Tech Blogs!

Blogs are an incredibly useful tool for getting access to information in this generation. That is because they serve as a hub for updates regarding any topic. This is even more true for tech blogs, considering how rapidly technology changes. One such blog I'd like to point out is gigaom.com, a pretty reliable webpage for all news technical. 

 

An important thing for technical blogs to have is scope, and Gigaom has a broad one for technology. They cover both hardware and software, and how they relate to everyday uses, such as apps, computers phones. energy, costs, social networking, and even the industry itself. Another good aspect of this blog is its simplicity and straightfowardness. All the articles are written in a way that's easy to understand, even for those who don't have the expertise in that area. There also is a bit of wit in the blog posts as well, but not the amount that would make you feel like you're reading an OpEd.

Let me know in the comments how Gigaom compares to your favorite tech blog!

Source: gigaom.com

QR Codes, making pictures worth more than 1000 words.

QR codes are an increasingly interesting topic, mostly because the concept of them is so broad that they span our entire technological generation. A QR code is a machine-readable image, typically a square inch in size, whose pattern serves as a unique identifier for its purpose. Not only does the pattern identify the data type of the content (ex: website URL, YouTube video, telephone number, Skype contact) but it also identifies what the actual data is. What that means is websites like Wikipedia can have a QR code that links a user to any one of their web pages, based on the pattern of the QR code itself. It functions as a bar code for much of the technology that our lives already integrate with on a daily basis.

New app store app download? Educational YouTube video? Old love letter from an ex? The possibilities are seemingly endless with QR codes. Taken from: http://www.askingsmarterquestions.com/ 

What QR codes have most to offer is applicability and ease of use. Airports in the U.S. are equipped to scan QR codes that contain a passengers unique boarding pass information, and can scan them from a user's mobile device and making the process completely paperless. A QR code can contain a Google Maps location, allowing you scan it and have it populate your GPS, without having to manually enter that information. A networking programmer can have a QR code readily available, so that when it's scanned can jump an employer right to their shared Dropbox account, allowing full access to their portfolio. QR codes can be used very creatively and already being implemented worldwide.

For a reliable website that can help you generate your own QR code, go to http://www.qrstuff.com/.

Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_code

SHA-3, a sequel in the story of hash algorithms

This week I want to talk about Secure Hash Algorithm 3 (SHA-3), previously known as Keccak, as a hash function chosen as the successor to SHA-2. Cryptographic has functions are most commonly used for digital signing and authentication, more specifically, password management. The idea behind these functions is that they work like a "super" data scrambler, a good hash of a user's password can be easily generated, but it's infeasible to reverse engineer. For example, websites with login accounts will store the hashed version of a user's password as opposed to plain text. When that user would log into the system, they would compare the hashes of the already stored and just entered passwords to authenticate that user, instead of comparing the passwords themselves.

Example of how a small change in text can result in a completely different hash. Taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptographic_hash_function

SHA-2 is currently the most commonly used hashing algorithm, but concerns about it's feasibility were raised in 2007. There was a competition held to find the next gen algorithm, and in 2012 it was the Keccak algorithm that won. The most interesting aspect of the SHA-3 solution is that it works in a completely different way then SHA-2, so even if SHA-2 was "cracked", it wouldn't get anyone any closer to cracking SHA-3. Since SHA-2 is still reliable, it's unlikely that systems already using it will jump to implement
SHA-3, but that's actually a good thing. Since there are two reliable hash functions now, malicious users trying to brute force their way into user accounts are first going have to figure out what hashing algorithm is being used.

NIST Tech Beat. (October 2, 2012). NIST Selects Winner of Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA-3) Competition. Retrieved March 10, 2014, from http://www.nist.gov/itl/csd/sha-100212.cfm.

VirtualBox, an open source solution to your virtualization problems.

A product I want to bring to light today is Oracle's very own VirtualBox, a program very familiar to both aspiring and well seasoned software developers testers. VirtualBox's sole use is for virtualization, which gives your computer the ability to mimic another computer's install of a specific operating system. What this means is that if you were a Mac user, you would run VirtualBox in a way that would pretend as though it was a Windows 7 machine. This is done through the use of virtual images, which are "snapshots" of these installs with specified hardware settings.

Image of Windows XP being run on a Linux machine using VirtualBox.

Virtualization has a number of applications, one being that it allows you to run programs that normally would only work on a specific OS. This is a common workaround for gamers that want to play a game which is only compatible with an operating system different to their own.

VirtualBox can do more than simulate software, it can apply to hardware requirements as well, such as RAM and processor capabilities. In industry, VirtualBox can be very useful for testing, allowing companies to certify target platforms for their software, as well as identifying minimum system requirements. Virtualization is also cost efficient, because it allows a company to have one high-end computer that can perform all of these simulations, rather than needing a computer for each permutation of the OS and requirements.

VirtualBox is also useful in in courses at many universities where students may have required software as part of the curriculum. A course with 100 students, for example, will feature selection of personal computers with different operating systems, service pack upgrades, and system settings. If all of these students are using VirtualBox with identical virtual images of Linux, it allows a instructor to streamline issues that students will have operating the required software, which could range from installation issues to a difference in defaulted settings. This is more relevant for computer science students, who when programming on different OSes, have to account for the differences in their code's expected behavior.

To learn more about supported OSes and about virtual box in general, go to https://www.virtualbox.org/.

"Oracle VM Virtual Box" (2004) Retrieved on March 3, 2014, from https://www.virtualbox.org/