I hate giving my phone number out and I am sure most people do… especially to strangers (digital and physical). I have a Google Voice account that I use sometimes since I can be more in control in how that number is routed… but it still doesn’t solve my issue of wanting to not give my number out!

I was checking into it, and it appears that there are actually numbers created just for this… the 555 numbers. I don’t know how accurate the Wikipedia page is on it, but it says “only 555-0100 through 555-0199 are now specifically reserved for fictional use – except for the 800 area code where only 800-555-0199 is reserved” which is AWESOME.

I need to conduct a phone interview where it would be extremely beneficial to record and transcribe it so that I can reference it while writing an article.

I have a fancy iphone and I thought it would be a standard feature… course not… but there are iphone apps that do it. The only problem is every app seems to have a limited amount of time they will record for (usually 20 minutes) at which point you must give the creators money and the quality is horrible and breaks up.

I did several test runs with a famous comic book artist using the app called call.rec which I was pretty unimpressed with but could have used out of need. Turns out there is a 20 minute limit… go figure.

So I did a bit more research and found out that my Google Voice account could handle the situation as long as it was an incoming call. I already have a fancy Google Voice number that routes to my iphone so I had said comic book artist call that number… it magically routes to my phone… and then during the conversation when I want to start recording, I press 4 on the number pad and tada! A voice announces that the phone conversation is being recorded to both parties and once the conversation ends, I can log into my Google Voice account and listen over and over to the conversation. It was a NY Times blog that actually reminded me to check with Google, cause as usually, they probably have it covered.

Check out BlockAdverts… read the whole page before you use it, cause it’ll make surfing the web look very different.

Have you heard of Google Badges? All I have to do is enable my web history and read Google News Stories while signed in to my Gmail->Google Account and I could get a badge related to subject matter and keywordssssss… imagine, I could one day hold a platinum badge in Fascinations!!!

Here I am, about to enable my “web history” with Google so they can effectively serve me the best quality websites for free and award me shiny gold stars for all my worthwhile mind blurbs… and I can’t get past the enable web history step (an Internet marketer could potentially benefit by having G-badges related to their verticals).

Let’s just make it clear that regardless of whether I choose to enable my web history or not, Google is still tracking how I interact with the web… especially in Chrome or when logged in to any of my Google accounts or perks… ***I can’t wait for my next post on uncomfortable Chrome screenshots*** but anyway, enabling web history at least lets me access it too!… but probably connects “me” directly to it instead of it being a little more anonymous… I don’t know at what level but here is a post on Google Anonymizing Search Records To Protect Privacy from 2007.

For some reason I want to tell the story of Rumpelstiltskin… through Rocky and Bullwinkle (yes Google, it is a burn from a little ol’web ant you could squash at will).
(here’s the link: Rumpelstiltskin as told in Fractured Fairy Tales of Rocky and Bullwinkle )

Did I mention how much I love the Electronic Frontier Foundation! If you were looking for a place to give all your money to when you die… Net-freeing organizations like the EFF need the funds and make a big impact on your digital private side.

I know… this is an odd fascination. I was justing thinking about how you know when you’re not doing something better. BETTER… not bad, just not forward; that is why businesses fail (and marriages, and lives…) in a REASON TO EXIST… they are plateauing which isn’t even holding even, it’s holding back.

There are all sorts of reasons for it; I tend to think some of it simply occurs cause we’re lazy… the non-ADD type who have to smoke things to get that burst of inspiration and creation. Or, those that care but are resigned to putting the right shape into the right spot (it’s called being a good girl and boy but that’s rarely progressive).

So, here are some things to help mitigate the situation:

——->Rethink Your Presence. All of it, physical, digital, impact on friends, impact on earth, impact on now.

————>Communicate Change. It always seems like you come to an agreement and you’re so happy about it cause it works, but my, do things change*… small, big, whatever… propose the changes that need to happen (almost weekly… biweekly?). *rethink your presence

——————->Stay Relevant. Avinash Kaushik said once at a conference (or twenty and his blog Occam’s Razor) to stay relevant. Can’t just keep up (unless its with the innovators, and even then you got to throw in!!! just like buying beer… you can do it…). I also just want to add, that I got to sit directly in front of Mr. Kaushik once and it made me happy. Hi Avinash (if you happen to check this fascinating backlink).

——————————>Don’t Be Lazy. It’s all work… yea, or like Danny Baker (former boss and GM of KTBC and TAB chairman) use to tell me in the elevator, it’s all about attitude!!! meaning, it’s work if that’s your headspace (so brainwash yourself, fun fun fun!). Just make it happen and lay off the excuses except for that special 10% of time, cause hey, we work…errrr have fun to much.

Alrighty, the thing to remember through it all is that it is all a circle… it will all come back around, even the circles that are bigger than our lifespan. If you can imagine something bigger than you… then you got no worries… or do you, hahaha, ha. Also note, fascinations are just that .

I don’t know how in the hell I missed knowing about Ogg Vorbis, but reading through their FAQ page is definitely teaching me a thing or two (that I should already have known) too.

Particularly this part about licensing cost for use of MP3 compression and the fact that Vorbis is used in 2 out of the 3 supported audio/video formats in HTML5.

Have you ever heard of using numerical IP addresses [instead of URLs] like 128.242.240.52 (Twitter), 69.63.189.34 (Facebook) and 172.14.204.99 (Google) in case, say… you wanted to bypass a certain web block a government might have put in place on a website? This could be pretty handy… especially if you live in war-torn dictatorships.

How about if you wanted to see if a Search Engine had indexed your site recently? Iplists.com has a pretty good lead on which IP belongs to which brand of SE… but I’m sure they have a lot more.

What if you wanted specific info on visitors… like you are looking to view IP addresses in GA? Well, included is an interesting hack on the matter that is a definite no no in terms of privacy and Google Analytics (but interesting nonetheless). Surely there are other metric systems out there that can help you… hint hint. See… aren’t numerical IP Addresses fascinating!

I stumbled upon the The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) when I was looking at some privacy guards (GNU Privacy Guard)

Check out their newbie page to learn all about them.

I need to get back to work, but my momentary fascination needs to be shared and propagate!

NPR’s Talk of the Nation has a life-logging audio piece that is not necessarily something I suggest if you are a daily web user… but here are some keywords from the audio piece that can help you know what life logging is if you don’t know already: “daily documentation of your life,” “constant exposure” via any known media, “an online archive of your life.”

Any way you could possibly log your life FOREVER (or so): scrapbooks, photo albums, blogs, hording, video surveillance, children, computer chips, mud, audio recording… and the list goes on. I hope they learn how to capture sarcasm well.

On a side note, life logging created Cylons, so beware.

I ran across a lot of blog carnivals today in my work. When done with a white hat blog carnivals are a pretty cool collection of info from various bloggers on any given interest… try looking at a kitten blog carnival. AHHHHHHH!!! It almost drives you cute crazy.

When done with a black hat a blog carnival is a bunch of stolen words. Find an ethical one and your golden for any given subject.

I was digging earlier and read article after article about the Verizon-Google pact that is a slap in the face to the purity of net neutrality. The FCC might be our saving grace if it listens to the public on this one.

This sent me down a digital elephant path… and I ended up on anonymous email companies. I found this article at PC World that explains a lot about anonymous email and the ideas and keywords around what it means. Definitely worth checking out… probably worth investing in if you want to retain your privacy.

I ran across the “How to Become a Hacker” Manifesto by E.S. Raymond.  It is awesome. I am inspired by the document.

The link hopping journey took me to the site “Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years” by Peter Norvig which is also a very sincere and helpful… and brings me to the 10,000 hours devotee mentality. How many things can you possibly achieve “mastery” with by devoting 10k hours to in your life? I am hoping for 7.