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HTC Droid Review

By Tom Fitzgerald on November 9, 2009 11:44 AM | No Comments
Ok I'm a little late in updating this. I just got the HTC Droid on Verizon Wireless on Friday. Why am I late in reviewing this? Because I spent literally all weekend playing with this awesome device. So here is my quick review on why I love this phone and why it will take over. 

  1. Android operating system
    To start off I will say that this will take over everything. Android will kill the iPhone not the Droid phone. The HTC Droid will come and go but the operating system will continue to improve. Unlike the iPhone, Google's Android operating system is open source. Just for fun I decided to download the SDK for iPhone development. Immediately it asked me to register as a developer and pay a hefty fee, I think it was $100. After I designed my application it costs money to post on Apple's site, and be included in the app store. 

    With Android's open source setup anyone can write apps and put it on the device. Perfect example; I downloaded a cool app called ChompSMS. This app completely replaces the default text message application. Imagine that for a second, imagine you don't like how your phone handles text messages. You can replace it. Don't like the dialer in the phone or found one thats better? With Android you can download a better one. This open source awesomeness is something that Apple just can't compete with. In this case, Apple is a lot like Microsoft. Trying to keep everything behind closed doors and make money on everything is not the future. 

  2. Interface
    I love how the Android operating system gives you a 'main screen' desktop, you can also scroll to the left or the right for 2 additional screens in each direction. Giving you a total of 5 screens. Why all the space? Widgets of course. Widgets are applications that can be posted on your desktop. Scroll to the right and I have my favorite speed dial contacts. Scroll again to the right and I can see my latest Twitter updates. All without actually starting the application. 


  3. Applications
    The amount of applications is be, and it will be bigger. Unlike the iPhone, applications written for Android will work on any Android phone. See why this is a big deal? Developers will get more bang for their buck. Writing a single application for Android will allow it to be used on many, many phones spanning multiple carriers. iPhone is just for AT&T which sucks where I live. 

  4. Service 
    Verizon Wireless's 3G service is great and pretty much everywhere. 

Palin 'Hacker' Found

By Tom Fitzgerald on September 22, 2008 9:32 PM | No Comments

This one just gave me a big laugh. I remember hearing in the news that Senator Palin's personal email was hacked. I remember chuckling and not really thinking too much of it. Big deal lots of people's accounts have been compromised. The same story that reported  she was hacked didn't mention anything embarrassing or incriminating that was found so whats the big deal? Well its not really a big deal its just everyone in the world is obssessed right now with the candidates so anything with their name on it is front page news.  Well its been a few weeks and now the hacker was caught. Lets look into the technical details on how he did it.

Well if you are looking for a step by step guide on how to be a hacker like this guy you are going to be pretty disappointed. Palin's account was hacked using any special tools or some kind of new attack. The hacker - actually I have to stop using that word to describe this person, lets use 'computer user'. The computer user simply reset her password. How? Well we know its a Yahoo mail account and to reset a Yahoo mail account you need the users birth date and the answer to her secret question. Unfortunately for Senator Palin the answer to her 'secret question' was easily answered by a quick Google search. So that's it! Our computer user guy just reset her password by Googling where Palin met her spouse (Wasilla High).

Another bad move is the guy then bragged about his hack on a public website. He was smart enough to use an Internet proxy server but unfortunately he only used one so it wasn't hard for the authorities to find this guy. So what's next? Well probably nothing if faced with a misdemeanor he could get up to six months. For more legal information take a look here at the original article.

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