The T-Files

A student from Kennesaw State University, Britney Lewin, said the manger of a cell phone store went through her mobile phone and sent an intimate picture from her phone to his.

The picture showed Lewin in a workout shirt and underwear.   The 18-year-old had left her phone at the Dunwoody (Georgia) Verizon store for “an emergency battery charge”.

What happened next is the stuff of big brother.  According to story on WSB-TV (http://www.wsbtv.com/news/16204406/detail.html ): “Days later she happened to check her sent items. ‘I came across a number that I didn’t know,’ said Lewin.

The number received the picture as an attachment. The store manager wasn’t in when Lewin called the store to complain but she got his number. ‘It’s the exact same number that the picture was sent to on my phone,; said Lewin. ‘I freaked out.’”

Lewin said that Verizon has offered her a new phone and a month of free service.  A spokesperson for Verizon said that the manager has been fired and additional training for all employees will ‘reinforce the importance of customer privacy’.

From the WSB-TV story “[S]ince there is no telling how far into Cyberspace her photo has spread she’d like to warn others to check their phones when they leave the shop.”

Is it wrong to love a search engine? If the search engine is Google, I think it’s OK. Google is always there for me: If I cannot spell a word, Google gives me the correct spelling; if I need know how much tuna I can eat before I risk mercury poisoning, Google has the answer; if I want to find an image or video on any subject: I just need to reach out to Google Images and Video. And, with Google maps installed on my BlackBerry, I will never need to ask for directions, again (although, as a guy, and I never actually ask for directions, but now I have rational reason beyond gender).

Google is positioning itself to be the portal for everyone. Once you’ve created your free Google account, you can customize your home page to show the news, sports, technology, or reference material you want. My home page includes a tab that shows a snapshot of my Gmail account, my Google calender, neighborhood gasoline prices, local news from 11Alive.com, the weather, and the headlines from the Atlanta Business Journal. And that’s just one tab; I have five others. My personal news portal also includes a search which returns any articles that have the words ‘breaking news’ in them. I’ve also included a search that let’s me know any time the word ‘Sarrecchia’ appears on a web site; that was how I found out that several of my op/ed columns had been republished elsewhere.

Here are some of my favorite Mother Google tools.

Gmail. I’ve migrated most of mail to gmail (tony.sarrecchia@gmail.com); over 6.8 gigabytes of free email space. Google represents their mail client as ‘never needing to delete email again’, and that’s one way to use it. Another way is to use it as almost 7 gig of off-site storage. You could set up multiple accounts just as a back-up to local storage.

Google Calender. Almost as powerful as Outlook, and much more flexible than ICalender; Google Calender offers a central spot to combine all calenders in one spot. Your calender can keep track of your appointments and send reminders to your cell phone or other mobile device. If you want to promote events you can share your calendar. You can also import from Outlook, ICalender, or other appointment tracking tools. With a Blackberry add-on tool (free from Google) you can sync your Google Calendar to Outlook: any update to one is reflected on the other.

Google Talk. An instant message client that installs on your PC or mobile device. This tool integrates with your Gmail account to save your conversations and lets you know when your mail contacts are on-line. PC users can also use Gtalk for their AIM accounts with the latest build. My gtalk account is tony.sarrecchia@gmail.com.

Google SMS. The power of Google on your cell phone; no download required. If you are looking for a weather update in Kennesaw, type in ‘weather 30144′, and send it to 466453. Within a minute, you will have the current weather and forecast for Kennesaw. Need to convert British pounds to US dollars? Type in 8 GBP to USD, send to 466453 and, in less than a minute you’ll know that you need about US$15.67 to make the purchase. How did your favorite team do last night? Type in Yankees or Braves and you’ll get the latest score. These are just few of things you can text to Google. For a better listing, check out http://www.google.com/intl/en_us/mobile/sms/. There is no cost to use Google SMS, but your cell phone service provider may charge for messenger service.

Google Documents. Web-based word processor comparable to MSWord that has ability to export to common formats (Microsoft Word, RTF (rich text format), OpenOffice, PDF, and HTML. While not as strong as MSWord in the extras department (you cannot create text-boxes or drawing elements), it has the functions you would expect in a word processor (font and paragraph formatting; bullets and numbering; the ability to add a links; a spell checker; to name a few). This column was written in Google Documents.

Google Spreadsheets is a robust spreadsheet tool, complete with functions you would expect a spreadsheet to have (financial, logical, data, text, look up, statistical, info) as well as the ability to pull in live results from Google Finance and Google Look-up. Spreadsheets can be exported as Excel, CSV, Open Office, and HTML. You can also import Excel, OpenOffice and CSV files. This is not Excel but, like the word processor, it contains enough functionality that most users will be happy with the results.

These are the Google tools I use almost daily, but there are others that you can investigate by going to Google and selecting ‘More’ above the search entry box.

One of America’s best weapons against Al Qaeda may be more Nancy Drew than Jack Bauer. In an engaging story that reads like Spying for Beginners, Jack Hitt tells the story of Shannen Rossmiller, a small-town judge and big-time amateur terrorist hunter. Using methods available to most Internet users, Rossmiller tells how she built the case against wannabe domestic terrorists Ryan Anderson and Michael Reynolds. With no formal espionage training, Rossmiller poses as a jihadist in online chat rooms and, with a little patience and a lot of gumption, has accumulated files on 640 potential terrorists. Compelling reading about an unexpected product of the war on terror.
in Wired by Jack Hitt, November 2007
This abstract was edited by Brijit. Read more here…