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Welcome Home Support from the Ground Up

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NCIRE – The Veterans Health Research Institute and Ann Fox, Producer

Invite you to a screening and DVD release celebration for

“Welcome Home: Support from the Ground Up”

A Post-Deployment Resource Guide for Service Members, Their Families and Loved Ones

Date: Friday, April 30th

Time: 3:00 – 4:30pm

Place: San Francisco VA Medical Center, 4150 Clement Street (at 42nd Avenue)
Building 200 Room 1A122 (The Teak Room)

RSVP: Linda Acton, 415/750-6954, ext. 4545 | linda.acton@ncire.org

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Nurph vs Chatroulette battle for top web handshake

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Ok there is quite a bit of buzz over the infamous Chatroulette, a site where random people are placed in a video chat session together. I personally don’t have the stomach to even try it since I’ve heard “found mostly depressed looking guys and naked men (about 1 in 5 shuffles was a guy’s bits)” source: Chris Brogan. Not my idea of a fun or practical application. Nurph on the other hand is exceptionally cool for several reasons:

  • It’s easy to setup
  • It works with most websites
  • Easy authentication
  • Realtime text chat, no video or audio

Easy Setup
The setup is very simple, you go to Nurph’s website and type in the url you wish to add a chat to. You can then use that URL in the future to access chat at that site or you can even create a link on the website to that url. For example if you click this link, you should be connected to the chat on this blog. If you see me online be sure to say hello.

Compatibility
I tested Nurph with Chrome, Mozilla and Internet Explorer. The only issue I had was a flash component (my cumulus tag cloud) overlaid the chat window. I was able to resolve that by enlarging the browser window. There may even be a setting to change the “always on top” aspect of Flash components. Please comment on this post if you are familiar with a way to do that. Websites that require authentication such as Facebook do not currently work with Nurph. No doubt that will improve with time as the product matures.

Authentication
In the battle for authentication dominance, I always find Twitter to be the most comfortable. Fortunately while Nurph is in beta you can only use Twitter to access it unless you are part of the beta program. Just use the connect with Twitter button, but make sure you are logged in to Twitter first.

Text Chat
My comments about Chatroulette were largely in jest, but plain old text chat is a good handshake medium. Rather than investing in voice or video chat via the anonymous web you have a simple medium by which to say hello and assess your new contacts before taking that step. For that reason Nurph is a great way to “shake hands” without committing too much. Since it is multiple user you can also see how the participants behave with groups.

Video
I am a screen-cast addict, if I need to explain how to do something a lot of times I just record a quick screen-cast and send that. Here is a Youtube video I created where I talk about Nurph and demonstrate how simple it is to use.

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Joe Hackman interviews Paul Pluschkell CEO of Spigit (Podcast)

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I enjoy speaking with and learning from leaders of innovative companies. My interview last week of Paul Pluschkell, CEO of Pleasanton, CA innovation platform Spigit was extrememly enlightening. I learned how far Spigit has taken the concept of crowd sourcing to foster innovation and solve problems within the private and public sector. I queried Paul on a number of subjects, some of the highlights included:


  • Advice to new Entrepreneurs

  • Employment opportunities

  • Operating a startup in the Tri-Valley Area

  • Gov 2.0 and Spigit

  • The companies growth and financials


Listen to Joe Hackman interview Paul Pluschkell, CEO of Spigit

Listen to the Episode


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Firefighter to Blog while in Mexico on Rotary Group Study Exchange

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Jonas Aguiar of the San Ramon Valley Fire Protection District will be blogging during his trip to Mexico as a part of the Rotary Group Study Exchange. Some local Rotarian’s may recall the four firefighters from Monterey, Mexico that came to visit as a part of this exchange. This is just a small example of the kinds of things that Rotary is involved with promoting good will internationally. Here is the full press release:

Jonas Aguair, San Ramon Valley Firefighter/Paramedic

San Ramon Valley Firefighter, Jonas Aguiar, will travel to Mexico for the month of April as part of the Rotary’s Group Study Exchange program and will blog about his experience on the District’s website, www.firedepartment.org.

The Group Study Exchange program, sponsored by the Rotary Foundation, is a cultural and vocational exchange for young professionals. The program provides grants for recipients to travel to foreign countries and learn about the host nation’s government, the local way of life and most importantly, allows the team members to observe and learn from members of their own vocation.

“I feel honored to have been selected to participate in the Rotary’s Exchange program,” said Jonas. “I’m looking forward to learning from the firefighters in Mexico and sharing my experiences with our community, though my blog on firedepartment.org.”

Follow Jonas on his adventure and see how firefighters in Mexico provide protection and emergency medical services to their community. Track Jonas as he explores the culture, interacts with his host family and presents best practices learned as a San Ramon Valley Firefighter and paramedic.

“Jonas’s blog will be the first of many blogs hosted on firedepartment.org,” said Fire Chief Richard Price. “In the future the newly launched blog.firedepartment.org will allow community members to follow San Ramon Valley Firefighters who are deployed as part of strike teams during fire season or when District personnel are called into action to provide disaster aid around the world.”

San Ramon Valley Fire would like to congratulate Jonas on his selection and encourage all to read about his experiences at http://blog.firedepartment.org/jonas/.

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Why you should not bypass Java and other Updates

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A very common complaint by end users involves “automatic updates” and some people go to great lengths to avoid them. We published this quick tip about when and how to run them to minimize the impact. There are several programs that you should think twice before bypassing or ignoring the update:

  • Windows Critical Updates
  • Adobe Acrobat
  • Flash Viewer
  • Oracle/Sun Java

The last item on this list is the primary purpose for this post, check out this bulletin from March 2009 related to Oracle Java. There were a total of 27 new security fixes:

“Due to the threat posed by a successful attack, Oracle strongly recommends that customers apply CPU fixes as soon as possible. This Critical Patch Update contains 27 new security fixes across all products.”

So please, when you get the notices for these updates – run them. Another great way to avoid many of these problems is to operate your computer with an account that has lower permissions. We will write a follow up describing how to do that and why.

If you’d like to see a chronological history of the Java updates or see if there are new ones go here. You can also add them to your RSS reader here.