Is Google Drive all that it’s cracked up to be? Or are there dangers hiding inside the ToS? Let’s look inside and see!

“You retain ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in that content. In short, what belongs to you stays yours.”

Well that’s good! Anything I belongs to me stays mine and I retain all my intellectual property rights.

Let’s continue:

“When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), …”

Okay, nothing terribly evil here. By putting my stuff in their cloud I’m essentially letting them use (that seems overly vague), host (fair enough), store (well, duh), reproduce (again, overly vague), modify (there’s that vague thing again), create derivative works (but they say it’s for translations and whatnot to make my content work better with their services, sounds okay to me).

But then things get a little concerning:

“… communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content.”

Wait, what? By uploading something to Google Drive I’m giving not only Google but “those [they] work with” permission to publish, perform in public, display in public, and distribute my work?! Seriously? That’s crossing the line, Google.

Dropbox, on the other hand, has this to say:

“You retain full ownership to your stuff. We don’t claim any ownership to any of it. These Terms do not grant us any rights to your stuff or intellectual property except for the limited rights that are needed to run the Services…”

Google should follow suit.

Source: Google Drive ToS

My instructions worked for many, but others are reporting that they’re still waiting.

Moments ago, Google responded with an explanation why you’re not able to get Google Drive — yet:

Hey everybody,

Yesterday we had to start rate limiting the signups for Google Drive and we are likely to have to keep doing that over the next few days so that we are sure we can handle the initial load. Please be patient and keep trying until you get Google Drive

Cheers!
Nicolas

So, patience! Google is “rate limiting the signups for Google Drive”, but they will likely only be doing that for the next couple days.

Source: Nicolas on the Google Product Forums

The phone is absolutely amazing. It’s got a beautiful, 720p HD screen, and it’s the Ice Cream Sandwich (that’s Android 4.0 for you non-geeks), flagship launch device — which means it’s going to be first in line for OS updates as they come along.

It’s been months since it was released. I got mine from the UK and shipped over. Same with my wife’s. We both love the phone. Now you can get it without the whole oceanic sojourn to worry about — and it’s only $400! (Sorry, Google, I’m rounding up a penny.)

Google also released Google Wallet, the app that turns your phone into a credit card wherever PayPass is accepted — you can now get the app on AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, and can even side-load it on Verizon (just don’t do it with a rooted phone running a custom ROM — just take my word for that).

So, why should you get this phone? It’s not expensive. In fact, for what you’re getting, it’s down-right cheap. Want a small tablet? Grab this phone instead It’s big enough to be a small tablet, but not so big that it won’t fit comfortably in any pocket. With Google Talk or Skype, you don’t even really need a phone plan, just a network connection. It does 802.11b/g/n just fine.

Would you rather have a real phone? Simply toss in your AT&T or T-Mobile SIM, or a T-Mobile or AT&T pre-paid SIM and you’re off to the races! Even the Wal-Mart family plan SIM should work fine. Try any one you like. If it doesn’t work, no problem, replace the SIM with another and you’re on your way. It’s not locked to a specific carrier, so you’ve got that freedom and flexibility out of the box.

Accessories were a long time coming, but the are now available! Well, everything but the car dock, we’re still waiting on that.

In short, this is your next phone. It’s got everything you need, most of what you want, and now that you can buy it from Google, no contracts or plans required, it’s the ideal phone for you.

After a somewhat long wait, Google Drive is now available — well, mostly available. You may still have to wait for it to be available for you, but the service is live, and that’s a good place to start.

If you have a “regular” Google account you simply click on the button to sign up and let you know when your drive is “ready”. They’ll email you.

If you have a Google Apps account, you might get a message that “Google Drive is not yet enabled for [your] domain”.

Your administrator (in my case, that’s me) needs to make sure your Google Apps account is set up for Google Drive.

1. Log in to your Google Apps control panel (or have your administrator do so if that’s not you), at https://www.google.com/a/cpanel/YOUR-DOMAIN-HERE
2. Click on Domain Settings
3. Under the General tab, make sure New Services is set to Automatic (otherwise you’ll have to come back and manually enable Google Drive later)
4. Also under the General tab, New User Features can be set to Rapid Release or Scheduled Release; pick Rapid Release if you want to get Google Drive sooner, otherwise you’ll probably wait a couple weeks.
5. Last, click the Save changes button.

Head over to https://drive.google.com/start and check the upper-right corner. You may see a message that “Your Google Drive is not ready” and a button to “Notify me”. If so, click that, verify you’re logged in with the right account, then click the “Notify me” button on that page, too. After that, you wait for your email.

If your spot in line has come up you’ll see a button that allows you to sign up, click it and follow the instructions.

UPDATE: Many of you have commented that this isn’t working for you. Google has gone on the record about why. Read what they had to say here: Problems signing up for Google Drive? Google Responds

Location: Ontario, CA
Employee Type: Full-Time
Required Education: Bachelor Degree
Preferred Experience: 2 to 3 Years
Reports to: Marketing Manager
Benefits Offered: Yes

Responsibilities:
This company has an immediate need for an eMarketing Web Developer to support the sales/marketing department to enhance the usability and functionality of their online presence globally.

Including build/maintain websites, build/maintain blogs, add content, e-commerce, search
engine optimization and some social media.

Key responsibilities include; customizing content within CMS (Joomla/Magento), adding
content to current websites, build/maintain shopping cart, producing HTML and CSS to
implement these designs and communicating these designs with outside developers if
needed. You also ensure designs are optimized for SEO and are compliant with multiple
browsers. This position will report directly to the Marketing Manager, as well as other
individuals within the department.

The duties associated with this position may include but, are not limited to:

• Responsible with creation customization and maintenance of website templates and content components using existing content management systems (Joomla and Magento)
• Troubleshoot issues with existing solutions
• Identify new tools and practices to improve usability and profitability
• Work collaboratively with members of the Sales and Marketing departments to deliver high-quality, effective solutions
• Employ user-centered design principles to ensure the delivery of compelling user experiences across the full range of audiences
• Deliver solutions that are compatible across browsers and across multiple devices/platforms
• Advance the overall quality of WCC’s online presence by applying proven best practices.

Requirements:

• Strong CSS, HTML and Javascript skills
• Extensive Knowledge in CMS (Joomla AND Magento preferred)
• Knowledge of SEO best practices
• Experience with Adobe Creative Suite (including Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, AfterEffects, and Premier) is a plus
• Proficiency with Microsoft Office
• Ability to make designs cross-browser compatible using standards
• Implement designer mock-ups into working code
• Ability to troubleshoot and debug code
•  Desire to work in a fast paced environment and ability to adapt to changing priorities
• Excellent communication and organization/project management skills
• Task oriented with extreme attention to detail
• Strong ability to work with a team, as well as independently
• Understands project and development plans and is able to clearly articulate roles, project goals, and time-lines.

Interested parties should contact me and I’ll put you in touch with the hiring manager.

It turns out that shortly after we bought the company, the “web guy” over there changed the contact information to our administrators over here. Doing so triggered a 30-day “lock” which prevents the domain from being transferred to another registrar.

It’s not uncommon for registrars to “lock” transfers for a certain amount of time after ownership or contact information is changed. This is done to protect the original owner from someone hacking their account, changing their contact information, then transferring away their domains.

Now you know.

The concept is really quite impressive: using the NFC chip in your phone you can pay for goods and services via a “PayPass” terminal. They’re all MasterCard terminals right now, so unless you have a compatible card, you can’t use them. If you have one of those cards, you might be able to add it to your Google Wallet app, and make payments on your card, through your phone.

Confused yet?

Those who don’t have one of those cards can get a pre-paid card from Google, and put as much money on it as you want from many other funding sources (Visa, for example). However, due to some obscure potential security hole, Google turned off the ability to add a pre-paid card to your Google Wallet.

They’ve fixed the hole, and turned back on the ability to add a pre-paid card — and given users $5 for the inconvenience, with a follow-up email (below).

Now, if only we could actually get Google Wallet released for our phones.

Hello,

As you may have experienced over the last few weeks, we temporarily disabled the feature to add the Google Prepaid Card back to your wallet if you previously removed the card or reset your wallet. We temporarily disabled this feature to ensure the security of our Wallet customers. We recognize this may have been an inconvenience for you, and we did not make this decision lightly.

We are happy to announce that you can now add the Google Prepaid Card back to your wallet with the newest version of Google Wallet, and any funds that you previously had on the card should be restored, unless you contacted Money Network and asked for a refund of those funds. To add the Google Prepaid Card back, you will first need to update your Google Wallet application to the most recent version.

To compensate you for any inconvenience this may have caused, we have credited an additional $5 (five US dollars) to your Google Prepaid Card. If you have further questions or concerns, feel free to contact us at 855-492-5538.

Thank you for your continued support of Google Wallet, and we look forward to launching many new and exciting features for you to enjoy in the coming months.

Sincerely,
The Google Wallet Team

Source: Droid Life

I tracked it down. The file was there. Perhaps it’s corrupt, I thought.

I found another system with the same builds and updates, and after backing up the “missing” file, I copied over the replacement. Same error.

It wasn’t a big deal, since that machine has SysInternals Process Explorer on it, I had access to the same information, I just hated having a system file that was “missing” or not operating properly.

I threw a tweet over to the previous sysadmin, Mike Dopp, he had a simple solution… almost. Apparently SysInternals’ Process Explorer has the ability to “replace” the built-in task manager. Our version wasn’t doing that, but it was trying to.

I launched procex64 and clicked on the options menu. There I found a “replace task manager” option. It was unchecked. Odd.

So I checked it, then I unchecked it. After that, Task Manager worked like it was supposed to.

Pay Rate

• $20 – $25 Hour

Job Description

The new hire will work closely with the CIO of the company to improve existing development as well as troubleshoot customer issues. The position will require the candidate to be a jack-of-all-trades and help with Tech Support issues and PC help desk issues.

Required Skills

• ASP.NET (0-1 years)
• Database Exposure
• Networking Exposure

Bonus Skills

• SQL – Any exposure

If you are interested, please contact me and I’ll put you in touch with the right people.

What They’re Looking For

• Talented Perl programmer – You have been around the block a few times and are comfortable using Perl to make web apps work.
• Object Oriented Perl – You think Perl is more than “just a scripting language” and know how to make it do things others can’t. Plus you understand how Perl’s object orientation differs from other languages such as C# and Java.
• Web Experience – You are familiar with how the web works, and can hit the ground running writing web applications and tools.
• Open source world – You have lived in open source code for most or a good part of your career and are not a fan of the commercial software world. For example, you have no problem using Vim or Emacs as your “IDE” for Perl.
• Team Player – You work well as part of a team, and are willing to take direction, but can be trusted to get things done on your own.
• Hard Working – Once you get your bearings, you are heads-down and tenacious in completing assigned projects

Qualifications

• At least 4 years experience as a Perl developer
• Must be competent developing Web applications and system utilities
• Must be able to create Perl modules
• Must be competent with object oriented Perl
• Must be knowledgeable with Linux and basic system administration
• Ability to stay on task, solve problems, and accomplish tasks in a timely manner
• Able to work well with other team members

Compensation
This is a full-time salaried position and includes a competitive benefits package. There is no specified salary range. They simply want the best talent we can find whatever the price—and for the right candidate they are willing to consider whatever it takes to make it worth their while.

If that sounds like you or someone you know, please contact me and I’ll put you in touch with the right people!

The pay should be around $17-$22/hour, depending on experience. Do you know anyone who’s not currently employed that might be interested? If so, contact me: Joe (at) JoeLevi.com

I can hear some of you saying “Thousands of dollars, pshaw! It’s only a printer, it only costs $70!” Not so!

Take a look at your “cheap” printers, then take a look at the ink cartridges for that printer. How much does a full replacement set cost? More than the cost of the printer? If that’s the case, when the ink that comes with the printer is all used up, why not buy a new printer instead of replacement cartridges?

So, start with looking at the cost of the ink cartridges — rather, look at the cost per printed page. If the ink cartridge doesn’t tell you the estimated number of pages that it will print, ask yourself why the manufacturer wouldn’t want you to know that. Perhaps they’re deliberately hiding it from you.

After you’ve picked out the top few ink cartridges, find out what printers use those cartridges, and see which ones have the features that you’re interested in. Might I recommend a couple:

1. DPI: how phot0-real do you want your print-outs. 1200DPI is good. Anything more and you’re probably burning through more ink than you need to — unless you’re always printing photos on it.
2. Duplexing: there’s not much that will slow your printer down more than printing on both sides. However, doing so won’t cost you too much more up front, and will cut the cost of you paper in half (generally speaking).
3. Networking: if you want to be able to print from more than one computer, get a printer that you connect to your network (preferably wired over WiFi — for simplicity). Doing so means you don’t have to worry about network printer sharing, and leaving the computer the printer is attached to on 24/7.
4. Energy Star: Your printer is going to be “on” almost all of the time. Make sure it doesn’t suck down a lot of power when it’s in standby. It’s a bad idea to hook your printer up to a switched outlet (it can’t properly park its heads when you do this, which could lead to premature failure of the heads, or drying out of your ink — or both).

Now for some things you don’t need:

1. a multi-card reader: face it, you’re going to want to import pictures from your camera to your computer, and print from there, rather than from a card reader and a 2-inch LCD on the front of your printer. Save the money.
2. an optical disc adapter: unless you’re in the disc duplication or distribution business, you don’t need a printer that will print onto special recordable media. If you do occasional disc labels, consider a LightScribe compatible burner (and matching media) and literally burn your label onto the disc. No more worrying about smudges when you clean the discs, or smeared media.

Things to avoid:

1. used or display models: don’t buy these. Just don’t do it. Chances are you’re going to run out of ink shortly after you buy it, so if you go this route, make sure the salesperson throws in a full set of ink, no additional charge.
2. Printers with a parallel port: modern printers don’t have parallel ports, they have either USB or LAN ports. Don’t get one with older technology. Many computers are coming without parallel ports, which means your printer might not work on your next computer.
3. Printers that don’t have “designed for” your operating system on the box: If you’re running Windows 7, don’t consider printers that don’t have a “designed to work with Windows 7″ label on the box. Sure, it will probably work, but it will save you headaches when installing if it’s got the certification.

Now that you’ve got some more information, go and buy your new printer!

He was hired by his current employer to fill the position of Web Application Developer left vacant by their previous Web Developer. Previously Joe worked for an advertising agency as their interactive Technology Director, and developed projects for clients such as 3M HIS, Novell, 3COM, and Sundance Resort. He performed contract work for a local dot com, building their first B2C e-commerce shopping cart solution. He even worked for a local pseudo-celebrity (Dell “SUPERDELL” Schanze) where he wore many hats (including Sharepoint Developer and various technical and management positions).

Joe was a Web of Trust Notary, endorsed by Thawte (a Verisign company), and experienced with x.590 Digital Signature Certificates. Joe believes in the widespread use of PKI Encryption technologies and methodologies as potentially being the “magic bullet” in eliminating online fraud, identity theft, and even casual snooping.

Give Joe a pair of headphones and a can of anything “cold and caffeinated” and he can code for hours on end. He can work efficiently as a solo developer and is also at-home when working as part of a development team.

When asked, Joe tells people that it’s not really that he knows all that much, rather that he’s just really good at figuring things out.

In the years since Joe began his employment with his current employer he has been instrumental in realizing several projects and keeps existing sites and solutions up-to-date and running smoothly.

Although Joe can work inside the constraints and scope of a project, he has a hard time “thinking inside the box” and can often see the larger picture and offer ideas, thoughts, or “what-if” scenarios that can help “future-proof” a given project to extend the value and business-returns.

His website, JoeTheWebGuy.net, and its accompanying podcast are the ongoing collection of things Joe has learned about development, the web, and technology in general. He now presents to you this app so you can keep up-to-date will that fountain of information on-the-go!

Although it didn’t happen to me or anyone I know personally, I can’t help but feel a little sick for whoever was the owner of this unfortunate car…

I also like cover artists.

I also like orchestral music.

What do you get when you combine all three? Pure awesome.

Watch the video on YouTube

“(ACTA is) more dangerous than SOPA. It’s not coming to me for a vote. It purports that it does not change existing laws. But once implemented, it creates a whole new enforcement system and will virtually tie the hands of Congress to undo it.” - Rep. Darrell Issa

Last month, we joined with countless other groups and individuals to oppose the SOPA and PIPA bills.

Similarly, people all over the world are protesting a similar proposal, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). We explain our opposition to ACTA in the letter to Congress below. We urge you take action using DownsizeDC.org’ Internet Freedom campaign.

The campaign’s hard-wired message says…

As a constituent, I insist that you oppose any attempts to undermine Internet freedom.

You may borrow from or copy these additional comments…

That’s why you must introduce and pass legislation to block the Anti-counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). (http://tinyurl.com/6npb9vj)

• ACTA was signed by the U.S. Trade Representative last October.
• It was negotiated in secret for years, under both Bush and Obama.
• Congress and the American people were by-passed, as were the parliaments and people of other nations.

There are four big reasons to make sure it is never implemented in the United States…

1. ACTA violates the Constitution…

• It’s a vaguely-worded “executive agreement” that the President has no intention of submitting to Congress, even though the Constitution delegates to CONGRESS authority over copyrights, patents, and foreign commerce.
• An unelected, international “ACTA Committee” will implement and enforce this “agreement”
• As Rep. Darrell Issa says, “it creates a whole new enforcement system and will virtually tie the hands of Congress to undo it.” (http://tinyurl.com/79nv2yb)

2. ACTA threatens OUR privacy…

• ACTA pushes Internet service providers (ISP’s) to carry out surveillance of their networks and to disclose personal information of ALLEGED copyright violators to copyright holders.
• Websites and ISP’s could be held liable for copyright violations from users, giving them incentive to monitor OUR online activities.

3. That means ACTA threatens OUR free speech and free press rights, too:

• ISP’s and website hosts would be encouraged – perhaps required – to censor MY online content even when it is unsure whether the material violates IP laws.

4. ACTA stifles innovation…

• Fear of unintentional violations of intellectual property (IP) will discourage new innovations in software and other industries.
• Harsher fines will create disincentives for business start-ups who cannot afford to fight litigation.
• Smaller internet companies are often the laboratories of invention. Yet, just as often they will lack the capacity to implement ACTA’s policing burdens. Will they sell out to larger competitors or just give up?

How did ACTA happen? Hollywood is the capital of the entertainment industry. It is admired, emulated, and respected around the world. It is even the greatest source of entertainment venture capital. It has international clout.

And ACTA is essentially a Hollywood bailout, designed to protect a buggy-whip business model.

The Internet frees you and me to entertain ourselves in our own niches. The movie and record people are reacting like ragtime, song sheet publishers resisting the invention of the phonograph.

ACTA doesn’t use sensible means to protect intellectual property, it is a draconian maneuver that will make people frightened to even go on the Internet.

I need you to stand up to these anti-progress, self-seeking, special-interest cheaters. Start by organizing your colleagues to pressure the President to walk away from ACTA. Then, sponsor and pass legislation preventing him from implementing it.

But please don’t bother writing back to me with that standard Capitol Hill boilerplate…

1. You’ve heard of ACTA
2. Here’s what ACTA does
3. You’ll keep my views in mind if it should come up

I shall see that response for what it is — apathy about your constitutional duty and opposition to a free Internet. I want you to tell me where you stand and what you plan to do about it.

You can send your letter using DownsizeDC.org’s Educate the Powerful System.

And we invite you to keep up with us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/downsizedc

Also, there’s an important note from the President of Downsize DC, below my signature.

James Wilson
Policy Research Director
DownsizeDC.org, Inc.

So I’m putting together a new rig… here are the specs:

Case: Cooler Master Elite 360 m-ATX ATX Mid/Mini Tower Case RC-360-KKR1
This case holds a full-sized PSU and a full-ATX motherboard. It doesn’t have a lot of room for internal drives, but two 5.25″ and one 3.5″ internal + one 3.5″ external should be just fine. This case is unique in that the PSU is located at the lower-front part of the case, utilizing room that would normally go unused (or be reserved for several hard drives). This layout lets the case be about the size a uATX/mini-ATX case, saving space on the desk in the process.

Power Supply (PSU): Corsair Enthusiast TX V2 Series 850-Watt 80 Plus Bronze Certified High Performance Modular Power Supply CP-9020004-NA
80 Plus efficient PSUs should be the only ones you consider. They are much more power-conscious, and in my opinion are higher-quality than their non-80-Plus siblings. The case I’m looking at comes with a 350W PSU, but honestly, for as much RAM and CPU as I’m putting in, I need the extra juice. As a side-note, your PSU won’t consume more power than is needed, so if the computer only needs 200W, that’s all the PSU will require. Going with a higher wattage means you’ve got more room to grow.

Motherboard: ASUS SATA 6 Gb/s DisplayPort Intel Z68 Micro ATX DDR3 2200 Intel LGA 1155 Motherboards P8Z68-M Pro
I like small motherboards. They’re easier to handle, easier to route cables, and today have pretty much everything you need in the uATX formfactor. I went with the -M version of the Asus P8Z68 simply because I didn’t need the extra stuff the non-M version included — and it saved me some money in the process.

CPU: Intel Core i7-2600K Processor
The CPU is what does most of the heavy-lifting in a computer. I was tempted to go with a Core i5, but was talked into spending the extra money to go from a basic quad-core to a quad-core with hyper-threading. That means apps that support multi-threading will essentially see 8 cores and be able to get the processing done that much faster. With video editing and rendering, the more cores you have, the better.

RAM: Corsair Vengeance Blue 16 GB DDR3 SDRAM Dual Channel Memory Kit CMZ16GX3M4A1600C9B
The motherboard I selected has 4 slots for RAM. Adding 4 sticks of 4GB RAM gives me 16GB RAM. Video editing benefits greatly from being able to keep project files in RAM, rather than in a scratch or swap file on disk. I decided to upgrade from four individual sticks of Kingston Value RAM (which is on this motherboard’s “certified RAM” list) and go with the Corsair for a nominal amount more. Corsair has really good RAM in my experience, and with the addition of the heatsinks that come on the Corsair sticks I hope keep them cooler and “happier” than their “naked” Kingston cousins. Also, I’ve had more success when buying RAM as a “kit” than buying sticks separately.

SSD: Crucial 128 GB m4 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive SATA 6Gb/s CT128M4SSD2
SSDs are so much faster and use significantly less power than traditional hard drives. Yes, they’re smaller in capacity, but that’s because data access is so much faster! With video editing, having a fast disk is important. If more storage space is needed, one can add a traditional hard drive, but for my purposes, 128GB working room is plenty. I’ve already got a storage server for archiving video files off to, so that’s not a problem for me.

Also, boot, resume, and resume-from-hibernate times are reduced a LOT when your primary disk is an SSD.

Bay Adapter: SILVERSTONE SDP08 3.5 to 2 X 2.5-Inch Bay Converter
Since SSDs are 2.5″ and desktop cases are designed for 3.5″ hard drives, you’re going to need an adapter to make sure everything fits right. This Bay Converter has room for two SSDs (or any 2.5″ drive, really) with a nice gap between the two drives to allow for air-flow.

Optical Driver/Burner: Samsung Blu-Ray Combo Internal 12XReadable and DVD-Writable Drive with Lightscribe SH-B123L/BSBP
This drive will burn CDs, DVDs, and Blu-Ray discs, in addition to reading them. It’s also got LightScribe built-in, which lets you “burn” a label onto the top-side of compatible discs — no more paper labels or specialty ink-jet disks (which require specialty printers). Very nice.

Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64bit (Full) System Builder DVD 1 Pack
A 64-bit OS is a must to take advantage of all the RAM in this box. Windows 7 Home Premium includes everything that I need, and most of what I want (sure, I’m not able to RDP into it, but I’m okay with that). SP1 being built-in is nothing more than a time-saver on the initial build.

Keyboard and Mouse:Microsoft Wireless Comfort Desktop 5000
Wired keyboards and mice are nice in that they don’t require batteries that you need to replace. I’m constantly “tugging” on my mouse to free up the cord (even with a clip in place to hold the cord), so going wireless is a no-brainer for me.

Battery Charger: Sanyo NEW 1500 eneloop 4 Pack AA Ni-MH Pre-Charged Rechargeable Batteries with Charger
With a wireless keyboard and mouse you’re going to want to have a battery charger so you don’t have to keep buying batteries. The Eneloop system charges AA or AAA batteries in pairs, and comes highly recommended.

UPS/Battery Backup:CyberPower CP1500PFCLCD Pure Sine Wave UPS (1500VA/900W)
Some might feel that a UPS is a luxury or a non-essential component for a computer. I’ve built enough — and fixed more than enough — computers to know that a UPS should never ever be considered “optional”. Unless you have a “clean” source of power coming into your house (solar panels, wind or water turbine, etc.) that feeds into batteries, which are connected to an inverter which powers your computer, you’re probably hooked up to a municipal power grid. The grid’s power is notoriously “dirty”. Dirty power will cause the premature death of your components. I’ve seen it. Popped, leaking, or bulging capacitors are usually the first physical sign of damage caused by dirty power. Even if you don’t care about dirty power, a battery backup will keep your computer up and running (rendering or uploading) while there is a power “blip” (a short brown or spike) — or even an extended power outage. How much runtime you have depends on how much load you have and how big a battery is inside your UPS.

Basically, look at your PSU, and get a UPS that will support it. Then, look at what else you’ll have connected (printer, monitor, multiple monitors, speakers, etc.) and add their wattages together, then add that to the PSU’s rating. Your UPS should be right in that range. When in doubt, more is better: you’ll be able to upgrade your system without having to replace your UPS, and even if you never do, you’ll have a longer runtime when the power does fail.

What’s Missing?
Total cost: under $1,330.⁰⁰ delivered. Some assembly required.

What’s Missing?

I didn’t include monitor: I’ve already got a 19″ square monitor, that I intend to use until such time as I need to replace it. When I do get a new monitor I’ll likely get a 23″ or 24″ widescreen LED LCD, but I’ll probably keep the 19″ as a secondary monitor.

I did not include speakers: I have a set of basic stereo speakers that should work just fine for my purposes.

I didn’t include a video card: the motherboard I selected includes pretty decent on-board video. One of my next upgrades will likely be a dedicated video card since most video editing programs can use the the GPU to accelerate rendering, not only that, a dedicated GPU frees up the CPU and RAM to do other stuff.

I didn’t include a webcam: I don’t do much video conferencing — yet. When I do I’ll add a webcam to the mix — or look for a monitor with a built-in cam perhaps?

What’s Next?
So, there’s the parts list. Next I need to wait for some funds to come through so I can buy them all with cash (no going into debt here!). Once that arrives I’ll get the parts ordered and will start assembling them. (Stay tuned for that!)

I’m also going looking for a desk this weekend. I would like to get an old desk with large, rustic planks for the surface, but we’ll see how that works out. I’ve got to be able to shoot videos on the surface, but it has to allow for a mouse to glide over (and work on) the surface, too.

I hope this helped, and enjoy!

A local technology company is looking for a JavaScript Engineer to join their team. The JavaScript Engineer will be part of a development team working on cutting edge technology creating mobile applications. If you are a JavaScript Engineer ready for an opportunity with an amazing company who treats their employees like gold, please read on!

What you need for this position:

• Advanced JavaScript skills (ability to create an application written in JS without a code tool)
• Strong Object oriented programming skills
• Experience and working knowledge of mobile applications
• Top notch communication skills

What you’ll be doing:

• Creating the most advanced applications using JS and other objected oriented technologies
• Working as part of a development team
• New development paired with troubleshooting and improvements with existing code

What’s in it for you:

• In house health care!
• FREE LUNCH! (YES FREE EVERY DAY!)
• Opportunity to work with cutting edge technology is a casual and fun environment

So, if you are a JavaScript Expert and you are looking for the opportunity of a life time, contact me!

I don’t see how anyone could argue that we need “more laws” given the recent MegaUpload.com shutdown. Can you?

Thank you for your recent letter to Senator Lee regarding S. 968, the PROTECT IP Act.

When the Judiciary Committee first received this bill, Senator Lee raised a number of concerns about portions of the bill that could threaten Internet security and stifle innovation in the online retail market.  At the time, Senator Lee pledged to work with the chief cosponsors of the bill, Judiciary Chairman Senator Patrick Leahy and Ranking Member Senator Chuck Grassley, to fix the offending provisions in the bill.

After several months of trying to find the proper balance between protecting intellectual property rights and not unduly burdening online businesses, the Senator determined that the bill as it stands still goes too far and he will not support it.

That said, Senator Lee still believes that the protection of private property rights is an essential foundation of our nation’s free market economy, and online piracy poses a significant threat to the intellectual property rights of American innovators.  He remains committed to addressing this problem and finding the right solution to hold infringing pirate web sites accountable to the rule of law.

For more on what Senator Lee is working on, you can follow him on Facebook at www.facebook.com/senatormikelee and on Twitter at www.twitter.com/SenMikeLee.

Thank you again for writing and please don’t hesitate to contact our office if there is anything we can do to be of assistance in the future.

Best,

When a person goes to a search engine they have a good idea of what they’re looking for (otherwise they’re be on StumbleUpon, right?). With millions of search results being found and displayed, sometimes it’s hard for people to find what they’re looking for among all those results. To help combat that, Google is trying to show searchers more information about their search results.

Information about information? That sounds a lot like meta-data! Yes, yes it does!

Unlike the traditional title, meta-description, and meta-keywords tags that most web developers are familiar with, the meta-data that Google is utilizing exists in RDFa, Microformats, and Microdata — Microdata being Google’s preferred markup schema.

Using any of those three technologies a web developer can provide additional information about what’s on a page, even what the page is talking about: a person, a product, an event, a recipe, a product review, and more.

The rich snippet not only shows the link title, the “snippet” (a summary of the content, usually the meta-description), but, in this example of a recipe, also shows a thumbnail of the recipe, the “star-rating” including the number of reviews submitted, and how much time you need to allow for preparation and cooking. Very helpful! And you didn’t even have to navigate away from Google to find whether the information was what you were looking for.

From a usability perspective, until everyone marks up their content to take advantage of rich-snippets your content will stand out above your competition, meaning you’ll probably have better click-through results and more traffic to your site.

Yeah, get a load of this: LCD glass, where the glass is a monitor…

Thousands of supporters of the open Internet will soon rally in New York and San Francisco to urge their senators to stand up and oppose this legislation.

Together we’re putting the brakes on the Hollywood-fueled momentum of these bills. But they’re not dead yet — and the Senate is voting on PIPA next week.

Pick up the phone and urge your senators to vote “no” on the Protect IP Act. We’ve created a new site that lists where every senator stands on PIPA and provides a simple script to help you make the call.

Last week the White House said it would not support any legislation that “reduces freedom of expression” or “undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.”² Today even Google altered its valuable homepage to black out its logo and include a note protesting SOPA and PIPA. And millions of Internet users have taken action to tell Congress that any bills that compromise our ability to speak freely online must be rejected.

Now it’s time to start lighting up the phones on Capitol Hill before the Senate votes next week.

Call your senators and tell them: Vote “no” on the Protect IP Act.

Let’s bury these bills.

Josh Levy
Internet Campaign Director
Free Press Action Fund
SavetheInternet.com

P.S. To learn more about the blackout and the growing open Internet movement, read the piece by Free Press’ Tim Karr today in the Huffington Post: “Why We Go Black”: http://act2.freepress.net/go/8201?akid=3212.9873227.8thHD1&t=6

1. Check out the full list of blackout participants here: http://act2.freepress.net/go/8178?akid=3212.9873227.8thHD1&t=8.
2. Victoria Espinel, Aneesh Chopra and Howard Schmidt, “Combating Online Piracy While Protecting an Open and Innovative Internet”:http://act2.freepress.net/go/8177?akid=3212.9873227.8thHD1&t=10

Free Press is a national, nonpartisan organization working to reform the media. Learn more at www.freepress.net

The message says customers’ names, e-mail addresses, billing and shipping addresses, phone numbers, “scrambled” passwords, and the last four digits of their credit cards “may” have been taken. Funny how the email keeps repeating the word “may” like they’re not entirely certain whether or not it happened… That’s an inherent problem with digital “goods”.

It’s fairly easy to tell when tangible goods have been stolen, or even tampered with. Digital goods, on the other hand, can be viewed and copied sometimes without the owner even knowing about it. That’s likely what happened with Zappos.com.

Any time I hear about personal information being “stolen” I immediately jump to a database hack. This type of hack usually comes from someone connecting to a SQL database with either stolen or cracked credentials. Sometimes brute force is all it takes — brute force requires time, but if I told you there was a sack of gold buried beneath my feet, chances are you’d get yourself a shovel and start digging. If after a dozen feet you still hadn’t hit the gold, but I assured you it was still there, you just hadn’t dug deep enough yet, you’d likely keep digging. The situation here isn’t much different: hackers know there is a bag of gold in that database, all they have to do is keep hitting it until they get in.

Aside from standard security measures (not using the built-in accounts and creating strong passwords), what can you do to add another layer of security to your data?

Don’t forget about your firewall!

SQL traffic flows over specific ports. Using your firewall you can set up rules to disallow SQL traffic from all but an approved range of IP addresses — you can even restrict the SQL traffic a single IP address. Doing so essentially eliminates the ability for someone to brute-force their way into your database.

Scrub your inputs — at the server

Injecting executable commands into a SQL database isn’t that difficult… just remember Little Bobby Tables. Some people attempt to scrub their data on the front-end by disallowing certain characters to be entered into input fields. That’s not a bad thing, but your form can be rewritten to eliminate those filters — and your protection.

Instead, make sure all of your database writes are being done through some sort of model or data abstraction layer, and that you’re only allowing the type of data into the fields that they should contain. Limit punctuation to only what’s needed.

Not exhaustive

Of course these aren’t all the strategies that you could (or possibly even should) be using to secure your data — and some you may not be able to… but think long and hard about your security. Even if you’re not I can say with a fair amount of certainty that the hackers already are.

Anyhew… here are some highlights from today’s playlist:

1. Mad World by Alex Parks
2. I’m Yours / Somewhere Over The Rainbow by With a Twist
3. Apologize by Timbaland/One Republic
4. Freshmen by Jay Brannon (a cover of Freshmen by The Verve Pipe)
5. Brick (Live) by Ben folds
6. My Immortal by Evanescence
7. Blow Me Away by Breaking Benjamin
8. Burning Down the House by The Used
9. Blue Monday by New Order
10. It’s My Life by Bon Jovi
11. Situation by Yaz
12. Free Fallin’ by John Mayer
13. How To Save A Life by The Fray
14. Brethe Me by Sia
15. Eleanor Rigby by The Beatles
16. For What It’s Worth by Buffalo Springfield
17. Jar of Hearts by Christina Perri

Unfortunately, if either (or both) get passed they will drastically change the internet as we know it — and not for the better. Unless you spend a lot of time online you probably haven’t heard of either. Why? The same companies pushing for SOPA own the mainstream media.

Without going into the details about SOPA here, but let me sum it up:

if you post a video of your kid dancing to Michael Jackson‘s Thriller to YouTube, under the proposed provisions in SOPA, you’d go to jail for 5 years — that’s one more year than the guy who killed him.

Enough said?

Companies that support SOPA support a law that wants to put you in jail for violating a website’s EULA or TOS — even though they change frequently and are agreements — not laws! Some are calling for boycotts of companies that support SOPA.

But what companies support SOPA?

Head over to my article at pocketnow.com to see a very novel idea!

Opposition to the bill has reached a boiling point. Millions of activists, hundreds of startups, social media sites like Tumblr, Reddit and Twitter and even big companies like Google, Yahoo! and eBay have joined with Free Press and other Internet rights groups against it.

This is one of the biggest tech stories of the year. Yet TV news has ignored it.

A recent report from Media Matters for America shows that SOPA — and Protect IP, its cousin in the Senate — have received “no coverage from major American television news outlets during their evening newscasts and opinion programming.”¹ Among the offenders are ABC, CBS, Fox News, MSNBC and NBC.

A likely reason for the media blackout? The big networks — and their parent companies — support these two Internet-censorship bills.

This is what happens when the interests of big business get in the way of the need to inform the public and protect free speech. These same media giants are lobbying the Federal Communications Commission to loosen its ownership rules and allow for even more media consolidation — another issue they’ve failed to cover. If the FCC permits runaway consolidation, media blackouts like the one affecting SOPA could become even more common.²

Meanwhile, rank-and-file journalists are coming out strong against these censorship bills.³ And print media have run stories on them. Earlier this month New York Timescolumnist David Carr wrote that SOPA was “alarming in its reach.”⁴ TIME, the Atlantic, Forbes and the Boston Globe have all reported on the legislation in the past week.

What is TV news afraid of?

The news directors of these networks need to be held accountable for failing to provide coverage of such damaging legislation.

Sign our letter demanding that the networks end the SOPA blackout. We’ll deliver your signatures straight to the news directors’ in-boxes.

Let’s demand answers right now.

Thanks,

Josh Levy
Internet Campaign Director
Free Press, SavetheInternet.com

1. Ben Dimiero, “News Networks Ignore Controversial SOPA Legislation,” Media Matters for America, Jan. 5, 2012: http://act2.freepress.net/go/8047?akid=3193.9873227.9JA3C1&t=7
2. “End the Big Broadcast Swindle”: http://act2.freepress.net/go/8066?akid=3193.9873227.9JA3C1&t=9
3. Tracie Powell, “What Journalists Need to Know About SOPA,” Poynter.org, Jan. 5, 2012: http://act2.freepress.net/go/8048?akid=3193.9873227.9JA3C1&t=11
4. David Carr, “The Danger of an Attack on Piracy Online,” the New York Times, Jan. 1, 2012: http://act2.freepress.net/go/8067?akid=3193.9873227.9JA3C1&t=13

Continue reading at pocketnow.com »

Read more details in my article on pocketnow.com »

Head over to my article on pocketnow for all the details!

In Missouri, however, one judge isn’t waiting to find out their word. US Magistrate Judge David Noce ruled last week in favor of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and determined that the FBI did not need a warrant in order to affix a GPS device to the car of a St. Louis man.

The US Supreme Court will decide later this year if such action is allowable without obtaining a warrant. In the interim, Judge Noce says it is just fine.

We have to wonder, is this just limited to law enforcement use, or can normal citizens (like you and I) affix GPS monitoring devices to other people’s cars without their consent? Could a civilian affix a GPS monitoring device to a law enforcement vehicle? Could a gang (for instance) place GPS monitoring devices on most of the police cars so they’d better be able to plan out their nefarious actions?

What are your thoughts? Let us know in the comments!

We already separate WiFi bars from cellular data bars, should we separate CDMA bars from LTE bars? EDGE from HSPA+? GPRS from EDGE? Voice from Data? Or should phones (accurately) report the signal strength of the “fastest” network to which they’re connected? If so, should the phone report EVDO signal if it’s “faster” than data that could be delivered through a low signal on LTE?

Read the full story, and leave your opinion over at pocketnow.com.

The aptly named Silk web browser challenges the “traditional” (read: old-fashioned) web browser by off-loading much of the processing from the client (the phone, tablet, or e-book reader) to a server sitting in the middle. Privacy concerns aside, this “man in the middle” approach means pages should load faster, and display better on smaller screens, slower processors, and slower network connections.

Unfortunately Silk isn’t available from the Android Market, in fact the only way you can officially get it is pre-loaded on the Kindle Fire. Unofficially, you can grab some files and with a little “techno magic” you should be able to run Silk on any rooted Android smartphone or tablet.

The installation requires downloading a set of files, copying them to the right locations (with root permissions, of course), applying the right permissions, and side-loading some .APKs. Oh, and it only seems to work on Android 2.3 Gingerbread.

Want to see what it looks like? Me too! Unfortunately, I gave up trying to get things to work after three unsuccessful attempts.

Now for the good news: it looks like in the time since I tried and the time this article posted, a new version of the port is available (and much less technical) that may work out better for you. If you give it a try, please let us know your results and thoughts in the comments!

Source: XDA

My reasons for this recommendation are many.

• If you are now employed at a “stable” job, you still have reviews (sometimes annually). Keeping your résumé up-to-date can help your current employer recognize your value, and might get you a bigger raise — or help you keep your job in a down-economy.
• If you happen to find yourself laid off, instead of spending the first few days of your unemployment getting your résumé put together, you can instead jump right into looking for and apply at jobs. If you were part of a bigger lay-off, these few days could give you a head-start over all the others who are applying from your former employer.
• You never know who might be looking for someone with your skill-set. Having an up-to-date, published résumé could land you a job you weren’t even looking for.

Of course, the list could go on, but I’ll leave it at that.

Switching from background to the purpose of this article…

It is a pain to keep your résumé up-to-date. These days you need an online résumé, a PDF version of your résumé, and sometimes even a Word Doc version of your résumé. Updating three separate documents is inefficient and can lead to errors or omissions — neither is good for your résumé.

To remedy that I selected a résumé hosting service called VisualCV. For those who don’t know, CV stands for Curriculum Vitae. A résumé should be one page (at most, two pages) and serves as a brief summary of your skills, experience, and education. A Curriculum Vitae is longer (at least two page), and gives more detail.

I feel that you should keep your CV up-to-date, and use that as your “generic résumé”. You can then use that document to pick and choose items to include in a résumé that you craft specifically for a particular position that you’re applying for.

Back to VisualCV…

Essentially, VisualCV is a content management and analytics service for your CV. You can input your data into a single-source, then view that data in multiple formats. You can also give a link to your CV and see how many people are viewing it, and sometimes even who they are. Very cool.

… unless they go out-of-business.

We regret to inform you that the VisualCV.com website will be ceasing operations, effective December 30, 2011.

Since our launch almost four years ago we’ve been gratified by the response to VisualCV, and how it has enabled thousands of professionals to better represent themselves online. Even more importantly we have been delighted to see VisualCV help people secure significant new career positions. However, we have been unable to turn the site into a viable, self-supporting business and therefore we reluctantly made this decision.

We recognize that many of you need time to recover your resume data from VisualCV — which is why we are providing you with thirty days’ notice. We recommend saving a PDF copy of your current VisualCV. You can easily do this by clicking on the button on the bottom of the page you see when viewing or editing your VisualCV. We also recommend you separately save any images, videos or documents in your portfolio that you do not currently have stored somewhere else.

To ensure we meet all our members’ privacy concerns, we will destroy all user data once website operations have ceased. This includes any and all backups we have. As a result, once the deadline has passed it will not be possible for us to recover any member data. You can be assured that we will not be providing any user data to third parties of any kind.

We will be contacting the small number of paying customers that still have active subscriptions to arrange a prorated refund for the months remaining on their annual subscription.

Thank you for all your support over the past four years. We wish you well in your future career endeavors.

Best Regards,
The VisualCV Team

So, if you’re like me and have your résumé on VisualCV.com, you need to go and get all the content that you want off the service before it’s turned off in just over a week.

I’m re-writing my CV on my site using HTML5 and Microformats. Once it’s done you’ll be able to view my résumé here. It’s now under construction, and doesn’t look like much, but the data is all there, which is the important part (it would be a pain to try to re-create the data).

Then you may be a criminal. At least, that’s what the Justice Department claims, and they want to strengthen the law to ensure that they have the power to prosecute you.

That’s why I sent a letter to my Representative and Senators to resist this power-grab and protect our freedom to use the Internet. 

I hope you do the same, and you may borrow from or copy this letter…

I am disturbed that the Obama Administration wants to strengthen the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) to prosecute violators of “Terms of Service” (ToS) agreements on the Internet.

The CFAA was intended to outlaw hacking and identity theft. But its vague language has led three federal courts to rule that employees can be prosecuted merely for violating their employer’s “acceptable use” policy. The feds also prosecuted a woman under the CFAA for violating MySpace’s Terms of Service. (http://www.cdt.org/files/pdfs/CFAA_signon_ltr_2.pdf)

The Administration wants to go further, and make ToS violations explicitly illegal under federal law. There are at least five reasons to oppose this…

1. It criminalizes activities that would not be criminal in the physical world. You can assume a false identity at a party without breaking a law, but using a pseudonym on the Internet could be a felony.
2. The innocent will be unjustly punished. If someone is falsely accused of a real crime like hacking, prosecutors will also charge him or her with ToS violations in order to secure a conviction.
3. Since almost everyone is guilty of ToS violations, the law could be used by U.S. Attorneys to wage personal or political vendettas.
4. It threatens the First Amendment because it could be deployed to prosecute individuals who criticize the Administration or Congress in comments sections or forums.
5. A ToS is a PRIVATE agreement, and Internet hosts are free to ban violators. Trolls are often banned on websites. Fake profiles on social networks are often deleted. Employees who violate agreements and use their work computer for fantasy football can be fired.

The Justice Department claims it wouldn’t have the time or resources to go after trivial ToS violations, such as lying about one’s age on a dating site. And yet it calls “worrisome” an amendment by Sens. Franken, Grassley, and Lee that would protect most people from ToS prosecutions. (http://bit.ly/vMcl8v)

Criminalizing ToS violations won’t prevent serious computer crimes, but it WILL give the feds tremendous powers to abuse and harass harmless Internet users. Please support the Franken-Grassley-Lee amendment and provide other safeguards to protect the American people from an out-of-control Justice Department.

You can send your letter using DownsizeDC.org’s Educate the Powerful System.

We urge you to encourage your friends to take action and protect Internet freedom. “Like” and “Tweet” this post on our blog.

James Wilson
Policy Research Director
DownsizeDC.org, Inc.

Genachowski will reportedly call for an “administrative hearing” in tandem with the DoJ’s suit to block the merger. This signals that the prospects for approval of this merger are next to none.

“It’s rare for the FCC to seek an administrative hearing on merger deals like this,” reports the Journal. “The last time the agency did this was in 2002 on the proposed merger of EchoStar and DirecTV. The companies eventually pulled the deal.”¹

The move is yet another nail in the coffin of this anti-competitive, job-killing merger, and it’s a huge victory for the hundreds of thousands of activists who stood up against this deal.

It’s now clear that no amount of AT&T lies could save this merger from defeat — not lies about job gains, nor lies about innovation and competition.

This time, we should applaud Chairman Genachowski for seeing through AT&T’s deceit and standing up for the public interest, despite intense pressure from AT&T’s army of lobbyists.

AT&T has spent millions on campaign contributions, lawyers and misleading advertising campaigns to help push the merger through Washington. But the truth — that this merger would kill tens of thousands of jobs, raise prices for consumers and stifle competition — is winning out.

The public outcry has stopped one massive corporation — and its lobbyists — in its tracks. For now.

I can say without a doubt that Washington’s conventional wisdom wouldn’t have turned against this deal were it not for you and others — both online and off — raising hell about AT&T’s plans.

Working together we can make a difference. This huge win is proof of that.

Thank you.

Craig Aaron
President and CEO
Free Press Action Fund
www.freepress.net

P.S. Help us keep winning! Please consider a contribution of $25 to the Free Press Action Fund to support our work to block this merger for good. If we raise 300,000 by Dec. 31, 2011, two longtime supporters will kick in an additional $300,000. We need just $60,241 to meet that goal. Please, donate today. Thank you!

1. Amy Schatz, “FCC Chief to Seek Hearing on AT&T Deal,” Wall Street Journal, Nov. 22, 2011:http://act2.freepress.net/go/7480?akid=3080.9873227.mh8QnS&t=4

Siri is so impressive that an Android “equivalent” (“Iris”)was built in around 8 hours. It’s not nearly as polished as Apple’s, but it’s a start.

But what if you could tap into Apple’s very own servers, and get the real responses. That’d be something. In fact, Apple would be smart to sell the Siri app to Android users and start making some money from the >50% smartphone share that is Android users… but I digress.

That’s just what has been done (the tapping into Apple’s protocol, not the app thing).

There aren’t any apps that take advantage of this (yet), and even if they come out, Apple’s likely to block them quickly, but it’s cool nonetheless. Unfortunately, the original source outlining the details of the crack has been removed… Perhaps apple sent some goons in black turtle-necks and blue jeans to rough them up a little?

So, since I can’t share that coolness with you, I’ll leave you with this Siri Parody:

Via: XDA

What happens when it’s cold outside? Most of us wear this fancy invention called “gloves” (though some of use opt for “mittens”). You have to take off your gloves (or mittens) to use your smartphone — and that’s just not cool! (Well, maybe it is, thermally speaking of course.)

Lucky for you, there’s a technological invention for that! Agloves® Original touch screen gloves

Wear those gloves and your fingers will be kept toasty warm AND you’ll still be able to text, answer calls, even surf the web!

And, yes, they’re compatible with iPhone, Android, and even Windows Phone.

You can thank me later™.

It’s an awesome invention. Instead of being within earshot of your sleeping child you can be in the garage working, or in the backyard mowing the lawn. But what if you need to run to the grocery store, or the mall, or the bar? That old fashioned baby-monitor just doesn’t have the range to let you run your errands and still be a “responsible” parent.

Lucky for you, we live in a connected age! Now you can toss out your old “radio frequency”, limited range baby monitor and replace it with this Wi-Fi enabled, Internet connected baby monitor from Evo!

(Oh, before you flame me in the comments, please note the sarcasm that putting “responsible” in quotation marks was supposed to convey.)

Need more? Check out these Angry Birds gift ideas.

The problem that was presented to me was with the QR code seemingly playing back a different video on the Windows Phone (Mango) platform than either Android or iOS — or desktop browsers for that matter.

Here’s the original scenario:

1. We create a shortened URI to play back a video on a branded YouTube channel
2. We encode that URI into a QR code (or MS Tag, or both)
3. The barcode is scanned via a smartphone app which resolves the encoded URI and prompts the user for the appropriate action (in this case, open the resource in a the default web browser)
4. The web browser resolves the URI and opens the web page — in our case the short URI it is 301-redirected to the “long” URI
5. The web browser resolves the redirected URI and opens the web page
6. The web server identifies the web browser and serves us the appropriate web page
7. The web browser renders the resulting page
8. Since this is a mobile browser (most of which do not have Flash) when the video is selected the mobile device uses the video handler associated with YouTube videos (usually the YouTube app) to load the selected video and begin playback

That’s a lot of steps — and a lot of potential points of failure, so let’s distill it down keep only the steps necessary to replicate the behavior.

Here’s the test:

• 1221 Video in branded channel
• 1221 Video on video page

Here’s a picture of the page it’s supposed to bring up: .

This works using the desktop versions of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and MSIE9. Additionally, it works using the iOS browser and the Android browser.

However, when using the browser that comes with Windows Phone (Mango), instead of loading the video requested in the URI, the latest video that was uploaded to the channel is displayed.

The solution we had to fall back on wasn’t ideal, but at least it will play the right video. Instead of linking to the specific video on the branded channel we had to link directly to the video page. On this video page will be other videos that YouTube thinks may be “related” to your video (including videos that may be advertising products from your competitor), and unmoderated comments (including trolls, and those that may be disparaging to your product or company).

Is this a YouTube problem with the way the videos are served up on branded channels, or a Windows Phone (Mango) problem with the way they’re rendering those pages? Since the problem doesn’t exist with other browsers, I’m leaning toward the latter.

I know, I was skeptical until I watched this video:

Or watch it on YouTube

How do you do it? Run the “Tracer T” program at the command prompt, like this:

tracert http://google.com

Amazing!

Uh, except, it’s not “Tracer T”, it’s “trace route” — and its for tracing the route your computer is taking to get to the address you supplied… and all those other “users”, yeah, those are routers.

Mwahahahaha!Silly n00b!

Featuring Jimmy Fallon as Neo!

Carrie, there’s something I have to tell you about the Martix… [...] no, no, you threw up in the real world. The Matrix is a system created by robots. It’s like the real world, but it isn’t real. The Matrix is real, but it’s like the real world that isn’t real. At least, that’s what the robots want us to think. But I don’t think the robots are real. Wait… Robots. But it’s real, but they told you it’s fake. They, they know it’s real. A lot of numbers… er… Wait. I should’ve wrote this down.”

I know Kung Fu.

In Japan, cats apparently don’t “meow”, they “nyan”. Oh, and they fly through the sky with a rainbow coming out their backside.

If a new bill gets through Congress, marketing robots will invade your cellphone.

The bill, called the “Mobile Informational Call Act of 2011” (H.R. 3035), would amend the Communications Act of 1934 to allow marketers and bill collectors to make endless calls to your mobile phone — just like they currently can on your landline, but this time using minutes that you are paying for.¹

Tell Congress: No Robocalls on Our Cellphones

Sponsored by corporate interests like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Bankers Association, the bill shows a blatant disregard for our privacy and our rights as mobile phone users.

And to make matters worse, you’ll likely opt in to this new robocalling regime without even realizing it.

While the bill requires that mobile phone users give “prior express consent” for telemarketers to start hitting them up, its definition of consent is incredibly loose. Giving out your number when you’re buying anything — clothes, groceries, a pack of gum — gives merchants (and the companies that own them) full license to robocall you into oblivion.

And the kicker? Most mobile plans include a limited number of minutes, so we’ll be the ones footing the bill every time a robo-dialer picks up his robo-phone and robo-calls us.

Right now a House committee is reviewing the bill. We need to stop it before it goes any further. Take action now to tell Congress to abandon any bill that lets marketers invade our cellphones.

Thanks,

Josh Levy
Associate Campaign Director
Free Press Action Fund
SavetheInternet.com

1. “Text of H.R. 3035: Mobile Informational Call Act of 2011,” govtrack.us: http://act2.freepress.net/go/7315?akid=3052.9873227.UMVqxL&t=8

You’d think a comedian performing a song, pretending to be another artist would fall into the “parody” category. In this case, I’m not so certain!

Take a listen for yourself as comedian Jimmy Fallon as Jim Morrison of the Doors covers the Reading Rainbow theme song — and makes it sound like a legitimate Doors’ song!