03.11.08
Posted in Blogs, Software at 3:39 pm by Alice Pretchet
This may be the best firefox plugin ever. Zotero lets you save web pages, or portions of pages and organizes them in a folder tree. You can put pages or notes into several categories, add notes to piecs of web info and more! This great plugin even auto detects information from several sources online and
can propagate important info for you. There is a way to run it from a usb flash drive, a portable firefox research tool, zotero.
I am now testing this handy web saver and comparing it with yoono - they both are plugins that help me save info from the web, and I am so glad these are available today!
Permalink
Posted in Misc Tech at 2:45 pm by Alice Pretchet
I had known for some time that ip addresses were one way for people to find out who you are, online. I knew that each computer had to access the internet through a gateway that has it’s own ip address, what I hadn’t known years ago, is that there are many ways to get someone’s ip address, and how easy it is to locate someone on a map, even from the other side of country, with just an ip number.
A few years ago I was chatting with someone using the instant messenger that came with another program, while talking with this gentlemen, he asked me how the weather is today in Lebanon TN. This shocked me, I had just met this guy online, how did he know where I worked? Was it someone I knew, but didn’t know I was talking to him? I had to chat with this guy for an hour to get him to divulge how he knew where I was.
He explained that his firewall program showed the ip address of incoming connections, and my chat window was just that, an incoming connection, so he took the ip address number and popped it into a free online tool, ip location, and had my whereabouts pinpointed in about 30 seconds. If that sounds complicated, believe me, it is not. Just about everyone has a firewall program running on their computer, it may take some tinkering to find connected ips, but that is the only hard part. Once you have someone’s ip addy, simply put it into one of the free online ip address tools and it will show you a map of where they are connecting from the internet.
Don’t worry, these tools don’t give you the actual street address of the person you are connecting with,just the connecting node from the net. So Jack was able to find that I was accessing the internet through comcast in Lebanon TN, he knew the area that I was in, but not my actual, exact location. Of course a subpoena to comcast could them to divulge the address wince they have the exact records of where each ip resolves to.
There are also cool tools for checking the email headers someone sent you, and getting their ip and it’s originating address on a map as well.
There are ways to mask these things, proxies, remailers, and other programs to hide ip’s from email and while surfing the net, but most people do not use them.
Permalink
03.05.08
Posted in Misc Tech at 4:40 am by Alice Pretchet
I’m really in need of a new chair. I’ve been slaving away online and studying the latest technology, all the while sitting on a chair that is using technology reminiscent of the dark ages. Thing is can’t justify spending a thousand dollars on a new home office chair, but I do need something that is made to be comfortable for 10 hours or more. Over the years i have gone through many chairs. I’ve had cheap chairs from department stores that lasted a year or so before a wheel or something would break. I’ve also had hand-me down chairs from nice executives, solid construction and strong steel, with fine leather. Those actually were the least comfortable for long term use, after a few hours my legs would go numb just using the computer. at one time I found a place in town that was selling used steelcase chairs and those were great. I used those for a few years before the fabric became tattered and the padding in the seat just wasn’t the same as it could be.
The past two years I have moved so much I have been using temporary hand me down chairs at the home office, and now I spend so much time working at home the chair situation has gotten really bad. I saw a cool looking chair at best buy recently, it seemed to have many of the features that I like in a good chair, but it was on some kind of rack and not accessible to sit in and really check it out. So I came home and did some looking online, and google has brought me so many choices I just don’t know what to do. Ultimately I would like to try all of these chairs out in person, but I doubt there is any place in town that has a majority of these chairs I am interested in.
So here are a few of the chairs I am considering, if you have any experience with any of these in your home or office please chime in with how satisfied or unsatisfied are / were with any of these:
Ak Designs Octane - This one looks futuristic, it caught my eye at Best Buy, i had no idea it was being billed as n office / gaming chair. Sounds cool, but how comfortable is the padding?
True Seating - Vinyl Executive Chair - Titanium Silver/Gray - This is much more affordable, it looks cool, says it has “Waterfall seat design fosters leg circulation”
This Iron Horse chair looks awesome, but when a place has “request a quote” in lieu of prices for a chair, I have to assume it’s in the “if you have to ask the price, you can’t afford it” category. It does feature “Anatomically contoured foam cushions engineered for hours of seated comfort.” which sounds and looks) awesome.
This Ergocraft Phantom Deluxe Control Chair looks like it would be very soft and comfortable, it actually looks like it would be softer than my bed, at more than $400, I would probably buy a new bed first though.
I found this Executive Black Leather High Back Swivel Computer Chair at Amzaon.com it looks great, sounds great, but I can’t tell if it has adjustable arms or not, it kind of looks like it, but I’m not sure. It does look very nice for a chair under $150.
Now this chair (Office Star Black Leather Managers Chair with Platinum Finish Base and Height Adjustable Arms) looks stylish and comfortable, it has adjustable arms, but it’s around $350 - hmm. A new chair, a new bed. Decisions decisions.
Then I find this one, the Multi Function Super Ergonomic Task Chair, it seems to have lots of adjustment options, which is great, the back looks like it may stick out a bit more than I prefer, but that may be helpful for leaning up on the keyboard and typing. i like to lean back a lot when working however, and a back that sticks out a lot may make that more difficult. At $180 the price is good for a very adjustable chair though.
Then I see this chair, the Office Star Super Ergonomic Task Chair, it may be the best of what all the other chairs have, at a price that is decent. For $230 it boasts:
# Thick Padded Seat and Back with Built-in Lumbar Support
# Pneumatic Seat Height Adjustment
# Ratchet Back Height Adjustment
# Multi Function Control
# Height and Width Adjustable Arms with PU Pads
# Heavy Duty Nylon Base with Dual Wheel Casters
I really have no idea what a ratchet back adjustment is, but is sounds hi tech, especially compared to the wooden chair I am using right now.
All in all I like the technology of having adjustable arm rests.
I must have soft padded arm rests, hard plastic or hard rubber will not due.
A good soft padding, especially in the area that the hamstrings rest on. With most of the chairs I have used in and out of the office I find that I put a lot of pressure on that area when typing and mousing around, sometimes my legs go numb, and when that happens I know that the poor circulation must be bad for my legs and it keeps my feet cold, so I am trying to avoid that like the plague. I do remember seeing some kind of pulsing air cushion invention somewhere online , this may make a cheaply padded chair workable, but I think it was around $100, so if I have o make due with less comfortable padding for the legs, then t he chair would have to be considerable cheaper.
Permalink
03.04.08
Posted in Hardware at 10:47 pm by Alice Pretchet
We are about to take on our own internet server and beefing up the company intranet, I remembered that Candice use to work at one of the big computer manufacturer / retailers and she went from retail level computer sales to corporate accounts. I was amazed when I heard how much these big companies spend on networking equipment. Routers costing more than $1,000 each and many companies needing dozens of those, along with multiple servers, switches and more. She is no longer working with this big manufacturer and now my company is finally in a position to consider getting our own servers online and the network equipment to handle lots of internet and intranet traffic.
So I called Candice and she recommended looking into used cisco equipment. She said that I could probably get the same warranty and save big money by going for used network equipment, and often times the places that offer the used or refurbished equipment are getting pretty new pieces that are being sold to them for next to nothing from big companies that have just gone out of business. I know that Cisco makes industrial strength equipment that is meant to take the stress of constant use, so that’s exactly what I am recommending to Derrick.
Permalink
Posted in Fun, Misc Tech at 2:21 pm by Alice Pretchet
It seems like second life had a bunch of press for a while and then kind of faded in the media, yet there were / are tons of people that are exploring it everyday. This week I have seen two more virtual worlds in the news, and I am surprised that there will be so much focus on making them kid friendly.
From the wired campus blog:
Indiana U. Receives Grant for Development of Virtual World for Children
The Indiana University School of Education has received a three-year, $1.8-million grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to expand the virtual world Quest Atlantis, which is designed to help foster creativity, social responsibility, and compassion in children ages 9 through 12.
Watch Sasha Barab, the university director of the Center for Research on Learning and Technology, discuss Quest Atlantis.-Andrea L. Foster
Looks like virtual worlds will continue to be developed, I wonder how much better they can get? It seems the the VR worlds I’ve explored are already very good, perhaps these initiatives will not be as much about making new VR or 3d technology, but about creating community. I wonder which VR worlds will end up with the most regular users.
and From Techcrunch:
EA-Land is the new, free Sims Online (TSO). The 12 different cities from TSO are being moved to EA-Land and the game area is being expanded to be “100 times bigger than the previous size of any city.” Existing TSO users will be able to purchase land in EA-Land before the new (reincarnated) world is open to the public with paying TSO users becoming “EA-Land subscribers” in a similar fashion to the way Linden Lab charges for land in Second Life.
Users of EA-Land will have the ability to upload custom content and (more importantly) buy these customizations from other players. Sounding a lot like Second Life? It gets better:
There is one significant difference though to Second Life: EA-Land won’t become the wild west as EA will be “approving all of the content [so] this user content is safe to be viewed by everyone.”
I remember when there were several social networks trying to coral the most users, and it seemed for a while that myspace had won the most people, but wasn’t necessarily the best social network software running. I would have bet that tagworld or me.com would have prevailed in that arena since the user interfaces seems better to me. There were many things that shaped myspace as a popular destination for the majority of users, and I believe a large part of that was myspace staying out of what people were putting on their pages (and by extension their 2d virtual world). With EA pushing to keep it rated E for everyone, I hope that take two will make an adult version and perhaps base it on Grand Theft Auto where it is not for everyone, so me and my friends can have a VR world that is not kid friendly, and therefor more fun to run around in.
Permalink
« Previous entries · Next entries »