What is it with services like Gowalla and foursquare that makes folk spend their days telling the world where they are?

OK if you’re going somewhere interesting and tweeting / sharing something of interest at the same time …

Or maybe you’re using it as a sort of diary tracking your life movements but are keeping it to yourself.

Then I get that.

But I don’t see it that way.

What I see are lots of stuff like this:

John Doe checked in at Some Restaraunt
Yum, breakfast.

Maybe it’s my age but I don’t think so – as a lot of the folks I ‘see’ using this are my age.

• So why?
• Go on, can you sell it to me?
• Do you use it for sensible purposes?

Here’s an interesting find.

Yesterday I blogged about how to hide your IP address and today I caught up with one of the many blogs (EFF in this case) I follow who posted about “encrypting the web”.

In short, it’s a plugin for Firefox released by the Tor Project and EFF that encrypts all your search requests and attempts to encrypt all standard web browsing. Read all about it here.

It’s still in beta but it’s a start.

I say grab it now.

N.B. it doesn’t hide your IP or stop search engines from logging but it does stop ‘in the open‘ intercepts.

I recently blogged about reasons why you might want to hide your IP address and a comment by Larry Westfall asking how this can be done.

So here I present to you an introduction to how you can hide your IP.

But before I start I will say that one of these methods will require you to be comfortable with adjusting your computer settings with the other just requiring you to install a piece of software.

Just before we dive in though a quick walk through on IP’s. An IP address is akin to your post or zip code and applies to one single machine at a time. When we surf the internet we utilise two IP Addresses – a public and a private one. It is the public address we are talking about hiding in this case. Read the rest of this entry »

This blog has just completed it’s 2nd full year and I thought it appropriate to share some thoughts.

Those of you that know me from reading here and from Twitter will also know that I’m not in this for the fame or even the fortune. But every blogger wants to know they are being heard.

No matter how small their audience.

We all crave feedback.

I’ve just completed the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog(ger) which is Darren Rowse’s (he of ProBlogger fame) ebook having picked it up to go through the OurChurch.com 31DBBB Project – and I want to publicly thank Paul of OC for his efforts in staging this project.

However, the final day (which was yesterday) co-incided with me thinking Read the rest of this entry »

The rainbow is considered a sign of God’s promise or covenant to us.

Today I find it an appropriate reminder of a promise I made 24yrs ago today.

Precisely 24yrs ago my very good lady, Kathryn, and I committed our lives to each other. We made the atypical vow of “till death do us part” and so far we’ve done ok.

Don’t get me wrong – like any relationship it’s had bumps and curve balls – but we’re honouring that promise we each made in an age when promises are easily broken or over looked for something shinier.

I want to publicly thank my wife for the fun, the tears, the laughter, the joy, the sorrow – all of which we’ve endeavoured to share together and use to build and make us better people. To make us a better couple, better parents, better friends.

Thank you babes – I Love You with all of my breath.

According to NetLingo, these are the top 10 of 50 acronyms you as a parent need to know (emphasis mine). For the full 50 click through on their link above.

1. 8 – oral sex
2. 1337 – elite -or- leet -or- L337
3. 143 – I love you
4. 182 – I hate you
5. 1174 – nude club
6. 420 – marijuana
7. 459 – I love you
8. ADR – address
9. AEAP – as early as possible
10. ALAP – as late as possible

I’m not sure I fully agree with all of them or even a lot of them but Netlingo’s unstated point is valid – that parents need to understand what their children are up to when on the web, texting or in real life (IRL).

I make no excuses for coming back to this time and again – not knowing what your children are doing is not an excuse. You should know and to some degree you should also understand.

• Have you ever come across an acronym you don’t know?
• Do you rely on ‘trust’ or google or ?
• Is there anything about tech you don’t understand and what do you do about that?

Mashable have written a nice article on the “Top 10 Ways to tweak Your WordPress Theme”.

The nice part is that even if you don’t understand they take you through the why you might want too and then show you how. Here are the 10 points

1. Edit Your Theme’s CSS
2. Display Post Excerpts or Full Content
3. Create a Custom Page Template
4. Crafting The Loop: Excluding/Including a Category
5. Crafting Your Page Navigation the Easy Way
6. Enabling Menu Management in WordPress 3.0
7. Create a Simple Conditional Statement
8. Add Post Thumbnails
9. Add Something (Anything) to the End of Every Blog Post
10. Add Google Analytics Tracking Code

To see the rest of the content you’ll need to head on over here.

Wireless LAN or wi-fi kit is getting everywhere these days.

And you’ll likely find that like most folks, your wireless surfing has slowed of recent especially if you’ve had it running a while.

The likelihood is that if you live in a densely populated area or you’ve made internal changes to your living space then either or both these (and more) could impact on your wireless surfing speed.

So what can you do?

• First off you can try changing your wi-fi channel. Most modern routers allow you to do this. It could simply be that your selected channel is now over-lapping or even on the same channel as a nearby neighbour. You could go for the trial and error approach or you could download Netstumbler (a free Windows tool) and allow it to show you all WLANs within reach, their SSIDs, channels and other information. Simply pick the least populated channel of the strongest ones near you.
• Secondly you could try moving the router. Sometimes we add new kit or other equipment degrades and leaks signals that can interfere or we even re-model our living spaces and that can cause problems with signal degradation.
• Another option would be to buy an add-on aerial – these range from simple rubber stick like items to omni or mono-dirctional to homemade “cantennas“. Whatever option you pick will boost the distance / receptivity of your wlan.
• A more involved option would be to install a wireless bridge. This is effectively a second router that can be added in an appropriate location to extend your wlan.

Two other less obvious options you could employ but could well be valid in your situation are:

• Ensure all your wifi kit is using the same standard. Most wifi routers will happily adapt to the lowest common denominator buy why restrict your 802.11n network to the speeds of an 802.11b? It’s akin to buying a Bugatti Veyron and putting a Mini’s engine in it.
• Lastly why not change your passphrase / password whilst you’re in the router control panel. If you use a simplistic one there’s no telling who might have ‘cracked’ it and be using you bandwidth for whatever.

So there you have it.

Six ways you could potentially boost your wireless surfing speed.

• Have I missed any options?
• Is this something you’ve experienced and tried to remedy?