New Samsung Android 2.1

So, my old Samsung Moment was having some severe process problems (something I installed), the CPU was getting pegged 24/7, causing the battery to die in 1-2 hours.

I decided to take the plunge and asked my wonderful Sprint dealer to hook me up with a download to the latest Android 2.1 update (the link is gone from public downloads), I explained my battery issue, and my dealer says "This would appear to be a "defect", heres a new phone with the latest Android 2.1."

I must say, it is definitely working much better, I have banged on it for over 2 hours straight of web-browsing over wifi even (burns more bat. than cell net), took several pictures and was surprised with the new ludicrous bright flash. The camera also had several other enhancements including filters and editing features. I know its still not 1080p like the MyPhone 4G.

It was nice to note that I wont need as many apps now as many feature enhancements apps have been built into the native OS, such as auto screen brightness, tts caller ID, and more. Email and contacts seems to function better, no hickups in my contact sync. I am going to see how it goes (battery) without installing any apps, then slowly install them to make sure I catch any that nuke it.

Now native support for PPTP and IPSEC VPN connections (OpenVPN as an app in Market).

So far the battery is still at 3/4 after 2 hours of internet and camera playing, and a couple phone calls and texts.

Asterisk and SIP security tips

Interesting posting on the Digium blog (i know its old), but it covers some important points, and even has a video showing what SIP users are up against from the dark side.

An important one that many of my associates may not have seen is the alwaysauthreject=yes, this gives hackers the same result if they try hitting an invalid extension, or a valid one, where as normally it would say "you have entered an invalid extension", or "you have entered an invalid password for this extension" - allowing a hacker to "harvest" your extensions and focus on them with further attacks.

I notice they also mention fail2ban which Smpl-PBX has also been using for quite some time, however unlike some of the "other distros" ours is actually secure with no backdoor holes in the fail2ban config. Besides this it is extremely important to keep up with Asterisk (or whatever your SIP server may be) security patches, which is why we do a regular audit of our systems.

Its interesting when a new customer says "I dont know, its just been running in the closet there for the last couple of years, then it all of a sudden stopped taking calls, and our PBX tech changed his phone number".

securely post your email in online forums

I sometimes see people posting their email address in online forums, those people may as well kiss their inbox  goodbye as every spam bot on earth will grab it within hours.

If you find you do need to post your address to a forum, who else, but Google is now offering mail "Captcha" service - this forces people to answer a complex question to actually see your email, and you simple post a link to your captcha page in the forums.

http://www.google.com/recaptcha/mailhide/

Cinco De Mayo - the 5th may be a bad day in internet history

Well it looks like the new DNS security protocol is being implemented on all 13 Root DNS servers (control the whole internet for the entire earth) on May 5th. This should prevent DNS hacker attempts.

Unfortunately it also breaks the compatibility with many networking devices around the world, most devices have a limit of 512 bytes for DNS packets, but the new DNSSEC protocol could often times generate 4 times that.

This means that some devices may not pass name info to tell your computer where Facebook is located.

All 13 root servers will be updated at 10AM PST MAY 5th.

Read more here.

Todays Antivirus reviews

Best Free Antivirus:

So - the latest in the seek for a good AV, no - there will never be one that is always perfect.

Here is my list, slightly skewed by CNETs reviews (click links to see reviews):

1. Avast 5
2. MS Security Essentials
3. AVG Free
4. Avira Antivir
5. Panda Cloud Antivirus

Sorry, you wont see any mention of Norton or his scottish cousin McAffee here, this review is for fast efficient products, and whats more all of them are free and I was not specifically looking for free, it just happened as a "bi-product"!!!

1. I tried the latest Avast the other day and it has been pretty good at keeping a problem customer clean for the last month, I am not impressed by its overhead, but its worlds above Norton type products. So far I can't 100% vouch for it as I do not have a wide client base using it.

2. Microsoft's new Security Essentials came out last year, at first its engine was not very efficient, but with recent updates I would put it at 99.9%, performance is great, their active scanner has very low overhead, probably the lowest of all. I have a very wide client base that has been using this for over 6 months, and so far only 1 has been infected.

3. Cant say I have been happy with recent versions of AVG, they seem to be getting more and more bulky in the resource area. However they still

3. Cant say I have been happy with recent versions of AVG, they seem to be getting more and more bulky in the resource area. However they still have a good knack for detection. I have been using AVG widely since 7.5, but last years version caused me to look elseware (pun- yes) for faster software.

4. Avira - I cant say I know much about her, other than lots of discussion read here and there that its a great product, CNET reviews it to do moderately well.

5. Panda Cloud Antivirus unfortunately was a disappointment in the detection department, but I think as more users get onboard and development progresses it has the potential to far surpass all these other products. Its resource usage is the lowest I have seen, and its pure simplicity is wonderful: "I detect viruses" - what else do you want it to do - "I constantly nag you and slow down your computer"?

New found speed for Android phones

While many Android phones are coming out with blazing 1ghz processors, there are still many more that are quite a bit slower, like the 528mhz Hero. Well there may be relief in sight as several new JIT (Just In Time) compilers are being released that speed up the Android Virtual Machine aka Dalvik -

- YES, Android uses a virtual machine (as do many other phone OSes), this is what allows Android to easily integrate with several different hardware manufacturers and still efficiently run its applications. Some may say - "the iPhone has control over the hardware, while Android is running wild, how does it stay efficiently stable?" Well this virtual machine is what does the trick.



This is similar to modern computing platforms (ie Windows, linux), you can install virtualization software which creates a kind of buffer layer between your applications and the hardware, allowing efficient control of resources along with "plug-n-play" usability - your guest OS or application no longer has to worry about drivers that run efficiently with your hardware, the virtualization software handles this in the background.



What does this mean for Android phones?? - well, it means they will run applications faster and use less battery - yeah!!! The JIT compiler allows the OS to kind of cache program code as it is processed, and speed it up when it is called in the future, this is a poor one liner explanation, so read more here if you like. There are now several JIT compilers in development for Android, shortly we should see stable releases of this new software. Here is a nice short article on one of the new JIT compilers.

In case you didnt know, Android is Google's mobile operating system that is found on a number of phones such as the Hero, Nexus One, Moment, Droid and many others; while it is not yet at the level of the iPhone OS, it is fast approaching, and often times considered the biggest competitor to the iPhone market. Android OS is currently on version 2.1, you can read more about it here.

CDMA iPhone to hit Verizon

Ohhhhh boy oh boy oh boy, wet my pants - its coming to Verizon - well, slow down there, *RUMOR* has it that Apple's manufacturer is working on a CDMA design (the protocol used by Verizon among others), *RUMOR* has it production may begin as early as September, this means Verizon users may expect phones by 1st half 2011 - again - these are all RUMORS, to date nobody creditable has confirmed even the production of such a phone.

I have heard some Verizon sales guys touting about how they will soon have Apple under their hat - ignore any such claims, we may also have men on Mars, but not this year!!

Good evidence that Apple is taking note of the Android market enfringement that was unleashed earlier this year - if you are a verizon customer, google may be coming to your neighborhood sooner than apple - dont settle for "Android clones", get a genuine Nexus One made by Google.