Social Media Speaks and the Government Listens

by Ryan DavisonComPostsPosted on No Comments
The idea of social media command centers is not a new one. The best known centers might be from Gatorade and Dell who each use theirs for brand monitoring. But businesses are not the only ones accessing large amounts of social media data. Carahsoft, a private government solutions company currently markets the InTTENSITY Social Media Command Center, by the InTTENSITYCorporation, to the US Government intelligence community. According to InTTENSITY, their web based SaaS product officially launched in September of 2011, has the capability to anticipate and measure events as they happen or even before they happen, based on social media monitoring.
It could be like a real life version of the TV show Person of Interest. With this software, upcoming events mentioned in the social media cloud could be monitored and even interrupted as they occur. If your tweets and updates happen to be tagged with a geospatial reference (address, city, lat/long) social activity could be pinpointed with precision.
Since much of social media is by definition public communication (as opposed to a private phone call or email) there doesn’t seem to be a barrier to a government entity watching what flows through Twitter to monitor actions, speech or ideas it doesn’t approve of, then affecting it in some way.
InTTENSITY claims its software is capable of tapping into the entire Twitter stream as well as Facebook and blog sites and can monitor in up to thirty-two languages. Is software like the InTTENSITY Command Center just TweetDeck on steroids? Is it an innocuous use of social media technology? Or does its potential as a social monitoring tool pose a threat to individual and community liberty?
I am not suggesting that our government is using or will use this software for anything other than monitoring real threats to the American people. However, as our government is further enabled to follow our daily personal lives, we the people must follow them even closer.

Just Another Haphazard Recording Studio Thrown Together Using Parts from eBay and Craigslist

by Ryan DavisonComPostsPosted on No Comments

I spent weeks meeting strange people from craigslist in parking lots all over town, searching eBay and cruising garage sales to find the best (read: whatever I could afford at the moment) equipment for putting together a sound recording studio at home. I don’t know exactly what prompted me to set up a studio. I guess initially I had thought I wanted a voice studio to read some of my own writing into an audio file for fun. I also mess around playing the banjo, Irish tin whistles and various other instruments and thought it would be interesting to see what I could do with a microphone and free audio mixing software.

When I wasn’t trying to buy equipment I was trying to figure out what the next piece I would need should be. I read plenty of how-tos on the subject of how to set up a studio at home. There were as many opinions about equipment as there were discussions. For that reason, this post is not about what to choose or how to choose it. Of course I will list out what I got and what I hope to replace it with, but I am just a hack at this so don’t take what I did as a serious recommendation.  So here is what I have:
Along with those purchases came a Radio Shack dynamic mic and an MXL 990/991 condenser mic set. I might try to use the MXL 991 to pick up the banjo. I decided to put it in the closet under the stairs since it is a small space and wouldn’t take too much to soundproof it. I can tell there is a little echo off of the closet door so I might have to get some egg crate foam or something to glue to the back of it. I only hope now that I won’t lose interest in the project before I get something recorded. Since I originally bought all of this stuff six months ago and only just finished setting it up, that is a distinct possibility.
M-Audio FireWire Solo Interface
M-Audio FireWire Solo Interface
Dell Inspiron 6000 with M-Audio Interface
Dell Inspiron 6000 with M-Audio Interface
MXL 990/991 Microphones
MXL 990/991 Microphones
AT2020 with Voxguard
AT2020 with Voxguard
If I do get something recorded I will put it on the blog.

Amazing Discovery! Presidential Candidate Website Color Trend

by Ryan DavisonComPostsPosted on No Comments

I was visiting presidential candidate websites the other night in hopes of finding sentient thought in our nation’s leaders when I discovered something peculiar. On almost every major Republican presidential candidate website the background is blue. Okay, it might not sound that amazing when you first read it but it does cause you to think. Why is blue such a primary (Wow, multiple puns intended with that one) background color for these people? It makes them all look strangely like Barack Obama’s 2008 and 2012 campaign websites. Was there some study done on the color of a candidate website or did everyone just think that it worked for him so it might work for someone else?

The colors blue and red are strongly associated with our two parties. Blue represents Democrats and red represents Republicans. So why are Republicans associating themselves so strongly with a color that practically screams Obama?  Perhaps they are politically suicidal? Perhaps they secretly want Obama to win so they can complain for four more years? If you watch their debates and how they give dumb answers to even dumber liberal media commentators (read: Anderson Cooper in Las Vegas) you might be convinced of this theory.

Whatever the case may be, I am going to keep digging into this and see if there is method to the color madness. In the meantime, take a look at the front pages for these guys and see for yourselves there is a major internet background movement afoot.

Update: The following websites no longer point to presidential campaigns of 2011.

www.hermancain.com
www.rickperry.org
www.mittromney.com
www.michelebachmann.com
www.barackobama.com

Interop 2011

by Ryan DavisonComPostsPosted on No Comments
If you have ever had the opportunity to attend the Interop conference you know that it is the premier place to be for the hottest new IT gadgets. Interop 2011 in Las Vegas, NV was no exception. Now you might be thinking I am referring to servers, firewalls and switches but you would be wrong. I’m talking about the great swag the vendors give away by the truckload. In addition to the bags, flashing pens and USB lights, it seemed like every other vendor was entering you into a contest to win an iPod, iPad or iPhone. The biggest crowd of hopefuls I saw was at the Dell booth when they were giving away a 55 inch flat screen LCD TV from Visio.
Most vendors just asked to scan your RFID enabled attendee badge and that would enter you to win, oh I don’t know, maybe an iPod, iPhone or iPad. One vendor got creative and brought a couple of claw crane games where attendees try to grab small white boxes that could contain anything from a bouncing ball to an, you guessed it,  iPhone, iPad or iPod.
McAfee went so far as to have a cash grab booth. You listen to the sales spiel and if you can quickly answer questions asked about the presentation you get to climb into a booth, strap on goggles and look like a dork trying to grab a couple of dollar bills swirling around you.  Of course you are a dork with a few extra dollars, so maybe it can be worth playing the fool.