I see lots of friends over on Facebook getting all in a tizzy over their personal information being displayed on spokeo.com. Most are worried that their privacy is being invaded. The general concern is that their information is searchable on this site, and that they didn’t authorize it. Well, I hate to break this to you, but… you actually did. But how did I authorize it, you ask? And how do they get that information?

How does Spokeo.com get that information?
In a nutshell: all of the information that you see on spokeo.com is publicly available already. This is information that is found in the phone book white pages, real estate listings, government documents and records, and most importantly… all of the public profile listings on your favorite websites like Facebook, Yelp, MySpace, Flickr, LinkedIn, Amazon… and the list goes on.

How did I authorize it?
Two words for you: privacy settings. Every site that allows you to create an online profile (like the ones listed above) also allows you to adjust what information is made available publicly. The problem is that most of them, by default, have many details set to be public. It’s up to you to keep that info from becoming readily searchable online.

Example: I have an account at flickr.com, and on that account I have my full name listed as my “screen name”. I do this by choice because I make money on the site as a photographer and Flickr is a great way to market myself. A simple google search for my full name shows my Flickr profile as the fourth item in the results. Is this an invasion of my privacy? No. I put my own full name on a publicly searchable item on Flickr, and thus I’ve authorized my full name to be found quite easily via a web search.

You see all of these photo thumbnails here on my web site? All of those are publicly viewable, so they will show up in the Spokeo.com search results. I posted them on Flickr as viewable by everyone… and that really means everyone.

This personal information can be found by anyone on the web. The ease of finding the information is dependent on how adept they are at searching the internet. But, Spokeo.com just does all of that legwork for them. And guess what? They are not the only sites that do this sort of thing; Pipl, ZoomInfo, ZabaSearch, Radaris, and Intelius. Technically, these sites are not doing anything illegal as the information they are presenting is freely and publicly available to everyone.

So, what can you do about it?
You have a couple of options.

1. Don’t ever share anything on the internet, especially on any social networking sites. This is a bit drastic, but you’ll be guaranteed to keep your private information private. Of course, keep in mind… you’ll have to be unlisted in the phone book, and never do anything that has to do with the government.
2. Get to know the privacy settings on the sites that you use and make the necessary adjustments accordingly.

To lead you in the right direction, go take a look into the privacy settings on Facebook. If you see anything that is set to “everyone”, you can consider that information available publicly and searchable on the web. I always tell friends to modify every Facebook privacy setting so that “everyone” is not selected. And an important one is the Public Search Results; Do you want people to find your Facebook profile page via any internet search engine? If not, then keep this box unchecked. I’ve sent this link out to folks before, and is great for understanding your settings on Facebook: 10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know. The locations of settings and verbiage on Facebook may have changed since this article was written, but if you spend some time you’ll be able to find everything you need to set.

Oh yeah, and why do these sites exist at all?
Simple: money!! They are trying to get you to pay them money to find more information about the person you are searching for. Just go to Spokeo.com and search, then click on the “see full results” button. You’ll be promptly directed to their Purchase page. But, it’s likely that you will not find any more detail about that person than what you can find with a simple web search engine.

Very important to know this: Completing the form on spokeo.com to remove your information will not remove the information from where spokeo.com found it. To do that, you’ll need to do one of the two options I’ve noted above.

Here’s the scenario: I have a .BAK file of the database that was hosted on a MSSQL Server 2005 at my previous employers data-center. I need to re-create that database on a hosted MS SQL Server 2005 system at GoDaddy.com. No worries, I thought. I will just create my new database, do a manual back up of it. Then restore it and point it to my .BAK file from the previous server. That concept is old-hat to me, as I’ve done it countless times… on systems that I have complete control and access to. This time it’s on a server that I have limited access to. GoDaddy only permits SQL restores from files that were created by the host system, and stored on it’s local disk. And… I have no rights to place my .BAK file onto the host db server. So, I put on my thinking cap and thunk this one out.

Now, I must fully expose that I am not a SQL DBA in any way, shape, or form. Systems Administration is my background… I can install, configure, and maintain the heck out of a MS SQL database. But, I have extremely limited skills with SQL programming and queries. So, here’s what I came up with:

I have SQL 2005 Express running on my Vista system. Figured I could use that to my advantage here to get the data moved. I’ll break it down into pieces. I have SQL Express connected to my local instance, as well as the remote instance.

• Create a new database (in my local instance, I created a new database… we’ll call it dbFOO)
• Make a back up of dbFOO
• Do a restore of dbFOO, and change it to grab the data from the .BAK file from the old system (this is the step that I would have loved to be able to do on the remote database server)
  • Change the options so that it overwrites the existing database
• On the remote instance, create a new database named dbFOO (db names must be the same since we’re using some queries and we want to limit how much manual editing we need to do)
• On the local instance, right-click on one of the tables and choose “Script Table as… > CREATE To > Clipboard”
• On the remote instance, right-click on the database and choose “New Query”
• In the query window, paste your clipboard contents
  • since your database names are the same, this query will run without issues on the remote instance.
• Execute the query. Boom, the table is now created on the remote instance. Rinse and repeat for the rest of the local instance tables.
  • Tip: keep that query window open, and just replace the sql script with the once for the next table and execute it. A little time-saver.
• Once the tables are created, right-click on the dbFOO database on the remote instance. Choose “Tasks > Import Data”
  • WAIT! SQL Express doesn’t have DTS built in, so how am I able to do this? I once had SQL 2000 Ent. Mgr. installed and I held on to the admin tools, which included DTS. It does spit out some errors when starting up, but I just launch dtswizard.exe and I’m able to use it for my SQL 2005 Express databases.
• Choose the local instance as your source, and your remote instance as your destination. Set up dbFOO as the database, of course.
• Go through all of the wizard steps, choose the option for “copy data from one or more tables or views”.
• Check the boxes for all the tables and make any adjustments. (I had to enable identity inserts)
• Finish the wizard and blam, there is all of the data.

Are there other ways to accomplish what I needed? Maybe so. Is this the most graceful way to accomplish what I needed? Probably not. Do I care? Nope… I got what I needed done. It actually took me longer to write this post than it did to do all the steps listed above.

If you have other ideas or ways that this could have been done, please leave a comment. I love to document this stuff for other out there that could be in the same pickle I was, to give them some ideas or help in their situation.

BeerPad is a nice little application for the iPhone that is designed for beer enthusiasts to keep track of their beer adventures. You can add beers that you try into the application and it keeps all sorts of information in its database for you.

Features include:

– Assign parameters to each beer from predefined lists. These include Style, Brewery, Region, and Pairings. Each of these lists are editable so that you can add items to them if they don’t exist.
– Assign a photo to the beer. Choose from the camera roll, or take a new one. I am not a fan of the iPhone camera, so I search google images to find either the label or a good pic of the beer online, then save it to my phone and use that one. I discovered that once you assign the photo in BeerPad, you can remove it from your camera roll and it stays in BeerPad.
– Assign a rating for the beer on a scale of 5 stars.
– Several other free form parameters can be assigned. i.e., color, aroma, finish, etc.

Back to my alergy to some beers… if I drink a beer that I am allergic to, my throat swells up. Now, it’s not my airway but rather my esophagus. Regardless, it’s not comfortable and quite irritating. By the way, I’m also allergic to macadamia nuts, which I discovered before the beer allergy. My tactic on new beers is to take a few sips, then wait a good 5 – 10 minutes for a reaction. If there is one, I slide the beer over to a friend to finish. If there is no reaction, score one for me because I have a new beer that I know I can drink without worry.

Here’s where BeerPad comes in to help me. For the past year+ I’ve been adding beers to BeerPad; ones that I know are OK and also an new ones that I try. I use the rating system to track the bad beers. Well, they’re not necessarily bad, just bad for me to drink. I assign a single star to the beers that give me an allergic reaction. Any other beer that goes down without a ruckus gets 2 or more stars.

When I first figured out this allergy, about 8 or so years ago, I had to rely on written notes to remember which beers I could drink. The iPhone in general has improved my quality of life by keeping me more connected. But with apps like BeerPad, it makes it all the more helpful to me. Are there smart phone apps or tools that you use in ways that were not necessarily intended but help you?

What could be running all the time that would cause a drain on the juice? Well, I have my work email account configured to sync mail, contacts, and calendar via ActiveSync. This was the only culprit I could think of that would run all of the time… at least when I had the push feature enabled. I did a few days worth of testing and here’s how it went.

• Day 1: Charged the phone overnight and left push and fetch off (as I normally do to avoid being awoken by new emails). At 6am, I turned both push and fetch on. I typically set fetch at every 15 minutes, so I left it as such. 
  • Results: After 2 hours, the battery was down to 50%. This was 2 hours of very mininal use, pretty much sitting on my desk for all but maybe 10 minutes of use. No phone calls, no internet use, no texting, etc.
• Day 2: Charged the phone overnight and left push and fetch turned off. At 6am, I turned only fetch (15 minutes) on.
  • Results: After 2 hours, the battery was down to 90%. Again… no phone calls, no internet use, no texting, etc.

Huh? I’m the local admin on this here system… the hell you say I don’t have permissions to access this file!

A quick search found that if you copy an executable to a remote system and try to run it via RDP, you get this message because the file is blocked by the operating system since it was copied from another computer. Apparently this is done to try and ‘protect’ the destination computer.

Here’s the quick fix for it: Right-click on the executable file. On the General tab, you will see at the bottom (under the Attributes area) a section for “Security” that has an explaination for you. It says “This file came from another computer and might be blocked to help protect this computer”. (good lookin out, windows) Just click on the “Unblock” button, then click the “OK” button and try running the .exe again.

Boom! You’re done. Now, wasn’t that simple?

McCain’s is shown first and then Obama’s.

I used the Mapaset tool with a set from my flickr stream of photos I took on a work trip to Greece. I think it sweet! Flickr does not have anything like this that I know of. You can use the left/right arrows to scroll through the thumbnails in the set. Click on a thumbnail, and it shows you the location on the map above, as well as some details of the photo, and also provides a link to view the photo on flickr.

It’s a really great system and is great to work on as far as administration of the system. I’ve found a good amount of valuable tech support using the ShoreTel support on their site, but I’ve found some equally beneficial help on shoretelforums.com. I value the help that I find on both websites. However, I recently became frustrated when searching for the default username and password for a ShoreTel switch.

I had to telnet into this particular switch to check on most likely add some ip routes. I’d done it before but did not document the login credentials I had used previously. So, I went to the place that I had found it before: shoretelforums.com. I searched for “telnet” and the first result was a post that had a link to the ShoreTel.com support document with the credentials… only this time the link was broken.

After racking my brains for a few minutes, I remembered the password and my colleague recalled the username. I thought is was sort of strange that no one on the forums site had simply posted the credentials. So, I did just that… only to find that my post had been edited and the credentials removed. Here’s what it said:

{edit: this site is open to the public, and for security reasons, I’d rather not have this password openly available. Feel free to PM it to somebody, but not post it openly. Thanks, and hopefully no hard feelings }

Sorry, but I think that’s just plain lame. No, there’s no hard feelings… but I don’t understand the logic in keeping this sort of information ‘secret’ from the public.

I help maintain a network infrastructure with Cisco and HP core switches that I believe are much higher on the importance chain than a VoIP switch. I can go to the manufactures sites for either of these and easily find the default credentials for any of their products. What makes it so important to keep this information ‘secure’ from the public.

Well, since I can’t post the credentials on the shoretelforums.com site, I’m going to post them right here on my site!

**edit**
There is a good reason that the credentials are kept from public view. If you are not familiar with working within the VxWorks CLI, then you should be cautious when using it… perhaps not even take the risk, and just contact your support vendor. Be aware that you may cause irreparable damage to the device. If you’re unsure, you should contact your ShoreTel support vendor.

Default ShoreTel VxWorks login credentials:
Username: anonymous
Password: ShoreTel

Don’t forget to enable telnet to that device before wasting your time trying to log in:
for a phone: phonectl.exe -telneton TARGET_IP_ADDRESS
for a switch: ipbxctl -telneton TARGET_IP_ADDRESS

Now, we’ll just have the interweb search monkeys go an do their voodoo… and before you know it, when you google “shoretel telnet login” or “vxworks credentials”… let’s just see if this post gets a better ranking than the forums.

When it comes down to it, if this post helps just one poor soul quicker than going through the forums or the ShoreTel site, then I’ll be happy.

Here’s the AP article.

Windows 2003 Resource Kit has a screen saver that does just what he needed. Check out the Microsoft KB article that describes how to set it all up.

Go to START, then RUN. Enter this command: gpedit.msc
This opens the local system policy, and you’ll find the options you require under:
Local Computer Policy > User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Control Panel > Display

Then change the following four options to set a specific screensaver and lock it:

• Change the option “Screen Saver” to Enabled
• Change the option “Screen Saver Executable Name” to Enabled, and enter the file name of an .scr file (from the Windows directory) in the box labeled “Screen Saver executable name”. For example, to set the screen saver to the logon screen saver, enter “logon.scr”.
• Change the option “Password Protect the Screen Saver” to Enabled (to password protect the screen saver and lock it) or Disabled (to keep password protection from applying to the screen saver and lock it), as necessary.
• Change the option “Screen Saver Timeout” to Enabled, and enter the number of seconds in the box labeled “Seconds”. (10 minutes = 600 seconds)

This will lock changing the screen saver, and set the screen saver options and lock them from being changed.

Check it out at Webware…

After trying several modifications to my screen saver properties, I stumbled upon a Windows Update that was listed under the “Windows Ultimate Extras”. It’s listed as Microsoft – Other Hardware – HID Non-User Input Data Filter. After installing that update (no reboot required), the screen saver worked fine.

Check the KB article here.

Vista does not like the forward slash that Lightroom uses when importing using “by date” organization. You can simply double-click on the path within the “organize” box (with the check mark on it), you can modify it and replace it with a backslash. The import should work fine after that.

Cheers! Happy importing!

After some googling, I found this highly useful article out there which provided a link to the U3 site for a removal tool. Works like a normal USB flash drive now… the way it should.

My ie7.log file (in the %windir% folder, most commonly C:\Windows\) showed some error that goes a little like this: DoInstallation: CustomizeCall Failed: 0x3f5

I was lucky enough to find a Google Groups posting that provided some insight. This funky 0x3f5 error has to do with registry permissions.

The fix? Well, since I use XP Pro… I opened a command prompt and typed this in (actually, I really just pasted it from the groups post): secedit /configure /cfg %windir%\repair\secsetup.inf /db secsetup.sdb
/verbose /areas REGKEYS
… and then hit the enter key. About 10 minutes later it was done, and I tried the IE7 installation again.

If you’re a XP Home user… you can go here to read the fix you have to do.

I now am gazing at the majestic yellow ring, and browsing the web with tabs… about time they did this. For the record… I still prefer Firefox.

From Thomas:

At present I’ve had my Flickrstream viewed more than 400,000 times. While I’d like to think that it has something to do with my stellar photography there are certainly tips that anyone can use to increase their visibility. Welcome to the Flickr popularity contest.

Read more over at ThomasHawk.com

I’ve actually posted this entry directly from Flock. Very cool!
Read more here…
Download it here… Flock 0.5pre

The Daily Show
Prison Break
House
Arrested Development
My Name Is Earl
The Office
Lost
ER
Scrubs
CSI
Pinks
Top Gear
The Amazing Race

Melanie’s shows (I swear I don’t watch them, really)
The OC
What Not To Wear

I don’t think we could do it without a DVR.