Google has enhanced its Maps API and MapsGoogle will now display EarthGoogle KML files. Here is an example. The KML file is appended to the maps dot google URL. Use a web service like Gmaps Pedometer to build trace routes. Use Gmap to GPX and create a GPX file. This file can be imported into Google Earth where the . KML can be edited. The paid Google Earth Plus version will shortcut the above steps as it has all of the features in one place.

With the Cover View feature on the new iTunes 7 release, I was motivated to catalog my misc music files. Improperly tagged files will not pull the album art. Correct file name standardization helps but also one must be sure that the meta data gybes. I discovered several utilities that assist. Picard and Magic MP3 Tagger allow manual edits as well as semi-automated meta data searches. You start with various clues such as artist, album and track names. Example: INKARI – Mi Raza – Music Of The Andes – Vol 3 – Surupana (Yaravi-Sikuri) Peru D.R.A3.mp3 A Google keyword search led to a latin music site Google Translate aided. Surprisingly, Amazon.com has a rather extensive music database. Other online db tools are freedb.org and the excellent MusicBrainz.org The rewritten file name, after the detective work and head scratching, uses the Artist – Album – Track Number – Song Title convention and reads thus: Inkari – Miraza – 10 – Surupana (YaraviSikuri).mp3 The preceding was a tough nut. If your taste runs toward the more popular it’s an easier task.

I’m using SageTV to timeshift favorite TV network programing. Since I am on the road 50% of the time, I need to spaceshift this video as well. FTP will deliver the entire file to a portable device but here is an alternative solution: ORB live streams the media over the internet. You need a broadband connection and windows media player. If you have a desktop, laptop, PDA, or Smartphone you are good to go. Here is a demo if you can suffer through a home movie. No worries it’s a 6 minute short film. [On location in Maine]

A newspaper article today describes the behavior, that of using some one’s bandwidth, as akin to reading someone else’s newspaper over their shoulder. Ethical or not, WiFi makes this practice easy and many out of town road warriors have begun to depend on its availability. Experts estimate that only 30 percent of all WiFi installations have been secured. This means that most wireless access point are free (or assumed by many of us to be). Internet security does have a learning curve. An excellent source to become enlightened is Richard Gibson’s Security Now website. He features a weekly 35 minute podcast that explains the elegant design of inter networking at the same time pointing out, for example, a now obvious omission: the total absence of security on your Ethernet (LAN). The architects of the net never foresaw the need for security on your local area network. They assumed that anyone in your household or on the office LAN would be trustworthy. Read: There isNO inherant security built in, nada, zip, zilch! A WiFi access point is configured, by default (go figure), as public. It is therefore wide open and subject to eavesdropping aka man in the middle. The only way to lock down your network is to keep the unworthy out. Take an hour and become informed. Activate the WPA encryption for your router. Piggybackers know your network ID. It broadcasts the universal piggyback invitation code signal: Linksys 😉