Armed only with an iPad I ventured onto a client’s site feeling slightly naked without my constant companion (my laptop). My laptop was at home, wired into it’s life support system (my home network). The home router had been told to make certain facilities available on the Internet and the iPad knew were to access these facilities.

Basic facilities such as note taking where dealt with using Evernote (great product, get it now!), all of these notes will be available on the iPad, my iPhone, and my laptop once I get home. So far, so good.

Web access, no problem. Safari on the iPad is perfectly fine.

Need to take a photo? Well, no actually. But if I had, no problem. Capture the snap on the iPhone and use Evernote to synch it onto the iPad and laptop (or transfer it into Dropbox, dealer’s choice).

E-mail – ah. The laptop automatically collects e-mail and removes it from the server. This works well normally, but presents a challenge now – the iPad client seldom sees it before the laptop removes it. I could simply reconfigure my system, but I don’t want to do that, it all works fine as it is, I do not want to mess with it.

Hurrah! iTeleport to the rescue. Use that to connect to the laptop, pick up my e-mail as if I were sitting at the laptop. Sweet.

Now, I was using iTeleport over a weak 3G connection (no WiFi for me), but it was surprisingly usable. Slow, certainly, but it worked and it was fine for reading e-mail. Using iTeleport for extended functions such as writing documents or drawing in tools like Omnigraffle will probably not satisfy over a weak link. But for simple stuff it rocks!

What iTeleport excels at it being able to load documents into Dropbox; a simple operation on the laptop. Dropbox synchronises with the iPad and bingo! The document is now available on the iPad. Mmm! Synchro-goodness.

Tomorrow, as they say, is another day (actually, everyone but the insane says that) and I am sure I will have more to report tomorrow because I intend to repeat the experiment.

Bottom line: when I don’t need a lot of heavy lifting processor power, the laptop stays at home from now on!

I do not actually need the laptop for today’s work (that is, I will not be doing any heavy lifting that might need the laptop’s power), so this is an ideal test of the iPad in my working day.

What I do have though is access to the laptop, which is running at home, through iTeleport (a very neat VNC system). So if I need access to something on the laptop, or specifically to an application that runs only on the laptop, I can log in to it and use the iPad as a remote terminal – nice.

My one concern was that I may not have access to a wireless network so would have to run through 3G (or, heaven forbid, Edge). My worries were only partially justified. I have just tried the laptop link and it is usable (just) through the 3G link. I would not want to do any major work through it, but for accessing information or minor updates it is ideal. It also means I can transfer a file from the laptop to Dropbox and subsequently access it on the iPad – brilliant.

So far, so good. I shall report on the final outcome later.

(oh, and I figured out how to scroll within text boxes on Safari on the iPad – simple really, use two fingers and drag on the text box :} )

There seems to be a trend to the small, positioning themselves between the iPad’s 9.5 inch display and the typical smartphone 3.5-4 inches. So what is the market? Why choose a particular screen size?

Having used the iPad for extended viewing I think it’s about as small as I would want to go with a device for reading/surfing for any length of time. In truth I would have preferred an A4 sized screen, sacrificing a little in portability for a better viewing experience. It’s a close call though as I can view the iPad’s screen for many hours without fatigue and it feels comfortable to hold in one hand (which a large A4 form might not). For viewing video I could comfortably go down to 3.5 inch screens, but much detail is lost at this size and watching a full length film (as against a few YouTube videos) is a less than compelling proposition.

Dell have claimed that their Mini 5 is, with a 5 inch screen, the largest size that will fit into a shirt pocket. Hmm. Somewhat questionable reasoning there, but okay I’ll run with it. First, I have very few pocketed shirts, but of course that’s not really the reason for Dell’s boast. What they really intend (I suspect) is that the device is small enough to be considered truly ‘pocketable’ (not something anyone would claim for the iPad).

Samsung’s effort, the Galaxy, runs to a 7 inch screen (slap bang centre between Apple’s 9 inches and Dell’s 5 inches — is anyone else snickering at the double entendre potential of that last statement?). This, to me, seems too small for comfort and too large to be pocketable. What were Samsung aiming for?

It will be interesting to see how the marketplace judges these devices. Will people prefer Dell’s ‘fits in a pocket’ approach (which begs the question, why not just use a smartphone rather than carry around an additional device – iPhone 4G anyone?), or will they go with more iPad sized offerings, or possibly something in between like the Galaxy?

There are many ways to examine your hard drive to identify where it’s all being used up. In my case I pretty much knew which directories where eating up all the space, but out of curiosity as much as anything else I tried a couple of disk analysers.

The first was OmniDiskSweeper, a free utility from the OmniGroup (the same people who make the spectacularly good OmniGraffle diagramming tool, and the ever-useful task management tool OmniFocus).

OmniDiskSweeper is simple and efficient. It scans your disk, reporting the total space assigned to each folder. Folder sizes are totalled so that it is relatively each to see which folders contain the most material.

The weakness of OmniDiskSweeper is that is it possible to miss large files that could be removed if they are buried in among other large files. The lack of a broad overview means these files can be overlooked.

This is not a weakness shared by the second disk analyser I used, the beautiful (and useful) DaisyDisk (free unrestricted demo with a nag screen, or $19.95). The reason for the apparently odd name of this tool becomes clear when you see the analysis display.

It looks vaguely flower like and I assume ‘Daisy’ was chosen for it alliterative quality.

DaisyDisk performs the same task as OmniDiskSweeper. It scans the selected drive, noting each files size and totalling each directory’s content. Where DaisyDisk wins out it in this flower-like display. It is a simple matter to see where file space is being used and spotting large files or directories among all the other clutter is simple, just look for the larger coloured segments. The colour coding provides easy identification of the sort of space (differentiating Library, User, Applications, and System files, among others). Hovering the mouse over one of the coloured segments provides specific details of actual size, path and for folders a breakdown of the largest constituent files and folders it contains.

Need a closer look at a specific folder? No problem, double click the relevant coloured segment and the display focusses on that folder. The makes examining deep folder structures with many smaller files much more comfortable.

Well worth a look if you want to figure out what is eating up your disk space.

The result of all this investigation is confirmation of my previous suspicions and so I have just archived three large folders containing media for the training course I produced last year (a grand total of 60GB of data). Add to this the removal of temporary render files used by Final Cut and my previously 10GB or so of free space has expanded to a comparatively capacious 91.2GB.

Anyway, long story short. With the archive and cleanup complete it provides a bit of breathing space and let me get on with producing some more media projects I have in mind.

The next time I’m in an Apple store I’ll ask about the possibility of dropping in the 500GB clone drive. If they can do this under the support contract I’ll definitely take that option as it will mean less messing around archiving data (and inevitably restoring it the next time I need to work on the files).

So, there are fewer exploits for OS X, what’s all this vampire stuff? It is said that a vampire can only enter a private residence if invited in, and the same applies for the vast majority of OS X exploits. Almost all exploits on OS X require you (the user) to install them. You have to take a deliberate actions such as opening an e-mail attachment, running software containing malware (again, ‘patches’ claiming to circumvent licenses are a prime source of these), visiting suspect websites (links in e-mail are a prime source of links to iffy websites and should NEVER be clicked unless you know the sender – double check the real sender and reply address, never trust the display name – and recognise the actual link address – NEVER trust the link text).

Protecting your OS X machine is more about not inviting the vampire in than garlanding your environment with garlic:

1. I do not run ant-virus software (this is the equivalent of garlic, it may be effective but it stinks up the place and is only effective at close range, i.e. the vampire has already made it through the door). Anti-virus software is a massive overhead and, in most cases on OS X, provides a false sense of security and most of it has a history of creating as many problems as it solves. This is not to say I will never run anti-virus software in the future. When the threat outweighs the cost I’ll be first in line.
   I guess a case can be made that running anti-virus software helps out by catching viruses in files and attachments that might infect other OSes if we pass them on, so we would be good citizens by helping stop their spread. But this is like punishing yourself for someone else’s mistake. Having chosen a secure environment I should make it less secure and slower just so I can protect those who chose a less secure option in the first place? Where’s the sense in that?
2. I always use a firewall to block all incoming connections (except those I specifically allow for periods when I need them).
   1. Use Shields Up to check your system for open ports through which naughty people might attack.
   2. Make sure that you are not sharing any services unnecessarily. (Open System Preferences… → Sharing and make sure nothing is selected that you do not mean to be sharing, most especially things like Remote Login or Remote Management should be OFF for most people. I leave everything OFF by default and only turn on sharing when I actually need it, turning it off again as soon as I’m finished. I do this because I’m often roaming and using WiFi connections. Any time your WiFi is on you’re potentially vulnerable, so playing safe is sensible.
3. I use LittleSnitch to control all out-going traffic. This is a great little program. It’s irritating at first, but once you’ve used it for a while it is an invaluable tool in ensuring you’re aware of all the software that’s trying to connect from your machine to the outside world.
4. Leave Bluetooth and WiFi off unless actually using them. (Saves the battery too if your not plugged in.)
5. Make sure any WiFi connection is encrypted and password protected. This is especially true when using an ad hoc computer-computer network — always set a password when creating an ad hoc network!
6. Keep software up to date.
   I always install updates for any application as soon as possible, but especially security updates for OS X. It is very, very rare that this policy causes more trouble than it’s worth.
7. Never open attached files in e-mail unless certain of the source.
8. Isolate suspected Spam in the mail tool’s junk/spam folder. If possible, only review sender and titles (do not open junk mail at all, even in a preview), move any messages that are accidentally junked back into the inbox and add the sender to my address book so it is no longer junked.
9. Do not allow previews of e-mail messages to display images unless you explicitly permit it. Alternatively, view all your messages in text only previews.
   This one is more of a privacy concern (although some image handling exploits have been known). Spammers commonly use embedded images (linked back to their site) to confirm ‘live’ e-mail addresses. as soon as you open the preview your e-mail system effectively announces it’s presence by visiting the spammers site to fetch the image. Turn off images in preview and selectively turn them on for addresses you know to be safe.
10. Do not click links in e-mail unless 100% certain of both the source of the e-mail and the link.
11. When receiving unsolicited e-mail about billing or account problems from an apparently legitimate source (especially your bank!), DO NOT click the provided link. Log in to your account on the supplier’s web site manually and check your account from there. If you cannot verify the account this way, use their support, billing, or sales contact on their website and ask if the e-mail is legitimate before following any link — caution is the better part of valour.

No system is perfect and mistakes inevitably get made, but using these common sense precautions I’ve survived online pretty well problem free since before the WWW started. Sooner or later I do not doubt I’ll have a problem, it would be unreasonable to expect to spend so much time online without a problem.

Being online a lot and expected to stay problem free is a little like running back and forth across a busy highway and expecting to avoid being hit. No matter how carefully you think you are checking the road on each run, sooner or later your attention will waver, or someone will approach in a stealth car, and you’ll get hit. The best we can do is be as careful as possible (or stop using the internet/running across the highway).

But while the Department is working to improve its debt recovery, its efforts are constrained by outdated systems and it has deferred plans to invest in them due to lack of funding. Better systems would help the Department improve tax recovery and reduce losses.

p. 3, “Summary” HM Revenue and Customs: Improving the Processing and Collection of Tax: Income Tax, Corporation Tax, Stamp Duty Land Tax and Tax Credits – Second Report of Session 2009–10

The argument is that existing IT systems are outdated and insufficiently connected so it is impossible for tax collectors to show all tax owed by individuals or companies in one consolidated report. This apparently makes collection of tax more difficult.

The solution? Spend more money updating the IT systems.

Regardless the government’s less than stellar record when it comes to managing large-scale IT projects or my own vested interest in increased IT spending (I work in IT), surely a better solution would be to simplify the tax system? Simplify the tax system and you save time and effort in calculating the tax owing. Simplify the tax system and you make it more transparent and consequently more difficult to manipulate. Simplify the tax system and you do not then need Deep Thought to figure out who owes what.

This now allows me to migrate from Thunderbird to the Apple Mail tool.

Why? Why Mark? Why are you moving from Thunderbird?

Well, Thunderbird is a good mail client. I may even go so far as to say it is an excellent e-mail client. However. Switching to the Apple Mail client will provide much more access to tools for information management on my Mac.

What ‘information management’? I hear you cry.

Well, the problems I have had while using Thunderbird are twofold:

1. Thunderbird does not support Applescript. This limits the access to e-mail held in Thunderbird from other applications.
2. I have become increasingly reliant on DevonThink Pro Office for gathering, filtering, sorting and generally munging information and the integration between DevonThink and Apple Mail is considerably easier to manager (because of the aforementioned AppleScript interface).

So get on with it already!

Ah, if only it were so simple grasshopper.

I have quite a legacy of information in Thunderbird. I also have a large collection of rules that filter and direct incoming e-mail in all manner of interesting ways. Ensuring that the information is correctly preserved and accessible is one reason for delay. Another reason for delay is the configuring of rules to categorise mail in the new setup.

Big friggin’ deal. Just import the e-mail into Apple Mail and set up the rules manually. Yes. Good idea. But. Rather misses the point.

In the new world order of e-mail handling I will have two means to store and process e-mail — Apple Mail and DevonThink — and each of these is good at doing one part of the job I have in mind.

Apple Mail is good for fetching, writing and replying to e-mail (let’s face it this is the minimum one would expect from an e-mail client). DevonThink kicks ass when it comes to sorting, categorising and searching through information (including e-mails).

In Thunderbird the rules are serving double duty; on the one hand helping to filter and direct incoming e-mail to make it manageable, while on the other hand also providing a filing structure to make it easier to find older e-mails.

In the new world order, Apple Mail’s rules are only needed to direct incoming e-mail to make it manageable to respond to. Once the e-mail is pushed into DevonThink the archiving, filtering, sorting and general munging will be taken over by an existing set of rules, to which a few more need to be added to reproduce some of the filing work currently done in Thunderbird.

So, you see, it may seem simple but until I have time to sit down and think this through I am loathed to start what will be quite a large job of migrating from one system to the other.

(In fact I will run both e-mail programs in parallel for a while to make sure I am happy with the Apple Mail/DevonThink setup before abandoning Thunderbird.)

This morning I booted up and logged in as normal. My machine is configured to start a whole host of helper applications and a few applications I always fire up in the morning, but this morning the machine booted, I logged in, but no applications started. No helpers, no main applications, nada.

A bit of investigation revealed that a file (~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginitems.plist) had been cleared during yesterday’s boot. Why? I have no idea, but it had.

Fortunately I run TimeMachine and the file was easily recovered from yesterday. This saved me from having to remember all the utilities that I start, so good save TimeMachine. Once restored my login behaved as it should and all was once again right with the world.

This all leaves the mystery of why yesterday’s login decided to clear the file, which is frustrating.

The idea that data is stored in a disparate infrastructure and processing power provided by commodity servers is hardly new, but to read the cloud computing lobby’s position you could be forgiven for thinking we were about to see something totally revolutionary.

What we are seeing of course, is the commercialisation of ideas which, until the last few years, have been maintained internally. Take any large organisation’s infrastructure in the last ten years and you have, to a large extent, the progenitor of cloud computing. Large, distributed storage facilities, large distributed server centres, and smaller local storage and processing facilities in the shape of desktop machines. Users hold most of their data on remote facilities, neither knowing nor caring about where or how they are physically stored.

There have been many attempts in the past to move from local PC computing to large commodity server processing. The irony being that early computing was based on dumb terminals and large central computing power. The cloud is slightly different, but only in that the provision of storage and service is not concentrated on one physical computer but rather spread about the internet, provided by potentially dozens of providers.

The shift to more browser based applications is no different to the shift from locally implemented drivers to operating systems. As Google are demonstrating, the shift to browser centric computing is an attempt to shift away from operating system dependence. The issue for consumers will be to protect the idea of open standards on browsers. Noticeably, even the mighty Microsoft are beginning to comply with standards in the latest incarnation of IE in order to position themselves in this emerging market.

Who benefits?

So, where does the market advantage come from for cloud computing? On the face of it the consumer will be the winner. With a crowded and competitive market of suppliers all using standards compliant protocols and browsers to deliver commodity services (no one should discount the bespoke market just yet) we can expect to get more bang for our buck in the next few years. The downside is trust.

Cloud computing in its purest form demands significant trust from users. Your data resides, not on your local machine, but ‘in the cloud’, which translates into ‘on someone else’s disks’. Google, Amazon, Microsoft, take your pick. Who do you trust with your information?

From the point of view of organisations supplying the cloud services the model turns you from a one time purchaser (when you buy your computer or software) into a revenue stream. Instead of buying software you buy access to it. Instead of buying a larger disk drive, you buy access to more on-line storage. The insidious thing about this model, from a consumer point of view, is that, like a hire purchase, seeing a few dollars each month leaving your account does not seem as painful as a large lump when you buy the computer and software but over the time you use the application you will almost certainly pay more.

It is inevitable that cloud services will be bundled in combinations that, like cable or satellite TV packages, will seem like value but in fact mean you pay for services you do not use.

Open Cloud?

Open source software is possible because many developers provide free time to developing it. You buy the hardware and they provide the software. With the cloud model open source benefits only the cloud suppliers. No longer can the consumer leverage free software into the cloud. Even if you find a cloud supplier willing to let you run an open source application on their infrastructure you will still have to pay for the run-time. It’s tough to see how open source will survive in the cloud.

Reliability

With current computing architectures there is a sense of ownership and problems with servers or storage (or your own PC) are directly under your control. If something happens then, assuming you have another PC and reliable backups, getting up an running is simple enough. Most business deal with these sort of failures every now and then, and most do so with minimal disruption to the business. With the cloud computing model there is an added risk that your supplier goes AWOL.

I have several external suppliers involved in delivering services for my business, one ISP provides my broadband connection, another provides support for my website, another supplier provides video streaming facilities, and another backup facilities. These all have high reliability promises, and they all fail periodically. When they fail I lose my on-line presence in part or as a whole. This is no major problem at the moment but as more of my business moves on-line I become increasingly aware of just how reliable a service needs to be to come close to one I own myself. The probability of system failure is the product of the probability of failure for each link in the supply chain.

Typical uptime promises offered by ISPs are 99.98%. This may seem very good until you realise that this means your ISP can meet this standard but still be completely unavailable for 1.75 hours every year. For a private individual this may not be a major problem, for a business it could be a big problem if that 1.75 hours is during a peak sale period. If there are four suppliers involved in the supply chain, each offering 99.98% reliability the worst case (assuming they meet this promise) means four lots of 1.75 hours downtime, or seven hours lost business.

There are strategies on the cloud that allow organisations and individuals to protect against failure, but at a cost.

Securing data

People do seem to be increasingly comfortable handing much of their information over to third parties. Occasionally someone will point out the inequities in a site’s terms of service, but more often than not people simply click through these without realising just what rights they are surrendering in doing so.

Certainly most information is not worth protecting too much. Does it really matter if your family holiday photo’s get out on the internet? Probably not. But what about those saucy photo’s you took with your boyfriend? These you probably would not want floating around. How about your banking details? Or some business plan you’re working on? What about that great invention that’s going to make you rich (providing someone does not beat you to the punch)? Or the blockbuster novel you’re writing? When you’re data is in the cloud it is no longer entirely under your control.

The internet is awash with horror stories of people sending e-mails without thinking of the consequences, and people losing their jobs because over perfectly innocent blog postings that their employer took exception to. The problems do not stop there once your data is in the cloud.

Consider the situation when a couple divorce. With all the data in your own local control it is fairly difficult for your ‘other half’ to get disclosure and almost impossible for them to dig around in your personal data without your knowledge. If this same information is in the cloud a simple subpoena opens the door to all that information and you are not necessarily notified that they have it.

I suspect there will be a growing market in tools to encrypt data as it goes to cloud storage, although we will all be increasingly reliant on third-party processing power if the cloud computing lobby have their way. When this happens we will be completely reliant on the storage solutions providing sufficient protection to our data as we will have no way to mediate any encryption.

As I said above, for a great deal of information it does not matter a great deal that we entrust it to the cloud (although I do take exception to sites that want some sort of ownership over, for example, my photographs just because I upload them to their disks). It is reasonable to assume that the big service suppliers have a vested interest in maintaining a good reputation for securing information. After all, clients will quickly move to another supplier if they believe their data is at risk. I for one will be very cautious about uploading anything remotely sensitive beyond the borders of my own local network without some serious encryption to which only I have the key!