App Store vs. Android on Steroids

It's official. The iPhone is God's greatest gift to humanity, and the greatest thing about the iPhone is the App Store. If any of you have seen what HTC has done with Google's Android platform, you've seen how close HTC is to matching the touted iPhone interface. I have only seen HTC's very intriguing demo, but it's even possible that their Sense interface and their core applications (I love the Footprints app) are better. They may even have better hardware.


HTC Hero with the new Sense interface (pic from HTC)

What HTC or Android does not have right now is the App Store. Their version, called "Android Market", appears to have only a few hundred apps (not verified). I honestly can't tell how amazing these apps are. On the other hand, the Apple App Store has tens of thousands of apps, and I love a bunch of them. Also, with iPhones becoming so ubiquitous and with all the developer support Apple is getting, it does not look like the App Store will run out of great apps soon.

Pot Haven

I know some old friends who will want to know where the "pot haven" is, so I have to set things straight: this entry is about our quick afternoon trip to Yingge, a city 30 minutes south of Taipei that specializes in POTTERY. Sorry, hemp lovers. =)

Train from Taipei

I'm quite sure the train ride from Taipei Main Station took less that 30 minutes. We didn't know that we could use Taipei MRT/bus cards (locally called "EasyCards" or "You You Ka"), so we bought the NT$32 tickets from the station. Taipei Main Station is huge and can be a bit overwhelming for unfamiliar travelers. It was actually good that we bought the tickets, because we wouldn't have known where to go if we went straight to the platforms.

We hopped on an MRT-like train for the quick ride to Yingge. Before we even reached Yingge station, Sue knew where we were with all the pottery murals visible from the train.


Getting to the Old Street
Literature says that there are two things to do in Yingge: the pottery museum and the Old Street, which sells—you guessed right—pottery. Since this was a quick trip, we decided to just focus on the Old Street.

With the summer heat and all the taxis waiting outside the Yingge Train Station, we were tempted to simply take a taxi to the famous Old Street. But Lonely Planet said that the Old Street was just a 10-minute walk from the station. It wasn't a perfect walk, but we did see some interesting—guess what—pottery along the way.

We knew it was going to be close to where the excitement was, so we just walked to where everyone was headed. After a few minutes, we saw what was obviously the Old Street and were greeted by kids setting up their big brass band. Right when we were leaving, these kids were at it, relieving our tired feet with their sweet renditions of some classical pieces.

Picking pots
The Old Street had an endless selection of pottery. Those sold in museum-like shops were very sophisticated and elegant and carried sophisticated and elegant prices as well. I had a crush on the large pots that one could use as a fish tank or a sink—very nice if fixing up a cottage-style apartment. But I knew we didn't have the space or the means to take them home. We settled for a few small but interesting items.

Young musician
Like many places in Taiwan, Yingge had its share of street performers. One young violinist actually played lovely music. What's interesting was that she bought her cat, which was very popular with the crowd. There must have been an interesting story behind her, but I could not read the poster she placed on the ground next to her.

Going home
After more than two hours exploring the shops in the Old Street, we were ready to go home. We found ourselves back at the rusty Yingge train station waiting for a train to Taipei.

Is your computer infected?

Have you ever worried that your computer has a virus or spyware (collectively called "malware")? We probably all go through that stage when we notice things running a bit slower or when we realize how often we buy things online. This is reasonable paranoia. But there are also more obvious reasons for suspecting that a computer is infected.

Symptoms of an infected computer

Tool options are hidden
Click Start > Run, then type REGEDIT. When you press OK, Registry Editor should open if you have administrator access. If it does not, something is trying to prevent you from modifying registry settings. You can also open Windows Explorer (right-click Start > Explore) and then Tools > Folder Options. If you can’t find Folder Options, malware might be hiding it.


Strange autostart entries
Only experienced users should mess with the registry, but if you do manage to open it, you can navigate to the Run key (HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run). You can see how it looks like in the screen below. If you know what applications are supposed to start automatically on your computer (many of us don’t), then you should be able to tell whether you have suspicious programs trying to start with them.



Constant warnings about infection
Many recent malware are rogue security applications—programs that pretend to be anti-spyware or antivirus software. Note that most legitimate security applications provide very conservative notifications. Don’t just install something because it warned you. If you need to install a security solution, visit a legitimate vendor site and download it from there. Many vendors (AVG, McAfee, Trend Micro, Symantec) provide free basic security software or trial versions.

Too many applications running
Everyone should have a decent process viewer for telling what applications are running on their computer. Windows Task Manager can help, but I personally love Process Explorer. The company that used to provide this tool (Sysinternals) has been bought by Microsoft, so perhaps a version of this tool will be included in future versions of Windows.

Process Explorer provides a quick list of all kernel and user mode process trees and an easy way to locate process images (the file counterparts). Before a clean up effort, I recommend stopping all unnecessary process. To do this, you need to be able to identify which processes are critical. One good indicator is the company name, which tells you whether the running process from Microsoft, Adobe, Yahoo, or some webcam maker, for example.



Too many pop-ups and browser toolbars
If your Web browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, etc.) has too many third-party toolbars, you should be wary. Some toolbars are useful, like site rating toolbars or search bars, but a lot of them are installed with spyware. Plus, they can really mess up the browser interface. I try to keep my toolbars to a minimum and use only the SiteAdvisor toolbar, since all browsers now have their own search bars.




How can you really tell?

The truth is most malware are pretty good at hiding their presence. Many malware use rootkits, which are very sophisticated ways of hiding from Windows APIs or the controls used to perform very basic actions in Windows. I often need to perform a scan to reassure myself that my computer is clean.

The scanner I currently use is the new HouseCall 7.0 (currently in Beta, but appears to be very stable). This scanner supports process scanning (similar to what can be done manually with Process Explorer) and can also detect rootkits. It uses a selective scanning method that first lists critical and suspicious sections before starting the scan. HouseCall 7.0 will typically finish scans in less than 15 minutes. Now that’s a quick way to tell if your computer is infected or not.



The initial startup of HouseCall 7.0 can take a while, depending on your connection, but succeeding runs are pretty fast. If you would want to use HouseCall again, it’s suggested that you keep a local copy of the launcher, so you won’t have to download it.



HouseCall 7.0 will let you clean all detected malware and will even allow you to restore files it has deleted or cleaned. But you probably will not need this feature, unless you want to keep copies of malware.