Winter Weather Woes

Not much new in the tech world lately, but if you're like me and live in the Midwest, you're getting very tired of winter. But it gives us lots more time to spend at the computer, updating our profiles on social media, and killing the backlog of email that piles up when we're not looking.  But what can you do when these winter storms and icy weather kill your internet connection?

Those of use who use DSL are being knocked offline in a random fashion, but I see more Comcast trucks than USPS mail trucks lately. They're restoring cable connections ten times a day.

Without a connection, I recently had to make the choice to use dial-up or head out in the storms. If you experience the same stunning lack of connectivity, don't panic. Turns out we have plenty of options to hop online. If you have a laptop, stop off at your local library, a wi-fi cafe, a Panera restaurant, or even the lobby at your local hospital, for a real email emergency! Without a laptop, your public library is the best resource. They have loads of computers available for your use.

What's important is such a minor crisis is to remember that you do have options. You might miss the comfort of couch surfing but the change of scenery may also boost your creativity, get you out among people,, and ease your panic over missed emails. It usually turns out they're not as hotly important as we think when we get caught up in them day after day.

And of course, you could also get some exercise, then relax and read a book.

Web design software

With the proliferation of web tools and social media to keep in touch, you may not think you need a website any more. But if you do, and don't want to spend a lot of money on web software such as Adobe Dreamweaver, take a look at Xara Web Designer. A recent Network World article by Mark Gibbs points out the advantages of this windows web software. With colorful templates and a $49.99 price, you can't go wrong.

Eye pattern movement in online reading

We formerly thought people scanned the computer screen, when reading web pages, with eye movements following the shape of the letter C or a backward Z.

Now, fast-forward to F patterns of screen viewing.

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/reading_pattern.html

The above link will take you to more info on these interesting images, and the project's author suggestion of what it means for you. If you want pepole who glance at your web page to find the critical content, put it where they will see it.

• Users won't read your text thoroughly in a word-by-word manner. Exhaustive reading is rare, especially when prospective customers are conducting their initial research to compile a shortlist of vendors. Yes, some people will read more, but most won't.

• The first two paragraphs must state the most important information. There's some hope that users will actually read this material, though they'll probably read more of the first paragraph than the second.

• Start subheads, paragraphs, and bullet points with information-carrying words that users will notice when scanning down the left side of your content in the final stem of their F-behavior. They'll read the third word on a line much less often than the first two words. 

Read full analysis here: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/reading_pattern.html

Requiem for a Website?

If you're an active blogger and use social media daily, when is the last time you checked your website?

Perhaps the time has come to put your site to sleep. Web sites are no longer the first place we look for up-to-date information or news. Social media is a more active and immediate place to stay connected.

Read this article at BNet.com and see if you agree. The most stricking evidence in the article is this:

"Shutting down your website to communicate solely through social meda channels might seem like a crazy idea for any large organization. But then again, there is some logic to it. The Wall Street Journal reported that Starbucks receives over ten times as much traffic to its Facebook page (19.4 million unique visitors each month) as to its corporate website (1.8 million). For Coca-Cola, the divergence is even starker: 22.5 million visitors on Facebook vs. just 270,000 to its website—over 80 times as much traffic."

Something to think about before you renew that annual hosting bill ???

What browser do you use? IE, Firefox or Chrome

Please take my one question poll about your web browser. The short poll is right above this post.


Internet Explorer continues to lose market share, I personally think Firefox is superior, and a growing group of clients and colleagues have made the move to Google Chrome.

There are advantages to each, so if you're not happy with your current browser, please explore Firefox or Chrome.
the poll expires April 5, 2011 at noon.   I'll comment on the results here after that date.

Helen Gallagher

Video Email ???

Oh, you knew this was coming... We know that email is one of the most used computer applications todoay, and we know typing text won't satify the multi-media nerds.

We know the feeling when we don't have time to wade through the Inbox, we keep reading email over and over, not having time to decide where to put it, whether to keep it, how to find it later, and afraid to just press "delete" to get back to an empty Inbox.

So, this innovation from Google is not likely to make things better -- A move toward convergence of all web junk into your Inbox??? Google says this new Buzz is "a new way to start conversations about the things you find interesting and share updates, photos, videos and more. Buzz is built right into Gmail."



Learn more here.
So tell me... Do you love it? or ... Hate it?

The Internet is suddenly middle-aged

The Internet, as we know it, turned 40 - the big 4-0 this week.
Boing Boing celebrates the news and has an interesting video link... something the boys in the lab couldn't have imagined in 1969.

"Forty years ago today, in Leonard Kleinrock's UCLA lab, a group of computer scientists managed to pass bits of data from one computer to another over some some gray cable. In doing so, they created the first node of what we now call (long dramatic pause)... the Internet.

Kleinrock and colleagues were working with the government-backed Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET), without which I would not be blogging these words today.

Now, some folks believe the actual "birthday" was October 29, 1969 - when Kleinrock sent the first message between two nodes, UCLA to Stanford. The message? "LO." As in "LO AND BEHOLD, THE INTERNET." Well, okay, not really. It was supposed to be "LOGIN" but the system crashed after Kleinrock typed "L" and "O."

See the video here.

BING: Microsoft's search engine

Okay, so they are still a few years behind their competitors but Microsoft has crawled to the finish line with an attractive search tool. Their intent is to kill Google, no doubt, but mostly it will move use away from Yahoo, Clusty, and the minor search engines some of you have been using for ten years.

Bing is sharp looking, and the search results are intelligent. My favorite feature is the photo background. Maybe I'll get tired of it, but for now, it gets me every time.

Here are a few highlights from David Pogue's full review on the New York Times site. I'll give you just enough to make you start typing www.bing.com (or just 'bing' in Firefox) next time you think of using Google. Then go read David's full article, and become a convert:

"For example, if you search for a celebrity’s name, that space offers an attractive table of common-sense links: News, Movies, Quotes, Biography and Images. When you search for a sports team, you see Schedule, Tickets, Stadium, History and Wallpaper. When you search for a medical condition, that table offers Causes, Remedies, Treatment, Prognosis and News.

Both Bing and Google offer an Image Search page, where you can find photos from the Web of anyone or anything. On Bing, however, the results page scrolls forever — you don’t have to keep clicking Next, Next, Next.

As on Google, you can search for videos. But on Bing, you can preview the results far more efficiently. Just point to a thumbnail (without clicking) in the search results, and the video begins to play back sample segments, seven seconds at a time, right there on the thumbnail."

Read David Pogue's full and balanced review here

Understanding Social Networking: Twitter, and Facebook and Furl, oh my!

If you are curious about Web 2.0 social networking sites, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, I've updated The Mysterious World of Web 2.0 to version 4, with loads of new helpful information.

You can download it now. This ebook also contains great graphics and statistics on who uses these sites, and the high percentage of teens that are more involved with micri-blogging and following friends all day.

Click to see a preview and download the ebook now - cost is only $6.95

Conficker worm removal tool

You've heard about the Conficker attack, which may spread through the Intenet on April Fool's Day. Here's an informative article by Elinor Mills on CNET.

The article assesses the possible damage, scope, and includes a link to the Microsoft patch to prevent vulnerability and a Conficker removal tool, if the worm does attack your computer.

Conficker.C, which surfaced earlier this month, shuts down security services, blocks computers from connecting to security Web sites, and downloads a Trojan. It also reaches out to other infected computers via peer-to-peer networking and includes a list of 50,000 different domains, of which 500 will be contacted by the infected computer on April 1 to receive updated copies or other malware or instructions.

The question is... If the worm is a result of a Microsoft vulnerability, and Conficker hasn't yet struck, how could Microsoft create a removal tool?

Just a thought...

Internet Explorer ver. 8.0 released

Microsoft is launching Internet Explorer's v. 8 shortly. You may recall many IE users were upgraded from v. 6 to v. 7 overnight, without consent. And, many woke up to find their browser didn't work.

So, if you're an IE user, contemplating the switch to Firefox - now's the time. Avoid the aggravation of IE 8. Firefox downloads fast and imports all your favorites/bookmarks, offers tabbed browsing, and a "Morning Coffee" plug-in to load your preferred pages for each dat of the week! (Ask me how.) Overall, its safer than IE and has superior features. Download Firefox here.

If you have a web site, you'll have to test it in IE 8.0 to be sure it still looks good. As you may know, many web sites look better in Firefox and other browsers than they do in IE, but at least make sure your site's functionality isn't harmed.

Get more info in IE 8 here.

Tech book review: Thinking on the Web

Is the web as good as it can be? Have we created a monstrous database that is beyond organization? Will search efforts continue to deliver irrelevant results?

I thought so until I read Thinking On The Web, by H. Peter Alesso and Craig F. Smith. Combining a history of web development to the present, and an insightful glimpse into what developers are currently working on to make the web better, Thinking on the Web brings together the technological contributions of Kurt Gödel, Alan Turing and Tim Berners-Lee.

These three men, born in 1906, 1912, and 1955, respectively, shaped the primary technology we use today. Few would argue the heart of the technological revolution is the internet. The development of what we today take for granted, we owe largely to Tim Berners-Lee, and the works of Godel and Turing, 40 years earlier.

Read my full review at BlogCritics Magazine

Print What You Like

Even if I invented this clever technology, I doubt it would make me a millionaire, since it's free. Instead of trying to print a web page and getting boxes of ads and empty pages, this tool lets you define what to print from any web page.

Visit printwhatyoulike.com for the free download. It's been a while since we've had a new, clever tool. Enjoy!

The Rebooting of America

As America's first tech-savvy President prepares for the big Inauguration Tuesday, we're witnessing a seismic shift in the marriage between technology and politics. There will be books and media studies discussing how Obama's revolutionary campaign brought millions of people to politics, and brought politics to millions in a way the 6 p.m. news and a daily newspaper just can't do.

Obama has his own channel on YouTube, reminiscent of the old days of Roosevelt's Fireside Chats. Obama's FaceBook page has over 3.7 million supporters linked to him.

"The rebooting of our democracy has begun," said Andrew Rasiej, founder of Personal Democracy Forum and the techPresident blog. "[Obama] has the potential to transform the relationship between the American public and their democracy."

I suspect he'll soon tap into all those 'friends' for the grassroots effort to revive the American spirit, in this age of Obama 2.0.

(image: CNN Video snap)

Online privacy? Nah...

When browsing the web, especially if you use Google, Microsoft Internet Explorer, or Yahoo, you're leaving more than cookie crumbs behind.

In a Wired.com blog on 12/18/08, writer David Kravets explored Yahoo's recent announcement that they would keep user date for only 3 months, instead of 13 months. Google keeps users search data for 9 months and Microsoft for 18 months.

As a computer consultant, I've always explained that the data collected when we use the web and search engines was aggregated, so maybe they can dig through the data and know how many people in your zip code shop online for a Chevy. But now, with advanced technology and plenty of money, these firms are mining for data to a degree beyond what we ever imagined. They now put everything together in a profile for, in the case of this graphic, a 37-year-old male web user.



Because all of our web usage can be traced back to an internet protocol (IP) address, I don't doubt that its possible to trace such a specific profile back to a unique user. If the data is out there, I don't believe privacy rights are enough to keep our usage patterns private.

Kravets' report provides a link to a Yahoo paper entitled "Squeeze Every Drop of Meaning from Data," http://research.yahoo.com/node/89, and a presentation made by Yahoo about the ability to gather massive amounts of data, all for the purpose of helping gain ad revenue from advertisers delighted to have such precise profiles of their target audience.


Source article http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/12/data-mining-una.html

Are you Linked In?

For those of us who shy away from social networking sites such as FaceBook, MySpace, Twitter and the rest, there is still one useful option. Consider using LinkedIn if you want a place to list a public profile, viewed by other people with your professional interests. It's like old-fashioned networking for business folks, without the "Hello My Name is...." badge.

You know a lot of smart people, and they know many other smart people. LinkedIn is away to see who they know, and ask for an introduction or get recommended as a respected contact.

The exponential growth of those connections is what makes LinkedIn worth a few minutes of your time. For example, I have a modest 23 connections out there, but that gives me a link to the 615,600+ professionals who are all someway/somehow linked to someone I know.

That's wide exposure to people who may want my consulting services, hire me as a speaker, or who may want to purchase Release Your Writing or Computer Ease. Take a look at LinkedIn.com if you want to expand your reach.

Chrome: Google's new web browser

Tired of Internet Explorer? I've frequently urged clients to move to SeaMonkey or Firefox, both from Mozilla.org, the creators of Netscape. Any of these browser are less crash-prone than Internet Explorer, and less susceptible to attacks from hackers.

If you haven't yet moved to the amazing Firefox version 3, you might jump to the head of the class and get the free download of Google's new browser, named Chrome. It is still a 'beta' product, meaning not ready for prime-time, and as one person suggested: "Chrome may need some polish." but you have nothing to lose by trying it.



Advantages include
1. smart typing so when you type www.nyt the address for www.nytimes.com fills in, if it is a site you've visited before.
2. My favorite feature is a start-up screen with thumbnails of the sites you visit the most. Now that's useful. Sort of like seeing your bookmarks and favorites asn actual screenshots.
3. Home page also includes links to recently visited pages.

Google likes to capture user information, so read the privacy notice if you want to turn off some of their data collection.

download here if you're ready for something new.

ADDENDUM: Well, it's been about a week and I can't say I'm impressed with Google. Maybe the Beta was released too soon. It lacks many of the features in other browsers, such as smart-typing, easy access to Bookmarks, a visible menu bar, etc. Download Firefox 3 from mozilla.org if you're looking for something better. / HG 9-11-08

Yahoo vs. Google - I always choose the underdog...

If you're a Google geek, you may have noticed they now include notice of potential security risks with some search results.

Yahoo is doing the same, and often has better search results because Google's are like an over-congested highway.

One of the things Google does is highlight those sites that might be a dangerous security breech for your computer. In Google, a risky link takes you to a warning page saying "This site may be harmful to your computer."

But Yahoo automatically removes those threats from the search results. It lets through those that may have a link to downloads which may be spyware tricks. You'll stay safer in Yahoo if you look for the red warning triangle before opening such sites through a web search.

The other nice thing Yahoo has figured out, is how to let you know if a searched site has a nasty habit of using people's email address for spam. Now that's letting technology do something wonderful for us.

I feel safer already. Let me know if you Yahoo !!

Work, Home, You article

When you're searching for interesting reading online, click your way to this online mag: WHY Magazine.

In the March/April issue, I've got an article in the Tech Talk column on effective searching, beyond Google.

New Ebook explains Web 2.0 social networking

The Mysterious World of Web 2.0 is now available in an exclusive ebook format. Download, read this colorful 43 page book with Adobe Acrobat Reader, and get a grip on the newest wave of the internet: Web 2.0. Written in slide-show format, the ebook makes it easy to understand what Web 2.0 is, and why you should care, especially if you have school-age children.

Priced at just $9.95 for instant download, with special pricing for qualified academic faculty members.
Download the ebook from Lulu at http://www.lulu.com/content/2045895 or click here for more details.

Registered purchasers will receive updates as this fast-paced social networking world evolves.

Helen Gallagher