Last year, I did a series on how to protect yourself and your privacy online, with the biggest issue being sites like Facebook. The instructions helped a lot of people, but were soon out-dated since Facebook released updated security controls and privacy settings to make the process even easier. I still had several people seeking advice for handling cyber stalkers, which is still an ongoing issue with the internet, and one that the courts have decided falls under “Free Speech” (however, a “public figure” of sorts filed this case after he had a falling out with a friend).

However, last year, I also used various pieces of technology to lose nearly 30 lbs over 6 months, without taking any medication. All it takes is an awareness of what you’re doing, what you’re eating, and an understanding of what your body is telling you.

My goal last year was to lose 100 lbs in 12 months, in preparation for my wedding. However, the closer it got to the wedding, the less time I had to keep it up, and I relapsed. This year, I take it from the top again, and document what types of technology I’m using, what things I’m doing, and how you can do it too. Everything I’ll be doing will have to fit into a 40 hr work week, with family events and 7-8 hours of sleep each night – so this will be a completely realistic routine for anyone to follow – if they make it a priority, like watching sitcoms, playing video games, and going out. The realistic target weight-loss is about 5 lbs a month. Too slow and it seems pointless, too fast and it will all come back.

If you’re starting a weight-loss goal this year, then I’ll leave you with the #1 tip for doing it: KEEP MOVING. If you’re moving, you’re burning calories, whether it’s walking, running, climbing steps, whatever…just keep moving.

Be looking for posts this year with tips, ideas, technologies, and my progress updates. I’ll also be interested in hearing any other tips that people want to share.

Technorati Tags: forecast, slim-down tech, update, weight-loss

I want to create a “Security Virus” (a virus, in that it can’t easily be removed/disabled) that when the computer is turned on tries to ping a known locally-hosted IP and verify the MAC address of the target. If it can’t verify/ping the target, it disables any usage of the UI, sends location data through Google Chrome, Firefox, or IE9′s location sharing capability to the owner’s email, and then turns itself off.

It would be even better on laptops with a 3G/Mobile data plan that it could automatically connect to in order to send the location data.

The purpose would be to help recover stolen computers. I know there are location-aware services for mobile devices and creative people have been able to recover stolen computers that have stupidly been put on the network. I’m also sure there are some pitfalls to this idea…what do you think?

Technorati Tags: computer security, location announcing, location-awareness, modern browsers, security

1.) Go to Google.com

For my images, I did a search on something pretty safe: baseball gloves. It’s clean, work-related, and simple. Note the SafeSearch settings (if you’re logged in to Google) in the image below. If you’re not logged in, you should do so, because you’re going to need to edit the Search Settings for your account.

2.) Edit your Search Settings

Click the Gear icon in the top-right of your Google Search Results, and then click on Search Settings. You’ll be taken to a page with all the search settings available to you.  Scroll towards the bottom until you find the section labeled SafeSearch Filtering, like in the image below.

3.) Start the Locking process

Click on the Lock SafeSearch link at the bottom of this section. This will lock  your SafeSearch setting to the “strict filtering” to remove explicit text and images. (“Moderate” just removes images, and “Off” does not remove anything.)

You’ll be taken to a Login screen to verify your account. Do it. Also note the text on the left side of the page: Google will place an image of colored balls (like the one at the top of this post) in the upper-right-hand corner of the search results to show that the Lock is in effect.

After you’ve signed in, click the Lock SafeSearch button in the Image below…

This will give you a %-Complete progress text as it runs through all the Google Domains…

When it has completed, you’ll see a status message. Unfortunately, in preparing this blog post, I got an “incomplete” message like the one below…

If this happens to you, click the Back to Search settings link at the top/bottom of the message, and find the SafeSearch Filtering settings like the image in Step 2 (it will look different from the one in Step 2). Then click the Verify link in that section…

You’ll be taken to a page similar to the original Lock SafeSearch page. Click on the Verify SafeSearch button…

4.) Test it out

Once you have completed the Verification process (mine never said it was fully locked, and I don’t know which domains were not successful, but Search was fine), test it out.

I was using Chrome, and just re-typed “baseball gloves” in the OmniBox, and the result was as I expected…

Conclusion

That’s it. If you want to undo this setting, just follow the instructions again from the Verification part of Step 3, but choose Unlock instead of Verify.

Technorati Tags: google, google account, google search, google settings, lock safesearch, safesearch, safesearch filtering, safesearch settings, search, strict safesearch, strict safesearch locking

This is spyware. Don't install anything you see a TV commercial for that will "clean" your computer

Over the course of the last 15 years I’ve learned a lot of tricks to keep spammers from getting my email, and spyware from getting installed. I do my best to create informative posts like these on this blog, but not everyone has access to it, and some don’t even realize how much they have put themselves at risk, and don’t consider it to be that big of a deal.

In my post about Improving Commercials, I take the position that commercials are useful to some extent, but have room to be improved. The other side of that coin are the commercials that are not useful: the ones that would be considered SPAM and SPYWARE-inducing if they were in email format.

I’ve seen the movie “Love & Other Drugs” – I know this is people’s livelihood to get the new drugs on the doctor’s shelf to give to patients, especially if it’s better, has fewer side-effects, or costs less. I get it. However, I don’t need it. I don’t even need to know about it.

There is no reason for a Cialis commercial after 5pm. Its target demographic is already in bed.

Asking people to treat their doctors as legalized drug dealers is one thing. Blatantly lying to people about what your service does is completely different. There is no software out there that will “double your speed”, there is no software that “fixes registry errors”, and there is no software that can “remove popups” that aren’t already removed by your browser.

All of these issues have real solutions, but they do not involve installing 3rd-party software.

Cable companies should allow user-feedback on the advertisers they sell spots to, or at least have some sort of ethics-in-advertising guidelines before letting someone come on. I know they can do this – I’ve seen the local broadcaster preempt national HD commercials with local SD commercials (And I hate it by the way – if it’s an HD channel, only HD commercials should be aired).

There should be a button on the remote that allows the viewer to mark this commercial as SPAM, False Advertisement, or (if you want to get granular) Irrelevant.

I realize this leaves the door wide open for every commercial to be marked as SPAM by some viewers, but the cross-sectional results of which commercials were marked as SPAM by *a majority* of viewers would have more value than the “dirty” data from abuse. And then commercials could be tailored to the household receiving them so that the ad-expense is actually worth the cost for the advertisers (and the ad-revenue can be increased due to the increased relevancy the cable company’s system can offer).

Seems like a win-win from my view. Customers don’t have to see SPAM commercials, and can vote-down false-advertisements, and potentially vote up relevant ads. Cable Companies can generate more ad-revenue from advertisers who would likely do better as a result of only broadcasting to interested customers.

Technorati Tags: ads, advertising, advertising innovation, commercial innovation, commercials, false-advertisements, spam, Spyware, television, tv, tv commercials, tv innovation

However, there are times when I’m there, the show is on, and there is nothing else to do but watch – and the commercials drone on like background noise for a bathroom break or a disappointing rummage through the fridge & kitchen pantry. Occasionally there will be an ad for an upcoming show on the network (History, SyFy & Science Channel are bad about this) that will air 2, 3 or 4 weeks out.

This is where the Cable Company could step in for the customers with DVR.

If I’ve got a DVR and digital cable, there should be a little icon for the advertised tv show in the watermark corner – or even toggle the watermark itself with a little message asking me if I’d like to set a reminder for this show.

Ideally, I’d be able to click the OK/Select button, and the cable box would set a reminder for the upcoming show. If that time-slot rolls around, and my attention is not on it, or I don’t respond to the reminder, it should automatically record the program for me.

Time Warner has already started (as of a couple months ago) a process (that was initially creepy) of changing the channel to some pre-determined channel they want to bring to your attention if your cable box is on, but your attention is not on, the channel it is *supposedly* broadcasting to your TV. I guess this is to prevent ratings padding for a particular channel. They then allow you to continue watching if you click the OK/Select button on the remote in the response time allotted.

This same type of system could be used to trigger a recording if, in fact, your TV happens to be tuned to the correct channel for the show, but it is not turned on. Thus:

• If you don’t respond to the reminder when you’re on another channel: Record
• If you don’t respond to the OK/Select request when you’re on the right channel: Record
• If you do respond, offer the option to record, watch, or both.

Then, I wouldn’t mind sitting through a couple commercials, to ensure that I don’t miss a show I might actually want to see, in the midst of Cialis & Viagra spam ads.

Speaking of which, why are those blocked from our email, but not from TV? Seems like there should be a spam setting. But that is for another post.

Technorati Tags: ads, advertisement innovations, advertisements, cable innovations, cable tv, commercial innovation, commercials, digital cable, television, tv, tv innovations

I started poking around to see what happens if you force https on a Google Search, and it turns out you’re redirected to:

https://encrypted.google.com

Then I wondered how to make this my default search engine without the use of plugins. It turns out it’s very simple.

1. Do a Google Search using the above URL, and you’ll notice the basic format is: https://encrypted.google.com/search?<insert-a-bunch-of-parameters>&q=<query>. We are just interested in the bolded part of that fake URL: https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=<query>
2. In Chrome OS, click the Wrench menu, click Options, then go to Basics and find the Search section. Click on Manage search engines… button.
3. You’ll get a window with all the Search Engines that your Chrome OS knows about. At the bottom of the “Other search engines” list, you’ll see a row for adding a new search engine.
1. In “Add a new search engine“, put something like: Google SSL
2. In “Keyword“, put something like: encrypted.google.com
3. In “URL with %s in place of query“, put the URL we made from above: https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=%s
4. Hit Enter.
4. Hover over the newly created search engine entry, and click Make Default when the button appears over the URL column.
5. Then try out a new search in the Omnibox and it should be SSL’d through Google’s SSL Beta search service.

Technorati Tags: chrome os, chrome os ssl search, chromeos, cr48, google, google search, google ssl, google ssl search, ssl, ssl search

“I want to be an extreme coupon-er…”

My first thought: I don’t want to be behind you in line. My second thought: How do I solve this problem?

The Proposed Solution

The solution I’ve come up with is a smartphone app that lets you photograph coupons. It scans the photos, and credits them to your online account as available discounts, and automatically removes them when they expire.  Of course, you’d also be able to share the coupons with your friends as well. You then take your phone with you to the store, and pull up the app. It displays a scanable barcode for the clerk. When scanned, the store’s system contacts the cloud-based coupon-holding server, deducts the coupon values from your total, and they are then removed from your account.

No more waiting behind that one person who brought 30 coupons to the store. No more keeping up with which coupons are still valid/newly expired. Just a smooth shopping experience for everyone in line.

Technorati Tags: cloud computing, coupon, evercoupon, ideas, iphone app idea, phone app idea, technology

According to the New York Times, AT&T is going to launch a text-message service to send SMS messages to customers in certain locations.

Um, hell no!

It’s called “ShopAlerts” and is designed to allow “brand-partners” (i.e. HP, Kmart, JetBlue, S.C. Johnson, etc.) to send advertisements and coupons to customers who happen to be in range of the “geo-fence” (a pre-defined geographic area around a particular place) for that brand.

The service is opt-in, which makes it a little less about. The troubling thing is it is just another way for people to give up their privacy.

If you allow a service to track when you are *in* a particular place, then by default it will also know when you are *not in* that place. Checking in on Foursquare should be enough of a trigger to send these kinds of advertisements – it shouldn’t be based on a passive location awareness.

In fairness, JetBlue does intend to use their JetBlue Go Places mobile app to offer their program’s points via check-in. According to the article, there is no mention of similar action-requirements. S.C. Johnson intends to put a geo-fence around Wal-Mart to [passively] offer their discounts.

It all sounds eerily similar to the Minority Report’s retina scanners in the shopping malls. Let’s hope the day never comes when you can walk past an adult novelty shop and the on-screen display asks how that sex toy you bought 2 weeks ago has worked out for you. This technology, if extrapolated to track purchases as a response to the ad, combined with the already-present knowledge of your receipt’s items would surely enable such a world.

Don’t opt-in. It’s already easy enough to track you, without making it constantly available.

Technorati Tags: advertisements, at&t, geo-fencing, hp, jetblue, kmart, location-based marketing, presence tracking, privacy, scjohnson, security, shopalerts, walmart

There are two methods of doing the editing, depending on the Yahoo! Store platform that you have. If you’re on the Legacy version, you must go to the page itself, and click edit. This provides you with a series of fields and input boxes for each type of field. No intelligence in the design of what those fields are for or differentiation in how they interact.

If you’re on the Merchant Solutions platform, then you have the option of going directly to the page still, or you can do it in a flat-file pseudo database-like UI which is nothing more than a search-by-field interface, which presents you with a different-looking (but still the same) interface for editing the page.

Over the next few months, I’m going to embark on a web-based interface for importing the legacy store feed (objinfo.xml, which can’t be customized) and see what can be done with the data as far as modifying it, preparing it, cleaning it, and exporting it back to the store. I’m also going to attempt to code it entirely using Kodingen.com. I’ve done a highly customized version of this concept for the company I currently work for (at the time of this post), but none of the code will be reused from that project, and this project will have different, and limited features (in some areas, and expanded in other areas), but for a different data model. In some areas, this application will be more limited (since it’s working with a standardized data format, rather than a customized “catalog.xml” feed from Merchant Solutions. Once this basic version is solid, I may start working on a customized version, or even offering a customizing service to handle the catalog.xml file.

Some things I’d like to do differently with this basic version is:

• create an install process (a la phpBB)
• extensive automation, and possibly some AI concepts
• learn more about object-oriented design and how it can be extended conceptually
• experiment with some various php and javascript frameworks

There are plenty of other feature sets that I’ve learned and developed in addition to these in the past and plan to use as well. So we’ll see how this goes, and I’ll post some updates here. Depending on what I plan to do with it, I may or may not open-source it. If I do, I’ll host it on Google Code.

Technorati Tags: ajax, catalog.xml, Coding, jasper, JavaScript, kodingen.com, MySQL, objinfo.xml, PHP, Programming, yahoo store platform, yahoo! stores

Setting up a Friend Lists

Account > Edit Friends

First thing you need to do is get on the Edit Friends page by clicking on the Account menu in the top-right corner of the Facebook site, and then on Edit Friends.

Once there, on the left-hand side you may notice a list of menu items: Friends, Phonebook, Find Friends, Invite Friends. Right in the middle of that list is where your Friends Lists will appear…like the one for the-spot.net in this image.

When we’re all done setting them up, you could have a list similar to my actual Friends Lists in the image below. I’ve segregated all of my friends into various lists describing where I first met them or my relationship to me. I have avoided putting people in more than 1 list. If they are in more than one list, and you restrict one of those lists, the results of the restrictions could behave unexpectedly.

Creating a Friend List

In the middle of the page, you’ll find a list of all your friends (probably defaulted to “Recently Interacted”). Just above it you’ll find a drop-down menu to filter the friends based on certain criteria (all, by city, recently interacted, and lists). There’s also a dynamic filter search box – as you start typing a name in it, your friends list is automatically reduced to the names that fit what you’ve typed. Above those is the Create List button.

1. Click the “+ Create a List” button.
2. Type a name in the Enter a name box.
3. Start selecting friends. Each one you click will turn blue. You can also type a name in the box to do a quick filter to find a particular friend.
4. Click Create List.

In my example, I’ve created a list called “Fans of tsn.”

Do this for as many different types of segregation you want amongst your groups of friends. If you’ve forgotten someone while searching through your lengthy friends list, you can hover over them and click the Edit Lists button, and then add them right there (as in the image below). You will also be able to add people to your lists when you’re responding to or requesting Friend Invitations.

Using Friend Lists as Privacy Settings

Once you’re done and you’ve got your lists, let’s put them to work on your privacy. Go to your Account > Privacy Settings page, and then click on the Customize Settings link below the Sharing on Facebook section.

On the Customize Settings page you’re presented with drop-down menus for the features list that we set to Friends Only when we configured your Facebook Profile Privacy Settings, as well as some things that others share related to you, and your contact information.

To make use of your new Lists, click the drop-down menu for the feature, and choose Customize. We’ll do Status Updates and Posts, for example.

This will give you a popup window with two options:

1. Who, in the world, should this be visible to…
2. Within that group of people, who should not be able to see it.

You might also see something like the image below, asking you about your Networks as well…

That goes back to the original intention of privacy. We only want our friends, not people who live in the same town, or go to the same school…leave them unchecked.

In the blocking area, you can use the Lists you’ve made, or individual friends from your global friends list…just start typing the name of the list or friend, and choose from the dynamic drop-down.

One example for this type of setup would be “Friends Only” can see my status updates, unless they are also on my CoWorkers List. Another would be “Friends Only”, except for your ex, Blake Smith.

Do this for all the ones you wish to hide from certain people. If you find yourself blocking the same group in every single feature, you might as well unfriend everyone in that group, and if they ask about it, and let the chips fall where they may. Most people won’t bring it back up, or even notice, unless they are constantly checking your profile – which is creepy anyway.

When you’re done, your feature menu will look something like this:

You can also use these lists to edit your Photo Albums’ Privacy as well, by clicking the Edit Album Privacy for existing photos link at the bottom of the page…

Once there, you’ll see a list of all your photo albums, and a similar drop-down menu as the features. Just click on it, choose Customize, and change the visibility settings.

Completed Configuration Example

Below is my entire configuration on my personal account. I have a Work list with all my coworkers on it, and I have blocked them from seeing anything that I post on Facebook as a status update. They have access to things like these blog posts through Facebook Pages I’ve created for my instructional websites. But my personal updates and thoughts are only broadcast to my friends. If the time comes that I change jobs, I’ll swap all of my coworkers out to my DFW (new skool) list and put my new coworkers into the list. If I start having problems with some people not currently blocked, I just create a new list and block them…but that hasn’t happened to me personally.

Conclusion of Facebook Friend Lists

Now that you’ve learned how to segment your friend lists into groups, and assign those groups permissions or restrictions, there shouldn’t be a time when you think to yourself “man I wish I could block that person from seeing stuff about me, without unfriending them.” Keep in mind, though, the reality of the internet: nothing is private. There’s nothing to stop the one person who is blocked from going over to a mutual friends’ house and still seeing what was previously blocked from them. If you find yourself posting something that would be devastating for them to see, you probably shouldn’t post it online. If you think you have mutual friends or connections to any of the blocked person’s friends/family members, then you should either block them all, unfriend them, or just not post the material online.

In my case, I have blocked my coworkers and non-friends from easily seeing my updates on Facebook, but those same updates are available elsewhere online. The reason the coworkers are blocked is less about the content and more about the frequency and that I don’t sit on Facebook all day, but rather I syndicate my updates from Twitter. If they found the updates, it wouldn’t be that big a deal for them to read; it’s more of an image thing.

If you’re posting things online that could hurt your image (photos with red SOLO cups, alcoholic beverages, profanity, obscene language, bitching & moaning about individuals), and want to hide that, you probably shouldn’t post it online, due to the content. But if you’re posting photos of your family or things, and are trying to block people to avoid harassment, that is an acceptable use.

The next post I’ll cover how to tell if some Facebook application or link or post is a scam or phishing attack, what those phrases mean, and how to protect yourself.

Technorati Tags: cyber bullying, cyber harassment, cyber-stalking, facebook, facebook friend list privacy, facebook friend lists, facebook lists, facebook privacy, facebook privacy settings, facebook security, facebook security settings, friend list privacy, friends lists, online bullying, online privacy, online security