I was reading a post on Lifehacker about a hypothetical Gmail account hijack. What would you do if someone gained access to your Gmail, or any web service, and changed your password? This brings up two important issues that I feel mostly over looked. The first is changing your password every 90-days. I know most of you are forced to change your password by corporate network administrators. The same logic applies to your web services.

The second point is backing up your data. I am guilty of not backing up all my data and have yet to come up with a solid strategy for the webapps I use but I realize the importance. I have lost data on my home system by not backing up; enduring the pain of loss only takes once to motivate you into action. Webapps are no different. I have jumped into Googleland with both feet using Gmail, Gcalendar, Doc and Spreadsheets, Greader and Gfinance to manage my life. Although the interface design and accessibility of Google apps are fantastic there is no substitute for a cross platform, local backup of your digital life. Don’t wait for a data disaster. I urge you to take the time to research and implement a backup schema for your important data.

I just got back from a badly needed vacation to Napa Valley and upon my return Halo nation has exploded. I am not what you would consider a gamer. In fact I do not even own a game system unless you count the Sony PSP as a light weight version. But the release of this game even has me a little excited as I enjoy watching others get snipered by 12 year olds. Good luck J-rome and DC; you are going to need it.

There are many reviews littered all over the internets. A wide range of opinions have emerged but in general it appears as thought Bungie has done a superb job in this the third version of Halo. Although not as snappy as the Gears of War television commercials, a few will hold your interest.

Update: Appears that the game developers chose to short the 720P HD format for smoother frame rates at 640 def.

I have been sitting on this post for a few months and now that I have gotten around to showing my organization skills I realized I kind of botched it. I thought I had pictures of the rat nest under my home computer desk but a search yielded nary a result.

Anyways my inspiration came from decluttered.com where the process is well documented. Routing the cables is much harder than it appears but all-in-all I feel the project was a success.

Please take a moment to celebrate Pi Day.

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10582097494459230781640628620899862803482534211706798
21480865132823066470938446095505822317253594081284811
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97566593344612847564823378678316527120190914564856692
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A 60 second review of the 5th generation video iPod. Contributed by guest blogger M. Ullmer.

• As an iPod, hands-down the best MP3 player out there. Light years better than my trusty, crusty 3G, and I like my 3G a lot . The features, battery life and capacity that are offered now are an insane value.
• As a video player: C+/B- at best. It works perfectly fine, the screen is just way too small. It only makes me want an iPhone-less iPod even more. Until a better solution appears for converting DVDs, I’ll (rightfully) bitch about it. 3-4 hours to convert a DVD to ipod-format is not acceptable.

Ullmer’s buying advice: Since I didn’t pay for it, it’s a huge step forward for me. But I’m glad I didn’t have to pay for it. For first-time buyers, they will absolutely love it. If you’re buying it for video, you will be disappointed (or have really low expectations). Call me when I can easily and quickly get my DVDs onto the iPhone version and I’ll be waiting, bag of gold doubloons in hand.

Not only should you be watching the President’s State of the Union address, for obvious reasons, but Engadget HD points out this is a great opportunity to compare the HD gear of the major networks.

Update: On Chicago Metro Comcast NBC is by far the best HD feed. I can not believe that Fox was not broadcast in high definition.

Nice website for finding the FM frequency in your area with the least amount of traffic. That is to say noise, so that you can tune your Sirius satellite radio station with minimal interference or in my case the iTrip; which in Chicago is nearly impossible to tune. Now my only question - how do you pronounce Sirius?

• Is it “cear-E-ous”
• or “cer-ous”

The Apple rumor windmill has been silenced. The device is no longer hidden away in the patent office or FCC’s paper piles. iPhone has arrived - well not until June really. I need not post any details here for every single blog in the world has highlighted the features better than I could. All I will add; yes I will be getting one. No, I will not be first in line for Apple is notorious for first generation hardware issues.

Update: Now that the full details of the iPhone (possibly temporarily named) have been flushed out I see this device as less revolutionary than a simple aggregation. The lack of third party apps, built-in battery, lack of memory expansion and no 3G make the phone a über stylish iPod with phone support but not a full smartphone. The Blackberry Pearl is still top of the list for my phone succession.

Update 2: iPhone ring tone sure sounds like a xylophone.

Lifehacker has some pretty good suggestions now and again. This tip on searching Gmail for emails with attachments and being able to further drill down to find exactly what you are looking for is worth a bookmark for future reference. And that is what I am doing here.

For those of you using Firefox, and who isn’t these days, Google has developed an extension that will help sync your browser settings from computer to computer. I use at least three different computers nearly everyday and I have always fought with keeping my bookmarks and settings the same across the systems. This Google Browser Sync is an unobtrusive extension that will sync bookmarks, history, persistent cookies, saved passwords, and restore your open tabs and windows across browser sessions.

The only issue that makes me think twice about installing this extension is the fact the Google pretty much has all of my information and I mean all. I use gmail, gcalendar, greader, and ggroups. I trust Google. Even though I probably shouldn’t, I still trust them.

Along with fixing the comments on stickrod.com I have started using coComment to track my conversations / comments that I leave for others. I tend to lurk around other’s blogs and not leave feedback even when I find an item of interest or I may possibly be adding value to the conversation. For some reason I feel that coComment entices me to actually leave a note and look at it later.

I will let them explain in detail how it works. In early release form some users created Greasemonkey scripts to notify when comment forms were detected. This is no longer needed for the coComment dev team released a superb Firefox extension. For the “other” browsers a bookmarklet is available but users must remember to enable it before leaving a comment. RSS feeds update when replies are present and other tools are available for enhanced usability of the service.

coComment came around early this year and has since shown tremendous growth. Let’s hope their innovation remains strong and does not head the way of Gravatar.

I case you were wondering I did not purchase a Zune; although I do fine the social wi-fi aspect of the media player intriguing. Rumor has it that chip architecture can support Linux which opens the door for hackers to actually capture the music shared from others. Also heard the software installation is less than smooth which should not take anyone by surprise. I mean come on people this is a Microsoft device.

Along the idea of wasting time with lines, Ze Frank’s Scribbler is a great destination. The Flash based drawing tool uses simple random rules to “scribble” your scribbles. The gallery is simply amazing as well as everything else that Ze Frank has to offer on his site.

Will someone please take this off the internet? I have burned at least 4 hours with this little guy trying my hardest not to accidentally kill him. I like how his eye blinks.

Update: Line rider has gotten to popular that Time wrote up a blurb. This is by far one of the best videos of the little guy on YouTube

Me likes pretty graphs. Actually, as a result of my day job I consider myself a type of information architect. When I stumbled across this little gem I was immediately enthralled trying to identify trends in my book marking.

Research Chronology is a chronological visualization of bookmarking activity, powered by information retrieved from the del.icio.us social bookmarking web site. Users are invited to enter their del.icio.us username and password and allow the visualization to map out their research activity along a time line, connecting posts together with tag lines.

Beautiful execution of usability and design. via: visual complexity