Is anyone in Portland, Oregon? says @Isaiahmustafa Visiting relatives, have nothing to do. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-qpEUOtLk8

about 2 hours ago via web

I've probably heard the words "Old Spice" 500 times in the past hour, but I'm still watching. You won't find the videos on the Old Spice YouTube page, instead hit up @oldspice on Twitter.

A few of my favorites:

1. inForm – Wireless Forms Made Simple – View forms, surveys, etc created by a Windows app
2. Forum for BlackBerry – Appears to be a front-end for some web forum
3. Law Enforcement theme for BlackBerry – A theme
4. vTerminal Credit Card Processing App for 8350, 8500, 9000 devices
5. vTerminal Credit Card Processing App for 95xx and 9630 devices
6. NEED FOR SPEED Undercover

Results were sorted by relevance, so I can totally understand why an application whose title contains every single word in my search phrase would be number 6, preceded by only one item that could even possibly be remotely related. That's assuming the Law Enforcement Theme makes some reference to speeding. If I had to guess, RIM is sorting results by category first, and then relevance.

It gets better though, if you drill down to the category view you can see that there actually six Need for Speed titles. But for some reason, they're all duplicated; one set is published by Electronic Arts Nederland BV and the other by Electronic Arts Inc. WHY?

This is just sloppy and really needs to be addressed. If App World is supposed to be the go-to place for BlackBerry users, it can't have amateurish mistakes like this. I hope App World 2.0 will eliminate little bugs like this. More importantly, I hope App World 2.0 fixes the nasty bug present in App World 1.x where it vanishes from the home screen, can't be launched in any fashion and needs to be reinstalled. Followed by a device reboot, of course.

The preferred noisemaker of the 2010 World Cup: the vuvuzela. For some reason these were distributed to fans attending World Cup matches, ruining the match for everyone watching at home.

When played by a stadium full of people the vuvuzela sounds like angry bees. I'm always up for a small project to help improve (or build) my BlackBerry development chops, and a vuvuzela app seemed like a perfect candidate. There are a slew of vuvuzela apps for the iPhone, but I only saw one other vuvuzela app for the BlackBerry, and that one only has a single vuvuzela sound.

Mine? It has 7.

I built the app with the 5.0 JDE. I tested it on a Storm2 9550 and Bold 9700 both running OS 5 and an 8820 running 4.5 and it worked on all three. If it doesn't work for some ancient OS, get a new phone.

Usage

Visit http://j.mp/cfg-vuvuzela using your BlackBerry to install the app. On newer devices the icon can be found in your Downloads folder.

Scroll and click a button to play the sound, or press the keys 1-7. You don't need to hold the ALT down; pressing W is the same as pressing 1. I haven't tested this on a SureType (Pearl) device.

Known Issues

• Multiple audio threads – This is a J2ME limitation. I use javax.microedition.media.Player to play the audio, and you can only have one Player instance on CDMA devices and two on GSM. I read this on the BlackBerry support forums, and confirmed with a member of RIM's media development team.
• Initial launch – the first time you launch the app on OS 5 it can take up to two minutes before the screen displays. Oddly enough it launches immediately on an old 8820 running OS 4.5. I'm looking into why this happens.
• Volume control – I'm actually not sure where the volume setting comes from, I just play the sound and it works, and it's loud. The way the VUVUZELA should be.
• The folks over at SistMan Software also have a vuvuzela app, and there is a conflict since both of our primary modules are named Vuvuzela (Vuvuzela.cod, etc). Until that's fixed, you can't have both apps installed. I like to think mine is better since it has more sounds, but they launched first and I'll publish a minor update with a unique module name.

Download

Download it OTA – Please link to this page, and not the .jad directly.

Recently the email address and ICCID (SIM serial number) of at least 140,000 iPad 3G owners were left unprotected by AT&T. AT&T chose to blame "hackers" for stealing this information, but that is just deflection. AT&T didn't adequately protect customer information, and as a result someone found it.

AT&T also claims that it was only the email address and ICCID that leaked, which is another partial truth. A 2008 paper titled SIMs and Salsa (quick view) demonstrates how the ICCID is directly linked to the IMSI.

AT&T SIM cards have a 20-digit ICCID, and the IMSI is 15 digits long.

The iPad ICCIDs all seem to begin with 8901410424 and followed by 9 important digits and then a single checksum digit. For example 89014104240123456781.

An AT&T IMSI is 15 digits, made up with the MCC (310), MNC (170) and the 9 underlined digits preceding the checksum in the ICCID. So if your ICCID was 89014104240123456781 as in the example above, your IMSI would be 310170012345678.

You can find your ICCID on your iPad by opening Settings, choosing General and then About.

Why is the IMSI Important?

Each device has a unique IMSI, and the IMSI is considered sensitive enough that it's rarely sent over the wireless network. Even the name – International Mobile Subscriber Identity – implies that it is something that shouldn't be shared freely.

The IMSI is also one of two pieces of information needed to clone a SIM card, the other being the Kⁱ, or subscriber authentication key. Fortunately the Kⁱ can only be retrieved with physical access to the SIM card.

But, knowing who a specific IMSI belongs to, for instance someone at the White House, allows an attacker target a specific user. Using technology like an IMSI catcher an attacker can insert their own device between a target and the carrier network and monitor data or voice conversations. There are a number of flaws in GSM that I assume could also be exploited relatively easily by someone – like a foreign government – with the proper resources and motivation.

AT&T is downplaying their own incompetence at securing customer information, and is putting customers at risk. Customers who are newsworthy in their own right. Even if the information on the iPad isn't sensitive, it can easily be compromised and used as an attack vector onto a previously inaccessible corporate wifi network.

Perhaps AT&T feels that is not a real risk? The latest jailbreak is a userland jailbreak and it's not inconceivable that it could be adapted to work in Mobile Safari. The first iPhone was able to be jailbroken simply by visiting a special website. And Dave Aitel has been selling Silica since 2006. One of the use cases Aitel would pitch for Silica was to mail it to a CEO and let it automatically hack anything it could find, beginning with wifi networks.

AT&T needs to immediately and proactively issue all iPad 3G subscribers new SIM cards.

To be specific:

#1: Searching and expecting to find any results older than 5 days

#2: Searching for with an until date more than 7 days ago – this is an option on the Advanced Search page, and has returned a HTTP/404 for at least a year now

#3: Partial matches – I can find this post (for the next 4 days) by searching for Ozzy or fucking, but not fuck

#4: source containing anything with a space. I can search for source:Tweetie but not source:"Twitter for iPhone"

The site fails miserably at it's sole purpose – searching.

By default both VMware Fusion and Parallels Desktop associate specific files on the Mac side with Windows applications.  Because there's nothing better than accidentally double-clicking a text file with a .log extension and launching an entire VM to view it.

VMware Fusion

1. Inside Fusion, open the Virtual Machine Library window – Window menu > Virtual Machine Library, or press CMD+SHIFT+L.
2. Select the VM and click the Settings button.
3. Click the Applications icon, and then select the Default Applications tab.
4. Uncheck Open your Mac files and web links using Windows applications and close the window.

Repeat the process for every VM.

Parallels Desktop

It's not easy, but does that surprise you? The icon may look different if Parallels is still installed. It's probably considered a feature that all the file associations remain, even after Parallels is removed – who doesn't like error messages!?

1. Find your VM – by default they are located in ~/Documents/Parallels/
2. Right click on the .pvm file and choose Show Package Contents
   
3. Delete the Windows Applications folder, and empty the trash.

Amazon was taking a loss on every $9.99 book they sold, because they wanted to further the ebook platform and not confuse people with variable pricing. Amazon is thinking long-term, whereas Macmillian is thinking like a 167-year old company that's run by people who are confused by and scared of the Internet.

If there is any doubt left about who has the reader's best interests in mind, try comparing pricing for a random book from Macmillan's Top Sellers page.

Eight Days to Live at Amazon

Eight Days to Live at Macmillan

Their uninstall icon sums up my feelings quite well. Their support is horrible, the forums are filled with people complaining and even their phone system is a joke; the IVR has a computer reading the name – Para-lel-ells – instead of a person.

The real deal breaker is the sticky keys bug.  Which ever the CMD key is mapped in a Windows VM doesn't work right. If you map CMD to ALT, Alt+Tab will 'stick'.  If you map CMD to WIN, modifier keys like WIN+D don't work right.

This bug with sticky keys was introduced a couple years ago when Parallels Desktop 4 was released, and still exists with v5.

Maybe VMware Fusion is slower¹, but VMware does virtualization right. I trust close to 90% of my servers to ESX/vSphere, and I'll continue to trust my desktop virtualization to Fusion. On a Windows desktop it's not even a question, VMware Workstation has no competition.

1. Fusion 3.1 RC is in public beta, so the MacTech benchmarks are already outdated

It took me much too long to figure out that it wasn't easy (or maybe even possible) with Automator, even though it's simple to do from the command line.

Each Automator action returns a result. That result is passed to the next item in the chain, assuming the item is accepting input. The key is to chain a series of Get Value of Variable calls together, which are passed to a shell script as $1-$n and the special $@ variable. I've written a short primer on using Arrays in Bash that may be helpful.

A crappy picture is worth at least 68 words, so here is what a sample workflow looks like:

You can download the sample workflow here.

If you want to loop through selected Finder items one-at-a-time, the best way is to use Nyhthawk Productions's excellent Dispense Items Incrementally action.

array.sh

#!/bin/bash
 
echo "<<< Load a file into an array"
echo "# Set the IFS (Internal Field Separator) to a newline
IFS='
'
# Load file.txt from the current directory
arr=( \$( < file.txt ) )
"
 
 
IFS='
'
arr=( $( < file.txt ) )
 
 
echo "<<< Addressing individual array elements"
echo "\${arr[0]} = ${arr[0]}" # the first line of the file
echo "\${arr[1]} = ${arr[1]}" # the second line of the file
 
 
echo ""
echo "<<< \${#VARNAME[@]} will always return the number of elements in an array"
echo "\$arr contains ${#arr[@]} (\${#arr[@]}) items"
 
echo ""
echo "<<< Loop through the array (\${arr[@]}), loading each item as \$foo."
num=1
for foo in "${arr[@]}" ; do
	echo "Loop iteration $num: $foo"
	num=$((num+1))
done
 
 
echo ""
echo "<<< Loop through the array, addressing each item with an index"
num=0
while [[ $num -lt ${#arr[@]} ]] ; do
	echo "Array index $num (\${arr[$num]}): ${arr[$num]}"
	num=$((num+1))
done

file.txt

file line 1
file line 2
file line 3
file line 4

Saving the two files above as array.sh and file.txt, and running array.sh yields:

$./array.sh 
<<< Load a file into an array
# Set the IFS (Internal Field Separator) to a newline
IFS='
'
# Load file.txt from the current directory
arr=( $( < file.txt ) )
 
<<< Addressing individual array elements
${arr[0]} = file line 1
${arr[1]} = file line 2
 
<<< ${#VARNAME[@]} will always return the number of elements in an array
$arr contains 4 (${#arr[@]}) items
 
<<< Loop through the array (${arr[@]}), loading each item as $foo.
Loop iteration 1: file line 1
Loop iteration 2: file line 2
Loop iteration 3: file line 3
Loop iteration 4: file line 4
 
<<< Loop through the array, addressing each item with an index
Array index 0 (${arr[0]}): file line 1
Array index 1 (${arr[1]}): file line 2
Array index 2 (${arr[2]}): file line 3
Array index 3 (${arr[3]}): file line 4

iPhone 3GS, brightness set to ~55%. Wifi was enabled all day, 7:00 AM – 10:40 PM. 3G was enabled between 11:00 AM and 8:30 PM. A single two-minute phone call was placed. Roughly 11MB of data usage while on 3G (several web pages and Twitter using Tweetie).

Final result: At 10:40 PM there was 26% remaining on the battery.

BlackBerry Bold 9700, brightness set to auto. 3G and wifi enabled all day – 7:00 AM – 10:40 PM. Multiple background apps – SocialScope (Twitter) and Twitter for BlackBerry, multiple web pages and push email for 5 different accounts (4 BIS, 1 BES). 5 phone calls were placed, lasting a total of around 70 minutes.

Final result: At 10:40 PM there was 65% remaining on the battery.

Dear RIM,

Please shave 1-3mm off the thickness of my next device, I obviously don't need a replaceable battery¹.

xoxo,
Corey

Side note: I have replaceable batteries for the BlackBerry Tour/Storm/Storm2/8900, the BlackBerry Bold 9700, my Mifi, and the BlackBerry 8530. I do not have any spare batteries for any of my Android devices, which would feel like trying to color coordinate my car with vehicles the rest of the highway. The BlackBerry 9700 is the first device I've ever owned where it takes significant effort to drain the battery (<20% remaining). Enjoy the high caliber of writing I produce right before I fall asleep.

1. Thanks to Alex for planting this statement in my mind

To avoid publicity and possible rival bids, Apple in some cases has offered a target only a three-hour period in which to accept the terms of a sale, according to one executive with knowledge of the situation.

Once bitten, twice shy.

Also telling:

Counting long-term investments that the company can "liquidate in a day," Apple had $41.7 billion in cash at the end of the last quarter, Broadpoint’s Marshall said. In comparison, Google had about $26.5 billion, he said.

I doubt Apple will be letting Google walk away with one of their acquisition targets so easily in the future.

via Bloomberg.

Looks like I was right, and TechRadar has a how-to guide for the SIM to Micro-SIM conversion. BGR has a few images of AT&T's new combo-SIMs, and although the AT&T Micro-SIM is a one-way street, MicroSim Shop sells a Micro-SIM (Mini-UICC) to SIM adapter for €5.99.

AT&T SIM/Micro-SIM Combo Card

MicroSim Shop also has a guide for cutting a SIM down to size, and some shots of the final product being used in one of their adapters.

Micro-SIM Adapter and DIY Micro-SIM

I hit the big red flashing button, and was told I didn't have any voicemail messages. I did on the other hand, have a text message. Press zero to hear your text messages.

I obligingly hit zero (anything to turn off that light), and I'm transferred to someone at the front desk who proceeds to read me a note from housekeeping, about towels – and shampoo. I get hints.

Note to Marriott – it's less of a text message and more of a live action voicemail.

1. four full size towels, four medium towels and two washcloths.

# apachectl configtest
httpd: apr_sockaddr_info_get() failed for foo.example.com+
httpd: Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name, using 127.0.0.1 for ServerName

Everything worked, so I never dug too deep, but each time I saw the message I got a little more annoyed. I thought there might be a hidden character in my httpd.conf file, but the actual issue wasn't related to Apache at all – it was the machine's hostname. I never noticed it because with a machine named foo.example.com I'd only see username@foo at a stock bash command prompt.

Running hostname showed that the the hostname had a trailing +

# hostname
foo.example.com+

It was easily fixed by running:

# hostname foo.example.com

When I tried to verify the DSN from within the app, I received the following error:

Can't connect, error [Microsoft][ODBC Driver Manager] Data source name not found and no default driver specified

A variant of this error is:

Microsoft OLE DB Provider for Microsoft OLE DB Provider for ODBC Drivers (0×80004005)
[Microsoft][ODBC Driver Manager] Data source name not found and no default driver specified

Most of the search results for that error turned up permission problems, and recommended explicitly granting access to the Registry key at the HKLM\SOFTWARE\ODBC\ODBC.INI. This wasn't my problem, and is also the reason that User DSNs exist.

It turns out that if you launch the ODBC Manager from the Start menu, you're getting the 64-bit version. 32-bit applications don't see DSNs created in the 64-bit ODBC Manager, and will fail one of the errors above.

The 32-bit ODBC Manager is located at C:\Windows\SysWOW64\odbcad32.exe

Launch that to manage DSNs for 32-bit applications and resolve this error.

Carriers can also tweak the browser options and set a default search provider, add new ones, etc. For instance, T-Mobile sets Yahoo as the default. Not a big deal, you can still change it to Google, Live Search, Wikipedia or Dictionary.com.

Big Red on the other hand, decided that the only option would be Bing. No other search providers, no other options whatsoever.

Verizon - Default Search Provider

This is important because normally when you launch the browser, you can perform a search directly from the native browser app, not from a webpage. With VZW I can only BING it.

VZW BlackBerry Search

Let's recap – other providers, like T-Mobile give you 5 options to search, and let you change your default search provider. Verizon used to do this. Verizon now gives you one choice.

Thankfully a Verizon PR flack was all over this. Jim Gerace (who oddly enough has the username jimgerace9 – is VZW Corporate the new AOL?) posted a thoughtful piece titled Use Bing * Or Any Search Engine * From Your VZW Blackberry.

First off, big Jim, way to shit all over RIM. If you read RIM's Branding Guidelines, you'll see that it's BlackBerry®, not Blackberry.

The article is short, so I'll post the entire thing.

Verizon Wireless is passionate about ensuring consumer choice in the wireless sector.

Customers still have all the choices they did before. Verizon offers many ramps onto the Internet, including all search engines.

If you love Google and don't want to use Bing, there are great options:

1) You can "mask" or hide the Bing icon from the webpage. Easy to do.

2) If you want to continue using Google or other search engines as an option, just:
Perform the search from the provider’s web page (i.e. www.google.com, www.wikipedia.com, www.dictionary.com).
Set the web pages as bookmarks in the browser.

3) You can download the free Google search client from Blackberry's Appworld and put it right on your homepage.

4) You can go to Google.com and push a link to your phone. From there, you download the app from Google. http://www.google.com/mobile/products/search.html#p=default

Choice is yours. Verizon isn't blocking or degrading anything; just providing a great option for customers.

This is great, exactly how I expect VZW to handle a problem. Take the bull by the horns, and address a problem head-on.

Customers still have all the choices they did before.

So I had five choices before, and now I only have one – Bing. Yup, that adds up.

Choice is yours.

As long as you choose Bing.

Verizon isn't blocking or degrading anything; just providing a great option for customers.

degrade – to lower to an inferior or less effective level
block – to hinder the passage, progress, or accomplishment of by or as if by interposing an obstruction

I'd argue that Verizon is both blocking and degrading something, but that's just me. And Merriam-Webster. Maybe Bing is a great search engine, but calling it an option implies I have other choices to choose from, which I don't.

I'm sure any Google employees with Verizon BlackBerry devices were thrilled about this great option. Maybe I'll only pay half of my bill this month. It's not degraded, I'm just giving VZW more options!

I'd have a little respect for Verizon if they were at least honest. Microsoft wrote a big check, and Verizon cashed it. I understand that, it's my dream to sell out. You want me to plaster your logo all over this site and post love letters about your company? Drop me a line.

I needed an excuse to add my new signing to the JDE, and quickly threw together an app (with an ugly icon) to lock your screen.

ScreenLock OTA (.jad) Installation
ScreenLock Offline (.alx) Installation

Get FFmpeg

FFmpeg is a fantastic cross-platform audio/video encoding solution. In fact it's so good that many commercial applications like to use it without paying license fees to the appropriate patent holders.

Download Windows ffmpeg binaries from http://ffmpeg.arrozcru.org/autobuilds/

On some Linux distros, like Ubuntu, you'll likely need the -unstripped builds.

There aren't many binary releases of ffmpeg for OS X, but the Audacity Project has a build from July, 2009 available. You can also compile it yourself, or use MacPorts.

Conversions

When quality is not a concern – and with such a low quality source, it isn't – you let ffmpeg use it's default settings without issue. Codec names will vary based on the age/version of your ffmpeg build. Run ffmpeg -codecs to see all the available codecs. If you want to keep the video bitrate the same, pass the -sameq parameter to ffmpeg.

Convert .3GP to Xvid

libxvid may just be xvid, and libmp3lame may be called mp3 instead.

ffmpeg -i MOVIE.3GP -f avi -vcodec libxvid -acodec libmp3lame MOVIE.AVI

A 4.3 MB .3GP file was encoded to a 783 KB .avi, 82% reduction in size.

Convert .3GP to MPEG1

ffmpeg -i MOVIE.3GP MOVIE.MPG

A 4.3 MB .3GP file was encoded to a 910 KB .mpg, 79% reduction in size.

Convert .3GP to standard MPEG4

ffmpeg -i MOVIE.3GP MOVIE.MP4

A 4.3 MB .3GP file was encoded to an 825 KB .mp4, 81% reduction in size.

Convert .3GP to standard Windows Media 7

ffmpeg -i MOVIE.3GP -vcodec wmv2 -acodec wmav2 MOVIE.WMV

A 4.3 MB .3GP file was encoded to an 885 KB .wmv, 80% reduction in size.