Mobile

You are unique… In so many ways… The accounting systems on which modern society depends are surveillance systems when viewed with another lens. All administrative, financial, logistics, public heath, and intelligence systems rely on the ability to track people, objects, and data. Efficiency and effectiveness in tracking have been greatly aided by improvements in data analysis, computational capabilities, and greater aggregations of data. Advances in social network analysis, traffic analysis, fingerprinting, profiling, de-anonymization/re-identification, and behavioral modeling techniques have all contributed to better tracking capabilities....

Smartphone Network Connection Monitoring Tools for monitoring and modifying connections between web browsers and web servers are essential for debugging, testing, optimizing performance, and assessing vulnerabilities of web-based applications and native applications. Developers, security professionals, and anyone with an interest in gaining insight into the lower levels of web traffic commonly use these tools. There are many mature options for monitoring connections from desktop machines. Unfortunately, there are fewer tools to monitor connections on smartphones and these tools often require more complex configurations, as the monitoring software must run on a separate device....

SSL De Facto for Securing Connections SSL, short for Secure Socket Layer, is a cryptographic protocol for securing network traffic that is the de facto mechanism for securing transactions on the web and many other protocols including email (SMTP/IMAP/POP), IM (Jabber/XMPP), VoIP (SIP), and SSL-based VPNs. The topic of SSL certificates is a bit arcane, but the much of security of our everyday online purchases depends on SSL. Yet, fewer services use SSL than one might hope....

Pinboard is a bookmarking service that allows you to easily save, tag, annotate, share, and archive bookmarks independent of your browser. Pinboard describes itself as “antisocial bookmarking,” which highlights its capabilities as a private and personal archiving tool compared to the social features offered by Yahoo’s Delicious service. I find Pinboard a simple, fast, and reliable way for me to save bookmarks and archive web pages for future reference. I have been happily using the service for nearly five months (Update a year) and recommend it highly....

I take a lot of screenshots when I research products, both on the desktop and on the iPhone, so having some way to automate organizing my collection is important. The problem is that screenshots images taken with the iPhone have no EXIF metadata. This means there is no straightforward way to produce a list of all your screenshots. After a little bit of experimentation, I found a workable but not ideal solution....

Instapaper, Dropbox, GoodReader, and Simplenote are my favorite applications for reading, writing, and sharing documents on the iPhone and the iPad. I have used each application for more than six months and I highly recommend all of them. Instapaper The Instapaper application makes it simple and pleasant to read lengthy articles on your mobile device. Instapaper is optimized for the type of articles where you find yourself starting in your browser and thinking, “I’d rather read this later”....

The Apple iPad does an excellent job of displaying most web sites. However, there are a few obstacles you may want to avoid. There are also a few customizations that will make your site look even better on the iPad. I will summarize the most important issues you should start to plan for and the differences between the iPad browser, the iPhone browser, and desktop browsers. As an added benefit, most improvements made for the iPad will also benefit users with an iPhone or an iPod Touch....

Recent versions of desktop Web browsers and email clients feature phishing and malware protection in addition to improved security notifications and indicators. Unfortunately, many of these improvements have not reached their mobile device counterparts. While the patterns of use and the threat model for Web browsing and email on mobile devices differ from desktop applications, as smartphones become more capable they present an increasingly attractive target. Institutions and services that wish to protect their mobile user base should seriously consider server-based filtering for both email and Web content on mobile devices....

The web-based interfaces offered by the shipping services allow you to schedule shipments, manage billing, store addresses, and track packages online. Some third-party services offer simplified interfaces and allow you to track shipments from multiple shipping carriers at once. Still, the process of entering multiple tracking numbers into multiple services can be cumbersome. I prefer the email-based input method used by the TrackMyShipments service. TrackMyShipments is an email-based online package tracking service I used for more than year and half to as a streamlined method to track packages....

For the Internet connected population, the problems of access to information have long shifted from limited availability of information to problems of narrowing down the flood of relevant information to a manageable amount. Filters have become increasingly sophisticated, but timely, relevant, and unobtrusive display notifications for the information we want are still a work in progress. This article explores recent developments in notifications for desktop clients, mobile phones, and Web applications....