April 1: Get Your Internet Game Face On

If you're internet savvy (or if you're not and getting there), you know already that not everything you read online is valid. You need to check sources, hoaxes, and any other reason to tear silliness to ribbons.

Get your internet game face on.

Today is April Fool's Day.

While you should always check backgrounds and sources, April 1 is notorious for being a source of bedlam for the internet world: anyone who has a computer can post anything on the internet. And while most of these April Fool's bits of humor are not remotely malicious, they will make you look like a fool if you read something and say OMG! I have to pass this on to everyone I know!

Credible sources - including Google - have been party to such tomfoolery.

The lesson on April 1 is: Do your research and wait until tomorrow. Then, if still credible, do your email forwarding then.

Save the servers! No April 1st email forwards!

Candid: The Loki Keyboard that Bit Me

In Norse Mythology, Loki is the troublemaker, the gadfly, the instigator (in case you needed that reference).



And in day to day reality, I am a fallible tech geek. Some folks who blog - especially those that have a business - hold themselves at a must-be-godlike standard. I understand, however, that occasionally exposing my flaws makes me more human, and we can all do with a little more human in our day to day interactions. It doesn't happen often, so enjoy the story:

Ghost in the Machine

About a month ago, I noticed that I was having some keyboard issues on my workhorse laptop. Specifically, on occasion, when I was trying to do anything from advance between the regular cavalcade of almost a dozen working applications to simply keeping a cursor in a web form, it wasn't working. Things were popping up or shifting fields as though there was a sticking problem in either my ALT or CTRL or TAB keys - or all three.

I would do anything from reboot to pound on the ALT key to scream and invoke Thor to take down this Loki in the machine. (Hey, when you're hand-coding and can't get a "<" out to start an anchor tag, things get a little crazy in the room.) I once did a Trojan scour, found one and thought it was all good - for about 30 minutes. And sometimes it worked, sometimes it faded for a time, sometimes it sent me to the Xbox360 demo of Bayonetta to do some virtual killing of demons with gun-shoes.

Yes, this has been going on for a month. I'd done some rudimentary searches for MS bugs on Vista, but only came up with a few minor operational errors that appeared rare. Bad thing was, when I was hard-up for a solution, I couldn't do a decent search because my keyboard didn't work.

Threshold | Epiphany

And this morning it hit a threshold: waking after a restless night, not yet enough coffee in me, the bug came at me with the first touch of the keyboard. I could send an email with the mouse, but couldn't type the contents; the pressing of buttons resulted in the on/of switch that is CTRL+Space, which takes my English letter combinations and translates them into a selectable tooltip for Asian characters. Basically, I could get absolutely nothing done.

I got another cup of coffee, took a few deep breaths, and - suddenly - it struck me. Not any more monumental than any other epiphany as I was holding back hope for disappointment, but there it was:

Redemption

With my graphics background on a Quantel Paintbox (pen & board), I have much greater preference for a mouse over the horrible touchpad that is on most laptops. About 6 months ago, I clicked-out my first, wired mouse and switched to a wireless Microsoft one I had previously purchased for my wife. It was a simple setup of a USB plug-in to a wireless receiver to accept input from the mouse ...and paired keyboard.

So, what if...? I went to the storage closet about 20 feet behind my desk, opened it up, and found said keyboard - sitting underneath a box of paperwork. I moved the keyboard to a higher shelf with nothing on top of it.

Guess what? No boxy, no pressy, no Loki.

Without pressure on what I thought was a do-nothing keyboard, the problem stopped: I'd been fighting with a keyboard in the closet with a box on it that was resting on the TAB, SHIFT, CTRL, ALT, and Space keys.


So what's the lesson here? Humanity, by definition, is fallible. Tech-savvy people, by definition, are fallible. And no matter how perplexing and unresolvable the problem you face, you may be surprised by the simplicity of the solution. Just pick up the box that's weighing you down.

Thursday Technology: Wii Think, WiFi Sensitivity, Dante Fail, 3D-TV

What do Wii Think?


This is not a joke.

Wii has a new one, reports Dvice. Concept peripheral that is. The reported use is that by getting older folks to think really, really hard, they'll ward off teh Alzheimer's. Yay! Right? Well, not really. See, there's not much scientific evidence saying that thinking real hard prevents Alzheimer's.

However, they have succeeded in creating the equivalent of the Nintendo Power Glove that our parents and grandparents can wear on their heads.

(sidenote: they spent so much on materials for this concept and the photog that they couldn't actually get a real Wii and used a cardboard mock-up instead.)


Dang Kids and Their Wifi - Spiders!

Now the Santa Fe New Mexican reports that one [man] has sued his neighbor for refusing to turn off their cellphone and Wi-Fi hotspot. Arthur Firstenberg claims he was made homeless by the neighbor, who apparently didn't appreciate his unique ailment. Firstenberg's legal argument is a bit of a treat, suggesting he's been forced to live in his car

I was going to put something in here about being crazy, but DSL reports already pointed out that "the science that does exist strongly suggests that those claiming to be suffering from "electromagnetic sensitivity" are simply suffering from psychosomatic disorders, and might be helped by therapy and/or medication."

If you're looking for a handout, collect unemployment like everyone else and stay home, crazy. Oh, wait. You can't. Alien death ray neighbors and all that. Sorry.


The Smack Dante so Hard Virgil Feels It Dept.



The folks behind the fun and enthralling demon-killing reimagining of one third of Dante's La Divina Commedia have sold the art so that Del Rey Books can release Longfellow's translation to coincide with the game release.

This, also, is not a joke.

Aside from the mix of zombie apocalypse and romance novel and "holy crap did he stitch a fabric cross to his chest?" and the fact that Dante does not - at any point in The Divine Comedy - wield a spine-mounted scythe, anything stick out for you?

If they'd sexed up any of Jane Austen's novel covers, I might have been a little more receptive in my Single Author class back in college. Then again, I'd have been even more disappointed by the contents. No, thank you. I'll stick to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (which is apparently starring and being produced by Natalie Portman!?)

But I digress. Message: stop pillaging classic literature with a file and wax. You're messing up the patina. And then it's worth nothing.


A Note on 3D-TV

With CES behind us for 2010, let's make one thing pretty clear: 3D-TV is the new generation's LaserDisc.

Companies see a new, cutting-edge technology, see James Cameron's "Avatar" blowing the sides off the movie industry and they want to stick their fingers into that honeypot. No! Stop! You're wasting your money!

There are people without TV's. There are people with TV's that don't use them because they haven't figured out or gone through the trouble of getting a digital tuner. There are people without cable. There are people - like me - who have a TV and cable but have not upgraded to HDTV (or even a flat panel) because of the cost.

Is anyone going to take one more step and purchase a television with a 3D badge so they can sit on their couch with glasses on? Well, yes. And those people are wealthy early-adopters.

But for the rest of us, it's silly. I loved going to see the 3D IMAX version of "Avatar" a couple weeks ago. But a really expensive television in the living room that makes me put on glasses that will probably get lost or crushed or the dog chewed them up so I can watch an occasional 3D show or movie? (Note: the tech to film "Avatar" was just invented by Cameron and most shows/broadcasts aren't even filmed in HDTV yet.)

I just don't see it.

But maybe I'm not wearing the right glasses.


That's your tech wrap for this week! What are your thoughts?