Lots of our customers trust us with their passwords.  And they should. We’re a very trustworthy company.  We store all of that confidential information in an application that uses a state-of-the-art encryption algorithm. The application uses 128-bit keys for encryption, which means it would take millions of years for a criminal to decrypt the data using a “brute force” attack.

But, even as secure as we store their data, we sometimes laugh because the passwords themselves are so weak, that cracking them outright would be easier than cracking our storage application. Most are birthdays, or children names, or just 4 or 5 random numbers or digits. Even those are easily cracked in few seconds to a few hours.

Study the chart below. Pay close attention to the difference between using just lowercase characters and using every possible character (uppercase, lowercase, and special characters – like @#$%^&*). Adding just one capital letter and one number would change the processing time for a 7 character password from 2 days to 2 years. Obviously, the longer the password length, the better.

See what a difference a long password makes. Even a lowercase, 11 character password would take over 100 years!

Here are some tips to help to you from becoming a statistic:

1. Use strong passwords. 8 characters or more, with uppercase, lowercase, numbers and/or special characters. I prefer numbers over special characters.
2. Use a password storing application. We use 1 Password. You remember one main password and then for each password you need, it will generate a strong password of any length, and store it. You just remember the one password.
3. Substitute numbers for letters that look similar. The letter ‘o’ becomes the number 0, or even better an ‘@’ or ‘*’.
4. Don’t use names!  Every name plus, every word in the dictionary, will FAIL under a simple brute force attack.
5. Not sure if your password is strong enough. Check the list above, or test the strength of your password at at Microsoft’s Security Center.
6. You really need to have different username / password combinations for everything. If it one gets cracked, the others won’t fall like dominoes. 1Password makes this a very easy proposition.

• Time Warner Wideband Internet

This is massive bandwidth. 50 mbps download speeds, and 5 mbps upload. Why would one need such fast Internet and especially in their house? Because it’s freakin’ fast, man. I’m a big Internet consumer. My work centers around being connected. And in the process, everything in my house, that’s a computer, is connected.

The TiVos are constantly talking across the internal network to the Tivo Server, which is incessantly pulling in RSS feeds from different web programming across the Internet.

Upload - Download Speeds

Our cell phones, because of the tremendously poor signal from T-Mobile (despite a cell tower less than 2 miles away), connect to the mobile network through our internal wireless network, so we can have cell service in our house.

The Skype Server lives only to provide business phone service. And, of course, there are two main workstations that consume bandwidth at any given time during the day.

So all in all, a big bandwidth consumer.  As you can see from the graphic above, download speeds have been averaging over 50 mbps, while uploads are peaking around the 2.75 area. Which brings me to the second amazing thing this week.

• Time Warner Support

The day after installation, TW called with my own support specialist who gave me a special number to call for Tier 3 support. TW doesn’t have many wideband customers yet, so they’re very intent on making sure those customers they do have are happy. And in cases like above, where they’re not quite hitting the speeds they promise, they want to know so they can fix it.

WTF! TW called me to preempt any problems and if I do I have my own personal Tier 3 support person! I almost didn’t know what to say to Joe when he called. I teared up a little. TW gets Internet support. Or at least little ole’ Dayton wideband division gets it. And maybe it’s because they’re all geeks who know early adopters are all geeks. I don’t even care if that’s not true and they have other motives. I have my own Tier 3 support person.  I just hope I never have to talk to her.

Suppose, the weather could be blamed for not being in the writing zone. You should actually just blame it on my laziness.

St. Alphoneo's Pancake Breakfast

So what apps are you running on your phone, Android or I? Here is a list of few that I’ve been using over the past couple of months that make sense and are worth having.

1. CardStar - Scan all of those loyalty cards you carry in your wallet, purse, key fobs, etc. and put them on your phone. It doesn’t always scan when I’m at the store, but it still shows your number for the cashier to type in. A little buggy, but better than carrying all those damn cards.
2. Kroger Coupons - If you have a Plus Card, if you use Kroger’s web site to load digital coupons on your Plus Card, then you’re going to like this app. With the Web site you had to load coupons before you went shopping. With the Kroger app, you can search, view, and load right in the store. If you have a Plus Card there is no reason to NOT use this.
3. Evernote - If you can see it, or think it, then Evernote can help you remember it. And it’s not just for your phone. It’s on your web browser. It’s on your desktop. So if you see it in a store, you can take a picture of it and store it so you can see it at home. If you’re at home, you can type your shopping list and see it at the store. There are millions of uses for Evernote. I don’t collect business cards anymore. I just take a snapshot of them and put them in Evernote.

1. If you are old enough to not be pushed in a stroller, then you smoke.
2. Everyone owns a dog. Everyone takes their dog with them every where they go.  Church, grocery, restaurant. You go, then dog goes too.

One thing that you never forget about France. Food. Food is more amazing in France than any other place on the planet. That might not be true. But more amazing than any place that I’ve been. Feel free to comment below.

In the US, we call it French food. In France they just call it food. Also feel free to comment on our command of humor.

Heather Anderson Land lost her battle with Malignant Melanoma in October 2008, but her wish was to educate others about awareness, prevention and treatment of all types of skin cancer – especially melanoma.

3rd Annual Heather Anderson Land Melanoma Awareness Day and Alumni Basketball Game

Please join us for a fun-filled, casual event including:

• Tip off of the first game at 12:20 pm; games run all day
• Free skin cancer screenings (limited availability; first come-first served)
• Facial sun damage screenings
• Skin care information
• Sunless tanning demonstrations
• Refreshments available, including a chili cook-off
• Door prize drawings and giveaways

All proceeds from this event support the Heather Anderson Land Scholarship Fund and the Melanoma Research Foundation.

Of course just like every other hotel in the world, I was asked to help them Stay: Green by recycling my linens and towels. A reasonable request, however it got me to thinking, how much do they really save if I do my part? And what is the rate of participation?

Google searches turn up a significant amount of information on the subject. And to save you all that wasted time, I did all the research for you.

It seems they even have a formula that figures all that out.

Kick 'em when they're up, Kick 'em when they're down. Kick 'em when they're up, Kick 'em all around.

Q = R x Oc x L x W x P

Where:  Q = the Quantity of water saved

R = quantity of guest Rooms

Oc = average Occupancy percentage of the hotel

L = average Laundry per room, towels and sheets, measured in pounds

W = Water used per pound of laundry (water efficiency of washer)

P = Participation rate by guests and staff (percentage)

The hotel industry will tell you that in general, their participation rate is 75%. That’s not really honest of them. Most studies showed that it really depends on the wording of that card they leave on the bed.

If the card said “WE’RE DOING OUR PART FOR THE ENVIRONMENT. CAN WE COUNT ON YOU? ” participation was around 45%.

However if  the card said “”HELP THE HOTEL SAVE ENERGY” then participation plummeted to around 16% mainly because the message was to help the hotel, not help the environment.

Which brings me to my point! If the hotel industry passed on any of those savings in the form of a rate reduction, they’re sure to be more participation! After all, if  a hotel has 75% of their 200 rooms occupied daily and a 60% participation rate, they would save over a million gallons of water a year.

200 (rooms) x 75% (occupancy rate) x 5 (lbs/room) x 7 (gal/lb fabric) x 60% participation
Water savings projection = 3,150 gallons per day; more than 1,000,000 gallons/year

Shouldn’t they pass that back to the customer?  The shareholder probably gets their cut, why should the consumer that is making it happen get a little piece of the pie, instead of those cookies they plant at the front desk. I want cash.

Got any thoughts about it?

On Top the Arc de Triomphe

Parisian’s mannerisms range from very subtle to overtly blaring. But they’re all beautiful. Of course I have 1000′s of photographs of people idly walking down the street. I once thought of starting a coffee table book series, The People of ….. fill in the blank. I have Reds Opening Day, Dragons Opening Day, London, Paris, Stockholm, Oslo, Copenhagen, et. al.  Some were candid, others I would stop and ask them to pose.

It’s like holding a mirror up to the city and catching someone or something at this decisively poignant moment. It’s people-watching at their finest.

I asked these two girls if I could take their photo but they didn’t speak English and I speak enough french to get on a train. It wasn’t until I said in my best french accent, “Can I take zee photo” that they understood.  We were on top of the Arch de Triomphe (which is a journey in itself) looking towards La Défense, a business district in northwest Paris.

I’ve been thinking about doing a book of just people in airports. Atlanta (ATL), Chicago (ORD) (which fortunately I haven’t been through in a while), Detroit (DTW), Paris (CDG) (and the top of my list for the worst airport in the world). Greatest people watching venue on earth.

There is this whole genre of folks doing street photography. Despite doing it for the past 8 years, it might just be my new thing.

Our world might be big, but we all live in a yellow submarine.

For the past year, I’ve been working for clean water and energy, helping to find a cure for muscular dystrophy and fighting childhood cancer.  But I’m not a hero, nor have I exerted much energy. I did it all from the comfort of my office. And all with just a spare computer.

At the Valley View Online World Headquarters, there are generally five or six computers running at any one time (your welcome, DP&L). One is running the phone system (skype server). Another manages the RSS feeds that gets sent to the two TiVos (tivo server). A couple of them are primary workstations. And then there is the iTunes server.

The lowly iTunes server, with barely enough horsepower to perform its main function, typically sits idle, consuming electricity and generating heat (which isn’t such a bad thing right now). But this little computer has a job more important that keeping the Shuffle charged, or music arranged.

While it’s sitting there doing nothing, it connects itself to the World Community Grid. The World Community Grid’s mission is to create the world’s largest public computing grid to tackle projects that benefit humanity.

Sponsored by IBM, the Grid currently has over 540,000 members, running 1,695,307 computers and has generated over 429,506 years of run time. It works like this. When idle, your computer will request data on a specific project from World Community Grid’s server. It will then perform computations on this data, send the results back to the server, and ask the server for a new piece of work. Each computation that your computer performs provides scientists with critical information that accelerates the pace of research!

The Grid is not the first project structured to re-capture unused and idle computing cycles. SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) has been in existence since 1999. SETI’s goal is to detect intelligent life outside Earth (insert pun about starting on Earth first). But the parallel is the World Community Grid launched itself using the same platform as SETI, called BOINC.

BOINC (Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing) has a couple dozen projects of which SETI and the World Community Grid are just a small part. But the research, that spare computing cycles participate, is large in how it benefits the world’s population at large.

For example, in 2003, using grid computing, in less than three months scientists identified 44 potential treatments to fight the deadly smallpox disease. Without the grid, the work would have taken more than one year to complete. The World Community Grid is helping to change the World now.

So maybe you have an old computer that is still plugged in that you use on occasion. Or perhaps, the one you always use is sitting idle overnight or while you’re at work. Consider using that idle time for something that can change the World we live in today and will have an impact on the World your children and their children will live in tomorrow.

Two things. Maybe three.

One: I always thought that my Blackberry made me more productive when I was away from my desk. It didn’t have everything I needed, but because I’m chained to email, it let me stay in communications with clients and friends. My new Android phone (HTC Glacier) is like having my entire desktop computer with me at all times. Now I want multi-touch EVERYWHERE!

Two: Apps. Everyone has heard of this ‘apps’ thing since the iPhone came out in 2007. I had apps on my Blackberry, but the screen-size made it different than my Glacier. The 3.8″ screen gives you plenty of real estate to do more than my BB could ever.

Android Man

So the one App everyone who travels should have is Airport Remote. You never have to search for an airport monitor again.  For every connecting flight, I could look up the departure gate AS I LANDED. It made connecting much easier. $3.99. First app I’ve ever paid for.

Three: Android version 2.2 gives you the ability turn your phone into a wireless router.  I spent 3 days in an Army conference room with no ability to connect to their network. My 4G phone now became the only portal to the ‘outside’ world. Turning on the ‘hotspot’ function in my phone gave THREE of us the ability to connect to the Internet.

With only a 2-bar reception, we could still get 1.01mb down and 460k up. Better than most DSL connections and plenty fast enough for us to email and IM our off-site colleagues.  Later trials, with 4-bars of reception, garnered 4.5mb down and 460k up. I streamed Netflix movies waiting for my plane.

More Android phone-fun facts in future posts.

Kathleen Baudendistel stars in Muse Machine's "Into the Woods"

Among the rising stars in this year’s production is Farmersville student Kathleen Baudendistel.

Muse Machine mounts its first Stephen Sondheim production in a year that celebrates the composer and lyricist’s 80th birthday. The smash-hit family musical intertwines the stories of many fairytale favorites and thrusts them into situations where their “happily ever after” may not come so easily. Finding familiar characters like Little Red Riding Hood and her wolf, Cinderella and her prince, Jack of beanstalk fame and others faced with new challenges makes the show both unexpectedly funny and surprisingly poignant.

“We can’t wait to bring a big, magical show like this to the Victoria Theatre,” said producer Douglas Merk. “It’s the sort of show that will have everyone laughing one moment and then really thinking about their own lives the next.”

With 100 young people from around the Miami Valley on stage, backstage and in the orchestra, Muse Machine brings its own flavor to each production. Into The Woods will experience some of the Muse touch through movement.

“Early versions of Into The Woods used very little dance, but we’re going to change that,” said New Orleans choreographer Lula Elzy. “Our performances will incorporate production numbers without changing the script – it will feel like they were always a part of the show!”

The creative team will also include one new face, director Rufus Bonds, Jr., familiar to manyas Collins from the Broadway cast of Rent and Mufasa from the national tour of The Lion King.

Bonds comes from the west coast, along with returning music director David Düsing from NewYork City to complete the directing team.

Into The Woods runs January 13-16, 2011 at the Victoria Theatre. Tickets are on sale exclusively through Ticket Center Stage: 937-228-3630 or www.ticketcenterstage.com. Patron and premium tickets are $52 and $38 (which includes a tax-deductible donation to the organization), adult tickets are $29, senior tickets are $2 off the standard adult ticket, non-Muse student tickets are $20 and Muse student tickets are $15. Seats for the Muse student musicals often sell out – purchase early to guarantee your seats!

About the Muse Machine

The Muse Machine is a nationally recognized arts education organization, providing creative experiences and resources for young people of the Miami Valley. Since 1982, they’ve produced 26 annual musicals and 14 concerts for the community and engaged thousands of students through academic-relevant lessons, workshops and in-school projects. For more information, visit www.musemachinedayton.com.