the life and times of endenizen » 2006 » January

The government is watching you! Maybe not, but your boss is watching you! Aw heck, *someone* is watching you! The internet isn’t a safe place so why not protect your privacy while you’re browsing the www. With these simple steps, you can create a secure “tunnel” between the computer you’re using and a remote server. Your data will be encrypted before being passed through the tunnel to prevent anyone from seeing (or restricting) your internet browsing. This technique is useful if certain websites are blocked (typical of some schools) or if you just don’t want your privacy thrown out the window as your boss monitors every website you visit. Besides, you’re devoted to your job and wouldn’t dare visit sites like Slashdot, BoingBoing or FARK on company time.

Note: For certain software setups and configurations, this can tend to be a very involved process. For this guide, I’ll be using a feature specific to PuTTY. This may work with other SSH software but I make no guarantees, though you should be able to find other solutions easily with Google.

The process:

1. Get PuTTY.
2. Optional: If you’re adding this rule to a previously saved session, make sure to select that session and hit load before you continue.
3. Click on “Tunnels” in the options list and enter 1080 for the source port (1080 is the “official” SOCKS port, though you can choose a different one if you so desire). Click the Dynamic radio button and hit Add.

4. Optional: Scroll back up to the Session options and save the session.
5. Make sure the Host Name (or IP) is set correctly in the Session options and click Open.
6. When you login, you should have a tunnel between your computer and the server you connected to (If it doesn’t work, make sure you entered all of the information correctly). Now we have to configure Firefox to work with our newly created tunnel.
7. Open up Firefox and click Tools->Options. Click on Connection Settings at the bottom of the panel.
8. Select “Manual proxy configuration”, type in 127.0.0.1 for the SOCKS Host and put in 1080 (where 1080 is the port you used in the PuTTY tunnel).

That’s it! You should now be able to browse the internet through the tunnel. To make sure it’s working visit www.whatismyip.com and you should see the ip of the server you created the tunnel to. If you have any questions about this HOWTO, please post them below and I’ll respond as best I can.

The development world has realized the true power of AJAX. With that, everyone wants to release the slickest, easiest, and most powerful online email and calendaring system… first. Once people find a good one and get used to it, chances are they won’t want to switch. Remember the launch of GMail and the mad rush to get an invitation? Well, now that everyone who wanted a GMail account has one (and 100 more invites to boot), it’ll be pretty darn tough for any competition to sprout up in the area. Yahoo is still beta-testing their new interface (which I hear is pretty neat) but who will want to switch email addresses *again* and update everyone in their address book *again*. If Google releases a calendar service, it would all but solidify their place on the top of free web-based email and calendar services. However, this is hardly the solution for the corporate environment.

Corporations need security. They need control. They need customizable in-house email servers. For the open-source community, you get to take your pick from a multitude of software packages. On Planet Microsoft, you get Exchange. Few have been able to stand up to the might of Exchange. Some businesses are even using 12-year-old installations because it’s worked *that* long. Of course, anyone who’s ever tried to get a Microsoft application to Play Well With Others knows that it’s a nightmare at worst, and an inconvenient, semi-working, mess at best.

Enter Zimbra.

The team behind Zimbra (Zimbra, Inc.) just released Beta 3 of their very popular corporate email and calendaring solution. Zimbra comes with everything: mail server, web server, db server, spam filters, and a web-based interface to rival Outlook on speed *and* features. I’ve been running a Zimbra server (the free open source edition rather than the network edition) for a couple weeks now and it’s been a vast improvement over the previous methods of trying to combine offline and online calendars or trying to sync Outlook between all the computers I use during the day.

The sentiment among some of my colleagues is that email clients don’t belong on the web. In some cases, I might have to agree with them. Zimbra is more than just a web-based email client though. If you’d prefer, you can set up your email the same way that you would with any other mail server. Still, if I need to check my email over the web and I’m given the choice, I’d choose Zimbra any day.

RFID devices (short for radio-frequency identification) have been around for quite a while. Mobil’s Speedpass uses this technology so you can “swipe” your credit information without actually sticking your credit card in strange slots. The U.S. government has said they will require RFID chips to be placed in all new passports by October 2006. This statement has generated plenty of controversy, since the information on the RFID chip will include the personal identification of the passport holder, but that’s a whole ‘nother story that I’m not too excited about at the moment.

What I *am* excited about, is the prospect of implanting a tiny chip into my hand so I can easily authenticate with a multitude of devices. Imagine your car door unlocking just when your hand reaches the handle; imagine logging onto your computer with a wave of your hand; imagine never again having to use the excuse, “I lost my keys.”

Forget biometric scanners or clunky “unlock buttons,” this is ubiquitous computing at its finest.

People around the world (mostly early-adopters of the latest tech gadgets) have tried RFID implants. Some night clubs in Spain have made Tuesday nights “Implant nights” for those who want to recieve their own chips so that the bar can literally keep “tabs” on the person. Others have hacked together their own hardware to open deadbolts or log them into a computer.

If you’d like more information, Amal Graafstra has an implant in each hand and is sort of an expert on the subject. He has a book on RFID coming out next month. The Tagged Forum is a good place to go for more information (or to fulfill all your government conspiracy theory needs). Phidgets sells one of the more popular chips used for implanting.