Now I’m a Mac user too and I’ve enabled some features that profess to offer good security with little impact, namely: -

• Encrypted Time Machine backups.  Does what it says on the tin; encrypted my entire USB hard disk that I use for Time Machine and on the first re-connection of said device I had to type in the password, I was then invited to store that password in my user profiles’ KeyChain for future use.  To set this up all you need to do is go into Time Machine Preferences and on the Select Disk menu tick the box to “Encrypt backup disk” then follow the wizard.  This means if my disk is physically compromised then my backup is unusable (unless somebody has my user profile too, so how to secure that? ….)

• FileVault 2 (Full Disk Encryption).  With Lion comes version 2 of FileVault and this allow you to encrypt your entire hard disk but carry on using your machine whilst doing so and quite handily, the encryption process defers resources back to usermode tasks (ie, doesn’t lag the whole system out but extends the timeline within which the initial encryption takes place).  A startup password is required and this then unlocks the entire volume for use by the core of the operating system, to applications this is all transparent as you’d expect from any proper FDE package.  This then means that the data on primary and backup (TimeMachine) hard disks are each protected even if lost / stolen together.  To set this up all you need do is go into the Security & Privacy System Preferences and in the FileVault tab click “Turn on FileVault…” and follow the wizard.  You even get a recovery key that you can store on Apple’s servers in-case you ever draw a blank with your password (I can’t see how you would being as you type it in on each boot).

• Firmware Password. Anybody with IT knowledge could steal a piece of hardware and if they’re not bothered about the data then they’ll simply swap-out the hard disk, install an operating system and off they go.  Well when a Firmware Password is set the Mac hardware will not boot any device other than the default “Startup Disk” without this password.  To set this up you must boot Lion into the Recovery screen by booting your Mac with Command (⌘) + R held down.  Once booted into this mode click Utilities and Firmware Password.  As usual follow the wizard and reboot.  No password is required to boot into the Mac normally.

With all things “security & encryption” they can add overhead so I intend to just see how it goes and report any major problems back.  If you’ve got an encryption or security story then please comment and let me know about it.

I put my iPhone 4 on charge that night and my fiancé didn’t bother as hers was at 95% battery and normally lasted her 2 days anyhow. The next morning I sat in bed and checked my twitter, Facebook and the news and thought it a bit strange how my battery had already gone down to 89% during that 10 mins of usage. My fiancé’s iPhone 4 was on 4% !!!

After having been live for a few days it seems we’re not the only ones with this problem. After reading some infuriating articles suggesting I

turn off notifications

or

disable location services

or

disable iMessage

or anything else that makes the iPhone great I started to do a little digging and found that deep in the menus were some items that perhaps helped my battery to last longer, I also did a lot of forum reading and have summarised my findings below.

Bear in mind this is obviously buggy behaviour and until there is an official fix I’ve implemented the “fixes” below as a temporary countermeasure: -

Time Zone

Buried inside Settings > Location Services > (scroll to bottom and find) System Services

Firstly you’ll notice that by default the “Status Bar Icon” is Off.  This means than whenever your iOS 5 device is performing on of the location functions above that it neglects to tell you about it on your main status bar (with your time etc).

Secondly you may notice that “Setting Time Zone” has a coloured location-symbol next to it permanently which means it’s always live.  Obviously if it’s always getting your location then that’s quite a hit on battery life but also; do you really need your phone to constantly be checking which time-zone you’re in?  I opted for not and set this to Off.

Notifications

I’m not sure whether this has had a large impact on my battery’s performance but it’s advised that you go into Settings > Notifications and switch off any notifications that you don’t actively need.  There are plenty of Apps that I have installed on my device that simply do not need notifications yet seem to want to register with the Notification Centre and be eligible for push notifications.

Usage Information

Your iPhone is sat there sending anonymous Diagnostic and Usage Data to Apple… when it wants… using up your battery life.

For this one you’ll need to go into Settings > General > About > (scroll to bottom) Diagnostic & Usage and then chose the setting “Don’t Send”.

iCloud

iCloud is great and all but it does generate a lot of network data which again; uses battery.  For me I don’t need to sync my Mail, Contacts or Calendar into iCloud as they originate on an Exchange server so why sync them to iCloud?  Also I don’t use the Safari web browser so do I need to sync my Bookmarks with the cloud?  This is much like with the Notification Centre; only sync and use the features that you need and/or want!

Ping

This is a social-networking experience (or attempt at) from Apple within iTunes.  I don’t know if this was included in the previous iOS releases but apparently disabling it has some negative impact on battery so if you weren’t aware of its existence or aren’t using it then Settings > General > Restrictions > Enable Restriction (and set a restrictions pass-code > Ping : Off.

Network Settings (the most effective change yet!)

I read this one a few times on various sites and refused to believe that it could make the slightest bit of difference.  That was until I was getting sufficiently frustrated that I decided to go for it.  BIG difference!  Before you go ahead, there is one disadvantage: your iPhone will forget all the WiFi networks it has previously joined and you must provide the security keys again.

To perform this operation head to Settings > General > Reset > Reset Network Settings.  You’ll need to confirm that you really want to do this and then your iPhone will reboot.  Don’t forget to re-join your WiFi networks

Hopefully if you perform these steps you’ll grab back some ever-useful battery life without limiting functionality.

Let me know how you get on or if you have any suggestions and if you have 2 seconds; answer the poll below:

In steps MS Office Web Apps – whilst still in “invite only” trials it appears to offer many of the features of MS Office in a streaming fashion.  By no means is this ready for public consumption and in my opinion the infrastructure isn’t there to support it yet but it is very interesting nonetheless.

Read about it on TheRegister

Tracking UK Holiday Go-ers
Vodafone UK have chosen a hashtag to trawl through Twitter’s many tweets and produce an overlay on Google maps using location data, check it out here.

Top-40 Chart
The more a track is talked about on Twitter, the higher up the chart it features – a more realistic Top-40 perhaps?  Check the chart.

US Election
Leading infographics website FlowingData mapped the US Election by the use of Tweets.

Please leave comments and suggest any others that people may find interesting.

Subscribe if you would and hopefully some of the posts will interest you.