For those, like me, who love free software (who doesn’t?), it can be hard sometimes finding a good piece of software that does a certain task, especially since these freeware products appear and disappear all the time. This is one scenario that has happened to me personally too many times: I find a nice freeware program, and I use it for a long time. Then at some point, I recommend it to someone, only to find that it has now become a commercial software (and not free anymore), so I have to go and try to find a good freeware product to replace it. If this has ever happened to you, then you know what I mean.

That’s why I was very glad when I found Gizmo’s Tech Support Alert. This site offers a list of the top freeware products out there. It is classified into categories like:

• Security / Privacy / Encryption
• Internet: Email / IM / FTP / File sharing / Download managements
• Enhancements to Windows / Desktop
• Computer maintenance / Performance
• System utilities / Backup / Data recovery
• Audio / Video / CD / DVD
• … and more.

Each category is further divided into subcategories for easy navigation. Each sub-category usually features 3 or 4 products, with a full review showing the pros and cons of each product, so that the reader can make an informed decision of which product to use. The list is also updated constantly, removing products that are not freeware anymore, and adding new software that just proved itself to be worth mentioning. The website also provides a free monthly newsletter (with a paid version that has more stuff in it), and a forum where visitors discuss freeware programs and computer problems.

This site used to be a lone effort by Ian “Gizmo” Richards, who created and maintained a highly popular list of the “46 Best-ever Freeware Utilities”, but over time that list grew well beyond 46 and reached the point where it could not be maintained by one person. So, now the website has changed to wiki-style, where it relies on the contribution of dozens of volunteer editors who edit and moderate suggestions from thousands of site visitors. As a result the range of software covered is ever increasing and quality of the reviews ever improving. In some sense, some might think of it as a Wikipedia for Freeware.

At this point, whenever I am looking for a software product in a certain category, this is the first place to check. I wonder how many others do the same. Again, the URL of the website is http://www.techsupportalert.com

When you are as famous and well-known as Google, the slightest changes in your identity will be noticed by millions. A couple of weeks ago, many people around the globe have noticed that the big capital “G” that was used as a favicon for the Google website was replaced with an unrecognizable lower-case “g” (which is the second “g” in “Google”).

Old Favicon	New Favicon

Some people seem to like to new icon, while many others (including myself) seem to prefer the old one. I personally think that the old favicon was instantly recognizable as the initial “G” from “Google”, while the new one does not have that quality. For a brand name like Google, I believe it is very important to have a logo (or even something as small as a favicon) that can be recognized.

Google’s reason for this change (as mentioned on their blog) is the following:

..we wanted to develop a set of icons that would scale better to some new platforms like the iPhone and other mobile devices..

They also state that the selection process was not easy, since they had to chose from among more than 300 different permutations. Some of the other alternatives they came up with are:

Seeing these designs, personally I would have chosen one of the more colorful designs with the capital “G” in it, since these two features (the capital “G” and the colors) are what comes to mind when you think Google. However, they also say that this is not the final design, but rather a first step to a more unified set of icons. So, hopefully, they will come up with something better. They also welcome suggestions, so if anyone can come up with a idea for a design, they can submit it here.

So, what do you think about the new favicon? Do you like it or not? and why?

For those who don’t know what phishing means, Wikipedia defines phishing as:

“an attempt to acquire sensitive information, such as usernames, passwords and credit card details, by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication.”

The most common form of phishing is when someone receives an “urgent” email asking them to take immediate action to prevent some impending disaster. Here are some examples:

“Our bank has a new security system. Update your information now or you won’t be able to access your account.”

“We couldn’t verify your information; click here to update your account.”

Once a person clicks on the provided link, they are taken to a webpage that looks exactly like the legitimate web site that they know (e.g. the website of their bank). Because the page looks familiar, people enter their username, password, or other private information on the site, not knowing that they have just given their information to someone unknown, who can now use this information to hijack their account, steal their money, or open up new lines of credit in their name. They just fell for a phishing attack.
Google just issued a warning on their official blog, to warn people from these phishing emails. According to this post, you can reduce the chances of being a phishing victim by following these steps:

• Be careful about responding to emails that ask you for sensitive information
• Go to the site yourself, rather than clicking on links in suspicious emails
• If you’re on a site that’s asking you to enter sensitive information, check for signs of anything suspicious
• Be wary of the “fabulous offers” and “fantastic prizes” that you’ll sometimes come across on the web
• Use a browser that has a phishing filter

You can read the details of these steps here. In addition, there are several quizzes online to test whether you can differentiate between a legitimate webpage (or email) and a phishing one. Just type “phishing IQ quiz” in your favorite search engine, and enjoy!!

A friend of mine was working on a paper, and he pointed out that one of the references he had to cite is:

W.H. Knox, R.S. Knox, J.F. Hoose and R.N. Zare, Observation of the 0 fs pulse, Optics and Photonics News, April 1, 1990

Now, try reading the authors’ last names together into one phrase, and see what you get…

Are you a fan of free, open-source software?
If yes, then please continue reading. Otherwise…well…also continue reading, you might change your mind!!

A while ago, I was surfing the net, and I came across the OpenDisc project. This is basically an ongoing collection of high quality open-source software for Windows, classified into categories, such as: Design, Internet, Multimedia, Utilities, etc.

The programs in this collection include (click here for the complete list):

• Blender: an advanced 3D graphics modeling program
• The GIMP: the open-source alternative for Adobe Photoshop (although a bit hard to learn)
• Azureus: a powerful BitTorrent protocol client
• FileZilla: a fast and reliable FTP client and server
• Firefox: web browser
• Audacity: an audio editing program
• VLC: a media player that supports a lot of audio and video file-types
• OpenOffice.org: a full-featured office suite including a word processor, spreadsheet, web page editor and presentation program.
• and many more…

Of course all these programs can be downloaded from their corresponding websites, but I think it is a good idea to group them all into one collection that can be downloaded from one location. The whole package can be downloaded as an ISO image that can be easily written to a CD. Go to http://theopendisc.com/ for more information or to download the package.

Also, another related project is the OpenEducationDisc, which is similar to the main OpenDisc collection, except that it claims that it focuses on providing students with quick, easy and powerful tools specially selected to solve their educational needs. However, I personally don’t see much difference between the two collections (except for 3 or 4 science and mathematics programs). The whole list of programs can be found here.

Still, I think it’s a good idea, and I’m sure more and more programs will be added to the list in the future. The project team is open for suggestions, and users can suggest programs on the forum.

Recently, the term OpenID has started to gain much attention, especially among bloggers. But what is OpenID? As mentioned in the OpenID website:

OpenID is an open, decentralized, free framework for user-centric digital identity. OpenID eliminates the need for multiple user names across different websites, simplifying your online experience.

So what does this mean? Each one of us has different accounts on different websites, and we need to maintain a list of different identities to use with each of these websites. Sometimes, however, it’s better to have something that tells you that user jsmith who commented on your blogger blog, is the same as the user john_s who writes in blog “X Y Z!” on WordPress.com, and he is even the same j_s who owns a particular Flickr photo album. So how do we do that??

This is where OpenID comes into play. More and more websites (especially blogging websites) are adopting OpenID. Anyone can sign up for a new OpenID for free. Now, let’s say you want to post a comment to a certain blog post. In many cases you can choose to sign in using your OpenID, which will link back to your OpenID profile, in which you can link to all your other identities (blogs, photostreams, profile pages, etc.). Actually it is even easier than this. If you have an account with some particular providers, then you might already have an OpenID. For example, if you have a blog on WordPress.com or LiveJournal, then your username is already your OpenID.

However, I do recommend that you sign up for an independent OpenID (at OpenID.net) that you can link with your other identities. The reason is as follows. Let’s say you use your OpenID that you obtained from LiveJournal, then you decided that you don’t want your LiveJournal account anymore. In this case, you have two options: You either have to keep the account, since you already used the OpenID to comment on other people’s blogs and so on, OR you can delete the account, and therefore all those comments will not be traceable back to you. On the other hand, having an independent OpenID means that you can keep it regardless of what other accounts you have.

So, do you have an OpenID? What do you think about it? Which provider do you use?

Google Maps strikes again!!!

Another newly added feature to the already amazing Google maps. Google Maps has teamed up with The Weather Channel to offer a new My Maps overlay of current weather conditions and forecasts. You can see different overlays (like clouds and radar), in addition to temperature and weather conditions at different points of interest. All you have to do is go to Google Maps, click the My Maps tab, and enable The Weather Channel from the list of maps.

… especially to all fellow grad students.

Source: PHD Comics

It seems that Google has started working on a new project; a new online knowledge base (similar to Wikipedia), where information is contributed by users. Google claims that they will not serve as an editor in any way, and will not bless any content. The project is still under development and testing, and it is currently named knol (which stands for a unit of knowledge). You can read more about that project on the official Google blog.

This is actually interesting, since Wikipedia pages seem to show up really high on the Google search results, no matter what you search for. I wonder how this will change, given the new Google knol. Will Google favor results from their own knol over those from Wikipedia, or will it be a fair game based on which has the more valuable information? I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

I just found this interesting page, whose author criticizes a research paper that has appeared in VLDB 2006 (a major Database research conference). The author of that page (not the paper) proceeds to point out some major (and minor) flaws in that paper, and also tries to find reasons why this paper did not get rejected. Here is an interesting extract from that page:

There is a common belief that the conference program committees never read more than a few pages of a conference paper when they make a decision on whether to accept or reject a paper. Since the statement contradicting the claim in the abstract is near the end of the tenth page, it would be easy to for such a referee to miss the contradiction.

The author also provides some suggestions on how to improve the review process. Some of the suggestions are quite obvious, like “authors should read their own papers”, while other suggestions might be a bit more drastic and need some time to see whether or not they make sense, like having one reviewer responsible for the paper, and getting their name associated with the paper if it is accepted (hmmm, what about blind reviews?)

It would be interesting to see if those suggestion could be implemented or not, and why. Any comments?

Well, this happened almost 3 weeks ago. My backpack got stolen at the gym, with my wallet inside it. This is the kind of things that you hear about all the time, but never think it could happen to you.

Anyway, of course the wallet contained a whole bunch of cards, and immediate action had to be taken in order to prevent any misuse (and to replace the cards), So I thought I should just write down everything I did here for future reference (and for anyone who might face a similar situation). Of course, this is specific to where I am (Ontario, Canada), so people at other places might have to do things differently, or at least use different contact information.

1. Deactivate or cancel all credit cards (usually your credit cards have a phone number to call for any help. Make sure you write that number down and keep it in a safe place). This has to be done ASAP before someone can use the stolen credit cards.
2. Deactivate or cancel any debit or ATM cards. This is usually less urgent than credit cards, since no one can use these without the PIN code. Still, it is a good idea to shut them down.
3. File a police report about the incident. (This could be done before step 2, or even before step 1, depending on how long you think it might take).
4. If the wallet also contained the social insurance number (SIN), you need to inform Service Canada, and get a replacement.
5. Call the three national credit reporting organizations immediately to place a fraud alert on your credit report. The alert means that whenever you apply for new credit (credit card, loan, etc.), the creditor will have to contact you to make sure you are who you claim to be, before they authorize any new credit. It took me a while to get a hold of the correct phone numbers for the 3 organizations. So here they are:
   a) Equifax: 1-800-316-7530
   b) Experian: 1-888-826-1718
   c) TransUnion: 1-800-663-9980
6. Replace driver’s license.
7. Replace University student ID.
8. Replace Health Card.

It is also a good idea to keep photocopies of all the contents of your wallet. It is much easier to have your driver’s license number, credit card number, etc. on hand when you call the corresponding organizations.

Side note, the backpack was found 2 days later, with all its contents, except for the cash and the watch, but that was after I already had to go through all the trouble of replacing the cards.

In addition to deciding whether or not to move my blog to WordPress, I have also decided to start a new blog. This new blog “Database Land” will be dedicated to databases, and anything related to them, which makes sense since it is my primary research area. Here is the address of the new blog:

http://dbland.wordpress.com

There will also be a permanent link to the new blog on the side bar of this page. Happy reading!

For some unknown reason, I suddenly decided to give WordPress a try. However, I will not abandon my original blog on Blogger just yet. Until I decide which of them I will continue to use, I will be posting to both of them at the same time. So please feel free to visit either of them, and let me know in the comments if you think one of two services is particularly better than the other (based on personal experience).

The web is endlessly full of articles that compare different email services, particularly Gmail (from Google) and Hotmail a.k.a. Windows Live Mail (from Microsoft). Still, I found this article:

http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-11-20-n35.html

I think it is a very interesting read. It is yet another comparison between Gmail and Hotmail…with a twist. The author tries to envision what would have happened if Gmail was designed by Microsoft instead of Google. Needless to say, the article is heavily biased against Hotmail (or against Microsoft), but still some of the mentioned points are very true and to the point (e.g. banners, spam filter, splash screen, log in information, etc.). Here is an excerpt from that post:

“First of all, we need to rebrand the application name to something longer. Let’s call this Windows Live Gmail, and add some of the visual elements connected with Windows. Also, as in Hotmail, there needs to be less space for the email subjects to make place for a reading pane, which is full of verbose explanatory help text…”

If you have used both services, you’ll enjoy the read. Let me know what you think in the comments!

I haven’t posted anything here for a while, and then suddenly two posts within a few hours!! Oh well! I just couldn’t let this one go.

Speaking of the Heroes show I was just talking about in my last post, it seems that the fellows at Google have someone with mind reading abilities among them. I was just talking with a colleague a couple of hours ago, and she she mentioned that she was trying to find an address on Google maps, but it pointed her to the wrong place. I mean, even though Google maps is usually pretty accurate, sometimes it can be a bit off. That conversation was just a couple of hours ago, and guess what, about 10 minutes ago, I came across this post. It seems that Google already noticed that problem, and they are now allowing users (not yet everywhere), to edit the pointer locations to make them point to the right places. Of course they had to make sure that no one will just do that for fun, so you have to be logged in with your Google account to do that, and any modification great than 200 meters has to be approved first. Also, if you are searching for a location that has been edited, you will still be able to see where it was originally pointing. Unfortunately it is not available for addresses in Canada yet!!

So I have recently started watching the TV show “Heroes“. I’ve been hearing about it for more than 6 months now, but never really got to watching it until about a month ago. The concept is pretty interesting: Ordinary people discover that they have special abilities, and how each of them deals with it. You can look at it as a toned-down version of X-men. People still have those powers, but there is no fancy X-jet or an academy where all those heroes train to use their powers and stuff. Some of the powers are actually things that you might find in real life (although very rarely), like telepathy and telekinesis, while others are straight-out fictional, like people who can fly, or turn invisible.

My only problem with the show is that all those “heroes” find out about their abilities around the same time, and it suddenly seems that so many people on the show have some sort of a special power. So many in fact that the “ordinary” people have become a minority on the show. At the beginning of the show, when there was only a handful of them, there was always a question of “what if there was someone you know who has some special ability that they kept as a secret?”, but with the ridiculously increasing number of heroes, I don’t think these powers can be kept a secret anymore!! I mean, come on, people flying around, or messing up with the time-space continuum, or people firing up bolts of electricity!! How can these not be noticed??

It never seizes to amaze me how different “custom service” and “customer relations” are. Custom service employees, in many occasions, seem to have no idea what they are doing, and just want to get you - the customer - off their back. On the other hand, customer relations employees seem to have a lot more knowledge and experience, a lot more that they actually CAN do to satisfy the customer.

Here’s my latest encounter. It was with my cellphone service provider. About 6 weeks ago, I found out that an additional phone number has been added under my name, and it has already been in use, with an outstanding balance on it. Of course I called the customer service, and it took a good amount of time to convince them (or at least to let them understand) that I do not know anything about this new number. They said they could cancel it if I pay the outstanding balance, which I refused. So they said they would have to start a fraud investigation to see if someone else registered in my name or how this exactly happened. I agreed, even though I had the feeling that someone in the company messed up! They said they would call me back within 2-3 days to let me know the status. A week later, and no one called, so I called them back. Again, the customer service rep told me that they haven’t looked at it yet, since these things usually take up to 2 weeks. So I waited for one more week then I called back. This time, the costumer service rep called the fraud department again, left a note for them, and told me they would call me back in a couple of days to update me. Again, no one called.

As you can already tell, I’m a very patient person, and I like to believe that these people have a lot other stuff to do, so they might have an excuse in taking so much time, even though they have no excuse in not getting back to me. Anyway, I called again after a couple more days. This time, the customer service rep said that no fraud investigation has even been opened since the previous people only left notes for the fraud department while they should have filled a certain form, which they didn’t. So this guy filled out that form for me, gave me another phone number, and told me to call that number in a few days (this was on a weekend) to get an update.

So, I tried calling that number, which seemed to be ringing with no answer all the time, until eventually someone picked up. They told me that the situation has been resolved, the unknown number has been canceled, and that the balance would be credited to my account, and that I should be able to see all that on the next bill. I guess my patience finally paid off in the end!!

Yesterday I got the bill, and guess what, the other number was still there, and the balance was still the same. At that point, I snapped!! I called the customer service and told them that I would like to cancel my account with them. I guess that was the magic word! They transferred me to customer relations. This person heard all the story from the start, then confirmed that the situation WAS indeed resolved. However, the effect would take place one week AFTER the bill has been issued. She kept apologizing about the unprofessional behavior of the customer service colleagues, and assured me that by Monday, the balance should be adjusted. However I wasn’t going to easily let this go with an apology. So, in a last desperate attempt to convince me not to cancel my account, she offered to even add an additional amount of credit to my account, as a compensation for all the trouble I had to go through. To be honest, that was a good offer, and I took it, so I get to keep my account, have my balance restored, and basically get extra credit. It’s amazing how far they are willing to go in order to keep a customer from leaving. I wish they could only go as far to make sure customers don’t think of leaving in the first place.

On Monday I should make sure that everything has been done as agreed, or I WILL cancel this time.

It seems that programmers have the same mentality everywhere. OR, compiling code has really become a tedious and time-consuming process.

Source: xkcd comics

Many of us have heard of (or talked about) a problem called the Writer’s Block. This basically related to writers when they find themselves unable to come up with something to write about. It gets really frustrating, especially if there are deadlines to consider. The more time that passes, the more frustrated the writer gets, the less they are able to write…and the cycle continues.

A find a similar problem relating to me as a researcher, and I call it the Researcher’s Block. This happens when we are looking for a research problem to work on, but unable to find one. I feel like I am currently in this situation. I went through a lot of literature, done a lot of brainstorming, trying to branch out of existing work, but with no use. I have been told to read a lot, and LIVE in whatever topic I’m working on, trying to think “outside the box”, until I find something. I have been doing just that, to no avail.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who faces that problem occasionally (at least I hope so), and I wonder what others do to overcome it.

Two days ago, I saw the last installment of the Bourne series (The Bourne Ultimatum). It was an excellent movie, very well done, intelligent, great action, great camera.

However, I just noticed something. There seems to be something special about names starting with the initials “J.B.”. I mean, think about it: James Bond, then Jack Bauer, and now Jason Bourne. This cannot be a coincidence! I’m not sure if this is a well known fact or something, but I certainly would love to know if there is something special and intentional about the choice of names.