Change to Google Policy Regarding Use of Your Personal Information

The following is cut from a desciption by Google of their new policy regarding personal information.  I've highlighted the important sentences.

How your Profile name and photo may appear (including in reviews and advertising)

We want to give you – and your friends and connections – the most useful information. Recommendations from people you know can really help. So your friends, family and others may see your Profile name and photo, and content like the reviews you share or the ads you +1’d. This only happens when you take an action (things like +1’ing, commenting or following) – and the only people who see it are the people you’ve chosen to share that content with. On Google, you’re in control of what you share. This update to our Terms of Service doesn’t change in any way who you’ve shared things with in the past or your ability to control who you want to share things with in the future.
Feedback from people you know can save you time and improve results for you and your friends across all Google services, including Search, Maps, Play and in advertising. For example, your friends might see that you rated an album 4 stars on the band’s Google Play page. And the +1 you gave your favorite local bakery could be included in an ad that the bakery runs through Google. We call these recommendations shared endorsements and you can learn more about them here.
When it comes to shared endorsements in ads, you can control the use of your Profile name and photo via the Shared Endorsements setting. If you turn the setting to “off,” your Profile name and photo will not show up on that ad for your favorite bakery or any other ads. This setting only applies to use in ads, and doesn’t change whether your Profile name or photo may be used in other places such as Google Play.
If you previously told Google that you did not want your +1’s to appear in ads, then of course we’ll continue to respect that choice as a part of this updated setting. For users under 18, their actions won’t appear in shared endorsements in ads and certain other contexts.
For greater control over your experience with ads on Google, you can also use Google’s Ads Settings tool to manage ads you see. Learn more.

Cost of Cyberattacks Has Increased 78% in Last Four Years

The following is from a news item on the web site http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com.  If you are interested in security, either for your home or business, this is a good site to bookmark or even apply for a email alerts.  I might also mention that, if you are an investor who takes a serious look at each investment opportunity, how a company manages security can be part of your investment decision process.  

The fourth-annual Cost of Cybercrime Study, produced by the Ponemon Institute and sponsored by Hewlett-Packard's enterprise security unit, showed the cost enterprises pay to clean up after a cyberattack has increased 26% from 2012, and has gone up a staggering 78% since the first report was released four years ago....

Instead of focusing on the total cost incurred by enterprises, the Ponemon report narrowed its scope to only include what enterprises spent while responding to cybercrime incidents, including detection, investigation, recovery and incident management.

Larry Ponemon, founder and chairman of the Ponemon Institute, noted that the report doesn't take into account, as an example, what costs a company would incur if its "crown jewel" of data was stolen -- either because a dollar value would be impossible to calculate, or because an organization typically overestimates the value of its own data. Even without these costs included, the report showed the cost range spanning all the way from the low of $1.3 million to the high of $58 million, a number Ponemon said even the largest organizations would notice....

Perhaps more important than having the right technologies, organizations that consistently experienced lower cybercrime costs did so by implementing the right people and processes. In particular, Ponemon pointed to enterprises that had a chief information security officer (CISO) or other equivalent in place, with the caveat that they were real senior-level executives. Such organizations, he noted, tended to have better security governance, mostly because hiring a CISO signals that the company takes information security seriously and is willing to make an investment in credentialed professionals.

"It's not that that person is the reason for the value that we find," Ponemon said. "But the organizations that have that person with the right role and the right title and authority tend to be smarter around the whole governance of security."

Changes to Google's search algorithms and what it means to the typical user

What should you  type into your search bar to improve the search results?  Or, to say it another way, what can you type in the search bar that will result in the most relevant results appearing at the top of the list of results?

A typical way to search is to use some key words, not any any particular order.  Until recently the search engine would process those results and generate a list where sites with the most hits and that have one of the words in their list of relevant topics would appear at the top of the list.  (Web designers have a field that is hidden from you but that search engines read.  That field contains a list of relevant terms.  There is an entire specialty career that focuses on "Search Engine Optimization," or SEO.  Furthermore, search engine companies often have a bidding process where advertisers will bid on certain words.  They will pay the bid price per click and the search engine company will move their web pages to the top of the list or put their results in a special box at the top of the list.)

The Google search algorithm has changed.  Google hasn't really advertised the change, but it is substantial.  The idea behind the change is to use "semantic search."  This means that it takes all the words you type and searches on all of them in their context.  So typing in single words is not the best way to get good search results.  Now you should type a question in the search bar and that question should contain your key words.  For example, type in "how to improve my search results?" or "how to improve your search results?"  The returned list will consider all of these words and also figure out a priority order.  Of course, they will also use the "paid word" business process, but, still, the results are pretty amazing.

For more information, type in "What is the Google Hummingbird search process?"

Here is another example that may interest you:  "Are Stink Bugs Being Used to Control Kudzu?"  You could also ask "Why are there so many stink bugs?"

Speed and Quality Tests for Your DSL (update)

AT&T now recommends using http://www.megapath.com/speedtestplus/ to test your DSL signal.  Choose Atlanta for your test site and click on the Home Service button.

The site provides an explanation of what the results mean.  If you are signed up for the maximum speed DSL service for our communities, you should have readings of:

• Download speed:  about 6 Mb/s
• Upload speed:  above 4 Mb/s
• Jitter:  ideally 0, but perhaps up to 2
• Ping:  around 40 ms.

I have called Technical Support and complained about the erratic performance:  sometimes the results will go down to 1 Mb/s and comparable deterioration in the other measures.  To date they've been unable to isolate the cause.  When they do diagnostics, they will ask you to plug your computer directly into the modem to run the test without the router in the network.  So you will have to call when you can do that test, or do it before you call to verify that the problem is not with your router.

Testing post of blog entry from android device

In the past, to publish to this blog, I've used Live Writer, one of the programs in the Microsoft Live series.  That lets me write the blog offline and then "push a button" to publish the blog post.  I found a better way to do if you are on your phone.  Use the Blogger app from Google Play.  I am running the a test by writing this entry on my Samsung S3.  

testing bold .  

Lets see how the picture works.  I am leaving Blogger running, clicking on the picture icon in Blogger, taking the picture, and then, saving it.  I come back into Blogger with the picture:

And then more text.  So the picture embedded itself. 

Based on this, It looks like the Android Blogger app works better than Live Writer.  If you are travelling, you can create the your blogs on your phone, take pictures, etc, then upload to your Blogger site when you wifi is available.  

Calls from Pierre???

Got a call from Pierre, saying something very close, but not exactly, that I had won $25K.  Went on line and found this:

Call from 312-262-0024 on 8/22, left message his name was Pierre and was calling with an awards notification for a prize of $25,000 from a contest I entered last year and for me to call 855-841-6089 and
yelled congratulations!!   I called back on 8/23 and Pierre was out but she could help me.  Said it was for a home improvement contest of $25,000 or cash prize.  She said she needed to verify my information and I ask her if she thought she was going to get my social she was mistaken.  She then said no, she needed more information for the next drawing.  I asked her so guess I didn't win?  She then said yes I did, my name was pulled out of first drawing.  Then told her that I was not interested and she sounded disappointed and confused that I would not want $25,000.  Told her good bye and hung up.

I also found several attempts to say, NO, NO... this was legit.  Hah!  No doubt put out by the same organization.

AT&T Gets an F (or worse) on DSL service (actual metrics)

I've about had it with AT&T!  I have been tracking key performance measures for DSL service.  These measures include:
Ping:  how fast it takes for a single packet of signal to go from my house to a particular server on the internet.  Values should be in the 40s of ms.
Download speed:  How fast can the internet link download information.  I pay for the highest speed:  a nominal 5+ Mbps.  They say up to 6, but when you talk to them to complain, they will say 5+.
Upload speed:  How fast can the internet link upload information.  This value is usually a lot lower than the download speed.  I pay for the highest speed, .5 Mbps.
Jitter:  How consistent is the speed, measured in ms.  It is a variation measure, the lower the better.  I would expect a Jitter of no more than 5 ms.  

I've run tests over the past 2 months and have got some good results, but mostly bad, real bad!   I often see:
Ping:  above 400 ms
Download speed:  < 1Mbps
Upload speed:  ~.1 Mbps
Jitter:  >50 ms.

The techs at AT&T want to point to my equipment, but I've run tests without my equipment in the way.  I've also run tests over a long period of time (over 2 mo now).  I shouldn't see so much variation.

To give you an idea of what I am seeing, here is a Powerpoint presentation:

To run your own tests, go to two sites:  http://www.speedtest.net, and http://www.pingtest.net.  The former is the one recommended by AT&T Support.  I'm cynical, I guess, but I think they don't want you to know about the latter site, which gives the more important tests about signal quality, rather than speed.