Category: Technology

All things geeky.

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Calling Marriot Housekeeping

On Saturday the 13th of October, Sarah settled into bed midnightish at a Marriot Hotel near Atlanta. She was traveling with the high school band to perform flags. On Sunday the 14th she awoke unable to find her phone that she had left on top of her luggage so she assumed it was in her luggage (that’s her official story..personally, I think she woke late and groggily shoved everything in her bag and rushed out to see her friends without giving the phone a thought). Sunday at 9pm as she came off the bus I asked, "where’s your phone?" She replied, "In my luggage." On Tuesday, she finally confided that her Motorola RAZR v3xx was lost or stolen.

I scoured her phone and text messaging records. The last number called was to Phoenix, Arizona so there was hope that we had a way to contact the person with the phone. After a few calls and several text messages we figured out that Sarah had actually placed those calls on behalf of a friend. Hope was lost. I contacted the housekeeping manager at the hotel and he confirmed no phone had been turned it. I deactivated the phone. A week later I called again and still no phone. LissaKay comes to the rescue (aided by Twitter) with a replacement phone for Sarah and Sarah flips with excitement spending the next 6 hours customizing the phone.

Yesterday I get a phone call from someone explaining they found the phone! Yea! Housekeeping came through. No, wait, this is guest! The phone, lost on October 13th, was found under the bed by an honest person staying in room 517 on October 29th. It still had power because Sarah had turned it off so the honest person was able to lookup "Dad" and found me. This means that room 517 hasn’t had a thorough cleaning in at least half a month and that for at least 15 guests, assuming the room is occupied every day, don’t check the room very well. Ewww.

Now, who gets the phone? Sarah or Tommy.

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Put @RedCross in your Twitter

What is Twitter? I feel that Twitter is still defining itself. Essentially, Twitter is an ongoing chat designed to be easily accessible from your cell phone via SMS which is why messages have a 140 character limit. The limit also forces you to be concise in your thought. Twitter puts us closer to people of importance or influence in our lives. (That’s not a Joe Biden endorsement..just showing that you can get a message to Joe Biden via Twitter easier than a phone call) Several other presidential candidates are using Twitter. The shakers and movers in the tech industry are using Twitter and I have been able to interact with a couple of people that otherwise would have remained "that famous person on the stage at the tradeshow." Today I even cracked a joke at Wil Wheaton in response to his tweet although I doubt he saw it. There is still some debate about whether or not a person receives your @ message if they are not following you. I say yes as long as the @ is the first character. You cannot direct message someone unless they are following you.

So why add RedCross? Because it is another way to make sure emergency information is getting into people’s hands as rapidly as possible. They are even using Twitter to add people to a searchable database showing you are safe and well!

Send ‘D safeandwell FIRSTNAME LASTNAME #### STREET CITY STATE ZIP CELLPHONE’ and a brief note about how you are. We’ll enter you in.

about 12 hours ago from web

Check out Safe&Well: https://disastersafe.redcro… – and *make sure* all your friends and family include it in their disaster plans. about 12 hours ago from web

I think Twitterers will fall into one or more of three types:

  1. Exhibitionists, Voyeurs, Gossips – These are the folks that will send/read a stream of messages about the minutia of daily life
  2. News feeds – These are the folks alerting the world about their experiences with the California fires, or the next big event. These are the newspapers getting the headlines out. These are people like myself alerting others that the Interstate is at a stand still.
  3. Topic Specific – These would be people sharing information about a particular subject. Unlike news feeds these will often include back and forth discussions about the topic.
    I originally had this one listed as "Techies" because that is what I do: Techies – These are the people sharing links to events in the technical world. Unlike a news feed, these will often include back and forth discussions on the ins and outs of technical issues.
  4. [added November 10, 2008] Spammers – People taking advantage of the tendency to follow those who follow you simply to draw attention to a product or website. The Twitter staff and others are trying to minimize the ability for people to spam through Twitter.
  5. [added November 10, 2008] Utility – such as how The RedCross has used Twitter to make accessing the Safe and Well database easier.

I suppose I should include a 4th classification "self-promoters/spammers" which would be people that use Twitter exclusively for trying to drive traffic to their sites. Twitter can drive traffic!

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This sums up my job

If architects had to work like programmers.

Dear Mr. Architect:

Please design and build me a house. I am not quite sure of what I need, so you should use your discretion.

My house should have between two and forty-five bedrooms. Just make sure the plans are such that the bedrooms can be easily added or deleted. When you bring the blueprints to me, I will make the final decision of what I want. Also, bring me the cost breakdowns for each configuration so that I can arbitrarily pick one at a later time.

…

You must be thrilled to be working on as an interesting project as this! To be able to use the latest techniques and materials and to be given such freedom in your designs is something that can’t happen very often. Contact me as soon as possible with your ideas and completed plans.

PS: My wife has just told me that she disagrees with many of the instructions I’ve given you in this letter. As architect, it is your responsibility to resolve these differences. I have tried in the past and have been unable to accomplish this. If you can’t handle this responsibility, I will have to find another architect.

PPS: Perhaps what I need is not a house at all, but a travel trailer. Please advise me as soon as possible if this is the case.
[Source]

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Joe Biden catches onto Twitter!

Presidential hopefuls should be making us their friends by talking candidly with Twitter.

joebiden Online now for a live chat via Washington Post until 5pm; submit your question: http://tinyurl.com/2ng8dj 2 minutes ago from web

joebiden Tweet a question @joebiden and a volunteer will submit it to WaPo. Include your city/state if it’s not on your profile. half a minute ago from web

Look at how close Twitter puts you to the action!

Narration with supplemental commentary: [audio:http://realityme.net/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/joebidencatchesontotwitter.mp3]>

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Quote of the Day

This made me laugh hysterically.

“We’ve heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know that is not true.” Robert Wilensky

Thanks to JBB of Lumbering Through Life! As an aside, I disagree with stance that Twitter’s 140 character limit is in place as an etiquette and means of keeping thoughts concise. The 140 character limit is to enable Twitter to send message by SMS and keep the message within a single text message. I believe different people are finding different uses for Twitter. I have chosen not to follow a couple of people because of their topic choices and style. I think Twitter’s will fall into 3 groups: self-promoters and linkers (using Twitter to post URLs to blogs and websites), news/media alerts, and voyeurs/exhibitionists/chatters. The first group, the linkers, will use Twitter to promote traffic to their own sites or sites interest them. The news/media alerts will be a group sharing relevant information that is happening now. The chatters will use Twitter as a replacement or complement to IRC and the instant messengers. Not everyone will enjoy the style of all three groups.

Update: My wife agrees with jbb.

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Twitter is killing my blog!

If you ask me about blogging, I will tell you to pay for your own hosting, buy a domain name, and use WordPress (.org)! My primary reason for this advice is so that you have maximum control and ownership of the content you produce. When you host with Blogger, or even at WordPress.com, you relinquish control of your content to a third party. They might close your account for a violation of terms of service and then you have lost your content or access to your drafts. They might close shop and you also lose your years of hard work.

Getting the balance of posts right for your readers is tough. Post too frequently and your readers will skim or skip (or worse, unsubscribe!) and miss your best posts. Post infrequently and your readers will go away. When Twitter first hit the scene, I didn’t get it. Frankly, I still take issue with Twitter because we are relying on a third party to manage our content but Twitter is addictive! I find myself making those short updates to Twitter while reserving my blog for longer commentary. I used to make one sentence posts to my blog and liter it with frequent updates. Twitter has changed the way I blog. And people have noticed!

Blog early and often! [Jack Lail]

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Presidential Hopefuls and their phones

Everyone knows Rudy uses his phone. Someone needs to teach him some manners. What other presidential hopefuls are using their phones? Twitter is a short messaging service that lets you barrage your friends (and others) with the overly mundane in your life. People have found different uses for Twitter from marketing to exhibitionism (look at me look at me) to making announcements and sharing information on the Internet. Presidential hopefuls have accepted that they can reach a large audience and become closure to the constituents by using (or having their staff use) Twitter.

Democrats

Republicans

Uhhhh

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Content Theft Worsens

If you follow my comment feed, then you may have noticed that I am getting huge amounts of trackback spam. Why not just turn off trackbacks? Because these people are stealing my content, and likely your content, for their own personal gain and the trackback is the easiest way to find them. Yes, they generate a link back to Reality Me which in theory should help my page rank but not when it is with duplicate content. I have installed the Antileech WordPress plugin but I am still figuring out how to use it without cutting off my feeds to legitimate readers. If you do end up getting a "this content is stolen" message instead of the actual post, please email juggler at gmail.com and I will fix it. That said, can you confirm which feedreader you use based upon the following:

  • Blogdigger/2.0 (http://www.blogdigger.com/; contact@blogdigger.com) Referred by: http://www.zimbio.com/Jaycees/trackers/7/Blog+Search+Tracker
  • Feedfetcher-Google; ( http://www.google.com/feedfetcher.html; 6 subscribers; feed-id=3701543567382179734) Referred by: http://www.google.com/reader/view/
  • Feedfetcher-Google; ( http://www.google.com/feedfetcher.html; 9 subscribers; feed-id=8604077678671105327) Referred by: http://www.google.com/reader/view/?tab=my
  • Feedster Crawler/3.0; Feedster, Inc. Referred by: http://ranchero.com/
  • Gregarius/0.5.4 ( http://devlog.gregarius.net/docs/ua) Referred by: http://blognetwork.knoxnews.com/feed.php?channel=81
  • Liferea/1.4.3b (Linux; en_US.UTF-8; http://liferea.sf.net/)
  • NewsGatorOnline/2.0 (http:/www.newsgator.com; 1 subscribers) Referred by: http://www.newsgator.com/ngs/subscriber/WebEd2.aspx?fld=0
  • NewzCrawler/1.8 (compatible; MSIE 6.00; Newz Crawler 1.8; http://www.newzcrawler.com/ )
  • SharpReader/0.9.7.0 (.NET CLR 1.1.4322.2407; WinNT 5.1.2600.0) Referred by: http://127.0.0.1:12108/sharpreader/page.html
  • Wasabot/1.4 (+ http://www.wasalive.com ) Java/1.6.0_02

I am assuming that Blogdigger, Gregarius, and Wasabot are used by content thieves.

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Anyone want to do a group project?

I’ve never done an open source project before. Here’s my proposal. We write a WordPress plugin that helps create a blacklist of known content thieving IPs. When an IP from the blacklist requests the RSS feed or direct link from the WordPress blog, we deliver an anti-theft of content notice instead of the actual content. The plugin will have the ability to deliver a custom message allowing people the personal choice of making the payload as obscene or marketable as they like. I have some thoughts on implementation since the splog delivering the content might have a different IP than the scavenger. For instance, the plug could alter the comment interface to include a check to mark a comment or trackback as potential content theft. The plugin would then have to examine the server logs to try to draw a correlation between when the real content was posted, the IPs that requested the RSS or post, and the time the stolen content was posted. With large samplings to a single database I think we could be very effective at blocking the thieves. Now, what’s the abuse potential here?

After getting this working on WordPress, I think we could extend it to other platforms.

Update: Looks like Owen Winkler (Antileech) has already written this! Kudos! Lorelle gives an overview and also recommends Digital Fingerprint Detecting Content Theft WordPress Plugin.

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I do not like Flash sites

As a developer, I steer clients away from relying upon Flash for anything on their site. Adobe would love Flash to be the medium of choice for everyone but the truth is Flash doesn’t bode well for deep linking, navigation is often slow and clumsy, and it is not as portable as straight HTML to mobile devices and other non-traditional browsers. Granted, Opera mini, other tools, and Adobe are trying to make Flash more readily usable on all platforms.

I do like Flash! I think it should be used to enhance the overall user experience on a website. Perhaps certain navigation elements could be done in Flash but if the browser cannot detect the Flash plugin then it shows a regular HTML navigation. Keep it small and light. Now, all that aside, the Sony Bravia Flash site is cool! And just when I was getting comfortable with the 2D web, someone had to go and add depth.

Ah! I put my finger on it as I was commenting at ProfessorFalken:

It adds the z-axis to browsing to bring us closer to that 3 dimensional hokeyness we see in computer movies like Hackers and Johnny Mnemonic. [Source]

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Orweillian of the Day

All those cameras and now "give us your keys."

People in the UK who encrypt their data are now obliged by law to give up the encryption keys to law enforcement officials…[Source]

Note: I have not confirmed the above against any other sources.

Per capita there are more surveillance cameras in the UK than any other country in the world…

The average city dweller can expect to be captured on film every five minutes…

Source, UK Something to watch over us, BBC News