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Condensed knowledge for 2007-06-01

Here are the weekend-ready goodies:

  • MS releases the Surface touchscreen computer. Previously code-named Milan, this puppy is manipulated using our hands — no mouse, no keyboard. You might say, whoopee, these displays have been around for years. True, but this is the first time they’re coming to the mass market, and what sets this device apart is that it interacts automatically with other wireless devices. If you put your wireless camera on the Surface, it’ll know to download all of the photos from the camera, wirelessly. If you put your cellphone on it, and it’s got a wireless connection, you can then drag that same photo to your cellphone. Same thing with videos. The built-in, automatic interaction is really, really cool.
  • Have you heard about the MINI Cooper D? It’s a sweet little car! (I have the Cooper S myself, but I’m already drooling for the D). The revised model will get up to 72.4 mpg! Wow!
  • Xerox has developed paper that you can re-use up to 50 times. You can print on it using UV rays, but the characters will start to fade after 24 hours, and when they’re completely faded, you can use it again. Now that’s what I call recycling!
  • A completely innocent American was arrested, handcuffed to a pillar, his feet were chained, and he was interrogated by the Secret Service, all for trying to pay with legal, new $2 bills. The man went to Best Buy to pay an outstanding balance for a stereo installation on his son’s car (after the store promised him it would be free, but charged him regardless), and when he decided to pay it with $2 bills, the clerk called the police, who then took him into custody and interrogated him. What’s more, he was handcuffed inside the store, in full view of everyone! Here’s my take on this… First, I don’t like Best Buy, because their prices are always higher than Circuit City and CompUSA. Second, their employees are rude and haven’t got a clue about the technology they sell. Third, that pathetic cashier owes the man a huge apology. Fourth, that cop who hancuffed and arrested the man shouldn’t be on the force. His powers of judgment are obviously subpar and he has no common sense. And fifth, the excuse of the police spokesman, Bill Toohey, is absolutely inadequate: “It’s a sign that we’re a little nervous in a post 9/11 world.” Just what does a $2 bill have to do with 9/11? That was their apology to the man? That’s it?!
  • The Rattlebuster is a really cool CD that plays vibration-inducing sounds at certain frequencies, helping you pinpoint the annoying rattles and vibrations in your car’s interior. As a MINI owner who’s had a persistent rattle in his dashboard for the past four years, a rattle that countless trips to the dealership couldn’t resolve, I can safely say that every MINI dealership ought to make this product a standard part of their diagnostic procedures.
  • Richard Marcus wrote a really nice piece for BlogCritics detailing what happens to the water in our environment when all of the medications that we take pass from our bodies into the sewers, then into lakes and rivers. The effects of the metabolized drugs on wildlife are shocking, and do not bode well for us, either.
  • Want to know the top ten passwords people use? Have a look at this, and try not to use one of them yourself, eh?
  • It pays to know your photographer’s rights!
  • Steve Jobs and Bill Gates met on the same stage and talked publicly for the first time in decades. What’s more, they complimented each other! 🙂
  • This is why I think public education is getting to be rotten to the core. The public school system endorses events like the one where Joel Becker (irresponsible dolt extraordinaire) from UCLA speak their dirty minds. This dude actually advised kids as young as 12 years old to have sex, do drugs and masturbate… Kids were forced to attend this event by their school, and it was only months after the fact, when pressed repeatedly by parents for an explanation and apology, that they admitted the subject matter was inappropriate. I have to wonder, where is our responsibility as adults to educate our children properly? How can we let the school system continue to chip away at the values we try to instill in our kids? How screwed up is this world when a person as irresponsible as Joel Becker is not only allowed to hold a professorship at UCLA, but also allowed to expound on the virtues of sex and drugs to young, impressionable children?
  • Hey, look, Screaming Beans! 🙂
  • A new spoofing/phishing technique has been spotted in the wild, where some sort of DLL attaches itself to IE, and when people surf legitimate URLs (like their bank website or PayPal), they get asked for unusual extra, private information. This thing isn’t yet detectable by anti-virus/anti-spyware programs, so be sure to follow this story as it develops. And if you get asked some strange questions the next time you visit your bank’s site, don’t answer them, call the bank to verify why they need that information.
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Thoughts

Who we are

➡ Updated 3/9/08: This post reflects the state of the site back when it was still called ComeAcross and I’d just started it. That’s no longer the case, as I’ve combined all of my content since at this domain. For more on that switch, have a look at the About page.

If I asked you who you were, it’s only fair to tell you who we are, or what my site is. If you already know, hang in there, you might learn some new stuff.

I’m Raoul Pop, and I launched the site with Ligia, my lovely wife. She doesn’t post much, because she works behind the scenes. She takes great care of me so I can keep on writing and working.

I launched the site on May 3, 2006 — not quite 5 months ago. Here’s why some of the content is older than 5 months. That same page has an explanation of the ComeAcross name.

So far, there are about 20-30 loyal feed readers for the Blog, about 10 or so for my Photos feed, and a couple for my Videos feed (although I suspect those are just my own subscriptions). There are about 8-10 really, really loyal Podcast subscribers, who’ve hung in there with me even though I haven’t published a podcast since May. Thank you! Who are you folks?

I started checking stats with Google Analytics on May 31, 2006. From that date until today (October 25, 2006), ComeAcross has had 8,927 unique visits and 16,055 page views. 14.75% of those visitors were returning ones. While most people were from the United States, if you look at the map below, you’ll see they’re coming from a lot of other places: Europe, South America, the Middle East, the Far East, and of course, Australia and New Zealand. A big, American HI to everyone! Google has been my biggest referrer by far (Sergey, Larry, thank you, and thank you), and I’ve also had significant traffic from Digg, StumbleUpon, and Yahoo.

ComeAcross Stats - Executive Summary

The top five keywords that people use to find ComeAcross so far are:

  • HP dv6000
  • Davison Inventegration
  • War between Israel and Lebanon (I don’t know why that post struck a chord, I didn’t think it was that good)
  • Funny animal photos (always a hit with folks, I gather)
  • Lasermonk (don’t know why this keyword is so popular)

ComeAcross Stats - Marketing Summary

The top five pieces of content on ComeAcross are:

ComeAcross Stats - Content Summary

I couldn’t have accomplished this without two wonderful products/services: WordPress and FeedBurner. They’re both fantastic, each in their own way, and amazingly useful. I am truly grateful for their existence, and the fact that they’re both free to use, easy to use, and feature-packed is a testament to the ingenuity of today’s web developers, thinkers and dreamers.

ComeAcross was once a dream for me. I dreamt that I could have a site where all of my content from my disparate sites was drawn together, and made easily accessible to anyone who wanted to read it, view it or search it. That dream is now a reality, and thanks to you, my readers, ComeAcross is shaping up very nicely.

I really do hope you’ll continue to read ComeAcross, and if you like it, spread the word. I’d like the site to continue to reach new readers, every day.

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Events

Happy 300 millionth, USA!

We turned 300 million today (people, that is) here in the grand old (or young, depending on your point of view) US of A. Yay!

Lots of us to go around, all of us immigrants (although some would think otherwise). We love big, open spaces, big cars, big houses, big meals and given our experiences when we go shopping, big clothes as well. (Is is so hard to make pants in a 30 waist?) We have it so well in this country, that we forget how badly others have it. As a matter of fact, we’re so busy doing so well (or trying to, anyway) that often we lose sight of what’s important (our loved ones, family, friends) in the pursuit of the American dream.

The opportunities in this country are amazing — like nothing else in the world — and that’s what’s caused us to get to 300 million. People are drawn to this country from all corners of the world, and after they get here, they multiply like rabbits — you know people, 2.2 children is the American way…

We’ve got some of the most polarized politics in the world. Everything is made into a political issue, and if possible, drawn to the national level, where Democrats fight against the Republicans over some minuscule thing while the important things, like our national debt, education, crimes of all sorts, infrastructure improvements, energy consumption, conservation of our environment, pollution prevention and serious medical research don’t get the attention they deserve.

The world wouldn’t be the same without the United States. Some say we meddle, and some say we help. I say we’ve lately been mostly meddling and sticking our noses in someone else’s pots — we’ve gotten into serious debt for it, too, not to mention we’ve made more enemies. Ah, but it wouldn’t be the US of A if they didn’t try to police the world, wouldn’t it? I guess you take the good with the bad if you live in this country, and you try to speak out against the bad.

So there you have it. A country like no other, and we’re 300 million strong! God bless America!

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The US has a negative bank balance of what?!

Stumbled onto this entry on Vinnie Lauria’s blog, listing the bank balances of various world countries. At the bottom of the list… the US of A. Our bank balance: $ -829,100,000,000. Say what?! Yes, according to the CIA, so it’s got to be true.

How about the US Budget? How’s that? Well, according to this chart, compiled with data from the Congressional Budget Office, our 8 years with GW Bush have been wreaking havoc on the budget.

Not really comforting news, is it? And we want to keep spending how much on the Iraq war, in order to bring “peace and stability”, and oh yes, let’s not forget, “democracy”, to that region? Isn’t it about time someone put a stop to our runaway spending?

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Someone's reading your email at work

This is a bit of old news, but the NYT is running a story on how companies read their employees’ email at work. The bottom line’s worth repeating, because people just don’t seem to learn: don’t use work email for personal messages!

I say this from experience. I’ve been an IT Director twice in my career, and I read people’s emails on both occasions. I didn’t and I don’t relish it – as a matter of fact, I hate it. But I had to do it, in order to see if activities that could incriminate or damage the organization were taking place.

Now I understand that my IT policies were actually pretty relaxed. I didn’t read email all the time, only when someone or something aroused my suspicion or that of the executives, and it was then that I went searching for evidence. I understand that in other places, this sort of a thing is automated, and happens routinely. Every email going out of the company is either scanned by a machine for keywords, or read by an employee, or even worse, every piece of email, internal or external, is scanned and flagged for further review as needed.

People, learn from this! It was not seldom that I stumbled onto emails where employees were flirting with each other at work, or talking about their supervisors in demeaning language. These sorts of things result in disciplinary action! If you’ve got to talk about those things, get a personal email account, and do it there, but don’t use company email for that sort of a thing! But I guess if you’re ignorant enough to badmouth your boss with a co-worker while you’re at work and supposed to be working, you’re ignorant enough to talk about it on company emails that can and will be used against you.

It’s time people realized the whole of their work activities is a permanent record, and this includes emails, and pretty soon will likely include voicemails. Make sure your email record is squeaky clean, and reflects your work ethic. If you talk the talk, walk the walk! If you say you’re a professional, let your email reflect that. Ask yourself this: if someone were to go through your work email now, would you be ashamed of what they’d find there? Is there something you could be disciplined or lose face for? If you work in a company that deals with secret/classified information, are you leaking company secrets, knowingly or not? If there is, cut it out! Put a stop to it! It won’t do any good to go back and delete emails, the company probably keeps a backup of the messages anyway. Just change your behavior and move on.

If you must get personal emails at work, use your personal account, or get a free webmail account from Gmail, Yahoo or Hotmail, and check that. Tell people to SMS you on your cellphone instead of emailing you. But for goodness’ sake, and for the sake of your career and bank account, don’t use your work account! It’s just plain dumb.

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