Courtesy of Intel’s sponsorship, the book lol…OMG!: What Every Student Needs To Know About Online Reputation Management, Digital Citizenship, and Cyberbullying is being given away for free in honor of Data Privacy Day this weekend. You can get the Kindle version of the book free January 27th through the 30th from Amazon. Even if you don’t own a Kindle, you can “purchase” the book and read it through any of the Kindle apps or in your browser with the Kindle Cloud Reader.
A few 3D printing services
Affordable 3D printers are oft speculated as the next revolution in computing. Imagine a part breaking for an appliance of yours and the manufacturer stopped carrying parts for that model. Instead of having a broken hunk of junk, you could measure, design, and print the part yourself. After installing it, your appliance is back to working condition. 3D printing is also heralded as a great tool for rapid prototyping. What better way to get feedback and evaluate a design than to have a phyical representation of it in front of you instead of just plans, sketches, or blueprints.
Book Review: Tangled Web – A Guide to Securing Modern Web Applications
Tangled Web by Michal Zalewski is an incredibly detailed book on the topic of web technologies. It includes an encyclopedic history of HTTP, HTML, browsers, and the path that has led us to where we are now. The book is well referenced with plenty of endnotes to guide you to further reading on the topics. With a focus on security in web applications, the amount of knowledge conveyed in the book is breath-taking. If you were to have this information available at your finger tips, the insights and recommendations will certainly make for more secure and competent web applications.
IL Senator Dick Durbin’s response to a constituent’s objections to PIPA
On the SOPA/PIPA blackout day, I wrote my legislators. Illinois Senator Mark Kirk (prayers for a quick recovery) came out in opposition of the bill late in the day. Senator Dick Durbin remained supportive of the bill despite hundreds or thousands of his constituents contacting him in objection of PIPA through his website contact form or commenting on his Facebook page. With SOPA/PIPA shelved, Senator Durbin has continued to support the bills but his tone has changed to be much less combative than in some responses that were shared before the bill was shelved.
Today, I received my response from the Senator (Kudos for responding to every Illinois resident that contacted you!) and it is posted below:
Google unifies its Terms of Service and Privacy Policy across products with update
Google’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Service are getting an overhaul to allow information about you pass between products. While the benefits to that are obvious, so is the (justified?) paranoia that the amount of data Google has on you is a little too alarming.
Technology in Obama’s 2012 State of the Union Address
The Obama administration has embraced technology more than any previous Presidential administration. From using YouTube, to redesigning the White House website with open-source Drupal, using a Blackberry, and holding discussions on many social websites, President Obama can certainly be considered as technology-aware. With the 2012 State of the Union Address last night, various technologies was included or implied through various points. You can read the full transcript of the speech or watch it streaming but we’ll highlight the technology-related points here, all politics aside.
Both Hulu and YouTube advertise as the place to recap Super Bowl Ads
The Pro Bowl is this upcoming weekend but following that we have the Super Bowl on February 5th. The New York Giants and the New England Patriots square off in Super Bowl XLVI. With two big teams of the Northeast playing in the Midwest, there might not be as much appeal as if your hometown team was playing but at least there are always the commercials right?
Capitalizing on that mentality is YouTube and Hulu. Both streaming video sites have opened dedicated portals to where you can watch the ads. Starting February 5th, you will be able to watch and vote on your favorite ads of the Super Bowl.
Calibre, the necessary software for e-books
I only recently got my first eReader (Amazon’s Kindle) after watching the market for quite a while. One thing that made me hesitant to choose one model was incompatibilities with book formats across devices and other restrictions and features that seemed to trade off. Of course, we could just stick to reading paperback or hardcover books (for all of their technical features) but having many books portable and accessible has already proven worth the cost to me.
