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There’s an app for that

5 Replies Christopher Roberts

On June the 26th 2007, smartphones didn’t exist. Mobile phones, and computers were two very different things. A day later (27/06/2007) Apple launched the iPhone.

You could argue that there were ‘smartphones’ pre-iPhone, but many in the technology industry view the iPhone as the tipping point and birth-date of the modern smartphone – no inverted commas.

With the launch of the iPhone, came the launch of apps. A few years later along came tablets – and what would a tablet be without apps?

In this post I want to explore some of those apps. Not the apps like Angry Birds, Rayman Jungle Run, Skype and Fruit Ninja though, they are what you expect from applications – games and communication. In this post I am going to explore some of the more innovative uses for apps.

Mirror

Ever desperately needed a mirror just when there are none in sight? Mirror by mmapps mobile, is a free app for Android which turns your phone into a usable mirror! The app even lets you zoom in and out and freeze the mirror, something that no mirror I have ever used does.

The app is available in many different languages, and similar apps are available for iDevices, however mmapps mobile don’t make an ‘i’ version.

Square Wallet

Square Wallet is an application which lets you fully embrace mobile payment. With Square Wallet, you can link your credit card to your phone, and then, in a surprisingly large number of retailers, pay for goods, using your phone! The app also lets you track transactions, so you can keep track of what you are buying.

Square Wallet is available for iDevices with iOS 5.0 or later, and Androids via Google Play.

Inflora Flower App

Interflora smartphone appTen years ago, who would have thought that you could be out and about, and on a device which fits in your hand, and order a bouquet of flowers? Probably not many people!

The flower delivery company Interflora has an app where you can do just that. Naturally its called Interflora, and can be download for free for iDevices – any iPod, iPhone or iPad with iOS 3.0 or later. Interflora is also available to download for Android devices. The app gives you access to a wide range of flowers, information (such as delivery details and a description) and prices; you can even order your gift using the app!

Zite Personalised Magazine

If you like to keep up to date with the latest news, and you like the news your way, then Zite is the perfect app for you.

Zite trawls through your Facebook and Twitter feeds to work out what you like to read. The application then created you your very own personalised magazine to read, and the more you use it, the cleverer it gets, and the more tailored your content become – to a point where it should only be displaying content you really want to read.

Zite is available for free for all iDevices with iOS 6.0 or later, although the developers state that is is specifically designed for the iPhone, as opposed to tablets. Zite is also available on Android.

Flow Powered

Flow Powered - NutellaAmazon have recently released an augmented reality app called Flow Power, which can identify millions of real life products (using your phones camera), and can then tell you more information about them.

The app ‘knows’ thousands of books, games and CDs, and is able to tell you about almost anything, if you scan the barcode.

Be it a novel, or a box of chocolates, the app can tell you how much it costs and what other people think of it – pretty clever huh?

Flow Powered is available for Android via Google Play and iOS 4.2 and more recent iDevices through iTunes.

It seems like there is an app for almost everything these days, be it an app to help you apply make-up, order flowers or tell you the price of a video game. There’s an app for that!

Smartphones really are smart.

What did you Wiki search for in 2012?

6 Replies Christopher Roberts

Did you use Wikipedia in 2012? Probably a silly question, as according to Alexa, 12.80% of all web users yesterday visited the online encyclopaedia, as part of their online day. The 3 month average reach of Wikipedia.org is 12.575%, so yesterday’s figure was no anomaly.

I usually visit Wikipedia multiple times a week.

Wikipedia logoThe fact that Wikipedia is open source is good, as it enables it to use the help of millions of people around the world to build its massive online encyclopaedia. Open source does however also leave it open to vandalism, as on most articles, nobody needs to verify your changes. Many Wikipedia articles are very accurate though, and they are getting better year on year.

In 2012, what was it you Wikied? A few days ago, Wikipedia released a list of the most popular pages visited on its site, segmented by country. The statistics make interesting reading, if you get some time.

With 32,647,942 views in 2012, Facebook topped Wikipedia’s list for the most visited English page. Wiki came in second with 29,613,759 views. Deaths in 2012, One Direction, The Avengers (2012 film), Fifty Shades of Grey and the 2012 phenomenon all had over 20 million views. The Dark Knight Rises, Google and The Hunger Games (all with 18+ million views) made up the rest of the English top 10 list.

For all of the top 10, I think you can understand why they were such popular searches. As Facebook becomes evermore a global brand, more and more people want to know what it is, and those using it, want to know more about it. A logical big winner.

With Wikipedia the 6th most visited site on the net, searching for what Wiki means, is probably not unexpected. One Direction, the 2012 phenomenon, The Hunger Games, Fifty Shades of Grey, The Dark Knight Rises and The Avengers were all popular 2012 trends online and off, hence their Wikipedia fame. Like Facebook, with growing web usage, and Google’s top spot on the web, that page you would naturally expect top have a big viewing.

The list isn’t limited to 10 pages though, Wikipedia have released the top 100 pages for many of the languages the site is published in.

Stephen Hawking - Photo from WikipediaThe 100th most visited English page is Stephen Hawking, the page about the British scientist, which had just over 7 million views in 2012.

Theoretical physicist, cosmologist, author, lecturer, defier of motor neurone disease and now 100th most visited English Wikipedia page 2012, what a career the 70 year old (71 tomorrow) has had!

With an extra 53,106 views, Albert Einstein just beat Hawking, claiming 98th place. That said, neither of the scientists had anything on Psy, who saw the page for Gangnam Style hit the 21st spot, with over 13 million views!

Many of the top 100 spots were claimed by websites (e.g. Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia, Google etc.), countries (United States, United Kingdom, India, Australia etc.) and trends (Katy Perry, 2012 Summer Olympics, Skyfall, Downton Abbey etc.).


The stats for other languages are also interesting to look at. Facebook appeared in most of the lists, topping the Spanish list, claiming 10th place in the German list, 3rd in the French and Turkish, 4th in the Portuguese etc. Wiki was also very popular, appearing in the top 10 list for eight languages, as was Google, appearing in three languages.

What did you Wiki search for in 2012? Can you even remember? I know I searched far too many pages to recall them all, but looking down the English list, I recall visiting most of the top 100.

Do the amazing figures behind this list (Facebook getting 30+ million on its English page alone) worry you sightly? Do we trust Wikipedia, which is potentially a very unreliable site too much?

Kill the Password

11 Replies Jonny Hankins

This week I would like to draw readers’ attention to an article that appeared in Wired at the end of last year. Written by Mat Honan and entitled Kill the Password: Why a String of Characters Can’t Protect Us Anymore, it makes for really interesting and alarming reading.

The author starts by explaining that he lost all of his digital life last year as his accounts were hacked, an event that lead him into investigating online security and how it is breached.

What he discovered is not for the faint hearted. The linking together of different accounts using an email as username means that any seriously interested party with a little time on their hands and very little money can relatively easily get into a single account, and from there into the others.

His conclusion is that the culture of using passwords for security is outdated, a thing of the past and that anyone who tells you otherwise is either deluded or trying to convince you of something that is not true.

The worst password choices

Worst passwords of 2012

The availability of information is a problem because of the personal question access to resetting your password. Mother’s maiden name, place born etc. are easy things to find out about anybody through ancestry sites or other documents. Once you have somebody’s email address, you try to reset the password using the personal questions through the provider’s website. The answers might be on Facebook, or on their blog, or maybe intuitive, but they are out there.

Then to the customer services rep that you speak to by phone. They are people and can be misled. The article contains a transcription of a conversation between a hacker and one of these people. As the user needs to be able to reset the password they are offered a series of questions that get easier and easier to guess. Names of best friends is possible using Facebook or other social network publications, but if not try favourite food or others, but the example given is name of one of the files in the account. Try Google, Amazon, Personal, one will be right.

So the problem is that the system needs to be flexible and easy enough to use, so we must be able to easily change our passwords, but this makes security impossible.

How can this problem be addressed? Here the trade off is privacy. If the company knows you, through your search histories, places you have been, where you work and what you like to do they might better be able to tell if the password reset-er is you, but you lose any privacy you think you might have.

Voice recognition can be tricked using recordings, biometrics and fingerprints too. Once a system uses these things that cannot be changed or reset the problem is magnified. If I have a fingerprint lifted from a screen I can use it to get anywhere and new fingers are hard to come by these days, so what do you use next?

The article poses these problems from the point of view of somebody who has been hacked, but the author also looks at who these hackers are and even meets a couple. It is big business in certain circles, particularly in the Russian speaking world where organized crime has a large stake and makes a lot of money through stealing identities and all that follows. In other circles they are just “kids” having some fun wreaking havoc.

There are a few simple strategies outlined in this (not short) article that are worth following but none are foolproof, and that is a lesson we could all learn from. Just a word of warning, it contains some harsh language.

On a lighter note happy new year to everyone, and my mum’s maiden name was Windsor (no relation to either Barbara or Elizabeth).