Is the iPod Mini the best travel companion?

Frederick Giasson

If not he is near. I just bought one in prevision of my trip to India in some months. Why do I think that the iPod mini will possibly be my best travel companion?

  • The iPod mini has the longest battery lifetime (about 18 hours)
  • You can put between 1000(the 4Gig) and 1500(the 6Gig) songs
  • You can upload audio books to learn the local language. In my case the Pimsleur Hindi I
  • You can plan some part of your trip in the calendar
  • The apple power adaptor can handle most of the world’s current voltage and Hz
  • He can be use to wake you the morning
  • You can play games while waiting at the airport or at an international bus station
  • You can read text format ebooks
  • You can consult a to-do list (previously build in a text file)
  • You can use it as a watch
  • You can use the contact list to consult the addresses of the hotels where you are expecting to sleep and the ones of your embassies in the countries are planning to go
  • You have plug-ins to transform it into a camera or a FM transmitter to listen the local news
  • He is small, light and beautiful

Do I need to tell mores?

I finally know why people sometimes adulate them. They are awesome. They are relatively low cost, full of useful features and beautiful.

In next days I’ll explain how I incorporated it in my daily live: the interaction of the iPod Mini between: me, my laptop and other software.

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Now I think that I know what writing mean

Frederick Giasson

In reality I don’t really know what it means but I tasted it

Sorry for my lack of blogging in past days. I had been overwhelmed by the writing of my article called Secure Web Feed Protocol. I rewrote it 4 times. As I said in a previous post I was only supposed to post the idea here, on this blog. Finally I sent a whole article to the PST05 security conference. It’s my first interaction with the world of publishing. The only thing I know is that I learned many things in the process and that I have many others to learn, accepted or not. I don’t really care about the outcome because I loved the experience and already learned a lot by doing it.

The main thing I learned was what writing means. I read some books about writing in past few months. They all said that writing is rewriting; that writing is a process. Now I know what they mean. If you don’t understand what you wrote, how people can? The only trick is to rewrite it as long as your thoughts are not clears.

Writing is learning? I learned a lot then. I not only learned on writing, I also learned on the subject I was writing on. Why? Because “writing is thinking is learning” — William Zinsser.

writing learning paper security

Shame on Canadian Politicians

Frederick Giasson

All the ancient Canadian combatants of the World War II are currently in Holland for the commemoration of the 60 anniversary of the liberation of Holland. The Canadian army of the Second World War was an army of volunteers, ready to give their live for their families, country and the World’s peace. The Dutchman are currently thanking them another time.

They know what these Canadian boys and guys done for them; they thank them every year; they teach the true story of their courage to each new Dutchman generations. They are seeing as heroes. In Canada they are seeing as elderly people that participated to a war far from home.

A week ago, our politicians tell them that they will not go to the ceremonies in Holland because they don’t have the time for this: the current minority government is in troubles. Tomorrow, after that these old heroes tell to these politicians what they think of them, the prime minister and the chefs of every other party concluded a truce to fly to Holland… The problem is that they will not be there for the official ceremony of Sunday, they will arrive in Monday.

Shame on them. These soldiers are old, it’s probably one of the last chances we have to thank them for what they done for our country, for our generations. We must remember.

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Small chapters for faster reading

Frederick Giasson

I these days, people have less time to read. Most of us can’t sit down, 4 hours in a row, to read. Our reading will be sparse. We like to read, but we’ll read 4 or 5 pages here, another 3 or 4 pages there, etc.

Many people will read before sleeping. They will read 10, 15 or 20 pages. Reading needs to be planned like any other tasks we have to do daily.

Personally I like books with small chapters or books with pauses in chapters. I need it because I hate to lose track of my readings. If a book is wrote with small chapters, between 5 and 10 pages, or have pauses (2 carriage returns), I’ll be able to read them in minutes. Then, I’ll be able to read these short chapters between other daily tasks.

If I check the chapter I’m starting to read and see that he have 75 pages, I’ll certainly not start it for a 15 of 20 minutes of reading. Then I’ll wait until I’ll have the time to read it. It’s rare that I’ll have the time to read 75 pages in a row during a normal week of work. Then, the result will be that I’ll read less during this week.

Otherwise, if I’m starting to read and see that the chapter have 10 pages, I’ll be able to read it somewhere between two daily tasks. The result will be a greater reading time because I’ll be able to more effectively plan the reading of these small chapters with my other daily task.

I don’t think that I’m alone in this situation. Our world is changing and I think that authors will need to take this new fact in count when they will write their books. They will need to write smaller chapters to give their readers more flexibility to read their books. I think that authors like John Grisham understand this new need.

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Why using SWFP rather than HTTP over SSL?

Frederick Giasson

This legitimate question has been asked by Daniel Lemire after his reading of the SWF protocol. There is my answer to his question. I added it as the section 7 of my SWFP paper.

The question is hard to answer because it depends on many factors. I’ll compare the two methods together and try to show you the differences between the two protocols.

Usually SSL is used to authenticate the server to the client and, optionally, the client to the server. With the cost of authentication certificates (about 100£ each), the normal clients can’t afford these authentication certificates. It’s why SSL is mainly used to authenticate servers.

Our goal is especially to authenticate the readers to the server. It’s a reason why using SSL as a secure channel and an authentication protocol is not so useful: because the implementation cost is too high; like the revised version of SWFP at section 5.

This is the big difference between SWFP and SSL: their goals.

A solution could be to use HTTP over SSL (HTTPS) with HTTP Authentication. HTTPS would provide the secure channel and HTTP Authentication would provide the authentication mechanism. The problem with this solution is that some feed readers only implement HTTPS, others HTTP Authentication and few implement both. Another problem with this solution is that who says HTTP Authentication also says login and password. In SWFP the authentication is inherent to the system. It’s made with the public key of the legitimate reader present in the secure database of the server. The authentication steps of the reader to the server are transparent to him. I think that this transparency feature is an important one because it simplify the process and brings non-expert users to use it. Only the simpler things, in appearance of, are widely used.

Two types of feed readers are available: the web applications like Bloglines or the standalone software like Omea Reader. Both principles, HTTPS with HTTP Authentication and SWFP, could be implemented in standalone software and the implementation time, cost and difficulty are probably comparables. However, I think that SWFP would be much more easer to implement in web applications. Why? To use HTTPS with HTTP, the web applications would need to create the secure channel themselves with the feed’s server. By example, Bloglines itself would need to create the secure channel with each private feed server. I don’t think that it’s imaginable. However, with SWFP nothing like that would be necessary because the encrypted feed is viewable by anyone who needs it, even web applications. If I check the FeedBurner stats of my blog: 30% of my readers use Bloglines. I think that it’s considerable and that we need to take this fact in count.

Another problem with the HTTP Authentication solution is that it’s not an optimal solution to our problem. If a user is subscribed to many private feeds then he’ll need to enter, each time, a login and password to check the feeds. Personally I don’t think that this is viable. Think about the pain such a situation would engender… nobody would subscribe to such feeds.

Finally one of the beauties of web feeds is that you can archive them for future readings. The problem with the HTTPS solution is that you didn’t really have the choice to archive the encrypted or the unencrypted content. But such a choice is possible with SWFP.

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