Is Google "Airbrushing" History?

Google has been accused of “airbrushing history” as it has replaced satellite images of the New Orleans area, showing the hurricane devastation, with pre-Katrina images.

In fact, it’s generated so much attention that Congress has taken an interest in the issue.

Citing an Associated Press report from Thursday, the House Committee on Science and Technology’s subcommittee on investigations and oversight asked Google Inc. Chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt to explain why his company is using the outdated imagery.

“Google’s use of old imagery appears to be doing the victims of Hurricane Katrina a great injustice by airbrushing history,” subcommittee chairman Brad Miller, D-N.C., wrote Friday in a letter to Schmidt. Source: Breitbart.com

It certainly is a questionable decision, though I wonder how much of Congress’ outrage is posturing. However, Google’s reason for making the change just boggles the mind.

John Hanke, Google’s director for maps and satellite imagery, said “a combination of factors including imagery date, resolution, and clarity” go into deciding what imagery to provide.

“The latest update from one of our information providers substantially improved the imagery detail of the New Orleans area,” Hanke said in a news release about the switch.

So, better imagery detail, but out-of-date images? Showing the pristine images pre-hurricane vs. post-hurrincane imagery? A weird choice, if you ask me.

Soon They’ll Be Asking for Blood … Oh Wait, They Are …

Online gaming bans are not uncommon, especially in gaming-crazy Asia. But what if you could get back “in the game” after a ban? Would you give blood to do it?

An online game operator has demanded that banned players donate blood to be allowed back into the game. Moliyo, which runs a 3D massively multiplayer online game in China, made the demand after banning 120,000 players who attempted to hack the game.

More than 100 players had already signed up to exchange half a litre (1 pint) of blood for game accounts. The company has also offered free accounts to ordinary players who give blood. Source: Weird Asia News

Interesting that they will give free accounts to regular players if they give blood. It doesn’t say, however, how long the accounts are free. Forever? Just the initial account? Or what? There’s a limit to what I’ll do for gaming … besides, I’ve given blood before … just to give it, for no other reason.

FCC Hangs Up on Cell Phone Use on Planes; My Mother-in-Law Rejoices

The FCC has decided to table the subject of cell phone use on planes, though I suspect it will come up again. The reason given by the FCC was technical, that it was not clear whether the network on the ground could handle the calls. On the other hand, it’s also true that thousands of passengers, my mother-in-law included, have written the FCC urging rejection of the proposal … because they wanted some peace.

Note that although the FCC was involved, so was the FAA, and both agencies would have had to approve the plan before cell phone use could have been made legal on planes.

The problem cited by (the chairman, Kevin) Martin did not have to do with flight safety or the mood in the cabin, but a problem raised by the cellphone industry. The system is designed for phones to communicate with a single cell tower at a time. But a cellphone that is several miles in the air can contact many towers at once, tying up circuits in all of them, the industry argued. Source: IHT

Interesting that the industry itself raised the issue. Also interesting that Joseph Farren, a spokesperson for the cellular industry’s trade association, the CTIA, said “From an in-flight perspective, there is some talk of, ‘O.K., maybe cellphone conversations would drive people crazy,’” he said.

And that’s where I (and my mother-in-law) agree. Have you heard people on buses or other rapid transit systems, or anywhere public on their cell phones? Because there’s no feedback or sidetone from the microphone to your earpiece on a cell phone, unlike land line phones, people talk louder.

That’s besides the fact that people on cell phones just tend to ignore other people’s comfort when they talk. So thank you, FCC … my mother-in-law is dancing in the street … I may not be so joyous, but inside, so am I.

“Expertise3P” Spray to Protect Against Electromagnetic Radiation?

As long as we’re talking about cell phones (see my last post) …

Despite the studies (or perhaps, because of them, since they seem to differ) on EMF and cell phones, are you worried about the effects of cell phone radiation on your brain? Clarins, a French beauty products group is set to release data in advance of sales of its “Expertise3P” (E3P) spray, which purportedly protects your skin against electromagnetic radiation.

It says the spray contains molecules derived from micro-organisms living near undersea volcanoes and plants which exist in extreme conditions like those alongside motorways or which grow in Siberia.

“This new product is contested so we have decided to publish the results of our experiments … in a world-renowned scientific journal,” Managing Director Olivier Courtin told a conference on the company’s 2006 results. Source: Reuters

Courtin also said, “Articles in some newspapers and on some Web sites have not been very positive.” No! I wonder why? Maybe they infuse their spray with lead particles. They also cited confidentiality when declined to name the journal in which the article would be published. Uh, huh.

Life Phone, Targeted for the 50+ Crowd

I’m impressed that my mother-in-law has learned how to use the Internet, but try as I might, I can’t get her to use a cell phone. This despite the fact that there have been times where it would have been really good for her to have one. Anyway, maybe I can talk her into this very simple phone, designed for the 50+ crowd.

The Life phone only has the most basic functions onboard and only lets its owners make and take calls, send and receive text messages or manage their directory of numbers.

The dualband Life phone can be programmed with up to five emergency numbers.

On the rear of the phone is a big red button that can be pressed in the event of an emergency and which will call one of the stored emergency numbers to summon aid. Source: BBC News

The phone was shown at the CeBit show and is scheduled to go on sale in May. It’s been pretty well thought out, in terms of usage for seniors, right down to the use of orange backlight for the screen, which is easier to read for those with failing sight.

One Number to Ring Them All …

and in the darkness bind them! Oh wait, that was a book … then a movie … and it was about a ring, wasn’t it? What I’m writing about here is the GrandCentral service. It offers the concept of a Uninumber … one number that will ring all of your phones at once. It will also centralize your voicemail. And the best thing is, if you only have 2 numbers to centralize … it’s free! A premium plan is offered at $15 a month, which allows to 6 phone numbers, voice messages preserved forever instead of for 30 days, etc., etc.

No longer will anyone have to track you down by dialing each of your numbers in turn. No longer does it matter if you’re home, at work or on the road. Your new GrandCentral phone number will find you.

As a bonus, all messages now land in a single voice mail box. You can listen to them in any of three ways. First, you can dial in from any phone (a text message arrives on your cellphone to let you know when you have voice mail). If you call in from your cellphone, you don’t even have to enter your password first.

You can also play your messages on the Web, at GrandCentral.com, and download them as audio files to preserve for posterity. You can even ask to be notified by e-mail; a link in the e-mail message takes you online to play the voice mail. Source: The New York Times

The downside is, now people will have an easier time tracking you down. There are a myriad of additional features as well:

a) Caller Naming: GrandCentral announces the name when you pick up the phone. This is determined either by caller ID or contacts you have imported.

b) ListenIn: When you pick up a call, and after it announces the caller’s name, GrandCentral then offers four ways to handle the call: “Press 1 to accept, 2 to send to voice mail, 3 to listen in on voice mail, or 4 to accept and record the call.” Option 3 is the ListenIn option, naturally …

c) Record Your Call: Besides option 4 above, you can also start recording in the middle of a call.

d) RingShare: Lets you replace the ringing sounds the caller hears with music — any MP3 file of your choice.

e) Phone SPAM filters: A constantly updated DB of telemarketers. Your phone won’t even ring if one of them calls you. Or you can have them tell the caller the number is not in service!

This sounds like something I definitely am going to sign up and try!

I Take It All Back: Draft-N Badness with the Netgear WNR854T

You may have read my earlier post about my upgrade to wireless-N. The upgrade was easy. The initial tests were great. Longer testing … grrr …

For the rest of the week after I installed I basically just used the router with my Wireless-G work laptop. Finally, last weekend, I did some real testing with my wireless-N card in my Dell Inspiron XPS M1710. And I was not pleased.

Here’s what happened: whenever I tried to access a folder on my wife’s laptop (also connected by a wireless-N card), the folder opened up incredibly slowly. It would take minutes to open. Not only that, if I watched the connection speed via the system tray icon for the wireless connection, I would see it drop. From 130 -> 117 -> say 52 -> as low as 2! Incredible!

No matter what I tried, the behavior was the same. So, I changed back to G, to see … and I had absolutely no issues.

I also noticed the connection speed values change when I was doing nothing. FIgured … nope, what I read was true. Draft-N still is too shaky.

So, the one good thing was … I bought it from Amazon. I could return it, shipping paid for by Amazon, because I couldn’t get it to work with my setup.

I also did more research, and decided to try some other routers. I’ll detail my results later, as time passes. For now, back to G.

Oh, Those Great Radio-Controlled Wristwatches (!?)

They’re called atomic watches, but really, these watches truly are synchronizing themselves with the atomic clock in Colorado. So that’s the “atomic” part of the name, but really, they are radio-controlled watches. With all the to-do about the earlier DST change, I naturally assumed that the Casio Waveceptor watch I’ve been using, which has made it through a few DST changes successfully, would adjust itself again.

Nope.

Woke up and it was an hour off. Nowadays it’s not easy to figure out how to operate these things, what with only 2 buttons and so many settings. But I did remember what to push in order to force a manual synch. But it was still off.

OK, so where’s that manual. Bah, can’t find it.

So, I went to Google, typed in Waveceptor manual, and found a page on the Casio website that listed a bunch of manuals I could download. “Check the back of your watch to see what MODULE you have”. 4303. Bah again, it’s not on the list!

I tried the next closest module (4316) but that wasn’t even close. A little more Googling and I was still stuck.

So, I went to www.casio.com, clicked through to support, watches, manuals, searched for 4303, and FINALLY found a manual. A little reading, and I found out how to see how strong the signal I was receiving was. Pretty weak, so I gave up and manually changed the time. Which I needed the manual for (and that’s the main reason I downloaded it) because it’s not obvious.

So, an easy-to-use, self-setting radio-controlled watch took me about an hour to reset to DST … a process that with one of those old, wind-up analog watches would have taken say a minute? Oh, the wonders of modern technology.

Finally, a Relatively Easy Upgrade: Draft-N Goodness with the Netgear WNR854T

Been a while since I wrote anything, as I’ve been struggling with, then putting off my upgrade to Windows Vista. You can find my travails here, here and here (so far) at RTN. Mostly it’s been about drivers, though I haven’t exactly been eager to start as I have to reinstall EVERYTHING.

However, all the attention has been on my Dell wireless draft-N (meaning 802.11n) card. Even though wireless-N has not been certified, I decided to upgrade my wife’s laptop with a draft-N PC card and my router to a Netgear wireless-N router, the WNR854T.

This router had some good reviews, though range is still an issue. The main thing for me was compatibility, not just with older G cards I have, but also, and especially with the draft-N cards. Since I had decided on the Netgear WNR854T, I opted for a Netgear WN511T wireless card for my wife’s laptop (I had already heard the Dell draft-N card worked well with the WNR854T).

Basically, to set up a wireless network, you have to set up the SSID, wi-fi security, DHCP, and whatever it needs in order to login to your broadband service (in this case, Comcast … all I need is to have the router clone the Mac address of the PC the cable modem originally (and don’t forget to change the default admin password, of course).

All of this only took 15 minutes.

What took longer was setting up my wife’s wireless-N PC Card. I prefer to use Windows to manage the wifi settings for a driver, but in this case, even when I installed the Netgear drivers, the only way I could get anything BUT WEP as encryption was to use the Netgear utility. Oh, well.

Once I did this, I ran into the range issues. Or maybe it’s the fact that my wife’s laptop is in the living room, basically buried in a corner. I had to move the router closer to my office door, and then I got a much better signal. It still only showed in the middle of the “signal graph” in the Netgear utility, but she was getting 263Mbps.

On the other hand, when I hooked up my Dell Inspiron XPS M1710 laptop, it was only getting 130Mbps, despite having a better signal. Still, much better than 56Mbps.

Anyway, it took about 45 minutes, and I was done, up and running, and all networked peripherals were working fine. Whew. On to Vista?