Make them sorry they ever stole from you:
Thousands of mobile phones are stolen every month, according to Synchronica. If these are smart phones, they can contain sensitive information such as e-mail messages and computer files, potentially causing embarrassing data leaks.
Synchronica's mobile-phone management product can remotely lock and wipe data from Windows-based phones as soon as their owners report the loss. Companies can also turn on the "Synchronica Scream" feature.
"On average, it takes only 30 seconds for someone to notice that their phone is missing, compared to an hour for a wallet or purse," according to Synchronica. As a result, victims should be able to hear their phones scream out for them.
According to this article:
1. A solid introduction paragraph
2. Visual elements
3. Structure
4. Using line-height and font sizes to boost readability
5. Links and Blockquotes
...via digg
Qantas has issued on advisory on Dell laptop batteries--they can come on the plane, but you can't leave the battery in and plug in your computer. This is only supposed to apply to recalled batteries, but some people have had to remove any Dell battery:
Qantas is issuing an advisory to all passengers on its flights on the safe use of Dell notebooks following the recall of 4.1 million batteries announced by the PC manufacturer last week.The airline said that although passengers would be allowed to carry their Dells either as checked or cabin baggage, they could only use them on battery power or through the aircraft power supply available in some first and business class cabins once they have first removed the batteries from the unit.
Qantas said cabin crew would be advising passengers of the measures which apply to any computer affected by the recall, that has not yet had the battery replaced.
However not all airports were following these procedures this week. One passenger who flew out of Canberra on a Qantas flight on Monday reported that he and his colleagues had encountered security personnel removing the batteries from all Dell computers, and taping up the contact points on the battery.
...via Gizmodo
Posted by dcoates at 02:16 PM
Digg's founder talks about Digg:
Speaking at the Building Blocks conference in San Jose today, Digg founder and chief architect Kevin Rose described his site as a "crazy madhouse of news flying around, 100 percent user powered." The Digg madhouse isn't yet a crazy quilt of ads aimed at increasing revenue, he noted when asked about getting to profitability.
...via Digg (of course)
The Northwest Florida Daily News asks--What does your inbox say about you:
"If you keep your inbox full rather than empty, it may mean you keep your life cluttered in other ways," says psychologist Dave Greenfield, who founded the Center for Internet Behavior in West Hartford, Conn. "Do you cling to the past? Do you have a lot of unfinished business in your life?"
On the other hand, if you obsessively clean your inbox every 10 minutes, you may be so quick to move on that you miss opportunities and ignore nuances. Or your compulsion for order may be sapping your energy from other endeavors, such as your family.
Email addiction, of course, is now a cultural given. But a less-noticed byproduct of that is the impulse of the inbox. Some of us are obsessed with moving every email to an appropriate folder while killing junk "spam" on arrival and making sure Mom knows that we got her email and still love her. Meanwhile, others among us are e-procrastinators, modern-day Scarlett O'Haras who figure we'll deal with old email tomorrow. We're discovering that the disorder in our inboxes mirrors the disorder in our homes, marriages and checkbooks.
Me, I'm a horder, at least in that I keep a lot of mail in my inbox. I prefer searching to categorizing. I don't think I'd call it hording vs deleting, though. I think of it as different ways of storing things. If I stuck my emails in different folders they'd be just as lost to me as they are to a 'deleter' who's overwhelmed by having 10,000 messages in their inbox.
From BBC NEWS:
Costing $1,565, the 5150 had just 16K of memory - scarcely more than a couple of modest e-mails worth.
The machine was not the first attempt to popularise computing but it soon came to define the global standard.
It altered the way business was done forever and sparked a revolution in home computing.
"It's hard to imagine what people used to do with computers in those days because by modern standards they really couldn't do anything," said Tom Standage, the Economist magazine's business editor told the World Service's Analysis programme.
"But there were still things you could do with a computer that you couldn't do without it like spreadsheets and word processing."
...via Digg
Andrew Carvin's notes from Jimmy Wales' talk at Wikimania:
We're announcing that the One Laptop Per Child Project is including Wikipedia as the first element in their content repository. (ac: though they've been talking about this for at least a year.)
Wikiversity: A center for the creation and use of free learning materials and activities. It will create and host a range of free content materials, multilingual materials, for all ages in all languages. It'll host scholarly projects and communities to support these materials, and foster research baed in part on existing resources in Wikiversity and other wikimedia projects. Launching in three languages, in a six-month beta, within a month.
Wikimedia Foundation will also now have an advisory board to help improve partnerships, public relations, financing, etc. Additionally, Wikia and SocialText is launching Wikiwyg. It will make it easier for more people to get involved in wiki editing.
The technological barrier to entry keeps out really smart people who are uncomfortable with the Wikipedia interface. "Wikiwyg, in some shape or form, will be the future of the Internet," because it will allow non-techies to become Wikipedians easily.
...via Smart Mobs
How to Totally Fake Being a Geek:
Computer Systems: That elite snobbery comes out the hardest in this subject. It's easy, all you have to do is pretend to hate the mainstream choices: Windows, AOL, Intel. Assert Windows is inferior to (pick one or more) Linux, Unix, BeOS, or Macintosh. Act sympathetic upon hearing an email addy ending in "@AOL.com" and say, "Any idea when they're gonna put cable modem in your area?" Snort at Intel commercials and chortle "Give me an AMD Duron any day!" It doesn't matter, again, that you have no idea what you're talking about. When challenged for an explanation, pick any random nonsense and string it together. Insist that your choice is faster, more secure, less expensive, conductive to open source, more efficient, or whatnot. This is exactly how real live conversations between geeks defending their favorite software/hardware go all the time. The point is that you're faking an opinion. Like any random geek, you could still be full of hooey.
Now, when it comes to operating systems, the Geekosphere (I coined it! It's mine! You heard it here first!) has jelled around Linux and BSD. When it comes to Linux distros, you win points the older and more obscure your distro is. Simply look up the history of computing and pick machines and systems going back in 5-year increments; or just learn this phrase: "I run Yggdrasil on a PDP-11. Boy, it was a bitch installing all that from tape!" You'll need a snorkel to breathe underneath the pile of groupies that will sack you. *Any* BSD distro is obscure. The mere name "BSD 386" instantly repels suits like garlic repels vampires.
...
Applications: While there is the obvious prejudice for emacs, vi, Gimp, Adobe, Mozilla, Firefox, and etc., you're just as well off here letting the other person name a software tool that they use, then caw, "Get a REAL program!"
Programming: Learn not only the names of these programming languages, but the order in which I present them: Basic, Cobol, Pascal, Ada, C, Java, Lisp, Perl, Python, Ruby, Assembler. These are listed in order of "least cool" to "most cool". Now you know what to do. Whenever the person you're talking to name-drops any language on this list, simply pick the next one and assert that this is what YOU prefer. What to do if you meet an assembler programmer? Act like any other geek: impressed! Bug them to teach you how to write a tic-tac-toe game that uses artificial intelligence in assembler. Stand and pretend to absorb their explanation in one shot. Shake your head in marvel and mutter, "And all that time, I was trying to do it the hard way!"
Here's another thing if you're out-trumped by somebody who knows multiple programming languages, including the coolest: make one up! Yes, it's true, there are more languages and variants out there than any human being could possibly keep track of, and new ones get invented all the time. Just call it something like "B/arg3" or "Modico" and claim that it combines the best features of (insert random language #1) and (insert random language #2). The geek you're talking to will simply assume that they've missed the relevant Slashdot articles. Cover up line: "It just reached 'break-even' point last month."
...via Digg
No one writes paper and envelope letters anymore, but everyone shops online. Although the number of first class mailings has dropped significantly for the US Postal Service over the last few years, the number of packages they delivered has managed to pick up a lot of slack:
At a recent conference that attracted 15,000 eBay enthusiasts to Las Vegas, the main sponsor was a big advocate of online shopping: the U.S. Postal Service.
"I have one message today for the entire eBay community," Postmaster General John Potter said in a speech. "We love every buyer, every seller, every power seller. Thank you for shipping with the United States Postal Service."
As people send e-mail and e-cards instead of handwritten letters and greetings, as they pay more of their bills online and file their tax returns electronically, the Postal Service has started to seem outdated.
Yet the Internet is actually injecting new life, and sorely needed revenue, into the Postal Service. And it is happening with packages, millions of them shipped every day, in a journey that starts with a few mouse clicks and ends days later at a customer's door.
...via Smart Mobs
An interesting Guardian article on who participates in a community and, at least peripherally, how that contributes to the critical mass of a working community:
It's an emerging rule of thumb that suggests that if you get a group of 100 people online then one will create content, 10 will "interact" with it (commenting or offering improvements) and the other 89 will just view it.
...
Bradley Horowitz of Yahoo points out that much the same applies at Yahoo: in Yahoo Groups, the discussion lists, "1% of the user population might start a group; 10% of the user population might participate actively, and actually author content, whether starting a thread or responding to a thread-in-progress; 100% of the user population benefits from the activities of the above groups," he noted on his blog (www.elatable.com/blog/?p=5) in February
...via elearningpost
According to the Guardian, YouTube has overtaken MySpace as the place to be on the Internet:
The video sharing site has taken a 3.9% share of global internet visits a day compared with 3.35% for MySpace, according to internet analysis company Alexa.
YouTube's popularity has grown immensely over the first six months of the year. In May its reach outgrew that of the BBC's websites.
According to Nielsen/NetRatings, YouTube's American user base grew by 297% in the first half of the year.
Four countries have already committed to buying 4 million Linux-powered OLPC laptops:
A spokesperson for the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program revealed July 31 that the countries of Nigeria, Brazil, Argentina, and Thailand have each tendered commitments to purchase 1 million Linux laptops through the U.S.-based program.
Several media outlets reported last week that Nigeria had committed to buying 1 million of the laptops, and others reported (incorrectly) that $1 million worth of computers -- or about 10,000 -- had been requested by the African nation.
OLPC program director for Middle East and Africa Khaled Hassounah confirmed to DesktopLinux.com July 31 that Nigeria has indeed committed to buy 1 million machines, and then revealed that Brazil, Argentina, and Thailand also have placed similar commitments.
...via Digg