I work in a law library, but I can quite imagine our librarians doing a remix of a Lady Gaga song called “Catalog” (aka Poker Face). You really have to be up on your library terminology to get what the reworked lyrics are saying. The students and librarians at the University of Washington Information School did a great job! Enjoy!
How can you make your iPad more useful? Velco!
iPad + Velcro = Amazing
In short, yes. If you quickly want to see how much information on Facebook you are making public, go to the ReclaimPrivacy.org website, and follow the easy instructions there, and you’ll know in less than a minute how much of your information on Facebook is now available for the general public to view.
We should be concerned about how Facebook is handling information that we assumed would be private when we signed up. The problem isn’t so much that some of the information we put on Facebook is available to the public, it is that Facebook has repeatedly changed the default rules on what it makes public. When I signed up on Facebook 2 or 3 years ago, virtually all the information I posted there was private by default. That was one of the big selling points of the site: Connect with friends and share information in a private fourm.
If I signed up today, virtually all the information I post would be public by default. Not only that, but if I clicked “OK” on the different “information dialog boxes” that appeared over the past year telling me how the Facebook’s default privacy setting were changing, virtually all my information would be public now as well. That is very concerning.
To find out what you’re exposing to the public internet, go to: http://www.reclaimprivacy.org/
A couple of years ago I wrote a blog post about how to create a family friendly internet setup in your home. Given how quickly technology changes, I thought it was time to revisit the topic to see what has changed.
Being the father of five children under the age of 15 years old, and having 4 computers in our home along with a couple of iPod Touches, I’ve been experimenting with software & services over the past few years to try make my childrens’ experience on the internet as porn free as possible. After trying some commercial software for content filtering that ended up slowing down our 4 year old computer, and didn’t do anything to help on our iPod Touches, I have found something that works quite well on all the internet devices in our house (remember that no solution is 100% perfect not matter what the software vendor claims). It not only works well, but once you set it up on your home router, you don’t need to install anything on the desktop computers or iPod Touches!
“How can I save a YouTube file and save play it on my kids iPod on our next 12 hour road trip?” Believe it or not, this is a question that I get fairly frequently as systems administrator at the UVic Law Library, and as the neighbourhood technology guru. Here are a couple of tools that can make downloading flash videos from YouTube (or other video websites), a fairly easy task:
Step 1: Open Firefox, and download the Video Download Helper plug-in. This plugin will allow you to save Flash Files to your desktop. If that is allow you want to do, then you should be able to view the video using a video player like VLC Player. If you want to convert the flash video into something playable on your iPhone or iPod, then on to the next step.
Step 2: If you are running Windows and want to convert the flash video to an iPhone compatible format, or Windows media format, then I’d suggest you download and install Format Factory. If you are running Mac OSX, then I’d download Handbrake, to do the conversion job.
DVD Conversion: If all you want to do convert some DVD’s to iPhone or iPod Touch format for the road trip, then install Handbrake on your computer and rip the DVD’s into MP4 files. This will take a while to convert the videos (almost as long as it would take to watch the video itself), but can be worth while if everyone is able to keep their sanity on the trip.
Have fun converting YouTube videos for your kids iPods for that next long family road trip!
I couldn’t stop laughing as I watched this video. Apparently Penn and Teller are magical beings, ignorance is truly bliss, and knowledge is bad. A humorous illustration of why critical thinking is good. Enjoy!
I saw a great faux news article on the Onion News Network titled, “Google Responds to Privacy Concerns With Unsettlingly Specific Apology“. For starters the article is very funny. What makes it even better, is that it addresses problems that Google will need to address in the not to distant future.
We know that their motto is “Do no Evil”, but now that they are a public company, their only real duty as a corporation is to enhance shareholder value. If down the road Google falls on leaner times, and they have to choose between enhancing shareholder value and protecting the public’s privacy, I’m not sure how well our privacy will be protected. I hope that they’ll do the right thing, but without strong regulation and threat of serious penalties, I’m not sure that who ever is in charge of running Google at that point in time will do the right thing.
Here’s a couple of great lines from the article:
Responding to recent public outcries over its handling of private data, search giant Google offered a wide-ranging and eerily well-informed apology to its millions of users Monday.
“We would like to extend our deepest apologies to each and every one of you,” announced CEO Eric Schmidt, speaking from the company’s Googleplex headquarters. “Clearly there have been some privacy concerns as of late, and judging by some of the search terms we’ve seen, along with the tens of thousands of personal e-mail exchanges and Google Chat conversations we’ve carefully examined, it looks as though it might be a while before we regain your trust.”
Google expressed regret to some of its third-generation Irish-American users on Smithwood between Barlow and Lake.
Added Schmidt, “Whether you’re Michael Paulson who lives at 3425 Longview Terrace and makes $86,400 a year, or Jessica Goldblatt from Lynnwood, WA, who already has well-established trust issues, we at Google would just like to say how very, truly sorry we are.”
-http://www.theonion.com/content/news/google_responds_to_privacy
A little bit sacrilegious, and extremely funny… Finally Mr. Deity provides an answer that makes sense of evil in this world:
If you’d like to create some fun graphics or animations for your next presentation, or would simply like a distraction as you ease back into work after the Holidays, why not give GoAnimate a try. From their website:
GoAnimate.com is an entertainment website that enables the simple creation of unique computer animated stories, satires and sentiments that can be shared with the entire online community.
Historically, the creation of animation required specific skills, limiting those who can express their creativity. We designed the Go!Animate application to allow users to create animations without drawing talent or a technical understanding of advanced software such as Flash. The site provides users with a library of interesting characters, backgrounds, props, sound effects and music for use in creating their own unique animations. Creators can customize their animations with a number of tools and features that allow them to create truly unique works of expression.
Enjoy!
Last night our family watched a StarGate SG-1 episode for our family home evening activity. The episode we watched is called “New Ground” from season three. I saw it for the first time back in 2000, and I can still remember being uncomfortable watching it because of the cognitive dissonance it produced for me. Just for the record, the kids loved watching it, and we had a great discussion afterwords.
The story highlights the potential for conflict between scientific discovery and dogmatic faith, and does so in an interesting and compelling fashion. For anyone with kids or teenagers, I highly recommend watching this episode with them.
The basic plot line is this: The StarGate team travels to a new planet, where a star gate has been recently uncovered by local archaeologists in their country of Bedrosia. The archaeologists are very surprised to find a star gate, because they were actually searching for evidence that star gates did not exist. Bedrosia is at war with a rival country, the Optricians, over their beliefs regarding the origin of human life on their world. The Optricians believe that aliens brought humans to their world thousands of years ago through a portal, while the Bedrosians believe that their god, Nefertum, created life on their planet.
One of the archaeologists is convinced that the functioning star gate is dramatic proof that his own beliefs, and the beliefs of all Bedrosia, are wrong, and that the Optricians have been right all along. The Bedrosian military is not convinced by the evidence and believe that the StarGate and SG Team are all part of an elaborate hoax setup by the Optricians to undermine Bedrosian institutions and their faith (i.e. their religion). From the Bedrosian General (I’m paraphrasing): “I will not allow this hoax to undermine the institutions and faith of our people. I have read the book of Nefertum from cover to cover and know that it is true no matter what lies the Optricians try to make us believe. Our solders have not died in vain.”
“The primary theme of the episode is the ideological war between religion and science. The archaeologist is a true scientist, who has no unfounded allegiance to abstract belief, but is eager to change what he believes when presented with new evidence. The Bedrosians are dedicated to their faith, and are presented as arrogant and stubborn — unwilling to consider that their beliefs might be wrong, even when presented with hard evidence. This dichotomy is manifested in the characters of the archaeologist and the military general.” – http://www.gateworld.net/sg1/s3/319.shtml
You can read a full summary of the episode here: http://www.gateworld.net/sg1/s3/319.shtml. If you’d like to watch the episode, you can purchase it at the iTunes store here.
Two thumbs up from Rich & Heather!
