Category: Tech

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I mentioned a few weeks ago that I want some sort of mobile internet access for San Diego Comic-Con so that I can post at least some stuff from the convention itself, instead of waiting until I get back to the hotel. Since the con has never offered wi-fi (except, IIRC, in the press room — which I just realized I could have used last year, since I got a press badge for CBR/Comics Should Be Good), I was looking into phone-based solutions.

Phoning it In

I experimented with post-by-email (not sufficient), with post-through-Flickr (slightly better, but only really suitable for image posts and still missing things like, oh, titles), and with using WPhone to provide a stripped-down admin interface in the hopes that my phone’s built-in browser could handle it (no such luck). No, I was clearly going to need a better web browser — one way or another.

Yesterday I went into a T-Mobile store, partly to look at the smartphones they had, and partly to ask about what data plan would allow me to use Opera Mini on my current phone. The guy tried to sell me a Blackberry, but I have to admit the Wing looked really nice, if expensive.

Opera Mini - The free Web browser for nearly any phoneI asked about getting the Internet plan, and while the sales clerk was familiar with Opera Mini (he uses it on his own Blackberry), he was convinced it wouldn’t run on my RAZR V3t. I’d used an early version of it during a brief window in which T-Mobile allowed access even for phones with the T-Zones plan.  But he seemed convinced there would be no point, so I walked out without having changed anything.  30 seconds of Internet searching reveals that yes, Opera Mini is in fact known to work on the RAZR V3t.

Free WiFi

Today, the news started making the rounds that the con will have free wi-fi everywhere except the exhibit hall itself, sponsored by the film, Eagle Eye. (Which, now that I think about it, is oddly appropriate and somewhat disturbing.)   This is a huge relief, and makes the phone access much less critical. Though it would still be nice…

Sure, it’s going to be a very busy network. But I figure I’ll type things up in TextWrangler and load up the web just long enough to post. Gears will cut down on the amount of bandwidth needed for the admin interface.  And I’ll save any serious emailing or forum visits for the hotel room.  Actually, I’ll probably stay off the forums during most of the con, unless I have the opportunity to post “Hey, look what I just found out!”

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At lunch today, I saw a woman, probably in her 50s, wearing a fitted black T-shirt that said, in sparkly letters, “BOTOX”. Srsly. I couldn’t find any pictures of the design, but a commenter here says it’s a promo handed out to staff at plastic surgery clinics.

Comic-Con has completely sold out. Hmm, let me rephrase that. There are no more memberships available for this year’s Comic-Con International in San Diego.

Spam Karma has gone GPL — After years of support Dr. Dave has decided to stop maintaining his spam plugin and turn it over to the open-source community. The project is now on Google Code. Update 2015: And now it’s on GitHub.

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I went by the Spectrum for lunch, and the line to get into the Apple Store for the new iPhone was still stretched past several storefronts into the nearest courtyard, right up to the fountain by the carousel — even though they’d launched that morning. Actually, I had several co-workers who were late today because they went down at opening for the launch.

From what I hear it was fairly chaotic, at least in the morning. Apple’s new policy of making you activate the phone in the store was causing delays, especially factoring in the fact that iTunes’ servers got swamped. That would explain why the line was still so long several hours after opening.

Usability note: One of said co-workers got tripped up trying to sync music to his new phone, because the default is to not synchronize music, and the “Sync only checked songs” box looked close enough to being the right option that he didn’t dig deeper.

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Bart Allen as the FlashI’ve just launched SpeedForce.org, a companion blog to the website, Flash: Those Who Ride the Lightning.

Since I started adding news items to the front page of Ride the Lightning, it’s started to get a bit crowded. I thought about converting it to a Delicious feed, but then I realized it really ought to be a blog. There hasn’t been a major Flash-focused blog out there since Crimson Lightning shut down, so I figured I’d step in and fill the gap. And I could use the domain I picked up last year!

I’ll be posting Flash-related news there, including a weekly round-up of Flash comics, as well as articles that might not fit into the existing site structure, and (eventually) reviews as well. Some stuff that I would have posted here will end up on the new site. Certainly Flash news, but I may start shifting more comics-related commentary over there as well.

I’ll be refining the look and features over the next couple of weeks, and cross-linking it more into Ride the Lightning. I might keep the current theme with a few tweaks, or I might try to match Ride the Lightning, or I might build something else entirely.

So please, check it out and let me know what you think! I’m open to suggestions as to content, design, etc. And of course bug reports.

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Yesterday the Los Angeles Times ran an article about the fact that, in response to soaring gas prices, smaller cars are outselling light trucks (which include SUVs, pickups, and minivans) in the US for the first time since 1996. Last night I was going through old magazines that we’d just tossed in a bag before moving. I found the September 2006 issue of Westways (the California Auto Club’s magazine), with a cover story about the new breed of small cars, wondering when the market would shift in response to the high prices. Now there’s timing.

On a related note, 9 months of driving a Prius has given me a somewhat different perspective on “good” and “bad” mileage. When I see averages of 38–48 MPG over the course of a tank of gas, and can get up to 60 MPG on straight, flat stretches of freeway, advertisements touting 25–30 MPG just don’t sound that enticing.

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Last month, eWeek reported that PayPal intends to block unsafe browsersfrom accessing their site. They’ve focused on phishing detection and support for Extended Validation SSL Certificates. So what are these features, and why does PayPal think they’re critical? And just which browsers are they likely to block?

Phishing protection has an obvious appeal for a site whose accounts are one of the biggest phishing targets on the web.  Opera 9.1 and up, Firefox 2, and Internet Explorer 7 check the websites they visit against lists of known fraudulent sites. These browsers will warn the users before they accidentally type their credentials into a bogus log-in form. While this makes no difference when a user is already on PayPal’s site, it does mean the user is less likely to get his or her password stolen, and thieves are less likely to carry out fraudulent transactions with the account.

Extended Validation or EV certificates are like normal SSL certificates: they encrypt your web activity to prevent eavesdropping. What makes them different is that EV certificates require the issuer to verify the site owner more thoroughly. Browsers with EV support will display an indication that the site has been verified, usually by turning part or all of the address bar green. This is intended to give the user greater confidence that the site is legit. EV certificates are currently supported by IE7 and development versions of Opera 9.50 and Firefox 3. (You can preview a version of Opera with EV support by downloading Opera 9.50 beta 2.)

(It’s worth noting that Opera 9.50 beta 2 is stricter about verifying EV certificates, and will not show PayPal with a green bar because it loads images and scripts from another site. More recent preview releases will, like IE7 and Firefox 3, be satisfied if the main page is EV and the resources are all protected by regular SSL.)

So which browsers might get turned away at the gate?

In a follow-up story, PayPal clarified that they have absolutely no intention of blocking current versions of any browsers, and that they would only block obsolete browsers on outdated or unsupported operating systems. So an Opera 9 user on Windows XP isn’t likely to get shut out of PayPal anytime soon. But a Windows 98 user might have cause for concern.

Browser detection is extremely tricky to get right, requiring frequent adjustments. It looks like PayPal intends to take the minimalist approach: Assume most browsers are capable of handling what you send them, and only block the problematic ones.

(Originally posted at Opera Watch as a follow-up to Blocking IE6)

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