Jeber Jabber

Google does IM

The rumors are true, some of them anyway.

Google is starting an Instant Messenger service.  According to their site, the IM client, called GoogleTalk, "is built to support industry standards. You can connect to the Google Talk service using Google's own client, as well as many other IM clients developed by third parties."

Unfortunately for some of us, and like several recent offerings by Google, this client is available to users of the Windows operating system only.  The rest of us "can connect to Google Talk using other IM clients".

Spread some holiday cheer

ACES is a service to the citizens of San Diego County run by my good friend and mentor Paul Adams. To quote from his mission statement, the goal of ACES is "to improve the quality of life for persons in San Diego County who are disabled by empowering them with computer technology. Specifically, our outcomes focus on civic involvement and self-sufficiency with an emphasis on quality of life enhancement. Our focus is San Diego County. Priority is given to persons who could not otherwise obtain this equipment."

If ACES can't help you, perhaps you can help ACES. They will gladly accept donations of money and/or computer parts. A staff of dedicated volunteers refurbish the computers then provide them to the disabled.  You can make this holiday season much happier, and the future considerably brighter for someone who otherwise would not be able to access the wealth of the Internet.  Send a donation to ACES today.

Democratic communication

As I was making my daily rounds of the websites and blogs I enjoy reading every day, I noticed that JOHO, The Weblog was "not found on this server...". This is the blog of David Weinberger, co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto, and author of "Small Pieces Loosely Joined", an excellent thought piece on the nature of the internet (which I happen to be rereading this week). David also happens to be one of my writing heroes. I almost dashed out a blog entry to find out if any of the other bloggers had any idea of what may have happened to his site. Then I got an idea. His "Small Pieces..." website was still there and contained his email address, why not send an email and ask the man himself. Within a short span of time, David responded, not his secretary, press agent or an auto-responder, and he assured me that there was a temporary problem but the blog would be back up shortly. Could that have ever happened in the real world? Which brought me to my next thought.

Now I Know

I think now I understand why my wireless ISP is called Ricochet: everytime my laptop sends a packet of data out the antenna, that data ricochets off every nearby, flat surface...bing, bing, bing...and finally runs out of energy and collapses on the ground where it's ground to bits under passing feet. OK, maybe it just seems that way. Seriously, the available bandwidth is near zero far too often. Many sites time out on me. For someone involved in web publishing, this can be more than frustrating. It can mean the difference between being the first to market with a story or being the 20th link in the chain.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not quite ready to trash my modem card just yet. But as soon as there's more competition in this market, I'll begin looking. Ricochet needs to get the backend of their system upgraded and make the total data path from me to web as speedy as it usually is from me to their transmitters. This is a wonderfully useful service, but really frustrating when it works slowly, or not at all.

Great day for a geek

For a politician, getting exposure on CNN or in the New York Times is a sign that the political world has noticed you. It says, "Now, you're somebody".
For a geek, there are also certain things web-related that really matter in a similar way. Today, to my surprise, I achieved my geeky "moment in the sun".

Yesterday I saw a post from Joe Crawford, who posts to, among other sites, the San Diego Blog (http://sandiegoblog.com/). I would highly recommend this blog to any and all of you living in or interested in San Diego. Anyway, he posted a story from a Chinese news source regarding their government's developement of the Ipv9 protocol. It's a story only a geek would find fascinating. I did, so I researched the topic a bit further. It seems there was a prank pulled online a couple of years ago regarding this topic, but that was when Ipv6 wasn't even a reality, so it was a good joke at that time. But I also found serious references to the work by the Chinese on this protocol, so, on a whim, decided to submit the story to Slashdot.

This morning I brought up Slashdot, as is my usual practice, and to my surprise the story made the number two spot on the main page. Whoohoo. My 15 kilobytes of geeky fame. Meanwhile, the original site has now been Slashdotted and will probably be down until the owners figure out what the hell happened to them. Perhaps they'll fear their own government was responsible.

My only other geeky bragging point is that I hold positions 1,2,4,5,6 and 7 on the page returned for a Google search of "jeber". That would be a really cool bragging point if I weren't honest with myself enough to admit that only friends, family and myself are ever going to bother to Google for jeber. But still...

You've got mail...a GB of it

OK, not yet, but I will have. Thanks to an invitation from a fellow Orkut member (yes, I've sold my soul to Google) and administrator in the Lockergnome forums, I now have a Gmail account. I don't think I've ever seen such interest around the web in an email program. So now I'm involved in two Google beta programs. I should feel comfortable with that, I used to be a beta tester for AOL (yikes!). I still have perhaps 15 AOL disks of the different beta versions. They're about as useful now as the free ones we all get in the mail every other week.
So now I have to run around replacing my web site's email address with this one, which uses my web page name (JeberJabber{at}gmail.com). Very cool. I'm determined to turn Jeber into a recognized moniker yet. I've managed to get the #1 listing on Google for searches of "jeber". And you know how often people search for that. Next project: get "Jeber" converted into a barcode I can have tattooed on my butt, then make it my legal name. All in good time, like when I'm really, really drunk.

The Village Idiot get his soapbox

I'm sure that allowing the official Lockergnome Village Idiot a voice on the web is a gross error on someone's part, which no doubt will soon be discovered and corrected. But until then, I intend to make the most of it. Sadly, I don't seem to have as much time to actually post within the forums as I used to have, and it's because I keep getting waylaid taking these geeky sideroads that require frequent input. I blame all my recent distractions on Chris Pirillo, who has willfully exposed me to the world of blogging and RSS feeds. Any day now I will be required to have the Lockergnome barcode imprinted on my forehead. In preperation, I have shortened my hair and shaved off my eyebrows. Should the barcode not require all that space (I do have a rather large forehead), I will consider regrowing the eyebrows. This will make the village dogs happy. They've been quite disturbed by my new appearance.
Hello to all my Lockergnome friends. Glad you could stop by. I hope you brought treats for the dogs. They get a little testy if you try to leave without dispensing treats.

Lockergnome Linux Fanatics-redux

Much of my free time lately has been spent scouring the web for any and all goodies related to my new love...Linux. I've only been using this OS for about a year, am far from an expert or even skilled user, yet I find about 98% of the time I'm on the computer, I'm using Linux. Mandrake 10 is my mainstay, but I have ready access to around 8 other versions I can fire up on the desktop machine to play with and learn from. As my laptop is limited by it's 40GB hard drive, I only dual-boot it with Mandrake and Windows XP Pro. Still, thanks to the advent of "live" distros, I'm able to also explore Slax, Knoppix, Gnoppix, Damn Small Linux, SUSE Live and PCLinuxOS, all without any loss of drive space. If you come across a great Linux site, or some breaking news, let me know and I'll credit you in the Linux Fanatics feed and newsletter. Help spread the word...Linux is here to stay.