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Where to find me at Macworld|iWorld 2012

Macworld|iWorld Logo

Can you believe we’re only a few days away from Macworld|iWorld? This is my favorite time of year, even better than Christmas. I can’t wait to see all my friends from the Mac community and meet up with some of the Mac Power Users fans. It will be a very busy few days but here’s a few things I’ll be up to and where you can find me during the show:

Friday, January 27 at 11:00 a.m.
Mac Power Users Entertainment Workflows TT964
David Sparks and I are sitting down for a special Workflows session of Mac Power Users where we’ll be speaking with actor, writing and producer Rob Corddry and our most popular workflow guest ever, Merlin Mann. I’m sure the combination of the two on stage will be nothing less than explosive.

Rob is flying out to San Francisco just for the purpose of sharing his story and hanging out with the geeks and we are honored to have him. Rob has a great story to tell about his journey to harness the power of his Mac and make his life more productive all in the context of the entertainment industry.

Saturday, January 28 at 3:00 p.m.
Smile: Meet The Podcasters
On Saturday, David and I will be participating in Smile’s Meet The Podcasters get together. The folks at Smile have always held a very special place in my heart. Not only are they really cool people who happen to make amazing software for Mac and iOS, they were also the first company who believed in Mac Power Users. Smile approached David and I about sponsoring the show long before we even considered sponsorship and their faith in us and support has allowed us to grow Mac Power Users to the success it is today.

If you want to meet the Smile gang, chat with David and I or see how we use their awesome software like TextExpander and PDFpen drop by the Smile Booth #201 on the show floor between 3 and 4pm.

Of course I’ll be doing more at Macworld|iWorld so be sure to check my Twitter Feed for the latest updates. I hope to see you at the show!

Still Need Tickets To Macworld|iWorld 2012?

Still Need Tickets To The Show?:

The folks at Macworld|iWorld were kind enough to give me a few free Exhibit Hall Only Passes as well as a coupon code good for $15 off an iFan Pass. Given all the excellent content at the show this year and the low cost of the iFan pass, even if you’re only at the show for a day, you’re crazy if you don’t pick up an iFan Pass.

You can check out all the content available at Macworld|iWorld on their site. Haven’t made reservations yet? It’s not to late, go crazy, be spontaneous, join us!

The Details:

The offer is limited to the first 100 people who enter SOURCE CODE: BOI96122 using this link. The offer is limited so please don’t register unless you actually plan on attending the show, leave the offer for someone who can actually use them. If the codes don’t work, that means they have all been used. In that case, please don’t email me or the folks at Macworld|iWorld because we won’t be able to help you.

Contemplating Cutting The Phone Cable Too

A couple of months ago I successfully “cut the cable” and canceled my subscription to my cable television service. I detailed the experience in Mac Power Users Episode 62. In the four months since disconnecting Cable TV service I’ve been very pleased with the experience and haven’t considered going back. I’ve also enjoyed a nearly $75 monthly cost savings on my cable bill.

I still use my local cable provider for high speed Internet access and telephone service. Unfortunately, the cable company is the only game in town for the high speed access I need. The DSL options offered by the phone company have slower speeds and less competitive prices. I have struggled with the decision to keep a landline telephone service since most people I know have long since given up their landline phone. I’ve kept my landline around for three major reasons:

Poor cell phone reception at my home. Although I do use a Microcell and it allows me to use my cell phone where I otherwise would not have service, the experience is less than stellar and the device has its own set of problems that have caused me to want a landline as a backup. The Microcell will regularly drop calls, have problems with echoes and occasionally take extended periods of time to connect a call.
I have a home alarm system that uses a phone line to contact the monitoring station. I’m not a fan of contracts – but at the time I built my home given a number of factors and promotions at the time it was significantly less expensive to have the alarm installed with a long-term contract for monitoring than to pay for the system outright. I have about 50 months remaining on that contract.
Convenience. Because of the poor cell phone reception at my home and the problems with the Microcell it’s easier just to grab the landline and chat when I’m at home, especially for longer calls.

As I was gathering information together for my CPA at the end of the year it struck me just how much I was paying for my home phone service that I really didn’t use all that often. I started having the same questions I did about my cable TV service – is it worth the price? I had the bare-bones telephone line from the cable company. Local calling only, no extra features. The advertised price was $12.99 but after taxes the total bill for the phone service was $25.20. Some quick math told me that over the 50 months remaining on my alarm monitoring contract I would spend $1,260 alone on the cost of the home phone line, and that’s assuming no price increases. I started thinking there had to be a better way and started investigating.

Click to continue reading: Contemplating Cutting The Phone Cable Too

PostDeck Christmas Wishlist 2011

Every year PostDeck polls notable people (myself excluded) and asks what they wanted for Christas this year. I was honored to be included on this list along with friends and fellow podcasters David Sparks and Dan Benjamin, Don McAllister and others. You can find the entire list here: http://postdesk.com/christmas2011/. Thanks to Sam England, Project Manager at PostDesk for heading the project and including me.

MPU 067 Web Security and your Apple Devices

MPU Logo Mac Power Users Episode 67: Web Security and your Apple Devices is posted. In our last episode of 2011, David and I are are joined by security professional George Starcher for a comprehensive talk about web security and your Apple devices. You can view the shownotes here or better yet, subscribe in iTunes.

MPU 062: Cutting the Cable

MPU Logo /><a href= Mac Power Users Episode 62: Cutting the Cable is posted. This is an episode that is very near and dear to my heart as it’s all about my personal experiences over the past few months ditching my $75 monthly cable bill and finding alternative sources for content. We talk about what works, the equipment used, what I miss and whether or not I’m considering going back. You can view the shownotes here or better yet, subscribe in iTunes.

Et tu, Dropbox?

Sunday afternoon Dropbox made a code update to their system that disabled their authentication mechanism.They left the front door unlocked for 4 hours. If you knew an account holder’s username, any password you typed in would unlock the account. Dropbox claims less than 1% of users logged in during that period time and those users have been contacted. I was one of them.

In my case, I remember logging in to my Dropbox account on Sunday afternoon, although I don’t recall the specific time. I just received my MacBook Air back from the Apple Depot and as an additional security precaution thought it would be good form to change the passwords to my most sensitive services. Dropbox sent me an email letting me know that my account was logged in during the time of the breach, but because I accessed my account during that time, I now have no way of knowing whether the access was just my access or whether anyone else logged in to my account as well. Thus far, it doesn’t appear that Dropbox can tell whether an account was accessed with an inappropriate password. Though it appears that none of my data has changed. Aside from their initial blog post, Dropbox has provided no official information as of the date of this post. As a security precaution, I changed my password again as soon as I learned of the breach.

In my last post, ironically posted during the time of the security breach but before it became public knowledge, I commented about how I stored my entire Documents folder on Dropbox and how this act saved the day when my Air suddenly died and required service. We also sung the virtues of Dropbox on Mac Power Users Episode 47 and I explained how I implemented my system of creating a symbolic link to my documents folder in Dropbox. (It should be noted that I’ve cleaned out my Documents folder so that it truly only includes Documents.)

What to do now? I’m still going to use Dropbox, but I am going to be more aware of what’s in there. Dropbox is simply too convenient a service for me to stop using it and my workflow has become too depending on it. I have never stored confidential information in Dropbox unencrypted. While I wouldn’t want anyone reading the contents of my Documents folder, it contains mainly word processing documents, spreadsheets and presentations, no financial or client confidential information.

Someone asked me if I was going to continue to use Dropbox sync for applications like 1Password. Yes, because the 1Password database is additionally encrypted within Dropbox, the file itself is useless. My guess is the 1Password folks will review this incident and discuss it further in their blog.

The reality is these security breaches are going to happen because the people who run these systems are human, and humans make mistakes. I will not vilify them, but I do expect them to learn from the experience and implement better security and testing procedures. Am I upset? You bet. But hammering out an angry blog post will serve no productive purpose. I expect changes are already in progress at Dropbox to ensure this type of embarrassment does not happen again, however their reputation has been tarnished. I am also concerned this accidental incident may make Dropbox a bigger target for malicious attacks.

We as users must take a hard look at the services that we take for granted and take better steps to control our own privacy and security, we can’t count on companies to do this for us. While we have no control over what happens at the corporate and the sever level, there are things we can and must to do protect our information:

Do not store confidential information in the cloud unencrypted
Use strong passwords and change them frequently
Read and understand the Terms of Service for the services you use
Stay on top of what the company is doing

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