Due to my past entries in the contest itself, i’m on the mailing list to receive notices and announcements for participants.  As of about 30 minutes ago, I received a general compliance email announcing that some participants have failed to comply with the Netflix Prize rules by creating multiple teams with an identical set of members.  According to the Netflix rules, any participants and all teams to which they belong may be suspended from participation in the contest and may be ineligible for the coveted one million dollar prize.

Sounds fair right?  So here is the rub.   On June 26, 2009 Team “BellKor’s Pragmatic Chaos” reached the 10% improvement over the Cinematch algorithm required to claim the million dollar prize.    According to the rules, once this goal is reached, all teams have 30 days to submit their final results to be considered for the prize.  The clock is ticking and the last day of the contest is July 26, 2009.   But…

BellKor’s Pragmatic Chaos is an amalgam of multiple teams that have collaborated to win the prize.  The current leaderboard for the list looks like someone was playing musical chairs with the team names including things like “Pragmatic Theory”, “BellKor in BigChaos”, “BigChaos”, “BellKor” and so on.

The leading team openly admits that they have collaborated to create a winning algorithm and it may well be that the prestige of beating Cinematch will be sufficient to satisfy their competitive spirits but it sure seems like Netflix is already prepping the world for the announcement that the winning team may be disqualified.

I realize the rules were published years ago and have been very clearly stated but I have to admit, this sure feels like bad sportsmanship to me in a game that Netflix created and could benefit from since, also according to the rules, they own the submissions and the algorithms used to generate them.

After a little research I found Tweetlater and in a short while, I was contributing to the problem myself. I realized that everyone on Twitter must know about Tweetlater and were already using it. Eventually I got to the point that I was only receiving spam for direct messages and many of the tweeps that I followed were just twitterbots. My twitter experience was really suffering. So recently, i’ve started cleaning up my friends list removing bots, blocking spammers, and overall just trying to clean up my account. But I still get the usually inane “OMG, thanks so much for following me! Now go to my blog at http://www.we-can-both-make-so-much-freaking-money-together.com.”

I understand the motivation. For those individuals, Twitter is about networking, keeping in contact with your industry, and ultimately generating business. I don’t fault them for doing it. I do it and most of you do it too. But on the receiving end I still should be able to control it and since most of the automated stuff is not useful to me anyway, I was looking for a way to control it. Thats when I found it. You can opt-out of direct messages from Tweetlater.

Here is how:

1. login to twitter and follow @OptMeOut.
2. wait until you get the email saying @OptMeOut was following you back.
3. send a DM to @OptMeOut with any message you like.
4. now optionally unfollow @OptMeOut so that you won’t appear in the list of @OptMeOut followers.
5. you will receive a confirmation of the fact that you are fully opted out.

Thats it! For the original article on the Tweetlater.com site visit Tweetlater.com/optout.

http://tcp3.com

The following list are the apps that I use daily and can’t live without. As an added benefit, all of these are also free apps available from the iTunes Music Store.

Enough talking…here is my list of the iTouch Apps you simply can’t live without! You must download these apps!

1 – Remote
This application is an absolute must have. It turns your iTouch into an absolutely amazing remote control for your iTunes PC. Since it runs on Wifi, no line of sight needed to change the current playlist.

2 – Twitterrific
If you use Twitter, then you MUST have this application. I’ve tried the other Twitter apps and in my opinion, this one tops them all in terms of ease of use, and polish.

3 – MySpace Mobile
I actually like using MySpace with MySpace Mobile more than I do with the MySpace website. The app is cleaner and less cluttered. What do you think?

4 – Facebook Mobile
This is the only Facebook app out there (free) but it doesn’t fall short in any way. This is one of those cases where you get more than you pay for.

5 – Movies
You have to know what movies are out and the showtimes. There are several apps for this but this one is the best. Don’t even bother with the others.

6 – Paypal
I use paypal even more often than I use ebay. The convenience factor is too high for sending payments over the Internet. This app gives me even more access to paypal by allowing me to check my balance and send payments directly from my iTouch.

7 – Mobile News
I started out downloading all of the mobile news apps but I find myself using this one the most. Even the NYTimes news app doesn’t hold a candle to this one. Let me know if you agree.

8 – Last.fm
There is a free Pandora app but I was never able to get into it. Last.fm is my favorite Social Music site and this app brings the site features to my iTouch. Too cool!

9 – Ebay Mobile
With this app you can track everything that you can see on your “My Ebay” page including open bids, watched auctions and items that you are selling.

10 – Weatherbug
I never liked WeatherBug on a PC but this app is perfect! I check it every morning.

Comment below to let me know which iTouch apps you can’t live without.

What may not be completely obvious is that while you certainly have the right to privacy, this right is not as encompassing as you may have thought.  Let me put it another way.  You have the right to privacy…except when you sacrifice or forfeit that privacy by some action.

Let me illustrate this statement with some examples.

When you are driving on the public roads your privacy is curtailed by the greater needs of the public.  You can be seen by anyone while you are in public and it is unreasonable to expect otherwise.  Where this starts to become uncomfortable is when technology is used to make the apparent invasion of your privacy even more painful, such as when public cameras are used to keep track of individuals using profiling techniques to gain advanced knowledge of criminal acts.  Have you read the book or seen the movie “The Minority Report?”

When you enter a business, your rights are secondary to the rights of the business owner.  This is why they have a right to use security video to protect their interests.  Only recently have states passed laws restricting the use of security cameras in sensitive locations such as public restrooms and dressing rooms.  Note the use of that word again…public.

So here is a statement that may or may not be obvious but is true all the same.  The Internet is a public place.  It is true that the Internet is not owned by government entities but for all intents and purposes the websites, computers, network cabling, fiberoptic lines, wireless radio signals are all publicly accessible in the same manner as the local shopping mall or department store.

So now that we realize we don’t have any expectation of privacy when we are in public either in the “real world” or on the Internet, what can we do to protect ourselves.

In general, you can protect yourself by taking the same steps you would in real life.  Here are a few:

• Don’t go to seedy web sites.  The same quality of individuals will be found in both places.  They are predators and you…you decided to be their victim by going into their world. You don’t go into dark allies in the middle of the night don’t do it on the Internet.
• Be protective of your personal information.  Someone comes up to you on the street and says give me your name and address, do you do it?  Don’t do it on the Internet either.  It’s a matter of trust.  Do not give your information to websites you don’t trust.
• Be careful of wolves in sheeps clothing.  On the Internet this takes the form of phishing sites and emails that pretend to represent businesses you know and trust.  Don’t respond to emails asking for sensitive information.  If you are unsure, do not click on links in the email, but rather go to the companies site and find a phone number.  Call them yourself to make sure but DO NOT click on links in the email.

This article is part of a series on various privacy issues including ways of protecting yourself and articles on where and how your information is kept and used.  Stay tuned for more detailed articles on the the subject of privacy both on the Internet and off.

The following text describes how to restore a non-responsive iTouch after a failed jailbreak attempt.

Symptoms of diseased iTouch:

• History of failed attempts at jailbreaking
• Non-responsive to touch
• Displays pages of scrolling white text before hanging
• Only displays black screen
• Permanently displays restore icon

If your iTouch is presenting with any of the preceding symptoms or other similar signs, proceed with the following proceeds until the patient responds to treatment.

Step 1 – Artificial Rescuscitation: try resetting iTouch by holding down both Home and Wake buttons for 10-20 seconds until iTouch restarts.  If iTouch doesn’t reboot and display the home screen, move on to step 2 – defibrillation.

Step 2 – Defibrillation: plug iTouch into the USB while holding the home button down…it should go into restore mode.  Once it goes into restore mode (illustrated by a screen that shows the iTunes icon and a USB cable) you should get a restore prompt from iTunes.  If you do not get a restore prompt from iTunes then you may have a dysfunctional iTunes installation and should proceed to step 3.

Step 3 – Dialysis: If you are unable to get a reaction from iTunes when you connect you iTouch (even after defib), then your best bet is to reinstall iTunes to fix any issues that you may have with your USB drivers and the iTunes services.  Do this with your iTouch disconnected and do not reconnect your iTouch until after the iTunes installation is complete.  When the iTunes installation is complete, reconnect the iTouch and you should be rewarded with a restore prompt or at least iTunes will recognize your iTouch and give you the main device screen where you can select the “Restore” button.  If you do not see either of these then your computer has other issues and you need a different kind of doctor.  We don’t do Windows.

Step 4 – Group Therapy: Regardless of which steps were necessary to restore your iTouch, you should probably know in advance that smoking cigarettes will give you cancer and jailbreaking your iTouch may fail.  If either one of these scenarios scare you then you should probably not do it.  Also, since as soon as you have finished restoring your iTouch, you will probably pick up another cigarette and proceed to jailbreak your iTouch again (we never learn…do we   the try the following tips to avoid another failed jailbreak attempt:

• Turn off autolock in settings
• Make sure you have a fully charged battery
• Don’t be impatient and start killing programs and disconnecting the iTouch until it is done
• Be sure you have a reliable wireless network…this means you should probably not use the neighbors unprotected linksys network

DISCLAIMER: Most of article was written with the best of intentions and in a light-hearted manner. The rest of it are serious and meant to advise and assist those of you who want to venture into the unknown world of jailbreaking.  You pick which parts are which.

It feels like a twitter clone but is missing some of the key elements such as the SMS linkage.  It has video, and image sharing which feels more like a full grown social network.

They have a feedback system built-in (you get karma for inviting friends and other actions) but all your karma seems to driven by helping plurk grow…hmm?!  Isn’t karma supposed to be good deeds in general?   Also, you get a goofy plurk character that represents your karmic self at different levels of plurkiness.  The one-eyed plurker pictured above is my first karmic representation…i’m going out to do some good deeds right now!

It doesn’t actually seem to compete with any of the current services (at least not on feature set)…but, it’s so cool i’m going to keep plurking to see where the rabbit hole goes!

Click here for my personal invite to join plurk!

The one simple step is running the ZiPhone software.  Make sure your iTouch is restored to a non-jailbroken state with the latest version of the firmware (1.1.4).  Also, make sure your iTunes software is up to date.  Connect your iTouch and make sure iTunes recognizes it.  If it does not, then reinstall iTunes and do whatever else you have to do to make sure your iTouch is visible to your computer.  Close iTunes but leave your iTouch connected to your computer.  Now, go to http://www.ziphone.org/ and click on the “Click here to download Ziphone” link.   Then download the Windows version of the ZiPhone software.  This is a phone named ZiPhoneWin-3.0.exe.   Run this file and you will get a directory full of files similar to the following.

Now double-click on the file named “JAILBREAK IPHONE IPOD.bat”.  You will see a console window on your computer and your iTouch.

After a moment, your iTouch will reboot and you will see the ZiPhone application appear on your computer screen.  Click on the appropriate button to finish the jailbreak.

The whole process takes about a minute.  This is the cleanest jailbreak so far.  So…my advice to you is to forget everything i’ve said in the past and use the ZiPhone method.  Now…i’ve got to go get my daughter’s iTouch to jailbreak that again…1.1.4 here we come!!!