Byte Size Pieces - Web Talk

[moongirl]

"The digital soup we are swimming in..."

By Howard Schneider
Using its playlist and some tech savvy, lost iPod reshuffled to its original owner.

What’s the chance of tracking down the owner of a lost iPod when all you have to go on is the playlist?

There are perhaps a quarter of a billion of the music devices circulating around the world now, and given the global traffic that passes through the Washington area, the owner could be . . . anywhere.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle ... story.html

[moongirl]

Humblebragging

http://twitter.com/Humblebrag

Humble Brag
The humble brag is a mock-modest offhand comment that is apparently meant to be self-deprecating, but is really intended to inspire envy or admiration for the speaker from the feeble also-rans who also happen to inhabit the planet.

A celebrity-worshipping culture which Twitter and Facebook have provided with a megaphone has enabled the humble brag to come into its own as a vehicle for shamefaced self-aggrandizement and demure preening in public.

To give you an idea of the format, at the blog 'Married with Toddlers' I found this convenient set of examples, followed by a remark from the blogger:

Top 10 Parenting Humble Brags:

"I'm my 19-month-old won’t stop talking. It is driving me crazy!" [Edited for clarity - Forum Admin.]
"My husband is so thoughtless. He had his secretary buy me an $800 bracelet for Mother's Day."
"I was so sick during my pregnancy. I only was able to gain 10 pounds!"
"Help! My 18-month-old insists on pooping in the potty, and I’m not ready to potty-train!"
"Two children, best-selling author, thriving career, how do I balance it all?"
"I am so tired of being asked if I am my childrens' nanny. I can't help that I look so young."
"My 2-month-old already sleeps through the night. Should I be waking her to nurse?"
"Whenever I take my child anywhere, strangers always stop us to admire her. I can’t even go grocery shopping in peace!"
"How do I support my best friend who’s toddler is developmentally delayed, when my own is so advanced?"
"My husband is really annoying me. He wants to be so involved in the child rearing.”

To all of the above, I just want to say "I completely know how you feel. It is so difficult raising gifted children."
http://www.wordwizard.com/phpbb3/viewto ... 16&t=23174

[moongirl]

QR Code


# A QR Code is a matrix code (or two-dimensional bar code) created by Japanese corporation Denso-Wave in 1994. The "QR" is derived from "Quick Response", as the creator intended the code to allow its contents to be decoded at high speed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_Code

# A two-dimensional bar code developed for use in Japan that permits the encoding of binary, Kanji, JIS, and alphanumeric information. ...
http://www.tasc.ie/bar_code_terminology.html

# This code was originally made by the japanese company Denso for the use in the car industries. By the now the QR-Code has advanced to the Asian standard code for mobile tagging. In Japan it is tagged 50 million times daily.
http://mobile-tagging.blogspot.com/2007 ... ssary.html

WTF QR Codes

Celebrating the ridiculousness that is QR codes.
http://wtfqrcodes.com/

[moongirl]

iDisorder

One of Dr. Larry Rosen’s friends feels he must be continuously connected to his electronic devices. If he is in a conversation that is more than 15 minutes long, “he excuses himself to go to the restroom so that he can check his iPhone.” Is this a sign of addiction? Narcissistic personality disorder? Anxiety? Does this man, as Rosen puts it, have an “iDisorder?”

These are the central issues in Rosen’s new book, iDisorder: Understanding Our Obsession with Technology and Overcoming Its Hold on Us. Coauthored by fellow psychologists Nancy A. Cheever and L. Mark Carrier, iDisorder is a perceptive, thoughtful look into the world of modern technology, focusing on those that are primarily communicative......


iDisorder: Understanding Our Obsession with Technology and Overcoming its Hold on Us
By Larry D. Rosen, PhD
Palgrave MacMillan: March 27, 2012
Hardcover, 256 pages
$25

http://psychcentral.com/lib/2012/idisor ... old-on-us/

[moongirl]

Meme


Meem it would seem

[moongirl]

Know Your Meme

Know Your Meme is a website dedicated to documenting Internet phenomena: viral videos, image macros, catchphrases, web celebs and more.
http://knowyourmeme.com/

[moongirl]

Nomophobia

(No Mobile PHOBIA) The anxiety some people feel when they cannot get a signal from a cellphone tower, run out of battery or forget to take the phone with them. See cellphone.
http://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia_term/ ... 081,00.asp

[moongirl]

Computer Visionary Who Invented the Mouse Dies Aged 88

Douglas C. Engelbart was 25, just engaged to be married and thinking about his future when he had an epiphany in 1950 that would change the world.

The idea for the mouse — a pointing device that would roll on a desk — occurred to Dr. Engelbart in 1964 while he was attending a computer graphics conference. He was musing about how to move a cursor on a computer display.

When he returned to work, he gave a copy of a sketch to William English, a collaborator and mechanical engineer at SRI, who, with the aid of a draftsman, fashioned a pine case to hold the mechanical contents.

Early versions of the mouse had three buttons, because that was all the case could accommodate, even though Dr. Engelbart felt that as many as 10 buttons would be more useful. Two decades later, when Steve Jobs added the mouse to his Macintosh computer, he decided that a single button was appropriate. The Macintosh designers believed in radical simplicity, and Mr. Jobs argued that with a single button it was impossible to push the wrong one.

(When and under what circumstances the term “the mouse” arose is hard to pin down, but one hardware designer, Roger Bates, has contended that it happened under Mr. English’s watch. Mr. Bates was a college sophomore and Mr. English was his mentor at the time. Mr. Bates said the name was a logical extension of the term then used for the cursor on a screen: CAT. Mr. Bates did not remember what CAT stood for, but it seemed to all that the cursor was chasing their tailed desktop device....


http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/techn ... d=all&_r=0

[moongirl]

Worm - short for: write once, read many

Known primarily as a virus, it is a computer program that can replicate itself. First postulated by computer science researcher Fred Cohen in the 1970's, computer viruses are small programs that propagate by attaching copies of themselves to other programs. The most famous examples include the 1987 "Internet worm," which shut down hundreds of computers nationwide, and the July 2001 "Code Red worm." The word "worm" is sometimes erroneously used for a search engine program that locates and indexes information on the Web (that's a spider).
Here's an example of its usage in the news: On March 5, 2009 Brian Krebs reported on his Computer Security blog in the Washington Post that security experts are warning users of Facebook, MySpace and other social networking communities to be on guard against a new strain of the "Koobface" worm, which spreads by tricking users into responding to a message apparently sent from one of their friends. The latest version of Koobface arrives as an invitation from a user's friend or contact, inviting the recipient to click on a link and view a video at a counterfeit YouTube site. Visitors are told they need need to install an Adobe Flash plug-in to view the video. The bogus plug-in instead installs a Trojan horse program that gives Koobface authors control over the infected user's computer, according to security firm Trend Micro, which documented the new strain on its blog.
In addition, the worm also hijacks the victim's social networking account, by sending out additional invites in order to spread the worm to the victim's friends and contacts. The worm currently is spreading across multiple networks, including hi5.com, friendster.com, myyearbook.com, bebo.com and livejournal.com. It's important to note that practicing basic online street smarts can save you from falling for these types of attacks, regardless of the medium. As always, be extremely cautious about clicking on links in unsolicited messages, even if they appear to have been sent by a friend or acquaintance. Also, don't install applications or programs if you didn't go looking for them. Before you install anything, take a few minutes to research the program and its vendor first. If you decide to install the application, make sure to download it directly from the vendor's Web site, if possible.


http://www.netlingo.com/word/worm.php

[moongirl]

Moto X Review - The Google/Motorola Smartphone

August 5, 2013
One year ago, Motorola, fat and fed by its Google acquisition, inched quietly into a silicon-spun cocoon to gestate. The subsequent passage of time allowed it to transmogrify and re-emerge a thing of red, yellow, blue and sometimes green beauty; a Google thing made by a Google company. The Moto X, its newborn monarch, arrives in an array of different colors, made possible by the NikeID-like Moto Maker site. It also comes with a homespun narrative: it's assembled here in the USA. Time to empty your wallets, patriots. This is America's smartphone and it costs $199 on a two-year contract.

If I'm right in reading between the lines of Google's marketing speak, the Moto X was made in the image of the everyman. It's the product of a democratic process -- you can take that future design poll on Facebook as proof of this point. The 4.7-inch screen size, the curvature of its back, the composite materials, its weight and front-face look were focus-tested for maximum inoffensiveness. The Moto X exudes no tech halo like the Galaxy S 4 or the HTC One because it is the sum of averages. Here's how I see it: You know those people who own iPhones, but don't know which model number they own and also refer to all Android phones as Droids? This phone is for them...

http://www.engadget.com/2013/08/05/moto ... -x-review/

[moongirl]

The Beer App.

August 11, 2013
A drone used to drop beer at a recent music festival got wild cheers from the crowd and it was a hit with thirsty concert goers. The Oppikoppi Festival in South Africa's northern province of Limpopo used a drone to deliver beer to the folks in the crowd who put in their orders through a Smartphone app, according to Digital Spy on Aug. 9.

The beer delivery drone even has a name, “Manna,” which is a play on the story from the old testament about bread falling from the sky to feed the Israelites as they traveled through the desert. Manna was well liked by the crowd of 5,000 at this music festival, every time a beer was dropped the crowd roared with cheers. It is almost like the drone was part of the entertainment...

http://www.examiner.com/article/drone-d ... -parachute

[moongirl]

Sell your smartphone the smart way with these tips

Selling your smartphone is a quick way to make some cash. But a study published earlier this week by the security firm Avast, in which the firm bought some used Android phones and recovered thousands of "erased" personal files, stands as a good reminder that you have to think carefully before you sell.

The study looked at 20 phones made by HTC, Motorola, Samsung and LG. According to Avast researchers reached Thursday, the phones ran several different versions of Android. Some, the company said, were running Android Gingerbread (version 2.3); most were at least up to Android Ice Cream Sandwich (versions 4.0.3-4.0.4).

Google said in a statement to The Washington Post that it doesn't believe that the study reflects the "security protections in Android versions that are used by the vast majority of users," given the older operating systems. According to the Android Developer's Web site, more than 74 percent of all Android users run some version of Android Jelly Bean (4.1- 4.3) or Android Kit Kat (4.4)

Regardless of your operating system, however, in addition to resetting it, here are some steps to take before selling or trashing your phone in order to keep your personal data protected...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the ... hese-tips/