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Phil talked to us about science communication online, and how the “new” (now teenaged, in more ways than one) media has affected it. Specifically how instant info – passed on Twitter – can actually make misinformation spread faster than good info, and how freaking hard it is to clean up once that happens.

Read more on Phil Plait – Active Skepticism Online…

• Micah Baldwin – Building Influence Online
• Christine Peterson – Life Extension for Geeks
• Firas Khatib – FoldIt
• Jay Grandin and Leah Nelson – 20,000,000 versus 20: Audience vs. Impact
• Warren Etheredge – The Art of the Interview (Or How to Grill a Star)
• Beth Goza – Nerd Craft: A Field Guide
• Angel Djambazov – Amazon, Affiliates & Taxes
• How Do You Think Outside the Box?
• To Twitter or to Fritter – That is the Question
• Is it Even Summer Yet?

Phil Plait – Active Skepticism Online is a post from: Chris Pirillo

Phil Plait – Active Skepticism Online is a post from: Chris Pirillo

Add to iTunes | Add to YouTube | Add to Google | RSS Feed

Phil talked to us about science communication online, and how the “new” (now teenaged, in more ways than one) media has affected it. Specifically how instant info – passed on Twitter – can actually make misinformation spread faster than good info, and how freaking hard it is to clean up once that happens.

Phil Plait is an astronomer, author, blogger, and skeptic… which means you better have some good evidence for any claims you make to him! In fact, Phil is the President of the James Randi Educational Foundation, a non-profit based on the works of noted conjurer and skeptic James Randi – famous for debunking the spoon-bending efforts of Uri Geller. The critical thinking movement is growing by leaps and bounds, and the JREF has been at the center of a grassroots effort to bring more skepticism into everyday life, especially online.

Phil writes the Bad Astronomy Blog, now hosted by Discover Magazine, and he blogs for the JREF and for SkepticBlog.

His books debunk many misconceptions about astronomy, and to his chagrin he still deals with Moon Landing deniers, astrology, and UFO believers to this day.

In his opinion – and he’s right – the Universe is cool enough. Why make up stuff about it?

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I remember the first time I used Ubuntu. Already being a Simply Mepis and Linspire user at the time, the jump to Ubuntu was only odd based on the use of the GNOME desktop over that of KDE. A few weeks of use later, I found myself loving GNOME vastly more than my info overload with KDE.

Personally, I cannot name any one thing that would provide a reason for Ubuntu success. That being said, I think there are a number of reasons for Ubuntu success. Among them has to be in part to their frequent release schedule, bundled with using the latest cutting edge improvements from Debian testing.

Five years later since Ubuntu first rolled out, I am still amazed at how people still don’t get it. Rather than enjoying it for what it is, they bitch about it and exclaim that Windows is still easier. Yes, so is sitting on your butt and collective welfare. This does not mean that it’s the wisest approach though. Just something to consider. In the end, I am all about people using the right tool for the job. If that is Windows or OS X, awesome. But use that instead of complaining about something that was not a good fit for you. It would be like me complaining about OS X, which I detest by the way. It gets me nowhere.

These days, it feels like Google has their paw prints into just about everything. Well today I found out that Google is becoming more “powerful” than I could have ever imagined. And yes, the use of “powerful” was a poke at their PowerMeter project.

The idea behind their PowerMeter project is actually pretty cool. Help people conserve and save by allowing the user to see what kind of usage is taking place, in real time. So on the surface, this sounds fantastic! Sadly however, for 99% of us not part of a partner utility company, it also means buying needed hardware.

Needed hardware aside, I think that Google might be onto something here. Assuming you are using enough power in a month to warrant the need to closely monitor what is being used, going along with a TED energy monitor might be just the ticket.

Bing users will be happy to hear that Microsoft has released Bing Mobile for those looking to Bing while on the go. And from the looks of things, it appears that Bing Mobile provides the full functionality of the Bing search engine.

Where Bing really steps it up, is for touch devices. Likely being aimed at the iPhone, Pre and Android, Bing Mobile provides some smooth glide controls for those looking to make their touch experience a bit more fluid.

Where Bing really drops the ball is ticking off folks overseas with yet more USA only Bing applications. This is sad as it is likely there are potentially millions of people overseas who would be thrilled to try Bing Mobile. Too bad it’s not available to them.

You’ve seen us repeatedly say to back up your files. When someone has computer problems, one of the first questions that we ask is whether there is a backup of the important files. You would be surprised at how many people do not have a backup. And there is no reason for that lapse in security.

Computers will fail. Hard drives will stop working. Disasters will happen, so we are going to make this backup routine very easy. We have an offer for our readers from GoodSync. This program has had good reviews and we agree. It is easy to use and it is effective:

GoodSync will automatically back up and synchronize all your important files so you never need to worry about losing your emails, precious family photos, contacts, MP3s, and financial documents. GoodSync works locally — between desktops, laptops, servers, and external drives, but it is also capable of backing up and syncing files to and from remote servers using FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, and more.

This program will work with Windows XP/2003 Server/Vista and yes, Windows 7. As a special offer to our readers, there is a twenty percent (20%) discount when you use coupon code LCKGS. This offer expires on November 11, 2009.

And for the Mac users, GoodSync has an alpha version, which is free. It’s still being tested, so use it at your own risk.

For the sake of full disclosure, we tested the pay-for version extensively. The Mac version was not tested by our reviewers.

Verizon is set to almost double its termination fee, starting at $350, then decreasing $10 for each month you are in contract. The move comes as the time approaches where Verizon will have to surrender their Alltel ownership in certain areas to AT&T. A higher termination fee means people just can skip away and grab an iPhone, which has become increasingly common since the iPhone arrived.

In 2006, Verizon announced it was easing fees after many class action suits and threatened action from the FCC. The dust has settled a bit now, and Verizon is back at locking customers in again.

In a move that may prove the undoing of the Firefox market share, the developers are stating that Firefox will get some changes as a nod to the changing face of Windows, but also the details show that more than a few of the proposed changes will make the new Firefox look more than a little like Google upstart Chrome.

Explaining that it will be a two step transform, we are not allowed to know the exact reasons why. It might be a process that the developer’s believe is too much for one jump, from a programming standpoint, or, perhaps it is being considered too large a stride for the users.

The developer’s fully admit that the Firefox look is frumpy and dated, and the story in ComputerWorld tells why -

Noting that Firefox’s current Windows interface feels “dated and behind,” Mozilla wants to spiff up Firefox 3.7 by embracing the “glass” style Microsoft debuted in Vista, moving to a more neutral color palette, hiding the menu bar, trimming the menu to just two items — “Page” and “Tools” — and combining “Stop” and “Reload” into one general-purpose button.

The decision to hide the menu bar, which Mozilla initially said would be replaced by a “ribbon”-style design similar to the often-derided look of Microsoft’s Office 2007, raised a ruckus in September when users expressed their displeasure. Mozilla later clarified its planning documents, and denied it would “ribbonize” Firefox.

Firefox 4.0 will continue the interface changes. Current ideas for that 2010 release include giving users the option of moving the browser’s tabs to the top of the application’s display, a so-called “tab-on-top” look that other browsers, notably Chrome, have adopted.

The Firefox interface was dated and behind from the start. That splash of color with vast expanses of overwhelming beige was advanced for Windows 3, but nothing more.  The dearth of beige was one of the things I found so enticing about Opera.

Other possible interface changes in Firefox 4.0 would combine the browser’s address and search bars — another visual element within Chrome — and remove the status bar at the bottom of the display.

The Firefox interface design plans have been spelled out in a long entry on Mozilla’s wiki.

Since I no longer use Firefox (whenever I install a BSD or Linux distribution on a machine, the very first addition is Opera. I find the Opera way of doing things much easier, and I don’t have to ever put up with the ’sea of beige’.) I can’t say I speak for the average user, but I do know that the combined address and search bar in Chrome for lots of people I interact with is one of the deal breakers.

Mozilla preempted criticism of some of those moves by saying it is not copying Chrome in particular, or other browsers in general. “We are not trying to make Firefox look like any other browser,” Mozilla stated in the planning document. “Firefox is Firefox. Similarities between browsers are unavoidable. They all have shared lineage and are based off of their predecessors. The basics of what a browser does and how it does it is already established. Browsers are all trying to solve the same problems so evolutionary ideas that are similar are inevitable.”

I find this very disingenuous. Clearly the Mozilla people are trying to increase share, and include the things it thinks are best from other browsers. No one can assess blame for that, but ‘lifting’ pieces from other browsers directly is not good form.

I find I use Chrome as a secondary browser, and I don’t expressly dislike it, but other than using it to be familiar, I don’t find anything about the interface especially innovative, usable, or handsome. I believe that 8 out of 10 would answer “speed” when asked why they use it. It is like that quick and dirty batch file that used to be thrown together to accomplish something that no other program would do – you used the batch, got the results, and put it away until next time, because there was nothing to look at.

Firefox has become big because it is not Internet Exploder, but also because of its modularity, with the various extensions. If the developers wanted to make Firefox truly innovative, it would make large chunks of the code interchangeable, kind of like a Lego approach. If you could add the interface of Opera, with the extensibility that Firefox has already, and a dose of speed from Chrome, with a possibility of substituting a Chrome-like face if that becomes the user’s preference. you could really ‘clean up’ because most everyone’s choices could be accommodated.

The article goes on with -

Firefox, he said, didn’t mimic Microsoft’s Internet Explorer look and feel when it debuted. “We innovated,” Beltzner said. Now, however, things are different. “All the browser UI designers have been experimenting, [drawing] from each other,” he said.

As an outside observer, I look and see that not much has happened to the Firefox interface from the start, and, when I did use it, I wasn’t overly enthused – the best thing was that it was not IE. I later became fond of extensions, but they were always lagging behind the development of the main program – sometimes far behind.

Opera has been an innovator, and when I see things in Firefox or Chrome, much of the time they have previewed in Opera. Also, it is not as if the lifted ideas were being better executed. Many times the execution was not as well done. It really does amaze that Opera has not grown much more rapidly – the only answer I’ve been able to posit is the fact that opera, though free, is not open source. Lots of people are on the bandwagon due to the idea of open source, and I certainly understand.

The new look and feel will most likely please Windows users, but how will it work on other operating systems? Time will tell if changing to try to capture the latest fashion look is a smart move. (Still, I’m all for as much beige removal as possible.)

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Quote of the day:

Martyrdom is the only way in which a man can become famous without ability.

- George Bernard Shaw

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