When the Tsunami struck SE Asia, killing huge numbers of people, I was struck by how poorly information flowed in that region. Scientists viewing pacific ocean irregularities seemed to be alarmed, but I understand it generally takes up to “hours” for word to spread from those scientists to those affected by the bad news.
This delay seems totally unnecessary in all but the remotest locations on earth – certainly not including the beaches of Thailand or even most islands of Indonesia where at least a handful of people have internet access.
My proposal is that Twitter create an “Emergency Broadcast Network” to spread news of pending trouble both regionally and around the globe. The system could be as simple as a simple informal network, but I think stronger would be a formal Twitter verification of thousands of credible people who are allowed to broadcast a tweet to everybody in an affected area. This in turn will be retweeted rapidly, effectively creating a huge swell of targeted “emergency tweets”.
Obviously everybody affected is not on Twitter, but enough people will see this that those folks can then contact authorities and media to spread the word. This is likely to work *faster* than the outmoded legacy systems such as radio and fax that plague even many “modern” police and media agencies.
Perhaps to enhance the credibility of the network Twitter could very formally assign several thousand volunteers – who collectively can easily be on call 24/7, the ability to review ”Emergency Tweets” for authenticity, though this could create delays so I think the first experiments would be to assume those authorized would use the power responsibly.
Why not?
Update – addressing some of the concerns expressed:
Reach (number of people you can instantly inform). This is generally very high in most areas where Twitter use is exploding, though I’m not up on global stats. Still, all you really need are a few volunteers per region to monitor the emergency tweets and spread the word to police, etc.
Cost: Zero. Not an issue. Volunteer base is millions, so the benefits include abundant free help vs high costs of staffing at communications centers.
No Computers / No Wifi in some areas: Twitter is a mobile application and works with phones as well as computers. Mobile access is exploding and fairly ubiquitous. Obviously this won’t work in areas with no connectivity whatsoever, but this factor diminishes daily.
November 26, 2010
Posted by JoeDuck |
twitter | twitter, twitter emergency broadcasting network |
6 Comments
CES Party List for Technology Report’s
*** CES 2011 Coverage ***
IMPORTANT: Almost all the parties at CES are “Invitation Only” and the procedure varies from party to party. Bloggers and Press folks can often score invitations by contacting the party sponsors, but don’t just show up and expect to get in.
Some of the best parties are announced at the last minute or somewhat secretly to those attending press conferences or other sponsor events. Those probably won’t make it to any of the party lists.
CES Parties on Tuesday Jan 4th
CES Parties on Wednesday January 5
7 – 10pm Pepcom Digital Experience! Caesar’s Palace, Las Vegas
7:30pm Audi at the Palms Ghost Bar
7:30 – 11 p.m GigaByte Room Marco Polo 707, Venetian Hotel
CES Parties on Thursday January 6
6 – 8pm NPD Reception – Bellagio (Client Invitation Only)
6 – 10pm Showstoppers – Wynn, Lafitte Ballroom (Invite only)
7 – 9pm Wired Party
7 – 10pm: Mashable Awards – New York, New York Hotel and Cirque du Soleil Zumanity
(Open to all, tickets $32 and up)
4 – 7pm Official 2011 CES Tweet Up. Las Vegas Hilton Space Quest Lounge
6:00 PM – 8:00 PM: FashionWare Show/KAPi Awards – Fashion Show Mall (Invite Only)
5:30 – 8:30 pm It Won’t Stay in Vegas Blogger Party – Atomic Museum, 755 E. Flamingo.
CES Parties on Saturday, January 8
5 p.m – midnight Xtremesystems Party - Pole Position Raceway, 4175 S. Arville Road.
Sources for this list include Party Sponsor Contacts + CESPartyList.com + Karen Thomas PR Party List. BE SURE to confirm your invitations as many parties won’t allow people to “drop in” without an invitation. Yep, that includes you!
November 22, 2010
Posted by JoeDuck |
CES, CES 2011, CES Parties, conference, Las Vegas |
1 Comment
Good time to review a few projects I’m associated with or working on now, and thank folks (esp. FoolsGold) for the many excellent suggestions provided over the years to improve the websites.
Over at the Online Highways empire we’re working on a mobile application for travel along the Oregon Coast that will be located at OHWY.mobi and will feature a very simple mobile optimized architecture that branches out to Coastal Cites, Coastal Lodging, Coastal Attractions, and more. I’m still not convinced that .mobi websites will take off as much as many believe they will because I think smartphones will get better fast and we’ll see a lot more optimization on the fly for regular websites, but it’s a good base to cover. I’ll be trying out the dot mobi “mobi translation” routine soon which will allow me to create some .mobi sites from my Airports and Airlines information at QuickAid.com Airport Directory and and the Airport City Codes site.
Meanwhile, after failing for a very long time to find a good and inexpensive Drupal developer to finish Retire USA, a Retirement Information Database, website, blog, and more including the most followed Retirement related account on Twitter. I’m taking it on myself as an HTML project. I’ll be extracting the Drupal data to a regular database we can enhance over time, and then use HTML templates and a merge routine to get a site that will look a lot like the Drupal site we had planned. I could be wrong but I think I’ll have a simpler and faster site with almost the same functionality as Drupal.
MedicalTraveling.net is another new blog that will have a database of high quality hospitals around the world that do procedures, operations, exams, etc for lower costs than here in the great old USA. Medical Travel and Medical Tourism articles and news will also be featured.
But wait…… there’s MORE!
November 17, 2010
Posted by JoeDuck |
medical tourism, medical travel, retirement, tourism, travel | medical tourism, oregon coast, retirement |
6 Comments
Many poo poo the idea that we are likely to adapt fairly easily to global warming changes because they are so tiny and take place over such a long period. However I have seen very few well reasoned discussions of this topic – most true believers simply dismiss it out of hand and most global warming skeptics can’t even see the obvious warming trends.
At first glance it would seem we really don’t have much to worry about. The earth has warmed less than a degree in the last 100 years, and even if that rate accelerates we are talking about tiny fractions of a degree every year. Every day we and other animals adapt easily to temperature changes of 30 degrees and more. Of course this type of daily change is not the same as gradual long term change, but it’s not clear to me why we can expect all hell to break loose as a result of very gradual temperature increases of fractions of degrees.
Here’s a good starting point for what I hope will eventually be a case by case examination of the negative potential consequences of warming.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_global_warming
November 12, 2010
Posted by JoeDuck |
Global Warming, science, Science & Technology |
6 Comments
I wanted to post this to help others who have run into trouble with the message along the lines of “Cannot Establish Database Connection”. This can happen for several reasons but usually the fix is fairly easy – you just need to modify a single file in your WordPress or Drupal or other file system according to the instructions below using FTP access.
If you move servers or rename the database or change your password you’ll want to go in and carefully put in the new database name or password.
If you’ve forgotten either of those, you may need to dig in to your control panel to find them. Ask your web host how to do that part as it depends on many things, but the part below is usually simple and done via FTP to your server.
Source: Godaddy
Connection strings for website databases:
NOTE:You will have to obtain these files referenced below by FTPing into your hosting account and into the application’s directories. For more information on this, see your application’s manufacturer’s Web site.
WordPress
Edit the wp-config.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.
define(‘DB_HOST’, ‘youroldhostname’);
Joomla
Edit the configuration.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.
var $host = ‘youroldhostname’;
Simple Machine Forum
Edit the Settings.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.
$db_server = ‘youroldhostname’;
DotNetNuke
Edit the web.config file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.
connectionString=”Server=youroldhostname;Database=DBName;uid=DBUser;pwd=DBPass;”
Drupal
Edit the sites/default/settings.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.
$db_url = ‘mysqli://DBUser:DBPassword@youroldhostname/DBName’;
Zen Cart
Edit the includes/configure.php and admin/includes/configure.php files. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.
define(‘DB_SERVER’, ‘youroldhostname’);
Gallery
Edit the config.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.
$storeConfig['hostname'] = ‘youroldhostname’;
Coppermine
Edit the include/config.inc.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.
$CONFIG['dbserver'] = ‘youroldhostname’;
OSCommerce
Edit the includes/configure.php and admin/includes/configure.php files. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.
define(‘DB_SERVER’, ‘youroldhostname’);
PhpBB
Edit the config.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.
$dbhost = ‘youroldhostname’;
Vanilla Forum
Edit the conf/database.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.
$Configuration['DATABASE_HOST'] = ‘youroldhostname’;
paFileDB
Edit the includes/config.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.
$dbServer = “youroldhostname”;
Noah’s Classifieds
Edit the app/config.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.
$hostName=”youroldhostname”;
OpenX
Edit the var/yoursitename.com.conf.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.
host=”youroldhostname”
BlogEngine.NET
Edit the web.config file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.
<add name=”BlogEngine” connectionString=”Data Source=youroldhostname;User ID=DBUser;Password=DBPassword;persist security info=False;initial catalog=DBName;” providerName=”System.Data.SqlClient”/>
Geeklog
Edit the db-config.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.
$_DB_host = ‘youroldhostname’;
Lifetype
Edit the config/config.properties.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.
$config['db_host'] = ‘youroldhostname’;
reBlog
Edit the config.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.
define(‘REF_DB_HOST’, “youroldhostname”);
Serendipity
Edit the serendipity_config_local.inc.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.
$serendipity['dbHost'] = ‘youroldhostname’;
Mantis
Edit the config_inc.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.
$g_hostname = “youroldhostname”;
MediaWiki
Edit the LocalSettings.php and config/LocalSettings.php files. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server. $wgDBserver = “youroldhostname”;
WebCalendar
Edit the includes/settings.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.
db_host: youroldhostname
anyInventory
Edit the globals.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.
$db_host = “youroldhostname”;
Mambo
Edit the configuration.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.
$mosConfig_host = ‘youroldhostname’;Community Server
Edit the connectionStrings.config file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.
<add name=”SiteSqlServer” connectionString=”server=youroldservername;uid=DBUser;pwd=’DBPassword’;database=DBName”/>
MODx
Edit the includes/config.inc.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.
$database_server = ‘youroldhostname’;
Moodle
Edit the config.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.
$CFG->dbhost = ‘youroldhostname’;
Nucleus
Edit the config.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.
$MYSQL_HOST = ‘youroldhostname’;
PostNuke
Edit the config.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.
$pnconfig['dbhost'] = ‘youroldhostname’;
SilverStripe
Edit the tutorial/_config.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.
“server” => “youroldhostname”,
Xoops
Edit the mainfile.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.
define( ‘XOOPS_DB_HOST’, ‘youroldhostname’ );
Pinnacle Cart
Edit the content/engine/engine_config.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.
define(‘DB_HOST’, ‘youroldhostname’);
BidWare
Edit the configuration/configure.inc.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.
$bidwareTsohbD = ‘youroldhostname’;
Elgg
Edit the engine/settings.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.
$CONFIG->dbhost = ‘youroldhostname’;
4Images
Edit the config.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.
$db_host = “youroldhostname”;
YetAnotherForum
Edit the yafnet.config file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.
<connstr>user id=DBUser;pwd=DBPassword;data source=youroldhostname;initial catalog=DBName;timeout=90</connstr>Brim
Edit the framework/configuration/databaseConfiguration.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.
$host = ‘youroldhostname’;
dotProject
Edit the includes/config.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.
$dPconfig['dbhost'] = ‘youroldhostname’;
OpenDB
Edit the include/local.config.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.
‘host’=>’youroldhostname’, //OpenDb database host
OrangeHRM
Edit the lib/confs/Conf.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.
$this->dbhost = ‘youroldhostname’;
phpCollab
Edit the includes/settings.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.
define(‘MYSERVER’, ‘youroldhostname’);
PHProjekt
Edit the config.inc.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.
define(‘PHPR_DB_HOST’, ‘youroldhostname’);
Aardvark Topsites
Edit the settings_sql.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.
$CONF['sql_host'] = ‘youroldhostname’;
Advanced Guestbook
Edit the admin/config.inc.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.
$GB_DB["host"] = “youroldhostname”;
Advanced Poll
Edit the db/include/config.inc.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.
$POLLDB["host"] = “youroldhostname”;
PHCDownload
Edit the include/config.ini.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.
$config['db_server'] = “youroldservername”;
phpMyFAQ
Edit the inc/data.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.
$DB["server"] = ‘youroldhostname’;
phpmyvisites
Edit the config/config.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.
‘db_host’ => ‘youroldhostname’,
PHPOpenChat
Edit the config.inc.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.
define(‘DATABASE_HOST’, ‘youroldhostname’);
MediaWiki
Edit the LocalSettings.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.
$wgDBserver = “‘youroldhostname’”;
November 8, 2010
Posted by JoeDuck |
blogs, wordpress | cannot establish database connection, database errors, database troubleshooting, wordpress troubleshooting |
2 Comments
Drama here at the mini web empire over the past few days. I was critical of Godaddy for taking down several of my sites after an advertising traffic surge of about 9800 unique visits to the new medical tourism blog MedicalTraveling.net put a strain on the shared server. After the blog post / tweet and intervention by CEO Bob Parsons my issues were very quickly resolved and now I’m on a much better server setup that should be able to better handle the high traffic I expect at that blog.
Still trying to figure out why it took Dr. Bob’s clout to resolve this. The tech folks I talk with at Godaddy are usually very capable and attentive, yet two of them had insisted to me there was no way to expedite things after what they seemed to believe was a ”network violation” caused by the traffic surge to the new blog. Uptime was particularly important to me on my new Medical Tourism blog because it’s being reviewed by Thai tourism as my entry in their Medical Tourism blogging contest where finalists will be flown to Thailand for an introduction to the country and to their very advanced medical tourism infrastructure.
So … we’ll see if there is a happy ending to another installment in the great lifetime blogging adventure, and I do want to thank Godaddy for coming through with a fast fix after the initial frustrations of having sites taken down.
November 6, 2010
Posted by JoeDuck |
blogs, medical tourism, medical travel, technology, tourism, travel, twitter |
10 Comments
UPDATE: Thanks to what looks like some personal attention from Bob Parsons, CEO of Godaddy [his comment is below] all my issues appear resolved now, sites are back up, and they are on a stronger server system that can take the extra traffic that appears to have caused the problem where my sites were shut off.
I want to thank Bob and his staff for the remarkable attention starting last night – I think after a tweet to him about this.
———————————————-
Although I appreciate GoDaddy’s very low prices and generally good support they have really messed me up for the next few days.
My modest ad campaign to boost the traffic at my new Medical Traveling blog overloaded the (older style) server so they moved me to a new one to “diagnose the problem”, which means up to 72 hours of downtime depending on DNS propagation. I assumed – wrongly – that a surge in traffic would not be a problem given their hype about load balancing and world class data centers, etc. I think the Godaddy marketing is once again out of whack with what you are getting. But I do take some responsibility here for naively thinking I’d have “world class hosting” at very low cost. I also give their Tech team kudos for at least calling me up when this happened so I could start explaining to people why my sites are down.
As is often the case CEO Bob Parsons is busy dreaming up provocative commercials rather than innovating for his customers. Simple fix for this would have been to FORWARD traffic to a temporarty website rather than move them without forwarding. I think I can configure this myself but now it may interfere with getting the DNS worked out at the new location. This should have been done as part of the migration process – it’s a no brainer and could have been automated.
Very frustrating Godaddy, and you may have cost me the trip to Thailand that was a reason I was working on Medical Traveling blog in the first place.
As is often the case with narrow minded IT approaches they did not anticipate the very negative consequences when heavy traffic (a GOOD THING) crashes the website. They solved their problem and left me hanging out to dry.
November 5, 2010
Posted by JoeDuck |
not yet categorized | godaddy complaints, godaddy problems, hosting, medical travel and tourism |
5 Comments
My friend Rob and my online pal Ellen asked me to clarify some of my earlier ideas about spending items and cultural sophistication vs weaponry. Ellen called it the “Duck Doctrine” (ha!).
Can anybody seriously believe we need to spend trillions to keep the US safe? Of course we do not!
By cultural sophistication I mean that defense dep’t needs to know other nations much better, especially before and after we make them our enemy or start wars. In Iraq I understand there were a remarkably low number of arabic speaking analysts involved, and even if there had been Cheney and Bush would have proceeded to implement the Perl / Wolfowitz PNAC world viewhttp://www.newamericancentury.org/ I agree with some of the PNAC stuff but also feel traditional conservatives naively think that people left to their own devices will choose freedom and democracy over fighting. I don’t agree and think we are very much the products of evolutionary pressures that favored short term, fairly narrow thinking.
Lest I be confused with a Tea Party guy I thought I better respond fast. I’m a real conservative thank you, not those fake ones who overspend on military and advocate for American theocracy. I want the founders back in charge and that means a Govt that governs best governs least, small military, entrepreneurial capitalism, and big personal freedom. Neither Republicans nor Democrats advocate that approach and that failure continues to our great peril.
We foolishly squander defense spending building weapons and paying for too many soldiers when we should be approaching things more cleverly and strategically, cutting big weapons systems in favor of clever infrastructure campaigns (building schools and clinics) that are followed with marketing to show how nice we are. Our military campaigns are generally “self fulfilling militarily” in that our approach is so aggressive and lacking in cultural know-how that the locals don’t have time to see we are the good guys. (and our guys are almost always the good guys even though many on the left don’t get that obvious point). Our intentions are good, our execution is bad, our military expense account is WAY too large.
It’s $12,000 to build a school in Pakistan where it’s $ 20,000 for one JDAM “smart bomb”. … and by bomb standards JDAMS are incredibly cheap – the military has non-nukes that cost over 400,000 per bomb. The point is that we should be much more proactive about building infrastructure and good will. There’s a big perceived difference between building and bombing. If the Taliban destroys the school the next month we’ve won a moral victory, but if we bomb and kill 10 bad guys and 1 good guy we’ve often lost moral ground in these regions. This simple, negative equation is going on all the time and it’s why the USA has so much trouble extricating ourselves from international conflicts.
Is Defense waste the only spending issue? Of course not. We are a land of reckless entitlements. Most getting social security do NOT need the money and did not contribute to the extent they are getting paid. Politically it’s very hard to reign in spending – we foolishly reward our politicians for their spending sprees, forgetting that overspending in “our” state or district is magnified a hundredfold all over the nation. Balanced budget is a no-brainer. In fact it should be a declining budget. Ben Franklin suggested that revolution might be called for if taxes went above 10%. Franklin frugality is the kind of fiscal responsibility we need, and note that Franklin was a super progressive guy back in the day!
More about defense spending: http://joeduck.com/2007/12/03/make-ads-not-war/
November 4, 2010
Posted by JoeDuck |
not yet categorized | cut defense spending, duck doctrine, spending, tea party |
3 Comments

The rumors are true – Medical Travel and Tourism, my new blog about that very interesting industry, is now complete. I’m always very happy with the great logos I get at GotLogos.com.
The inspiration for finally getting a Medical Travel blog going came from Thailand’s travel / medical blog contest which is in the process of choosing twelve folks to go on a “fam tour” of the Thailand Medical Tourism industry. I’m one of 68 entries and they are only picking 12 to go, so fingers remain crossed until the announcement on November 8th. I’d miss Thanksgiving in favor of reporting on colonoscopies, plastic surgery, and great Thai Food and hospitality but hey, isn’t that what blogging is all about? This would also give me a chance to add Thailand to the Online Highways country list.
The good news is that even if I don’t get to go I’m *still* going to get great food and travel adventures in Vietnam when we head over there for most of February, as well as build out a country website for Online Highways.
November 3, 2010
Posted by JoeDuck |
not yet categorized | medical tourism, medical travel, thai medical tourism |
2 Comments