated how I would be protected through this entire process.

Something else to note, was that the actual message with the directions for payment was filtered by gmail’s spam filter. They even take that into account by sending the following email from “eBay Support”

Once I removed the purchase directions from my spam folder, I saw the action that would kiss my $3800 goodbye. Western Union.

Upon further inspection of these “eBay” emails, I noticed that they actually did not even come from eBay at all.

So what have we learned? If something seems too good to be true, more than likely it is. Craigslist is doing their best to warn users about scams, but you need to use some common sense to protect yourself. I had a little fun researching for this post, and I hope that it helps someone protect their money. In the end, I have learned to never trust a geologist from Portugal.

This morning Facebook held a “mobile event” to launch some new updates to their mobile platform. First and foremost Mark Zuckerberg has admitted that the Android Facebook app has been lagging behind the iPhone, and said “…[N]ow we’re back to parity, we think.” This morning version 1.4.0 of Facebook for Android was released in the Android Market, adding features that were only available to iPhone and touch.facebook.com users. These features include Places and Groups. Zukerberg has also squashed any rumors of a “Facebook Phone” by saying “There’s been a rumor floating around that Facebook was going to build a phone, No.”

Check out the Android market to update or install the latest Facebook for Android.

Google has updated the YouTube app for Android, but if you have a custom rom like CyanogenMod installed you may find that the install is failing from the market. This can be easily fixed by renaming (or deleting) the old YouTube app before trying to install the new one. This post assumes you have rooted your device, seeing how that is necessary to load the custom ROM anyway.

Open a terminal emulator and become root. Mount the /system filesystem as read/write using mount -o rw,remount /system

Change into /system/app

Rename (or remove, if you are brave) YouTube.apk

Reboot. One the phone comes back up, you should be able to download and install from the market like normal.

Verizon wireless has put out a press release today confirming that the highly anticipated Android powered tablet from Samsung will be released on November 11th, 2010. The Samsung Tab will be available for $599.99 without a contract requirement. Wireless data access will be available similar manner to the iPad 3G, beginning at $20 a month for 1 GB. This announcement, paired with Verizon’s recent iPad announcement will give customers the ability to choose an iOS or Android powered tablet running on Verizon to best suit their needs.

BASKING RIDGE, N.J., and DALLAS, Oct. 20 /PRNewswire/ — Verizon Wireless and Samsung Telecommunications America (Samsung Mobile) today announced the highly anticipated Samsung Galaxy Tab™ will be available Nov. 11 for $599.99. Running on Android™ 2.2, the Samsung Galaxy Tab features a brilliant 7-inch touch screen; robust HTML Web browsing experience with full support for Adobe® Flash® 10.1 for video and mobile gaming; and a 1GHz Cortex A8 Hummingbird Application processor.

“This is an incredible time in mobile technology, and as a company we’re excited to add the Samsung Galaxy Tab to our portfolio,” said Marni Walden, vice president and chief marketing officer for Verizon Wireless. “The Samsung Galaxy Tab brings together the reliability of Verizon Wireless’ 3G network and the power of Android 2.2 to deliver on our promise of providing consumers and business customers with a host of options to help manage their lives.”
Popular mobile applications, including V CAST Music and V CAST Song ID, VZ Navigator®, Slacker Radio, Kindle for Android, BLOCKBUSTER On Demand® presented by V CAST Video, and the exclusive golf game, “Let’s Golf,” will be available on the Samsung Galaxy Tab. In addition to text, picture and video messaging, the Samsung Galaxy Tab will also feature V CAST Apps, Verizon Wireless’ mobile storefront offering hundreds of applications for businesses and consumers at launch.
Verizon Wireless customers can add a monthly access plan beginning at $20 a month for 1 GB on their Samsung Galaxy Tab. For additional features and specifications on the Samsung Galaxy Tab, visit www.verizonwireless.com/galaxytab.
For additional information on Verizon Wireless products and services, visit a Verizon Wireless Communications Store, call 1-800-2 JOIN IN or go to www.verizonwireless.com.

Source

Verizon Wireless

Bringing more attention to the CDMA iPhone rumor, The Wall Street Journal has released another article stating that CDMA wireless providers Reliance Communications Ltd. and Tata Teleservices Ltd. in India are in talks to bring Apple’s iPhone to their networks. Again, citing sources “familiar with the matter” the WSJ says that this move could bring Apple’s popular device to the worlds fastest growing wireless market which is adding about 18 million users a month. A CDMA iPhone in India would help Apple compete in this market where they only held 1% of the market share in early 2010. In comparison, Nokia held 71% of the market share at the same time.

What does this mean for the rumored Big Red CDMA iPhone running on Verizon in the US? With this new information and speculation that the AT&T exclusivity deal on the iPhone in the US could last until 2012, it is possible that the large quantity of CDMA chips purchased by Apple from Qualcomm could be for use on a network outside the US rather than Verizon.

Same as before, all parties involved have declined to comment on this new information.

Rumors of a CDMA version of the mighty iPhone are as old as the device itself. With the most recent public letdown coming back in January, when everyone expected a Verizon iPhone to be released along side the iPad. However, the magical iPad release came and went without any indication of an iPhone that would talk on big red. Just this week, an article in the Wall Street Journal has fired up the VZW iPhone rumor mill yet again.

WSJ: Apple Readies Verizon iPhone OCTOBER 7, 2010

The article says that AT&T will lose their exclusivity on the device starting in Q1 of 2011, citing their source only as “people familiar with the matter”. The VZW iPhone would resemble the current GSM iPhone 4, but with the Qualcomm manufactured internals necessary to communicate on CDMA networks. According to “these people” the new iPhone will not be quad band, meaning it will only function on CDMA networks and not GSM.

Something left entirely out of the report is the mention of Verizon’s new LTE network which will be available in select markets at the end of this year. Why would a new, flagship phone, like the iPhone not include something as important as the ability to function on Verizons new 4G network. CDMA technology is primarily used in the United States by carriers like Verizon and Sprint, the majority of the world uses GSM technology. However, as mentioned in the WSJ article, there are countries in Asia that use CDMA wireless technology. Another conclusion that could be drawn is that this new CDMA iPhone is being prepared for release in South Korea and Japan. Also, if the new iPhone is designed to be CDMA only as described it could not be used internationally by Verizon customers roaming overseas. Verizon has a number of “world phones”, including those running BlackBerry OS and Android, that are capable of roaming on GSM networks. A CDMA only iPhone would not be able to compete in the business market with these already released phones.

Lastly, with the recent DROID campaigns run by Verizon and Google it would seem hypocritical to suddenly welcome the very handset that they are trying to compete with. It may be too little, too late as Verizon users have already shown that they are interested in Android powered devices, and the numbers back it up with the market share of Android devices steadily increasing each quarter.

Only time will tell with this latest VZW iPhone rumor, as expected all parties involved (Apple, Verizon, and Qualcomm) have declined to comment.

With 50 percent of current BlackBerry users planning to change to iPhone or Android once their current contract expires, can the new BlackBerry Torch save RIM?

Today, July 30th 2010, is the 11th Annual System Administrator Appreciation Day. To everyone out there that spend their days (and nights) running cables, fighting malware and worrying about uptime, have a good one!

Check out the official site at http://www.sysadminday.com/