I received a more interesting than usual press release today which claimed that 45% of women and 10% of men were willing to give their password out for a bar of chocolate, purportedly for market research. I’m not going to lie, a couple of people (both family members) know my password but I purposely don’t tell my friends, but how many people know your password?

Quite scarily, I googled my password once (probably not wise) and I was surprised to see it was actually on one database of passwords for bruteforcers. I have several passwords and changing my passwords on all sites I use is too mammoth a task but if I truly were security conscious, I should probably change it or better yet have more than 3 passwords!

So, some tips for keeping passwords safe:

1. Don’t tell anyone, obviously. Not your friends, family or even IT department
2. Have different home and work passwords
3. Use lots of passwords and a password manager, which has to be encrypted naturally. If using a password manager, I’d suggest keeping it on an internal desktop hard disk as USB pens can easily be lost! You could always use a private key, stored on another device, to encrypt/decrypt the passwords.

iPlayer, the BBC online ‘catch-up’ service, is a remarkable success because it seems to be used by a wide range of people and not just ‘nerds’ as I suspected. Whilst it isn’t perfect, still not permitting Mac or Windows downloads for example, I think for the typical user it is completely fit for purpose.

The iPlayer website is extremely simple to use (I haven’t used the software since the beta due to my conversion to OS X). You simply search to find the show you’re after or browse through all of last week’s television to have it play back to you through a Flash video player. I expected the BBC, like most traditional media organisation, to stream things through WMV or, in true Beeb-fashion, a Real file. Utilising Flash, an almost universally accessible media, was a fantastic decision because it is much more efficient and less intimidating!

iPlayer is so popular, ISPs are claiming it is straining their bandwidth but how have the BBC deployed it so well?

Firstly, they started with a small beta which builds hype and interest in iPlayer amongst nerds and the traditional media. As the beta ended and iPlayer became public, the BBC ran adverts and included ‘view this on iPlayer’ on the credits of television shows. Even though this wasn’t too intimidating or ‘in your face’, it definitely made an impact! The BBC being the BBC also attracted the interest of newspapers who also covered iPlayer and stories such as the ISP bandwidth and iPlayer being hacked raise interest!

So hats off to the BBC for making iPlayer, at least their streaming service, so fantastic. Heck, even a paper newspaper admits it’s a success!

Tags: iplayer, bbc

If you, like me, often find yourself with a few dollars in your PayPal you may consider donating them to charity. There are so many good causes to support but a few may touch the heart of a nerd.

1. The Electronic Frontier Foundation are an organisation who aim to protect people’s civil liberties online. They’re against censorship, the DMCA, DRM, RFID and attempts to stop file-sharing. Whilst you may not agree with all of these, you will agree with some. The EFF mobilise nerds to lobby against such legislation as well as providing, or funding, legal defence in court. Donate here.
2. Wikimedia provide sites such as Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons and Wiktionary which are invaluable resources. However, there is a cost on keeping and sharing all that data (whether it be open-source sound, film or music) and by donating you’re aiding this non-profit organisation in staying online and educating humanity. 57% of donations (which is $2,573,000) will go to technology, such as bandwidth, hardware and paying technicians, and the rest will be used for such things as the legal protection of Wikipedia as well as causes such as providing text books, based on Wikipedia content, to poor Argentinean school pupils. Donate here.
3. OpenOffice is a free office suite which Microsoft would charge you hundreds for. They use donations to hire independent developers and promote themselves. Donate here.
4. Have an old PC? Why not donate it to Computer Aid International who will give them to schools, hospitals or charities?
5. Ubuntu, the Linux distro, use donations to hire developers, promote Ubuntu and provide bounties. Well worth support a Windows competitor! Donate here.

But there are hundreds of other causes. You could always click the ‘donate’ button on that blog or software you like!

Tags: donate, charity

I was reading Mapping the Web today and his article about ‘Wikipedia and Ownership‘ and I began to think about the importance of attribution and copyright to Web 2.0.

I am not a massive fan of closed ‘all rights reserved’ copyright but I respect open copyrights and the principle of attribution. Whenever I can, I attempt to use images which are under a Creative Commons copyright because these images are often high quality and it gives me an opportunity to respect the copyright as well as promoting the owner.

But how important is copyright to Web 2.0? When Joe User goes and changes his MySpace layout to one of many pre-coded templates, does he consider copyright for one second? I wonder how many MySpace users acknowledge the creator, and quite possibly owner, of their template or whether they somehow assume the template becomes theirs.

Copyright has landed some start-ups in bother. The problem with giving users control over your site is that they can do whatever they want to it. How many copyrighted clips are on YouTube? Whilst I’m sure some users are aware users are breaking the law, I’m sure many do not. Interestingly, copyright violations are not as strife on Wikipedia as you may expect; the site self-polices, because many users respect copyright and want to keep it an open resource but I doubt many users report copyrighted videos on YouTube because they appreciate the people uploading them in the first place!

The thing is, most people still know far too little about copyright and how to avoid infringing it. Most people will do a Google image search and use the best image they see for whatever they need; how many will use Creative Commons Search to find an image? Most people will download music illegally; how many will use GarageBand?

The typical user needs to be educated about copyright and then, perhaps, they will use open copyrights which will only encourage more people to provide open content.

Tags: copyright, open content, open source