Didn’t think Gumshoe Chip and Elisa, the girlfriend-turned-security gumshoette, would be back, did you? If these names aren’t familiar, no worries, you can check out the story from the beginning. Enjoy your summer reading as Elisa deals with misspelled words and polka, all while sleuthing security threats.

WAP, WEP and other wireless-related technologies frustrate many IT employees because of the always-changing technologies and different standards. Many of their companies are just now looking into wireless. I think the responses we received provide great information for understanding the technologies and how to choose which to use.

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) has stirred much controversy in terms of privacy concerns. However, retailers praise its benefits such as streamlining product management. Despite mixed reviews, IT personnel want to stay on top of RFID news and how it’s used, since it has potential. This month’s question asks about RFID. I’m sure many readers would value any real-world knowledge and experience shared on the hot topic. [ Read about it all in the latest issue of
The Remediator Security Digest ]

I posted a while back (here and here) when free [fill-in-the-blank] offers were new where you have to complete one of the offers and forward the link to friends in hopes that five or so sign up for the offer. If they do, then you get a free whatcamacallit. The first one was an iPod. Since then, monitors, game systems, and other gadgets have been offered using the same set up. That was it for me. No more. It was a bad experience.

Then, Bryan Wirth contacted me out of the blue. He is helping friends and strangers (me) that have completed their end of the bargain. He established Gratis Internet Sucks (now Gratis Internet Rocks to assist people who have completed their offers, but were disqualified from receiving the iPod or whatever the item.

Many experienced glitches, like with mine — I sent a link to Paul who promptly signed up. I had neglected to recall that it can’t be the same address. It was rejected. No problem. I was cool with that. But I had a total of seven or eight legitimate completed offers (two over the requirement of five) other than the disqualified ones.

One of my friends did complete the eBay offer and even WON the auction. That was disqualified because Gratis Network stopped accepting eBay as an offer. Anyway, because of my mistake, Gratis suspended my account. I admitted the mistake and emailed customer service several times receiving the same answer every time.

Bryan sent a couple of emails to Gratis who took my account out of suspension and is letting me proceed with receiving my iPod. So I thank Bryan for his efforts to make more progress than I did and to Gratis for making good. If you are interested in an offer, I’d appreciate it if you give Bryan credit. You can get a Photo iPod (60 GB), Mac Mini, or PSP. If you had problems with Gratis, drop Bryan a line. He’s happy to help.

As for me, I’ll just take the iPod and pass up the offers though they’re tempting to this gadget freak. I’m going to wait six to eight weeks so I can get the color iPod instead. Then I can show off pictures of my kids while enjoying music and practice listening.

The awesome staff behind InformIT is receptive to suggestions on improving the site. I’ve been working with the Web Design Guide for a long time, so I have lost the perspective of a user visiting the site looking for information.

What changes would make the site more appealing to you? One thing that I think needs improvement is not having the sections broken into so many pages. Each section could be an entire page, or if it’s too long, then use pages (but not as many). I appreciate any valuable feedback you offer.

When I was working with code away from my main desktop, I recalled I had files on it that would help me solve a problem. I didn’t want to wait till I got home, so I grabbed my files with help from Avvenu, a new application for sharing files. See how Avvenu works and whether or not it’s a good file sharing app.

In spite of its title, Free the Beagle (review) isn’t about Snoopy or his friends. It’s similar to Fish!, Who Moved My Cheese?, and Zapp! in that it uses a tale to teach. I am trying like crazy to remember I book I read somewhere between 1992 and 1995 about a circle that learns about thinking out of the box (cliche’, but a great book). This one also used a story to get its points across. It’s going to take some serious searching … online and memory.

A reader asks about WEP, WAP, and IPSEC. Anyone an expert on these topics? I would appreciate it if you or someone you know can help the reader whose question is below. Contact me, if you have recommendations for people to interview on the topic.

“We’ve yet to see global standardization for wireless access and throughput (802.11a/b/g/n) and encryption (WEP – Wired Equivalent Privacy, WAP — Wireless Application Protocol and IPSec VPN — IP security virtual private networks, for example). Because of the lack of standards, we’re struggling to stay up to date without spending hours of training or a fortune on figuring out what to use.

“What the heck are these things, and how do the average Tom, Dick, Harriet and Jane configure the system to send secure data with minimal spending and training time?” [ Answer the challenge ]

Americans everywhere are swimming, barbecuin’, picnic’n, watching fireworks, shopping July 4th sales, and whatever else they do to celebrate the country’s birthday. Since it’s on Monday, it will be a weekend-long affair. Should be fun next year when it’s on Tuesday. Ick. Don’t you hate it when holidays fall on Tuesday thru Thursday (Thanksgiving exempt)? What a more appropriate place to go than to EFF’s Legal Guide for Bloggers (and as always, remember this should not be a substitute for legal advice.

More law stuff (thanks to Janet of Marqui for pointing this out — the company has posted an excellent white paper explaining blogging) as Utah and Michigan have email-related laws going into effect today impacting those who managing email newsletters. Articles:

Michigan Office of the Governor Press Release

ClickZ

Forbes

ISIPP

Chris Knight points to Hotmail adds safety e-alerts for email authentication. MORE barriers to emailboxes for legitimate emails!

Yes, indeedy! Dontcha love America? All these delightful laws to help us. After all, if it were not for this New York law, “A person may not walk around on Sundays with an ice cream cone in his/her pocket,” we’d have sticky pants on Sunday unless we put gum or taffy in the pocket instead.

And Happy Canadian Day to our friends up north.

Tools for Thought is a book about the history and future of technology. You can read the entire thing online or purchase a print copy to read when you’ve been pulled away from the computer or your eyes need a break from the screen. The original was published in 1985 and the current edition came out in 2000. Old by technology standards, but current technology makes up a small part of the book. The following summary gives a good idea of what the book covers:

Starting with engaging portraits of such important thinkers as Ada Lovelace, Alan Turing, and Jon von Neumann, Rheingold swiftly and seamlessly moves into more current affairs, checking out the men and women behind Xerox PARC, ARPANET, Apple, Microsoft, and other cornerstones of today’s environment.

Can read it online and see if you like it before you buy it… the purple text makes it hard to read it though. I haven’t had a chance to read it to provide an opinion. Let me know what you think.

Whoa, dude! Two of what I think are the best feed readers have joined forces. Actually, NewsGator has acquired Nick Bradbury’s FeedDemon. According to this article, Bradbury would’ve turned them down had he not read NewsGator founder Greg Reinacker’s entry discussing the roadmap for his company.

Ambitious, it is. I don’t think it affects the home user too much except for a major release of its Outlook and online editions. The rest of the plans focus on the enterprise. I can’t figure how FeedDemon is going to fit in this. But then again, that’s why you don’t see me creating products…

BBS: The Documentary has finally shipped! The creator, Jason Scott, travelled roughly 20,000 miles by plane and car through 25 states and one province, and interviewed 200 people. He recorded roughly 247 hours of interviews, with the shortest at 5 minutes and the longest at 5 hours. At no point did he despair, except when the police towed his rental car away in Oregon.

While over 500 people signed up for interviews, he could only see less than half of them. However, I think I have a very solid sample of the types of folks who were involved with BBSes and between all the hours, a real complete story starts to emerge.

The Web site has the entire photo album from all 200 interviews up. It also has trailers and other downloadable stuff.

Spanning three DVDs and totalling five and a half hours, this documentary is actually eight documentaries about different aspects of this important story in the annals of computer history.

* Baud introduces the story of the beginning of the BBS, including interviews with Ward Christensen and Randy Suess, who used a snowstorm as an inspiration to change the world.

* Sysops and Users introduces the stories of the people who used BBSes, and lets them tell their own stories of living in this new world.

* Make it Pay covers the BBS industry that rose in the 1980′s and grew to fantastic heights before disappearing almost overnight.

* Fidonet covers the largest volunteer-run computer network in history, and the people who made it a joy and a political nightmare.

* Artscene tells the rarely-heard history of the ANSI Art Scene that thrived in the BBS world, where art was currency and battles waged over nothing more than pure talent.

* HPAC (Hacking Phreaking Anarchy Cracking) hears from some of the users of “underground” BBSes and their unique view of the world of information and computers.

* Compression tells the story of the PKWARE/SEA legal battle of the late 1980s and how a fight that broke out over something as simple as data compression resulted in waylaid lives and lost opportunity.

* No Carrier wishes a fond farewell to the dial-up BBS and its integration into the Internet.

The documentary includes Ward Christensen (creator of CBBS and creator of XMODEM for transferring files), Vinton Cerf and Wynn Wagner (wrote Opus, the BBS software).

I was also interviewed. No, no… I didn’t create software or start some huge BBS. I was just a gal who used BBS and ran a small one in Fort Worth for a couple of years. I wrote to Jason Scott when he first announced his project. He came to DFW since there were a couple of BBS big shots around here, so I was a stopover. I wish I didn’t wear that outfit. It happened to be Mother’s Day. Shoulda been more casual.

BBSes gave me the opportunity to chat with people “over the phone” when I was a teen, something I couldn’t do on my own. A teen that can’t use the phone… that’s a tough place to be. I met some great and nasty people through BBSes. Despite the bad side, I would not change a thing as I met my husband of 16 years (tomorrow!) through a BBS.

I’ve been using the Sidekick II since late 2004 and I’m pleased with it. It has one huge annoyance, however. T-Mobile wants to get as much money as it can from your calls… so it made it easy to “accidentally” dial someone’s number. I am serious.

TWICE I was working to send an SMS to a friend and it dialed instead. Before I realized it, she answered and I’ve been charged with one minute. Granted, the charge for a one minute call is small, but if enough users have accidents, it adds up. After all, it’s happened twice. And it feels silly to contact them about a charge less than 50 cents.

But since this happened twice, I went ahead and contacted customer service (gee, T-Mobile makes it tough to find the contact information when you’re logged in).