Is anyone still reading this?

Help me pick a new Android phone on the AT&T network:

HTC One X Plus (LTE 4G; 4.7" display; 64GB memory - not expandable; WiFi; Hotspot; simultaneous voice and data)

or

Samsung Galaxy S III (LTE 4G; 4.8" display; 16 GB memory - but expandable to 128 GB; WiFi; Hotspot; simultaneous voice and data)

Are you paying too much for your broadband?

If you live in the U.S. - probably!

The Daily Stat (Harvard Business Review)
MAY 24, 2012
Broadband Access Is an Expensive Bottleneck in the U.S.
The least-expensive broadband plan in the U.S. is more costly than the comparable service in 28 of the 34 industrialized OECD countries, if measured in dollars per megabit of speed, says The New York Times. One reason is that to foster growth of the physical infrastructure, the U.S. discouraged competition in the industry, and now 96% of Americans have a choice of at most two broadband providers.
Source: Keeping the Internet Neutral

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

So long, Google Reader.
Sadness.

Tough CAPTCHA

Please solve this captcha in the comments....how long did it take?

When Google Voice transcription goes awry

Hi joe, I just got your email and ward. The sir gonna actually ironically was trying to. I was about to reach out to your husband I just want to, yet to stop by my name are. I have the number I met you and your husband couple years ago and that sort of you. Are you both poppers. There. And I just heard from her off that he started it. Don't worry, and I wanted to talk about that process. Again, this is XXXXXXX XXXXXXX. And my phone number is (XXX) XXX-XXXX. And actually live in the end of the organizer, right. So I'm pursuing work out and you know at the talk with Jeremy possible, anytime. So thank you so much appreciate it and enjoy your Your Mom day soon. Take care bye bye, bye.

How to spot a scam

From: ######## ########## <***************@sbcglobal.net>
Subject: Awful Trip............######## ##########
To: [undisclosed recipients]
Date: Monday, July 18, 2011, 7:06 AM

Hi,
I'm writing this with tears in my eyes,my family and I came down here to London, United Kingdom for a short vacation. unfortunately,we were mugged at the park of the hotel where we stayed,all cash and credit card were stolen off us but luckily for us we still have our passports with us.

We've been to the Embassy and the Police here but they're not helping issues at all and our flight leaves in few hours from now but we're having problems settling the hotel bills and the hotel manager won't let us leave until we settle the bills. Well I really need your financially assistance..Please, let me know if you can help us out? Am freaked out at the moment!!

######## ##########

Let's take a look at this.

If you couldn't tell from "hello" that this email was a fake, here are a few things to consider before you decide to send the sender some money:

1) Consider the sender
2) Consider the language
3) Consider the message

1) Consider the sender
In this particular email, it was coming from the email account of someone I know. If you get an email with a similar message (I've seen a few within the last year), it will likely come from someone you know -- because your email address was in the sender's address book.

This particular sender was a high school football coach. I can't imagine him (a) with tears in his eyes (pretty sure he's never cr.ied, lol), (b) getting mugged (he's a pretty solid guy), or (c) being "freaked out at the moment" (what?!).

2) Consider the language
The grammar is bad, the spelling and punctuation aren't accurate, and the language is awkward or doesn't make sense. Here are a few examples:

"came down here to London, United Kingdom for a short vacation"

• You probably know the sender (as noted above). Would it be "down" from their home to London?
  
• Would the sender find it necessary to clarify "London" with "London, United Kingdom"? And, if they clarified "London," why not "England" instead of "United Kingdom"? Sounds like a non-native English speaker, to me....
  
• Would the sender go all the way to London for a "short vacation"? This is more subjective, but I'd wager that for my particular email, this family from California might want to spend more than a "short vacation" if they go that far.

"at the park of the hotel where we stayed"

• More phrasing that sounds non-native English speaking.
  
• The true sender would probably say "hotel's park" - although that's not a phrasing I'm personally familiar with (a hotel with a park?).
  
• The true sender would probably say "hotel we stayed out" instead of "hotel where we stayed"

"Well I really need your financially assistance.."

• "financially assistance," eh?
  
• Why are you asking me instead of your bank or your family?

"Our flight leaves a few hours from now."

• This sentence is meant to express urgency and inspire you to quick action. But:
  
  • How long has it been since the email has been sent?
    
  • What time was it in the sender's location at the time of the email? Was it reasonable for a flight to be leaving in the next few hours?
• The lack of specificity is common in many phishing/scam emails. Why no flight number or flight time?

"Please, let me know if you can help us out?"

• To me, seems awkward to end the sentence with a question mark; that sentence is making a request, not asking a question.
  
• Didn't provide any way to contact him.

"Am freaked out at the moment!!"

• Nit: Why not "right now," instead of "at the moment!!"
  
• Nit: Tense should probably be "freaking"

3) Consider the message

• The sender was robbed on vacation and lost all money, but retained a passport. The police and the embassy aren't helping. The hotel manager is preventing them from leaving. They need money fast. Can't you help?
  
• Does that make any sense? Some things don't just add up:
  
  • They had the presence of mind to not have their passport on them, but not leave some money or a credit card behind with it?
    
  • The police isn't helping with what? Recovering the money quickly enough? Not sure what kind of help they're anticipating once they file a police report...
    
  • The embassy isn't helping with what? The sender still has a passport; I'd expect the embassy to be helping the traveler get documents to leave the country if a passport was stolen. The embassy isn't going to pay their hotel bills...
    
  • The hotel isn't letting them leave before their bill is settled? I'm not sure how hotels in London work, but in the U.S., you give a credit card at check-in and then the final bill is slipped under your door early in the morning before you check out. The bill will be settled because the hotel received payment information at check-in. Further, while not an advocate of skipping out on hotels or restaurant checks, I'll just point out that I'm not sure how the hotel can physically prevent the sender from catching the airplane.

It all seems fishy to me. Not planning on sending the email sender any money any time soon. I'd call them and let them know their email has been hi-jacked. If someone has control of the account to send that message, they're probably monitoring responses for both gullible persons who are trying to send money and aware persons who reply to warn the sender his account is hijacked. Most webmail providers have support pages that help users re-gain control of hijacked account.

What about you -- what else do you see in this email that makes you realize that it's a scam?

a persistent weed

Doing maintenance and upgrades on a family member's PC (Windows Vista). Dutifully use Control Panel | Add/Remove Program to get rid of AVG. Uninstall appeared to be successful.

I tried to use Firefox a little while later to download another favorite tool, used the search feature in the address bar, and was taken to a search results page that was search.avg.com instead of Google.

What?!?!

Double-checked Add/Remove. No AVG remaining.

Searched the web. Found several other people who were having the same problem.

Found several remaining files from AVG.

• AVG8 (Folder C:\Program Files\AVG)
  
• AVG Security Toolbar (Folder C:\Users\#####\AppData\LocalLow)
  
• AVGTOOLBAR (Folder C:\Users\#####\AppData\LocalLow)
  
• AVG7 (Folder C:\Program Files\Grisoft)
  
• AVG (Folder C:\Program Files\)
  
• avg_igeared.sml (File C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\searchplugins)
  
• AVG8Uninstall.ico (File C:\Users\#####\AppData\Roaming\Software Informer\cache\icons)
  
• avglinks.bmp (File C:\Users\#####\AppData\LocalLow\AVGTOOLBAR)
  
• avglogo.bmp (File C:\Users\#####\AppData\LocalLow\AVGTOOLBAR)
  
• avgtoolbartb0503.cfg (File C:\Users\#####\AppData\LocalLow\AVGTOOLBAR)
  
• avhchk75.exe (Application C:\Program Files\Grisoft\AVG7)
  
• glossary_avgcost.html (HTML Document)
  

Deleted them. Reset the keyword.url value from the search.avg.com hijack to http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=

Think we're back in business....



Keywords
AVG reset my firefox search settings
Firfeox search hijacked by AVG
Firefox search redirected to search.avg.com
AVG is a pain to remove

SpeedTest 2

2011-06-04
Download Speed: 17625 kbps (2203.1 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 8616 kbps (1077 KB/sec transfer rate)

Whose brilliant idea was that?

I use a McAfee security product (free through my work [a]) on my computers at home. Up until this switch, I've always had an up-to-date Norton Internet Security product.

I have my scans scheduled to run in the background while I'm sleeping (I know, I'm bad and leave the netbook on most nights), so I don't normally need to deal with McAfee's Security Center (MSC) interface. Recently, I wanted to go check out some settings, so I tried to open up MSC and all I got was a blank screen. Tried to verify my subscription was current - but couldn't since my user profile didn't have sufficient admin privileges. Stopped the MSC process from the Task Manager, restarted, same issue. Logged into the admin profile, verified my subscription was current, that the software was up-to-date, tried to open the MSC up again - and got the same blank screen.

Started poking around the interwebz - figuring that since these self-help steps didn't fix it, surely someone else must be having a similar problem.

I put mcafee security center is blank into Google. Dates of the results in the order they appeared (including the sub/related results):

• 2006-11-05
• 2009-04-08
• 2009-01-03
• 2008-09-12
• 2009-04-12
• 2009-01-25
• 2010-09-27

First, it struck me that people were having the exact same issue four years ago. Either lots of bad user error or something hasn't been fixed by now... Looked at some of the earlier ones, along with the 2010 result, and learned something that I found to be quite astonishing:

McAfee Security Center relies on Internet Explorer as it uses HTML to display.

But that is not all. MSC relies on IE, but it will only rely on (some?) stable versions. Many, many posts related to MSC show how beta versions of IE cause MSC to break. The bottom line from a Microsoft help site:

In simple terms you can either use McAfee or IE9

So, I ask: Whose brilliant idea was this to develop a product that requires

1. Windows to be fully patched (ok, so that's a great idea, but if you can't patch it, you can't have McAfee virus protection?),
2. IE to not be beta (so you can't even try to be a "techie" or get "with" a new browser roll-out and use McAfee?),
3. relies on a Microsoft product as the engine for making the program run properly, and
4. can't default to another browser if the IE version isn't supported (what did they do with McAfee for Macs? force you to install IE? build it on another HTML platform? what a novel idea...)?

Ugh.

So, either I stop playing with IE9, or have a functionally impotent virus scan product. Or find another (free?) security suite to replace this craziness.

[a] I found it somewhat humorous that shortly after our office IT switched to McAfee, a flawed definitions update file that got pushed to McAfee customers crippled untold numbers of Windows machines. Doh!

Doth mine eyes deceive me?

My netbook runs Windows 7 Starter. Yesterday, the following error message appeared, blinking away on the task bar. Do you see what I see?

Hmmmm... Apparently Internet Explorer is not fully compatible with Windows. Who would have thunk it?

Relevant search results

[[this was from days ago...I'm finally clicking Publish]]

Most of you know that I'm not a big sports buff. It's my least favorite (and least successful) category on Trivial Pursuit. I can't recall sitting down to watch many games on TV (besides the Super Bowl, but I have fond memories of going to Angels games, and I think I even went to a Dodgers game with my uncle. I've also attended the Mighty Ducks, the Anaheim Bullfrogs (pro roller hockey), and a BYU college football game.

In any event, because of my co-workers, I was aware of the Navy game this past weekend. Not wanting to feel out of the loop (and wanting to gauge the mood of the crowd Monday morning), I simply typed "navy football" in the Google search box. This is what showed up:


Just what I was looking for. Looks like they won! Way better than TellMe...

Build your own Pac-Man

Jill shared this YouTube video with me. I figured it deserved a spot in the Technology & Innovation Hall of Fame. Just for being crazily awesome.

The creators' website is here.

Teach Chrome New Tricks

When Google Chrome is open, you can press CTRL-M to open a user profile dialog box. Select the drop-down menu, select , give your profile a new name, and then Chrome will ask you if you want to make a shortcut for this user profile.

I said yes, then dragged the shortcut into my Windows Start area, right underneath the other Chrome shortcut that replaces the Internet Explorer option for Internet.

Awesome, huh? And for a while I believed some of the old posts about how Chrome didn't support multiple user accounts, like Firefox does.

SpeedTest

Download Speed: 8301 kbps (1037.6 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 3907 kbps (488.4 KB/sec transfer rate)
(from http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/)

GIF

GIF ... you know, the "bitmap image format [...] introduced by CompuServe in 1987 [that] has [...] come into widespread usage on the World Wide Web due to its wide support and portability."

Remember The Hampster Dance? This Internet meme has, according to Wikipedia, "four simple animated GIFs". And an awesome soundtrack. I remember this from back in the day.

I thought of this when I was reading some of the items Jill shared on Reader, in particular, a post that linked to gifbin.com. [Note: Be forewarned if you choose to visit the site -- the few clicks I did from that post had some NSFW advertisements. For that reason, I'm linking to the image URL and not the page with it and all the comments...]

Something Educational:

And the link to one of the original Hubble/NASA photos.

And, a funny soccer moment:


And, for good measure, a sweet chair trick:


Anyway...

What are some of your favorite GIFs? Share away in the comments!

Jeopardy, Part 1

What does Jeopardy have to do with Technology and Innovation, you ask? Well, probably nothing. I just couldn't think of which blog I wanted to post this on. But I guess the nexus is that, in the process, I learned more about HTML and adding multimedia to my blog.

First, the HTML:
<embed autoplay="false" controller="true" height="286" pluginspage="http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/" src="http://flash.sonypictures.com/video/tv/shows/jeopardy/howdies/092109/Diane_A.mp4" width="496" /></embed>

Now, the video:

Diane is a colleague of mine whose dream was to go on Jeopardy. And she did! This is her "howdie" to folks back home. She enjoyed the experience and made some new friends out of the trip.

Part 2, if I ever find it, will be a link to the actual show (if anyone knows where to get them, she played on the 21-Sep-09 air date). SPOILER ALERT: Di didn't do as well as she hoped.

You won't believe this

[Have I used this post title before?]

Ok, maybe you will.

The buttons at a crosswalk don't work.* Seriously, check out this New York Times article titled, "For Exercise in New York Futility, Push Button".

*In some areas.

Contest Entry

I noticed this link today on the Google home page:
Explore the world of Google books. Play the game today.

So, I did. The game walks you through several questions and requires you to use your Google-searching skills to search through Google Books to find the answer. I completed the game in just a few minutes. At the end of the game, you have a chance to submit your scores, and enter a contest. Today's entry prompt was, "In 50 words or less, describe what you think reading will be like 100 years from now."

50 words - it's harder to write shorter works than long ones [["I made this longer letter only because I did not have the leisure to make it shorter." (Brownie points if you can identify the speaker and leave it in the comments.)]]. Then I thought about some of the poems Jill has been sharing on her blog, so I decided to write a free form (is that the right descriptor?) poem as my 50 word answer to the prompt:

Reading -
What is that?
Today I gain knowledge
through a direct link to my mind.
Yesterday's books
are tedious -
why waste the time reading,
and thinking?
Just plug in and obtain.
The link gives me new thought
I can obtain with its key word.
Mind meld removes need to read.

Reading 100 years in the future -- what do you think?

SR-71 Blackbird

Someone sent me a forward with the following link

http://www.greatdanepromilitary.com/SR-71/index.htm

with this accompanying text from someone along the forward chain:

In 1968 (1967?) an SR-71 made an emergency landing at Grand Forks AFB (ND) and was “parked” between two B-52 hangers close to the N/S road that paralleled the base runway. The aircraft was completely visible to anyone using the road. Immediately after landing, GFAFB security established machine gun "nests" close to the plane.

The two man crew could not exit the plane until a C-130 arrived from Edwards AFB with the ground support equipment and aircraft technicians to evacuate the crew and "fix" whatever the problem(s) were... Of course, everyone on the base came to see the 71 and security had to control traffic. After the "fixes" were accomplished (two days?), the 71 exited the base heading north. A few minutes later it returned at a very low altitude at tremendous speed in a fly by. It was awesome and was probably witnessed by about everyone on the base.

Eye candy for people who like airplanes

Grab your beverage and relax for a few minutes of awesome beauty.

The SR-71 was the creation of Kelly Johnson, Lockheed, Eisenhower and the Air Force. It was envisioned in the '50s, first flew in the early '60s, retired in the '80s, briefly brought back in the '90s.

In all, 13 units of the single seat A-12 were built, and 32 of the Pilot + Recon two seat SR-71 units were built. Five A-12 were lost, one is stored. Twelve two seaters were lost. The remaining 27 are on display around the USA . The closest is at Atwater, the old Castle AFB museum at Merced with 50 other classic warplanes. You probably have a better opportunity of viewing the one in San Diego . Ask me and I'll tell you where the others are. NY, OR, OH, DC, etc. I can find most answers to most questions. Just ask. Start with the 2000+ mph, the 80,000 feet + altitude. More if you wish.

So enjoy.

One more thing. The author of the captions to the picture in this video made one misstatement, due to youth. The U-2 Recon aircraft was created in 1955, flew operationally in 1956. Kelly thought the USSR would shoot it down in 18 months. Lucky us, it flew until Gary Powers was downed on 1 May 1960. But Kelly Johnson already had the go-ahead from Ike for the A-12. It first flew in 1962, JFK kept the manufacture of it active. No one told LBJ, 'cause everyone knew he would spill the secret. He wasn't told til the week after JFK left us. And sure enough, LBJ gave out the secret in a matter of months.

Anyhow, the most interesting, most exciting five years of my life were spent in the
program, as a KC-135 refueling pilot. Where the Blackbird went, we went. You will see several refuelings in the following.

I decided to share this for the following reasons:

1. I love airplanes
2. I think the SR-71 is an incredible plane
3. I've seen a Blackbird in person (at the Evergreen Aviation Museum), along with walking inside the Spruce Goose
4. I just read about the development of the SR-71 in The Wizards of Langley
5. The pictures in the slideshow above are really cool.
6. What better thing to post on my Technology & Innovation blog than one of the most advanced reconnaissance systems of its time (and then some)?

Due to the unknown authorship of both the email and the slideshow text, the details should be viewed as having varying quality. Discretion and judgment (and some personal research) should be utilized. That being said, enjoy!

Weekend Reads - 06/20/2009

Tweetpsych - The details about this Tweet-alyzer claims:

Communication is a window into a person’s mind, and the way a person talks can tell you a lot about how they think. Linguists have developed two methods to decoding the written word into a meaningful profile of a person’s cognitive processes.

Using a Regressive Imagery Dictionary (RID) and Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) to "build a psychological profile of a person based on the content of their Tweets." Put in any Twitter user name, and it will provide a "score" of various psychological factors, such as Cognitive Content (e.g., Social Processes, Sensations, Cognitive Processes) and Primordial, Conceptual and Emotional Content (e.g., Concreteness, Social behavior, abstract thought). My analysis is here.
------------------------------------------------------------
Search Engine Wars - Unless you've been living under a technological rock these days, you've probably heard about the launch of two new online search engines. (And, if you've really been paying attention, you'll know that they don't claim to be search engines -- rather, a "decision engine" and a "computational knowledge engine". Bonus points if you know which one is which.) Microsoft launched Bing and the Wolfram team launched Wolfram Alpha.

I overheard a colleague talking about Bing's launch. He was very impressed with the high-quality images that grace the home screen. When you loaded the page, you may have noticed a few flashing squares in the image. As you move the mouse around, they'll re-appear, and you can hover over the squares and they provide additional information about the image, complete with links to even more info. To be honest, I noticed the picture (it's quite the contrast from the nearly all-white Google background), but I don't think I would have touted the image while describing the new decision engine from Microsoft... Anyway, the background images are cool -- and they change. I've only used Bing a few times so far; I've read a lot about it. After what appeared to be a successful launch, Bing started having problems with it search results -- explicit images and videos were getting included, and Norton's porn filter couldn't block them. Big no-no -- you don't want to be the "decision engine" that's NSFW or for your kids to use ... Microsoft changed a few things about how Bing works, and apparently has found a work-around. Keep an eye out for that if you use Bing; I'm sure they'll get the problem sorted out some more. Tough set-back for the launch, though.

Another recent launch was the Wolfram|Alpha "computational knowledge engine." The admittedly not-a-Google-killer engine, Wolfram|Alpha attempts to use semantic language processing to take your query and to create an output based on the data stored inside Wolfram|Alpha's brain. Good ol' W|A is self-aware--it knows who it is and how old it is. Initial complaints by users charged that (1) it didn't have the answers to their queries (granted, the search syntax is a little different from Google/Yahoo, and the system is "still learning") or (2) they couldn't see a reason to use the service. Then, perhaps as a precursor to Bing's porn woes, Wolfram|Alpha users pushed back when they took a moment to really read through W|A's Terms of Service. A CNET contributor discussed W|A's "mind-boggingly backward at best, and troubling at worst" Terms of Service:

Wolfram Alpha requires: "If you make results from Wolfram Alpha available to anyone else, or incorporate those results into your own documents or presentations, you must include attribution indicating that the results and/or the presentation of the results came from Wolfram Alpha." It's a fair request, but it may not be a reasonable request. Not if Wolfram Alpha wants people to actually make widespread use of the service.

Something to be aware of if you consider using Wolfram|Alpha for any projects...

Not to be left out of the headlines, Google made sure that people remembered how cool it still was, and updated some services, like its Contact manager. I'm still a fan of all of the Google services: GMail, Blogger, Reader, Search, Docs ...
------------------------------------------------------------
Something for the security conscious ComputerWorld did a review of an interesting software called Safe Calculator. The article says:

It doesn't even require installation. All you do is enter the password at any time and click MS, and "safe mode" appears, changing all the calculator buttons to ones that would be useful for an app like this. Then, click on + to store and = to confirm. After that, you can execute the file, bring it back from hiding, or delete it.

Interesting application - but why a goofy calculator? Does anyone actually use that application anymore?
------------------------------------------------------------
THE URL Shortener Tracker I stumbled upon this the other day. Many of you have seen the bit.ly or ow.ly or tinyurl.com links floating around the Internet / Blogosphere. These services have exploded, especially with the need to share links via social networking sites/services like Twitter and Facebook. Someone is keeping a list of all the services available at this Google Docs spreadsheet.
------------------------------------------------------------
More on Bing's launch Some other reads:

• Wired: Bing hides its best features
• CNET review
• CW review
• a funny picture of Google vs. Bing suggested search terms related to Linux

------------------------------------------------------------
More on Wolfram|Alpha I had been waiting for W|A to launch for some time [I waited for Bing too] before the day actually came. I missed the live web video of the launch (delayed from some glitches). Since the launch, I collected some links about W|A and am now finally getting around to posting the:

• Easter Egg #1
• Easter Egg #2
• Wired article about W|A and the secret of time travel
• ComputerWorld article
• CNET review
• CW "answer engine vs. search engine"
• W|A already has ads
• Read the fine print
• Another reader perhaps summed it up best: "It looks like it'll be good for something, but I'm not yet sure how it will serve me, an ordinary person. It's not readily apparent how to use it most effectively. It may just be a matter of a learning curve for a new way of thinking about inquiries."

------------------------------------------------------------
There's computer hacking, and then there's social engineering hacking.
------------------------------------------------------------
A cell-phone for Ashley [W.] B: a shock- and water-resistant phone.
------------------------------------------------------------
"Charging Gadget redefines power-walking" -- a portable power charger/generator for small devices