mostly research stuff
hey, those of you who know me have already heard me wax apocalyptic about the ultimate value of all of these social networking sites: pure law enforcement and network modeling to catch criminals (remember how google’s orkut helped drug dealers and the cops chasing ‘em?)…so in another recent turn of events, some cops have begun to use the facebook quite regularly to identify possible perps and assailants by - get this - supposedly paying universities to get a “.edu” email address to allow for registration…
unlike myspace, where any russian hooker, pedophile or troglodyte can set up an account, the facebook actually requires the use of a valid “.edu” higher ed email address (see the eligibility section of their terms for more) - this (ideally) keeps it limited to people who a) are in college or have matriculated and b) keeps out people without a higher education (clever! the gentrification of the internet and cool ajax scripts at the same time - a marketing utopia!)…
…so, according to an article from the dartmouth (”america’s oldest college newspaper“), it all started with confusion about the hanover police using the college greenbook (aka “the facebook”) to identify wily students - but then folks got it confused with the actual “the facebook.com” web site…this was denied, until loopy student mandy lobel ran onto a game field in disguise - after which time she was nabbed, and pursuant to which she confronted the fuzz about using the facebook - which they admitted to doing…but here’s what’s loopy: the key copper in this incident admits to causing confusion by referring to “the face book” and claims total lack of awareness of the popular web site - yet others in law enforcement admit to using the site, actually many of them do (try a search for “police use facebook” and you’ll be blown away by college paper articles and local news out the wazoo)…again, all leading to that comment about paying universities for “.edu” email addresses..could one of these institutions please clarify for me? or rather, would the folks at the facebook perhaps take a few minutes to address this (mark, dustin, chris?)?
so get this, it turns out that blogging is about to receive a new infusion of creativity…and right in time, because everything i’m reading regularly is starting to make me feel like i’m standing barefoot in a puddle of room temperature piss…am i talking about another scoble blog? another future-dead-site like wonkette? something cooler, like sex and moxie? (disclosure: i really do love that sex and moxie blog, sorry)
…and the answer is: none of the above. this is about blogging pigeons taking to the sky above san jose armed with little satellite receivers, air pollution sensors and little cellphones…they’re going to measure pollutants and then send the findings via sms to a real time blog…oh, and they’re gonna take some aerial photos too (so stop getting high in your backyard you telecommuting bums because pigeons tend to fly low)
from the new scientist breaking news bit that covered this, “”We are combining an air pollution sensor with a home-made cellphone,” says interdisciplinary artist and researcher Beatriz da Costa of the University of California, Irvine, who came up with the idea of the pigeon blog with her students Cina Hazegh and Kevin Ponto…The pigeon bloggers are due to be released at the Inter-Society for Electronic Arts’ annual symposium in San Jose on 5 August. The data they send back will be displayed on the blog in the form of an interactive map. As well as providing local residents with real-time data on air quality, da Costa hopes the pigeon blog will inspire people to come up with new ways to monitor the environment. The pigeons will also carry cameras around their necks and post aerial photos to the blog.“
this is the funniest example of flawed technology from elgoog that i have seen in ages - courtesy of the feedback column in new scientist (from the bit on “teenage terror todo list“) …according to this wrap-up, young doran amos was tinkering with an offering from elGoog labs called the experimental ’sets’ program and discovered a nasty set of word associations…
…how’s it supposed to work? you (ideally) type in some words or phrases, and elGoog scours its databases to look for relevant ‘next’ or ‘other’ terms that belong in the grouping…and why is this soooo funny? well, doran typed in “mow lawn, do laundry, buy groceries” and elGoog added to the list, “clean gutters, do homework, trim trees, mail anthrax, pick up dry cleaning” (read that again - “mail anthrax“) - what the shit? who designed this labs project again? you can reproduce those same results for yourself by typing those precise three terms into the sets program…
so at any rate, new scientist tossed in their own terms and found equally puzzling outcomes….for example, they ask how “kyoto” and “bush” go with “nirvana” (and “radiohead“)…
…it is moronic! hah! i did my own simple set, typed in “who, what, when” and got the additional “where, why, how” and then when i clicked, “grow set” and scrolled down i saw new interrogative associations like, “degassing storage” (this is the best thing from elgoog ev-ah!!!) - “governor, senator, president” yielded a set with “kindergarten teacher” (ouch) …hey, enjoy it, and please let me know if you find some great sets….oh yeah, and because i’m so immature, i naturally spent additional time growing sets from groupings like, “dick, tit, ass” (awesome set from that one!) - and “hooker, pimp, stripper, hustler” (that set yield included “demimondaine” - like anna nicole for example…uh…maybe…)
okay, so i have a got a long ass post coming about building a researcher browser with firefox - and it’s way overdue…but in the interim, i wanted to turn you on to a couple of very new and recently updated firefox extensions that i’ve been using and loving…these are really just time savers and utilities, but they’re extremely useful little timesavers if you’re dealing with a regular deluge of data during secondary research and get sick of clicking too many times, scraping together notes or cutting and pasting or copying and so on…
who is this person? this is a very new extension that pulls a highlighted name and runs a ton of quick queries on the name with a simple right-click, from the developer, “Highlight any name and request matches in LinkedIn, Wikipedia, Technorati, Yahoo Person Search, Google News, TailRank and more.”- but what would i like to see? the ability to add more engines and resources (duh)
down them all - sometimes when i hit a website and need to pull down 20 or more documents i start tearing out my hair (in the back, because i don’t want to lose any more in the front)…this very recently updated version lets you simply right-click and pull down everything that’s linked to from within the page, and then check/uncheck what you want to grab locally…there are several advanced features in configuration…
google’s send to phone extension - okay, so i shit on elgoog all of the time, but this a damned useful little tool for grabbing snippets (phone numbers, names, data points) and quickly sending to my phone - you highlight the text, then click the pic of the little phone in the upper right and select your carrier from the menu and away it goes (to your designated phone number) and voila, within roughly five seconds (my average), i get an sms with the snippet (and on my treo i can dial the number by just clicking it, which is nice)
wikalong sidebar wiki - this is just damned useful, sticks a little wiki into the sidebar during a firefox extension so that you can use the browser as a notetaking tool…an update for firefox 1.5 was just released on january 22nd so enjoy (from the creator, “embeds a wiki in the SideBar of your browser, indexed off the url of your current page. It is probably most simply described as a wiki-margin for the internet“) - btw, if you’re only using IE, there is actually a bookmarklet version too…and if you’re smart, you can use kwiki to share the wikalong notes and collaborate with others in a note taking environment specific to named websites (very, very cool collaborative utility here)
mystickies extension - okay, this is new and you can actually just go to the mystickies web site to set up your free account…very similar to the ancient idea (now ancient) proposes by third voice back in the day, but in this case, you don’t share your stickies…this is ideal for note taking during tabbed sessions or during the online research phase of a project that will eventually end (for security’s sake, use cryptic language and be sure to delete all stickies when you’re done)
i rarely implore readers to pick up an article that i’ve read because you all know that my m.o. is to just give you the skinny and then link to it for the not-lazy mofo’s reading this shit…and i get a lotta magazines (guitar world acoustic has a johnny cash feature this month btw)…but this week i read the most amazing article in information week called, ‘anatomy of a break-in‘ and i am just saying this to you: if you care about issues like corporate security, industrial espionage, hacking, social engineering and rusing and penetration testing or espionage simulation or open source intelligence, then follow that fucking link above or click it again right here…
…and for those of you who want some idea of what you’re clicking on, here’s the summary of this long and detailed article: over a period of two days (following preparation), ira winkler of the internet security advisors group along with two cohorts (one a social engineer/rusing guru, the other a tech/penetration/hack type) did espionage simulation for the cio of a very, very large corporation…during this time, they did everything from trick security guards into issuing them photo id’s to planting boxes in the computer room…in fact, if you read the appendix in kevin mitnick’s ‘art of deception,’ you will find that this particular target company obviously never saw that damned book or the appendix about securing the corporation..
…but what makes the article so much more interesting than, say, more shit on scoble’s blog? ira takes the time to explain not only how they did all of this stuff over a couple of days, but he also explains why certain things were done - allowing for you to understand, for example, why certain machines were of greater interest, or exactly what they did in preparation for their two day romp through the hallways and servers of this company…seriously, this is a must read article for anybody interested in that huge list of topics above - and it’s free, so what the shit? don’t be a lazy ass…and if you’re really interested in the granular details of break-ins, you might want to pick up mitnick’s new book, “the art of intrusion” (though only if he’s using proceeds for restitution…)
this blog is mostly safe for work, though i sometimes throw around a 'fuck' or two. you'll find a bunch of my articles from CI Magazine, SCIP online, other research pieces and some other crap. enjoy. there's lost of content here related to getting information about, around, from and through people and organizations...