Found Not Lost

My blog find for today is Google Stalking. I think we’ve all done this before, Google someone’s name, an old friend, beau or foe, and see what they’re up to now. I just never thought about making a whole blog out of it! That’s what Google Stalking is all ABOUT:

Searching on Google for old and new classmates, lovers, roommates, employees, friends, teachers… Anyone you have ever met in your life. That is Google Stalking. You are a Google Stalker and these tales of Google Stalking are your stories.

The owners of this website have no affiliation with Google. As if there was any doubt. Dur.

They ask for people to submit their Google Stalking story:

Nothing should be held back when relaying your Google Stalking story, except for last names to respect the privacy of those you Google Stalked. We want you to submit all the dirty details, no matter how minor (though we prefer the major ones). We want you to tell us how you know the person you Google Stalked. We want to know what drove you to Google Stalk them. Most importantly, we want to know what you found from your Google Stalking.

and people really do submit candid and highly entertaining stories! I admit I’ve googled a few names or two and even found an old friend that I had lost touch with through googling.

Reading through some of the posts on the site, I can’t help but wonder about people’s motives when they Google an old acquaintance. Is there a perverse sense of curiosity, the type usually manifested in school reunions, that hopefully this person is worst off than you are? Sort of like the glee one would get in finding out the most popular cheerleader is now fat with six kids and is on welfare? Whatever the motives, I think it’s a fun and cathartic exercise to be able to write it down anonymously. It sure was fun reading about some of them.

Skeet was playing with words today on Wordle and it just looked like so much fun I had to try it out. I used to do this in high school but on paper of course, that was pre-internet times You’ve seen ‘word clouds’ on other websites, I’m sure. With Wordle, you can turn any text into word art. Try it out and see if you don’t get hooked.

My first attempt on the left is the quote from Twilight. The one below is this post.

I was amazed to find this site today. The title of the post is Jenny Makes a Catfish Cake. I thought it would be a fish patty or something. I thought the photo on top was of the real catfish to make the cakes. Reading on, I was amazed to learn the catfish IS the cake! Go visit the site and look at the step by step process. Jenny is an artist if you ask me

I have to admit though, it’s not the most appetizing looking cake, but how awesome is it to make something sweet look slimy and fishy!

UPDATE (9-06-08) - I just found out Jenny can also make pig cakes!

Did you know that, when you travel outside of the U.S., on your return back to the country the U.S. government can take your laptop, cell phone or PDA and download all your private information including personal and business documents, emails, phone calls and text messages, and browsing histories? It’s not like you can refuse to be searched either, like when you get stopped by a traffic cop and they ask if they can search your vehicle. The airport security, protected by the department of homeland security do not have to ask you, this is an official policy outlined on their website: Policy Regarding Border Search of Information. Related articles on the the Leadership Journal - The Homeland Security department’s blog:
Answering Questions on Border Laptop Searches
CBP Laptop Searches

I found out about this in an email from the Care2Petition Site. They are asking people who think this policy violates our rights to privacy to sign a petition.

This is the form letter found on the site:
Read more…

There are times when I have to send out a lot of mail for my job. One of the most common problems I run into is that people often forget to put their zip codes. For those times, I usually depend on the good old usps.gov website’s zip code locator. However, when it comes to international addresses, I usually hit a dead end.

ZIPCodeWorld™ is a company that provides ZIP Code and Postal Code data products all over the world. They have a variety of products that enable you to find the information you are looking for and more. For instance, on their U.S. Zip Code Lookup database, when I put my zipcode in, it came back with not only with the longitude and latitude of my location, it also came back with additional demographics such as elevation, persons per household, the number of counties in the area, how many people live in the zip code, how many of them are white, black or Hispanic, and what is the median income per household and the average house value. That’s a lot of information to glean just from a zip code alone!

If you are a webmaster or web designer, ZIPCodeWorld™ offers a free Store Locator service. You know how when you go to a company website and you click on that ‘locate a store near you’ button a list comes up with stores in the area you specified? That’s a store locator. To program something like that can be a lot of hassle. ZIPCodeWorld™ will provide the code and maintain the system, all you have to do as a webmaster or designer is copy and paste an HTML code to your website.

Check out ZIPCodeWorld™ their service may be something you need.

I found this article while on how to protect your kids online with open DNS (Domain Name Systems). I wouldn’t profess to be a techno geek, but I’m all for protecting my kids while they are online. My girls are on the computer all the time and we’ve covered online safety so much they are probably sick hearing about it. But as helpful and entertaining as the internet is, there are also a lot of unsavory things that they can easily run into without even trying.

So you talk to them about internet safety until you all can get sick and tired of it, but you can also try some technological solutions. This tutorial on how to use DNS to protect your computer is very easy to read and follow. I’ve bookmarked it here so that I can sign up for it. My girls go to networking sites and also play those multi-player games online so they run into a lot of viruses, ads and phishing attempts. They’ve also run into porn but luckily they are smart enough to not click on sites they don’t know about and our pop up blockers seem to be doing a decent job. But, things still get through and they are teens so they are curious and sometimes all that talking doesn’t always take. This Open DNS sounds like it may be a good and easy solution. What do you think? Have you had experience with Open DNS?