Here are some sound effects you can download for Halloween. All sites lised have been given a green light by McAfee site advisor.
Curly’s Spooky Halloween Wave Files
Halloween online radio stations from Live365
Monster’s Halloween Party $ — link attempts to load iTunes page and takes you to page. Full album is $9.99
Download.com’s Halloween Screen Savers
Larry’s CBS News Halloween Podcast (45 seconds)
We’re less than a week away from an election that, among a lot of other things, will help determine how America approaches its technology challenges. Sadly, despite the fact that we are the home of Hewlett Packard, Intel, IBM, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, Google, Apple and many other incredibly innovative companies, the U.S. is not always number one when it comes to utilization of this technology.
For example, the U.S. is in 15th place when it comes to broadband penetration per capita. We’re way behind Denmark, the Netherlands and our neighbors in Canada, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. We’re in ninth place when it comes to broadband speed. Japan averages 61 megabits per second compared to 4.8 here in the U.S says the Technology & Information Foundation. Neither McCain nor Obama would applaud those statistics.
Both candidates have a technology platform on their websites and, not surprisingly, their technology policies are more or less reflective of their overall political philosophies. On the surface, the contrast is not as stark as you might expect. Both Senator Obama and McCain want to see more innovation, a stronger and more technologically savvy workforce and widespread connectivity at all income levels. But that level of similarity can be said for other major policy areas. Both want prosperity and security and an America that the world respects. The question isn’t so much what they want but how they plan to achieve it.
In 2004, President Bush pledged to bring “broadband technology to every corner of our country by the year 2007 with competition shortly thereafter.” It hasn’t happened. McCain sees less regulation as the solution. “I have been a leading advocate in the Senate for seeking market-based solutions to increasing broadband penetration,” he told CNET news. “We should place the federal government in the role of stimulator, rather than regulator, of broadband services, remove state and local barriers to broadband deployment, and facilitate deployment of broadband services to rural and underserved communities.” Obama’s tech policy statement says “we can get true broadband to every community in America through a combination of reform of the Universal Service Fund, better use of the nation’s wireless spectrum, promotion of next-generation facilities, technologies and applications, and new tax and loan incentives.”
Both candidates want to see more rigorous enforcements of trademark and copyright laws though Obama’s web site polity statements place more emphasis on international piracy, especially China. “While the Internet has provided tremendous opportunity for the creators of copyrighted works,” says John McCain’s website, “it has also given rise to a global epidemic of piracy. John McCain supports efforts to crack down on piracy, both on the Internet and off.”
In September, McCain policy adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin waved his BlackBerry around and said, “you’re looking at the miracle that John McCain helped create.” Of course, the BlackBerry is from a Canadian company and McCain had nothing to do with its development. Another McCain aide later dismissed this as “a bonehead joke by a staffer.” Unlike Obama, McCain doesn’t even carry a Blackberry or any other smart phone and has been quoted as saying that his wife Cindy has to help him access the web. Still, McCain was chair of the Senate Commerce Committee where he was a staunch advocate for deregulation. While not claiming to have invented anything, his campaign site does say that “under John McCain’s guiding hand, Congress developed a wireless spectrum policy that spurred the rapid rise of mobile phones and Wi-Fi technology.” In January, McCain told CNET news, “I believe that we must promote competition and reduce regulation in order to secure lower prices and higher-quality services for consumers and encourage the rapid deployment of new technologies.”
Obama plans to appoint a national CTO (Chief Technology Officer) to “ensure that our government and all its agencies have the right infrastructure, policies and services for the 21st century.” The CTO, says the Obama site “will ensure the safety of our networks and will lead an interagency effort, working with chief technology and chief information officers of each of the federal agencies, to ensure that they use best-in-class technologies and share best practices.”
Obama advocates “doubling federal funding for basic research over ten years, changing the posture of our federal government from being one of the most anti-science administrations in American history to one that embraces science and technology.” McCain campaign told the New York Times that “he will encourage corporate research by reducing the capital gains and corporate taxes and promoting “conditions favorable to investment.” He has also been quoted as wanting to relieve “burdensome regulations” that inhibit innovation.
One of the most controversial technology issues today is network neutrality. For most people in the United States, the only two practical means to get broadband are from either their cable company or phone company, leading to a duopoly when it comes to connectivity (satellite broadband is available but it’s slower and most expensive than what the cable and phone companies offer). There has been a great deal of pressure on Congress to do something to assure that these companies treat all Internet traffic fairly and not favor their own services over those of competitors. There is worry, for example, that phone companies could interfere with competing voice over Internet service or cable companies might favor their own video programming over that of rivals. Critics of net neutrality have pointed out that there has been relatively little blockage of competitive services and that there is no need for government regulation.
Senator Obama is in favor of the government assuring network neutrality while Senator McCain wants to leave that up to market forces. McCain “does not believe in prescriptive regulation like ‘net-neutrality,’ but rather he believes that an open marketplace.” I was at a Wall Street Journal Conference last year where he said “when you control the pipe you should be able to get profit from your investment.” Obama’s campaign says that “a key reason the Internet has been such a success is because it is the most open network in history. It needs to stay that way. Barack Obama strongly supports the principle of network neutrality to preserve the benefits of open competition on the Internet.”
I created a Power Point Presentation about technology for and the next president that you can download.
It should come as no great surprise that American families are increasingly using technology to keep in touch with each other. A survey last week by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that married couples with minor children “have higher rates of Internet and cell phone usage, computer ownership and broadband adoption than other household configurations.”
The numbers are quite impressive. Fifty-eight percent of “married-with-children” households own two or more computers while nearly two-thirds of those multi-computer households have them linked in to a home network. Nearly nine out of 10 such households own multiple cell phones and 57 percent of their children (ages 7 to 17) have their own cell phone.
And for those who worry that technology isolates and pulls people apart, the survey found quite the opposite. It revealed “that couples use their phones to connect and coordinate their lives, especially if they have children at home. American spouses often go their separate ways during the day but remain connected by cell phones and to some extent by Internet communications. When they return home, they often have shared moments of exploration and entertainment on the Internet.”
But there is a somewhat disturbing trend as well. Families with multiple communications devices are “somewhat less likely to eat dinner with other household members and somewhat less likely to report high levels of satisfaction with their family and leisure time than are families with lower levels of technology ownership,” according to the report.When it comes to couples, cell phones can lead to greater communication. Sixty-four percent of couples who both own cell phones contact each other at least once a day and 42 percent of parents contact their children daily using a cell phone.
The study found that TV viewing is down. Twenty-five percent of the adults surveyed said the Internet has “decreased the amount of time they spend watching television” but most say it has not cut down on time they spend with friends, family or attending social events. Reduced TV viewing is even more pronounced with younger adults — 29 percent of those between 18 and 27 and 27 percent of 30- to 49-year-olds.
And, despite the slightly fewer tech-savvy families who eat together, the survey found that 25 percent of respondents “feel that their family today is now closer than their family when they were growing up thanks to the use of the Internet and cell phones, while just 11 percent say their family today is not as close as families in the past.”
The report pretty much confirmed what I have noticed with my own family, which has been using e-mail and instant messaging — and now social networking — to stay in touch for many years. More important, it gives me some optimism that, over time, technology will help today’s children, teens and young adults maintain longer and stronger relationships with their friends than was the case with previous generations.
I have no studies to back this up, but my kids — ages 22 and 24 — are in contact with many of their middle school, high school and college friends thanks to AOL Instant Messenger, Facebook, cell phones and e-mail.
My 24-year-old daughter, who just got married, had her close high school friends as bridesmaids at her wedding. In the six years since high school they’ve kept in close touch, mainly through technology. And even though my son’s high school friends are scattered all over the country, he still communicates with them on a regular basis. Many still have the same cell phone numbers they had in high school as well as the same AIM screen names. My daughter has kept her phone number, screen name and e-mail address even though her last name has changed.
Contrast this to the kids I grew up with. I’ve lost touch with all but a couple of them, having no idea what’s happened to them since high school. Back then it was very expensive to stay in touch by phone and, of course, we had no other electronic means of communications. If my kids stay on the same course, I have every reason to believe they’ll remain in touch with their friends for life, using technology to help them support each other through all those changes that inevitably take place over a period of decades.
Over the course of my kids’ lifetimes, technology will go through unimaginable changes. I have no idea what they’ll be using to keep in touch in, say, 2040, but I’m pretty confident that their world will be a lot smaller and closer than mine. And, for the most part, that’s a good thing.
For the past week I’ve been carrying around the T-Mobile G1 – the first phone to run Google’s Android operating system. While I’m not gaga over Google’s first phone, I am generally pleased about its consumer friendly features and ease of use. Still, it has that “1.0″ feeling to it, a good start but still a bit rough.
The phone, which is manufactured by Taiwan-based HTC Corporation, will be available from T-Mobile starting Oct. 22 for $179, with a two year contract.
Like the Apple iPhone, it features a touch screen (3.2 inch) to easily launch applications but there are also five dedicated buttons, including very handy menu and home buttons, plus a trackball.
If you want to make a phone call while holding it in portrait mode you can bring up an onscreen dial-pad, but if you want to enter text – perhaps to respond to an email or access a web page, you have to turn the phone on its side and slide out the physical QWERTY keyboard.
I like having a physical keyboard – the lack of one is my major complaint about the iPhone. The keyboard is okay, but I prefer the extra travel you get when pressing keys on the Blackberry Curve. Without a backlight, the G1 keys are hard to see in the dark.
When you slide out the keyboard, the phone goes from portrait to landscape mode but it doesn’t do that just by moving the phone.
I’m surprised and disappointed that it doesn’t give you the option of also bringing up an onscreen keyboard for typing text. Seems to me they could have offered that along with the physical keyboard but perhaps that will be corrected with a software update or a third party application.
And therein lies the real promise behind this phone. Like the iPhone, there is an icon on the main screen that brings you to an application store (it’s called the “Market”) where you can download applications provided by independent developers.
So far there are only about 40 such applications, compared to thousands for the iPhone, but if Google is successful in evangelizing Android, it’s safe to assume that a lot more applications will be forthcoming.
Unlike Apple, Google and the cell phone carriers have said that they will permit virtually any application – even if it competes with the economic interest of those companies. For example, there is already an application called iSkoop that lets you make free or inexpensive international and domestic calls using Skype. Warning to merchants – my favorite application lets you use the phone’s camera to “scan” a product’s bar code to look up reviews and comparative prices.
The G1 comes with only one gigabyte of memory compared to eight gigabytes for the $199 iPhone or 16 GB for Apple’s $299 version. However, the G1’s memory is on a removable microSD card, making it very easy and reasonably affordable to expand the memory up to 8 gigabytes now and, probably, 16 or more in the future. An 8 GB card can be purchased for about $25.
As you might expect, the G1 comes with a dedicated Gmail and Google calendar application where your mail and calendar are always in synch with Google’s web-based applications. This can be extremely convenient if you regularly use Gmail and Google calendar on your PC or Mac, but possibly a deal-breaker if you’re not a Gmail or Google Calendar user.
There is another email application that works with other POP3 and IMAP email accounts but, so far, not Microsoft Exchange mail which is used by many companies.
Unlike every other smart phone I’ve used, the G1 doesn’t come with software to synchronize your calendar or address book with a PC or Mac, which could be a big problem for many people but not for those who already use Gmail or Google Calendar. Microsoft Outlook users can get their data into the G1 by first using free PC software to synch with Google’s web applications.
The phone does come with a USB cable to transfer music or photos between the phone and a PC or Mac. Unlike Apple products, it uses the same standard Mini-USB connector as the Blackberry and many digital cameras. You can also charge the device from a computer’s USB port.
The interface is pretty intuitive. You get a relatively sparse home screen but you can reveal all of the applications by tapping or dragging a tab on the screen. There are actually three main screens that you move between by flicking in an iPhone like gesture. You can bring up a menu to add any application or icon to any screen by holding down your finger for a few seconds. It’s not intuitive but it’s easy to use once you figure it out. Like the BlackBerry, but unlike the iPhone, you can make a call by just typing the person’s name from the home screen.
The G1 has the second best web browser I’ve seen on a phone – almost as good as the iPhone’s. The G1’s browser does let you use your finger to move about the screen and you can zoom in or out by taping on a plus or minus icon. That’s not bad, but not as good as using two fingers to pinch and zoom or contract an image on the iPhone. When you’re in the browser you can press the menu to bring up screens to enter a URL, search, set a bookmark or switch to a new browser window. This is a pretty versatile browser for a hand held device.
There is also an Instant Message program that supports AIM, Google Talk, Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo Messenger.
The phone does have GPS and Google Maps. You don’t get turn-by-turn directions but I was able to easily use the map application to help me find an address on a recent car trip. You can view the map from street or satellite view.
The G1 does have a music player and it comes with a stereo headset that connects to the USB port. Unlike the iPhone and the consumer oriented BlackBerries, there isn’t a standard audio jack. I think that’s a real shame especially for people who like to use higher-end headphones, plug music players into a car stereo or, like me, tend to lose headsets.
I’m told that an optional adapter is available but that’s one more thing to buy and possibly lose. Although it supports Bluetooth headsets for talking on the phone, it doesn’t support stereo Bluetooth music headphones.
In addition to transferring music from a computer, you can purchase songs via the Amazon MP3 store. The songs are unencrypted and you can copy them from the G1 to a PC or Mac by connecting the two devices with a USB cable and dragging the file as if between disk drives. There is no synch program like iTunes.
If you’re a YouTube fan, you have plenty to watch but that’s it when it comes to video. That’s a glaring omission which, I hope, will be remedied by third party developers.
The G1 phone works on T-Mobile’s high-speed G3 network as well as its slower Edge network. I found G3 coverage in most, but not all, parts of the San Francisco and Los Angeles areas where I tested the phone and I was pleased to be able to get coverage, albeit a bit slower, at several car stops between the two cities on U.S. 101 and Interstate 5.
Depending on use, the battery typically gave me between about 3 and 4.5 hours of use but, unlike the iPhone, the battery is removable so heavy users can bring along a spare.
T-Mobile’s $25 data plan includes unlimited email, web access, 400 text messages and Google Talk access. For $10 more you get unlimited text messages and instant messages. Both plans give you access to T-Mobile WiFi hotspots. You’re also required to have voice plan starting at $30 a month.
Bottom line: The G1 is an excellent phone but lacks a bit of the fit and finish of the iPhone. It’s easy to use but not as intuitive as the iPhone. I like it a lot better than any Windows Mobile phone and – for consumers – it competes well against the BlackBerry but doesn’t bury it. It’s definitely not ready for corporate use.
Of course, this is only the first of the Android phones. Google’s Open Handset Alliance includes many carriers, including Sprint and cell phone makers LG, Samsung and Motorola. Over time we’ll see a lot of choices including phones with different form factors than the G1 as well as new applications.
Still, if you want to be among the first to play with Google’s entry into the phone application market, the G1 will serve you well.
The presidential election has a lot of people excited, with supporters of both major campaigns eager to do all they can to help assure victory in November. Trouble is, if you live in California, Texas, New York or any other solid blue or red state, you’re not likely to change the outcome by campaigning where you live.
As a result, many partisans who don’t live in a battleground state are using the Internet to reach out to voters in swing states like Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, Nevada and Missouri.
Both JohnMcCain.com and BarrackObama.com provide lists of voters or volunteers whom supporters can call from the comfort of their home or cell phone. And because many people have unused cell phone minutes and free long distance, they can make an impact without straining their budget. They also can use Skype to call from their PC or Mac for about 2 cents a minute.
The easiest way to make calls is to sign up for an online account on either campaign Web site, pick the state you wish to call to and make the calls while sitting at your computer.
The McCain campaign makes it easy to sign up and start calling people in any state. To register, you need to provide your name, e-mail address and street address. You’re taken to a page where you can select the state you wish to call. However, the page doesn’t necessarily give you voters in that state.
I experimented by selecting Nevada and was immediately taken to a page with the name and phone number of someone to call in Iowa. The next person on that list was in Ohio. The campaign’s desire to have you call someone in Iowa or Ohio is understandable given the tight races in those states, but I’m not sure why they bother letting you pick from all 50 states. The Web page gives you the name, phone number and city and state for each voter, along with a script you’re asked to read aloud.
To its credit, the McCain site blocks you from calling late at night. When I visited McCain’s “Voter2Voter” phone bank at 11 p.m.Pacific time, I was told to come back the next morning because it was “outside calling hours.”
The assignment you get when you sign up for the Obama campaign’s “neighbor to neighbor” outreach program seems to depend on where you live and when you first signed up for an account on the site.
When I logged in to experiment with the Obama site last week using an account with a California address that was established months ago, I was given a choice of calling voters in New Mexico, Ohio, Colorado, Nevada, or Latino voters in Nevada or Obama supporters in California. But when I signed up as a new volunteer that day, I was given only the opportunity to call supporters in California to see if I could convince them to get more involved in the campaign.
I can only guess that this is to distinguish between more “trusted” volunteers and those who log on for the first time. But despite several conversations with campaign representatives, I was never able to reach a campaign worker who could explain it.
The Obama Web site gives you the name, phone number, age and gender of each person you’re calling, along with a suggested opening line. But it leaves it up to the caller to “engage with potential supporter in a conversational manner.”
During the call, you’re asked to place a check mark in the appropriate box to indicate if the voter supports Obama, leans toward Obama, is undecided or leans toward or supports McCain. You’re also asked to indicate if the person is willing to vote early (if possible in that state), and there is a place to type in additional notes. The Web page tells you the time zone of the state you’re calling into and warns you not to make calls after 9 p.m. in that time zone.
McCain’s site provides a script on how “John McCain and Sarah Palin will bring real change to Washington.” You’re also requested to ask each person if McCain can “count on your vote this November?” There’s a drop-down box to indicate if the voter supports McCain and Palin, Obama and Joe Biden or is undecided.
You can also indicate whether the voter’s support is strong, average or weak. The site asks you to collect e-mail addresses for everyone who is a McCain-Palin supporter. Data entered on these sites can provide valuable follow-up information during the last minute get-out-the-vote push.
Neither campaign lets you dial automatically through the computer. That would have been a nice touch, especially if they picked up the cost of the call, which they could do for a very low price by contracting with an Internet phone service.
Both Web sites have other resources for supporters, including plenty of ammunition as to why their candidates are better. There also are places where you can find local campaign events or post events that you want to host, as well as lists of local campaign offices where you can volunteer to help. And of course they’re happy to accept online donations.
If you’re an Obama supporter willing to travel on behalf of your candidate you can go to TravelForChange.org to request free frequent-flier miles or donate miles for others who wish to travel. The site also links you to field offices in those states. After a Web search and an interview with a McCain spokesman, I wasn’t able to find an equivalent site for his supporters.
The current economic crisis has a lot of people wondering where to put their money. The stock market is chaotic, some banks are wobbly and real estate, that old standby, is on a downward spiral.
But before you start stuffing money under your mattress, consider going online to loan some of it to a strawberry farmer in Ecuador, a secondhand clothing store in Senegal or a health food store in Zapata, Texas. Loans like these can be surprisingly safe and, in some cases, pay as high an interest rate as bank CDs.
I wrote about these microlending Web sites a year ago but that was before the financial meltdown. At the time, banks were paying pretty high rates for CDs and almost no one was talking about the possibility of bank failures or plummeting stock prices.
The two leading microlending sites are Kiva.org and Microplace.com. Kiva is a nonprofit organization that bills itself as the “world’s first person-to-person microlending Web site, empowering individuals to lend directly to unique entrepreneurs in the developing world.” Microplace is a subsidiary of eBay, which plans to donate any profits to the company’s Global Citizenship Project.
Microplace pays interest ranging from 1.25 percent to 3 percent, depending on the specific loan. Before you invest, you can read about the project to find out how the money will be used. In most cases, you’re lending to a fund which then re-loans the money to an individual or small business.
When I last wrote about microfinancing, I noted that 3 percent was low compared with most bank CDs. But that may no longer be the case. Some banks still pay more than 3 percent but many pay less.
Microfinance loans are not insured but they are a lot less risky than many investments in the developed world. Microplace founder Tracey Turner notes that borrowers reside in emerging markets which, while not immune from the turmoil, are “pretty stable relatively speaking.” She added that “we haven’t seen any change in the level of returns in investments in microfinance.”
Globally, according to Turner, microfinance borrowers repay about 97 percent of the funds loaned to them. But she said the risk is actually lower for her organization because of the nature of the loans and the lending organizations. A Calvert Foundation representative told me that they enjoy a 99.8 percent repayment rate, which is a very low risk.
There is a $100 minimum for your initial Microplace investment. Subsequent investments can be as low as $50.
While Kiva doesn’t pay interest, it does offer some advantages. First, it’s more of a “peer-to-peer” lending arrangement in which you get a bit more control over whom the money is lent to. Also, the minimum investment is only $25.
My favorite feature is that Kiva allows you to give gift certificates to enable others to make loans. It’s a great gift for children, especially as we approach the holiday season. Rather than giving physical presents, store gift cards or cash, you can give a child a $25 gift certificate to loan to an entrepreneur.
The child gets the experience whom to loan it to, gets to track their repayments over time and, eventually, gets to use the money for college or whatever else they need or want it for. Kiva also has what it calls “lending teams” that let people join together and recruit new members to increase the impact of their loans.
One concern about microlending is that the end-borrower typically pays a much higher interest rate than those of us who borrow from banks here in the United States. Interest rates to borrowers range from 18 to 60 percent but, on average according to Turner, about 30 to 35 percent.
But considering the size of the loans and the complexity of microfinancing, this isn’t necessarily an exploitative rate. When we borrow thousands of dollars in the United States, the amount of effort that goes into writing and servicing the loan is relatively small, considering the total amount of interest the lender will make over the life of the loan.
For example, a $30,000 car loan for five years at 6 percent will cost $4,799 in interest payments. At 30 percent, a $100 loan to a farmer in Bolivia will cost the borrower $30 a year. But unlike our car loans, the lender doesn’t just sit in an office and punch numbers into a computer and deposit monthly checks or electronic payments. The lender has to spend a lot of time working with the borrower, first to determine whether to give the loan and then, typically on a weekly basis, to collect payments.
And, yes, I’m putting my money where my words are. As I did last year, this holiday season I plan to give Kiva gift certificates to the children in my life and Microplace loans are included in my investment portfolio.
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