General

Making Sure Your Laptop Won’t Stray. Laptop owners can now choose from an array of fascinating antitheft technologies that claim to protect computers — and the files on them — from loss. Do they work? [New York Times: Technology]

I’m doing the Mac port of Absolute’s CompuTrace, which got a favorable review here.

I’m all moved in, but using a dialup connection now. I fried my DSL modem when I plugged it into the wrong AC adapter. BellSouth is sending me a new one this week.

I’m still pissed about the movers. They ended up charging me close to $800 (which is more than twice the estimate) because my old place was on the 3rd floor and they had trouble getting some items down the stairs. They also wanted cash, since nobody was at the office to take a credit card (and nobody bothered to tell me until they got there, so I had to rush off to the bank and take out cash).

AT&T Broadband was supposed to install my cable TV today, but they never showed up. I called and they said the guy was way behind schedule. Since I couldn’t stay home & wait, I had to reschedule the installation for Thursday.

I went back to my old place, cleaned it out, and returned the keys and then I picked up Cody at the vet this afternoon. Even though he was sedated, he still MEOWed very loudly the whole 30 minute drive and kept trying to get out of the cage. I stayed in the right lane on I-95 just in case I had to make a fast emergency stop if he got out. I’m keeping him confined to one room until he starts using the litterbox & until I get the rest of the place cleaned up & safe for him.

Aside from the mishaps & expenses, the place is beautiful.

When I came home from dinner Saturday night I saw a racoon in the parking lot. I’ve heard there’s other wildlife around & even occasional manatees in the river.

I discovered that the town I’m moving to in a few days, Wilton Manors, has its own home page. Boca Raton, where I live now, also has its own home page.

15350 ª March 7 2:25 PM. Amazing collection of information on Folklife in Florida between 1937-1942. Audio files are stunning. They were originally recorded (with a portable acetate cutter!) by Zora Neal Hurston and Stetson Kennedy, working for the WPA. Does anyone else have other favorite Library of Congress sites?[MetaFilter]

An interesting look at Florida’s history. Here is a direct link to the site.

Chat client updated: Fire 0.30.a is a major update to the chat client that handles AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, Jabber and IRC chat protocols in one program. Be prepared to input the account information for each of those services again with this update, though. The program author at Epicware says that the new storage system for account info is needed to prepare for future upgrades… [Mac Net Journal]

I tried it out, but I still prefer Proteus, which seems more reliable. Fire still seems to have problems with buddies not appearing online when they are. At least it finally imports the list from the server and shows names instead of numbers for ICQ users

The Sacred Heart Palm Project

“Walk into the main hall at the Convent of the Sacred Heart High School (CSH) in San Franciscoâs Pacific Heights neighborhood on any given Monday morning and youâll see a huddle of students holding their Palm IIIc PDAs toward a wall-mounted, infrared beaming station. Like bees around a hive, the group is collecting information invisibly.

In fifteen seconds theyâll have downloaded their weekly class schedules, their homework assignments for every class, as well as the school calendar, sports schedule and daily announcements from what they call an ‘electronic cubby hole….’

Maggie, a senior, passes a group of ninth-graders in the hall using their Palms, takes a quick look and says, ‘Iâm soooo jealous of you guys.’ Itâs the ultimate compliment and an unsolicited validation of coolness….

On the first day of school, the entire freshman class÷all 54 of them÷were presented with brand new Palm IIIc handheld organizers, instead of Texas Instruments scientific calculators. With an educational discount from Palm, supplemented with funding from CSH, costs for the studentsâ parents was a wash….” [Design Interact][via The Shifted Librarian]

This is very cool! An excellent use of PDAs in school.

15331 ª March 6 9:54 PM. Gambia for the People Two guys I know, using affordable (and easily transported) technology, have gone from our island in Maine to Gambia, West Africa the last two winters to play, promote, and help preserve traditional music. Rock stars have sold out, local radio is a joke, and big-label/commercial music is doomed, but these two are doing good things. Any inspiring independent music projects in your part of the globe? [MetaFilter]

Dave Gilden is doing something similar. He runs Cora Connection, which specializes in kora music (a 21-string west African harp). He spends a lot of time in Gambia, working with local musicians, including the late Amadou Bansang Jobarteh, one of the greatest masters of the kora. He also imports instruments, offers lessons, and visits schools.

NY Times: Intercepted Al Qaeda E-Mail Is Said to Hint at Regrouping. “Senior counterterrorism officials said that Al Qaeda’s effort to rebuild itself outside Afghanistan appeared to rely heavily on the Internet for communications among highly mobile operatives, who often check their messages in public Internet cafes around the world, making them difficult to track.” [Jake’s Radio ‘Blog]

Nat Hentoff: “The press ought to awaken the citizenry not only to the FBI’s harvesting lists of what ‘suspect’ Americans read, but also to the judicial silencing of bookstores and libraries that are being compelled to betray the privacy and First Amendment rights of readers.”  [Scripting News]

The government continues to chip away at the constitution and nobody seems to care

He knows what you’ve been checking out. The USA PATRIOT act gives the government broad new powers to seize library and bookstore records — and prevents librarians and booksellers from

complaining. [Salon.com]