Category Archives: Commentary

I Love Google

This is the first of a three part series on my thoughts about the search giant Google. I definitely have a love/hate thing going on with them. I thought it was appropriate to start with love. Parts two and three will be published within the next couple of weeks.

My first experience with Google came in 1999 or 2000. I was working at Dell and one of my coworkers made the statement “Just Google it” in response to a question, and I didn’t know what that meant so I searched Yahoo!. It took several more years for them to become my primary search engine because at that point I was already very familiar with Yahoo!. Now they ARE my primary search engine.

In fact, there are a number of Google products that I use on a daily basis.

Search. This is what got them started, and its still their salient product. The search results found within Google are still better than those of the other major players, in my opinion. I also love the simplicity and white space. I never use the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button because I like seeing all the options and selecting myself. I don’t really know what else to say about search, it’s been my home page for years now, and I use it at least 30 times a day. Seriously. And even I don’t know all of the commands that can be used to make their search results more targeted. Define, site, omit, and, or… I know there’s a list, but I’m not sure I’d use them all so I never look them all up. And did you know that Google is also a calculator? 32,874 divided by 4.

Mobile. How often have you been out and wanted to know the start time of a movie, but couldn’t get to a computer? Or wanted the answer to a question right away? If you have a smart phone that’s no trouble. If you don’t there’s Google Mobile. Send a text message to their servers with your search query and they’ll reply via SMS with your answer. This is awesome. I don’t use it every day, but I do use it, and it works exactly as you expect.

Gmail. When Gmail was announced my feathers were ruffled because the media played up the fact that Google servers scan your inbox for keywords that prompt advertisements. Then the service was launched and you couldn’t get an account unless you were invited. I think I bought my invite on eBay for $1. I’ve never looked back. There is no other email application that can compare with Gmail. Threaded email history, categorizing via labels instead of folders, filters, IMAP/POP/SMTP support, ever increasing storage capacity, fantastic search capabilities, easy archival, excellent spam detection… no one else can hold a candle to Gmail. My Gmail account has been my primary email address since the summer of 2005, I very rarely delete anything (and I send myself files all the time), and today I’m only at 20% of my total storage capacity. And, every once in a while I learn of another feature that I’ve never heard of. This is definitely the product that sold me, I may have never become a Google fanboy were it not for this product.

Maps. Before Google Maps I used MapQuest. At first I didn’t think that there was a significant difference between the map providers, it was just a matter of who you were familiar with. Then I realized that you could switch between map, satellite and terrain views. And you can email maps to people as a link. Then they published their APIs and you can embed their maps in your own web pages. Their directions are super easy to work with, they give you a couple of routes to work with, and if you want to alter one (to avoid a toll road, for instance) you just drag the route and the travel time and distance update automatically. Whoa! With street view came the ability to look at the buildings you’ll see when you arrive, before you even leave. Just a month ago I realized that you can search within Maps and it’ll show businesses in your area. Type in Austin, TX pizza and you’ll get a number of dots on the map. I’m not a map expert by any means, but if anyone else has brought in this many features without bloating the application, I don’t know about it.

Reader. If you like reading blogs, there are a couple of services that make it a snap to handle the RSS feeds of all your favorite publishers. I used Bloglines for years, and then finally succombed to Google Reader. I can’t say that Reader is hands above any of the other online RSS readers, but the truth is that it works perfectly and is very easy to use.

Goog-411. Do you ever have to dial information? If you call the phone company it costs. If you call Google its free. I’ve been using it for a couple of years and there have maybe been only two times that it couldn’t find the number that I was looking for. Just like the phone company, once you find the number it’ll dial and connect you, and you even have the option of having the info texted to you.

Voice. This service is newer, but man did they get it right. Once you have a number (currently by invite only, and not all areas are being served) you can easily forward that number to any or all of your other numbers, home, office or cell. You can also send or receive text messages using that number. Here comes the good part, you can arrange your contacts just as you would with your email addresses, work, family, friends, etc, and route them accordingly. Want all work contacts sent to your work number and all friends sent to your cell? No problem, either way, they all dial the same number. This service also converts your voice messages to text, and you can either listen to them or read them (or both) online. Phone companies, please pay attention.

Analytics. If you have a website, and you like monitoring the traffic that it receives, Google Analytics is a fantastic service. How many visitors, how long they spend on your site, how they found your site, their geographic location, etc. Its advanced features allow you to filter out your own visits, create and track campaigns, segment the traffic any way you choose and more. I have tried many other traffic monitoring tools, and I would recommend this over all of the others, free or otherwise.

Documents. Ten years ago it was pretty tough to get by without having a copy of Microsoft Office on your computer. As much as I hate the way Microsoft treats their customers, Word and Excel are some of the most useful programs available, I use them daily for work and in my personal life. Today there are plenty of free options. Google Documents is one of the best. Through this tool you can create letters, spreadsheets and presentations. They don’t offer the same amount of features as their Microsoft counterparts, but that’s one of its salient points, they’re generally much easier to work with because they aren’t bloated with options that you never use. Plus, you can use this service to create PDF files. If you used Microsoft Office you should at least check this service out.

Calendar. When Google launched their calendar service in 2006 I thought it was janky at first. Now I like it very much. The only reason that I don’t use it on a daily basis is that I’m required to use Exchange at work and its just easier to handle everything there. When I had a Blackberry, Google Calendar was my main calendar. Its a snap to create appointments or recurring meetings and invite anyone. You can share your entire calendar or just certain portions of it, and you can even publish portions of it on the web. Its very easy to use.

I haven’t even covered all of the tools that I wanted to talk about and I’ve already gone longer than I thought I would. I’ve also used and recommend Picasa, Google Earth, Google Finance, Google Desktop, Android, SketchUp and others that elude me at the moment. I’m also very excited to play with Google Wave when it launches.

Each of the services that I’ve mentioned above isn’t just great, they’re best of class. I don’t want to handle email without Gmail anymore. Phone companies, I’m paying you, please give me all of the features that Voice gives me for free. Is there anyone on the planet that still prefers MapQuest to Google Maps? Google doesn’t offer services, each time they launch something new it changes the way people think about the service. When you bring them all together in one account, it changes the way you use the web. Seriously. Sergey and Larry certainly don’t get all the credit, but their commitment to excellence shines through in everything this company touches.

Dear Google, I love you. Keep giving us the good stuff.

Craigslist Scammers

I’ve listed a couple of things on Craigslist recently. I generally prefer selling on Craigslist because its free, but you do have to deal with scammers. Generally my policy is to avoid them, but this week I decided to let the story play out just to see what happens. The “person” that wants to buy my iPod is ibrojsmelbar@gmail.com (aka Banderos Smith), and he’s “paying” for it to be shipped to Nigeria.

When he wrote me back, he offered me more than I was asking. Just to jack with him, I raised the price even further, and of course he went for it (when you don’t plan to send any money at all, what’s another $30 or $40?). So first I get a spoofed email from Paypal, saying that my account has been credited. I have to say that its a pretty bad spoof. But then it gets more interesting, I’ve gotten a total of three spoof emails so far.

The first email was sent by pp305@ultimateemail.com, with the name showing as service@paypal.com. If you use gmail (or Google apps) then you’ll see right off that the email was not sent by Paypal. The email asks you to send the shipment tracking number to “Paypal” at the same pp305 email address. Any astute user will note right off that Paypal does not send their emails through any free email service, ultimate email or otherwise.

Paypal spoof email from scammers

Paypal spoof email from scammers

Within minutes of receiving that email I got a second, again from pp305@ultimateemail.com. This one is a reminder of the safety measures that Paypal takes to ensure the security of my account. Once again, its pretty easy to identify it as a fake.

Fake Paypal Safety Email

Fake Paypal Safety Email

At that point, I sent Banderos an email saying nice try, and I figured we were done. I forwarded both of those emails to Paypal so that they’re aware of them, and went about trying to sell my iPod. This morning when I woke up I had an email supposedly from the FBI, threatening that if I didn’t provide a tracking number within hours that I’d be facing legal consequences. This one was sent from f_b_i_crimeteam@ultimateemail.com.

Spoof FBI email

Spoof FBI email

Each of these emails was obviously a fake. I’ve pointed out a couple of obvious errors, there are several others that I won’t mention here because I don’t want to make it easier for them to fool someone else. Lets just say that there is quite a bit of evidence suggesting that this is a scam, for anyone that has the inclination to look.

Seller beware. The fact that they’ve put so much thought into this scam indicates that they’re taking advantage of enough people to make it worth their while, which is pretty sad. I still prefer Craigslist to eBay because its free. I’m sure I’ll be dealing with more cretons like these soon enough.

Cellulosic Ethanol

Dual-fuel gas station at Sao Paulo, Brazil.
Image via Wikipedia

Last summer I shared my thoughts on biofuels, specifically E85. In short, yes they can offset our dependence on foreign oil, but because biofuels contain less energy per gallon than gasoline we’ll need more of it to keep up with our current consumption rates, and this solution completely neglects our need for more efficient cars.

There is a process that can produce E85 with the waste from other manufacturing processes that involve plants. This uses the plant material left over from other types of farming such as sugar or corn and uses the stalks, straw, wood, etc to make cellulosic ethanol. Cellulose is present in all plants, so there’s plenty of this material available, and humans can’t digest it, so this will never be a source of food for us. Plus, this uses the waste of other processes, so it wasn’t being used anyway. This negates the argument about growing for food versus fuel. Also, because this is a biofuel, it burns cleaner than petroleum based fuels. So far so good, right?

There are a couple of snags hidden in the details. First, the process of turning plant material into something you can burn in your car is not very efficient. With today’s technology we’d need A LOT of plant material to make enough E85 to make a dent in our foreign oil consumption, more than required to make corn ethanol. What this means is that if we’re going to look at this as a large scale source of energy, the waste from other manufacturing processes won’t provide enough raw material to work with. We’ll need to grow plants for the purpose of putting fuel in our cars. The food versus fuel argument is not solved.

And there’s more. Cellulosic ethanol is estimated to cost $2 per gallon, about the same as gasoline. Because its ethanol, a tank full of this fuel still won’t take you as far as a tank of gasoline, so the net cost to the consumer will still increase. The takeaway is that this has the potential to drive both food and fuel prices up. That’s not exactly what I have in mind when looking for alternative energies.

If you’re a die hard green energy proponent higher prices may not be enough to deter you, you want cleaner energy regardless of cost. Okay, lets look at this from another angle. Think of all the engergy required to grow, harvest and manufacture cellulosic ethanol. Tractors are needed, electricity to run the plant, fuel to distill the final product. Apart from the land devoted to grow the raw material, each of theses processes require energy. Today that energy is provided by petroleum based products. In other words, non-green energy is being used in the production of a green biofuel (what the???). If the manufacturers switched to burning ethanol in their processes so that this fuel were green from start to finish, they would still be burning fuel to make fuel, but because ethanol contains less energy per gallon they’d need to burn more of it and the cost of production would increase. Cellulosic ethanol would then become more expensive than gasoline. I’ve read that cellulosic ethanol burns clean enough that green house gases are reduced by 90% when compared with petroleum products. I question that stat, but even if true, because of the amount of energy required to produce the fuel it’s not enough. It would be more expensive and we’d still be polluting the atmosphere.

Keep in mind that there’s a good chance that your car is not capable of burning E85 as is. If you want to take advantage of E85 you’ll need to convert your engine which costs anywhere between $500 and $1,000. And, keep in mind that you’ll be spending more for fuel than you would if you chose to burn gasoline.

So lets put all of this together. If cellulosic ethanol becomes available in my neighborhood next year, I may be tempted to burn it instead of my regular gasoline. I’ll pay to convert my Nissan Maxima to burn E85. Then, I’ll fill my tank up. The cost will be about the same as what it costs me to fill up with gasoline, but instead of getting 300 miles per tank, I’ll only be able to drive about 250 miles. Plus, I’m buying a fuel that displaces land used for food production, and a lot of energy was used to make my E85.

I’m a strong proponent of alternative energies, for both political and environmental reasons. I think its smart for us to consider all kinds of solutions to our energy needs. Plus, as an engineer I appreciate that as a country we’re pursuing new technologies. There are two things that I object to about cellulosic ethanol. First, the media and biofuel evangelists tout this as the solution to all of our problems, and that’s just not the case. This doesn’t fully address our dependance on foreign oil, and it isn’t a boon for the environment either. At best, its trading one set of problems for another. And second, our government is pumping millions upon millions into this industry. I just don’t see this paying off. I’m in favor of smaller goverment, so honestly I wish they would leave this to the private sector, period. Since that isn’t a reality I wish they would at least shift some of the funds into other solutions, like nuclear fusion or geothermal energy, a smart power grid, improving wind energy storage… there are many other solutions more promising than biofuels.

Sweetwater Texas

© Guerito 2005
Image via Wikipedia

I have believed for a long time that high energy prices would ultimately be good for the American economy. I generally keep an ear to the ground for new developments in renewable energy technology, and new products that take advantage of alternative energy sources. I recently learned of a small town that has gotten in front of the alternative energy movement, Sweetwater, Texas. This has completely changed the outlook of the community. Ten years ago this was a town that teens left as soon as they could because Sweetwater offered no future for them. The town decided to install wind turbines. Today Sweetwater Texas is running on green energy.

This did more than just revitalize their economy. They needed workers to install and maintain the turbines, so in 2007 the community college in Sweetwater launched the first two-year program on wind energy technology (now there are several around the country). They still have more jobs than they can fill, so people are moving there to find work. Home prices have gone up and new homes are being built, which means more construction jobs. America’s premier wind energy legal seminar, which provides continuing legal education to attorneys, is held each year in Sweetwater. The mayor has been interviewed by the Discovery Channel.
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Gene Kranz

Recent photo of NASA's very own Gene Kranz.
Image via Wikipedia

Tonight Gene Kranz, the famed NASA mission controller played by Ed Harris in Apollo 13, came to speak at UT and I was able to make it. I went with low expectations because I didn’t know much about him other than what I had seen in the movie, and just wow. This man is awesome. The speech was really inspiring and gave me renewed pride in being an engineer and being an American. It was that kind of speech.

Before Kranz came out, one of the professors involved in bringing him to speak at UT introduced some of the students and people present in the audience, and he did one of the coolest things that I’ve seen at any speech. He had the veterans stand to be recognized, and then he asked the military members awaiting a commission stand and be recognized. I’m proud of America, and I’m proud of my service, and I think its awesome that he gave credit to the military’s future leaders.
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My Oma

A week and a half ago my grandma, whom I have always referred to as “Oma” (the German word for grandma), passed away in her sleep. She was 93 years old. I feel pretty fortunate to have had her in my life as long as I did, she was truly one of the most beautiful and loving people I’ve ever met.

During her memorial, my family asked if I would give the eulogy for her. I’m quite honored to get to share my view of Oma and the relationship that we shared, so of course I said yes. Since then a few family members have asked me for my notes on what I said, so I’m posting it here. Liz encouraged me to talk about Oma’s character, and I agreed.
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Less is More

If you read my Twitter or Facebook updates then you may already know that I’m selling some of my guitar equipment. Earlier this week I listed all of my effects pedals. People keep telling me not to sell my guitar or amp, that later I’ll be sorry. I’ve spent a fair amount of time thinking and praying through it, and I’m pretty confident that I’m going to sell the whole lot of my gear, with the exception of my acoustic guitar. I’m just not playing anymore, and I’m not really interested in playing in the short term. I do think that I’ll be in a band again someday, but that could be next year or 20 years later. I’m also cancelling my Netflix account and downgrading my cell phone plan.

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Electric Drag Racing

A buddy of mine sent me a link to an electric car that is entering in drag races. This is awesome. John Weyland gutted a 1972 Datsun 1200, converted it into an electric drive, named it White Zombie and has breaking records at his local drag strip. In this video he drops both a Corvette and a BMW M3.

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Ubuntu on Inspiron B130

Once again I have two laptops, both Dells. My main system is a Vostro 1500 that sees daily use and a lot of miles, and an Inspiron B130 that was previously my daily system, but now is the computer that I keep in the living room to surf while I’m watching TV. As part of regular system maintenance I was going to un/reinstall the operating system, and having a great experience with Ubuntu a couple of years ago, I decided to try again. Last night I cleaned the hard drive and installed Ubuntu 8.04 on it. Once again, I’m really impressed with this operating system. I’ll start with the hardware details then give a play-by-play.

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The Ford ECOnetic

I just learned that Ford has a car in production that will get 65 MPG. That’s not a misprint. The Ford ECOnetic is a diesel hatchback that gets a full 65 MPG. For those of you keeping up, that’s better than the Prius, and it isn’t even a hybrid. Ford has opted to have the motor manufactured in Britain, so it will not be cost effective to sell this car in America. Once again, you read right. The ECOnetic will only be available in Europe.

Americans are buying fuel efficient cars from Japan, and selling cars with even higher fuel efficiency in Europe. I’m losing hope.