I’m a simple man with simple needs. The Nokia N900 is awesome. There is a huge body of people developing cool applications for Maemo 5, the N900′s operating system. In fact, I only have a few problems, none of them very large problems.

For instance, there’s no Shazam app for the N900. I used that program all the time on my old phone to identify music in restaurants and on the radio.

You can’t have multiple ringtones on the N900, for instance giving each contact a custom ringtone. Not a big deal, but still odd that the N900 doesn’t allow it. In fact, that feature is so common in all phones now, it’s not even anything I thought to investigate when researching the N900.

The biggest problem for me was reading RSS feeds in Google Reader. I love Google Reader. On my pc. The interface is a little hard to use on the tiny N900 screen, and using the iPhone’s mobile Google Reader interrface doesn’t sort feeds by web site, nor does it act at all like I want it to.

This was a problem, and I have even been evaluating other web-based feed readers for a better mobile interface, when I read about Grr.

I’ve been working pretty hard on a few projects as of late, and that generally results in my taking mini-breaks by wandering around my room and tidying things up. It’s started to seem pretty ridiculous to me that I have so many papers. When writing, it’s just easier to brainstorm and work out outlines with a notepad and a piece of paper. It might not be as fast and the result is quite a bit harder to read, but it’s just easier for some reason.

This and this.

A bank mis-typed an email address, sending a complete stranger a file with tons of personal information:

The attachment contained confidential information on 1,325 individual and business customers that included their names, addresses, tax identification or Social Security numbers and loan information.

They then sent a second email to this stranger telling him or her to delete the previous email and contact them immediately. They heard no response, went to court, and the court ordered Gmail to close the account. I have to completely agree with this statement, from the second of the above links: (emphasis mine)

“It’s outrageous that the bank asked for this, and it’s outrageous that the court granted it,” says John Morris, general counsel at the Center for Democracy & Technology. “What right does the bank have and go suspend the email account of a completely innocent person?”

I get emails sent to my phone, so I tend to see every email within hours of it being sent. My dad uses email for work, so he checks his regularly. My sister, however, can go weeks without checking her email. It’s very possible that the person who was sent this email hasn’t even checked his or her account yet, and now it’s shut down. I have Google Voice, Reader, and Calendar tied to one Gmail address. How would this court order affect all of those services?

I have to say that it’s very possible both emails were read, but the attachment wasn’t opened. If you got those two emails isn’t there a huge chance you’d just assume they were a phishing scheme and ignore them? That makes me wonder why the court chose to start with the undiplomatic brute force method. Why not order Google to first see if the data has even been viewed yet? Why not have Google attempt to contact the person–then it might become apparent that these emails aren’t in fact a scam.

And finally, the question of the day, why the hell wasn’t that personal information encrypted? What kind of bank sends an attachment with the private information of 1,325 customers and doesn’t encrypt it? Truecrypt is free, banks. This bank should be buried in fines, branded as a high security risk and left as an example to others.

Lark

Tonight I indulged in a time-honored tradition, ego-surfing–where you google your name. I didn’t google my own name, but the name of this website, “Thriceberg”. As it is this site mostly sits here, taking up space. In a few months it should start to take off content-wise. That said, I’ve been wondering if I should register a new domain. There is a reason for the name “Thriceberg” but that reason is all but extinct. It still has usefulness, however, when I want to sign up for some web service such as twitter and I don’t want to spend a half an hour having all variants of my name and hobbies being rejected because they’ve already been taken by some other user. In addition, it’s nice to be able to type in “thriceberg” and have 99% of the posts have some relation to me.

I’m shocked at how much is out there. 4,170 results (shut up, that’s a big number to me), most of them, I’d wager, created by bots. It’s amazing how many sites exist that just catalog other site’s material. A great number of the sites I found made notes of things I’d tweeted in the past. Not a blog post commenting on it, just re-posting it in some category on their (I’m assuming) bot-driven site in order to increase their page ranking.

After the bot-sites, there are a few video-sites that linked to old videos I used to have online. Only 3 in total, those videos used to be on this site. I took them down for various reasons, though I’m sure someday I’ll tighten them up a bit and throw them back online. Since most of these sites embedded these videos from Revver, and they’re no longer on Revver, the result was Google linking me to a bunch of empty pages. Not Google’s fault.

A few mentions my of Team Fortress 2 tweets, some apparently non-existent mentions on a Zune site (I own a Zune, thriceberg is my user name with them). A handful of blog comments, not too many. Actually, now that I think of it there are some comments I’ve made recently that I would have expected to top the search. It took a while before this site was the top result when searching the word ‘thriceberg,’ and Google still thinks it’s a misspelling. Personal goal: become so popular Google suggests “Did you mean ‘Thriceberg’?” when people search for ‘the iceberg,’ instead of the other way around.

I found two comments on two posts on a blog called “Paleo-Future,” attributed to a “thriceberg,” and for the life of me I can’t remember if I posted them. I saw a lot of old message boards I have accounts with, but the reasons for those accounts all came back to me. I suppose I could have followed a link from Boing Boing or something to this site, and decided to comment. Both are comments I could have written, although there is a lack of proper capitalization that I don’t think I was capable of at the time. They seem vaguely familiar, but I’m really not sure.

Well, those comments are from 2007, and I’ve had this domain for…going on three years now? 3 years at least, and I’ve been using the name thriceberg for longer. I didn’t dig too far in the search results, only a dozen pages or so, but that’s all I saw I couldn’t discern as either something from me or referring to me. Where was I in 2007? I refuse to even try to remember. There’s too much for me to do tonight as it is.

My primary concern with using the name “Thriceberg,” is that people won’t immediately see it for what it is–a play on the word ‘iceberg’. People may think it’s two words and mentally try to break it up. I don’t really have a reason for it, so I’m sure people will keep asking me what it means and I won’t have an answer. Okay, I’ve officially decided to come up with an interesting lie that explains the name.

I’ve also decided to keep this domain as my primary one for now. That’s official, too. People have done better with worse names, and at least this name is unique. I think, anyway.

Would you guess that I have a tendency to over-think things? Oh, you’re too kind.

Lark

It’s no secret I’m a fan of Google and the services they provide. I don’t even mind that they use my information serve me better ads–I’ve actually started coming across more and more ads that help me find things I’ve been looking for. However, there are lines that need to be drawn. The more and more services Google provides, the more important it is that we ensure that Google protects our privacy.

The EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) has an interesting article about this, with a form you should fill out to let Google know how they need to handle your private information. The EFF writes:

You shouldn’t be forced to pay for digital books with your privacy. Tell Google it needs to develop a robust privacy policy that gives you at least as much privacy in books online as you have in your neighborhood library or bookstore.

Security used to mean keeping your important personal documents in a safe. Now all our personal information is sent through emails, internet voice services, or to online backup utilities. All this redundancy is great–if you’re careful, a fire doesn’t mean you lose copies of documents, or photos, or music. And it’s a lot easier to search files on a computer than files in a cabinet. However, digital information is exponentially harder to keep track of. As more of our information becomes digital, it becomes increasingly important that we have more effective privacy policies.

Google is collecting such information. We need to make sure this information is safe. Go to the website. Fill out the form.

Lark

This has probably been done better in other places, but here’s my experience with Google Voice, after playing with it for a few hours.

For the rest of the day at least. I finally got an invite to Google Voice. I’m waiting for my friend to get off work so I can test some of the features. Most anxious to test the voicemail transcription and SMS sending/receiving. Wonder if there will ever be a Google phone a la Skype phones, where you have a dedicated mobile just for your Google number.

First impressions–it’s cool. I signed up for an invite, then wondered if I’d ever use it. looking at all the features though, this service is worth the trouble for the collation of all your phone data on your pc.

However, I can only access Google Voice’s mobile site, unlike Google Search it won’t let me choose or go back to classic. I have a smart phone, I can use Google Email on my phone, the non mobile version (I just confirmed). Oh, never mind, looks like I can only choose from the basic html version or the mobile version, not the “full version.” Hopefully there will be a Voice app for WinMo in the near future.

Will get back when I’ve tested it more,

Lark

Wow, I sure am talking about Google a lot lately. I guess everyone is. Anyway, I’ve been reading a little more about Google Wave, and something just occurred to me. Wave is designed so you can embed it into your website, making your comment section itself a Wave.

That considered, what if Google gave you the option to slap your own domain on a wave, add robust theme support, and made a Wave publicly available to read (with one or more admins who could edit)? Then you’d have a pretty cool blogging engine. I’m on WordPress right now, and I like it a lot. However, my internet connection at home is SLOW. Navigating the Dashboard just to post is fine, but after typing a post I go through a process of proofreading it (2nd time), editing it again, publishing it again, proofreading it AGAIN, and then if there are no problems I’m done. Hitting Edit and waiting for the Dashboard to load, then waiting for the post to re-load can get pretty time consuming. This added to the amount I spend anyway obsessing over any particular post means blogging can eat up a lot of my time. How much cooler would it be to be able to change the text on the same page I’m viewing it on? Meaning, this actual text you’re reading right now. If I’ve just posted, then my site knows who I am, why should I have to keep returning to the Dashboard to edit?

Well, one reason would be, what if I leave my site open and I accidentally hit some keys, editing the post? There’s a lot of different ways that could happen. What if, instead, the edit button on my site activates ‘edit mode,’ but doesn’t take me to the Dashboard? Instead, I edit it there, as it appears, and save it, closing the mode. Ideally WordPress should also save revisions in case something does accidentally happen. When an admin is previewing his or her site, the post could have two options side-by-side: Edit (on screen), or EiD (edit in Dashboard). Sound good to me.

Too bad I don’t have the time, money or skills to make this happen.

Lark

Thinking about Google Voice, I wish I knew someone in the loop that got invites and could give me invites. Had to wait for Gmail to become public, I’ll never get a membership to the country club, and the local union won’t give me journeyman status. Life is one big party that I’m not invited to.

Lark

I remember hearing a while ago about this cool new service called Grand Central, that gave you a lot more control over your phone, be it cell phone or land line. Basically they gave you a number, which they forwarded calls from to your actual number. Coolest feature I was aware of? You could listen to messages as people were leaving them, and choose whether or not to “pick up” and talk to them.