Knowing how to keep your web traffic data safe while browsing the web on unknown networks is a vital skill that not enough savvy Internet surfers take part in. I have previously discussed a few ways of solving this issue through the use of SSH tunnels (manually-created and application managed). I have also discussed things like “anonymous” web browsing through the Janus Privacy Adapter as well as with public Tor nodes. (Side note: Anonymous in quotes because truly anon browsing requires encrypted, signed traffic over private Tor networks — not public, published ones everyone knows about — but I digress). While VPN is nothing new and has been used by businesses and their employees for over a decade, it has not generally been something aimed at the typical Internet user. [click to continue…]
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Encryption,
Giganews,
Guides,
How To's,
Internet,
Reviews,
Security,
VPN,
VyprVPN
Blippy is my pick for startup to watch this year (with Square being close by). Blippy enables people to automatically share their purchases done through a variety of services, such as Amazon, iTunes, Netflix and better yet their credit/debit cards, with their followers. At first glance many will be shocked and wonder why they would ever want to use such a service but that only brings up memories of people saying the same thing about Twitter just a few years ago. The concept behind Blippy is crazy enough that I believe it will take off rather quickly. In fact, they recently announced they are already tracking over $1M in transactions.
My Blippy Profile – Some aesthetic elements of Blippy are noticeably inspired from Facebook and Twitter, but that’s because they work well. [click to continue…]
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Blippy,
Editorials,
Internet,
News,
Reviews
I always found it a bit ironic that I had less time to blog here as I started working full-time on a blogging startup. Well, my time spent on Skribit is starting to pay off. Today, Skribit finally goes out of what we’ve internally been considering our public beta — so it’s our official launch day. We have been laying low on the marketing and press front, except for my ramblings here, and now we are ready to tell more people about it. That being said, TechCrunch just wrote about Skribit (thanks Daniel!). This is the first step on our so-called “Customer Acquisition Plan”, as MBA as that sounds.
[click to continue…]
Tagged as:
Internet,
News,
Skribit,
Software,
Startup,
Startup Weekend
The third year of Atlanta Startup Weekend is less than a week away and begins Friday November 13th and goes through Sunday night. I am definitely biased as I have attended the last two Startup Weekends, but I strongly suggest attending if you are within the Atlanta area. For those unfamiliar with the concept, Startup Weekend is a 54 hour event where people with a variety of backgrounds — from legal to backend development — gather, pitch ideas and then take the selected ideas from whiteboard to working web application or whatever it may be. [click to continue…]
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Internet,
News,
Skribit,
Startup,
Startup Weekend,
Twitpay
The saga continues as I go to all lengths to find 5 bars of cell phone reception at home. It first started when I moved into my new apartment. I didn’t think to check my cell reception when first touring the property so I was in shock after I moved in and noticed I had No Service. In the meantime, I signed up with Vonage for a VoIP line, but I hated having two phone numbers. I experimented with the Wi-Ex zBoost cell signal booster and that worked, but there were drawbacks. It only provided a 6 foot radius of signal, the booster [click to continue…]
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3G,
AT&T,
Cellular,
GPS,
Hardware,
Internet,
iPhone,
MicroCell,
Mobile,
Reviews,
Technology
Two years ago during a trip to San Francisco I met up with entrepreneur Steli Efti. He had previously contacted me and told me a bit about his story. He bought a one-way ticket from Greece to San Francisco with the intent of creating a startup called Supercool School. Steli wanted to change the way people learn. I remember talking with him then and noting how remarkably passionate he was about the idea of giving anyone the ability to teach or attend an online class about any subject. I thought to myself about how this type of passion is what startups are really about. [click to continue…]
People: Steli Efti
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Education,
Internet,
Reviews,
School,
Startup
When it comes to music, I am a complete maniac. I must have some new, non-overplayed songs to get any work done. That’s why I invested in a solid studio monitor setup and that’s why one of my screens usually looks like this:
Left to Right: Hype Machine, SweetFM, thesixtyone, iTunes, Last.fmAdd to that my propensity to store stuff in the proverbial cloud, and it’s no wonder why I’m relying more and more on music websites than actively seeking downloads to put in my iTunes (and it doesn’t help that I always have just a few MB left of space on my early-adopter SSD). I used to labor over [click to continue…]
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Internet,
Music,
News,
Reviews,
Software,
Spotify
It has been quite a while since my last update on what I actually do for a living – work on the startup Skribit. Okay, well to be technically correct this blog is more of a living as it pays more (thanks for reading!), but I work about 60 hours a week on Skribit, more or less. Some weeks we’re gearing up for a deploy (like this past week) and I work a lot more to clean things up in time. For those wondering what Skribit is or what I’ve talked about thus far as I attempt to chronicle [click to continue…]
Tagged as:
Internet,
Life,
News,
Skribit,
Startup,
Web Dev
July 28, 2009
You have probably heard of a company called GrandCentral a few years ago. They made big news with their September 2006 beta launch of their service allowing people to use a single phone number for all of their phones. David Ulevitch of OpenDNS was the first person I knew that began using GrandCentral full-time. He [...]
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Android,
Apple,
Gizmo,
Google,
GoogleVoice,
GrandCentral,
Internet,
iPhone,
Reviews,
Software,
VoIP
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July 13, 2009
While inflight Internet access isn’t anything new, especially to airlines like Virgin America and JetBlue, I finally got my first whiff of it this past weekend on an Airtran flight. The particular Boeing 717-200 I flew on this past Friday, like many planes in the Airtran fleet (and some planes with American, Delta, Virgin America, [...]
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EVDO,
Gogo,
Internet,
Mobile,
News,
Reviews,
Technology,
Wifi
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June 22, 2009
I recently did the unthinkable. I changed the URL structure of my blog’s URLs. Long considered a scary territory, along with moving domains, due to the SEO implications and potential for losing traffic, I was convinced by Bruce Keener to give it a shot. Ever since my blog launched I have been using the domain/year/month/day/post-name [...]
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Apache,
blog,
How To's,
Internet,
SEO,
Web Dev,
WordPress
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June 17, 2009
If you live in Atlanta, you’ll be happy to hear that there’s a new ISP in town. And I’m not talking about just any type of Internet connection. I’m talking about WiMAX (read my Thoughts on WiMAX post). It’s called CLEAR by Clearwire and its launch makes Atlanta the “Fastest Unwired City in the [...]
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4G,
Atlanta,
CLEAR,
Clearwire,
Hardware,
Internet,
Mobile,
News,
Technology,
WiMAX
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