The Federal Bureau of Investigation is looking for a better way to spy on Facebook and Twitter users. That’s pretty much the gist of a new FedBizOpps.gov post from the FBI’s Strategic Information and Operations Center (SIOC) soliciting proposals for an app capable of sniffing through online media sites and social networks. 

The successful app will “have the ability to rapidly assemble critical open-source information and intelligence that will allow SIOC to quickly vet, identify, and geo-locate breaking events, incidents, and emerging threats,” according to a detailed guide to just what is the FBI is looking for in its online snooping tool.

But app developers shouldn’t expect to get paid if they answer the ad. For now, the FBI says it’s just conducting market research into whether it’s even possible to make the sort of data-sniffer the SIOC is looking for and if so, exactly how you’d craft it and what it would cost to develop.

The agency is setting the bar pretty high for the app’s capabilities. It must be “infinitely flexible,” according to the guidelines. And the desired application can never, ever, under any circumstances be gamed by those under surveillance, but rather has to have “the ability to adapt quickly to changing threats to maintain the strategic and tactical advantage” for its operators.

If built, the app could be used in a variety of FBI operations, including battling cybercrime and terrorism. The SIOC wants it to have an automated “search and scrape capability” that works to cull pertinent information from “both social networking sites and open source news sites.”

The ad even lists some prominent sites the government wants to get better acquainted with—Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, Twitter, and Facebook, to be specific. Drilling down into the “operational capabilities” of the proposed app, the guidelines call for it to “instantly search and monitor key words and strings in all ‘publicly available’ tweets across the Twitter [s[ite and other ‘publicly available’ social networking sites/forums (i.e. Facebook, MySpace, etc.).”

And it’s got to have a “dictionary of ‘tweet’ lingo.”

The app also needs super location tracking powers—the FBI wants the it “to geo-locate the open-source social media ‘search’ by setting a radius by both miles and kilometers … that will allow the user to quickly narrow the search to a specific area/region/location.”

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2399425,00.asp

A criminal suspect is arrested, with ample probable cause. An inventory search post-arrest yields a receipt for payment for a room at a self-storage facility. The receipt doesn’t indicate room number. Employees  don’t recognize photographs of the suspect. The suspect isn’t connected with any other building, office, house, et cet., but is believed to have stolen property within his control. Suspect has declined to speak other  than to ask for counsel.

There are 100 rooms at the storage facility.

Is this probable cause for a warrant? How to retrieve the stolen property and obtain relevant evidence without violating someone’s constitutional rights?

We don’t think there’s an easy answer. But we hope to address this problem – and electronic analogues – in future posts. Comments and guest posts welcome.

The best thing I can say about the current “Help” arrangement in MS Word is that it sorts by relevance, apparently without assigning weight on the basis of whether or  not the Help content in question was generated by Microsoft, or by outside sources. And one suspects that the quality-control system for Microsoft “Help” entries is less rigorous than Wikipedia. Once an entry in Wikipedia has been through its understaffed and therefore slow vetting process, Wikipedia entries are, in  my experience, consistently outstanding.  Any they  are always looking for volunteers. The foregoing sentence should not be construed as a subtle hint, but rather an outright unambivalent exhortation.

In response to my search about template file paths, MS Word onlinehelp led me to Christine Kent’s outstanding post Where does Word 2010 store files?  Ms. Kent, on her blog Christine Kent’s Microsoft Word Blog, is not voluminous or encyclopedic. But every post I’ve read seems to pinpoint a critical function or problem which isn’t well-documentedin the Microsoft help pages, either the client-based help files, or the Microsoft Online help system. Some examples:

The pitfalls of the Word help system might be required reading for anyone designing technical documentation.

How to organise your styles If you’re going to use MS Word, this is one of its most powerful feature sets. But setting it up and organizing it is a bit daunting, and, in my view,somewhat counterintuitive. But they’re there,  and Christine Kent  can help you use them  rather han my strategy, which has been to avoid and ignore them on the assumption that learning them would be too hard  or unproductive. And that would have been a correct assumption if I were relying on the Microsoft native instruction and help systems.

List of new features when upgrading from 2007 to 2010.  Again, CK² This post may make  you feel better about having purchased MS Word or MS Office 2010, and give you a few ideas which may make you more productive, improve your work, or both.

In addition to Christine Kent’s Microsoft Word Blog, Ms. Kent has also published several books on making the best use of MS Word and MS Excel, which are quite neatly segmented into which version one is using or upgrading to,  such as Microsoft Word 2010 upgrade from 2003: A New Way of Working. This approach makes a lot of sense:  changes between the 2003 and 2007 versions were substantial, and the changes from 2007  to 2010 even more so.  For anyone changing from the 2003 version to the 2010 version to learn anything about the intermediate 2007 edition would not only be a waste of time, it would be absolutely counterproductive. So Ms. Ken has also written an entirely separate volume, Microsoft Word 2010 Upgrade: Building on Word 2007  for those making thee 2007  to 2010 jump.

The quality of Ms. Kent’s explanations puts one in mind of the O’Reilly Media books; I wouldn’t be surprised if we were to eventually see her byline on books with the O’Reilly imprint.  The only other book(s) that I’m aware of and swear by about MS Word are from Payne Consulting, which has published 12 books on Word and Excel for attorneys. Payne’s books and their applications are or should be must-haves for attorneys  and the people who graciously tolerate us as colleagues. Of particular interest  should be their MetaData Assistant, which is brilliant in conception and execution. The link is to version 2 of the single-user version with which I have direct experience, but Payne also has a single user version 3, and Enterprise editions of versions 2 and 3 (v. 2 Enterprise edition - Metadata Assistant link here, and  Metadata Assistant 3 (Ent.) v. 3  Enterprise Edition link here).

So – if you’re having trouble getting MS Word to do your bidding, or need an outstanding technical writer,  check out Christine  Kent; and since she’s based in Melbourne, be even more impressed because she’s doing all of this this amazing writing upside-down. (Although, given the state of Microsoft documentation, perhaps that goes some way to explain her virtuosity).

1. For reasons not clear to me, I’ve found installing WordPerfect on any Windows XP machine led to many system crashes and freezes. Since I was able to replicate the problem one more than one machine, and make the problem go away, consistently, by uninstalling WordPerfect,  I gave up.  The inference of a causal relationship between WordPerfect installation and system difficulties did not escape me, but, life being short, one can tilt at only so many windmills, and my bought-and-paid-for boxed copy of the Corel Suite, which includes WordPerfect, now sits on a bookshelf not far from my boxed copy of the complete set of the first generations of Infocom games, including the much-beloved Zork.
2. Notice that her name is not only alliterative,but that she shares not only initials, but also certain personal characteristics of one unassuming mild-mannered journalist on the staff of a well-known daily newspaper whose logo includes an image of the Planet Earth. Coincidence? You be the judge.

Tote Notes™ is an innovative application for Android smartphones that records, transcribes to text, and emails your call notes at the end of important calls, by using only two taps and your voice.

Tote Notes™ combines the functions of your Android smartphone in a new and useful way, and provides you with a powerful productivity and note-taking tool. It’s especially effective when combined with your existing email account. Adjust your email settings to automatically filter and organize all your Tote Notes™.

Tote Notes™ uses Google Voice™ for transcription…..

Each Tote Note™ is delivered to your email inbox with the following subject line: “Tote Note: Contact Name (phone number)”, such as “Tote Note: Tracy Brown (4155551212)”

Tote Notes™ currently comes in two versions: FREE and PRO. The FREE version sets the maximum recording time at 30 seconds for each Tote Notes, and accommodates one destination email address. The PRO version allows each Tote Note™ to be up to 2 minutes in length, and also allows for a secondary email address, which can be used as a “cc” to another person or email address, such as an assistant.

Tote Notes™ are initiated by the end of a phone call, or on demand. To send a Tote Note™ on demand, tap the “History” tab, where you can view your note history and tap any contact to manually record a new Tote Note™.

 

This is a splendid idea – and $4 is a bargain if it fits into one’s workflow. We’d like to see this integrated with a call logger or recorder (for those states which permit it, or where both parties agree to recording in order to be avoid note-taking while driving, to give just one example). And Why note Tote-Notes for landlines? This is version 1.0, and the developers clearly intend to keep improving on ToteNotes. If they can integrate this into other task management or time tracking functionality, they’ll have a killer app on their hands. As it is, it already looks like a bruiser.

A list of of lists:  excellent USB-runnable  apps, from office suites to single-function tools, which if you’ve the right one with you, make you McGyver, if not for a whole day, at least for an hour or so:   

1. 100 Portable Apps for your USB Stick (for Mac and Win)
2. The Portable Free Ware collection has over 500 apps and counting
3. PenDriveApps.com – don’t know how many apps, but they’r eorganized by category, and there are dozens of those.
4. 70 Free Useful Portable Applications You Should Know from the always ahead-of-the-curve Hong Kiat
   
5. TechSupportAlert.com has NOT ONLY Best Free Portable Programs  but also Guide to Portable Applications, and Best Free Android Apps and  Best Free Win 7 / Vista 64 bit Apps, and more or which you’ll have to check out
   TechSupportAlert.com.
6. Spoon Lets You Run Portable Desktop Apps From Your Browser as always, essential advice from Lifehacker   Plus , also from Lifehacker, for whom there are only two optimal quantities – a lot,and “even more” – the balance are links to individual posts/reviews on Lifehacker

• Bluemind Is an Ultra-Lightweight Mind Mapping Application   (LH)
• DokuWiki on a Stick Packs a Portable Wiki in a Tiny Package  (LH)
• Create Timers via Flexible Inputs with Orszeszek Timer   (LH)
• Use Your Smartphone as an Always-With-You Portable Apps Suite  (LH)
• Without a Trace: Turn Your Flash Drive into a Portable Privacy Toolkit   (LH)
•  Create Synchronicity Is a Tiny, Portable Backup and Sync Utility   (LH)
•  Tweak Me! Puts Dozens of Windows Tweaks in a Portable Package  (LH)
• Portable Ubuntu Tres Runs 9.10 on Windows Desktops   (LH)
• ZeuApp Downloads 82 Awesome Open Source Apps  (LH)
• uTorrent Portable Puts BitTorrent on a USB Drive   (LH)
• Five Best Portable Apps Suites     (LH)
• FolderSize Displays What’s Eating Your Hard Drive Space   (LH)
• VLC Portable 1.0 Puts Multi-Format Playing on Thumb Drives
• Portable Chrome Updates with Chrome 2.0’s Speed Improvements
• LiberKey Installs 200+ Portable Applications
• Everything Portable Smokes at Finding Files on Your System 
• Turn Your Spare Thumb Drives Into Feature-Packed Giveaway Drives
  
• ActiveHotkeys Shows You Which Keys Are Available
• DP Shredder Securely Shreds Your Files 

Please feel free to add selections, experiences  bad and good, in comments. We’d also be very interested in what readers have to say about their favorite and least favorite flash drives.

Upon learning about a suspected 2002 assault by Sandusky of a young boy in the football building’s showers, Paterno redirected the graduate assistant who witnessed the incident to the athletic director, rather than notifying the police. Paterno said the graduate assistant who reported the assault, Mike McQueary, said only that something disturbing had happened that was perhaps sexual in nature. McQueary testified that he saw Sandusky having anal sex with the boy.

Excerpted from Paterno Is Finished at Penn State, and President Is Out  (Mark Viera, The New York Times, November 9th, 2011)

Having learned of this conduct, and the obvious risk that it might recur, what were Paterno’s choices? He could have reported the incident to the athletic director himself, gone to campus police, the university president, the local police, local prosecutors, or local social services agency. He could have instructed the graduate assistant to do any or all of those things. He could have fired Sandusky.

Viewed against the range of possible choices, telling perhaps the lowest-ranking person (the graduate assistant) to report the incident to the athletic director, presumably one step above Paterno on the organizational chart, but in reality probably less influential than the sainted Paterno, may have been the smallest thing he could do in order to do something.

This is only one of several incidents. If Paterno believed the graduate assistant, wouldn’t he be surprised that no arrest followed? If he thought the graduate assistant had made a false allegation, wouldn’t firing be appropriate for such serious defamation?

Does this fact-pattern seem reminiscent of recent Catholic Church scandals?

Slocum’s portfolio is outstanding, and it’s clear that they exploit each other’s talents to good effect. A look at the staff portraits makes the point well: each of them is outstanding, and is the visual anchor for each staff member’s “About” page.  In fact, it makes a strong case for engaging a team, whether it’s an established full-time team, or an ad hoc team assembled for a project, for even relatively simple projects. The simplest statement of the principle is that no one should proofread or edit their own copy in any text that matters.

My installation of the WordPress plugin was entirely snag-free [plugin page on WordPress repository]; what’s more, the people at Slocum took the time to provide a clear and detailed entry in the WP Plugin Repository.   NB: if you install via  the WordPress dashboard, there are several other similar-sounding plugins, with similar descriptions of functionality. I tested  Mr. Desrosier’s plugin first because it was featured prominently on the Evernote website. What you’re looking for is “WP Evernote Site Memory,” with a credit in the description field for Slocum and Mr. Desrosier.

Other developers have produced Site Memory functionality for Joomla and Tumblr, and Evernote also provides information for developers; it’s all readily navigable on the Evernote Site Memory page.

One other Evernote plugin for WordPress, EverPress, is essentially the opposite of WP Evernote Site Memory.

EverPress is an automatic RSS posting plugin primarily designed to integrate with the information capturing service, Evernote. This plugin allows Evernote users to automatic post their shared notebooks to WordPress. [EverPress also supports]post scheduling – by day, week or month, and time of day; [and]post settings – set the author, category, status (draft, public and private) and tags.

EverPress is the creation of Martin Hawksey; we hope to have tested and reviewed it in short order.