The UPS truck delivered something today that brought tears to my eyes: my own hardcover copy of the book Sexting including an chapter by lil’ ol’ me. Gale Cengage Learning approached me a year ago about including a blog post of mine, Sexting highlights society’s issues with privacy and shame, in one of their their textbooks. I agreed to publication with a writer’s fee and copy of the book. They complied with a check and a copy of the book as promised. My article appears as chapter two titled “The Threat of Sexting Has Been Exaggerated” on page 15 of the hardcover edition. The book is part of the At Issue: Social Issues series.

Here is the Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Sexting / Stefan Kiesbye, book editor.
p. cm. — (At issue)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7377-5161-1 (hardcover) — ISBN 978-0-7377-5162-8 (pbk.)
1. Internet and teenagers. 2. Internet–Safety measures. 3. Teenagers–Sexual relations. 4. Electronic mail systems. I. Kiesbye, Stephan. II. Title. III. Series.
HQ799.2.I5.S49 2011
004.67’80835–dc22

I am excited to be a part of this compilation and I look forward to reading the other chapters!

I had fun with this one, letting out a bit of my campy side along with my geeky side. I guess I’m just so giddy about getting a new laptop and this fancy new presentation remote. I don’t work for Targus, but I sure wouldn’t mind if they sent me a check! Ha ha. Really, though, I am so happy with this product and it fills a need that anyone who does presentations and has a MacBook Air is going to need to fill. I wish this information had been there for me when I was frustrated with the lack of any solution in the Apple Store yesterday. Just get one. You won’t be disappointed. Or your money back. (If the store you buy it from has a money-back guarantee, that is.)

P.S. There is a tiny switch inside the remote (which you can see when you pop off the back) that allows you to set it to Windows PowerPoint, Mac Keynote, or Mac PowerPoint. Very nifty, but you might overlook it if you didn’t know better. So now you know!

In case you ever uploaded a video to Google Video and didn’t get the memo that they’re shutting down, here’s a copy of the email from Google yesterday:

Dear Google Video User,

Later this month, hosted video content on Google Video will no longer be available for playback. Google Video stopped taking uploads in May 2009 and now we’re removing the remaining hosted content. We’ve always maintained that the strength of Google Video is its ability to let people search videos from across the web, regardless of where those videos are hosted. And this move will enable us to focus on developing these technologies further to the benefit of searchers worldwide. [*Google Video is shutting down as a content host but will continue as a video search.]

On April 29, 2011, videos that have been uploaded to Google Video will no longer be available for playback. We’ve added a Download button to the video status page, so you can download any video content you want to save. If you don’t want to download your content, you don’t need to do anything. (The Download feature will be disabled after May 13, 2011.)

We encourage you to move to your content to YouTube if you haven’t done so already. YouTube offers many video hosting options including the ability to share your videos privately or in an unlisted manner. To learn more go here.

Here’s how to download your videos:

Go to the Video Status page.
To download a video to your computer, click the Download Video link located on the right side of each of your videos in the Actions column.

Once a video has been downloaded, “Already Downloaded” will appear next to the Download Video link.

If you have many videos on Google Video, you may need to use the paging controls located on the bottom right of the page to access them all.

Please note: This download option will be available through May 13, 2011.

Thank you for being a Google Video user.

Sincerely,

The Google Video Team

Google Video was the pioneer in closed-captioning Internet videos. They first introduced closed-captioning for Google Video on September 19, 2006. I was one of the first people in the world to use the technology when I publish my closed-captioned Google Video on October 4, 2006. Google then bought YouTube on October 9, 2006. They later introduced YouTube Captions and Subtitles on September 22, 2008, and I didn’t find out about it until May 7, 2009, when I uploaded my first closed-captioned video on  YouTube.

Since then, I went back and closed-captioned all my spoken videos on YouTube and I continue to closed-caption the videos I upload to my YouTube channel.

In Gmail, tap Menu, then More, then Settings. Scroll all the way down to Vibrate. The default is Never. Tap the down arrow to change this. Select Only in Silent Mode or, to be safe, For all Gmail notifications.

In Email, tap Menu, then Account settings, and scroll down to Vibrate. Here’s where it can trip you up, because it is different from Gmail. In Gmail, what you see is what you get; i.e., if you see For all Gmail notifications, that’s when it will vibrate. In Email, it will say “Also vibrate when email arrives,” but that’s not what you get unless you select it. As with Gmail, the default is Never. To change this, tap the down arrow and select either Always or Only in Silent Mode. I select Always to be safe. Note that you will have to repeat this process for every one of your Email accounts.

In Messaging,
follow the same directions as for Email. As always, the default is Never. Why Google would make never the default for all these messaging apps I cannot understand, especially when the wording is misleading in the settings for Email and Messaging. What’s even more misleading is that the messaging apps settings do not honor the system settings for the device itself. I had already set device settings to Vibrate: Always. So why should Always not apply to messages? Pretty stupid, if you ask me.

So, now you know how to make sure your Android device vibrate when new messages come in. I’m happy to give free advice as a netizen who has benefited from other bloggers, but I’m also happy to donate to bloggers when their helpful hints save me a lot of dough. If this blog post saves you money, please consider donating to my blog by going to the home page and clicking on the PayPal Donate button. Thanks!

I work as a freelance interpreter for the deaf, and the agents I work for send out mass emails whenever they need to fill requests. In this age of email, when every interpreter I know carries a mobile device with them, I can respond to a request in 60 seconds and the agency will tell me it was already filled by another interpreter who responded in 30 seconds. It’s not always that fast, but when I don’t even realize I got an email from an agency until 20 to 30 minutes after the fact, it does me no good to have a mobile device. That’s why it’s so business-critical that I be notified the moment an assignment offer goes out.

Posted from WordPress for Android

After careful consideration, I’ve decided not to root my NOOKcolor. I’m no troglodyte; in fact, I’m an early adopter and an Android OS fan. I bought the G1 and, later, the Nexus One, the day they came out. I was aware before I bought the NOOKcolor that it was, at its core, an Android tablet. I had read the reports that you could root it; that is, hack into it to unlock total access to the Android OS and all the apps one can download and install from the Android Market. I considered rooting or, rather, having a friend root my NOOKcolor for me, but then my wise husband asked me, “What would you be able to do on it rooted that you can’t do now?” After some time, I realized the answer was, “Well, um… nothing, really.” Here’s why:

1. I already own an Android phone. Anything Android I can do on my Nexus One.
2. I already own a laptop. Anything creative–writing, spreadsheets, presentations, photo & video editing–I can do better on a laptop than a tablet. And then I can view it on my NOOKcolor.
3. I’m not a gamer. I don’t know nothin’ ’bout killin’ birdies. If I wanted to shoot aggressive avians, I could do it on my phone.
4. I already spend too much time on the Internet! The NOOKcolor comes out of the box with a built-in Wi-Fi card and Web browser, and I already spend a lot of time using both. When I’m not using the Share feature to update my reading status, post a quotation, or rate/recommend a book, I’m shopping for more books on the nook store– and that’s before I even open the Web browser. Once I load the browser, I can do practically anything Internet. The mobile versions of Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube work great on the NOOKcolor, so why bother with Android apps? In fact, with the larger screen, even the full versions of several of the websites I normally go to work fine on the NOOKcolor. The only one I’ve found that I must use the mobile version for is YouTube. So, I think I’m set for the Net.

Barnes & Noble already made a bold move by giving readers full access to the World Wide Web, not just a few Net Apps, and I can tell you personally that the ever-present Web makes it hard for me, sometimes, to stay tuned to a book. Rooting my nook would only complicate matters. Now, let me get back to that book I was reading…

Daniel Greene isn’t paid to write this stuff– he’s just a super nice guy with an insane need to spend hours writing blog posts for nothing. Won’t you stop the insanity with a small donation?

Has this happened to you on Flickr lately? You’ve tagged photos at various times with lowercase and title case keywords, and you decide you want to make them lowercase for standardization. You go to your All Tags page and click Edit to the right of one of the lowercase / capitalized tags in the list; for example, I wanted to standardize “accessibility, Accessibility” to “accessibility.” After clicking Edit, I get an “Edit this tag” page that shows Accessibility in the text entry field, and below that, a line that offers “Or, use a different format: accessibility” with “accessibility” as a hyperlink. I click accessibility, and Flickr puts the lowercase version of the keyword (tag) in the text entry field. I click Save and a dialog box pops up that says, “Are you sure you want to replace accessibility with accessibility?” (I know that looks odd, but the first instance of “accessibility” in that sentence is the database version of the tag, which will always be lowercase, and the second instance is the display version of the tag.) I click OK, but does Flickr change the tag? No. And there are only four (4) photos are tagged with that keyword! This has been going on for me for the past three weeks. In fact; the first night, I wasted two hours changing tags from title case to lowercase only to find out in the morning that Flickr hadn’t changed any of them.

If you think I’m crazy for caring about tag standardization and spending two hours working on it, then this blog post is not written for you. I know this is not something most people care about—and, God, do I know there are worse problems in the world!—but I’m sure there are a lot of others out there like me who do care about this and are bugged by it. This screenshot got 5,704 views in its first 24 hours on Flickr, so obviously I’m not the only one who’s having the problem and searching the Web to find out who else is.

I posted about this problem in a thread in the Flickr Help Forum three weeks ago and have not gotten resolution. Two weeks ago, Flickr staff changed the title of the thread to “[resolved] Batch tag update not working“– even though the problem is not resolved. If you are still having this problem, I encourage you to go to that Help Forum thread (link above) and let them know this problem is still unresolved and you would like them to fix it.

Here’s my real-person experience with the NOOKcolor. I’ve owned and used my NOOKcolor for a week now. In my review, I will answer three questions: “Why buy the NOOKcolor instead of the iPad or Samsung Galaxy Tab?”, “What do you wish you had known before you bought the NOOKcolor?”, and “What do you love about the NOOKcolor?”

Why not just buy the iPad or Galaxy Tab?

The NOOKcolor is half the price of the cheapest iPad, and even with a cover is less than half the price of the Galaxy Tab; it has a beautiful 7″ wide-screen-format full color LCD (which I actually find to be a better fit for my hands than the iPad); it comes with 8 GB internal memory and a MicroSD card slot for expansion (which the iPad doesn’t have); it has a full web browser (Google Chrome) that allows you to view anything on the Web that isn’t made with Macromedia Flash (which the iPad doesn’t support, either), and it has QuickOffice software that allows you to view Word, Excel, and Powerpoint documents. It allows you to drag and drop (with a standard MicroUSB cable, not the proprietary iPod/iPad connector) files such as audiobooks, music, photos, documents, etc. for listening and viewing (even in a photo slideshow) on the pretty screen. There are a few games (Chess, Crosswords, Sudoku), and you can use the Pandora app to listen to streaming music if you get bored of the music files you loaded into the device. There may be more “Extras” to come (free or for purchase), as well. As for the Galaxy Tab, I don’t need a portable videoconferencing device, and I don’t need another Android phone. I still like my Nexus One, thanks.

As for the NOOKcolor’s web browsing capabilities, so I have watched YouTube videos, checked my GMail, caught up on Facebook and Flickr, read content on news websites, downloaded content from the Barnes & Noble store (some free or 99¢ public domain books) and free ePub download sites, and managed my Netflix queue. Primarily, though, I enjoy the NOOKcolor for reading e-books. Go figure! I’m not a big gamer, so I don’t care about iPad games designed for the accelerometer, and I don’t expect to do much document creation on a tablet, so I don’t miss iWork. For my intents and purposes, the NOOKcolor does everything I would want the iPad or Galaxy Tab to do— for half the price.

What I wish I had known before I bought the NOOKcolor

• You can only use the LendMe™ feature once per book—only one time the whole time you own the book!—and you can only use the LendMe™ feature with a limited selection of Barnes & Noble books, not with all of them! You can only “lend” a B & N book for seven days— just long enough for your friend to get hooked and click “Buy Now” to buy it from Barnes & Noble, unless they read fast and don’t put off starting the book. In other words, LendMe™ isn’t to help you save money; it’s to help B & N make money.
• You can only use the Share feature to post quotations, write reviews, make recommendations, etc. about Barnes & Noble books, not with any other books! Yes, the Barnes & Noble books are standard ePub, but they’re specialized in such a way that your NOOKcolor knows if you’re reading any other ePub and it won’t let you use the Share feature with anything but their books. What this means is that you have to pay, say, $1 or $2 for a public domain book you can get free elsewhere for the privilege of giving Barnes & Noble free advertising so your friends are encouraged to buy these old public domain books from them instead of downloading them from any number of other ePub download sites.
• On a related note: the only books that are guaranteed to show up in your library with cover art are your Barnes & Noble books. This may be a bug they will fix, but I wouldn’t count on it. Why? Because having their books and not other supplier’s books show up with eye candy is another reason for you to buy books from them. It’s a way of devaluing the competition’s product and making you want to fill your virtual bookshelves with books that look pretty. When you drag and drop ePub books you got from other places, what you get on your NOOKcolor screen is just a little gray rectangle with a text title that’s often truncated. When you buy a B & N book, you get the full color cover art. Nice, eh? You also sometimes get little badges that say “Sample” or “New” or “LendMe™” on the B & N book covers—dandy.
• You will have to charge your NOOKcolor every day with regular use, and be sure to bring your NOOKcolor charger with you if you’re planning to use it a lot in a day and be away from home all day.

Bitter? Not really; just disillusioned. I still ♡ my NOOKcolor, and here’s why:

What do you love about the NOOKcolor?

• I love its size and shape and curves
• I love its gorgeous touch screen
• I love its intuitive interface
• I love that it’s a pleasure to read on*
• I love that it has WiFi and a full Web browser that lets me see anything on the Internet I want (as long as it’s not Flash)
• I LOVE the dictionary— a must have, I think, for any ebook reader. With the dictionary on the NOOKcolor, it will also take you to Wikipedia or Google if you have a WiFi connection and want more info.
• I love how easy it is to rate books you’ve gotten from the BN website, and I think I’ll love the LendMe™ feature because it’s better than not being able to share books and/or try them before you buy them.
• Oh, and I do like it that you can spend up to an hour in a Barnes & Noble store reading a book free of charge, although I don’t know if I’ll ever actually do it, and—again—I’m sure it’s designed to make them money, not save you money.

So, there’s my honest opinion about the NOOKcolor. I’m glad I got it. I chose it carefully over the e-readers from other manufacturers such as Amazon, Apple, and Sony. I would recommend the NOOKcolor to a friend. Or to you! And, of course, because I care about my friends, and about you, “Gentle Reader,” I’m warning you of its shortcomings as well.

Did this review help you? Did it save you $300? If so, would you reward the time I took to write this for you by giving me a small donation of even $1? I work hard on these blog posts and I do them without sponsorship from tech companies or advertisements. If you like, please give.

*P.S. I just have to laugh at the television ad with the woman reading her Kindle at the pool next to a guy who can’t read on his iPad. I don’t read at the pool! In fact, I can count on my fingers and toes the number of minutes I spend on the deck of a pool each year. I need an e-reader to be easy to read indoors without having to sit directly under a lamp or with a booklight.

My HTC Nexus One Car Dock broke only a few months after I got it. I searched the Internet about this, and found that I was not alone. One man suggested a way to handle it with care and I am now following his advice with my replacement dock. I am providing this video to give you a visual tutorial about how to baby your fragile car dock. Hope it works for you!

In case your car dock breaks, I recommend that you do what I did: call HTC Repair and tell them that your Nexus One Car Dock broke and you want them to send you a replacement under the one-year warranty. If they give you any trouble, tell them that you know of other people whose car docks broke and who received replacements. They should email you an RMA label. You will have to box up your broken car dock and drop it off at a FedEx with the provided shipping label. HTC Repair should receive it within a couple of days, process the replacement in a couple of days, and ship it back to you via FedEx in a couple of days; i.e., you “should” have a new one in your hands within a week.

What happened in my case is they dropped the ball on processing the replacement, and I didn’t call and bug them about it until three weeks after my tracking number said they received it. I recommend that you call them as soon as you see from your tracking number that they have received it and ask them to confirm receipt of your old one and provide a tracking number for delivery of your new one. Be the squeaky wheel, and good luck!

I ordered the Nexus One Car Dock the day after it was released, and it arrived today by FedEx Ground. I put it in my car tonight to see how the car dock, Car Home, speakerphone, etc. worked. I’m happy I got the Car Dock, though I do wish the other Android apps like Phone and Contacts would go into landscape mode, because that’s the way I like to view my Google Maps GPS navigation.

I created this video on October 3, 2006, and at the time, I was one of the first handful of people in the world to publish a video using Google Video’s new closed-captioning implementation. I just found out that YouTube now supports the same method (which makes sense, since they were bought by Google a couple of years ago). Apparently, though, YouTube has been supporting this closed-captioning method since Fall 2008. Who knew? Anyway, since this method of closed-captioning is now supported here, I’m uploading my old Google Video movie with its accompanying closed-caption file so people can view it via the more popular and extensible YouTube.