Category Archives: Drivelling

Hello World… Ahem, Hello Carrier IQ

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How would you feel if your every location, keystroke, button push, SMS, URL and Web search you made on your mobile was monitored, read and stored by a piece of factory pre-installed software that automatically sends it to a company you’ve never heard of, plus this software cannot be switched off or removed? AKA a *rootkit

You wouldn’t like it would you? Well, if you have a modern Android, BlackBerry or Nokia phone, then that’s exactly what’s been happening from the first time you switched it on.

And when I say every keystroke, I mean EVERY single keystroke! so yes every login and password you’ve made, even over HTTPS, has been recorded and is now stored by Carrier IQ

Don’t believe that’s possible, then check out this Wired article, plus the video below (although jump to 11 mins in for the good / scary stuff!)

Trevor Eckhart original post. The root kit creator Carrier IQ

* “rootkit,” a security term that refers to software installed at a low-level on a device, without a user’s consent or knowledge, in order to secretly intercept the device’s workings. Malware such as keyloggers and trojans are two examples.

UPDATE: there’s a Twitter hashtag for this now #CIQ

Too Much of a Good Thing

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Here’s a great article from Smashing Magazine on “improving customer experience by limiting choice.”

It’s an issue I’ve encounter numerous times, when a client thinks they are doing me a favour by giving me an open brief, as in reality there’s no worse type of brief to get! So I’ve often said ”Give me the flexibility of a tighter brief”

Plus I’m a firm believer of Occam’s Razor “The simplest solution is always the best” A design isn’t finished when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away

So in keeping with the article’s advice, I’m keeping the options of this post simple, here’s the link

Don’t Have Regrets

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If you recognise yourself in this video, change your life! (oh and look out for banana skins)

“Never regret… if it’s good, it’s wonderful, if it’s bad, it’s experience” - Victoria Holt

“A man is not old until regrets take place of his dreams” - John Barrymore

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did” - Mark Twain

ID me at Early bird registrations!

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ID me at is an identity aggregator I’ve been working on for a while that I’m hoping to launch in the coming months. I’m currently putting a front-end site together that explains what “ID me at” is (which I’ll upload when completed).

But I wanted to give those of you who know me an early opportunity to pre-register for your username, as in similar style to Twitter and Facebook, once someone’s grabbed a username, it’s gone for good! So grab yours on Friday, you can set a reminder here

In essence “ID me at” is an identity aggregator, that lets you share your contact details from a single personalised profile, so your contacts automatically get your latest information whenever you change or update it (because it’s automatically pushed to their own address books, either online on their desktop or mobile).

You get a unique domain www.idme.at/yourname for your personalised homepage, onto which you can easily embed links for all your social networks and personal contact details, then include the domain in your email signature or place it on your stationery for a business card that will never go out of date!

Visitors have the option of downloading .VCF’s (virtual card files) and scanning QR codes containing all your contact details, so avoiding any mistyping, plus they can synchronise everything to their own personal address book of choice… and best bit of all, you get to control who gets access to what about you!

We’ve all been there, new email, new phone number, moved house… it’s a hassle informing everyone that needs to know and making sure they’re up to date, the same is try when someone sends us their new details, we have to input it into our address book and copy it to our phone etc… but why waste time doing that when you can update all this information in a single place and it’s pushed automagically to all of your contacts… plus they can do the same to you with their details. You’re never have to manually update an address book again!

for an example you can idme@brendan

Oh and did I mention, it’s all completely free!

Please help spread the word by liking and sharing the Facebook page and following and tweeting on Twitter

 

 

Thinking Differently from 1955 to 2011

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Here’s to the Crazy One.

The misfit. The rebel. The troublemaker. The round peg in the square hole.

The One Who Saw Things Differently.

He wasn’t fond of rules. And he had no respect for the status quo.

You can quote him, disagree with him, glorify or vilify him. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore him. Because he changed things.

He pushed the human race forward. And while some may have seen him as the crazy one, we saw genius.

Because the man who was crazy enough to think he could change the world, was the one who did.

The Blog Icon 45,000 Downloads and Counting!

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Ever since I created the blog icon I’ve been pleasantly surprised  by where I’ve discovered it’s been used and encouraged by the responses I’ve received from those that have downloaded it and are using it.

In April this year web designer Mark Hesketh wrote a blog post about the blog icon… a couple of weeks ago Events Northern wrote an amazing blog post about their search for a blog icon and how they’d ended up using mine… a couple of days ago Carol Katona from AssurX informed me that Constant Contact are using it in their customer facing systems, as you can see from the video below (starts at 30 secs)… and today I received this message on the Facebook wall from Jessica LaShawn Payton “Thanks! I’m going to use the blog icon in my social media presentation. I didn’t want to use the orange B since we’re not using blogger and the tumblr badge looks too much like the twitter badge and would be too confusing to a novice social media user. This works just great!!”

I’ve also been surprised by how popular it’s become and the number of people using. I get around 120-130 people a day visiting my personal blog after searches for “Blog Icon” (that’s about 45,000 people a year!)  below are yesterdays statistics. Compared to this time two years ago when I was surprised to get around 20 people a day

so if you’re looking for a blog icon that’s completely free to use, you can stop looking

http://www.theblogicon.com

Please like the Facebook page and follow on twitter @theblogicon

New Truth

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I was having a conversation just now and it reminded me of a sketch from the BBC Three animated series entitled Monkey Dust

In this sketch the Advertising Agency Labia, are pitching “New Truth” to a Government Ministry that has to deliver some bad news!

“By reclassifying things that aren’t entirely bad as things that are very nearly very good, you can achieve a significant re-emphasis of the good / bad ratio. We call it New Truth … it’s up to ten times better than old truth.”

eBooks Are For Weirdos

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According to a new survey by Harris Interactive 1 in 6 Americans now use an eReader with 1 in 6 likely to purchase one within the next 6 months. That’s 15%, which is almost double what it was this time last year, 8%. Also eBook readers purchase more books and read on average more than paper book readers!

I should know, since I purchased my first Sony eReader I started reading more, and now with the books from my Kindle available on my Mac, iPhone, iPad I purchase and read more than ever!

A case in point, Seth Godin released a new book today entitled, We Are All Weird, but rather than purchase the hard back and wait for it to be delivered (which I’ve not done in many many years!), I clicked the link to the Amazon Kindle store, clicked the “Buy now with one click” and had it on my Kindle before my kettle boiled this morning! Two Clicks and I had the book, why would anyone purchase a book in any other way, and why would an author sell their book any other way?

I’ve been saying this for years, it’s part of my no paper mantra, but it would appear Seth believes the same:

My new book, We Are All Weird goes on sale today. We only have 11,000 hardcover copies on sale at Amazon, with no plans to print more. I wanted you to have first dibs. (PS, Outside the USA? click here). Why limit the number printed?

Conventional publishing wisdom says that the first 10,000 copies are the hardest. In fact, you don’t make money until after that. The goal is to prime the pump and then, if you get lucky, sell millions and millions of hardcovers, day after day, year after year. That’s what pays the bills at all the large publishing houses. The thing is, digital is better at infinity than paper ever will be. Digital is easy to keep in stock, easy to replenish, easy to connect with. Paper, on the other hand, benefits from scarcity.