Category: Digital Life

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Many without TV after switch

It seems my family is just one of many with much less access to television since the switch to digital. Bush’s government kept telling us that all we needed to do to continue to watch TV after the switch to digital was buy a converter box with the free government coupon. Well, this wasn’t any more true than some of Mr. Bush’s other stories.

Thanks to President Obama postponing the switch date my family and many others were able to get a digitial converter box in time but that’s the end of the good news in this story. read more

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The new white flight: Facebook

The new way to prove social superiority is in the social media/Web 2.0 environment. Heaven help us.

Dana Boyd is a social media researcher at Microsoft Research New England and a fellow at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society. In 2006-7 her

conversations with high school students began showing a trend of white, upper-class and college-bound teenagers migrating to Facebook . . . Meanwhile, less educated and nonwhite teenagers were on MySpace. Ms. Boyd noted that old-style class arrogance was also in view; the Facebook kids were quicker to use condescending language toward the MySpace users. read more

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Digital TV switch delay approved

Your TV will still work on February 17, even if it’s analog. I am personally not a fan of TV in any form, but even I recognize that TV is the way many household, and especially many elderly Americans, connect to the outside world and fill idle hours that would otherwise be spent in silence. The attention to the comfort of the average American is obviously high on our president’s priority list – pushing through this delay to enable more people to get ready for it was one of Obama’s first priorities and he got the job done in good time. read more

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Free your cellphone! Sign the unlock petition

The Electronic Frontier Foundation EFF needs help with getting cellphones unlocked. Sign the petition to free the phones.

Hundreds of thousands of cellphone owners have modified their phones to connect to the network or run the software of their choosing, and many more would like to. But the Digital Millennium Copyright Act poses a legal threat to phone users, even though the law was supposed to protect copyright owners and distributors of digital music and movies. This threat of litigation has driven consumers underground, stifling innovation and competition. read more

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The Wall Tweet Journal and other Twitter phenomena

Twitter enhancers . . .

Tiago Doria tipped me off about The Wall Tweet Journal, giving up to the minute news about the microblogging portal. Tiago also likes to play with TweetLater. Lets him archive his tweets for delivery later. Is that fun, or what?

So, which are the Twitteratii that you follow who also follow you? Just as importantly, who isn’t following? My friend Dossy Shiobara created an app calledTwitter Karma just to give a simple answer this question. Give it a whack.

Twitter Karma

Want to see photographs turned into mosaics using fotos representing Twitter users? Sure you do. Twittermosaic.com. read more

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Send email/sms or make to-do list by calling Jott

How’s this for cool?

Send an email or sms with a phone call:

First, register as a user on the Jott website. Make a phone call to (866) JOTT-123 [(866) 568-8123].

Select a recipient. If you want to send a message to yourself, say, “Me.” Speak words, wait for next prompt, hang up.

To send a message to someone else, enter that person’s email address in your Jott contacts area. You can also upload your entire contact database. If your recipient has an email address on file in your contact list she’ll get an email. If you entered a phone number instead she’ll get an sms message. read more

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You too can have a Gravatar

A gravatar, or globally recognized avatar, is quite simply an avatar image that follows you from weblog to weblog appearing beside your name when you comment on gravatar enabled sites. Avatars help identify your posts on web forums, so why not on weblogs?

Get your Gravatar here.

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Lindsay Lohan mimics Marilyn Monroe before suicide

Referring to the cover of New York magazine’s 25 February issue:

At play . . . is a commercialism that is . . . creepier and more compelling: a picture of a nude Lindsay Lohan, less than a year out of her third go at rehab.

The image is causing a ruckus in the blogosphere, and not because her nipples can be ogled through the thin triangle of pink chiffon she clasps with her mouth like a schnauzer. The photo and eight more inside the magazine mimic, frame for frame, a handful of the fabled and ubiquitous pictures known as “The Last Sitting” that the photographer Bert Stern took of Marilyn Monroe in 1962, six weeks before she died of an overdose. read more

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Transfer Outlook files to Mac [Entourage]

An acquaintance is asking how to transfer files from MS Outlook on PC to MS Entourage on Mac.

The point is that Outlook .pst files can’t be read by Entourage, which uses .mbox files. Somewhere along the line the files need to be fed through a separate filter which will convert them. Instead of spend a couple of hours figuring out which option for doing this manually is best, I might just pay $10.00 for O2M. Aside from its low cost, it seems this app will save a lot of time. It’s also recommended by Apple. read more

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No more free Salon pass

I wanted to read a Salon article today that I bookmarked a while back, and was disappointed to find that there’s no more free lunch in the Salon.

Today, Salon allows me to choose to give one of 100 companies sponsoring its website, my personal contact information plus credit card information. And after a few days, I’ll qualify for premium membership, valued at $29.99.

In the mean time, my personal information will have been bought and sold between major retailers at least 100 times. I_couldn’t_bring_myself_to_do_it. Eventually, I’m going to have to think about shelling out the $29.99 fee. I know my privacy’s worth at least that much. I just need to figure out whether Salon is. read more

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Verizon tinkers with dns & search settings

Overrides Internet Searches With Its Own Results

by Martin H. Bosworth, November 3, 2007

Subscribers to Verizon’s high-powered fiber-optic Internet service (FiOS) are reporting that when they mistype a Web site address, they get redirected to Verizon’s own search engine page — even if they don’t have Verizon’s search page set as their default.

“It was the very first thing I noticed when Verizon finally got FiOS installed here the other day. Very annoying and hardly in the spirit of net neutrality, eh?,” wrote one Webmaster World user, who originally had Google set as his default search engine. read more

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A great reason for no TV in the living room

At 6:00 pm Wednesday night, while moms across America were getting dinner ready and hungry kids were watching TV waiting for it to be served, Samantha Ventresca lay in her living room in Lawrence, NJ, pinned underneath her own family’s 27-inch TV.

In a freak accident, apparently, the TV fell on top of 2½-year-old Samantha when she tried to climb onto the table it inhabited. Tonya, her mom, was home but had been attending to Samantha’s sister of 15 months. Tonya immediately dialed 911 and called for the help of a fire-fighter neighbor who was sitting outside on his porch, but Samantha slipped into coma and passed away at 10:30 pm. read more