Category Archives: Web/Tech

Ego Check

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I read this piece in the Wall Street Journal online today about a pregnant woman who Googled all the potential names for her baby to make sure the name she and her husband picked for the kid would be searchable.  From the article:

Before Abigail Garvey got married in 2000, anyone
could easily Google her. Then she swapped her maiden name for her
husband’s last name, Wilson, and dropped out of sight.

In Web-search results for her new name, links to Ms.
Wilson’s epidemiology research papers became lost among all manner of
other Abigail Wilsons, ranging from 1980s newspaper wedding
announcements for various Abigail Wilsons to genealogy records listing
Abigail Wilsons born in the 1600s and 1700s. When Ms. Wilson applied
for a new job, interviewers questioned the publications she listed on
her résumé because they weren’t finding the publications in online
searches, Ms. Wilson says. (See Google results for Abigail Garvey and Abigail Wilson.)

So when Ms. Wilson, now 32, was pregnant with her
first child, she ran every baby name she and her husband, Justin,
considered through Google to make sure her baby wouldn’t be born
unsearchable. Her top choice: Kohler, an old family name that had the
key, rare distinction of being uncommon on the Web when paired with
Wilson. "Justin and I wanted our son’s name to be as special as he is,"
she explains.

And here’s a bonus they don’t mention: the kid can ride the advertising coattails of the Kohler company that makes plumbing fixtures.

This got me to thinking about how searchable my name is.  Turns out that thanks to this blog and the fact that my name is plastered all over some former employers’ websites I’m doing okay. Type in Jon Lowder, even without the quotation marks and my blog comes up first and a bunch of work stuff, my LinkedIn profile and other stuff related to me comes up in the first few pages.  So I decided to see how I do with just Jon.  There I don’t appear until the 9th page of results (54th position) but that’s okay considering that there are some pretty web-loved Jon’s out there: Jon Stewart, Jon Udell, and Jon Lebkowsky.  Wait…who?!  I’m being beaten by a guy named Lebkowsky and who names his blog "Weblogsky"?  At first I thought maybe it was a fan site for The Big Lebowski but I was wrong.  Ends up its just a blog by a guy named Jon Lebkowsky, and from my short reading I’ll have to begrudgingly admit that it’s a good blog.  Okay, it’s a better blog than mine, but that doesn’t help my ego.

So I decide to try just Lowder.  How many Lowders can there be?  More than you’d think, but I still do relatively well by coming in at #3.  A company called LowderNewHomes is number one and a former soap opera star (Days of Our Lives) named Kyle Lowder comes in number two.  Not bad.

Knowing one’s place in the universe is a good thing.  Thanks Google.

Keeping Track of Congress Just Got a Lot Easier

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One of the frustrations I’ve had in keeping tabs on what my Congress-critters were doing was that I was pretty much dependant on news outlets to keep me abreast of the action in Washington.  For one thing I didn’t know anyone who had the time to wade through all the information unless their job pays them to do so.  For another, until the advent of the web you had to subscribe to the Federal Register to access all of the info, and even after the web came along it was a tedious process to go and browse the online information.

Now thanks to a project called OpenCongress you can subscribe to RSS feeds dedicated to any Representative or Senator and have their every action sent to you as it’s updated.  I just added the feed for Virginia Foxx to my Netvibes page and now I can see how she’s been voting recently, and in the future I’ll be able to see her votes as soon as they happen.  Even better, OpenCongress has pages that pull together information, including descriptions of the bills, articles about the bills and other data on each bill in one easy to read page.  So here’s one of the recent feeds for Madame Foxx:

Rep. Virginia Foxx [R, NC-5] voted ‘Nay’ on the question: On Passage: H R 1362 Accountability in Contracting Act regarding H.R.1362 Accountability in Contracting Act

If you click on the link to the Act you can read all about it which makes it easy to see how my representative voted and to determine if I agree with her.  Since I think she’s a dingbat I doubt I’ll agree with her much, but at least with this tool I’ll be able to make my judgements based as much on her votes as for her less than appealing public appearances.

More Tivo to Love

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Anyone that’s talked to me in the last year or two probably knows that I love-with-a-capital-L my Tivo.  It looks like I’m going to have even more reason to love it in the near future.  Amazon is teaming with Tivo to offer video dowloads from Amazon’s Unbox service straight to Tivo, and it looks like you’ll be able to rent or buy.  They’re doing a limited test but they expect to roll it out to all Tivo subscribers in the near future.  One limitation is that the Tivo has to be hooked up to a broadband network (luckily ours is hooked into our network) so Tivo users that still have their systems updated via dial-up will either have to hook their systems into their home network or go without. Here are details from the announcement:

    To activate the service, subscribers will simply log on to
Amazon.com and follow a few simple steps to establish a link between
their broadband connected TiVo Series2(TM) or Series3(TM) box and
their Amazon account. Once the initial set up is complete, eligible
movies or television shows from Amazon Unbox can be downloaded
directly to the customer’s TiVo box. After the movie has been
downloaded, the title will automatically appear in the subscriber’s
TiVo "Now Playing" list with all of their other recorded shows, easily
viewed with just a click of the TiVo remote.

    Customers can purchase television episodes for $1.99, purchase
most movies for between $9.99 and $14.99, or rent movies starting at
$1.99. As an added bonus, all purchased videos are automatically
stored in each customer’s "Your Media Library" at Amazon.com for
future access and download.

Su-weet!

I truly hope this gets going, but I’m waiting to see it actually launched before I get too excited. I was stoked when Tivo said they were doing a deal with Netflix but that deal seems to have died on the vine.  If the Tivo/Unbox service does indeed go off as planned and does work as advertised then our Netflix subscription might be going the way of all flesh.

Stupid Lawyers. Oxymoron?

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I recently stumbled upon a cool new web service called Stumble Upon (hat tip to Sean Coon for pointing it out) which is a little browser tool you can download and use for free. Here’s how it’s described by BBCWorld:

"Stumbleupon is a brilliant downloadable toolbar that beds into your browser and
gives you the chance to surf through thousands of excellent pages that have been
stumbled upon by other web-users"

So I was using my little new procrastinating tool and I found this page of funny quotes from courtroom transcripts.  Here’s a small sample, but then you really should check out the whole thing:

Lawyer:  "How far apart were the vehicles at the time of the
collision?"

and,

Lawyer:  "Were you alone or by yourself?"

and,

Lawyer:  "I show you Exhibit 3 and ask you if you recognize
that picture."

Witness:  "That’s me."

Lawyer:  "Were you present when that picture was taken?"

and,

Lawyer:  "Doctor, did you say he was shot in the woods?"

Witness:  "No, I said he was shot in the lumbar region."

and,

Lawyer:  "Were you acquainted with the deceased?"

Witness:  "Yes sir."

Lawyer:  "Before or after he died?"

and,

 

Lawyer:  "What is your relationship with the plaintiff?"

Witness:  "She is my daughter."

Lawyer:  "Was she your daughter on February 13, 1979?"
   

 

and finally,

Lawyer:  "Now, doctor, isn’t it true that when a person
dies in his sleep, in most cases he just passes quietly away and
doesn’t know anything about it until the next morning?"

Cool NC State Parks Site

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Of the "web 2.0" developments I think that the coolest is the explosion of "mashups" that resulted from companies like Google opening up their API (whatever that is) and letting any Joe Citizen develop a widget or service incorporating its service.  A great example is this mashup of data on North Carolina state parks and Google Maps.  If you click on any of the bubbles it will pop up a window with a weather forecast from Yahoo, a link to pictures tagged with the name of the park on Flickr , and a link to the park’s own website.  Simple, but effective.

Fried Router and Google Desktop on Today’s Menu

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There are lots of pluses to self employment and/or working from home.  Not having to shave for days on end, wearing sweats and a t-shirt on a daily basis, showers-optional, etc.  On the other hand there are some definite negatives like bad-smell-syndrome and anything related to technology.

This morning my router was fried (me thinks it had something to do with the crackling I heard emanating from my power strip) so without the convenience of tech support it was off to the store to buy a new router.  The router that was fried was a Linksys Wireless G router that I purchased when the G standard had just been produced, I think around four years ago, and this morning as I was driving to Circuit City I had a vivid recall of the decidedly non-automated set up procedure for the old router.  In other words I remembered how painful an experience it was for your average non-tech-geek to install a wireless network.

I bought the next version Wireless G router (with speed and signal booster!) and ran back home.  I popped open the box and saw these magic words on a big red sticker: "RUN CD FIRST: Do not unplug any existing PC or Networking Equipment".  For once I followed instructions and two minutes later the router was up and running, the security settings were set up automatically without me having to re-learn all that crazy lingo (WEP, WAP, whatever) and my computer, which is the only one cabled to the router, had a nice internet connection. 

Next I was asked by the install program if I wanted to install other computers on the network.  When I clicked yes it asked if it was wired or wireless.  I clicked wireless and then it asked me if I could temporarily attach it by cable to the router for the install.  I said no and it then asked me if I had a USB flash drive.  I said yes and it prompted me to plug in the drive and then it installed a setup program and said all I needed to do was plug the drive into any other computer I wanted to install on the network and the program would automatically configure the computers for the network (assuming they’re all running Windows XP).  SWEET!

I went downstairs to Celeste’s office and kicked her off her computer so I could get it back on the network.  I plugged the flash drive into her USB port and then waited, and waited, and waited.  What the hell? So I pulled up Task Manager and saw her CPU at 100% usage.  I looked at what was running and noticed a butt-load of memory being chewed by Google Desktop and other Google Pack goodies.  I shut them off and she instantly went to 23% usage.  Hmm.

As soon as I turned off Google the Linksys install program launched and we had her online in about 60 seconds. When it was done loading and I’d confirmed her connection was good, and that she had a much stronger connection than she’d ever had with our old router, I uninstalled all of her Google stuff. 

All told my tech support job cost me about an 1 1/2 today, but the result is we seem to have a much stronger wireless network and I’m coming to believe that Google really wants to be like Microsoft.

Does This News Bode Ill for People Who Read for the Blind?

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The International Herald Tribune is allowing readers to get audio feeds of any article they like.  Users can go to audionews.iht.com and create custom "podcasts" of any individual news item or news section that they can then play over their computer or on their portable player (MP3, iPod, etc.).  Best of all it’s a free service.  While I started writing this piece as just one more sign that we’re finally seeing newspaper companies embrace the emerging convergence of different media, and how they better speed it up before they go the way of dinosaurs, I’m now looking at this from a different angle.

A while back Celeste and I got a special radio for my grandmother who had recently lost her eyesight.  The radio receives just two stations, one that is the local public radio station and another that is broadcast out of Wake Forest and is dedicated to audio programs that include volunteers reading newspapers, both local and national.  What does a program like the IHT’s mean for these volunteer programs?  If newspapers throughout the country adopt this standard won’t the organizations that distribute these programs simply be able to pick the "podcasts" they want and broadcast them to their listeners?  That would be a bummer for people like my Mom who volunteer to read and enjoy it thoroughly.

Greensboro Has Wireless Envy

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Over in Greensboro Ed Cone posted an item about Winston-Salem/Forsyth County getting ready to offer municipal wi-fi and lamenting the lack of such an effort in Greensboro.  Much discussion ensued and it’s one of the few times I can remember reading anyone write something re. technology that states Winston-Salem is ahead of Greensboro.

Ed also says that Greensboro’s downtown wireless corridor isn’t the same thing as municipal wi-fi (too limited) and I’d agree; we also have a free wi-fi corridor on Fourth Street in W-S but what they’re talking about doing is a much bigger deal.  Hopefully it works.

WinstonNet is the group behind the wi-fi effort.

**Update: Check out DarkMoon’s analysis of the deal here.

A Voting Toolkit

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Now that we’re entering the heavy campaign season for the 06 elections I think we need a toolkit on how to gather information so we can make informed decisions at the polls.  Below are some links to sources of information about Congress and people running for Congress: