Here are some shocking and surprising findings from a new survey:  1 in 3 parents say that “kids are online too much.” 

Hmmm.  I think the rest of the results of this survey go something like this:  “2 in 3 parents not paying attention.” 

Of course kids are online too much.  I suppose the next study we’ll see will show that “kids watch too much TV, don’t eat healthy foods, and hate going the dentist.” 

Add this to a long line of studies we didn’t need due to the findings being obvious and undisputed.  I mean, this study even comes from a nonprofit called Common Sense Media (that’s not a joke…that’s really their name).  Sheesh.  I wonder how much time and money this survey cost, because if it was $10 it was probably too much. 

This Information Week  article is called An Interview With A Convicted Hacker, and it’s pretty interesting.  First of all, the hacker in question is 23 years old.  I mean, wow.  To be only 23 and headed to federal prison…I think that’s quite an accomplishment (and why is it that hackers keep getting younger?  That kid who was the first to hack the iPhone was, like, 17). 

Secondly, this dude was part of a scam with VOIP phone services, and did most of the heavy lifting to pull things off.  Yet, he only netted $20,000 for his trouble.  Hey, somebody tell this kid that the local Waffle House pays management trainees almost twice that ($36,000).  Crime really doesn’t pay…at least not very well. 

Lastly, the hacker is quoted as saying, “It was so easy a caveman could do it.”  This makes me think he’s on Geico’s payroll to help push their series of cave man commercials (or ABC’s payroll, to help promote the show they are launching which is based on the Geico commercials).  But here’s the best thing you can get out of this article, and I quote this young felon:

“When you’ve got that many computers at your fingertips, you’d be surprised how many are insecure…I’d say 85% of them were misconfigured routers. They had the default passwords on them.”

People, the days of having default passwords on your computer, email accounts, servers, or wireless routers are over.  Don’t give some young whipper-snapper access to all your files just because you’re too lazy to change the password from “admin” to something more complicated. 

Actually,  Keith Rhodes, chief technologist at the U.S. Government Accountability Office, says it better than I ever could: 

“Default passwords are a silly problem,” said Rhodes, who is widely considered to be the federal government’s top hacker. “But they were able to take a silly flaw and turn it into a business. … It disappoints me, but I’m not surprised.”

One of my favorite new toys is Google Earth.  It gives us amazing aerial views of pretty much anywhere in the world–and it’s free! 

But a lot of buildings weren’t designed with the aerial view in mind.  Prior to Google Earth (and similar Windows Live Earth), these perspectives simply weren’t possible. 

The US Navy, for example, has a barracks building in Colorado that, when viewed from above, resembles the Nazi swastika.  The accidental resemblance was discovered recently by Google Earth users, and now the Navy is going to spend $600,000 remodeling and redesigning the structure. 

I don’t know what’s crazier here:  that someone has enough free time to go looking for offensively-shaped buildings on Google Earth, or that the government is going to spend over half a million dollars to fix something that is clearly not intentional and will be viewed only by bored air travelers and a few obsessive computer users?  You make the call. 

Did you hack your iPhone so that you could use it on a non-AT&T carrier?  Yeah, well…it probably stopped working yesterday, didn’t it? 

Apple released an update for the iPhone yesterday that apparently included the company’s response to those users who decided to hack, basically making those hacked iPhones little more than a paper weight.  Those phones now receive an error message telling them they need an authentic SIM (Subscriber Identity Module). 

Now, in fairness to Apple, they warned users a week or so ago that this would happen, but most hacked iPhone fans thought it was just a bullying scare tactic.  Umm…not so much.  Moral of the story?  Don’t mess with Apple, they’re not kidding around. 

Meet Zeno.  He’s a lifelike robot. 

Granted, he can’t walk or talk yet, but his eyes can track and follow movement.  He’s 17 inches tall and he’s the first of a planned line of “social robots.” 

Eventually, though, robots like Zeno will be able to converse and interact fully with their human counterparts. 

So, yeah…if you want to socialize, but aren’t that into people…get yourself a 17-inch robot for companionship.  Somehow I don’t see this taking off.  But then again, both the “pet rock” and the “digi-pet” have been huge hits, so there’s probably more potential here than I might see.  You can read more about this fellow here.

So the “smiley”, AKA  “:)”, is 25 years old.  And we apparently have this cheesy nerd to thank for it. 

I, for one, am hopeful that this milestone can pass without a lot of fanfare being heaped on.  After all, it’s maybe one of the most overused expressions on the web (a close second to “lol”).  But some people love the little smiley guy. 

I don’t know what’s sillier to me, though… the fact that somebody documented the exact date and time that this emoticon was first used, or the fact that CNN wrote a whole article about it.  You can read the article here.

As a business owner, I’m constantly bombarded with “opportunities” to market my business. Many of these potential opportunities are simply not good for Keystone, but would be good for a company in another sector.

Others are simply a fraud; “Yellow Assistance” for example. If ever there was an underhanded and sleazy way to make money, this is it. If they’d only exploited children or old people they’d have achieved total scum-bag excellence. Because we advertise in the Yellow Book, I almost mistook Yellow Assistance’s correspondence for Yellow Book’s invoice. Hopefully none of you are being fooled by these sleazy good-for-nothing hucksters. Click here to see their “solicitation.”

Time Magazine has released a list of The 50 Best Websites of 2007.  There are some interesting choices there, including StarWars.com.  I’m not sure why a Star Wars site is so compellingly relevant in 2007 to deserve to be in the Top 50, but hey…maybe Time just likes Star Wars. 

There are also a lot of sites you’ve never heard of on that list, which is part of what makes these types of articles fun–we get to discover a new site or two.  For instance, I had never heard of RedFin.com, an online real estate broker.  Apparently, through using the RedFin site, you can save thousands in commission costs when buying or selling a home. 

I also learned about I’mTooYoungForThis.com, which is an online community and resource center for kids and young adults with cancer, connecting them with other kids as well as online and real world support groups. 

While you’re over at Time’s website, you might also want to check out their list of the 5 Worst Websites.  Even more interesting choices on this list (they don’t like MySpace, even though it made their Top 50 list in 2006). 

Google has been inching closer and closer into direct competition with Microsoft.  They have an entire arsenal of office tools and softwares, available for free, called Google Docs. 

A new product in the Google Docs family has just been announced:  Google Presently.  It is, in short, their version of a slideshow presentation system much like Microsoft’s Power Point.  In it’s infancy, Presently is still pretty bare bones, and Google says their target market for the product is the casual user.  Presently is intended for quick, simple presentations, and currently lacks some of the robust features you’ll find in Power Point.  The company plans to grow and expand the program, though, and more features will be added in the future. 

The big plus, obviously, is that it’s free, whereas Power Point is only available as part of the Microsft Office suite of software. 

Google now has products that compete directly with Power Point, Excel, and Word.  There have long been rumors that the search company plans to eventually release an online-based operating system to challenge Windows.  There are also strong rumors that Google will soon release their own cell phone, like Apple did. 

Well, if you live in the Nashville/Davidson County area, you spend an average of 40 hours a year sitting in traffic.  That’s a lot.  For the mathematically-challenged, it’s almost two entire days.  I don’t know about you, but I can think of a lot of things I could accomplish in 40 hours that would be far more rewarding than bonding with my fellow travelers in bumper-to-bumper traffic.  During those 40 hours of not going anywhere, we Nashvillians waste 25 gallons of gas.  Ouch.

But it could be worse.  A new study ranks Nashville as the 28th-worst American city, in terms of traffic and congestion, which means there are exactly 27 places where traffic is worse than it is here.  Atlanta, for instance, tied for 2nd worst (no surprise there), with its drivers wasting upwards of 60 hours a year in gridlock.  Los Angeles won the top spot, with it’s commuters spending 70 hours a year in traffic clogs. 

Officially named the 2007 Annual Urban Mobility Report, the study ranks cities from worst to best, and contains a lot of interesting data besides just the “wasted hours” column. 

You can see the Nashville-specific report (in PDF format) here. 

You can view the full report, including the cities by rank, here.