SmarterGeek Blog by Rex Moncrief: March 2009

Stupid Text is as Stupid Does

This is nearly as bad as forwarding emails for urban legends. For the past 2 days a text - sms - message was circulating around the Shreveport / Bossier City area claiming a gang initiation at Wal-Mart was going to take place. Supposedly, 3 women would be shot.

FWD: Police r askn all women do not go to walmart 2nite there is a gang initiation n 3 women will be shot. This is not a prank this is serious. ::pRAYiN 4 sTReNG

My neighbors were in a frenzy. The public were calling radio stations. The Shreveport police issued a statement refuting the "gang initiation". Obviously, it was started by someone who (1) had a beef with WalMart and wanted to harm their business for an evening or (2) was bored and had nothing better to do. Mission accomplished on both counts.

Can you trust a "fwd" in a text message? Not anymore than you can trust one in an email. 99% of them are jokes, myths, urban legends, or just plain stupid. Please stop spreading them unless you know something for a FACT.

Labels: sms, urban legends

Erasing your Data

When you put a file in your "recycle bin" or "trash can" on your computer, it is not really gone - not even after you empty the recycle bin. The information can be recovered with freely available software. Granted, over time the file becomes harder and harder to recover, but it can be recovered.

You can permanently erase a file though. Free programs such as Eraser allow you do erase single files, folders, or even nuke the whole drive. As a matter of fact, wiping the whole drive is the only way to insure that the files can't be recovered.

In the past, people have touted the fact that erasing over a file once was not secure enough. As a matter of fact, most of these programs will do up to a 35-pass wipe of the file or drive. It looks like you don't need to be that paranoid though. In reality a single pass will do the trick.

even firms specialising in data recovery, openly admit that if a hard disk is overwritten with zeros just once, all of its data is irretrievably lost.

http://www.h-online.com/news/Secure-deletion-a-single-overwrite-will-do-it--/112432

You should also remember that encrypting your whole drive is a much better solution for data protection. You only need to wipe the drive if you think your encryption password has been compromised - or just change the password.

Labels: encryption, erasing data

hulu saves a rainy day

I've found a new best friend as a parent - Hulu. My twin boys have been watching movies all afternoon. That was a welcome rescue since they've been trapped inside all day.

-- Post From My iPhone

Chase Bank Error Code 1300

So far I've been pretty pleased with Chase bank. The tellers are generally friendly and the online banking site is pretty good - so far.

About 2 weeks ago, when I ported my Verizon number over to AT&T for my new iPhone, I noticed that I stopped receiving text alerts from my Chase account for transactions. I logged into my Chase account and decided to delete my text alert profile and then re-add my phone and re-verify the phone now that it was on ATT's system. That's when the trouble began.

Now, I can't add any alerts back in.

Unable to Complete Transaction
We were unable to process your change. The transaction cannot be processed. (1300)

Ok - so I sent a secure message via the site to Chase with details and even a screenshot. No response except "you will get a response within 24 hrs." That's typical. So 24 hours later I call Chase. The first thing the lady says, "Oh I hope it's not a 1300 error." Oh great!

As it turns out, this issue will not be resolved until 3-22-2008. That means I have no account alerts until then. That's really safe. Thanks Chase!

On the upside I check my account several times a day anyway from my laptop and iPhone - but the alerts sure are nice. Come on Chase.

Labels: chase, iphone

BlogPress Review

As most of you are aware, I switched over to an iPhone a couple of weeks ago. I've got to say that I have thoroughly enjoyed it. Just the Google Sync (calendar and contacts) feature alone is worth the money spent.

Then there is the Apps Store - this is arguably one of the most addictive things for the iPhone. I seem to have fallen into the Apple realm of throwing money - albeit $.99 and $3.99 is not going to kill me.

I purchased and install BlogPress - an iPhone app for blogging that supports multiple platforms including Blogger which I use. Now let me be clear - blogging from your phone is NOT a substitute for blogging from your laptop or PC. Firefox extensions such as ScribeFire are just far more robust. However, there are times when I want to blog while mobile - and when I don't have my laptop around.

Here are the postitives and the negatives as I see them.

Positives:

Initial setup is easy
App is very responsive and publishes quickly
Can upload multiple pics and resize/reposition them
App author very responsive to email support - responded within 10 minutes of my request!
Uses Picasa albums to host pics - can use your own Gmail account

Negatives:

WYSIWYG not present except adding your own HTML tags
No way to delete Picasa albums once added

Problems/Issues:

I had an issue trying to use my Picasa account that is associated with my Google Apps account. BlogPress would show my albums but error out when trying to post with the image. My solution was to use one of my Gmail account Picasa albums.

Feng, the app author, is going to test with a Google App account.

============
Posted content from my iPhone
============

-- Post From My iPhone

test from iPhone

Well I've had my iPhone for a week now. So far I love it. There are a lot of cases where I don't have to take my laptop - I can just take my phone.

This is my first test from the iPhone using iblogger. We will see how it turns out.

I tried blogpress for the iPhone but it's not very robust. The only cool feature was inserting pics, but the app locked up with multiple blogs.

Mobile Blogging from here.

Labels: iphone

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