Safe browsing and virus removal

Sometimes you have to use Windows. There might be a game you like that only runs there or you might need a Windows-only program for work. Whatever it is that draws you to Windows, you know going in that you run the risk of your system becoming compromised (becoming a "zombie," getting a key-logger or any number of other harmful scenarios). OS/X is starting to feel the heat of increased market share as well, in case Mac fans thought they were somehow immune. In 2009 and now in 2010, Mac/OS + Safari did quite poorly in a challenge to compromise browsers. My brother just recently got some sort of malware that caused him to spam the family with bogus links, and I put together this overview of what to do in response. In case it's useful to others, here you go:

Preventative:

1) Always use Firefox to browse the web (Safari and Chrome are getting there, but currently don't have the suite of helpful and stable plugins that Firefox does) http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/personal.html
2) Always use the noscript plugin for Firefox http://noscript.net/ and add exceptions with care
3) If you're going to visit a site that might be questionable, use the "Tools -> Start Private Browsing" feature

Doing anything less is roughly equivalent to going on a sex tour of the third world without condoms. That's not a pretty metaphor, but neither is having your system infected with every bot this side of Robbie from Forbidden Planet.

As for cleaning your existing system... it's hard. The best and safest way is to back up your data and then use the re-install/recovery disks that came with the computer. If you want a less drastic approach (that isn't as guaranteed to work), then I suggest one of these resources:

AntiVir removal tool -- Avira, makers of my favorite free antivirus tool
McAfee Virus Removal Tools -- McAfee (about $90)
Symantec Removal Tools -- Symantec removal tools (free?)

I suggest figuring out what you have first. AntiVir, McAfee or Symantec can be used to do a full scan, and should turn this up. If not, try a malware removal tool like Spybot Search and Destroy SpyBot Search and Destroy (but be careful if you do a Web search for it... don't click on ads, and make sure you spelled it correctly).

To keep yourself safe in the future, make sure you have an up-to-date virus scanning tool (AntiVir has a free version that pops up a single ad for their product only, per day, asking you to buy the full version and there are paid programs from Symantec and McAfee). Also, make sure that you run the latest version of your browser (Firefox will auto-update with security fixes, but you should upgrade to the latest major version at least once every 6 months). Don't use IE. but if you really must, make sure it's updated to the very latest version. Microsoft's track record for keeping old browsers secure isn't very good.

Beyond that, consider doing everything that isn't Windows-specific in a virtual machine. You can get an easy-to-use virtual machine manager at http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads and then download the install image for Ubuntu Linux and load it up in the virtual machine. This allows you to do things that would otherwise be unsafe in Windows within a safer environment. It's cumbersome, but the security return on your investment is well worth it.

Droid Replaces My iPhone

Friday, I went out and got a Droid to replace my iPhone (which I've handed down to someone else). My first impression is that its very nice, but for every iPhone annoyance that the Droid fixes, there's a new one to replace it.

Here are a few:

• Keyboard is far too prone to multiple keypress
• Camera is slow, and prone to blurry images
• The iPhone had a sleep function (timed shutoff) that Droid lacks
• Music management is horrible
  
• Apple's smart playlists are clearly a killer feature
• Recovery from a dropped wifi connection is not as graceful
• No popup SMS/messaging notifications (brief scroll on top bar instead)
• Google Voice / built-in messaging can be confusing (which one am I selecting?)
  

On the other hand, it has:

• An open app store
• Free turn-by-turn navigation with a fairly cheap car-mount
• A keyboard at all (narrowly a win over none... narrowly)
• Great email/SMS integration if you use gmail and Google Voice
• Search by voice for nearly everything
• "Back" button works across apps

Some things that I think would improve the experience:

• Add a countdown timer that kills the browser and music player when it goes off
• Make the music player automatically create playlists from directories on the SD
• Add smart playlists (see my other post)
  
• Build in some software guards against multiple keypress
• Improve guessing with respect to poking at links on the Web browser (I often get the wrong link)

Overall, it's a great phone, but in some respects, it leaves me longing for my iPhone. I'm sure that over time it will become my favorite phone, but it's not a clear iPhone killer.

How To Use Smart Playlists In iTunes

Do you have an iPhone and many more Gigabytes of music you love than you can fit on it? Do you get frustrated over having to choose what to put on the phone? Here's a way to never compromise your collection while still carrying around only a trivial number of tunes:

• Create a playlist for a kind of music you want to listen to. You can use one of the built-in smart playlists like "Highest Rated" or build your own (for example, I have a "Quiet" playlist of songs I like to go to sleep to)
• Now create a new smart playlist and give it the rule: "Playlist", "is", and the playlist from above.
• Select the checkbox next to "Limit to" enter "50" or "100" for the count and for "selected by" use "Least recently played".
• Now when syncing your phone, go to the "Music" tab under the iPhone's entry in iTunes. Select the option to only place selected playlists on the phone, and select your new smart playlist.

(more...)

Blackra1n, Cydia and SBSettings

I've just re-jailbroken my iPhone (mostly to fix a problem introduced by upgrading to 3.1 without first uninstalling the jailbreak - never do that), and I ran into an SBSettings problem. It installs fine, but once it's done installing, it doesn't do anything. I swipe across the top of the screen and nothing happens.

If you just used blackra1n to jailbreak, and SBSettings won't work for you, here's what you do (props to this forum for the fix):

• Re-install Cydia from the blackra1n interface
• Re-install dpkg (this may show up as "Debian Package Manager" or similar) from Cydia
• Re-install SBSettings from Cydia
• Re-boot the phone

This worked for me, and got my SBSettings install working flawlessly.

Apple: An Android's Best Friend

Today the news came out that Apple has removed all Google Voice-related apps (including one from Google) from their App Store for iPhones. OK, that's a lot of buzz words, but what does it mean? It means that Apple has told Google and others that they're not allowed to write apps that customize the iPhone for use with Google Voice (hereafter GV). This would have included making calls from your GV number, making calls through the GV international calling plan and easing access to GV voicemail and other services.

Apple has been playing this game with Google ever since the release of Goolge's phone platform, Android, but today's move might well be the last straw for consumers. Google Voice is an extremely popular service right now, and I don't see any competing offering coming from Apple any time soon. Users want email transcription, numbers that ring multiple phones, call screening and all of the other features that come with GV. They don't want to hear "Apple doesn't think you should get that."

I know that this cements my departure from Apple products, though to be fair it was their treatment of Google Talk and Latitude that had me pretty much over the fence, especially after the disastrous launch of the Google Latitude Web app that has iPhone users looking over their Blackberry and Android-using friends' shoulders. I won't be extending my iPhone contract, not out of protest, but simple pragmatism. I can't afford to use a second-class device, and with the release of phones like the insanely sweet Sony Ericsson Xperia X3, HTC Hero and even the low-end phones that HTC and Motorola are about to push out, that will certainly be where the iPhone finds itself. Without access to Google's apps (which they're willing to hand to whoever want them, mind you), the iPhone is going to stop being the phone that technophiles like myself urge their less-savvy friends to use, but it's not all about Google. They're just getting more press than most of the companies whose apps get kicked out of the App Store for varying and seemingly arbitrary reasons.

In the past couple of years, I've probably convinced ten or more of my friends and relatives to buy iPhones either directly or just by example. What happens when people like myself stop using it, and move to more open platforms like Android? Has Apple seriously considered where this is leading?

Spurious "iTunes could not connect to the iPhone because it is locked with a passcode" Error

I just updated iTunes to 8.2, and got this error when connecting my phone for the first time:

"iTunes could not connect to the iPhone 'XXXX' because it is locked with a passcode"

with XXXX being the name of my phone. It was easily fixed by waking up the phone first and then connecting, but it's clearly a bug since my phone was not locked at all. This may happen because iTunes can't tell the difference between a phone that is scheduled to lock after some period of time, but currently is just in idle mode and a phone that's actually locked.

Anyway, don't freak out if you see this message. Just re-connect after going to the home screen on your phone.

Quick thoughts on MSFT vs. APPL

I won't be the first person to point out that Apple has announced their best March quarter ever while Microsoft nearly simultaneously announced their first drop in profits for 23 years. It's the "I'm a PC," moment that Microsoft PR is going to be hard-pressed to spin positively. I blame Microsoft's end-user products which have been kicked in the teeth. Does anyone have a Zune? Yeah, XBox is growing, but Wii and PS3 still own the market in the U.S. and overseas, XBox is barely a competitor.

Update: A friend pointed out in the comments that I'm all wrong about the PS3! I mis-read my source info. In fact the XBox outsells the PS3 in the U.S. (the opposite being true in Japan, and I don't have numbers for other countries).

Interesting times...