Television personality and producer Mike Robles visits with El Kaiser to discuss life, work, and how the Emmy Award winning comedian uses social media to both expand his audience and interact with his existing fanbase. Are you ready to work on your first novel but only have 30 days to do it? No worries! National Novel Writing Month is “write” around the corner and J.D. fills us in on the yearly Internet-based project and introduces us to some tools that can help you get started on that potential bestseller. In the news, remembering a computing pioneer with a Wikipedia Editathon; Twitter updates its direct messaging system; Google causes a stir with an update to its privacy policy; Apple confirms a second fall announcement; Netflix is heading to a cable set-top box near you; and a new consortium hopes to eliminate linkrot for links and documents cited in legal documents.
Tag Archives: zombies
PTJ 68 News: How ‘Bout an October Surprise?
This week brought the annual Ada Lovelace Day, a remembrance of the First Lady of Computer History — and a celebration of women in science, technology, engineering and math. Several events were held in honor of the the day, including a Wikipedia Editathon to add and enhance entries for notable women in science and technology.
Change is in the air for Twitter, which is rolling out an update in the way it handles direct messages. A new setting allows anyone to send a direct message to another account without having to follow it. While this could be a spam magnet, it’s an optional setting at the moment. And Google has updated its privacy policy for those Shared Endorsements on the way. (Want to opt out already? Here’s the settings page.) The change to the Terms of Service prompted Senator Ed. Markey of Massachusetts to fire off a letter to the Federal Trade Commission asking the agency to look into the matter.
Apple has finally confirmed that it will be having its second fall announcement on October 22. New iPads are expected, as well as new MacBook Pro laptops, that funky Mac Pro that looks like a canister vacuum, OS X Mavericks and who-knows-what-else. Here’s hoping for a genuine, giddiness-inducing surprise next week. (At least TUAW had some fun overanalyzing the official invitation to the event.) As for Apple’s earlier product releases this fall, while there have been reports that the iPhone 5s is outselling the 5c two phones to one, the 5c is still selling. And in other phone news, Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8 software is getting another update later this year and HTC showed off its One Max phablet earlier this week.
From the Paranoid Security News desk, the National Security Agency has been collecting buddy lists, online contacts files and address books and a researcher has found a backdoor in the firmware used by a number of D-Link routers (here’s a Sophos blog post on the issue with a list of affected models). And an app for Snapchat called, naturally, Snaphack, can save videos and photos sent through the self-destructing instant message service.
Nextflix is reportedly in talks with some cable companies to get its service included in set-top boxes, a move which Wall Street seemed to like a lot. And Netflix has signed a deal with Sony Pictures Television to produce a 13-episode psychological thriller from the creative team that made Damages for the FX channel. Grab the Lime ‘n’ Salt popcorn and stand by for a binge!
But some shows still stick to that old once-a-week airing plan, which can attract viewers as well, as the fourth-season premiere of The Walking Dead on AMC drew enormous ratings last Sunday night. (It’s a good bet many attendees from last weekend’s massive New York Comic Con staggered right home to watch.)
And finally, from battling zombie rot to stopping link rot: A coalition of about 20 university law libraries is trying to provide a permanent home for online documents cited in legal documents. The new consortium, called Perma CC, includes Oxford, UCLA, Harvard, Yale and Columbia and will hopefully keep those legal links that escaped the Wayback Machine all nice and Downy fresh.
Episode 32 News: Great Spexpectations
Are typed passwords passé? Google has some thoughts, and in a paper to be published later this month, suggests a number of ideas to bolster password security with hardware like a USB token that can be plugged into the computer, a ring that can authenticate the user’s identity or two-step verification with a smartphone linked to the account. Now, if only the biometric retina scanners and voiceprint identification software were ready for the home market. (Fingerprint readers for smartphones seem to be in the works, though.)
In the world of mobile devices, Research in Motion has changed the name of its online store from BlackBerry App World to BlackBerry World. The Microsoft Surface Windows 8 Pro tablet will go on sale February 9th in the US and Canada. Instagram recently piped up to says it still has 90 million active users, even after the fallout from its PR blunder late last year about how maybe it just might share its users’ photos with advertisers for money (a TOS item that has since been revised).
File-sharing, especially sharing of copyrighted content, is the bane of the entertainment industry, but Columbia University’s American Assembly research center has just done a public option poll that suggests that people using peer-to-peer sharing services buy 30 percent more music than those who do not use P2P sharing. Kim Dotcom, founder of the late Megaupload site that was a favorite of those sharing copyrighted content, is back with a new file-storing and sharing site. (Some have raised security concerns, however.)
Do you prefer to do your video-sharing by watching TV with the family? The research firm Frank N. Magid Associates thinks many people may be buying a new TV soon; bells and whistles like big flat screens and built-in Internet connectivity are seen as upgrade lures. And there will soon be more to watch on the stream aside. Fans of the Arrested Development TV show celebrated when Netflix decided to pick up the long-canceled show and produce new episodes that are due this May, and now Amazon may be getting into the content-production game as well. The online ultra-mega-uberstore is said to have snagged the Zombieland TV show that was under development for one of the major broadcast networks.
At least these services pretty much have the whole streaming thing down, compared to the National Hockey League, which had some trouble with its own live video app this past weekend and plenty of griping fans; the NHL did acknowledge there were issues that they were “working hard to fix.”
Meanwhile, out in space… NASA’s older Mars rover, Opportunity, is still hard at work after 10 years of leaving Earth for its own mission on the Red Planet. And Curiosity, the bigger, newer rover is expected to start drilling on that rock within the next couple of weeks in search of evidence that Mars once had flowing water.
And finally, it’s time for Rumor Roundup:
- Specifications expectations (spexpectations?) are high for the Samsung Galaxy S4 and Samsung is said to be holding a press event on March 22.
- The iPhone, which the analyst firm Kantar WorldPanel ComTech says grabbed 51 percent of US smartphone sales last quarter, is always the subject of rumors and one of the latest murmurs says Apple has a model with a 4.8-inch display in the works with the curious name of the “iPhone Math.” The name, the hardware, the phone itself are all unconfirmed, but the iPhone Math comes alongside whispers of a cheaper model and an iPhone 5S possibly this summer. Or maybe next year. (And maybe it’ll have something to make the stockholders happy again.)
- Sony’s PlayStation 4 could be getting a touchscreen controller instead of or in addition to the traditional dual-stick model. And it may have biometric feedback built in.
- Microsoft’s next Xbox looks to be a powerful presence in the living room, if the leaked specifications are anywhere in the ballpark. According to the site VG Leaks, the next Xbox may have 8 gigabytes of RAM, a Blu-ray player, USB 3.0, a hard drive and HDMI port and a built in Kinect motion controller.
One hopes the real new Xbox lives up to the rumored Xbox here. And hey, that kind of multipurpose entertainment console just might call for…a new TV!
(Hopefully) Helpful Hint: Learn to Code
A few episodes ago, we talked about iTunes U as a free source of educational courses, content and lectures from major universities. Along those lines, you can also take free computer science and programming classes from sites like Coursera and MIT’s Open Courseware. Practical Programming in C is one such course offered on the MIT site.
Want something a little looser in format — but just as educational that you can do in your own time? Visit the Codeacademy, which is the product of a start-up company based here in New York. On its interactive Web site, you can take lessons in a few different languages including Python, Ruby, JQuery and JavaScript and learn website fundamentals.
If Ruby piques your interest, there’s also the TryRuby interactive site. It’s linked to the Code School site, where you can sign up for and try classes for free — and then pay $25 a month if you want to keep learning.
Want to learn Ruby on Rails, which is an open-source full-stack web application framework that works with the Ruby language? Try the Rails for Zombies site, also from Code School. (Zombies, we just can’t get enough of zombies — especially with The Walking Dead returning with new episodes this weekend.)
For the younger set, there’s CodeMonster from Crunchzilla. CodeMonster uses a fun way of guided interaction to teach live JavaScript programming. For example, the screen suggests you change a number. When you do, the colored box next to the code changes size so you can see the cause and effect of your programming actions. You go from colored boxes to working with basic animation and fractals. Other examples introduce standard programming concepts like expressions, functions and loops.
Another site for young programmers is <Code/Racer>, which is a multiplayer live game that teaches how to write the code for a basic Web site in HTML and CSS. If you already know how to do that, the site tests how quickly you can code.
These sites are just a few of the many options out there, but a good place to start your search for a programming language to learn. And once you get the skills down, you can flaunt the wardrobe.