Geek News and Musings

So, this was really weird. I was having an instant messenger chat with a colleague here about the various “three strikes” proposals that have been popping up around the world, and he asked me whether or not the BSA had taken a stance on the issue. I noted not remembering hearing anything from them on it, and assumed that it was because the BSA mainly focuses on business users, for which a three strikes policy is not really an issue, and that the BSA would hopefully realize that cutting people off from the internet would almost certainly hurt the software industry a lot more than help it. But, literally 10 seconds after I sent that last text, I flipped over to my RSS reader and up popped an article about how the BSA has come out in favor of a three strikes plan. Freaky.

Guess I should have known better than to assume the BSA was smarter than the RIAA on this issue. As the article at Ars explains, the BSA tries to put in a bunch of caveats about due process and judicial oversight, but spends a bunch of time in its statement explaining how ISPs can get around all that due process and judicial oversight by simply putting three strikes into their contractual language — meaning that they can just decide on their own to cut users off. Good luck with that.

More troubling, however, is that when questioned about the new statement by Ars Technica, the BSA said it was necessary because “last year our industry lost over $50 billion (USD) worldwide.” Hmm. It’s really quite troubling that the BSA still stands by these numbers when they’ve been debunked so thoroughly over and over again. They count the “retail value” of every piece of software as being “lost,” which is clearly a lie. Five years ago, the research company that runs these studies for the BSA, IDG, flat out said that the BSA was wrong in claiming that “the retail value” of the software is the same as “losses.” So why does the BSA continue to get away with claiming it?

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As most Mac users have undoubtedly read over the past few days, there are some pieces of software that are a bit buggy with the latest version of OS X, Snow Leopard, which was released on Friday. Applications that have been having issues include the developer builds of Chrome and Chromium for OS X. While these versions are obviously still not complete yet, there are more and more people using them as they had been becoming increasingly stable and usable under OS X Leopard. And today, Google rolled out a bunch of bug fixed to keep it purring along in Snow Leopard as well.

Specifically, version 4.0.203.4 of the Dev channel build of Chrome fixes a host of problems, ranging from text being garbled to favicons no longer working. Find the full list of changes here.

I’ve been playing around with the latest Chromium builds all day, and have yet to notice a crash. Flash is still working just fine, but unfortunately the bookmark manager (including the bookmark importer), which was available in builds earlier this month, is still temporarily disabled.

You can grab the latest builds of Chromium here, as well as the Dev channel build of Chrome for Mac here. You can also find out information about our Chromium auto-updater here, though we have yet to test it in Snow Leopard yet, hopefully we’ll do that soon and will update you on it.

Update: At some point recently, Chromium gained a nice new “About” screen (below):

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I knew this was common years ago, but I honestly had no clue that modern sports leagues were so clueless as to think that it made sense to blackout local TV broadcasting if the attendance at the event wasn’t a sell-out. Those rules were from a time (apparently still existing for some) where people actually thought that being able to see a game on TV would mean fewer people coming out to the actual game. Of course, as any sports fan knows, there’s a massive difference between watching on TV and “being there.” But allowing fans to watch their favorite team on TV does seem to encourage fans to care more about their team, making it more likely that they’ll go out and see the team live when they can. But… not according to the NFL, who still has such blackout rules in effect, and is suddenly worried that attendance this season is dropping (thanks Carlo) due to the economy, meaning that many more games won’t be shown to local fans. It’s difficult to see how that makes any sense at all. All it does is piss off the biggest fans, and give them reasons not to pay attention to the team, and to cut out the most compelling local TV for many fans (harming ad revenue). On top of that, you risk a sort of death spiral. Teams that don’t get enough fans at the live event piss off their fans who can’t watch the games on TV — and without the games on TV, they’re less interested in following the team… leading to less interest in going to the game… leading to more empty seats… leading to even fewer games getting on TV.

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Google Voice is great, but it isn’t an entirely free voice-over-internet service if you have to pay a phone bill to use it. With a few tweaks, though, you can talk to anyone on-the-cheap through Skype, or entirely for free with Gizmo.

Since we’re extremely cheap, we’ll start out with the Gizmo/Google Voice 1/2 combo, since you can use it to place and receive calls without spending a dime. If you’re particularly partial to Skype, we’ll demonstrate how you can integrate Gizmo, Voice, and Skype for cheaper Skype calls after we demonstrate how to get everything up and running with Gizmo.

What you’ll need

• A comfortable headset: Mine’s a $30, USB-or-analog model I grabbed off the shelf at Target. If you plan to do some serious talking from in front of your monitor, read up on what works best for your ears and head.
• Free Google Voice account: If you haven’t already requested an invite, do so now. They’re still dishing them out first-come, first-served style, and the line gets longer every time someone writes an article about the service (ahem).
• Free Gizmo5 account: It’s a free virtual phone service that Google Voice officially supports and connects to. If you’re more of a Skype person, we’ll show you a relatively cheap solution for hooking up Gizmo to Skype.
• Broadband net connection: Because you’re doing a good deal of data transfer and service forwarding, you’ll want a pretty good pipe for phone calls that won’t make you wish for your cell phone.

Hooking up Voice and Gizmo

Once you’ve finished signing up for Gizmo and Google Voice, head to my.gizmo5.com, and log yourself in if necessary. Hit the “My” link in the upper-right corner to get to your settings page. The first box asks you to enter your Google Voice number and turn Google Voice calling on, which you should definitely do. That routes all outbound Gizmo calls through Voice, eliminating the need to buy credits for those outbound calls.

Three rows down, under the “Account Overview” section, copy your SIP Number, which you won’t need to memorize, or even use, except this one time. Head over to Google Voice, click the Settings link, then Phones, and paste that SIP number into the “Number” field. Give your Gizmo account a name like, say, Gizmo, then set the “Phone Type” to Gizmo. By default, your Gizmo/VoIP phone will always “ring” whenever someone calls your Google Voice number from any phone. I find that to be just fine, since “ringing” that phone doesn’t really affect any of your other phones, and I don’t leave my computer on at all times with the speakers at full blast. If you only want your virtual phone to ring at certain times on certain days, go ahead and tweak those settings in Voice, then hit Save.

Got those headphones handy? Plug them in, usually through a USB port or the dual red/green mic/speakers ports on your computer. Check that the headphones are picking up sounds and that the microphone is enabled in your system’s volume settings. Want to test out your Voice/Gizmo capabilities? Head to http://gizmocall.com, then sign in with your Gizmo username. Hit the “Test” button for an echo test of your headset and connection. To try out an actual call, call your Google Voice number from a standard cell or landline phone you have handy, or open up Google Voice’s site in another browser tab and make a call to a phone number that won’t mind getting it.

It’s worth noting that since you’re using a VoIP service through another VoIP service’s routers, it’s fair to expect a bit of call lag. I haven’t noticed an audible difference between using Google Voice on my cellphone and through Gizmo but, then again, I’ve had seemingly worse lag experiences overall with Voice than others I’ve complained about it to. Your mileage will almost certainly vary, but if you’ve got an ultra-important phone interview for a job, consider stepping away from your headset. Otherwise, it probably works just fine for normal conversations.

Calling tools

If all went well between Voice and Gizmo, you’ve got a few options for making and receiving free calls through your headset with Voice and Gizmo:

• The GizmoCall.com site: You can keep the page itself loaded in your browser, or click the “Open in separate window” link to keep it separate from your browsing work. When it first opens, your Flash plug-in will ask for access to your microphone and speakers, which you should grant and hit “Remember” to avoid future prompts.
  

  Want to reduce browser tab necessities and make Gizmo even more convenient? Check out Google Voice Tricks’ write-up on embedding Gizmo’s gadget into Gmail.

• Gizmo software: Available for download for Windows, Mac, and Linux systems, Gizmo the application is very similar to Skype, sitting in the system tray and popping up an alert window when a new call is coming in. It also tracks your VoIP calling separate from your Google Voice account, which can be helpful for client billing or other purposes. If you’re planning to keep Gizmo open to accept calls, you’ll probably want to import your contacts into it to recognize callers. You can only import an Outlook-formatted file into Gizmo, but that’s one of the formats most contact managers (Google, Apple Mail, etc.) can export to.
• Google Voice site: You’ll still need to have some kind of Gizmo notifier running to receive calls, but Google Voice’s own site is pretty handy for making calls. Load up the site (or keep it loaded as a permatab), hit “c” to make a call, type in a contact name or phone number, then select your Gizmo number as the caller. Google will ring you at Gizmo, and once you pick up, the call starts ringing through to the intended receiver.

Forwarding to Skype

If you’re already set up with a Skype name and lots of contacts and you’d prefer to keep Skype as your go-to VoIP app, you can get Google Voice and Gizmo to route calls to Skype for notably less money than Skype charges for its call-out service. Alternately, if you only need to make the occasional Skype call and don’t want to bother installing software and getting a user account, Gizmo and Google are available there, too.

Gizmo explains all the potential uses and ins and outs at its OpenSky page, and also lists pricing. You can make free calls to Skype names and forward your Voice/Gizmo calls to Skype for anywhere from 1-5 minutes, depending on server load—fine for quick "Call me back" or "Here's the deal" messages, but not conversations. OpenSky claims a $20/year price for basically unlimited calling of up to 2 hours per call. We don't do a lot of Skype out calling, but that seems like a pretty good deal.

Whether you're going the free short call route or paying for some OpenSky credit, setting up a Voice-to-Gizmo-to-Skype connection is fairly easy. Head to your Gizmo5 settings page again, then head to the "Forwarding Gizmo5 Calls" section. Set Gizmo to forward all calls to Skype, then fill in your Skype username. That's it—when someone rings your Voice number, if you've got Voice configured to ring you at Gizmo, then you'll actually be rung up at Skype. The last thing you'll need to do is enable Skype to accept calls from anonymous callers—kind of a pain, but necessary, because Gizmo routes your calls through different Skype names from time to time.

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That’s the starting point for integrating free (or very cheap) VoIP with Google Voice, but with such open, geeky services, we’re sure there’s a lot more that can be done. Post up your questions, suggestions, and neat hacks in the comments.

If you’ve been keeping up with the latest Chrome releases for OS X and you just upgraded from Leopard to Snow Leopard, you may have been disappointed to learn that Snow Leopard introduced quite a few bugs into Chrome. Luckily, Google’s just released a dev channel update for Chrome on OS X fixing issues related to keyboard shortcuts, appearance, crashes, and more. You can download the latest dev release here. [Google Chrome Releases]

Last week we wrote about claims that copyright holders were purposely putting their own content online to see who downloaded it, and then suing them. In that post, we mentioned a post from last year, about one of the companies that’s been hired to track down file sharers, DigiProtect, and how its contract seems to suggest this is exactly what the company does. After that came out, there was some talk about how that contract clause really was only used to make sure the company had the right to investigate infringement. However, the company now appears to be quite forward in admitting that it puts files online specifically to catch downloaders:

“We get the legal rights from the companies to distribute these movies to stores, and with these rights we can sue illegal downloaders. Then we take legal action in every country possible, concentrating on the places where such action will be profitable.”

Of course, this seems questionable on a variety of levels. First, if it’s getting the distribution rights to the content, then the distribution is authorized, and not infringing. Second, DigiProtect makes it quite clear that its focus is on figuring out the most profitable way to do this — not the best way to cut down on infringement. The company apparently doesn’t pay anyone on a fixed salary, but everyone shares in a cut of whatever is “collected.” In other words, the program is not at all about stopping unauthorized file sharing, but figuring out the best way to profit from sending threat letters to people. The company even admits that the numbers it demands from people, and the numbers used in lawsuits have nothing to do with actual damages, but are entirely about what they think is mostly likely to get them paid. That sounds an awful lot like the what most people call extortion.

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On its iGoogle Developer Blog today Google issued a warning to developers: Optimize your gadgets for speed, or we’re labeling them as “slow” in the directory.

Starting in late September, Google says that any widget that doesn’t meet a speed requirement, will get a nice “slow” badge attached to its directory listing. The only detail it gives about the requirement is that it will get the badge if it’s “slow enough to cause speed-related user dissatisfaction.”

That sounds pretty arbitrary, and that it could lead to a lot of developers complaining that their apps aren’t really slow, but are labeled as such. But we all know how much Google loves speed, so this move isn’t all that surprising.

To make sure your gadget doesn’t get the Scarlett Letter, check out these optimization tips from Google.

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Ottawa artist Howie Tsui paints fantastical, evil, and beautiful landscapes of monsters, ghosts, demons, and deities. He tells me that his new large paintings, “Horror Fables,” are in the form of Ming Dynasty scrolls and were influenced by “a variety of dark subjects, including Asian ghost stories, Buddhist hell scrolls, Hong Kong vampire films, neo-conservative propaganda, and twentieth-century genocides such as the Nanking massacre.” Howie Tsui

Over at BB Gadgets, Steven has the details on these I-SWARM robugs. They’re 4 mm long, wide, and tall and solar-powered. Swarm Bots: Now W/Solar Power, Complex Behaviors!

A followup on this earlier BB post about the wacko blog and gadget hallucinations of kidnapper/rapist (now also a murder suspect) Phillip Garrido.

Weighing in on that post, an astute BB commenter noticed that if you do a Google Maps search for 1554 Walnut Avenue, Antioch, CA — the address of the Antioch home where Garrido detained Jaycee Dugard (and her children, fathered by rape) — you can see an overhead view of all the tents, tarps and sheds that Garrido’s parole officer(s) and local police were too incompetent to bother checking, despite the fact that the guy was a convicted rapist. The overhead view in Google Maps has since been widely reported and blogged, so that’s old news 4 days later.

But not this. Check out what another commenter noticed. When you’re at that address in Google Maps, switch over to Street View mode. You’ll see something chilling. Right in the 1554 Walnut Avenue driveway, you see a beat-up van with a rusty, trashed exterior, and what looks like a man behind the steering wheel. Follow the van. Pull your POV out of that driveway, moving away on Walnut toward Bown, and look backwards toward the house on Street View. For what I think is, like, 6 blocks or more, that guy in that van is following the black Google VW with cameras mounted on it. Was that Garrido in the van? Is it possible he saw the Google van with all the gear on top, freaked out about being surveilled, and followed it for a while with interest and fear?Maybe, maybe not. IANALEO (I am not a law enforcement officer) so I don’t know. Maybe I’m imagining this, and I probably need to stop obsessing about this story. But it’s the creepiest thing I’ve ever seen on Google Street View.

Photos: Here’s the Flickr set I created of the sequence within Google Maps. The final shot, before the van veers away, is at the top of this post.

Previously on BB: The blog of Philip Garrido, serial rapist and kidnapper: “sound control” gadget hallucinations.

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