Showing posts with label Internet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Internet. Show all posts

How to fix your Google Chrome bookmarks if you can't stand the new "enhanced design"

  April 26, 2015    

Has Google messed up your Chrome bookmarks with its "new, improved" bookmark system? Don't panic! You can fix it and go back to the way things were, where your bookmarks are organized the way YOU want.

The obscure but simple fix is described below (this works as of April 27, 2015). If you want to know more about the "Enhanced Bookmark" changes that Google has been forcing onto users, scroll down below these steps or click here.

(Note: I am certainly not the first person to describe this fix. That's because Google has been rolling out the new "enhanced" bookmark to Chrome users over time, for several months. Indeed, you might not have seen the new bookmark interface yet, but now you know what the fuss is about.)

Steps to return your Chrome bookmarks to the normal folder arrangement


1. Go to chrome://flags > by typing chrome://flags in the URL bar and tapping Enter. You should see something like this, with one of the worst warning messages you will ever read in any software ever (don't those self-important "user interface enhancement" nerds at Google realize browsers are no joking matter!):

chrome-flags

2. Find the "enhanced bookmarks" setting by using Find (Control/Command + F) and typing enhanced bookmark as seen here (the auto-fill will find it as you type):

search-enhanced-bookmarks

3. Use the blue drop down box control to Change the setting to Disabled, as seen above.

Note: You should not make changes to any other settings on this page unless you are sure of what the effects will be. That part of the warning is appropriate.

4. Make sure there is no unsaved work in any of the pages you have open in Chrome and then click the Relaunch button at the bottom of the page:

restart-chrome

That should make sure your Chrome bookmarks look the way they always have, so when you look at a bookmark it looks like this:

proper-chrome-bookmark

If you haven't yet seen the new "enhanced" Google Chrome bookmark it looks like this:

google-chrome-enhanced-bookmark

Now you know how to make it go away, I will explain why I think this new system is bad, and why forcing it onto Chrome users was a really dumb move by Google, not to mention arrogant.

What the flip did Google do to my bookmarks in Chrome?


your-choices-chrome-bookmarkApart from gobbling up screen real estate, the new user interface for bookmarks in Chrome severely limits your organizational options. For example, it appears to offer no way to choose the folder for the bookmark other than the choices it suggests.

For example, there is a very specific folder on my system for pages related to something called HIMSS, but that folder does not appear as a choice, and I can't get to it from this box.

Google says I have to put the bookmark in the Bookmarks Bar or the Sysadmin folder (seriously, WTF has Sysadmin got to do with HIMSS).

But Stephen, what about the "VIEW ALL BOOKMARKED ITEMS" option, you ask. Oh no, you don't want to go there, because "there" is where you see just how badly Google has messed up your carefully curated bookmarks, about 15 years' worth of bookmarks in my case, maybe even more for you.

I mean there I was, cheerfully bookmarking pages in Chrome, gathering material for a research project in the third module of my Criminology degree course, saving the pages in: Mobile Bookmarks > MSc > Module 3. Then boom! Some arrogant, "I understand users better than you" expert at Google, says "Stephen, your system sucks, try this!" And here is a glimpse of what you see when you view all bookmarks in the new in-your-face interface:

chrome-bookmark-tiles

Believe me when I tell you that no amount of scrolling down the list on the left takes me to "Mobile Bookmarks > MSc > Module 3". That structure is just not there. And I will add more thoughts about that on this page when I have calmed down. For now, I want to put this "fix" out there. If you want to come back for more, please bookmark this page (he said with no trace of irony at all, honest).

 

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The Google-SOPA-PIPA-DNS-Copyright-Oil-and-Gas Link

  December 04, 2011    

What does copyright infringement have to do with scraping oil from the bottom of a barrel and an acronym soup like SOPA, PIPA, DNS and DNSSEC? The answer lies with Google, not the search engine but the company.

More specifically, the answer lies with Google's Executive Chairman, Eric Schmidt, who said the following at the University of Minnesota last week when asked about legislation (SOPA/PIPA) which would--in the name of protection against copyright infirngement--give the U.S. government the power to mess with the Domain Name System (DNS) that forms the backbone of the Internet:
“There are a whole bunch of issues involved with [SOPA] breaking the Internet and the way it works. The correct solution, which we’ve repeatedly said, is to follow the money...Making it more explicitly illegal to make money from that type of content [pirated movies, software, or other counterfeit goods] is what we recommend.”

Mr. Schmidt is entirely correct, and I love the expression "making it more explicitly illegal to make money from..." because it covers a range of actions that governments and law enforcement agencies can take without interfering with the way the Internet works.

For example, the act of distributing pirated movies would be more explicitly illegal if the pirates were identified, arrested, extradited or extracted, imprisoned, tried, convicted, and given 20-year sentences in maximum security facilities without the possibility of parole. The same goes for the makers of malicious software. Let's put a bunch of them in jail with long sentences and see if that reduces the malware problem.

I just don't see a downside to this hardline approach to making something like software piracy or handbag counterfeiting "more explicitly illegal" except that some people will say it costs too much money. Au contraire, if you do this right it will actually make a lot more money than it costs. Consider the numbers put out by supporters* of the Stop Online Piracy Act: "IP theft costs the U.S. economy more than $100 billion annually and results in the loss of thousands of American jobs" (The Austin Statesman).

If you gave me a budget of one percent of that amount ($1 billion), I would most assuredly, and within a period of 12 months, reduce the cost of that theft by at least 15 percent ($15 billion). In other words, backing the effort to crack down on piracy to the tune of $1 billion in fresh money would pay huge dividends, save thousands of U.S. jobs, and actually create jobs (without messing with DNS).

Why am I so sure of this? My answer is not a lot of hot air, but it is a bit oily, as in petroleum production taxes. Thirty years ago I was criss-crossing America auditing the state oil and gas taxes paid by petroleum companies, firms with names like Koch, Hess, Ashland, Texaco, and Hunt. During that time I learned a lot about the ways in which we humans try to cheat each other.

Consider the sludge that forms at the bottom of a crude oil holding tank such as you see next to wells in oil fields where the wells are not connected to a pipeline. Some of that sludge is recoverable oil and, from time to time, someone goes into the tank to suck it out. How much of the sludge is oil? How much gets pumped out? Where is it taken? How much of it gets there? These are all points in the oil production process where numbers and readings and measurements can be fudged, to the advantage of one party and the disadvantage of another.

Not that every case of missing petroleum tax dollars was a case of cheating. Oil companies were sometimes being cheated by employees and contractors. And every time the production output of a well is understated that also cheats the royalty owner, the person who owns the mineral rights to the land from under which the oil and gas is being extracted.

Operating on a shoe string budget my auditing team raked in millions of previously unpaid taxes within the first 12 months of operation. We used no new laws or fancy gimmicks. We just followed the money, which is what Eric Schmidt is saying when it comes to cracking down on copyright infringement. In oil production areas you don't close down the roads in and out of every county where production is apparently going missing. You go to the top of the organization, the people getting the money, and you figure out how they came by it. You examine the paperwork. You audit the heck out of the operation. If the organization is shady, you shed light. If it is in another country then you remind that country of our mutual interests.

We have already seen positive results when private dollars are used to help enforce public laws, as in the Microsoft and Pfizer funded action against the Rustock botnet. (If you're wondering why a drug company got involved, read the story, it really is a big deal.) So why not an anti-infringement posse formed and funded by the likes of Google, eBay Facebook, and Yahoo! The backers of Protect Innovation could really make a lot of friends in high places, and on the High Street, if they were seen to spearhead a new effort to put cyber-criminals behind bars.

* Note: Here are some of the fine companies and trade groups that back SOPA (I respect and admire many of them, I just think they are wrong about SOPA): National Cable and Telecommunications Association, National Association of Manufacturers, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), Business Software Alliance, Screen Actors Guild (SAG), the U.S Chamber of Commerce, Independent Film & Television Alliance (IFTA), National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO), Motion Picture Association of America, Inc. (MPAA), American Federation of Musicians (AFM), American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA), Directors Guild of America (DGA), International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, (IATSE), International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), Comcast/NBCUniversal, National Songwriters Association, the United States Conference of Mayors, National Sheriffs' Association, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, International Trademark Association.

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Cobb's Satellite Internet Whitepaper Published by Rural Mobile & Broadband Alliance

  May 03, 2011    

Update, December 18, 2019: A recent decision by the FCC has put the spotlight on satellite internet service for rural communities in America (see Viasat gets $87.1M for rural broadband). I researched this topic - from a rural home that depended on satellite service for its internet connection - back in 2011. This article describes, and links to, the whitepaper in which I wrote up my research (PDF, 2 megabytes).

Original article:

I'm happy to announce that a document I've been working on for some time now has been published by RuMBA: the Rural Mobile & Broadband Alliance. Here's the full title:

Satellite Internet Connection for Rural Broadband: Is it a viable alternative to wired and wireless connectivity for America's rural communities?

RuMBA Satellite Internet WhitepaperYou can download the whitepaper here (this a 22-page PDF document just under 2 Megabytes in size).

For those who haven't heard of RuMBA, it's a non-profit organization that was launched in February 2009 by Luisa Handem Piette as an advocacy group "seeking to ensure that rural communities are offered the same access to affordable mobile and broadband services available to urban and suburban areas."

I admit that I first got involved with RuMBA for purely selfish reasons: I live in a rural community that has no access to broadband and I like broadband.

Okay, it's more than that. I need broadband to earn a living. Sure, I could go through some sort of retraining program and earn a living as a farmer or lumberjack or trucker, but to keep doing what I've been doing for the last 25 years, researching, writing and publishing, I need broadband.

(I actually think broadband can help you be a more successful farmer, lumberjack, or trucker, so it's not like those careers wouldn't benefit from better access to broadband as well.)

When I found out about RuMBA, a group of people looking to expand rural access to broadband, I signed up. One of the things I like about RuMBA is that it's not just an organization for consumers of broadband. And it's not just a meeting place for suppliers of broadband. RuMBA is a good mix of consumers and suppliers and experts, and a great place to research this field. I have already learned a great deal from RuMBA members about the possibilities and challenges of bringing broadband to un-served or under-served areas.

Which brings me back to satellite Internet. Attentive readers of this blog will know that I've had a lot of experience using satellite Internet over the last 5 years. Until recently it was the only way to connect to the Internet from the cabin in Upstate New York where I live and work IF you wanted speeds above those of an old-fashioned dialup modem.

In fact, the claim "faster than dialup" has been at the heart of marketing efforts by HughesNet and Wildblue, the two largest satellite Internet providers, for many years. What you don't see when you look into signing up for these services on the web is the phrase "satellite broadband." And there is a good reason for that [spoiler alert--the next sentence reveals the primary conclusion of the above-mentioned whitepaper].

Basically, satellite Internet is not broadband. It is not sold to consumers and small businesses as broadband. But it is getting promoted to government agencies and regulators as broadband. Which raises two questions:

  1. Why did I write a 22 page document to make that point?

  2. What's the problem?


Let me state the problem first: The traditional terrestrial Internet providers, the purveyors of DSL, cable, and fiber, do not want the government to require them to serve rural areas in the way that America requires telephone companies to serve rural areas.

Have you ever wondered how it is that your relatives on the farm way in the middle of nowhere North Dakota have a phone line? The answer lies in federal legislation dating back to the 1930s. That's when America decided "to make available, so far as possible, to all the people of the United States a rapid, efficient, nationwide and worldwide wire and radio communication service with adequate facilities at reasonable charges."

One of the principles established back then can be stated like this: If a company wants to run cable or beam waves across this great land of ours, everyone living on this land should get a slice of the service those cables and waves deliver. For example, a great big rope of fiber runs right through my village here in rural New York. My neighbors have to exercise care with their farm equipment so that they don't damage said cable or the power injectors and related fiber-phernalia. It seems only fair, at least in that old-fashioned 1930s way of American thinking, that a slice of said fiber should serve the community through which it passes. Right now it does not.

And one of the arguments that fiber/cable/DSL companies in America make against a universal broadband service requirement is that the country does not need it because: rural folks can always get broadband via satellite. And of course the satellite companies love that; they even got federal broadband money to build out their subscriber base. The telecommunications industry can say: "See, there's no need for universal service requirement because everyone has access to broadband."

Except they don't. That's because Satellite Internet is not broadband. And just so there could be no doubt about that statement I decided to make available an argument-ending document full of facts and references that anyone can print out and hand out and email, something that substantiates that statement in language anyone can understand. (And that answers question 2 above.)

If you would like a copy, it is free, and I encourage to download it now then please, spread it around.

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Narrowband Wastelands? Of rural America, death spirals, and the Narrow Belt

  September 19, 2010    

Looking back they will say: "It could have been avoided." They will say: "If only the government had been more effective, if only the telecommunication conglomerates had been less greedy."

Somewhere it will be noted that, back in the Fall of 2010, somebody wrote:

Narrowband wastelandThe fact that tens of millions of people living in America's rural communities lack adequate access to broadband services (data, video, voice over Internet) is painfully apparent when you drive beyond the suburbs.

Some rural communities have broadband, others do not. Some of the latter are waiting to receive expanded broadband access that is being created with the help of federal stimulus spending, others are not.

And for this last group, the places that didn't make the cut for stimulus grants, the places that appear to be of zero interest to the nation's telecomm companies, the future looks grim. Such places may be destined to become narrowband wastelands, stagnant economic backwaters.

The fact is, during the last five years broadband has become an essential part of our national infrastructure, the dominant channel of communication for industry, enterprise, employment, medicine, government, education, and entertainment. Communities that do not have access to broadband are increasingly considered "off the grid" and out of the mainstream. In short, not the kind of place in which your kids or grand-kids will want to live or work.

By 2015 you will have trouble selling or renting any property that does not have access to broadband, and that means lower property values, which means lower tax revenues, which will impact schools and infrastructure, which will further reduce property values. In short, a death spiral.

Those patches and swathes of America's countryside where the only Internet access options are dialup or satellite will become narrowband wastelands: The Narrow Belt. This Narrow Belt faces a spiral of accelerating economic decline at least as pernicious as that which devastated the Rust Belt.

Sure, if you lower your prices you still may be able to sell or rent in the Narrow Belt, but only to members of that increasingly rare group of people who think that Internet technology is just a passing fad, an unnecessary distraction, or a violation of some divine plan. We all know that is a rapidly shrinking pool of potential property buyers (with the possible exception of the Amish, who are expanding their rural holdings).

Furthermore, but often overlooked, there is this fact: Even those people who have no personal interest in broadband are aware that most other people do. Even the unconnected can see that connection adds value, lack of connection subtracts. Face it, as a factor in property valuation, access to broadband is here to stay; confinement to narrowband is now a form of property blight.

We are approaching the fourth quarter of 2010. The federal broadband stimulus funds have been allocated. If your home or community does not yet have access to broadband and is not part of a stimulus-backed broadband build-out, you need to start thinking about the alternatives (if you have not already). As I explore these alternatives, I will keep you posted.

The only way to save rural America from becoming a narrowband wasteland may be for the people who live there to take matters into their own hands. Let us hope they do so in a constructive way.

Notes:

A. Satellite Internet: For a variety of technical reasons, which I will be describing in my forthcoming whitepaper, satellite should be considered narrowband and not broadband. The latency of satellite Internet is worse than dialup and satellite's capacity constraints and bandwidth caps mean high speed data transfers are only available in short bursts. As providers like HughesNet state themselves, satellite is not recommend for, or does not support, five technologies at the core of any functional definition od broadband: streaming video, VPN, VoIP, real-time trading, and large file downloads like security patches and other software updates for operating systems and productivity applications.

B. The Amish: I am not qualified to comment on what the Amish think of the Internet, but I have a strong hunch you will see a correlation between expansion of Amish farms and the narrowband wasteland.

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Of Nerds and Whitepapers, Satellites and Cynics

  September 04, 2010    

You know you are a nerd if...You spend your spare time writing technical whitepapers. And that's what I've been doing. Apparently, it's not nerdy enough that, for the last two years, I have spent at least 40 hours a week--and often many more--working on contract for a software company for whom, among other things, I write whitepapers. No, in my spare time I feel compelled to write more.

Not that the world is papered with my whitepapers. Many don't see the light of day, not because they're not good, but because a whitepaper often has to hit a moving target and few targets move faster than a software startup. However, I will soon be releasing one of my "spare time" whitepapers because the target is, as I see it, frozen in the headlights of public attention.

That target is the terrestrial telcos, the nation's broadband providers, the folks making loads of money delivering big fat juicy bandwidth to urban and suburban consumers, maximizing their profits by avoiding servicing the rural areas through which their bandwidth passes on its way from one profit center to another.

This seems to be a very American problem. In many civilized countries there are universal service requirements with respect to broadband (as there are in America with respect to telephone service). In order to stave off broadband service requirements in America the terrestrial telcos have formed an alliance with the non-terrestrial telcos, that is, the satellite Internet service providers. The strategy? Convince politicians and government regulators that every rural American can get broadband (without the need for running fiber optic cable or coaxial cable or DSL phone lines) because satellite Internet service is available everywhere. The problem I have with this is summed up in the title of my forthcoming whitepaper: SATELLITE IS NOT BROADBAND.

That's right, satellite is not broadband and it never will be. And the terrestrial telcos know this. The non-terrestrial telcos say as much on their own websites. (The short version: there's too much latency and not enough capacity, so satellite Internet cannot realistically support VPN, streaming movies, real-time trading, VoIP, automated software patching, interactive learning systems, or SaaS applications.)

Despite this, the strategy of "Let them eat satellite" is being pursued by lobbyists in state capitals and our nation's capitol. For example, the FCC website at www.broadband.gov now lists satellite as a broadband option, which is like the U.S. Department of Transportation saying motorcycles are an interstate freight delivery option. The bankrolling of this cynical hoax by the terrestrial telcos upsets me for a variety of reasons, the most immediate being:

a. Where I live we can't get proper broadband right now (Time Warner Cable's business division recently told me it would cost "over $100,000" to bring cable to my home office, even though they offer cable service less than 5 miles from here).

b. We can't afford to change where we live (that's not the fault of the terrestrial telcos, although they do seem to be guilty of perpetuating an attitude that says "If you can't get broadband where you live, just move to one of our service areas").

c. I recently committed myself to raising public awareness of a potentially fatal genetic disorder, widespread ignorance of which causes much needless pain and suffering. This project would go a lot better if my current Internet connection didn't suck so badly. (You can see the first phase of the project at www.CelticCurse.org.)

d. My current Internet connection is satellite Internet service, which is NOT broadband.

So, as I prep the presses for this whitepaper, I am marshaling my arguments and rounding up my footnotes. My hope is to provide--in the form of a well-argued and well-documented whitepaper--powerful ammunition for the patriotic forces of fairness and justice now arrayed against the self-interested terrestrial telcos.

ATELLITE IS NOT BROADBAND



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Zero Privacy: Thoughts on McNealy and Zuckerberg and “privacy statements”

  June 26, 2010    

In some of my recent posts about privacy, occasioned by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's apparently dismissive attitude to privacy concerns, I referenced the "infamous" privacy comment that Scott McNealy made in 1999.

At that time, McNealy was the CEO of Sun Microsystems, and Sun was hot. Java was cooking, so to speak. Anyway, McNealy was reported to have said, to a group of reporters, something like: “You already have zero privacy anyway, so get over it.” The rest of this post is what I wrote on this subject in my 2002 book on privacy (which you can always download, for free, if you feel like reading more) followed by a few fresh thoughts.
Light Down Under
When Scott McNealy addressed the National Press Club of Australia in September 2000 he explained what he meant by that zero privacy remark. Here is a verbatim transcript:
“If you get hit by a truck, you want somebody to have your medical records. If you cannot tell them the combination to your safe or where your medical records are kept, you have a problem. In effect you want your medical records to be available online out over the Internet. You want every ambulance driver to be able to unlock it. So that is a little risk you take. Every ambulance driver might be able to tap into your medical records. Get over it. That is better than getting hit by a truck and dying.”
That's not quite the same as simply saying: "You have zero privacy, get over it."

Various versions of the quote—and Mr. McNealy’s last name—rapidly populated articles and presentations about privacy, most of which made no mention of the original context. That context was frustration at announcing a new product, JINI, then having to field questions about the one thing it can’t do—guarantee absolute privacy of personal data—rather than the many things it can do, such as make vital data instantly available across a wide range of hardware, software, and networks.

A lot of people in business can relate to Mr. McNealy’s frustration with those who have turned privacy into an absolute. While the potential to abuse information technology such as Web sites and email is a genuine cause for concern, foolishly equating privacy with anonymity—somehow forgetting that you cannot participate in society unless you share information about yourself—does nobody any good. As I said in Chapter 1, the reason that privacy on the Web is such a big challenge is that nobody yet understands exactly what privacy means in the context of today’s highly interconnected, heavily computerized, data-dependent world. About the best we can say is that privacy in the information age is a work in progress.

Of course, if you are the sort of person who thinks corporate America is only out to steal people’s wallets and ruin their lives, you are unlikely to be swayed by my assertion that most businesses actually want to respect the privacy of their customers, particularly if that is what their customers want. The problem is that we, as a society, simply haven’t finished our homework on this one. In other words, we are not yet at the point where a significant percentage of consumers have articulated specific Web and email privacy demands that businesses have chosen to reject.

As Rob Leathern, a Jupiter Research privacy analyst recently observed, “Neither consumers nor businesses effectively address online privacy issues.” He was reflecting on a Jupiter Media Metrix report that found more than 80 percent of U.S. consumers would give out personal information in exchange for small rewards, while at the same time nearly 70 percent said they were concerned about their privacy online. They might be concerned, but 60 percent admitted that they did not read privacy statements before handing over personal information to Web sites (not helped by the fact that a lot more than half of consumers surveyed found online privacy statements difficult to understand).

Notes from 6/26/2010: A lot has changed since 1999, but a lot remains the same. As Facebook and Twitter attest, digital privacy is still very much a work in progress. And some things never change: CEOs do not have "freedom of speech" any more than their employees. A bank clerk can be fired for mouthing off about the company. A CEO can put his or her job in jeopardy by saying the wrong things in the wrong place, like in email that lives forever or in the presence of a reporter's microphone. What may be new is the extent to which we are all more closely watched, surveilled if you will, which adds a level of transparency to our society, the implications of which we don't yet fully grasp.]

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Mark Zuckerberg Faces the Privacy Meter: Facebook trends open book

  May 02, 2010    

Face it folks, it's time to dust off the Privacy Meter for a quick check of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. According to an internal source, Mr. Zuckerberg has placed himself in the camp made (in)famous in 1999 by Scott McNealy, the CEO of Sun Microsystems, who was reported to have said: “You already have zero privacy anyway, so get over it.”

Mr. Zuckerberg's position was recently described by a Facebook insider in response to this question: "How does Zuck feel about privacy?" Response: “He doesn’t believe in it.”

The details of this revelation can be read here and I'd have to say it hardly amounts to a public statement by "Zuck" himself (for the record, Scott McNealy's declaration was not a public statement either, and should be placed in context, something I tried to do in my 2002 book on privacy).

I doubt that either Mr. Zuckerberg or Mr. McNealy would say, on the record, that they don't believe in privacy. What both men seem to share is a frustration with privacy concerns as they relate to digital systems. Human beings can be annoyingly inconsistent and hard to predict when it comes to matters of personal information. That makes it inherently difficult to design online communications and online communities that satisfy every shade of sentiment with respect to the sharing of personal information. And that's why I created the Privacy Meter:

Not exactly a high tech device, it nevertheless serves its purpose: to help people assess their own attitude to their personal information. I developed the privacy meter as a teaching tool, specifically to teach Chief Privacy Officers and other C-level execs that:

a. Everyone has a different place on the privacy scale, there is no "correct" score;

b. Entities like companies and agencies cannot handle privacy issues according to one person's views about privacy.

In other words, the fact that you're an open book kind of person does not make it okay to impose an open book approach on people who are more closed book. If you are closed book you can't impose that view either because it could limit your organization's ability to serve its customers. Most importantly, the way you handle other people's private data has to be in accordance with their view, not yours. That principle was established, in the context of computer data, back in 1974, and remains one of the pillars of privacy best practices in the realm of data protection (see Chapter 3 of Privacy for Business, available as a free .pdf file here).

Several years ago I put together a short set of slides on the privacy meter and the potential benefits and problems arising from getting privacy positioning right or wrong. You can click here to download the slides as a .pdf file which I recently updated to include Facebook's current privacy perception problem. That slide is pretty easy to understand:

Just a few hours after Wired puts out the story that your CEO doesn't believe in privacy, PC World publishes a story about the latest privacy invading scam that your system is enabling. Not good. Just the sort thing that can hurt your share price and tarnish your brand. Which is why your personal feelings about privacy should probably remain private when you are running a company.

[BTW, you can now download the full 240 page text of Privacy for Business (2002) as an Adobe Acrobat document from this web site; there's no charge and no registration required.]

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My "Satellite is Not Broadband" Letter to the Editor, FCC Test Data, and More

  March 15, 2010    

dish-ice-200I just noticed that my letter to the editor of the Daily Star about rural broadband was published (back on February 15). I have pasted the letter at the bottom of this post.

The letter is part of my ongoing campaign to evangelize the need for affordable broadband connectivity in rural areas. I truly believe that if affordable broadband is not made available to what are currently "dialup-only" areas, once-thriving villages will eventually become ghost towns. On the other hand, if such connectivity is made available, then many rural areas can be transformed through better jobs, better education, and a variety of digital community-building initiatives that are currently impractical.

fcc-broadband-test-resultSometimes you will hear people say "rural households can get satellite Internet, so they have broadband available to them."

As I have described at length before, my opinion is that satellite Internet service is NOT broadband and never can be. In my letter I try to explain that in plain English in the context of recent efforts by Otsego County to get federal funding for improved broadband access.

On a brighter note, one positive step the federal government is taking in this field showed up recently on the special FCC site called broadband.gov. The agency has posted a test that anyone can use (rural or sub/urban) to check their connection's speed. This test evolved out of growing suspicion that most broadband providers claim to provide higher performance than they actually deliver. (For example, I pay for a download speed of over 1,000kbps but as you can see from my test result, I get nothing like that.)

I urge you to test your own connection. In the meantime, here is my letter titled "Satellite Internet not same as broadband."

Dear Editor,

Your coverage of Otsego County's struggle to provide affordable broadband to rural residents is much appreciated by those of us whose property prices are being hit by the lack of broadband access. ("County's request for Web funding denied," Feb. 4.) I have seen neighbors move already, putting property up for sale because of the lack of broadband.

With all due respect to Rep. Betty Anne Schwerd, whom you quoted, satellite Internet service is not broadband.

A broadband Internet connection should support real-time trading, Voice over IP (like Vonage), video streaming (like YouTube and NetFlix), and Virtual Private Networking (VPN is required for many telecommuting jobs).

Satellite does not support these core broadband functions, as stated on the website of HughesNet, one of Otsego County's two main satellite providers. The other provider, Wild Blue, is not accepting new customers in parts of Otsego County due to capacity issues. These can cause a big drop in performance. As a HughesNet customer, my median download speed is 258kbps, much slower than the "headline rate" of 1.6mbps for which I pay $70 per month.

Cheap dial-up delivers 56kbps plus better latency than satellite (which will always be weak in this regard because every bit travels 45,000 miles into space and back).

Sadly, lobbyists for cable and phone companies, fighting requirements that they serve rural customers, have tricked politicians into thinking that "everyone in rural areas can get broadband thanks to satellite." This is deceptive at best. Satellite Internet is not broadband and, if there's no broadband where you live, you cannot participate in all the opportunities that the Internet affords. As a result, the value of your property, like mine, will continue to decline relative to areas that have broadband.

Stephen Cobb
Cherry Valley

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I've Moved! But I'm still here...

  February 18, 2010    

Moving billionsLast night I completed the move of cobbsblog.com to a new hosting service!

Moving a web site is not that hard, but moving a WordPress blog with all that SQL database stuff can be tricky.

So please let me know via the comments if you see anything missing or not working right. Fortunately I found an excellent set of instructions here, for which I am very grateful.

Another factor that can complicate the moving of a web site is the reluctance of the existing web hosting company to let you go (more on that later). However, this move will save money on hosting fees and give me greater control of the site. (It is now on my virtual private server, operated by a hosting company that has proven helpful and reliable over the years: 1&1.)

BTW, the graphic in this post is not the covert transportation of billions of bits that make up my blog but the not-so-covert and ever-so-stupid moving of billions of dollars of cash into Iraq.

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Opera to the Rescue? Definitely worth a listen

  December 17, 2009    

Opera Browser LogoI just spent my evening at the Opera. Not the fat lady sings kind of opera, more of a browser with wings kind of thing that just happens to go by the name Opera. And I am really impressed (even though I'm tone deaf and can't tell a libretti from a Lambretta).

I have checked out the Opera browser several times in the past and each time was impressed at the way successive versions added new features, often ahead of IE (not hard to do) and Firefox (quite a bit harder but Opera has been doing it). However, I did not feel compelled to make it my default browser. When Google Chrome came along, seemingly faster than Firefox and with good stability, I made it my default browser. The recent emergence of the Mac version of Chrome into beta meant I could run it on both of my work boxes (one a PC, the other a Mac--yes, when it comes to tech--I go both ways).

But the latest Opera, version 10.10, has really impressed me and may become my new default. I was particularly interested in a combination of three capabilities that might be unique to me, but could make a difference to many other users.

First capability: An integrated email application that can read Eudora files. (For the younger generation, Eudora was a very popular email application last century and I still use it today because it's reliable and easily searchable. Unfortunately, the makers of Eudora abandoned it many years ago and it's starting to show its age.) I've been looking for a Eudora replacement and Opera might be it. I had been reluctant to give up Eudora's trusty filter/folder system of message management but Opera replicates it while using a more flexible system of "views."

Second, there is a Turbo feature that speeds up browsing on slow connections. Regular readers of this blog will know that my home office connection to the Internet is via satellite, specifically HughesNet, which can be very slow at times. Tada! Opera Turbo helps me cope with that.

Third, regular readers of this blog know that HughesNet makes it hard to access my own blog. (Something so weird I made a video about it.) But guess what, Opera sees my blog even when Firefox and Safari and Chrome and IE7/8 do not! Yes, it sounds crazy, but it is verifiable (a video of this phenomenon in action is coming). So there is no other way to put it: Opera works when the others don't. (And no prizes for figuring out with which browser I am writing this.)

There's a bunch more cool stuff in Opera 10.10 that I have not fully explored yet, including file and photo sharing and audio streaming (the audio thing was the source of the "worth a listen pun" in the blog post title). Even though Opera does not have a large share of the notebook and desktop browser market, the company is clearly pushing ahead with innovations and picking up enthusiastic users in the process. The company is also well established in the mobile and embedded browser market (check out the browser in your Nintendo Wii).

Over the next week or so I will be checking out more features and, if this whole HughesNet workaround capability pans out, I will be posting my impressions here.

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A Tale of Intrigue & DNS: See HughesNet “blocking” my blog, now on YouTube

  October 03, 2009    

I have just uploaded my "HughesNet DNS Fail" video to YouTube but you can watch it right here. To be honest it is not my most polished video work, but I think it gets the job done. I have another one in the works that might be more effective. The plot goes like this: At times when HughesNet refuses to show me my own blog--yes, this very blog that you are reading--I can reach it via my iPhone over the AT&T Edge network. One of these days I am going to get really calm and centered and call HughesNet support with iPhone in hand and try to explain the flaw in their DNS ways one more time before I call in the sharks.

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Cobbsblog on YouTube (via Stagecoach not Satellite)

  September 01, 2009    

This is a quick post to highlight the video I just uploaded to YouTube. Probably not my finest mixed media effort, it's a quick screencast to demonstrate the fact, oft-mentioned to friends and colleagues, that the $80-per-month HughesNet Satellite Internet service which I get at my house "blocks" access to my blog.

(10/2/2009: Video link updated. For the video, click here.)

In fact, even as I write this, I am being forced to eat a veggie pannini at Stagecoach Coffee in Cooperstown so I can use their free WiFi to get to my blog to post this on my lunch hour. As you can see in the video, accessing my blog via HughesNet  "normally" results in a DNS Lookup Error. However, there is nothing wrong with the blog, as can be demonstrated with DownForEveryone, which I demonstrate in the video.

I have reported this problem to HughesNet but they tell me it must be a problem with my web site or web hosting company. Obviously the problem is NOT with my web site or host. I am pretty sure the problem is HughesNet DNS. I even demonstrated this to HughesNet by running Anonymizer which, as shown in the video, intercepts the HughesNet DNS and makes my blog accessible over the very same HughesNet connection that said "DNS Error."

My speculation that this problem occurs because I am frequently critical of HughesNet, on this and other blogs, is indeed speculation. But you don't have to be ultra-paranoid to think it mighty strange that my HughesNet connection, which can reach Google.com but not Cobbsblog.com, is fishy. It certainly stinks.

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Why Rural Folk Feel 3.6X Angrier About Broadband, TV, and Verizon

  August 22, 2009    

Guest Blogger Stephen Cobb writes:

Right now it hurts to watch New York City's Channel 4 NBC news if you live just a few hours outside of New York City in the rural areas that supply the metropolis with its dairy goods and fresh produce. Why?

The NBC 4 New York sports section is sponsored by Verizon FiOS and Verizon FiOS spots are all over the show, advertising an $80 per month deal on high speed Internet, plus television and phone service. That's $80 for all three. What do you have to pay if you live outside the city? $290.

That $290 "deal" is what rural folks must pay to get service that is not even as good as FiOS at $80 or even FiOS at $160. Yet some of the fiber optic cables that make FiOS possible pass right through these rural fields and valleys. Here's how it breaks down in the many areas that phone and cable companies chose to ignore:

$80 for HughesNet satellite Internet
$75 for Verizon land line phone service
$135 for DirecTV satellite TV

Yep, it adds up to $290, about 3.6X what city cousins pay. Bear in mind that the rural dweller's $80 rate for satellite Internet only gets him, if he's very lucky, download speeds of 1.6Mbps and upload rates of maybe 128Kbps, with latency that is much worse than dialup. And daily traffic is capped at 425Mb (in other words, one hi-def movie download or operating system upgrade and you're done for the next 24 hours).

Yet the current 3-way FiOS package from Verizon, which "serves" most of these rural areas of New York state at a much lower grade, gives the subscriber phone service, plus TV service, plus broadband Internet access at 50Mbs upload, 20Mbps download. That is more than 25X what you can get in the country, with a bandwidth cap that is at least 1,000X greater than the cap on satellite. So, Verizon gives city dwellers a level of service that is massively better than what they offer their rural customers, at about a quarter of the cost rural customers have to pay.

If the situation were reverse and it was rural customers getting that deal, surely there would be riots in the streets of the city. No?

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Well That Was Fun: Monetate launches Smellr

  April 01, 2009    

There are many things I enjoy about working for Monetate and they all came together today: Cool technology, brilliant developers, cutting-edge digital artistry, crafty copy-writing, savvy leadership, and great camaraderie. All of this orchestrated in a concerted team effort to execute a good idea with skill, excellence, and a good laugh.

And we succeeded!

The web site Smellr got over 14,000 visitors. The Monetate Post-click Marketing Blog and the main Monetate web site both received at least 20 times the normal amount of traffic. We've been mentioned in the Associated Press, The Guardian, and many blogs, including blogs.com and the bostonist. We were even seen on CNN in the Netherlands!

I know some people get tired of April Fool's jokes, but I think one reason they still persist is that many people feel the need for a good laugh about this time of year. You've struggled through the Winter and it's still struggling to hold back Spring. The nights are getting longer but the skies are still too grey. It's time to take things a little less than seriously for a day.

Happy April First!

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Turducken? Feeling chuffed with my Thanksgiving post

  November 26, 2008    

I just completed a blog post for Thanksgiving over on the Monetate Post-Click Blog and I'm quite pleased with it (back in the old country people would say they were "chuffed" when they were feeling pleased with something).

I've spent quite a bit of time the past two months studying various aspects of blogging, notably the role of the corporate blog. I've been getting a lot of good insights from reading Naked Conversations by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel. I remember skimming through this book in my local Barnes & Noble not long after it came out (in 2006 I think) but at that time I did not have a "corporate" blogging role and some of the points didn't really sink in. Now I'm contributing to a company blog the advice from Scoble and Israel really clicks, things like: write in first person and be authentic, timely, and relevant. The turducken piece follows that advice. Here's hoping it generates some buzz. I mean, there can't be that many other bloggers talking about turducken in the context of search engine marketing, can there?

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Broadband Lines That Reach Into Rural Communities, Yes!

  September 30, 2008    

If you want to get all selfish and "single issue" about political candidates, then there was one line from the first 2008 Presidential Debate that got my vote: "broadband lines that reach into rural communities."

Of all the energy-saving, eco-friendly, game-changing moves that America could make, which would pay for itself within a few years but also reap dividends for decades, it is "broadband lines that reach into rural communities." The benefits to rural communities would be enormous, more companies could locate there and more people could telecommute from there. America as a whole would benefit because more telecommuting means less traffic, less pollution, less demand for oil.

So I'm voting for the candidate who talks about this topic like he means it, the candidate who is smart enough to make it a priority and put it out there on the national stage. Yep, that's my candidate. Can you guess who it is?

Yes! It was Senator Obama who said "I also think that we're going to have to rebuild our infrastructure, which is falling behind, our roads, our bridges, but also broadband lines that reach into rural communities." (Check the debate transcript at CNN if you think I'm making this up.) It looks like we actually might have a presidential candidate smart enough to understand the difference between broadband lines and inferior alternatives like dialup and satellite. If my brother can get a 6Mbps line in a small fishing village in Spain, surely every village in upstate New York should be able to get the same.

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Labor Day for Virtual Workers?

  September 01, 2008    

A few days ago I wrote a post over on the Monetate Blog to make the point that every worker should be proud on Labor Day, even those of us who work with bits and pixels and other nebulous, virtual things. Code slingers and geeks and digital tinkerers are responsible for a significant percentage of the GDP, not to mention the joys of MP3s and Hi-Def TVs and cell phones and IM and texting and such.

Happy Labor Day!

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Cool Stuff for Online Stores

  July 13, 2008    

Had a very interesting chat today with David Brussin whose new company, Monetate, has developed a very powerful tool for online retailers. This tool/product is also called Monetate and what it does is pretty amazing. Suppose you’re shopping on the web, maybe for new boots. You visit a couple of sites that sell the boots you want. As you flick between sites to find the best price, an offer pops up, giving you 20% off on the exact product you want, if you order today.

If you're selling boots and your site that makes that offer, you may well get the order. Making that offer is what Monetate does.

Even better, from the site owners point of view, Monetate can extend offers like this based on very specific criteria, like "free next day delivery on big screen TVs" but offered only to customers who are within 50 miles of the warehouse. You might think online retailers already have the ability to do this sort of thing and a few do. But many are still struggling to implement this level of personalization. Monetate is relatively easy to implement (it's SaaS, but without the need for clients to code to an API). Plus, you can make personalized offers even to people who have never shopped at your site before.

How does Monetate do this? I'm about to find out. I will report back soon.

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Two Blasts From The Past In One Day: Monetate and IMCD

  July 11, 2008    

I got two exciting calls today from friends and former colleagues, David Brussin and Michael Miora. two of the guys with whom I co-founded InfoSec Labs and ePrivacy Group.

Mr. Miora is a seriously qualified information security and disaster recovery expert (as in Michael Miora, CISSP, ISSMP, FBCI). He has been working on a product that helps businesses recovery from disasters. It is called IMCD, from Incident Management CD, because one of its many clever tricks is to store, one on CD (or USB thumb drive or SD card) everything your company needs to know in an emergency: who to call, contact details, systems and software applications and data, by department, priority, location, and so on and, Wow, there really is a lot of stuff you need to get your hands on fast when the nasty stuff meets the whirling blades.

One reason I'm familiar with this product is that my brother (Mike Cobb, CISSP, ISSAP, MCDBA) was heavily involved, coding the interface and algorithms and such. The exciting news today was the availability of the new version, boxed and priced to sell, on places like Amazon, for $99.00. At this price it's a very cheap insurance policy and potential life-saver for owners of small-to-medium businesses as well as in charge of regional offices of larger companies. The next step in the marketing plan is to move into brick and mortar retail stores like Staples and OfficeMax. I look forward to seeing it on the shelves soon.

The news from Mr. Brussin was also very exciting--his new company's new product is ready to rock and they've just activated the first client. David is one of those people obsessed with making things work better through the appropriate application of technology. He was running his own networking company before he turned 20 and has been coming up with bright ideas ever since, like the anti-spam router, still the single most effective anti-spam tool you can buy. This latest company/idea is a means of making online retail sites work better (a by-product of spending too much time Internet shopping?). It sounds like David has put together an ace tech team to build this thing and I look forward to learning more about it.

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What Fighting Spam Taught Me About Marketing (and Market Forces)

  July 10, 2008    

Yesterday I reflected on the emergence of the spam problem and some early work on anti-spam strategies. I'd like to continue the topic today with a second observation from early in 2001:

2. A lot of people want to receive relevant offers.

This is not the same as observation #1 in my previous post: Some people like unsolicited email. Back in 2001, point #1 was true: a not insignificant percentage of email users were open to getting email they didn't ask for. This percentage dropped rapidly over the next few years as the quantity of unsolicited email that these people received increased, together with the proportion of that email which was deceptive and distasteful.

What did not change is point #2; it is human nature to be receptive to a good deal IF it is relevant. We realized this...

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