One more reason not to use Internet Explorer

Posted on July 30, 2005 by Richard K Miller

A couple of weeks ago Walt Mossberg, the technology columnist for the Wall Street Journal, wrote about “cookies”. Cookies are small text files that websites put on your computer when you visit them. For instance, some newspapers require you to type in your ZIP code to see an article. Once you enter your ZIP code, the website saves it on your computer in a “cookie”. The next time you visit the site, and everytime you visit the site, your web browser automatically sends back all the cookies that the site left there before. The website then knows what ZIP code you’re from.

A website can only read the cookies that it left there previously. It can’t read other sites’ cookies, nor can it read of the files on your hard drive like Word documents. For instance, if you visit the site for Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory, it won’t even be able to read the cookie from the newspaper website to know what ZIP code you’re from.

In his column, Walt Mossberg called cookies “spyware”, lumping them alongside the infectious programs that cause popups, because of their ability to “track” your browsing habits. However, I found his column to be a bit alarmist, since cookies don’t “do” anything — they just sit on your computer. (I also wrote to him to say so.)

The real problem with cookies, which he didn’t take the time to explain, is that they can be left by websites’ advertisers. If your newspaper website has ads from a company called DoubleClick, for instance, DoubleClick can leave cookies on your computer too. DoubleClick can read its own cookies anytime you visit a site that uses DoubleClick as an advertiser. It can then put together a profile of what sites you visit and what your browsing habits are — probably an invasion of privacy to most people.

Mac users that use the Safari browser will be happy to know that they are already protected from this type of “tracking”. In Safari preferences, under Security, there is an option called “Accept Cookies only from sites that you navigate to (For example, not from advertisers on those sites.)” By default, the option is turned on. With this option turned on, cookies pose little to no threat.

If you use Firefox (whether on a Mac or PC), you can turn this option on, but it’s not on by default. On a PC, go into Tools->Options, or on Mac, go into Firefox->Preferences. Go to Privacy and Cookies. Check the box that says “for the originating web site only.” Press the “Clear” button to get rid of old cookies from advertisers. In the future you won’t need to worry about it anymore.

If you’re using Internet Explorer, there is no such option to protect your privacy. This is one more reason why you shouldn’t be using Internet Explorer. If you use a Mac, try Safari. If you use a PC, try Firefox. Instead of taking such an alarmist approach and appearing to be ignorant about cookies, I think Walt Mossberg should have entitled his column “One more reason not to use Internet Explorer”, since other browsers do a fine job of protecting your privacy from bad cookies.

Steve Urquhart for U.S. Senator

Posted on July 27, 2005 by Richard K Miller

I’m supporting Steve Urquhart in his recently announced campaign to run against Senator Orrin Hatch. I’m sure Senator Hatch is a nice guy (I read the first half of his biography a couple of years ago and liked his character) but I think he is out of touch on technology issues. WAY out of touch. He has consistently sided with Hollywood and the big music labels, instead of technology firms and small businesses, of which Utah has dozens. Utah entrepreneurs and small business owners need someone else working for them in the U.S. Senate. And as a technologist, I’d interested in seeing Senator Hatch defeated no matter what state I lived in.

Phil Windley explains it well in “Beating Hatch”.

New blog look

Posted on July 23, 2005 by Richard K Miller

I just switched the look of my blog — now the colors are a little more “summery” and at the right you’ll notice the latest picture from my phone. The quality isn’t wonderful, but it’s alright for a phone. (It’s a Nextel i860.) You can click to see more pictures.

And for the tech-minded: I also switched the underlying software from Movable Type to WordPress. Brian has been trying to get me to switch to WordPress for a while, but I haven’t ever made it a priority until this week when I realized that I wouldn’t be able to easily include “the latest pic from my phone” on Movable Type. Movable Type uses a lot of CGI forms and static HTML pages, while WordPress is all PHP — a lot easier to work with.

I set up a POP3 email account just for pictures. After taking any pictures I want to keep, I send them from my phone to that email address and the server checks every 10 minutes for new messages. If there are new messages (pictures) waiting, it puts them on the “moblog”. After that was done, it was super easy to write a WordPress plugin with a few lines of PHP that shows the latest picture in the box at right.

By the way, if you want to start your own blog of pictures (a “moblog”) here’s how you do it:
1. Take a picture with your camera phone and send it to “go@blogger.com”.
2. Blogger will send a password (“claim token”) back to your phone.
3. Log into go.blogger.com, type in the password, and sign up.
4. Then whenever you send a picture or text message to go@blogger.com, it will be added to your blog.

If any of you do this, I’d like to see it. And unfortunately, Blogger’s service doesn’t yet work with Nextel phones.

Events & Venues Database

Posted on July 21, 2005 by Richard K Miller

I came across a cool website today: The Events and Venues Database (evdb.com) which, as you might guess, has listings for all kinds of events, lectures, sporting events, concerts, etc.

And for the tech-minded: One of the best things about the site is that you can subscribe to an RSS feed or an iCal calendar of the events or people you want to follow. (You’ll have to create a free account first, and this site is beta so it may still have bugs.)

Provo parade

Posted on July 4, 2005 by Richard K Miller

This morning I went to the Provo city Independence Day parade. The parade included the Governor, both U.S. senators from Utah, the president of BYU, an army tank, all kinds of veterans, beauty queens, rock bands, streams of police motorcycles, and probably every high school marching band in Utah county. The best part was probably the fly-overs. We had fly-overs of a huge bomber plane, four fighter jets, and two choppers. The Daily Herald has a full list of the parade line-up. The parade was almost 3 hours long, but I stayed until the end and can affirm that the 94-entry line-up is accurate. What isn’t in this list is the girl in a sequin shirt that came out from the crowd and danced on the street whenever the beauty queens passed by, and the electric guitar player who played the national anthem Jimi Hendrix style on top of his roof.

Last night, by the way, was a fun night. University Avenue was lined with hundreds of campers, spending the night to get a prime spot for the parade today. There were tents, sleeping bags — the works. But it was hardly quiet time. Several groups brought TV’s and Xbox’s and were playing Halo. We saw one group singing Karaoke. Everyone was walking through the streets and Stew and I rode our motorcycles up and down University, as did about 30 other motorcyclists. I put about 20 miles on my motorcycle in a 1/2 a mile strip of road.

On the right is a picture of the crowds in front of 7-11 that I took with my phone.