11-08-08

How Barack Obama will Advance Technology


It’s no secret that President elect Barack Obama was the more tech-savvy of the two candidates. He ran a very technology-driven campaign, launching his own social network that attracted over 1.5 million participants (built by Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes), and built up a Facebook profile to over 2.7 million supporters. In the end, he was able to raise just over $600 million dollars - much of which from the web.

Now that the election is over, it will be interesting to see how he puts technology to work when running the country. Throughout the past year, he’s made some comments on tech-specific initiatives he supports.  I’ve summarized them into the following list:


Net neutrality – loosely defined is the idea that all internet content should be treated equally. In effect it prevents internet service providers from charging a premium for different types of data traffic. Many fear that this private regulation will hinder innovation. President Obama is strongly in favor of net neutrality.

Wireless spectrum Auction – the FCC is auctioning wireless spectrum in the 700MHz range, currently being used by television broadcasters, but no longer will be in early 2009 when they switch to the new digital signal. This frequency range is especially attractive to mobile service providers, who can use it to extend service to underserved and rural areas. Where’s the controversy? Broadcasters are worried it will interfere with their signal, as are wireless carriers for the same reason. The FCC however has tested these “white spaces” and says there is nothing to worry about. President Obama sides with the FCC. More on the issue here.

Internet Taxes – President Obama wants to keep the internet free of federal taxes.

Federal E-rate program – allows underfunded schools to get subsidized telecommunications and internet services. Created under the Clinton Administration, the program unfortunately has eroded throughout the past eight years. President Obama has pledged to reform the program by expanding and modernizing it.

Chief Technology Officer – this would be a new appointment created by the Obama Administration who would be in charge of finding ways to use technology in order to add a layer of transparency to government. This may include the use of wikis within the legislation process, webcasts of important meetings, or open websites to collect and display comments from the general public.

 

Anything I missed? Let me know in the comments.

Posted by Gary in politics, tech
3 Comments

11-02-08

Essential WordPress Plugins for Every Blogger

WordPress is a great application by itself, but there are still a number of useful features that it does not natively support. Below is a list of essential tools to help you get the most out of your WordPress blog.

FeedBurner
An analytics tool for your RSS feed that tells you how many subscribers you have, and where they’re coming from.  If you don’t mind a few ads within your feed, the optional FeedBurner Ad Network helps you monetize your blog.
http://www.feedburner.com

Sociable
Automatically adds links to common social bookmarking websites like Digg.com below every post so that your readers can easily promote your content for you. 
http://yoast.com/wordpress/sociable/

RECAPTCHA 
Requires readers to type a jumbled word before commenting, preventing bots from spamming your blog. One of the best, and most popular CAPTCHA tools out there.
http://recaptcha.net/plugins/wordpress/ 

Akismet
CAPTCHA can prevent bots from spamming your blog, but if people are doing it, Akismet adds a second layer of protection by automatically screening each comment, and letting you review the ones that look fishy. 
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/akismet/

WP Google Analytics
Google’s completely free analytics program keeps getting better. This simple extension helps you to add the Google Analytics tracking code to your blog so you can track anything from page views, referring urls, downloads, etc… 
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-google-analytics/

Google XML Sitemaps
Creates a sitemap of your blog, making it easier for the most popular search engines (not just Google) to index it. Additionally, whenever you create or edit a post, your sitemap updates itself and notifies the search engines.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-sitemap-generator/

All in One SEO Pack
When submitting a sitemap is not enough to get your blog noticed by the search engines, this extension helps you optimize your page titles and meta tags, making it easy for search engines recognize your content as being the most relevant for a given term. 
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/

WP Super Cache
Each time a visitor loads a page of your blog, a call is made to the database. When multiplied many times, it can be very burdensome on the server and significantly increase page loadtime. WP Super Cache converts your pages to simple html, making them lightweight and fast. 
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-super-cache/

Get Recent Comments
This simple extension displays your most recent comments within the blog’s sidebar.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/get-recent-comments/

Posted by Gary in social networking, tech, wordpress
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10-29-08

Top 10 Twitter Tools

Twitter, as you all know is the most popular micro-blogging platform out there. What you may not know is that a number of applications have been built to extend its functionality and usability:

  1. Twitbin - an add-on for Firefox that lets you access Twitter directly from your Sidebar.
  2. Twhirl - a desktop application for both Mac and Windows (based on the Adobe AIR platform) that not only lets you interact with Twitter, but also laconi.ca, Friendfeed, and sessmic.
  3. TwitterBerry - a Twitter mobile client for BlackBerry (requires OS 4.0.2+).
  4. Twitter for iPhone - just as the name suggests, a Twitter client for the iPhone
  5. Flock - The ability to view Twitter updates is only a small part of this new web browser.
  6. TwitterSnooze - a very useful application that lets un-follow someone for up to 30 days
  7. TwitterVision - a very cool website that shows the newest Tweets on a world map.
  8. Tweet2tweet - lets you monitor conversations across Twitter
  9. Twist - almost like a Google Trends for Twitter. Lets you track the popularity of various keywords.
  10. Digsby - a well-rounded app that lets you monitor your entire online social life from a single tool. AIM, Gmail, Facebook, MySpace, AOL, MSN, Linkedin, Yahoo, and of course, Twitter. 
Posted by Gary in social networking, twitter
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10-28-08

19th Century Automata

This is some of the most amazing automata. I’m sure it wasn’t quite as freaky over 100 years ago when created.

Posted by Gary in automata
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10-26-08

Storing Your Passwords Securely

When it comes to storing multiple passwords, most people either save them to a file on their local computer, or simply use pen and paper. While both methods work, they can easily lead to your security being compromised.

My solution is not a simple one, but definitely worth the trouble. You’ll just need three things:

1) Any USB drive (as cheap as $5 at newegg.com)
2) KeePass Password Safe (a free Open-Source password manager)
3) TrueCrypt (a free Open-Source encryption tool)

Step 1
Download TrueCrypt from the link above and set it up on your local machine

 

Step 2
Plug in your USB drive and make sure it has been completely formatted

 

Step 3
Next, you’re going to encrypt your USB drive so that all data saved to it is secure. Open up TrueCrypt and click the “Create Volume” button. Make sure “Create a standard TrueCrypt volume” is selected and click “Next”

 

Step 4
Click “Select File” and browse to your USB drive and open it. Now you will need to create a new volume within your USB drive. Everything within this volume will be secure. Next to “File name”, create a name for you new volume and hit “Save”. Then click “Next”.

 

Step 5
Here you will need to select your encryption algorithm. Since I am by no means an encryption expert, I’ll leave it up to TrueCrypt to explain each one. Once you’ve made your selection, hit “Next”.

 

Step 6
Now you’ll need to determine how large to make your volume. If you were using this volume to store/backup files, you would want to designate as much space as is available. But since we’re only storing passwords, 10MB is more than enough. That way you’ll still have the rest of the USB drive to store other things (although not securely). Click “Next”.

 

Step 7
Set the password for this volume. Make sure it’s a very good one using the guidelines set by TrueCrypt. Click “Next”, and then click “Format”. Finally, click “Next” once the Volume Created screen appears. You can now click “Cancel” to close the window.

 

Step 8
Now that you’ve created the encrypted volume, you must now mount it in order to add/remove files within it. This step will need to be done each time you plug your USB drive back in. Click “Select File” and browse to your USB drive, open it and click on the volume you just created. Click “Mount”, enter your password, and click “OK”. You’ll find the drive mounted as a separate letter name within My Computer. Find and open it.

 

Step 9
Download the KeePass portable edition to your local machine and unpack it into your open volume. Double click “KeePass.exe” and follow the master password creation instructions.

 

Step 10
Add your passwords to KeePass. Once finished, close KeePass and click “Dismount” in TrueCrypt and safely remove your USB drive.

That’s all there is to it. If you happen to lose your USB drive, not only are your passwords encrypted by TrueCrypt, but also protected by KeePass’ built-in password. Comment with any questions or suggestions.

Posted by Gary in security
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