Ken Knapton's Cyber Safety Blog

Moved my blog!

2010-08-11T08:55:00.000-06:00

I have moved my blog to KenKnapton.com - please update your favorites, and join me over there!

Cyber Stalking

2010-08-05T13:39:00.000-06:00

The Wall Street Journal reports that GPS technology in cell phones and location services on social networking is making it much easier for stalkers to track their victims.

The report mentions that those who are most at risk to be stalking victims, 18-24 year olds, is the same demographic that uses technology such as social networking. The majority of stalking victims know their stalkers, and thus would be connected with them, even if they are not directly "friends", on their social networks.

Please take a few moments to watch this video. Then,make sure you check your settings on your cell phone and social networking page, and make use of the "block" feature on Facebook when needed.

What Americans Do Online

2010-08-03T08:40:00.000-06:00

Nielson has a released a new report called What Americans Do Online: Social Media And Games Dominate Activity Nielsen Wire. One of the most interesting facts to come from this report is that social networking has not only become the #1 activity on the web, this report indicates that it has a full 25% share of our online time.

Some other interesting facts to come from this report are:

* Online games overtook personal email to become the second most heavily used activity behind social networks – accounting for 10 percent of all U.S. Internet time. Email dropped from 11.5 percent of time to 8.3 percent.

* June 2010 was a major milestone for U.S. online video as the number of videos streamed passed the 10 billion mark. The average American consumer streaming online video spent 3 hours 15 minutes doing so during the month.

* Email remains as the third heaviest activity online (8.3 percent share of time) while instant messaging is fifth, accounting for four percent of Americans online time.

10 Golden Rules

2010-07-15T15:06:00.000-06:00

Germany’s consumer minister has recently called for the creation of the "Internet’s 10 Golden Rules”. As I was considering this concept, I thought I would write my own personal list. Here is what I came up with.

Ken Knapton’s 10 Golden Rules of Internet Usage

Be respectful. When responding to others online, I will always show respect and will not degrade or demean. I will live by the mantra that “It is OK to disagree, but it is not OK to be disagreeable”.
Be kind. I will be kind to all with whom I interact online. I will not use technology to bully, harass, or otherwise degrade or demean others.
Be myself. My online identity will be a realistic representation of who I am. Someone who knows me online would not be surprised to meet me in person – I am the same person in the physical world, with the same passions, skills, and experiences as I am online. I will not portray myself as someone I am not.
Be accountable. I will take ownership and responsibility for all of my comments, posts and interactions on line. I will not hide behind anonymity, screen names, or other mechanisms to try and hide my online interactions. I will not use technology to participate in any activity that I would not want my children, spouse, ecclesiastical leader or anyone else to observe.
Be lawful. I will respect the law online as I do in the physical world. I will not use technology to participate in anything that is illegal or immoral.
Speak up. I will join the conversation, and share - not force – my opinions and views on blogs, news stories, and other online media. I will allow those who want to find me to do so – I will not force my content, opinions or judgments on anyone else.
Do no harm. I will not encourage others to participate in any online interactions that would cause them harm. I will not participate in any online interactions that would cause others harm, put them in danger, or cause disruption to their livelihood or family.
Strike a balance. I will not allow virtual interactions to take an inordinate amount of time or attention away from my other “real” interactions and relationships. I will not use technology as a time-waster. I will use technology to enhance “real” relationships – not to harm them.
Show integrity. I will show a high level of integrity in all of my interactions – whether online or in the physical world.
Use good judgment. I will not forward emails in the hope of getting a check from Bill Gates, helping some poor child in a third-world country, or seeing something “cool” on my screen. I will not open attachments from people I don’t know. I will not try to accumulate “friends” on my social networks just to get a big number, but instead I will be judicious in my choice of whom I communicate with online, and how I manage my online interactions. I will protect my identity, my data and my relationships.

So, now you know my personal 10 Golden Rules of Internet Usage. If you agree with these, and would like to add your name to this list, feel free to leave a comment agreeing with this list. If you disagree, think I missed something, or want to share your own list, feel free to leave a comment to that effect as well.

Education is key

2010-06-07T17:41:00.000-06:00

In the June issue of the Ensign there is an article entitled Education is Key to Protecting Families from Pornography. The article passes along several of the suggestions I offered to parents at the Protecting Children and Families from Pornography and Other Harmful Materials conference eariler this year. Please take a moment to follow the link above and read the article!

Technology as a Tool

2010-05-31T14:02:00.000-06:00

One of the points that I try to make when I speak on Cyber Safety is that technology itself is neither good nor bad - the morality of technology comes in how that technology is used.

I had a perfect example of this recently. I was speaking in Salt Lake, about 45 miles from my home, and when I got back in my car to drive to my next engagment, I couldn't turn the key to start my car. Evidently, the tumblers in my ignition column decided they were tired of tumbling, and wanted a permanent rest. After coming to the realization that no amount of fidling with the key would get it to turn, I gave up and called my wife to come rescue me. We left my car in Salt Lake City, returned home, and apologized profusely for missing a speaking engagement (that is probably the worst part of this for me, but that is not the point of this post).

Since the next day was a holiday, I knew that I wouldn't be able to get the car fixed for at least one more day. I really didn't want to leave it on the street, and worried about how to fix it so far away from my house. I knew that we couldn't tow it home because I have to turn the key in order to get the car out of park, so we were pretty much stuck. Being the "computer geek" that my wife frequently reminds me that I am, I decided to turn to the Internet to see if anyone had been thoughtful enough to post instructions about how to hotwire a car. Sure enough, I quickly found step-by-step instructions. I returned to my car, followed the instructions and was soon on the road returning my car to our driveway to be fixed sometime in the future.

Prior to this incident, had I run across instructions online about how to hotwire a car, my first thoughts would have been about how this information contributes to the deliquency of minors, and teaches kids how to embark on a life of crime. While there still may be an element of truth to that sentiment, I am grateful to have found the information I needed to assist in a very valid need of getting my property back to my own home. People who want to steal cars will figure out how to do it, with or without the Internet. The fact that instructions are posted online is not in-and-of-itself evil.

As I continue to say, the Internet is neither good nor bad - it simply "is". How we use the information we come across on the Internet is where we put that information to good use or evil use. The ethics and morality of how we use technology is completely in our own hands. It is important to remember that, since there are not many things that you cannot find out about on the information superhighway today. It is even more important to teach our children this concept so they understand how to use technology as a tool to help uplift, and not to drag down.

7 Ways to Reduce Online Dangers

2010-05-13T15:54:00.000-06:00

Education Tech news today listed 7 ways to help educate school children about online safety. I am honored to be listed as one of the 7.

How does Violence in Gaming affect our children?

2010-04-30T16:42:00.002-06:00

Here I discuss how violence in gaming affects our children. This is an excerpt from my talk at the "Protecting Children and Families from Pornography and Other Harmful Materials" conference earlier this year.

UCAP - Filters 101

2010-04-30T16:40:00.002-06:00

Here is my discussion of filters from the "Protecting Children and Families From Pornography and Other Harmful Materials" conference earlier this year.

UCAP - Intro to "Cyber Safety"

2010-04-30T16:37:00.001-06:00

I posted some excerpts from my talk at the "Protecting Children and Families from Pornography and Other Harmful Materials". Take a look here:

Utah Coalition Against Pornography Annual Conference

2010-03-28T22:16:00.002-06:00

The Deseret News today had an article about the "Protecting Children and Families from Pornography and other harmful material" conference sponsored by the Utah Coalition Against Pornography. They quoted my break-out session. Very nice write-up of a great conference!

C u l8r. Will these be your final words?

2010-03-23T12:32:00.005-06:00

Seen on a billboard along I-15 in Utah: "C u l8r. Will these be your final words?". According to a University of Utah professor, distracted driving is responsible for more teen deaths than drunk driving. As quoted in this article, 1 in 10 drivers are talking on the phone at any given moment. And, although some states have enacted laws against texting while driving, many continue the practice. While this is dangerous enough for adults, it is even more dangerous for less experienced and more easily disatracted teen drivers.

Parents - urge your teenagers to put away the cell phone while driving. Help them understand that there is nothing so urgent that they have to respond to it while they are driving. Leaving the cell phone in their pocket while in the car could quite literally save their life.

Soldier court-martialed over his Facebook Status

2010-03-05T13:05:00.002-07:00

Adults also need to be cautious of what they post on Facebook - this story tells of a soldier who posted the details of a pending raid, and was court-martialed for it. The "digital natives" who grew up with technology engrained in their lives often don't think through the consequences of sharing everything on their favorite Social Network!

Public Library Computers

2010-03-04T11:49:00.002-07:00

I continue to be amazed that many public libraries do not install filters on their computers. As this story from the Salt Lake Tribute shows, there are individuals who are so drawn to their addiction that they will not hesitate to view inappropriate material in a public place, where our children can look over their shoulder at any moment.

While we can control what our children see on the computers in our own home, we do need to remember that they have access to the Internet in many other locations, including the public library, their school, their friends homes, and - if they have a laptop, netbook or smart phone - anyplace they can find a public WiFi hotspot. Even if we have protected our home computers, we need to talk with out children about what is available, and how they can avoid it.

How to set Parental Controls on Game Consoles

2010-02-25T09:55:00.002-07:00

After a recent Cyber Safety event, several of the participants asked me how to set parental controls on their game console. Since each one is different, I could not provide step-by-step instructions at the time, but I thought it would make a great blog post.

As you may know, most game consoles today allow Internet access, either to enable multi-player games over the Internet or to even to enable web browsing directly from the game console. These web browsers are not filtered by the content filter that you may have installed on the computers in your home, so you may want to make use of the parental controls to disable web browsing altogether.

Parental controls can also be used to set limits on the types of games that you allow in your home. Most games today have an ESRB rating, which is much like a moving rating - it informs parents of the target audience for the game, and helps communicate what type of activities are found in the playing of the game. For more information on ESRB ratings and how to interpret them, click here. You can use the parental controls to limit the games based on their ESRB rating.

Here are the step-by-step instructions for setting parental controls for the three most popular game consoles on the market today:

XBox

Wii

Playstation

Remember that your game console is every bit as powerful of a computer as the desktop and laptop machines that you may have in your home, and require just as much parental oversight.

Teen gets 15 years in prison for Facebook scam

2010-02-25T08:22:00.003-07:00

19-year-old Anthony Stancl has been sentenced to 15 years in prison, plus an additional 13 years of extended supervision, for sexual crimes initiated on Facebook. He posed as a female and enticed other teens to send him sexually explicit images of themselves, then used those images to blackmail them.

The District Attorney prosecuting the case said he is not sure the message is getting out to the kids, as sexting continues to grow as a problem among our teens. He is quoted as saying: "I'm just not sure they're hearing this message...I hope their parents are."

I agree. Parents, we need to know what our kids are doing online, and help them understand that there are real, long-term ramifications to their actions.

Parents Beware - random video chat

2010-02-24T20:27:00.002-07:00

I am hesitant to even write this post, for fear of generating some curiosity. The only reason I do is because your content filter will probably not automatically block this site - and you will want to keep your children away. Please, take my word for it, and add these two URLs to your block list: ChatRoulette.com and ChatRT.com.

This is a relatively new site that is catching on very quickly. According to this post, it grew from 300 users in December to 10,000 in February of this year. The site allows you to randomly connect via video chat (that is, through the webcam on your computer to the webcam on another computer) to another individual who happens to be using the site at the same time. If you don't like who you are chatting with, you click "next" and are randomly connected to another person.

Although the terms of use state that pornographic content is not allowed, there is no way to actually control what people display on their webcam, and you know as well as I do that there are some really crazy people out there.

You do not want your children accessing this site. If you have a content filter installed, add this to your block list. If you don't, now would be a great time to install one - before your kids stumble across it.

Apple Removes 5,000 apps from IStore

2010-02-23T09:38:00.002-07:00

Thousands of applications have disappeared from Apple's iStore in the past few days. Apple has begun enforcing their new policy of not allowing "overtly sexual" applications. I applaud them for this move. There is no age restriction for using an iPod, and many children have access to one. In their first attempt to resolve this problem, Apple enabled a "Parental Controls" feature for the iPod, but taking the additional step to remove these adult-oriented applications completely is another big step in the right direction.

Of course, this is a very controversial move, and Apple is taking some heat from those on the other side of this issue. I just want Apple to know that I am very appreciative of their new policy, and I applaud them for it.

One final note of irony for this post: I really wanted to provide a link to another source (news story, blog post, etc), but I couldn't find one that didn't have an image in the article showing what types of applications have been removed! I can't in good conscience provide a link that would send my readers to view the very material that we are talking about as being inappropriate for the iStore. Yes, I know that one can see most of these images in a magazine rack in the local grocery store, but that doesn't mean that I need to point you in that direction. So, I apologize for not having a link to a full news story on this post...

Cyber Bullying: Legality vs Morality

2010-02-16T13:38:00.005-07:00

A Federal Judge has ruled that a former high school student can proceed with her lawsuit against her old high school over a facebook-related suspension. She was suspended for posting unflattering comments about a teacher on a facebook page, and urged others to join her, and is now suing to have her record expunged (you can read full story here). There was a similar ruling in December from across the country - in this case, a student was suspended over cyberbullying content aimed at another student and posted on YouTube (you can read that story here).

In both of these cases the justice system is siding with the individuals who use digital media to post derogatory comments about another person - today referred to as a "cyber bully". The judges in both cases are listening to arguments related to the first ammendment, and extending that right of free speech to digital Internet communications. Seems like an appropriate interpretation of "free speech".

On the flip side of the issue is a now-famous case involving Sue Scheff, who was defamed online. Sue brought a case against her attacker, and eventually won an $11.3M verdict, which has now been upheld on appeal (you can read about her case in her book Google Bomb).

So, what are we to conclude from these cases? That kids can say anything they want without fear of retribution, but adults can be held accountable for their words and actions? I guess that would be one way to interpret these cases. But, I tend to see this just a bit differently. For me, it comes down to a subtle yet dramatic change in the world in which we live.

Today kids are empowered with tools that we didn't have when I was young. If I had a problem with a teacher, or a fellow student, I could tell maybe 20 peolple. My parents would get wind of it, and they would sit me down and have a heart-to-heart. I would then have the "opportunity" to return to the invididual that I was defaming, and apologize. No harm, no foul - and I got to learn a lesson about how we treat others.

Today, our kids can tell thousands, even hundreds of thousands of people - including future employers, college recruitters, future spouses or religious leaders. Word can spread quickly, and once it is in cyberspace, it is there forever. Whether the person we are defaming is a student or an adult, the information is now "out there" for anyone to search and find, and the ramifications are much more far-reaching than they were before digital media. By the time the young one realizes they were too harsh, an apology to the defamed individual is not going to resolve the issue any longer.

For me, these cases highlight the fact that in todays digital world it is even more important than ever for parents to be teaching morality and ethics, rather than just legal right and wrong. They need to teach digital responsibility. Parents need to know what their children are doing, how they are using digital media, and what their children are saying about others - be they students, teachers, leaders, or anyone else. Parents need to know how their children are using technology, just as they need to know how their children are using the car. If the children do not show restraint in their use of technology, it is up to the parents, not the legal system, to reign them in.

Of course, this means that parents need to understand the persistent nature of digital media, and parents need to understand that posting untrue, or even extremely biased opinions about other people can be extremely dangerous to those individuals. A student who posts defamatory comments about a teacher could have a very negative impact on that teachers ability to earn a living - while this may be legal, it may not be morally right. Parents have to instill in their children their moral compas, and help teach them to be guided by this compas throughout thier lives.

In our digital world, a momentary lapse of judgement by an adolescent who doesn't think through the consequences of their actions can lead to very real, and very serious consequences. Informed and involved parents can go a long way toward minimizing the impact of such lapses of judgement.

Family Movie Night

2010-01-11T09:13:00.002-07:00

Our family really enjoys watching movies together. Getting the family together and watching a good movie is one way we like to spend our time - but it is difficult to find movies that we can watch as a family - expecially with the age ranges that we have in our home.

Several years ago we looked into ways to get movies that would meet our family standards. We found two different ways of accomplishing this - one was the companies like CleanFilms and CleanFlicks that would edit the movie, re-burn it on a new DVD and rent that DVD to us. The other was ClearPlay, which uses a special DVD player to edit the movie on-the-fly. We chose to use CleanFilms, and enjoyed that service for a couple of years.

Soon, however, CleanFilms, and those like it, were put out of business because Hollywood didn't like someone else editing thier movies - so, we were left without a way to watch movies as a family without worrying that the PG or PG13 rating still didn't meet our family standards (for example, you are allowed one F-bomb in a PG13 movie...we don't want any...).

Because of how their technology works, ClearPlay doesn't have the same legal issues - although they have been challenged in court. That is because they are not modifying the DVD itself at all - instead, they provide a "filter" that you can download from their website, and the movie is "edited" in real-time as you watch it. Once I realized that they had come out with a high-definition version of their player - well, somehow one of them made it under our tree this past Christmas.

Now that I have had a chance to watch a few movies on it, I figured I'd provide a quick review here.

To use a ClearPlay device you will need to purchase the device itself, then pay for the filters on an ongoing basis. We purchased the annual license, which gives us full access to all filters for a full year. Not a bad deal.

Our first experience was not good. After loading the full library of filters, we put in our rented DVD, which was of a fairly new release movie, and sat down to watch the movie. The ClearPlay device told me that there was no filter loaded. I looked on thier website and saw the filter listed as one that they offered, so I ended up calling support. Turns out that the filter is tied to the version of the movie - widescreen is one filter, standard picture is another, etc - and we just happend to get a version that they didn't have a filter for. Bummer. I had to keep the remote handy, and we did indeed have to fast-forward a few scenes. Not fun.

Our next two movies were much better. We inserted the DVD, and immediatly our player found and loaded the filter. The experience watching the movie was not too bad. There are two possibilities when ClearPlay is editing the movie - 1. it will skip a scene entirely, and 2. it will automatically mute the sound.

The first time ClearPlay muted the sound it was a bit odd - I thought something had gone wrong with the DVD. A conversation was going on, and suddently all sound was gone. We saw the actor moving his mouth, but we heard nothing - including all of the background noise (the discussion was happening in a subway). Then, I realized that he was using expletives, and the device had edited them out for us. Very nice.

We could not always tell when a full scene was edited out, but once one of the actors made a reference to something that had happened earlier in the movie, and we realized the scene had been skipped - but it really didn't affect the flow of the story at all. I did notice some slight pauses in some scenes, as though the DVD stuck for a half a second - I am not sure whether that is an indication of a scene being edited out or not - but if so, it is a small price to pay for removing a scene that we don't want our family to see. Still very worthwhile.

So, bottom line: ClearPlay is a great way to watch movies. We are very happy with our device, and plan to use it to, as ClearPlay says, bring back family movie night.

Bypassing Filters

2009-12-15T10:32:00.001-07:00

I had the opportunity recently to speak to some teens in a sexual addiction recovery program, along with their parents and therapists. There were about 15 – 20 of these boys in the room, and each of them introduced themselves to me as we began the meeting. Because of the topic I was to present on (Cyber Safety), they were asked to share with me one thing about the Internet that has been a problem for them. While not surprising, their answer to this question was certainly eye-opening.

Every one of these boys informed me that they had viewed pornography on the Internet. However, they didn’t identify that as their “problem” with the Internet – almost every one of these teens told me that their problem with the Internet is that they know how to get around the technical blocks that are placed in their way to prevent access to pornography. Wow. I have long known that children know how to get around filters, and those who have either read my book or frequent this blog know that one of my main concerns with Cyber Safety is that parents will install a filter and think that their job of protecting their children is done. So, this revelation from these teens was not a surprise – but the fact that they consider their knowledge of how to bypass technology as their primary problem with the Internet certainly was a surprise.

In my opinion, every computer should have a filter installed to prevent inadvertent access to pornography – for both adults and children. However, parents need to understand that their job doesn’t end there. Staying diligent with regard to how your computer is used, and maintaining an open dialog with your children regarding their Internet usage is the best defense against inappropriate Internet use.

How old should you be to Facebook?

2009-12-03T15:54:00.003-07:00

I ran across an interesting article on KSL today entitled "Is 12 too young for Social Media?" While I agree with the intent of the article, I think there is another angle to explore. The line that caught my attention is this "Stay says there are some dangers with allowing 12-year-olds to use sites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter". Yes, there are - and those same dangers apply to people who are 13, 15, 18, 25 and so on.

Yes, I understand that as children mature, they improve in their ability to make good choices, and they evolve in their understanding of dangers both in the physical world and the digital one. But, there is nothing magical about ANY birthday - the person is still the same person they were the day before.

Think of it this way: We have a child who recently turned 18. My wife and I didn't all of a sudden start treating him like an adult, just because he had a birthday - rather, we give him the freedoms that he has proven he can handle as he grew up. When he reached 18, he had already shown he could handle certain freedoms. Whether or not the world thinks he is an adult has no bearing on the freedoms that we allow him - other than those afforded by law, of course (in other words, we wouldn't allow him to drive at 14, just because he showed the ability to handle that responsibility).

Similarly, we don't let our 13 year old watch any-and-every PG13 movie, just because some rating system tells me it is appropriate for 13-year-olds. We, as the parents, decide what is OK for our 13 year old to watch. There are some PG13 movies that my wife and I won't watch - and there are some that we allow our 11-year old to watch. It all depends on the content of the movie and the person's ability to handle that particular content or topic. We, as the parents, make the judgement call - not our community, our society, or Hollywood.

Similarly, I believe that there are some 13, 15, 18 and older people who shouldn't be on Facebook. It all comes down to the individuals understanding of the technology and the ramifications of not being digitally responsible. If you don't believe me, just look into the story of Cynthia Moreno, a college student (well over 13) who posted a rant about her hometown on her MySpace page. Not a good idea - and her family has suffered greatly now because of it.

Rather than talk about a specific age when we should allow our children to participate on a social network, we should look at how that child handles themselves, and what they know of the dangers of the web. Those who can be digitally responsible should be able to use technology - just as those of my children who can be responsible drivers are going to be able to borrow my keys. Those who cannot, will have to wait a while longer - no matter how old they are.

Time controls: Least-utilized Parental Control feature

2009-11-30T14:45:00.003-07:00

In your home, how do you control the amount of time that your children spend on the Internet? I have been asking parents this question recently, and although this cannot be considered a scientific poll by any stretch of the imagination, the answers I have received lead me to believe that “time controls” is probably the most under-utilized technological solution available to parents today.

What are Time Controls?

Time controls allow parents to set some boundaries regarding the amount of time children can spend on the Internet, or even on the computer itself. Time controls can be configured in two ways:

1. Set the amount of time per day or per week that a child can use the Internet.
2. Set specific hours during the day (or night) that the Internet can be accessed.

Even though time controls are freely available via Internet filters and even some operating systems, much of the time parents don’t know they have this capability, and the feature is never configured and remains unused.

Why do we need Time Controls?

Many parents in my non-scientific poll replied that they themselves are the time control – they simply watch their children on the computer, and tell them when to turn it off. They do this for all other activities their children participate in - they say - why not treat computer access the same way?

Natural Bounds

Others tell me that they don’t control time on the computer - they allow their children to naturally tire of the activity itself. I call this the “natural bounds” approach. In years past, many children’s activities were controlled by natural bounds: for example, my parents didn’t need to tell me when to stop playing sports. The environment or the activity itself naturally limited our play—whether it was the setting of the sun, the park closing, enough of my friends going home that there were simply not enough of us left to enjoy a game, or, just being too tired to run around anymore. In the end, we would have to wrap up our activities and plan to meet again the next day. It was the natural order of things.

Unfortunately, this approach breaks down when it comes to technology. Digital activities do not have these natural boundaries. Online games generate the adrenaline rush that helps keep us awake; moreover, our bodies don’t get physically tired from typing on the keyboard and moving the mouse. Therefore, we can spend all night in a virtual world and not even notice the time flying by. When friends drop off, we can continue playing with the myriad of other people who remain online, or we can just play against the computer-generated characters by ourselves. Chatting online with friends can continue well into the night, long after the natural bounds of the physical world would have forced us to disband and return to our homes.

Nighttime Computer Access

Another reason to use time controls is to prevent access to the Internet during the middle of the night. Many children who are searching for inappropriate content will do so during the night, when their parents are sleeping and don’t know the computer is being used. In reality, there are very few valid reasons for children to be accessing the Internet in the middle of the night – so why not turn on time controls and ensure the Internet is not accessible during the nighttime hours? Although the Internet is available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, there is nothing that says that our children must have access to the Internet at all times.

No arguments

Using time controls also takes care of the argument from the kids that “I just need a few more minutes to finish this level”, “I’m almost done- just a couple more minutes”. When time runs out, the Internet is no longer available from that computer – the kids can’t talk back to the time control software. They learn very quickly that they need to be aware of how much time they have left and they better save their place in the game, or finish their last email/chat, before their time runs out. I can tell you from personal experience that our children have become self-regulating since we instigated time controls in our home.

Where can I find more information about Time Controls?

Remember that no technology is foolproof, and kids today are smart – they can get around technological barriers placed in their path. No technology is an end-all solution - but time controls are still a very powerful parental tool which is often overlooked by many parents today.

Time controls are easy to use, and are freely available either as part of your operating system (if you have Windows Vista or Windows 7), or as part of a commercial Internet filter- even free filters have time controls.

If you are using Windows, look for time controls under Control Panel, Users and Settings and Parental Controls. If you are using a commercial Internet filter, look at your administrative settings for Time Controls.

I would love to hear how time controls has helped you in your home!

Education and Awareness - not fear

2009-11-28T14:09:00.002-07:00

How do we keep our children safe while still allowing them to participate in their digital world?

I believe the answer to keeping our children safe lies in education and awareness.

Our children are the technology natives – we are technology immigrants. They know more about technology than we do – and they are less afraid to learn than we are. There is a real danger in this – our children don’t have the background to understand that there are real dangers in the world, and that there are people out there who want to do them harm. It is our job to protect them, and to help them learn to protect themselves.

I see this is as quite similar to handing them the keys to the car. We would never allow them to drive the car without first teaching them the rules of the road, helping them obtain a license and telling them what we expect when they get behind the wheel. The problem is that parents are less aware of technology and its dangers than the children are, and find themselves at a disadvantage when it comes to teaching our children the "rules of the road" for technology.

The truth is, however, that we already have the parenting skills to handle this. Technology has not brought any new dangers or sins into the world – just new ways to access them. Keeping pornography away from our children has always been an issue, long before the Internet. Protecting them from child predators has been a concern of parents long before online chat rooms and online gaming was popular – just ask John Walsh. Technology just provides a new avenue for our children to wander more easily into these dangers – and when parents are not aware, it becomes even easier for our children to find themselves exactly where we did not want them to be.

Technology is not to be avoided – it blesses our lives and provides great miracles for us. Personally, I believe that if we shield our children from technology we do them a dis-service – they need to know how to make the best use of technology to thrive in the world today.

So, we have to find the balance between allowing them use of technology, and the enjoyment that comes along with playing online games, socializing with online friends, and making new ones – and responsibly using technology without becoming so enthralled with it that they lose their attraction to the “real world”, or get sucked into dangerous situations.

It is about parenting in this new, digital world. Communication with our children, understanding what they are doing – both online and in the physical world – is the best defense. And, being aware of what technological dangers exist and how we can prevent them is just as important. And that is what this blog, and my book “Cyber Safety: Maintaining Morality in a Digital World”, is all about.

Cyber Safety: Teens, Technology and Testimony

2009-10-12T14:08:00.003-06:00

Meridian, an LDS Magazine, has recently published an article that I wrote regarding raising Latter-Day Saint children in this digital world. I'd love to hear your reaction and comments to this article!

New Media Convergence

2009-09-22T12:28:00.002-06:00

Take a look at this video for a very interesting look at how our world is changing, and how we consume information today as opposed to how we did just a few years ago.

Very interesting.

Cell phone tips

2009-09-02T00:28:00.002-06:00

Kids sure love their cell phones. In a recent study, the cell phone ranked 2nd only to clothes in importance for teens today. The cell phone can do much more than traditional phones, however, and giving this technology to kids without guidelines or restrictions can invite problems. Here are a few suggestions to help parents who give their children cell phones:

1. Remember that with the associated data plan, a cell phone can browse the web just like a computer can. A recent study shows that 1 in 3 teen regularly browse the web on their phone. If your cell phones have this ability, then you need to be aware of what is being viewed. Remember that your filter doesn't block content on the phone. Also, restrict the cell phone from the bedroom at night just like you do for computers. One way to enforce this is to require that all phones be charged in a public room of the house each night. We have our children charge their phones in the kitchen every night, so they don't have their phones in the bedroom with them.

2. Sexting (sending inappropriate images of themselves to someone else via text messaging) is very popular today. Spot check your childrens phones every once in a while to see what pictures they have on their phone.

3. Create a "check in/out" system if your children are very young. They can check out a phone from you when they need one, and they check it back in when they are done. This way, you have the ability to get in touch with them when you need, and they can always call you - but they don't feel "ownership" for the phone, so they won't give out the number to their friends, and if they do the friends will be less likely to send inappropriate messages and pictures to that phone, since they will know that it belongs to YOU.

4. Cell phone comanies allow you to turn off certain features - like premium text messaging (i.e., the "services" that can cost you money), or web browsing. Call the cell company, and limit the abilities of your childrens phones - only let them have what they really NEED.

Just a few small things can go a long way toward keeping your children safe!

10 Cyber Safety tips

2009-08-24T12:39:00.002-06:00

Although I am a big proponent of Internet filters, throwing more technology at our children and expecting it to solve the problem is not the best way to protect them from the digital dangers in the world today. There are many things you can do, today, to help make a safer environment for your children.

Here are 10 tips you can implement immediatly to help keep your children safe in todays digital world:

1. Educate yourself about your computer and how the Internet works. If parents know the dangers, they cann more easily help their children avoid them. Simply banning a child from certain websites or technologies may only motivate them to become curious, and to seek them out - whereas educating your child on how to keep safe will help them to understand the reasons that we want to limit their digital experiences, and will help them develop their own “internal filter” so they can know on their own when they are venturing too far.

2. Teach children to protect their identity while online. Help your children understand how to safely share photos of themselves on their social networking sites, using the privacy settings to help protect these images from strangers. Teach them not to give out their names, addresses, phone numbers, schools, or other personal information where strangers can find them. Teach children not to share any personal information online without parental knowledge and permission. Help them understand that many predators pose as children to gain access and information that may put them at risk.

3. Install a filtering program, and learn its features and how to use it. Don't simply "set it and forget it" - read the reports, use the features, and know how your computer is being used! Family safety software is becoming extremely advanced and an effective way to filter dangerous content. Additionally, this software usually comes with tools like time management, remote monitoring and reporting, and keystroke recognition. Good filtering programs allow you to view a history of which sites and chat rooms have been visited and when, as well as a record of incoming and outgoing e-mails and chat logs. Educate yourself about the latest filtering/family safety programs at sites such as www.internetfilterreview.com.

4. Know the dangers associated with applications and websites that your children use. Teach family members to never open e-mail from someone they don’t know, and to be wary of attachments to emails. Become familiar with the social networking sites they frequent, and be sure you know what people are doing on your children's favorite sites that could put them in harm's way.

5. Teach family members to tell parents if they encounter any form of inappropriate content online. This may include pornography, sexual solicitations, online bullying, etc. Teaching children to bring this to your attention will help reduce the fear or shame that accompanies accidental exposure. It also serves to open discussion about the dangers of pornography.

6. Manage your children's time on the Internet. Scheduling times when a child can be on the Internet and the amount they can be online ensures that you know when they are on the Internet and how long. By not allowing them to have free reign reduces their chances of being exposed to inappropriate content. Be aware of what your children’s school and public library policies are regarding Internet use and accessibility.

7. Set specific Internet guidelines for your children to live by and consistently enforce consequences if they are not followed. Giving your children specific guidelines to follow ensures they know where they stand when it comes to how they use the Internet as well as the consequences when they breach the rules. If a parent enforces consequences consistently, their children will be more likely to follow the rules.

8. Place computers in high-traffic areas of the home. With PCs in the open, children will be less inclined to view and access material that may not be acceptable. Kitchens, family rooms, and studies tend to be good options, because these rooms usually don’t have doors and they are typically less secluded than bedrooms. Position computer monitors so the screen faces out for public view. If you are having a tough time figuring out where to place the computer, look for where the carpet is the most warn in your home – that is a high-traffic area, and may be an ideal location for a computer.

9. Strive for open relationships with your children that would be conducive to open communication. Open communication and trust is key when dealing with online safety. By letting children know what is expected from them and that their safety is a top priority, they will feel that if something happens--whether they are approached by a cyber stranger or bully or receive an inappropriate email--they can approach a parent to resolve the issue without feeling they are in trouble.

10. Prepare yourself NOW for how you will react when your child comes to you to inform you of something innappriate that they saw or read online. Your reaction will determine how quickly they come to you the next time it happens - don't over react, and remember that statistics show it is only a matter of WHEN, not IF, they come across inappropriate content. It doesn't mean they went looking for it. If you are prepared for how you will handle this conversation, it will go much better, and they will come to you again the nex time it happens.

Remember that we are living in a new, digital world. Our children are looking to us to help them stay safe, both in the physical world and the digital one. Stay informed, and help them stay safe!

Twitter Warnings

2009-07-23T07:20:00.002-06:00

Twitter is a great networking tool. It truly creates a global conversation, where anyone can provide and receive advice and input from others around the globe. It provides a mechanism for people to brand themselves or their company, and make the world just a bit smaller.

There are some dangers with Twitter, however. Here are three specific warnings that I would pass along to anyone entering the Twitter conversation:

- Shortened URLs. Each Tweet must be no longer than 140 characters. In order to provide more information, people either need to send multiple Tweets, or they need to send a link to something on the web (like this blog post). However, many web addresses are too long, and leave little or no space for the actual tweet. To solve this problem, Twitter users make use of URL-shortening sites. These sites act as a proxy for the “real” site, but with a much shorter name. The name itself has nothing to do with the actual content.

The danger here is that we have no indication of where we are being taken, other than the text of the tweet. So, one could receive a tweet that simply says “Check this out!” with a URL pointing to someplace on “bit.ly” or “tinyurl.com”. Clicking on the link could result in pornography, phishing schemes, malware or any other unseemly or dangerous site. As with email, be very wary of clicking on links in Tweets that are from people you don’t know well.

- Twitter Spammers. In my last blog post, I explained that Twitter is a much more open environment than Facebook. The intent is to “put yourself out there”, and to make it easy for those who may have similar interests to find you and follow your tweets. You post some tweets, and those who like what you are saying will find you and follow you. You don’t seek out followers – they naturally find you based on what you are discussing.

There are many, however, who turn this paradigm on its head. They follow anyone and everyone – not because they want to receive updates from these people, but because they want to make these people aware of their existence. Since Twitter includes images with each Tweet, many of these Twitter spammers will use pornographic images – thus spamming you with an image that you neither requested nor sought out.

Unfortunately, there is not much we can do about these types of Twitter users. The best we can do is to use the Twitter “block” feature, and block them from following us. Unfortunately, that means we need to: 1. Know about them, 2. Know what they represent, and 3. Decide we don’t want their influence on our Twitter page. and 4. Specifically "block" them from following us.

- Relationship of trust. Every con artist will first attempt to build a relationship of trust before scamming you. A common problem with all social networks is the relationship of trust that is inherent in these networks. If a scammer can leverage that existing relationship, it makes their job much easier.

Remember that at any time anyone can have their account compromised – it only takes someone discovering the username/password combination and they can start posting as if they were that individual. If any of your online friends ask for personal information, be wary of providing it online. Their account could have been compromised, and you may be handing your information over to a complete stranger.

These are just a few of the unique areas of concern for the open social networks such as Twitter. Don’t let these warnings prevent you from entering the global conversation, but when you do decide to join in, please do so with your eyes open to the dangers, and be vigilant in protecting your digital footprint. Be sure you are not associating with those that would do harm to your online reputation.

Not All Social Networks are Created Equal

2009-07-21T07:50:00.003-06:00

The popularity of micro-blogging sites is bringing a new wave of changes to how the Internet is used to disperse information. People are communicating in 140 characters at a time – sharing how they are feeling, issues they are pondering, problems they are facing – and doing so succinctly in just a few words at a time.

Sites like Twitter, Facebook and MySpace started out by simply providing a place where one could post a few words to describe their mood, interests or current activities. But as people starting using these mediums, they changed the usage to create a “global conversation” where questions are posed, advice is offered, and brainstorming occurs.

With this new communication mechanism comes some new dangers that parents need to be aware of. Not all social-networking sites are created equal, and each site serves not only a different audience, but a different intent as well. For example, although often mentioned together, Facebook and Twitter serve almost completely opposite purposes. Facebook is intended to help you keep in touch, or get back in touch, with people you already know in the physical world. In order to read each others updates, you need to acknowledge that you know the other person. While nothing posted on the Internet is ever private, there is a certain (albeit extremely small) expectation of privacy – only those to whom you grant access can read your updates.

Twitter, on the other hand, is intended to make new friends and associates. Every ‘tweet’ sent to twitter is available for anyone else to read – whether you know them or not. Anyone can respond to your tweet, and can strike up a conversation with anyone else. You don’t have to know the other person in the physical world in order to interact. People search all tweets for certain words or phrases, and may begin “following” anyone who uses those terms.

The good news is that teens today understand this, and most of them are avoiding Twitter for that very reason. Many of them find Twitter “creepy”, and prefer to stick with Facebook, MySpace and the other “connect with people I already know” type sites.

However, as we know, the dangers of the Internet are not limited to children – adults can quickly find themselves involved in things they didn’t expect. Twitter is finding it necessary to actively search out twitter spammers as people figure out ways to leverage this open environment in a self-serving way.

In future blog posts we will explore some of the unique dangers that accompany participating in the “meet new people” type sites, such as Twitter.

Technology and Smoking Reduction among Teens

2009-07-10T13:14:00.005-06:00

I just heard two stories on the radio that cause me to wonder whether technology can take credit for actually making kids healthier. If so, could it also help reduce teen pregnancy, teen vandalism, and other innapropriate activities? Interesting thought...

One recently-released study indicates that kids as young as 2 years old are spending more time online - and the number is growing. The other story indicated that smoking is down among young people (I couldn't find that link, but here is a similar story from a few months ago indicating that marijuana smoking is down by double-digits among teens).

In the report on the decline in pot smoking, they surmise that the decline is due to the fact that kids are not going out at night as much as they used to - and they guess that this is because kids are engaged in on-line activities. So, playing online games and participating in social networks may actually have played a part in reducing smoking among teens. Very cool.

I have blogged in the past about the lack of "natural bounds" when participating in digital activities - that is, kids spend more time online because their bodies don't get tired like they would if they were playing outside, or they don't recognize the time passing like they would if they were outside and the sun went down, etc. Now there is actually scientific evidence that participating in digital activies may actually have a positive "natural bounds" effect - allowing kids to participate in online activities instead of going out at night may keep them more healthy.

Of course, we still need to ensure they are using technology safely - there are plenty of things they can get involved in online that would be just as detrimental to their health as smoking. But the good news is that we have much more control over the technology in our home than we do once our kids leave the house to "hang out" with their friends. Of course, we don't want to swing the pendulum too far to the other side either - kids need peer interaction, and they need some freedom to associate with their friends in the real world.

The bottom line is that we, as parents, should not throw the baby out with the bathwater. No need to unplug the cord and keep our kids away from technology - just be sure we help them understand how to use technology responsibly - and it may just help us reduce some of the difficulties of the "old days" when kids would just hang around outside with their friends in the real world - and would quickly find ways to get into trouble.

Family Safety = more than just Internet and Cell Phones

2009-06-20T13:53:00.004-06:00

I am very pleased to see the recent increase in awareness about Family Safety and the Internet. It certainly seems that parents are becoming more interested in the issues surrounding keeping their children safe while they make use of the Internet, cell phone and other new, digital technology that we find in our world today.

As we strive to keep our children safe in this digital world, however, we cannot forget about some of the other dangers that our children face from the media that we allow into our homes - specifically with regard to television and video games. If we are not vigilent regarding all of the media and entertainment that comes into our homes, our children could be exposed to a huge amount of violence and age-inappropriate sexual behavior through these mediums as well as through the Internet. Dr. Victor B. Cline once said: “The amount of violence a child sees at 7 predicts how violent he will be at 17, 27, and 37. … Children’s minds are like banks—whatever you put in, you get back 10 years later with interest.” He indicated that violent television teaches children, step-by-step, “how to commit violent acts, and it desensitizes them to the horror of such behavior and to the feelings of victims.” In Dr. Cline’s opinion, America is suffering from “an explosion of interpersonal violence like we have never seen before. … The violence is because of violence in our entertainment.” ("Therapist says children who view TV violence tend to become violent,” Deseret News, 24 Mar. 1989, p. 2B, as quoted by M. Russell Ballard). Note that he said this in 1989 - before the Columbine, Trolley Square, or Virginia Tech shootings.

As I have talked in different venues on this subject, it is clear that some parents are not convinced that aggressive behaviors can be learned from violence on television and in video games. Many of the television programs aimed at children are extremely violent, especially some of the cartoons, they argue. Many of us simply brush it off, rationalizing that this is just how it is, and every child is exposed to this level of violence. In a now-famous study referred to as the Bobo doll study, Dr. Albert Bandura found that simply viewing violent behavior can indeed lead children to model that behavior. He conducted his study in 1961 with a group of 24 children between 3 and 6 years of age. He studied each child individually, to ensure that he was observing the behavior of the individual, and not the mob mentality of a group. The intent of the study was to see if the behavior of an adult would affect the way that these children played with different toys. The center piece of this experiment was a Bobo doll-- an inflatable doll that stood about 5 feet tall.

The children were placed in a room with an adult who simply played with a tinker toy set for about 10 minutes, then they were brought into another room where an adult pounded on the Bobo doll with a mallet for about 10 minutes. They were then allowed to play with the toys by themselves. The study became very controversial, especially with the TV stations, because it showed that the children would, indeed, model the extremely aggressive behavior by beating on the Bobo doll with just about anything they could find. As it turned out, they not only physically, but verbally abuse this doll based on the modeled behavior they saw from their adult playmate. In Bandura’s own words, “They added creative embellishments. One girl actually transformed a doll into a weapon of assault.” In the video of this study, one can plainly see a tiny, well-dressed young girl pounding the doll, then searching the room for other things to pummel it with (@ about 3:45 in the clip). Even though the adult model in the study did not play with the toy gun, Bandura noted that “exposure to aggressive modeling increased attraction to guns, even though it was never modeled.” These young children made the connection between violent behavior and guns on their own.

Children model the behavior they see. How much violence and sexual activity are they exposed to on the television and in video games today? It is challenging to find a show on primetime television that doesn’t have some sort of violence or sexual overtones of some sort – and it has become steadily more so since this study. Remember that Dr. Bandura’s study was done in 1961, when it was taboo to show a married couple sharing a bed on television (recall the Dick Van Dyke Show where the bedroom had twin beds) or to show any significant violence (think of Psycho, where you never actually see the knife touch the victims body in the famous shower scene, which recieved an "R" rating back then). Today you cannot get through an episode of most prime time sitcoms without sexual innuendos or overt references, and you cannot watch many dramas without extreme violence. As these shows become available on the Internet where the content is no longer regulated by the FCC, it will become an even greater danger to our children. We need to be very careful about what we allow our children to watch, especially in their formative years.

Being a parent in this digital world is increasingly difficult. As we strive to ensure that our children are safe while they make use of the Internet and their cell phones, let's also ensure that they are playing age-appropriate games and watching age-appropriate television shows.

Understanding Query Strings

2009-06-16T18:17:00.003-06:00

Have you ever wondered whether your child really came across that innappropriate image accidentally, or whether they searched it out? There is a way to find out exactly what they were searching for - by understanding a geeky term called a "query string".

Understanding query strings can help you determine how your computer is being used and what people are actively searching for. By understanding the query string, you can determine whether someone inadvertently came across some illicit content while performing an innocent search (which does happen, and is why you should always employ "safe search"), or if they were intentionally trying to locate that content.

While some web sites make an attempt to render this data unreadable to the human eye by encrypting the data into a large number or set of meaningless characters, most just use standard text formatting which permits easy interpretation. When you understand how to read this, you can understand exactly what someone has been doing on your computer; these query strings act like a trail of breadcrumbs.

A typical query string looks like this (go ahead - click on it - it is a live link to a search):

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=george+washington&btnG=Google+Search

By ignoring the extraneous data encoded in this query string, one can see that someone used this computer to search for George Washington data on Google. The following version of this URL highlights the sections that provide this information.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=george+washington&btnG=Google+Search

The “www” tells us that they performed a text search (rather than an image or video search). In the query string, we see the words “George” and “Washington”, indicating what they searched for. The rest of the characters on this query string are only meaningful to the search engine and can be ignored for our purposes.

In this next example, we see that the search was slightly modified, allowing us to search for images of George Washington, rather than textual references to George Washington. Note that the "www" is replaced with "images" (this is how Google and Yahoo do it - you will notice a slightly different, yet still very readable format for ask.com and bing.com below):

http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=george+washington&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi

Here are a couple of URLs showing the same searches on different search engines. See if you can pick out the relevant data to understand what search engine was used and what was being searched—that is, text or images, and what topic:

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=george+washington&fr=yfp-t-501-s&toggle=1&cop=mss&ei=UTF-8

http://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images?p=george+washington&fr=yfp-t-501&toggle=1&cop=mss&ei=UTF-8

http://www.ask.com/web?q=george+washington&search=search&qsrc=0&o=0&l=dir

http://www.ask.com/pictures?q=george+washington&search=search&qsrc=178&o=0&l=dir

http://www.bing.com/search?q=george+washington&FORM=BWFD

http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=george+washington&FORM=BIFD#

Understanding how to interpret a query string gives you a powerful tool to help you determine if someone “just happened” to stumble across some inappropriate data, or if they were actively searching for it. This data is kept in your browser history, and it is also tracked and recorded by many of the filters available today.

Become familair with query strings, and keep a watch over what is being actively searched for on your computer. When innappropriate content is found on your computer, review the browser history and/or filter logs to see exactly what was being actively searched for when the content appeared. The best way to keep your family safe on the Internet is to keep yourself informed about the Internet!

Filters - Dynamic vs. URL List

2009-05-26T07:08:00.007-06:00

I find this article to be quite ironic. To understand the irony, let me back up just a bit and explain the back story. A few years ago the Australian government decided that they wanted to step up their efforts to protect families in their country from the barrage of pornography that invades our homes via the Internet. Toward this end, they set aside some government money to purchase an Internet Content filter for any family in their country that wanted one. It was actually a great idea.

However, as is always the case, the devil was in the details, and success of this type of program is entirely in the implementation. At the time I was working as the Chief Technology Officer of ContentWatch, makers of the well-known NetNanny filter. We had just recently purchased the NetNanny brand and had changed the underlying technology from a purely list-based filter (i.e., blacklist of URLs, or web addresses) to a dynamic content analysis engine (i.e., the technology "reads" the web page and makes a determination based on linguistic algorithm whether to block or not). We were working hard on educating the industry to the fact that a list-based filter would not be able to keep up with the new URLs that would appear on the Internet in the near future. Of course, I am a bit biased, but I believe that we were ahead of the curve.

When we submitted NetNanny to the government entity that was selecting the handful of Internet filters that would be available through this program, we were found to block 97% of the URLs that the Australian government had found over the years to be pornographic. As we looked into the 3% that we did not block, we found that many of them were websites that were once pornographic, but no longer hosted illicit content - the content had changed, and our algorithm recognized that, and did not block the page. We spent quite a bit of time discussing the difference between a dynamic content filter and a list-based filter, in an effort to help them understand that a dynamic analysis of the content on-the-fly was better than a URL list. However, the rules had been set, and to be selected a filter had to block 100%, regardless of the content.

Now for the irony of the above story: NetNanny would have picked up the wikipedia change that is mentioned in the article, and would have blocked the page - because it looks at the content, not at the website address.

It seems that now, two years later, they are coming to the realization that a list-based approach is not the best way to filter the Internet, and they are now informing parents that a "watchful eye is better than filters". This statement is not entirely true - I would say that a watchful eye is just as imporant as a filter - and that a dynamic analysis filter is better than a list-based filter. Neither is perfect, and both have their weaknesses (the pros and cons of both are outlined in my forthcoming book entitled "Cyber Safety: Maintaining Morality in a Digital World").

It is certainly true that a filter will not block everything, and even that a dynamic filter will block some pages that it shouldn't. Nothing takes the place of a parents' watchful eye, but we need to be very careful not to throw out the baby with the bathwater - filters have their place, and provide a needed initial blockaid to the filth available on the Internet - but parents also need to know that a filter is not a "set it and forget it" type of technology.

The bottom line: Every home with children should have a filter on thier Internet connection, but having a filter installed doesn't take the responsibility away from parents to stay involved in what their children are doing online.

Cyberbullying case prompts new laws

2009-05-25T14:42:00.002-06:00

Megan Meier may not be "patient zero" of a cyberbullying epidemic, but the strange twist associated with her case (i.e., that an adult was responsible for the bullying) has certainly caused her name to become synonomous with the plight of the cyberbully victims. Now, in another sad twist to this story, the woman behind the fake MySpace persona that tormented Megan may get off scott free, according to this article. This is simply more evidence that our laws have yet to catch up with the technological advances in cyber space.

When it comes to online behavior and the dangers associated with our children, cyberbullying is quickly becoming more of a concern to parents than online predators. If there is anything positive that has come from Megan's story, it is that it helped to bring cyberbullying to the forefront. Many states have enacted new laws to deal with cyberbullies, but there is still more work to be done.

As always, the more involved parents can be in their child's online activities, the faster they will be able to react to the clues of cyberbullying, and the easier it will be to prevent a tragedy such as Megan's. Know what your children are doing online, and who they are talking to - and what others are saying to and about your children. Watch for cases where your children may be cyberbullying others as well - young kids can be extremely hurtful in person, and the anonymity of the web only magnifies their bravado, causing them to say things online that they would never dare to say in person.

Cyberbullying is a real problem - with a real solution. While our lawmakers continue to strive to enact laws to protect victims of cyberbullying, may we as parents continue to get more involved in our children's online lives, and help them understand the line between harmless banter and hurtfull comments with real-life consequences.

Game Consoles = Unfiltered Internet

2009-05-05T12:00:00.004-06:00

A game console is the kind of video game box that you connect to your TV, and either buy or rent DVDs to play on them. The most common examples are xBox from Microsoft, PlayStation from Sony, and Wii from Nintendo. Many people don't realize that most of these game consoles today have the ability to connect to the Internet, and could be a source of unfiltered Internet access within your home.

The primary reason that these game consoles have Internet access is to allow you to connect to someone outside of your home and play a game in real-time with them. While this has its own set of dangers (where do you think the predators are going to hang out, if they want to meet your children?), that is a subject for a future blog post. The danger I want to discuss today is the little-known fact (among parents, that is) that many of these consoles also have a built-in web browser which will use that same Internet connection to simply browse the web.

Yup- that's right - if your console is connected to the web, it is entirely possibly, even probable, that it is being used to browse the Internet, unfiltered by the PC-based filter you may have installed on the computers in your home. This doesn't mean that it is being used to see content that the filter would prohibit - but the possibility certainly exists. And, if you are using a PC-based filter, the activity from the game console would NOT show up in your usage reports either - it is a completely separate device that does not report its activity to your filter.

The good news is that most of these consoles have parental controls built in. Although you cannot install your own filter, you can set the console to allow the level of access you desire in your home.

If you have a game console in your home, check to see if it is connected to the Internet. Many of these consoles have the ability to disable the web browser while still allowing connections to others in the games, so don't worry that you are going to limit the "live" experience of interactive gaming, if that is what you purchased the console for. Of course, you can also close down the Internet connection completely from these boxes, and leave the gaming to those within the walls of your home, if you so desire.

Finally, remember that the parental controls on these boxes allow you to set the level of access that is appropriate for your home - use them! Set the parental controls to only allow the ESRB ratings that are appropriate for your family (see the ratings here). And, communicate with your children - know what games they are playing, with whom, and when.

FCC and the "Fleeting Expletive" rule

2009-04-30T12:00:00.003-06:00

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled yesterday, in a 5-4 decision, that the FCC could indeed fine networks for a "fleeting expletive" aired prior to 10 pm over the public airwaves. In the decision, they left open the possibility of re-hearing the case from the perspective of whether first ammendment rights are involved or not.

Given the fact that Obama is set to replace 3 of the 5 member FCC board, and that the "fleeting expletive" rule is a Bush administration policy, it is clear that this case is far from over.

Regardless, I am left to wonder how much this really matters in today's world anyway. Make no mistake about it - I am very pleased with the courts ruling yesterday, and fully support the fleeting expletive rule - but given that the FCC has no control over the Internet and cable television, it certainly reduces the impact of such a decision.

Unfortunately, our children see "fleeting expletives" all the time when they are playing online games with people they don't know. And, most of the time, the parents don't even know because they can't hear it from the next room - instead, it is piped into the headphones or typed on the screen. And the FCC has no control over it. Neither does anyone else.

In his written opinion on this case, Justice Scalia wrote "There are some propositions for which scant empirical evidence can be marshalled, and the hamful effect of broadcast profanity on children is one of them". Unfortunately, the harmful effect is not diminished when the broadcast mechanism is the Internet rather than TV or radio. Michael Coops, who is acting Chairman of the FCC until the new leadership is confirmed, tried to "reassure parents that their children can still be protected from indecent material on the nation's airwaves". Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the place where they spend most of their time - namely, in online and Internet-enabled console games.

Social Networking Reunites Family

2009-04-10T09:19:00.002-06:00

I wanted to share this story today, because I worry that I spend so much time warning of the dangers of cyber space that sometimes I forget to share the positive aspects of technology. This story reported by KSL news is a great reminder that the Internet is a great tool for helping strengthen families and bring happiness to many people's lives. The fact that a mother who gave her child up for adoption can then find him 30 years later on a social networking site is a testimony of the great blessing that technology can be in our lives.

I am so glad to be living in a time when the world is getting smaller, and technology can be used for so much good and to bless the lives of so many people. Have a great Easter weekend!

Technology won't solve the problem

2009-04-02T08:13:00.002-06:00

I was so glad to come across this article about a study from the University of New Hampshire. It is entitled "Technology alone can't protect minors from online sex predators". Amen. The number one problem with technology solutions is the false sense of security that parents have when that technology is deployed. The problem of online predators and other cyber dangers is not going to be solved by simply making use of more technology - it requires that we interact with our children, teach them of the dangers in the world, and help them understand how to recognize the warning signs, and inform them of what to do when the see those signs.

It would be easy to mis-interpret this report, however, to indicate that there is not a problem. UNH has released other reports in recent years that indicate that online predators are not as big of a problem as the media makes it out to be, like this study indicating that it is more often the case that teenagers get involved over the Internet fully aware of what they are doing - as opposed to being lured into a meeting unwittingly by a predator. There certainly may be some validity to that notion - but that doesn't change the fact that there are predators out there, and they do prey on our children.

The bottom line from both of these reports is spot-on, in my opinion: technology won't solve this problem. Whether the problem is predators, or whether it is youth knowingly getting involved online with some one who may do them harm - the answer is not more technology. This problem will only be solved when we teach our children how to deal with these issues, and what to do about them - whether they run into these dangers in the real world or the virtual one. Technology has its place, and should be employed to its fullest - but we cannot end there. Technology cannot be a replacement for communication between parents and children.

Sexting leads to teen's death

2009-03-26T08:56:00.002-06:00

If you haven't yet heard it, there is a new word in the English language: "sexting". It is defined as the act of sending sexually explicit photos electronically, primarily using text messaging on cell phones. These photos are usually of one self, and are normally sent to a girlfriend or boyfriend. No longer do people need to go searching for pornography on the Internet - our kids are creating it themselves, and sending it to each other on their phones. And, Internet filters and logging tools that we set up on our home computers will not catch this - it is accomplished over the phone network, not the Internet.

Of course, what these kids are not thinking about are the unintended consequences. All too often, these images will be forwarded and will spread like wildfire among many of the individual's friends and classmates. Just in the past few months there have been several news stories about this on all of the major news stations, including ABC News and CBS News. And then there is the story of Jessica Logan that aired on NBC's the Today Show earlier this month. Jessica sent a nude picture of herself to her boyfriend - when they broke up, he sent it to hundred of other students in their high school. She was harrassed, started skipping school, and simply couldn't face her peers. Finally, she walked into her bedroom and hung herself in her closet. Heart breaking.

Apart from the extreme emotional toll that sexting can have on a teenager, there is also the very real possibility that they are breaking the law - if the individual in the picture is under age, the image is considered child pornography, which has very strict laws attached to it. Distribution of one of these images to an under-aged person is also illegal. Not only are these kids causing themselves potential harm by allowing innappropriate images of themselves to exist "out there" forever, but they are also putting themselves in a very real danger of having a criminal record at a very young age, and possibly finding themselves on the sexual predators list forever.

Not very smart. But then again, teens are not known for thinking about the future. As parents, we need to know how our children are using the technology that we put in their hands - and help them understand the potential dangers and long-term effects of a split-second decision.

Cybersafety Constituency - a non-denominational initiative

2009-03-18T14:02:00.003-06:00

I am really bothered by this article by TheRegister today. It makes the incorrect assumption that because the new Cybersafety constituency was proposed by a mormon, and someone who supports CP80, then the constituency must be a Mormon initiative to kill free speech on the Internet. Rubbish. Complete conjecture, and not even close to reality. The Cyber safety constituency, CP80 and the LDS Church are three separate entities - any attempt to link them are nothing more than an attempt to scare people into voicing opposition to an initiative that would help many people and create a safer Internet environment.

Unfortunately, as evidenced by the comments posted today, many people are taking this article at face value and are now voicing opposition to the new constituency because they don't agree with the CP80 approach, when the petition clearly indicates that the new constituency has nothing to do with CP80 at all, but rather would simply be a non-denominational organization to help make the Internet safer for our families.

If you support this initiative, based on what is written in the official petition, then PLEASE send your email of support to: cyber-safety-petition@icann.org.

And, if you happen to not be a Mormon, please let them know that - we need to show some cross-denominational support for this initiative!

30 days to make a difference!

2009-03-06T09:05:00.002-07:00

Have you ever wondered what YOU can do to help make the Internet safer for our families? You now have that opportunity - we have 30 days to speak up in support of a vote to implement a new Internet governance organization focused on making the Internet more safe for our families. Please take advantage of this chance to have your voice heard!

For those who are not familiar with ICANN ("Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers"), it is essentially the governing body for Internet and is the entity that is responsible for overseeing the direction of this global technology. You can read more about them here.

ICANN has certain consituencies that have voting rights and that help determine the general direction of the policies that govern the Internet (as far as such world-wide technology can be governed). Many of you may be familiar with the attempt to put in place a .xxx domain that would house the adult content for the Internet - it was ICANN that had to determine whether to implement this or not (ultimately, they decided not to, which is why we don't have a .xxx domain today).

There is currently a proposal in front of ICANN for a new consituency to be created, called the Cyber Safety Constituency. You can read about this on ICANN's website by clicking here. There is a link to the introduction letter explaining this new constituency, as well as the petition itself. You can read these two documents to get a better understanding of what this new constituency will be responsible for.

Before this new constituency is approved, there is a 30-day public comment period. This is where you come in - if you are concerned about the safety of your children online, and worried about the content that they can currently access, and want to do something about the online predators that are stalking our children - make you voice heard in support of this constituency by sending an email to cyber-safety-petition@icann.org and tell them you support the "Cyber Safety Constituency". All public comments will be posted here, so you can check back to see your comments and read the comments of others on this topic.

Please do not miss this opportunity to make your voice heard! Be part of the solution, and help get this new consituency created. I did - please join me.

Utah leads the nation in online porn

2009-03-03T08:17:00.003-07:00

This Salt Lake Tribune article is actually quite disturbing. It is a story about a recent Harvard Business School professor's study that indicates that Utah is #1 in the nation when it comes to the purchase of online pornography. Add to this the fact that Salt Lake City has shown up toward the top of the list for Google searches for extremely graphic sexual content for several years, and it shows a very disturbing trend.

The good news here (if there is any) is that this study is only looking at online pornography. There are no indications of whether this trend holds for pornography consumption in general, or if it simply means that in Utah the consumption method of choice is online rather than other means. So, it could be that this study indicates that we as a state are more technology-friendly than any other state in the nation, and we simply prefer to do all of our purchases online. Maybe we would be #1 in online book purchases, and online clothes purchases as well. OK - I admit it - am really stretching here.

So, why is it that Utah ranks numero uno in this distinctive category? Utah is a very conservative state, which would lead some to argue that we, as conservatives, are all just a bunch of hypocrites, and that this is now proof that those of us fighting the pornography battle are really closet consumers. I would be wary of such interpretations of this data. The article talks about the trends in areas with young population (OK, so Utah certainly tops this list), as well as college education and higher income. Utah would rank fairly high in all of these areas. It is also a fact that many parts of Utah, including our capitol city of Salt Lake, are becoming more liberal - based on recent voting history and trends. So, I don't think we can link this strictly to conservative "hypocrites".

The thing that really scares me is the following quote from the author of the study: "Even when I control for income, age, education, and marital status, Utah residents still consume disproportionately more than people from other states". I have no answer for why this is the case, but it makes me extremely concerned - especially for the youth of this state. More needs to be done to study this trend, and find out why Utah residents are disproportionately interested in purchasing this material online.

Very disturbing indeed.

Utah Child Protection Registry

2009-01-31T10:58:00.003-07:00

If you live in Utah, and have children, you need to visit this site. You simply enter your email adresses, and anyone who sends adult-oriented spam is required to remove your email adress from their list. Those that fail to do so will face felony charges and "substantial civil and criminal fines".

For those who don't live in Utah, check with your state governement - if they don't have a similar registry, then contact your legislators and ask them to create one! It may not end the onslaught of adult-oriented spam, but it certainly will have a positive impact.

Thank you State of Utah! I, for one, sincerely appreciate this initiative.

Cell phone porn - accident?

2009-01-30T13:02:00.002-07:00

This is a really disturbing story. The very short synopsis is this: a Utah man recently took a pornographic picture of himself with his cell phone and attempted to send it to his girlfriend. He allegedly mistyped the number, however, and ended up sending the image to a teenage girl.

Now, one can argue the merits here - for instance, why was he typing in his girlfriends phone number - wouldn't she be in his address book already? However, that is not the point of this blog post. There have been several incidents in recent months where teens are sharing innappropriate images via their cell phones - I even blogged about that problem on this page last year. In those cases, the kids themselves were inappropriatly using the technology they had been entrusted with. This is different, however - distribution of pornographic images to a minor who in no way requested or showed any interest in the image in the first place.

At issue in the news story is whether this should be considered a crime, or whether it should be treated a an "honest mistake". Reading through the comments to that story show very clearly how this is not a cut-and-dried situation for many people. For me, however, it seems pretty black and white: whether it was a mistake or not, the individual distributed pornography to a minor, and should be punished for it. If you want to distribute that sort of content, be more careful about how you do it.

There are many corollaries in our legal system already: you cannot distribute alchohol to a minor, you cannot sell them cigarettes, and you cannot sell them pornographic magazines. Whether you do it intentionally, or just "forget" to check their ID, it doesn't matter - you are still guilty of a crime.

Similarly, if one hits someone with their car and kills the individual, there are consequences. Intent determines whether that person is charged with murder or manslaughter, but either way there are consequences.

In the case of the cell phone porn, if intent cannot be proven, there should still be some legal recourse, and the individual should have some sort of punishment.

For me, there are two lessons to be learned here:

1. For those who want to use their cell phone to share innappropriate photos with others - take extra care to ensure you are only sending it to your intended recipient. If you don't you will be punished via the law (I hope).

2. For parents who give their minor children cell phones (I am one of those, by the way), don't assume that because your children won't put themselves in a situation to recieve innapropriate images, that it won't happen. Stay very close to their usage of technology, and maintain an open dialog with them so they will tell you when this happens.

Whether it is on the cell phone, Internet, television or any other technology - our children will see things that we wish they wouldn't. As parents, we need to ensure that they will tell us when they do, so we can limit the undesirable affects of exposure to this content, and help them avoid it in the future.

The mom in the above story summed it up when she said: "This type of stuff didn't happen when I was a kid." You are right. Our children are growing up in a very different world than we did. It requires different parenting than we recieved.

Adult Industry Bailout? You've got to be kidding...

2009-01-09T09:38:00.003-07:00

Fox Business reported this week that the Adult Entertainment industry (which is really just a politically correct way to say the Porn industry) wants to ask congress for some bailout money. This is obviously nothing more than a marketing stunt, and is not a serious request in any way. As was reported by Fox News 5 in Las Vegas the next day, the Adult Entertainment industry is actually booming, and doesn't appear to be affected by the slowing economy at all. They report that "The porn industry generated $12 billion in 2007, and it is not showing any real signs of slowing down."

Of greatest concern to me, however, are the following comments from the two articles:

"our Internet sales are up"

"...video sales have been falling by 15 percent a year since 2005, but the producers and filmmakers said that market segment is being replaced by Video On Demand and online streaming."

"The press release noted that DVD sales and rentals for the adult industry have decreased by 22% in the past year, partially because people are turning more and more to the Internet for adult content."

The bottom line is this: the Internet is indeed fueling the growth of the porn industry. Much of the content is free, with the express purpose of getting people to pay to be able to view more of the content - much like drug dealers who give drugs away for free in the hopes of getting a new paying customer.

And remember - anything that is available to adults is also available to our children - the Internet has extremely poor age-identification mechanisms.

If you are a parent whose children are online, do not let your guard down. The porn industry is growing, and our children are smack in the middle of that growth curve.

How Many Social Network pages do we need?

2009-01-06T08:08:00.003-07:00

I have had a LinkedIn profile for many years now, and I consider this to be my preferred method of "social networking". It was through LinkedIn that I ended up in my current job, and it has provided me with several professional opportunities over the years. I keep it updated, and have used it to reconnect with people I otherwise might have lost touch with.

I also created a Naymz page at the request of a friend, but I don't use it much - except when I recieve notifications that someone has visited my profile (which has happend surprisingly often). It is kind of fun to see how people come across my name - Naymz has a feature where they will show the google search that brought people to my page. Usually, they are searching for someone that I am connected to, and end up looking at my profile.

For many years my kids have had Facebook and MySpace pages, and because of my interest in Family Safety, I took my own advice and created pages on those sites just so I could "connect" with my children and keep an eye on what they are posting - I never actually intended to make use of those networks.

So, you can imagine my surprise when I recieved a "friend request" from a professional acquiantance on Facebook. As I started looking into it, I realized that there are plenty of adults using Facebook to connect professionally. Color me surprised. I actually started receiving friend requests from people I have worked with in the past, and whom I respect professionally. Most of these people are already connected to me on LinkedIn, but it appears as though they are much more actively participating in Facebook - updating their "wall", posting comments about what they are working on, etc.

This has me thinking - how many social networking pages does one need in order to be plugged in today? There are features of each site that I like - but in the end, it isn't really about what I like - it is about how people can find me and connect with me, how they can share professional opportunities with me, and how those with similar interests can get in touch with me. I used to think that a LinkedIn account was enough - but I am now reconsidering that.

Maybe it is time for me to start looking at twitter...

More cool technology

2008-11-18T13:41:00.001-07:00

I want one - check this out. No student should be without one!

Connected Devices Phone Home

2008-09-09T08:59:00.002-06:00

In the past few months I have heard several news stories about stolen connected devices helping to locate their captors. Very cool. The latest story was of a woman who had her camera stolen. Evidently, the woman had activated a service on the camera that would automatically upload the pictures to a personal site for the owner whenever the camera detected a wireless connection. Sure enough, a few days after the theft the victim noticed her pictures on her website - with a few additions. There were pictures of some men she didn't recognize. She took the pictures to the last place she remembered having the camera, which was a restaurant of some sort, and showed them to the manager there. As it turns out, the pictures were of the head cook. She got her camera back, and the cook no longer works there.

I also recall a story of a woman who had her Mac laptop stolen. A few days later a friend called her and asked if she got the laptop back. When she answered that she didn't get it back, the friend told her that it must be connected because she had just been logged into her IM client. With this knowledge, the woman got on the Internet, located her computer, activated the camera and took a picture of the person using it. She took the picture to the police, who knew the individual from prior illegal activities. They tracked him down, and the woman got her laptop back.

How cool is it that devices can "phone home", and can actually call for help? Who knew...

Reflections

2008-06-13T07:43:00.003-06:00

As we close in on the one-year anniversary of my cancer diagnosis, I find myself very reflective of the happenings over the last 12 months. I will have another CT scan next week to see if the cancer is still gone. Although we have not seen any sign of it for a few months, my doctor warns me to be only cautiously optimistic, as the cancer that I had is very slow to return. We need to keep watch for a while to be sure it isn't slowly making its comeback.

Honestly, it seems like years since I was diagnosed and sat (or slept) through my treatments. We were looking at family pictures the other evening, and I realized that there were several family activities that I was not able to participate in - there were many pictures of my kids and my wife, without me. As I mentioned in a prior post, I was in denial for a while, and didn't think I had "real" cancer - but now I realize how serious it was, and how those pictures without me could have been foreshadowing the future for my family.

I received the news this morning that a friend of mine who has been struggling with breast cancer passed away last evening. She has 3 young children, and her husband is my age (we were college friends and roommates). I am amazed at how quickly the end came for her. She began chemotherapy shortly after I completed mine, and things seemed to be going well for her. There were a few complications, and earlier this week her doctor informed her that the cancer was too aggressive, and they were going to stop treatments. Two days later, she passed away, leaving her husband to raise her three children.

Over the past year, I have met so many people who have suffered with this disease in one way or another. One of my neighbors survived breast cancer, and had just completed her treatments when I started mine. I have met several others who went through it many years ago, and are now living normal lives. Another neighbor had a close relative pass away from cancer just a couple of months ago.

One year ago, I didn't know anyone with cancer (or so I thought). Now, I don't go a day without thinking about the strange disease, and witness the different effects it has on different people.

Maybe I am just getting older, but my perspective has changed significantly this year. While my work is very satisfying, it no longer defines me - I am not as concerned about what I do, what title I have, how quickly I can climb the job ladder, etc. There is much more to life than work - that is just a way to provide for my family. I do hope that I can make some type of difference in what I do, but the real benefit of life is every day when I come home to my family.

I hope no potential future employers are reading this blog...but for me, I truly believe that there are two phases of my life: life before cancer, and life after. I am blessed to enjoy the latter, and will not ever take that for granted.

NIH and SOA - bad combination

2008-05-09T08:25:00.004-06:00

I am continually amazed at the amount of time and effort (and money) that companies will put into writing code that is well outside of their core competencies for their business. The usual reasoning that I hear is that the technology they are building is foundational to their core business. In other words, no one does it "exactly" the way that they want, so they have to build it all themselves.

Really?

I very recently met with some representatives from a company that is taking this concept to the extreme, and has even created their own programming language to support the needs of their business. When I pushed them on this, they outlined the need and benefits of doing so with a straight face. I asked them why they invest so much in something that is ancillary to their core business, and the response was "this is our core business", to which I replied "your core business is writing programming languages?".

"Well, no - but our core business relies on it".

I see - what you mean is that your desire to develop a programming language has created a foundational dependency for your core business.

To me, this is akin to saying that because our delivery company relies on cars, we need to build and staff a factory to design and produce those cars.

Now, I am not picking on this one company - the "not invented here" (NIH) syndrome has plagued developers for many years. I used to teach an object oriented programming class at one of our local universities, and I would always start out the semester discussing the evils of what I called "developer reflex #4" - the overpowering desire to re-write any code that a developer reads, which he or she has not written themselves. Everyone seems to think "I could do that better", and it is almost painful to use something that someone else wrote - especially if you can actually read their code constructs and see how they implemented the functionality. The desire to build a better mousetrap is overwhelming for developers - even if they are not in the business of catching mice.

I was a very early adopter of component technology, and was a vocal proponent of such when I was a young developer. Where I was working at the time, we actually had some great success stories of re-usable code and sharing components between applications (I even co-authored an article on the subject). I now firmly believe that one of the keys to our success was that we shared binary components, where other developers had to consider the shared component as a black box - they couldn't see under the covers to know if they could implement it more efficiently or not. And in the end, it didn't matter - the components worked just fine for them.

I view the Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) hype today as simply an extension of this component-design approach. Rather than sharing components to build applications, we are now talking about sharing full applications in order to build systems. But, the danger still exists - developers have a "not invented here" syndrome that causes them to still feel that only they can build the right application to share - and if everyone else would just use their implementation, SOA would finally fulfill its destiny.

New technology, same old biases. And somehow, the technologists convince their business to invest in building these non-core technologies, assuring them that anything less would be a sacrifice that will ultimately take the business down due to its lack of competitiveness.

We need to stop trying to build everything ourselves, and start innovating around our own core business - stop re-inventing the wheel, and put some true SOA principles into action, making use of the best of what is out there, being built by those who specialize in that technology. Invest in the innovations around our core business competencies, and minimize our investment in anciliary technologies.

Then, companies will become more competitive through the use of technology.

PCI - the mess of security

2008-04-29T07:09:00.004-06:00

Having spent some years in the computer forensics industry, I can tell you that criminals today are very smart. They look for the path of least resistance, they are very determined to find the data they want, and they have the tools to accomplish the task. In recent years the credit card industry has congealed around a set of standards for credit card security, called the PCI standard (i.e., Payment Card Industry). Prior to that, each credit card company maintained their own set of standards...making it very difficult for merchants to keep up. This new standard is still evolving, yet many of the merchants are still trying to meet the bare minimum. This is a tough problem, as we have a real war going on - the criminals getting smarter about how they steal data, and the industry trying desperately to put in place standards to stop them.

The reality is that we will never be able to stop these criminals. We can slow them down, and make them work much harder to find what they are looking for, but we will not be able to stop them completely. Even now, as merchants are becoming compliant with PCI standards, they are still suffering from data breaches. Take the story of Delhaize Group, who on the same day that they received notification of compliance with PCI also received notice that 4.2 million credit cards may have been stolen (as reported in todays Wall Street Journal). This breach was not a result of poor implementation of PCI standards, but rather was a result of the criminals understanding PCI as well as anyone in the industry, and finding a new access point for the data they wanted. Rather than attacking the data in-transit, or at the point-of-sale, they actually attacked the internal network of this company, where PCI has no rules regarding the safety of the data. Once the data is within the companies network, it was assumed that the data would be safe.

Criminals are very smart, and since security standards are open, they can keep up with them just like the rest of the industry can. PCI is not the silver-bullet to protecting our data: the real answer is that those who have our data need to start treating it as a precious commodity, and understand its real value. Security is not cheap - encryption slows down access to data, and key management is always problematic. Putting in place rules and regulations regarding who can access the data is a pain, and keeping anti-virus and anti-spyware applications updated and functioning on a network are difficult tasks - but these are all steps that must be taken to make it more difficult for criminals to find our data. Until companies view PCI as the minimum bar, and take steps to really protect our data from end-to-end, and view themselves as stewards of important data, the criminals will find the paths of least resistance around the security measures.

Securing our data is less about adhering to standards, and more about shifting the mind-set of corporations. Until that happens, our data will be vulnerable.

Net Neutrality

2008-04-12T20:17:00.002-06:00

The argument about Net Neutrality has been going on for a while now. I was first introduced to the topic when working at my last job, where our business success was tied to ensuring that our filter product didn't get in the way of anyone's fast internet connection, which they were paying good money for.

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that the 100 million streaming videos that are watched daily account for as much bandwidth as was used in an entire year in 2000. With the advent of sites like YouTube, and with TV networks posting full episodes of their shows, the pipeline into our home is again getting constrained, much like in the days of dial-up access, and will soon slow to a crawl again if Internet content and usage remains on the trajectory that it is on.

So, the providers of those pipes want to start charging on a "use more, pay more" model. And, congress wants to stop it by passing a law that the Internet must remain free (or at least that our flat-rate model needs to remain intact). Thus, the net-neutrality debate.

CIO magazine has posted this commentary, which I found quite interesting, on the topic. It is about 5 minutes, and certainly provides some food for thought on this topic.

The Futuristic CIO

2008-04-07T18:22:00.002-06:00

I am attending the Gartner symposium this week, on the topic of "emerging technologies". After a full day of breakout sessions, it seems that there is a theme running through the track that I have chosen. It is that the futuristic CIO is going to be very different from the CIOs today. Many of the current CIOs could be CTO in another company - they are very technically-minded, understand technology in at least a broad sense, and some are even quite deep in some technical areas. They are concerned about uptime, managing risk and maintaining business continuity. They manage technology, and consider themselves to be a service organization to the business.

The CIO of tomorrow will be very different. They will be concerned about maintaining services, and providing good experiences for all consumers: both internal and external to their company. They will be an integral part of the business, not a service organization to the business. In fact, they will be part of business decisions, not looped in after the fact to simply enable a prior decision to be carried out. They will be concerned about managing information, not technology (these are very different things, incidentally). The CIO of tomorrow may not even have a technology background - they won't need to even understand technology very broadly at all.

Very interesting. And vaguely familiar...(I posted a blog entry last year on this topic). It will be fun to watch the CIO role evolve over the next few years...

Technology Projects: Thin line between Success and Failure

2008-04-04T08:54:00.002-06:00

This article from today's edition of the Wall Street Journal really leaves me scratching my head. Here are the facts:

- The Census Bureau is scrapping the use of new, hand-held devices to complete the 2010 census, for which they paid $600 million to a high-tech company for development
- The cost of NOT using them will add an additional $3 billion to complete the census
- The effort to fix the devices so they can be used in the future will double the value of the contract to this high-tech company, raising it to $1.3 billion

But, here is what really makes me crazy. According to the contracted company,
the devices reportedly operated with 99.5% accuracy. The reason that they won't be used is reported as the lack of "comfort level" of using them by the census bureau. According to the census bureau, the reason for the failure boiled down to scope creep.

So, the bottom line is that as a result of spending $600 million to successfully complete a project (99.5% accuracy has to be considered a success), the government will now spend an additional $3 billion to complete the census, and will then tack on an additional $700 million to "fix" the successful project - all so that the agency can be more "comfortable" using the devices. All of which could have been resolved with better requirements management throughout the project.

So, who ends up footing the bill for the $3.7 billion cost of poor requirements management? The Project Manager? Nope - the U.S. taxpayers.

Wow.

Personal Note - cancer update

2008-04-04T08:02:00.003-06:00

It is hard to believe that it has been only 6 months since I completed my cancer treatments. To me, it really seems like much longer. I guess that is an indication of how quickly my life got back to "normal" - whatever that is. Many people have commented that they believe this is because of my positive attitude going through this process. I guess there might be something to that theory - but to me, I just can't imagine it being any other way.

I talked with some of the nurses in the treatment center yesterday, and they couldn't believe that it had already been 6 months...to them, it seemed much shorter. I am really quite impressed with all of those who work in the Central Utah Cancer Center. They all remember my name, as well as the specifics regarding my treatments, and they all make very kind comments each time I return for a check-up. With the number of patients that go through that facility, I am really surprised that they even remember my name.

I have been meeting with my oncologist every month since treatment ended, and have been on blood thinners for that entire time, since we have been trying to get rid of the blood clot caused by the PICC line which was inserted for my treatments. Yesterday I had another monthly visit, and we have now crossed another bridge in the recovery process. I am now off of the blood thinners, and my visits to the oncologist are reducing to once each three months. For now, I am in complete remission, and all is well. If we keep this up for 5 years, then I can be considered "cured".

I still find it strange that I am a cancer patient. I signed up for a blood drive last week, and my wife asked me if I really thought I would be able to donate. I couldn't figure out why she was asking me that question - then she gently reminded me that I am a cancer patient...sure enough, it will be between 5 and 10 years before I can donate blood again. This was not the first time that my wife had to remind me of my new health situation. I am not sure I will ever get used to it, but as of now my situation is not disruptive in the least - just the occasional CT scan and more frequent visits to the doctor than I have historically done.

I truly appreciate the notes, e-mails and comments from everyone as my family and I went through this process. Please know that all is well, and I am settling back into life as normal.

Free! Virus included.

2008-03-24T14:42:00.003-06:00

An associated press article has recently been published regarding new, out-of-the-box gadgets from reputable stores that attempt to install a virus on your system when you plug them into your machine. The one documented case that they refer to is a particularly dangerous virus that attempts to steal your passwords. It is not clear whether this is a deliberate attempt to infect computers via a brand new gadget, or whether it is an honest mistake (i.e., one of the machines on the assembly line getting infected), but either way it is an ominous sign.

If it is indeed a deliberate attack, think of the consequences: hackers can pre-install viruses on the factory floor in China, then send any device (like digital picture frame, MP3 player, etc) to your home and infect your machine as soon as you plug it in and attempt to use it for the first time.

Many of you are aware that I am in the process of writing a book on Family Safety on the Internet. In that book, I talk about the reality of dangerous bits bombarding our home computers - pro actively coming at us from every angle. Pornographers, identity theives and hackers all attempting to gain access to our computers from the Internet. Now, we can
add a new attack method to the list - brand new, out of the box gadgets purchased from our favorite retail store.

Technology or Common Sense?

2008-03-18T07:53:00.003-06:00

When I was in high school I accepted a job as a clerk at a souvenir shop on the beach in northern Fort Lauderdale. I loved that job, and kept it for many years while I completed school. I recall that one of the first things I learned was how to calculate and count back change for customers. It seems like a simple thing - just count up from the amount of the sale until you reach the number of the bill you were handed - then count it back in the same way to the customer, so they can rest assured that they were handed the correct change.

I am constantly saddened that today people who are more than twice the age that I was then cannot perform this simple task. They simply punch in the amount they were handed, and the register calculates the change, and even drops the coins automatically. All they have to do is hand you the money, without a word about how the change was calculated, nor whether it is correct or not. We all just assume that since the register calculated it, it must be correct.

Our reliance on technology has now risen to even greater heights. I have read several stories recently (like this one from the Wall Street Journal) about GPS systems and online mapping software sending people to the wrong place, or even into on-coming traffic, and yet they simply blindly follow the directions. We assume it to be correct.

I had a personal experience with this recently. I had to attend a funeral at a chapel that I had not been to, so I turned to Yahoo! maps to locate the address for me. While I had not been to this particular chapel, I also knew immediately that the directions were completely wrong - it would have sent me 20 blocks to the north of where I should have been. So, I turned to Google maps instead - with the same result. In the end, I just had to locate the address myself, using good old navigation techniques based on my knowledge of the area.

The sad thing is that I would bet that many of the cashiers today would not know how to calculate or count back change if their register made a mistake or stopped working. We simply put too much trust in our technical devices, and don't think twice about following its advice - even when Mapquest sends us to someone's driveway instead of the county courthouse, or up a mountain side to a dead-end instead of reconnecting us to the highway.

Somehow, we need to bring common sense back into the mix when dealing with technology. After all, no matter how good technology becomes, it is still based on human input.

Walking While Distracted?

2008-03-10T21:19:00.003-06:00

I simply couldn't pass this up. According to this story, 1 in 10 pedestrians in London have been injured while - get this - texting. Evidently, people can't text and walk without getting hurt. So, the city of London has decided to do their part to prevent these accidents - by installing padding around the base of the street lights!

Crazy. I just wonder how those conversations go at the hospital. "I was just walking, minding my own business, and that street light just jumped right in front of me. Good thing I was texting my BFF , who was walking 3 feet behind me, or who knows how long I would have been laying on the sidewalk".

Did You Know

2008-03-05T13:37:00.003-07:00

I found this to be a very interesting and thought-provoking video from YouTube.

And, here the author discusses the genesis of this video, and breaks down the sources for the statistics referenced. Very interesting reading, and a great case study for the viral nature of the web today.

YouTube's "butterfly effect"

2008-02-26T07:44:00.003-07:00

I am sure you have heard of the "butterfly effect". This is the theory that states that the fluttering of a butterfly's wings in Africa could cause a tsunami in China (my geography may be off, but you get the point).

We have witnessed another butterfly effect this past weekend on the Internet, which has been just one more reminder that the Internet is global, and one person can truly affect the worldwide audience. It seems that a YouTube video from a Dutch film maker was thought to be so controversial in Pakistan that it might cause riots, so the Pakistan government decided to block access to YouTube in their country until the video was removed. Unfortunately, they did not configure their routers to appropriately handle this block message, and instead all Internet traffic intended for YouTube globally was re-routed to Pakistan, and promptly dropped. This caused a worlwide YouTube outage for several hours on Sunday.

Now, I am not of the opinion that an outage of YouTube is disastrous. Personally, I am not a big fan. I am also not in any way advocating censorship on the Internet. However, this incident certainly gives one pause, on multiple fronts.

Most importantly, it highlights the very real danger of one "loose cannon" individual posting something that could indeed cause riots elsewhere in the world. While I do not support what the Pakistani government was doing, I do believe that their concern was probably well-founded - one video or blog post could indeed cause riots. I hearken back to some e-mails that I have sent, which I later wished I hadn't...I thought it was funny, others didn't see the humor. Luckily, the message only went to a few thousand employees. It didn't cause a riot, but it also certainly didn't help build relationships in a newly-merged company that was trying to gel its employees into one happy family.

The other problem that this brings to light is the fragile Internet infrastructure upon which we are becoming more dependent. One person's mis-configuration can affect a much larger audience - and while the particular router problem that occurred in Pakistan this weekend was very rare, it proves that technology is not infallible.

The Internet community is growing, due to the popularity of blogs, social networking sites and other user-generated content websites. This brings with it an implied responsibility to be mindful of possible worldwide reaction - we need to be aware of the Internet Butterfly Effect.

Or, I suppose we could just keep the idiots off of the web...but if we did that, I would have to close down my blog.

Microsoft comes full circle

2008-02-22T15:58:00.003-07:00

It is interesting how things have come full circle for Microsoft. I love the story of the early days of Apple and Microsoft, and how each company evolved based on a core set of almost diametrically opposed beliefs: Apple believed in maintaining tight control over its system by keeping a closed, proprietary system - thereby maintaining the integrity of their design and vision for the user experience. The PC, and Microsoft by association, instead embraced an open environment, where people were encouraged to mix and match components and software to build on the "group thought" and innovation of the masses.

Apple's course led to a tight-knit group with a very stable and consistent operating system, while the PC (and Microsoft) had a much wider audience, but too many cooks in the kitchen led to a group of unhappy people running unstable systems.

Of course, Microsoft only bought into the open environment as far as it was beneficial to them to do so, and kept their OS secrets close to the vest; which has been the source of many anti-trust allegations and lawsuits over the years.

Now, we have come full circle. The open system has now evolved to the open OS, led by Apple (well, technically, led by the open-source community via Linux, but we don't need to delve that deeply into the details here...). The Apple OS has been based on BSD for several years now, which (along with the advent of the iPod) has breathed new life into the company. Yesterday, Microsoft finally announced that they are releasing over 30,000 pages of technical documentation for their operating system. Documents, by the way, which Microsoft used to charge a fee to access.

The real question, though, is this: when can those developers who PAID for this documentation expect their refund? Don't hold your breath for that one.

Management and IT

2008-02-15T14:47:00.002-07:00

I recall a recent dialog on one of the e-mail lists upon which I lurk, where people were hotly contesting the allegation that the manager needs to be able to do the job of the people who report to him/her in order to be a good manager. To substantiate this claim, the author cited a very well-known company, and stated that it was this practice that caused their high-quality output. This caused quite a bit of discussion, and obviously some tension on the list. The statement also turned out to be false...but I digress.

As I have been reflecting on that conversation, and thinking about some of the challenges facing me at my job today, I came to this rather startling realization: I don't consider myself the smartest person in the room - regardless of who I am in the room with. I am sure that if any of the developers or architects that I used to work with were to hear me say this, they would double over in laughter, as I used to be one of worst of the quintessential prima-dona developers that I have known in my career.

Somewhere along the way, I realized that I can learn something from just about everyone I meet. This was an epiphany to me. As I learn more about my job, it is becoming clear to me that my role is less about technology, and more about relationships. For an old developer like myself, this is a strange realization.

So, I have finally crossed the line. I used to think of myself as a technical guru who also had some management skills. Somewhere along the line I became a good manager who also happens to have some technical skills.

While some may see this as my "Anakin Skywalker becomes Darth Vader" story, this is really not such a bad thing. I actually enjoy managing people more than developing code - something which I never thought would happen to me. As I have been talking with several different people recently about some of my management philosophies, it has become clear to me that I am not your typical developer-turned-manager. Determining whether that is a good thing or not will be left as an exercise for the reader.

Microsoft, Yahoo and Google

2008-02-05T11:59:00.001-07:00

There is a very thought-provoking article on the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal today, written by Michael Malone (those who have WSJ.com access can read the commentary here). Essentially, he compares the MS bid for Yahoo to the HP/Compaq deal, and paints MS as an "als0-been" who has not been successful in any other endeavor apart from the OS and Office product lines. As he states in the article, "most everything else is a flash".

He then goes on to discuss the troubles that Microsoft and Google both face today, as they both head for (or are already in the midst of) their mid-life crisis. He brings out some very interesting thoughts, and attributes the mostly unexpected success of the HP/Compaq deal more to Dell falling on its face than any inherent positive momentum created by the new HP - which should be a warning to Google if this merger goes through.

Overall, I tend to agree with his points. Google needs to view this as a wake-up call, and get back to its innovative roots. They need to stop trying to branch out into so many wacky frontiers (like their energy initiative - what is that about?) and re-focus on being the high-tech innovative company they are. As Michael puts it "Google...stop fooling around and get back to business".

It is a very good read.

Utah House Bill 139

2008-01-29T09:27:00.001-07:00

Utah House Bill 139 is causing quite a bit of discussion in Utah this legislative session. Specifically, the area of concern surrounds the idea that an ISP would be held accountable if a minor who accesses the Internet via their service encounters material intended for adults. While I agree with the intent of this bill, I find it sad that it is so difficult to author legislation to protect our children on the Internet that will pass the first amendment bar. The main problem that this bill faces is the same problem that all other legislative efforts in this realm face: how to let those adults who want to access smut do it while not allowing our children to gain the same access. Most of the attempts to do this in the past have failed to be upheld in the court system.

First, let me state that personally I am of the opinion that it is more important to protect our children from unintentionally accessing this material than it is to keep it easy to access for adults. The first amendment doesn’t imply that adult material has to be “easy” to access. As adults, those who really want to view this material can jump through a hoop or two if it means preventing innocent children from accidental exposure. But, the courts don’t seem to see it that way.

In the physical world, this is not as difficult a problem, as we can put adult material in the back room and restrict access to it, or we can place covers on magazine racks so kids (or anyone else who doesn't want this forced on them) can be protected from inadvertent exposure to this material.

There is no real equivalent of magazine covers on the Internet. The closest thing was the attempt a few years ago to require a warning page with a link that said something like “only adults are allowed to see this. If you are an adult, click here to gain access”. While this does help prevent accidental exposure, it does nothing for the quizzical youth who is happy to lie about being an adult just to see what is behind the curtain. It also doesn't completely solve the inadvertent exposure problem, as the pages behind that "curtain" are still indexed and searched via the popular search engines. There is really no way to ensure that people have to click that link to get to the page - they can access the content directly from many other sources.

The current legal interpretation of the first amendment has left us in a situation where we now have to try and create legislation that protects children while allowing adults to get anything they want on the Internet without having to slow down for any virtual speed bumps we may want to put in the road. This seems backwards to me: protect the adults at the expense of the children, instead of the other way around.

The technical problems to be overcome are not small. For example, there is no way to accurately and definitively determine someone’s age over the Internet. Legislation requiring people to enter credit card information to access adult content was shot down because it made too many people nervous about entering their information. And, it left those without credit cards out of the "adult" community on the Internet. Besides, even with a credit card entry system, there is no guarantee that it was an adult who actually typed it in. My children could easily find my credit card number and enter it – or they could have a credit card themselves these days. Until we have a way to determine that the hands on the keyboard have been on this earth for more than 18 years, there will be no reliable method of age verification over the Internet.

While I support this bill, and others like it, I truly believe that this is not a legislative problem. Just like we need to teach abstinence in school rather than handing out condoms, likewise we need to instill our children with a moral compass that will help guide them as they wander the virtual world of the Internet. Occasionally they will experience something that we would rather they didn’t. Unfortunately, that is a fact of life. We can’t stop them from looking out the window of the car as we pass a bad accident on the freeway, and the bloody image they might see will remain with them for a long time. So it is with the Internet – but, if we teach them to use their moral compass, they will quickly be on their way, and will shun the filth that makes its way into our lives via the Internet.

Protecting our children on the Internet is founded on a societal and educational solution - not a technical or legislative one.

Family Safety and P2P

2008-01-27T18:53:00.001-07:00

In recent years the “peer-to-peer”, or P2P, file sharing technology has become quite popular. This has mainly been driven by the soaring popularity of digital music and video players. The concept behind a P2P application is that it allows one to easily share files with others via the Internet, making it very easy to obtain content for your digital player. There are several P2P applications on the market today, and most of them are free of charge.

From a security and safety standpoint, there are several areas of concern with regard to P2P applications. Of course, there are also the legal issues, since copyright laws can be easily ignored and bypassed by using these applications, but I do not want to focus on the legality of data shared via P2P applications in this post.

Apart from the legal issues surrounding P2P applications, there are some significant security concerns. In my opinion, these applications are the single most effective way to bypass the security measures that are put in place to protect both our computer and our family. These applications are architected to provide a direct pathway into your computer from any other computer in the world. The protocols that are used are not normally monitored by any of the security or filter applications, which means that by using a P2P application you are opening your computer, and your home, to complete strangers and allowing them to directly place anything they want on your system.

Installing a P2P application is just like opening a window and installing a conveyor belt that can bring content directly into our home. Worse yet, this virtual conveyor belt is connected to every home in the world. Anyone can simply place a package on that conveyor belt, and it is allowed into our home without inspection by any controlling entity – including our filter. To make thing even more concerning, there are no laws regarding the content of these video files. This means that people can create videos of extremely graphic nature, and place them on this conveyor belt, and the video is promptly delivered directly into your home.

People will put video files out on the P2P network that are intentionally mis-labeled, just to get the extremely graphic video into your home. As a parent, you would never know it unless you actually viewed the video yourself, since the name would be consistent with current, popular artists. You would think that it is just the artists latest video, rather than some inappropriate content that you would never allow your children to view.

Video files are also among the least secure formats, and can contain malicious code that can do just about anything to your computer, ranging anywhere from installing malware which could steal your personal information, to releasing a virus that will destroy your data. While you are entertained watching the video, any number of things could be going on in the background to steal or destroy your data. We should never watch a video on our computer from anyone that we don't know and trust.

Allowing our children to use a P2P application on our computer is, in this bloggers humble opinion, the virtual equivalent of sending them into a bar in the worst part of town to buy a soda while we wait in the car for them to return. We would never do this in the real world - why do we allow it in the virtual one?

I cannot think of a valid reason to have a P2P application installed on our computer. If you can, I would love to hear it.

The DVD Promise

2008-01-09T21:32:00.000-07:00

My wife and I sat down the other night to watch a movie. As the DVD loaded, we were presented with a decision: do we want to watch the theatrical version, rated PG13, or do we want to watch the Unrated version?

Very interesting. I remember when DVDs first came out, and how cool it was going to be that we would be able to choose the version we wanted to see. We would be able to rent a movie, and decide whether we wanted to watch the PG, PG13 or R version. Depending on what your family was interested in, the DVD would provide the technology to allow you to choose what content you wanted in your home.

And now they have finally delivered on that promise. But of course, the Hollywood producers missed the point. Leave it to them to get it backwards.

Filters 101: User Generated Content

2007-12-28T11:16:00.000-07:00

With the soaring popularity of User Generated Content sites (like YouTube and MySpace), I have had many people ask me about how filters handle that content. I thought it was time to sit down a blog about it, so here goes.

First of all, let me state very clearly that I am a huge supporter of filters, and believe that every computer should have an updated and operational filter installed. Having said that, filters are far from perfected technology, and they don't deal well with user-generated content.

Before we can talk about YouTube, we need to understand a little bit about how filters work. There are essentially two things that filters can use to determine whether to display a page or not: it can either look at the URL, or it can use the content of the page to determine what category it falls into. The former is like blocking a channel on your TV, and the latter is like blocking shows based on their rating. The main difference between a computer filter and your TV parental controls, though, is that on the computer the filter attempts to "rate" the content on the fly, while the content on the TV uses a standard rating system. Television filtering is a much easier problem, as the parental control only needs to look at a standard rating in the stream, and can then enforce your choices for your family - the computer filter has to use sophisticated linguistic algorithms to determine what the content is. It is a much less accurate process.

So, how does this all apply to User Generated Content? Sites like YouTube and MySpace allow anyone to create content and upload it to their site for others to view. This does not go through any type of standard rating system, and when the content that is uploaded is video or images, the linguistic algorithms that filters use are relatively useless. This means that unless you block the entire site by adding the URL to your block list, the site is mainly unfiltered. If enough people type comments onto the page that describe what the video relates to, then the linguistic algorithms have something to work from, and they will pick up the page and categorize it - but this is only based on the textual comments added to the site. This is a very unreliable method of categorizing the video content.

Now, why is this important? Two reasons:

1. False sense of security with filters. I cannot tell you how many times I have had to explain this to parents. Their usual response is "but, I have a filter installed - won't that block the inappropriate content from YouTube?" Too often we install a filter and then feel that our job of protecting our children online is done - unfortunately, filters are only a piece of the puzzle. We still need to remain very aware of what our children are doing online, and how they spend their time. If they are spending large amounts of time on sites like YouTube, we need to know what they are seeing and why. The best way to do this is the old-fashioned way: Communication. Direct questions.

2. Undesirable content is easily masked to appear innocuous. It is a sad fact of our life today that people want to push their inappropriate content into our homes. In the early days of the Internet, people would register domain names that were a common mis-spelling of a popular site, and would post pornographic content there. This made it very easy for someone to stumble across a bad site. An example of this was whitehouse.com (instead of whitehouse.gov). This used to host pornography, until a law was passed that made this type of deception illegal. Unfortunately, there are no similar laws for user-generated content (yet). So, someone could easily film some extremely inappropriate content, label it "Sponge bob" and upload it.

I ran into an example of this recently. I was searching for that very funny SNL skit with Christopher Walken, so I searched for "cow bell". I found a video which looks like a possible hit for the content I was searching for. Instead, it turned out to be an ad for a presidential campaign. This is a perfect example of what our children could run into: they search for one thing, someone uploads content that appears to be what they are looking for, only to find that it is something much more offensive than a presidential advertisement. And no filter would catch it, unless you block the entire site where the content is hosted.

The bottom line here is that we need to be very careful about what our children are viewing online, and we cannot allow ourselves to be lulled into a false sense of security just because we have a filter.

In a future post, I will discuss the related problem of very popular peer-to-peer file sharing applications and how undesirable content can get bypass our filter, virus protection and other apps designed to keep that content off of our systems.

Blogging 101

2007-12-13T09:00:00.000-07:00

For those who may not understand the coolness of blogging, here is a youTube video that explains blogging in laymans terms...

I.T. as part of the business? Ludicrous.

2007-12-12T08:52:00.000-07:00

I.T. is just a cost center, isn't it? The "business" is everyone who is not involved in I.T., right? Even as I settle into my new job in a very large organization, there is talk of having to align I.T. with the "business", or how important it is to satisfy our "customer" - meaning the rest of the organization that is not part of I.T.

This thinking is backwards, and creates the kind of attitude that will simply continue the difficult relationship between I.T. and the rest of the company. Instead, I.T. needs to be considered as part of the business - a part that is critical to its success, not a necessary evil that has to be overcome in order for the business to be successful. Too often, the "business" sees I.T. as a bunch of techno-geeks who just want to create cool technology, rather than an integral part of the company that needs to be leveraged as a partner to satisfy overall business needs. They are seen as technologists who don't really understand the intricacies of the business, and who should be kept on a need-to-know basis when it comes to business decisions.

We need to make I.T. a partner with the rest of the business in solving problems, and finding ways to satisfy our true customers: the end-user of the output of our business. Until we look at it that way, there will be a disconnect within the organization. This concept is eloquently stated in a recent blog post on CIO.com.

In order for this to happen, the entire organization needs to see I.T. as partners in solving problems, and needs to bring them to the table sooner rather than later. I have seen too many examples of "the business" trying to keep I.T. at arms length, and rather than bringing them to the table during the brainstorming of solutions, they involve I.T. only after they have decided what they want to do, and give only the information that they think I.T. needs to provide their part of the overall solution. This is fragmented, and leads to mediocre solutions in the end.

So, how do we change this? I.T. people need to change their attitude toward "the business", and stop hiding behind the thought process of "that is a business decision. Once they figure out what they want, we can provide it", and take on instead the attitude of "what is the real problem we are trying to solve for our customers, and how can we help our business achieve those goals". The non-I.T. folks also need to change their behavior, and realize that I.T. is much more than just the technical solution, but that there is real value in bringing them into the "inner circle".

When this happens, our business will be more aligned and we will have much better technology solutions that help keep our real customers happy.

The Future of Technology

2007-12-04T11:08:00.000-07:00

I heard a great quote the other day at the UTC hall of fame that I wanted to share.

The quote came from Stanford Business School's Magazine. It was from
the school's former chairman of the board of trustees, and successful
private investor and entrepreneur Issac Stein.He said:
"We need to train our Graduate Business School students
for leadership in solving problems that have not yet been defined, with
technology that has not yet been invented."

Those who think that the best days in high tech were the 80's and 90's should be aware of the oft-quoted IBM exec who once said that the world would have use for maybe 5 computers at most. While times are certainly different than the garage-based startups turned huge successes, there are still plenty of great technological advances to be made.

The best is certainly ahead of us from a technology standpoint. Personally, I love the high tech industry, and look forward to the exciting days ahead.

UTC Hall of Fame

2007-12-03T07:57:00.001-07:00

I attended another great Utah Technology Council Hall of Fame on Friday. It was a great event, as usual. The keynote speaker was Paul Otellini, President of Intel corporation.

Mr. Otellini mentioned two statistics that I found particularly interesting. First, he said that Intel projects that in 2009 laptop sales will out pace desktop sales. We are becoming a much more mobile culture. Then he mentioned that overall Internet traffic is expected to double every year through 2011. DOUBLE. Wow.

Taken in tandem, these two statistics, if they prove to be true, would indicate that by 2011 we will be a mobile Internet society, with the expectation that we can access whatever information we want anytime we want. The implications for businesses, as well as for family safety, are astounding. Mr. Otellini spoke of the Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs), which will provide for a much richer Internet experience while on the go.

I expect that he is right. The day after attending this event I went up to the mountains for a quick getaway with my wife. Unfortunatly, my BYU football team was playing a re-scheduled game in San Diego, and since I was not able to watch it on TV, I just wanted to get updated scores on on my blackberry. I was surprised at how difficult it was to find a place to obtain these scores during the game. When I did finally find a site that would just give me the score, we were too far up in the mountains to get a signal. I realized two things:

1. I expect to be able to access the Internet anywhere, anytime these days, especially for news and sports. If I cannot be in front of the TV to see a game, I just expect that I will be able to get the score wherever I happen to be.

2. Most Internet sites have not yet caught up to the mobile device craze - there are just too few sites designed for the small screens of today. Our cell phones, blackberries and the MIDs that will be coming in the near future have very limited screen space, and need websites specifically designed for them. Far too few websites have a mobile device alternative.

If Mr. Otellini is right, it won't be long before most websites cater to the mobile devices, and I won't have to worry about not being able to get updated scores while spending a weekend in the mountains with my wife. While I am looking forward to that day, the truth is I will probably never be able to actually make use of it - my wife will most likely make me leave my MID at home.

Internet Safety

2007-11-22T08:17:00.000-07:00

It seems that safe surfing is a hot topic these days. Having spent a couple of years at ContentWatch, which makes NetNanny, this is a topic that is close to my heart. As parents, we cannot simply allow our children to wander around on the Internet without some sort of supervision or control. Statistics show that about 60% of the content on the Internet is pornographic in nature. That is an amazing statistic - that means that a majority of the content out there is adult in nature. The average age of first exposure to innappropriate content is 8 years old. It is simply irresponsible parenting to allow our children free access to all of the content on the Internet. Even if they don't search it out, they will come across some type of pornographic content if they spend any significant amount of time on the Internet.

Another study, done by the FBI, showed that anyone who spends any significant amount of time in chat rooms has a 100% chance of interacting with a predator. Our children don't understand this danger, and it is up to us as parents to help them understand the dangers and avoid them.

However, there is so much good stuff out there that we don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. It is not realistic to simply turn off the Internet to our homes.

So, we need to become educated as parents, and provide the tools and rules for using the Internet that will help our children have a good experience, and avoid the bad stuff out there. While I was still working for ContentWatch, I helped to compile the 10 safety tips for parents, and one of my friends has started an Internet Safety podcast site, where he discusses these types of issues. Dr. Knutson and I have had several great conversations regarding the need to provide guidance and protection for out children. This is a topic that is close to his heart, and these are meaningful podcasts. Check it out here.

Bottom line is that there are plenty of resources out there. Don't allow your children to become one of the statistics - get educated about Internet Safety, and put some rules and technology in place for your home.

Update

2007-11-02T14:32:00.000-06:00

For those who have been following my personal battle with cancer recently, I wanted to post an update. I met with the doctor today, and was given a clean bill of health. We are done with all treatments for now, and will keep an eye on things for the next few months to be sure.

From a physical standpoint, I am feeling quite good these days. I have resumed many of my normal activities. There have been a couple of evenings this week when I needed to rest, and I am still getting to bed earlier than I used to, but I have spent three days back in the office this week, and have returned to most of my normal duties. I am planning to attend the BYU football game tomorrow, which will be the first one that I attend this season, and I see no reason why I would not be able to work a full week next week. Food tastes normal again - as a matter of fact, we are going to Outback to celebrate tonight. I am just waiting for my hair to grow back now...I may be waiting a while.

I told my wife that although I am now officially considered a cancer survivor, I don't feel like one. I feel more like a cancer treatment survivor. Either way, I am now ready to get back to normal life.

I want to thank all of you who have provided notes, thoughts, prayers and in any other way had kept me and my family in your thoughts - we certainly felt the impact, and I have no doubt that this positive outcome is directly related to your prayers on our behalf.

Thank you!

The (Not-so) Agile Waterfall

2007-10-27T08:58:00.000-06:00

For those who have read my blog in the past, you know that I am a strong believer in the Agile method of software development, and that I also believe that there is not a single "agile method" that will work for each organization. Instead, I believe that there are a core set of fundamental "agile" concepts that need to be implemented in the way that best meets the needs of each organization, and the entire organization needs to be very disciplined in adhering to those concepts. To define a single implementation of agile for all organizations is an oxymoron.

I have recently been made aware of yet another organization that says they are "doing agile" when in fact they are not. They are in fact following almost a text-book example of the waterfall method, but using agile terms such as "iteration" and calling it agile. They define every iteration up front, and lock themselves into dates when each iteration will be completed, even for projects that will last six months or longer. The development team is strictly held to meeting these dates, and product is not delivered until the end of the project.

This led me to wonder, what is the very least that can be done to consider yourself an "agile" development organization? And, what causes organizations to try to be agile, yet fall back to the old, failed waterfall methodology? Here are my answers to those two questions - I would love to hear your comments on this subject as well.

Regarding the question of what are the minimal Agile concepts that must be present: I believe it comes down to three:

1. Test-First: In order to truly have a customer-focused, agile process, you must have a test-first mentality, including prototypes that the customer can interact with. The customer must drive the functionality, and the acceptance criteria needs to be well-known before any development starts.

2. Commitment to change: The waterfall methodology locks you into features and dates well into the future, and thus creates a significant problem for keeping up with the fast-changing world of software development. Any implementation of an agile process must, by definition, not only allow for but embrace change throughout the project. This means that you cannot lock yourself into features or strict deadlines at the beginning of a long project - you can only lock down these things within an iteration or maybe two. After that. expect things to change, and build it into your process.

3. Working apps at the end of each iteration: In order to meet the ever-changing desires of your customers, you need to have a process that allows you to release a product with very short notice. The customer needs to be able to say "I decided that I don't want these last few features, I would rather have the product as it is today". An agile process needs to allow for this, and to provide working code to the customer, that could be released, at the end of each iteration. This also implies that you would deliver product every few months at the most, since most customers want their new features immediately.

As to the question of why organizations fall back to the old, comfortable waterfall, I believe it comes down to a very simple answer: metrics. Upper management likes to have nice metrics to track the progress of their organization, and the easiest metric to track is on-time delivery. If you can tie the delivery of something to a date, it is very easy to track that over time. So, executive management says "developers can use their agile methods, as long as they commit to features and dates at the beginning of the project, and meet those commitments". So, you end up with a purely waterfall method, where you lock in the features and dates up-front, but break things down into "iterations" so developers will think they are "doing agile". In the end, you wind up with nice metrics for upper management to track, but applications that don't meet customer needs because they can't keep up with the changing environment. Your customers become frustrated because you aren't delivering product frequently enough to meet their needs, and when you finally do deliver it isn't what they need anymore. Developers become frustrated because they ask why Agile isn't working to solve these problems.

So, it is the on-going fight between upper management and the front line. Upper management has come from a long career using waterfall methods, and view agile processes as the "cowboy" mentality. When we can provide metrics for upper management that show customer satisfaction with our frequently-released products that come from short iterations based on customer input, we will finally be able to break the cycle of trying agile but falling back into the waterfall.

Just my 2 cents...

Recovering

2007-10-23T12:10:00.000-06:00

As anticipated, I finally turned the corner this weekend, and was up and around, albeit for a short time, on Saturday. I attended to most of my normal duties on Sunday, which made for a very busy day. I am actually in the office today (Tuesday), and plan to spend at least one more day in the office this week.

From a physical standpoint, I actually feel fairly good during the day now. I still tire easily - just walking from my car to my office got me quite winded. The only way I can think to describe how I feel is that I feel like I do when I am coming down with a flu. I don't have much energy and my muscles are sore, and my head feels a bit stuffed. But, I am up and around and attending to normal duties - for the most part. In the evenings I still tend to drop a bit, and have to get into bed quite early. Interestingly, I tend to have severe heartburn each evening. Once it goes away, I can rest through the evening, and by morning I am feeling better again.

I will go in for the post-chemotherapy test tomorrow, and will get the results next week. We will then know what the next few weeks will hold. Until then, I expect to feel just a bit better each day, and hope to spend 3 or 4 days in the office next week. I anticipate that by the first week of November I should be back to full activities.

I want to thank everyone who has kept me in their thoughts and prayers. There is a real power there which I have felt and deeply appreciate. I expect that I will return now to my high-tech focused blog entries, with probably one more update on my condition after my visit next week with the doctor.

I have heard that once you are diagnosed with cancer you view your life in two parts - the life before the cancer, and your life afterwards. I am excited to now begin my life after cancer...assuming the test shows that it has been eradicated.

And now we wait...

2007-10-16T17:08:00.000-06:00

I have completed my final week of prescribed chemotherapy. We now enter the "wait and see" phase, where we will find out if we have successfully eradicated the cancer or not. It will be a couple of weeks until we know. Again, I seem to be on the fast track - I know of others who have to wait 6 months before they knew if the chemotherapy worked or not. It is surprising how much different the treatment is for each type of cancer.

As for my condition, this past week has been very difficult. From about Wednesday of last week, things have been rough. This time I am not only very weak and fatigued, but I have been very sick as well. It has been tough to keep food down, and we are a little worried about dehydration - but my wife keeps forcing me to drink fluids. I quite literally haven't left the bedroom since Friday, and today (Tuesday) is the first time that I am sitting up in bed for more than a few moments at a time. I have been sleeping quite a bit, but it is not easy to get comfortable - my body aches all over.

They tell me that I should not expect to rebound too quickly from the treatments. Since it took 7 weeks to drag my body down to rock bottom, it could take just about as long to completely recover. My plan is to take the rest of this week very slowly, and not try to jump up and move around too quickly. I hope to be back to semi-normal activities next week, including finally getting back to the office for at least a couple of half days. If all goes well, I will be feeling back to normal before my favorite holiday - Thanksgiving. And, of course, I am really looking forward to finally getting to a BYU football game this season - so far, I have given away all of my tickets. As long as I can make it to the BYU - Utah game, all will be well...

Heading into my final week of Chemo

2007-10-07T21:35:00.000-06:00

As I prepare to head into what I hope will be my final week of chemotherapy, I am surprised at a couple of things. First of all, it has only been 6 weeks so far. That seems like such a short time, but looking back on my experience, it feels like much longer. It seems as though I have been going to the cancer center for years. Of course, the daily blood thinner shots for the past two weeks have not helped that impression. In reality, 6 weeks is not long - and if this is indeed my last week, it will have only been 7 weeks of chemotherapy. That really is not long at all.

The other thing I have been surprised by is how badly I have felt this past week. At the end of my first cycle, I was feeling almost back to normal. I felt fairly good as I started into my second cycle. I thought that this week would be similar - but I was mistaken. I kept thinking I would feel better, and would get back to normal (almost) before starting my last cycle, but it never happened. As a matter of fact, there were a couple of days this past week when I could not clear my head all day - I woke up feeling drugged (although I hadn't taken anything except Tylenol), and simply couldn't get out of that "groggy" state all day. There are hours of those days that I cannot remember - I believe I fell back asleep.

So, I am not very optimistic about this coming week. If I am feeling this weak now, I expect that I will start to feel the effect of the chemo this week much faster than I did before.

Some friends have told me of the relationships that they made as they went through treatment, and how they heard stories from others about their experiences. I am really not a very social person, and am much less so these days, so I haven't talked to many of the others in treatment. I have gotten to know the nurses quite well, but not the other patients. I usually try to find a chair in the back, close to the network connection, and stick to myself. My wife is usually there for the treatments, and we talk - if I am not sleeping.

The other thing I am not looking forward to this week is getting stuck with a needle every day. My PICC line was removed due to the blood clot, and since I only have one week left, it didn't make any sense to try another one in the other arm. And we know from the first cycle that my veins won't handle two days in a row (my arms still have evidence of hardened veins from the I/V 6 weeks ago). So, I will just get a new I/V in a different vein everyday this week. Dang.

On the positive side, the doctor did tell me that my blood test showed decrease in the cancer markers, which is the only indication thus far that the treatments are working. A few more weeks and we will have a much more definitive test. Until then, I have one week of chemo, and then try to get back to normal.

The Light at the End of the Tunnel

2007-10-04T14:46:00.000-06:00

We are heading into my last cycle of treatments. I found out today that I am now done with the weekly shots, so my last cycle will consist just of the full week of chemotherapy, then two weeks of "waiting period". I will then have another PET/CT test to see how much of the cancer is left. We should know by the first week of November where we stand, and whether there will be a need for radiation treatments or not.

Regarding the blood clot; my pills haven't kicked in yet, so I remain on the daily blood thinner shots through at least next Monday - which makes almost two weeks total. We have increased my dosage of the blood thinner pills, so the hope is that by Monday we will determine that I no longer need the shots. I hope this is the case, as I really don't like those shots. They have to inject them into my stomach, and it stings for about 5 minutes afterwards.

All in all, this has gone relatively well. I expect next week to be the toughest yet, and the following week will probably be not much better as I try to recover from the chemotherapy treatments, but then it should be all downhill from there.

Indeed, I can now see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Halfway through - some bumps in the road

2007-09-25T21:57:00.000-06:00

It is 10 pm, and I am feeling better than I have all day. Actually, I am probably feeling better than I have in days. I hope that I wake up feeling this good tomorrow.

Denial is an interesting thing. I can see now that I was in a bit of denial when this all started. I guess that because the prognosis is fairly positive, I thought "I don't have real cancer". It was like I was just taking the introductory course - the real stuff was for those who were sick, and tired, and got fatigued just standing up from their chair. That wasn't me. Until this week. This past week has been much harder than the first three weeks of treatment. I have been nauseous, tired, and overall just aching. I walk hunched over, and slow - when I can get up at all. I spent the entire weekend in bed. When I took my shower yesterday, I had to get back in bed afterwards because it had taken up all my energy just to shower and dry off.

The hardest thing is that I never know what will make me feel better. My wife and kids see me looking like I am hurting,and ask me if I need anything - YES! I need to FEEL BETTER. Problem is, I have no idea what will accomplish that: do I need a steak sandwich, a glass of water, a heating pad, an ice pack, more pills, what? I honestly have no idea sometimes what I need. So we guess. I usually guess the steak sandwich.

It is also tough to know which aches and pains are normal, and which I need to tell the doctor about. My arms have been hurting for quite a while now, and my neck stared to really hurt over the weekend. When we went into the doctor for my shot today, I decided to mention it, even though I thought I was just being a baby and assumed they would just say to take more Tylenol and deal with it. It was a good thing that I did mention it - as it turns out, the PICC line that had been my savior for the past two weeks has now become my nemesis. It irritated the vein just enough to cause a couple of blood clots, and they had to remove it today. I am now on blood thinners for a while. I was worried that this would interrupt my chemotherapy, and that it might extend my treatments, but the doctor said that for now it should not affect the treatment schedule at all. I just have to stay on the blood thinners for a few months.

As usual, I am trying to stay looking on the bright side. I was a bit worried today as we were discussing what this all meant with the doctor, but it really is nothing more than a small speed bump on the road to recovery. Maybe I am still in denial, but sometimes a little denial can be a healthy thing.

Chemo - cycle 2

2007-09-19T10:38:00.000-06:00

As expected, I had a fairly good weekend. I was up and around quite a bit, but did run out of energy and still needed some occasional naps. I am now on day 3 of my full week of chemo, and am finding that I am feeling the effects a bit faster than I did the first time around. The last time I had the full week of treatments, I didn't really start feeling the effects until Thursday. This time, I started feeling tired yesterday (Tuesday), and am feeling it much more today. I am already finding it hard to concentrate, and just to take the time to write this is causing me to have to focus more than normal.

I am very glad that I got the PICC line. It has been very nice to just hook me up in the morning without have to get stuck with a needle. My right arm, which hadn't had any needles since just over 3 weeks ago, is finally just about back to normal - yesterday was the first day that I could extend that arm without feeling pain at the elbow. The vein had just hardened up from the I/V, and it was in almost constant dull pain, which would turn to a sharp pain when I extended my arm. The PICC line is taking care of that, as I am now on my third day with no side-effects in the vein that it empties into. I wish they had more fully explained the options before I started, as I would have chosen the PICC line right from the start.

We did have a minor scare last week, when my incision from the orchiectomy started to show some signs of infection. My doctors are very concerned about any type of infection, since my immune system is dramatically effected by the chemotherapy drugs, so we wanted to ensure that there was not a problem here. As it turned out, it was just a couple of stitches working themselves out of my body. I am not sure why they didn't dissolve like they were supposed to - maybe that has something to do with my blood cells working overtime on the cancer, and ignoring the stitches. That is just a guess though - Darn it, Jim, I am an engineer, not a doctor .

In an effort to maintain full disclosure, I need to mention that I had a pretty down day last week. I think this has all finally gotten to me, and I just crashed emotionally. As my kids will attest, I am a fairly emotional individual when it comes to things close to the Spirit, and I tend to get chocked up when talking about spiritual matters. However, it has been a very long time since I just felt like crying for no reason. Last week I had one of those days. It was not from asking "why me", or anything like that - I was just down and depressed about things in general. It passed fairly quickly, and I am back to my normal self now. It was strange to be in such a funk and not know how to get out of it, so I just slept through it.

Overall, I am still doing well physically. I am feeling more nauseous this time, but still have not been sick to my stomach yet. I am more tired this time around than I was last time, but I am still keeping up with work tasks and meetings, and seem to be handling the treatments well. My hair is falling out slowly, but for some reason my eyebrows have not yet been affected. Strange.

I think that is all I have for an update this week. I am expecting the next few days, probably trough the weekend, to be the toughest yet. We'll see if that turns out to be true. I hope I am not setting myself up for a self-fulfilling prophecy, but rather just being the pragmatist that I am.

Cycle One Wrap-up

2007-09-13T20:20:00.000-06:00

One down, two to go. The first 3-week cycle of chemotherapy is now complete. I met with my doctor today, and he said everything is progressing well and on-track. So, I get another good weekend, and then I start on the full regimen again on Monday. Last weekend was pretty good, with each day getting just a little bit better. I don't think I had to take a nap at all this past Monday, which was a first. The doctor said this is one of the tougher cocktails of chemotherapy drugs, and was pleased to hear that I have not been sick at all.

This week has thus far mimicked last week, with the Tuesday shot in the morning, and me sleeping much of Tuesday afternoon and evening. Wednesday was tough, with today just a little better. Again, I spent much of the late afternoon and evening in bed. I have been able to make it into the office a couple of times this week, which is nice because it gets me out of my bedroom.

As expected, my hair has started to fall out this week. Of course, my head is already bald, but we are now finding hair from all over my body falling out in the bed, in the shower, on the bathroom floor, etc. It is strange - I can run my hand over my arm, and several little hairs will just fall out. I can understand how unsettling it would be if I still had hair on my head.

I am truly humbled by the wonderful service of my great neighbors. Before all this started, Debbie and I (mostly Debbie) had been spending quite a bit of time in our yard, trying to get our landscaping in this year. We had completed the front yard, but the backyard still needed quite a bit of work, and Debbie had been out there by herself ever since I started my treatments.

Our caring neighbors took notice, and for the past two days we have had neighbors in our yard digging, raking, setting sprinkler heads, etc. What an outpouring of love and support. We don't feel worthy of such service, and are humbled greatly by it. It reminds me of the quote from Thomas S. Monson: "In the New Testament we learn that it is impossible to take a right attitude toward Christ without taking an unselfish attitude toward men." We have seen such Christlike service and giving from our neighbors, family and friends.

Although I would never desire to be a cancer patient, it has been such a blessing in our lives already - just for us to see such unselfish service from those we love. It certainly makes it all more bearable.

Week 2 of 9

2007-09-06T13:32:00.000-06:00

They tell me that it takes 48 hours for the chemotherapy drugs to be completely expelled from my system. If that is accurate, then I am now drug free for the first time in 11 days, and it will be 6 more days until my next injection. I suppose that these next few days I will be feeling the effects of my body trying to replace the blood cells that have been used up over the past week, rather than the direct effects of the drugs themselves.

Today is a good day - very different than yesterday, when I barely made it out of bed all day. Today I am out of bed, and actually got out of the house for an hour or so. My legs told me it was time to sit down again, but I am not as fatigued as I have been. I have not yet found any rhythm or cycle to the fatigue, other than the fact that I haven't had two good days in a row yet. Some days I can move around, and even attend to some normal activities (like going into the office), others I can barely walk from the bed to the bathroom before I have to lay down for a few minutes. I was definitely overly optimistic regarding my ability to maintain normal activities, but overall it has not been as bad as it could have been. Still no sickness, other than some overall aches throughout my body.

We had one scare this past week. It was about 1 am or so Sunday morning when I awoke with my body completely soaked in sweat. I felt very hot, and thought I had a fever. They had told us that a fever of just 101 would be an emergency situation for me, as the drugs reduce my immune systems' ability to function, so I awoke Debbie so she could check it out. Luckily, she said my skin felt cold rather than hot, and it turned out that I didn't have a fever at all. She still called the doctor, who said that hot flashes from the medication are not uncommon. He said if it didn't pass in a half hour or so that we should go to the emergency room. It passed, and all was well again.

Both of my arms are black and blue and swollen. They ache, and have even hurt enough to wake me up in the night if I move them wrong in my sleep. I can still tell which vein the IV was pushed into, as they are still sore. Since we now know that my veins won't take the IV for more than two days before causing pain, I have requested a PIC line, which they will install on Tuesday before my next injection. This is a line that will be inserted into my fore-arm, close to the elbow I think, and they will thread it up my arm and into my chest, where it will empty into a larger vein. This will stay in place for the remainder of my treatments, and will be the source for all IVs, injections and blood work. The other option was a porta-cath, but that had to be surgically implanted in the chest, and seemed like overkill for just 6 more weeks.

I am starting to recognize the signs my body gives me. I can tell when my body is planning to shut down, and how long it will be until it happens. It usually starts in my legs, then 15 - 30 minutes later I feel it in my head. After that, I have about 45 minutes or so before I had better be in my bed. It is as though my body decides it is time for a "troop surge" against the cancer cells, and starts depleting the blood from my legs for this purpose. Debbie tells me that the body will naturally re-route blood from the less-critical areas of the body (such as the extremities), which explains why it starts in my legs. Why it goes next to my brain is anyone's guess (insert your own joke here...).

It does seem as though my mind has been getting clearer these past few days, and I almost feel back to my normal self today. I hope that these next 6 days are more like today than yesterday...

Week one of Treatment

2007-09-01T16:29:00.000-06:00

It is 4:30 Saturday afternoon, and I finally have enough energy to sit up and type for a few minutes. I have completed my first week of chemotherapy. It could have been worse - I never did get nauseous. I suspect that is due to the saltines and strawberry fig newtons that I kept eating, as well as keeping water by my bed all the time. I never did have to take the "emergency" medication that they prescribed for me, which I consider a blessing.

Things certainly took a downturn on Thursday. I found it hard to open my eyes on Thursday. I couldn't necessarily sleep, but I just couldn't keep my eyes open. Friday I bounced back a bit, and although I was fatigued, I was lucid and able to participate in a good meeting at work.

Today is a different story. My legs feel like rubber, and my throat is very sore. My stomach feels like I have been doing sit ups. It hurts to swallow - I have had a lot of ice cream today (which is unusual for me, as I really don't eat many sweets). Some things are starting to taste different - I couldn't tell the difference between a Diet Coke and a Sprite. My head feels fuzzy - I find it difficult to concentrate. This is especially frustrating, as I can't read or study anything since I can't focus my brain. Since I don't have the strength to get out of bed, and I can't concentrate, I find myself simply staring at the ceiling for periods of time. Very weird.

The toughest thing for me is that I am listening to BYUs opening football game while laying in my bed, rather than sitting in my normal seats in the stadium watching it (at least we are winning...). My boys didn't have to miss out, though - with the help of some good neighbors and family we got them to the stadium. It has been inspirational to watch family and friends provide such support - everyone is doing something to help - bringing dinner, sending gifts, cards, e-mails, prayers, thoughts. I truly believe that having such a good support system has also been critical to making this week better than it could have been. Things certainly could have been much worse this week.

Chemotherapy Day 3

2007-08-29T08:54:00.000-06:00

I am the only patient in the chemotherapy room this morning. It makes it nice for making a few work-related phone calls and meetings that I need to catch up on today.

Yesterday was a good day again. The nausea is staying under control, and for the most part I am feeling well. I participated in a meeting at work after therapy yesterday, and I could feel my body starting to shut down toward the end of the meeting, but I made it home before I got too groggy. Around 4 pm each day I have been taking a nap for a few hours - it is strange to wake up when it is dark outside. It seems to take a while to come out of it - almost like when I was trying to wake from the anesthesia after my operation.

Yesterday it felt like the vein they were pumping the drugs into was starting to complain. I could feel some burning sensations, and the I/V started to slow down - they had to hook me up to a pump. When we had some similar symptoms this morning, they decided to try a different vein, so I had to get stuck again. It is doing much better now, and hopefully we can stay with this vein for the rest of this week.

All in all, things are going well. No side-effects yet - food still tastes OK, and I am keeping it all down. Just a but tired in the late afternoons.

Chemotherapy - Day 2

2007-08-28T08:31:00.000-06:00

Day 1 was no problem. I saw no immediate effects from the drugs while in the treatment center, and only had a few very small indications of anything amiss afterwards - some minor dizziness, and the start of some nausea. When I felt the nausea start, I took one of the prescribed pills, and it went away. Within a couple of hours, I was extremely tired, and took a couple of short naps. Other than that, the day went well. I got up and talked to some friends to came by the house to drop off some food for our family, and took a walk just prior to bed.

I was awoken in the middle of the night because of the I/V in my arm. Since they don't want to stick me every day, they leave the I/V in my arm and just wrap it in some tape. I moved the wrong way in the night, and it pulled on the I/V, which caused enough pain to wake me. Given that was the worst thing to happen that day, I would say it was a great day.

They tell me that today should be similar, although they will add a new drug to the mix today which could cause some aches and pains throughout my body. As a preventative measure, they will administer some Tylenol in conjunction with this "Tuesday" drug.

I am told that tomorrow will probably be the start of the downhill trend, when I will start to feel much worse, and I may start to loose my taste. For now, I see none of those effects.

There were quite a few people in the treatment center yesterday. Probably 15 people at one time. I am still surprised at how many people are actively fighting this disease just in this area. We spoke with one woman yesterday who has leukemia, and has been through three separate chemotherapy treatments over the past 15 years. She was here for her regular monthly visit, which took about an hour or so.

As for me, I was able to keep up with work from here, which is nice. I stayed on top of e-mails and meetings, made a few phone calls, etc. We will see how much I can continue that as things start to turn south in the next day or two. My wife spent most of the time in the treatment center with me, which really made it nice. I can't remember the last time we spent that many hours together without kids asking for something.

Technology and Being a Patient

2007-08-27T09:06:00.000-06:00

I am sitting in the chemotherapy treatment lab, with about 5 other patients. I have been surprised at how busy this place is - I had no idea that this many people were dealing with cancer in this area. Every time I have come in here there have been 10 - 20 people in the waiting room.

This is not new news, but I have been reflecting recently on how technology has changed the experience of being a patient. As soon as I found out I had cancer, I immediately went to the web and began reading as much as I could about it. My neighbor is a doctor, and he also pulled some information off of the web for me. By the time I first met with the oncologist, I already knew the terms and could speak fairly intelligently about my test results. As he talked with me about those results, I understood more than I would have, as I had been exposed to the new terms already, and had looked up those that I wasn't familiar with.

Then there is the chemotherapy treatment lab. Here I sit, in a recliner, with my laptop on my lap, connected to the Internet. I have already done some work, answered some e-mails, and of course am blogging from this "comfy chair" (a reference for those Monty Python fans out there...). Except for the I/V in my arm, and the few strangers walking around in this room, this is much the same as when I work from home. Not exactly what I would have expected chemotherapy to be.

The availability of information and the widespread connectivity available today certainly makes the experience of being a patient much different than it once was. I wonder if the doctors find that a help or a nuisance.

When will technology serve us?

2007-08-24T17:28:00.000-06:00

So, I have to get something off my chest. When I started my new job I was told that we use Groupwise for our corporate e-mail. No problem - I was peripherally involved in the creation of Groupwise many years ago (at WordPerfect, before Novell bought them), and I really liked it.

The problem is that I have been maintaining a personal folder in Outlook for several years. This is very important to me, as it contains all of my personal notes, e-mails, etc, and I refer to them on a regular basis.

OK - so this is not a problem, or so I thought. I would just use Outlook for my personal e-mail, and have Groupwise handle my corporate stuff. A rather simple solution, since technology should serve our needs - this will work just fine.

Little did I know that Outlook would automatically detect that I had Groupwise on my machine, and connect to it for me. Not only that, but as soon as I installed it, I could no longer send e-mails from either Groupwise or Outlook. So, I decided to uninstall both, and install and configure Outlook first. Having successfully accomplished this, I then re-installed Groupwise. Of course, Groupwise automatically detected that I had Outlook on the machine, and re-configured it to read my Groupwise e-mail - in the process, of course, removing all of the other settings I had set up. After all, these programs know better than I how they should work.

I spent several hours over the course of the next few weeks trying to find a configuration that would work for me. I am sure that there are some e-mail aficionados who would have been able to figure it out faster, just as I am sure that some would have given up long ago. At any rate, I finally have a configuration that doesn't cause havoc - albeit with some strange side-effects. Of course, I lost over 200 e-mail messages in the process, as Outlook kindly retrieved them, and then sent them into oblivion because it couldn't figure out how to route them to my personal folders with Groupwise on the box. I finally figured out how to get Outlook to ignore Groupwise, with the exception of the startup - Outlook continues to ask me for my Groupwise password, even though it doesn't handle any of my Groupwise messages now.

Why do we still have consumer applications that require a CS degree to configure the way we want? When will technology be truly intuitive, and truly serve us, rather than making us jump through hoops just to end up with a semi-acceptable solution, rather than a great solution?

I guess the answer is "when we stop accepting the mediocre solution, and demand intuitive software that does exactly what we want". In other words, probably not in my lifetime...

A personal note

2007-08-23T07:10:00.001-06:00

I really debated whether to blog about this here, since this is a very personal issue. But, many who are already aware of what is going on have asked me if I am going to blog about the experience, and I finally decided that it might be a good idea. So, this post (and some others in the near future) will deviate from my high-tech focus, and will delve into more a much more personal issue that I am now working through.

Just after starting my new job I was diagnosed with testicular cancer. I had known for a few months that something was not right, but I really didn't think it was the "C" word - after all, that happens to other people, not me. When I finally decided to see my doctor, he immediately recognized that this was quite serious. Within two days I had received an ultrasound and seen a specialist. A week later the tumor was removed, and I was informed that the cancer had already started to spread into the abdomen. It was really a whirlwind - add this to the normal stress of starting a new job, and you can see that I have been quite distracted.

It has been three weeks since the orchiectomy, and we are now "staging" the cancer. This means that we are trying to find out how far it has spread - if it is in the lungs, then I would be a stage III. If it is remained in the abdomen, I would be a stage II. Either way, I will be starting chemotherapy next week. I am told that I should expect to be in the cancer treatment center for between 4 - 6 hours each day for the first week (which really cuts into my work day...), and then I will return for a quick visit each Tuesday for the next two weeks. We will then start the process all over again, and I will go through that either 3 or 4 times.

As I begin the chemotherapy, I will continue to blog here about the experience. I hope to continue to work while going through this, although some friends say I am being overly optimistic, and they think I will be too tired to work. Everyone reacts differently, so until I know that I can't focus I will plan on trying to work as I go through this experience.

The real question in my mind is: do I wait for my hair to fall out, or shave it off before hand? Actually, anyone who knows me understands what a minor issue this is, as I am already bald by most standards. At any rate, I finally decided (with the help of my wife) that this really comes down to an issue of control - shaving my head is the only thing I can really control right now. If I do it before, then I am doing it on my terms, and not allowing the cancer to take control. Interesting perspective (she is smart that way). I am planning to shave my head before I start chemo on Monday...

blogging from my blackberry

2007-08-22T13:12:00.000-06:00

I have never been a bleeding-edge kind of guy. I guess that is why it has taken me so long to get a blackberry. Now that I have had it for a week, I wonder how I got along without it.

So, I am posting from it now. As you can tell from my prior posts, I am usually quite verbose. Maybe the plus side of having this blackberry is that I will learn to be more consise.

At any rate, blogging from a blackberry is pretty cool.

Loosing "Craplets"

2007-08-03T08:16:00.000-06:00

It looks like Dell is listening - they have come out with the "Vostro" line of desktops for small business. The really cool thing is that they are not shipping any trialware on this line of machines (which Walt Mossberg refers to as "craplets").

This is significant because it indicates that we have come full-circle. Everyone wanted to get their trialware on Dell machines - it was like a comic getting called over to Johnny Carson's desk after their bit - it meant you had arrived. Unfortunately, Dell (and others) took advantage of this, and saturated the market so customers became so frusterated with all of the stupid apps that they didn't request, but yet had to remove from their machine, that we have now come full-circle, and it is "big news" that Dell is shippinng a computer without them.

As a customer, I am very glad about this switch, and I hope others follow suit. As a software guy who has tried to get small businesses up and running, I believe that we will have to get more creative regarding our marketing and delivery mechanisms now.

All in all, this is a very good thing.

"That Agile Crap"

2007-07-27T07:46:00.000-06:00

I have recently started a new job. In my experience, I usually drive home from my first day thinking one of two things: either I am wondering how I landed such a great job, and just can't wait to get to work tomorrow to gert started on some of the challenges ahead, or I am asking myself if I made a huge mistake and what can I do now to fix it. For me, there is usually not much middle ground here.

Having been such an advocate of Agile Methodologies, I was very interested to see how (if at all) agile processes had been implemented here, and what my role would be in either implementing or improving them. My first day was full of one-on-one meetings, where I was able to meet some of the key decision makers in my new organization. As I like to do when starting a new job, I asked each of them what I could do to be successful in this role in their eyes. One answer evoked a surprising comment about agile development - which was a real surprise, since I didn't mention agile or development practices at all (I try not to reveal my feelings on the subject yet, as I don't want to taint the well, so to speak).

I was told that a particular project was in disarray. As we talked about the reasons, he said something like "the development team keeps re-working things, and they keep doing the same thing over and over. You know, its because of all that agile crap".

Once again, it seems that Agile is being blamed for bad development practices. Either that, or the development team is using Agile as an excuse for not delivering - I guess I will have to figure out which it is. Either way, it seems that Agile development is always an easy scapegoat for projects gone bad.

While it is true that an agile approach leads to some re-work, it is also a key agile principle that the output of the agile team must meet the customers needs, and re-work should only occur if it is in direct response to a real customer need, not a perceived future benefit that has not yet been requested by the customer.

It seems that the real problem here is that the customers requirements are not understood by the developers working to solve their problems. Where the source of that breakdown is I don't yet know, but the failure certainly is not because of the "agile crap" - it is more likely that either the development team doesn't understand the customers real needs, or they are not practicing true agile principles.

So, on my long drive home, I found myself thinking about my day, and I did indeed fall squarely into one of the two camps I mentioned above. Which one it was should be quite obvious to anyone who knows me...

Ajax and Nielsen Ratings

2007-07-11T08:10:00.000-06:00

I was very interested to read that Nielsen/NetRatings will change the way that they rank websites - mainly in reaction to the adoption of Ajax technology. Rather than ranking pages based on clicks or views, they will now rank pages based on amount of time spent on the page.

Of course, this is because of Ajax - referred to in the article as a "software trick". As this technology is becoming more popular, the page views are naturally reducing, as this is one of the key concepts of Ajax. Pages can refresh and update data without requiring a new page view request.

This is really quite interesting to me, because we have long fought with this concept as we try to report on time spent on the Internet in our product. How do you know if someone has their eyeballs on a page, or if they browsed to a page and then became distracted, or even left the room completely, but left their browser sitting open? Ad revenue will now be based on this concept of time spent, rather than page views, and (in my opinion) may be much less accurate. When you factor in the tabbed browsing capability, this has the potential for being very inaccurate, and a poor measure of true website popularity.

The article reports that this benefits AOL, since now all time spent on their Instant Messing is counted as part of this new metric. Thus, AOL ranks first with 25 billion minutes for May. Of course, this also means that Yahoo! ranks above Google, since they have different strategy with regard to web search - Yahoo! wants to provide you with data to read on their sites, where Google wants to link you over to your data as fast as possible.

When trying to determine popularity of web sites, and how much to charge for ads on those sites, I suppose it is necessary to find a better metric than page views. I am just not sure that time spent is the right one either.

Agile = Discipline

2007-06-27T08:29:00.000-06:00

In a recent conversation with another agile enthusiast, I reiterated my assertion that any formal embodiment of Agile is inherently an oxymoron. This was met with some concern, and the conversation quickly turned to the subject of discipline and agile.

There is a very common misconception that agile means complete freedom (i.e., chaos) where every developer can do what they interpret to be the "right thing". Freedom from documentation, freedom from a disciplined approach to software development, freedom from being accountable for product not shipping on time. This is not only completely false, but is actually the polar opposite of a true Agile environment.

A team that is truly operating under the Agile principles actually must be extremely disciplined. In fact, I assert that following agile principles requires more discipline that non-agile processes. If you are going to get product out the door and into customers hands on a regular basis, and if you are going to have a functioning "shippable" product at the end of each iteration, and if you are going to operate under a "test first" mentality, then you must be extremely disciplined in whatever process you put in place.

My assertion that a single embodiment of agile principles will not always work for every team does not indicate that I advocate chaos. Rather, I believe that one needs to assess the team, the customers, and the product and come up with the implementation of the agile contepts that works best for that environment. Once those processes are put in place, the entire team must be extremely disciplined to follow those processes in order to get their product shipping regularly to customers.

Of course, every process must be molded and modified as time goes on. This is another reason why I believe that each team must create their own implementation of Agile in order to create their Agile Culture - because those processes will be changing over time to better meet customers needs. If you simply lock yourself into XP, Scrum or whatever other embodiment you choose, you may loose the ability to mold that process over time as your culture evolves.

Having a true agile culture actually means much more discipline on the part of developers, testers, product managers, management, etc.

Developers need to be more disciplined to ensure that they develop to the test plan that has already been written, that they do not change too much at one time, and that they return to a "shippable product" state before moving on to work on a new feature.
Management and product managers needs to be more disciplined in prioritizing features so that any given iteration is not overloaded with too many changes, and it takes discipline to stick to the idea that no product will ship before its time (or that no iteration will end before its time...).
Testers need to be more disciplined to ensure that the product remains shippable at the end of each iteration - especially if that product DOESN'T ship! It is much too easy for testing to sign-off on a "shippable" product so we can jump into the next iteration if they know the product isn't actually going to ship to customers. It takes discipline to stick to the same high standards regarding the definition of a shippable product regardless of whether it will actually get into customers hands or not.

Agile does not mean chaos - agile means dedication to small, incremental changes that benefit the customer in observable ways, and reacting to the changing priorities of customers. And that requires great discipline throughout the team.

Does Agile always apply?

2007-06-15T07:57:00.000-06:00

I have been asked several times in just the past two weeks whether I believe that you can "apply Agile" to every project. This is a very interesting question to me, since I believe that agile is a culture, and not a defined process. To me, this question is much like asking whether you can apply your religious beliefs to every situation in life. Agile is a way of approaching software development, and if you are truly "doing agile", you will continue to use that same approach for every project - you can't simply set aside your core beliefs regarding how quality software is developed. To say that it doesn't apply to this product indicates that you don't believe that you can develop this project to meet real customer needs with a high degree of quality. Why would anyone take on that project in the first place?

I was very interested to read Alistair's explanation of applying agile practices to home building. This really shows how these concepts are truly universal, and can really be applied to many different situations.

When people ask if agile can be applied to any software project, I believe that what they are really asking is whether the specific agile implementation that they are familiar with can be strictly enforced for any project. Of course, the answer to this is "No". As a matter of fact, I believe that ANY implementation of agile cannot be strictly enforced - defining an agile implementation (like XP or Scrum) is an oxymoron.

To truly "do agile" one needs to look at the environment, understand the people involved, know the product and its complexities, and then put in place the pieces of certain agile processes that make sense for that environment. You have then created a culture where software can be developed with minimal documentation, a test-first mentality and most likely with daily stand-ups and automated testing. You take the values from agile and create a culture of software development that results in high-quality products that meet real customer needs.

When you create this culture, you do not set it aside for some new project that may not seem to fit into an agile process. Instead, you mold your processes around the culture you have created to meet the needs of this new project. Being an agile development team means more than strictly applying an agile process - it means being agile in the very definition of that process, and molding the processes and procedures to meet the needs of the project.

Can you put the toothpaste back in the tube?

2007-06-13T12:54:00.000-06:00

I admit it - I have Google'd my own name. In todays world, I think you almost have to. I am fairly religious about getting my free credit report 3 times a year (once from each company), just to ensure that my credit score is where I expect it to be, and that someone hasn't stolen my identity and started using my credit. Considering the proliferation of blogs, and taking into account the permanent and yet dynamic nature of the Internet, I would think that we now need to be just as religious at finding out what other people are saying about us on their blogs and other posts -whether we are notable figures or not.

I read today about some companies that are trying to make a business out of helping people to stay on top of this. Defend My name and Reputation Defender are just two examples. Both claim to scour the web, watching for your name to be used in an unflattering way.

Their reaction is very different, however: one will start by sending an e-mail directly to the website owner, asking that the content be removed. If it is not removed, then they continue down that path, sending less-friendly e-mails to the owner, and even communicating with the ISP that provides the service for the "offending" site. This can often backfire, as some bloggers have simply posted these e-mails, and mocked the request to remove the content as a blatant attempt at censorship.

The other site takes a different approach: they will create positive posts to try and counter the negative ones. Their hope is to put enough positive things out there that the search engines will push the negative comments down, hopefully to the feared second page of results, which no one ever looks at.

Both of these approaches make me wonder: can you really put the toothpaste back in the tube? Once some negative comment is out there, it is really very tough to take it back - especially if it has already been widely distributed.

And what if the negative comments are actually accurate and well-deserved? What if you are really a con artist, taking people's money, or scamming them out of everything they own - but you want to use one of these services to keep your name from being defamed? Or, what if you are just a jerk, and your neighbor wants to tell people about it? They certainly have that right, at least in this country.

It is indeed a very interesting world we now live in. A few years ago I was involved in an on-going dispute with our school board. My name was mentioned in the minutes, which were posted to the web regularly. My comments were not just available to those at the meeting, or even to those at the school - but rather to anyone who happened to search for my name online (potential employers/employees, family, friends, etc). I kept a fairly close eye on those comments, just to ensure that they were not too defaming. In this case the posts, while not always complimentary, at least fairly accurately communicated my stance on the issue at hand. But this may not always be the case.

Do you search your name, just to see if your neighbor posted some negative comments about your barking dog, or worse yet - some pictures taken through your open window? How much would you pay for a service that would find these things, and attempt to remove them for you?

I would think that a service such as this should be paid for based on a reverse-AdWords approach: the more exposure it had before the company removed it, the less you would have to pay. A premium would be paid for those that were removed before anyone looked at it.

Regardless, I believe that just as we keep watch on our credit report, we all should Google our own names every once in a while, to keep watch on our on-line reputation. It is just one of those things we need to do in this new, online world of ours.

Microsoft Surface

2007-06-06T08:46:00.001-06:00

OK - this is actually pretty cool. I had a chance to use something similar a few years ago when I was working with the FBI - it was a map-based system, run off of the satellites, where you could use your fingers to zoom in and out and move the map around. At the time, I was more impressed with the real-time satellite images (and I was looking at the non-classified version), but it was pretty cool to interact with this device without using a mouse or keyboard.

Now that Microsoft is bringing this to the consumer market, it actually looks pretty exciting. I really like the way it seems to seamlessly interact with other external devices, like phones, music players, and credit cards. Pretty cool stuff. I can't wait to get my hands on one.

Digital Music Services

2007-06-05T12:31:00.000-06:00

I am not a big digital music fan - I have my "old" CD collection, and have a very old MP3 player (yes - it is a pre-iPod - contrary to popular belief, this technology did exist before the iPod). But my teenagers are really excited about their digital-music devices, and so I am always on the lookout for better ways for them to find songs than via peer-to-peer file sharing applications. Apart from being illegal, they simply expose our computer, and our children, to way too much bad stuff. Before I blocked these P2P apps from all of our computers, I once found an extremely graphic video on our machine, which one of my children had inadvertently downloaded thinking it was something else (which, of course, was the intent of whomever put this on the peer-to-peer network). With these P2P applications no longer an option in our home, and since they can't use iTunes (because they don't have iPods either), we are always looking for safe, legal ways to get the music they want.

So, I was intrigued by this new service called lala.com. As it turns out, LaLa.com is taking a very different tactic than the rest of the iTunes competitors out there, in two major ways:

1. Lala.com will allow you to listen to any music on your computer for free. You can create playlists, and use the service as much as you want without every purchasing any music or paying any subscription fees. It is only when you want to move a song to your portable player that you have to pay for it. So, for those who hang out at their desk all day, and just want to listen to music while they work, this is a completely free service where you can access as much music as you like.

2. Lala.com will only sell the entire CD - you cannot purchase an individual song. When you are ready to download something to your player, and want to make a purchase, they are forcing you back into the old-school packaged CD mentality, where you must purchase the entire set of songs that make up the CD rather than the one song you want.

While this is not much of an option for my children (they don't listen to music while at the computer, and they don't like purchasing entire CDs), it will be interesting to see how this service is accepted by both the music industry and the consumers. I would expect that consumers would like the all-you-can-consume music streaming, but would not be happy about having to purchase an entire CD of songs, whereas the music industry would be just the opposite.

It will also be interesting to see how Apple responds to this, since you can play these songs on your iPod, and can also download songs directly to your iPod from lala.com without going through iTunes to get them there. Not exactly the Apple way.

This seems like a risky approach to me, and one that doesn't really meet anyones needs completely. But then again, as I mentioned above, I am not a big digital-music fan, so what do I know...

Missed again...

2007-05-23T14:05:00.000-06:00

One of the most popular dating sites, which claims to be chasing Match.com this year, is run by one man out of his home. PlentyOfFish.com claims to generate over $10,000 a day in ad revenues, as documented in this video. In the video you can see a check from Google, which he also posted a picture of, for just under $1M, which was earned in about 2 months, as claimed on his blog. The Wall Street Journal reported that Google did indeed verify that this was a valid check.

I must be in the wrong business. With technologies like Bungee Labs now making web development "so easy a caveman can do it", and with Google paying out the wazoo for ad placement, just about anyone can make a website and make themselves a ton of cash-ola.

Sounds a lot like the dot-com boom all over again...only this time the cash is flowing. I guess I need to come up with a great idea that I can support with AdSense revenues...

Agile and the "Big Picture"

2007-05-22T11:13:00.000-06:00

Software Quality News posted an interview with Alistair Cockburn regarding Agile and how it has been implemented (or not) by companies since the creation of the manifesto. I really like the interview, but the thing that really hit a nerve with me was one of his top ten ways you can tell you are NOT doing Agile. Number 9 is as follows:

They have itty-bitty requirements on the order of "here's what happens when you click here," but they don't have long-term vision for what they're trying to accomplish.

This reminds me of a discussion we had in the last the CTO Peer to Peer regarding how some groups expect their architecture to "emerge" from their agile processes, so they rationalize that there is no need for formal architecture in the project.

I believe these are all-too-frequent rationalizations when people attempt to adopt an Agile methodology. Since Agile de-emphasizes documentation, people jump on the cowboy mentality bandwagon, and begin coding without ANY documentation, hoping that their architecture, and their "big picture" system, will slowly emerge from the clouds as their project comes together.

This is a recipe for disaster. If anyone tells you that because you are "doing Agile" you cannot document the big picture or design an over-all architecture, that is a clear indication that this individual doesn't really understand the Agile methodology.

Jumping into solution space and writing code before you have a well-defined architecture and big-picture goal is like taking off in an airplane before you have a flight plan.

Using agile methodologies in this environment will only help you get the wrong solution released faster.