Archive for July 25, 2017

#Fail: Marketo Forgets To Re-Register Their Domain

Posted in Commentary with tags on July 25, 2017 by itnerd

For those of you who don’t know who Marketo is, they make marketing automation software to help companies engage with their own customer base. It’s a cloud product and it had a major #fail.

This morning, Marketo users were reporting trouble with logging on to its website. That soon led to #Marketo trending on Twitter. So, what was the cause? Here’s what Marketo CEO Steve Lucas had to say on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/nstevenlucas/status/889905248378159106

This was then followed by this:

https://twitter.com/marketo/status/889884823459901440

Then this:

https://twitter.com/marketo/status/889931560710832128

So… What was the issue? Cue the Twitterverse:

Wow. That’s a #fail. A marketing company that makes software that resides in the cloud who couldn’t keep their own domain registered. Someone was asleep at the switch. Fortunately, the Twitterverse has a sense of humor:

https://twitter.com/justindmorris/status/889839267492638721

While there is a bit of a sense of humor about this, a whole lot of people at Marketo HQ have some explaining to do to customers over the next few days. After all, you can’t have a #fail like this with a cloud based product without some repercussions.

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#Fail: iRobot Wants To Sell Maps Of Your Home

Posted in Commentary with tags on July 25, 2017 by itnerd

The maker of the Roomba robot vacuum, iRobot has found itself embroiled in a privacy storm after its chief executive suggested it may begin selling floor plans of customers’ homes, derived from the movement data of their autonomous servants:

No. Seriously. I am not making this up. Here’s the proof:

“There’s an entire ecosystem of things and services that the smart home can deliver once you have a rich map of the home that the user has allowed to be shared,” said [iRobot CEO Colin] Angle.

Remember the days when worrying about the Internet of Things meant that you were worrying about someone pwning said thing on the Internet and causing you some grief? Yeah, 2016 was such a good year. In any case, this is a stupid idea. Why? It’s a slippery slope. Targeted ads, law enforcement wanting to get their hands on this data…. That’s just two ways that I can think of that this can go horribly sideways. Now you could opt out…. But:

The iRobot Home app does clearly inform users that they are capable of turning off the cloud sharing functions on their Roomba. But the actual terms of service document is written in typically convoluted legal language. The privacy policy frames most data collection as something that will just make your device better and improve overall user experience. A section of the policy on sharing personal information with third parties bullet points out the situations in which iRobot could share this data.

That doesn’t inspire confidence. I’m going to keep an eye on this as this is guaranteed to blow up. Which means I’ll be reporting on this again in the not too distant future.

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Microsoft Says That It’s Not Killing Microsoft Paint Due To Public Pressure

Posted in Commentary with tags on July 25, 2017 by itnerd

Yesterday I posted that Microsoft was going to kill Microsoft Paint after being part of Windows 10 for just over 3 decades. Well, there was a plot twist that I didn’t see coming. Apparently people like Microsoft Paint and told Microsoft so. Thus the software said late Monday that it will not be killing off its Paint app in the next update of Windows 10. It will be made available via the Windows Store for free and will not be completely removed:

The U.S. technology company recently released a list which labeled Paint “deprecated,” meaning it was considering removing the app when the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update gets released later this year. Fans on social media decried the potential death of Paint, which has been in existence for 32 years. But Microsoft released a blog post shortly after to clarify that Paint would not be completely removed, but instead made available via the Windows Store for free. “Today, we’ve seen an incredible outpouring of support and nostalgia around MS Paint. If there’s anything we learned, it’s that after 32 years, MS Paint has a lot of fans. It’s been amazing to see so much love for our trusty old app,” Megan Saunders, a general manager at Microsoft, wrote in a blog post on Monday. “Amidst today’s commentary around MS Paint we wanted to take this opportunity to set the record straight, clear up some confusion and share some good news: MS Paint is here to stay, it will just have a new home soon, in the Windows Store where it will be available for free.”

This is an interesting reaction and one that I would not have expected. Who knew that so many people loved Microsoft Paint? But maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. It hasn’t changed all that much over the years, so people are comfortable with how it works. Plus it’s kind of handy to have as a quick and dirty file conversion tool for different graphics formats. That might explain what happened in the last 24 hours or so.

Long live Microsoft Paint!

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Flash To Be Deep Sixed By Adobe By 2020

Posted in Commentary with tags on July 25, 2017 by itnerd

Somewhere Steve Jobs is declaring victory when it comes to killing Adobe Flash. The news is out that the once popular, but now exploit ridden browser plug in will be dead by 2020:

The software company’s decision to phase out Flash is noteworthy considering that the software has been synonymous with Adobe since its debut for playing videos and animations in web browsers. As the Internet matured and grew in popularity over the years, so did Flash, which became one of the most widely used ways for people to watch video clips and play online video games.

But as more people used Flash, criminals increasingly found ways to exploit security vulnerabilities in the technology and hack into people’s computers. Flash’s increasing holes and bugs soon became a source of frustration for some of the world’s biggest technology companies.

Frankly, Flash won’t be missed. With standards such as HTML 5 and Web GL, there are way better and safer ways to display web content than Flash.

R.I.P. Flash.

UPDATE: Here’s the official word from Adobe.

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Force Quitting iOS Apps…. Yes Or No?

Posted in Tips with tags on July 25, 2017 by itnerd

Something that I come across from time to time are people who insist of force quitting iOS apps which is done by double clicking the home button, and then swiping the app or apps that they want to force quit. The word on the street is that you save your battery life, RAM and CPU power by doing so. But is that true or not? The answer is perhaps a bit more nuanced than a simple yes or now answer. Let’s start discussing this by looking at what Apple says in this document:

When you double-click the Home button, your recently used apps appear. The apps aren’t open, but they’re in standby mode to help you navigate and multitask. You should force an app to close only when it’s unresponsive.

In other words, the apps that are in the background aren’t consuming that much RAM and they aren’t using any CPU or battery life. And the thing is, iOS is exceptionally good at making sure that these apps behave. In fact, it actually takes more CPU and battery power to force quit and restart an app than it does to simply leave it there. Thus you shouldn’t force quit an app unless it’s crashed or something.

Now there is one scenario where I can see where that you might save some CPU and battery power by force quitting an app. It is possible that an app that uses location services functionality that is set to always active may not be put into standby as it is periodically polling for your (or more accurately the iPhone’s) location. Thus logic suggests that force quitting one of these apps may actually save you battery life if you don’t need the functionality that the app provides.

Now you’re likely wondering what I do. I will admit to force quitting apps like Garmin Connect, Runtastic Pro among other fitness apps that I have on my iPhone for the reasons that I stated above. But most of my other apps like Maps, Calendar and the like are always running. I can’t say if that makes a difference or not and perhaps someone should take a look at this empirically to see what the truth is. In the meantime the question of whether you should force quit an app on the iOS platform is not a yes or no answer. At least not at the present time.

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