If your like me and many others all over the internet, you have multiple email accounts possibly one for friends/family, one for spam mail, and another you’ve had for years.  Well wouldn’t you like to view them all in one place?

If you have Office for Mac 2008 version you can respond to and have at your finger tips one place to see all your mail from multiple sources.  I’m only talking about Office 2008 Mac, but you could be doing this with other email clients such as thunderbird.

Settings for GMAIL

First inside of your gmail account you have to let GMAIL know that you want to be able to view your mail from other sources.  In the top right corner you will see what looks like a gear next to your name, click the gear icon and you get a drop down, click on “Mail Settings”.

Once inside of Settings, click on the heading labled “Forwarding and POP/IMAP” make sure to “Enable IMAP” here is where the process gets tricky.

Gmail changed the default settings ports that IMAP is associated with,so when you set up your client make sure to use SSL authentication.

• IMAP Server: imap.gmail.com
• SSL:yes
• PORT: 993

• SMTP Server: smtp.gmail.com
• SSL: yes
• PORT: 465 or 587

Make sure to use your full gmail address “emailname@gmail.com”, then your password and things should work well.  If you still have a problem I have attached some links that helped me out.

Configuring other mail clients (gmail, google link)

Outlook 2007 mail client (gmail, google link)

I found this post important so I wanted to let others know about this new worm.

TBTR

COPYRIGHT 2010 Normans Media Ltd.

TELECOMWORLDWIRE-September 10, 2010-Symantec reports rapid spread of new worm(C)1994-2010 M2 COMMUNICATIONS http://www.m2.com

Norton, an Internet security company and a division of Symantec (NASDAQ:SYMC), reported that Symantec Security Response has, as of yesterday, been tracking the rapid spread of a new computer worm that spreads using a socially engineered e-mail attack.

The company said that the threat is being spread via e-mails that ask the recipient to click on a link embedded in the e-mail which points to a malicious program file posted on the Internet and disguised as a PDF file. Once this file downloads it installs a worm known as W32.Imsolk.B@mm.

The worm, once it has compromised a usera[euro](tm)s machine, will attempt to spread itself further by gaining access to the usera[euro](tm)s e-mail contacts and repeating the process. It can also spread to other machines connected via network shares or via removable media.

The company advises all users to ensure that they take appropriate precautions, such as isolating compromised machines, blocking access to any address contained in the e-mail and insuring that they have installed and updated appropriate security applications, such as Norton Internet Security 2011.

Norton has made further information available at http://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/new-round-email-worm-here-you-have.

The month of February 2011 I decided to run a month long blogging series dedicated to Black’s in Technology.  I decided to showcase a host of African American inventors.  The Idea came from a friend of mine Wayne Sutton who runs SocialWayne.com he came up with an idea a couple of years ago for 28daysofdiversity.com.  Well following in his footsteps I decided to copy his idea, but with different flair.  I decided that most African American’s don’t get the opportunity to be highlighted in our everyday lives, but they are just as important as any Inventor.

I thought about doing this last year but for what ever the reason I didn’t do it, and I wanted to jump on this opportunity for 2011.  I will say that it’s easy to blog about something that your passionate about, but when it comes to a blogging series, and no less about people who may have passed away and your research is limited, that’s a different story.  Your writing from stories all over the internet some factual and some fake, you can’t get the word from the horses mouth so to say.  It takes some time to get your information togeather, you need to approach the task as an overall achievement up front.

Here are a couple of my tips for how to address a month long series in blogging, or just a series in blogging over all.

• Creating the concept is easy, but you must be ready to write it down, even if it’s not going to make it to publish (your ideas are important, don’t loose them because you thought it was not important)
• Come up with the number of post or days up front, this helps you know how many post you will be publishing, and your not brainstorming every night looking to add more and more post that will drag your series out.
• Have your days mapped out, so you know who your going to talk about and on what day (This does not mean you have to write all your information up front)  You do need to know who’s coming next so you can be prepared
• If your doing research and it seems your not getting anywhere, make sure to use the advance search capabilities of Google (I know other search engines exsist, but this one just seems to give me what I want the way I want it) i.e. images, blogs, video, and more.
• I just wanted to give a couple of tips for how to create a series in blogging on a topic or subject.

I hope my tips are helpful I know there are other sources that have probably put out information like this, add that to your list of current reads on “Creating a blogging series”

TBTR

Benjamin Banneker

Benjamin Banneker was born in 1731, it’s said he was born to a colonial American who was an indentured servant at one time but by the time Banneker was born he was born free, but with all things when it comes to African American’s it’s hard to trace the true origins of some people’s history.

Banneker made astronomical calculations that predicted solar and lunar eclipses.  As he understood the need for this kind of information he created an almanac ephemeris from 1792, to 1797.

Banneker's Almanac

Banneker also made a clock, as I understand it he took apart a clock that was given to him, and then created a clock made of wood that worked and chimed at the hour mark.

Later Banneker was part of a survey team that in late February 1792 was dismissed, they had failed to have have the plans published the leader Pierre Charles L’Enfant was dismissed.  The story goes that L’Enfant left with the plans he had completed, thus leaving the project up in the air, and the possibility of starting the project over again from start.

Banneker was able to draw from memory and provide the plans that were later used for the construction of the federal capital city.

So far in my research I have no knowledge that Banneker went on to college or even how far he completed high school or for that matter grade school.  We do all know this, his almanac was truly remarkable and he is a great African American Inventor.

TBTR

Percy Lavon Julian

Percy Lavon Julian was born April 11, 1899 in Montgomery Alabama.  He was a research chemist and a pioneer in the chemical synthesis of medical drugs from plants.  He largely worked on chemical synthesis of the human hormones, steroids, progesterone, and testosterone, from plant sterols.

During his lifetime he received over 120 chemical patents. Julian was one of the first African Americans to receive a doctorate in chemistry.

Percy synthesizing progesterone, estrogen, and testosterone from the plant sterols, stigmasterol and sitosterol, isolated from soybean oil by a foam technique he invented.

His most famous work comes from his synthesis of cortisone which is used in the treatment of arthritis and other inflammatory diseases.

Working in Lab

Little unknown fact: In 1999, the American Chemical Society recognized Julian’s synthesis of physostigmine as one of the top 25 achievements in the history of American chemistry.

It seems that all the people I have talked about found truth in education, and understanding that by using that education they could excel to the highest levels.  I never understood that education and what it really meant until I was older, it’s time we all start waking up.

TBTR

George Washington Carver

Would I be doing the world justice if I didn’t mention one of the greatest inventors of all time, African American or other wise.  George Washington Carver born 1864 finished high school through much hardship.  He also attended college he was accepted at Highland College in Highland, Kansas.  He later found out once on campus that he was rejected because he was African American.

In 1896 , Carver was invited to lead the Agriculture Department at Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, later known as Tuskegee University.  Carver remained at TU for 47 years teaching.

Carver became famous for his research into and promotion of crops as alternatives to cotton, such as peanuts and sweet potatoes.  One of his goals was to educate poor farmers to grow alternative crops both as a source of their own food and as a source of other products to improve their quality of life.

His inventions are too many to name for the peanut, but I have to give you some examples.

George made things like wood stains, shampoo, face power, printer ink, vinegar, soap, coffee, butter, milk, and cheese. These were only a few things that he had that he made from peanuts. He also made different things from other plants. Carver produced paint pigment and talcum powder from southern clay and many other plants. George also found 118 ways to make industrial materials from sweet potatoes, like rubber. He also made five hundred dyes from various southern plants.

His life and legacy will live on forever, his work with the peanut and sweet potatoes is well documented and if you knew all that he created from his work you would understand why he’s so important.  His thurst for knowledge led him to finish High School, and to complete college.

He was, is and will always be a great African American Inventor.  I was able to find some videos from youtube which goings into depth about him and his legacy check them out.

Part 1 of 5 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAnq17vaUKs
Part 2 of 5 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_T0ApOsnF8
Part 3 of 5 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-w0xYk1hW6c
Part 4 of 5 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzYF47cmrAk
Part 5 of 5 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nF7vGEWJGDA

TBTR

Dr. Charles R. Drew

Dr. Charles Richard Drew was an American medical doctor and surgeon who started the idea of a blood bank.  Along with that he figured out a system for the long term preservation of blood plasma.

He found that plasma kept longer then whole blood.  Plasma is prepared by spinning a tube of fresh blood containing an anti-coagulant in a centrifuge until the blood cells fall to the bottom of the tube.  The plasma is then poured off.

Blood Centrifugation Scheme

Dr. Drew set up and operated the blood plasma bank at the Presbyterian Hospital in New York City, NY.  Drew’s project was the model for the Red Cross system of blood banks, of which he because the first director.

Possible fact: Drew protested against the practice of racial segregation in the donation of blood, as it lacked scientific foundation, an action which cost him his job.

Dr. Drew was not a techie, but again the significance of his accomplishment can’t go with out mention.

TBTR

Alexander Miles made improvements to the Electric Elevator patent #371,207 improved the method of the opening and closing of elevator doors.  This was very important because before his invention patrons of the elevator had to close the door manually.  Sometimes this created a situation with bad results because people would not always shut the door, causing accidents with people falling down the elevator shaft.

Here is a copy of the patent information ELEVATOR PDF

TBTR

William B. Purvis (Date of birth unknown) he was an inventor in the late 1800′s.  He was a African American inventor who decided to make a better mouse trap.  Mr. Purvis turned reality upside down when he invented what is known as the “Fountain Pen”.

Fountain Pen Patent# 419,065

I’m guessing through real ups and downs he considered the question ” Why do I always have to carry a bottle of ink with me, why can’t my writing device have ink inside of it?” Honestly the question was probably more complex but I’m just giving you a little story here..lol

On January 7, 1890 W.B. Purvis as he was also known received a patent (419,065) for the fountain pen.  Purvis said of his invention “the object of my invention is to provide a simple, durable, and inexpensive construction of a fountain pen adapted to general use and which may be carried in the pocket.”

His invention is still used today, but due to the fact that we hardly learned anything about this African American Inventor shows me why I am writing about these great individuals this month.

I came across a video created by Mt Gilead Missionary Baptist Church promoting black history education month, enjoy.

Video

Fountain Pen Patent PDF

TBTR

Printing Press

William A. Lavalette an African-America was awarded patent number 208,208 in September 17, 1878 for improvements to the printing press.

It was very hard to find any information about William Lavalette, it was even harder to but, I was able to find the actual drawing of these new improvements after much searching.

Just know that as you read a book, newspaper, magazine or other printed materials, Mr. Lavelette probably has part of his lifes work in your hands.

TBTR

Henry T. Sampson, Jr.

Henry Thomas Sampson, Jr. was born in 1934, he attended Morehouse College, but graduated with a Bachelor’s degree from Purdue University, later he rececied a MS, and PhD.

He is the first African American to earn a Ph.D in Nuclear Engineering in the United States.

Sampson was employed as a research chemical engineer at the U.S. Naval Weapons Center in the area of high energy solid propellants and case bonding materials for solid rocket motors.

His patents included a binder system for propellants and explosives and a case bonding system for case composite propellants.  Pretty much this all just means his inventions were related to solid rocket motors.

TBTR

Dr. Caldwell McCoy, Jr

Dr. Caldwell McCoy, Jr was born June 27, 1933 in Hartford, Connecticut.  He earned his Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering, MS in Mathematics, and Doctor of Science degrees in Telecommunications.

Dr. Caldwell served in the USAF from 1956 to 1959, as a Combat Flyer with the Stetegic Air Command.  Dr. Caldwell’s employment  with the Naval Research Laboratory involved research on state-of-the-art computer equipment for underwater signaling and detection.  Dr. Caldwell was awarded the Thomas Edison Fellowship in 1968 from his work developing long-range anti-submarine system at the Naval research laboratory.

Later during the 1970′s Dr. Caldwell directed the United State’s largest computer network devoted to a single problem, to analyze the prospect of achieving usable energy from magnetic energy.

In 1983 Dr. McCoy became the Director of Information Systems Program at NASA.  Dr. McCoy was responsible for administering a program with funding in the millions of dollars, involving over 275 government and contractor employees.

Dr. Caldwell established The Caldwell McCoy Jr. Foundation which helps prepare and increase the number of students entering career paths in engineering, science, technology, and mathematics.

Frederick M. Jones

Frederick M. Jones was born on May 17, 1892 in Cincinnati, Ohio.  He learned electronic devices largely thought self-taught methods and work experiences.  So education was not his first direction, be he was still able to be granted over 40 patents in the field of refrigeration.

In 1935 he invented the first automatic refrigeration system for long-haul trucks.  This was well received and became adapted to a veriety of other common carries, including ships, and railway cars.

While I’m not sure about this story I wanted to share the significance with you.  It seems Jones inspiration for the refrigeration unit came from a conversation with a truck driver who had lost a shipment of chickens because the trip took too long and the truck’s storage compartment overheated. (This could be fake, so I wouldn’t put too much on the fact that it was chickens **side eye**)

Because of his invention the capability to ship fresh produce across the United States during summer or winter changed the American consumer’s eating habits.  Its seems that now foods that would go back could be kept safe.

Thanks Mr. Jones for your innovation, and understanding that learning on the job really does help you in the long run.

TBTR

Annie Easley was born April 23, 1933 she received her Bachelor of Science in Mathematics from Cleveland State University.  Ms. Easley worked for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Lewis Research Center and it’s predecessor agency (NACA)

Ms. Easley developed and implemented computer code used in determining solar, wind, and energy projects for NASA.  Her energy assignments have included studies to determine the life use of storage batteries, such as those used in electric utility vehicles.

Her computer applications are used to identify energy conversion systems that offer the improvement over commercially available technologies.

Ms. Easley’s work with the Centaur project helped as technological foundations for the space shuttle launches and launches of communication, military and satellites.  Her work contributed to the 1997 flight of Saturn of the Cassini probe, which was launched by Centaur.

TBTR

Clarence L. Elder was born in 1935 he graduated from Morgan State College. In 1967 he was awarded a patent for a monitoring and energy conservation control system.

That system reduced energy use in vacant homes and buildings.  This was very useful for hotels and school rooms.  The system used an electronic beam aimed across the building entrance, this beam could gauge the coming and going of traffic.

The system could reduce heat and light demand and boast energy saving up to 30 per cent.

Patent # 4,000,400 filed April 9, 1975, issued December 28, 1976.

Bidirectional Monitoring PDF

TBTR

Ozzie Williams

Mr. Williams was born September 2, 1921, he blazed a path of first, being that he had a Bachelor of Science and Master of Science in Aeronautical Engineering he was hired by Republic Aviation, Inc. during World War II.  No less this was at a time when African American were still not encouraged to become engineers.

Within four years working at Republic Aviation he was promoted to Senior Aerodynamicist.  Later Williams joined Greer Hydraulics, Inc. he was the group project engineer.  This team that he lead helped develop the first airborne radar beacon, this was useful for locating crashed aircraft.

Thought this mans efforts we are assured that no matter what happens in the sky if something goest wrong, we should be able to find it, because someone cared enough to think about those who were lost in Aircraft accidents.

TBTR

While I’m on a roll of people that are not really high lighted in Tech, I wanted to give light to an individual that could be considered the savor for a lot of African Americans.  Walter Sammons of Philadelphia filed for a patent April 9, 1920.

The patent (1,362,823)was for an improved comb that straightend hair, his invention is now known as the “Hot Comb”

BTW my sister is gonna kill me for saying this, but I remember her and mom over the stove on many a Saturday using Mr.Sammons invention, lol

Hot Comb – PDF

TBTR

While Ms. Goode’s invention has nothing to do with technology, I thought she needed mention here because I know alot of us didn’t know this.  Ms. Sarah E Goode is the first African American Woman to file a patent.

Goode applied for and was awarded a patent on July 14, 1885. (Patent #322,177, for a cabinet bed).  Her invention was a something that was needed because of space in the small homes of america.

While her invention took a piece of furniture and converted it to a full bed, like a Transformer it was not popularized until years later.   Thirty years later in 1916 the Murphy bed was created. It was concealed behind a closet door or wall, rather than inside a piece of furniture, such as the cabinet bed.

Today it is known as a “folding bed” or the “hide away bed”.

Cabinet Bed – PDF

TBTR

Mr. Dunkley created Three Dimensional Viewing Glasses (3-DVG).  His invention displays 3-D effects from regular 2-D photos without any type of lenses, mirrors or optical elements.  As I did some research for this African American’s Invention, I had to dig deep.  He didn’t invent 3D.  In fact this patent was not submitted till April 18, 1986 Patent #4,810,057

Dunkley didn’t create 3D but he did create 3D Viewing Glasses which allowed you to look at a picture and the 2D image would appear to be in 3D.  I can’t seem to find a really good picture of a demo.  I attached a copy of the PDF that shows the device.

Dunkley discovered that blocking two points in a person’s peripheral vision will cause an ordinary picture to appear 3-Dimensional.

A true to life working sample is what we are looking for, let us know if you run across a sample.

3-DVG image of the actual patent application – PDF LInk

TBTR

Amazing inventions usually call for people to take another look at that idea and improve upon it.  As in the case of Thomas Elkins (Day 2) help with refrigeration system, John Standard another African American looked at Elkin’s system and decided to improve upon it.

On June 14, 1891 a US patent #455,891 was created that took Elkin’s design to another level.  While this patent improved on the design of a refrigerator, it again was not the true creation of the refrigerator.

I would like to say for the record that these two men Elkins and Standard are the major reason refrigeration exist today.

TBTR

Granville T. Woods was born in Columbus Ohio April 23, 1856. He attended school till he was 10 he served as and apprenticeship in a machine shop and learned the trades of machinist and blacksmith. Woods realized that learning and education were essential for developing critical skills he went to night school and took some private lessons.

Woods invested his spare time in studying electronics, later he took a mechanical engineering course in an eastern college.  While his skills were great he couldn’t get anywhere in the jobs he was getting.

Woods was a great electrician and inventive genius, Woods invented fifteen appliances for electric railways.  In 1880 he had established his own shop in Cincinnati, Ohio.  Woods later succeeded in selling many of his inventions to some of the county’s largest corporations.

TBTR

Today we talk about Otis Frank Boykin born August 29, 1920 he was an inventor and engineer. Boykin invented more than 25 electronic devices. One of his inventions was an improved electrical resistor for computers, radios, televisions, and other electronic devices.

Mr. Boykin also worked on one of his most famous inventions a variable resistor used in guided missiles. Did you also know that Mr. Boykin created a control unit for the artificial heart pacemaker. The pacemaker essentially uses electrical impulses to maintain a regular heartbeat.

Ironically Mr. Boykin himself, died of heart failure in 1982. I wonder if the device, he helped make, that saved so many lives, would have helped to save his own?

Tell us what you think leave a comment

TBTR

George Edward Alcorn, Jr.

George Alcorn co-patented a Method of fabricating an imaging X-ray spectrometer. Patent #4618380 issued on October 21, 1986.  He received his four year Bachelor of Science degree from Occidental College.  Later he earned his Masters from Howard University in Nuclear Physics in 1963.  An earned his PH.D in Atomic and Molecular Physics also from Howard University.

Dr. Alcorn hold eight patents in the US and Europe on semiconductor technology his area of research includes:

• Adaptation of chemical ionization mass spectrometers for the detection of amino acids and development of other experimental methods for planetary life detection;
• Classified research involved with missile reeentry and missile defense;
• Design and building of space instrumentation, atmospheric contaminant sensors, magnetic mass spectrometers, mass analyzers;
• Development of new concepts of magnet design and the invention of a new type of x-ray spectrometer.

Dr. Alcorn spent time as a research engineer with the Space Science Division of North American Rockwell.  While there he performed computer analysis of launch trajectories and orbital mechanics involved missiles.  He worked on the Titan I and II and the Saturn IV.

TBTR

Copyright: emeagwali.com

Philip Emeagwali is one of two winners of the 1989 Gordon Bell Prize. The Gordon Bell Prize is awarded by the Association for Computer Machinery in conjunction with the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. The award is given each year at the Supercomputing Conference to recognize outstanding achievement in high-performance computing applications.

Philip won the award for his use of Connection Machine supercomputer to help analyze petroleum fields. He programmed the Connection Machine to compute a world record 3.1 billion calculations per second using 65,536 processors to simulate oil reservoirs.

The supercomputer contained 4096 nodes with each node consisting of 16 processors.  I’m not sure but this sort of sounds like grid computing, I’m guessing this was Linux, or Unix…LOL

In the caption of this picture on emeagwali’s site it says that he helped give birth to the supercomputer, the technology that spawned the internet.  While he may have achived this awesome accomplishment I don’t think we can she he gave birth to the supercomputer.  On top of that his site also states that he is “Father of the Internet”.  I’m just saying that’s a bit much, but the accomplishment was a great addition to modern computing.

TBTR

Thomas Stewart patented a new type of mop, but that’s not why he is listed as Day 7 Black History in Technology.  He is listed because he co-patented an improved station and street indicator in 1883. It was used with railways and street cars to signal what road or street the vehicles were crossing.

Their indicator would automatically activate a signal by means of a lever on the side of the track.

While this fact might be short, his contribution along with William Edward Johnson, has saved hundreds, if not thousands of lives.

TBTR

Cordell Reed born in 1938 was in charge of nuclear licensing and environmental activities for Commonwealth Edison Company of Chicago.  Reed started with the company in 1960, starting as an engineer assigned to the design, construction, and operation of coal-fired generating stations.

In 1967 he transferred to their Nuclear division, his task was developing more efficient and productive power plants.  The work he did during that time lead him to a promotion in 1975 as he was appointed manager of the nuclear engineering department, where he headed a group of 75 engineers who were responsible for the engineering design of all nuclear projects.

During Reeds work Commonwealth became the Nations’ leading nuclear utility;  Reed is a native of Chicago, and holds a masters degree in engineering from the University of Illinois.

Here is my salute to Mr. Reed for leading the way in the improvements, and literally writing the book on Nuclear Policy.

TBTR

Mark Dean born on March 2, 1957 is credited in two very important areas of the modern computer systems.  He was Chief engineer for the team that developed the IBM PC/AT the original home/office computer.  Later he helped develop the Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) system bus.  This allowed multiple peripheral devices such as modems, and printers to be connected to a PC.

Dean owns three of the original nine patents that all PCs are based upon.  In early 1999 he and his team at IBM made history successfully testing the first gigahertz (1Ghz) CMOS microprocessor.  Overall Dean holds about 20 patents.

What you may not know is that Dean graduated from the University of Tennessee in 1979, and Florida Atlantic University in 1982.  While he was well accomplished, he decided to go back to school to achieve his PhD in Electrical Engineering graduating in 1992.

It says so much about him being that he was already a great contributor to modern computer history, but knowing he didn’t know it all he choose a path to higher learning.

TBTR

James West was a Bell Laboratories employee at Lucent Technologies; he specialized in electro, physical, and architectural acoustics.  His research in the early 1960′s help in the development of technology that is used in sound recording and voice communications.  That technology is used in 90 % of all microphones built today.

Dr. James West was born in Prince Edward County Virginia, he attended Temple University and interned at Bell Labs during his summer breaks.  When he graduated, he joined Bell Labs and begin work in electoacoustics, physical acoustics, and architectural acoustics.

His patent #3,118,022 file May 22, 1962 (along with Gerhard Sessler)  was approved January 14, 1964 it was for the electro microphone (what we know as the Condenser microphone).  West holds 47 US and more than 200 foreign patents on microphones and techniques.

West retired from Lucent Technologies in 2001, while I saw a posting that he was with John Hopkins University Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, but looking through staff records I couldn’t find any current record of him.  I believe he must have moved on or retired again.

Some of the greatest voices on earth have been helped by this African American Inventor, image if he had never taken the path he did.

Electroacoustic Transducer

Do you have a home security system? Better yet do you have a home video suvallance system?  While the home security system is a very common item in most homes today, Marie Brown managed to do something no one had done before.

In 1966 she filed a patent for a closed-circuit television security system.  The patent was way a head of it’s time, it included 4 peep holes in the front door of a home.  A camera could slide up and down to look out each hole and that would be wirelessly beamed to a televison so the person inside could know who was at the door.  The person looking at the video could then unlatch the door by remote control.

Marie Van Brittan Brown was born October 30, 1922, she died on February 2, 1999 at the age of 76.  Mrs. Brown along with her husband Albert Brown also filed for other patents.

Patent #3,482,037 Filed August 1, 1966 Issued December 1969.

Below is the PDF of the patent with drawings, and explanation of this invention, please take a look at the drawings they are amazing.

Home Security System Utilizing Televison Surveillance

TBTR

Thomas Elkins

You might ask yourself who is Thomas Elkins?  He created something that we all know very well, we use it everyday and if it wasn’t for him refrigeration would not be possible.  Thomas Elkins designed a device that helped with preserving perishable foods through refrigeration.  This device was not the creation of the Refrigerator, but his design was instrumental in the creation of what we now know as the refrigerator.

Before he invented his device we had to bring in ICE from the mountains, and place that ICE with whatever we wanted to keep cool, in a self made hole in the ground.  This method of keeping items cold worked, but created pools of water after the ICE melted not to mention had to be attended to very frequently.

Elkins device used metal cooling coils which became very cold and would cool down items that they surrounded.   Elkins patented his device on November 4, 1879 patent #221,222.  An interesting fact someone posted on the internet, Thomas Elkins refrigerator was designed to chill human corpses.  I’m not sure if that was true or not but I thought it might be interesting information to add here.

Could you image a world without refrigeration?  I can’t…

TBTR

I can still remember the feeling I had as I watched the Space Shuttle Challenger go up into space on the morning of January 28, 1986, while I was in school.  Who would have known that 73 seconds into this launch something would go wrong.

I choose to talk about Ronald McNair as the first person in technology because of the impact it had on my life.  Take away his being named in 1978 to the NASA astronaut program he was a person of great character.

Ronald McNair was a 1967 Graduate with a BS from North Carolina A&T State University, and received his PHD from MIT in 1976.  Why he was choosen for the NASA program I’m not sure but I would guess it had something to do with his early development of chemical HF/DF and high pressure CO lasers.

I don’t think most people knew that this flight was not Dr. McNair’s first trip to space, February 3, 1984 was the first flight for him.  That mission was a success but as we all know the next flight he was associated with was not to fair so well.

I think about his work with lasers and I ask myself if his research would have continued…

Take a moment to Google Ronald McNair, after years we know many schools have been named after him, also countless buildings grace his name.

Reading about guys like this make you take a moment and address your life, where you are and where your going.

TBTR

February is here and that means “Black History Month” most of us remember these days from our childhood where schools would try and give some information about the contributions that African Americans have given to history. Keeping with that theme I decided to give the world a little bit of Black History myself. I decided to blog about  28 individuals over 28 days that have contributed to Black History with a Technology core.

If you read this blog then you know how often I post… almost once every two months, and if you know me then you can see how this could be a disaster or a compelling success. I want this to be a success, and I’m going to make sure I keep going with valid information about African Americans that have contributed to Black History in some Technological way.  If you want to thank someone for giving me the bug to do this, it’s my good friend Wayne Sutton his blog is here and he created the site “28 day of diversity“.

How ever big or small I want to take a moment to give light to some old and some new individuals that are making waves in Technology or have made waves. A word of caution I’m not here to debate all that these people have done in the world right or wrong, it’s a light that I want to use to help someone or give someone information they may not have known.

So pull up a chair and take a moment to read some of these post I will be bringing to you each and every day. By all means please send comments good or bad so that we can start a dialog about these people here on TBTR.

I hope you enjoy this “28 days of Black History in Technology”

TBTR

Hacked? What does it mean, well I guess it means something different for everyone, but if you’re a website that does 100% of it’s business on the internet, it means a lack of sleep, and a possible call to the justice department. Today I noticed a story as I logged on my computer about the dating site “Plenty o fish” they have been hacked.

Hacked usually means someone or a group of someone’s have broken the security of a website, application, or hardware device. For the latter hardware hacked it just means some one has taken the time and effort to break the code or security code of a device which now lets anyone on the device do things they shouldn’t be able to do. As such is the case with the Xbox Kinect device, which was hacked and there are sites popping up everyday to show you what joy they have in hacking this device.  I placed the search term here so you can see what people are doing with Kinect Hacked.

Although there are some good instanced of hacking there is the other side of the coin such in the case of Plenty o fish, their database was hacked and the username an passwords that people created for the site have fallen in the hands of Hackers with ill intentions. The story I came across is from thedrum a uk site that did a story on the owner of plenty o fish and the dilemma they are in. While the story is not that interesting the understanding of the hack is very interesting.

As with anything on the internet people usually come up with easy passwords when logging into and using online sites such as plenty o fish. I mean you can only use so many passwords before you start to forget them, and you’re always requesting a new password, over and over for that site you love. While I have talked about the alternatives to saving passwords, it never goes too far for me to remind you again.

Make sure when making a username and password for a site that you don’t make the password match the same password as your email account that you have tied to the website of your choice. In my opinion you’re just inviting something bad to happen to you. Imagine if that site gets hacked like plenty o fish, the hackers now have great information about you, your passwords, and email address. The only way to combat this type of hacking so that you don’t get touched is to create a different password for every site that you log onto. You can tie those passwords to one email address, so that if you forget the password, it will always send that password to your primary email address.

Another way to help combat hacking of your accounts is to create an email address that you only use for signing up with websites. This helps shield you from the potential of someone getting into your email account that you have had for many years.

With anything else you can never be 100% assured that your account won’t be compromised, but you will have the ability to lessen the problems that will be caused in your daily life if some one hacks a website you love.

Remember make complex passwords that don’t match any other passwords or accounts that you use on the internet.

Enjoy surfing the net

Oh…the story unfolds about plenty of fish hacked on their blog post

TBTR

If you haven’t heard Blackberry has a new Tablet coming to market it’s called the Playbook, a press release was sent out back on September 27, 2010 here.  While we won’t really know what to expect we can say this, apple and samsung will have some competition in the tablet market very soon.  Here are youtube videos of the Playbook in use with a nice comparison of the Playbook and iPad.

The videos looks awesome, let us know what you think about this device and what potential it has for personal or business use.

TBTR

If you didn’t know by now McAfee one of the premier leaders in Antivirus, Encryption, Firewall and other web centric solutions has just been acquired by Intel Corp for an estimated 7.68 Billion dollars in CA$H.  Right off the bat it leads me to believe two things here 1.) Intel is looking for a better bottom line, and an acquisition will take care of low cash amounts very quickly. and 2.) McAfee my have been about to go bye, bye, leading us to believe that without the acquisition McAfee’s old style mentality my have been spit into pieces.

 
Which ever reason I’m truly not sure but this does something for consumers right away.  For those who have purchased McAfee it ensures a long life that your products will continue to work, and support will continue.  One thing we know about Intel they always seem to make things work, they hire the best, and work you to death or so I’ve heard.
While the ink is still just drying we are all going to benefit from this purchase, especially if you use McAfee or maybe your looking to use it either way it’s worth it’s weight in GOLD about 7.68 Billion worth.

TBTR

The New Kindle

Yesterday Amazon.com announced they are about to release a new Kindle which is smaller, lighter, and faster.  Since Amazon introduced the Kindle it’s taking on a life of it’s own, for a device that I previously though would not be around.  Amazon has figured out the right way to market this device to those in need and they love the product hands down.

Amazon has two new models both come with a 6′ display, both have wifi, but one will feature a 3G connection that has no contracts with no additional cost.  Don’t get your hopes up to high this device will not let you surf the web like the iPad, but I would say thats probably coming along soon for Amazon. *wish list*

Kindle Wi-Fi $139 Click here to view

Kindle 3G $189 Click here to view

While I can see the uses for this new Kindle I have never been able to bring my self to pay the high cost of the other older 1st generation units $300+, but the new lower cost and the additional improvements make this a possible 2010 Christmas Gift to myself.

Enjoy

TBTR

Facebook…Facebook…Facebook…  I mean what more can you say about the Social Media darling with over 400 Million registered users.  While the light has been shining bright for Facebook there seems to be a new back lash of users who are either deleting their account, or limiting what they say and do on the social site.

I’m not one to speak too much about one website or the other, but at first Facebook was trying real hard to be the top social site on the internet and they have done it for sure.  What is the cost they had to pay to obtain that elusive status?  As of recent there have been reports of privacy concerns and other things that has Facebook under the microscope from the casual user to the seasoned Social Media Junkie.

I ran across an article on the NYDailyNews.com titled “Step-by-step tips to protect your Facebook infomation from ending up on other sites” please take a look at this article if your unsure about how your privacy settings are administered.  I think you might just be amazed at how much infomation your really exposing to the world.

TBTR

It looks like Facebook has been hit with another so called virus, which looks to steal among other things your bank passwords.  Please remember you need to make sure your not falling for the tricks of the trade we have talked about good passwords, but some of these things are very tricky.  Just remember when you log into facebook, always go directly to www.facebook.com don’t use hyperlinks that people might send to you, or a hyperlink from an advertisement.

REMEMBER FACEBOOK IS NEVER GONNA JUST RESET YOUR PASSWORD, DON’T CLICK ON THOSE LINKS.  IF YOU WANT PLEASE SHARE THIS STORY WITH YOUR FRIENDS.

AJC is reporting the virus here
McAFee is also report the issue I found this story at Reuters here

Be careful of links and request that say your password has been reset

TBTR

Over the last few years the cost of storage devices has come down to rock bottom pricing.  Remember when 20GB Hard drives cost hundreds of dollars?  I even remember the days when a 256MB portable pen drive cost about $49.95.  While I always thought that was way to expensive I didn’t buy at those prices.  One thing for sure with the cost driven down so low , most of us who used pen drives just went out and bought a portable 2.5 or 3.5 hard drive giving you gigs and gigs of space to place your movies, music, and DVD backups.  So now what do you do with those old pen drives that are just piling up on your desk like dust bunnies?

Portable apps has a solution for you, imagine you decided to visit a friend and while there you want to show him or her some of your documents or pictures, usually you would need to put up some website login and produce the images you want.  With Portable apps you now have a small device that can display your images, or let you pull up your bookmarks, even check email.  All of this can be done with out leaving the normal breadcrumbs on the foreign computer system.

Portable apps is installed as software on your pen drive so that as you place that drive in any computer your able to access your email, bookmarks, passwords and much more with out issues, it’s simple and a great way to keep those drives from becoming trash.

Take some time to check out www.portableapps.com they provide tons of software on the pen drive such as Firefox (web browser), Pidgin (instant messenger), OpenOffice (Like Microsoft Office but FREE).  Other applications are able to be installed with portable apps so the site will provide more links.

Make no mistake this does not replace your computer, but what it does do is provide a easy way to give you some familiarity to any computer you step up to and insert your USB pen drive.

TBTR

Comments are welcome always

• Apple to Developers: No Location-Based Ads for You http://ow.ly/16vg92 #
• Congress Asks NBC Why Hulu Blocked Boxee http://ow.ly/16vdC0 #
• Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Models + Live Video = One Sexy Stream http://ow.ly/16v9mA #
• Betty Goes Boop: Cc: Betty To Be Reborn As Threadbox http://ow.ly/16v9mB #
• How Social Media Helps One Small Business Connect with Fans http://ow.ly/16v5Aq #
• Apple’s iPad: Will it Improve the Web? http://ow.ly/16v2tt #
• AppFund Launches To Seed iPad Apps http://ow.ly/16uZ4o #
• Sneak Peek: Monster’s Super Bowl Social Media Blitz http://ow.ly/16uZ4n #
• iPhone Apps Get Web Previews http://ow.ly/16uVRC #
• Happy 6th Birthday, Facebook! http://ow.ly/16uQ3z #
• Cognitive Match Secures Another $2.5m For Realtime Matching http://ow.ly/16uQ3A #
• Symbian OS Goes Open Source http://ow.ly/16uNTV #
• AppsFire Draws In Some French Angels To Bankroll Mobile App Recommendations http://ow.ly/16uJSD #
• New post Twitter Updates for 2010-02-03 http://twurl.nl/vh64ja #

• Hovercards: Twitter Launches New Profile Preview Feature http://ow.ly/16uHUE #
• SAP Launches a Google Wave for the Enterprise http://ow.ly/16uFws #
• Factual Raises $1 Million Seed Round From Andreessen-Horowitz, Idealab, And Angels http://ow.ly/16uBmL #
• Los Twitteros: Mexico Eyes Legislation to Regulate Twitter http://ow.ly/16uBmK #
• Amazon Buys Touchscreen Company for Its Kindle Division [REPORT] http://ow.ly/16uxNM #
• Textbook Publishers Embrace iPad Apps for Education http://ow.ly/16uuBa #
• Mark Cuban May Hate News Aggregators, But He Also Wants To Invest In Them http://ow.ly/16urel #
• 11 Outstanding Online Resources for Web Developers http://ow.ly/16urek #
• Facebook Trends: Goodbye Doppelganger, Hello Urban Dictionary Week http://ow.ly/16uo56 #
• Acacia Awarded $12.4 Million In Patent Infringement Case Against Yahoo http://ow.ly/16uhTq #
• Windows 7 Reaches 10 Percent Market Share http://ow.ly/16ufEh #
• Online Video Ad Network BrightRoll Raises $10 Million http://ow.ly/16ubCN #
• Everybody Forgets The Readers When They Bash News Aggregators http://ow.ly/16ubCO #

• Music Consumption Faceoff: Subscription Vs. Ownership http://ow.ly/16u9uD #
• Add Private Notes to Tweets and Group Emails With Bccthis http://ow.ly/16u7dT #
• Video: Android’s New Pinch-To-Zoom Multi-Touch In Action http://ow.ly/16u2WA #
• Google's two-front war with Apple and Facebook; who are the winners and the losers? http://ow.ly/16u2WB #
• 10 Fabulous Valentine’s Day Gifts for Your Beloved Geek http://ow.ly/16u2Wz #
• Google Nexus One: Now With Multitouch http://ow.ly/16tZmN #
• Glue Introduces a New Way to Target Influencers http://ow.ly/16tWeJ #
• So who is going to purchase the new iPad? #
• Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch Defends Flash, Warns That HTML5 Will Throw The Web “Back To The Dark Ages Of Video” http://ow.ly/16tSI1 #
• Prop 8 Trial Re-enactments Circumvent Supreme Court’s YouTube Ban [VIDEO] http://ow.ly/16tSI0 #
• Does Facebook’s Doppelganger Week Violate TOS? http://ow.ly/16tPuR #
• Twitter Under Phishing Attack? http://ow.ly/16tMAC #
• New post Apple iPad, because I read in color. http://twurl.nl/2gfbgm #
• Twitter Asks Users To Reset Passwords After Possible Phishing Attack http://ow.ly/16tK01 #
• New Android From Motorola is Called Devour http://ow.ly/16tHR1 #
• Ustream Raises $75 Million in Funding http://ow.ly/16tFRe #
• Don’t Think Chrome OS Will Compete With iPad? Watch This Video. http://ow.ly/16tDGv #
• New post Twitter Updates for 2010-02-02 http://twurl.nl/cv8cgc #

introductions are usually blad, not at Apple

Many companies over the past 2 years have been trying desperately to appease the public, and most of all their shareholders during these financial times.  One company has been moved to display a calm and really serious valor for bringing innovation in times of hardship.  That company is apple with numerous consumer items at arms length it’s only fitting that they introduce one of the most anticipated items of the year.  On January 27th Apple let the world in on a secret that only the blogs were buzzing about for months.  Apple introduced the iPad which for lack of a better word seems “perfect”.

While some people look at these kind of events with one blind eye and deaf ears, when Apple speaks it’s like the old E.F. Hutton of the 80 “people listen”.  The keynote speech is up for anyone to download, and for those interested in Apple products I would say take a look at this Keynote.  While the CEO Steve Jobs looks surprisingly well, he is very thin, when you get past his lanky stance you get to the meat and potatoes of this event “The iPad”.

Simply "Perfect!"

What is it?

Apple says “It’s the best way to experience the web, email, photos, and video. Hands down.”  It’s a multi-Touch computer that enables you to do all of the above and more.  It weights just 1.5 pounds, with a 9.7 inch LED display.  Talk about beautiful products, this has to go down in history as just plan ass cool.  So many people have said that the iPad just looks like and over sized iTouch.  I will say it does have some cool features that allow you to surf the web, respond to emails, watch videos, and by all means even create & edit documents and presentations using iWork.  You get productivity in a small package that can make your life easier while traveling, having a client meeting, or just plain old surfing the web.

What does it do?

Well I think every person using a iPad will have an opportunity to decide how this question is solved.  We know you can surf the internet using safari no doubt (the build in browser in all apple products).  We also know the iPad has the capability to provide email in a small package, while so many of us are tied to our desk to read, and respond to email the iPad gives you a chance to come out of your email comfort zone.  Think about those photos that you have on your computer, say you want to organize them.  You can do that and more with the iPad, it gives you a chance to edit, move, and also watch some amazing slide shows right from the iPad.  It’s helps ease your access to pictures that you would normally have to display on a laptop.  No more, you now get a chance to show the best slide shows of your summer vacation at any time to anyone.  Think about, if your a photographer, and you want to show people more about photography and how you seem to capture the moment.  It’s all right here on the iPad.  We could talk about how well the device is tied to all the music you already own in iTunes, or the more than 140,000 apps in the iTunes app stores,  no need to buy your apps all over again, they work already out of the box on the iPad

Last, but not least the iPad has something very new to the Apple Store, iBooks.  Steve Jobs showed how effortlessly the iPad is able to display your books to be used as an e-book reader.  With a battery life of about 10 hours you could read most of a great novel during a trip overseas.  While there are other e-book readers out there, I don’t think you will find one that does so much more than just read books.  Lets be honest other e-readers only display in monochrome, but don’t we read in color?

Why should I want one?

I could sit hear and think of numerous reason why the iPad would be a great purchase, weather your a mac or windows fan.  Take these notes with you How much does it weigh? 1.5 pounds.  Can I surf the internet? Yes Am I able to listen to my music? Yes Do I get a chance to slow a slide presentation with out taking 10 minutes of messing around with the VGA cables and trying to get my laptop to display on the projector? Yes Do I get more precise use of Google Maps? Yes Notes and Contacts are included.  Honestly what more can you ask for in such a small package.  While netbooks have been making great strides, you need to understand the value of this new product.  I will never say that something fits all, I think its possible that Apple has created a product that’s not only pleasing to the eye but pleasing to the pocket book.

Take some time to get to know the iPad here at the Apple site, also everybody will have an opinion it’s not right for every occasion, but it’s damn close.  Congratulations Apple for being the true innovator we always knew you were, keep up the good work.

TBTR

• iPad Hardware Reveals Potential Slot for Camera http://ow.ly/16tBFK #
• Google to Launch App Store for Google Apps [REPORT] http://ow.ly/16tzy4 #
• Rumor: Apple Has Another Tablet In The Works. More Like A Mac Than An iPhone. http://ow.ly/16tvCh #
• Zune Phone and Windows 7 Mobile to Debut This Month [RUMOR] http://ow.ly/16tvCg #
• Mashable’s Social Media Week San Francisco Closing Party: This Friday http://ow.ly/16ts2j #
• Amazing, Extraordinary, Tremendous: The 3-Minute iPad Keynote [VIDEO] http://ow.ly/16tpiN #
• Target’s Facebook Campaign Combines the Super Bowl and Valentine’s Day http://ow.ly/16tm9L #
• Facebook Now Has Yahoo In Its Sites, Already Bigger In Pageviews (ComScore) http://ow.ly/16tm9M #
• Microsoft’s Tag Links the Physical World To the Internet http://ow.ly/16tgbW #
• Nokia, Pearson Set Up Digital Education Joint Venture In China http://ow.ly/16tdrZ #
• Social Networks Are Becoming a Security Risk [SURVEY] http://ow.ly/16tdrY #
• Steve Jobs Is Not Happy With Google, Adobe http://ow.ly/16tb76 #
• Does Foursquare Have A Douchebag Problem? http://ow.ly/16t6Y2 #

I have been thinking for a while about keeping this blog going, and for the moment the appeal is just not there.  I could say that talking about technology is getting…shall I say boring and uneventful.  Personally I have been reading more and more, and since I have gotten rid of cable I have also tried to stay away from the computer more and more.  Reading was never a passion of mine, but lately I’ve read some really good books.  I guess I’m just taking a little bit of time to look inside and figure out what direction I’m going.

I hope to see you on the other side in 2010.

Happy Holidays

Jayson Flint

Microsoft and Bill Gates (The riches man in the world) should be proud and over joyed at the soon to be success of the new Windows 7 OS.  PC manufactures, along with others should be burning the midnight oil with glee knowing they have a product that we can all stand behind. According to CNNMoney article “Windows 7 ready to launch” Experts expect that PC users will change their operating system for the first time in about eight years when Windows 7 launches today.

We all know someone or heard about someone that had horrific experiences with Vista.  As a network administrator I gave recommendations to my superiors about what technology we should implement, and what we should wait on.  I always stated that we should wait out the Vista movement for the next flavor, and I was 120% right from a support stand point.  Vista came along and gave us too many issues I felt like from a support stand point it would have been a true nightmare not only for me but for management as well.

Windows 7

I don’t see the issues of the past with Windows 7 I see an operating system that has been tested, tested, and tested again.  Personally back before the summer started I started using Windows 7 on a older less powerful machine.  “Wow” are the words I uttered when using Windows 7 for the first time, because I think Microsoft finally got it, the bells and whistles don’t mean a thing if the OS does not perform some of the most basic functions with ease.  I can speak from experience that Windows 7 is a great OS to use on your current system, and also on a older system that you would have normally thrown away.  Don’t listen to the clutter that’s gonna start about well you should just buy a new computer, I would presume that those Tech support places will all be saying this, but resist my friendly computer user unless your computer is a Pentium II or lower with less than 512MB.  If it’s any better than that I’m tell you Windows 7 should be an eye opener.

What about Windows XP?

Well for those of you who have used Windows XP in my opinion you will gain a better Operating System in Windows 7, and workhorse right out of the box, new features, speed, and the capability to take off where Windows XP ended are clear indications that you should go for it.  Lets just say with the introduction of Windows 7, in 6 months no one will remember that thing called Vista in my opinion.  Now if your using XP at this point and you are going to install Windows 7 your gonna have a problem upgrading.  This has always been the Microsoft policy when upgrading, if your two generations back in Operating systems, they don’t make it very easy for you to upgrade with a “One click solution” I would guess there will be many companies taking advange of this (creating software to help Windows XP users upgrade).  My best advise for anyone looking to upgrade from Windows XP to Windows7 please do yourself a favor, make a backup of your critical data, such as documents, pictures, program data for specific programs and such.  Then insert your new Windows 7 OS CD and choose to do a clean install on your computer or laptop.  Then place your data and programs on the new OS.

Windows XP all flavors (Pro, Home, Media Center, Tablet, and x64) will be unsupported in the next two years so upgrade is eminent

Don’t let the experts scare you into buying a new computer, the one thing I have noticed is that with older machines I have had great success with Windows 7.  Currently I run Windows 7 in VMWare on my MacBook Pro and it’s been working like a charm, to my credit I had to tweak some stuff, but that’s what I do.  I hope your success with Windows 7 comes soon, I will say that you will not be disappointed going from any other OS to Windows7

Chime in and tell me if you have been using Windows 7 or if you plan on upgrading to the new OS in the comments?

TBTR

Password Leak

As many of you may have heard about the Hotmail Password leak that occurred early this week.  The administrator of Pastebin.com has written a sweet and simple blog post.  He has removed the names and email addresses, but as a last effort to tell the community how to fix this issue he says

please don’t ask if your name was on the list. I have no way of knowing. Just change your password.

Sounds simple but as the administrator those of us who are admins know the truth.  If your the admin of a domain or a site, your “GOD” meaning you can see everything and anything you want.  At larger companies they take many precautions to ensure that only 1 person really has the full access to the system, but regulations are in place to police that person in the system.  Remember when things like this happen, just change your password and move on, don’t worry about it any more than that.

P.S. Any system can be cracked no matter how good a password you have but I would upgrade to a different email system be it Google, Yahoo, or your own domain email.

TBTR

Its amazing how my brain works and what seems to be just a post out of the sky about Dropbox on Monday has now turned into a second post about Dropbox.  So you might ask yourself why would I post another story about Dropbox one reason is because Dropbox is just flat out Cool.  The other reason is because Dropbox has launch an iPhone app which can be downloaded as of now.

• Access your Dropbox on the go
• Download files for offline viewing
• Sync photos and videos to your Dropbox
• Share links to files in your Dropbox

Just as I was about to download the Dropbox App I found out that you must have Ver 3.1 installed on your iPhone or iTouch.  I was using the iTouch, so since I can’t use the App at this time if any of my iPhone toting friends can let me know what they think in the comments I would appreciate it very much.

Data, no matter how much you have now days, your needs keep growing year over year, and for some people it’s month over month.  Recently I’ve been reading more and more about storage devices, and backup solutions, stay tuned for more coverage of these topics.  I recently blogged about Dropbox where I talked a little bit about how you can use this service to share, and backup data.  Sometime ago I also talked about Google Docs which gives you online space for documents and other files. I recently ran across a press release about the new Seagate FreeAgent DockStar $99.99, the name reminds me of DeathStar but maybe that’s because I’m a StarWars Fan.

Anyways the FreeAgent DockStar by itself does nothing, it’s just a docking station, with a power adapter and a ethernet port, but when you couple this device with FreeAgent Go portable storage solution you get a large amount of data that you can now store and access from across the internet which means anywhere in the world.  The device as stated has a dock port for the FreeAgent Go device, 3 USB ports to plug in other storage devices including USB thumb drives, and NON Seagate storage devices, a power adapter and ethernet cable.

So you ask the question what is this product just supposed to do for me?

You get a device that can enable your storage to be placed on the internet (encrypted) so you can access your iTunes music, your pictures, your video, your documents etc.  It can even create a RSS feed for each of those directories, which now enables you to give that to anyone who can plug the feed info into a feed reader so as changes are made to your directories they get updates showing the changes without the traditional notification of calling someone, or having to email them to say take a look at the new data I uploaded. Here are some of the highlights:

• File sharing at its simplest with a clean, web-based interface.
• Access files from any networked PC or Mac® computer in your home.
• After service activation, access and share files with friends, over the internet — no special software required.
• Enables friends to upload content as well, creating a comprehensive share space.
• Appears as a local drive whether in the home or accessed through the internet, for simple drag-and-drop access.
• Dock a FreeAgent Go™ drive and connect up to three USB storage devices.
• Send pictures straight from your iPhone® to the FreeAgent DockStar network adapter.
• Gigabit Ethernet connectivity.

Think about this…

Imagine your out of town, visiting a friend or loved one, and you want to show them that video from this summer. Without a device like this or some kind of web service you would just have to wait till you got home, figured out a way to upload all the videos you want to show them, then pray that they know how to access the files.  This solutions eliminates that issue, all you have to do is connect to the internet using any computer and supply your username and password, then start streaming the video directly to this computer.  That is awesome, an just down right cool when you think about all the other things you would have to do otherwise.

In my case it now eliminates the fact that I had to keep my server running at home while traveling hoping and praying that something didn’t happen to my hard drive on the computer or it didn’t over heat and start a fire.  Those days are long gone in my book with the FreeAgent DockStar.

Conclusion

I think that Seagate is obviously on the right track to supply us with a solution that makes things easy, but the one draw back I have is the fact that the device uses the underlining technology of pogoplug.com which is not a bad thing it’s just that DockStar only comes with a 1 year pogoplug subscription for internet sharing after that first year you have to pay $29.99 to continue usage that is where the device fails in my eyes.  Why should we have to pay after 1 year, when if we just purchase a pogoplug for $99.99 the Internet Sharing is FREE for ever.  Most people who purchase this device would not know this if they didn’t know the underlining technology is pogoplug.  Shame on you Seagate for trying to pad the bottom line when you really don’t have to this way.

TBTR

The cost of computers has come down so much so that now days a lot of people have more than one computer in their home.  Some have a desktop computer for the kids, while others have the desktop for gaming, and a laptop for mobile, or job work.  What ever the situation lets face it, the more computers you bring into the home, the more data i.e files, music etc that is spawned all over your multiple computers.

To fix this issue of data everywhere, you could create a home network, but unless you have the money that option is just not feasible.  On the other hand you could use a large USB thumb drive to keep your most precious files with you at all time, but lets face it.  If you lose the thumb drive, you also loose all your data, with personal and confidential files included for who ever finds it to see.

Dropbox is here to help you with trying to keep your data in one place, and on top of that it’s easy to use from a PC, Mac or Linux OS.  How about 2GB of storage space in the cloud (online) for FREE? I have personally been using Dropbox for over a year, and while I use it in different ways you may find this as a solution for you in a couple of areas:

• Keeping your iTunes music files synced in one place
• Personal documents follow you no matter what platform
• Pictures can be located in one place on each system
• Collaboration should be much easier since you can share the system with any number of installs
• You never have to email files to yourself for safe keeping
• This space could be used as a permanent backup solutions for you
• Sharing a file on the internet is easy
• Do you have alot of MP3 files for your podcast you wanna share, Dropbox can help with that too

Dropbox is software that syncs your files online and across your computers.

Since I can only say so many good things about Dropbox, and you won’t get it until you try it, here is a full list of the features.  Remember this is free for 2GB of space, there are pay plans and I would encourage you to purchase more space if you really need an online repository for all your data.  The files are encrypted on and over the internet so hackers can’t get into your account.  Now if you use one username and one password on the internet, then your a target for someone to hack your accounts, but thats a whole other story.

It just works,

TBTR

Samson the makers of premiere Audio devices is set to make a splash with it’s new Video Recorder dubbed “Q3″.  This device is cabable of recording video at 640 x 480 resolution, althought I don’t see any references to HD quality I’m sure the video image is usable.  Lets face it even if you have have a HD video camera, sites such as Youtube don’t allow you to upload in HD quality, so your audience never gets HD quality. 

Sampson known for audio equipment is trying to take a way the bad audio stigma, that comes with these small video devices. Sampson’s Q3 has True Stereo Sound, which makes for a awesome device that can definitely make bad video much better with quality audio. 

This true audio is achieved by the Q3 having two condenser mics on-board, arranged in such a way that gives you the best stereo recording possible. When I see the Q3 it’s look clunky and futuristic but when you think about it, that could be an advantge when holding the device, it probably provides a better grip.  The unit also includes audio meters so you can set and monitor your levels as you shoot, this is an added plus when you look at the other video recorders that don’t give you any choice in the matter when it comes to audio settings.

Overall the Sampson Q3 looks like a winner although I predict that most will overlook the Q3 as a novelty because The Flip, and Kodak Zi units get most of the coverage and are seen in a lot of online circles.

Features:

Built-in stereo condenser microphones with X/Y configuration for true stereo imaging
Get up to 1 hour of video with bundled 2GB SD card
Accepts up to a 32GB SDHC card for 16 hours of recording time
Large 2.4″ LCD display with a resolution of 320 x 240
Video resolution of 640 x 480 at 30 frames/sec
Video Format: MPEG-4 SP
NTSC / PAL TV output
Optics Lens Type: Fixed Focus (0.8m to infinity)
Audio formats with video include 44.1/48kHz 16/24-bit Linear PCM WAV or MP3 up to 320kbps
Audio only formats include 96kHz 16/24-bit Linear PCM WAV
Auto Record Level automatically adjusts audio levels during recordings
Uses two standard AA batteries or NiMH rechargeable batteries
USB 2.0 with built-in cable
Windows and Mac OS compatible
Built-in speaker and tripod mount
Includes on-board editing software, YouTube up loader software, Apple Quicktime, TV cable, softcase, windscreen, 2GB SD card, two AA Batteries

P.S. Promise me if you get a hold of one before I do, you’ll pass it along so I can review this puppy.

TBTR

I came across a post today from Gizmodo.com the headline read “Remember The AT&T Ads About the Future? You will” This short story written by Danny Allen reminded me of one thing, Vision.  Through out the history of time we have come across people that have for one reason or another been ahead of their time.  AT&T back in 1993 was ahead of it’s time, each thought they displayed about the future has come true, but it’s not all because of AT&T.  It’s in my opinion because of some one there that had a great vision for the future and you know what they were probably called a crackpot, or lun in one or more circles.

This is why you have to just let people be who they are, technology is a place where dreamers can dream and create.  This is why I love Technology, here are the ads that we are talking about.  Everyone has vision, will you use it? or let someone defeat your vision, I pray you understand what I mean.  Enjoy this old collage of videos from AT&T 1993.

Hp is about to introduce a new digital frame that seems to go far beyond the normal viewing of photos.  The HP DreamScreen will allow you to show photos, connect to the internet, access social media and more.  For the suggested price of $249 you can have one.

We all know how these devices show you pictures, but what about your friends latest pictures from Facebook, or their most recent status updates?  Now that’s what I’m talking about, remember it’s not a full time computer, so don’t think you will be responding back on the unit, and it does not have a touch pad.  (YES I’M STILL WAITING FOR THE APPLE TABLET) That kind of makes me sad, but come on they gotta keep the cost down somehow.  Imagine Pandora streaming music for you, the DreamScreen does that too. I’m finding a weather forecast is pretty important in Florida, DreamScreen has you covered.

This seems to be just the beginning for the digital photo frame revolution which for 2009 is a $25 million dollar industry, projected for $50 million by 2013.  When twitter, and a open API are available (I hope)  I’ll be more able to really show my geekness to those who visit me and my HP DreamScreen.

Recently Google celebrated a milestone the 1 year anniversary launch of the Google Chrome browser.  I remember when it was swirling around the internet that Google was about to drop a browser on the Internet community we were all a buzz over it.  That was over 366+ days ago and what have the super geeks at Google been up to, well they have been making improvements in the Google Chrome browser.  They say that the Google browser now has quicker load times, and runs web applications faster.

The stable release of Chrome under windows was released yesterday some of the benefits are listed below:

• 150% increase in javascript performance
• Redesigned new tab page
• Some HTML 5 features are included
• Form auto fill
• Side by side view
• Ability to remove items from the tabs

Give the stable version a try here

For those of us who use a Mac or Linux they state that at this time, there is no release, but they are making rapid progress.  You can download a copy of the developers version for Mac & Linux which will let you try Chrome on your Mac or Linux, but understand it’s not a stable release.  Us geeks can try it out anyways and at least see how things are coming along.

TBTR

So imagine looking at the web as a virtual magazine of content, you get to see the stories of the day.  The stories can be any of the vast number of topics your interested in everyday.  Google Labs has a new item called Google Fast Flip it’s described as:

Google Fast Flip is a web application that lets users discover and share news articles. It combines qualities of print and the Web, with the ability to “flip” through pages online as quickly as flipping through a magazine. It also enables users to follow friends and topics, discover new content and create their own custom magazines around searches.

It’s simple you visit the site and skim, the news content that interest you and your friends, or just choose a subject and start viewing your virtual magazine.  One day when they put this into a reader like Kindle from Amazon.com, then we might really have something on our hands for now I’ll just play around with it for the rest of the day.

At present it’s only available on the Google Labs website in English, but International users should be able to see it.  You can also view a full list of the headline sources here http://fastflip.googlelabs.com/sources.

TBTR

With the introduction of Windows 7, we are at another crossroads in time. Microsoft is releasing Windows 7 in late October, in my opinion that day will be the death of Vista. The major reason is because worldwide acceptance was never on the radar for Vista, EVER! and Windows 7 is ready to pounce. Microsoft can show the share holders the value of Vista but when that value is inflated with numbers that come from new PC sales, not existing customers upgrading, also not tied to the number of New PC sold with the Windows XP downgrade, I hope you see the point I’m making.  Vista was never accepted in very wide circles, you had to take it when buying a new computer and this made the numbers looked very good for Microsoft in doing that kind of a move.

Many small to medium sized businesses never moved from Windows XP, and we know why that never happen. Microsoft had finally over time gotten something right with the release of Windows XP SP2 and the OS (Operating System) was so stable, that you were in awe that it could continue to run for weeks and even months without crapping out. Microsoft had to push back the end of Lifecycle on Windows XP, because it was so stable, and the heat they took for saying it was coming to an end without a good alternative had many people crying foul.

One of the other major problems with Vista was the overly abundant versions of the OS from the simple OS to the most complex and secure model, I believe there were 6 different versions, and for a consumer wanting to upgrade from any other OS they had a technical decision that most just could not make so the easiest thing to do was just to stay with what you had.

Windows 7 is coming on October 22, 2009

I remember when Windows XP dropped and people were at the Mall ready to purchase it at 12:01AM. Some people were camped out at the door steps of the local best buy looking to grab a first copy. Microsoft had that kind of effect on people (geeks) but now days everyone knows bugs are gonna be an issue with any brand new OS. My father always said “Never buy a new car the first year it’s in production” in my opinion my father knew what a beta tester was even way back then.  Even Mac has had it share of bugs with the Snow Leopard release. Since we all know how Microsoft is famous for releasing a product, to the masses knowing damn well it’s an unstable release, some will fear the same with Window 7 and will not brave the weather to be in a store at 12:01AM to purchase the OS.

You have a decision to make, upgrade of clean install?

With any OS you have to make a very important decision about weather you should upgrade, or install the new OS as a clean install (meaning you delete the data on the hard drive and install the new OS on the formatted hard drive). Upgrades are an unknown factor when it comes to computer systems, meaning that you could have a smooth install or one that deletes all your hard work that you have acquired over the years. It’s always a good idea to have a full backup of your computer system, from software files, to personal photos, and personal data files from your most used applications.

Once you start the process of upgrading you can’t turn back so weigh the decision very seriously. Take the time to read the information about the upgrade process. One thing I will say is that Microsoft will throw a ton of PDF’s at you explaining how to do something with their OS. It’s truly a Google, or should I say Bing search away.

Why upgrade?

The major reason you should upgrade to any OS is because of the new capabilities of the software, along with refinements in speed, access, and security to name a few. It’s amazing how much faster a system will run with the right equipment inside your computer. Understand that a lot of times when someone upgrades their PC they are doing this for reasons only they know. Some people notice how much faster the new OS will access their data, some people will notice how finding items, and doing normal task will speed up with a simple upgrade. The upgrade is supposed to give you access to possible new features that were not included in the older previous versions of the OS.

Why Clean install?

Clean install, is the best way to start your OS life with a existing computer. Note: If you already have a brand new computer with Windows 7 installed you will not need to even read this post. Clean install means you wipe the hard drive of your computer with many of the free (disk erase) tools on the net. Understand this will totally delete all Software, and Personal files from your PC. You will never be able to get them back so make sure you backup your data and personal files, there I said it again. Backup, Backup, Backup oh and don’t forget to look at the backups once your done. I’ve seen first hand a company backup data, but the never looked at said data before wiping out a hard drive and poof, the damage is done. One company I know of was totally down for 7 days, they had no computer systems to use and lost a lot of business because backups were never checked.

That clean install is just like having a new computer, remember when you first bought your computer home from the store and you took the time to set it up and when you turned it on it was so fast you thought it was a mistake. That is what a clean install will do for you, if you just upgrade some of those old files and programs are gonna start up as your new systems starts, thus slowing down your computer. I suggest you either consult a real technology professional, when doing a upgrade or clean install. Or at least I suggest you take the time to view some of the thousands of pages that Microsoft has out there to help you upgrade your system.

The jury is still out on how popular the new Windows 7 OS will be, but I can say this, I’ve been using a version of Windows 7 that seems to be working like a charm and I have had no issues, oh except the time I closed my laptop while using VMWare on my Macbook Pro, while Windows 7 was running in the background processing a programs data (blue Screen of Death). I will probably say I caused that crash, with all my awesome geekness.

TBTR

As an avid blackberry user and former Network Administrator I have come across a ton of scenarios where backup was needed but not practiced.  Some methods I’ve used to fix these problems come from knowledge base articles, to online forums, to just plain old common sense.  There is one thing that as a tech junkie I have to talk about today.  That subject is about Backing up your data, While there are many articles on the net about backing up your personal (Computer) data many don’t talk about backing up your cell phone data.

I have been a blackberry user for over 5 years now, and in that time it’s come to my attention over and over again, the question is not if I will lose data it’s when?  That “when” you may never know, but since blackberries and Smart Phones in general are the norm now days.  We all have to take the proper precautions to save our data.  Some of us have saved data for years, and while most people can’t understand why someone would want to save so much useless data.  I have a ton of reasons I’ll go into on another post some day.

Why Backup your Smart Phone

Simply you have over time added more and more task, contacts, memo’s, notes, and other things to your Smart Phone that if you lost today, you have no where to get it back.  A lot of these phones can carry an enormous amount of data including files, pictures, calendars and other things.  These items are usually stored in the ROM of your smart phone.  Wikipedia.org defines ROM as Read-only memory (usually known by its acronym, ROM) is a class of storage media used in computers and other electronic devices. Because data stored in ROM cannot be modified (at least not very quickly or easily), it is mainly used to distribute firmware (software that is very closely tied to specific hardware, and unlikely to require frequent updates). ROM cannot be removed from your phone, it’s a permanent storage area within your device.

This ROM is your internal MEMORY which saves your data, pictures, and other items to your device.  Some smart phones also have a memory flash card that lets you create a place to store more data, that you can also remove from your phone and even access with a computer given the right software sometimes. Usually this flash card only saves pictures, music, video, and items that you record, but it does not save any contacts, calendar, task or other items that are part of the phones software.

I understand ROM, but tell me why I need to backup

A Smart phone is just like a computer it can fail, and if it does will you be able to recover that special number, or contact calendar from your device?  In most cases NO, you will never get that data back and it’s over.  You have to start from scratch with entering all your contacts again, which means an enormous amount of your personal time, not to mention the loss of critical items that are gone forever.  Don’t even think about sending your device to a specialty tech shop that deals in lost data, if you do plan on spending hundreds of dollars.

You don’t need to lost your data, at least you can always have a backup with in reach at any given moment.  Most Smart phones come with software that you can use to import contacts, task, calendar functions and other things that help.  Along with that most of them allow you to backup your data right to the same computer that you use to do all these functions.  I’m only going to discuss the blackberry method today but remember there are many manufactures out there that also do this, please consult your device manual for more information.  Better yet call your carrier, and ask for the data team or someone that can help you set up backups with your phone and the accompanying software, that is what they are there for in my opinion.

Blackberry backup method

You will need:

• Blackberry device
• USB Cable

Since I’m all about saving time and allowing you to get the best resources for answers I took the time to sift the net and found some resoruces that should help you in the process.  They tell you how to make that backup of your device and should help as a written example of how to do this, I hope my words hit home.  Remember this can happen to anyone, it’s only a matter of time.

Indiana University With a Blackberry, how do I backup and restore data

BlackBerry Cool Backing up your Blackberry (Cool Screenshots)

BlackBerry Rocks How to backup and restore your Blackberry (Even Cooler updated Screenshots)

TBTR (Comments are always welcome)

Tr.im is resurrected along with the fire storm that started it all, We discuss the new Microsoft Zune HD which is gonna try once again to compete with the Apple iPod, and last we discuss the New Mac OS X snow leopard software that hit shelves on 8/28/2009.

Thanks,

TBTR

FriendFeed was acquired by Facebook, we talk about that and we had our First Official caller into the Podcast Michelle called and we are overwhelmed and delighted to have had her voice introduced into the podcast.

Thanks so much Michelle

iTunes link here

As always comments are welcome

TBTR

In this edition of TBTR we talk about Google Chrome beta, Google OS and netbook plans for 2010, and the Twitter DDoS Attack from Thursday morning.

TBTR

Today’s podcast talks about the Sony and Kindle e-reader, The Microsoft & Yahoo deal, Twitters redesigned homepage, The current Apple Revolt over Approval then Removal of applications, including the Google Voice debacle, The USMC bans the usage of Social Sites on there network for the enlisted, and Apples warning about those who jail break the iPhone.

TBTR

While Microsoft and Yahoo pounded out a new long awaited partnership, a small company has firmly placed it’s hat into the arena as a Real-time search engine, Twitter.com.  Twitter has long been seen as a site for uber geeks, and that thing people do for fun, but today Biz Stone one of the founders of Twitter announced on the Official Twitter blog about the new home page redesign.

It looks like they have made a change for the better or maybe the worst (more about that later).  The new design shows a focus on topics that are hot by the minute, day, and month.  This is showing up as a fire storm on the internet it’s obvious that twitter is really trying to make money by positioning themselves in a better way to grow and create revenue.

Twitter began as a rudimentary social tool based on the concept of status messages but together with those who use it every day, the service has taught us what it wants to be. From features invented by users to applications built on the platform, we’re still discovering potential. Twitter has moved from simple social networking into a new kind of communication and a valuable source of timely information. Also, it’s fun.

We all know how many companies have failed at trying to change the original concept of having fun while being different from the rest of the pack.  Twitter will remain different from Bing.com and Yahoo.com which are both horrible in there own little ways.  A head of twitter I see a lot of changes to the culture and pure awesomeness of the site I have come to know and love.  You see twitter while a darling in the social world is burning through cash like Netscape was during the Internet Explorer invasion.  The only way for twitter to survive and stay a float is to do something that gives them more appeal and makes us all look at them like the kid that got beat up on the playground.  You feel sorry for the poor guy, but those who were his friends from the beginning will remain loyal and now tell more friends just how awesome he really is.

The internet has long been buzzing about what twitter can do to start making money, I think this is one of the items on the radar along with paid accounts, which hopefully will give you more capability.  I think the problem with twitter coming up with paid capabilities is the fact that most of what they think up will have already been made by a third party app using the Open twitter API.

While it has been a challenge trying to explain what twitter is to a lot of my friends who are not twitter users, this looks like at least I can tell them use twitter when you want to search a topic that is right now Real-time.  If a huge news story hits the wire, it’s almost a given it was first reported in 140 characters on twitter.  The appeal to a lot of people is the always on and current topics that seem to find it’s way into twitter.  Only time will tell if this “Search Engine direction” is a good move or not, we do know this twitter is here to stay and I’m loving every minute of my 140 characters.

Tell me what you think about twitters new direction by leaving a comment

TBTR

I just gotta say WOW I am amazed at the Google Voice Application for my blackberry.  You can read about it here “Google Voice for Android and Blackberry) While those iPhone users are pissed they didn’t get an application for their OS, I’m so excited I was able to download and update my new Google Voice Application on my Blackberry.

From the Google Blog: So with that, we’re excited to release the Google Voice app for Android and Blackberry. You can use the app to make outgoing SMS messages and calls from your Google Voice number. What’s more, this app improves the mobile experience of Google Voice in a number of ways.

Google released the application today and when I saw the topic trending I went to get a copy immediately m.google.com/voice the site started my OTA download and I was able to input my information to get the application working.  At first it didn’t seem to want to download my info, but after a few minutes it showed my last few calls, and also all the text messages I still had in my Google Voice messages area.

If you want a invite to Google Voice please signup at the google voice invitation link

TBTR

Mashable ran a blog post today called Followformation: Quickly Follow Dozens of Categorized Twitter Users.  The problem with the story in my opinion is it looks like someone at Mashable or someone with close ties to Mashable created this BS service. I mean when you goto the twitter site http://twitter.com/followformation it shows only 130 friends, and 19 updates. The service was started by http://www.aermarketing.com/

It’s not even a well tested services, so what gives Mashable the thought to post about story about it.  I know they report Social Media stuff but damn some things just look weird now days.  It seems everyone is posting links for people in their twitter streams, and they don’t always say “PAID AD”.  You be the judge but there are many services that I don’t have to sign up for to get the same kind of information.

This story is just bland in my Opinion.

TBTR

I ran across a story just a while ago from Mashable: Bing Now Bigger Than Digg, Twitter and CNN.  People seem to wanna give Bing.com it’s props for being a initial success.  Well from the statistics it seems that’s true, but tell me what is the major reason they are getting all this traction?  I have used Bing.com a couple of times but it’s nothing special, it’s just a new search engine.  Microsoft finally got it right don’t try to build off the old search system build a whole new search system.  That is part of the success, but the truth Bing is successful for one reason and one TRUE reason alone ONE HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS.  That is the advertising budget that has been alocated for the serach engine.  Tell me who can’t succeed with that kind of money at their disposal.  Now take that to the bank, IMO the jury is still out on bing.  Lets see how much traction they keep after the money is gone.  You can call me a hater or fill in the _________, but you know how things go with Microsoft they copy successful companies instead of innovate as they claim.

Please leave me your comments about Bing.com and what you think.

TBTR

These days it seems everyone is trying to intergrate Visual voicemail into their wireless service.  I ran across a post where YouMail has brought the service to the iPhone in a post here from Cnet’s Jessica Dolcourt.

I also heard Verizon charges for this service, while everyone is trying to make money off the Visual voicemail one service is not.  Google’s former service GrandCentral has been providing this feature for over two years now it’s been renamed Google Voice.  At one time you could invite people to the service, but that option has been turned off for some time.  This is the latest post about Google Voice:

To clear up any confusion, please note that there are no Google Voice invites available at this time. There has been no distribution of any sort of Google Voice invites, as these invites do not exist. The best way to be informed when Google Voice becomes available for sign up is by providing your information at https://services.google.com/fb/forms/googlevoiceinvite/.

I would suggest you signup, also if you already use Google Voice leave a comment about how you like the service.

Thanks,
TBTR

WordPress hands down might be the best blogging platform around, but with so many changes so quickly do you really need to upgrade today?  I always say when it comes to upgrades on blogs or on standard Operating systems, unless the update is a critical patch don’t upgrade immediately.  Most of the time you find that if you don’t need to upgrade then take your time and let the experts do all the break fix testing.

New WordPress 2.8 Blog Post

Give the community time to download and install especially those who are new to blogging and WordPress.  I would say give it about a month before going for the upgrade and if there are plug-ins that you use check out the developers site to see if they have checked that it works or is having issues before you upgrade.  WordPress is at version 2.8 which means in my opinion if your at anything below 2.7 you need to a least upgrade to 2.7.  With that said please check your plug-ins before upgrading this will help you in the long run.

On the other hand WordPress 2.8 seems to be another great release from the guys/gals at wordpress.org.  They say that over 700 fixes have been made to this version.  WordPress has release a video that shows some of the improvements and I would say those improvements alone are reason to upgrade, but again wait a month and I think you well be out of hot water by then.

Enjoy,

TBTR

Symbaloo is a personal online desktop, in my opinion a customizable home page of sorts, it’s currently in beta but has been around for a couple of years over seas.  The service is free and there is no need to signup unless you want to customize this home page for viewing in more than one place/computer.  Symbaloo is very similar to iGoogle which is miles above Symbaloo, but as we all know competition is always welcome.

Give it a try and tell me if you like it Symbaloo

Spammers

Looking over my friendfeed today I came across a post from Lockergnome that simply said “Spammers Harvesting Sorrow From Twitter“.
The post talks about how spammers could be harvesting email addresses
directly from your own steam on twitter.  Lockergnome referenced the
article from ZDNet “Spammers harvesting emails from Twitter – in real time”
And while the article talks about a script that can be run to harvest
the emails in real time, we further get a understanding of the Twitter
TOS (Terms of Service).

You are solely responsible for your conduct and any data, text, information, screen names, graphics, photos, profiles, audio and video clips, links (“Content”) that you submit, post, and display on the Twitter.com service.

- meaning your on your own if you tweet something you didn’t like

After reading the ZDNet article I decided to do my own test with tweetgrid.  If you do a little bit of search for things such as “email me at” you can see all kinds of addresses.  A sample search on search.twitter.com using gmail.com OR hotmail.com OR “email me at” Weather these email addresses are valid or not is a whole other story but look at the image below.

Savvy internet users who have their own domains know you can create a temporary address such as info@mydomain.com.  Send that out as a tweet and then after they are done, delete that address.  Situation solved and over in my opinion.  Although for people just coming to twitter and the internet for that matter a little help with this is understandable.  Some people were posting in comments on those blogs that “Well your stupid if you tweet your address.”  While I understand why they say that, most people forget we all come to the internet with limited skills and over time we understand more and more.

Just know this email harvesting is not new, but with twitter gaining warp speed traction in some of our everyday lives we are opening up to those who want to do harm with the info we tweet, always be cautious.

TBTR

One of my twitter friends posted on her blog “Palm Wanted To Know If I “Got Opinions?” I just happen to find this post in over 1000 RSS feeds which I should clean up, but that’s another story.  Anyways Tessa took the challenge and answered the call.

If you can tweet your opinions about Palm phones in 140 characters or less, we want to hear from you.

Palm on their blog ask the question “Got Opinions? Become a Real Reviewer (and get a new phone courtesy of Palm).  I’m super excited about this, and I’ll tell you why.

Back in 2000 I moved out to Denver Colorado, it was a time in my life when I felt I had to get away from the comforts of home (Atlanta).  While in Denver I started working for USWest wireless which later became Qwest Wireless.  I was part of a data team which was started to test, teach, and help troubleshoot phones used for data communications.

The team was great I learned a lot, one of the phones we used was the Kyocera Smartphone 6035.  As a techie you don’t know the joy I got using this phone.  It was my first introduction to a true Smartphone, and while I use a Blackberry now I would be very open to the new Palm phone.  I am the type of person that can give you accolades and in the same sentence tell you that your missing the mark.  It looks like Palm wants both sides of the coin.  That’s the kind of review that makes change and improvement possible.

So anyone who wants to become a reviewer for Palm should take the survey here.  If your selected you will be notified on May 8th good luck to us all.

It would be a pleasure and honor to be one of the choosen few.

((Video attached))

Over the weekend twitter was exposed to what they dubbed the “Stalkdaily worm.”  I got wind of this worm as a tweet from one of my followers on twitter then I followed up and found the techcrunch.com article also twitter talked about it on their blog http://blog.twitter.com/ this weekend.

Next I talked about Smallaa which is a new site that was launched by CEO Tim Lai here is how they describe the service at http://www.smallaa.com

Smallaa helps you bring relevancy to your social interactions by enabling you to follow the most interesting aspects of your friends. The feeds in your multiple social networking sites are combined at Smallaa. Everything you post at Smallaa will automatically goes to those websites. When you and your friends post to different topic of interests, you get to pick and follow what really interests you from them. Friends will in turn want to post more things about your interests.

Last but not least I talk about the Dasher Project this is one of the coolest things I have ever seen, In my opinion the applications for this project are endless, not to mention immobile, and paryalized individuals can type with limited movement using this application here is a youtube video showing how it works. At first it’s confusing, but continue to watch you will get it I swear.  If you want to test for yourself make sure you go to this (java applet) link it’s an awesome product.

Comments are appreciated, enjoy

TBTR

Blackberry App World was launched on 4/1/2009 we tell you some of the detailed info about the service. Tweetgrid is another tool in the arsonal of twitter applications/websites you can explore. Seesmic desktop launched on 4/6/2009 and seems to have put everything in the application including the kitchen sink.

Leave a comment or email at thebtr[at]gmail.com

Enjoy

Why on April 1 would you open or launch your signature product?  I guess the buzz you create could carry you into the next year, or people could take it as a joke and over look you all together.  RIM the makers of the Blackberry Smart phones have launched what they hope is the defect o home for bb users.

The Blackberry App World ( I guess they didn’t use store because Apple would probably sue) is now open for business.  When I got in this morning I saw the buzz and decided to jump on the bandwagon.  I went to the signature page with my Blackberry www.blackberry.com/appworld/download to download the icon OTA (over the airwaves) but I had and issue just like Larry Dignan said in his post “First impressions and a weird IE requirement.” so I turned to the blackberry desktop software.  I had to download the app this way.  It worked perfect and I was able to get in the application.

Put more of your life on your BlackBerry smartphone! Download BlackBerry App World for free to load up your BlackBerry smartphone with games, social networking, online shopping, personal productivity, organization tools and other fun and functional apps. It’s your world – bring more of it with you with BlackBerry App World!

While most of the featured applications we probably all have on your Blackberries as an out of the box application.  I did some research inside of the app world and found a lot of apps I never knew existed.  During the coming weeks and days we will review some applications and give our take on the success or failure of the Blackberry App World.

BlackBerry App World is a free download. To purchase applications from BlackBerry App World, a PayPal account is required.

Application makers can also take the time to create new apps, and place them in the app world just like on apples itunes app store.  This is opening up the devices to innovation from small programmers, and also opens them up like apple to foolish applications that do nothing but charge money for access.  Lets sit back and watch the paint dry, or you can get involved if your an avid Blackberry user.

I plan to get involved, just wait an see

Leave us comments

TBTR

Tweetgrid has created an accessible page for the iPhone or iPod Touch.  While it’s not a App Store application it does give those iPhone users access to the custom searches and real time updates that makes Tweetgrid a widely used website.

Look here for the iPhone site

Leave comments and tell me how you like it.

TBTR

It looks like someone has finally said, the hell with twitter search I’m gonna create a Plurk search site.  If you don’t already know Plurk is another social site much like Twitter but no where near the mass appeal of Twitter.  I don’t want to make this a Twitter vs Plurk post but lets face it Twitter has some great search resources and while that’s all good.  It looks like someone decided to dive into the Plurk API and create a search site for us plurk lovers.

Plurk History v1.0 beta has arrived and I have to say it looks like they are just getting started so it reminds you of the store bought brands bland but functional.  No flashy icons on the site no catchy name but it does one thing good.  It shows me my old Plurks month by month going back to when Plurk lunched.

Honestly sometimes I have wanted to go back in my stream on Plurk and look at something I posted along time ago but could not do it.  Well now with this site I’m able to look at plurks from November of 2008 with amazing speed.

The cool thing about Plurk is that every update creates a Plurk page where your update is listed with all comments associated with that Plurk.  That is one of the selling points of Plurk a conversation you can follow.

I was able to put in my Nick name and chose the month and year I wanted to go back and within seconds I was looking at my stream of previous plurks.  Since my account is not protected I didn’t have to enter my password.  I’m not too sure about the project yet so I would say if your account is protected on Plurk you probably don’t want to enter you password yet.  At least not until we find out about the publisher of this project.  It’s not affiliated with Plurk so we have to approach this with caution.

This is posted on the site to help those with doubts of entering their passwords… “If you still don’t feel safe enough and you have a private time line you can also change your password temporarily so that even if we stored it (we promise we don’t) we wouldn’t be able to access your data”

I hope that the project finds legs and can stand somewhere on the net because it really has a purpose.

TBTR

Plurk History Link

Plurk History is not affiliated with Plurk.com

It’s always exciting to find new things in the social realm but Social Treehouse seems to be a dud.  Ok here’s the deal I get the concept, but the UI is dismal at best.  It seems someone needs to redesign the UI before I will take this concept seriously.

SocialTreehouse.com is a unique website that brings people together to share videos about events and activities nationwide. People are encouraged to find fun events based on fellow user event reviews and of course by sharing their own view of the event afterwards.

This is one of those site’s built as a “If we build it they will come concept” but you have to have a better UI before the masses will come IMHO.

The concept of SocialTreehouse is kind of cool but it’s needs more work in my opinion, take it for a test drive and tell me what you think?

TBTR

This morning I got wind that Google has worked on giving us loyal users new themes in a blog post called“iGoogle’s got game… themes!”.  It seems they have taken this to another level giving us gamers enough themes to last weeks maybe even months.  As a kid I loved the old arcade games just like the author of the blog post from Google.  I too spent many a weekend in the local arcade at South Dekalb Mall in Georgia.  With the edition of these new themes you can enjoy some of the games you loved as a child and as a grown up.

iGoogle now has graphics from all sorts of games that I know will excite my fellow gamers. Picture your homepage with “Burnout” cars zooming in the background, Ryu from “Street Fighter” blasting hadoukens across your page, or rock stars jamming out to tunes from “Guitar Hero.” It doesn’t end there. For those of you who used to dream about completing the Triforce or getting out of tombs alive, choose from “Zelda” or “Tomb Raider.” Want more? Try “Dungeons & Dragons,” “The Sims 3,” or “World of Warcraft” on for size.

The new themes are located here www.google.com/gamingthemes or you can choose a setting that uses a random theme daily at game theme of the day.

Enjoy
TBTR

As many of you know I’m attending SXSW Conference in Austin, Tx and Today @waynesutton of Talksocialnews.com was saying that he was going to post a podcast tomorrow here at the Pepsico podcast play ground. So I had to go way back in my archives to find these resources they are some of the first shows I ever did. It was on “How to Podcast” I discussed a lot about what you need and how to do it.

If your interested check these links out to that resource and send this out to anyone you want or retweet the link if you enjoyed.

Thanks,

TBTR

Podcast #2-a July 18, 2007 Part 1 of 3
http://www.theblacktechreport.com/index.php/2007/07/18/podcast-2-july-18-2007/

Podcast #2-b July 22, 2007 Part 2 of 3
http://www.theblacktechreport.com/index.php/2007/07/23/podcast-2-b-july-22-2007/

Podcast #2-c July 23, 2007 Part 3 of
http://www.theblacktechreport.com/index.php/2007/07/23/podcast-2-c-july-23-2007-part-3-of-3/

So I’m at the South By Southwest conference and last night as I was still nursing my stomach in bed my room mates came home and in the middle of a conversation.  The talk turned about how so many people are at SXSW but lacking power, everyone is always charging a device but it seems like it’s all the iphone or apple users for the most part.

I just got a message from a twitter friend @waynesutton they launch the site which they just talked about last night alwaysbecharging.com  Sometimes an idea is birthed and formed in the blink of an eye.  Hanging out with George G. Smith Jr.  - @georgegsmithjr Kipp Bodnar – @kbodnar32 Jason Keath – @jakrose Brian Cary – @briancary
Wayne Sutton  - @waynesutton and others I’ve learned something.

Dont’ talk about it Just do it, otherwise what are you doing???

Thanks guys yall are awesome

Last year I had a problem and couldn’t really attend the SXSW conference in Austin Texas.  This year I begged, begged, and begged some more.  This morning I’m going to Texas.  I hope to bring a little bit of the conference to my users and let you know more about SXSW and also network with other people who are interested in this social interactive world.

Tell me if there is something you want to know about the conference or the attendees of SXSW, leave your comments.

Stay tuned,

TBTR

So it seems once again we are back to the hackers being smarter than the designers. According to recent reports Facebook the popular social site has been infected again with hackers trying and succeeding in stealing your profile password. The worm gets people to click on a bogus adobe plugin that installs a Trojan Horse that allows the hackers to take over your facebook profile and send notices to everyone one on your list so it keeps happening over and over.

TrendMicro has documented the the new strain here.

The key here is to remember the hackers have gotten very good and tricking people into clicking on things and if you really want to be secure just don’t click on links from anyone for a while. This will help but just like a car, if the theifs really want your car they will get it no matter what.

Be careful out there.

TBTR

Google latitude is a new service where you can share your location with friends or anyone else you trust.  Certain cell phone users can use this new service also it runs as a gadget on igoogle.  If you don’t download the phone app you have to manually update the location by typing in your city and state.

Google Video Explaining Google Latitude

If you don’t have a cell phone but, want a real time update of location you can download Gears plug in which uses your wireless signal to determine your computers location. You can also update your status which is tied into your Google talk.  Pictures can even be updated on the fly so you can change your icon.

When I tried to change my pictures from my Blackberry Curve 8320 it froze my phone for a few minutes while it accessed my Media Card, but it was back to normal soon after

Remember this service is opt-in so you don’t have to add all the people you know.  You can even deny people from seeing your location but add them to see their location only.

I think this will change the laws for stalkers, it’s so easy for people to follow you now a days on the net.  As social networking grows, it gets harder and harder to hide from a stalker.  So watch who you follow and more importantly who you allow to follow you.

So as a G33K I had to ask myself how this service works.  I think Google Latitude works by knowing which cell towers your transmitting with.  Then by knowing your carrier they can guess with in so much distance where you are located.  I’m pretty sure their are some other things involved, but I like to guess.

Visit google.com/latitude for the mobile info, and the gears info

Also more links to Google latitude resources:

• See where friends are with Google Latitude
• Locate your friends in real time with Google Latitude
• Official Google Latitude site

I was reading my RSS feeds in Google Reader today and came across a post by TechCrunch where they showed a video from Microsoft promoting some new software called Songsmith.  While the thought of software that helps you create songs is not new, the thought that they paid for this video is a clue that MS must be hurting pretty bad.  Sometimes it’s not a good thing to promote your child’s acting career with a cheesy MS video.  Although in years to come she will probably be a superstar…mark my words…

Judge for yourself!

TBTR

We have hit 2009 and some people started their case for world dominance before me, damn you. Over the past couple of days twitter has been all a buzz over a phishing scam that someone is using. While the scam seem to only be a way to send out spam to your followers again here we go with the what if scenarios.

What is a phishing?

(wikipedia.org description)
Phishing is the criminally fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. Communications purporting to be from popular social web sites.

So now that you know what phishing is let me tell you why it’s gonna be around for a long time. Users are gullible, sometimes we click things we should not, sometime we are curious, sometimes the joke is on us. Gone are the days of sending you to a website that pops up 50 windows and it’s like a duck hunt game trying to shot your way out of the maze. Now what people, thieves, and yes sometimes companies, do is make you think that what you saw was real.

Twitter has a API that has been open for a long time, and the authentication has always been a question to me. Coders have no behind the scenes way with twitter to authenticate with any other way but to have users enter their username and password on an off site.

What makes this phishing scam work is the fact that with all the fail whale, and network issues of the past. When people saw the screen shot below at first glance that thought oh here we go again. Twitter is on the fritz but what most failed to do was to just look at the URL and see that it was not twitter.com that was serving up the page.

Will this ever stop?

Probably not but if you have other sites where you socialize you will notice some distinct things that try to help curb users from falling victim. A lot of other sites that have OPEN API’s allow you one password to log on to that service, then when you want to login or tie your account to another site they give you a alternative password. This helps to ensure that you don’t give out your real login password and shall we say hand over the keys to the house. Twitter knows all about this authentication method, why they have chosen not to implement is beyond me.

I think it’s time twitter give it a second look, other wise I for see some people changing their strategy of using twitter as the first line in micro blogging and move on to something like friendfeed, brightkite, or even jaiku (no one really uses jaiku so I’m only kidding on this one) none of these sites do things much better but when people get feed up they move on to the next ship.

Remember boys and girls your password is a very important thing, I blogged about this here in I wonder how many computers will be infected and I still feel people are sleeping on good passwords for access to their online life. Keep your password in your pants that way no one can steal it, for the most part. But seriously just be aware of whats going on, and remember two things if nothing else in this post.

1. No the King of some small country does not really want to deposit 28,000,000 in your account
2. You bank will never send you anything online saying change your password it’s been compromised

Twitter get it right or get lost oh and don’t forget to follow us on twitter.com/thebtr

TBTR

We have all come across this issue more than once, your looking for that email from 3 months ago in your Microsoft Outlook email program. You try to search for it using the built in Outlook search but it’s so complex that after 3 or 4 tries you give up and start looking through all your email one by one. After 5 minutes of searching you finally find it at the bottom of every email that was pulled up, frustrating.

You don’t use Windows desktop search or Google Desktop because you don’t need to index everything on your entire computer just your Outlook email program. The wasted time and effort has you ready to drop kick your computer. Who or what program are you gonna call on to help?

The Xobni plug-in for Outlook has come to the rescue, and I wanna share it with you. Xobni is FREE, yes you heard that right FREE. Xobni creates a profile for each person that emails you. The profiles contain relationship statistics, contact information, social connections, threaded conversations, and attachments all in one easy to use interface. Xobni was founded by Adam Smith and Matt Brezina in the spring of 2006 but with the recent updates has made major headlines as of late.

Bill Gates called Xobni the next generation of social networking

The Xobni download and install process was very easy. I clicked on the download link closed my Inbox, a window popped up asking if I wanted to find out more about my contact such as Skype, Linkedin, Facebook, and Hoovers info, you can enable or ignore this request. The setup process was not drawn out or confusing just a couple of quick questions to answer.

Once the program is started it has to index your emails, which means depending on how many contacts, and how much email you have can take a while to finish. While this did temporally freeze up my mailbox I just took it upon myself to go on a quick break and by the time I had returned all was working.

While this program shows great promise I can only imagine the things that I can now do with my email being much more easy to find.

Xobni System Requirements:

• Windows XP or Vista
• Outlook 2003 or 2007
• Cached Exchange Mode
• 2 GHz processor
• 1+ GB RAM

Xobni download link

This product video is less than 5 minutes in length if your serious view this video for more information it answered a lot of questions:

When you view the Xobni Analytics it will blow your mind.

Tell me what you think about Xobni in the comments section.

TBTR

I just got wind of a potential malware problem with Youtube videos.  It seems someone has finally figured out how to install software on your computer through Youtube, according to this update from CrunchGear.

The virus is called Actns/Swif.T and seems to contain a redirect to a phishing website embedded within a SWF file.

Embedding Malware & Spyware in software has been the norm for a long time, but if this is true and if you just watch a video and get software installed this could be a potentially huge issue for Google.

Lets hope they get a hold on this quickly.

To protect yourself always watch what you click on when surfing the net.

TBTR

Since the early days of IM (instant messaging) people have been looking for ways to connect better online.  I mean connect with something other than typing LMAO (Laughing my ass off) or LOL (Laugh out loud) these are short acronyms we use when chatting online.  They have been around since the early days and now instead of typing those letters we can now actually laugh, talk, and hide on Video Cam.

Voice and video in Gmail only works with the newer version of Gmail in supported browsers: FF 2.0+, IE 6.0+, Safari 3.0+, and Google Chrome.

Google has release a download plug-in that lets you use your Voice and Video with GMail.  I had the joy of testing it today with some of my twitter friends.  Once the download is done it makes you close your browser then it reopens and now lets you connect your voice and video.  While there are other services out there that let you do this with minimal cost Gmail lets you do this for FREE.  Yes understand that this happens only with Gmail and your browser, you can not tie this to your Gtalk application.  This confused me at first because I downloaded the plug-in and then tried to use it with Gtalk.  So remember this it will help you save about 15 minutes of troubleshooting, why it’s not working.

Google as usual gives you alot of information at the following link http://www.google/videochat

Something that I didn’t expect was the 30% off Logitech webcams on the link above this alone is a better saving than any where on the net at this time, also FREE Shipping please use the link on the Gmail/videochat site for the discount.  This is in place until November 30th, 2008 so order soon.

Have fun with the product, you know I did.

TBTR

Not more than a couple of weeks ago I wrote a story called “Talk about EPIC Fail, I got a Colossal EPIC FUCKING FAIL LHW.com” I wrote the story because of my disappointment with LHW.com and how they handled a admited colossal FAIL. It looks like the powers that be have decided to enrich the community and try this promotion again but with better results.

They have enlisted the help of Akamai Technologies, Inc. to help provide the needed bandwidth for this promotion, something they should have done in the first place but were either to cheap, or didn’t know the old network would bog down and Fail. Regardless I’m happy they have fixed the issue and I’m also happy the are going to try the promotion again details to follow on October 17, 2008.

Check the website often and see if you can get in on booking one of the Leading Hotels of the World at the amazing rate of $19.28 per night rooms.

Promotion Link to rooms for $19.28

TBTR

EPIC Fail

I truly believe that some system administrators don’t get it when it comes to internet traffic and the power of the media. So yesterday I was surfing the local news site AJC.com and found the following story Luxury hotels offer $19.28 per night needless to say I fell for this hook line and sinker others did too. At Hotelchatter.com they posted Yeah, We Got Totally Shut Out of the LHW $19.28 Sale Too. As I understood it the World Luxury hotels were going to offer rooms in some of the worlds best hotels for $19.28 in celebration of being in existence since 1928. This was all supposed to unfold at 8AM Est time on October 1, 2008.

I show up at the website ON Freaking Time and I hit the link http://www.lhw.com/1928 and this is what I got immediately:

Needless to say I hit update like a gazillion times trying to make sure I was not gonna get cut out of my share of low cost hotel rooms.

Anyone who works on the internet or makes a living on the internet knew this was gonna be a huge deal when it comes to internet traffic and system resources. So Truth is I was at the website early, I made a point to get up and out of the house just to make sure I was at work and in line to get one of the rooms at a great rate. I really feel for the people on the Pacific coast they were truly hoodwinked, the constant updates or refresh of the website did nothing for me, until about 10AM when I got the second message saying this:

I’m sitting in my chair at work like WTF, these bastards made me get up early get to work, take the time out and your not even gonna have the promotion now because some snot nosed kid in your data center can’t figure out how to off load some traffic through routing and sever timeouts. I was ready for a revolt against all hotels today then the next message came:

Oh I’m still pissed and unsatisfied I don’t think they understand what they just did, I don’t have many friends who stay and luxury hotels but hell I really did want to try out The James in Chicago. I guess that won’t happen now or maybe one day it will I am still pissed and not happy but this goes to show you, idiots are all over the world.

Next time you guys at LHW.com decide to do something like this call some fucking experts not your cousin Johnny who thinks he knows networking you guys truly suck MONKEY BALLS. IMHO

Thanks,

TBTR

Cuil is the name of the enormous search engine that launch back in July of this year. The media was a buzz, bloggers were ready for what we all thought would be a new take on search engines. Have you ever heard the words EPIC Fail? To everyones dismay the launch of the search engine did nothing more then explain why Google and a couple of other search engines are gonna be #1 and #2 for a long time. Cuil tries to explain a lot about the system on the FAQ page.

Cuil’s claim to fame was two fold 1.)It was started by a former Google employee and 2.)It was supposed to have indexed billions more pages than Google or any other search engine combined. What they didn’t tell you was just be cause we have indexed billions upon billions of pages does not mean its in a readable wonderful interface.

As Cuil launched back in July the strain was so heavy on Cuil that the whole system crashed, I guess us geeks got the word and started searching. All of my searches were like the bridge to now where I searched for my name and found some other guys picture over my name it was weird and since then I have not really been back to Cuil.com until today.

On September 24, 2008 Cuil posted on their blog saying they are putting their heads down and getting back to work on Cuil, I guess that bridge to no where didn’t work for them either http://www.cuil.com/info/blog/2008/09/24/welcome-to-the-blog. It’s amazing how the launch gained so much exposure but the reality is that cuil was not ready for prime time.

Opinion: In my opinion the only way you get listed in Cuil correctly is if your a star or your site is mega huge. Test your searches against google.com and you will see what I’m talking about. Cuil had to go back to the drawing board because what they created was just Hype, now it seems it’s just too late to make a difference. To reinvent your self less than 2 months after launch is ludicrous and on top of that has to be very costly I would hate to be the VC watching all this unfold.

TBTR

Micro blogging has been around for a while now but lately it has taken off growing by leaps and bounds. Can you update your friends and colleges in 140 characters? It’s harder then you think and by no means is it easy when the real estate is so limited. So what happens when you want to save and share a URL link? As we all know some URL links could be 50 characters all by it self. so the shorter a URL is the better that is for you and what you want to say to the world.

Tweetburner lets you track what happens with the links you share on Twitter.

Last week I came across a URL shortner called Tweetburner. Not the shortest name for URL shortners but it ties statistics to those URL’s so you can gauge how many people click the link. It’s always good to know if people are really clicking your links. There are a number of URL shortners on the net, I found a blogger at cusumingexperience.com who created a blog post back in May of 2008 about is.gd called “Shorten URLs via is.gd – free bookmarklet for URL redirection“.  Mashable created a post showing “90 of the top URL shortening services”

The reason why I’m talking about tweetburner is two fold, not only does it work but you can create your tweet right from the tweetburner website which will let you login to your twitter account and/or friendfeed to send a post right from the site. Most of the other URL shortners don’t do that cause they were not made with twitter specifically in mind. Give tweetburner a try if you want statistics or give is.gd a try if you just absolutely have to have the shortest URL.

I found a video of Tweetburner which explains a bit and shows you what it does check this out:

Enjoy,

TBTR

If your like me you surf the internet quite often. The free time you have at work to the free time you have at home. Sometimes you want to show your friends what you come across that you think would interest them. You don’t want to pass your friends everything but maybe just specific sites. You can create a boring email with links all over the place which might be filtered as SPAM or you can use Agglom. Agglom lets you share the good stuff with your friends and maybe even some new friends.

Easily save and publish your sets of links

The cool thing about Agglom is that you can share a multimedia webpage as a RSS Feed or as a Web Slideshow. It’s like sending a book to your online friends. You can make them for public or private viewing. You can recommend other organized webs sessions that are created by other members.

Share them as a multimedia web page, as an RSS feed or as a Web Slideshow

To view most of the web sessions you don’t even need to sign up, but If you want the full experience it’s not hard to sign up which gives you access to your own page, with RSS access.

Agglom works by letting you tie together URL links, Presentations, & Videos into one easy to use bundle. A Permalink is created along with a RSS link. As you pass this out to your friends by URL, or email they can then view, each of the areas. The Slideshows are kind of cool it adds a little top bar to the site where you can click the arrow to navigate through each link like a powerpoint presentation. You also get a RSS feed to the user which would update each time they add a new content.

Make them private or public

Say you come across a web scene and you know of a link that would go great you can suggest this link to the person who created this Slideshow. The creator then has the option to include your link as added benefit, or dis-approve it as non relevent.

Example: vctr a user over at Agglom created a resource called Social Network basics concepts – how to build one with a Permalink: http://agglom.com/agglom/490/Social_Network_basics_concepts_how_to_build_one oh don’t forget an RSS is also created take a look and you will see why I’m liking Agglom.com

I think Agglom has a lot of potential to succeed, people just need to know about this site. It seems they are improving it (the creators) all the time. The only thing they need now is someone to really design the site, not that I don’t like it, but I just think it needs a web 3.0 look.

Enjoy,

TBTR

It’s not everyday that you will need a utility like WinMerge but, I will tell you this it can save you a ton of time. WinMerge 2.8.6 is another great Open Source tool created with you the user in mind. Why do you need WinMerge? Why should you even give WinMerge a chance to grace your desktop real estate? I think if you work with text based files such as HTML, CSS, or just Text files in general then this tool will help you a lot.

Visual differencing and merging of text files

Say your working on a new project where a client has updated his HTML code and your trying to fix the problem they are having because something is just not right. If you use WinMerge you can input the old HTML code on one side, and the New HTML code on another and compare the files. You can see where the changes have been made and with that being said, fix the issue without having to go line for line in a HTML document that could be pretty long. WinMerge will color code the changes and show you where the differences are no longer will you have to rely on site alone.

Handles DOS, UNIX and MAC text file formats

Not only does this tool let you see the differences of files, but if you want it can Merge the files together to create a new document. This is a great feature where changes have been made and you want to make sure to keep all text streamlined and in working order. WinMerge will do the trick with ease.

Website: http://www.winmerge.org/

Download Link: WinMerge 2.8.6

Enjoy,

TBTR

Please don’t forget the doors to this years Black Weblog Awards is closing on 8/31/2008 if you have not voted please take the time to do so here.

Remember if you feel this blog has potential and you would like to see us win something then please vote for us under:

Best Science/Technology Blog
The Black Tech Report

Thanks so much for all those who voted and I hope you have a wonderful Labor Day weekend.

TBTR

How many passwords do you enter on a daily basis? If you answered more than 4 you need SuperGenPass. SuperGenPass is a password generator but not in the normal sense. Normally with password generators you have to install a program. That puts another software program on your computer and that takes up precious system resources. Installing a program means when you want to use it you have to find the program, start the program, and use the program that’s time consuming.

SuperGenPass allows you to remember just one password (your “master password”), which is used to generate unique, complex passwords for the Web sites you visit.

The great thing about SuperGenPass is you don’t install any software on your computer. Remember when I reviewed Password safe & Any Password here each one of those programs had to be installed on your computer.

SuperGenPass uses MD5, a one-way hash algorithm, which means that no one can determine your master password from your generated passwords.

As we know the biggest problem on the internet now days is keeping up with every single new site we join and keeping up with that password. You could do what most people do and that is to create one to two password that you use all over the internet. In other words you use that for your email, bank account, and even your computer logon password.

Nothing is ever transmitted by SuperGenPass, and your passwords are not stored anywhere.

We all know this is not the smartest thing to do, you see if a hacker gets a hold of just one password, they could potentially have access to your whole internet life. Trying to keep up with all the different passwords is the issue here and SuperGenPass lets you use one Master Password and that generates the passwords for each site.

Don’t worry SuperGenPass does not save passwords to your computer it’s a bookmark that you save to your browser.

See the video I created to show you how this works:

More about how it works

Link to SuperGenPass Website

Enjoy,

TBTR

You mean to tell me you have 12 seconds to leave a video about what your doing? Don’t we already have Micro-blogging sites by the dozen. How much time and effort went into making a service or site called 12 seconds. Talk about trying to get the VC money, and then some ridiculous conglomerate to buy you out. I’m so sick and tired of people piggy backing on other services. They say ” oh well what if we decided to take what they do but flip it.” 12 seconds will not be along for the ride too much longer. They want money, they need money to keep it going, so who’s gonna pay up some VC that has nothing but money to hang out the window. When you think about it 12 seconds as a company should last about 12 seconds long.

Most of the videos I see on the site, suck because they try to go past the 12 seconds and then the video looks stupid. The thing just cuts off WTH, I’m listening and your cutting off the video because you forgot this is only 12 seconds long. Think about why it’s only 12 seconds and you will see it’s not because of some crap about we figured that 12 seconds is about as long as the brain can stand to watch some online webclip crap. It’s because the ratio of video to users with 12 seconds cost less then just letting your user go crazy with unlimited time to do nothing but record their living room. One thing is that with the time constraints it does make for interesting videos if done right, I will agree with that.

12seconds.tv allows friends and family to record and share short video updates about what they are doing or where they are. You can use a webcam or a cellphone. It’s a FREE, easy, and fun way to stay in touch.

This is my rant and the truth is we should all be ashamed to follow as the mass of people try every new service or web 2.blah out. Right now this micro-blogging is all over the place and honestly it’s getting out of hand. Who’s gonna take the lead and stay in it for the long haul. We all know Twitters problems about money they turned off SMS for overseas users, and in Japan they have turned on the ads which also lets you know the ads are coming soon. Is it just me or is Pownce the only one that could see, if you give the users something great they can use we will pay for it. Or was pownce so hard up for money that they had to ask for money up front just to keep things going with out losing the farm if you know what I mean.

My prediction is that 12 seconds will only last just about that long 12 months, then some VC or competitor will come in and buy the thing lock, stock, and barrel. I guess I’m a little upset that I didn’t think of such an idea cause the truth this I want an account but I’m so tired of signing up for stuff all over the net.

Enjoy the success 12 seconds,

TBTR