Sleepless in Midland

St. Could, Fla, and the free wi-fi experiment

In 2006, St. Cloud, Florida, a town of about 30,000 people, became the first city in the U.S. to experiment with free city wide wi-fi. But the recession hit, and like every other U.S. city, they faced declining tax revenues. And the city wide wi-fi network looked like an easy target for the city council to eliminate. So they cut the public portion but kept the portion used by the city government.

Perhaps this is one of those efforts by governments to cut programs that people really want so that the taxpayers feel enough pain to welcome a tax hike. In any event, the public didn't like it. Excerpt:

Scores of angry residents packed commission chambers Thursday, demanding that the city not pull the plug. " St. Cloud is not a hick town anymore," said resident Keith Harris. "We're country folks, but we're not backwards. One of the reasons for that is our Internet."

As a result the city council voted to extend it for another 120 days. Perhaps the citizens should conduct their own examination of the budget and make some trimming recommendations to the city council.

Publish your own magazine

You know, a hard copy photo magazine would be a great way to commemorate some important event: A wedding, a vacation, or a reunion, for example. A publishing process once exclusive to pros in the business is now available to anyone.

It's a product of HP Labs, and one of the consultants put together a 40 page photo magazine featuring some photos taken during that big dust storm in Australia, and it's available for purchase online at Magcloud.com.

It's a remarkable demonstration of the combination of old style magazines with today's technology. And amazingly, he did the whole thing in fewer than 32 hours. Here's his step by step how to do it. Browse through the index of other magazines they published here.

Via Reason.com.

Move over, Oprah.

Malware for Macs

Those of us who use PCs have been dealing with the threat of viruses and malware for years. Oh yeah, we're uncool, too -- just watch the commercials.

However, Macs have gotten the attention of the scammers. The bloggers at Sophos have been attending a virus conference, and this entry tells us about the Russian "Partnerka." Excerpt:

The Partnerka is the complex network of affiliates who profit from spam and malware. Run like a multi-level marketing scheme, if you've ever received an email which points you to a "Canadian Pharmacy" website, you've met the Partnerka.

And they tell about a website that was offering $0.43 every time an affiliate was able to sucker a Mac owner into downloading and installing malware. So a victim who gets his/her computer snagged has a huge headache plus the ignominy of having been sold out for a whopping $0.43. Now that's not at all cool.

An invitation to join a social network or malware?

The other day I got three emails telling me friends wanted to send me a "teddy." Funny thing is, each of those friends denied sending such an email.  The links in the emails directed me to the website you can see in the screen shot on the right.

So what gives? The emails invited me to register at www.shtyle.fm and supply all sorts of personal information in order to receive the gift. Sorry, no can do.

I don't know whether it was a trojan horse or aggressive marketing, but when emails get sent out without the knowledge of the sender then something smells phishy.

NYTimes.com serving up scareware

As if their content wasn't bad enough, NYTimes.com readers recently had to deal with scareware pop-ups:

This weekend, readers of the New York Times website NYTimes.com were exposed to danger as the popular media outlet served up malicious adverts to some of its visitors.

According to a posting on the website some readers saw a pop-up messaging warning them that their computer had been infected, and urging them to install fake anti-virus software (also known as scareware)...

The quote is from Graham Cluley's blog where you can read all about it and see some screen shots.

Spam, Spatter and Spews

In an article about a new Australian anti-spam law, Paul Ducklin at Sophos blog gives us some great new appellations:

SPIT - spam using internet telephony
SPIM - spam over instant messaging
SPASMS - spam via SMS
SPATTER - spam via Twitter
SPEWS - spam through electronic web submissions.

He calls them acronyms, but that's no reason to quibble when the material is so full of richness.

Bloggers are well aware of SPEWS, those sneaky advertisements disguised as innocent comments left at blog entries. C-SPAM perhaps?

Those sneaky little TinyURLs

There's something annoying about those TinyURLs -- the target site isn't obvious until you are there. It's not just a curiosity to know where the link will end up, there are some sites web surfers might just like to avoid. For example, see Tweets Link to Identity Theft, in which the author offers a warning about the TinyURLs, to wit:

Unfortunately, a condensed URL that appears harmless can easily lead to a malware download or phishing site, rather than the destination you were expecting. What appears to be a link to a friend’s home video may actually be pointing you toward the Koobface virus. Hackers can target a single URL shortening service and intentionally misroute millions of users.

Further, a TinyURL rival called Cligs was hacked recently. See Hacker cracks TinyURL rival, redirects millions of Twitter users.

Fortunately, there are some Firefox add-ons that can fix that by disclosing the full URL. The one I eventually settled on is Long URL which converts the TinyURL to the long form. Works great, however it doesn't seem to work on Clig shortcuts. I originally experimented with one from the "Experimental" category but decided against that one. The decision was based on an unbiased concern about that "Experimental" label and had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that the author's website was in Arabic and strewn with praises for Allah.

Updated 7/15/09:  The Long URL add-on quit working yesterday afternoon and doesn't seem to be working today.  Don't know whether this is a temporary outage, a bug in the program, or a fatal problem.

Google's new operating system

Well now, this is interesting. Google is developing a computer operating system.

Microsoft trounced all the rival PC operating systems and grabbed the lead back in the '80s. And currently, there is only one real rival, the open sourced Linux. Linux has a small but loyal following, and it just might get bigger since the Google OS is going to be based on Linux. Their initial focus is on netbook computers, and here's what the Official Google Blog says:

Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010. Because we're already talking to partners about the project, and we'll soon be working with the open source community, we wanted to share our vision now so everyone understands what we are trying to achieve.

Via Marketwatch.com.

The way they describe it it should be a nice OS for web use, but it's not so clear whether it would be much use for those of us who still use old fashioned word processing, photo editing and other software planted firmly in our PCs.

Further, Google probably already has enough stored information to compile a dossier on each and every one of us, and the Google Chrome browser together with the Google Chrome OS may just make Google closer than a family member. How good Google will be in the future with the history of our personal computer usage is anybody's guess.

What does the internet think?

This search engine, though some mysterious way, tries to analyze positive and negative attitudes toward words and phrases to tell us what the internet thinks. To find out, click What does the internet think? According to the disclaimer, "The results are merely a reflection of a majority in search term results for said search-engine(s)." And the results are indeed interesting and maybe even informative.

So let's give it a trial run and see what the internet thinks about layoffs, war on terror, swine flu, bird flu, global warming, WMD, weapons of mass destruction, and cash for clunkers. (The Google engine was used for simplicity.)

What does the internet think about this?

Query	Negative	Positive	Don't care
Layoffs	94%	4.8%	1.2%
War on Terror	36.5%	63.5%	0%
Swine Flu	74.4%	13.6%	12%
Bird Flu	27.5%	65.9%	6.6%
Global warming	54.6%	32.8%	12.6%
WMD	15.9%	55.7%	28.4%
Weapons of mass destruction	11.5%	73.6%	14.9%
Cash for clunkers	16.7%	83.3%	0%

Your results may vary.

Turn photos into cartoons

Here's a useful site. Upload your own photos and turn them into cartoons at BeFunky.com.

 

A sample above -- a real dog and the cartoon version. (Keen observers will notice that the dog has captured a bird.)

On the lam? Don't forget to update Facebook.

Those social network sites really must pull the users into them. Maybe it's a sense of obligation to the network friends. Or maybe it's the feeling that someone out there really wants to know what was for breakfast.

Anyway, in this particular case, the Facebook poster had New Zealand cops on the trail, and the cops figured out that the fugitives were in China from Facebook entries.

A New Zealand gas station owner named Leo Gao had his bank overdraft application approved, but the decimal point was misplaced a couple of zeroes. Mistakes happen, but they always seem to favor the bank. Not in this case, though. Instead of NZ$100,000 the amount was NZ$10 million. Now there's a toxic asset!

So he promptly took out about a third of it and disappeared along with his girlfriend and some members of both families.

But the girlfriend's sister had a monkey on her back. An addiction. She couldn't resist the lure of Facebook update. So authorities figured out they were in China.  Not that it helped much, though.  As of the latest report these new millionaires are still on the lam.

Links: Fans cheer couple who took the money and ran and Sister of accidental millionaires returns to New Zealand.

Conficker again? And we thought we were done with it.

April 1 came and went without a peep from the Conficker worm we were warned so much about. Most of us had downloaded a Conficker removal tool or used that cute Conficker Eye Chart. And by April 2 with no news of catastrophic computer hacks we were thinking we had been punked, Y2K style.

But along comes Yahoo Tech which says Conficker infected computers are sending out spam. It's not so much of a problem in the U.S., according to the article, as "Some 3.5 million are estimated to be infected worldwide (with just 4 percent of those machines installed in North America), though estimates of infection range from much lower to substantially higher."

Reuters says this:

Conficker installs a second virus, known as Waledac, that sends out e-mail spam without knowledge of the PC's owner, along with a fake anti-spyware program, Weafer said.

The Waledac virus recruits the PCs into a second botnet that has existed for several years and specializes in distributing e-mail spam.

"This is probably one of the most sophisticated botnets on the planet. The guys behind this are very professional. They absolutely know what they are doing," said Paul Ferguson, a senior researcher with Trend Micro Inc, the world's third-largest security software maker.

He said Conficker's authors likely installed a spam engine and another malicious software program on tens of thousands of computers since April 7.

He said the worm will stop distributing the software on infected PCs on May 3 but more attacks will likely follow.

With progress comes pestilence.

Typepad comments not working

The commenting feature of blogs has to be one of the main reasons why blogs have become so popular. So when it's not working it sure is missed.

Beginning sometime in the past day or so Typepad's comments stopped working, and unfortunately, the commenter doesn't realize it until he/she tries to save the comment. Bummer.

Typepad provides a good service, and the staff has always done a great job. So hopefully they will get the comment feature back up and running soon.

In the meantime, thanks to everyone who has tried to leave a comment, and sorry for inconvenience.

Want free wireless broadband internet?

See USA Today:

Free broadband for America has inched closer to reality: The plan, after two years of debate, is finally on the calendar for a full vote by the Federal Communications Commission.

Assuming the plan is approved at the FCC's Dec. 18 meeting — one of the agency's last before President-elect Obama takes office — free broadband could become reality within a year.

First proposed in 2006, the plan calls for a chunk of airwaves called AWS-3 — now idle — to be used for wireless broadband across the USA. Under terms being contemplated by the FCC, the winner of the AWS-3 auction would have to reserve 25% of network capacity, at least, for free broadband.

The winner would be allowed to charge for other services, including premium broadband that would offer faster speeds.

Assuming there are no last-minute snags, the AWS-3 auction will take place early next year.

Free. Now that sounds nice so long as taxpayers don't end up footing the bill.

Happy Birthday Typepad

The blogging service Typepad is celebrating its 5th birthday this year. As one of the early users I can say they have served me quite well over the years. Oh, there have been some problems here and there, but they've been quick to find solutions, and people answering the "help" questions have indeed been helpful.

There's still one little problem, though. They used to have a "search" button which allowed subscribers to search for keywords in prior posts. Well, it's gone. I may be one of the few who noticed, but with over a thousand posts at Sleepless in Midland there's often a need to link to or update an old post. The last time I asked about it they replied that they are working on it, so I still have hope.

That's my quibble. How about some good news. Go to their celebration page to see some success stories, including how a couple met through their blogs and got engaged.

Happy birthday, Typepad! (And please don't sell out to Microsoft or Google.)

Updated:  They brought back "search!"  Thanks, Typepad!  You guys/gals are terrific!

Block those annoying Flash ads -- a Firefox addon

There's a scene in a "Futurama" episode in which the characters' virtual selves fly around surfing the world wide web of the year 3000. But to enjoy themselves they first have to escape advertisements, just like today.

We've all experienced those Flash ads on some websites with their distracting movements and annoying images flashing on and off. Well, here's a great add-on for the Firefox browser called Flashblock. It's supposed to speed up surfing, but the real delight is that it keeps those annoying Flash ads from appearing, that is, unless you want them. If you want to see a Flash image simply click on it, and the block is removed.

It's such a pleasure NOT seeing those things.

Migrating favicons

Firefox is a good and popular free browser, and version 3.0.3 is now available. However, there's one bug/feature that I hope they will eventually fix. There's a tiny logo -- a favicon -- that appears in the bookmarks by each of the bookmarked webpages.

This bug sometimes puts the favicon of a recently visited website by the wrong bookmark. For example, take a look at the jpg on the right. You can see the tiny green Typepad favicon in the accompanying image to the left of several bookmarks in that folder. However, there's one that doesn't belong. See that tiny little human image by "Sleepless in Midland?" That's another blogger's favicon, and somehow it migrated into this folder and attached itself to the bookmark of my own blog like a squatter camping on the front porch.

Fortunately, there's a fix. Someone posted a solution about a year ago. Goodbye trespassing favicon.

Turning a sheet of paper into a PDF file

Converting typed sheets of paper into a single pdf file is a pain in the rear without the proper equipment. I struggled for hours trying to accomplish that task recently, and the resulting file was less than desirable. My HP flat scanner would not save a scanned document directly to PDF, so the process required scanning to jpg then using the free PDFCreator -- Komando recommended, by the way -- to save them into a single PDF document. And the results stank. Saving the jpg with a low resolution made the page too dim to read, but with a higher resolution the resulting PDF file size was humongous.

Adobe Acrobat would do the job, of course, but that's a budget buster. Some flatbed scanners will save straight to PDF, and I was ready to go buy a new one. But then discovered ScanToPDF. The free trial version was easy to use and worked like a charm, but it left a watermark. I had to buy the home version at $40 to get rid of the watermark, and it worked. It makes multipage PDF documents in a snap, the files are small, and the pages are readable. I'm so happy.

Move over Max Headroom

There have been some amazing advances in the creation of computerized images of people. TimesOnLine highlights a newly created character named Emily in Lifelike animation heralds new era for computer games. Click the link to see her and read the article. Excerpt:

Previous methods for animating faces have involved putting dots on a face and observing the way the dots move, but Image Metrics analyses facial movements at the level of individual pixels in a video, meaning that the subtlest variations - such as the way the skin creases around the eyes, can be tracked.

Image Metrics puts the human face on a computer generated image by capturing an actor's performance on camera, and then with a powerful chip and their own proprietary technology they analyze all the details, and with the help of animators generate a realistic looking person like Emily.

Pretty amazing. Max Headroom never had it so good.

Via Linkfilter.

Cuil.com - a new search engine

Just about every internet user who had a gut reaction to the news about the subpoena ruling in Viacom v. Google has been on the lookout for a search engine with a high enough regard for users' privacy that the users don't have to wonder if their search history will ever be made available for the world to see. See Court Ruling Will Expose Viewing Habits of YouTube Users.

Our lives are becoming less private by the minute, and if we use electronic gadgetry then there is probably a computer somewhere that has a record of it. According to some, all of that information may be available to the government at Fusion Centers. But let's address that another time.

The above mentioned subpoena involves Youtube, but we all know that Google keeps the information derived from searchers' use of the service, and most of us have wondered what they plan to do with it. So it's encouraging to see a new search engine come along. See Ex-Google engineers debut 'Cuil' way to search. They are claiming to index more sites than Google, but it's not clear from the article whether or not they do. Some excerpts:

A search index's scope is important because information, pictures and content can't be found unless they're stored in a database. But Cuil believes it will outshine Google in several other ways, including its method for identifying and displaying pertinent results.

Rather than trying to mimic Google's method of ranking the quantity and quality of links to Web sites, Patterson says Cuil's technology drills into the actual content of a page. And Cuil's results will be presented in a more magazine-like format instead of just a vertical stack of Web links. Cuil's results are displayed with more photos spread horizontally across the page and include sidebars that can be clicked on to learn more about topics related to the original search request.

I've always thought there must be a better way to rank pages than the way Google does it. The page with the best and most accurate information on a subject may be buried so deep in a Google list that the user may never get to it.

But here's the part I like:

Finally, Cuil is hoping to attract traffic by promising not to retain information about its users' search histories or surfing patterns - something that Google does, much to the consternation of privacy watchdogs.

It's cuil.com, and here's what the opening paragraph of their privacy page says, among other things:

Privacy is a hot topic these days, and we want you to feel totally comfortable using our service, so our privacy policy is very simple: when you search with Cuil, we do not collect any personally identifiable information, period. We have no idea who sends queries: not by name, not by IP address, and not by cookies (more on this later). Your search history is your business, not ours.

And that's fine with me.

Updated: A not so positive review. See "Cuil" Search Engine Launches, Kind of Doesn't Work.