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The Boston Globe ran a story today about a Pediatrician who was betrayed by his very own blog while defending himself in a malpractice suit involving the death of one of his patients.

His name is Robert P. Lindeman. Apparently, the case was leaning in his favor, at least until the opposing counsel sprung the following question:

“Was Lindeman Flea?”

At the time, the jury had no idea what this meant. It turns out that Dr. Lindeman had a blog, and on this blog he went by the name Flea. This obviously isn’t bad by itself, but what he was writing on his blog was a bit of a shocker. According the Boston Globe, Lindeman scoffed at the plaintiff’s case and the plaintiff’s lawyer in his blog. He wrote things like the jury was dozing. He even revealed what their defense strategy was.

Needless to say, the defense quickly settled the next day.

I don’t usually write about stories like this, but this one caught my attention. Probably because of a discussion I had a month ago with a friend of mine who was stating the reasons why NOT to blog. One of his arguments was that you can get busted for things that you don’t want other people to find out. He’s not the only one with this view either. But that’s no reason why NOT blog. Just don’t blog about stuff you shouldn’t be blogging about, e.g., the details of an on going court case that you happen to be a part of. If you’re going to blog about something, or comment about something, or post about something, or……almost any case where you add something to the almighty Internet, assume anyone can get a hold of that information. Because for all intents and purposes, they can.

     

Filed under: News
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Scratch is a new programming language developed at M.I.T. and specifically geared towards kids. Instead of using the conventional syntax based methodology, Scratch employs colorful building blocks (objects) which users can drag and drop. Each of these blocks has different attributes, and when combined with other blocks, users can alter the functionality of their program and create something truly unique. It’s a great way to get kids interested in and understand the fundamentals of programming.

Interesting Video and Article on Scratch by the BBC.

     

Filed under: Geekculture, Software, News, Technology, Design / Development
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I was surfing around last night and I came across this site.

Finally!

I guess I’m done. It’s been nice knowing all of you. I’m going outside now.

     

Filed under: Links, Zen Geekery
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It seems these days, that I am hearing more and more people say WW.something.com. It drives me crazy.

It’s W W W people! Three W’s. It stands for the World Wide Web.

See? It’s not World Wide or Wide Web or World Web.

World Wide Web!

or as the Brits call it,

World Wide Web!

In fact, if you’re going to omit one “W”, you might as well omit them all. We’ll figure it out

www.something.com = good

something.com = good

ww.something.com = NOT good

This concludes today’s lesson.

     

Filed under: Random Bits
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This is the best. Bubbleguru.com allows you to create a video right from their website and embed it into your website as a little video pop-up bubble. And you now how much we all like pop-ups, right?

It’s completely free and it takes only a few minutes to get a new video on your site. I signed up, created a video, and embedded it into my site in under 5 minutes. Sorry for the bad quality. I used the built-in mic and camera on my MacBook. But imagine the possibilities.

Not only can I annoy people with my writing, but now someone has made it easy for me to annoy people with my face too. Thanks bubbleguru! Their slogan should be “We are Web 2.0s version of blinking text”.

All kidding aside though, this looks like pretty cool technology. You might see me pop in from time to time. Prepare yourself.

     

Filed under: Software, TV / Video, Geekculture, Web 2.0, Cyberculture, Design / Development, Technology, Internet
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Testing Journler’s blogging abilities — If you see this, it worked. Yay!

For the last few days I’ve been messing around with a great program for the Mac called Journler. It’s like a journal on steroids. It has all the basic features you would expect from journaling software, but then takes it to a whole other level. You can do things like add audio, video, and photos to your entries with the click of a button or record them directly using your built-in hardware. You can even publish your entries to your blog (I haven’t actually tried this yet, cross your fingers). The interface is sleek and intuitive, just what you’d expect from a Mac app.

Don’t look at this as a full review of Journler though, since I’m still plummeting head first through the learning curve, but I was impressed enough with what I saw to give it a mention to anyone who has never heard of it.

Journler

I’m still a big time Mac noob. I’ve had this MacBook for about a year now and I just recently discovered what that weird little diagonal line is that all the Mac tutorials refer to. But I do listen. The OS X gurus may not think I’m listening, but I am — and every now and then I pick up on their good habits. I’ve recently been introduced to a little app called Quicksilver. I’m really not the guy to be giving a full review of this app, or any Mac app for that matter, but from what I’ve seen of it so far, it’s pretty damn incredible. Here’s what I can tell from the little time I’ve spent with it — it’s an extremely powerful search application with a slew of built in macros (is that the right word?) which allow you to do all sorts of things to the items that you’ve just searched for. It uses a lot of keyboard shortcuts (which I love) to accomplish tasks at a lightning fast pace.

I’m really not doing this program any justice, so I’m gonna shut up now. The guys over at the Blacktree Inc. will most likely be sending me a cease and desist letter any day now anyways because of this literary mutilation of their product. Go ahead and check it out for yourself. I think you’ll really like it. If you don’t, blame the gurus.

Quicksilver

     

Filed under: Apple, Links, Software, Productivity
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I’ll write this tomorrow…

     

Filed under: Zen Geekery
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Have you ever been sitting at your desk thinking to yourself, “Man, I wish I brought my Ninja mask to work today.” Yeah, me too. Well thanks to the teachings of Ninja master Vern Reid, there is a quick and easy way to create your very own Ninja mask using an ordinary T-shirt. MacGyver would have been proud.

Behold!

     

Filed under: Geekculture, Zen Geekery, How To's
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You can now create your very own customized Netvibes theme. Thank God!

Here’s the thing. I am a Netvibes addict — I honestly don’t remember what life was like before Netvibes came along. The only problem, Netvibes really isn’t prettiest thing to look at. At least not until now.

Read the full article on the Netvibes blog.

     

Filed under: Web 2.0, Technology, Design / Development
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So I was shopping around for new domain names, as I do from time to time, and I thought I’d check on sinclaire.com. I already own robertsinclaire.com, my name, but I thought that sinclaire.com would make a nice addition to my ever growing domain name collection. As suspected, the name was already snatched up, but what I found interesting, and disturbing at the same time, was GoDaddy’s list of recommended domain names — just for me.

A search for SINCLAIRE.com prompted GoDaddy to recommend these alternate domain names:

ERRORCLAIRE.COM
TRANSGRESSIONCLAIRE.COM
WRONGDOINGCLAIRE.COM
MISDEEDCLAIRE.COM

How sad is that. I feel like I’m being judged by a piece of software. I always knew GoDaddy’s website didn’t like me. Now I have proof!

     

Filed under: Random Bits
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