Fred Sandsmark's Blog

I don't have cable TV anymore and haven't yet hooked up a rooftop antenna. I haven't missed television, but tonight I needed to record a news segment for work. What to do?

I got my little LCD TV out of my emergency kit, and put my Flip Ultra on a tiny tripod. It's not beautiful, but it did the job.

Labels: gadgets, media, technology, TV, video, work

I got a fun assignment at the recent Oracle OpenWorld: to conduct some informal video interviews of people attending the conference. Two of them are posted on YouTube.





I hadn't done something like this before, and I found it a bit intimidating to approach strangers at first. (Especially with a two-page release form for them to sign.) But the interviewees were gracious and funny, and the assignment was a kick.

The videos were shot with a Flip Video Ultra. I was so impressed with the camera that I got my own. Expect more videos soon!

Labels: clips, gadgets, Oracle, technology, video, work

Norway's national tax agency sent CDs containing personally identifiable information (PII) of four million Norwegians to media groups. (The story is here.)

Two numbers stick out in this story: Norway has just 4.6 million inhabitants, and that the CDs were sent to just nine groups. (It would be interesting to know how many send the CDs back, as the agency has asked them to do.)

Labels: media, Norway, privacy, technology

I wonder if Buy.com thinks anybody ever watches the homemade demonstration videos for its products. Case in point: the MySoldius1 Solar Charger. Click the "Watch Video" button on the left side of the screen, under the product image.

Between the one-take-is-plenty-but-lighting-doesn't-matter camerawork, the uninformed mumbling voiceover, and the hairy arms that seem to have never handled the product before, it's quite a piece of work.

My favorite lines: "Just plug it in there the right way and you're set to go," and "There's a few instructions on this sheet of paper right here that comes with your solar charger, and a few specifications right there."

Best of all: I bought the device anyway.

Labels: fun, gadgets, marketing, sales, solar, technology, video

We're trying out some new technology here at the Marble Publishing World Headquarters.

Connectivity: I'm testing out AT&T High Speed Internet Pro here at the home office. I haven't yet turned off my Comcast cable modem service, but expect to soon. Several factors played into this decision: I'm not watching TV anymore so having cable is $1200 a year I don't want to spend; AT&T's service includes use of WiFi at Starbucks; and by consolidating billing I can save a few bucks and simplify paperwork. (I opted not to get the U-Verse service, because [again] I'm not watching TV.) I got the setup kit just before Labor Day and the install worked fine. I left the modem running for the weekend and switched the computer over to the service this morning. The DSL modem (a Motorola MSTATEA) is a tiny thing, just 4.25 x 3.5 inches.

Related question: the DSL modem has a sticker reading: "To maximize connection speed, leave this modem on for 10 days after DSL installation is complete. Please note: You can use your DSL service during this time. It is not necessary to leave your computer on, only the modem." Any idea what that's about?

PDA: I've sprung for an Apple iPod Touch. I got the base model on the Apple Refurb store for $200. (It's been months since my Palm Zire died.) I couldn't justify the monthly charges for an iPhone. So far I'm very, very happy with the Touch. I've got it loaded with music, videos, and photos, along with my calendar and contacts. I'm using it occasionally for email and web surfing (including on the AC Transit M Transbay Bus). I haven't bought any apps yet, but I'm looking at some sort of password database.

Desk phone: Call me old-fashioned, but I still have a landline here at World Headquarters. However, because I consolidated phone numbers (510-538-5263 is no longer connected), I wanted a cordless desk phone with an answering machine and two handsets (one for downstairs). I got a Panasonic KX-TG9342T, and so far I like it very much. (Thought the Talking Caller ID is kinda creepy ...)

Wireless router: I got a Linksys WRT54G2. I haven't had WiFi in the house for a while, and bought this router without a lot of comparison shopping. Perhaps a mistake. It works great with the Touch but not with my old G3 iBook. I have yet to figure out what's up there, but haven't put a lot of effort into it yet. I may end up wishing I had splurged on an Apple Airport with Airtunes, especially once I move more of my music collection in that direction.

Labels: Apple, gadgets, Internet, ISP, technology, TV, work

How about two annoying companies merging?

Comcast is buying Plaxo.

Labels: Internet, ISP, technology

After a brief hiatus, Symantec has resurrected its CIO Digest magazine. for the current (April 2008) issue, I interviewed three healthcare IT leaders, asking them about their challenges with device management, enterprise security, storage, compliance, and communications. The article, entitled Best Medicine, can be found here (pdf).

Labels: clips, health, marketing, medicine, science, technology, writing

The new issue of Boalt Hall Transcript (the UC Berkeley law school alumni magazine) is out, and I realize that I hadn't yet linked to articles from the last issue, published in Spring 2007. I had two:

Does Money Talk? discusses the research of Professor Eric Talley, who's done work linking creative executive compensation to securities fraud.

Patent Trolls Take Their Toll talks about patent reform with Professor Pamela Samuelson.

Please check them out, and share your comments. For the current issue of Transcript (which I'll link to when it's live online) I profiled Howard Chao, a prominent Silicon Valley attorney who does private equity work in China.

Labels: clips, law, technology, writing

I went through all of my domains at Go Daddy and updated the registration information. Some of it was wrong or out of date. This seems to have fixed the problem.

It's a good news / bad news thing. The good news, obviously, is that the problem is fixed. The bad news is that the Go Daddy tech support people I spoke with couldn't identify the problem, and worse said there was no problem.

Anyway, it's fixed and I'm happy. I hope my posting this fix helps somebody else in the future.

Labels: email, Go Daddy, Internet, ISP, technology

I use email forwarding through Go Daddy for one of my domains, and in the last week it has stopped working. I called GD and asked if they were having problems; they said no. I tried loosening up the spam filters on the receiving side, but it didn't do any good. So we're foregoing the service, which makes me unhappy.

Can anybody corroborate my experience? Got a workaround? And can anyone suggest a low-cost domain purchase and/or parking service that includes reliable email forwarding? (I don't want to have my domain registrar hosting my email, no matter who it is. Once bitten twice shy ...)

Labels: email, Go Daddy, Internet, ISP, technology

I dropped my Palm Zire 72 and now it's dead. Calendar and Contacts are recently backed up; other stuff may be gone, but that's not a huge deal. (Maybe the password database is a huge deal, but a surmountable one.)

So now I'm tempted to get an iPhone. I'm pretending that I can justify it by not having to buy another Palm and because my Nokia phone is aging and will need replacing soon. Somebody please stop me before I spend a bunch of money on a gadget.

Labels: Apple, budget, gadgets, technology

Anybody else in the Castro Valley / Hayward area having problems with Comcast high-speed Internet service? My connection has been awful today, and has been spotty for weeks and weeks. The symptoms are always the same: the service cuts in and out. Calls to service result in them pinging the modem from the network end and telling me it's fine -- which it is, for a little while. Then it cuts out again. One technician who came out let on that Comcast is doing "network upgrades" in the area. (That explains those shabby no-name contractor trucks I've seen around the telephone poles.) If this is an upgrade, I'd hate to see a downgrade.

I'm truly weighing whether the extra speed of Cable over DSL is worth it for my needs. By contrast with this ongoing mess with Comcast, I had a landline phone problem last week and AT&T was out within a day; the service technician was smart, professional, and communicative -- a far cry from the "service" I'm getting from Comcast right now. Plus, I could bundle DSL with my landline and mobile phone bill and maybe save some money. (I'm sure not going to choose Comcast for landline phone service with a lousy connection like I've got.) An AT&T bundle is looking mighty tempting.

BTW, in the course of typing this post, Blogger has tried to autosave four times and failed. Each time the connection has returned and autosave has worked. Cross your fingers; I'm about to click "Publish Post."

Labels: email, technology

Sam Whiting's article in this weekend's San Francisco Chronicle Magazine about long-distance commuters on Amtrak's Capitol Corridor reminded me of a couple of similar articles I wrote nearly a decade ago. Both of mine were for computer magazines (CCN and Silicon Valley TechWeek) so they focused on the wired road warriors; Whiting's article does, somewhat, too, but has a wider focus. The technology part of the story has changed dramatically in the intervening years, of course; back in the 1990s, simple cell phone service was spotty along much of the Capitol Corridor, but now the trains have wireless Internet access. The computers have changed, too; here's a snippet from my CCN article, talking about the 110v electric outlets on the train. (The "Yard Dog" quoted in the article is one of the colorful conductors.)

Those outlets are important, because not every computer can run on batteries. "A while back, we had a rider who brought along a whole computer on a cart," recalled Yard Dog. "Computer, monitor, keyboard, mouse — he'd hook it all up and go to work," he recalls with a chuckle. "He didn't last for long."

The CCN article can be found here. I'll try to get the TechWeek article up and linked soon. (The magazine is long gone.)

Labels: clips, technology

I don't know how, but yesterday's post about daffodils made it onto the radar of the folks who run the First Daffodils blog. With a photo, no less! I'm so proud ...

Labels: technology

What is it about free wireless at Macworld that makes it irresistable to create a blog post, even if one has nothing to say?

Labels: technology

I got this lovely personalized greeting in my email in-box this morning:



Oh, my. And the thing is, I know this company has my first name.

I don't hate email marketing. In fact, I wrote an article a couple of years ago on effective email marketing strategies for Cisco's IQ magazine. Maybe the Greenhouse Catalog should read it.

Labels: clips, email, marketing, technology

An item on KTVU news last night about San Anselmo's flood warning system reminded me of one of the first freelance articles I sold, back in lae 1997, to California Computer News (CCN). It ran in the January 1998 edition of the free monthly, and I'm republishing it here. At the end I've added some comments.

Roseville is ALERT to Flood Danger

The ALERT system uses cable television and high-end technology to keep Roseville residents apprised of potential flooding

In recent years, Roseville residents have switched on their televisions during winter storms to see newscasters (and, on occasion, the President) wading through their town, inspecting flooded homes. Now residents don't have to get their news through commercial television. They can simply flip the channel to a local cable station to see exactly what the city's swollen creeks are doing at that very moment.

Roseville has added a sophisticated, complex flood alert system. A network of remote gauges measures creek flow and rainfall, and forwards the data to a central computer. There it is compiled, analyzed and (if the water levels warrant it) broadcast in real time over cable television. Another computer can telephone the residents of threatened neighborhoods and advise them to evacuate.

Most cities in the Sacramento Valley have a flood-monitoring system, but its television broadcast ability sets the Roseville system apart from others in the area and in the nation. "This feature is found in few, if any, other flood warning systems across the country," said Rob Nelson, key operator for the Automated Local Evaluation in Real Time (ALERT).

The system provides about three hours of warning when a creek is about to flood. This aggressive program requires a collection of special equipment. Fourteen streamflow monitors are strategically placed on the seven creeks in the Upper Dry Creek Drainage Basin, an 80-square-mile area that feeds the city's creeks. These remote monitors track the height of the creeks and transmit the information via radio to the ALERT center at the Roseville Corporation Yard. The streamflow monitors are supplemented by 19 digital rain gauges, which also communicate with the center via radio. Eighty percent of the water that flows through Roseville comes from rain that falls outside of the city limits, so the monitors are as far away as Newcastle.

CENTRAL HUB

Roseville's ALERT center is a small, windowless room crammed with computer gear. The sophisticated system runs on relatively modest hardware, including a 486DX33 which features software developed by the National Weather Service (NWS) for recording the data from the remote sensors. A 133 Mhz Pentium analyzes the same data. It runs proprietary software developed by Novalynx of Rancho Cordova (www.novalynx.com), a company that specializes in meteorological instruments and software. This computer converts the numbers to graphics that appear on cable TV and helps Nelson to predict future creek levels.

The QNX operating system makes these humble computers capable of processing a deluge of information. QNX (www.qnx.com) is a very fast micro-kernel OS that bills itself as "the leading real time operating system for PCs." QNX is used in a variety of industrial and emergency situations where real-time processing and high reliability are essential.

The third computer, a 200 Mhz Pentium Pro running Windows NT Server, isn't on QNX. Through an ISDN modem connected to the Internet, this computer receives radar and satellite imagery which is used for predicting and tracking weather. These aren't the same weather maps the public can view on the Web -- those are delayed at least a half hour, while Roseville's are updated every six minutes. The satellite data comes from the Geostationary Operational Environment Satellites (GOES) operated by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.

MUST-SEE TV

The ALERT center sorts the information and—when the city's Emergency Operations Center (EOC) at the main fire station deems it necessary—the information is transmitted via modem to the city's cable TV channel. A repeating automatic television program—which gives real-time data from the six most critical streamflow monitors—shows a six-hour history of creek levels and indicates via a color code whether the stream level is at a normal, alert, warning or critical stage.

At the alert stage, city staff are carefully monitoring creek levels and weather conditions. When the creek levels reach the warning stage, flooding is a possibility and residents are encouraged to take precautions to secure their property and personal safety. At the critical stage, flooding becomes imminent and residents are advised to evacuate.

As a side attraction, the television program runs when flooding isn't a threat. The city has found that residents like to observe the stream situation even when it's not an official emergency.

CALL OF THE WILD CREEK

The ALERT system doesn't rely solely on people to watch the television broadcast. Flood stages are communicated to all at-risk residents using an automatic telephone dialing system that matches floodplain maps with a database of telephone numbers. It can make 480 telephone calls an hour, and will soon be upgraded to make 1,000 calls an hour over 16 phone lines. A 233 Mhz Pentium runs "Teleminder" software by Decision Systems (www.decsys.com/decsys/tmcare.html). It calls at-risk homes and plays a recorded message describing the flood potential.

The city gets telephone numbers for the database from the local telephone company, so even unlisted numbers are called. The system is tested every autumn and is available for other emergencies in Roseville.

WATER UNDER THE BRIDGE

Roseville's ALERT system has been evolving since a February 1986 storm soaked Roseville, flooding 209 buildings and causing $7.5 million in damage. Initially two monitoring systems only recorded stream levels, so the first improvements were to add radio transmitters to the gauges. Most of the remaining monitoring locations were installed by 1990.

The ALERT center began with just one 80386 computer processing NWS data. The second computer was added a few years later, and both have since been upgraded. The link to the cable station was installed over four years ago, and in 1993 the radar/GOES workstation was added. The city estimates the system's price tag at $500,000. But who cares about expense when you have such a comprehensive system that the World Meteorological Organization tours it as part of its biennial international training program.

The next upgrade of the QNS OS will use an X Windows motif that will allow ALERT data to be networked through the city's Hewlett-Packard mainframe directly to the EOC and the cable television station without using modems.

USE IT OR LOSE IT?

Like an insurance policy, Roseville's flood monitoring system was purchased with hopes that it would never have to be used. But the system has been engaged, on average, every year since it was created. "The potential for flooding is present during every rainy season," the city tells its residents.

Roseville does its best to keep the system idle. It has ambitious civil-engineering plans (costing up to $8.3 million in 1998) to keep the creeks in their banks. Perhaps Roseville residents will someday turn on their televisions during heavy rains to watch newscasters wade through other towns.

Ten years later, I'm pretty happy with the story. One exception: I can't believe I wrote "But who cares about expense when you have such a comprehensive system that the World Meteorological Organization tours it as part of its biennial international training program." I wonder if I actually did write it, or if it was added in. I can see that my sometimes-misplaced enthusiasm for bad-pun subheads and em-dashes was already at work.

CCN still exists, at least online. It was a Sacramento-area regional publication in the 1990s, and because I don't live there anymore I don't know if it's still published in hard copy. A lot of similar free regional computer publications have died. I had a good freelance run with the publication, writing dozens of articles including a handful of covers. Sadly, its story archives aren't online anymore.

I worked with two fine editors there, Michelle Gamble Risley and Justine Kavanaugh Brown. Michelle took a chance and hired me when I was a new freelancer with no clips, and for that I'm grateful. I'm not sure where Michelle or Justine are anymore, but I'd love to hear from them.

Labels: clips, technology, weather