David R Storms.com

My how the apple has fallen! If you are anything like me, you use Google’s search engine a lot. I rely on it heavily and it is the first site I turn to when searching because I trust the results and I can somehow find what I want almost every time. Being that I use the site every day, it is set as my default home page so I get to see the new graphic as they come out.

Today they were celebrating Sir Isaac Newton’s birthday. That’s great. And for the first time that I can recall, the logo is a bit animated in that a small apple falls from the logo.

When I saw this I had to laugh. I can’t help but think that this is some kind of inside joke about Google dropping Apple due to the recent turmoil each of them have been in. There must be a bit of bad blood between the two what with the Google Voice app denied from the iPhone AppStore, plus Google competing in the smart phone OS space.

You could also read this not only as Google dropping Apple, but maybe pointing out how far Apple has fallen from the proverbial tree. Perhaps saying something about recent animosity regarding the AppStore approval process.

Something to think about, either way it’s very very clever, even if it wasn’t meant to be!

I decided to try something new this month and see how long it lasts. If you look at the top of the site you will see a “Live” link. Click that link and you will go to the UStream page that has an embedded video player. This page will contain the live feed that I am broadcasting online from my computer or phone. This sounds crazy but it’s just something new I feel like trying out. Typically if I’m somewhere worth capturing video, I think I might as well share it live as creating a video, then uploading it later.

UStream has an awesome technology of capturing the video and uploading it to several places, such as YouTube of which I have an account.

UStream will post a “tweet” on Twitter for me when I start broadcasting, and if you follow me on Facebook my Twitter feed is pushed there so you will know when I start broadcasting too. You just have to click a link or visit my site and you can watch the live feed.

I don’t particularly have much to share, or have any set schedule, but every now and then I plan on uploading some live video. It will also be setup on my YouTube channel as well.

Let me know what you think. Technically this can go under the “life casting” category and I’m eager to see how this works over a 3G connection.

Too Cool

Can anyone explain to me why 3D seems to be the only technology that dies and keeps coming back? It’s popular, then it’s not. It kind of reminds of winter: at first when you know its coming a lot of people are excited about the possibilities.  A lot of people get ready for it, making financial commitments (like snow tires!) and when the glorious day arrives, it’s just a bitter cold day that you only stay outside for a hour or two before going somewhere warm again. Soon you realize that the snow is not going to stop and be a constant annoyance for several months before you a free of it. Then, just when you thought it was gone, it comes back again.

That’s kind of how I feel about this technology. I remember when I was little seeing Michael Jackson’s Captain Eo at the Epcot Center in Disneyland. I also remember a little over a decade ago TV executives got the idea that they should turn all their prime time shows into 3D. I remember Home Improvement and 3rd Rock from the Sun joining in on this bandwagon. And you know what? It flopped because I don’t know about you, but I don’t carry around a 3D glasses nor it is common place in my home.

Watching those shows was a lame as the concept, with the actual scripts having scenes meant to purposely take “advantage” of the experience, such as lots of things and actions that were out of place jabbing at the screen. It ruined TV I think and thankfully went away quickly.

Now you are hearing the rumblings again. 3D movies still aren’t that popular, but it seems like its coming back to gaming. With Sony flirting with updates to the PS3 to enable 3D gaming we can only hope it is not a travesty like the wonderfully pitiful products that was Nintendo’s VirutalBoy.

In hilarity, I saw that recently that the huge screen that the Dallas Cowboys played on tried to broadcast in 3D and it was a miserable failure and was discontinued in about 7 minutes after they realized nearly no one had 3D glasses and the blurry pictures were causing a lot of nausea.

I will keep an eye on this, but I think this technology needs to go, or be reinvented somehow. I am interested in what Sony does, and may even pick up the glasses to try it out and see what it’s like. But I think the real path will be to create more immersive environments, like 360 screens, etc, but that may not solve the nausea problem!

Let me know what you think!

If you ever listen to the most excellent podcast Security Now! hosted by Leo Laporte and Steve Gibson, you would be familiar with their recommendation to disable 3rd party cookies. Check out the GRC website (Gibson Research Corporation) on this topic for more detailed information.

If you don’t know what cookies are, then in very brief terms they are small files that reside in your temporary internet folder on your computer, they are sent to you by a web site you visit and stored by the web browser. They are then sent back to that same web site each and every time you revisit that same site. The concept is to allow identifiable information to be sent back to the web site so that they know its you returning. Now this likely isn’t like your bank account information, but say your logon ID so that when you next return to Facebook you don’t have to login again.

3rd party cookies are nasty buggers that do the same thing, but they don’t come from the site you are visiting, but say from an ad on that website that really comes from another server. See, it doesn’t have to be the same site you are on where the cookie comes from, even that page you are visiting can trigger your browser to talk to another site to get an image (like an ad) and thus a new cookie is dropped on your computer.

Now if that same ad or site where the image comes from turns up on another website, well now they cookie is sent back from your computer to that site thus linking the two sites together, and thus to you.

You can think of that as nefariously as you want, I personally just disable my browser from allowing 3rd party cookies. For the most part this is harmless.

Now today when I was on the Windows Live site poking around, I clicked the Logout link at the top right. I was running Ubutnu 9.10 using FireFox 3.5, but it probably doesn’t matter. I also tried it on my Mac Snow Leopard running Safari 4, same thing.

The message is pictured above, and likely  most people don’t see it unless they have 3rd party cookies turned off. By default they are turned ON.

Somehow the logout process on the Live sites uses them and causes the above message which just seems unlikely to be something you would expect. When I tried to access the Live services again, I had to login so I wasn’t worried there that my session was invalidated. But it begs the question what that cookie is needed for.

I think 3rd party cookies and Flash cookies (also nasty, and I’ll explain later when I get over this one) are going to increase in awareness over time and I think its best that sites stop having reliance on them like the Live one. Of course, sites make money on ads which will still work, just the tracking aspect would be gone.

Want to know how to turn off 3rd party cookies?

Visit www.aboutcookies.com and find your operating system and browser to learn how