Kalbzayn's Writing World - Technology

Free Books From Google

kalbzayn@gmail.com (Mike Miller) — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 13:14:16 -0700

Google is now giving books away for free. Kind of. They are providing a way to download PDFs of Public Domain books. The books have been scanned by Google.

I downloaded Huckleberry Finn that LifeHacer points to. It looks good. Definitely readable.

Bookstores are probably not going to like this. Huckleberry Finn may be Public Domain, but I'm pretty sure I can still pay for a copy in any bookstore. When it gets assigned for school, I bet a lot of people start downloading the free copy instead.

Google needs to add a flag in their search to make it easy to find the books that are Public Domain. I coudn't figure it out without doing more research than I am willing to do. I'm sure if I wanted to I could use Google to get a good list of Public Domain books.

Or Project Gutenberg is probably another easy place to find titles. Project Gutenberg is another great resource, in fact, for getting free electronic copies of books. But, they do not offer PDF's. They do offer audio copies of a lot of books. Project Gutenberg scans the books into a text format and then asks volunteer proofreaders to edit where the text gets clobbered. The copies are nice for reading on a Palm type device. I used to be addicted to doing the proofreading during lunch. There are some weird old books out there that are fun to read after society has changed so much over the years.

Linkie Winkie Mystery

kalbzayn@gmail.com (Mike Miller) — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 07:16:36 -0700

I stumbled upon a little mystery on the internet while looking through my Feedburner stats. One of my subscribers is Linkie Winkie.

I decided to check them out since it sounded like an interesting name. The website is tiny and has a hint of a mystery.

Linkie Winkie is a bit of a social experiment and we want to see what happens. We're not going to tell you much about it, except that its a very altruistic little site and loves to be talked about.

So if you can work out what it does, and get your timing right, then Linkie Winkie might help you out for a while

I have no idea how it works, but apparently if you get mentioned on their site, a fair number of people will visit your site. It seems like a lot of people are interested in figuring out how it works. I know I ended up visiting all of the sites that were listed on the page.

It will be interesting to see if the site ever morphs into something different. Maybe they are building a new search engine and using this site to test it. Maybe there are just having fun and don't ever plan on doing anything with it.

Reminds me of one of my favorite jokes that I used to tell my sister when we were little.

How do you keep a turkey in suspense...?

Save the Innocent Children From Myspace

kalbzayn@gmail.com (Mike Miller) — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 09:57:23 -0700

The government wants to get involved with helping protect children from the bad things that some Myspace users do.

There have been a number of incidents of kids getting contacted or even initiating the contact with adults and ending with the adult abducting or doing some other bad things to the kids.

One proposed bill would prevent students from accessing websites in schools and libraries that let users create a public profile or offer a discussion board, chat room or e-mail service. That would pretty much take away most of the internet.

I was at the public library a couple days ago. I saw no fewer than ten kids in the late junior high/early high school age group working on various computers throughout the building. EVERY SINGLE KID was on Myspace.

Myspace has become the new Dungeons and Dragons. A social interaction group that "grown ups" don't understand. When bad things happened to a few kids playing D&D, parents everywhere were outraged and started banning their kids from playing role playing games. I had to sneak around for years to play Bard's Tale and other RPG's on the computer.

Myspace is gaining much more attention because there are over 90 million accounts. I don't know what the odds of really bad things happening to people in the wild but .01% seems like a pretty small number. Let's say .01% of people using Myspace have something really bad happen to them. That's 9000 people a year. That's a pretty alarming number. That's the kind of thing that will attract politicians and lawyers attention.

"If we could save one child, then it's worth it--that one child, that innocent child who may fall prey during the school hours because the legislation wasn't enacted," said David Zellis, an assistant district attorney in Bucks County, Penn., who testified at the hearing.

That's the kind of statement that tugs at the heart strings. That one innocent child. Everybody always says they want to save that one innocent child.

I don't really have much of a problem with schools shutting down access to sites in the school. I think it should be a school district decision and not really something mandated by the federal government, but whatever.

But, they are suggesting that sites like Myspace should be shut down at public libraries, too. That's crossing the line. Rep. Michael Fitzpatrick said:

"When children leave the home and go to school or the public library and have access to social-networking sites, we have reason to be concerned."

So my kids would be able to come home log onto Myspace and hang out online with their friends, but would not be allowed to do it at the library. That doesn't sound so evil. Annoying, but not evil.

What about the kids that don't have computers with internet access at home? According to PCWorld.com 73% of kids 12-17 have access to the internet. That's a pretty big percentage, but nowhere near 100%. Later in the article, the numbers get a little more skewed:

Furthermore, 82 percent of families with a household income of over $75,000 per year had Internet access by the end of last year, while 38 percent of households with incomes below $30,000 per year were online, Pew says. The study pointed out that a greater percentage of lower-income households gained access to the Internet in the second half of 2000, up from 28 percent by June 2000.

Apparently it is okay for kids from families making more than $75K a year to access sites like Myspace, but the kids under that $30K line, well at least we'll be protecting them.

We'll be drawing yet another line in the class divide in order to save kids from bad people. While Myspace might be annoying, millions of kids are learning how to type, write, make friends, and even program html because they use Myspace.

People don't even think about dumping their kids at a movie theater, mall, amusement park or any variety of places where bad things happen to kids all the time, but for some reason it's not okay for them to hang out at the library and play on Myspace. I'm not sure I get it.

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Fighting Child Pornography

kalbzayn@gmail.com (Mike Miller) — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 10:10:22 -0700

Technology is such a cool thing sometimes.

I read an article yesterday about a bunch of big companies (Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL, and a couple others) building a giant database of child pornography images that they could use to determine when these images pass through their network.

I was outraged. I did not like the idea that these companies would be allowed to store these images somewhere where they would undoubtedly eventually be hacked. I started to blog about how upset I was by this, but when I hit save my browser crashed and I didn't get a chance to rewrite the entry.

Today I found a different article about the topic.

This article clearly states that they will not be storing any actual images but rather an electronic signature that can be used to identify the image. That's a lot more reasonable.

The discussion about how much access and control the government should have over what we do on the internet, over phone lines, or even what books we check out from the library is a topic for another day. But, at least technology has managed to take away my first and strongest objection to the proposal.

New keyboard

kalbzayn@gmail.com (Mike Miller) — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 05:57:39 -0700

No more writing by hand at the coffee shop for me.

After hearing me whine about wanting a laptop for the...well, she probably has a better idea of exactly how many times I've whined, my wife said to me, "Why don't you just get a keyboard for your Palm.

I forgot that keyboards existed for the Palm. They cost $69.99 which I think is outrageous, but a lot cheaper than a new computer or even an Alpha.

I spent a ton of time getting everything set up on my Palm just the way I like it, and then headed to the living room.

I sat in the living room with my wife watching TV, making fun of the women on Flavor of Love show, and working on my book.

In about an hour, while barely thinking about it and while constantly getting interupted by Flav's crazy women, I managed to get in 600 words. I went down the computer before going to bed, synced the Palm, and pasted the new words into my master document.

I love new toys.

Protecting our homeland one finger at a time

kalbzayn@gmail.com (Mike Miller) — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 21:31:10 -0700

Engadget has an article for another stupid security device trying to help us feel more protected against terrorists. Or could companies possibly just be preying off our fear of terrorists and trying to make a few bucks.

The device scans your finger and tries to detect traces of explosives. The device could be set up in the vending machine where you buy the tickets and on the turnstiles into the subway.

Wait. Maybe they're onto something. After all, the dirty, filthy, stinking terrorists never wash their hands, right? Maybe this thing is foolproof after all.

Never make a bet you can lose

kalbzayn@gmail.com (Mike Miller) — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 09:19:38 -0700

What do you do when the writer of a site makes a bet with a buddy about which one can get more links before a certain date?

You could ignore him and wait to find out what the loser has to do. Or you could help him out and give him a link. When he is offering a link back in return it makes the decision a little easier.

To all my friends that wonder about all of the boring blogging mumbo jumbo I like to sometimes talk about, places like Bloggerpreneur are where I find a lot of that kind of stuff. Check it out if you want to gain a little insight into one of my other addictions.

By the way, Robb, what does the loser have to do?

Somebody call Will Smith

kalbzayn@gmail.com (Mike Miller) — Fri, 24 Feb 2006 14:11:51 -0700

If I've learned anything from the movies, we're in trouble now.

I can't remember the last time an unexplainable explosion in the night sky ever turned out to be part of a love story. These explosions always bring crazy monsters and the near extermination of our species.

Kiss your loved ones and hope Will Smith still remembers how to fly never before seen alien spacecrafts.

Trackbacks in the future

kalbzayn@gmail.com (Mike Miller) — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 14:40:13 -0700

Sometime in the near future....

"Ding. Robert Scoble new entry."

Crap. I forgot to turn it off before I left the house. "Title."

"Track your comments no matter where you make them."

"Save as unread. Notes. Update Technorati Live Notifier to let me audibly change prefences when remote. Save."

At least Technorati has their indexing and updating problems fixed. I still need to tweak some of the settings on the new implant.

"Ding. Zoli Erdos trackback."

"Delay audio."

"Ding. Ray Chow trackback."

Delay....

"Ding. Stowe Boyd trackback."

My head ached by the time I reached the Cingular store. I waited five trackback dings while the clerk rang up an order for the only other customer in the store.

When asked what kind of phone I wanted, my mind went blank. I am a mess without my tablet PC. I just can't get used to the new network implant. It is just plain strange to navigate the internet without being able to see it.

"Ding. Robert Scoble new entry."

"Can I have a second to look them over?" I asked the clerk. He nodded and walked a few steps away.

"Play title."

"Title. How to use new Cingular phone as a modem."

"Sweet timing. Play full text."

Seconds later, I confidently purchase my new cell phone and returned to my car hardly capabale of understanding how unconnected we had all lived just a few years earlier.

"My Blog. New entry. Trackback...."

Slow down Technorati

kalbzayn@gmail.com (Mike Miller) — Wed, 22 Feb 2006 17:07:54 -0700

I learned that Technorati has added a new favorites feature. Great. Just what I need.

I am pretty certain that I won't use this favorites feature very often if ever.

Instead of adding goofy new features like giving me the ability to mark favorites (which I could do with my browser or del.icio.us, I wish they would work on their overall capacity problems.

I frequently search for things on Technorati. I really love how quickly sites like these index new entries. Minutes instead of days is a very good thing.

Unfortunately, I have started avoiding Technorati a little because of how frequently I get the message that my search cannot be completed because their servers are too busy.

Hopefully, somebody will give these guys some money to buy more servers. If it is not a server problem, then I wish they would spend their programming time designing better algorithms to make these "too busy" moments disappear.

I can't remember every seeing one of the major search engines ever tell me they were too busy to handle my request. If Technorati wants to be mentioned with the big boys, they need to improve the search times. Even more importantly, they always need to come back with results.

Wifey, my birthday is right around the corner

kalbzayn@gmail.com (Mike Miller) — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 14:47:42 -0700

I know, I know. I just got round to installing the shower CD player you bought me a while ago, but if you run out of ideas for my birthday, what could be better than a new shower clock radio with all the new "special" features.

Sneaky and creepy.

Giving away PS3 - someday

kalbzayn@gmail.com (Mike Miller) — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 14:07:17 -0700

Sony's Playstation 3 is expected to come out this spring, but it looks like it might take quite a bit longer.
Continue reading "Giving away PS3 - someday"

Potential fix for Technorati Update Problem

kalbzayn@gmail.com (Mike Miller) — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 21:27:29 -0700

Well, I knew it would happen someday. I knew I would get sucked into the actual technical side of the internet.
Continue reading "Potential fix for Technorati Update Problem"

Why won't you talk to me ESPN

kalbzayn@gmail.com (Mike Miller) — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 14:50:37 -0700

I am a member to ESPN's website. I pay a few dollars a month to get access to some of their more in depth articles. I've considered cancelling just because it seems just a little too frivolous. But, during college football and basketball, it becomes a must have for me.

I was reading their special Daily RPI rankings today and noticed that they have a pretty big error in the rankings table. Being a good member of the site, I decided to let them know about it so they can fix it.
Continue reading "Why won't you talk to me ESPN"

Mr. and Mrs. Smith sneak onto your computer

kalbzayn@gmail.com (Mike Miller) — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 09:49:10 -0700

Sony was busted recently for installing copy protection code on some of their CDs. The code hid itself and some files and directories from anti-virus software without notifying the user it was going to happen. They were ridiculed by geeks all over the world. Bad Sony.

Yesterday, F-Secure announced that the German release of the Mr. & Mrs. Smith DVD, released by 20th Century Fox, contains similar code to hide itself from your computer.
Continue reading "Mr. and Mrs. Smith sneak onto your computer"