Category: Technology

I work in technology sector. And I do round a clock, not only from 9 to 5. It is my bread and butter, it is my hobby, it is the fascination of my life. And with the current rate of change particular in information technology (IT), there is always something new to learn, to try, to talk about. I often post news, thoughts, and reviews. And when I do, this is the category I use.

20 must see TED videos for Computer Science people

Masters in Computer Science collected and described 20 must see TED videos for Computer Scientists.  I  previously saw some of these, but it’s nice to have them all handy in one place.  If you prefer TED’s video player, click through to get the list.  I personally like YouTube better.  So I collected all these videos into a public playlist, which you can watch, bookmark, and share.

Continue reading 20 must see TED videos for Computer Science people

Adding Google Apps GTalk account to Pidgin

Google Apps help page is a little bit outdated and I had to spend a few minutes working out the solution, hence this post.  Here is how you add your Google Apps GTalk account to Pidgin.

  1. In Pidgin, click on the Accounts menu.
  2. Select Manage Accounts.
  3. Click ‘Add…‘ button.
  4. Select XMPP protocol.
  5. Specify account’s local part in the Username field.  For [email protected] that would be joe.
  6. Specify account’s domain in the Domain field.  For [email protected] that would be examle.com.
  7. You can ignore the Resource field and leave it empty.
  8. Specify account’s password in the Password field.
  9. Switch to Advanced tab.
  10. Change Connection security to ‘Use old-style SSL’.
  11. Change Connect port to 443.
  12. Change Connect server to talk.google.com.
  13. Press Save.  You are done.

SyncTube – even better social YouTube

Just yesterday I posted about YouTube Social web service, which makes watching YouTube videos together with your friends easier.  But today I found out that there is an even better way – SyncTube.  It’s exactly the same idea, but a much better user interface.  It also supports non-Latin characters in chat and allows participants to pick better names than ‘guest123’.

On growing challenges in IT security

I came across an interesting article which illustrates the growing challenges in IT security.

“The IT guys have been told to do one job, so they [lock things down and] rule out the use of Google docs. And the workers are told to do another job, to get their work done, so they start using Google docs, and the power balance is moving away from the IT guys,” says Josh Klein, co-author of Hacking Work, a guide on how to “break stupid rules for smart results”.
According to a survey by networking firm Cisco, 41% of workers break corporate IT policies, saying that “they need restricted programs and applications to get the job done – they’re simply trying to be more productive and efficient”.
Judging by my personal experiences, I’d say most companies will go for the productivity and efficiency.  Employee efficiency helps the company to move and adopt faster.  Not only it usually means more money, but from the security point of view it makes the company a faster moving target.
Also, with this approach, a lot of security issues will be moved from a company level to an employee level.  Similar to how training evolved.  Companies still train employees, but a lot of skills are just expected from the employee and it’s up to him or her how and when to acquire those skills.  For example, nobody really trains employees to process email, search the web, or operate a telephone. A quick display of the interface and a “you’ll figure it out, and let me know if you don’t” is usually enough.
Similarly, I think, many of the security issues will be passed on to the employee.  The company will just expect him to run antivirus software, spam filters, basic firewalls, secure passwords, and such.  With that, IT departments will have more resources to focus on protecting centralized resources – web servers, databases, etc.

YouTube Social

The idea of social television is not particularly new.  People have been watching TV together for years.  Now that a lot of entertainment is moving online, social digital TV is a cool idea.  I’ve heard about a few attempts to implement it before, but I haven’t actually seen one up-close.  Via Download Squad I’ve learned today about YouTube Social.  I think it’s pretty cool, even though it’s definitely not perfect.

It’s really simple to try.  Just go to YouTube Social and search for videos using a familiar YouTube interface.  Either play them immediately or add them to the queue.  If you have a Facebook account, authorize YouTube Social to use it, so that you could add friends to your session easily.  If you don’t have Facebook account or don’t fancy the authorization, you can still use YouTube Social.  It’s just that you and your friends will be assigned anonymous names like ‘guest123’.  You can either send your friends a tiny URL to join the session or an automated Facebook chat invite.

When your friends join the session, you are all watching videos synchronized.  Which means that all of you see the same video at the same time.  And you can talk about it in the chat window while you are watching it.  User with the remote control can pause, play, and find more videos to watch.  The remote control is just a token, which can be passed around like a regular remote control.   Overall, pretty awesome!

There are really only a couple of things that I didn’t enjoy – chat only works with Latin characters (Cyrillic simply don’t show at all) and the Facebook-only login option (no Twitter/Google/etc).  The user interface could use some polish, and I’m sure it will get some in the near future.

Overall, a very nice execution of the idea in demand.