I bought a Juice Bar solar charger from ThinkGeek. Of the choices available, this model was moderately priced at $39.99.

I mentioned my purchase on Twitter and several people asked for my opinion.  My first impression based on the device having to charge initially for 6 hours via USB or 15 hours via light source was that this is not a “solar charger”. It’s actually a rechargeable battery.  That is not a problem but calling it a solar charger is a little misleading.  I saw direct solar charge options when considering this device but those were a little more costly.

The Juice Bar battery charges a variety of gadgets as it came with 12 connectors. Of the connectors that I mainly use three of them: USB Type A, USB Mini-B and iPod/iPhone. I’ve also started carrying the PSP connector as that one works with several gadgets I have. I’ve used the device to charge my iPhone, iPod, and Motorola RAZR which I have recently started carrying again. It has about an hour and a half of charge which works for all of the above devices. I’ve recently resurrected the RAZR and have not located its charger and the Juice Bar is the only thing I have that delivers enough power to charge it.

I tried the Juice Bar at work but the first real test was at a conference I attended in Orlando a few weeks ago. Being that my iPhone doesn’t have the best battery life, having this charger comes in handy. I charged the Juice Bar at night and would bring it out when the iPhone battery starting dying. On the last day, I had forgotten to charge the JB so I tried to grab whatever energy I could from the flourescent lights. Being that I was catching the plane, I decided to use it to keep my iPod alive instead of my iPhone.

For the most part I am happy with the Juice Bar. The one complaint I do have is that the iPod/iPhone connector is kind of loose so movement disconnects it. I have used the USB connector with an iPhone cable to avoid this.  That said, it is a convenient item to carry around.

Bonus: I decided to keep the other connectors around even though I don’t use them. One day my friend got into my car with her dead Blackberry asking if I had anything that would charge it. I handed her a standard USB cable because last time I used a Blackberry that’s what they needed to charge. It didn’t fit. She had a connector that I was not familiar with. So I went in the trunk and got my Juice Bar connectors and sure enough one of them fit. She was able to get enough charge while we were at a restaurant to make a few calls.  Now she and our waitress want one.

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A few months ago someone brought me a laptop saying that it needed its virus software updated. When I looked at it, I found that attempting to run any Windows process resulted in a popup window saying that the file was infected with a virus and that the antivirus software needed to be updated (in other words money had to be paid) to clean the infected files.  It took a while to finally get rid of the infection, but I wondered how the user got this virus.

Then while visiting the WordPress blog of a Twitter friend, I get the following very realistic popup indicating that a virus was found on my computer.  (There was a rash of WordPress hackings at specific web hosting providers.)  The popup looks exactly like Windows Explorer.

(Click to enlarge)

This is a mere screen capture of a Flash animation that made it appear like my machine was being scanned by legitimate antivirus software.  When it popped up, I was a little freaked out because it was pretty alarming.  I was, however, browsing with the Linux operating system at the time.  If you look closely at the screen print, you will see that the fake Windows Explorer appears in a Firefox browser window.  You will also notice that this fake antivirus scan does not say McAfee, Norton, Symantec or any other well known antivirus software.

After taking the screenprint I attempted to close the Firefox browser.  The Flash animation would not allow me to close the window without downloading an executable file that had I been using a Windows machine would install fake antivirus software.

This malware relies on the users’ fear of malware to get the user to install it.  After installation, it then essentially asks for money (to clean the supposedly infected system files) to be able to do the most basic task in Windows.  This type of malware is called ransomware in that it holds your system hostage until you pay money to regain access.  An unsuspecting user would likely pay to make their computer work again future opening them up to additional exploitation since criminals would then have the user’s credit card information and who knows what type of malicious activities the still installed software will actually do on their computer.

Legitimate virus  protection can help identify many malware threats but it’s not a panacea.  It doesn’t even matter what operating system is being used if the user will install anything.  Granted this particular malware is targeted specifically to Windows users, but malware is being created for other popular operating systems as well.  Therefore awareness is just as important as technological solutions especially since technological solutions tend to be reactionary.  A good rule is to ignore popups and kill any kind of forced downloads.

It is also important to keep up with updates and patches for your software.  I wonder what kind of damage could have occurred had I been using Internet Explorer 6 on a Windows machine.  If you are using this, please upgrade to Internet Explorer 8.  Also consider installing Firefox and/or Google Chrome.

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Just before Facebook’s privacy blow up, the company announced that they were going to make the service more secure against hackers.  I encountered something that was undoubtedly a result of these new measures.  Below is what happened with my own account.  I logged in to see the following:

This type of monitoring seems to be as a result of all the successfully phishing and malware attacks targeted at Facebook users.

This screen is confusing.  Was my account accessed or was it just a login attempt?  I know I haven’t been phished.  And I’m pretty sure I don’t have any malware installed.

I take issue that Facebook made me go through all of that but wasn’t clear if my account was actually accessed.  I also question the effectiveness of this measure as I still see malware links on Facebook.

Has this happened to anyone else?

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So, I upgraded my old phone (iPhone 3G) to the new iOS 4 operating system.  The backup process took forever and I fell asleep on it.  When I woke up the next morning the update was done but I still needed to do the restore.

Here are the features I noticed:

• Unified inbox. Finally!
• Emails are grouped by threads.
• App folders.  I love the folders but I wish they looked like folders instead of boxes with miniature icons.
• Camera zoom
• Can view photos by places in camera roll.
• Camera now asks if it can know my location. It’s good that they have added this feature back.  We should be able to decide if we want to geotag our photos instead of it automatically being done for us.
• Can see what apps have requested my location.  In addition, an indicator on status bar shows when apps have access to location.
• Birthday calendar. Creates a calendar of contact’s birthdays.  Incidentally, I also figured out how to sync multiple calendars with Google Sync so I can now see Facebook Events, Facebook Birthdays, and other calendars I have in Google Calendar.
• Syncing notes.  Unfortunately, I’m using Google Sync which does not have Notes functionality.  If I were syncing to an actual exchange server I would be happy with this.
• Edit playlists
• Group SMS messaging
• Google suggestions in Safari. This comes in handy when trying to look something up quickly.
• Spell check. I can see a red dotted line under misspelled words while composing email messages.

Features I read about that I can’t find for iPhone 3G

• Multitasking.  I knew that feature was not included already.
• View photos by Faces and Events
• Rotate photos
• Game center
• Ability to search web or wikipedia from home screen
• Home screen wallpaper
• Bluetooth keyboard support

Most of these missing features, I don’t care about at all.  However, I am upset about the Bluetooth keyboard support.  The home screen wallpaper seems easy enough a feature to be included so I was a little disappointed about that as well.  Many have speculated about a unified notification center but that remains to be seen.

Many argue that the older phones are not capable technically of handling many of the new features which seems reasonable.  To some extent, though, I think Apple intentionally leaves features out to serve as a proverbial carrot to motivate users to get the newer versions.  The carrot on stick motivation technique has never worked for me.  In everything, my loyalty depends on how I am treated.  In August, I will be a free agent in terms of phones and cell carriers.  I will be weighing whether or not I should stay with iPhone or move to Android.

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I am excited that CLEAR high-speed wireless internet service is available in the Washington, DC area as of June 1. I’ve been anxiously awaiting its arrival since attending the Baltimore launch event more than a year and a half ago.

CLEAR is a wireless internet service that boasts speeds up to four times as fast as 3G. It is completely mobile and works anywhere within the service area. It does, however, require a new type of wireless card to get access to the network.

If CLEAR catches on it could change internet service as we know it. Right now people pay for an internet connection at home, one on their mobile devices and many times wifi at locations such as cafes, hotels, airports and the like. The beauty of CLEAR is that one would be able to pay for one internet service plan and use the same service all over the metropolitan area. The user’s connected devices could also be used in other CLEAR service areas.

The service area is larger than I would expect for the initial launch (I thought it would just be in the District alone) but still does not include where I live. When the service is expanded to my area, my internet service provider should expect an “it’s not me, it’s you” letter from me.

In the meantime, CLEAR will be broken in this week as it will provide internet access for the core events of Digital Capital Week, a 10 day festival in Washington DC focused on technology, innovation and all things digital in our nation’s capital.

CLEAR uses a technology called WiMAX. WiMAX (worldwide interoperability for microwave access) refers to a standard designed to provide high-bandwidth wireless services on a metropolitan scale – think public WiFi on steriods. Reportedly, WiMAX download speeds rival that of a traditional DSL connection. WiMAX differs from WiFi in that while WiFi tends to work in a radius of about 30 meters, WiMAX’s footprint is 3 kilometers. What does that mean to you? Essentially WiMAX can easily blanket an entire city to provide wireless access. Not only that, the network speeds are not greatly compromised as with WiFi at the outer limits of coverage.

More than a year ago Xohm launched it’s WiMAX service in Baltimore. There have been numerous launches all over the country since then. During that time Xohm changed it’s name to Clearwire and rebranded the WiMAX service as CLEAR.

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