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Excerpt from an email from the head of our IT department at work:

To ensure security of your system and the corporate network, do not open any email unless you know the individual and can trust the person or content. DO NOT open eCards or click on any website links in an any email. Even emails from known individuals can be suspect, especially if they themselves have been hacked. So make sure you are aware of the emails and websites you are accessing.

For more information on this vulnerability, please visit:

http://www.symantec.com/security_response/threatcon/index.jsp

http://isc.sans.org/diary.html?storyid=4274

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/Bulletin/MS08-021.mspx

In other news, India is about as much fun as I remembered it being, and the 12-hour workdays are killing me.  By the time I get back to the hotel room, all I want to do is sleep.  So I doubt I'll be online very much over the next month.  I'm drafting entries piecemeal so I may/may not have a post up about once a week, depending on my level of productivity.

Hi folks,

Because of MiamiShyner's recent post, I decided to make a new group here on Vox called "I Declare SHENANIGANS!"  I sent invites out to a few folks in my 'hood but didn't hit everyone up.  However, if you're interested (see description below for more information), I'd love it if you joined the group.  Oh, and I'd love it even more if you have some old rants or posts of your own that you could repost to the group to get the content level up.  Thanks!

(From the group description):

Have you ever wanted to call someone out for their actions but instead just sat, fuming?  Maybe it was that non-handicapped person who parked in the handicapped space, or the guy who tried to pass you in traffic, only to slow down once he got in front of you?

Well, here's your place to vent, tell the world what happened, and (possibly) share photos of the transgressors!  Tell the world you're not happy, and say, "I Declare SHENANIGANS!"

I've reposted some of my old entries to the group as examples of what I was envisioning.  Hopefully you'll have some more to keep the shenanigans declarations coming!

Here's an idea I had a while back for a new web startup - since I know I'll never get around to implementing it, I'm offering it up for grabs to anyone who wants a chance at fame and fortune.  After all, I'd rather a site like this actually exist than just sit percolating in my head.

Site name: What the Hell (or Heck) Is That?

Redheaded Woodpecker

Premise: Have you ever seen something, but not known exactly what it was?  Maybe you're curious what that big humming box is behind your office building (it's a transformer) or what kind of bird it is that keeps dive-bombing your car (it's a redheaded woodpecker).  Well, thanks to the magic of the internet, now you can find out exactly What the Hell is That?

How It Works:

• Any registered user can upload a picture to the website.  Ideal for cameraphone pictures, as you can moblog while on the run.  However, you can also email or use a in-page widget at your computer, if you prefer.
• The photos get loaded onto a "Can You Identify This?" page that is constantly updated.  Registered users can take a stab at identifying the object of interest in the photo, filling out a small web form that has categories like:
• Object Name
• Intended Use
• Difficulty in Identifying Object (Very Difficult - Difficult - Moderate - Easy - Very Easy, etc)
• Once a user has entered information identifying an object, the photo goes into a Voting queue, where registered users can vote on the accuracy of the identifying information.  This could be as simple as a thumbs up/down for usefulness of identifying information down to a rated scale for how accurate the user was.
• When enough users have voted positively for an identification, you get a notification via the medium you used to submit the photo with the results.  You can also check the individual item's page on the site in the meantime, if you want to see the status as it updates.  New identifications can be turned off at any time, and will automatically be shut off at a predetermined time period (assuming there is already a valid identification in place).

How The Site Makes Money:

• Like many sites out there, I think this would probably work best on an ad revenue basis.  Make it free for users to register/upload/identify/vote, so you get a big base of people involved, and then make money off the advertisements served.
• How do you get people interested in identifying/voting? 
• Besides the fact that I think there'd be a lot of people interested if you just turned it into a game of some sort, with rankings/scores, you could also institute some sort of profit-sharing mechanism.  For each picture that someone identifies "correctly" that gets a certain number of corroborating votes from distinct users, they get some small fraction of a cent.  More difficult pictures yield a bigger profit for identifiers.  (Restrictions would have to be put in place to prevent botting, but I'm sure these could get figured out.)
• You could also have site-sponsored contests - prizes for people that identify a certain number of items, or identify long-outstanding unidentified items, or items that the site administrators decide to post at random intervals.

So, what do you think?  Does this sound viable?  Anyone want to take it on?  I figure there's some new college grad out there burning to get moving on a big project like this - I've provided the outline for the service, now all you have to do is go implement it :-)  After all, the next time someone asks me "What the hell is that?", I'd rather not have to say "I don't know" when instead, I could leverage the power of the internet to help me get my answer.

Tuva

Tuva is a small, autonomous republic located in extreme southern Siberia.  It's capital city of Kyzyl may be best known for being located at the geographic "center of Asia".  But Tuva itself is best known for something even more esoteric - Tuvan throat-singing.

Throat-singing, also known as overtone singing or harmonic singing, is a type of singing in which the singer manipulates the harmonics & resonances created as air travels from the lungs, past the vocal folds, and out the lips.  By doing so, a singer can create more than one pitch at the same time.  The results are amazing, and depending on the individual style, can be reminiscent of anything from birdsong to the rumbling undertones of a didgeridoo.

Paul Pena, a blind blues musician out of California, made his personal discovery of Tuvan throat-singing in 1984 while searching for a Korean language lesson on his shortwave radio.  When he finally tracked down a recording of some of the singers seven years later, he spent several months experimenting and taught himself the vocal techniques of three different styles of throat-singing.  He also taught himself the Tuvan language - but since there were no Tuvan-to-English dictionaries, he had to learn it the hard way: he used a Tuvan-to-Russian dictionary combined with a Russian-to-English dictionary.

In 1993, Pena attended a Tuvan throat-singing performance at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco.  At an intermission, he impressed famous Tuvan throat-singer Kongar-ool Ondar with an impromptu Tuvan song in the kargyraa style.  Ondar was blown away and insisted that Pena come to Tuva to participate in the second international Khoomei (Throat-Singing) Symposium in 1995.  Paul would be the first westerner ever to compete in the Symposium.

Kargyraa Moan

Paul Pena

Not only did Paul compete, but as you can tell by the ending of this track, he won first place in the Kargyraa contest, and also won the "audience favorite" category. 

Ondar (and other Tuvans) called Pena "Cher Shimjer", or Earthquake, for the deepness of his voice.  Unfortunately, Paul Pena spent a portion of his life suffering from both diabetes and pancreatitis, and died from complications of these illnesses in 2005.

A documentary film called Ghengis Blues was created in 1999 that documented Pena's journey to Tuva and his competition there.  It won the 1999 Sundance Film Festival Audience Award for a Documentary, and was also nominated for an Academy Award in 2000 in the Documentary Feature category.

For more information on Tuvan throat-singing, along with many other links, please check out Friends of Tuva.  More info on Paul Pena, including links to buy his albums and Ghengis Blues, can be found at Paul Pena's website.

Just heard about the new feature for Flickr Pro members - the ability to upload video to your account and tag/organize it just as if it was a picture.  Decided to test it out for myself to check out its capabilities, drawbacks, etc.

Pros:

• The video quality is much better than YouTube, and by default is bigger than the default YouTube size.  Also includes a full-screen option without any hacks!
• You can organize/tag the videos just like you do your photos, including adding it to a set/collection.
• You can embed the clip in a blog or webpage very easily through the "embed" option, which allows you to set parameters such as size of the clip.
• Has the same public/private sharing options as your photos, so if you already have these set up for family members, they'll be able to access the videos the same way they do your photos.
• Videos are uploaded the same way you upload photos, and can actually be uploaded in a batch along with photos.
• No limit on number of videos you can store in your Pro Account.

Cons

• Video size/duration is limited to 150 MB or 90 seconds (whichever is less).  Not a big deal for little clips, but it would be nice if this got bumped up a bit for longer videos.
• Video uploading is limited to Flickr Pro members.  Free members can view publicly-shared videos, but cannot upload them to their accounts.
• No Vox integration yet, so no tagging, linking, etc on Vox.  You'll have to use the "embed" code to insert a video into a page, for now.

Even if Yahoo/Flickr isn't touting this as a YouTube killer, it's still a very nice application and one that I'll definitely be using in the future. 

And a comparison test, for you to see for yourself:

Taking my own stab at a submission for the Fail Blog.  FYI, this is the entrance to Babies 'R Us.  I had to stop and do a double-take to make sure that yes, this was the entrance to the store.

Entrance Fail

1 comment

Just heard "Show Me the Meaning of Being Lonely" (muzak version) playing over the speakers in the men's restroom.  What's sad is that I recognized it.  What's even more sad is that it sounded 10x better than the original.  That sax player can wail, man.

I'm Going Back Home :: Better Go Home Now

http://calliopeno...

Previously on the Calliope

Yay, a song for the Calliope AND a cover (although you might have to listen to it to figure out who they're covering).

I Wanna Go Home

Van Morrison, Lonnie Donegan, Chris Barber

Show us a great April Fools' Day joke.

I'm not a big one for practical jokes.  In Robert Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, humor is codified, for the sake of an intelligent computer's understanding, as "Funny Once", "Funny Always", and "Funny Never". Some things are funny only the first time, some are always funny no matter what, and some things just aren't funny at all.  For me, practical jokes usually fall in the "Funny Once" category, although if they're mean-spirited or cause stress for the person being pranked, they immediately go in the "Funny Never" bucket.

WARNING: The rest of this post is sort of geeky.  If you don't consider yourself kind of geeky, you may find it funny.

That being said, I do appreciate when an April Fool's joke doesn't harm anyone AND manages to be "Funny Always".  One example that I recall is when a former boss of mine sent me some cut-sheets for some new electrical components he was thinking of buying, and asked me to review and provide my input.

Yes, these are cut-sheets for "Write Only Memory".  Just as you'd infer, where "Read Only Memory" devices have data on it that can only be read (and not written to), "Write Only Memory" devices can only be written to (and not read from).  Some of the uses suggested on the cut sheet for Write Only Memory:

• Don't Care Buffer Stores
• Least Significant Control Memories
• First-In, Never-Out (FINO) Asynchronous Buffers
• Post-Mortem Memories (Weapons Systems)

It took me a little while to figure out what the hell the stuff was supposed to be, but I chuckled quite a bit as I started reading the descriptions and looking at all the hard work that was put into these cut sheets.

MP3 Linker Example

Vox provides a great way to check out music that people have uploaded, but what if you've got a browser that doesn't have a flash player, or you just want to listen to the music in a different media-player plugin in your browser?  This Greasemonkey script is the answer for you!

This script simply adds a hyperlink directly to the .mp3 file on any individual song file page.  Once that link is present, you can access the .mp3 directly, instead of having to go through the flash player interface. 

And, although I guess you could use this to right-click on the link and download the .mp3, I urge you not to illegally download your music and instead buy your music legally from someone like Amazon's MP3 Store or iTunes.

Want to install this script for your own use?  First install Greasemonkey, and then get the script here.  (Instructions to install Greasemonkey can be found here.)

THANKS TO: lemon, for beta-testing this script for me over Easter weekend!

(Please note this script assumes the Vox audio file that was uploaded was a .mp3 file. If it was a different audio format, this script may not provide a proper link to the file, or the file may not play back correctly in your media player.)