elgooG and Alice falling down a Rabbit hole

I came across elgooG (Google spelled backwards) really quite by accident. One of those - let me see what happens if I type Google backwards in the search engine we know well. To my genuine surprise not only did Google return something; but what it returned was amazing. The first thing that came into my mind was Alice falling down a rabbit hole and into a curious hall (Alice in Wonderland Chapter 1).

ElgooG is the literal mirror image of the Google search engine; not only is all of its content a reversal of Google, the search terms must also be written in reverse in order to give you the desired results.

It turns out this was originally created by All Too Flat "for fun", and it found practical use in the People's Republic of China after the domestic banning of Google, as it circumvented the government's firewalls.

Another important aspect is that because search terms in elgooG were typed in reverse, and the search results were also in reverse, it was harder for intermediates to track what users were searching for.

A bonus for me and those using computers in the 80’s will appreciate is the simulated terminal mode (see image). Not only does it take you back to ASCII based computer graphics of the day but the analog carrier signals simulated by a MODEM connection has to be seen and heard.

Just as an aside remember those early modems established a 300 baud rate (symbols per second) connection. Now you’re probably reading this blog on a network connection of say 9.5Mbps. That’s 9500000 times faster than the old 300-baud modems of the era. Try the modem at:

http://elgoog.im/terminal/

Xmas message 2012

May this holiday season bring you the music of laughter, the warmth of friendship, and the steadying hand of love.

I wanted to include various christmas themes when living in the age of social media - these are about a time to be kind and less about a religion..

A Facebook inspired theme with a message to someone not forgotten.

And Twitter...

                                                                                Youtube (click below)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZrf0PbAGSk

                                                                                              Google

Google's doodle - a great man living in dark days

As usual Google doesn’t disappoint. In the doodle celebrating the 100th birthday of Alan Turing they have created an animation reflecting the great man’s work. It’s also true unless you’ve studied university mathematics and/or computer science it’s probably something not immediately familiar.

The Google guys are no hacks by any means and have not only pulled together a brilliant doodle, it’s also at once a turning engine and a piece of cryptography challenging us to crack. For those who know of Turning will know he was an exceptionally gifted mathematician, computer scientist and code breaker, whose Turing Machine was the basis for so much in computing.

There is a photo of Turning in my office amongst much clutter – from time to time when I come across it, I’m reminded just how great his loss is to the world, and of the bigotry he endured in very dark days.

For in an act of utter disgrace, for which the British government only apologized in 2009, Turing was prosecuted for homosexuality in 1952. He was chemically castrated and died in 1954 at the age of 41 after biting into an apple laced with cyanide.

Turning helped crack the German Enigma code, a great step toward bringing a successful end to World War II. In return, he was prosecuted for gross indecency and given the choice of prison or experimental chemical castration. He chose the latter. His conviction meant he could no longer work for the British government.

Click below for the solution to the doodle.

By the way, the text “Google” is 01000111 01101111 01101111 01100111 01101100 01100101 in binary.

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2186651/Alan-Turing-Google-Doodle-Turing-Machine-Codebreaker-Logo-Honors-Father-of-Computer-Science

Google's Data Liberation Front - our digital legacy

Jack Dikian

January 2012

Sometime ago I talked about our digital legacy - Those digital or virtual assets in the form of photographs, music, blogs, information, and other data that may be typically overlooked, intentionally left behind, and/or when removing them is impossible or at least too difficult when we pass away.

Digital Legacy has been described as ‘the birth of a new industry' as new companies are being created to hold secure encrypted access to digital assets, to be released upon the proof of a users death.

See

http://onsocialcomments.blogspot.com/2011/07/jack-dikian-july-2011-i-was-early-user.html

At the same time much is being said in regards to the consumers’ ability to have real control over data held in repositories such as Google, Facebook and Twitter. How easy is for example to the wipe the slate clean. Just today, I received an email from the Google with the subject header “Changes to Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service”. In it, there is a reference to Google’s new team “Data Liberation Front” whose "goal is to make it easier for users to move their data in and out of Google products."

The purpose of the Data Liberation Front is to ensure that data can be migrated from Google once an individual or company stops using their services.

It’s going to be extremely interesting to see how quickly Facebook, for example, will take to provide the tools enabling us to permanently delete our Facebook profile.

THE DIGITAL STORY OF NATIVITY

Jack Dikian

December 2011

The Nativity of Jesus, or simply The Nativity, refers to the accounts of the birth of Jesus in two of the gospels and in various apocryphal texts.

New Testament accounts of the Nativity of Jesus appear only in the Gospel of Luke and the Gospel of Matthew. There has been debate among scholars as to whether these two accounts can be partially reconciled or if they are totally contradictor.

Regardless of these accounts, one thing is for certain, the digital account of the story of nativity, as it had never been told back then.

Click or copy/paste the following link, it’s vey good. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZrf0PbAGSk

Our Digital Legacy

Jack Dikian

July 2011

I was an early user of the Internet – only back in the dusty computer and physics labs of Sydney University the term Internet wasn’t yet invented. It was all about having UUCP access so that we can jump on the Usenet and look at newsgroups.

Newsgroups contained a great deal of content, albeit mostly of a technical nature and mostly text. Even from back then it occurred to me that much of what we were posting would have a presence, linger on servers distributed all over the world.

We are, after all, the first people in the history of the world to create vast online records of our lives. I say our lives because since the rise of the Internet (some 25 years) and more recent advent of social media (7 years) the internet has become seamlessly integrated with all our experiences, and more and more of our everyday life is being documented online.

For example, a quick look at Facebook’s stats tells us there are more than 750 million active users, 50% of them log on to Facebook in any given day and have 130 friends on average. Our lives, relationships, thoughts and opinions will surely fascinate future historians, sociologists, archaeologists and anthropologists studying the dawn of the digital age. The individual worth or contribution might be relatively small, but collectively, as a result of years of Internet activity, this becomes a significant.

At the same time people are beginning to think about their digital legacy. Those digital or virtual assets in the form of photographs, music, blogs, information, and other data that may be typically overlooked in terms of financial or monetary worth. Digital Legacy has been described as ‘the birth of a new industry' as new companies are being created to hold secure encrypted access to digital assets, to be released upon the proof of a users death.

In contrast to the legal, finical and officious aspects of digital legacy I’ve been wondering about what will happen to our Internet presence once we are gone. This is particularly true when we consider the rise of the phenomenon of social networking especially amongst the over 50’s is creating millions of personal archives.

So should someone notify our friends and followers on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other services after our death. Would we want somebody to remove our material from those services, or to leave it there as a memorial? More than a quarter of a million Facebook users will die this year alone.

Importantly, how long will our blogs, tweets and other material remain on the net if nobody removes them? History shows that even the most prominent technology companies can be rapidly overtaken by competitors or deserted by customers. It’s possible that some of our material might disappear along with the demise of our favorite platform. I grew up believing IBM would permeate our personal and professional lives for example.

Twitter

Whislt Twitter’s search only goes back a few days, every public tweet, ever, since Twitter’s inception in March 2006, will be archived digitally at the Library of Congress. Twitter processes more than 50 million tweets every day, with the total numbering in the billions. So there is a very good chance our tweets will be archived for many many years.