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TechSpot

With its little brother having already spilled its guts, it was always going to be interesting to see how the new 9-inch Fire compared. Turns out it owes an awful lot to Samsung. More »

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Gizmodo

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TechSpot

And Apple’s apology to Samsung as order by the UK court just got even messier. After posting an apology they had to rewrite, and then pushing the rewritten one down the page with Javascript, a UK court has ordered Apple to pay Samsung’s legal frees in full to even things out. More »

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Gizmodo

The routers we use in our home networks are sometimes referred to as “residential gateways” and are frequently used to connect to a broadband service over cable or DSL. These routers may also include an internal cable or DSL modem. Residential gateways typically provide firewall functionality through network address translation (NAT) and port address translation. Instead of directly presenting the IP addresses of local computers to the remote network, such a residential gateway makes multiple local computers appear to be a single computer. In terms of home network security, your router is the mask you wear, effectively hiding your real identity from the internet.

This article provides a very simplistic definition of a router. The router performs an amazing amount of work behind the scenes, and is the device that is most responsible for allowing the Internet to work at all.

The term “firewall” originally referred to a physical barricade against the potential spread of fire. In home computing terms, a firewall is a component of a computer or network that acts as a barrier between your home network or PC and the Internet. The firewall blocks unauthorized access while allowing authorized access to your systems. Firewalls can be hardware devices or based in software, both serving the same function.

Firewalls work by inspecting all traffic, both inbound and outbound, and deciding whether the traffic is denied or allowed passage based on a set of pre-established rules or policies. These rules and policies can work in one or more of several methods:

NAT – Network Address Translation
NAT is a method of connecting multiple computers to the Internet (or any other network) using one IP address. NAT allows one IP address, which is shown to the outside world, to refer to many IP addresses internally; one on each PC. NAT automatically provides firewall-style protection without any special set-up because it only allows connections that are originated on the inside network.

Packet Filter
Packet filtering blocks traffic based on a specific Web address (IP address) or type of application (e-mail, ftp, Web, etc.) .

SPI – Stateful Packet Inspection
SPI tracks the data to ensure that the inbound data were requested by the user.

Refer to your router’s user manual for instructions on how to set up your firewall. There are many online resources that discuss some of the more complex issues with firewalls, but for most home network users, the default settings will provide a very high level of security.

Windows comes with a built in software firewall that you can turn off if using a hardware firewall. Microsoft, however, recommends that you leave it on to provide protection if one of the PCs on your home network should become infected and start sending out malicious data.

• Information on the Windows firewall can be found here.

Phishing is the act of illegally attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames and passwords by posing as an otherwise trustworthy entity through email or other electronic communication. I can’t verify for certain where the term came from, but there seems to be a consensus that it is derived from “Password Fishing”. Seems appropriate.

A Phishing attempt usually begins with an email that mentions some dire emergency that you must take care of. Recent examples are:

• Your PayPal account may be closed if you don’t visit the hyperlink that is provided…
• Your bank account may have been compromised and you need to enter some personal information for verification…

Chase Bank has some good examples of what some of these emails can look like. Click here to check them out.

There are many more, but in most cases there is a hyperlink that will take you to an official looking website that is really a fake site designed to resemble the site you think you are on. The Phishing scheme is to get you to enter information that they want into an online form.

You need to use the same caution online as you do in the physical world. Be aware of your surroundings, don’t talk to (or trust) strangers, and keep a low profile.

Be suspicious of any online communication that tells you that something big (good or bad) will happen if you don’t click on the supplied link and take care of it. If you’re not sure, instead of using the link that is provided, go to the site using its official address and attempt to ascertain if there is really a problem. Many times, the institution will have information about the scam on their home page.

• Here are a couple more good articles on Phishing

Slave may be too strong a word, but we may be so reliant on our digital devices that our basic behaviors has been permanently changed. We text, we tweet, we chat incessantly on our cellphones in grocery store check-out lines, our kids use calculators for basic math, we eschew libraries for Google, and finally, when was the last time you “looked that up in your Funk and Wagnalls?”

The desire to perform tasks faster, better and more efficiently is pretty basic, and has resulted in some pretty amazing technologies. It’s all good, right?

Technology enables us to be more productive and it can help us focus our talents. But it also allows us to become detached from the world around us – the world where real things live.

Consider the cellphone and its impact on our lives, it goes with you everywhere and you would feel naked without it. This little guy allows you to be a press of a button away from everywhere that you’re not. I love my cellphone, but I don’t want it to rule my life, so I rely on two little bits of technology: Caller ID and Voice Messaging.

Technology to fight technology. Maybe I’m still a slave.

/doc

Some of its features are on display in a recently released video that show its usefulness as an electronic organizer. I have to say that it has a very Apple look to it. The two displays appear as book pages with the spine of the book acting as sort of a clipboard. If this is its primary purpose, I can’t say how I would put it to use.  As a PC, even with advances in handwriting recognition technology, I’m a much faster typist, and would feel burdened without a tactile keyboard.

The code name for this new product is Courier, and understand that it is still in development so nothing is certain, but it still looks extremely appetizing. Further discussion and the just released video clip can be seen at gizmodo.com and crunchgear.com.

/doc