Where do you want to go? You probably know, but do you know how to get there? The CoPilot Live app can help in ways that you’d need other apps to assist. A route that’s optimized for time. One that suggests places to eat or gas up along the way. An interface that lets you stay inside the app while you take advantage of Wikipedia place entries or Facebook Places. Even traffic updates, for just a little extra each month. Like under a buck.

But the thing that sets this nav app apart is that you’re not buying maps to use it. There are no in-app $49 purchases for North American roads. CoPilot is sold with maps included and free updates How’s that possible? Well for one thing, they do their own maps, instead of paying a third party. Then there’s the company background: they sell truck fleet software and have for 25 years. You don’t have to care about how CoPilot does its business but you’ll want them to keep up with those free maps. Nav apps can get expensive in several ways

But before we look at that, let’s do a discount dance. Until the end of this week the CoPilot app is $9.95, the iPad version $14.95. Discounts a-plenty here in Macworld week. Even at the regular prices this app looks like it can lead you to better value for nav.

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The noteworthy Macworld Expo unfurled its computing charms this week, but the 27-year-old show about all things Apple has a nouveau business patina these days. Almost 75 percent of Apple’s historic Q1 sales came off mobile products. It’s a remarkable tally considering that was a $46 billion first quarter. Apple is not doing it on the backs of consumers exclusively. Business has embraced the Apple brand, not only in mobile but also on the enterprise’s desktops.

Although it’s diminished from its heyday of crowding both North and South Moscone Center exhibit halls — the whole thing has been in the more cozy Moscone West for two years — Macworld hovers near the 20,000 mark in attendance these days. A few hundred vendors make up the show floor this week, even though it’s thick with vendors of covers for any Apple product you can carry — which if you take a moment to consider it, becomes the bulk of the Apple line: ultra-slim laptops like the Macbook Air, beefier models like the Pro and the iPads and iPhones. All accomplished solutions, but there’s a growing number of companies that want to out-do Windows desktops here, and I’m not talking about Angry Birds on Windows Phone or MS Office. You can look beyond the common-cloth Unix choices if you’re making a migration and plan to buy off the shelf replacement software.

This year a new player entered this market with a software shell that makes Mac management as simple as administering Windows desktops. Mokafive integrates with those Mac systems so an admin with Windows experience — Active Directory, that sort of thing — can manage everything from a single screen. (That screen at left is on a Macbook Air.)  After all, inside the heart of Apple’s products beats Unix, the original “open” system that’s supposed to connect with everything. Mokafive isn’t the only way to convince your IT staff that Macs won’t be any extra burden. There are other products aimed at creating a homongenous workplace for computers which tap corporate data.

Okay, full disclosure here: The companies I’ve worked for and founded since 1987 have been Apple shops. It used to be the domain of pariahs and the source of derisive snorts, but the Mac world has gone corporate on us all. The pro-sumer movement, where iPhones and iPads get carried into an enterprise by C-level officers, has brought along Macs as a sticky complement. In a report on the $46 billion quarter, Apple’s CEO Tim Cook said nearly all of the Fortune 500 is using Apple’s products, including most companies adopting Macs. It used to be that a localized in-house datacenter kept Apple out. Now there’s cloud computing to take the place of vendor-specialized databases. For companies leaving the world of classic IT, this cloudy future is helping to make Apple’s business outlook brighter.

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On the Macworld upper deck the creators of Liquidspace have set up a quiet and unique workspace for editors and attendees here. It’s a demonstration of the power of the company’s iPhone and iPad app and database; the database tracks availability of more than 250 meeting places around the US. The space pictured is in Sacramento, and you can book it for a fee that Liquidspace collects via credit card. Some meeting spaces are fee-free, such as local libraries participating in the meeting space network.

Most small business providers have had a constant need for a meeting space away from the office. Especially when that business office is a home office. Starbucks or Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf are the obvious options. These are, of course, poor places to Skype into a meeting, given the noise or the lack of privacy. if you’re on the road and away from a hotel, Liquidspace has a solution. But for $50 or more for the hour, if the budget allows, you can reserve a private space including amenities such as wifi, presentation gear, or even enough room to host a group of 15 colleagues or prospects.

The Liquidspace app is free and becoming a member lets you book spaces and get check in passports for exclusive use of a space — or just a $4 seat at a spot like the quiet workspace next to the Caltrain station in San Francisco. Of the 250 spots available now, 150 are in the Bay Area where Liquidspace is growing up.

Garmin is using Macworld to introduce new social search and check-in capabilities for its StreetPilot onDemand navigation app, as well as a new function for the Tracker app that allows users to share links to a live tracking map. Dan Bartel of the company said the new features help users to stay connected and share location-based information with their friends and families. Navigon introduced StreetPilot; Garmin acquired the German navigation provider in 2011.

The new social media capabilities for StreetPilot onDemand integrate Wikipedia, Facebook and foursquare. Users can display locations from these networks on the map and check in upon arrival at their destination. Clicking on one of the Wikipedia icons on the map will reveal detailed information about a location, such as the identity of an interesting building or landmark. Also new for the are visually refined 3D renderings of buildings to provide a better overview.

Garmin’s Tracker app works in conjunction with the GTU 10 tracking device to display its location on a map “to virtually follow anything from your loved-ones to valuables or the family dog. Users can set up a geo-fence to get alerts when the device crosses in or out of a defined area. The latest version of this app now also allows a continuous tracking mode, and enables users to send out map links to others.”

PowerPoint slides in SlideShark

Brainshark will use Macworld to introduce a new workgroup version of its SlideShark app for the iPad. The company says the software has begun to solve the problem of PowerPoint’s incompatibility on the iPad. There’s 30 million PowerPoint decks created every day, according to the company.

SlideShark has been selling since October, and the company says its been downloaded twice a minute since then. A version that will launch in early February adds functionality to support teams and groups within organizations. The current version is geared more toward individuals.

“Prior to SlideShark’s launch last October, millions of iPad users who wanted to view and show PowerPoint slide decks on their device had only spotty, unreliable options,” the company said in a release. The existing software on the iPad market flattens presentations into PDFs at worst. Or the competition’s conversion techniques render animations inactive, sometimes distorting fonts, colors, images and more. We can attest to the last outcome. While we don’t animate with PowerPoint, those slides check into iPad apps of today and don’t check out the same.

SmartPlans

Left Coast Logic is unveiling new apps and a cloud service at Macworld this week. The SmartDay organizer integrates tasks, events, notes, and projects into one app. The company’s SmartTime logic is behind the organizer. It schedules tasks directly into free time between calendar appointments. SmartDay Mac is the company’s first Mac app, but it includes a feature-set similar to its iPad organizer, SmartPad. The company is also unveiling a web version, mySmartDay.com, that synchronizes with both.

A new version of the SmartPlans app uses Smart logic at a higher level to manage multiple projects within the context of a weekly work balance. Version 3 adds business-oriented features such as milestones and dependencies, but the most significant new feature may be the way it integrates projects into the native iPhone and iPad calendars.

Doxie Go, a new cordless scanner that scans without a computer, has been upgraded with Doxie 2.1, delivering ABBYY FineReader Optical Character Recognition.

With the latest software, Doxie Go users can sync scans then create searchable PDFs in black and white or color, all without leaving the Doxie software. Searchable PDFs can be searched or used locally, or pushed into the cloud for instant sharing.

The $199 product works with Windows as well as Macs. Doxie 2.1 is a free software upgrade to all existing Doxie Go owners. With an optional sync accessory, it can work with the iPhone & iPad.

Small business users can employ the new FiledRight Document Management system for Mac from Mindwrap, announced at Macworld this week. The company says the software is designed specifically for Macintosh-based small business users. After 24 years of experience in the imaging and document management marketplace Mindwrap is bringing integrated scanning and batch processing capabilities to the product offered in user license bundles of 5, 10, and 25 users including a FiledRight server, a client workstation, indexing and query screens for common business needs, administration tools, and a scanner driver

FiledRight is being sold this week at a starting special price of $1,999. It employs the popular open source FireBird database for indexing, searching, and management of all types of scanned and desktop office documents. Like a lot of larger-company solutions, an annual support contract is being offered as an extra expense.

Jim Small, Mindwrap’s president, said the Mac’s support for PDF and images makes it a natural platform choice for document management.  FiledRight is an integrated, turnkey solution, a package that’s usually faster to deploy than toolkits that can require extensive development.

Installation and configuration are quick and easy with the included server administration tools, allowing managers to select and deploy application-specific indexing screens and assign role-based permissions to all users. Scanning can be enabled for any FiledRight native Mac workstation with the addition of a scanner driver. Clients can quickly convert paper to multipage PDF and TIFF using Fujitsu scanners. They can also perform page-level editing and redaction of sensitive documents. FiledRight maintains historical versions of all edited documents.

The CoPilot Live Team is making Macworld passes available for free. Apple fans just need to visit the CoPilot Live USA Facebook page and Like the company. To show their appreciation for its giveaway, they’re offering a few free CoPilot Live HD apps for the iPad. We’ve got their free iTunes store codes for the first couple of readers who contact us or send a comment. This is a $24.99 app, so go visit the Facebook page and come back for your codes. First come, first served.

Review by Steve Hardwick

No Starch Press, November 2011, 320 pp., $49.95

In a recent survey by Veracode in December 2011 found that more than 80 percent of approximately 10,000 web applications examined failed security testing. This data shows that web applications provide a fertile ground for hackers to launch their malware. Obviously web developers still have some work to do to make their applications secure. The Tangled Web by Michal Zalewski is targeted toward web application developers and security professionals that have a solid understanding of the web and browser operations at an operational level. The author will go into fairly technical details assuming that the reader has the necessary skills to understand the technology discussed.

After an introductory chapter outlining some security fundamentals, the book is split into three parts. The first part covers browser and web technologies. Specific attention is paid to vulnerabilities and how they became to be part of the infrastructure. The second part covers browser security and highlights some of the ways to mitigate the inherent holes in the current technology. The final portion covers some of the new vulnerabilities that are expected to come in the near future. With a couple of exceptions, most chapters are concluded with a security engineering cheat sheet. This gives a summary of the topics covered in the chapter and serves as a guide to implementing some of the technology discussed. It provides a useful quick reference to the books contents after the reader has completed their read through and can be used as a design aid on future projects.

Part One goes into some depth on the various technologies used by browsers, both their inherent operating infrastructure and the services used over the web. Attention is paid to areas of the technology that are open to exploitation. In many cases the author outlines how some of the weaknesses came into being and provides a good view into the difficulty of building this technology. Part One is broken down into chapters that cover the different pieces of the browser function. Both internal processes, HTML and CSS parsing for example, are covered plus external processes, HTML and URL parsing, are reviewed. Two chapters cover additional programming capabilities of the browser i.e. JavaScript and plug-ins.  Throughout this section many examples are given on how the vulnerabilities can be exploited. This gives the reader a better understanding on how a hacker would go about using these weaknesses. In some cases a chapter has a limited discussion of the topic due its wide complexity. The author does include references to other works that cover the topic in greater detail and then focuses on key areas that are relevant to web security.

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