Though her disappearance has been investigated as much as any other 20th century event, there has never been any undisputed evidence to indicate whatever became of Earhart, her navigator Fred Noonan or the Lockheed Electra 10E aircraft they were flying in.

This is a strange coincidence since I intend to go missing later today as well. I’ll be on vacation for the next several days and posting to the blog will be suspended.

If you’re a first time commenter, your comments may be held until the next time I’m online to approve them.

With any luck, my disappearance won’t become a 21st century mystery.

Wishing you a wonderful holiday weekend!

1. The Echoes of Apollo event was huge. Huge. An amazing number of people were literally focused on the moon. Read about it at the site above and don’t miss this comment from Robert Brand on the blog. Did I mention this event was HUGE and that the story made the New York Times?
2. Garmin is finally getting it with its built-in support for APRS in their Colorado and Oregon.
3. Clandestine HF Beacons – these unlicensed beacons do not follow government regulations for operation (such as Part 15), and are technically illegal. There are many of these beacons, quite a few are run as propagation experiments. Due to their nature, the exact location of these stations is generally not known, although many are believed to operate from remote locations in the deserts of the southwest USA.
4. Microsoft announced that Hotmail email account aggregation is rolling out in the US, Canada and Brazil.  This is a feature that allows consumers to receive email from other POP-enabled email accounts (including Gmail, Yahoo! Mail and AOL) directly into their Windows Live Hotmail inbox.
5. Looking for some technology content for your iPod or smart phone? TimeSys recently introduced LinuxLink Radio, a free podcast focused on embedded Linux.

And it wasn’t supposed to be just a casual bit of hit-and-miss record keeping. If commercial traffic was being interfered with and a radio ham suspected of the interference, the station log could incriminate or exonerate the said ham. But time passed and eventually the legal burden of logging was removed; by that time, most hams continued the practice. There is value in data and most operators use their station logs as a way of tracking the performance of a particular antenna or piece of equipment, or for keeping track of how many states, provinces, counties, continents or countries had been worked, etc.

This had been a handwritten exercise on ruled paper until the 1980s when personal computers hit the scene and the ham shack.

Since that time, we have seen hundreds; if not thousands of logging programs come and go. Some are exceptionally powerful and useful tools while others provide only the most fundamental information. Problems of compatibility between applications were monumental at one time but through the years most of those have been hashed out among those who craft these applications.

But there remains much room for improvement…

Enter the Cloud

Cloud Computing is a method of computing in which dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources are provided as a service over the Internet. Users need not have knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure in the "cloud" that supports them.

Think of your Gmail, Yahoo, or Hotmail account. These are cloud services. You don’t need to install any special application to use these services — the mail "application" is running on servers that you don’t own, and can’t see (and probably don’t know where they are even located) by way of your Web browser.

And it’s high time that ham radio logging be made available in the same manner!

Imagine for a moment an environment where your ham radio logging could be done in a Web browser – any Web browser, running on a Mac or PC, using the latest version of Windows or a seriously old Linux distribution. No headaches, no hassles, no more keeping that old piece of junk laptop because it’s the only hardware that runs your seriously old logging application.

You could access your log from anywhere that has a browser and Web access.

Now let’s further imagine that the ARRL were to take on this sort of project. Their servers could issue a token that matches a certificate when you log in so that your contacts auto magically matches up via their LoTW database. No more uploading a signed file that was generated by another program to get award credit, it would all be seamless to the end user.

If someone were to pursue this project, I would encourage them to make the API open so others could easily expand the system. I can envision small browser "plug-ins" that would extend the application. Think of the rich depth of your logged data if you could mash-up Google maps with propagation data, etc.

Since all the data from every user would reside on central servers, how cool would it be to click a button and see who all worked a particular station – and on what band, mode, and time?

Spelunking the airwaves could be preceded by doing a deep dive on the data to discover what methods and patterns that rare DX station that you need typically uses. And no one would ever have to upload or send off log data from a contest – all the data would already be on the servers in the cloud.

And by the way, contest organizers could upload a logging template for their particular contest. That way when I open my browser and select "CQWW CW contest" the right template would appear for me to enter my data for that particular contest.

Users might also upload some personal data including their email or home page URL. That way when we work each other and log the contact we could just click a link and visit your homepage, a picture of your shack, get your QSL information or even auto-generate a PDF QSL card for that contact that you could download with a single click.

Need your rig to "talk" to your log? Grab a comm plug-in for that. Want to access your log when you are offline? That’s another plug-in; just like Google-Gears that allows me to read and write email whenever I am not connected (the data is cached until the next time it can connect to the servers to sync the data).

I like the idea of having a common interface for entering log data into any Web browser, and I like the idea of being able to extend that application through widgets and plug-ins even more. You would never require another logging program upgrade (though the server side software could be continuously updated and improved) and if one day you decided to dump your Mac in favor of Ubuntu, the change would be completely invisible to you.

If the ARRL were to offer a service like that, they could charge two dollars a month and make money at it though they may find it even more lucrative to offer it as a free benefit of membership. Why pay $50 a year (or more) for a logging application "license" when you get a free logging service with your ARRL membership?

If you can’t see the embedded video above, here’s the direct link to it on YouTube.

As founder and publisher of Skeptic Magazine, Michael Shermer has exposed fallacies behind intelligent design, 9/11 conspiracies, the low-carb craze, alien sightings and other popular beliefs and paranoia’s. But it’s not about debunking for debunking’s sake. Shermer defends the notion that we can understand our world better only by matching good theory with good science. Thus, in order to explore a conspiracy theory that pre-planted explosives caused the World Trade Center towers to fall on 9/11, the magazine called on demolition experts.

Shermer’s work offers cognitive context for our often misguided beliefs: In the absence of sound science, incomplete information can powerfully combine with the power of suggestion (helping us hear Satanic lyrics when "Stairway to Heaven" plays backwards, for example). In fact, a common thread that runs through beliefs of all sorts, he says, is our tendency to convince ourselves: We overvalue the shreds of evidence that support our preferred outcome, and ignore the facts we aren’t looking for.

Its goal was to create ideal mobile equipment with latest transistor technology and advanced design and in 1963, SBE began to sell their first model, the SB-33 transceiver — known as the first practical transistorized rig; a significant milestone in amateur radio equipment history.

Fox News – Fair and Balanced and blissfully unaware of Tivo
Fox News says they made a little boo-boo when they incorrectly identified South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford as a “Democrat” while breaking the story about Sanford going missing while trysting the nights away in South America. But it’s a little tough to take the fair and balanced network at its word about that “mistake” since they had a similar slip when former congressman Mark Foley admitted to having problems with alcoholism — after reports that he had behaved inappropriately with congressional pages – and Fox News also incorrectly identified him as a Democrat.

Raiders of the Still Lost Ark
World Nut Daily has been hyping the news that some Ethopian priest was all set to unveil the Ark of the Covenant, a mythical relic supposedly containing the actual 10 commandment stones. It should be noted that the WND promoted story link of the soon to be revealed miracle was right next to another link selling an informational video about the Ark for $44.95. Once the date had come and gone for the unveiling, word trickled down that the Ark wouldn’t be revealed after all. Was anyone really surprised?

Ahoy Matey!
Russian cruise liner companies are offering pirate-hunting trips on armed private yachts off the Somali coast. Passengers pay £3,500 a day hoping to be attacked by raiders so they can retaliate with grenades, machine guns and rockets. The ships cruise slowly close to the coast in an attempt to attract the pirates.

Crime Spree
Wired magazine breaks down the ten best prison breaks of all time. They even have a list of the seven best capers of 2008. The columnists at Wired are thinking way too much about about crime…

Bada-Bing
Monopolist wannabe Google says they aren’t sweating Microsoft’s Bing decision engine and have been openly mocking it and the stuff behind it. But Bing is off to a pretty good start. The site last week attracted 16.7% of all search users, up from 15.8% the previous week, according to market watcher ComScore. For the week of May 25, when Bing launched, its share stood at 13.7%. It has often been stated that 1% of the online search market equals one billion dollars which means Microsoft just slurped up $3 billion dollars worth of someone’s pie…

When You Wish Upon a Star
Apparently you can close your eyes, click your heels three times, and the bible will say anything you want it to say. And if it doesn’t, you can just make it up as you go. Golly them Southern Baptists are friendly folk…

Ever since Pastor Wiley Drake declared not once, but three times, on national radio that he was praying for the death of President Obama, he has been trying to clarify. Yes, he really does want God to smite Obama. No, it’s not a partisan prayer. Yes, it’s in the Bible, he says, and no, he wasn’t kidding. He’s deadly serious.

The former second vice president of the Southern Baptist Convention said he’s merely practicing the age-old art of “imprecatory prayer”—a theological term for praying that bad things happen to bad people.

I Want That on a T-Shirt
Best quote of the week comes from Jon Stewart of The Daily Show. Reporting on South Carolina governor Mark Sanford’s marital infidelity Stewart said:

“Oh, marital infidelity, you’re just another run of the mill human being whose simple moralizing about the sanctity of marriage is only marred by the complexities of their own life. Well just another politician with a conservative mind and a liberal penis.”

Stewart was, of course, referencing Sanford’s views on marriage which he thought should only be between a man and a woman.

I figure some mention should be made of his passing in this blog space but despite some soul searching for something profound to say about the death of this pop star I came up empty. Folks that are my age watched him go from an adorably gifted adolescent to an enormously gifted young man, to a freak show.

His sudden death of course comes as a shock to all but could anyone really imagine Michael Jackson at 75 or 80 years of age?

And isn’t an untimely death the usual and customary toll exacted by fame?

While I couldn’t come up with a eulogy for this pop star, James Kuntsler did somewhat better:

"It’s fascinating to follow the coverage of Michael Jackson’s death, but especially the lavish tributes to his “genius" and general wonderfulness. He was, in fact, a monster, and an apt reflection of America’s extreme  collective cultural confusion. He was a distillation of the lies America tells itself. He was infantile, grandiose, horrifying, and probably dangerous. His "accomplishments" as a grown man amounted to little more than a  half dozen popular songs. The arc of his life may have been tragic, but it was a tragedy of his own making. His sudden end brings to mind a remark Gore Vidal made upon hearing about the death of Truman Capote: "Good career move."

Yeah. What he said. I can’t improve on that.

Amateur Radio Newsline is reporting that:

The FCC has acted very quickly on a petition filed this past May 6, by Jack Najork, W5FG, of Hubbard, Texas, concerning signal reports transmitted by amateur stations that are participating in contests.
Specifically, Najork had  request that the Commission sanction the American Radio Relay League for not taking any action to prohibit or discourage what he termed as "false 5-9 blanket reporting."

In the  petition, Najork stated that contest signal reports have become — and we quote  "wholesale liar’s exchanges."  He also expressed the concern that the ARRL has — and again we quote — "targeted newly licensed radio amateurs with articles in QST to insure they learned and followed this sham reporting system."

But in its almost record-setting dismissal of the Najork petition, the FCC flatly stated that the way in which hams exchange signal reports is of no interest or concern to the regulatory agency.  In regard to the message exchanged between stations in contests, the FCC said that these are specified by the various contest sponsors and generally consists of a call sign and a signal report.  As to hams giving other hams inaccurate signal reports, here the FCC notes that there is no rule in Part 97 that requires a station to transmit a report of the signal received.  Nor is there one that specifies the standard for reporting signal quality.

If the FCC were to simply shut-down the entire amateur radio service over the time wasted by the sheer stupidity of this trivial petition, not even one of us could honestly blame them…

This report seems to echo the data seen in many similar reports and the bottom line is that as we age we need to stay socially connected and keep our minds and body active.

And what better way to do that than through an enjoyable hobby like amateur radio?

Generally speaking, radio hams are a sociable bunch who like to chat, tinker with things, learn and explore, and some of us even enjoy using Morse code to communicate – and if that doesn’t keep your brain sharp, nothing will. The "over 60" crowd generally have more of an affinity for radio than do youngsters, and with plenty of spare time to pursue their hobbies they can quickly become passionate supporters.

It’s a perfect match!

How many times must we chide the ARRL into specifically targeting the aging baby-boomers in their promotion of amateur radio?

The national association for amateur radio should be placing targeted adverts and articles about our hobby in publications like the AARP magazine and others like it and everyone of us should be contacting our elected officials to urge them to do just that.

Saving lives with amateur radio doesn’t always require emergency communications.

System notification is nothing new or notable and besides, no one seemed interested or capable of improving on the Mac notification system, Growl.

But having had a few months to become acclimated to this nifty feature, I’m more than a little impressed.

I was thinking about this last night while sitting in front of the laptop. I’m in a hotel far from home, which has become quite normal. On the screen in front of me is the news of the world in a Web browser, friends chatting endlessly in some IRC channel, family available to chit-chat using IM with just the touch of a key, emails spilling over the transom, and Twitter messages rolling in every few minutes to add a little spice.

And with each different event, a friendly message appears in the upper right-hand corner of my screen keeping me fully updated on everything that’s going on. I imagine it’s a little like sitting in a darkened cockpit, in front of a twinkling control panel, prepared for a night flight — the entire world virtually at my fingertips.

While Ubuntu has very quickly become a rock-solid Linux distribution that “just works” when installed, it’s obvious that a lot of thought and effort continues to go into it, and that has never been more apparent than with the last several releases.

The next update, Karmic Koala (9.10) will be shipping in October and aren’t you glad it’s free?