Family Connections

Is there such a thing as safe, family-oriented computing? I believe there is.

'Safe' is, of course, a relative term. Once you connect your computer to the internet, there are many dangers, such as these, that you need to educate yourself about. If you are part of a family with more than one computer in the house, you can substantially improve your family's safety, and vastly improve the quality of your family's computing life, by installing a home network.

From a safety perspective, a home network allows you to put all your family's computers behind a hardware "firewall" that prevents miscreants from getting access to the contents of your hard disks. You can install virus protection software that protects the whole family at once from the latest outbreak.

Installing a home network used to be a very big deal. You had to run wire all over the house and hunker down to a good bit of research about alternative ways to set up a network. To be at all civilized, you had to put new outlets in the walls, and buy special tools to painstakingly wire up the outlets. You had to buy a network hub or switch, install networking and firewall software, and then try to coax all of it into working together. Or, you had to spend a good chunk of change getting someone else to do it for you.

It is now possible to substantially simplify all of this by substituting a wireless router for the hub/switch, and buying wireless network cards for each computer. Look, Mom! No Wires! Wireless network speeds are now quite acceptable, the software is easier to set up, and the equipment has all become reasonably inexpensive. The router is the public face of your network, and the individual computers hiding behind it can't be accessed from outside your network (without your explicit intent.)

With a home network in place, you can enjoy many benefits:

• Share your broadband connection. The most obvious advantage of a home network is that all of the computers in the network can share the same broadband connection and access the internet simultaneously. Dad no longer has to wait for Billy to finish his game of networked Intergalactic Death to download his stock quotes. Suzie can research her homework on the internet while Mom is sending an email.
• Share printers. In our family, we have an inexpensive laser printer, and a combination color printer/copier/scanner, which we all can share over the network.
• Share files and disk space. Behind a hardware firewall, it is safe to allow file sharing among family members. You can put everyone's digital music and digital photos in one place, if you like -- perhaps on the computer with the largest disk -- and let everyone else share it from there. You no longer have to use floppies to copy a file from one computer to another.
• Common network security. Companies like TREND Micro offer software that protects all the computers in the network against viruses, spyware, wireless network intrusion, and more. Using their "PC-cillin Home Security Pack," you can protect up to three PC's for about $90, or five PC's for $150.
• Remote access. If you have Windows XP Professional, you can use an inexpensive laptop computer to remotely access other PC's in your network -- say, from the poolside. Your laptop suddenly acquires all the capabilities and resources of the remote computer, incuding, for example, your email account. You no longer have to think about moving files between your laptop and your desktop computer, just so you can do your work in the chaise lounge while sipping an umbrella drink.

A home-network-enabled laptop tends to wander around the house, getting used for different things. Ours mostly hangs out in the living room, where we look up words and historical facts when they come up in conversation, or while watching a baseball game on TV, get the batting stats of the guy at the plate, or shop for stuff on the internet. And, of course, we Google incessantly.

If you don't have a home network, and you want to have one, there are some good resources on the internet to get you started (including information about how to find a home network installer, should you wish to avoid the hassle of doing it yourself.) One of my favorites is HomeNetHelp, which has everything from "Starter Stuff" to "Beyond the Basics." It tells you what you need to shop for, provides product reviews, tells you even more things you can do with your home network, and tells you all of it in one well-organized web site. Google "Home Networks" to find a whole host of other resources.

If you haven't set up a home network for your family, yet, do take another peek at the possibilities. You may like what you see.

Power to the people.

T.I.N.

TiVo, the SuperBowl, and Wardrobe Malfunctions

I don't think anyone has seen my TiVo that doesn't covet it.

It will come up in a conversation. I will say something like, "No, I haven't seen that episode yet, but I TiVo'ed it." ("TiVo," you see, has become a verb.) Their eyes will widen -- "You have a TiVo?" They have all heard someone talk about it, but it sounds like a techie thing that is probably too complicated to get involved with. I then have to explain that you don't have to be a nerd to have a TiVo. You pretty much just hook it up and go. In this day and age, I say, I don't understand how anyone can live without a TiVo.

"Well, ...um... What exactly does it do?"

"Oh," I respond, "it does many things."

• Ever watch TV, have the phone ring, and have to do a quick assessment about whether you would rather miss the call, or miss a critical chunk of the show you're watching? Not a problem with TiVo. You just pause it. Live TV? Yup. TiVo will stow away the piece you are missing -- up to half an hour of material -- while you are talking on the phone, answering the door, taking a power nap, getting a snack, or answering the call of nature. Press the button again, and it resumes where you left off. (My wife and I use the pause feature even more often to stop the TV to review what just happened and discuss its implications for the plot.)
• Ever wish you could have your own personal replay? Live TV? Yup. In slow motion, if you like. A single button backs you up 8 seconds and resumes, as many times as you want. Or just press the rewind button and go back as much as half an hour. (My wife and I use this most often to get a second or third chance to understand a piece of barely-intelligible dialog.)
• With TiVo, you can get a "Season Ticket" to your favorite series, automatically recording all episodes when they are broadcast, without further intervention. You can even instruct TiVo not to record repeat episodes.
• Here's the key to never watching another commercial: If there is a 1-hour program you want to watch, tune to it on time, but watch it 20 minutes later. Back up 20 minutes, and fast-forward through the commercials. There are, on average, 20 minutes worth of commercials in every hour-long program. (This is why, in the age of TiVo, web-based advertising is becoming more important.)

At this point in the conversation, a demonstration is generally required, followed by incessant coveting.

TiVo is sometimes described as a "Venus" technology, because women seem to like it as much as men. One of the things my wife likes most about it is that she can hit the pause button before saying something to me, and I actually register the fact that she is talking to me.

TiVo does a lot of other things, but these are the features we use the most. Since we are hooked up to satellite TV, we also use it to schedule recordings of pay-per-view movies at, say, 1:00 in the morning, when no one in the house is watching anything else. I was an early adopter, so my TiVo doesn't do all that the newer ones do, like making DVD's from recorded programs, scheduling recordings over the internet, or broadcasting the show to other TV's in the house.

However, my TiVo has a feature that newer TiVo's don't: I have the Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction on my TiVo.

That's right, I recorded last year's SuperBowl. During halftime, I went off and drank beer, or something, and it wasn't until the next day that I even heard that something unusual happened during the halftime festivities. Even when I heard about it, the TiVo slow-motion replay possibilities didn't occur to me, until a friend came over.

As my friend was coveting my TiVo, I off-handedly mentioned that I had recorded the SuperBowl. His eyes widened. Did you get the halftime show? Well, sure, but what... oh... yeah, I did!

I want to say that in no way did my friend and I make a statistically signficant contribution to the "most TiVo'ed moment in 2004" record that has been so widely publicized. We couldn't have added more than, say, one or two percent to the total.

I think a complete recording of the 2004 SuperBowl will have some enduring historical value, don't you? That, I assure you, is the only reason I haven't deleted it from my TiVo.

Power to the people.

T.I.N.

Let's Be Careful Out There!

I love technology, a lot. But occasionally, it bites.

I got bit, recently, when a friend sent me some truly unbelievable pictures of the unfolding tsunami disaster. I trusted him, and he trusted the source he got them from, so he and I both forwarded the pictures -- he to a large list of his friends and acquaintances, and I to my wife. However, I happen to subscribe to a "New Urban Legends" feed, and within a day or two I found that the pictures were clever fakes.

Somewhere, the chain of trust had a weak link, and that is still a major weakness of the internet. We can never completely trust what we see.

A 'blog,' as I mentioned in my last column, is a kind of on-line diary, or journal, that anyone may create for others to read. ('Blog' is short for 'web log.') Recently, I found a reference to the "Bill Clinton Daily Diary", with a link to it that I followed, with some curiosity. If you think it's suspicious that Bill Clinton would reveal his innermost thoughts on such a wide range of titillating subjects in a published diary, you're starting to catch on. However, there are apparently a large number of people who have been reading this for months, not realizing that it's fraudulent.

In the first case, the harm was only a little embarrassment for me, and a bit more for my friend. Actually, the embarrassment toll was quite large when you consider the extended chains of forwarders, of which we were only a small part. We can survive embarrassment, and while I have no idea how Bill Clinton puts up with someone masquerading as him on the internet, or even whether he has any recourse, I suspect he will survive the misrepresentation. However, there are people out there who want to steal your money by misrepresenting themselves, and gaining your trust.

In the last week alone, I have received three "memos" from "banks" like this, purporting to "protect the security of your account." These emails typically direct you to a website, wherein you are supposed to "confirm" the I.D. and password of your account. Recently, these emails have begun to use good English grammar, have exact duplicates of business letterheads, and have at least some face plausibility. Even if you examine the internet header, you may have difficulty finding clues that the email isn't legitimate.

I have received letters similar to this one from banks, credit card companies, eBay (an online auctioneer), and PayPal (a company that brokers monetary transactions between buyers and sellers on the internet.) Collectively, these scams are known as "phishing." The scammers "phish" for personal information they can use to steal your identity, and subsequently to steal your money.

How do you protect yourself? Certainly, be suspicious of any email asking you to provide ID's, passwords, Social Security number, or other personal information. If you have any suspicions, it's quite easy to investigate them. I begin by using Google. I type in a precise quote from the suspect email, with quotation marks, and inevitably it brings me to a fraud report. There are web sites dedicated to providing information about frauds, scams, and hoaxes. Here is a couple:

• http://www.snopes.com
• http://www.fraudwatchinternational.com/

Any website which asks you for personal information should have a URL address beginning with "https://", with the 's' on the end standing for 'secure.' On a slightly different track, definitely, keep your virus protection software up to date, and don't open email attachments without being certain of their trustworthiness.

Hopefully, we will see improvements in the internet's ability to authenticate identity, so that we can know for sure whom we are communicating with. In the meantime, as Sgt. Esterhaus used to say on Hill Street Blues, "...And, hey -- let's be careful out there."

Power to the people.

T.I.N.

The Blogosphere is My Oyster

It turns out that we all have something to say. We always did, but it has always been difficult to get everyone's attention. Letters to congressmen, phone campaigns, copy machines... All are puny tools for the powerless. How could we ever get anywhere with these useless, pedestrian modalities?

Then along came the miracle of "desktop publishing," which gave us the ability to emphasize the importance of everything with italics, multiple fonts, and fabulous color combinations. We could run off a hundred copies of all the news that's fit to print, with color graphics and a bannerhead in 48 pt Times New Roman, and mail it out to everyone in the church congregation. First the church, then the world. Time Magazine, look out!

Then we were empowered by PowerPoint. Suddenly, it didn't matter that we never got around to that Toastmasters membership, or that we continued to have problems with eye contact. Now we had slides! Good slides guaranteed that we could get our points across with nary a met gaze. And all of the arguments were solidly supported by embedded spreadsheets and tri-color bar charts. We made our points in the dark, and our emphasis with a laser pointer. Didn't hear my talk? I'll print you out a copy of my slides. First the promotion to group manager, then on to riches and national prominence as a motivational speaker. Lookout, Deepak Chopra!

But all this pales in comparison to the developments of 2004, when we discovered blogs. If you don't know, a blog is an online journal, which anyone can create. You can let the whole world read it, if you and the world are so inclined. You can even provide an automatic alert to your readers when you add something.

Compared to blogs, those other ways of trumpeting our message seem so ... well, so 20th century. Now it's just me and my laptop, sitting at a Starbucks, tapping at the keys and changing the world! I couldn't print more than a few hundred copies of my tabloid before my printer broke down, and of course the audience for my PowerPoint presentation had to fit into one room. But, oh baby, look at me now! I'm a world critic in undershorts!

I might be struck by an invaluable insight anytime, anywhere. Why should the world be deprived of it any longer than necessary? In minutes, it can be buzzing around the blogosphere, titillating and enlightening the minions.

And, you know, we -- the Bloggerati -- have influence without precedent. We blow the whistle on corporate scandals in our sandals. We pressure presidents from our residences. We whisper hot tips and watch the results on stock market tickers.

So please come to hear my 20-slide PowerPoint presentation this Sunday at the Unitarian Church, entitled, "Why YOU Should Read My Blog." Alternatively, press the Amazon button at the bottom of the page and purchase my self-published pamphlet.

Power to the People.

T.I.N.