Nokia 770 + Verizon = Nice

I recently purchased the Nokia 770 and had been using it at home. Since it support 802.11G, it was been quite handy on my wireless network. Thats all well and good, but I want to use this thing everywhere, so I did some research and checked out Verizon. Turns out we have pretty good BroadbandAccess coverage, which is one of their high-speed networks. A number of their phones support Bluetooth, as does the 770. one phone that looked interesting was the enV, so I tried it out and I was impressed. Not by the phone really, as I will probably exchange it since I don't text and have no need for the keyboard due to the 770.

The 770 and enV talked Bluetooth without any trouble and in no time I was browsing the internet on my 770. The speed was good as I was playing streaming media with no issues. The nice thing about the Bluetooth connection is I just have to have the phone near me and it works. One drawback is I cannot receive calls at the same time, but they can leave a voicemail.

A word of warning, be careful about which plan you get as you go through a lot of data quickly. I was up to 20meg transfered within a day or 2. They have an Unlimited Data plan that allows tethering (i.e. laptop or the 770) but it is upward of $50+ a month. Anything less and you may get a surprise bill. Overall I am very pleased with how it is working.

The Quest for Mobile Media - Part 2

I recently had a chance to use a new service from Verizon called Mobile TV. They currently offer two phones that can use this service, by Samsung and LG. I was able to use LG's VX9400. Basically, Verizon's Mobile TV delivers TV channels to your cell phone. At the time I used it, there were 8 channels available, including CBS, Comedy Central, ESPN, NBC, Fox and Nickelodeon. These are not the same channels you will see if you go to your house TV, they are mobile versions.

Mobile versions? Yuck I thought at first. They are full fledged channels, commercials and everything. There is a lot of repeat programming during the day, but there still is a pretty good variety. This isn't a VOD clip service either, they are full shows. The most surprising part of the service was the quality. The TV shows looked amazing on the LG. The images were bright and shown at 30fps. There is no buffering either, it was very smooth.

Coverage seemed very good too, as we are about 30 minutes from the closest big city. Price was reasonable as well. New channels should be added as time goes on, so maybe we will see a movie channel. According to the literature, live events should also be possible. Overall I am very impressed with the service. Most Verizon stores should have units out on display. For more information about the LG phone, check the link below.

InfoSec Foundation: Networking

In my first post, The Beginning, I wrote about the first book that really got me interested in Information Security. This post and others will hopefully give you some idea of what you can/should learn to help you in that field.

Information Security is a broad field with many specialty areas. Some subjects are common amongst most of them. Networking (architectures, protocols...) is one very important topic. For the sake of the bytes, I will narrow it to 2 reasons: Remote Attacks and Network Defense.

There are generally two types of attacks against a computer system, local and remote. Remote attacks come from other computers by way of networks. To truly understand the attack and ways to defend against them, you need to know how it move around. Some attacks are in the network protocols themselves (i.e. Smurf Attack) while other attack applications and use the network just for transport.

There are numerous protocols and you should be familiar with as many impossible. The most important would be IP,TCP,UDP,ICMP. Now the ones I listed are at different layers, but they are the most common. The best way to learn about these is to grab a book (see end of post for some recommendations) and using tcpdump and Wireshark to look at actual network traffic.

In the world of corporate information security, they are a big believer in separation of duties. So while we may manage the Intrusion Detection System's and firewalls, the network and all the routers belong to the Networking department. It is important that we be able to communicate effectively and knowledgeably with the networking guys. If you do not understand the basics of the networking, it will be tough to work with them.

More to come in the InfoSec Foundation series...

Evolution of MMORPG's

The folks at Broken Toys posted a funny look at the development of MMORPG's (Massivly Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games) like WoW or EQ. It is meant to be funny, but there is a lot of truth in it also. As someone who used to build and run MUSH's (aka MUD, text based), it reminds me of those times. There are several different kinds of players and pleasing them all is very difficult, as they often have conflicting styles. The type of player I found most difficult was the one that played the system, not the game. They would tend to play based on the best formula and try to take advantage of the system any way they can. In my opinion, this goes completely against the RPG concept, as you are supposed to envision yourself in the game world. You can find the article at http://brokentoys.org/2007/08/06/reroll-game/

The Quest for Mobile Media - Part 1

What do I mean by Mobile Media? In a nutshell I want to be able to access my movies, music, docs and the internet from anywhere. It shouldn't matter whether I am in my house, the backyard, the car or a hotel. I want it all and I want it conveniently.

This is a quest I have been working on for a few years now, on and off. In this series of posts I hope to document my journey in the hopes others like me will be helped.

My first exposure to the possibilities of mobile media was a few years ago with Tivo, MythTV and Windows Media Center. Tivo doesn't exactly fit in the same category, but they did have to capability to play shows on computers over the network.

At this point in time, I started to see the potential have storing movies centrally and playing them on any TV in the house. My main problem with Tivo/MythTV/MCE was the client interface. It was unacceptable to have a computer in each room. There was talk about MCE offering extenders and MythTV being able to be installed on small STB-like computers, but that really isn't what I had in mind.

So after fiddling with the above technologies, I was still without a solution. I forget how, but I stumbled upon GB-PVR. GB-PVR is a Windows/.NET based PVR (i.e. Tivo) application with a wide variety of support for TV cards. One thing that really stood out was that it supported the Media MVP.

The Media MVP is a small STB with a remote control. It has a built in 100Mbit Ethernet port and the newer versions even have built in 802.11G access. This was definitely something I could see putting in every room. GB-PVR would push the User interface out to each device, then stream the selected media, including live tv. When I was using this, they did not have the wireless MVP, so I used a wired version and a wireless bridge. The quality was not bad at all. The MediaMVP does not support High Definition as far as I know. GB-PVR does support it, so you would be able to watch it if your using it as a traditional PVR.

This concludes part 1, in the next part we will talk some more about GB-PVR and where that led to.

A visit to Pixar

Peter Hirschberg is a fellow classic arcade game enthusiast who worked on the arcade themed movie "Chasing Ghosts". As a result, he was invited to Pixar for a visit. Check out his day at Pixar here.

Nokia 770 Internet Tablet

I recently purchased a Nokia 770 Internet Tablet. This is a handy device but can be a little confusing. It is not technically a phone. That means, you can not use it as a replacement for your current phone, as it does not talk to cellphone networks (i.e. Sprint, Verizon). It does have Bluetooth capabilities and 802.11G support for wireless networks. These capabilities allow you to leverage you cellphone and home networks to give the 770 internet access. In the case of cellphones, this would be known as tethering. You should make sure your calling plan supports unlimited data and tethering, otherwise you may receive a nasty bill.

The 770's screen is ~4.7 inches and supports a resolution of 800x480. I was pretty impressed with the quality and brightness of the screen. It is also a touch pad, which works nicely with the included stylus.

The operating system is based off of Linux, so no windows apps here. If you need a windows environment, there is a solution. There is a RDesktop port available at this link. RDesktop will allow you to connect to your windows system and have a desktop on the 770. It works well, although there can be some window sizing issues. VNC is an alternative to RDesktop and there is a client for that too.

There is a lot to talk about with the 770, so I will continue soon.

The 770 is not the latest version from Nokia, that would be the N800. That means the 770's can be had for a good price. You can read reviews and get more info from the Amazon link below, but you can probably find a better price elsewhere.

The Beginning

Welcome to the beginning of Passing it Along. The main purpose of this blog is to pass on information that I have learned that may save other people time. I hope to cover everything from movies to computer security.

My first post will deal with Computer Security (aka Information Security, hacking etc). Often times I am asked how to get into the field. It is tough to break into the field, but not impossible. Since this post is entitled 'The Beginning', I may as well start there. My first venture into the field was in college. I started reading a book called Information Warfare. Now, this book is dated, but it really got me interested in Information Security. This book is not very technical, so it is a good beginning.



Feedback is welcome. So are computer security questions and such, I can hopefully help some.