I finally get how Siri can change the world

A colleague this morning introduced me to the wonderful world of Siri proxies. As expected some clever guys have reversed the protocol used by Siri, the voice service for iOS devices. So you can now have your own proxy that intercept Siri’s query to Apple’s server and provide your own answers to specific commands. I think this opens a world of cool possibilities. Imagine sitting at your favorite coffee shop and ordering your favorite coffee drink using Siri. Once Siri’s API is available to iOS apps, you could do this with a specific app for the coffee place. But by doing it via a network proxy, you can integrate your commands in canonical Siri interface. This seems like a much smoother solution.

The flipside, as always, is that these methods could be used for more nefarious purposes. For example a store could provide free Wi-Fi but block access to competitors or price comparison sites. Worst they could let you access these sites but change the content of the page to increase their competitors’ prices or stocks. This shows once again the importance of making SSL more ubiquitous on the web.

Currently Siri proxies are a bit of a hack. I really hope that Apple will officially support them soon and I can’t wait to see how businesses, public services and home automation nuts will use them.

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Six years of Gmail

   I have been using Gmail for six years as of today. Six Internet years is like 30 years in the real world! It's an amazing testimony to the quality of that service. And it's all for free.

   But enough congratulations. I noticed something else with Gmail. When I joined in July 2005, the service's main selling point was the huge amount of storage it offered. More than 2GB! And counting as they say on the homepage where they shows a real-time counter of the ever-increasing disk quota allowed to users.

   There has been many speculations on how that quota has been computed over the years. It reached 7GB in Fall 2008. But then at the beginning of 2009 the rate of this growth suddenly dropped by a factor of ten. And we are now, three years later, at 7.6GB. How come? I mean 7.6GB is plenty of space so I am not complaining but with the bandwidth of our Internet connections always increasing and the file of our digital media always growing, for how long will that 7.6GB feel so huge. The maximum attachment size currently is 25MB. My DSLR camera makes bigger files than that!

   So I am wondering if Google is not resting on its laurels here. I am only using about 20% of my Gmail quota so I don't think I would switch to a new service tomorrow even if they offered unlimited disk space. But what if that service also integrated a Dropbox-like feature to backup your files in the cloud. You could share by email big files because they would upload in the background. Wouldn't that be great?

   I guess my conclusion is: stay on your toes Gmail team! Because I really want Gmail to stay the best email service out there. And thanks for everything that you have done so far.

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iPhone apps are not magically secure

   I have been wondering about the iPhone apps security for a long time. Most apps are connected to some sort of web service but are they using SSL? We spent so much time educating users to check the security icon in their web browser and now the iPhone comes out and nobody cares anymore! That bugs me so I decided to find out.

   After starting Wireshark on my router, I went through most applications on my iPhone, logging in, accessing my profile and my account details. The good news is that all the banking apps that I tried are connecting over SSL. But many of the more casual apps are not. Ironically the first app that I found transmitting my login and password in plain text was the Squarespace app! And apparently it's not alone amongst the blogging apps since Tumblr is doing the same. Sincerely it depresses me that in this day and age, developers still spend so much effort designing design such cool apps and services and yet do not care about their security.

   One might say that these are just passwords to your blog. No big deal. But everybody knows that most people use the same password on every sites. And it's not just passwords. The LinkedIn app transfers your whole profile in the clear. Name, e-mail address, resume, almost everything you need for identity theft or to figure out the answer to the security question for the web sites where you did not use the same password as the others.

   That's a good opportunity to remind everyone of two fundamental security rules. One, use a different password on every web site. Tools like LastPass make it very easy. Two, never connect to unencrypted Wi-Fi networks. Everybody can capture everyone else's data on these networks.

   Finally if none of this is news to you, please take the time to explain it to your less tech-savvy friends and relatives.

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Having fun with Lomography Spinner 360°

   I got a new toy: the Spinner 360° from Lomography. It is a film camera that takes a 360° by spinning around a handle. And I have to say, it is a load of fun!

   The camera is very simple to use. There is only one setting on the camera (sunny or cloudy) so you have to forget about exposure, focus and all that, and just take pictures. It is completely the opposite of how I approached photography. When I bought my first digital camera, I spent a lot of time learning all the camera settings and understanding their impact on the resulting picture. That is the way I go about things but it is also a distraction from the most important thing: taking pictures. With the Spinner 360°, you only have to think about taking pictures. You think about the location, the subject and the framing, that's it.

   Speaking of pictures, the results are brilliant. Of course it is hit or miss process. It is hard to picture what the result of a 360° shot will look like. Not to mention all the little details going around you (literally) when you take the picture. That is why I usually take several photographs in each place. Typically a 36 exposures roll of film will get you about 7 360° exposures.

   The only drawbacks are the costs. First there is the cost of the camera, about 125 €. The camera seems solid but it is mostly plastic and there is not much to it. So you are definitely paying for the trendiness of the Lomography brand. Then there is the cost of film and development. That actually is cheaper than I expected. However most photo labs will not be able to properly scan the developed film due to it's odd format. It means you will need your own flatbed scanner with a backlight unit. I bought the Epson Perfection V600 and I am very happy with it but it is another 240 €.

   In conclusion I recommend the Spinner 360° because I am really having fun with it. Maybe the novelty will pass but I feel like I have already got my money's worth with this camera. If you've always wanted to experiment with film photography without taking it seriously, you will love it.

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I want a GPS in my laptop!

   In my opinion one of the coolest feature of smartphones is geolocation. But why is it not yet available in every laptops? It's amazing when you think about all the ways developers could take advantage of it. Here are just a few examples of the top of my head:

• Select automatically the current date, time, time zone.
• Choose your default printer (e.g. home or office).
• Mitigate WiFi network spoofing (instead of remembering SSIDs, your computer should really remember SSIDs at a given location).
• Find your lost/stolen laptop.
• Switch to local news, weather, sport, search etc. in one click.

   Some of these features are already available using certain operating systems or software utilities but they usually rely on some guesswork based on your network address etc. Why not use a real GPS, or even better, both! We still have a long way to go. Your ideas are welcome in the comments (but then don't sue me if somehow still your idea).

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