Entries Tagged 'Google' ↓

Aid and Comfort on Google

In this post are copies of some WWII posters and literature from the 1940′s:

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Apparently, Americans a few decades ago didn’t feel that getting our soldiers killed was part of their First Amendment rights. My, how things have changed, in our “progressive,” “liberated,” “internationalist” society today.

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This information is on Mashable, today. Stan Schroeder is exposing Google for providing pics of Fort Sam Houston military base. Google says it was a mistake, and that they’ve corrected it, but as of the publishing of this article (3/7/08 at Noon CST) this much is still available. Apparantly what was showing earlier, that prompted the Pentagon to get involved, showed even more, including the location of the guards and other security information, including 360-degree footage of the insides of some buildings.

When did giving aid and comfort to our enemies become acceptable in America?


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The Google Phone: What’s it all about?

(Updated 11/17/07)

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What the Google Phone is, and what it is not

  • No, you can’t go to the Google menu and order a fancy new phone! Google is not providing cellular phone service at this time, nor is Google manufacturing or selling phone handsets.
  • The Google Phone is a project under development. No new products or services are ready to be offered to consumers.
  • The Google Phone project, code-named Android, is to create a new cellular phone software platform. This will consist of a cell phone operating system, together with mobile applications, that will run on many different cell phone handsets offered by various major service providers.
  • Unlike proprietary products such as the Apple iPhone, Microsoft Windows Mobile, Nokia/Symbian, and RIM’s Blackberry, Android will be based on Linux and other open-source software.
  • At this time, 34 vendors are involved in the Android consortium.

What will Google’s Android project mean to you?

The Android project will introduce more competition into the cellular phone marketplace. To keep their market share, other smartphone vendors that are not part of the Android consortium will have to lower their prices, open up their proprietary software to outside developers, or both.

This project will undoubtedly encourage more experimentation and innovation in terms of what can be done with cellular phone devices.

Google to bid on wireless spectrum – What does Google plan to do with it?

CNET News: Don’t expect Google to take on AT&T

Google is lining up financing to bid on wireless spectrum in the Federal Communication Commission’s upcoming 700MHz auction, and it’s already built a small high-speed wireless network at its headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., to test out what it could do with the spectrum, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

The Journal cited sources saying the company is planning on bidding in the auction, set to take place early next year. Google has obtained a test license from the FCC that it’s using to test technology on a small wireless network on its campus, the article said. And it’s supposedly using prototypes of handsets that use the company’s newly announced Android software

After all the fuss and hoopla surrounding Google and the auction, it would seem ridiculous if the company didn’t bid. Google lobbied the FCC hard for rules to be passed as part of the auction that would require license winners to allow open devices on that part of their network.

CNET News suggests that Google will probably lease this spectrum to other wireless providers to use with the Android project, rather than attempting to build its own wireless network from scratch.


Android Robot

Google’s Android Project – Media Coverage


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Are Jihadists Visiting Your Blog?

Updated!

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1389 Blog has been getting some strange visitors lately…

Screen shot showing a very suspicious search

This chart shows the search phrases that people entered yesterday to get to 1389 Blog.

Here’s what happened: Someone entered the phrase “how to make remote pipe bombs” into Google or another search utility. 1389 Blog was included in the list of sites that came up, simply because we ran a news story about the Goose Creek “pipe bomb boys”. The person clicked on the link to get to 1389 Blog.

For the record, there are NO instructions on this blog for making remote pipe bombs or any other WMDs. I wonder whether this particular visitor became frustrated and decided to get back at us by falsely reporting 1389 Blog as a “hate site.”

In case you’re wondering, there is no hate speech on this blog. No trash talk. No incitement to violence. No mention of anything pertaining to racial issues. No ad hominem attacks. No bloody pictures. Comments are moderated, and we don’t even allow swear words. So if you’re looking for an excuse to ban this blog, you will find it only in your imagination.

So how can you find out who is visiting YOUR blog?

By running blog statistics and checking them regularly.

Where do I get blog statistics?

You’ll need to download a plugin, sign up for a web-based utility, or have your hosting provider set up a statistics utility if you want to gather statistics. Just for starters, try these. Follow the instructions at the websites:

  • If you have a WordPress blog, whether it’s at WordPress.com or independently hosted, you can use the WordPress.com blog stats plugin.
  • Anyone with a blog can sign up for Google Analytics.
  • The free version of StatCounter lets you pinpoint the actual IP address for the most recent 500 page views. If this isn’t enough, you can upgrade to a larger log file size for a monthly fee.

How blog statistics can help you to improve your blog

There are other good reasons to run blog statistics.

For one thing, the only way you can build your audience is by trying different things on your blog, and then checking your statistics to see how readers react. You can see how many people are visiting, where they are coming from, which search phrases they used to get to your blog, which blog articles they are viewing, how long they are staying, what they are clicking, and so forth. If you don’t collect statistics, you’re just groping in the dark.


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Our enemies use many avenues – including our own blogs -
to spread disinformation and propaganda. They also use many techniques to try to shut our blogs down entirely.

Jihadist disinformation in blog comments and email

Are e-jihadists attacking your blog?


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“What’s an RSS feed, and why should I care?”

Good questions. First, here’s why you should care.

Unlike getting website updates or ezines by email, RSS feeds give you absolute, 100% complete control over the situation.

You don’t have to reveal your email address. If you want to stop receiving content, you don’t have to request to be “taken off the list.”

One click, and poof… the subscription is gone.

Plus, since there’s no email address involved, there’s no way a publisher can sell, rent or give away the means to contact you.

That’s right… no more spam, viruses, phishing, or identity theft. And best of all, no reason to put yourself at the mercy of the publisher’s intentions.

You won’t need to suffer through the legalese in the privacy policy (if there is one) looking for loopholes that will send you deeper into inbox hell. No more setting up dummy Hotmail accounts “just in case.”

Again, if you don’t like the content, you can make it disappear as fast as you can change a TV channel. With just one click.

Pretty cool, huh?

“That is cool! Umm… What’s RSS?”

All right! Now we’re ready to get to that part.

RSS is a simply an Internet technology standard that allows busy people to receive updates to web-based content of interest.

You might have figured that much out by now. But basically, that’s the essence of an RSS feed – you subscribe and then receive new content automatically in your feed reader.

If you actually want to know how RSS works, click here.

“What’s a feed reader?”

You may already be using a form of feed reader, and not even realize it. If you use personalized home page services like My Yahoo or My MSN, you’ve got RSS capabilities built in. That’s how syndicated content like news, weather and stock quotes appears on your personal page. You can also add content from any blog or other site that uses RSS to provide updates.

Other web-based tools are primarily dedicated to feed reading only. One of the most popular web-based feed readers at this point is Bloglines, and it’s also free and easy to get started with.

If you use the Firefox browser, you can also receive RSS feeds from your tool bar by using the Live Bookmarks function. The next version of Internet Explorer will add this feature as well.

Finally, there are desktop-based feed readers. These function somewhat like an email program for feeds. Examples include Newsgator and Feed Demon.

If it sounds complicated, it’s really not. And things will get even easier when the next version of Outlook integrates feed-reading capabilities. So, you’ll have the same convenience that email subscriptions offered in the old days, without any of the terrible consequences of giving out your email address to potentially unscrupulous characters.

“Sounds good. So how do I subscribe to a feed?”

First of all, look for the subscription or feed options (some bloggers make this difficult for some odd reason). You might see a variety of buttons (amusingly called chicklets).

If the site you want to subscribe to uses FeedBurner to aid in the subscription process (like Copyblogger and many other popular sites), you’ll likely see the standard RSS icon, which takes you to a page that will give you an array of the most popular feed readers so you can select yours, and you’ll go from there. This is the new standard RSS icon:

Sometimes there will be a chicklet for your particular reader right on the blog that will take you to the appropriate subscription page. You may see these (among others):

Add to Google

Subscribe in Bloglines

Finally, you may also see little orange buttons that say XML or RSS. Often these chicklets will take you to a page that looks like code gibberish. In this case, you simply cut and paste the page URL from your browser window and manually paste it into your feed reader subscription function.

Hopefully this last method will soon disappear, never to be seen again.

In summary: RSS solves BIG problems.

So there you have it… RSS is being adopted at a phenomenal rate, because it’s a good thing for everyone.

The benefit to readers is obvious. And it’s good for publishers too, because we want to make sure that people feel comfortable subscribing, and that our message is not nuked by an overzealous spam filter.

If there’s anything here that is confusing, or you have a question, please contact me and I’ll be happy to help!

Thanks to Copyblogger for a helping hand with this tutorial.





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Why Conservatives Need to Geek-Up (Part 1)

If you are not a liberal when you’re 25 you have no heart, and if you’re not a conservative when you’re 45, you have no brain.

This saying, sometimes credited to Winston Churchill, seems to hold a bit of universal truth, as does the notion that the young people of a generation affect change, while the older folks lend stability. This certainly seems to be the case when it comes to politics online in the 21st century (allowing, of course, for exceptions such as the Young Republicans clubs and the die-hard hippies).

Web 2.0 technology affects our lives online in the form of blogs, online citizen journalism sites (social news), wiki’s, folksonomies, social networking sites, collaborative bookmarking sites, podcasts, aggregators (e.g. RSS), semantic web, collaborative software, and other online scenarios in which users create and share content such as graphics, news, information, technology, creative writing, software, photos, and videos. The original World Wide Web gave us the opportunity to share information by posting what we had to say, and by reading what others had to say. Web 2.0 takes that concept to the next level, by giving users the opportunity to collectively influence what information is available and how the information is distributed.

Today’s twenty-somethings grew up online, and generally seem to be more intuitively tech-savvy and more comfortable with online collaboration than those of us that are older (“older,” in this case meaning anyone over 35!). It is no wonder, then, that there is a noticeable liberal/progressive majority in the politics discussions of any of the social networking sites, which extensively utilize the newest technologies and the art of collaboration.

Largely due to Web 2.0 technology as well as increasingly interactive search engines, there is a growing body of knowledge online that is taking on a life of its own, and it is very influential. Features such as Google PageRank assure that the majority view of any issue is likely to be the first available information on any given topic. Anyone interested in the accuracy of the information that is being disseminated online, needs to have a voice in this increasingly important global discussion.

As conservatives, we need to understand and utilize Web 2.0 technology if we want this body of knowledge to even partially reflect our values, attitudes, respect for history, and vision for the future.

(Go to Part 2 of 3)
(Go to Part 3 of 3)

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Technorati has changed…and some of us have misgivings

DigiDave discusses the changes in Technorati’s user interface in Technorati’s New Design. Also, please read the comments posted there.

Seems as though Technorati is de-emphasizing the blog search and blog networking features that made it so worthwhile, and instead trying to be a news aggregator for the general public. It’s possible that they are afraid of competition from Google’s blog search, which is much less powerful and does not have the infrastructure to promote blogger networking. 1389 thinks that they’re making a mistake in trying to reach the mass market by downplaying their strong suit and becoming a me-too player in the already crowded news aggregator arena.

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Top 17 Search Innovations Outside of Google

We’re always hearing about what Google is doing next, but now readwriteweb has a great article about search innovations taking place outside of Google.

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Oops! That wasn’t supposed to happen! © Google 2007

Okay, I’ll admit it: 1389, a/k/a the editor of this blog, is the worst Internet junkie on the planet. Among other things, I have upwards of thirty feeds coming into my Google Reader account alone, and when I’m out somewhere, I pick them up on my cellphone with Google Reader Mobile, which is currently in beta test.

Normally, Google Reader Mobile works surprisingly well, even on a cellphone screen not much bigger than a postage stamp.

This past Friday, I clicked on a feed link and got the mysterious message shown in the header of this blog entry.

Obviously, this is not the most helpful error message – neither for the tech support staffer nor for the end user. If any of you happen to know anything about this message, please post a comment here!

More to the point: my attention was especially drawn to the fact that Google included a copyright notice in a message that is such a painfully ironic summation of the human condition.

After all, who among us has not said, or at least thought, the same thing?

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