I’m a fan of OpenDNS .
Google Latitude "So Cool", Says Mom
It’s true. My mom thought Latitude was the greatest thing. Not that she’ll ever use it, but that she could load up the web page and see exactly where I was. Very handy, so as to avoid multiple phone calls asking "have you arrived safely?" (Yes, my parents love me. Be jealous if you must.)
Back story: It wasn’t anything I had originally thought of when the Latitude service from Google was first announced earlier this month , but adding my parents and my sibling was probably the best thing I could have done. The idea came to me as I was packing to leave for a 3 day vacation to snowy Truckee, CA. (Which supposedly had more than 4 feet of snow in 4 days.) The road conditions to and from were far less than ideal, and I figured if anything were to go wrong, at the very least my family would know where I was last registered by my cellphone.
New story: While I’m still not entirely sold on location-based advertising (only because I don’t like advertising, not because I don’t like efficiency), Latitude is a great idea for parents. It won’t be long before children everywhere are hearing, "if I’m paying your cellphone bill son, you’re damn well going to load some form of tracking service so I can find you whenever I want." Not that it should be looked at in a negative way. Safety first.
Truckee, CA Photos:
Cabin — 
Snow on Truck (one day of snow) — 
Google Latitude “So Cool”, Says Mom
It’s true. My mom thought Latitude was the greatest thing. Not that she’ll ever use it, but that she could load up the web page and see exactly where I was. Very handy, so as to avoid multiple phone calls asking "have you arrived safely?" (Yes, my parents love me. Be jealous if you must.)
Back story: It wasn’t anything I had originally thought of when the Latitude service from Google was first announced earlier this month , but adding my parents and my sibling was probably the best thing I could have done. The idea came to me as I was packing to leave for a 3 day vacation to snowy Truckee, CA. (Which supposedly had more than 4 feet of snow in 4 days.) The road conditions to and from were far less than ideal, and I figured if anything were to go wrong, at the very least my family would know where I was last registered by my cellphone.
New story: While I’m still not entirely sold on location-based advertising (only because I don’t like advertising, not because I don’t like efficiency), Latitude is a great idea for parents. It won’t be long before children everywhere are hearing, "if I’m paying your cellphone bill son, you’re damn well going to load some form of tracking service so I can find you whenever I want." Not that it should be looked at in a negative way. Safety first.
Truckee, CA Photos:
Cabin —
Snow on Truck (one day of snow) —
Project Homeowner California (Flyer)
Managed to find a copy of the flyer for the California Project Homeowner event I wrote about earlier this month. Click image for a larger version of the flyer. (Opens in new window.) The event is scheduled to take place Saturday, February 28, 2009 at the Stockton Memorial Civic Auditorium from 10:00 to 4:00.
Update: Chase finally has its web page up that gives quite a bit more information about the event. There will be a series of stops throughout California, so look for the Project Homeowner event in a town near you.
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All thoughts / words / feelings on this blog are mine and do not
reflect opinions of my employer.
iVolunteer, How About You
I probably don’t volunteer as much or as often as I should, but I do get a kick out of it when I do, and it usually lands me in a situation where I meet some new strange people, which makes it all worthwhile in the end, so I want to volunteer more often.
To the point, though, I’ve added the iVolunteer plugin , which you will see in the left sidebar (provided you’re not one of the RSS readers.) At the time of this posting, the plugin "displays TEST DATA only." Hopefully it will be up and running soon with local events. Although, I’m not sure how it decides what’s local for whom? There weren’t any options to enter information, so it could offer events based on your location, my location, or the host company location. Seems like it would need to be based on your location to be of any use. We’ll just have to wait and see.
In the meanwhile, check out the iVolunteer website , and maybe add @iVolunteer , if you’re into that sort of thing.
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Twitter On United States Congress
It’s a lot like wearing a tie in that I don’t know why so many people do it, but I know why I do it, and my reason(s) for doing it don’t seem like they would be good enough for others to be doing it. See what I’m sayin’?
Tweet Congress is the latest in web twitter tech, and I’m not totally sure what to think about it, but I have started following @tweetcongress , so we’ll see what useful information comes of it.
If you’re curious, TweetCongress.org tracks folks from the Hill that use Twitter. So give it a look and search for your congressmen. Let’s get them all to sign up and start sharing with us. We can chat about all sorts of important things. Oh yeah!
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Social Networking Sites Need Two More Features
The first feature I’d like to see added to sites isn’t one that I’d probably use, but there are still a couple places I’d like to see it implemented, and that’s the option to opt out of the social aspect of the site. Which probably makes very little sense in most cases, but could be useful on a site like Wesabe which is useful for tracking my spending habits, but not something I necessarily want to share with other folks on the site, or anywhere on the web for that matter. I would like for my Wesabe account to be invisible to all other users, or I at least want the option to opt out.
The second feature, and far more important, is that control to block the accounts of minors . I don’t want to see them nor do I want them to be able to see my account. There’s no reason I can think of for minors to interact with my social pages. (The one exception being a relative.) This seems like it should already be the default setting, when a person sets his age to under 18 that account should automatically be invisible to any adult figure who is not specifically listed as a family member. (Lying about age is the parents’ burden.) Which isn’t to say that every adult is a pedophile, but only to say that social websites should be doing more to protect minors, and this seems like a reasonably easy fix to implement.
Let us all play prevent from the get go. Change our default settings so we’re not forced to opt out completely from using your service. Thank you.
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FCC Up To What?
What’s the FCC up to and why are they giving TV stations a hard time? It seems some stations are wanting to get their conversion over and done with now in February even though the FCC moved the date back to later this year. The FCC is saying it’s not okay to shutdown analog signals unless TV stations can confirm there will be no negative impact to consumers. Meaning, how the heck is that supposed to happen? And why does the FCC keep moving the date?
FCC is claiming that if stations shut down signals prematurely, some consumers could be without access to emergency broadcasts.
How ’bout we get everyone on digital and stop messing around with this nonsense. I’m voting for the FCC to create no further delays. I want the analog signals shutdown and released into the wild for our white space hopes and dreams.
How We Learn About You
One of the coolest things about maintaining a blog, or any web space for that matter, is using an analytic software that let’s you know which search terms people use to land themselves in your written space. (I don’t want to list the words here, so as not to skew any future searches.) I find myself asking, "really? you entered that combination of 3 or 4 words and you landed here?" How strange and curious.
What's The Point?
It doesn’t count to blag everyday if you’re not going to take it seriously and write something you’ve thought about, right? Except, you can’t write it without first thinking, even if only long enough to get the message from your head to your fingers. So it goes.