1. I run Double Killer to find any duplicate files.
2. I run Space Monger to get a graphical impression of what is filling up my harddrive. And then I delete all the stuff I don’t need any more.

In the proces I often free 30%-50% of the harddrive…..

Joost is the new project frem The Skype guys and the talk of town right now. This time they provide all-legal free TV. The experience where mostly impressive. It takes a few seconds to understand the logic behind the program. On my 4 mbit connection playback was smooth and the quality was great but they say it should work on a 1 Mbit connection.

The only flaws I’ve found so far is that it is not open to all, and that the content they provide is a bit limited, even though I’ve spent hours enjoying Indie-films, World-Poker Tour and National Geographic documentaries.

It seems that they are inspired by Google in their approach to PR. As Google did with Gmail you need to be invited by another user in order to gain access (If anyone wants an invite make a comment, and I’ll send you one if I, at some point get more invites than I can use). To me this seems like a great way to make a hype.

As with Skype the grand idea is to base it all on peer-to-peer, the concept behind most file-sharing applications. The advantage of the concept is that all users serve each instead of all being served by a central server.

In a matter of hours a guide on how to get pass the block was published. This guide claims that the block is a simple dns-block, meaning that access is only prevented if the users use Tele2’s own dns server. With this knowledge the average user should be able to get passed the block in five minutes.

What really bothers me, is that they use such an extreme means for such a complicated case. The whole allofmp3.com discussion is a complicated matter which lately has gotten political. These extreme means should only be used in extreme cases. Another point is that these extreme means lose their value when used in cases such as these, more people will know how to avoid getting blocked.

Last but not least – as the case with China shows – it is extremely hard to control the internet. It will be very hard for the danish Internet providers to block people using proxy servers, tor and so on. In my mind it is just a waste of time.

I like owning things, and I distrust things that are free. That is why I thought Googles new online spreadsheet and word processing applications called Google docs was a bad idea. However, I decided to try it out after listening to the podcast Gillmor Gang.

First impression – there is something missing

The first thing I noticed about Google Docs, is what it is lacking compared to a standard office suite. It had the basic stuff, but a lot of the more advanced functions i missing.

Second Impression – I can’t live without it

After using it a couple of days, I realize that I’ve grown quit addicted to a couple of function.

The collaboration possibilities are absolutely amazing. Within a few clicks you can invite someone to view or collaborate on the document. It is a lot easier than saving it, emailing it and waiting for the response. It is actually possible to be two (or more) persons working on the same document at the same time, or several persons can share a document.
I think this function actually makes it possible to compete word since you don’t have to export it out, you can just invite people in, all they need is a computer with internet connection.
It works on almost all platforms. I often use several different PCs during the day, running XP or Linux. When doing that it is just a thrill to have a system running on all platforms (without installation).

The third thing which has gotten me hooked is the document handling. It is very handy that they are all in the system – No matter from where I connect. I don’t have to waste my time exporting things and saving it on different media and transferring it. Another
advantage is, that if the laptop i stolen, no documents is on it.

And the winner is…

All in all I’m a lot more fund of Google Docs now than before I used it. Most of the time I don’t miss the advanced functions – because I was not going to use them for the document. And I have become really fund of the new functions Google docs has. But a lot of it comes down how much one trusts the service provider – Google.
Comparison

Advantages of Google’s service:

• Free – as in beer
• Platform independent: Requires a browser and a connection
• Avoid losing your documents with the laptop
• No wasting time moving documents
• Amazing collaboration possibilities

Advantages of regular Office:

• Once you own it – you own it!
• More advanced in most area than Google Docs
• Keep your documents safe by not saving them online
• The default document format

A few days ago danish newspaper Politiken reported of an 11 year girl named Marlene, who has been contacted by the heirs of Marlene Dietrich.

According to the newspaper, the heir’s of the German actress claim, that they have the rights to the name Marlene. They are demanding that she hand over her domain www.marlene.eu and pay 50,000$ to compensate for the loss that she has inflicted on their business.

The girl and her family has nothing to fear according to a lawyer specialized in domains. The lawyer, Mikkel Gudsoe, tells the newspaper that you are allowed to use your own name, as long as it is not done in order to create confusion.

From my point of view, the logic must, that the girls “stealing” the traffic intended for the official Marlene Dietrich web site. That logic has a flaw, that the .eu domains are very new, and not getting a lot of traffic. This is indicated by the sponsored counter on the girls web site, according to this she did not have any visitors at all last week until saturday when the story was picked up by the newspaper.
It seems to me that the heirs, or their lawyers, are trying to avoid having to pay for the domain by scaring of the girl and her family.

The main problem is, that most data on the harddrive is in unencrypted form – making it possible for anyone with physical access to the drive to read the data of the drive.
How to protect the sensitive data

There are some different ways to keep your sensitive data safe

1)Keep the data completely of the hard drive.

Use the laptop as terminal. Boot from a live-cdrom or the image of one. But don’t keep the data of the hard drive. Access the data via an encrypted network connection like ssh or vpn. The advantage is that if the file data is only stored in the ram it should be completely of once the laptop is restarted.
One efficient way to this is to use remote access protocols (VNC, Windows Terminal Service…etc), in this case the data will never be on the local laptop since everything will be going on on the server.

2)Keep the data on the hard drive but encrypted
Encrypt a partition: an encrypted drive can be an efficient protection. Just be carefull that backups or other copies of the data are not saved outside the encrypted partion.

You can use a encrypted data partition, along an unencrypted system partition for

Truecrypt is efficient for this. Read an overview here or a howto in encrypting a drive here.

Encrypt the data file by file:Possible, and maybe a solution if it is very few files which is only accessed rarely. This can be done by GnuPG or similar.

Conclusion

As a ordinary home user, with mostly none-sensible data I find an encrypted partition to be the the obvios choice, since it requires no server and use free software (truecrypt) it is very cheap. The data can still be compromised, but it is difficult and requires time and resources.

UPDATE

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A great article about how easy it is to break in to a mac, if you have physical access.

When Apple Tuesday announced the New Ipod models, the biggest surprise to me was that Apple will be selling Games through the Itunes Music Store. The games include classics like Tetris, Pac-Man and Texas-hold-em.

Most Geeks know that it has been possible to play games on the Ipod for some time. All that is needed is an alternative firmware like Linux or Rockbox, and then it is possible to play Doom or use the Gameboy emulator to play Gameboy classics.

When I help family and friends with IT problems remote access to their desktop has been extremely useful. Control of the desktop speeds up the process of detecting the problem and finding a solution compared to the situation when I rely on phone descriptions. The current solutions I know of have different weaknesses. Like the price, that some are Windows only, that some are insecure or that it is difficult to establish a connection when people use nat-routers to share an Internet connection.

Cspace features

The features of c-space is that it provides you with a decentralised encrypted instant messaging service. Which should provide a high level of security. The second feature is the possibility to transfer files between, and the main feature is the possibility to remotely control the desktop.

Using cspace

Even though cspace is beta software, it seems to be pretty functional. The documentation however is scarce. It is however pretty simple to set it up, I however had a bit of trouble in making it work with the firewalls on the two test systems (norton and zonelabs). But that seems to be something which should be solvable. It however established a connection over the Internet and through two nat-routers without any problems, and with the firewalls turned of, it was also established a remote access connection.

All in all, a promising software which I will be trying out some more later.