Medical Alert
October 18, 2008
Surfing around today I found another cool product I am tempted to get for my father-in-law. I have fallen and I can’t get up is a real possibility with him. He is just too damned stubborn for his own good most of the time to do like he should. Four years ago he decided to shovel snow in his typical old man dress shoes. Needless to say he fell and cracked two vertebra and was in a back brace for most the next year. Laying in the snow for more than an hour with his heart problems and diabetes didn’t do him any good either. The Medical Alert bracelet would have made things a lot safer for him then.
Things haven’t gotten any better for him since. With the addition of COP and failing memory this grand little device would reduce a lot of anxiety on everyone’s parts. The GPS in the Medical Alert monitor would have saved us all a lot of worry before we finally had to take his keys. It is more than just knowing where he is too. The fall alert, no activity feature and the medication reminders are even more useful now that he is often times home alone. I especially like the no activity feature which if it doesn’t detect any movement over a significant period of time will initiate a response. Of course I wonder how many personal reminders he would have it to just for someone to talk to. All in all this seems like a really good product to look into if you have someone in your life you are worried about.
Post 75 of 100 of Brad’s Tiny World Scribefire Challenge.
Windows Se7en Forcast
September 23, 2008
Windows 7 to Dump E - Webmonkey
Microsoft is planning to remove e-mail, photo editing, movie making and other secondary software offerings from the upcoming Windows 7. Windows Photo Gallery, Windows Mail, and Windows Movie Maker were all part of Vista, but, in an effort to cut down on development time of future OS updates, Microsoft plans to give them the heave-ho.
Instead users will be directed to download the Windows Live programs that replace each of those apps. In fact, Microsoft has already been encouraging users to replace the Vista versions with the Windows Live equivalents.
I have been looking forward to them doing this for some time now. I simply hate vista and its bloated suckware. it is simply time that they did this but there are noticeably bad things with this concept. They admit to not wanting to take the time to fully develop the system and get it out as soon as possible, which simply could make this another Windows Vista or worse another Windows ME. It is good that lazy consumers who just assumed what came with windows was good enough, will be forced to actually use better programs and just maybe produce less crappy content for the web.
The one program I am sure they won’t touch though will be notepad. That is simplicity at its best. The one program I am almost completely sure will go will be wordpad. This is a shame in many ways since it is all the word processing power most people will ever need, I have long been advocating that to my friends and family.
In the end I am hoping for a good release of Windows Se7en (windows seven). The crap I have seen with vista has caused me to convert much of my PC use to Linux, but despite what many Linux users will have you believe, it can’t do everything just as well. It will do it far more cheaply which often makes up the difference, but there is something to be said for having an OS on at least one machine that I can play all the latest games on.
Who Is To Blame For Brooke Bennett’s Disappearance
July 1, 2008
With the sad and frightening disappearance of Brooke Bennett, a twelve year old Vermont girl, online communities are once again forced to face public criticism. Public scrutiny is always needed. Criticism however is usually misplaced though.
The public, especially uninformed parents likes to blame the online services every time something happens to a child. While there have been a few cases where some small companies have failed to act on information that is rarely the case. While I do not like blaming the parents of kids that had something happen to them because of their online activities, they are the ones who ultimately old the most responsibility.
In The case of Brooke Bennett I have to ask what she was doing with a MySpace account in the first place. She was twelve, meaning she lied about her age to get an account. A lot of kids do it when they go online, in fact I have only ever met one who was unwilling to do so and played by all the rules. She however is scrupulously honest about her seventeen years. She is also the exception to the rule I think. There are literally are no ways to prevent this behavior that doesn’t put a serious burden on everyone else.
Not only would making it harder for kids to go online make it harder for everyone else, it would potentially endanger them even more. The more we forbid or restrict the action the more enticing it becomes as a rebellious activity. Secondly, every predator online would have the excuse, I thought she was eighteen, because you have to be eighteen to go online. Making it harder to go online or use services, benefits no one.
This once again brings the responsibility right back into the lap of the parents. Most parents will openly say, I don’t understand or really know what my kids do online. That however is not good enough. As a parent if you allow your kids to participate in an activity, then it is up to you to educate yourself with the facts. You are responsible for them, so it simply isn’t good enough to listen to hype from your kids about how great the internet is or the fear mongers saying how dangerous it is. It is up to parents to become informed and if that means showing and interest and taking part in what they are doing so be it.
It is also up to parents to learn about the sites their kids go to. If you are worth anything as a parent you aren’t letting your kids come and go at any hours of the night or day without knowing who they are with, where they are going, or when they will be back. The same rules apply online. If they are keeping a blog read it. If they are going to MySpace, FaceBook, LiveJournal or anywhere else, you need to find out what they are doing there. It is up to parents not some corporate internet service to act like parents.
In the end, Brooke Bennett’s parents may not have been able to do anything to stop this. Some kids will rebel and get hurt at no fault of the parents. On the other hand they should have known a hell of a lot more about what their daughter was doing. A lack of understanding is simply no excuse for parental ignorance.
Who Is To Blame For Brooke Bennett’s Disappearance
July 1, 2008
With the sad and frightening disappearance of Brooke Bennett, a twelve year old Vermont girl, online communities are once again forced to face public criticism. Public scrutiny is always needed. Criticism however is usually misplaced though.
The public, especially uninformed parents likes to blame the online services every time something happens to a child. While there have been a few cases where some small companies have failed to act on information that is rarely the case. While I do not like blaming the parents of kids that had something happen to them because of their online activities, they are the ones who ultimately old the most responsibility.
In The case of Brooke Bennett I have to ask what she was doing with a MySpace account in the first place. She was twelve, meaning she lied about her age to get an account. A lot of kids do it when they go online, in fact I have only ever met one who was unwilling to do so and played by all the rules. She however is scrupulously honest about her seventeen years. She is also the exception to the rule I think. There are literally are no ways to prevent this behavior that doesn’t put a serious burden on everyone else.
Not only would making it harder for kids to go online make it harder for everyone else, it would potentially endanger them even more. The more we forbid or restrict the action the more enticing it becomes as a rebellious activity. Secondly, every predator online would have the excuse, I thought she was eighteen, because you have to be eighteen to go online. Making it harder to go online or use services, benefits no one.
This once again brings the responsibility right back into the lap of the parents. Most parents will openly say, I don’t understand or really know what my kids do online. That however is not good enough. As a parent if you allow your kids to participate in an activity, then it is up to you to educate yourself with the facts. You are responsible for them, so it simply isn’t good enough to listen to hype from your kids about how great the internet is or the fear mongers saying how dangerous it is. It is up to parents to become informed and if that means showing and interest and taking part in what they are doing so be it.
It is also up to parents to learn about the sites their kids go to. If you are worth anything as a parent you aren’t letting your kids come and go at any hours of the night or day without knowing who they are with, where they are going, or when they will be back. The same rules apply online. If they are keeping a blog read it. If they are going to MySpace, FaceBook, LiveJournal or anywhere else, you need to find out what they are doing there. It is up to parents not some corporate internet service to act like parents.
In the end, Brooke Bennett’s parents may not have been able to do anything to stop this. Some kids will rebel and get hurt at no fault of the parents. On the other hand they should have known a hell of a lot more about what their daughter was doing. A lack of understanding is simply no excuse for parental ignorance.
Faster Than A Speeding Twit
May 15, 2008
Yahoo today is reporting that Twitter users got the news of the China earthquake out before the big media giants did. Well goody for them. This is any surprise to those of us using Twitter.
This isn’t the first time I have heard of news breaking on Twitter. Just yesterday I heard there would be an announcement concerning the fate of Ohio AG Mark Dann hours before it was official. It was also going around Twitter every time they thought he was ready to come out and speak and when it going and, and when it was over. Word travels fast there.
On the same notion of word traveling fast despite the 140 character limit for news it isn’t hard to go into information overload. With hundreds of tiny messages saying the same damned thing it is hard to keep track of the news, the gossip, or checking your regular updates. While Twitter succeeds in getting the word out the lack of filters can drive you insane.
MyLot Test Post
May 6, 2008
myLot User Profile For those interested in creating a bit of additional income and have a place to promote your own blog I would suggest trying MyLot.
New Theme and Web Compliance
April 12, 2008
The current theme is Mani Karthik’s of The Daily SEO Blog. I will get it updated with all my stuff here pretty quickly. Thanks to KC for pointing out the there was something wrong with the Suckerfish pulldown menus when viewing in Internet Explorer. I clean up the code to make it fully css compliant and leave it to Microsuck to find a way to have a conniption fit of standards compliance. In the mean time I want to thank Mani for his great work on this theme and tell any of you who are serious about blogging that today would be a good day to subscribe to his feed if you don’t already get it every day. Mani has a great post up today about being a Social Media Power User . Check it out!
Now that the niceties are made to a nice guy this brings up the actual post. In a world that is driven more and more by internet software, it becomes more and more clear that standards must start being adhered to.
Blog Catalog and Other New Additions
April 2, 2008
With the great leap forward in my Technorati Authority and The Other Blog and Brad The Blog Boy now in play and upgraded to 2.5 i can start deciding where to begin on improving Brad’s Tiny World. My first addition is something I should have done a lot sooner and that is to join Blog Catalog. I would appreciate it you would rank me as well with the icon in this post and on the sidebar.
MyBlogLog - Problem Solved
March 30, 2008
Is there anyone else having problems logging into their mybloglog accounts?
WordPress 2.5 My First tests - Broken Plugins
March 30, 2008
Alright, my first test post after activating several plugins was a painless experience. All my tabs were open on the post page. This was both good and bad, as All in One SEO Pack was open and ready to use, but so was every other section requiring lots of scrolling.
The plus side is All in One SEO Pack, AutoMeta, WordPress Database Backup, Twitter Tools, Technorati Tags 
and ShareThis seems to work.
Bad News: LiveJournal CrossPoster, and Adhesive don’t work.
I guess it will be a while before I bother upgrading…
WordPress 2.5 My First Impressions
March 30, 2008
My first impression of WordPress 2.5 is the admin side of things looks like they simply added a new theme changing the basic layout. Is it drastic? Not really, it will take some time getting used to it no doubt, but I don’t feel at the moment the interface is anything to worry about. The guinea pig test blog was a pretty standard 2.3.3 WordPress install on my local PC server. I simply copies the 2.5 files into the directory loaded up the local host and boom install with no problems. I am not sure I like the new layout, but that could be out of long standing familiarity with the other one. I liken the change to going from word 2003 to 2007 without horrible file extension surprises.
First image is the Dashboard
The posting page doesn’t have any real drawbacks except the expanding tabs for all your extra fields at the bottom. Simple Plus and Minus signs open these up. Which for the casual poster who rarely uses them, this won’t mean a thing. For those of us who tag, retag, use plugins like the All in One SEO Pack this will probably get on our nerves if we can’t figure a way to keep it open.
The Manage tab is pretty much straightforward as well. For a person who is used to dealing with many browser tabs open at one, there nothing really difficult about managing WordPress
The Design Tab which used to be called Presentation might throw someone because of the name.
On the right side of the screen you have Plugins, Settings and Users which have the new style but little functionality differences that I can see immediately.
All in all WordPress 2.5 works and looks pretty good, on the other hand Windows WTF Vista did too the first time I loaded it up. I am going to play around with this for a day or two before uploading it to a working blog. I hope to give you a full report on what this version breaks. As always backup before doing anything.
Drive Traffic To Your Blog
March 24, 2008
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| Drive Traffic to Your Blog with BlogMad. BlogMad is great source to drive traffic straight to your blog. It is as simple as going to their site and surfing all the other blogs listed through their browser window to earn free traffic credit. I earned 68 credits for 68 visits to my site while watching a movie last night. I also picked up a couple of great ideas for my blog and with their del.icio.us Integration, i was quickly able to bookmark them and move on to the next site. What is the catch you ask? Well of course there is one but it really isn’t any big deal, you can only click through one site every twenty-five seconds, and you have to manually mouse click on a number in their status bar to prevent spam. Alright you are now asking what do they get. Their status bar has an adsense window which refreshes every time you get a new page. While I got sixty eight credits towards visits to my site, they got 68 adclick impressions and I clicked on two interesting ones. not bad while I was half paying attention to Office Space… What do you mean paper jam? | |||
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Computer Security Tools
March 21, 2008
It has been a meh day for blogging and the world of news and technology. I keep seeing the same questions posted by people everywhere I go like what do you do with hamburger, or what antivirus should I use, or do I have to use a firewall? Well it is obvious to me that some of those questions are quite applicable on this blog. Here goes my not so humble answer… it is never humble when you start off an opinion piece with “I think!”
Antivirus
- Commercial vs Freeware: If you are a large corporation you may want to buy the commercial product simply because having a big name to blame when someone eventually gets past even you tightest security measures always makes you feel better. I put my money on quality freeware programs that are updated daily for the latest protection. if you are using them for commercially you are honor bound to pay for it, but it is still a lot cheaper than what you pay the other companies.
- How many should I use? Just one
- Which one do you use? AVG Free Edition
Firewall
- The same thing applies for Commercial vs Freeware as it for Antivirus and will spyware.
- How Many to use? Just one software based or they can get in the way of each other. For those with High Speed internet in the US (and probably elsewhere too) you will get a fine hardware firewall as part of your equipment package, but it is still advise able to get a separate one for each of your computers.
- Which does Brad use? Comodo Firewall, but there are several other good ones out there for free. I like the ease of setup and how little effort it takes to keep it doing its thing quietly. Read more
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Make Money Online!
March 16, 2008
I have found what looks like another real winner when it comes to making money online. Things are still small about 150k users at the moment, but I think there is the potential to grow fairly quickly.
www.myLot.com Read more
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4 Social Media Marketing Tips for Bloggers
March 16, 2008
I have been reading Darren Rowse’s ProBlogger feed for some time now and have really learned a lot from it in terms of how to be a better a blogger. In the spirit of his his advice about passing along other people’s sites before promoting yourself, I bring you Darren and his latest video post. on using social media to promote your blog.
I hope to bringing you more of Darren’s and other blogging sage’s great advice regularly. This little video is great and I hope some of you get as much out of it as I did. I recommend visiting ProBlogger or getting the feed delivered as soon as possible.
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