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The Internet is Eating Me.

by Jimmy Marks

My mom got a free iPod Touch with her computer when she bought it about seven months back. She loves her MacBook, she's getting better with putting picture albums and email together. She's one of a growing number in her generation that's only getting more computer savvy as they age, and I'm quite proud of her. But the iPod Touch was just a bit much; if you've just grown used to CDs as your means of music, something with as much functionality as the Touch can be more frustrating than satisfying. 

(Brief sidebar: My mom, back when we had a cassette player in the car, bought the Bible as read by James Earl Jones. We listened to the book of Jeremiah four times, because the tape player flipped the tape automatically and mom kept flipping it manually. I love you, mom.)

So, long story short, we're switching iPods. She's getting my old 40 gig with some of her favorite albums on it. I'm just getting used to the Touch. Love it. Now, I can get email, Safari, maps, my calendar, YouTube, and I plan on downloading Twitterific for it so I can tweet on the go. 

And today, it hit me: the Internet is eating me. 

The Dialogue of the Deaf: How Congress is Missing the Mark

by Jimmy Marks

New House spending bill includes $500k for DM postcards. What happened to high tech communications & being green? - The CU Warrior, via Twitter

What's the opposite of "progress" again? 

Oh, right. 

Congress is spending money on plenty of things aimed at keeping America afloat, like Frisbee parks (read here). Part of that afloat-y type spending is a direct mail marketing postcard piece to let people know about townhall meetings where they can ask questions of their government (click here for more info). 

WHOAH, back up...postcards?!? This is the way we're "gettin' the word out"? And you're going to spend HALF A MILLION DOLLARS DOING THAT?!?! What's worse, you've been touting how you're going to be "greener" and how you want to curb global warming...and you run to paper? Come on...

In researching this story, I came across an old phrase "the dialogue of the deaf". I believe it existed before the creation of a standard sign language, because it refers to the moment when two people are talking to each other and neither is listening to the other. Let's get away from that and start making a real, responsive, constructive dialogue between the people who make the laws and the people who have to live by them.

Oh no you didn't...

by Ron Daly

We are gathered here to day to mourn the death of JuicyCampus.com...wait, did I say mourn? I meant celebrate.

Now, being in the long-time internet guy that I am, I usually don't enjoy the demise of a website. I know there are plenty of people out there just trying to make an honest go of the web. But the folks behind Juicy Campus don't inspire sympathy in me. For those of you who don't know (or don't have college-aged kids), Juicy Campus was set up to let college students spread rumors about the school, campus organizations, or each other. The rumors could be benign things like "the price of parking is increasing soon" or malicious notes about people's relationships, appearances, or any other area of someone's life.

It took me two seconds to decide that this site and its mission was despicable. And it took me less time than that to be happy when I heard it was gone (click here for details on its closing).

I don't know "social networking" as well as some of my credit union contemporaries, but I do know this: a social network can't survive when it's built on hate-mongering. Juicy Campus lost out because it couldn't drum up online advertising here in the downswing. It has since been usurped by collegeACB, which stands for "Anonymous Confession Board", which doesn't encourage gossip so much as anonymous comments from anyone at any time.

Yeah, there's a BIG difference between that and Juicy Campus (sarcasm alert!).

But let's take a moment to talk about the people who are doing a GREAT job of social networking in the credit union world. And HOW are they doing a great job? They're not spitting on people and being catty.

The Heartland Hack and You

by Jimmy Marks

I've written articles about password troubles before, but when it comes to any security smarter than that, I defer to those of greater experience. 

Ron, for instance, looks at the break-in from the POV of a former credit union CFO. He wrote a good article yesterday for CU Soapbox (click here). An excerpt: 

...I've had small breaks (80 member accounts affected) and fairly big breaks (400 member accounts affected). There's the estimated ~$15 you spend reissuing cards and closing accounts. And then there's the ~$10 you spend on credit monitoring on the accounts. That's ~$25 per account, so at worst it's about $10,000 that I've had to account for after a breach. And that's why, recently, there's a thought that's been troubling me.

The thought that the breach of Heartland Payment Systems has the potential to affect up to 100 million accounts. Click here for the CU Journal article.

100 million! One. Hundred. Million. I'm hoping the math makes sense for you here, because 100 million times $25 equals $2.5 BILLION. In losses and monitoring and trouble and waste.

It's a troubling aspect, that you'd be costing millions, if not billions, in damages. 

Rob had some issues with the break-in, too. Being the CIO/Security Specialist at DigitalMailer, he knows a thing or two (or two million, really) about security standards.