Tim.Igoe.me.uk

It was found out that when Google's Street View car was doing the rounds in Germany (and maybe other countries too) it was sniffing out for "open" wifi networks. The plan was maybe to plot these on the map for users to find wifi networks easily when they were in an area. They claimed to be collecting SSID and MAC addresses of the devices (these could potentially be used to identify users locations).

The bad thing to this, is that a number of home users STILL have no security on their personal wifi networks so these would have been picked up too. This incident on its own is a very strong reminder to ALL that you should make sure your wireless networks are as secure as you can get them.

Back in 2006 a Google engineer was working on a wifi sniffing project, to capture publically broadcast wifi packets sent via insecure wireless networks, what they were going to do with this information is unknown. This project was apparently shelved, but when the team responsible for street view wanted to find out about wifi networks while the cars were on the move wanted similar functionality, instead of creating it again, they used the same code.

This code was 'accidentally' (according to Google) saving packets of data along with the requested information as the street view car did its rounds, and while the car was moving it wouldn't have captured MUCH data for each wireless network there is no way for us to know what exactly it DID capture.

What concerns me here, is IF this software was even properly tested before it was sent out to do the rounds? If it had been tested, wouldn't it have been obvious that it was capturing data packets that it shouldn't have been, and thus the code checked into / ammended? Or is this a cover up from the internet behemoth now that someone has found out via an audit that the data was collected?

Plans are now in place to, with the relevant authorities in a list of not known countries, destroy the data - however it HAS been captured, and without consent or agreement. If Google has captured, and first off denied doing so, this data then what else are they capturing and denying?

Canonical has been working extremely hard this month to bring us the new itteration of the popular Linux distribution, Ubuntu. Including fixing a show stopping bug found just before launch, they made it and Ubuntu 10.04 (2010, Month 04, April) was released successfully today.

There are plenty of new features that have been added to this release, and some notable changes from previous ones too including:

• A new theme - new wallpapers, colours, skin for everything
  
• Gnome 2.30 - The Desktop environment you interact with
  
• Updated Linux Kernel (2.6.32) - The heart of any Linux distribution
  
• Social Media integratin powered by Gwibber - Facebook, Twitter and more at your finger tips.
  
• Faster booting
• Ubuntu's Software Center for easy software installation
  

Ubuntu is old computer friendly, and can be installed along side, or as a direct replacement to Windows on any PC from the past 8 years. While it runs quicker on newer hardware, it won't be unusable on older machines and is a good way of recycling older hardware that is too slow to keep up with Windows.

Installation of Ubuntu is a breeze, pop in the 'live cd' and you can boot into a test environment and actually use Ubuntu before even installing it. If you are happy installing Windows, Ubuntu will be simple, the only confusing aspect for new users is when it comes to drive partitioning. The installer will help you along here.

Once installed and your new machine boots (quicker than before due to all the optimisations that have been added to boot performance) you will be able to login and see a desktop that looks similar to the installer's environment. From here you can add extra software easily using the Ubuntu Software Center (this includes adding software that may not have been added by default of which there are litterally thousands of packages).

As normal, there are things that could be improved on but overall, I'm impressed, Canonical are pushing Linux forwards at a rapid pace.

Can we blame Adobe for being a little annoyed with Apple recently? Months ago, in the early build up to Adobe releasing Creative Suite 5 (CS5) they announced they were working on a means to convert Flash applications to the iphone using a special compiler / converter. To developers this sounded like a brilliant idea, it would enable many more developers to create iphone / ipad compatible applications without the requirement of an Apple Mac, the iphone dev kit and learning Objective C. Apple didn't say anything, or stop them at this point.

However, with Apple's announcement of the iphone 4.0 SDK, they changed the wording of it to exclude using anything that wasn't Objective C and the iphone SDK to create apps, this effects far more than just Adobe but they are the biggest company effected and didn't take kindly to it. It has lead to one Adobe staff member saying "go screw yourself" to Apple (http://theflashblog.com/?p=1888), followed by threats of sueing Apple, the final stance is ditching the iphone / ipad platform altogether. This is all in addition to Apple denying Adobe the chance to bring Flash to the platform.

However, could this be benifitial to Apple's competitors, having Flash support on your device opens up so much of the web, and allows much richer sites. Windows, Linux and OSX already have a flash player, so why not the i-devices? Adobe don't want to annoy their current users so will not hold back CS5 from the Mac, however, could this be a good time to look at porting it to Linux as well? Windows already gets a full port of everything in the Creative Suite, but Microsoft themselves are trying to compete with Adobe when it comes to rich media in websites with their Silverlight player, a direct competitor to Flash.

I know I for one would love it if I could get Photoshop for Linux, while The Gimp is good, its just not Photoshop.  I believe not every applicaiton would need to be ported straight away, the core ones would be enough to get some designers to move from Apple machines. For one the cost for one is prohibitive with Apple hardware when compaired to a PC of similar spec. I feel there are a couple of things that hold back a higher Linux uptake in the work place (for certain types of work), web design is one fo those areas I feel NEEDS Photoshop on Linux to make it work.