Bet you never thought about just how smart your “smart phone” really is.  Well, now you should.  In addition to managing your email accounts, voice calls, texting, Facebook, etc…your phone tracks your location and reports back to your carrier on a 1440 basis…that is, every minute of every day.

While this might surprise you, it really shouldn’t.  For example, how many of you are using Google Maps on your phone?  I happen to love this little app on my Blackberry.  I get driving directions, maps, satellite views anytime and anywhere.  I recently used this app in Puerto Rico and it didn’t miss a beat, but did you ever think that the phone has to know where you are to give you directions and…here is the surprise for most – this data is stored after it is created.  So your whereabouts are being recorded.  For most of us, this isn’t really a big deal as I don’t really care if someone knows that I went to Starbucks for a coffee…although my wife might think that I go there too much, so don’t tell her.  As a parent, I welcome the idea of knowing where my kids are. However, it is true that this data could be used inappropriately, and we need to make sure that it is protected.

Interestingly though, this data is proving to be a real asset in the fight against crime. Cell phones are increasingly being used to prove that criminals are travelling to a secret meeting or are at/near the location of crimes.  Law enforcement also has the ability (with the right authority) to listen in on the conversations these folks are having since your carrier can turn on your phone remotely and without you knowing it…just something else to think about.

You may want to keep your eye on this one.  There appears to be quite a debate raging.  Reports indicate that Barack Obama’s Justice Department insists it should have the authority to conduct such tracking without a warrant, although some judges aren’t buying it.

Man, I had no idea my phone was so smart!

Good news and bad news…the good news is that new ideas on how to connect and communicate are still coming…enhancements to Facebook, Google Buzz…lots of good ideas.  The bad news is that folks seem to have forgotten that there are a lot of bad guys out there and you need to protect your social networks just as much as you need virus protection software for your pc and a firewall for your network.

Keep in mind that hacking has taken on a new strategy whereby the hacker gets in and keeps their presence quiet so that they can pick my opportunity to take advantage…no longer are they just attacking…hackers are in stealth mode and your social network is a great target.  Also note that hackers post successes for others to read…so that when one gets in, the rest can follow.

Social networks are the new big “Greenfield” opportunity for hackers.  People are forgetting that your network has a ton of info about you and a ton of info about your friends.   I have been seeing reports of Facebook hacking scams where a hacker gets in to your page, changes the password so that you cannot get in and then scams your friends by telling them you are trapped in some foreign country and need money.   Your friends respond by sending you money…only problem is that you don’t get the money…the hacker does.    Facebook has a form that must be filled out if your account has been compromised.   Make sure that you know where to find it on their site as it might come in handy some day.

Other tips include limiting the info that is on your page…don’t have your complete birthday (just the month and date are good enough) and don’t put your full name or address or cell number on the page.  Also watch out for information that you unwittingly include…such as your schools name on a sweatshirt or a license plate on a car.  Hackers are smart people…don’t forget that…and your friends already know how to get in touch with you.  Also make sure that you review the privacy settings…don’t just go with the default.

Google Buzz…you have to love the notion of using your email list to automatically create your social network.  I think that this is a great idea because the people that I email all the time are great candidates for my social network.  Only problem is that my contacts could become publically available.  Don’t worry as Google is fixing the issue, but this is a great example of a well meaning company making a mistake.  Google is getting real serious about social networking and Buzz won’t be the last we hear from them.

So what is the bottom line…for me it is that you have to pay attention to the details and make sure you information is protected no matter where it is stored.

This is a great site…very useful…

The big V day is Sunday and some of us may have forgotten to make dinner reservations!  Well, never fear, because there is a solution…check out www.opentable.com and you can have a table waiting for you and your significant other for Saturday night…and for free!

Believe it or not, reports indicate that a full 30% of folks that plan on dining out, are going to make reservations at the last minute.   This is where www.opentable.com comes in.

OpenTable provides access to restaurants and their openings for dinner and thereby saves you a TON of time in finding the perfect spot for you and your significant other.  Check it out.  I like being able to search by location, type of food, price, date, time and party size.  So for example, I searched for a steak dinner in Baltimore at 7pm for 2 people and found 4 restaurants with openings and another 7 with openings that are close to my 7pm time.  Oh, and I did this in about 10 seconds.

Another aspect I like about open table is their ability to help you find a good restaurant and see ratings and reviews of this restaurant.  I frequently run in to the issue of “we want to go out, but don’t know where to go”.  OpenTable solves this issue.  Now you can search for a type of cuisine (e.g., American, French, Fusion and 16 others) and an approximate cost and then read some reviews…pick a place to go and you are all set.  Very cool.  I really like the ability to find new restaurants to explore.

OpenTable has more than 11,000 restaurant customers and, since its inception in 1998, has seated more than 120 million diners around the world.

Check it out to get you out of a bind for V Day and you use this site all year…I know I am.

The worst of the recession looks to be over and companies are starting to hire again.  Great news.  So if you are in the market to find a new job or career – then where do you look?  The same is true if you are just coming out of college and are looking for employment that might not be in your main field of study.   Since I have spent the last 20 years in tech, I may be biased, however I recommend technology.

The demand for tech is continuing to grow with many tech jobs remaining in demand during even the bottom of the recession.    AND…technology jobs are going to be one of the first to return…I have already seen this to be true with IT job demand since the January 1!

So if you aren’t a techie, but want to be…or at least think about it…what positions are the most in demand?

Well, the folks at Network world did some research and came up with the following listing…I am only going to directly discuss the first two and add one that is not on the list.  The entire list can be found at www.networkworld.com.

First on the list is Security specialist/ethical hacker.   Most websites are Swiss cheese and hackers are having a fun time hacking in to everything they can.  There are even websites that list sites that are vulnerable and how to break in.   Want to be surprised…go to YouTube.com and search on “hacking how to” videos…there are plenty of them.  This is going to be a major field, so get in now, with the Wash/Balt region becoming the epicenter for IT security for the world – you can’t go wrong.

Next on the list is Virtual Systems Manager.  If you aren’t familiar with the concepts of Software as a Service (Saas) and Cloud technologies, take a few minutes and read up on these topics.  Predictions are that more than 50% of all software will be purchased using a Saas model – meaning that you will pay as you go.    Cloud technology and virtualization allow for companies to significantly reduce their risk and costs by using technology computing resources that are “in the cloud”..you no longer need to know where your servers are…let someone else worry about it and cut your costs by 50%.  Amazing.

Other positions on the list include Capacity Manager, Network Engineer, Open Source Specialist, Service Assurance Manager, Electronic Health Records Manager, Sourcing Specialist, Service Catalog Manager and Business Process Engineer.  All good jobs and worthy of some research should you be interested in choosing a new career.

Also give some thought to a Social Media Analyst.  These folks are very much in demand as everyone works to grapple with the best way to utilize Facebook, Twitter and FourSquare to create and maintain communities of friends, clients, customers, prospects, vendors…Being able to do a little HTML will dramatically raise your price tag for this position.

So the good news is that companies are starting to hire and tech positions are one of the first to gain momentum.    Do some research and jump in…a bright future awaits.  If you want more information on what the Baltimore business community is looking for in IT positions, feel free to visit www.g1440.com and check our list of positions that businesses are looking for.

Ever heard the term…”it takes a village”…well, Mark Randall, a local entrepreneur has launched The Athlete Village.  If you haven’t heard about this site, I believe you will.

Launched on January 19^th, www.theathletevillage.com was built to create an online community of swimming coaches and swimming enthusiasts for the purpose of making you a better swimmer and building community.  Cool idea and joining the village is free.

Let’s face it…most folks are competitive and we all love to win.  What is the major difference between many successful athletes and many unsuccessful athletes?  Professional experienced coaching.

Athlete Village solves this issue by offering online technical analysis of your swimming stroke…and for only $49.   All you need to do is upload a video on the site, and you get access to some of the best coaches in swimming…they will give you feedback, advice and pointers on how to improve.  Now, the really good coaching that used to be only available to the top swimmers is now available to everyone!

The Athlete Village is really an online “village”…and provides an online meeting place for athletes and coaches to share experiences, knowledge, guidance, and just to get together with other villagers with similar interests.   Athletes love to hang out and learn/chat with others of similar interests.

“There is a large community of swimmers out there – a community that includes beginners, kids looking for better times to get college scholarships, masters swimmers, recreational swimmers, and triathletes –and they are looking for ways to improve,” said Scott Riewald, performance technologist for The US Olympic Committee and Athlete Village coach. “We don’t intend on replacing existing coaches or swim camps but rather want to provide access to other resources and a greater number of experts than is readily available to most swimmers along with a community site to host the exchange of information”

And swimming is just the beginning…many sports will fit in to this model…so stay tuned and keep checking out as Mark and his team continue to roll out new sports.  I can’t wait for golf…because I could certainly use the help!  Come on Athlete Village…what is wrong with my wedge…it IS my wedge right…and not me…right?   It has to be the club…couldn’t be me…right?

Imagine watching a Ravens game in 3D… pretty cool, huh?  How much fun would it be to see Tom Brady get sacked and feel like you are right there…well, 3D TV is right around the corner.

In case you missed it, last week was the CES or Consumer Electronics Show…this is the show where really cool stuff usually shows up before hitting the mass markets.

3D Television was one of the hot technologies on display this year.  While 3D television has been discussed by many folks over the years, the big news is that manufacturers are signing up to start delivering 3D sets this year for about the price of an HD set.   Manufacturers like Sony, Samsung, LG and Panasonic have either rolled out 3-D products or are expected to in the near future.

To make the picture complete (sorry for the pun, but couldn’t resist), several studios are also on board to provide content…which is nice, because we will actually have something to watch if we were to buy a 3D set.  Content providers like ESPN, DreamWorks, Direct TV and Discovery have said they are planning to produce 3D shows in 2010.  ESPN is clearly out in front, because…well, who buys a lot of TVs…um, men.  And who watches a lot of sports…um, that would be men too!

My research shows that some TVs currently available are 3D ready and/or can be upgraded when the 3D content is broadcast.  So, if you are in the market for a TV, be sure to check on whether or not your TV is 3D ready.   Also be sure to check on how 3D will be provided as some TVs will require glasses and some will not.

I checked with some folks in the “biz” and they tell me that this technology is likely to go through a number of early stage changes and enhancements, so if you buy early, you may be left with some obsolete technology pretty quickly.  They recommend waiting for the first few generations to come out before jumping in and slapping down your $8,000 to $10,000.

Personally, I can’t wait.  Anybody seen Avatar in 3D or Up?  3D technology has come a long way in the last couple of years and I believe will become the standard for viewing pretty quickly.

If you’re a Verizon customer and have been dying for an iPhone…or maybe you’re just tired of hearing how “everything Apple” is the most amazing technology ever created, then you are in luck! Motorola and Verizon are teaming up to release the Droid. The Droid is aimed squarely at the iPhone and is going to be released this Friday, November 6th for around $200.

Credit where credit is due…the iPhone did raise the bar for phone design and there is no doubt about it.  The Droid follows in this design and is a very sleek touch screen phone that has a slide out keyboard and can pick up and use a Wifi signal…very cool.  So far, they are tied. 

So, what is so special about the Droid?  The Droid is focused on providing features that the iPhone does not. An open platform that will encourage app development is a nice start….with a reported 10,000 apps already built for the Droid. The Droid also brings a little more to the party. Multi-tasking up to 6 apps at once, so you can do more than one thing at a time such as placing a call and receiving a text or email all while on the call. I don’t know about you, but I have been frustrated with being cut off from doing anything else, while on a long conference call. The Droid boasts a 5 megapixel camera with dual LED flash for night pictures as well as auto focus and image stabilization, and even provides DVD quality video recording.

My initial impression is that the Droid is a solid contender for the iPhone. The styling is nice and the Droid is a little heftier than its competition. The best part of the Droid may not actually be the phone, but instead, what it represents…a little competition. 

I believe that competition is a good thing and the Droid is going to be good for everyone - even for iPhone users.  

Apple will need to respond to the new kid in town. I have heard even the most diehard iPhone fan complain of dropped calls, no night time pics, multi-tasking, etc…and now the iPhone has some catching up to do.  I believe that they will. Apple is known to design very, very well and they will not want to give back any of their reported 15% market share.

In addition, developers will need to build for both platforms and this should mean more and better apps.  Developers that may have missed the initial surge for the iPhone will jump on the Droid bandwagon. 

So…more features, lower prices and better apps – sounds like a win to me.

Ever wonder what’s going on in Baltimore while you are out of town? Wishing you could be watching the Ravens game or a little JHU lacrosse, but just can’t find any stations that are covering what you want to watch because you are in Montana, or Shanghai or please God, not…Pittsburgh!!! 

Now you can, if you have a Slingbox. Slingbox is a very cool piece of technology that lets you watch TV on your computer or your phone from any location…all you need to do is connect to the internet. You watch the same channels and programming that you could watch from your living room, from any location. Your location is now irrelevant. 

So, how does it work? You connect a Slingbox to your cable box and then to your home internet router/network. Lastly, load software on to your computer or phone and you are ready to go.  At this point, you can now connect to the Slingbox from your computer or mobile phone from anywhere you have a high-speed internet connection and watch the same TV signal that is in your home.

What’s special about Slingbox is that it can operate inside and outside the home, a phenomenon called place-shifting. You can watch TV anywhere in the world. As long as you can find a broadband connection, your laptop can communicate with the Slingbox in your home, bringing your local video feed on the road.

I believe that place-shifting is going to continue to grow dramatically. Place shifting is the act of using technology to make your location meaningless. There are many technologies out there that help us place shift…video conferencing is a good example. Slingbox is yet another. Place shifting will continue to grow as we make greater and greater use of mobile technologies.

 How about a few examples to help get your brain around this one…college students are installing Slingbox on their parents cable boxes and watching TV while away at school without having to pay for the programming or rely on the college to supply decent progamming…

Another report depicts someone that was living in Israel and was watching his favorite shows from back here is the USA. Slingbox is also extremely useful inside the house and it can allow you to access/play music stored on one computer in your house with another computer.

Slingbox mobile is required to watch TV on your phone and works with iPhone, Blackberry, Windows Smartphone, Treo and Symbian phones. Check it out at www.slingmedia.com.

Happy viewing and have a blast place shifting!!!

If you’re like me and haven’t memorized all the important numbers in your cell phone, then this is a good lesson for you.  

T-Mobile/Sidekick users may have permanently lost all the contacts, photos, calendar entries and any other data in their phones after a series of catastrophic server crashes occurred this past weekend. Since the Sidekick reset process synchronizes with the data on these servers, it wipes out the data on the Sidekick.  Reports indicate that as many as 800,000 people were impacted. 

That is why it always pays to have a plan B! 

On a notice on its website, T-Mobile, said its customers who do not have such data stored locally on their Sidekick devices will “almost certainly” have lost the data. 

Personal information stored on your device such as contacts, calendar entries, to-do lists or photos that is no longer on your Sidekick almost certainly has been lost as a result of a server failure at Microsoft/Danger,” a Microsoft unit, the company said. 

Please note the irony here…Danger is the name of the unit that was responsible for managing the servers and backups. Who names a company “Danger”?  

What should you do protect yourself?  Everyone that relies on their phone should back up their data on their computer.  Specifically, Sidekick users are being advised to not reset the phone, remove the battery or let the battery drain all the way down without charging it…as this will cause a loss of all the data that has not been backed up…and when the phone synchronizes, you will be out of luck. 

Please note that no phone is really immune from this issue.  Anyone who uses a phone network i.e. Verizon, ATT or Sprint to back up your phone data remotely, you should be concerned. The good news is that backing up data on to a local computer is not hard.  I have a Blackberry and have always backed up the data on my phone using the Blackberry desktop manager.  All phones will have some way to back up.  I used to back up my Treo with Microsoft’s Outlook software. 

So the time is now, take the time and determine a way to back up the data on your phone on a computer that you control. One day….you will be glad you did!

Governor O’Malley has declared October to be cyber security awareness month.  The Federal Government has as well. What does that mean? Well, according to the Governor, it’s necessary to remind all Americans that we need to protect the security of cyberspace from the viruses, theft, hacking and loss of sensitive information that has become a daily occurrence.

So, how serious is the cyber security issue? Well… bad and getting worse. The main reason is that businesses that are running .com websites are not focused on securing them. Reports indicate that 91% of websites are vulnerable. If you think this is too high, then consider that G.1440’s experience is that 86% are vulnerable…meaning that basically 9 out of 10 are Swiss cheese.

Making matters even worse is that hacking has changed to be a stealth crime… business owners believe that they are safe as long as they aren’t aware of anything bad happening…this is very, very wrong…according to Verizon data breach report, 63% of business owners don’t know for months that they have been hacked. Hackers infect your site and then plot their next steps…even if your site is simple and just an online brochure, you can still be implicated in a crime where your business is used as a front for a hacker…and all without you knowing it. Sound crazy? Unfortunately, it isn’t farfetched at all and is happening today.

One last myth that must be exposed is that firewalls will prevent your website from being hacked…this is simply not true.

Basically, the .coms are not paying attention to this critical issue and need to start. The US Govt is spending 100 million on protecting government sites only to have them attacked by their own citizen’s computers and websites. Several officials that I have spoken to have predicted that scanning of .com websites will be mandatory – this will happen due to the need for all sites to be protected.

The Federal Government is clearly stepping things up and has just announced that the Department of Homeland Security is going to be hiring over 1000 security specialists.

What can you do to protect yourself?  For starters, ask the business owners you know if they are aware that October is Cyber security Awareness month and if they have had their website scanned for hacking vulnerabilities.

Next, only visit sites you trust – especially true for downloads as hacked websites will give you more than you asked for when you click a link to download…a click is just an opening for a hacker to send you whatever they want.

Remember to keep your browser security as up to date as possible as your computer can be infected just by visiting a website that has been compromised.   Keep your virus protection; spyware; id protection software up to date and consider the use of a link scanner… www.avg.com has a good one that is free. Lastly, back up your critical key files just in case.

It is a crazy world wide web right now and you need to take steps to keep yourself safe. Unfortunately, actually fixing the problem will require businesses to start scanning and repairing their websites. Hang in there… this situation will improve as more and more people become aware of it.