Earthling

Blake at Voodoo Ventures reports that he can see repair crews working on the streetcar lines outside his offices. Blake's neighbor a few doors down saw "a functioning street car filled with people rumbling down St. Charles". There are a couple of photos on Idea Fuel, and if anyone has any more, let me know.

I did a little research and found that the part from Canal to Lee Circle was expected to be fully operational by Christmas. The work will continue and the rest of the line is expected to be in service by the end of 2007. I also found a community of streetcar fans on LiveJournal(via the Think New Orleans Wiki).

Posted by dave coustan at 10:05 AM |

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As of October 1 of this year, EarthLink has been proudly sponsoring the live Panda Cam at Zoo Atlanta. At that time we took over for temporary stopgap support generously offered by CNN. Lun Lun and her new cub are viewed remotely in all of their cuteness by thousands of visitors each day.

On Monday, Mark Davis reported in a blog article on AJC.com that the Cam will now be operating from 10 a.m. - 5 p.m. Eastern time, rather than full 24 hour coverage. The change in operating time is due to ongoing staffing and bandwidth costs that have outpaced zoo resources, and was planned independently from EarthLink's sponsorship agreement in October. Judging from the activity on the AJC's Panda Watch page, the Cam has developed an enthusiastic following. Some of the commenters to the AJC blog article mistook the change as related to EarthLink's coming on board. While I empathize with those who want 24-hour live Lun Lun coverage, according to the zoo the costs associated with staff to keep the Pandas well in frame and the resources involved in supporting live simultaneous streams have made the new hours necessary.

I called Zoo Atlanta PR Director Susan Elliott for her thoughts. Susan appreciated the passion of the Cam following, and explained that the sponsorship has ensured the Cam can support the thousands of viewers it gets each day. According to Susan, "Without EarthLink's support, the number of viewers we'd be able to accomodate would be extremely limited."

Posted by dave coustan at 12:08 PM |

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My sister asked me what digital camera she should get for her toddler daughter. She looked at the options made specifically for kids, like the Fisher-Price Kid-Tough, but didn't like that they take such small photos. So she's thinking maybe she'll buy a used point-and-shoot that would be no big deal if it got dropped and broken. Any suggestions for specific cameras to watch for on eBay?

I wrote a while back about ways you can find answers online, and am somewhat surprised I haven't found a satisfying answer to this one yet. The first page of a Google results set gave me this from 2004, plenty of reviews of the one specific camera for kids, and this pretty useful list of suggestions from Photo.net. On Yahoo Answers I found these Two questions, but few, if any, answerers give any actual camera recommendations other than "buy something cheap".

Update: Some recommendations on Ask Metafilter.

Posted by dave coustan at 4:41 PM |

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Thank you to everyone who contributed an asnwer about what's most important to them on their browser's start page. As you might expect, the answers have been varied, and start pages mean different things to different people. Some set themselves up with a full set of content right there, and others want the barest experience possible. The myEarthLink team has been reading them over with interest, and will be sharing some thoughts with Earthling in the next couple of days.

In the meantime, feel free to add your thoughts if you haven't already.

Posted by dave coustan at 1:10 PM |

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I'm pleased to report that EarthLink has been selected to develop a municipal Wi-Fi network in Alexandria, VA. The city has chosen EarthLink's bid to create a roughly 16 square mile Wi-Fi network. Our proposal also provided for discounted access for a certain number of qualifying, low-income residents, and free public hotspots in approximately two dozen areas. Like the networks we're building in Philadelphia, New Orleans, San Francisco, Anaheim, and Milpitas, CA, it will be an open-access network, allowing other providers to sell service over it as well.

More details in the press release issued earlier today.

Update: There's more information on the city's planning and development process and timeline on the Wireless Alexandria site.

Posted by dave coustan at 2:30 PM |

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Starting some time over the weekend, I saw large amounts of spam in the Junk Mail folders of various accounts that fit a definite pattern, all rolling in in batches. Have you seen a bunch of spam with the subject line "So and so wrote:" with nothing after the colon, and a first name that matches the "from" field of the e-mail in question? I'm seeing a whole mess of them. I guess the spammers figure that that subject line tying back into the from field will get them past junk filters.

Judging by the content, they appear to be all part of the same stock pump-and-dump scam where scammers try to artificially inflate a stock price, and then get their money out quickly. There's a great discussion and explanation of this type of scheme on Ask Metafilter.

I asked EarthLink spam sleuth Mary Youngblood about the new pattern this morning, and she said it's likely to be one ring or group of spam rings behind it. Spam patterns have helped our fraud and abuse team to bust many organized groups of spammers over the years, including a phisher scam indictment in September.

Posted by dave coustan at 11:13 AM |

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I'll be away from Earthling for the Thanksgiving holiday. My plans include seeing family, laying around, eating my share of the bird, and making one of these.

If you're planning on braving the crowds and shopping on Friday, check out Buzzfeed.com's links and blackfriday.info(thanks, Reid!) for bargains and strategy tips. And if that's not your bag, you can always pick a different way to spend your Friday and/or declare your observance of Buy Nothing Day.

Have a good holiday. See you Monday.

Posted by dave coustan at 2:01 PM |

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• First of Five Helio Stores Opens - Helio's first standalone store location opened on the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, CA. Here's coverage from Rafat Ali at mocoNews, a snarky write-up at Gizmodo.com, and more details at Phonemag. The Drift was recently given an 8.0 out of 10 by CNet reviewer Nicole Lee.

• Third Helio TV Spot - This one for the Drift, directed by Jared Hess of Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre. Calling it a phone can have dire results.

• Try Out DSL And Home Phone In Person - The EarthLink Tour is at the Topanga Canyon Mall and the Santa Anita Mall in LA from now through December 30th. At the tour set-up, you can take a look at DSL and Home Phone in person, and make a free long-distance call through the service itself.

• Mile High MindSpring Call - Director of Systems Engineering Michael Sugg sent in a report of his unusual usage of MindSpring - "...I called my wife this morning at home using our MindSpring product from 34,000 feet about halfway between Canada and Dublin (over the Atlantic Ocean)." He says it worked pretty well way up there.

• New RSS Feeds From myFavorites - According to the myFavorites Product Blog, you can now subscribe to Popular, Recent, and Tag pages via RSS. Don't subscribe to heh or you'll ruin the Friday surprises.

• Beyond Internet Access Podcast - President of Value Added Services(VAS) Craig Forman was recently interviewed about EarthLink's mission and the role of VAS for the latest in a series of EarthLink podcasts. You can listen to it directly here, subscribe to the podcast feed, or check out all of the EarthLink podcasts on the main page.
  

Posted by dave coustan at 10:30 AM |

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I received word today that EarthLink's CEO Garry Betty was diagnosed with a serious form of cancer and will be taking an indefinite medical leave to receive treatment. Garry is a very visible personality at our offices, and someone who I’ve bumped in to in the elevators and at the airport on several occasions. As one of my colleagues remarked today, optimism and positivity have always been hallmarks of his personality. We'll all feel his absence from the office during his treatment, and our thoughts will be with him.

Mike Lunsford, EVP of Access and Voice, and Shared Services will be stepping in as interim CEO. Mike has been with EarthLink since 1999, and has worn many hats in the organization.

If you'd like to send along your best wishes to Garry, I've set up a mailbox at wellwishes@corp.earthlink.net specifically for that purpose, and will make sure they get to him.

Posted by dave coustan at 3:58 PM |

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The first batch of Nintendo Wii Consoles hit stores yesterday. A Flickr search for the word "Wii" currently yields over 10,000 photos. Engadget has a wrap-up of how it looked at Nintendo's launch event in New York. It sounds like there were enough left over there so that about a thousand people who hadn't waited in line were still able to nab one.

I've been pining for a Wii ever since I tried it out at E3, but after narrowly missing the ability to pre-order, I'm Wii-less. I hope to track one down as soon as I can.

If you have a Wii launch day story, or first-hand experience bringing one home and firing it up, please let me know about it in the comments below.

And if you're looking for one as well, here are some tips for how you might track one down. Engadget also offers a long list of frequently asked questions answered with first-hand experience.

Posted by dave coustan at 11:13 AM |

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One of the most exciting things we're working on right now in the Value Added Services group is a tear-down/rebuild of the myEarthLink experience.

That's a fancy way of saying we're redesigning what you see at my.earthlink.net. It has remained an important point of access for all of the tools and services that our users rely on, but we've been building on the same "collection of boxes and widgets" model for some time. In the meantime, web browsing habits and the average user's demands on their start page and browser have changed. In the past couple of years, we've also started to serve a wider audience -- people who just want to use our free start page and e-mail in addition to those who also get paid services like voice and internet access from us. The project was in motion well before Mike Arrington of TechCrunch referred to our current portal as ancient, but we aim to make our new page as useful for Mike as it will be for those who are now saying to their neighbor, "what's TechCrunch?"

Here's what a couple members of the project team had to say about the project:

"We're moving beyond boxes you shuffle around the page. We're focused on 'what does the user want to do any time they open a browser window?': search, get a quick status on their life, and go to their frequently-used online tools." - Gregg Hartling, Director of Web Applications

"For the initial launch at the beginning of 2007, our focus has been on easy access to information. For example, users will be able to see essential information such as news, weather, new video and e-mail status at a glance; they'll be able to jump right into using tools from other sites, such as Expedia, eBay and Amazon; and they'll be able to add their own favorite sites and feeds to the page. Later in the year, we're going to focus on personal publishing and sharing. We want users not only to access everything that's important to them, but actually comment on what's important to them and contribute their own content." - Tom Harris, Senior Product Manager

Read on for more on the project, and how you can be a part of it.

Continue reading "A myEarthLink Revisioning With A View"

Posted by dave coustan at 5:50 PM |

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Last I checked in on Security Product Manager Ben Kaplan, he was inviting large amounts of viruses and spyware into his computer. He and his team are preparing to release the new version 2.0 of EarthLink's Protection Control Center in the next couple of months, which will feature a new technology called Attack Shield. Attack Shield represents a new approach to fighting malware, that sniffs out potential threats as they are happening to your computer, and stops them from doing any damage. I interviewed Ben via e-mail to find out about how it works and what's new in PCC 2.0.

PCC 2.0 interface - click to see a larger screenshot

What feedback and suggestions did you hear most often from users of the current PCC, and how did you incorporate it into the new version?

The number one suggestion was to improve the Firewall to be more user-friendly in terms of providing better information about whether to allow or deny alerts. We took that information and made the firewall smarter to decrease to the number of firewall alerts while still maintaining excellent protection. We also now give recommendations to the user on whether to allow or deny an inbound/outbound communication. We also improved the UI to give the user an easier way to make sure their computer is always protected. At a simple glance EarthLink customers can now see if their virus/spyware definitions are up-to-date, if they need to run a scan, or if their Firewall settings are correct. A simple click can now make the necessary changes to keep your computer and personal information safe.

So what's the Attack Shield part of it?

A new piece of malware is created approximately every 3 minutes. According to research from our partner Sana Security the average time it takes a traditional security vendor to release a definition file is 22 days. That's 22 days between when a virus is known about, and when your traditional protection software suite can do anything about it. Attack Shield incorporates the idea of keeping your computer clean during that lag between when a new threat comes out, and when the security companies can recreate it, analyze it, make a vaccine, and get it out to you in the form of a new virus definition. This is sometimes known as Zero-day protection.

Read on for more.

Continue reading "Protection Control Center 2.0 and Attack Shield Sneak Preview"

Posted by dave coustan at 10:44 AM |

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I'm back in the office today* and in the middle of catching up on everything. If you're expecting a reply from me on something, please bear with me while I dig out.

A couple of weeks ago Schroeder, one of the bloggers I met on my last trip to New Orleans spotted an EarthLink Wi-Fi SSID in the wild. Before my vacation I asked our Wi-Fi team for an update and found out the build-out is in fact in full swing and they're installing Wi-Fi radios on light poles and working on the network infrastructure. I had little intention of doing much work on my vacation, but knowing all that (not to mention the tremendous food options available), I couldn't resist passing through the city on my way back from Baton Rouge. So on Sunday I went nodespotting.

Behold, a node!

With my carefully trained nodespotting instincts and some rough instructions about where to look, I saw a bunch of nodes on light poles up and down South Carrollton Ave. With a friend's laptop I was able to hop on to the free network from there and perform my first Google search from FeatherByEarthLink. More photos of nodes in the wild here.

*Thanks to John for keeping the blog well fed while I was gone.

Posted by dave coustan at 1:22 PM |

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As in, I'm pondering things. I am ponderous today. Here's what I'm pondering:

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor the World Wide Web, is concerned. In a recent interview with The Guardian, he talks about his concern for the blogosphere, and how too many bloggers are so credulous that basically anything they read online is taken as truth.

"there is a great danger that [the Web] becomes a place where untruths start to spread more than truths, or it becomes a place which becomes increasingly unfair in some way"

It's tempting to trust people online. Hard to remember our critical-thinking skills and stop giving everybody the benefit of the doubt. And if enough people repeat it, it's almost impossible to remove false information from our collective understanding.

I worry about this. But I think most of us worry more about the Internet's signal-to-noise ratio. As the 'Net fills with spam and splogs, forum and blog comment spam, phishers and cybersquatters, what methods will we use to fight back? Can our defenses keep up? Will we rely on others to filter the Web for us? Will we voluntarily reduce the amount of the Web we can access? And who will we trust to be our guardians?

How do we preserve the integrity and usefulness of the Internet in the face of human nature? This may be the most important question of the Internet age, and I think we're going to need an answer sooner than we'd like.

Posted by John Nolt at 5:31 PM |

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Guest-blogger John here, filling in for vacationing Dave. Party!

I thought it might be nice to switch up on the usual "Friday Heh" post with a roundup of some of my favorite music-related sites. The sites below are mostly pop music just like the radio, but you probably haven't heard of any of the artists. So put on your explorer's hat and get ready to hear something... new.

SomeSongs - This site is a large collection of links to tracks made by people who make music just because. The songs are all evaluated by listeners like you, resulting in a rating from 0.00 to 10. Yes, there are songs on there with almost a zero. Listen if you dare! Most of the artists on this site are very very indie, but try the list of top-rated songs and you're almost guaranteed to hear some top-notch tunage.

Song Fight! - One of the most venerable online music sites, SongFight.org is an online song competition held every week. A title is posted, and everyone on the Internet is invited to write a song for that title. The entries are posted, and you can vote for your favorite. Some entries are so good you wonder why they're not on the radio. Other entries make you wish you never evolved ears. Dig through the archives for literally DAYS worth of free music to listen to and hate add to your iTunes.

Garageband.com - Nothing to do with Apple's music-creation software, Garageband.com is another amalgamation of free, independent music that's been filtered and rated so you can get to the good stuff quick. The artists on Garageband are trying a little bit harder to be "pro" than the folks on SomeSongs and Song Fight.

Magnatune - This online record label's Googlesque tag line is "We are not evil." They try to do right by their artists and their audience. You can download the music in their catalog for free, or purchase uncompressed WAV files to burn a CD of an album like the groovy "I Don't Know What I'm Doing" by my pal Brad Sucks.

Posted by John Nolt at 2:20 PM |

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I'm taking a few days away from Earthling for a computer-free vacation which will include catching my first SEC football game, the LSU/Alabama game in Baton Rouge. I'll try to send some cameraphone pics to the Earthling Flickr account, but will be otherwise out of communication with the blog. In the meantime, Senior Technical Writer John Nolt will be stepping in as guest blogger. You may recognize John's writing from some of his work on the eLink newsletter. You'll be in good hands, and I look forward to reading his stuff when I get back.

Posted by dave coustan at 8:53 AM |

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A new Helio device joins the Kickflip and Hero today. It's called the Drift, and it looks like it'll be my new favorite. Sorry, Kickflip.

It brings completely new functionality to the Helio line-up including integrated GPS technology and new applications that put it to good use. Through Google Maps for Mobile and GPS, the Helio Drift can:

• Give you driving directions from wherever you happen to be
  
• Show you the results of a Google search for services near you (right on a draggable map)
  
• Point out traffic jams and accidents in your path with real-time traffic reports
  
• Give you access to satellite views of your maps

Through another application called Buddy Beacon, you can find where your Drift-carrying friends are, and let them know of your location throughout your travels. If you'd rather stay under the radar, you can always turn Buddy Beacon off. And if you want to know where everyone is, you can send them an SMS prompt to turn their beacons on.

Helio tells me that all of their new devices will be GPS-enabled from now on, and they'll continue to develop new features for Buddy Beacon and new applications as well.

The Drift is the first Helio to offer Bluetooth technology, including support for wireless stereo headsets. It supports USB mass storage mode, so you can connect it to a computer and drag and drop to it like a USB hard drive. Like the other Helios, the Drift has a really nice 2 Megapixel still and video camera, nationwide 3G connectivity, MySpace Mobile support, video on demand, MP3 audio, and supports microSD cards up to 2 GB. And it makes excellent phone calls too. It's made by Samsung, is only available to Helio members, and comes in both Black and White.

The Drift costs $225, and is available right away at Helio.com, in retail stores, and through 1-888-88-HELIO. New Helio stores will be opening throughout the country soon.

As soon as I get my hands on one, I'll report back on what it's like in the flesh.

Update: More details at Helio.com.

And some thoughts from Google's Alex Medina about the GPS integration with Google Maps for Mobile at the Official Google Blog.

I'll add more photos after the "continue reading" link.

Continue reading "Meet The New Helio Drift"

Posted by dave coustan at 12:01 AM |

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Have a question or suggestion about EarthLink Web Mail, or just want to stay informed about upcoming features? Email guy and Senior Product Manager John Foltz is putting the finishing touches on the new EarthLink Web Mail Product Blog, and invites you to stop by, kick the tires, and say hello. You'll also soon be able to get to it via a link on Web Mail itself as well.

One of the things I like best about John's blog is the open thread where you can comment on any Web Mail-related topics that don't have a home elsewhere on the site. It’s a nice way to make sure he’s covering both what’s most important to the product team, and what’s most important to the users.

A few quick facts about John and the new Web Mail blog:

• John's first commercial email account was from MindSpring in ‘93 or '94. He was MindSpring user #589.
  
• In addition to Web Mail itself, John works on SpamBlocker, CAPTCHA, and various back-end services related to email.
  
• The primary goals of the blog are "to keep users informed, and to use their collective wisdom to guide the product."

Take a look or add it to Reader. And if you don’t have an EarthLink Web Mail account, you can sign up for myEarthLink and get one for free.

Posted by dave coustan at 3:45 PM |

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My first double-best. The Huxtable Dog Sweater I wrote about when I gave Etsy.com its first best last December is long gone now. I'm giving the site a best again today for a feature I just noticed after visiting Etsy this morning via a blog called Miss Malaprop.

The feature is called Alchemy. eBay has something like this where you can create a Want It Now listing (sort of the opposite of "buy it now," though not quite) if there's some object you don't see for sale but want to find out there. Etsy's "Alchemy" lets you ask Etsy's talented merchants if they'll agree to make the gifts, clothes, and art objects you've dreamed up but can't make yourself. This way, getting no results on an Etsy search isn't a dead-end. Since this is the world of hand-crafting, with Alchemy you can request an object or combination of objects that doesn't even exist yet. Want a hand-knit Google sweater? A scale diorama of one of the hatches from TV's Lost? Just ask the crafters if they'll do it for you, and how much they'll charge.

Whatever you dream up, you place a free custom request and fill in some details, and then crafters bid on the price and right to make that thing for you. You can also make a request to a particular seller if there's some crafter's specific handiwork you want to entrust with the project.

Looking at the current list of Alchemy requests, there's everything from a Baby Luigi Baseball Cap to a Kimono Dress to Pumpkin-flavored Chapstick. If you put in your requests now, you could probably get all of your crazy ideas made for you well in time for the holidays.

Posted by dave coustan at 2:45 PM |

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First, an update on a previously reported heh: Remember young Ava's Love Is Embarassing book? Ava gave the book to her classmate Alexander, and this week her dad reports back on how the book was received. As Ava predicted, Alexander was duly inbarist.

• Ghosts Of Halloween Past - Ava's dad Ward also offered a great look back at his old halloween costumes.
  
• Use Your iPod As A Ouija Board - This looks like it works well, but the thing is, there's a popular band named "Yes" but none named "No". That could slant some of the answers. I guess a true ghost would still find a way to get a No across.
  
• The StickCam - Sure, we all know what it's like to chase a stick, but what's it's like to *be* a stick being chased by a Pug? [via John]
  
• Illustrated Seven Phases Of Owning An iPod - I've seen people utterly self-destruct around Phase 6. People always seem to forget that Apple does not actually disable the functionality of older iPods each time they come out with new ones. Word to the wise.
  
• Who Says Irony Is Dead - David Parmet found a CNN.com headline that kind of hurts my head.
  
• When Studio Effects Go Bad - I think the image was supposed to switch when this newscaster poked at the screen with his finger. This is the kind of thing I'd miss if YouTube found a way to magically and suddenly remove all of its broadcast content.
  
• Adopt A Microbe - Featured on Blogger. The illustrations are particularly hehful.
  

Posted by dave coustan at 1:36 PM |

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There's been a lot of action this week in the field of copyright and digital asset rights management, including YouTube's working on removing tens of thousands of video clips that contain copyrighted material. Mark Cuban had one of the most interesting and blogger-baiting bits of unsubstantiated gossip about how concerns about copyright lawsuits may have played into the negotiations as YouTube sold to Google.

During YouTube's rise, Om Malik observed back in February that the growing popularity of YouTube had "...less to do with amateur content, and more to do with copyright infringing content...I wonder how many people actually visit You Tube to watch broadcast content online." I wonder how long it'll be before one of the other video hosting services with fewer scruples and partners to worry about becomes the next destination for copyrighted video content. Any bets on which one it'll be? Is this a cycle that will go on for a while, or will someone figure out an efficient and kosher way to tap into the demand for sharing clips hastily grabbed off of TV and old recorded media?

Update: This probably won't be available for long, but Valleywag offers a clip on YouTube of the broadcast response by Stephen Colbert on The Colbert Report to his clips being removed by his parent company.

Here are a few more of the week's DRM-related stories:

• MySpace To Block Copyrighted Music - Through a partnership with Gracenote, MySpace is getting serious about keeping copyright-protected music clips off of the site. Less of a worry than with YouTube since it's not central to what MySpace is about, but I do wonder if this will cut into MySpace's popularity when other social networks don't have similar policing practices. Less music playing on MySpace pages wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. Instead of calling it a DRM crackdown, they could call it a user experience improvement.
  
• Kazaa Settles With Music Publishers - Peer-to-peer music sharing service Kazaa is getting some comeuppance in the form of a couple of class action lawsuit settlements rumored to total in the $100 million dollar range.
  
• Tape It Off The Internet Dot Com - On the other side of the DRM coin, I found this new television download/share/discuss community on del.icio.us today. It's invitation-only right now, so I can't tell much yet about what it is or how it works. I've applied for an invitation and will report back if I get one.
  

Posted by dave coustan at 1:55 PM |

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I've seen a recent jump in the amount of spam that ends up in junk mail folders of my various e-mail accounts -- like it's thousands instead of hundreds every couple of days. Until I saw some headlines about it, I assumed it was just the natural ebb and flow of the Spam arms race. An Ars Technica article pinned some of the blame on the rise of botnets, networks of zombie-ized drone computers that Spammers harness to blast out massive amounts of unsolicited e-mails that are hard to trace.

I asked EarthLink Network Abuse Manager Mary Youngblood if we're seeing a similar rise in Spam recently, and what we're doing about it. Read on for her thoughts.

Continue reading "Are You Noticing More Spam Out There?"

Posted by dave coustan at 2:48 PM |

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I was excited to read that Sling Media finally released a Mac OS X version of their SlingPlayer software this week, initially as a beta. This is the software piece that goes with the Slingbox hardware, that lets you view your television's live content stream from any laptop connected to the internet. It might make a fine substitute for my holding an iSight webcam up to my television to send my dad a live feed of a football game that he can't get in his local area.

Update: Eh, it looks like you can't really do stuff like that according to the software's licensing agreement. Technically to meet it I think you'd have to be the one in the room yourself, using SlingPlayer on your own computer. The hardware owner has to be the person using the player software. Sorry dad, good to know just the same.

There's more on the Slingbox in my coverage of CES from last year. Back then, the Mac version of the software was anticipated as a Q2 2006 release.

Posted by dave coustan at 1:55 PM |

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