Build your own cloud

I've been in the computer industry for over 12 years and the biggest changes I've seen is the move to third party cloud services such as Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, One Drive, etc.  It has never been easier to send and receive files, especially for printing or getting photos from a photographer after a job is finished.  I've been a production manager for a print company and the easiest way we could get large oversized files to us was to try and have a ftp server with a java applet that worked about 70% of the time or a step by step PDF the links to a ftp program and hope the user was techy enough to follow the instructions.  I've help on some projects where I used a web based file manager like extplorer to create something like Dropbox only without someone needing to sign up and become a member of the cloud service but it never really worked quite right and it required more technical knowledge for creating users with proper directories.

I learned about owncloud last year from a google plus post and I found the project interesting and the thought of having my own 500gb cloud storage is pretty awesome.  I did a default install on a Linux php mysql platform, and it had a default limit of 2 GB  per upload.  I have a 50 mbps connection through telus so I have 10 up 50 down a 400 GB bandwidth cap.  This worked really well and it does not require more then basic computer skills to setup users and share files.

The user setup is really straight forward.  After a successful setup you can login and start creating users.  Go to where your name is and click on it; it is an actionable button and select users.  You will then see a screen much like this one.  To create a user simply put in a username and password and hit create;  That is it.  It's that simple.

You can get really crazy and setup different user groups, and have granular control of things on the server.  Some great use cases that I've setup others using the other software would be for submitting content for a contest, gallery or a website, large project collaboration, the list goes on.  Since you have control of the server you don't  have to go though the hassle of having the users create online accounts with Google, Microsoft, Dropbox or any other cloud storage service.  You can login, setup the user, and email them the URL or make a shortened URL via bit.ly and include their username and password.  They do the rest with the web browser and as you can see by the image below it is extremely straight forward.

New lets you create a new file but the main one we are interested in is the upload icon next to the new.  It will upload a file from the computer to your owncloud.

As you can see when you hover over a file in owncloud you get options as to what you want to do with it.  In this case share it.

If the person has your owncloud name in this case "demo" they can share it with you and it will end up in your owncloud, however they can also send it to you via email link and password protect it and set an expiration time for that access.  If you are setting this up as a "file drop solution" the drive that users upload files to could be shared out and accessed by those with the proper share path and username and password to access the files, making it extremely easy to access the files that are uploaded.

This is extremely impressive technology for an open platform, and that the community edition is free, is even better.  The site is also mobile responsive and works well in the browser, but if you want the app it's going to cost you a whole $1.00 on both Android and iOS.  There are also desktop apps for Windows, Mac OS and Linux.  You can also specify whether you want to enforce https or use either http and https depending on what your needs are and how your server is setup.

How to install and Remove Java on Ubuntu

Install Oracle Java in Ubuntu by PPA 

This provides instructions on how to install the Oracle Java JDK (which includes Java JDK, JRE and the Java browser plugin). The PPA provides the full Oracle JDK package. 

To add the PPA and install Oracle Java 7 in Ubuntu use this: 


sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/java

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install oracle-java7-installer 

To add the PPA and install Oracle Java 8 in Ubuntu use this: 

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/java
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install oracle-java8-installer 


If you want to see your version of java run the following command in the terminal: 

java -version

It should return something like this 

Java version "1.7.0_51" (version 7) or "1.8.0" (version 8) 
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.7.0_51-b13) - version 7
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0-b132) - version 8
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 24.51-b03, mixed mode) - version 7
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.0-b70, mixed mode) - version 8 

If the Java version in use is not 1.7.0, you can try to run the following command in the terminal: 

sudo update-java-alternatives -s java-7-oracle 

The installer requires you accept the Oracle license before the installation begins. This is only required once. If you need the installation to be automated, you can run the following command to automatically accept the Oracle license: 

Version 7

echo oracle-java7-installer shared/accepted-oracle-license-v1-1 select true | sudo /usr/bin/debconf-set-selections 

Version 8 

echo oracle-java8-installer shared/accepted-oracle-license-v1-1 select true | sudo /usr/bin/debconf-set-selections 

Setting Java environment variables To automatically set up the Java 7 environment variables, you can install the following package:

sudo apt-get install oracle-java7-set-default 

 If you've already installed oracle-java6-set-default or oracle-java8-set-default, they will be automatically removed when installing oracle-java7-set-default (and the environment variables will be set for Oracle Java 7 instead). Switch back and forth between Java 7 and 8

Switch to Java 7

sudo update-java-alternatives -s java-7-oracle 

 And, switch back to Oracle Java 8 using: 

 sudo update-java-alternatives -s java-8-oracle 

If you get some warnings when running these two commands, ignore them.


How to Remove Oracle Java To remove java on your system and want to go back to OpenJDK or remove java completely, all you have to do is remove the Oracle JDK7 Installer and the previous Java (OpenJDK, etc.) version will be used: 

sudo apt-get remove oracle-java7-installer 

sudo apt-get remove oracle-java8-installer    


Special thanks to webupd8.org for their great tutorial for which this is based.

Disable Encryption on Ubuntu VNC Server

In Ubuntu starting with 14.04 a change was made in the VINO server (VNC) to have encryption on by default. Of course this breaks many of the VNC Clients on windows, so to allow windows users access to the linux server via VNC there are 2 ways to update the VINO server to disable encryption.




Option 1 - Command Line:

edit ~/.bashrc and on the last line add

dconf write /org/gnome/desktop/remote-access/require-encryption false

save the file and reboot the system

Option 2 - GUI

On the linux server open the terminal and install dconf-editor

sudo apt-get install dconf-editor 

Open the program it Navigate to: 

org  >>  gnome >> desktop >> remote-access and Disable "require encryption"


After doing this your windows VNC client will have no problem connecting to the Ubuntu Server using Screen Sharing.

Troubleshooting Tip:  If your having problems with the screen redraws make sure your using the XORG driver.  Using the proprietary driver can cause redraw issues with VNC

Removing Java Runtime from OS X

Java 8 removes the Medium Security
Setting in OS X

Removing Java From OS X

Since Java 8 came out you no longer have the ability to run self signed java runtimes.  This is a good thing from a security perspective but some devices like iKVM's use java self signed certificates to allow access and if your running Java 8 and OS X you might have a problem.  My solution to this was to uninstall java 8 using the following commands

sudo rm -rf /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk{version}.jdk

sudo rm -rf /Library/PreferencePanes/JavaControlPanel.prefPane

sudo rm -rf /Library/Internet\ Plug-Ins/JavaAppletPlugin.plugin

Then I installed the latest version of Java 7 which will only be available until April 2015, but it will still be made available though the Java Archive.

Expanding a FREENAS ZFS volume by drive replacement

Freenas is a great NAS solution especially given the price and the hardware of other NAS solutions; Freenas offers the best performance, expandability, value and flexibility in a NAS solution.  Freenas can provide NFS, Samba and Apple shares so the platform you want to use really doesn't matter what the client machine is.

Just reciently I've found my self down to 100GB of my 6.4 TB NAS and decided it was time to upgrade my storage space.  Now upgrading storage space on freenas isn't as simple as just replacing a bunch of drives; you must replace them one at a time and you wait for the drive to be completely replaced (resilvered) before replacing another drive otherwise you risk data corruption or loss.  By default the auto grow is set to off so if you want to grow the space on your nas you must enable the auto expand feature in freenas.  As always you should have another backup of this data.

So on your FreeNAS server you want to login via SSH or use the shell console provided in the web interface.  Type the following command.

zpool set autoexpand = on {your volume name}

Once that is enabled you may now grow your freenas storage by replacing drives.  As for myself I've replaced 4 320GB drives with 4 1TB drives moving my NAS from 6.4 GB to 8.3GB of storage space and to replace the drives it is a daily process with replacing a drive once a day until they are done.

Backing up your Android Phone's Stock Rom and Recovery

Backing up your Android Phone's Stock Rom and Recovery

Have you ever wanted to mod your new android phone but wanted a way to get back to the factory settings without having to mod the phone first?  It is possible to do but you need a few things, the Android Dev tools, fast boot, and some command line know how.  For this example I will be using a HTC One X on the Telus Network.

With HTC you have to get a developer token which can be obtained from http://www.htcdev.com.  You will have to sign up as a dev to get your developer token.  HTC has a great tutorial on how to unlock your bootloader on the htcdev site.

Once your bootloader is unlocked you can now download a 3rd party rom manager (don't worry we are just going to boot off it; were not installing it yet - also make sure you have enabled USB Debugging in the developer tools).  I used TWRP, it is more compatible with my device then clockworkmod is.  Once downloaded (I renamed the downloaded rom manager to recovery.img) and moved it into my fastboot directory on my computer.

Here is a look at the fastboot directory on my computer

Now the fun can begin; make sure you have all the files you need in the directory your working out of, in my case the fastboot directory.  Your phone should be plugged in via usb to your computer then I used adb to reboot my phone into the bootloader

C:\fastboot>adb reboot bootloader

Then I booted off the recovery.img file in my fastboot directory.

C:\fastboot>fastboot boot recovery.img

Then your phone should boot off the custom recovery rom without installing it.  Then you can make a backup using the recovery rom.  Once done reboot into the phone's system and load a file manager like ES File Explorer to get the files off using dropbox or some other means.

Now you have a backup of your stock phone and you can now mod your phone to your heart's content.

Update:  I forgot to mention that with HTC you also have to update your boot.img file using the commandline interface.  To get the boot.img file you can get it by extracting it from your backup or the zip file from your thrid party rom like cyanogenmod.

C:\fastboot>fastboot flash boot boot.img

Freenas Format Error: Operation Not Permitted

Freenas Format Error

If your trying to erase a drive in freenas and you get an error "Can't Erase Drive /dev/: Operation not permitted it is happening because of GEOM's protection of the MBR of the disk drive.

To solve this turn off the sysctl variable from the console.

sysctl kern.geom.debugflags=0x10

Connecting A Mac To A Windows Share

Connecting A Mac to a Windows Share

With the exception of mobile devices we still live in a "Windows World" and with the latest version of OS X comes an update on how to connect to a windows share using SMB2 instead of SMB.

On Mac OS X (Pre Mavericks or 10.9) we connected to a windows share using smb.

From the Finder press the "Command" + "K" keys or go to the "Go" menu and select Connect to Server.  In the server address field put in either smb for pre 10.9 or cifs for 10.9

On a workgroup it looks something like this:

smb://thecomputer/sharedfolder

On an active directory the samba setup it looks more like this

smb://domain.ext/dfs/sharedfolder on a domain using a DFS Share

Now on OS X Mavericks we use cifs to connect to the windows shares.

cifs://thecomputer/sharedfolder on a workgroup and 

cifs://theremotecomputer/sharedfolder$ on a domain using a DFS Share

If you are not logged into the domain or if the share doesn't have anonymous access it will prompt you for a username and password.

How to ssh into a Linux/Unix System without a password

Login to a Linux/Unix System without a password 

Setting up SSH/RSH Keys for Remote Administration Under Linux/Unix can be one of the most time saving things you can do.  I've set this up because I am managing a dozen Linux based kiosks based Lubuntu Linux and Mozilla FireFox on that need to remotely shutdown and startup.

For managing the kiosks I am using Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, on a VLAN network.  This server also remotely shuts down some Windows based stations and is used for Imaging using the FOG project.  I need to update the RSH Public and Private Key because I have replaced the server.

Setting up RSH Public and Private keys are trivial but this allows me to control the systems without having to enter a password every time I want to do something to the computer (besides something that requires root privileges).

The first thing I do on the computer I want to control the other computers with is generate a public and private key.  I've done this in a .ssh directory using the Terminal

$ mkdir -p $HOME/.ssh
$ chmod 0700 $HOME/.ssh
$ ssh-keygen -t dsa -f $HOME/.ssh/id_dsa -P ''

This should create two files, $HOME/.ssh/id_dsa (private key) and $HOME/.ssh/id_dsa.pub (public key).

In my case I'm using a script called dafturn-ofris which is kind of a steady state script for linux which prevents users from making changes to the system and rebooting restores the system to the state it was frozen in.  So I unfreeze the client system (the system I want to control remotely) and copy the public key from the "Server" to the client; I used SCP to accomplish this.

On the computer you created the key on open the Terminal move to the directory you generated the public key.  In my case it is the .ssh folder in the $HOME directory of the user I'm logged in as.

$ scp id_dsa.pub username@remotehost:directory/to/save/it/in/

Enter in your password and this will complete the file copy.

Then login the remote client move into the directory where you saved the public key and run the following commands.

$ cat id_dsa.pub >> $HOME/.ssh/authorized_keys2
$ chmod 0600 $HOME/.ssh/authorized_keys2

Depending on the version of OpenSSH your using the following commands may also be required.

$ cat id_dsa.pub >> $HOME/.ssh/authorized_keys
$ chmod 0600 $HOME/.ssh/authorized_keys

An alternative is to create a link from authorized_keys2 to authorized_keys; your choice.

$ cd $HOME/.ssh >> ln -s authorized_keys2 authorized_keys

Now you should be able to remote into the client computers you want to control from the server computer without being prompted for a password; with the exception of root access.  I use this for running rsh command that remotely shuts down client stations when its closing time.

Source Credit: http://csua.berkeley.edu/~ranga/notes/ssh_nopass.html

Creating A Secure Password

Creating a Secure Password

Password security is critical to your online life. If you don't have a secure password you will be easily hacked, many passwords are set to be 12345 or password.  

Here is an example of a bad password. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6iW-8xPw3k

The best passwords have upper and lower case, numbers and alternate characters like underscores, dashes, asterix and are long typically over 8 characters; 8 characters would be a minimum length for a password today. Try remembering this password created by Data on Star Trek The Next Generation.

Creating a good password is hard, and making one you can remember is even harder but not impossible. 

Elements Every Password Should Have: 

• Be longer then 8 characters should be more like 20
• Not be a dictionary password 
• Should have at least 2 numbers
• Should have at least 2 capitals 
•  It should have at least one alternate character
• Should not be the SAME PASSWORD on every site.

Here is a form to help you create a good password; please fill out the following:

Favorite Animal/Colour/Activity: ______________________________________ 

 Favorite Object/Word/Family Member: ________________________________

Select one of the or more of the following characters: ! @ # $ % ^ & * ( ) _ - + = | ? / 

Put down your favorite Number ____________________ 

(if your favorite number is a single digit please put a 0 in front of it. Ie. 01) 

Example: 

Favorite Animal/Colour/Activity: __cat_ 

 Favorite Object/Word/Family Member: _orange_ 

 Select one of the or more of the following characters: ! @ # $ % ^ & * ( ) _ - + = | ? / Put down your favorite Number ______24_______ 

Your password can be OrangeCat@24 or other variants can be used what ever is easiest to remember.

Password Testers

Microsoft Password Checker

http://www.passwordmeter.com/ 

http://howsecureismypassword.net/ 

Password Generators

http://www.testyourpassword.com/ 

Crazy Password Generators 

https://www.grc.com/passwords.htm 

https://www.grc.com/ppp.htm 

Top 500 Worst Passwords 

For the regular user expecting them to change their password every two weeks for all their online services is pretty crazy.  However for them to have a tiered password system or create a good password that is related to the site you are visiting but not obvious using the rules shown above.  For example if I create a hotmail account I might make my password something like MyOrang3h0tM@!lAcc0unt24

And in case your wondering it would take an average desktop over 18 trillion years to crack my password.  How about yours, try it out on http://howsecureismypassword.net/

Creating A Secure Password

Creating a Secure Password

Password security is critical to your online life. If you don't have a secure password you will be easily hacked, many passwords are set to be 12345 or password.  

Here is an example of a bad password. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6iW-8xPw3k



The best passwords have upper and lower case, numbers and alternate characters like underscores, dashes, asterix and are long typically over 8 characters; 8 characters would be a minimum length for a password today. Try remembering this password created by Data on Star Trek The Next Generation.

Creating a good password is hard, and making one you can remember is even harder but not impossible. 

Elements Every Password Should Have: 

• Be longer then 8 characters should be more like 20
• Not be a dictionary password 
• Should have at least 2 numbers
• Should have at least 2 capitals 
•  It should have at least one alternate character
• Should not be the SAME PASSWORD on every site.

Here is a form to help you create a good password; please fill out the following:

Favorite Animal/Colour/Activity: ______________________________________ 

 Favorite Object/Word/Family Member: ________________________________

Select one of the or more of the following characters: ! @ # $ % ^ & * ( ) _ - + = | ? / 

Put down your favorite Number ____________________ 
(if your favorite number is a single digit please put a 0 in front of it. Ie. 01) 

Example: 

Favorite Animal/Colour/Activity: __cat_ 

 Favorite Object/Word/Family Member: _orange_ 

 Select one of the or more of the following characters: ! @ # $ % ^ & * ( ) _ - + = | ? / Put down your favorite Number ______24_______ 

Your password can be OrangeCat@24 or other variants can be used what ever is easiest to remember.


Password Testers

Microsoft Password Checker
http://www.passwordmeter.com/ 
http://howsecureismypassword.net/ 

Password Generators

http://www.testyourpassword.com/ 

Crazy Password Generators 

https://www.grc.com/passwords.htm 
https://www.grc.com/ppp.htm 


Top 500 Worst Passwords 

For the regular user expecting them to change their password every two weeks for all their online services is pretty crazy.  However for them to have a tiered password system or create a good password that is related to the site you are visiting but not obvious using the rules shown above.  For example if I create a hotmail account I might make my password something like MyOrang3h0tM@!lAcc0unt24

And in case your wondering it would take an average desktop over 18 trillion years to crack my password.  How about yours, try it out on http://howsecureismypassword.net/

Apple Rotten To The Core?

Is a mac the machine to buy? You might want to think twice!

I've been using Apple products since I was 7, so I'm very familiar with the way Apple does things but now I'm calling them out on the lack of a physical recovery disk when you purchase a mac instead opting to go with a recovery partition. Ok so why should you care? Here's why.

If your a geek like me you like to push your hardware to the limits, finding compatible cards, and accessories is fun and getting them to work is even more fun, and you do a lot of reinstalling, and if your not a geek you should also be concerned, because this takes getting your computer fixed out of your control. Now your better off to go with a Windows computer because at least you can make recovery disks.

 

 

 

Here is a copy of a letter I've sent Apple.

Dear Apple Support,

You probably won't care about this email but I'm writing it anyway. I must express my profound disappointment with your decision to go with a recovery partition over a recovery disk. As a tech person I am often helping people with their systems, and as such have the occasional time where a machine is past warranty and they don't have the money to purchase a new one, or they want to do some sort of hardware upgrade where a reinstall of the operating system is required.

Now that you are no longer offering bootable disks with your systems I must now categorize you in the company of HP or Dell, (That is a bad thing). I often recommended Apple Computers for their pick of hardware, but the fact you actually got some sort of other bootable media other then the hard drive if anything were to happen to your computer. Now that is not the case and the fact that you need an internet connection to do a restore will make things take longer and to frank about it is a joke. I know your trying to make the move to cloud computing but there are some things that the cloud can't do well and operating system installs is one of them. Now your going to tell me that I can take my Mac to any apple store and they will do it for me and at no doubt with some sort of charge. When you made this decision did you think everyone was made of money and time?

If you are going to sell computers without a recovery disk you should at least give users an option to guy a bootable flash drive of the OS or some sort of removable media. I've purchased every Apple OS from system 9 to 10.7 and have been a large supporter of apple computers in my social circles but now unless you change your current policy I can no longer do that. I always felt you were trying to do what is right on for the user but in this I can't support and won't support, you are taking away a user's right use their computer as they see fit and if that's your policy that's your policy there is nothing I can do about it but tell you about it and how I don't like it. (Hell at least Microsoft will let you make recovery disks you guys won't even do that; and the thought of that use to suck).

I hope you will reconsider shipping your systems with removable bootable media.

Trevor Tye

 

------------------UPDATE-----------------------

Apple does offer a USB Flash Drive of Lion for $70.00, which is a little outrageous but it is better then nothing.

http://store.apple.com/us/product/MD256Z/A?

There is also the Lion Recovery Disk Assistant that will let you make a recovery disk to DVD's or a Flash Drive

http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1433

Apple getting rotten to the core?

Is a mac the machine to buy? You might want to think twice!

I've been using Apple products since I was 7, so I'm very familiar with the way Apple does things but now I'm calling them out on the lack of a physical recovery disk when you purchase a mac instead opting to go with a recovery partition. Ok so why should you care? Here's why.

If your a geek like me you like to push your hardware to the limits, finding compatible cards, and accessories is fun and getting them to work is even more fun, and you do a lot of reinstalling, and if your not a geek you should also be concerned, because this takes getting your computer fixed out of your control. Now your better off to go with a Windows computer because at least you can make recovery disks.

Here is a copy of a letter I've sent Apple.

Dear Apple Support,

You probably won't care about this email but I'm writing it anyway. I must express my profound disappointment with your decision to go with a recovery partition over a recovery disk. As a tech person I am often helping people with their systems, and as such have the occasional time where a machine is past warranty and they don't have the money to purchase a new one, or they want to do some sort of hardware upgrade where a reinstall of the operating system is required.

Now that you are no longer offering bootable disks with your systems I must now categorize you in the company of HP or Dell, (That is a bad thing). I often recommended Apple Computers for their pick of hardware, but the fact you actually got some sort of other bootable media other then the hard drive if anything were to happen to your computer. Now that is not the case and the fact that you need an internet connection to do a restore will make things take longer and to frank about it is a joke. I know your trying to make the move to cloud computing but there are some things that the cloud can't do well and operating system installs is one of them. Now your going to tell me that I can take my Mac to any apple store and they will do it for me and at no doubt with some sort of charge. When you made this decision did you think everyone was made of money and time?

If you are going to sell computers without a recovery disk you should at least give users an option to guy a bootable flash drive of the OS or some sort of removable media. I've purchased every Apple OS from system 9 to 10.7 and have been a large supporter of apple computers in my social circles but now unless you change your current policy I can no longer do that. I always felt you were trying to do what is right on for the user but in this I can't support and won't support, you are taking away a user's right use their computer as they see fit and if that's your policy that's your policy there is nothing I can do about it but tell you about it and how I don't like it. (Hell at least Microsoft will let you make recovery disks you guys won't even do that; and the thought of that use to suck).

I hope you will reconsider shipping your systems with removable bootable media.

Trevor Tye

QR Codes and some good advice on how to use them.

Quick Response codes or otherwise known as QR Codes started showing up in marketing here in Edmonton about 3 years ago. Originally created back in 1997 these were primarily use for tracking parts in vehicle manufacturing but are now used for a wide variety of purposes. Whether or not those purposes are useful to the end user is another question. In my experience, QR Codes are best used to give an end user direct access to something they may be looking for such as information on a product, a form to enter into a contest, or a link to download a newsletter, ebook, audiobook, etc.

 

QR Codes can also make excellent editions to business cards with information already filled out and added to a client's address book with minimal or no fuss. They are also handy for connecting to an encrypted wifi network (Sorry,  Android only). However QR Codes can and have been horrifically misused, such as having a QR Code in an ad that doesn't go to the the product advertised but a cheap useless landing page or the companies website.  Another example I've seen are QR Codes on realty signs that go to the realtor’s website instead of the property that is for sale.

 

The QR Code empowers the user giving them instant access to something that they are doing, wanting to do, or get information on. They can also be used to contain information like your library card number, an address, phone number and event information.  It also adds a bit of interactivity between you and the user, getting your proverbial “foot in the door”.

 

My favourite QR Code Generator is http://www.qrstuff.com and you can customize the colour of your QR Code without using a graphics program like photoshop, it's free and easy to use.

 

 

Recommended QR Code Readers:

 

Android: QR Droid Private
iPhone: QR Reader For iPhone
Windows Phone7: Esponce QR Reader
Blackberry: QR Code Scanner Pro - Free
Other: Neo-Reader

 

Some other good information on QR Codes:

 

Mashable Article

What is a QR Code and why do you need one

CNET Video on QR Codes

 

Posted via email from The OptionKey Blog

QR Codes and some good advice on how to use them

Quick Response codes or otherwise known as QR Codes started showing up in marketing here in Edmonton about 3 years ago. Originally created back in 1997 these were primarily use for tracking parts in vehicle manufacturing but are now used for a wide variety of purposes. Whether or not those purposes are useful to the end user is another question. In my experience, QR Codes are best used to give an end user direct access to something they may be looking for such as information on a product, a form to enter into a contest, or a link to download a newsletter, ebook, audiobook, etc.

 

QR Codes can also make excellent editions to business cards with information already filled out and added to a client's address book with minimal or no fuss. They are also handy for connecting to an encrypted wifi network (Sorry,  Android only). However QR Codes can and have been horrifically misused, such as having a QR Code in an ad that doesn't go to the the product advertised but a cheap useless landing page or the companies website.  Another example I've seen are QR Codes on realty signs that go to the realtor’s website instead of the property that is for sale.

 

The QR Code empowers the user giving them instant access to something that they are doing, wanting to do, or get information on. They can also be used to contain information like your library card number, an address, phone number and event information.  It also adds a bit of interactivity between you and the user, getting your proverbial “foot in the door”.

 

My favourite QR Code Generator is http://www.qrstuff.com and you can customize the colour of your QR Code without using a graphics program like photoshop, it's free and easy to use.

 

 

Recommended QR Code Readers:

 

Android: QR Droid Private
iPhone: QR Reader For iPhone
Windows Phone7: Esponce QR Reader
Blackberry: QR Code Scanner Pro - Free
Other: Neo-Reader

 

Some other good information on QR Codes:

 

Mashable Article

What is a QR Code and why do you need one

CNET Video on QR Codes

 

Digital Locks, If your MP doesn't get it they can screw us all.

Do you have itunes, or purchase movies, music or tv shows from some sort of online service? If you answered yes, then you should write your MP and get them go change the digital locks provision in Bill C-32. The conservative party with one notable exception in the Industry Minister Tony Clement who seems to be very technically savvy, and has fought for a lot of the fair use provisions in bill C-32. However due to his position as industry minister or other reasons, has been very silent about changing C-32 to include a fair use provision for breaking digital locks. As Bill C-32 is currently written, all fair use exceptions are over ruled by the digital locks provision. (see my previous blog post).

The conservative Member Ed Fast seems more interested in play politics and with our future in regards to "fair use" or "fair dealing" then doing what is best in the interest of all Canadians.

Mr. Fast asked the question how could justify "eliminating digital locks altogether by allowing circumvention for fair dealing purposes?" to the Canadian Federation of Students and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. Both times his response to their answers was "my concern is if you go that extra step and allow circumvention for fair dealing, you've now made it so much more easy to actually allow the cheaters to undermine the system, where digital locks become absolutely meaningless."

He obviously misses the point. Copyright was designed to stop people from making MONEY from other people's work. For example it was designed to stop people from starting selling CD's and DVD's from out of your basement, to people for 5 dollars where Walmart is selling them for 10 dollars; or buying a projector and selling seat tickets to people who go view a movie. A 21st Century example would be to stop someone from ripping a DVD and selling a digital copy of that movie for money.

If you try and stop fair use you will only encourage piracy. Look at what happened in the United States with the DMCA, it has been changed to allow for the ripping and copying of DVD's for personal use and backup.

What's going on and why should I care?

Mr. Fast seems to be having a hard time seeing the light as to why the digital lock circumvention is essential to Canada's new copyright bill. We want artists to be paid fairly, we don't want to be charged $24.99 for each copy of a movie we want to put on our personal devices. Let me see, to put it in money terms, a copy on your computer, copy on your ipod, perhaps your phone, and don't forget a backup copy, that's $24.99 X 4 formats = $99.96 plus tax for 1 movie in 4 different formats. That is ridiculous. Don't even get me started about what happens if you have an itunes account and a 3rd party or non Apple video player. Guess what under C-32 in it's current form it would be illegal for you to circumvent the digital lock on that purchased DVD and rip it to your computer to put on your ipod, android or windows device. That in my opinion is wrong and as someone who has an entertainment server where I put a digital copy of my purchased DVD's and CD's along with the digital copies I've purchased from itunes, and other online stores, to make it easily accessible for my wife and I to watch our shows listen to our music and play our games. I don't know about you but I don't want to be thrown in jail for ripping a DVD.


What can you do.

Email this Ed Fast, the members of the copyright committee and your MP. Tell them why Bill C-32 needs a by pass for consumers to circumvent the digital lock for fair dealing purposes.

Amendment:

Read the transcripts From the Committee meetings here

Red the transcript about by passing digital locks with regard to fair use with Michael Geist.

Trevor Tye

PS. Please feel free to start your letter or email by copy and pasting the following text.


Feb. 16, 2011
First Name, Last Name
Address
City, Province
Postal Code
email


Dear Mr. Ed Fast MP and the copyright committee,

I as a consumer have an answer to your question "Why does Bill C-32 needs a by pass for consumers to circumvent the digital lock for fair dealing purposes?"

{Now put what you do with movies, and music. Also put what you would like to do with all that in the future. Also think about how much money you have invested in the movies and music you purchased and how much you would have to spend if you had to re-purchase everything. Don't you think your entitled to a backup?}

Sincerely,

Your Name