billso.com

TITLES

I didn’t give titles to the articles from my old alohapundit.com blog. I was younger and anti-blogging newbie. I imported these articles on 5 April 2008 and I have been replacing the “Post number” titles and related posts lists to these articles.

TAGS

I post every article article with multiple tags or keywords to help users find related posts easily.

Tags can cross-connect posts to other related tags.

There’s a list of relevant linked tags at the end of each article.

The tag URL is http://billso.com/tag/keyword - use a dash if the tag includes spaces.

Some sample tags include http://billso.com/tag/honolulu and http://billso.com/tag/value-chain

On 29 January 2008, I enabled linkable tags in all my blog posts. If a word is identical to a tag, that word will appear as a link to a tag page. This feature was more of a nuisance than a help, so I disabled it on 16 May 2008.

TAG CLOUDS

Upgrading to WordPress 2.3 required some changes in the tag cloud and tag archives pages (28 September 2007):

• Tag archive pages are now labeled with their tag name.
• The tag cloud displays the most frequent tags that I’ve used in my articles.
• See my 25 January 2007 for a discussion of tag clouds.
• Technorati has a good discussion of what tags are and how they can be used here.

CATEGORIES

I use categories to sort my articles into different feeds and pages for my courses. A post may have 1 to 4 categories.

A list of categories appears beneath the title for each post.

Categories are organizational tools that impose a hierarchy on my articles, based upon the information systems courses that I teach at Hawaii Pacific University.

Thus, categories are different from tags, as discussed here.

COURSES

Until May 2008, my courses at HPU have their own dedicated links on this site. (Links changed 3 July 2007, and the RSS feeds were shut down in March 2008).

See the courses page for more information.

The Washington Post reported yesterday on allegations that US Customs agents have inspected and confiscated laptop computers, iPods, and mobile phones during passenger inspections. Passengers claim they were asked to provide passwords and open files. In some cases, mobile phones were inspected and returned with purged call logs. One person claims their laptop has been held for an over a year.

According to this article, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Asian Law Caucus have filed a civil lawsuit against the Federal Government, based on 20 complaints from Northern California residents. The goal is disclosure of the US government’s boder search policies. One sourse of concern is an apparent pattern of racial profiling, in which agents targeted Asian and Muslim passengers.

The US Department of Justice asserts that electronic equipment falls into the same category as a briefcase, and may be searched and confiscated for inspection.

However, the scenarios described in this article sound more like coercion or out-and-out robbery.

Of course, many corporate travelers have confidential or private information on their computers and phones. The Post article cites a Canadian law firm that sends corporate travelers headed to the United States with “empty hard drives”. There’s an operating system and a web browser on the laptop, of course, but employees access their email and documents through a secure Internet connection such as a virtual private network (VPN). This helps keep confidential data off the drive, as the law firm fears discovery by search more than a hacked Internet connection.

BoingBoing and the Consumerist each had articles about the Post report, although both blogs misidentified US Customs as the TSA.

Sadly, the activities alleged in this lawsuit do not surprise me. BusinessWeek recently reported on Indian IT outsourcing firms that have systematically underpaid IT workers who were brought to the United States on H1-B visas. These workers make tempting targets, as their outsourcing companies can send the workers back home for any reason. By the time some workers determined they would never get their back-pay, they were no longer in the US. It seems that only a few lawyers or client companies will step in to help these guest workers.

Last Thursday, I posted a brief article about Internet problems in India, Africa and the Middle East. Two undersea cables had been cut in the Mediterranean Sea, near Egypt.

In the following days, two more undersea cables were damaged. The International Herald Tribune printed an article about the third cable cut, and Wired followed suit with its own article, including a helpful map.

This Tuesday, as Reuters was reporting that a repair ship had reached one of the cut cables, reports surfaced of a fifth cable cut in the same region. BoingBoing has been following the cable cut story, and linked to a report from a Dubai newspaper. CrunchGear also reported on the fifth cut, and added a global map of high-speed fiber-optic connections. Wired claims the fifth cut is actually a cable failure that occurred before the Egypt cuts.

Bruce Schneier has a brief article with several links that I’ve used in this article.

All of these cable failures can be repaired. Here’s a link to pictures of various cable repair ships.

In the meantime, attention is focused on something most Internet users take for granted: the fiber backbone that supports the Internet.

HELP PAGES AND TOPICS

• About Bill Sodeman and billso.com
• Academic honesty
• APA formatting and style
• Article titles
• Categories for articles and pages
• Comments about articles and pages on this blog
• Courses that I teach at Hawaii Pacific University
• Finding references for papers and assignments
• Mobile support for PDAs, smartphones, mobile phones, iPhones and iPods
• Privacy
• RSS feeds that readers can use to receive new posts automatically in a feedreader or email application
• Tags displayed in a cloud, with links to archive pages for each tag.

SITE NAVIGATION

If you have a suggestion for a new service, email me.

The menu at the top of the site has links to several landing pages and features.

Almost every page, post and article on this blog is available through several landing pages:

• site search – available at the top of the right sidebar, along with a Google search field.
• sitemap – a list of every page and the most recent articles on the site, along with a list of monthly archives.
• direct access through URLs - students do not need to log into Campus Pipeline to access this blog.
• lists of related posts or articles, appearing on some articles and pages.

I use the terms “posts” and “articles” interchangeably – they mean the same thing. These pages are linked to specific dates on the site calendar, and they’ll appear on the home page, as well as the daily, monthly and annual archive pages.

I also maintain dedicated pages for my courses and specific topics. Pages are not linked to a specific date, but they do display the most recent date they were edited.

USABILITY

I’ve added print-friendly links on the pages and articles. The print-friendly links had been removed on 5 April 2008 because of a software bug. (Added 16 May 2008)

Mobile and PDA users are automatically directed to a specially formatted version of the site at m.billso.com. Our server detects and supports most mobile web browsers. (added March 2007, updated February 2008)

There’s a calendar on most pages of this site. Links display the posts for specific days. I also list assignment due dates on the calendar for my courses.

Our favicon appears in the address bar of most web browsers. This is a miniature version of the mighty billso logo. Look for this icon in your bookmarks, favorites, newsreader and address bar.

BILLSO.COM FEATURES THAT HAVE BEEN DEPRECATED OR REMOVED

I was using reCAPTCHA as a spam deterrent in the comments boxes. I added the feature on 6 June 2007, and disabled it on 5 May 2008.

I used to repost my articles on Facebook but I stopped that service in Janaury 2008, because Facebook doesn’t provide efficient tools for managing comments on its site.

Our custom button allows users to search the entire site within the Google Toolbar. Free software required. Supports Internet Explorer and Firefox on Windows and the Mac. (added 6 June 2007)

Most of this site is Bill Sodeman’s blog.

If you found this page in a search engine, you probably want to go to the home page of the site:

http://billso.com/

Monthly archives , a sitemap and help pages are available, too.