My Indian tourist visa just arrived this morning.

Frederick Giasson

Expiry date: 17 November 2005. Dah! Have I applied for a 6 months or 1 year visa? Definitely a 1 year, I paid for it! If I arrive in Delhi in September I have… 3 months? I’m not arrived in India and all my “plans” fall apart. The problem is that Indian visas start when they are issued.

I called at the consulate of Toronto and asked why I got a 6 months visa when I paid for a 1 year one. It seems that it is much more difficult to get a 1 year, so I got a 6 month. Fred… do not ask any questions and take it as it is.

So I need to bring back my plan number 2: arrive in Delhi and run at the nearest country to get another 6 month visa. Many possibilities exist: Arrive in Delhi, do the northern states of India for 3 months and go to Katmandu to get another visa. Or from Delhi to Calcutta to finish in the Bangladesh. Or run from Delhi to Colombo. There are so many possibilities… the problem is that this is not 100% sure that you get your new visa hahaha. Any ideas?

It’s what I like in traveling… you never know what will happen and where you will go. The only thing you can do is to go with the flow… the flow of events. When someone say to me: I’m planning a trip. I stare at him and start grinning.

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The place of mind maps and traditional writing in the creative process

Frederick Giasson

Some days ago I had a discussion with Niall about mind maps. We were talking about the fact that mind maps are far more flexible than linear notes. However, one method could be better than another depending of you and your needs. I mused about the place of mind maps and traditional writing in the creative process.

Vincent Ryan Ruggiero in his book The Art of Thinking describes the creative process in four stages:

1. Searching for challenges

  • “The first stage of the creative process represents the habit of searching for challenges, not at one specific time, but constantly. Its importance is reflected in the fact that you can be creative only in response to these challenges that you perceive.”

2. Expressing the problem or issue

  • “The objective in this stage is to find the best expression of the problem or issue, the one that will yield the most helpful ideas “A problem properly stated,” noted Henry Hazlitt, “is a partly solved”. Because different expressions open different avenues of thought, it is best to consider as many expressions as possible. One of the most common mistakes made in addressing problems and issues is to see them from one perspective only and thus to close off many fruitful avenues of thought.”

3. Investigating the problem or issue

  • “The objective of this stage is to obtain the information necessary to deal effectively with the problem or issue. In some cases, this will mean merely searching your past experience and observation for appropriate material and bringing it to bear on the current problem. In others, it will mean obtaining new information through fresh experience and observation, interviews with knowledgeable people, or your own research.”

4. Producing idea

  • “The objective in this stage is to generate enough ideas to decide what action to take or what belief to embrace.”

Now, what are the places of mind maps and traditional writing in these stages?

At stage one, the mind maps are well designated to answer to the need. Mind maps would be created each time we face a new challenge, each time we see a problems or an issue with a certain process. What is important to remember at that stage is that we need to constantly review the mind maps we have done, we need to find links between them. It is important to find these links because it will help us to view the problems or issues with a different eye.

At stage two, mind maps are also privileged. The links previously found will help us to aboard the problem or issue with many perspectives.

At stage three, mind maps always best fit the need. However, in this case what we like is the flexibility characteristic of mind maps: their ease updatability. As Niall said, they are much easier to update than linear notes. Then we can easily update old mind maps facts with new ones.

For the stage four, I will divide it in two sub-stages: (1) the act of producing many ideas and (2) the act of defining some of these ideas. In the first sub-stage, the mind maps or free writing always have their place. We do not need to bother us with clarity; the only things we need are ideas, many of them. However, we will eventually need to clarify them, to structure them for us and for other. We enter in a stage of writing for others. In this sub-stage, we try to refine some of our ideas. We need to put a light on some of them; we need them to be reviewed by our peers. In this process we will ask ourselves many questions. We will write and rewrite our most promising ideas. In this stage, the mind maps of these ideas are here to help us to make a plan for the writing. However, they are useless for their presentation to others. Mind maps are the expressions of our cognitive process but are worthless to others and lack depth. The traditional writing will structure, refine and deepens our ideas. It will make them clear and usable for their communication to others.

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Do not use the Atom Gmail service with online aggregators like Bloglines

Frederick Giasson

I study the problem of the secure web feeds since some weeks. I read a surprising post that talks about the Gmail Atom feed service used with Bloglines this morning. An idea came up in my mind while reading the post: it is not possible… can I really have access to login and password of people that subscribe to “secure” web feeds that use SSL and HTTP Authenticate with Bloglines? The answer is sadly: Yes I can.

The problem is that to use the Gmail Atom service in Bloglines, you need to build your feed’s URL like this: https://USERNAME: [email protected]/ gmail/feed/atom, to provide the user and password to the feed’s server.

All the problem is there: you have the username and the password in plaintext directly in the URL.

The first thing I then checked is if I was able to find such strings in online aggregators such as Bloglines. There is the answer:



Why do I have access to these URL? Probably because the Bloglines profile of these users are public and not private.

Then I tested if I was able to have access to these users and passwords by subscribing to the SSL and HTTP Authentication test feed on the silverorange project with Bloglines. I created two Bloglines profiles: one that the profile (Jim) and his blogroll are public and another (Todd) that will check the blogroll of the first account. The scenario goes like this:

1. Jim subscribes to a new SSL and HTTP Authentication protected feed with Bloglines. His profile is public and he does not know the consequences of what he is doing. The address he subscribe to is:

https://testuser:[email protected]/rsstest/
httpauth/rss_with_ssl_and_auth.xml

2. Todd discovers the public profile of Jim and checks his blogroll. He is lured by an entry called “Test Feed (HTTP Auth, SSL)” he checks it, likes it and subscribes to it. Then Todd see this Bloglines page:



3. Todd check more closely to this Bloglines page and remark:



Todd just discovered the user and password of a “secure” web feed. Basically he was not able to see the complete URL of the feed because it is viewable in the Bloglines system as: http://www.bloglines.com/preview?siteid=1830560. However, by subscribing to it, Bloglines shows the complete URL of the feed to the subscribed users.

This is just a test I performed with a SSL and HTTP Authentication RSS test feed available on silverorange.

Now, think about the consequences of this situation when users subscribe to Gmail or any other “secure” web feed using SSL and HTTP Authentication? The problem is real and could have many undesired consequences.

The best thing to do is not using such feeds in online services like Bloglines. Even in stand alone software it could be unsafe. I pointed out a week ago why I do not like this strategy to handle the problem of secure web feeds. This is a beautiful example of the potential problems it can lead to. You can read my article on the problem and the proposal of a solution here: Secure Web Feed Protocol.

This experience is a good example of the potential security treats that can appears when more than one system start to interact together.

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New applications of the Secure Web Feed Protocol – In Gmail and RSS Calendar

Frederick Giasson

Five days ago I proposed my article: Secure Web Feed Protocol, to the PST05 conference. Two days after I came around 15 things you can do with RSS. Two of these applications got my attention:

  1. Collect your email from all your email accounts in your RSS reader
    Stay updated on someone’s schedule
  2. I thought: these ideas are wonderful! What about the security of these services? Could they use SWFP? There is what I found.

1. Google is supposed to have tested a RSS feed service for Gmail in their GoogleLabs in 2004. I can not confirm if the service is always available because I do not have any Gmail accounts and I can not sing-in for one. This service put new incoming messages of a Gmail account into a RSS feed. Then if you subscribe to that feed you will see your new Gmail messages directly into your web feed reader. What an excellent idea! However, I was surprised to found that they used SSL to create a secure channel between the feed and the feed reader.

In the section 5 of the SWFP article I explained why I think that using SSL to secure a web feed is not the good strategy to adopt. It is for this reason that I was surprised to discover that they tried to use SSL to secure the inbox web feeds. JC suspected that they did not create it for this purpose but for another application called Google Notifier. I think he is right.

I do not know what was the real purpose of this test but the result is the same: the idea of using RSS feeds to check your mail is interesting. However, using SSL does not seem to be the good strategy to adopt. Not all stand alone feed readers support SSL. If you do not wish to enter the login and password of the private feed each time you want to check for new messages, you will need to do something like that:

https://USERNAME:[email protected]/gmail/feed/atom

This solution is even worse than not encrypting the web feed at all. With this string an intruder could sing-in into your account then check, delete or send messages with your Gmail account. It is far worse than only having access to the unencrypted inbox content.

This is a beautiful idea that could be handled by the Secure Web Feed Protocol. Now check out the second application of RSS feed that could use SWFP.

2. This time we are sharing our calendar with our friends and family using a service called RSS Calendar. When you add something to it all your friends and family will have access to your calendar’s changes. Is that not beautiful? Yeah it is. What about the security of this other service?

You could wish that the planet know that you are going to Mont Washington the 20 Mai 2005. But what if you only wish that your friends and family know it? There is no privacy feature in the service for the moment.

I think that the implementation of the Secure Web Feed Protocol could be really interesting in this case too. Only the people you choose would be able to read your calendar. I like the idea.

You are now thinking: how could the implementation of SWFP could be done in such services? The only thing that will change with what I discussed in the article is the way you will distribute the asymmetric keys

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Why blog systems do not include comments in blog posts’ feed?

Frederick Giasson

Comments are integral part of posts. Why blog systems, like Radio Userland, do not take this fact into account? I mean, why the comments are viewable from another source, another system? I would like that the comments made on my posts be integrated in them and in the blog’s feed.

Why? You are asking. I thought about it and I found that even on popular blogs people do not comment too much. The reason? Most readers seem to read the posts on the feed and not on the blog. The result is that they do not see the comments made on them. If people could be able to read the comments at the same place that they read the posts, I think they would be more motivated to join in the discussion and leave comments.

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