The UK based Bereavement Register will provide the service via the Deep Space Communications Network (DSCN) at the Kennedy Space Station. (Ironically, the Bereavement Register is normally in the business of preventing communications with the deceased. Their “day job” is assisting British families with putting a stop to direct mail to those no longer with us.)

The bereaved can visit www.rememberingyouthischristmas.com and enter a Twitter-style message that will be beamed to the cosmos. They’ll compile the messages and fire them into space in one shot on Christmas day, using state of the art transmitters and a five-meter parabolic dish. (The dish pictured is actually a much bigger 70 meter model, part of the similarly named but not to be confused NASA Deep Space Network, or DSN.) The transmission will be aimed at an “empty” area of space, ensuring the transmission traveling at the speed of light expands outwardly, unimpeded.

For the interested geek, they have chosen a comma separated/tab delimited file to transmit – clearly a choice compatible with the great database in the sky.

Let’s hope the Lifeboat Foundation doesn’t find out, as this being a flagrant affront to their mission of keeping Earth off alien civilizations’ radar. Sending messages to nowhere may be a gesture appreciated by your dearly departed, but you never know how a hostile alien nation in the transmission path may interpret the message billions of light years along its way. That is, if they aren’t too busy responding to Craigslist ads that have gone out on the DSCN previously.

Oh, you’ve got until December 20th to add your message.

The mission will happen in two stages: a rocket delivering the impact payload will send the payload craft at close to 6,000 miles per hour into the crater. The delivery rocket, specially equipped to detect the presence of water will chase behind, fly through the debris cloud, and then smack into the crater approximately four minutes later.  The hope is, that by kicking up enough Moon stuff into the “air,” scientists will be able to detect the presence of water that may be hidden just under the surface.  The crater was chosen as a likely candidate because it lives in the shadows and hasn’t seen sunlight in perhaps millions of years.  It’s cold temperatures may have allowed for frozen water to remain locked away, whereas moisture exposed to the heat and light would have boiled off into space countless ages ago. It’s likely the moisture itself was delivered from violent impacts in the past, when ice laden meteorites crashed into the lunar surface.

So what’s the point?  The discovery of water on the Moon may mean it can support life. Not life native to the Moon of course, but it could help support human life. A “Space Base” on the Moon may some day make use of the moisture for drinking water, and even splitting it into its constituent parts to make breathable air. If moisture is detected, NASA has plans for follow up missions to drill several feet into the Moon to get a better look.

Aside from being able to detect moisture, the chase craft is also equipped with high definition video cameras. NASA has an entire event planned, including a stream of the live footage. The event can be seen on the NASA channel on cable, or live at the NASA LCROSS website. It begins at 6:15AM. The debris cloud from the impact is expected to be large enough that it should be visible to the amateur astronomer with a typical hobby telescope.

Just some final notes: For those of you who spend more time hugging trees than reading science books, please take a moment to put this impact in context. The force of the impact in relation to the size of the Moon is on the order of a mosquito hitting the windshield of a dump truck at highway speed. It pales in comparison to the impacts that have rained down on the surface of the moon for millions of years.  This will not harm the Moon -- how do you think the giant crater NASA is targeting got there in the first place? And… for the conspiracy theorists who think it’s cover to test weapon capabilities -- I’m not even going to try to convince you otherwise. We already know sending things to the Moon is ripe for spinning convoluted tales…

I’ll leave you with this prophetic clip from Mr. Show.

Throughout the trial, the prosecution contended the sites’ co-founders brought in as much as $4 million per year in advertising revenues, while the defense argued no profits were made – hence any illegal activity was actually on the individual users who chose to participate. In an ironic (or is that hypocritical) twist, it looks like the Pirate Bay is about to be sold for a hefty profit. Details are being finalized at this point, with sources reporting Swedish based “Global Gaming Factory X” putting up somewhere between $7.7 and $7.9 million dollars for the acquisition – making that $3.6 million dollar fine look like chump change. [full text press release, PDF]

So what’s a Swedish company to do with an organization recently convicted of illegal activity by Swedish courts?  Legitimize it, of course. Stick with me for a moment folks, if this business plan doesn’t make any sense to you, you’ve got the jist.

First, Global Gaming chief exec Hans Pandeya, plans to license content from media companies for legal downloads. That’s right – they’re expecting the likes of the Sony and Viacom and Fox and Warner Brothers of the world embrace the namesake Pirate Bay to legally tout their digital wares. No, it’s not deja vu… how’s that business plan working out for you Napster? Surely, those 20 million users in search of free downloads will stick around when the site’s offerings are slashed to near nothing and will suddenly see the light and start paying for it.

Next comes some premium advertising. Pandeya and co hope to raise up to $50 million per year in ad revenues on the newly legit ‘Bay. As of now, the Pirate Bay (and sites like it) have difficulty finding advertisers that will even touch potential breeding grounds for digital theft. Advertisers on display range from bottom feeders to downright scammers, bidding at some of the lowest CPMs on earth. But hey – once it goes legit, everybody will forget the past! Large companies will surely see that same light the users do, and will ignore history to put their highly protected trademarks and reputations all over it. (You might want to turn down your sarcasm detectors if you haven’t already; I’m not responsible if they blow a gasket.)

But lastly, we have a real gem of a business idea. The Pirate Bay is going to get in the Internet services biz. They’re going to take the concept of peer-to-peer and leverage those millions of users’ Internet connections… Users can opt in to a program where they share their existing bandwidth with a peer to peer “cloud.”  Internet service providers can rent capacity on this network when they need short term boosts of bandwidth to handle unusually high loads. This new technology is called “Peerialism” and potential uses might be streaming video during major media events (like the great bandwidth drains earlier this year care of studious employees watching the NCAA Final Four on their work computers.) After all, this distributed model has been used by legitimate researchers to do things like search for aliens and seek out a cure for cancer.  Only here, users will be compensated – financially – for participating. Earnings might be paid out directly, or used within the site to purchase music from the afformentioned licensees.

Cool idea on the bizarro Internet, perhaps. In the real world, the whole idea is perposterous. It’s against the terms of service set by pretty much every single Internet Provider out there. Looking at my own provider’s ToS, I can count at least half a dozen ways this violates my contract. Save yourself the legal jargon – here’s the synopsis, assuming a residential connection. You can’t use the service to make a profit or run a commercial endeavor. You can’t re-sell your connectivity. You can’t redistribute audio/visual content. You can’t charge others in any way shape or form for access to any facet of your service. You get the picture. Ignoring the fact this will either be blocked by your provider or cause your connection to go dark without a refund, it still doesn’t make sense if you consider who the intended customer is: Internet pervice providers. Why again will an ISP essentially buy back the bandwidth it just sold you? It’s like buying a dozen ears of corn at the grocery store and telling your grocer “hey, I just noticed you’re short 12 ears of corn, I’ve got a dozen here you might be interested in!” ISPs already have bandwidth sharing strategies to buy bandwidth from one another when their tubes get clogged… but SURELY they’ll want to go around in circles and buy their own bandwidth back care of their own customers in violation of their own terms of services – from the Pirate Bay, of all places. (OK, you can turn those sarcasm detectors back on, I’m done.)

In summary, so long Pirate Bay. It’s been a good run. And while I’m not a certified financial advisor and you should always read your prospectus first… if Global Gaming Factory X or “Pirate Bay 2.0″ ever goes public, you might want to devise a short sale strategy.

The Western NY region won Yahoo! over thanks to discounted energy from the New York Power Authority and other incentives offered by the Empire State Development Corporation.

Read more about today’s development on Buffalo Business First or at the Lockport Union-Sun & Journal.

(Updated: The bill has been voted down in the house. More info at the bottom.)

Media reports have been all over the map, with sources suggesting anywhere from 5 million to 20 million US households are unprepared for the transition.  There have also been reports of as many as 2.5 million on the FCC’s waiting list for their converter box coupon program.  13.5 million coupons have been passed out, but it’s estimated that roughly half have not been used.  The coupons carry a 90 day expiration, and as the unused coupons expire those on the waiting list will get a shot at one.

President Obama has called for an additional $850 million as part of his stimulus package to provide additional funding to the FCC coupon program.

The FCC has of course already auctioned off and collected it’s nearly $20 billion dollars to re-license the wireless spectrum that would have been freed in just 3 weeks.  (Why again, does the FCC need another $850 million of taxpayer’s dollars to cover the coupon shortfall? Anyway…)

Major players AT&T and Verizon will have to wait until June to begin using their newly acquired slice of the airwaves, though this morning’s bill includes a 116 day extension to the end of their original licenses as compensation.

(Shameless plug warning: who needs OTA anyway, when you’ve got Artvoice TV?)

Update, Wednesday Jan 28: Despite the unanimous vote and the support from President Obama, it turns out this bill was not a shoo-in after all. Because the bill had been fast-tracked in the House, it required 2/3rds votet here before reaching the President’s desk; however, this morning it was shot down by a 256 to 168 vote. So it’s not over yet folks. The House may vote next week for a second time on the issue. In the mean time, we can say the great digital delay… has been delayed.

The original 1984 Macintosh 128K

It was 25 years ago to the day: January 24th, 1984, that the very first Macintosh personal computer first went on sale, changing the computer industry -- and perhaps history as a whole -- forever.  While we might fondly look back with a chuckle at its meager 8MHz CPU, 128kB of RAM and 9″ black and white screen, there’s no arguing the importance and success of the Mac.  This original Macintosh introduced the world at large to the graphical user interface: a means of operating a computer with a pointing device, aka the mouse, where by its user could access the machine’s functions and interact with it’s software by simply pointing and clicking on menus and icons on it’s display -- rather than typing cryptic commands into a terminal, which was the norm of the era. The GUI was thought to be but a mere gimmick by hobbyists, geeks, and experts alike at the time. Some went as far as to consider the machine a toy that would never be useful for serious computing tasks.

While it is true the GUI existed before the Mactintosh, the Macintosh made it a success.

It’s price point of $2,495 made the technology available to the average middle class American family. While it received several overhauls to it’s innards, this original form factor, 9″ black and white screen and all, had enough staying power to remain on the market until 1993, having sold 10 million units over that time period.

It was actually two days earlier, on January 22, that the now famous “1984″ ad aired during Super Bowl XVIII.  The ad itself is considered by some almost as important a milestone in the arena of marketing -- something that Apple still does as well as anybody.

The iconic “1984″ television ad

A rare 20th Anniversary edition Mac

Fast forward to 2009 on this 25th anniversary of the Mac, and most of us can’t imagine using a computer any other way than via the graphical user interface the machine pioneered. While Microsoft Windows now holds the dominant share as far as graphical user interfaces in the computing world, it likely would have never existed without the ground having been broke by Macintosh first. Though Apple struggled through some dark years in its history between 1984 and today, that original formula from a quarter century ago of producing powerful, easy to use, all-in-one computers for average people has been the cornerstone of it’s success and has played a major role in the company’s re-emergence as a dominant player in the computer market.  Apple continues to innovate on the user interface front today with gadgets like the iPhone and iPod with their touch-screen and gesture based input technologies, which just might shape the way we interact with our machines for the next 25 years.

A little surprisingly, Apple has been mostly mum on this anniversary.  Perhaps they’re still a little bit stung by the failure of the Macintosh almost nobody remembers: The 20th Anniversary Mac.  This machine, though a forward looking nod to today’s iMac, is one clear example that not quite everything Apple has touched has turned to gold over the years. Though there’s no outward celebration from Cupertino to mark the occasion, there’s plenty of well-wishing and fond reminiscing on the blogosphere at least.

25 years on, the current 20" iMac

Despite the poor health of CEO Steve Jobs, and despite the economic downturn, the company remains in a strong position today. The company that the Mac built has grown tremendously, and just about anyone who doesn’t reside beneath a rock are familiar with it’s full lineup: including a wildly popular line of laptops, the iPod and iTunes Store as de-facto standards as portable music players and as an Internet music marketplace, and now even its successful foray into the mobile phone market with the iPhone. Many of Apple’s customers have developed a cult-like affinity for the always attractive aesthetics and frequently innovative computers and gadgets “designed in California”.  Its 230 world-wide retail outlets are viewed almost as a destination in a technological pilgrimage for the Apple faithful. Its brand has transcended the computer business and reached the level of cultural icon.

So whether you love or hate the Mac, it’s mark on history and on the entire trajectory of computing progress is something we benefit from, and rely upon, on a daily basis.

Join me in wishing the original a happy 25th Birthday -- and here’s to another 25 years of “thinking different.”

Wading through the blogosphere (as opposed to wading through the two feet of snow outside), it looks like the story starts here: CNET reports that sources close to the RIAA claim the group’s budget is being slashed and their role reduced. One might assume they face the same problems as any business or organization – a tough economic climate, dwindling sales, and so on. A likely story, but given the fact that those 350,000 lawsuits targeted many innocent individuals, levied disproportionately high penalties to very small time file sharers, and in sum total did next to nothing to curb on-line piracy, maybe the truth is their litigious witch hunt has been a near total failure, and they’re finally acknowledging that.

It’s not all good news for fans of file sharing, as you aren’t off the hook yet.  The RIAA has apparently struck deals with several major ISPs to enact a “3 strikes and you’re out” policy.  So the witch hunt is still on, but instead of slapping you with a lawsuit, the RIAA intends on tattle-taling to your Internet provider instead.  The ones who have agreed to cooperate (and so far, the ISPs in agreement have NOT been named), will likely follow this line of attack: (1) a warning; (2) a second warning coupled with speed reduction and/or possible block of peer to peer traffic, (3) cut off your Internet access all together.

NY State’s own Attorney General Andrew Cuomo apparently played a large role in brokering this deal.  You may remember Cuomo’s campaign to stop on-line child pornography earlier in the year (aka the ISPs campaign to have a good excuse to stop providing Usenet service while making good press yet not actually doing much to stop on-line child pornography)… borrowing a page from that book, we can see the list of ISPs Cuomo has already gotten cooperation from in the past here. I’ll reiterate – the RIAA has not said which ISPs are on board; and this is speculation on my part, but I have a feeling we’ll see a lot of those same names come out as participants.

So the bit of good news is, you probably aren’t going to get sued if you’re caught illegally downloading a couple of songs.  The RIAA also will never know your identity, nor harass or subpoena your ISP to learn your identity.

The bad news? There’s a couple points…

• The RIAA doesn’t need to follow due process anymore. That saves them a lot of lawyers, a lot of time, and a lot of money.  Remember those budget cuts I mentioned?  Probably not relevant; they don’t need the budget to do things this way. No lawyers needed, less in depth investigation needed… any suspicion of somebody? Just fire off an e-mail!
• The RIAA still reserves the right to sue big-time file sharers with large volumes of songs.  They might go after you if you do something particularly irksome as well (careful with those “leaked” pre-release albums, kids!)  There’s no clear line. So while the risk to file sharers has gone down, it hasn’t gone away.
• It looks like enforcement is a the discretion of the ISPs, and it’s the RIAA’s word against yours. No real proof needs to be provided, no appeals process, etc… unless your ISP is nice enough to provide a fair process, you’re probably out of luck, be it rightly or wrongly accused.
• Lastly, it’s just a huge can of worms that probably shouldn’t be opened.  ISPs should be neutral. They provide a service that transmits your data from point A to point B.  They shouldn’t have any business telling you what you can or can’t send from “A” to “B” – if you’re breaking the law, there’s a legal system to deal with it. Does this mean ISPs are going to start spying on your traffic to confirm RIAA complaints?  Does it mean they’re going to do the police work for other industry organizations?  Are ISPs themselves going to take heat if they fail to comply with RIAA requests? Are they going to go beyond cutting off your Internet access and blacklisting you from their services as a group – again, without any sort of legal due process to prove your guilt?  (That’s what they’re looking to do in some European countries, by the way.)  Are they going to apply the connection-slowdown-punishment to other areas at their discretion? Obviously there’s a lot more questions than answers right now, but it doesn’t look good for the pro-net neutrality folks.

Surely this will be an on-going process that we’re all going to have to wait to see how it pans out. It’s a small victory for file sharers.  Potentionally a large loss for privacy and neutrality advocates. Possibly, like the RIAA’s last campaign, a bunch of hot air that gets them nowhere fast. Some day we’ll come up with a way where artists looking to get paid can, and ‘netziens looking for free content can find it without fear… but it’s certainly not today.

Hacking Democracy

First, we’ll take a look at one of the best kept secrets of the campaign season, from both sides, care of a Newsweek article published just today.  Over the summer, the FBI had its hands full with simultaneous cyber crime investigations: the hacking of the Obama campaign computer system(s), and the hacking of the McCain campaign computer system(s).  While the intrusions have been acknowledged,  little else has been released or confirmed yet.  At this point, it’s known for sure that the FBI was involved, that “a large number of files” were stolen from the Obama side, and that the attacks came from a “foreign entity” and definitely did not come from the opposing sides.  The McCain campaign systems were intruded on in a similar fashion as the Obama systems, but the extent of the compromise on their side was unmentioned.  The rest is speculation of course: security experts have suggested the attacks likely came from China or Russia, and anyone’s best guess is that the goal of such an intrusion was to gain an inside line on procedures and policies used by the campaigns for a leg up in future dealings with the to-be president. (H/T to Newsweek)

This of course wasn’t the only politically motivated cyber-crime this campaign season – I’m sure many recall the Sarah Palin e-mail intrusion back in September.  Though it’s significance is near nil at this point, we’ll remember it as the day our servers felt the shock wave of a web traffic explosion.  If anyone is still interested: David Kernell, a college student in Tennessee, and the son of Tennessee democratic representiative Mike Kernell, was indicted by grand jury in late October.  His trial begins on December 16th, and faces up to 5 years and fines.  Not so “anonymous” now, eh David?  A court has also ordered the e-mails in both of governor Palin’s Yahoo! accounts be preserved for further investigation.

Another dishonorable mention is the state of Ohio election information and registration website that also came under attack, and experienced some brief downtime in late October.  (H/T to Reuters)

Technology Promises

I also want to give a nod back to another item I’ve talked about here: Science Debate 2008.  We’ve got a list of policies and action-items promised to us from pre-president-elect Obama in the realm of technology.  I’ll be saving a copy and keeping score for the next four to eight years.

Along the same lines is Obama’s “Blueprint for Change” video on technology issues.  Maybe you missed it?  Don’t feel bad; for whatever reason, this wasn’t released until the night before the election, effectively burying it in the rest of the 11th hour buzz.

Hi-Tech Election Day Coverage

Election night itself was a grand display of technology as well.  CNN debuted it’s new “hologram” technology – much to the chagrin of pocket protector pencil neck purists who are still complaining two days later that the effect isn’t actually a hologram.  “True” hologram or not, I personally found it a bit silly.  We’ll see if CNN or others bother with this technique down the road.

Ratings speak volumes though, and CNN enjoyed second place of 14 major networks covering the event with 12.3 million viewers.  ABC was the victor, at just over 13 million viewers.  In all, it’s estimated about 71 million viewers tuned in on Tuesday to watch the results unfold.  As impressive at it sounds, it’s still over 25 million shy of this year’s past Super Bowl.  Apparently the world’s couch potatoes are still more interested in the Patriots than in patriotism. (Nielsen’s complete ratings here.)

Nielsen also kept an eye to the web to gauge coverage ratings in cyberspace.  There’s a comprehensive list here if interested; CNN, MSNBC and Yahoo! News being the top three destinations for surfers on Tuesday. The official campaign sites also received a boost on Tuesday, with Obama’s site receiving 1.2 million unique visitors, and McCain’s site receiving 479,000 unique visitors.

The Future

Lastly, let’s look ahead to some new developments that will affect us going forward.

While not related to presidential politics per se, this is still a governmental policy decision that flew under the radar with all the elections buzz, that could mean huge developments in the wireless arena.  On Tuesday, the FCC approved a measure to free up “white spaces” for unlicensed (read: free but regulated) use.  In short, this means unused areas of the wireless spectrum in the general area of digital TV transmissions can be used by consumer devices.  This coveted piece of intangible mathematical electromagnetic real estate means higher bandwidth (faster) transmission of information to and from consumer devices, at greater distances than the current public bands allow.  It’s been a long fought battle mostly centered around issues of interference with licensed bands (at least, that’s the PR friendly argument – it’s probably been a long fought battle because telecommunications companies have sunk billions into competing technologies that may have just been rendered obsolete.)  To appease the interference complaints (some of which are probably valid), devices will have to be extremely smart: they’ll be required to be GPS aware, and to communicate over the Internet with a central database to announce their position and ask permission for an interference free frequency.  There’s a loophole for less intelligent devices, though they’ll have to pass some pretty rigorous interference tests.  You can read more here.  Dell claims to have laptops with “white space radio” already in the works that you can learn about here.

The last “bit” we have to pass on is some news about some technology related appointments to the Obama transition team.  Named to the team include Google philanthropy officer Sonal Shah, and Julius Genchowski who is a former IAC executive and former chief council to former FCC chairman Reed Hundt.  Rumors abound about Google CEO Eric Schmidt may be in the running for U.S. Chief Technology Advisor as well.

First, we’ve got two great bits of news on the e-book frontier:

In the left corner: It looks like photos of the second revision of Amazon’s Kindle electronic book device have hit the web.  Of course, as with any “Internet leak” you have to take it with a grain of salt.  Amazon tried (with mixed results) to buzz up the original Kindle,  but if you’re not familiar with the original device, I can’t really blame you – but you can check it out here.  Could this leak be another attempt at generating some buzz?

The Boy Genius Report has a photo gallery with photos of the purported second version of the device.  It seems to be merely an incremental update: some cosmetic changes, new controls and keyboard layout, and USB charging instead of relying on an AC adapter.  Of course, there’s only so much one can infer from looking at photos, so we’ll have to wait for more official word to hear what other features may be built in.  No word on when this might be available; Amazon has previously claimed there wouldn’t be a new Kindle this year.

The new kindle is rumored to still use EVDO wireless as the first edition did.  This wireless functionality is pretty cool: it works with Sprint’s cellular EVDO network, so you can pick up a signal in nearly any populated area and find and download content to read on the go.  Amazon foots the bill for this; so there’s no need to be a Sprint customer or to pay any monthly access charges.  (Content however, often comes with a cost.)

In the right corner: Sony has announced their new e-book reader, the PRS700, at a press event this past Thursday.  It’s a follow up model to their acclaimed PRS505 reader, and it adds some really cool features.  It’s got a sleek look, a touch screen that lets you flip through pages with the swipe of a finger, more memory, more processing power, and a front light to allow you to read in low light situations.  It has five different font sizes and a new zoom feature to make reading easier on the eyes.  The biggest news out of the press event however isn’t even the device itself, but rather Sony’s new commitment to the e-book market.  They will be carrying the device at 3,000 locations U.S. wide (up from 700 currently), have hired a sales force of 1,000 to give in-store demos, and plan to have 100,000 titles available for download in their digital book store by year’s end.  The device is slated to be available in November, so with Sony’s new marketing position, you can expect to see this around when you’re out shopping this holiday season.

Both of these devices are of course based on electronic ink display technology.  Electronic ink is a ground breaking technology using actual ink particles to display text and graphics on amazingly thin (and even flexible) screens, and the ink particles are controlled by means of the electronics in the device.  It makes for outstanding battery life – the only time power is needed is when you change the page.  You can keep text on the page indefinitely however, without sucking up any more juice.  That means these devices have battery life on the order of days or weeks, rather than hours.  This does means you still need to read under comfortable lighting.  While there have been add-on accessories akin to book lights, the new Sony device brings a built in light to the game (expect battery life to decrease while you’re lighting up your screen.)  Electronic ink displays are black and white only at this time, though the readers out there are getting pretty good at displaying images in grayscale with many shades of gray.

They’re still a niche product – probably because of price – with the current Amazon Kindle clocking in at $349 (no word on pricing of the new version yet), and the Sony device expected to be $399.  This will hopefully change as years pass and electronic ink advances.  Industry experts have been predicting that electronic ink will take over old fashioned paper and ink for years now, but with each new device it seems we’re taking a step closer.  The time is near when Universities will likely mandate or provide these for students, and they’ll be able to carry an entire college career’s worth of textbooks in a single device, with the ability to note-take and annotate as well.  Just think of all the trees we’ll save…

While we’re on the topic of electronic books, I thought I’d give a shoutout to two new software applications I’ve been trying out recently that I’ve found particularly useful.  (Note, my “daily driver” is a MacBook, so these are Mac OS X applications – sorry Windows users!)  More after the jump…

The first is Yep!:

Yep! bills itself as the “iPhoto for PDF.”  I think it’s more like an iTunes for documents… but either way, you get the idea.  Yep! will scour your computer for PDF files, and gather them all in one place, regardless where they are on your hard drive.  It has powerful tagging functionality that allows you to not only find your documents quickly, but can automatically show you which documents are related or similar to the one you’re looking at.  It has search capabilities similar to the already built in OS X Spotlight, and includes a number of ways to organize, categorize, and preview your documents.  My favorite feature (simple but important): it remembers what page you were on, so if you’re reading a document and stop only to come back later, it will open up right to where you’ve left off.  You can try Yep! for free, but the full version will run you $34.

Combine Yep! with a document scanner, and imagine the possibilities.  Take all the paperwork and clutter in your life and turn it digital, allowing you to find anything at the touch of a button.  Imagine being able to check your home theater manual, find an invoice or recipe, check out last year’s water bill, etc, in seconds.  (Remember to back up though!)  There’s dozens of document scanners on the market with some pretty affordable price points these days, so this combination could be a godsend for some folks.  We use a Fujitsu ScanSnap S510M here at the office which will eat a thick stack of papers alive, front and back simultaneously, churning out an indexed and searchable PDF file in a matter of minutes.

Second, we have Audiobook Builder:

This is a super simple to use app that will turn any type of existing audio file, or audio CDs, into “m4b” files.  An m4b file is like a regular AAC audio file, with some extra features thanks to meta-data that can be stored in the file.  An m4b lets you combine multiple files/tracks into one single file that includes markings to delineate chapters.  When played on a supported device, like an iPod, you can then skip around between chapters in a book, view the cover and illustrations in the book, and save your place to pick up listening where you’ve left off.  iTunes and iPods treat these as separate types of media, so you won’t have to worry about transitioning from an upbeat dance tune to chapter 7 of a philosophy book when you’ve got your device on shuffle.  The killer app for me: iPod’s speed feature.  An iPod allows you to speed up playback of m4b audio files by 25%.  Listen to 75 minutes of an audiobook in 60 minutes time.  Don’t worry about the reader sounding like a chipmunk; this is pulled off without changing the pitch of their voice.  (You can also slow down the speed if you’re really trying to absorb the material, but the speech unfortunately sounds a little weird when you do this.)

The speedup feature is pretty little known, and that’s probably because it only works with m4b files.  m4b files are little known, probably because the typical means of acquiring them is to buy commercial audio books through a store like iTunes’.  Audiobook builder bridges that gap and lets you turn anything into an m4b.  Now you can turn any MP3 podcast for example, recorded lectures, radio show recordings, et cetera into an m4b file, and fill your head with 25% more information.

Another plus?  Registering your copy of Audiobook Builder will only set you back $9.95.

The Register is reporting the investigation may be relatively easy to conclude.  The attacker attempted to cover their tracks using ctunnel.com, a proxy service.  This way, when Yahoo searches their logs, the visits would have appeared from ctunnel.com, rather than the address information of the person(s) who had broken in to the account.  It just so happens that ctunnel.com logs connections for situations such as this, and thanks to screen shots showing a large portion of the ctunnel.com URL in the address bar of the web browser, it’s going to be pretty easy to match that to the log files.

Anyway, now that the dust has settled some, I thought maybe I’d take a few moments to respond to the slew of comments and hatemail about the Pailin e-mails.  It doesn’t seem many understand the nature of the situation, and mainstream media is having a field day with spin and framing the story for whoever candidate they’re biased to.  So here’s my thoughts:

… on anonymous

First, a little background on who “anonymous” is.  They’re often referred to as a “group,” but they’re more like an Internet counter-culture.  There is NO organization, agenda, or leadership.  It’s just a bunch of individuals acting on their own that wear the label.  Their main playground is the 4chan.org website, though there are dozens of other spin-off sites.  The site, and others like it, are based on “imageboard” software, which is like a message board, but puts emphasis on posting images over posting discussion.  Those who post on any of the 4chan boards are not required to sign up for an account, and are not required to leave any identifying information – hence “anonymous.”  Threads on the board only last as long as they’re being actively being replied to, and otherwise will fade away and are automatically removed from the system when visitors have moved on to more “interesting” topics.

It originally started for those with interest in Japanese culture, anime cartoons, and that sort of thing.  It contains different categories, one of which being “Random,” or the /b/ board.  This was an anything-goes area of the website that’s grown virally to enormous proportions. The /b/ board is basically the armpit of the Internet, where people post photos and jokes of all sorts (often spreading beyond their confines as viral “memes” – if you use the web, you’ve probably seen some of these “memes” without even realizing) – including copious amounts of pornography, gore, and racist material – and it’s cultural norm there to find it funny, no matter the content or context.  Some of the postings are actually still related to Japanese culture, though few and far between.  /b/ loosely organizes on occasion to play pranks; their spoils being screen shots or photographs of their pranks, that they then in turn post onto the board to poke more fun at.  Pranks (or “raids” as they call it) have run the gamut from making fun of people with eating disorders on on-line support groups, inserting pornography and racist imagery into on-line children’s games, breaking into MySpace and Facebook accounts, prank calling talk shows, and all the way up to “real-life” pranks as serious as bomb threats.  Even the much famed Scientology protests organized by “anonymous” wasn’t so much about an ethical, religious, or moral stance against the group – it was simply to annoy them, grab 15 minutes of fame, and get a few laughs.

All in all, these folks aren’t activists.  They’re an immature bunch (probably because most are teenagers), simply seeking attention and make mischief to get it.  Sometimes that mischief is rather high profile, like yesterday, and it gets them high profile attention.  The Internet to them, is a mere playground. Take one glance at their website, and you’ll see what I mean (but do so only if you’re prepared to be offended and thoroughly disgusted on every level humanly possible.  That’s NOT an exaggeration.  You’ve been warned.)

… on how it all went down

This description was posted to the 4chan board yesterday, by a person going by the nickname “rubico.”  I’ll stress, there’s no way to confirm this, because again, people are allowed to post whatever they want anonymously.  It does seem to jive with how things played out however.  Red text is my “translation” for you, for those who don’t speak “Internet”.

rubico 09/17/08(Wed)12:57:22 No.85782652

Hello, /b/ as many of you might already know, last night sarah palin’s yahoo was “hacked” and caps were posted on /b/, i am the lurker who did it, and i would like to tell the story.

In the past couple days news had come to light about palin using a yahoo mail account, it was in news stories and such, a thread was started full of newfags (somebody relatively new to the website) trying to do something that would not get this off the ground, for the next 2 hours the acct was locked from password recovery presumably from all this bullshit spamming.

after the password recovery was reenabled, it took seriously 45 mins on wikipedia and google to find the info, Birthday? 15 seconds on wikipedia, zip code? well she had always been from wasilla, and it only has 2 zip codes (thanks online postal service!)

the second was somewhat harder, the question was “where did you meet your spouse?” did some research, and apparently she had eloped with mister palin after college, if youll look on some of the screenshits that I took and other fellow anon have so graciously put on photobucket you will see the google search for “palin eloped” or some such in one of the tabs.

I found out later though more research that they met at high school, so I did variations of that, high, high school, eventually hit on “Wasilla high” I promptly changed the password to popcorn and took a cold shower…

>> rubico 09/17/08(Wed)12:58:04 No.85782727

this is all verifiable if some anal /b/tard wants to think Im a troll (if a “regular visitor” thinks I’m lying), and there isn’t any hard proof to the contrary, but anyone who had followed the thread from the beginning to the 404 (when the discussion topic expired) will know I probably am not, the picture I posted this topic with is the same one as the original thread.

I read though the emails… ALL OF THEM… before I posted, and what I concluded was anticlimactic, there was nothing there, nothing incriminating, nothing that would derail her campaign as I had hoped, all I saw was personal stuff, some clerical stuff from when she was governor…. And pictures of her family

I then started a topic on /b/, peeps asked for pics or gtfo (aka “prove it”) and I obliged, then it started to get big

Earlier it was just some prank to me, I really wanted to get something incriminating which I was sure there would be, just like all of you anon out there that you think there was some missed opportunity of glory, well there WAS NOTHING, I read everything, every little blackberry confirmation… all the pictures, and there was nothing, and it finally set in, THIS internet was serious business, yes I was behind a proxy, only one, if this shit ever got to the FBI I was fucked, I panicked, i still wanted the stuff out there but I didn’t know how to rapidshit all that stuff (post to a file sharing site, rapidshare.com), so I posted the pass on /b/, and then promptly deleted everything, and unplugged my internet and just sat there in a comatose state

Then the white knight fucker came along, and did it in for everyone, I trusted /b/ with that email password, I had gotten done what I could do well, then passed the torch , all to be let down by the douchebaggery, good job /b/, this is why we cant have nice things

… on spin and conspiracy theories

We don’t yet know for sure who’s responsible, as the above account can’t be confirmed.  Given the description above and armed with some general knowledge as to how this “group” behaves, it is totally likely that whoever perpetrated it acted alone. These are teens and adolescents that for a large part would rather be trading pornography than be involved in a political scandal.  There’s a chance the perpetrator isn’t even old enough to vote.

At any rate, when you hear labels like “extreme left wing activist group” attributed to anonymous in the media, it’s time to change the channel.  That’s simply not true, and is way off base.  There’s no particular affiliation; they’re a bunch of individuals, acting individually, though under the same guise.

It’s been interesting to see both sides spin it with their theories.  We have republicans angered, claiming it’s nothing but liberals or “Obama operatives” relentlessly digging for dirt.  We have democrats claiming this was done intentionally as a publicity stunt.  We have others yet with really twisted conspiracies that say Palin faked the hacking of her e-mail in order to have cover to delete the accounts.  (News for that theory, Yahoo has probably just “disabled” the account, leaving its contents in tact.  Even if it was “deleted,” a company such as Yahoo surely has back-ups.)  So again, all of these ideas are stretching it.  It was basically a prank.  Even despite the language above about “derailing the campaign,” the goal was probably a notoriety grab.  The more attention and drama a prank stirs up, the more its “lulz” value rises – how funny it is to them.  They would do the same to any candidate; it just so happens the Palin compromise was easy to pull off.

… on posting the material

I’m really disappointed with all the threats I’ve received as a result of this – disappointed that so few of us know our own rights.  I guess it’s hard to know any more these days with the ways our constitution has been trampled the past few years, but we can still cling on to the first amendment for the most part.  I admit, I had to double check for myself to be sure, but found nothing that suggests it’s in the wrong to have posted these.  If you’re still not sure, you might want to read about a 2001 Supreme Court decision, Bartnicki v. Vopper, which bears quite a resemblence to this situation.  Even further back, take a history lesson on the Pentagon Papers, where the courts sided on free speech in spite of illegally obtained, classified documents with supposed national security implications were published by the New York Times.  The EFF has also posted an analysis of the situation, and citing the same case I mention, comes to quite the same conclusion.  Even the McCain campaign statement was “we hope that anyone in possession of these e-mails will destroy them” – notice, it wasn’t “we demand these e-mails be destroyed.”  With all due respect to the campaign, there’s only a little material here, it is of public concern, it is newsworthy, and isn’t remotely damning to your candidate.  It’s public knowledge now, for better or worse.  I of course don’t condone or reccomend anybody even attempting to violate anybody else’s privacy; it’s dispicable and cowardly regardless the situation.  In the wake of the incident, some sites *have* taken it too far in my humble opinion – Gawker having posted Bristol Palin’s cell phone number so that folks could call it – even leaving a recording of her voicemail message on their website – is definitely crossing the line, and I’ll join in on saying “shame on you, Gawker.”

… lastly, on political slant, and this blog

After being called all sorts of names and accused of being all sorts of things, I did also want to remind anybody who had read the story here yesterday that I didn’t make political commentary one way or the other.  I try to cover topics relating to technology, the Internet, and science on this little corner of the web.  As such, the incidence was reported because it was a high profile breach in security on a popular e-mail service.  That’s all, it was Internet related news to me just as much as it was political news.  The posting wasn’t an attack on Palin, or on anybody for that matter.

When all is said and done, there really wasn’t anything incriminating or even all that INTERESTING found in these e-mails.  Rebpulicans can relax knowing their gal won’t be incriminated by what was found, and democrats can relax knowing the truth will come out that this wasn’t an attack lobbed from their side either.  As for any lingering conspiracy theorists, please understand this probably took all sides by complete surprise.  The rest of us?  Consider it a tounge-in-cheek stock tip: beat the down markets and economic crisis by investing in tinfoil hats.