SERVICE: Stop crime one bike at a time

Tuesday, September 30, 2014

http://www.care2.com/greenliving/will-you-help-us-stop-online-bike-theft.html

Will You Help Us Stop Online Bike Theft?
Alex A. Kecskes
September 26, 2014
3:10 pm
12 comments

Will You Help Us Stop Online Bike Theft?
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We’re witnessing the power that a small, but targeted local petition can have over the war against bike theft. Please join our petition: Demand eBay and Craiglist Require Serial Numbers on Bike Listings.

$400 Million in Bicycles Stolen Annually

That’s a lot of bicycles from owners who, in some cases, invested heavily in their two wheels and depend on them to get around. In the U.S., only 18 percent of bicycle thieves are ever arrested. One reason is that victim and thief rarely know each other. Another reason is that bicycle theft is largely a crime of stealth, one that goes unnoticed or unchallenged. Then there’s the problem of proof of ownership — most owners simply can’t provide enough details to help investigators locate a missing bike. Even if the bike is recovered, detained suspects are often released due to the proof-of-ownership problem. This is why so few recovered bicycles are ever returned to their owners. When thieves steal bikes, they often sell them to get rid of the evidence and cash in on the crime.

How Thieves Sell Stolen Bikes

The Internet has been a huge tool for bicycle thieves. Criminals waste no time putting stolen bikes on online eBay and Craigslist to sell them and rarely get caught or punished. Once a bike’s serial numbers are removed, thieves can unload a stolen bike to an unwitting consumer with very low risk. It’s too difficult to identify a bicycle in an online listing (even with a photo) to prove ownership or to get law enforcement to act. Unlike motor vehicles (where standardized VIN numbers, mandatory licensing and required incident reporting can help locate and ID a stolen car, van or truck), bicycle registration is not widespread, making ownership difficult to establish. There is one crucial thing we can do to help stop bicycle theft: no serial number, no sale.

Demand eBay and Craiglist Require Serial Numbers on Bike Listings

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/686/977/588/?TAP=1319

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Posted by reinkefj

SORTWARE: IOS8 HEALTH is lame

Monday, September 29, 2014

The IOS8 upgrade carries a “HEALTH” app to the first screen.

(Even if I didn’t want it. At least “TIPS” went on the last page.)

It’s OBVIOUSLY a placeholder.

The select an emergency contact feature doesn’t work. 

And it does NOT have a provenance, versioning, or linkage to other “health” data sources.

Not Apple’s best work.

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SERVICE: Google Wallet and Google Mail

Saturday, September 20, 2014

https://www.google.com/get/googletips/card/sending-money-to-your-friends-and-family-is-as-easy-as-sending-an-email/detail/

Sending money to your friends and family is as easy as sending an email.  

This ties in Google Wallet to your Google Mail.

I recommend wallet as an easy and free / cheap way to transfer money around.

Recently, I cleared an advance in Iowa by a quick transfer from my phone.

Pretty neat.

The recipient was impressed.

Laugh. I just hate owing anyone anything. And love to play with technology. I think I’ll be using it more.

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JLINKEDIN: Regan, Kelly (MC2009) Clearing Client Services Goldman Sachs

Thursday, September 18, 2014

2014-Sep-18

http://http://www.linkedin.com/pub/kelly-regan/13/1b7/470

Regan, Kelly (MC2009) 
Clearing Client Services
Goldman Sachs
Greater New York City Area
Financial Services

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Posted by reinkefj

SOFTWARE: recommending CHROME REMOTE DESKTOP

Thursday, September 18, 2014

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/chrome-remote-desktop/gbchcmhmhahfdphkhkmpfmihenigjmpp/related?hl=en

Chrome Remote Desktop

*** begin quote ***

Access other computers or allow another user to access your computer securely over the Internet.
Chrome Remote Desktop allows users to remotely access another computer through Chrome browser or a Chromebook. Computers can be made available on an short-term basis for scenarios such as ad hoc remote support, or on a more long-term basis for remote access to your applications and files. All connections are fully secured.

*** end quote ***

As always, “TPIR” (http://www.priceisright.com/), and YMMV!

But I like it.

I’m recommending it.

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Posted by reinkefj

TECHNOLOGY: Facial recognition software report — not ready for prime time

Saturday, September 6, 2014

2014-Sep-06

http://patch.com/new-jersey/southbrunswick/have-you-seen-her-police-looking-woman-involved-nj-fraud-scheme#.VAsQu2RdXrM

Have You Seen Her? Police Looking for Woman Involved in NJ Fraud Scheme

NOTJJ 2014 09 06

Suspect allegedly stole license plates from cars in East Brunswick, cashed forged checks at various banks around New Jersey, police report.

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Guess facial recognition software is NOT that good yet!

In one respect, that’s good for privacy.

In another, that’s bad for putting an end to this petty crime spree before others get hurt,

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Posted by reinkefj

HARDWARE: Bond multiple internet connections

Monday, September 1, 2014

Carrier grade capabilities coming down to high end user price levels.

It’s easily now in the SMB range. Won’t be long before it’s in SOHO.

Bond 4g, 3g, cable / fios, cell phone bandwidth together.

Never dreamed of in the old days.

Wow.

*** begin quote ***

Introducing SimplyBonding from 3Gstore
3Gstore is thrilled to announce our new hosting service that allows you to bond multiple internet connections with minimal equipment and easy setup: SimplyBonding. Unlike failover or load balancing, a bonded connection takes multiple internet connections and COMBINES them. The resulting connection is both faster and more reliable: if you have 3 internet connections that are bonded together and one goes down, your connected devices and apps will never know there was a failure – even apps that maintain persistent connections!

Video: SimplyBonding Unbreakable Internet

What is bonding?

When businesses need a more reliable internet connection, they often turn to Failover or Load Balancing, features familiar to many users and available on a variety of consumer and enterprise grade routers. Failover routers have the ability to switch over to a secondary connection when one internet connection goes down, but you lose the connection during the switchover (and again when the primary connection comes up again and it switches back), and failover doesn’t help with connection speeds. Load Balancing routers split the traffic load amongst multiple internet connections, but they do not aid in reliability or increase speed. Failover and load balancing are useful features, but they are NOT the same as bonding.
A bonded connection takes multiple internet connections and COMBINES them to create a faster and more reliable stream. The concept of bonding (AKA aggregating) internet connections has been around for years, but it has historically been prohibitively expensive and very complicated to deploy and manage. SimplyBonding solves both of those problems!

*** end quote ***

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HARDWARE: Turn off the Caps Lock key

Monday, August 11, 2014

http://www.cultofmac.com/246792/stop-yelling-turn-off-the-caps-lock-key-on-your-mac-os-x-tips/

Stop Yelling – Turn Off The Caps Lock Key On Your Mac [OS X Tips]

Rob LeFebvre (6:00 am PDT, Sep 23rd 2013)

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Gal Pal’s Mom, on a Windoze implementation, for the n-th time, had the caps lock on while typing her password for AOL.

(Yeah, I know, who knew AOL was still business.)

So, Gal Pal asked me how to permanently disable it.

Easy peasy.

Then I go to think of all the times I inadvertently did the same thing.

So I found out how to turn it off on the Mac OS X.

Easier!

Done.

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SERVICE: ESPN on the inet via the ISPs

Tuesday, August 5, 2014

http://espn.go.com/watchespn/apps

Your Favorite ESPN Networks are Now Available live anytime and anywhere with WatchESPN.

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Doesn’t seem to work on the Mac?

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CHROMEBOX: Asus Chromebox $169.99

Thursday, June 19, 2014

http://www.chromestory.com/2014/06/deal-alert-asus-chromebox-169-99/

Deal Alert – Buy Asus Chromebox for $169.99 from Amazon
Dinsan Francis 19/06/2014

Amazon has great discounts on Asus Chromeboxes. The base model is now selling for $169.99, down from the original $179. This is a 5% saving around $9. The second model with 4GB RAM and i3 processor also has a great offer. It is now $379.99, down from $399.

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That’s unbelievably cheap!

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SOFTWARE: Freeplane for mind mapping

Wednesday, June 18, 2014

https://sourceforge.net/blog/june-2014-project-of-the-month-freeplane/

The Community Choice Project of the Month (POTM) for June is Freeplane, which is an application that supports mind mapping and analyzing information contained in mind maps. Congratulations to the Freeplane project on being voted as the June 2014 Community Choice POTM.

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I love “mind mapping”.

I really don’t understand why it doesn’t become more popular.

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Posted by reinkefj

HARDWARE: Chromebook Central Google Product Forum

Wednesday, June 4, 2014

Hello, Chromies!

Our new Chromebook Central Google Product Forum is officially live and awaiting your posts! You can access the new forum here (https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/chromebook-central).

To get started, why don’t you stop by this thread and discuss your favorite extensions, apps, and plugins with other Chromies.

Please note that Chromecast has moved to its own forum. You can access the new Chromecast forum here (https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/chromecast).

We will now be archiving the posts on this community forum, meaning you will still be able to search and read the archived posts, though this former site will no longer feature active posts (learn more about the reasons behind our move here.) Be sure to share the new forums with your fellow Chromies!

Thanks to all of you for the contributions you’ve made to the Chromebook Central community. We’ll see you over in the new Chromebook Central and Chromecast forums!

– Andrea
Chromebook Central Community Manager

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SOFTWARE: Anyone else notice CHROME BROWSER performance stinks

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Recently, all I seem to get is “spinning tabs”. Opera and Fivefox don’t have a problem.

I’m confused.

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Posted by reinkefj

TECHNOLOGY: Google Glass and QR codes

Saturday, March 15, 2014

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/03/er-doctors-use-google-glass-and-qr-codes-to-identify-patients/#p3

ER doctors use Google Glass and QR codes to identify patients
Custom medical application for Glass keeps data off Google servers.

by Jon Brodkin – Mar 12 2014, 10:50am EDT

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Interesting.

But the lead photo shows doc with Google Glass learning quickly that this is room 45.

Laugh!

But I understand “security”.

I’d have put something better for him to “read”.

The hospital’s website, Google search, or anything but the room number. Makes it look trivial.

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SOFTWARE: EVERNOTE

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/02/jeremy-andenberg/30-ways-to-improve-your-life-and-work/

One App to Rule Them All: 30 Ways Evernote Can Improve Your Life
By Jeremy Andenberg
The Art of Manliness
February 24, 2014

*** begin quote ***

7. Grocery list. Our household goes through endless scraps of paper for meal planning and grocery lists. They end up lost more often than not. Create your weekly list in Evernote, share it with your wife or roommates, and everyone will be on the same page. You can each add items to the list as you think of them instead of risking forgetting and needing to make a return trip to the market.

*** end quote ***

Argh!

I’m trying be serious here.

I need a pick list in any of the three “super” markets I use.

And, it would nice if the app gave me a solution that is the lowest cost.

Watson? (Not Wilson!) where are u?

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SOFTWARE: BLUEGRIFFON chokes on an errant copy and paste

Sunday, March 9, 2014

2014-Mar-09

In doing my weekly Jasper Jottings, I was delayed by a data formatting error.

Apparently, when I posted an article in the daily blog, using MARSEDIT, some how the article was posted as the title.

I didn’t realize it and did a copy and paste from MARSEDIT into BLUEGRIFFON.

That cause BLUEGRIFFON to make the page width six times larger than it needed to be.

Took a break.

When I came back to it, I did CNTL Z’s until BLUEGRIFFON restored the page size.

Then the hunt for what was causing the problem.

Repeated the cut’n’paste into SIMULTRON5 text editor. Couldn’t see anything. Back into BLUEGRIFFON same result.

Deleted all the blank lines and made sure that each line had an EOL on it.

Cut’n’paste back to BLUEGRIFFON; same result.

Then I cut’n’pasted the first line to BLUEGRIFFON; same result.

Then I cut’n’pasted just the text part of the first line to BLUEGRIFFON; that worked correctly.

Resumed and everything was now right with the world.

Argh!

Still don’t really understand what happened.

The issue went out about 8 hours late.

Argh!

# – # – # – # – #  2014-Mar-09 @ 14:36  

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SERVICE: Google’s not infallable

Saturday, January 25, 2014

Official Google Blog
Today’s outage for several Google services
Posted: 24 Jan 2014 04:47 PM PST
Earlier today, most Google users who use logged-in services like Gmail, Google+, Calendar and Documents found they were unable to access those services for approximately 25 minutes. For about 10 percent of users, the problem persisted for as much as 30 minutes longer. Whether the effect was brief or lasted the better part of an hour, please accept our apologies—we strive to make all of Google’s services available and fast for you, all the time, and we missed the mark today.

The issue has been resolved, and we’re now focused on correcting the bug that caused the outage, as well as putting more checks and monitors in place to ensure that this kind of problem doesn’t happen again. If you’re interested in the technical explanation for what occurred and how it was fixed, read on.

At 10:55 a.m. PST this morning, an internal system that generates configurations—essentially, information that tells other systems how to behave—encountered a software bug and generated an incorrect configuration. The incorrect configuration was sent to live services over the next 15 minutes, caused users’ requests for their data to be ignored, and those services, in turn, generated errors. Users began seeing these errors on affected services at 11:02 a.m., and at that time our internal monitoring alerted Google’s Site Reliability Team. Engineers were still debugging 12 minutes later when the same system, having automatically cleared the original error, generated a new correct configuration at 11:14 a.m. and began sending it; errors subsided rapidly starting at this time. By 11:30 a.m. the correct configuration was live everywhere and almost all users’ service was restored.

With services once again working normally, our work is now focused on (a) removing the source of failure that caused today’s outage, and (b) speeding up recovery when a problem does occur. We’ll be taking the following steps in the next few days:
1. Correcting the bug in the configuration generator to prevent recurrence, and auditing all other critical configuration generation systems to ensure they do not contain a similar bug.
2. Adding additional input validation checks for configurations, so that a bad configuration generated in the future will not result in service disruption.
3. Adding additional targeted monitoring to more quickly detect and diagnose the cause of service failure.

Posted by Ben Treynor, VP Engineering

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Posted by reinkefj

HARDWARE: FIOS required update

Sunday, January 19, 2014

 		  
 

Dear Valued Verizon Customer,

We continually strive to improve your 
FiOS® TV service and are making enhancements to create an even simpler and better experience for you. These changes will occur on Tuesday, January 21, 2014,and will cause your Set Top Box to automatically reboot, which means turning off and on. If you experience any issues with your Set Top Box as a result of this automatic reboot, please unplug your Set Top Box and plug it back in. This should resolve most issues.

Some of these enhancements include:

   TV
       
 
Adding more Closed Captioning capabilities
   
       
 
Simplifing your FiOS TV menu by:

  • Consolidating our Customer Support section, making it easier for you to use
  • Renaming your DVR Settings to Configure & Upgrade
  • Allowing you to access all of your TV listings using the Guide View header in Guide/TV Listings
 
Your Parental Controls will also be enhanced to enable you to temporarily turn them off for a period of 4 hours. This new capability will allow you to turn your Parental Controls off to enjoy an evening of TV watching without having to remember to turn them back on later. They will automatically resume after the 4 hour period. To use this functionality, press the Options button on your FiOS® TV Remote Control while watching live TV and select Parental Controls.
       

Thank you for choosing Verizon. We hope these new enhancements help you enjoy your FiOS TV service for many years to come.

Sincerely,

Your Verizon Team

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I don’t see anything that I need. So why do I have to upgrade? Time to rethink the paradigms and memes involved.

# – # – # – # – #  2014-Jan-19 @ 11:18  

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Posted by reinkefj

SERVICE: Journal by email

Monday, January 13, 2014

http://ohlife.com/

*** begin quote ***

It’s private
Only you can read what you write. No friend requests, no posting your entries publicly.

*** end quote ***

Seems like a neat idea.

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SOFTWARE: KRYPTOKIT for bit coin and encrypted email

Sunday, January 12, 2014

http://kryptokit.com/getting-started.html

What is KryptoKit?

KryptoKit is the world’s first instant Bitcoin wallet and secure messaging system that’s built right into your browser. It’s the easiest and fastest wallet to set up, and the easiest and fastest way to make Bitcoin payments. KryptoKit is a free extension plug-in for Chrome, making Bitcoin and GPG secure messaging instantly accessible even for beginners.

We believe in frictionless systems. We do things to remove the amount of clicks and friction that can often be involved when working with webwallets or making Bitcoin transactions. Below we’ll explain how to set up KryptoKit, its wallet and messaging system, as well as some of the other features KryptoKit offers.

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Posted by reinkefj

SERVICE: Fandango has tickets on iPhone

Thursday, December 26, 2013

http://www.fandango.com/

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FANDANGO, the movie site, sell tickets. (No news there!)

Pick them up at the box office (wait on a long line) or at the kiosk (wait on a shorter line).

(The AMC in 22102 makes you used the automated ticket seller. And for certain shows sells specific seating. Dumb idea. Guarantees long lines for everyone! Argh! I won’t be doing that again.)

BUT, now Fandango will text you a link to a QRcode that you display on your iPhone. 

The ticket taker scans it and you’re in. No line. Love it. 

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SERVICE: Yahoo Mail is “Not Recommended”!

Monday, December 23, 2013

 

Yahoo Customer Care Satisfaction Survey

Dear Ferdinand

Your opinion matters. Hearing about what you think will help us improve our products and services. Please take a couple minutes to complete our short online survey about your recent experience with Yahoo Customer Care.

Please select the link below to complete the survey: Take the survey now

Thank you for sharing your experience.

Yahoo Customer Care Team


Case number: 131210-081188
Property: Mail
Contact date: 12/10/2013 07:01 PM

    

take the survey

take the survey
New from Yahoo
Don’t just check the weather, see it. Introducing the Yahoo Weather app. The forecast is beautiful.
Download for iPhone. Download for Android.

Copyright © 2013 Yahoo Inc. All rights reserved.

My feedback: “I’m exiting Yahoo Mail as soon as possible and urging others to do the same.”

Partial outages, nonexistent support, and “doesn’t play well with others”.

Steer clear!

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SERVICE: Aria wifi sucks

Thursday, November 21, 2013

And you pay for it in the “resort fee”.

Setup is trivial but the response time varies greatly in the initial authentication. 

Can’t authenticate to their wifi from the Kindle.

Argh!

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1 Comment | SERVICE | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj

HARDWARE: Changning Time zones

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Argh!

Why CAN’T we all use GMT?

The company issued blackberry doesn’t know time zones.

Apple does.

Amusingly the IPAD with only wifi capability know what time it is here.

Even my anchient Verizon cell phone knows.

And why is my body sit on EDST?

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Posted by reinkefj

HARDWARE: No signal on plane

Sunday, November 17, 2013

Most interesting on today’s flight.

No signal on the iPhone and no signal on the mifi while in the air.

That surprised me.

With all the fluff about cell phones on planes, they are not much use without connectivity.

NO email; NO texting; NO voice.

Hmmm, have to rethink everything.

# – # – # – # – #  2013-Nov-17 @ 09:26  

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SERVICE: A change to how money xfered

Monday, November 4, 2013

Dear Ferdinand:

We want to handle your money the way you want it handled. That’s why you’ll notice some changes the next time you send money.

 

Tracking Number (MTCN) required
for Receivers to pick up their money:

Already in most countries around the world, and starting November 5, 2013
in the U.S., receivers will be required to provide the Tracking Number
(MTCN) to pick up their money.

If your receiver is picking up the money at an Agent location that uses
a telephone transaction center, they will need to pick up the phone and provide their Tracking Number (MTCN) in order to receive a special PIN
from a Western Union customer service representative. The receiver will
then need to provide this PIN to the Agent location employee to pick up
their money.

What to do:

Senders: When you send money, ALWAYS contact your receiver to
provide them with the Tracking Number (MTCN).

Receivers: When money is sent to you, ALWAYS ensure that you
have the Tracking Number (MTCN) from your sender before going to
pick up your money.

 

We appreciate you choosing Western Union for your money transfer needs and look forward to continuing to help you move money for better.

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Interesting. Perhaps this to cut off those Nigerian Princes?

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