Clipmarks | rmowery's Technology-Privacy collection

Free DNS

Tue, 04 Jul 2006 09:14:37 GMT

clipped by: theDaryl

Clip Source: freedns.afraid.org

Free DNS Hosting, Dynamic DNS Hosting, Static DNS Hosting, subdomain and domain hosting.

Why is it free? It's quite simple. We wanted a challenge... that's it.

Free DNS, Dynamic DNS, Static DNS services

Free subdomain hosting, free domain hosting, free backup dns, reverse IPv6 DNS hosting (forward/reverse)

Free URL redirection [web forwarding]

Tags: dns, free, technology, web, domain

'MySpace' teen's trip leads to family court

Thu, 29 Jun 2006 16:24:00 GMT

clipped by: rmowery

Clip Source: wireservice.wired.com

'MySpace' teen's trip leads to family court

By DAVID RUNK Associated Press Writer

Thursday, June 29, 2006 9:56 a.m. ET

GILFORD, Mich. (AP) -- Weeks after trying to get to the West Bank to pursue an online romance, a now-17-year-old girl was set to appear Thursday in Family Court, where authorities have filed a runaway juvenile petition against her.

A judge could ultimately place Katherine Lester under court supervision until she turns 18 next June 21.

Her secret was uncovered earlier this month, when she slipped out of her mother's home in rural Michigan and made it as far as Amman, Jordan, before being sent home by U.S. authorities.

Lester is now living with her father, Terry, near Flint. A judge ordered her to surrender her passport and undergo counseling. In an interview last week on ABC's "Good Morning America," she declared her love for Abdullah Jimzawi, a 20-year-old Palestinian who works in his father's business delivering goods to minimarkets.

They still talk online, her father and Jimzawi have said, and she says she wants to marry him.

"Now that this is all over with, I know that if I would have told them about him, they would have understood my feelings for him," she said in the appearance with her father and stepmother. "I wish I would have told them about him."

"Now that our relationship is out in the open, I feel like I don't have to go there to talk to him or to be with him," she said. "I plan on him coming here and us being together over here."

Tags: myspace, social networks, teens, palestine, love, court, social apps, social networking

Quitting politics via text message

Mon, 26 Jun 2006 15:38:56 GMT

clipped by: rmowery

Clip Source: news.com.com

Quitting politics via text message

Published: June 26, 2006, 5:46 AM PDT

When Nobel Peace Prize laureate Jose Ramos-Horta resigned from his East Timor government posts, he did so via a mobile-phone text message. Ramos-Horta told a news briefing that he had sent an SMS (Short Message Service) message to Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri, announcing his intention to quit on Sunday, and received a reply in the same format from the premier. "I explained myself in a subsequent text message," he said.

The country has been embroiled for months in a political crisis, and text messaging has emerged as the fastest and most reliable means of communication. Thousands of protesters clamoring for Alkatiri's resignation have been mobilizing themselves via SMS, and news of him stepping down on Monday spread rapidly through text messages.

Tags: east timor, politics, resignation, text message, text message resignation

Minority Cube -- Webcam activated like used in Minority report

Thu, 27 Apr 2006 14:36:40 GMT

clipped by: rmowery

Clip Source: incubator.quasimondo.com

Minority Cube

If you've seen the movie Minority Report you probably remember the impressing gesture based computer interface that Tom Cruise uses. Well, my experiment here is far from that, but nevertheless quite entertaining I think:

Minority Cube allows you to control the rotation of the cube on the screen by moving your hand (or yourself) in front of your webcam. All the calculations are done in the browser with Flash - there is no server-side processing involved. It currently understands up, down, left, right and screw (a motion a bit like if you're trying to screw a light bulb into your webcam's lens). If you don't have a webcam attached you will not be able to move it, I'm sorry. You might have to experiment a bit what's the best lighting situation, distance of your hand and motion speed.

Since I've been dug, I've just added a little extra: if you press the space bar, your webcam picture will be mapped to the cube. Doing the "screwing" motion in this mode will resize the texture. Unfortunately this will also reveal that my perspective mapping is far from perfect - but hey this is Flash 8, not Director or Java.

A note to Mac users - it seems like you might have adjust the settings of your iSight in order for Flash to receive the camera stream: right click on the cube, go to "settings", and specify video source is "firewire".

And another note to all the sceptics: of course I will not spy on you or download pictures on my server when you allow webcam access for this demo - but if you don't trust me on this you should unplug your net connection whilst playing around.

Tags: minority cube, minority report, webcam activated

GPS tracking via cell phones helps parents keep virtual eye on kids

Mon, 13 Mar 2006 20:21:53 GMT

clipped by: rmowery

Clip Source: livingstondaily.gns.gannettonline.com

anuary 26, 2006

GPS tracking via cell phones helps parents keep virtual eye on kids

DANA KNIGHT, The Indianapolis Star

Cell phones using CAT Trax software designed by Astra Digital have a GPS chip that allows parents to track their children at all times. They will also send alerts, via text message or e-mail, if children end in places parents don't want them to be. by Matt Detrich, The Indianapolis Star

Wendy Garcia's 13-year-old son is too old for a baby sitter, too young for a car and he has a two-mile walk home from school each day.

That leaves a good half-hour of roaming time for Daniel - time for a lot to happen - and Garcia worried every day as she sat at work.

So she bought Daniel a chaperone - a cell phone imbedded with a Global Positioning System tracking chip and software that allows her to log onto her computer and watch every twist and turn he makes, right down to whether he's on the sidewalk or in the grass.

Indianapolis-based Astra Digital, a small private company that is making big strides in the business of GPS tracking, designed the software for the groundbreaking system, which a California company launched recently.

"I can watch his path minute by minute and see if he deviates from the path," says Garcia, who lives in San Jacinto, Calif. "If he calls and says he's home, I can look on the map and see he isn't and say, 'Ah ha. I know you're lying.' "

The product, called CAT Trax, is the brainchild of Irvine, Calif.-based CATS Communication (www.catscommunication.com), which hired Astra Digital (www.astradigital.com) - a 15-employee software design and development firm - to develop the system.

Tags: gps, big brother, kid monitoring, parenting

Skype Use May Make Eavesdropping Passe

Tue, 21 Feb 2006 04:26:20 GMT

clipped by: rmowery

Clip Source: news.yahoo.com

Skype Use May Make Eavesdropping Passe

Thu Feb 16, 3:42 PM ET

By PETER SVENSSON, AP Technology Writer

NEW YORK - Even as the U.S. government is embroiled in a debate over the legality of wiretapping, the fastest-growing technology for Internet calls appears to have the potential to make eavesdropping a thing of the past.

Skype, the Internet calling service recently acquired by eBay Inc., provides free voice calls and instant messaging between users. Unlike other Internet voice services, Skype calls are encrypted — encoded using complex mathematical operations. That apparently makes them impossible to snoop on, though the company leaves the issue somewhat open to question.

Skype is certainly not the first application for encrypted communications on the Internet. Secure e-mail and instant messaging programs have been available for years at little or no cost.

Tags: skype, encryption, eavesdropping, government, technology innovation