Thanks to Matthew’s post on Data Mining, I came across this very interesting video about the anthropological nature and impact of YouTube. The talk was given by Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural and Digital Ethnography at the Library of Congress. The video is long, but well worth the time.

Also, check out Mike’s other video that went viral some time ago. Also pretty wonderful:

…I guess now I’m part of the anthropology of it all.

I recently accidentally ran into NuevaSync and am jumping for joy.

I’ve had the iPhone (2G) for a while now and have never used the calendar feature. This is a pretty big waste of functionality since I rely on my digital (google) calendar to organize my life. The problem is that there was no easy way to synchronize the two. Add to that the giant pain in the ass that is syncing contacts between the iPhone and gmail and you find yourself with a personal organizer that really doesn’t organize anything.

Enter the 2.0 firmware and NueavaSync. With the introduction of Exchange support on the iPhone NeuavaSync’s ability to “fake” an exchange server and sync with google becomes a life saver. It took me all of 10 minutes to set this up and now my iPhone is synchronized with my google calendar and contacts. FANTASTIC!

Everyone and there mother has been blogging about the new iPhone 3G. I must say that I’m not immune from the to and as an iPhone (2G?) user I am thrilled at the idea of having a faster version of the wonderful product I already own.

However, AT&T is going to screw me (and the other several million users) out of one. Because the discount price of $200 is only available for new users or those who are eligible for an upgrade (every 2 years), anyone who bought a first gen iPhone (at most about a year ago) can’t get the discount rate and has to shell out $400 for the 3G version.

This sucks for me because I’m not willing to spend $400 just for a boost in speed, but it sucks for Apple/AT&T because at $200 I’m willing to bet that many current iPhone users would upgrade to the new version. Now, not so much.

…I’m leaving for a 2-week work/vacation to Germany tonight so my posting will be limited.

I ran across this beautiful video on Flowing Data and think it is absolutely correct. I’ve always said that the only way to save the world is to empower women. This organization, Girl Effect, focuses mostly on young women in developing countries, but I think the problem is much bigger.

Women everywhere need to be treated as equals. Imagine increasing the work force of this world by nearly 100%. Imagine a world where education is pervasive and disease is ancient history. I’m convinced, as are the folks over at Girl Effect, that this will only occur if/when women (all women) are genuinely integrated into main stream society.

There’s also a wonderful TED talk by Isabel Allende on the same topic. I recommend taking the 18 minutes to watch it and be inspired:

This is a sign I saw just outside the door to my plane in the San Fransisco airport. Not only are they telling you that you’re going to die from standing there, but they won’t tell you from what or how!

(oh, and I’m back from vacation now so expect more posts…at least for a week before I head off to Europe for conference/vacation fun)

I received a rather annoying email today informing me that my office computer had been compromised by a virus and has been sending out elicit packets. Damn.

I’m not sure how I got the virus, but clearly it is a security threat to me and my school. I appreciate that removing it is not an option, but is re-imaging my machine really the best way to go? That’s right, the default response to this type of situation for our IT department is to re-image the infected machine.

Of course they will help back-up my data, but what about all my settings and all the programs that I have personally (legally) installed? I’m pretty anal when it comes to how my computer is configured and it will take me several hours to get things back to the way I like them. So I ask again, is this the right move? I’m not a security expert but it seems like there are several other steps that can be taken first: virus scan, firewall, etc… Why must they wipe everything as a first move?

Anyone have any experience with this and know how I can convince my IT folks that there is a better way? I really don’t have the time/energy to deal with re-installing my entire machine.

Help!?

All too often the popular press will jump on a scientific result and shout its praises. On the surface, this is great. The scientists get exposure. The people get knowledge. What could be wrong with that?

Well, it turns out that 99% of the time journalists seem to avoid the dirty work of reading the paper that describes the research in question and simply go for the abstract. Then, they often take one choice sentence from the abstract and extrapolate from there. This, of course, leads to conclusions which are not supported by the data.

Although the most recent example I came across isn’t necessarily an example of this type of journalism, it has the same flavor. This is an interview in Time magazine of Daniel Kripke, co-director of research at the Scripps Clinic Sleep Center in La Jolla, Calif.

The article suggests that those people who sleep between 6.5 and 7.5 hours live the longest and those who sleep less than 6.5 or more than 7.5 have a higher likelihood of dieing early. On the surface, this is terrible for me. I routinely sleep 8 - 8.5 hours per night. I guess I’m already a corpse? Of course, those of you that read the entire article will notice that Dr. Kripke acknoledges that this relationship is NOT CAUSAL. Did you get that? It’s not that sleeping more leads to early death. It’s that, for whatever reason, people who sleep longer also die younger. It does not mean that if I sleep 1 fewer hour I will live longer!

Now, the good news is that this was at least mentioned in the article…but not till pretty far into it. Most people just read the headline and the first paragraph, a dangerous practice. If I took this seriously (as I’m sure many people will), I might uproot my life based on the belief that I’m sleeping too much.

Journalists needs to get some stronger ethical standards when it comes to presenting scientific research and acknowledge things like correlation <> causation early on. Defusing these types of misconceptions will surely lead to a more informed citizenry.

Clearly any time you have to travel you fall behind in a slew a different arenas: work, friends, family, etc… One area that particularly gets to me is my blog reading.

I read something like 40 different blogs on a regular basis. Most of them only post something 2-3 times / week so it’s easy to keep up. But some, like Digg, Engadget, and Gizmodo have hundreds of posts per day. This means that when I get back home (as I just did), my RSS reader ( google reader) has more than 1,000 posts to go through.

The decision I am presented with is: do I a) read them all, b) read some of them, or c) mark them all as read and move on with my life. Option (a) is clearly out of the question. (B) seems appealing, but then I always feel like I’m missing something. (C) is what I usually wind up doing, but then I worry that I will be left out of the loop.

What do you guys do? Is there a strategy for catching up on 100s or 1,000s of posts? Help!?!

As you probably already know, I’m not a big fan of religion. In my mind, blind obedience usually leads to mayhem and oppression. In any case, my “favorite” religion, Catholicism, has just made it that much more apparent that it is still in the dark ages.

Apparently, the Pope recently ruled that any woman who becomes a priest, or any bishop who ordains a woman is to be immediately excommunicated from the church. For religious Catholics, that’s almost worse than death.

Really, what are they thinking? With more and more people leaving religion (and especially Catholicism), is the alienation of an entire gender the right move?

Then again, if the end state is that fewer people become sucked into a mythical dogma which discriminates against 1/2 the people in the world, then maybe this will end well after all.

I actively use three computers: my office computer, my home computer, and my laptop ( ACER Travelmate C300). The firs two I love (as much as one can love a computer) but the third is driving me crazy. I almost exclusively use it when I travel (mostly to conferences) and the damn thing weighs a ton (actually, 6.3 lbs). I bought it thinking that I wouldn’t care about the weight, but after three years and roughly 20 trips later, I am regretting my decision.

So now I’m thinking of upgrading to a new, lighter, laptop. The problem is that I’m on a pretty tight budget.

Here’s what I want:

1. Light (< 3.5 lbs)
2. Small (< 13” display)
3. Powerful enough (needs to run XP, Photoshop, Power Point, and Flash (development) at the same time…without dieing)
4. Built in optical drive (DVD reader…don’t need a burner)
5. VGA out
6. Relatively long batter life (> 3 hours)
7. Inexpensive (< $1,000)

Other than that, I don’t care.

I’m currently looking at the Fujitsu LifeBook S2210, but don’t know if it’s right for me (especially since it is more expensive than I’d like at $1,300 for the base model and the battery life sucks at 2.25 hours).

I prefer new laptops, but something refurbished might not be so bad.

Any and all suggestions are eagerly accepted.