TechTips

The goal of this site is to inform and educate the students, staff, and faculty of The Ohio State University community about various emerging technologies that impact services provided by the Libraries.

TechTips: Extending Cellphone Battery Life

Posted on June 16, 2010 by Eric Schnell

I recently purchased a new Android-based mobile phone. I spent the first day checking out all the features and options, downloading a bunch of applications, and experimenting with the GPS and location-based services. It didn’t take very long to notice the battery drained relatively quickly.

The problem with the current generation of phones is that all the neat features also eat away at the battery. They have large bright screens.  They have connections for 3G, Wi-Fi, and GPS. They connect to the Internet. They have applications that run in the background to provide alerts.

Simply put, cellphones spend a lot of time connected to their chargers these days.

Here are a few things one can do to extend cellphone battery life:

Check the settings of your background applications and notifications: Having email, Twitter messages, Facebook updates, and calendar appointments delivered minute-by-minute is perhaps the largest battery drain. Resetting the email polling interval from every 5 minutes to an hour will do wonders for battery life. If you keep multiple applications “open” for quicker access or alerts, run them only as needed. There is no need to get storm alerts if it is going to be 80 and sunny.

Turn off roaming/3G/4G when not needed:  If you have good coverage and are mostly usind the phone for talking, or get only occasional email updates, there isn’t a need to keep such a wide wireless connection open.

Use location-based services onlt when needed: Having the phone constantly look for new Bluetooth devices, Wi-Fi hotspots, GPS positions definitely eats up battery. Find out how to turn these things off on your phone, or automate their use. Add shortcuts and widgets to the homescreen to make it easier to control the radios.

Play with screen time-outs, brightness, and backlight: Adjust the setting for how long the screen stays lit after a quick check of the clock. Turn on automatic brightness so the screen auto-adjusts in light and dark environments rather than having brightness turned all the way up. Alternatively, lower the default screen brightness.

Keep it cool: Avoid keeping the battery at full charge and high temperature. This is the case when placing a cell phone or spare battery in a hot car. Keep it out of your pocket and away from your body heat whenever possible.

Turn off live wallpapers and vibrate; lower ringer volume: They do use processing power and eat into the battery life.

Please leave a comment if you have any other tips for extending smartphone battery life.

Tips:

 iPhone | BlackBerry | Windows Mobile | Palm

References:

LifeHacker | Gizmodo | wikiHow |

Photo by fbar under Creative Commons license 

-Eric Schnell  

Posted in Hardware, Informational, Mobile |

TechTips: What is Website Clickjacking?

Posted on May 22, 2010 by Eric Schnell

Clickjacking describes a Web page / browser attack where user initiated mouse clicks trigger an unintended action, such as disclosing passwords and other confidential information. This action is done primarily by hiding clickable Web page elements inside an invisible frame. Clickjacking can affect all the major Web browsers — Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and even Opera by exploiting vulnerabilities in embedded code or a script on a Web site.

For example, the attacker may create a set of “dummy” buttons that are loaded transparently on top of another page. The visitor thinks that they are clicking on the visible buttons when, in reality, they clicking on the buttons located on the hidden page. Another technique is known as text injection, where attacker controlled text is entered into a field on a Web form.

One of the more recent clickjacking attacks was made on Facebook in 2009.

In a recent white paper, Paul Stone, researcher for UK-based Context Information Security LTD, discusses new attacks that dupe users into activating malicious links on websites without their even knowing it. website developers should read the paper. There is also a browser-based clickjacking tool available to show website owners how easy their site could be clickjacked.

While much of the management against the risk against clickjacking involves best practices by site developers, there are a few things the Web user can do.

Firefox users can download the “no script” plug-in. It allows JavaScript, Java and other executable content to run only from trusted domains of your choice, guarding your browser from some clickjacking attempts.

Internet Explorer 8 users can also mitigate the impact of attacks by logging out of sensitive websites when not in use or by using independent InPrivate Browsing sessions, which lets the user control whether or not IE saves browsing history, cookies, and other data.

Google Chrome now supports a security feature that helps sites defend against clickjacking attacks

While not immune to clickjacking attacks, Opera appears to have a decent built-in prevention.

-Eric Schnell  

Posted in Informational |

TechTips: Sharing Content Using Shareaholic

Posted on April 26, 2010 by Eric Schnell

Shareaholic is a Web browser plug-in which makes it easier to share, e-mail, tweet, and bookmark news, videos and blog postings on any of your social network sites.

  • Share links, videos, news articles, images without cutting and pasting
  • Toolbars, buttons and bookmarklets are no longer needed for every social media site you use
  • Works with 100+ sites
  • No need to sign up for yet another service or account
  • Available for Windows, Mac and Linux
  • Supported browsers include:

Mozilla Firefox Firefox

Google Chrome Chrome

Internet Explorer 8 IE 8

Flock Flock

Opera Opera

SafariSafari

Songbird Music Player Songbird

A nice demo video is available.

-Eric Schnell

Posted in Discovery, Social Media |

TechTips: Does Spokeo.com Violate My Privacy?

Posted on April 16, 2010 by Eric Schnell

There has been a lot of discussion over the the past few weeks about a personal data aggregation service named Spokeo.  Just yesterday, I received an email about the site with a subject line containing the word “scary.”

The bottom line with Spokeo is that all the information pulled together with this service is already discoverable on the Internet. Some of the information is factual, the same as what one could find in a phone book. Other information is available through public records sites, such as property records.  Additional information is pulled from social networking sites.

Such services are not new. In fact, most of the data on Spokeo has been available on whitepages.com for years. Every time a new site pops up privacy concerns are raised, like a few years ago with ZabaSearch.

Spokeo’s began back in 2006 as one of the early aggregators of data that was mined from the various social networks. The early vision for the service was as a customizable browser home page that could keep track of friends activities from all those sites. The recent increase in discussion about the service began about a month ago when the latest version was released.  All the chatter is certainly driving a lot of traffic to their site, making “spokeo” among the top Google search terms over the past last few weeks.

While all the information on Spokeo is generally discoverable otherwise, and may be actually inaccurate or old, there is a way to have your information removed:

  1. Go to Spokeo.com
  2. Search for your name. One can narrow the search for common names by adding a city and state.
  3. Select your name to see the information listed
  4. Copy the Web site address for your information page
  5. Go to their Privacy Page
  6. Paste the Web address in the URL field
  7. Enter an email address to receive a confirmation message
  8. Enter CAPTCHA code shown on the screen
  9. Click “Remove Listing”
  10. Open the email message sent by Spokeo and click the embedded link
  11. Search Spokeo to confirm your record has been removed
  12. Remember, all this does is remove your Spokeo profile. All your information is still on the internet – just not pulled together on this site.

Scary? Well, what may be scary is how much of your personal information has been made available though your activities on social networking sites.

-Eric Schnell  

Posted in Discovery, Informational, Social Media |

TechTips: Can My Smartphone Get a Virus?

Posted on March 29, 2010 by Eric Schnell

A couple of weeks ago I bought my first Android phone. As I was researching cool applications to install, I stumbled upon this blog posting from the security company Panda about smartphones sold by Vodafone in Spain being infected with the Mariposa botnet.While the Vodaphone outbreak was limited is scale it did make me think.

If the primary methods used to spread viruses on a desktop computers include email clients and web browsers, and if these applications are also installed on my smartphone, is it vulnerable to a virus?

In short, yes.

As phones evolve to include even greater functionality the more vulnerable they are becoming to the same threats that plague our desktops and laptops. At a security conference in early March 2010, researchers demonstrated how they could send the malicious version of an application to smartphones via an auto-update feature.

According to McAfee, the most vulnerable smartphone features include:

  • Text messages
  • Contacts
  • Video
  • Phone transcriptions
  • Call history
  • Documentation
  • Buffer overflows

The outbreak might not be contained to the smartphone either.

Most of the current generation of smartphones have mini usb connectors. The connector not only allow the devices to be charged, but also allows them to be plugged into a desktop computer for data syncing. This could allow a virus to be transferred to your desktop or laptop from your smartphone.  (I also plug my smartphone into my car’s usb connector to charge. Could a virus be uploaded into it?)

So, what should smartphone owners do? While many companies have developed anti-virus software for smartphones, I suggest simply using the same safe computing practices one uses with their desktop:

  • Be wary of email attachments, even if they come from friends
  • Obtain applications from trusted sources
  • Keep your sensitive data safe
  • Protect your passwords
  • Be careful using open wifi networks

-Eric Schnell  

Posted in Hardware, Mobile |

TechTips: OSU Branded Doodle

Posted on March 5, 2010 by Eric Schnell

Anyone that has had to schedule a meeting with participants across campus departments, or at other institutions, knows how challenging it can be. One emails out a list of possible times and sorts the replies looking for a common time. The process is repeated if no time can be agreed upon.

Well, this has been simplified for members of the Ohio State Community by a new scheduling tool called OSUDoodle.

Account users use this tool to establish a “poll” of preferred meeting times, which are presented in a tabular display of possible time slots. The meeting coordinator then invites participants and enable them to vote transparently and democratically for the best available date and time to meet.

Alternatively, Doodle can also be used to help a large group make a choice among activities or social events.

OSUDoodle is free to the university community. Only users with e-mail addresses ending in osu.edu, wosu.org, osumc.edu, wexarts.org, and ohiostatealumni.org may initiate new OSUDoodle polls within this OSU branded service.

For more information on this service, contact: Ted Hattemer.

-Eric Schnell  

Posted in Communications, Discovery, Services |

TechTips: foursquare

Posted on January 25, 2010 by Eric Schnell

Foursquare is an location-based social networking service (some call it a game) that is a combination a Facebook status, a Twitter update, and a Yelp restaurant review.  Users “checkin” at different locations,  unlock badges, post “to-dos” and “tips” for different locations. The goal of the service is to help users find new ways to explore a city by “discovering new places, doing new things and meeting new people.”

Users checkin to foursquare from their mobile devices using a text message or from an iPhone or Droid application. There is also a web form and the FoursquareX desktop application for (mac) laptop users.

Users can also can see other foursquare users that have checked into the same physical location, or that are in close vicinity.  The application is able to identify a user’s current location using a variety of methods including GPS and WiFi mappings.

For example, one can see those that have checked into Ohio State’s Thompson Library,  the Science and Engineering Library, or even Adriatico’s Pizza.

Upon checkin, one may leave a short tip about the location or about services offered at that location. For example:

foursqaure tip

Checkins can be pushed to Facebook or Twitter accounts, or, only be communicated to other foursquare users. Alternatively, one can also checkin but elect not to share the location. Such checkins appear as [off the grid]. One can also get a direct message from Twitter when a friend checks in.

The possible uses for foursquare in libraries could include:

-  Incentives for those checking into the library. The Mayor could be given reserved seating or priority access to group study rooms.

- Library events could include check-with prizes for the first person who checks in or includes a ’shout.’ 

- Someone checking in, and identifying themselves to staff, could be given $X amount of free printouts/copies.

There are other similar services that help friends find each other like BrightKite and Google Latitude. However, there is currently more excitement around foursquare since it incorporates elements of gaming and social competition.

Here are a couple of tips for new foursquare users:

- Don’t push all your checkins to Facebook or Twitter. This can quickly annoy your friends, or make them feel like they are stalking you

- Do selective posting to Facebook or Twitter and make sure to include a ‘shout.’

- Turn off the option to push an update Facebook or Twitter when you are elevated to mayor or earn a badge.

References:

Foursquare, Libraries, and Librarians
Foursquare in Libraries: Social Media Incentives for Engaged Patrons
Location based services and Libraries – Tweets & Foursquare
Fourquare and Libraries – Anything There?

-Eric Schnell 

Posted in Communications, Discovery, Informational, Mobile |

TechTips: Xmarks Browser Bookmark Sync

Posted on December 10, 2009 by Eric Schnell

I use several computers and a couple different web browsers during any given day. I bookmark work related resources, articles to read, and any number of interesting sites on my Web browser. But when I use a different computer or change to a different web browser, the links I bookmarked on one aren’t available on another.

While social bookmarking sites like delicious are very usful, having to navigate to their site to access my commonly used bookmarks simply adds in a few extra unwanted steps.  Xmarks (was FoxMarks) is a very handy bookmark synchronization tool that resolves this issue.

Xmarks allows one to synchronize bookmarks between computers and browsers. The use of multiple profiles allows one to to separate your bookmarks into categories — like for work and home. One can to choose which profile to sync on each computer. This way, all those shopping sites don’t show up on the work computer. The other nice thing is that all the bookmarks are also backed up, which comes in handing when an old computer is sent to the recycling facility.

Browsers currently support supported by Xmarks include Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari (Mac OS). There is also an alpha release for Google Chrome. One can also add bookmarks and have them synced to your computers/browsers from any computer using  my.xmarks.com. Xmarks can also synchronize passwords.

Xmarks’ Smarter Search feature add some level of relevance to Google searches. When you perform a search after installing the applicaiotn, Xmarks will highlight the top Google search results for that query, based on how many Xmarks users have bookmarked a particular site.

As with any third-party application, one needs to be mindful of any potential privacy issues. Xmarks does encrypt bookmarks while they are being synced to their server. Individual users’ bookmarks are also kept private from other users.

-Eric Schnell  

Posted in Information Management, Services |

TechTip: Renting Scholarly Articles Through DeepDyve

Posted on October 29, 2009 by Eric Schnell

I received an email  from a colleague about a month or so ago about a search engine they uncovered, called DeepDyve. DeepDyve was started in 2005 by two scientists who had previously worked on the Human Genome Project. It makes sense that the search engine searches for information spanning the life sciences, medicine, and patents. ( Note: Steve Wozniak as a member of their advisory board.)

The original focus of the company was to build a powerful research search engine.  While most search engine queries consist of just few words, DeepDyve queries can be as complex as the searcher desires: a few words, whole sentences, paragraphs, anything up to 25,000 characters. DeepDyve indexes entire phrases of up to 20 words each, compared to most search engines indexes individual keywords.

A funny thing happened. The company changed their focus.

While DeepDyve still makes use of their proprietary search engine technology,  they are now marketing themselves as an online research rental service that provides access to  over 30 million articles from thousands of authoritative journals for as little as $0.99 per article.

In is important to emphasize that DeepDyve is not selling copies of the articles., they rent them.  The rental fee provides 24 hours of unlimited viewing of that article. A silver plan of $10 per month provides up to 20 articles per month for 7 days. The gold plan of $20 per month provides access to an unlimited number of articles for an unlimited amount of time.

The proprietary flash-based viewer does not allow for download, screen capture, or printing of an article. One can only read the articles on screen. The service does provide personalized suggestions, bookmarks, alerts and related articles.

Although DeepDyve has signed up 25 publishers, some prominent ones are missing. For example, Elsevier. The following are some of the publishers available:

DeepDyve presents another challenge for academic librarians. There is a good chance that many of the journals and articles available to researchers from DeepDyve have already been licensed by the library.  How many researchers will use this service and pay yet again for the use of a work?

What would be really useful is if DeepDyve could incorporate openurl to redirect users back to a local copy rather then simply renting it from their own collection.

-Eric Schnell  

Posted in Discovery, Information Management |

TechTips: Google Wave

Posted on September 30, 2009 by Eric Schnell

The folks at Google released 100,000 invites today to preview their new model of Web-based communication and collaboration, called Google Wave.

Since it has been in private beta, one has to rely upon others to explain what Wave is. It has been described “as much of a real-time chat room as a platform for editing documents collaboratively. It can also be used as a Wiki, to replace email and IM within an organization, or just to organize a pub crawl.”

A “wave” is equal parts conversation and document, where people can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more. Each Wave consists of a threaded forum combined with a wiki, IM, and email that are then combined into a single interface.

In Google Wave, one can create a Wave and the add others to it. Everyone can insert content or edit in the Wave.  Since each Wave is updated in real time, others can see content as it is being created. The service can be used for quick messages and persistent content — it allows for both collaboration and communication.

A playback feature allows one to watch a Wave as it evolved, providing access to edits, who made them, and in what context. A locally hosted Wave server can interact with other Wave servers, but will also have the option of keeping their content private or limited to specific users.

Check out Wave in this 10-min abridged video of this hour presentation:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Itc4253kjhw[/youtube]

If you are one of the lucky ones to get an invite early on, please make sure to comment on your experience.

-Eric Schnell 

Posted in Communications, Information Management, Services |