This Should Work

I think we should all thank Google for fighting the good fight and not releasing massive amounts of search data to government; now we can see just how dangerous data mining can be.

Over the weekend AOL deliberately accidently released the search queries of 650,000 AOL users and the results were rather scary. Even though AOL says that the data cannot be tied to specific users, the New York Times has used the data to discover the identity of one person in Georgia.

It was this type of data that the Department of Justice was asking for from Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, and now we can see just how dangerous it is. Not to mention freaky; just look at the results from this guy.

Two Words: testicle festivals.

I hope they don’t find out who he (or she) is.

My goal was to redesign this site in time to submit it for the CSS Reboot event that happened on May 1st, but that didn’t happen. I’ve been wanting to change the look for a few weeks, but couldn’t find the time or energy to do it until this morning.

Why a mouse trap? I just set my first one this morning. I wasn’t hurt when setting it and the mouse won’t be hurt either–it’s a humane trap.

PC games used to include something called a Boss Key. A Boss Key is a key or key combination that changes the video game screen to something that looks like a spreadsheet or document, basically making it look like you were doing something other than screwing off at work.

Well the NCAA Tournament and CBS have brought the Boss Key back this week. CBS is webcasting the first two rounds of the Mens Tournament for free! Of course this means folks like myself and many others will be watching the games on our computers at work. So CBS has created a Boss Key! It’s very old school and very cool.

The Boss Button is last on the menu. Clicking it reveals this

My favorite part of the spreadsheet is “5- Remember, cheering in the office gives you away”

[tags]NCAA, Tournament, CBS, Webcast, Boss Key, Boss Button[/tags]

In an effort to help me remember how I solve certain computer problems and share some solutions with others, I started another blog. You may think I have too much time on my hands (and you may be right), but I find this a good way to keep a log of what I’ve done to solve problems.

The URL is http://www.thisshouldwork.net/tech.

It is really tech focused, so if titles like Using NetBios over TCP/IP and LMHost files to eliminate NetBEUI overhead mean nothing to you, then you may want to skip it. But if you think it sounds interesting, check it out. These solutions worked for me and hopefully they’ll help you out. Also if you’ve got any ideas or solutions that have worked for you, I’d love to hear about it.

It’s an ugly site right now, but maybe in the next couple weeks I’ll make it look pretty.

[tags]Tech Support, Tech Solutions, Tech Should Work[/tags]

Even though Apple announced a new Mac Mini with an Intel processor, Front Row and remote, I’m still in love with the one I bought right before the announcement. I’ve tried not to read every review and blog article about the new mini, but I couldn’t help it- I wanted to see just how much I was missing.

And while I may miss the speed of the Intel processor, here are the things included on the new Mac Mini that I can live without:

• Gigabit Ethernet port: This allows the mini to travel the network 10 times faster than usually, but only if you have the correct equipment. I don’t own networking gear that can travel that fast, and I’m connecting to the network wireless. So no use for me on this one.
• Front Row with Remote: After doing some research on the web, I’ve found a way to put Front Row on my Mac Mini (it’s not just a straight install). As for the remote, I have a wireless keyboard and mouse that I use from the couch; and if I want something smaller, I can download a free program like Romeo and use any Bluetooth device as a remote.
• Larger and Faster Harddrive: While a faster harddrive would be nice, I don’t need anymore space (at least not right now). I’ve placed most of my music collection on the Mini and I still have about 70 Gigabytes left.
• Two Extra USB Ports: I’m not using the ones I have now, why would I need more?
• Digital Audio Jack: Great for movie to give you the best surrond sound, but I’m just playing my music from my mini into my stereo.

When it’s all said and done I also saved about $250 by buying the older one, which will do everything I need it to and more.

[tags]Mac, Mac Mini, Intel, Front Row[/tags]

I finally broke down and bought a Mac computer and I am so glad that I did.

One of the downsides to keeping up with the latest computer gadgets is that I always read about “the next genereation” of a product and convince myself to wait on purchasing the item. This was true the Mac products, but I just got tired of waiting and spent the money on a Mac Mini.

Along with the mini I purchased a wireless keyboard and mouse (bluetooth)and becuase I don’t have an extra monitor laying around the house, I’ve hooked it up to my HDTV!

I’m hoping to turn it into a media center for our household, allowing us to stream music to any room in the house with speakers. I’ve spent most of today “moving” my music from CD’s to the Mac Mini. I’m still deciding about placing a copy of our digital photos on it as well.

But one thing I am truly enjoying is getting to know OS X Tiger. At first I found it a little complicated because I was so used to Windows as well as the ability to right-click items. But after a while I got used to it and started using some great porgrams included in OSX like Automator and Expose.

I’m having a lot of fun with my new toy, but the one downside to Apple’s products is that they’re very white; perfect for showing all the dog hair that gets on the keyboard!

So if you’re curious, this is what my entertainment center looks like (click the picture to view the flickr notes):

[tags]Mac mini, HDTV, media center[/tags]

A recently launched website is hoping to become the definitive clearing house for all things relating to spyware and adware. The site stopbadware.org is organized by the Harvard’s Berkman Center and the Oxford Internet Institute, and is sponsored by big Internet companies like Google and Sun Microsystems.

The nice thing about this website is that it encourages participation from Internet users from all technical level. Computer Techs and IT Security specialist can talk about their experiences with each other about what works best for cleaning systems of “badware.”

And non-technical people can also just share their story of what happened with their computers when it became infected. While it may not seem like sharing one’s computer nightmares is not helpful, it can. By reading these stories can help the tech-savvy folks analyze the average user behavior; this can lead to better training, and better anti-badware” programs.

This site is still in its early stages, but I think it’s got a lot of potential because it tries to bridge the gap between the users and the “computer guys.” If you are interested in the whole computer spyware/adware/badware subject, these are two of my favorite sites on the subject:

• Spywarewarrior- a good all around site to find out what anti-spyware tools work and which will cause you more headaches.
• Ben Edelman- former student fellow to the Berkman Center, Ben’s served as a consultant for many big name organizations fighting spyware.

Now that we’re finally moved into our new home (but not completely unpacked) and our Internet is up and running it’s time to fire up the old blog machine, this time with a few new changes.

Some of them you won’t see because the changes were to the back-end part of the server, I was trying to make it a little more secure (and it was very secure! There was moment when I had locked everyone out of my website, including myself!). But there is one change you can see on the sidebar. I’ve add a section called “iListen To…”

This section will display the last three songs I’ve listen to on iTunes. If you’re an iTunes user (or at a computer with iTunes installed) you can click on the album art to view the track in iTunes. I plan on making an entire page out of this, showing the last 30 songs I’ve listened to, but for now this is what I’ve got.

While you’re at the sidebar, I wanted to mention a couple of new-ish links that have been added. First, my brother has started blogging; you can check out his website World Domination Foundation. Also a good friend in Gambier, Ohio cracked a few months back and started a blog as well called Memory Chick on blogspot. Check them out and show them some love.

I’m working on the iListen To… page now, so hopefully it’ll be up soon.

Just a quick note that we’re moving into our new house this weekend (finally!) and that my web server will be down for the weekend. I’m also planning on making a few changes to server and do some routine maintenance on it over the weekend as well. Hopefully, by Monday night it will be back up. Thanks!

I’ve wanted to learn more about Macs for quite a while, but I haven’t found the money (or cracked and used my credit cards) to purchase a Mac desktop or notebook. My friend showed me her Mac Powerbook once and I thought “Wow! This is a great piece of hardware!” I’ve read my former colleagues book Mac OSX Tiger Unleashed cover to cover and thought “This sounds pretty good. I should try it out.”

I thought about purchasing one last year, but all the rumors about Apple switch over to Intel chips gave me pause. I wanted to see if the new Macs with Intel chips (which are faster than the current Macs with Power PC chips) would be reasonably priced, like around $999.

So when Steve Jobs made his classic “One more thing. . .” annoucement today about the Macbook laptop running a Dual core Intel chip, I rushed to the website to see what else came with the new laptop. And while it comes with loaded with stuff (iSight, iLife, iWork, etc) it’s starting price is $1999. And that’s for the cheap one!

I thought that maybe the prices of the old Power PC chipped laptops would drop in price. Nope, they still start at $999.

I think I’ll wait for next Steve Jobs accouncement for Mount Apple and hope they start making affordable laptops with Intel chips soon.