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Last weekend I spent a little time working on a project I've been wanting to do for quite awhile: adding touch functionality to the screen that I built into my desk about a year ago. While it's cool enough to have a "desk screen" I figured it would be even cooler and more useful to use it without needing a mouse. The clear solution was to integrate touch functionality via an IR pen and Wiimote in order to create a rich tablet-like experience. The end result is a very cheap and elegant solution which tracks incredibly well. This is just a preliminary setup using LEDs that are not of the most sensitive wavelength to the Wiimote. What's more, the LEDs aren't powerful enough and so I had to point it directly at the Wiimote sensor rather than down towards the display thus leaving a lot of room for improvement.

I've ordered some new LEDs from Europe off Ebay which should do the trick and as soon as they get here I'll get right into building what will be the final product. Once that's done, I'll definitely write a how-to guide so that you can do the same thing if you want as well. In the meantime, here's a short video of the result of the prototype:

Ebay is an incredible resource for buying a huge variety of both new and used goods. The upshot is that it scares a lot of people and so the first thing to do is to make sure that you, the buyer, knows how to stay safe. I promise it’s really not that hard if you follow these simple tips. Hang on, the way you shop is about to completely change!

First, some simple ground rules: always make sure that your connection is secured whenever logging into a service which involves transactions. In modern browsers, that means that you'll see a little padlock in either the bottom right or in the address bar at the top. This is important because it means that your connection is encrypted and the identity of the remote site has been verified. This is important in order to prevent phishing attacks, among other things.

Now the first thing we need to do is get a PayPal account. You’ve probably heard about it at some point or another but may not know how it can help you. The idea is actually pretty simple and in fact, it’s a lot like using a credit card for fraud protection. That said, PayPal is different from credit card companies In that they require immediate payment for transactions to take place. You are protected because you make purchases without ever directly giving funds to the seller. What is happening in the background is that PayPal will take funds from your account, convert them to the appropriate currency and pay the seller on your behalf. Technically PayPal isn’t required and some sellers may accept credit or bank cards or other forms of payment, but it’s a lot safer because the seller never actually sees any of your personal information. PayPal also offers buyer protection specifically designed for online transactions, which is a huge plus. For those wondering, they make money by taking commission on sales. The only costs we’ll be concerned with at the moment will be currency conversions as they will take a small cut there. It’s not huge and banks do it too, but just know that it’s happening.

When you go to get your account in a couple of minutes, you’ll probably be wondering what card to link with PayPal. It is generally preferred to use your bank card under most circumstances for a few reasons; first is because you are cutting out the middleman.  Furthermore, using your bank card you can get your address verified and some sellers only ship to verified addresses. If you really want, you can link both your bank and credit card to PayPal and choose which funding source to use every time at checkout. Just a heads up: if your account does not have sufficient funds when you go to make your payment, PayPal will warn you and take the rest the next source. Now that we know what PayPal is and how it works, take a break and go open your account and hurry back!

Now that you’ve got a brand spanking new account with PayPal it’s time to sign up on Ebay. This is by far a less substantial affair because Ebay is largely a search engine and a way of keeping track of your purchases, feedback to your and from you to sellers. Ebay makes its money entirely from sellers and so you don’t have to give them a penny directly. No worries here at all, again just make sure you use a strong password. Consider using a different one from your PayPal password, though, this is a case where it’s good practice but is not an absolute must. The reason it is recommended is because if one password is compromised and you use that for absolutely everything, anyone with that password will have access to everything you do online. I’ll leave how you want to “split” passwords and logins up to you.

So, to recap, here are the basic rules to staying safe online:

• Always make sure your connection to the remote site is secure
• Use PayPal whenever possible to protect yourself from fraud
• Use strong passwords when signing up services involving finances
• Split up your passwords and don't share them

Stay tuned for the third part of this series, we'll talk about shopping victoriously and finding great deals without getting screwed over!

Let's face it, the idea of a corporate blog is scary to a lot of managers, and rightfully so. The idea of having information flowing from the bowels of your organization straight to the public eye is disconcerting to say the least. Sure, legal will have a field day trying to figure all this out - but I can save everyone that trouble right now: quite simply, a blog is a more Web 2.0 way of saying website. What's more, a blog is generally epxected to have a more casual tone to it than your main page which means there will be a lot more leniency towards what you say. So, without further ado and in no particular order, here are the top 10!

Adobe http://blogs.adobe.com/

The Adobe blog is used as a platform for product launches, company news and general background information on goings-on in the company. As with other companies, Adobe keeps things a little casual and you'll find some funny posts here and there. Adobe pulls blogs in from various people and divisions working there, all having their own blog published onto the main one allowing for more frequent updates.

Amazon http://www.amazon.com/gp/daily

As you would expect, Amazon focuses more on the consumer space with their posts and adopt a much more casual tone than most. There is a pretty clear focus on technology news which should appeal to their market. The posts are brief, interesting and you may even walk (or browse) away with gift ideas for an upcoming holiday.

AMD http://forums.amd.com/devblog/

The AMD blog is a little different from others: it is updated less frequently and is geared more towards an engineering and developer community. You'll also notice that you'll find references to things in pop culture, like popular TV shows. Unlike on their main page, a lot of the posts contain even contain smileys :-)

Cisco Systems http://blogs.cisco.com/news

Cisco makes use of its blog mainly to promote their thought leadership regarding various topics surrounding their industry. They update each of their channels almost daily and are also on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Flickr doing their best to leverage their online presence.

Dell http://en.community.dell.com/blogs/direct2dell

Dell uses their blog to showcase new products, services and initiatives, but posts are a little less formal than your standard press release. The blog has been up since July 2006 and updates have flowed in just about every day since then. Dell's online presence extends to social networking sites as well: they recently announced that they have reached 2 million dollars in sales from their Twitter channel.

EMC http://www.emc.com/community/index.html

VMWare's parent company EMC takes a different approach to corporate blogging by simply creating a page which links to blogs of the upper-level management team. It is of course less centralized than other corporate blogs, but they still get to demonstrate how smart the people that work for them are without having to stand completely behind the content.

Google http://googleblog.blogspot.com/

Google is a big company - really big. Not only that, but they are innovative industry leaders and have quite a bit to say, so what better way of doing it than through a corporate blog with over 480 thousand followers at the time of writing? If you don't read their blog then you probably should because Google makes it really worthwhile to follow them.

IBM http://www.ibm.com/blogs/zz/en/

IBM has taken the same tack as EMC by creating a directory of employee blogs. All the same rules hold true here where IBM gets to show off a little thought leadership without all the trouble of having to strictly stand by and control it as their own. Again, as a result of the format, a lot of content ends up being about the personal lives of IBM employees with a little less focus on the company itself.

Microsoft Windows Team http://windowsteamblog.com/

While most people don't think of Microsoft as truly understanding the web, they actually do a great job with their blogs. The Windows blog is used to allow Microsoft developers to enlighten the world on the design process of Windows as it comes along and provides a glimpse of some of the behind the scenes work that goes into the OS which really showcases the innovation that most people normally wouldn't get to see.

Seagate http://storageeffect.media.seagate.com/

If a Seagate engineer was interested in a storage-related story then it's sure to make its way onto the corporate blog. There is an interesting mix here of storage-related industry news and stories intertwined with information about their products, how they work and some of the new releases.

Why Do It?

So to recap, what makes all of these corporate blogs good for both the readers and the companies that maintain them?

• It demonstrates thought leadership of your employees
• It can promote a feeling of transparency
• News feels like it's coming from real people
• All the content can drive traffic in from search engines
• The more casual feeling is refreshing for readers coming from big comapnies
• It can make your company look modern and well-connected
• It can help generate interest in your market

Don't forget...

The one thing to keep in mind is that the internet is a pretty though industry to excel in and you need to persevere if you want to reap any substantail benefits from it. You can't update a blog daily for a month then stop - unlike most marketing campaigns you need to persevere with no ending date in sight. What's more, you really need frequent and consistent updates to stay current. As such, the time investment needs to be there; iif you aren't willing to take time out of your day or have someone else do so to write some thoughts down then don't start a blog. Having a deserted blog is always worse than having no blog at all!

Working with bits and bytes and everything in between can be confusing if you aren't familiar with how it all works. If you wanted to know why your hard drive is actually a lot smaller than what is written on the box and that's considered fair game, read on. If you just want a go-to guide to send to your friends, then this guide is also for you. Hopefully this can clear up all the incorrect usage of terms on the internet once and for all! And yeah, I know I'm dreaming...

Bits

Definition: 1 bit is the smallest divisible amount of digital data. One bit will be either represented by a 0 or 1 in binary: on or off.

Abbreviation: b

Bytes

Definition: 8 bits of data form one byte. Bytes are the most commonly referred to unit in digital storage.

Abbreviation: B

SI Prefixes

Definition: The SI (from the French Standard International) units are prefixes which multiply the value of bits or bytes. It is a base 10 system.

Abbreviations:

Base 2 Prefixes

Definition: These prefixes are used almost exclusively in computer science to account for the fact that computers inherently work on a base 2 system rather than a base 10 system.

Abbreviations:

Working with Units

It is relatively simple to combine the prefixes with bits or bytes if you remember the scales. Let’s consider a few examples:

1KB = 1 kilobyte
1Kb = 1 kilobit
1Mb = 1 megabit
1KiB = 1 Kibibyte
1Tib = 1 Tebibit

When working with the commonly used SI prefixes, each “step up” is 1000 times larger than the previous one:

1000B = 1KB
1000KB = 1MB
1000MB = 1GB…

It is common to use bits when referring to networking applications, while most other uses will normally be presented in bytes. For example:

Network adapters are commonly 100 Mb/s (100 megabits per second)
Hard drive capacities now reach up to 2 TB (2 terabytes)

Converting from bits to bytes is equally simple; all you need to know is how to divide by 8:

Uncapped, ADSL can reach up to 8 Mb/s (8 megabits per second)
This is equivalent to 1 MB/s (1 megabyte per second as there are 8 bits per byte)

Another case where proper usage of terms can be confusing is with HDD capacities; the reason that your 1 terabyte hard drive does not format to a full 1000 gigabytes is because they are rated using the SI base 10 system, while computers actually work on a base 2 system. For example, see the conversion done in Wolfram|Alpha.

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