recordsquest

Ian Elwood's blog is now located on International Rivers' website. Ian will still blog here about topics related to technology, media access and social justice more generally. He has additionally taken on helping to protect rivers through online advocacy and organizational support of International Rivers' campaigners. Thank you for your continued readership.

Today I begun beta testing 510pen, a community wireless network that allows anyone to share their Internet connection to create an open wireless network for, as they said on Sesame Street, "the people in your neighborhood." 510pen is partnering with Media Alliance and Cernio Technology Cooperative in order to create a non-profit member-benefit cooperative to manage the wireless network.

So far it has been great. I just cracked open my new wireless mesh gateway, the Model OM1P from Open Source Mesh Solutions, all I had to do to get setup was plug it in as a replacement for my old wireless router. Then I could get online using the SSID "open-mesh," go to 510pen.com and register. About five minutes after registering my wireless gateway updated itself and my new customized 510pen wireless mesh node was online. I also have a private wireless network I can use that isn't available to the public. I will be keeping a log of my connection and uptime, hopefully it helps the network.

In case you haven't found this out the hard way, updating Firefox to 3.5 will nullify your PingFire extension. A developer has stepped up to the plate and forked the code, take a gander at the work of Alex Mikhalev!

I find inline GnuPG (GPG) keys to be totally distracting and an additional step that discourages new users from adopting email encryption. Buried deep within the settings of Thunderbird lies a way to attach your public GnuPG key, rather than sending it as plain text in the email.

The trick I could never figure out until now was that the setting is actually in the options when you are writing an email, not when you are in the main window of Thunderbird. You should actually disable signing of the message, as you will now be sending an unsigned email to the recipient, who should then import your public key. Here are the steps to attach your public key:

On a Mac, or Ubuntu Linux machine the steps are the same:

1. Compose a new email
2. Click the OpenPGP menu
3. Select default composition options
4. Select Signing/Encryption options
5. Go to "Advanced"
6. Click the radio button for attach my public key to messages (check!)

Like other lost souls, I find myself looking this up on Wikipedia a few times a year for the past few years, getting frustrated then getting distracted by something more interesting.

The difference is so subtle and totally irrelevant in many contexts that it is easy to overlook. The difference between a URL (say "elll") and a URI (eye, matey) is location. URL is a more specific, but often informally misused category. It describes a location on the network, whereas URI could describe a location, name, type, or other attribute. The short of it is that you can start calling URLs URIs and it will make you sound smarter at your next tech conference or geek party, if you go to either of those. For a more cerebral explanation, check the W3.