Archive for May, 2007

05-26-2007

Cell Phone Security Tips

David Boch’s blog on Yahoo! Finance recently had an eye opening post about cell phone security. I consider myself relatively security conscious, but I hadn’t considered the potential financial consequences of a lost or stolen cell phone.

In addition to some harrowing stories of lost phones, the article also offers some basic tips for keeping yours safe. It’s important to keep in mind that it’s not in a cell phone company’s best interest to watch out for you, so be diligent in guarding and protecting your own phone.

Eileen Perrera’s story revealed what happened after her phone was stolen while she was on vacation. She filed a police report and contacted Sprint immediately, but then received a bill totaling almost $16,000. Sprint claimed to have never received the call from her reporting the stolen cell phone.

Eileen was able to submit proof from landline phone records that she had indeed called Sprint customer service. As her late fees piled up, the situation remained unresolved for months.

Since the tips in the post were a bit basic, I did some more digging and found a similar story on Bruce Schneier’s blog, which includes some good security tips in the comments.

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Posted by Matt in money, tech | No Comments »

05-01-2007

Video Translation Could Change How We See the World

I ran across a new service called dotSUB that streamlines the process for subtitling and translating online video. The site recently featured a Rocketboom episode explaining how the service works, allowing users to quickly and easily enter captions which are overlaid onto a Flash video file.

The captions also allow other users to translate the content into other languages. Once subtitles are entered, the new language is immediately available for viewing, since the original video is shown with the new language overlaid on top.

Unfortunately, dotSUB’s options for embedding video in other sites appears to be limited. I wasn’t able to embed the Rocketboom video here because it would break my template’s layout. However, it’s worth visiting the site to check out. I’m willing to bet that the options for embedding video will expand as the service matures.

I think dotSUB has some excellent potential. Off the top of my head, I could see it being useful for nonprofits, activists, language learners, and anyone with hearing problems. I’d love to see some good foreign language documentaries made available through the site.

UPDATE: Apparently dotSUB was listening (see the comments). A smaller version of the dotSUB player is now available, so I’ll include the Rocketboom video below. Try clicking on the up and down buttons (to the left of the speaker icon) to switch between the various subtitle languages.

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Posted by Matt in communication, movies, tech | 2 Comments »