California beach-goers are going high tech! Heal The Bay and Go Live Mobile (a mobile marketing company) have joined forces to update residents with a beach report card. Instead of heading out to a beach, only to be disappointed by poor water quality, people can send a text message to 23907 with the name of the beach they’d like information on. A text message will be sent in reply with that particular beach’s weekly grade. Heal The Bay has published the Beach Report Card since 1990, but this will be the first time that California’s analysis of beach water quality will be available via cell phone. Thanks to mobile marketing, residents will be able to stay informed and safe.

I’d love to see this rolled out in other parts of the country. We have a horrible problem with Red Tide here in the Tampa Bay area, and it would be nice to get a quick update before heading to the beaches, especially for people like me who live farther away from the Gulf of Mexico.

I’m not big on text messaging.

I just can’t type fast enough to keep up, and leaving the vowels out of words annoys me. But text messaging is useful, and 2 events in the news proved that recently. In the first, a Malaysian teen thwarted an attacker by sending a text message to family. After hearing a noise outside, Salima Mohamad Noor sent a quick text message, and the next thing she knew, a guy had a knife at her throat.

(What’s up with the kids today, anyway? They here a noise and their first instinct is to text for help? What about RUNNING LIKE HELL?)

In the second story, 2 lawyers in Atlanta (that sounds like the beginning of a lawyer joke!) were kidnapped. David Deganian held onto his cell phone, and used it to text his brother that he’d been kidnapped. The missing men were found, unharmed, after one of the suspects was picked up for using a credit card belonging to one of the victims.

I’m always interested in new revenue steams for my blogs. I’ve often wished I could get paid for sharing video content - there are a few videos I’ve put up on YouTube that have received thousands of views - wouldn’t it be nice to be making money each time someone watched one of those videos? It’s not an option on YouTube, but it IS an option on your very own blog, with a new site called The News Room. CPM start at $1 - that means for every thousand views of a news story, you get paid. You earn more money when someone takes that content from your site and puts it on their own site. $1 per 1,000 views may not sound like much, but many stories pay much more, and the work is practically effortless. After all, I already turn to sites featuring tech news to be inspired to blog, and now I can easily add video content to those blog entries. Here’s a story I “mashed” from The News Room to accompany this blog entry - all I did was scroll through the categories and subcategories, find a new story I liked, select the layout (allowing you to personalize your video content) and then I copied the code I was given. Et voila, we have a news story about Google buying Feedburner:

Pretty easy - I provide great content to my readers, but I still get to add my own spin on things via the blog article that goes with the news. Oh - I should add that in addition to getting paid for placing content, you can also earn prizes! Neat, huh?

Here’s an example of one of their news stories via video:

An update on my earlier post about the Virginia Tech tragedy…as I mentioned, we had a spammer sign up here in the GeekySpeaky forum under the name of the shooter, and of course, I immediately deleted the post and the profile.

Spammers are now using emails to attempt to infect computers with a trojan horse program. The emails say they are linking to footage of the slayings. Why anyone would click on that to see people in fear for their lives in dying, I don’t know, but they probably deserve the virus that they get for doing so!

In addition, fake websites are attempting to collect money for charity by using the names of the victims in the shooting. Over 450 domain names related to the shooting have been registered. eBay cancelled auctions for such domains.

People are sick.

I watch the show Medium every week - ever seen it? If not, it’s a weekly drama that focuses on a woman with psychic powers, and she dreams things - places, people, phone numbers, etc.

I was instantly reminded of that show when I read this story about a man who had a phone number running through this head. He dreamed the number and couldn’t stop thinking about it, so he finally sent a text message to the number, wondering if he somehow knew the owner of it. The woman he texted continued to exchange messages with him, and they eventually met…and just returned from their honeymoon! Now that’s a geeky match made in heaven!

Last week it was Turkey blocking YouTube, this week it’s China blocking…everyone in the free world. Fark’ers have plenty to say about it.The link isn’t working right now (is the USA blocking it in retaliation? Hmmm) but it can be found at:
http://greatfirewallofchina.org/test/

I’m not surprised that China blocks websites. Are you?

I love my VoIP telephone service, but this article from ZDNet has me a bit worried. It reports that computer security experts are warning of spammers using VoIP to spam you via your phone, just like the spam you get via email (or blog comments) now. I’ve got visions of my voice mailbox being filled with ads for medications and mortgage refinancing, and worry that in order to combat this spam, the price of my phone service will increase dramatically. There’s already software being made that seeks out the IP addresses of people using VoIP and then sends a recording to each number. I’m sure this type of thing doesn’t fall under the do-not-call list rules, since the messages are pre-recorded….right?

You know, people are stupid. And this proves it. A woman in New Jersey named Melanie McGuire was arrested for the murder of her husband, who died in 2004. Among the evidence presented in court were logs of her computer activity. She googled “how to commit murder”, “instant poisons”, “undectectable poison”, and other naughty search terms a few days before her husband died.

Let’s see…let’s plan a crime, and use the computer in my HOME to find out how to commit said crime. Duh!

It was only a matter of time…

Viacom is suing YouTube & Google for showing unauthorized Viacom videos on the video sharing site. And not just suing…but a suit for $1 billion (with a B!) dollars. This reminds me a bit of Napster…and the recording artists going after people sharing music there. If anything, seeing clips of shows on YouTube makes me want to buy the full season disk. I love that anyone can share a 30 second clip from an old show there, or a funny commercial. Until Viacom opens up their own video sharing site, I wish they’d leave Google and YouTube alone.

In the recent L.A. Times article I appeared in, I was quoted as saying (in reference to paid blogging):

“People talk about how we’re destroying the credibility of the Internet,” Caldwell said. “Let me tell you — there are a lot worse things happening online.”

What “worse things” you ask? How about the teens in Denver that killed someone, and blogged about it? Bryan Grove (17) and Tess Damn (15) conspired to kill Tess’ mother, Linda, and then blogged about the crime afterwards on MySpace.

This reminds me SO much of a crime committed here in Tampa a few years back, when Valessa Robinson and her boyfriend, Adam Davis, conspired to kill Valessa’s mom, Vicki. One big exception of course…Robinson and her boyfriend didn’t have blogs. I wonder if the blogs and entries will be used in the trial against Grove and Damn?

Those of us living in America take a lot for granted. By now, you’ve probably heard about YouTube being banned, and then unbanned in Turkey. I read a bit about it on my friend Osman’s blog - he lives in Turkey, and went through this nonsense first hand. How lucky we are to live in a country that allows us to go anywhere, and do almost anything on the internet, from viewing stupid videos to blogging for money. You can even find out how to build a bomb online if you want - because we’re ALLOWED to go where we want online. Is our country without fault? Certainly not, but being told where I can and can’t go online isn’t something I worry about.

I’m really happy to see that Turkey reversed the decision. I wouldn’t want anyone in Turkey to be deprived of anything that I can access online.

I came across an article in my hometown paper today about YouTube being used by police agencies to catch crooks. More and more, surveillance videos from robberies and crimes are being uploaded to YouTube to identify the perps (how’s that for some cop lingo?), and it’s working. One such case involved a fatal stabbing at a concert in Ontario, Canada. A 72 second video from a security camera was posted on YouTube, where it was viewed over 35,000 times. The police were able to make an arrest within 2 weeks of posting the video.

So is YouTube making a difference, or is it just good old fashioned police work? In the case of the murder above, I have to wonder how many people actually viewed it to see if they knew the killer, as opposed to the video getting passed around by email because it showed someone being murdered. (”Hey bro…you gotta check out this dude gettin’ whacked on YouTube!”)

This all reminds me of when the TV show America’s Most Wanted started in the 80’s. It completely changed how technology can help to stop crimes. Average people, in their living rooms now played an active part in catching crooks. Now we can do the same from our laptops. Or just forward the videos to our friends for shock value.

I noticed something a bit funky in my Outlook calendar this week, and I can only assume it’s related to the new & improved daylight saving time coming our way this weekend. After this weekend, all my recurring appointments are showing a start time 1 hour later. As if I’m not confused enough, my calendar has to try, right?

Like Y2K, the newly legislated DST is causing computer and software issues. Many manufactuers have created patches to ensure that your operating system, email, calendars, and phone systems can handle the big switch this weekend. Microsoft has released Patches that may not switch 100% of the calendar entries to the correct DST time during extended DST period (from March 11 to April 1). What’s that mean to you? Your calendar entries, like mine, may be 1 hour off.

These problems could occur again during the 2nd extended DST period later this year, from October 28th through November 4th.

Picture it. You’re a teacher in a formerly Communist country. You have students hungry for knowledge, and limited resources. And on good faith, you buy computers that come with Windows software for your students. The next think you know, you’re facing 5 years in a Siberian prison and a fine of $10,000 US for buying pirated software.

This isn’t a fairy tale, or a teacher’s worst nightmare, it’s something that Alexander Ponosov is living with daily. Alexander is a school principal in the Ural Mountains region, and he claims he bought the computers in good faith, not knowing that the software installed was illegal. He’s got President Vladimir Putin and Mikhail Gorbachev (former USSR leader) in his corner, begging Bill Gates for leniency.

“Show leniency and drop claims against the principal,” wrote Gorbachev. “This teacher, who has dedicated his life to educating children and earns a pitiful wage compared with even the lowest-ranking people at your company, now faces imprisonment in a Siberian penal colony.”

I didn’t know that Siberian prison even existed…I thought that was just something out of the movies. I’m saddened that for all the money Bill Gates has, and for all the money he’s donated to organizations all over the world, that he may allow this man to suffer for 5 years in jail over this.

Technorati Tags: Bill Gates, Microsoft, Siberia, piracy, softeare, Windows, pirated software

Let’s just call it what it is. PORN or PORNOGRAPHY. This isn’t intended to start a debate on is it right or wrong, and should it be on the internet. I personally don’t give a hoot, as long as the people viewing it are adults. The problem I had with online porn is that it’s too easy for kids to see it online, and this recent article says that half of U.S. children ages 10 to 17 say they’ve seen porn online.

How does that happen? Well, dad looks at porn and doesn’t clear the history on the computer. The next day, the kids go back a day to find that cool site they were at previously…and they stumble upon dad’s porn. Or a spammer enters a forum and posts pornographic pictures. Or kids go online and look for naked pictures of people. My favorite? Kids misspell a URL or a phrase they’re searching on, and instead of going to a legit site, they get sent to a porn placeholder.

The study found that children who sought pornography were significantly more likely to engage in rule-breaking, and to be withdrawn or depressed. Offline victimization, such as bullying, was found to be correlated with seeking pornography.

The study also showed that boys accounted for 80% of WANTED exposure to porn. Well, duh.

Technorati Tags: porn, pizorn, pron, p0rn, pornography, internet porn, porn online, internet pornorgraphy

I don’t get a choice of operating system on my laptop, since it was provided to me by my company, so I will not be one of the first users to give the new Windows Vista a whirl. And honestly, I’m not sure how many people will switch right away, given the bugs and issues with every new Microsoft release. After 5 yeas and over $5 million dollars to get Vista ready, you’d think it would be bug free, but this IS Microsoft we’re talking about after all.

One reason a lot of people won’t make the switch? Vista requires at least an 800 Mhz chip, 20 GB of free disk space, 512 mb of system ram, and 128 mb of video ram. Unless you’ve got a reasonably new PC or laptop, you probably can’t use Vista. One more reason? The average at home PC user isn’t going to shell out $100 for a new o/s when Windows is working just fine for them.

Technorati Tags: Windows, Vista, Microsoft, operating system, o/s

Do you send text messages? I’ve sent a few in the past, but I’d rather just pick up the phone and talk to someone if I need to reach them. I’m just old enough (30) that I can’t pick up “texting” and my thumb coordination stinks. One day I was texting with Sindy and I was amazed at how quickly she was texting back to me, and how long her messages were. Turns out, it was her 15 year old, doing the texting for you.

No matter how you feel about texting, it’s here to stay. Especially now that a book has been written completely in the text message format. The Last Messages has been published in Finland, and it tells the story of an IT executive…in nothing but text messages.

Personally, I don’t think I could stand to read a book like that. It was hard enough for me to read “The Color Purple”, which is a classic written by Alice Walker in the vernacular of a poor black sharecropper in the early 1900’s. It took me a few chapters to get used to the spelling and grammar. Likewise, I think that a book about text messaging, filled with “g2g” and “brb” would drive me nuts.

Technorati Tags: text message, text messaging, The Lost Messages

It was announced this week that eBay will be purchasing StubHub in a $310 million dollar deal. (I guess all of those final value fees eBay charges sellers really do add up!)

For those of you not in the know, StubHub is a site that lets fans buy or sell tickets to concerts and sporting events. StubHub acts as the middle man by processing and making delivery on the transactions. In a way, they’re very much the “eBay” of tickets, in that they connect buyers and sellers as a middleman. Where Ticketmaster fails, StubHub succeeds, and I expect to see a lot more of them in the marketplace with eBay’s deep pockets available to access.

Technorati Tags: eBay, StubHub, TicketMaster, concert tickets, sports tickets

Michael Arrington, founder of TechCrunch, and known in some circles as Assington, is taking 2 months off, because he’s burned out.

“Maybe his skin is just getting thin. Arrington recently was accused of having conflicts of interest for accepting advertising from and writing about companies that he advises or invests in.”
–Elinor Mills

Arrington was quoted as saying,

“All I promise is to give my honest opinion every time I write, regardless of whether there is a conflict of interest.”

Hmm…doesn’t that sound vaguely like the bloggers statements - the same bloggers he dissed for doing PayPerPost? He even called PayPerPost “absurd” when they launched DisclosurePolicy.org.

Michael even went so far as to state, in that blog entry, that

“Blurring the lines in this way - facilitating the pollution of the blogosphere while creating an illusion of doing something good for the public, is a good business move for PayPerPost. But it is a terrible development for the blogsphere and public trust. I hope that very few bloggers are suckered into going along with this.”

So it’s okay for Michael to blog about companies that sponsor him, or companies he has a vest interest in, because he’s the only possible person in the blogging world that can truly not be swayed by a conflict of interest. No one else has his moral fortitude. Michael? Err, pot? I’d like to introduce you to kettle.

While Michael is gone, no doubt on a vacation paid for by some sponsor that he didn’t disclose, please enjoy 2 minutes with the Michael Arrington bobblehead.

It was only a matter of time before someone snatched up MyBlogLog. For those of you not in the know, MyBlogLog is a relatively new social network that connects bloggers by building communities. You can meet people who read the same blogs that you do, or find out who’s reading your blog. Obviously Yahoo saw a lot of value in the MyBlogLog model, because theyponied up $10 million for it. Monkey Bites points out that MyBlogLog and Bix (another Yahoo purchase) might be considered “B-list prizes“, due to the fact that Yahoo tried (and failed) to acquire YouTube and Facebook.