NBC Direct - I don't think so!

I went to nbc.com to watch a tv episode. One of the options is to download a software application, NBC Direct, that you then use to download episodes and watch them when you want.

Well, I downloaded the software and then started reading the license agreement. Here are some key clauses:

First, their definition of "content":

[The service] manages and delivers video, music, audiovisual and other content ("Content") to you from NBCU.

And now, what you agree to:

BY ACCEPTING THIS LICENSE, YOU AGREE TO ALLOW FILES CONTAINING CONTENT TO BE DELETED FROM YOUR HARD DRIVE BY THE SERVICE AT THE EXPIRATION OF THE APPLICABLE LICENSE PERIOD and term.

YOU SPECIFICALLY AGREE THAT THE SOFTWARE MAY DELETE FILES AND CONTENT FROM YOUR HARD DRIVE(S) AND OTHER COMPUTER MEDIA.

you hereby grant permission for the Software to utilize the processor and bandwidth of your computer for the limited purposes of (i) facilitating the transfer of digital files and communication between the users of the Software and the Services and (ii) facilitating the transfer of digital files to servers for purposes of posting content on websites or blogs and (iii) pasting links to content in instant messages and RSS feeds.

[The software] will block you from obtaining and playing Secure Content for which you do not have a valid license.

NBCU or the owners of DRM Technology may also download revocation lists onto your computer.

You consent to periodic updates of the Service client application stored on your computer without further notice to you.

Now NBC might use these contractual rights benignly, but the contract is written in such a way that they could act malignantly and argue that they are acting within the bounds of the agreement. For example, the definition of content SHOULD mean only the video, music, etc. that you get from them; but the sentence is written in such a way as to allow them to argue that any of video, music, etc. on your computer is "content". Taking this stance, the other clauses allow them to delete or deny access to any content on your computer. They'd cause quite an uproar by doing this, and they probably won't; but I don't need their software, so am I going to complete the installation process? I think not.

WebTracer2 for website structure visualization

I periodically review web sites. And when I do, I like to be able to see graphical illustrations of their structures. In the past I've created these using aharef. The graphs this site creates are helpful, but there's no interactivity - you can't point to a node and find out what page on the website it represents, you can't click on a node to be taken to the page, etc.

Well, I've just found a software app that takes this concept to the next level. Called WebTracer2, you run the "spider" program to create a map file of your site, and then you run the "visualizer" program to see the illustration. WebTracer2 has 3 advantages over aharef:

• When you hover your mouse over a node, it displays the url of the page the node represents.


• When you click on a node, the page represented by that node is displayed in your web browser.


• You can use your arrow keys to zoom in and out and rotate the graph.

It's not perfect - it requires a lot of horsepower, and you can't make it display the url's for all of the nodes simultaneously; but it is a big jump in the right direction.

tracking the location of your laptop

The University of Washington has published free, open source software you use to track the location of your laptop. It periodically communicates its location (ip address) to a distributed set of servers (OpenDHT). With a Mac OS X laptop, you can also have it periodically capture and send pictures to those servers.

When you install the program, you will be provided with a complex, unique identifier. You must save that id in a separate location (e.g., a thumb drive). You will need it if your laptop is stolen.

If your laptop is stolen, you would then install Adeona on another computer and run a program to retrieve the location of your laptop. You would then call the authorities to help you get the laptop back.

Disqus

I'm intrigued by this service. It looks like you can easily add a comment section to any page; and you don't have to install or maintain any software, or maintain the comments repository - it is all hosted on disqus servers. All you have to do is add a JavaScript snippet to your pages.

On the other hand, I have to wonder how long they're going to be around - so far they have no business model. Seems to me they ought to be able to charge for this service, especially for larger web sites.

Vyser RoamAbout - browser widgets

Do you every find yourself looking at a web page containing an address that you want to map, but there's no map on the page and no link to have it mapped? So you open another page to display Google Maps, MSN Maps, or Mapquest, go back to the original page, cut the first line of the address, go to the map page, paste the text into the search field, go back to the original page, cut the second line of the address, go back to the map page, and paste the rest of the text into the search field, and then click on the button to display the address on the map - whew!

Or you are reading about a company, and you decide you want to look up the company's stock price, or get other information about the company. So you cut the company's name, then go to one of the myriad of business sites (e.g., Yahoo Finance, MSN Money, Google Finance, SmartMoney, etc.), paste the name of the company into the search box, and then click the button to display information about the company.

How would you like to display an address on a map just by selecting it and clicking a button? Or display information about a company just by selecting it and clicking a button? You can do these things and more with Vyser RoamAbout (though admittedly -for now - only if you are using Firefox).

RoamAbout puts an icon in the lower right corner of your browser window. You click on it to open or close a sliding icon bar displaying icons for the functions it provides. The picture below shows what your browser window looks like after you select an address and click on the "map" icon:

The picture below shows what your browser window looks like when you select a company name and click on the "stock quotes" icon:

Google teleportation

Learned about this at the cnet site. When you do a search, the results might present a search box under the results. When I search for "Tektronix", for example, I see this:

Note the new search box under the listing. If you do a search in that box, it only searches on the tek.com site. I'll let you decide whether you think this is a good thing or bad thing for your site. But… if you see this as a bad thing, I believe you can contact Google and ask them to turn off this feature for tek.com.

file dropper

Upload 5GB files, get a unique url, and use it to download the file; or give the url to others so they can download the file

polldaddy - create and run online polls

Looks like a competitor to SurveyMonkey.

We7 - free, advertiser-supported music downloads

If you don't mind listening to ads, you can download music for free from this site.

YouSendIt - enables transfer of large files

The free service allows you to upload files of up to 100MB and download up to 1GB per month. If your email provider limits the size of attachments - or you just don't want to tie up your email client - this would be helpful.

Roxxer - build a web site on the page

Edit your page on the page. Looks like a good way to allow non-techies to publish. Will be interesting to see if it gains any traction.

Web-based Desktops

I've been watching the web-based desktop applications as news has come out about them. At some point I expect they will get to a level of maturity that companies will start making a big leap, replacing MS Office on their employees desktops with access to one of these. It makes great sense - the employees no longer need powerful pc's, their pc's no longer have to be backed up (as the documents will reside on the server), employees can access and update their documents using any pc anywhere where there's Internet access, and there's a much reduced need to do desktop updates.

In addition, the combination of these apps and SAAS (having these hosted externally and paid for as a subscription, rather than licensed and installed internally) will become more enticing. However, the developers of these apps will have to assure organizations that their service is virtually 100% reliable and the data is secure.

I haven't seen an app that's ready to replace MS Office, but I remain hopeful.

These apps look like good integrations of open source apps in virtual desktop interfaces, and I'll watch to hear more about them.

AjaxWindows

G.ho.st

gOS

Find a wifi hotspot

If you travel, and you worry about being able to find a wifi hotspot, hotspotr may help.

iterasi - snapshotting web pages

I'm curious to see if I find this useful.  The product's not ready yet, but I've signed up to get it when it is.  It's an IE and FireFix plugin that allows you to snapshot the web page you're on (they call it "notarizing") so that you can get back to it later.

Sounds like bookmarking, right?  But it can save the state of the page you're on, whereas bookmarking can't always do that.  An example they demo uses Google Maps.  As you browse different geographic areas in Google Maps, watch the url in your browser.  It doesn't change.  So if you were to bookmark the page,  the bookmark wouldn't take you back to the page as it was when you bookmarked it (yes, I know that Google provides you a way to do that - this is just an example).  But the iterasi plugin will save the page, just as it was when you were looking at it, on their server, allowing you to look at it again at a later time.

Their service will also allow you to schedule automatic, periodic snapshots of pages you choose.  So you could monitor how a page changes over time.

Again, I look forward to seeing if this ends up being useful to me.

Hubdub - predictions of the crowd

If you’re a news junkie, you may find Hubdub interesting. If the site thrives, it will be interesting to see how well the crowd does in its predictions.

Google mashup - polluters

If you want to scare yourself.

MS Office Professional 2007 and McAfee Security Center

I installed Microsoft Office Professional 2007 - and then I couldn't access the Web, and Opera and IE locked up! I found that the installation causes McAfee Security Center to stop working. The only way I could get my access back was to uninstall McAfee and use a different firewall. Caveat Emptor.

HP iPAQ Pocket PC hx4700 - hard reset

Hello!

Periodically I see something or learn something that I want to share or think others may be interested in. Tonight that happened again, and this time I couldn't find the answer to my question with Google. So it's time to start a blog.

My wife gave me her HP iPAQ Pocket PC hx4700 (again). I had previously "upgraded" it to Windows Mobile 5 (WM5). So after she gave it to me, I tried to hard reset it (the latest phrase may now be "clean reset"). Hard resetting with WM5 turns out to be different than with previous versions of the operating system. You still press the power, calendar, and task buttons concurrently and then press the reset button in the hole on the bottom. But this is where it changes. When you do this, you will see three lines in red:

Enable KITL
Clean Registry Hive
Format Storage

Next to each one of these lines is "No" or "Yes". You can move through the lines by pressing the calendar button, and you can toggle the "No"/"Yes" by pressing the task button.

To hard reset the device, make sure "Enable KITL" is set to "No". Set the other two to "Yes". Next (get this!) press the record button on the side of the IPAQ - and wait. It will take a while.

Good luck!