The Iron Nail

Caching Cachet

2005-08-19T15:37:00.000-04:00

What do you call game that gets a nerd out of his cave and whacking the bushes with nature-loving technophobes? Iron Nail Nirvana? Yes, but another name for it is Geocaching.

The first attraction of the game is that it gives us all that long-sought excuse to go out and buy a GPS unit. "GPS" stands for Global Positioning System. It's a collection of satellites - currently 27 of them - that orbit about 12,000 miles above the earth transmitting ranging signals, but the acronym is also used for an increasingly inexpensive hand-held device that tells you very precisely where you are, down to 10 or 20 feet, by interpreting the satellites' signals.

Now, what's the fun in that? Well, for the nerds, it's great fun to be able to give their precise longitude and latitude to anyone who should make the mistake of asking their whereabouts. But for all of us, there is Geocaching.

"Cache" is one of those boundary-crossing terms that brings us all together. To computer programmers, a cache is a store of data tucked away in memory where it can be quickly retrieved. But outdoor-types might think, instead, of a hiding place for food and provisions in the wilderness. To both, it is a place where something is kept until you have a need for it.

Geocaching in a nutshell: People hide things in caches all over the world. They publish the precise coordinates of the things on the web. Other people use GPS units to find the caches. A few simple rules make it a bit more interesting:

Take something from the cache
Leave something in the cache
Write about it in the logbook

Hopefully, a) the person placing the cache puts it somewhere interesting in its own right, and b) they leave something in the cache that is at least mildly entertaining. But most of the time this is, primarily, one of those getting-there-is-its-own-reward kinds of things.

If you're like the Iron Nail family (one 10-penny, one 8-penny, and a tack), some Saturday morning after breakfast, you will all sit down in front of the computer, navigate to http://www.geocaching.com, and pick a cache in a place you would like to go. You can start by providing a zip code of the general vicinity, or even a country, if you have a private jet. (Note to self: future column?)

In my experience, not all the caches have logbooks, but I definitely like most the ones that do. The logbook provides a little history of what was originally left, who has been there, what they left, and what they took. (Finding out what has been in the cache in the past sometimes makes you wish you had gotten there sooner.) The logbook may also give you coordinates to other, unpublished caches.

The web site is a great guide for obtaining information about things like:

Different kinds of GPS devices, how much they cost ($100 - $1,000+), where to get them, and how to use them
Where the published caches are
How to prepare your own cache
What kinds of things you should/shouldn't put in a cache
Where you should/shouldn't store a cache
An on-line form for publishing the location of your own cache
Etc.

There are lots of variations on the game, such as leaving a "hitchhiker" item that has instructions about its ultimate destination. You take the item if you can move it to a cache closer to the destination. Hitchhikers have traveled all over the world this way.

If you're a nerd, get out of the house. If you're a Luddite, get over it. Hey, if you have fun, don't thank me. Just send cache.

T.I.N.

Open, Sesame!

2005-07-26T13:54:00.000-04:00

In case you were wondering, The Iron Nail broke his brain trying to provide a clear and concise description of home entertainment center setup, and was checked into a psychiatric rehabilitation facility for several months. He emerges from his psychotropic stupor, however, with renewed energy, and a regained sense of optimism that there are some technologies of great potential benefit to the masses that many people haven't yet grasped.

Which brings us to passwords. Do you have trouble remembering your passwords? Have you resorted to using just one or two passwords for everything, and praying they will never be discovered? Do you laugh hysterically whenever it is suggested that you should change your passwords frequently? Do you write passwords on yellow stickies and stick them to your monitor? What about your P.I.N. numbers? credit card numbers? door entry and alarm codes? Do you wish you could manage all those private bits of information safely and easily?

Never fear, Access Manager is here. Access Manager is one of a class of software applications that might be referred to as "password safes." The general idea is that you open the program with a single, master password that you remember, don't write down, and don't tell anyone. Once inside you have the keys to the kingdom. This is the fundamental strategy that all such programs share, but Access Manager, which comes from a company in the U.K., is free, and it has some distinctive features.

For example, most people wouldn't use a long or complex password, even though its safety is directly related to its length and complexity, because the difficulty of typing it is also directly related to its length and complexity. In Access Manager, you simply click a button next to the password entry and it is copied into your computer's memory, and you may then paste it into the password field of the program or web page requesting it. Access Manager will even generate safe passwords for you, following rules that you set for it -- e.g., length, use of upper/lower case, use of numbers, use of symbols, etc.

Many web sites ask you for a response to a challenge (e.g., your mother's maiden name), so that if you lose your password they can email it back to you if you provide the proper response. The trouble is, you specified "Frisky" as your dog's name, and your dog was hit by a car, and you wanted the whole family to forget Frisky as quickly as possible, so you picked up a Frisky-look-alike from the shelter and named it "Frosty." Frisky was promptly forgotten, along with the Frisky-related password, and now you're stuck. But not if you have Access Manager, which allows you to store up to three challenge-response pairs per password.

The data you store in Access Manager is dual-encrypted. Does that make it safe? Well, if you're charged with keeping the national security secrets of even a small country, perhaps you shouldn't keep them in Access Manager. Otherwise, you can probably sleep in peace.

As is the case with many free programs, you can get more if you're willing to pay for the "professional" model -- a mere $25. With Access Manager Professional Edition, you can store its data in a shared folder on your home network and access it from any computer in the house. You can have multiple users, with each deciding which of their passwords should be shared with others or kept private. You can install the whole application and its data on a USB memory stick and put it on your key ring. You can tell Access Manager to back up its data, along with any other specific files you would like to back up, to two pre-designated locations. You can use special Access Manager utilities to encrypt, decrypt, or securely delete (i.e., completely overwrite with gobbledigook and then delete) any file on your computer.

Personally, I began using the free version a couple of years ago, when there was no professional version. I recently updated it to get some new features and discovered the professional version. I was happy to pay to support the development of this nifty little program, and happy to get the new features. It has a very sporty user interface, which takes up very little room on the screen.

So, now you can throw away those sticky notes, forget your mother-in-law's middle name, get a new cat, and use passwords like F6W5kK7mTY!

Enjoy!

T.I.N.

Input This, Part 2

2005-02-26T08:59:00.000-05:00

In Input This, Part 1, I suggested that coming to terms with your home entertainment system is a manageable task. If you don't particularly care about audio quality, you can do just fine without the need to purchase or hook up a component system. If you like the idea of listening to everything -- music, TV, DVD's, and so on -- through the same, high-quality speakers, then the bulk of the complexity is focused on one component, which is the A/V receiver. The receiver is the heart of your system, and everything else hooks up to the receiver in a pretty straight-forward way, if you get the right receiver. A receiver is "right" for you if it is suitably powered, has connections for the components you want to watch and listen to, and fits your budget.

If you don't have a suitable A/V receiver, now, you can purchase any of a number of very capable receivers in the $300 range. Do you know about Froogle? Froogle is one of Google's spin-offs. Go to the web site, type in "A/V Receivers" (or anything else you're shopping for) into the search field, and you can explore a range of products, with product details and comparative pricing information. Once you arrive at a model you're interested in, Google its model number and you will find even more information, and more places to purchase it.

For example, one receiver listed in my Froogle search is the "Pioneer VSX-D912K." If I copy just the "VSX-D912K" part and paste it into the Google search field, there are links shown for reviews, price comparisons, and catalog entries for specific retailers. CNet is a particularly good source for buying guides, reviews, and comparative prices of home electronics. Even if you choose not to purchase on the internet, you can still do your research this way.

So, you bought it, you have it at home, sitting in its cardboard box. You can still take it back! You can still call your nephew to figure it out for you! You could do those things, but let's be brave this time and plunge ahead. You take it out of its box. The back panel can only be understood by an electronics engineer! Not so. Take a deep breath. Here are the keys:

Sound and video travel from their point of origin through the receiver to your TV and speakers.
Connect the outputs of devices that play sound and picture to the receiver inputs
Connect the outputs of the receiver to your speakers and TV
Devices that both play and record have both outputs and inputs, and the receiver has places to connect both for those specific devices

The good news is that everything is labeled. All the connections for the speakers are in one place that will be clearly labeled "Speakers." There is a section labeled "TV" or "Monitor" with "Video Out" and "Audio Out." If you chose your receiver wisely, there will be labeled sections for each of your components.

Speaker connectors are usually red and black. Audio component connectors are either red and black or red and white. Video connectors come in a variety of types. When combined in one cable with the audio connectors, they are yellow. Connect red to red, white to white, black to black, and yellow to yellow. You might also have surround speakers.

Hook up your speakers and TV first. Hooking these things up is generally straightfoward. Power up the receiver and see if you can hear AM/FM radio through the speakers. Work with one component at a time. Focus on what the receiver's manual says about hooking up that kind of component.

There are often several possibilities for the video connection. For cable TV and and satellite TV, you will have a coaxial cable coming from the wall that looks like this:

You typically use this type of cable and connector from the wall to your set top box, and from there to your VCR.

Other cables are used to connect components to the receiver, and the receiver to the TV. The most common is the "RCA" type, which may be used for video and/or audio:

Red and white are for audio, and yellow is for video. Alternatively, you may connect just the audio with RCA cables/connectors and connect the video with a higher quality "S-Video" cable:

Take it one step at a time. Hook up a component, test it to make sure it works, and move on to the next. To test, turn on the receiver, the TV, and any other component you wish to test. There will be a button on the receiver's front panel corresponding to input sources, e.g., TV, DVD, VCR. Press the button corresponding to what you want to watch and listen to. Save the remote controls for later.

The role for your nephew is to make all those remote controls manageable. As I write this, I look to the coffee table on my left, and I see five remotes. I periodically put most of them in a basket -- all but my favorite two -- but over the next couple of weeks they gradually return to the coffee table. There is one for the receiver, one for the TV, one for the VCR, one for the DVD, and one for the TiVo. Ugh!

The good news is that they now sell remote controls that can be taught about all of your components, so you control everything with one remote. But it gets better. The newest customizable remotes have touch screens, somewhat larger than a cellphone or PDA screen. Once customized, the screen shows buttons appropriate to the selected component. For example, if you select VCR, it has play, stop, fast forward, etc., without the distraction of other buttons for other devices. So, you just have to get your nephew to program the remote.

Ultimate power, after all, rests with nephews. But stick with the dream. Power to the people.

T.I.N.

Input This, Part 1

2005-02-12T15:08:00.000-05:00

Did you enlist your nephew to hook up your home entertainment system? Do you live in fear that your VCR or your DVD player might break, and you will be forced to try to figure out how to hook up a new one? Do you buy a new home entertainment component only to have it sit in its box while you get over the setup gumption trap? Is that what's bothering you, cousin?

If it isn't, then skip this and the next T.I.N., because I want to offer advice and comfort to the troubled.

The first thing you should know is that you aren't alone. Otherwise, 12:00 wouldn't have blinked on so many VCR's for so many years, and nephews wouldn?t be so busy. The second thing to know is that if you take it one step at a time, you can do it.

"But I didn't used to need my nephew to hook things up!" you might say. "How is this considered progress?" Indeed, we used to simply connect the antenna wire (video and audio source) to the TV. For music, we listened to a table top radio, or a record player. TV's, table top radios, and record players are all-in-one devices, which makes them simple.

This way of doing things is still possible. Manufacturers have struggled to put more capability into stand-alone devices. For example, they equipped some TV's with video tape players or CD/DVD players. 'Boom boxes' can be purchased that will play almost any conceivable sound source, including MP3 digital audio from your computer.

So... why should anyone take the dive into component technology, with all its complexity?

It's all about the audio. If you don't care about getting a feeling of being in the concert hall or jazz club when you're listening to music, or hearing the low notes of a string bass or the punch of a drum, or hearing the jets fly overhead and feeling the spatial ambiance of the scene when you're watching a movie, then you should just keep it simple, and many people do. If you do care about these things, then you have to consider the limitations of these all-in-one devices:

They have awful speakers. They are awful because they have to be small to fit in a small space, and because
the sound amplifier is small, to avoid over-heating the surrounding components tightly packed around it. The low range of the sound spectrum requires more amplifier power and larger speakers to be reproduced.
Even if such a device claims to be have stereo sound, the speakers are too close together to get a believable stereo effect, let alone the surround sound of a movie theater.

Modern home sound systems and home theater systems use the same amplifier and speakers for all sound sources. Buy a good amplifier and good speakers, and everything you listen to sounds good. That's the source of the appeal. It's also the source of the complexity, because everything has to be hooked together.

Adding to this complexity, we have lots of new audio and video sources to play with. In roughly historical progression, we have audio tape, cable TV, satellite TV, video tape, CD's, DVD's, DVR's (Digital Video Recorders, e.g., TiVo,) and satellite radio. When you decide to upgrade, you need to make a decision about which of these sources you want to be able to watch or listen to. Listen to speakers at the store, and pick the ones that sound good to you playing these sources, and that fit your budget.

The next step is the key to staying on the good side of your nephew: Purchase an A/V receiver that has enough power for your speakers (the manual that came with your speakers should prominently feature this information,) and that provides suitable connections for all of your sources. While you shouldn't rely on a salesperson to tell you which speakers sound the best, how much money you want to spend, or whether you really should purchase that service contract, they can tell you which receivers are suitable for your speakers, for your TV, and for the list of sources you wish to play.

Think of the A/V receiver as the Grand Central Station of your home entertainment system, switching incoming trains to different outgoing tracks. Every audio and video source goes through it, on its way to your speakers or TV screen. The incoming trains are the antennas, CATV or satellite TV cables, and players of tape and disk media. The receiver adds AM/FM radio to the list. The outgoing tracks are the speakers and TV screen. There are also 'side tracks' for these sources to get recorded, so recording devices get hooked up to it, too. With all of your sources hooked to the receiver, you control what you watch and hear by controlling the receiver.

One complication is TV channel selection: Changing channels used to be the sole province of the TV tuner, but a number of different devices can provide this function now. If you have conventional cable TV with premium channels, or digital cable, or satellite TV, you probably have a set-top box with its own remote control for switching channels. Think of this as a decoding or de-scrambling step that happens before the signal reaches the receiver.

We still have to talk about all those wires, and where they go, and we'll do that in the next column. We'll also discuss the problem that arises from the fact that virtually every one of these components -- the audio and video sources, the receiver, the recorders, and the TV -- has its own remote control. Once everything is hooked up, the real power rests with those who master all those remotes, right? Not necessarily!

Power to the people.

T.I.N.

NEXT WEEK: Cables, connections, remote controls, and making best use of your nephew.

Tech-annoyance

2005-02-04T20:15:00.000-05:00

I love technology. In literary terms, I phile techno. But it is not an unconditional love.

One condition I have is that to receive my love, technology must not be annoying. I occasionally run across a technology that is annoying, and I want it to be gone from my sight and my consciousness as quickly as its two little techno-legs will carry it.

For instance, cell towers that look like trees. At least their creators think they look like trees, or maybe they think we'll be extremely grateful because they tried so hard to make them look like trees. Driving east from Gardner on Route 2, one cannot avoid looking at a cell tower that, were I forced at gunpoint to find its resemblance to a tree, I would have to compare to a giant sequoia. It is, indeed, in the midst of a lot of other trees, none of which have the vaguest resemblance to giant sequoias, or even little baby sequoias. I say that until scientists, through the magic of genetic engineering, are able to grow forests of trees that look like cell towers, Verizon et al need to find another solution. That is, if we have to have cell phones.

My feelings about cell phones are... ambiguous. They bat their little cellular eyes at me, and, I confess, my heart races a bit. But whenever I see, or worse hear someone using a cell phone, I instantly find that person less attractive. The person who sits close to me at work who has a different ring tone for every person she knows, who knows lots of people, and whose most frequent caller has the honor of announcing his cellular presence with a perfect rendition of a 1950's phone with an actual bell and clanger inside of it, has severely hampered my aural satisfaction with living.

Technology can be just plain silly. Take, for example, those machines at checkout counters that you're supposed to use to sign your name for a credit purchase. The pen is as fat as a cigar, anchored at one end by a stiff wire that has three and a half twists in it, which serves to discourage the pen from pointing at the glass pad where you're supposed to sign. When finally you coax it into approximately the right orientation, you discover that there is no place to rest your hand while you sign. That forces you to sign by using your entire arm, most of which is extremely unaccustomed to being in use during the signing experience. It is then you realize that under no other circumstances have you ever signed a piece of glass. When you finally sign it, and tilt your head so you can see the result without the glare of the overhead fluorescents, you are unsurprised to discover it looks nothing at all like your signature, and that the use of your shoulder muscles rendered it approximately four times its usual size.

The entire signing experience makes you feel silly, but the really silly part comes next. The clerk picks up your credit card, looks at its signature, carefully compares it with your just-completed random scribble, smiles, nods his head, and hands it back to you just as if it were a perfect match. It took lots of training at the Massachusetts Institute of Silly Technology to perfect that performance, and you at least have to respect that.

President Bush's least favorite technology, I'm told, is the teleprompter. Now, I don't agree with George on every little matter, but I admit to resonating with this particular opinion. For George, the durn thing goes too fast, or too slow, or sometimes has words that are hard to pronounce. The strain of trying to stay up with the scrolling text on the teleprompter sometimes makes him go a little cross-eyed. For me, as a witness to the resulting performance, I find it difficult to stay attentive to the message of a cross-eyed person giving a speech, whose eyes when not crossed seem to be looking at my forehead, but maybe that's just me. At least, I don't seem to be in the majority.

Some of the most mundane technologies are the most annoying, particularly those that you encounter on a daily basis. For example, product packaging. You would think they would have cereal boxes down pat, by now. Every time I open a new box of MiniWheats, I work my way through a box that was designed to be easy to open and re-sealable, only to discover a space age material inside that cannot be opened by human hands, and once opened will never again discourage a wayward weevil.

And, if you're able to overcome your resistance to taking out a second mortgage to buy a new razor, which has at least one or two more blades than you actually need, how do you feel about trying to free it from a square foot of packaging made out of Space Age Material #2? I try to keep track of my wife's garden snippers just for these occasions.

Which brings us to my least favorite packaging technology, and may a special place in the HereUnder be reserved for the inventors of CD packaging. You are first required to unwrap the CD box from a material that appears to be cellophane, but is actually Space Age Material #3. When you finally get that off, you are confronted with little sticky strips which cover all the edges, and which are absolutely impossible to remove in one piece. They come off in little 1/8" strips, and as each comes off it sticks to you in a way that only my cat could enjoy. Finally, you have to figure just the right way to hold the box to actually get it open, and just the right way to grab the disc -- only by the edges, of course -- to pry it loose from the box.

And the recording industry wonders why kids are copying music over the internet?

As for those little stickers on fruit... don't even get me started.

Power to the people.

T.I.N.

Family Connections

2005-01-27T06:22:00.000-05:00

Is there such a thing as safe, family-oriented computing? I believe there is.

'Safe' is, of course, a relative term. Once you connect your computer to the internet, there are many dangers, such as these, that you need to educate yourself about. If you are part of a family with more than one computer in the house, you can substantially improve your family's safety, and vastly improve the quality of your family's computing life, by installing a home network.

From a safety perspective, a home network allows you to put all your family's computers behind a hardware "firewall" that prevents miscreants from getting access to the contents of your hard disks. You can install virus protection software that protects the whole family at once from the latest outbreak.

Installing a home network used to be a very big deal. You had to run wire all over the house and hunker down to a good bit of research about alternative ways to set up a network. To be at all civilized, you had to put new outlets in the walls, and buy special tools to painstakingly wire up the outlets. You had to buy a network hub or switch, install networking and firewall software, and then try to coax all of it into working together. Or, you had to spend a good chunk of change getting someone else to do it for you.

It is now possible to substantially simplify all of this by substituting a wireless router for the hub/switch, and buying wireless network cards for each computer. Look, Mom! No Wires! Wireless network speeds are now quite acceptable, the software is easier to set up, and the equipment has all become reasonably inexpensive. The router is the public face of your network, and the individual computers hiding behind it can't be accessed from outside your network (without your explicit intent.)

With a home network in place, you can enjoy many benefits:

Share your broadband connection. The most obvious advantage of a home network is that all of the computers in the network can share the same broadband connection and access the internet simultaneously. Dad no longer has to wait for Billy to finish his game of networked Intergalactic Death to download his stock quotes. Suzie can research her homework on the internet while Mom is sending an email.
Share printers. In our family, we have an inexpensive laser printer, and a combination color printer/copier/scanner, which we all can share over the network.
Share files and disk space. Behind a hardware firewall, it is safe to allow file sharing among family members. You can put everyone's digital music and digital photos in one place, if you like -- perhaps on the computer with the largest disk -- and let everyone else share it from there. You no longer have to use floppies to copy a file from one computer to another.
Common network security. Companies like TREND Micro offer software that protects all the computers in the network against viruses, spyware, wireless network intrusion, and more. Using their "PC-cillin Home Security Pack," you can protect up to three PC's for about $90, or five PC's for $150.
Remote access. If you have Windows XP Professional, you can use an inexpensive laptop computer to remotely access other PC's in your network -- say, from the poolside. Your laptop suddenly acquires all the capabilities and resources of the remote computer, incuding, for example, your email account. You no longer have to think about moving files between your laptop and your desktop computer, just so you can do your work in the chaise lounge while sipping an umbrella drink.

A home-network-enabled laptop tends to wander around the house, getting used for different things. Ours mostly hangs out in the living room, where we look up words and historical facts when they come up in conversation, or while watching a baseball game on TV, get the batting stats of the guy at the plate, or shop for stuff on the internet. And, of course, we Google incessantly.

If you don't have a home network, and you want to have one, there are some good resources on the internet to get you started (including information about how to find a home network installer, should you wish to avoid the hassle of doing it yourself.) One of my favorites is HomeNetHelp, which has everything from "Starter Stuff" to "Beyond the Basics." It tells you what you need to shop for, provides product reviews, tells you even more things you can do with your home network, and tells you all of it in one well-organized web site. Google "Home Networks" to find a whole host of other resources.

If you haven't set up a home network for your family, yet, do take another peek at the possibilities. You may like what you see.

Power to the people.

T.I.N.

TiVo, the SuperBowl, and Wardrobe Malfunctions

2005-01-20T20:06:00.000-05:00

I don't think anyone has seen my TiVo that doesn't covet it.

It will come up in a conversation. I will say something like, "No, I haven't seen that episode yet, but I TiVo'ed it." ("TiVo," you see, has become a verb.) Their eyes will widen -- "You have a TiVo?" They have all heard someone talk about it, but it sounds like a techie thing that is probably too complicated to get involved with. I then have to explain that you don't have to be a nerd to have a TiVo. You pretty much just hook it up and go. In this day and age, I say, I don't understand how anyone can live without a TiVo.

"Well, ...um... What exactly does it do?"

"Oh," I respond, "it does many things."

Ever watch TV, have the phone ring, and have to do a quick assessment about whether you would rather miss the call, or miss a critical chunk of the show you're watching? Not a problem with TiVo. You just pause it. Live TV? Yup. TiVo will stow away the piece you are missing -- up to half an hour of material -- while you are talking on the phone, answering the door, taking a power nap, getting a snack, or answering the call of nature. Press the button again, and it resumes where you left off. (My wife and I use the pause feature even more often to stop the TV to review what just happened and discuss its implications for the plot.)
Ever wish you could have your own personal replay? Live TV? Yup. In slow motion, if you like. A single button backs you up 8 seconds and resumes, as many times as you want. Or just press the rewind button and go back as much as half an hour. (My wife and I use this most often to get a second or third chance to understand a piece of barely-intelligible dialog.)
With TiVo, you can get a "Season Ticket" to your favorite series, automatically recording all episodes when they are broadcast, without further intervention. You can even instruct TiVo not to record repeat episodes.
Here's the key to never watching another commercial: If there is a 1-hour program you want to watch, tune to it on time, but watch it 20 minutes later. Back up 20 minutes, and fast-forward through the commercials. There are, on average, 20 minutes worth of commercials in every hour-long program. (This is why, in the age of TiVo, web-based advertising is becoming more important.)

At this point in the conversation, a demonstration is generally required, followed by incessant coveting.

TiVo is sometimes described as a "Venus" technology, because women seem to like it as much as men. One of the things my wife likes most about it is that she can hit the pause button before saying something to me, and I actually register the fact that she is talking to me.

TiVo does a lot of other things, but these are the features we use the most. Since we are hooked up to satellite TV, we also use it to schedule recordings of pay-per-view movies at, say, 1:00 in the morning, when no one in the house is watching anything else. I was an early adopter, so my TiVo doesn't do all that the newer ones do, like making DVD's from recorded programs, scheduling recordings over the internet, or broadcasting the show to other TV's in the house.

However, my TiVo has a feature that newer TiVo's don't: I have the Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction on my TiVo.

That's right, I recorded last year's SuperBowl. During halftime, I went off and drank beer, or something, and it wasn't until the next day that I even heard that something unusual happened during the halftime festivities. Even when I heard about it, the TiVo slow-motion replay possibilities didn't occur to me, until a friend came over.

As my friend was coveting my TiVo, I off-handedly mentioned that I had recorded the SuperBowl. His eyes widened. Did you get the halftime show? Well, sure, but what... oh... yeah, I did!

I want to say that in no way did my friend and I make a statistically signficant contribution to the "most TiVo'ed moment in 2004" record that has been so widely publicized. We couldn't have added more than, say, one or two percent to the total.

I think a complete recording of the 2004 SuperBowl will have some enduring historical value, don't you? That, I assure you, is the only reason I haven't deleted it from my TiVo.

Power to the people.

T.I.N.

Let's Be Careful Out There!

2005-01-15T11:15:00.000-05:00

I love technology, a lot. But occasionally, it bites.

I got bit, recently, when a friend sent me some truly unbelievable pictures of the unfolding tsunami disaster. I trusted him, and he trusted the source he got them from, so he and I both forwarded the pictures -- he to a large list of his friends and acquaintances, and I to my wife. However, I happen to subscribe to a "New Urban Legends" feed, and within a day or two I found that the pictures were clever fakes.

Somewhere, the chain of trust had a weak link, and that is still a major weakness of the internet. We can never completely trust what we see.

A 'blog,' as I mentioned in my last column, is a kind of on-line diary, or journal, that anyone may create for others to read. ('Blog' is short for 'web log.') Recently, I found a reference to the "Bill Clinton Daily Diary", with a link to it that I followed, with some curiosity. If you think it's suspicious that Bill Clinton would reveal his innermost thoughts on such a wide range of titillating subjects in a published diary, you're starting to catch on. However, there are apparently a large number of people who have been reading this for months, not realizing that it's fraudulent.

In the first case, the harm was only a little embarrassment for me, and a bit more for my friend. Actually, the embarrassment toll was quite large when you consider the extended chains of forwarders, of which we were only a small part. We can survive embarrassment, and while I have no idea how Bill Clinton puts up with someone masquerading as him on the internet, or even whether he has any recourse, I suspect he will survive the misrepresentation. However, there are people out there who want to steal your money by misrepresenting themselves, and gaining your trust.

In the last week alone, I have received three "memos" from "banks" like this, purporting to "protect the security of your account." These emails typically direct you to a website, wherein you are supposed to "confirm" the I.D. and password of your account. Recently, these emails have begun to use good English grammar, have exact duplicates of business letterheads, and have at least some face plausibility. Even if you examine the internet header, you may have difficulty finding clues that the email isn't legitimate.

I have received letters similar to this one from banks, credit card companies, eBay (an online auctioneer), and PayPal (a company that brokers monetary transactions between buyers and sellers on the internet.) Collectively, these scams are known as "phishing." The scammers "phish" for personal information they can use to steal your identity, and subsequently to steal your money.

How do you protect yourself? Certainly, be suspicious of any email asking you to provide ID's, passwords, Social Security number, or other personal information. If you have any suspicions, it's quite easy to investigate them. I begin by using Google. I type in a precise quote from the suspect email, with quotation marks, and inevitably it brings me to a fraud report. There are web sites dedicated to providing information about frauds, scams, and hoaxes. Here is a couple:

Any website which asks you for personal information should have a URL address beginning with "https://", with the 's' on the end standing for 'secure.' On a slightly different track, definitely, keep your virus protection software up to date, and don't open email attachments without being certain of their trustworthiness.

Hopefully, we will see improvements in the internet's ability to authenticate identity, so that we can know for sure whom we are communicating with. In the meantime, as Sgt. Esterhaus used to say on Hill Street Blues, "...And, hey -- let's be careful out there."

Power to the people.

T.I.N.

The Blogosphere is My Oyster

2005-01-04T15:09:00.000-05:00

It turns out that we all have something to say. We always did, but it has always been difficult to get everyone's attention. Letters to congressmen, phone campaigns, copy machines... All are puny tools for the powerless. How could we ever get anywhere with these useless, pedestrian modalities?

Then along came the miracle of "desktop publishing," which gave us the ability to emphasize the importance of everything with italics, multiple fonts, and fabulous color combinations. We could run off a hundred copies of all the news that's fit to print, with color graphics and a bannerhead in 48 pt Times New Roman, and mail it out to everyone in the church congregation. First the church, then the world. Time Magazine, look out!

Then we were empowered by PowerPoint. Suddenly, it didn't matter that we never got around to that Toastmasters membership, or that we continued to have problems with eye contact. Now we had slides! Good slides guaranteed that we could get our points across with nary a met gaze. And all of the arguments were solidly supported by embedded spreadsheets and tri-color bar charts. We made our points in the dark, and our emphasis with a laser pointer. Didn't hear my talk? I'll print you out a copy of my slides. First the promotion to group manager, then on to riches and national prominence as a motivational speaker. Lookout, Deepak Chopra!

But all this pales in comparison to the developments of 2004, when we discovered blogs. If you don't know, a blog is an online journal, which anyone can create. You can let the whole world read it, if you and the world are so inclined. You can even provide an automatic alert to your readers when you add something.

Compared to blogs, those other ways of trumpeting our message seem so ... well, so 20th century. Now it's just me and my laptop, sitting at a Starbucks, tapping at the keys and changing the world! I couldn't print more than a few hundred copies of my tabloid before my printer broke down, and of course the audience for my PowerPoint presentation had to fit into one room. But, oh baby, look at me now! I'm a world critic in undershorts!

I might be struck by an invaluable insight anytime, anywhere. Why should the world be deprived of it any longer than necessary? In minutes, it can be buzzing around the blogosphere, titillating and enlightening the minions.

And, you know, we -- the Bloggerati -- have influence without precedent. We blow the whistle on corporate scandals in our sandals. We pressure presidents from our residences. We whisper hot tips and watch the results on stock market tickers.

So please come to hear my 20-slide PowerPoint presentation this Sunday at the Unitarian Church, entitled, "Why YOU Should Read My Blog." Alternatively, press the Amazon button at the bottom of the page and purchase my self-published pamphlet.

Power to the People.

T.I.N.