Trevin pointed to a cool site called Wordle, where you can enter a bunch of text and the web app then creates a visual image representation of the text, where the most commonly used words are larger. You have control over many aspects of the visualization, such as font, colors, layout direction, removing common words, how many words to display in the image (default is 150), etc.

I copied the text from the home page of my blog just before posting this and used Wordle to generate the image below. It's interesting to see what words flat to the "top" of the list. Makes me thing that maybe you can tell something about people from their writing, and as such from the words that dominate what they write.

You can make your own at http://wordle.net, and see what you learn about your own writing. There's also a gallery of wordles created by others, which I got quite caught up in for a while, reading what others have created. Wordle was created by Jonathan Feinberg, who works in IBM Research with the Collaborative User Experience group.

Everything about this video - The Website is Down - is so sarcastically and stereotypically hilarious. Josh Weinberg (the creator) is my new hero.

A mashup of true and mostly-true stories from IT hell. If you've ever called tech support and wondered what the hell they are doing down there... well, this should answer some questions for you. Starring Apache, Windows XP, Linux and Halo (among many others).

Note: There's some very NSFW language and visuals. You have been warned.

I'm not going to post video here -- You need to go to the site and watch the whole thing, and then be sure to check out the geeky interactive UI at the end.

(via Chris Pirillo on Twitter)

I've traveled to Europe with my iPhone before, and despite activating an international data plan I ended up spending a bit more than I wanted to (by about $100). But Raven Zachary came back home to a $800+ bill, and there are many tales of others having even worse experiences.

Raven wrote a blog article offering some tips to keep your costs down, all of which are good. So, if you are traveling out of the USA with your AT&T iPhone (and yes, that DOES include to Canada or Mexico, so do your homework), check out what he wrote.

As of today, there is no "unlimited" international data plan available. It can get very expensive to deal with email attachments and use the maps program, or even just to check email the same way you do back home (meaning automatically every n minutes). With the 3G network coming on the new iPhone and the associated roaming costs for high-speed access projected to be higher, this all becomes even more important.

Until AT&T makes it a little easier to be their customers, and simplifies things for those of use paying them big bucks for service, you'll need to order specific international services and configure your iPhone in certain ways to make sure you don't get nailed and you'll have to search the 'net to find sources to read about the problems and related solutions. I feel sorry for people who get completely blindsided (and there are a lot of those people out there). So much for seamless, don't-have-to-think-about-it use, eh?

Jeff Martens had an idea, one I had been thinking similarly about - but he vocalized it first (or "tweeterized it" might be more accurate). I jumped right in and created a new LinkedIn group called "PDX Tech," a networking group for people in the Portland, Oregon general area who work in what we will loosely define as the technology marketplace.

If you'd like to join the group and you meet the above requirements (which are not too restrictive), just click here and sign right up.

In the first 24 hours we already have a substantial group of people who have joined, but I know there are many, many more out there in PDX-land. Hope to see you on the group list!

The Mars Phoenix crew has just announced they've discovered ice on Mars. There will be more tests soon, and ones that should be more direct in their analysis. Today's discovery is based on the visualized disappearance of some white material from the surface over the past few days. From the Mars Phoenix web site:

June 19, 2008 -- Dice-size crumbs of bright material have vanished from inside a trench where they were photographed by NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander four days ago, convincing scientists that the material was frozen water that vaporized after digging exposed it.

"It must be ice," said Phoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson. "These little clumps completely disappearing over the course of a few days, that is perfect evidence that it's ice. There had been some question whether the bright material was salt. Salt can't do that."

Very cool stuff, and it will be even more interesting to see what's next:

Also early today, digging in a different trench, the Robotic Arm connected with a hard surface that has scientists excited about the prospect of next uncovering an icy layer.

And how/where did the news come to us? Via Twitter!

You can follow http://www.twitter.com/marsphoenix for regular updates if you wish. The specific ice updates from today on Twitter are here and here.

Today the trucking company showed up with my oh-so-cliché-midlife-crisis mobile, a 1969 Mustang convertible that I recently purchased from a good guy in Pennsylvania. I made a trip back east a couple weeks ago to hand over the check, transfer the title and drive the car a bit, and then painfully left it there to wait for a vehicle transport company to pick it up and deliver to Oregon.

The car made a long and round-about trip all over the country, and it got pretty grungy while in New Mexico thanks to a dirt road construction zone detour in the desert. I used to live there, so I understand. The soil in the desert, if you can call it that, is very fine and it gets into the air and can find its way on and into everything. When the car came off the truck today, it looked so dull and gross I almost couldn't stand it. But, after two complete washes it looks quite a bit better. It will need another good hand wash and them some detailing and a good wax, but it looks pretty nice already. These pictures were taken after the second wash and a hand-drying.

Most of my day was spent on the car: Receiving it from the back of the truck, washing it the first time, getting title and registration taken care of at the DMV, fueling up and washing it again, driving to town and giving some friends rides, stopping by the 60's-style corner soft ice cream and burger place with outdoor tables in the town I live near, and driving home on twisty-turny roads through the woods. It's a powerful, cool sounding and fun-to-drive machine, without a doubt. It's several years since I owned a convertible and I forgot how much fun and how relaxing it is on a nice day to just put the top down and drive. Add the raw power of this car's engine, and wow... A pretty darned good day, if I do say so myself.

And a bonus, which I only discovered when I got it home tonight: It fits in the garage with just about 12 inches of room to spare, nose to tail. Phew! Looks like I need to relocate some shelves.

Microsoft's Steven Lindsay posted a video a couple months ago showing his top five things you didn't know you could do with your Media Center PC. Cool tidbits for people who want to get deeper into using a few more of the capabilities of Windows Media Center. Worth the viewing time.

Apologies to web viewers for the temporary disruption here - I have changed the design template for this blog to a new one (thanks to Anthony Bouch at http://www.58bits.com/ for letting me borrow) and plan to leave it live for 24-48 hours to see how it impacts visits, clicks and retention times in the stats.

I want to make a change since my old template is, well, old. And because Scott harasses me for it a couple times a year. But the template I have been using for a few years now works very well and so I have not made the final decision to move away from it just yet. My plan is to play with this one some and work toward a design that is as effective performance-wise as the old template, but one that looks nicer.

Anyhow, just wanted to send out a quick "sorry" for regular readers of the blog via the web for the cliche "under construction" phase. Be sure to let me know what you think works and what doesn't for you.

Last month, Microsoft released the Microsoft Forefront Integration Kit for Network Access Protection, a solution accelerator that enables their Forefront Client Security products to interoperate with the Network Access Protection (NAP) capabilities included in Windows Server 2008. In a nutshell, it allows an integrated system of policy compliance and real-time checking of the status of a computer's Forefront security status, as well as remediation and access protection for machines that fall or are found to be out of compliance.

Using the technologies together, administrators can leverage the state of a client computer as part of the information and policy status that NAP leverages in controlling access to the network.

You can use the Kit to help protect your network infrastructure by configuring a Forefront Client Security compliance health policy across your network, monitoring the operational health of Forefront Client Security in real time, and remediating problems that arise.

More and better in-depth defense mechanisms, and ones that work well together on top of that, are good to see coming out of Microsoft and others. It's the kind of progress that's needed to stay on top of quickly evolving threats, and to proactively keep them from spreading.

(via Dan Griffin)

I'm in warm and sunny Orlando for the IT week of Tech Ed. My cohort Richard and I will be interviewing, making the speaker contest happen, and generally staying busy through Friday. If you are at Tech Ed this week, be sure to drop by the Tech Ed fishbowl in the exhibition hall, or send and email and let me know. It would be great to meet new people and catch up with others.

Most of my friends know that every now and then I operate public fireworks displays - as in the big ones with hundreds or thousands of shells, way up in the sky and loud as hell. It's a fun side gig, and I am licensed in Oregon and Washington to run the displays.

This year for the July 4 celebration, I am once again operating the Walla Walla, Washington show. I ran last year's show and am headed back. But I certainly can't do it alone, and so this is an invitation to anyone in the area (meaning in Walla Walla or in the Portland/Vancouver/etc. area) who might be interested in joining me as part of the pyro crew to speak up and join in!

And I'm quite serious. We'll load mortars and set up some thousands of shells and stuff, do a lot of fun and interesting training and safety stuff, learn about how fireworks work, and generally have a fun time. It's not lounging/leisure time - In fact there's quite a bit of manual work of a reasonable nature, and it can get hot. But pretty much without fail, people who join the crew have a great time and are glad they did it. Some get hooked, like Travis and Jenn, who keep coming back for more year after year. Suckers. Heheheh. Be sure to check out Travis' blog entry and Jenn's pictures from last year's show to give you a bit of an idea of what it's like.

So, who can participate? Anyone 18 years of age or older (you have to be 21 years old to fire a show, 18 to help set up and whatnot), who is not restricted from handling regulated explosives (in other words, you can't be a convicted felon or certifiably insane - sorry). You'll be doing some moderate labor (some lifting, carrying, etc). Obviously nobody on the crew can consume alcohol on that day (until the show is over, at least) and you can certainly think of other obvious things that would be safety no-no's.

If you're interested, great! Let me know as soon as you can. I need to firm up a crew list in the next week or two. All I ask is that once confirmed, please make sure you are actually planning to be there. We'll provide the lodging, food, drinks, training and lots of fun. You get to tell people (kids, grandkids, friends, and lame non-believers) about how you are so awesome becuase you helped blow up tons of cool explosives for the Walla Walla community. Just be warned: It can be addictive. Ask Travis and Jenn. :)

To entice you, here is a video with some highlights from last year's show. The video is only a few minutes long; the actual show was close to 20 minutes.

A reporter from Forbes Magazine, Brian Caulfield, has been sneaking around a bit, asking questions, and taking pictures from various public-domain locations where he thinks Apple's next-gen iPhone (or APple Tablet, or next-gen iMac, or all of the above) are being dispatched from.

Tons of boxes overflowing a large warehouse, courier service trucks in drives coming and going, no-label boxes and warehouse workers being cagey but saying basically nothing. But when you start to stack up so much circumstantial evidence it's pretty convincing. If nothing else, it generates great hype and gets people like me to pay attention and write about it. Marketing madness.

What I really want to know: Where and when to line up as an existing AT&T customer who wants to upgrade, and how much cash to bring with me. I'm guessing/surmising the answer is sometime in the next week and a half, and $200 (plus a pen to sign a contract extension).

TechCrunch is reporting that Google is releasing Gmail Labs this evening, and is also outlining some of the details as they hear them.

Gmail engineers come up with new ideas all the time. Gmail Labs is our place to try them out and get your feedback. None of these features are really ready for prime time yet, so they might change, break, or disappear at any time.

Very cool. You can choose which ones you want to use, turn them on and off. Check back in a little while - all Gmail users will be able to take advantage.

At 6pm PT they’re launching Gmail Labs – it will be a tab on top of settings, a list of features that are rough, have gone through almost no filtering. Using the send feedback link users can go to the Google Conversation. Every user will have this available.

The first batch will include 13 new features being tested now, all created by Gmail engineers. Everyone will have access to these.

If you're like me, you rely on Google a lot to help you though your day. There are a few sites out there that - much to my frustrated chagrin - include their content in Google's index but won't let you see the content when you click the search results link - unless you sign up for an account (sometimes you even have to pay). I know there are some ways around the blocked access (Google can see the content, so there are open doors), but what I really want is a way to avoid seeing those sites in my search results.

As it turns out, excluding a domain from search results is very simple. It's not very clearly documented anywhere, but I'll tell you here, so you'll be a tiny bit smarter and look really cool to whomever you show it to in the future.

To start, one key thing about searching with Google that we need to understand is that in pretty much any Google search you can exclude anything you want by preceding it with a minus sign when you type your term into the search box. Knowing this, we can exclude almost anything - including a domain/site.

Next, we need to know how to search and specify a domain in our search query term. We do this by entering the word "site," followed by a colon, followed by the domain name. For example, I can search for an exact match on my name within this site's domain by structuring my search term like this:

Similarly, if I want to search for exact matches on "Greg Hughes," but this time I want to search all sites except greghughes.net, I do it like this:

Note the "minus sign" that precedes the "site:" search operator in this case. That's how we tell Google to exclude the site/domain specified.

So there you have it. Want to exclude a domain from your search term? Just specify the domain with "-site:" and you're all set.

But what if you don't want to specify the domain to exclude every time by hand? In that case, set up a Google Custom Search Engine (http://www.google.com/coop/cse/) and specify during setup that you want your custom search engine to include results from the entire Internet. Then, after your search engine has been created, go to the Control Panel, choose the "Sites" tab, and from there you can specify as many domains as you like to exclude from every search. You'll get a custom search engine that you can tweak to your heart's content.



That's it - hope it helps someone in need. Enjoy!

If you saw the season finale episode of Lost and happened to be paying attention to the commercial breaks near the end of the two-hour episode, you might have noticed the "commercial" for Octagon Global Recruiting, with a note to visit the web site octagonglobalrecruiting.com for more information.

"Octagon Global Recruiting is currently seeking volunteers to contribute to an important new research project." And it's "on behalf of the Dharma Initiative."

So if you happen to need something to do and have expertise in the following areas (from the commercial spot), be sure to click on through. Oh, and you might want to think about going to Comic Con in San Diego at the same time the recruiting event is happening.

There's one more trade that I couldn't quite get a screen grab of - dentists. And there you have it.

Check it out here. And have fun. :)