Author: agup

Safe internet surfing for travelers

These are some easy and basic precautions you can take that will reduce the possibility of having your online identity stolen. While I am not an internet security expert, I do know enough about software and HTTP sniffing to say that a few simple steps will help discourage the every day thief, which is about the best that a typical traveler can ask for. Think of these suggestions as being similar to not leaving your valuables sitting on your car seat when parked in a public parking lot.

Note, these steps will not protect you against the most determined individuals and organizations since they are typically equipped to do things such as cracking your encryption. If you have business concerns about your encryption being hacked then you will definitely need to consult with a security expert.

1. Do not use public wifi. These can easily be monitored by crooks using what’s commonly called “packet sniffers” which can be used to steal your passwords. Crooks also sometimes set up fake wifi nodes specifically aimed at monitoring and stealing information.

2. If you do use a public wifi with your device then also use a consumer Virtual Private Network, or VPN. These are becoming available for smartphones. If you don’t know what this is, then here is an example. VPNs encrypt all of your traffic making it more challenging to see what you are doing. I have noticed the free versions typically cause some slowing down of your surfing experience.

3. Don’t use an internet cafe to log into your email, facebook, twitter, etc. If you absolutely have to use an internet cafe be sure to run your session in private browsing mode and then close the browser completely when you are done. Change your password when you get home.

4. Some phones will work internationally, and you can ask your carrier for a one month international data plan. If your phone does not work internationally, then rent an international phone with a data plan. Do your research first on pricing and hidden extras. Also try to make sure you rent from legitimate vendors by searching and reading reviews. If you have a travel agent ask them for suggestions.

References:

Chrome Incognito mode

Firefox private browsing

Safari private browsing

Internet Explorer private browsing

6 reasons why your smartphone battery doesn’t last

I’ve surprised many people when I tell them my Android lasts less than 8 hours under heavy use. And, I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve asked someone how long their smartphone lasts and they really don’t know. The most common response goes something like this “…not sure because I plug it in whenever I get a chance.” Some of my friends even carry separate rechargeable backup battery packs to augment their limited battery life. As soon as their battery gets down to around a quarter tank they plug in the mega backup.

As a developer who builds apps for smartphones, I’ve spent quite a bit of time becoming very familiar with many of the configurable aspects of my various phones all the while using it intensively in build/debug cycles. And, I’ve put some thought into categorizing the different types of battery power usage of which some are less obvious than others. So here goes:

  1. Screen brightness. I turn it all the way down, but this does make reading the screen outside in bright daylight nearly impossible. The fact is the brighter the screen , the more pull on the battery.  On all my phones, the screen is the biggest gas hog.
  2. Number of applications loaded into memory.  Very few of us pay attention to how many applications are loaded/running versus completely shut down.  The more running apps the phone has to manage the more battery is drawn.
  3. Cellular signal strength. If your phone has a weak signal it will boost its own radio to try and compensate.  Cell phone signals are not constant and they ebb and flow all the time. On the down side when signals are weak, the phone will expend additional power to try and keep you connected. Sure, use wireless (wifi) were possible, but when wifi isn’t available you have to rely on good old cellular. It’s commonly understood that 4G draws the most power, 3G draw less and wifi draws the least.
  4. Duty-cycle for using apps. What I mean by this is how much time you use apps during the time period between charges.  If you spend 2 solid hours of app play time between 8 hour charge cycles then that means a duty cycle of 25% (2 divided by 8). The lower the duty cycle the less power is drawn assuming an idling phone with no apps installed is the baseline for minimal power usage.
  5. Number of applications that continuously connect to the internet.  This includes Twitter, facebook, FourSquare, email, etc. Secretly these apps can be very talkative in the background and you might not even know it. Every time they ask the mother ship for an update it draws power to make the request over the internet and then process the results.
  6. Talk-time. Everyone knows that talk time uses battery power, so this is obvious compared to items 1 – 5. On a smartphone you are usually doing other things in addition to talk time. In the days of feature phones, such as the original Motorola Razr, the only thing you could do with those was talk, talk, talk and intermix that with some limited texting. At least for me, over the period of 8 hours I’ve spent much more time (or duty cycle) using apps, such as email, as compared to making phone calls.

Hopefully this takes some of the mystery away from short battery life. We all wish batteries could last days, but we unconsciously create situations within our phones that draws down the battery much faster than expected. And, their are situations beyond our control. such as low cell signal strength, that draw extra power.

3 Steps for Determining if Your Website is Mobile Ready

Here are three step for helping determine the mobile ready strengths and weaknesses of your existing website. I’ve had a number of conversations from website teams recently asking the question: “Can we reuse our existing site for mobile users?” I was surprised to learn that the individuals asking me the question had, in fact, never visited their own site on a mobile device.

Note, this blog describes steps that need to be address before you decide whether to build for the web or native applications.

Step One – Create a small focus group of company outsiders, friends as well as employees.

  • Gather as many different types of mobile devices as possible including: iPad, iPhone, Android tablet, and several varieties of Android phones. Try to use a combination of older and newer devices. Don’t fool yourself by simply using all of the latest great versions, especially if your web visitors are the general public.
  • Get a mobile projector, such an Elmo or IPEVO.
  • Write down the common use cases, and the workflows associated with them. An example use case might be logging in to your site. And, a workflow would describe the steps a user takes to complete the login process  from beginning to the end.
  • Visit your website and run through the common use cases.
  • Turn off wireless, if possible, and let everyone experience typical internet speeds to simulate, for example, standing in line at the grocery store.
  • Trade off using different devices.
  • Hire a user interface (UX) designer if you don’t already have one. Bring them on board at the beginning, or as early as possible, in this evaluation process.

Step Two – Create a grading system to help assess the experience everyone had with each device.

  • Were you able to accomplish your task as easily and quickly as if you were at your desk with a full-size laptop or computer?
  • Did you have to do a lot of extra panning and zooming in and out to navigate through the use cases and workflows?
  • Was there any functionality that simply didn’t work, didn’t work correctly, or didn’t work as expected on the mobile device?
  • Were there any aspects of the site that looked different or wrong? For example, was all the text the right size? Was everything in the right place?
  • Were you satisfied with the amount of time it took for pages and images to load?
  • Were you able to comfortably use the site when rotating the phone between landscape and portrait views?
  • Were you okay with how quickly you were able to switch between different pages on the website?
  • Were you able to access secure resources without any problems?
  • And, perhaps most importantly, were there any obvious improvements you would like to see made to make mobile surfing experience better?

Step 3. Apply some commonly known mobile-specific conditions to your findings and see if helps to provide context to everyone’s experience.

  • One-handed plus gestures. It’s a fact that navigating a mobile web is significantly different from a desktop browser. There’s no mouse! Mobile browsing is usually done with one hand, while the other hand is used to hold the device. The screen is driven by what are called gestures. Examples of gestures are when you swipe your thumb upward on a page to scroll it downward, or when you use two fingers, usually the index finger and thumb, to pinch zoom the screen in or out.
  • Smaller Screens. And, of course the screens are much smaller than what you would find on a desktop or laptop. Different devices have different resolutions. And, navigating a full website can seem more cumbersome as you use gestures to navigate around, in comparison to the desktop experience of seeing the entire page, and using your a precision mouse to whip through the different links on a page.
  • Download Speeds. Download speeds on mobile devices vary considerably compared to your work machine hooked up to a reliable local area network (LAN). A site that seems zippy on your work machine, may load much differently on a typical smartphone. Also, for some older phones they may have much less processor power and that may lead to the perception of slower download speeds as the CPU chugs through displaying the page.

How do I interpret the results?

When you are done compile, discuss and analyze the findings with your internal teams and stakeholders.

Good. If most testers successfully navigated the majority of use cases and workflows then you are in good shape, and you may simply need to do some additional tweaking to your site.

Not so good. However, if most testers had unsatisfactory experiences then you’ll need to spend more time looking more closely as what worked and what didn’t work. You may find workflows that are great on a desktop machine that are clumsy and awkward on a mobile device.

Don’t be surprised. Portions of your site may have to be redesigned. You may not be able to include everything that’s in your full site into your mobile site. You may have to spend a lot of time optimizing the site to speed up page load times. Pay special attention to functionality that didn’t work on mobile. Mobile web browsers have well known limitations compared to full browsers. Looking at what didn’t work may help you decide if you need access to native device capabilities.

You’ve just taken a huge first step towards helping your team set the stage for stepping into the mobile world.