Facebook grows by the day … and I use it too … even though I don’t completely get it. I mean I do get the find people fast bit, but the details of daily life laid out for the world to see? Heavens remember our teachers struggling to get people to do journals? Isn’t this an electronic journal … anyway back on track …

Oddly facebook tells me that I cannot when signing up for a business account use an email that begins with info@ because that type of email indicates I am a business …. duh, that is why I clicked on set up a business account …

It says my email address is invalid.
Unfortunately we do not support email addresses with generic prefixes (e.g. info@, webmaster@ etc.). Since email addresses of this nature are typically used for organizations and businesses, we do not allow them to be used for personal Facebook accounts. You will need to use a personal email address that does not contain this type of prefix. There are no exceptions to this rule.

Oh and to indicate how stupid the thought is … how to fix the problem … just create an alias from facebook@ to info@ and problem solved … come on guys.

Funny and relevant, at least if you are in Australia.
Censordyne

Say no to censordyne folks! Since when have politicians been technology proficient enough to even consider make decisions like this?

I’m thinking ….

Toyota has developed the wheelchair in collaboration with researchers in Japan. The system analyzes brain wave data using signal-processing technology and delivers neuro-feedback to the driver.

Several months back we became aware of a technology that is alleged to help people improve their brain patterns — to become more productive. I went to a seminar by Hope139.com and learned that you can monitor brain action and through neuro-feedback improve your ability to think. I was intrigued, but not intrigued enough to fork out the big bucks they desired.

In contacting “traditional” medical professionals and health insurance companies, I was informed that this technology is not widely recognized and getting any type of reimbursement would be difficult at best. This was in fact confirmed by the presenter at the seminar I attended. And yet the idea seemed logical to me and I wondered about it a fair amount since. The idea may be starting to gain some recognition however.

Last week when I learned from Mike Industries (a blog that used to be full of great things and thanks to twitter is now near useless … present story being a rare exception of late) that a company was now making a “toy” that allowed you to levitate a ping pong ball with EEG waives, I became even more intrigued. That videor story suggested that work was underway to do all sorts of things with brain waves, including flying jets. I really think there is something to all of this … you exercise your body to become better at a skill be it juggling, writing, typing, running, basketball … and on and on. Why not your mind? And I suppose we do exercise our mind on some level — we do multiplication tables, division problems, figure things out, do jigsaw puzzles, be we get no truly objective and simultaneous feedback (unless I suppose you are juggling knives … hmmm).

Now this week Toyota announces a wheelchair that responds to brain waves! Exactly! Now how can they tell you there is nothing to this technology on the one hand and then on the other use a wheelchair that uses the very concept?

I’m intrigued and thinking this will be the next big thing — much bigger than the Segway which was to revolutionize our world as we knew it.

I’d love to replace my computer mouse with an eeg … but not to strap on a helmet to do it …

According to Informationweek, IE8 has been out for only a very brief period, and yet many early adopters have already changed back to IE7. They also say that IE is now down around the 67% mark in overall popularity thanks to Firefox and Safari.

Makes for interesting reading and highlights again why you should never code your site in browser specific language.

It is the year 2009 when data is readily available and their on-line service does not offer a year end summary for download. Amazing. I’ve been doing this with my Discover Card for years. I call to ask how to do it and they tell me:
a) not available on-line
b) they’ll order me one and mail it (like that’s going to help me … I’d still have to key in the data)
c) it will take two weeks — I want to finish my taxes in the next day or two

Doubt I’ll still have the card at this time next year. What a bad job of providing something that they already have, my data.

So if you are considering a Bank of America Credit Card, I’d recommend against same because their customer service is poor — go somewhere else.

I had a machine go down in my home. It had on-board video and I was fairly sure it was the video card after a bit of testing, poking and prodding. They had a used card for the PCI Express slot, tested it in my machine, blew out the dust and cleaned up my memory cards for me (they had some accumulated dust), and I got out of there for well less than the cost of a new video card, $15. Pretty impressive. It’s good to know someone like them is right around the corner. So go try out Grand Prix Computer if you are in West Michigan.

This story was interesting. The US Department of Justice sets up phishing site apparently to test workers and see if they are practicing safe computing. Of course it was catch and release — no real data was released to the outside world, but I bet any employee who made the mistake of clicking through will regret having done so. Not a bad I idea I suppose, but if their system were set up correctly, their users shouldn’t be able to go phishing no matter what they do, should they?