Now we are looking at $540.00 for his birthday. Now his birthday is in August around other people’s birthdays of people I want to get stuff for and then after that we have Black Friday and Christmas. Oh did I mention I was planning to get engaged to my gf (I do not want to look at rings again) now fiance that year too. So yeah I’m on a budget now. So not backing down by the pressure I figured he has other kids (6 including me lol), I so called them up told them the price and we teamed up to buy him the ipad. My fiance teamed up with me too. By doing this the price was split 7 ways leaving me to  $540/7 = $77.14 and saving me 540 – 77.14 = $462.86. In the end he was happy and we got him the ipad and he still uses it to this day. Funny thing is I think this is the only gift that he has received from my brothers and sisters and I that he still uses.

Now after going to this process you have to ask yourself why do I have to go through this continuous cycle every year not only with my father but friends and family? Than I have to guess what they want which they may not like and spend all this money! It would explain why the majority of the population gives gift cards and hallmark cards or nothing at all. With all this technology and the rise of social networks how come this has not been combated in a graceful way yet?

In comes nobadgift.com! Nobadgift.com was born out of this frustration of birthdays, weddings, father’s day, mother’s day, christmas, going away parties, house warmings, ANYDAY. Now how does it solve this problem. I wanted to first tackle the main problem what do people want? So when you log onto the website, you create a wishlist. After you create a wishlist you add gifts of everything that you want. Next you want to spread the word through facebook, twitter and email. 5 easy steps:

1. Click wishlist tab
2. Create a wishlist of your choosing
3. Add gifts
4. Let your friends and family know
5. And let the good times roll

I looked at alot of laptops coming out lately and the main thing I have seen is upgrading, no further innovation from last year to this year. Laptops are getting more and more powerful but after a while you have to ask the question, are they really using this power? I seen alot of average computer users never fully tap into the power of their technology. So if you are not really utilizing your computer’s full potential is there really no reason for you get another computer when your not really utilizing your old one. I say save your money and stop drinking the cool aid these companies are feeding you.

I feel as though if you really going to get a new computer in which you can really recognize a nice increase in performance (that you actually use) and innovation. You need a computer that solves one of the most common problems that computers are facing, the speed of memory. Even though they are constantly increasing the speed of the CPU, it comes to a point that regardless of fast your CPU is you are going bottleneck your system. Imagine that you are running a track relay you have three people on your team that run real fast but the last runner runs slow as you know what and his name is memory. So if you are going to buy a new laptop I would save wait till the price of solid state drives drop and usb 3.0 comes out.

Solid State Drives

Solid State drives are one of the most needed things to improve speed and battery life on computers. Right now the most popular hard drive to get nowadays are the ones with rpms (revolutions per minute). These hard drives have disc in them that spins to access memory. These hard drives use more power by spinning and if drop can mess up the disc inside of them which can prevent you from access memory on the drive. SSD (Solid States drives) are superior in every way to these drives. They use up to significantly less power and can kick and smack the heck out of it and it will still work. Their main disadvantage thats keeps them from being widely use is cost. The cost for a ssd drive that is 256 GB is approximately over $400.00 compared to the rotary hard drives that are 250 GB might be around $50.00 – $100.00.

USB 3.0

One thing that is continuously happening is the price of external hard drives is continuously dropping but the speed of them are not catching up. As you keep giving people larger and larger access to store terabytes of information the demand to want to transport bigger and bigger files onto the external hard drive will increase. There is firewire 800 which is better than usb 2.0 but you need have special access on your computer to use it. But the most common way people transport information is usb 2.0. Thats when usb 3.0 comes into the picture usb 3.0 will have a big increase in speed. It is 10x faster than usb 2.0 and will be able to really give you the edge you need.

Lately there has been a large influx of attacks in the cyber world. I don’t know if you heard but there has been attacks on the 32 of some of the biggest companies in America including, Google, Adobe, General Electric, and many others. Google even went as far as pulling out of China, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126333757451026659.html, which has the single biggest population out of all countries. Google has been making the biggest fuss out of all the companies it seems. I’m guessing they stole something that was very precious or highly secretive. It was said that the attack was very highly sophisticated and has not been seen to this degree before on commercial companies but only in the defense industry.  People in the government of the United States and defense having been opening admitting that the US is not ready for an all out cyber attack.

Ways to Protect yourself

So I guess your wondering now how does it effect me. Well chances are if a big company such as Google can be comprised by the same can happen to you. But I believe you have a better chance at defending yourself than Google. Why? you may say well because the companies are bigger entity which renders bigger holes than an individual which have lesser holes to close but requires education to close them.  In order defend yourself against hackers and people trying to compromise your information you need to know the mindset of hackers.

• Weaknesses! When hackers are trying to get hack someone the first thing they will try to do is find known weakness in your software. For example if I found out that someone that I’m trying to compromise is using the browser internet explorer 6 I will look through list of known vulnerabilities and execute attacks on the browser to get what I want. Sometimes it that simple! So they gather information on you and exploit your weakness.
• Attack the biggest market share! If I was hacking I would want send out an attack could affect the largest population of users. For example if I know that windows has the biggest market share of users in the operating system world, I would attack them because I know would get the greatest return in information.
• Brute force and Dictionary Attacks! When attacking peoples accounts they use programs to first guess the typical names people use for passwords and usernames. You will be surprise at how easy this works. If this doesn’t happen to work the next step is to brute force your password. This involves trying a combination of letter combination’s to guess your password. How would you defend against this? Have password that are at least 8 to 15 letters long with caps, numbers and special characters. It won’t stop them but it will be difficult for them to crack it and may make them move to an easier target.
• Wealth of Information! With social networks and almost finding anything you want on Google, you could really get a nice synopsis on a person and what they are about. By doing finding your information on social networks this could give someone an good idea of how to go about attacking you. So adjust your facebook privacy settings!
• Social Engineering! This is probably one of the most effective way of hacking people is through social engineering.Why always go about things the hard way when you could just ask. Always question people asking for your information before they ask you something question their credentials. One of the most famous hackers wrote a book called the art of deception which talks about to get information that you want out of people by talking, being friendly and asking the right questions.
• No protection! Here is my previous article on viruses
• Lack of Education! Self-explanatory! Read and stay updated on new attacks and technology!.

Here is some more information on Security

Your Router: Here is my previous article on securing your router

Your Website: Here is my previous article on securing your website

Your Computer: Here is my previous article on removing viruses

My quote:

Some believe that the Third World War will be fought with guns, missiles and nukes I believe it will be through cyberspace.

References:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126333757451026659.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/business/global/02hacker.html

http://www.thecowl.com/world/american-companies-hacked-by-chinese-schools-1.1173974

Clean Eats uncovers the dirty secrets of your favorite restaurants. These reports are compiled by state and local governments and Clean Eats aggregates this data to make it more convenient for you. Based on your location, Clean Eats delivers this information directly to your iPhone or iTouch. You will be empowered with a letter grade {A,B,C,D,F}, list of violations, and any comments the inspector may have noted. Some locations may even include more establishments such as grocery stores, schools (elementary, middle, and high school), and many more! Here is a video on the unique application.

Clean Eats 2.0 iPhone app demo from patrick jackson on Vimeo.

Click here to download from iTunes

Supported areas:

Los Angeles County, CA
New York City, NY
Virginia (All cities)
Plus More!

I just wanted to thank all the people that supported people and plan to take things to another level for 2010.

SO THANKS EVERYONE!

I always thought that in order to really use utilize or to get what I want out of my phone that I needed to jail break or root my phone.  But there have been two applications that disapprove my thought process. I really wanted to be able to have multi touch and to tether my phone and computer without rooting the Droid and have been successful in my search. Check it out below

Dolphin Browser (Multi Touch)

Well here is something to rub in the faces of Iphone users. I always hear about how the Iphone has multi touch, but little do they know that even though android phones doesn’t come with multi-touch applications the hardware just supports multi-touch. So the only thing that needs to be done is on the software side. So one application who has accomplish this task is the dolphin browser. It works for the HTC Hero and the Droid phone. Here is a video of it.

PDAnet (Tethering)

For tethering for the droid I was always under the impression that I needed to root my phone to even come close to this but PdaNet has changed my perception. PdaNet has made an application for android and for windows and mac. PdaNet uses the application they created for your phone uses your phone’s internet connection and make it seem like the browser is using when in actuality it is redirecting it towards your computer. You can check out the site here. They also support Iphone, Blackberry, Palm OS and Windows Mobile phones.

This morning I was getting a ready for this meeting had which is a hour away. I’m running around making sure everything is good and studying the night before to make sure I’m on point with my information. I finally get there and find out the meeting is canceled after I get there and it was a ruff drive getting there. Turns out the lady sent me an email stating 2 hours before I got there that it was canceled. I didn’t find out because I have been having trouble getting exchange active sync for the server to work with the droid pre-built application for emails. So someone that I know has the android phone and suggested I use the program that he had that came with his phone for the HTC called work email. As soon as I downloaded and inputted the information for the server IT WORKED!!! I was so happy because it will keep me from missing very important emails and keep my constantly up to date.

So I wanted to share it with everyone so everyone don’t have to go through what I went through. Here is the download. After you download it make sure you have your information for the server handy and active sync for your account activated and you are good to go!

In the IT world I heard a lot about certifications but have you ever wondered for yourself why should you get it? Let’s say you know Java and your probably at the top of your class with it, but you are having a hard time getting a job or not getting the desired salary that you want. The next best thing to boost up your resume is to get a certification. In basic terms getting a certification shows that your knowledge meets up with professional standards. This is important because everyone has something that they feel they are the top of their game at but if it doesn’t fall inline with standards of the industry your knowledge can be considered invalid if you do not have no experience on the job.

Lately I have been studying to get certifications and have recently received my certification in MySQL. But did my salary increase? Did my prices rise for my clients? The answer is no. The reason is because I’m not doing anything MySQL intensive for anybody but myself. So it was something more so for myself and also challenged me to push my knowledge further with MySQL and see if my knowledge met up with professional standards. But the next couple certifications I will be getting will increase my pay and opportunities. So this brings me to my next topic what are some of the top certifications in IT.

I pick the top 5 certifications from the list on about.com.

1.CCIE

The CCIE always ends up on lists like these, and with good reason. With a pass rate of only 26% it is certainly the most difficult of all IT certifications. Once you place this on your resume, you know you have a truly impressive credential and can expect to earn an average salary of $93,000.

2.CISA

With the economic climate these days, big business needs auditors more than ever. The CISA is designed to certify audit skills, both technical and ethical. According to GoCertify.com, the average CISA can earn as much as $115,000.

3.CCSE

The CCSE is another high level security certification that created for individuals who work with Checkpoint products and must maintain secure VPNs. The demand for this certification is evident in the pay as shown on PayScale.

4.MCSD

The Microsoft Certified Solution Developer certification is designed for people who like to problem-solve. You are expected to know about enterprise solutions and Microsoft products. You will be expected to use business analysis skills to decide which solution is best for a particular environment or business. Here is the PayScale for the MCSD.

5.PMP

The Project Management Professional certification is here because it is another that requires an extensive amount of skill and experience to obtain. Once you have passed the exam and fulfilled the requirements you can pull in around $101,000 (based on a ZDNET Salary Survey).

I did look at other lists and the ones that kept showing up were CCIE and PMP. I will also mention Java, Oracle are in high demand. Even though there are several certifications you can get it is best you get ones that fall inline with what you really want to do. If you get a certification in something that may be the top in the field but never use it, all you did was waste time and money, and give your clients or employers a false sense of your abilities. So get those certs!

After much debate and researching you probably won’t guess what phone I got! The Droid! You will probably see from my previous article, I was leaning a little towards the iphone but I guess I have to give my reasoning for getting the Droid. First let me pull out a comparison chart.

Specifications	Motorola Droid	Iphone
Picture
Memory (GB)	16	8
Display (pixels)	480×854	480×320
Camera (megapixels)	5	3.2
Weight (ounces)	7	6
Sound Quality	Good	Good
Talk Time (hours)	6.4	5
Multi-tasking	Yes	No
Multi-touch	Capable but not enabled	Yes

Now after looking at this chart you it will appear that the droid has out class the iphone but apple also has the iphone 3GS. Which has 16GB and faster processor. Also even though droid has better megapixels than the iphone the picture on the iphone looks better.When looking smartphones it really is a hard pick to choose which one you want because they possess so many capabilities and can be manipulated to cater to almost anybody. For example the iphone may not be able to multi-task but when jail broken it can multi-task. Jail breaking iphones is the act of hacking the operating system into an open operating system allowing you multi-task, download free apps, third-party apps and manipulate according to your liking.

So when it comes to me choosing a phone I look at the things I can’t change myself for example hardware and network speed. Reason why I choose the Droid is because it has a fast processor and Verizon as it’s network provider in which I greatly love their internet speed. And I have tested the AT&T connection it is good in a certain spots but not stable as Verizon. I will also say with usability the Droid is straight forward and simple as with the Iphone but I consider the usability on the Iphone more enjoyable. Probably because of the multi-touch, I wish they had that enabled for the droid already. But Google didn’t want to violate the patent by Apple and keep a good relationship between them. But I think Google still made the Droid to still be able to use multi-touch so someone could enable it themselves or release an update for it after things get settled with that.

When it comes down to picking a phone make sure you pick the one that relates to your personality and the way you are. I recognize that is always the best pick when selecting anytype of technology. So you must ask yourself are you a droid or an iphone?

Question: Who has the better phone plan between Verizon and AT&T?
Answer: In terms of plan it will probably range from $80 to $100 with the data plans I want with either phone but AT&T has roll over minutes which I really like and Verizon has not taken a liking towards that yet.

Question: Which phone is better?
Answer: I look at this from a customer standpoint and developer standpoint. As a consumer iphone has very organized app store and strong brand with customer satisfaction with the iphone than the Android. The Android operating system will be placed on more phones but I haven’t seen it operate on any attractive phone and their app store is nothing to get excited about. Also from a developer standpoint the iphone owns alot of the smart phone market share and you could generate alot of money from developing an app for the iphone. Also since Apple develops the operating system and hardware for the phone the iphone has a higher compatibility rating than any phone out there. The Android has to be made to be a adaptable operating system since it is a open-source operating system which will be on phones and eventually netbooks. So if the vendor does not study it in and out it will not fully utilize the capabilities contained within it.

The Droid phone is coming to Verizon phone from what I have heard in November (don’t quote me, lol). So I will love to see who wins when it drops into stores than I will test it out so I can switch from my unattractive phone.

One thing I know for certain is that if Verizon had the iphone I wouldn’t have this problem! Let me know what you think?