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Open source mobile

How much does it cost to create a phone? $32 million - at least that's what Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu figures. They have unveiled an ambitious plan to create a smartphone that will be funded on crowdsourcing site indiegogo.

showpiece for true mobile innovation

The open source giant are attempting to create a mobile device that will usurp not only your smartphone, but also you desktop and laptop.

Of course technology doesn't come cheap. $675 secures a device which has an estimated delivery date of May 2014.

Preliminary techincal specifications for the device are as follows:

Dual boot Ubuntu mobile OS and Android

Fully integrated Ubuntu desktop PC when docked

Fastest multi-core CPU, 4GB RAM, 128GB storage

Micro-SIM

4.5in 1,280 x 720 HD sapphire crystal display

8mp low-light rear camera, 2mp front camera

Dual-LTE, dual-band 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4, NFC

GPS, accelerometer, gyro, proximity sensor, compass, barometer

Stereo speakers with HD audio, dual-mic recording, Active Noise Cancellation

MHL connector, 3.5mm jack

Silicon-anode Li-Ion battery

64 x 9 x 124mm

Link: Ubuntu Edge

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The Pixel Painter from The Pixel Painter on Vimeo.

Wow!

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Jennifer is learning to create websites by putting together a new website every day for 180 days. She's doing well - check her out!

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If ever there was a time to change your password

What with Apple's Developer Center being hacked and the Ubuntu forums compromised, it's a good time to review your passwords. We don't need to tell you to keep strong unique passwords for each service you use, but just in case you've been a little slack recently - here's a few resources for you:

Password Card

Password card is great - it's a credit card sized slip of paper you can print out with a series of unique random characters auto generated for you in a grid. Print the card out and use the grid to generate passwords - for each service you use, choose a colour and a symbol from the password card and read off the characters for your desired password length (added bonus points if you choose to read right to left).

Generate your own

If password card is too annoying (and you hate fishing in your wallet every time you need to log in somewhere), use a pre-generated base password that only you know, interspersed with some characters from each domain name for the service you are using - for example, if your base password is "Pa55word" and you visit gmail.com, then your algorithm might be something like first 3 letters of my base password, plus the last three letters from the domain name plus the rest of my base password, rendering "Pa5ail5word" as your password for gmail. Repeat for each site you visit for a unique password for each site - as long as nobody finds your your personal algorithm and base password, you're good to go.

Beef up your memory

If that isn't good enough for you, then the only thing to do is beef up your memory - something like the Memory Palace technique can be a real lifesaver. Also called the Method of Loci, the memory palace technique associates items to be remembered with physical places you know well combined with something ridiculous to help remember. So, using gmail as an example you might picture an envelope sitting on top of your kitchen counter top drinking a fine ale. You password can then be something like "kitchencounterdrinkingale" - substitute some numbers and special characters and you've generated a password that you probably won't forget.

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Is this pair programming done right?

Floobits is a "scratch your own itch" kind of startup - the founders, Geoff Greer and Matt Kaniaris, alumni of Cloudkick, Rackspace and CloudFab have put together a pair programming product primarily to help themselves in their pair programming endeavors.

Currently they support pair programming through Sublime Text, Vim and Emacs as well as a browser based editor. The site is a little lacking in visual je ne sais quoi, but it's clear these guys have been busy with the code.

Promising, especially given the increasing programmer geographic dispersion.

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WHERE WOULD YOU MOST LIKE TO VISIT ON YOUR PLANET?

Russia

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Are you a wiki war monger?

Wikipedia - site of the most outrageous and vicious edit wars ever. Now, the top ten touch subjects have been revealed - if these subjects boil your blood, you could be a wiki war monger:

George W Bush

Anarchism

The Prophet Muhammad

World Wrestling Entertainment employees

Global warming

Circumcision

The United States

Jesus

Race and intelligence

Christianity

Unsurprisingly, the more things change the more they stay the same with four of the top ten edit war topics hitting the religious subjects. Maybe the next most contentious dinner conversation topic will be which topics on Wikipedia make you reach for the keyboard.

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