SXSW so far

Although the crowds seem smaller, or maybe there are just so many film people around, SXSW is fun this year. My panel went ok today, and I'm looking forward to relaxing the rest of my time here.

One thing has really been driven home by the availability and ubiquity of hacking tools: the downside of wireless is (un)security. I've been saying this since last year's E-Tech conference, but as long as Apple is pimping their airports and the wonders of wireless they really should have an "iSecure" app that makes ssh tunneling painless and easy. A few months ago I spent an entire saturday afternoon writing scripts to auto-login to my email server through a tunnel, and that was just email. Secure web browsing is something else entirely, and the services of things like anonymizer look attractive as a total package (but they're still a pain in the ass to setup).

Ideally, it should be entirely transparent, painless, and easy to setup and use a secure tunnel. Apple could even tie a service into their iTools accounts. I'd be happy to pay $50 a year for encrypted email and web traffic (with an easy interface to establish the connection).