Kurtopia

Ever wonder how Facebook interactions might play out in real life?  Check out this hysterical “dramatization”!

[Via Geeks Are Sexy]

Talk about Comcastic!

I’m generally not someone who shies away from the latest and greatest technology — after all, I work in IT! (Though I did just start using Gmail last year.) I use my computer and the Internet for so much: I pay all my bills online, I buy things from Amazon all the time, I’ve got a 3G smart phone running Windows Mobile 6, and I’ve been using Vista since it came out (and I like it!). But one thing I haven’t done is made the leap to digital downloads of music. I still much prefer to own the actual CD than to pay for MP3s of the same thing.

Why?

One reason is fidelity. Any rip of a CD is only an approximation of the original — you’ll never get quite the same sound out of an MP3 as you do out of a CD. Okay, you could use an absurdly high bit rate, but then you end up with an enormous file for each song. But otherwise, an MP3 will never sound as good as the original CD. Now, I don’t claim to be an audiophile. I can’t necessarily hear the difference, but my mind knows it’s there.

Another reason is DRM. Who wants to deal with that garbage? Fortunately, Amazon has started selling DRM-free music downloads. I purchased “Love Shack” by the B-52s!

Then there’s cost. A lot CDs are pretty damn cheap these days… so cheap that buying digital downloads is actually more expensive at times. I buy a lot of my CDs on Amazon — there’s no sales tax, and since I’m a member of Amazon Prime, there’s also no shipping. Cheap, cheap, cheap!

There’s just something comforting to me about owning a master copy of the music. With the CD, I can rip MP3s of any bit rate at any time. If I accidentally blow away my hard drive one day, I don’t have to buy my music all over again — I just have to re-rip it all.

I think the biggest reason is that I don’t have a dedicated MP3 player that I can store a ton of music on and easily hook up to my stereo. (Yes, ladies and gentlemen… Kurt does not own an iPod.) I use my phone as an MP3 player, with a 2GB Micro SD card. Otherwise, in the car and at home, I listen to CDs the old-fashioned way — through the stereo.

I guess the bottom line is that I think owning the CD ultimately gives me more flexibility, and I like that a lot.

My web host, DreamHost, is carbon neutral!  See?

I have Netflix.  I have a Vista Media Center PC.  So I’m stoked to try out the MyNetflix plugin, as described over at Gmedia.

I need to use my media center PC more.  And by "more," I mean at all.

I’m a little late posting about this, but something amazing happened a few months ago — I achieved my Holy Grail of integration.  I’m referring to using my Samsung BlackJack smart phone not only as a phone and PDA, but also as an MP3 player.  Now, this may not seem like such an impressive feat, but getting the MP3 functionality to work just the way I wanted required finding just the right device.

That device turned out to be the Motorola MOTOROKR S9 Bluetooth stereo headphones.  The first thing to note about these headphones is that, through the wonder of Bluetooth technology, they are wireless!  No messing with annoying cords from the headset to my phone.  Second, the headphones have controls, allowing you to stop, pause, advance the track, go to the previous track, adjust the volume, and even answer a call, all without touching the phone.  Glorious!

This simple device has revolutionized my commute.  When I once would bury my head in my phone playing solitaire (which gets old pretty fast, let me tell you), I now rock out to my favorite tunes!  Okay, so I don’t “rock out.”  I’m sure I look just as miserable as everyone else!  But it’s what’s on the inside that counts.  And on the inside, I am indeed rocking out.

The only drawback is that the Bluetooth communication seems to almost cripple my poor BlackJack.  Trying to do anything else on the phone while listening to music can be painfully slow, and can also make the music stutter at the same time.  And while the performance is generally great while I’m on the subway, above ground is a different story.  I don’t know if it’s a result of my phone trying to check email or the collision of various wireless “stuff” flying through the air (or both!), but the music tends to stutter a lot when I’m on top of terra firma.  While the execution may not be the best with my particular setup, I still love the technology.  It may push the limits of my trusty BlackJack, but I’m sure a slightly beefier phone would handle it without breaking a sweat.  Besides, it works best when I need it most: when I’m being shipped around underground from Old City to University City.

Today I attended a presentation/discussion on Wharton’s plan to deploy Microsoft Exchange 2007.  By far the most active portion of this discussion was about spam: whether to block it or simply filter (or both), where to do so, and how.  It made me realize that every time people talk about spam, they tend to forget one critical component: preventing it in the first place.

Once you start getting spam, there’s nothing to do except block and/or filter it — either way, spammers are still sending things to you.  The key is to protect your email address as much as possible from the moment it is created.

I’ve been at Wharton for over six years now, and thus have had my Wharton email address that long.  I get very little spam at that address.  In fact, the majority of the spam I do get is from mailing lists I’m on — spam sent directly to my account is almost non-existent.  The reason for this is because I’ve been pretty careful about protecting my email address.

The best way to prevent your email address from ending up on a spammer’s mailing list is to make sure that it is never posted on the public web.  If it’s absolutely necessary to post your address, then you need to make sure that Javascript or another technique is used to obfuscate it from the bots that troll web pages look for email addresses.  Even better, replace mailto: links with a web form that fires off an email.  And if scripts start spamming that form, a CAPTCHA will pretty much stop them dead in their tracks.  When you’re taking the time to post a comment on a blog, sign someone’s guestbook (if people still even use these things), or post to a message board, make sure that it’s not going to display your email address in plain sight.

Also, be careful about which sites you give your email address to.  Don’t worry about the reputable ones, like Amazon.com, but be wary of those you’ve never heard of.  If you need to enter an email address in order to download something, for example, first try entering a completely phoney address.  If it turns out that you need a legit address in order to receive a link to the download, then establish and use a throwaway address from any number of free web email providers.

IT professionals: educate your users from day one about how to keep their email addresses at least relatively spam-free!

In terms of spam filtering, though, I do have to give props to Gmail for the best darn spam filter I’ve ever seen.

Oh Vista, don’t be such a drama queen.

Geeks Are Sexy has this hilarious clip from Curb Your Enthusiasm about a guy yapping away in a restaurant using a Bluetooth headset.  Did I mention that it is hilarious?