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Last night we had a sell out event at the Side Theatre. This is an excellent venue and judging my the feedback we will be back there soon.

David Coxon started off proceedings and gave an excellent presentation of how he setup the online store for The Baltic. Rather than choosing an off-the-shelf ecommerce application, David and his team decided to develop the shop from scratch. This was a risky decision but one that paid off in the end because after many long nights work the site was released on time and significantly under budget. You can download Davids presentation here and watch the video here:

Paul Callaghan then gave a detailed introduction to version control and why saving your data in bomb proof bunker is rather useless if your disk fails. Paul went on to introuduce us to Git, a free and open source version control system. Traditional revision control systems use a centralized model, where all the revision control functions are performed on a shared server where every Git clone is a full-fledged repository with complete history and full revision tracking capabilities, not dependent on network access or a central server. Through a practical demonstration Paul showed us that branching and merging tasks are fast and easy to do. You can download his presentation here.

Finally we heard from Alex Kavanagh. Alex gave us an introduction to Subversion (SVN), another open source version control system. Subversion differs from git because it is a centralised repository, this means that all changes are checked into a central repository and users must communicate over the network with the central repository to obtain history about a file. You can see Alex’s presentation here:

I want to thank Alex and Hannah from Sailor Girl for finding and organising the venue for us.

Alastair Mc Donald introduced us to the world of geocaching (pronounced geo-cashing), a treasure hunting game which is played by thousands of players around the world. The game is an intriguing mix of treasure hunting, navigation, and outdoor hiking/walking. Players (geocachers) place caches in hidden locations around the world and log them on a geocaching website. Anybody with a GPS device can then try to locate the geocache.

A typical cache comes in the shape of a tupperware box that contains a pen and paper. Once located the player can open the cache and sign the register. There are many types of cache and these are listed on the geocaching.com website.

Players are encouraged to find local caches and place a few themselves. Alistair has been playing for a few years and now has 14 caches located around the country.

Gavin Elliot and Justin Turner from the Ecommerce Experiment told us about how they plan to revolutionise the ecommerce market.

The Ecommerce Experiment was setup in early June by the Carrot Media team. Over the next three years the team will setup and run an online shop. During this process they will blog about all of their experiences. The team plan to discuss each step in detail including:

1. How to setup a bank account
2. How to source and buy stock
3. What development platform to use
4. What marketing tools work

You can follow the team on their blog and twitter.

Mike Parker from OrangeBus told us about how he uses Drupal to ‘Work less, Surf more’, a story which told us how he uses Drupal for rapid development.

Drupal is an open source development environment (released under the GPL) used by tens of thousands of people to power scores of different web sites, including Nike, Sony, Yahoo Developer Network and Beyonce (if it’s good enough for Beyonce it’s good enough for me). Drupal makes web development easy by combining an excellent PHP, mysql and user interface in a powerful environment that allows for third party modules and plugins.

Mike used an example of a website that he developed in 45 minutes to demonstrate how easy it is to develop using Drupal and the CCK, Panels, Five Star and Views modules. This was Mikes second presentation to SuperMondays.

Our final presentation of the night was from Ryan Dewhurst who introduced his  ’Damn Vulnerable Web App’.  DVWA is a PHP/MySQL web application that is damn vulnerable. Its main goals are to be light weight, easy to use and full of vulnerabilities to exploit. Used to learn or teach the art of web application security.

Ryan first released DVWA in December 2008 and since then it has gained quite a following. It has been developed for the use of information security professionals and students to test out their skillz and/or toolz in a legal environment.

The newest version of DVWA is 1.0.4 and was released at SuperMondays under the GPL.

The group want to thank our four speakers for their time and commitment….and Northern Film and Media for their sponsorship!

This month’s event was different from previous SuperMondays events for a few reasons, not just because of the fact that we held it on a Tuesday. This month we changed the venue, the format of the event and the topics of the speakers. We hope that you liked it!

During the first hour we were encouraged to walk around ‘Space 2’ of the Culture Lab to speak to various product designers about their research projects. This including presentations from Tom Martindale and his multitouch surface computer, John Dawson and his interactive computer application and Guy Schofield and the rapid prototyping facility that Lab uses.

The second part of the evening was in a more traditional lecture environment. The event was opened by Professor Atau Tanaka, the Chair of Digital Media and the Acting Director of Culture Lab. After a brief introduction to the facility, its place within the university and a synopsis of some of the work that is undertaken there Mr Tanaka passed over to Patrick Oliver.

Patrick described the Culture Lab as a place to research the interaction with computers in everyday life. Projects such as the ‘Ambient Kitchen’ push the bounds of pervasive computing and apply them to everyday tasks in a normal domestic kitchen.  The kitchen has many computers and sensors placed in the floor, walls and inside the appliances which collect data to be relayed to a collection of computers which analyse the data and provide feedback on a collection of displays around the room. The Ambient Kitchen is typical of several of the projects at the Culture Lab in that it captures the users motions and actions with a view to understanding what they are doing so that helpful prompts can be given if necessary. The work has many applications but it is most powerful when it’s applied to provide ambient assisted living for older people or people with dementia. The ultimate goal is to help people with everyday tasks such as making a cup of tea or preparing a meal.

Dr Jayne Wallace also introduced us to her work at the Culture Lab. Jayne is a digital artist with a background in contemporary jewellery. The core of her work considers how jewellery can act to play a role within what we each consider personally meaningful for us in our lives, in an emotional context, and how the expression of fragments of this can be enriched through the integration of digital technologies. Developments already exist in wearable electronics and digital product design that have taken the body as a location, but in many cases such digital objects miss many of the subtleties and inimitable qualities associated with jewellery. You can find more information on the work that Jayne undertakes here:
http://www.digitaljewellery.com/

Our final speaker of the evening was Andrew Waite who introduced us to the concept of ‘honeypotting with Nepenthes. Nepenthes is a low interaction honeypot which emulates several known vulnerabilities across multiple services and protocols. It’s ultimate goal is to capture live malware samples as the honeypot is being ‘exploited’.

A honeypot server should have no legitimate services installed upon it and as such it is assumed that all of the traffic that is targeted at it is considered malicious. Running a honeypot gives you an insight into how systems are being probed and as part of a broad IT security policy they can help you to secure your network against attacks. If the honeypot is placed externally, it can provide an early warning system for attacks. Placed internally they can help identify any internal infections.

Andrew has been running his honeypot for over a year and in that time it has had over 2000 recorded attacks with over 900 unique malware specimens, the first of which was recorded within 30 minutes of gaining a live network connection!

Andrew uses this data, in combination with server logs and intrusion detection software to help predict, prevent and secure his IT network. Doing so gives him a fully rounded understanding of his IT security needs. You can read more here:
http://infosanity.blogspot.com/2009/05/may-supermondays-presentation-aftermath.html

‘If you know your enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles’ – Sun Tzu

We are very grateful to Atau, Paul and Jane and all the staff at the Culture Lab for opening their facility for such an inspiring event. We would also like to thank Northern Film and Media for sponsoring the event. Finally, thank you to Shuoling Liu for all his hard work with the video recorder!