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I admit it. Sometimes I'm just plain wrong.

When I first heard about kickstarter.com, I thought it was a silly idea. What idea, you ask? It's a site dedicated to raising funds for silly ideas. Well, to be honest, some of them are great ideas and some of them are good ideas and yeah, some of them are silly ideas. But they're all brought together on a website and served up to the donating public who can choose to give as much, as little, or nothing at all to any notion they deem worthy.

Each idea master creates an information set - along the lines of a grant proposal, but generally more colorful and interactive, which might include visual, video, descriptions, biographical data, budgets, calendars and so on.

Ideas are grouped according to general topic, so funders can search according to interest: Books, movies, design, music, food and so on. Searches can also be narrowed geographically. Staff picks and other featured selections can be investigated and a banner of random selections can be rolled over and clicked on to learn more serendipitously.

Each project has a target dollar amount it seeks, anywhere from hundreds to literally millions and a target timeframe. If the target amount is not pledged within the timeframe allotted, all bets are off and no money changes hands. If the target is met (or exceeded), donors are expected to pony up and meet their pledges with a check.

Much to my surprise, not only have projects been funded, but millions have been raised this way to fund all sorts of projects, from very arty endeavors, to start-ups looking for the funding to go from idea to VC pitches.

So, whether you've got a good idea, or a good heart (and a good pocketbook), check out kickstarter.com. You may just find the means to a very good end waiting.

Even before my old desktop's hard drive started making strange and clearly EOL noises, I had decided I needed to consider a new computer for editing video and audio. And while Mac and Final Cut are by some considered the sine qua non of video editing, I wanted to be sure I examined all my options.

But once I started digging into the new specs, I realized it had been too long, much too long, since I had educated myself about the meaning of it all. What's a Core i5 processor (from Intel) and why would I want one? Is AMD's Opteron 6200 a viable alternative (as once upon a time AMD was to Intel's technology) and if you read something like this: "Up to 160 percent more cores to handle more VMs per platform and minimize datacenter space" what are you finding out?

I know I need power. I know I don't want a lot of fan noise (often an accompaniment of a very fast machine). I know I want a big, big, big hard drive (I'm working with media, after all, and while compression has improved quite a bit, it's still important to have lots of storage space and tons of RAM for running complex software.) And of course, I'm going to need a very fast, powerful video card to handle the display.

Well, I've more or less figured out that the "core" referred to is the same as the old "dual core" that we used to rave about. Essentially a dual core allowed your computer to work on two processes at the same time (real, true multi-tasking, as opposed to very rapid switching from one task to another, giving the impression that your computer was multi-tasking). So with the i5, and hyperthreading, Intel is claiming that each core can work on two tasks simultaneously, or 4-way, "smart" multi-tasking.

AMD tells us "Comparison of 16-core AMD Opteron™ 6200 Series processor with 6-core Intel Xeon 5600 series processor and 10-core Intel Xeon E7 Series processor. SVR-30 yields up to 160% more cores as compared to the above named processors. Its ability to handle more "VMs per platform" refers to its ability to handle more virtual machines.

What does all this give you? HPC - High Performance Computing.

But (the ever-present big but): All of this is far beyond what I'd need for my relatively simple editing jobs. Still, I'm learning a little of the new language and more importantly, learning that while there has always been an elite among computers and users, the divide between the guys who are creating modern animated movies, searching space for black hole and those of us simply editing a little audio has widened to unimaginable proportions. Once upon a time, I could dream about having the fastest computer on the market available to Joe Citizen. Now even that is beyond not only my means, but my needs.

So where do I go from here? Stay tuned. My shopping adventure continues next time!

It shouldn't be news to anyone who uses it that social media (notably Facebook and Twitter) have crashed more than one budding career. I don't quite understand why people would post incriminating things on their social media sites - particularly things like snarky comments about current employers - but then I don't live by or for my social media posts.

I was more than a little astounded to read recently, however, that some employers are taking what I'd consider to be the incredible step of asking employees for their social media logon information! We can only presume they are planning to police it for anything that doesn't fit their "brand," as it's easy enough to simply follow employees to keep updated on what they're saying without requiring logon credentials.

Survey-takers at American Pulse(TM), a survey organization that is part of Prosper Business Development Corp., revealed recently that most of them would prefer to quit their jobs sooner than give up their privacy.

A mere 11.4% of adults 18+ would comfortably show their social media profiles to a potential employer, with men being slightly more likely (14.7% vs. 8.3%) to do so than women. And while almost 90% of us agree that we bear the responsibility of what we post on our social media sites, just slightly fewer (about 85%) also feel that their employers have no business digging into what they consider to be their private lives - however publicly shared on their social media sites.

I've been pestered by an odd problem lately: When typing in Gmail, not only are the keystrokes painfully slow, but every third or fourth letter will not type at all. I should note that I run two instances of Gmail: one for work, which I have been running on IE 9, and one is a personal account that I run on Firefox. Both were responding slowly, but IE was notably worse. One thing was soon clear: When typing into another type of interface, or on a Word Doc, there was no noticeable slowness or lost letters, so it was clearly something to do with Gmail.(Though I will admit that I swapped out my keyboard before it dawned on me that I was typing just fine everywhere but in Gmail!)

Then I thought it might be a virus, so I ran a virus scan. Nothing turned up.

And I suppose had I been thinking a little more deductively, it would have occurred to me that I was having the same problem on one of my home computers (though oddly, not all of them).

So, I ran a Google search on the problem, and lo and behold, I was not alone in my misery! Several users on Google Groups were describing the exact problem I was having and several users fingered Skype as the culprit. As I don't really use Skype on my work computer, I uninstalled the program there.

Firefox immediately responded and all was well with my Gmail account when using that browser, but IE was still painfully, obnoxiously slow and buggy.

A little more reading suggested that I uninstall all sorts of additional software, with various users having luck with this or that combination of programs.

Finally, one user wrote this: "After more than a year, the slow typing problem of Gmail is still present. Unbelievable, but true.... It is a very bad trick of Google to let people stop using Internet Explorer as internet browser. I found out that the problem exists on both Vista and XP machines with IE7 or IE8. (And I, Nancy, can attest to the issue on Windows 7.) Sometimes it looks like modern, faster, computers seem not to have this problem with IE. So Google is forcing us to use fast computers or another browser which is totally unnecessary because their previous version typed O.K on IE."

So, I opened Chrome and voila! Gmail functions perfectly, problem solved.

Well, the problem is solved for me in this instance, but I make no excuses for Google forcing people to abandon IE when using Gmail in order to get acceptable performance.

What do you do on Facebook when you read a post which you disagree with? Or when you read a post about something sad, bad, mad or dangerous to know? (Bonus points if you get that reference!)

People have actually been clamoring for a "Dislike" button on the popular social site. In fact, not too long ago a petition for such a button was signed by three million people and submitted to the popular, time-sucking site. So far, no go.

While a newish app created by Dean Terry of the University of Texas at Dallas doesn't exactly answer that plea, it does allow you to express disapproval, distaste, even disgust by declaring someone or something an "Enemy." The app is called "EnemyGraph," and it is, contrary to the author's prediction, still available on Facebook, though you do have to endure a warning that you are entering "unsafe" territory before you get to it.

The app's tagline says it all: "Because it take more than just Friends." As any FB user knows, the site is based on "Friends." You "friend" people to share thoughts, pictures, ideas and other information with them. You are free to "Like" and "Share" your friend's thoughts, picture, ideas and other information. You can "Comment," which is an opportunity to express negativity about a post, and probably the worst - though not public - thing you can do is "unFriend" someone: remove them from your Friend list.

But you can't just push a button and express dislike or disapproval - unless you're using EnemyGraph.

Now, granted, EnemyGraph doesn't solve the problem of how to express sadness when a Friend posts something like "My dog just died," but we'll shelve that for now, and just concentrate on the disapproval/disgust type of dislike. The app explains itself this way: "Have a problem with something or someone? You can list & share enemies or any Facebook page: politicians, bands, places, groups, things etc."

It shares this information the way all other personal information is shared: you can set levels, from the world at large to just Friends. And, the app also warns "This app may post on your behalf, including enemies you declared, archenemies you declared and more." I'm not exactly sure what that means, though as you proceed through the install process you are asked if the app can post, with your permission, enemy information "on your behalf," with the reassuring disclaimer that "we'll always ask first."

I'm not sure if the developers meant to do it this way, or if FaceBook, er, "disliking" the application, has made it purposefully confusing, but when you agree to install the application, you are left staring at a big, blank space with some tiny print - which turns out to be the app's options - at the bottom. One of these options is "create a page," and that's the key to EnemyGraph.

Select this option, and things will churn along for a while, and eventually, you will get a page offering you the option to create a page about a local business or place, an entertainer or form of entertainment, a brand, and so on. So let's say you really, really, really didn't like Ashton Kutcher. There you go - start an "Artist, Band or Public Figure" page dedicated to your deep abiding hatred of the "Punk'd" star.

Since I don't really have any hatreds I care to share with my Friends, I'm stopping there. For now, anyway. The election is still a few months away! But, if you're my Facebook Friend, I'll keep you posted!

Did you ever wonder when you see one of those messages informing you that "there is a Java update available," what exactly "Java" is?

It's certainly ubiquitous - as its owners tell us, "Java runs on more than 850 million personal computers worldwide, and on billions of devices worldwide, including mobile and TV devices." You may even have Java running in your car.

Again, according to Oracle, the people who wrote the language, "Java is a programming language and computing platform first released by Sun Microsystems (later merged into Oracle) in 1995. It is the underlying technology that powers state-of-the-art programs including utilities, games, and business applications."

When you download "Java," you're really downloading something called the Java Runtime Environment (JRE). What that is is the Java Virtual Machine (JVM), Java platform core classes, and supporting Java platform libraries. Runtime simply refers to, you guessed it, the "world" that allows a programming language to, literally, run. So when you encounter an application on the web - say, you go to do some online bill paying - that's written in Java, you'll need this "Java Runtime Environment" installed on your computer in order for that application to work.

One of the features of Java that makes it so popular is that it's "platform independent." That means that it doesn't matter if you're running a Mac, a PC, or any other operating system (such as Linux, for example). Java should run just fine on any machine. This is a benefit to website owners, as it means they don't have to program multiple times in order for a game to run on different computers, or even different devices, such as mobile phones, kiosks, or, as I said, your car. Programmers call this WORA (write once, run anywhere). And they like it.

When a Java script is running, you'll frequently see a little notice down in the lower left corner of your screen--and sometimes you'll get a notice that a "script" has stopped running on a particular page, indicating that there is an error in the script, perhaps you need to update your version of Java, or some other malfunction has occurred.

Most often, Java is associated with games or business applications you run via the web. So, you play a game online, or you want to calculate a mortgage payment - odds are, you'll be using Java to do it.

You've heard of drunk dialing, right? That's the unfortunately not-so-uncommon phenomenon of calling someone, typically an ex, when you've had one (or seven) too many, and either a) professing undying love; b) ranting; c) starting an argument; d) hitting redial one-to-one-hundred times, or (possibly worst of all); e) leaving an incoherent and horribly embarrassing voice message. This has become all the more dangerous with cell phones, since we have such easy access to them, and redial is so simple.

Wouldn't you know, somebody has thought of that, and taken care of it. Actually, more than one somebody, and more than one way of protecting you from yourself-on-technology.

DON'T DIAL (for both Android and iPhone, just $.99) "lets you lock out those dangerous numbers (parents, exes, crushes, your boss) for up to 24 hours. Don't worry: As soon as you're sober, they'll re-appear in your phonebook.

You can also opt to make a friend into your "designated dialer," and let them set a password for the evening.

Hangovers are hard. Don't Dial is easy:
•Pick all of your usual suspects from your contact list.
•Choose a block: use the timer, or have a friend enter a password.
•Go out, knowing you're safe from embarrassing drunk dial incidents!
•The next morning, run the app again to unlock everyone.

BAD DECISION BLOCKER works in a similar way, and also protects you from texting while intoxicated, as does NIMBY (No Intoxicated Messaging By You).

"This app strives to prevent you from sending a regretful email or tweet. Once you write you message, the app prompts you to complete one of three tests within 30 seconds. The brain busters consist of a word search, completing basic algebra or navigating a mouse through a maze. If you can't finish in time, you can't send the message." -- www.nbcphiladelphia.com.

And in the final category of "protect-me-from-my-drunken-self," there are social media applications.

Chrome/Firefox: SOCIAL MEDIA SOBRIETY TEST is a simple extension for Google Chrome and Firefox that administers a set of sobriety tests to keep you from drunkenly leaving a post on your boss's wall or sharing your margarita-fueled musings via Twitter.

Similar to the "Mail Goggles" feature in Google Labs—which require you to solve math problems to deter late night drunken emails—SOCIAL MEDIA SOBRIETY TEST locks down your social networks including Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, and Tumblr, as well as a custom URL.

"When you visit those sites between the hours specified in your settings you'll have to take a "field" sobriety test like following a finger drifting around the screen with your mouse or indicating which side of the screen is blinking in a "Simon Says" like puzzle. Fail to pass the test and you can't log in to the social network." -- lifehacker.com

So spare yourself a ticket and the humiliation of the morning after the night before, and lock your car keys in a combination box, and lock your social phone and computer access until you've had a chance to sleep it off!

I think I shared with you a few posts ago a friend's horror story: computer crashed, and she lost all her emails (contacts, etc.). It was a sad day in Mudville. I've always liked the idea of webmail, but assuming you're on a local client (like Outlook, for example), the prospect of moving everything, and notifying everybody, can be daunting.

And we've all had one of those email accounts that turned into a spam collection device: you made the mistake of buying a product online, and after your email address was sold a few hundred times, you found yourself clearing spam out of your inbox for up to an hour a day in a worst case situation.

Or maybe you've built a new website, and you'd like to use your new domain for email, to further promote your site.

This is where TrueSwitch (www.trueswitch.com) comes in. Basically, for $19.95 (or free if you're migrating to one of their partner services) they'll do it all for you: copy your personal data (all your past emails and folders); notify all your contacts of your new email address; forward any emails that come in to the old address.

The copy feature includes copying not just your contacts and emails, but your calendar and favorites as well.

The notify feature will send a polite notification that you've switched email services, or you can customize this message if you choose.

Finally, the forward feature (one that is very important to anyone doing business via email) will watch for 30 days and forward any mail that arrives. Now, one caveat here: it applies to Internet email only, and you must maintain your account for the full 30 days.

And while the normal fee is, as mentioned, a modest $19.95, it's free if you're switching to/from one of TrueSwitch's partners, such as Gmail, Hotmail, Comcast, and a handful of others. (Check the website for a complete list.)

So, basically, what's your time worth? If you reckon it's more than about $20 or so for the hour (or more) it will take you to copy your contacts, write an email and send it to your contact list. (While studies have shown that most users have between 30 - 50 contacts, I have literally hundreds! So for me, the service would be invaluable!) So if you're not happy with your current email service, or you simply want to move to a web-based email service (with all the backup benefits), but you're been reluctant to take on the task, here's an easy out: let someone else do it for you! There's a solution I can feel good about.

Readers of this column know I love it - serendipity. The word is so good I'd love it all by itself, but it's also one of life's little pleasures. (In case you don't know, serendipity is a "happy accident," or "pleasant surprise." I most often think of it in terms of a chance series of discoveries.) On a rather more boring than usual early January day, I was lucky enough to stumble on a little serendipity.

Most often, there isn't really any reason why these things are fun and interesting, but there's no doubt that the Internet has made them far more accessible. Yes, I admit it, I was one of those people who'd go to a library and simply stroll around, looking for the odd book spine that would attract my attention - or thumbing through magazines I'd rarely see to "discover." Later, of course, Barnes & Nobel would do just fine and a cup of coffee, too. But better yet, of course, is simply sitting at your computer and happening on things. This was how I first fell in love with the Internet.

There's even a site dedicated to just that - we've covered that here before. It's called "StumbleUpon," and it's a free-but-subscription-based service that allows users to define subjects that interest them, then "stumble." Content is randomly served up, which users can then rate to "teach" the system their preferences - what amuses or amazes.

Today, I was actually reading through some of the many email newsletters I get (and typically delete). This one happened to be discussing QR codes - again, a subject we've covered in this column. These are the pattern codes associated with products or services that can be scanned by your smart phone, and then that scan used to access more information, such as price comparisons, about that product or service.

The article (from Mobile Insider) was touting the potential of in-store use of QR codes, but acknowledging that unreliable wireless reception was the biggest stumbling block to customers' relying on QR codes to gather information, and next was that old reliable: attention span! While marketers love-love-love the idea of consumers standing in the aisles looking at all the rich content they make available that explains why their product is better-than-great, consumers are not so apt to be easily transfixed. (Actually, have you ever watched customers in a mall or big box store? They're transfixed, alright, but they just keep moving. It's apparently some sort of herd instinct, but I digress.)

What writer Steve Smith finds is that now that (especially tech) store associates understand how to use them, QR codes can be useful sales tools, particularly when they don't understand the product very well.

So where does the serendipity come in? Well naturally, I had to find out a bit more about QR codes, and code-reading in general, and came across this site: www.evoretail.com. Here is a company devoted to retail robotics - and their latest-and-greatest product is something called LaneHawk. LaneHawk is a bar-code-reader that stores can build into the lower part of a checkout counter, and it will read "BOB" items - bottom of basket. So if the customer forgets, or "forgets" to bring the item up and scan it, LaneHawk will read the item's barcode - compare it to the customer's itemized order - and let the store know if the item hasn't been paid for yet.

Who'd have ever guessed?

Many (frighteningly many) years ago, one of my favorite radio shows was the New Music program in the mid-afternoon on the then-student-run WAER (the SU radio station). What I loved about it was the discovery of music that didn't get air time on the commercial stations. You remember those bad old days: we got to listen (over and over and over) to the rotating "top 40" or whatever was the formula for programming music at that moment, and you had a single genre - the station was pop, country, easy listening, or whatever.

How things have changed! One of my favorite music gurus FB posted that we music lovers should keep an eye on two new services, Grooveshark and Deezer. So naturally I had to try them out and see how they compare to services I've written about before, Blip.fm, Pandora Radio and Spotify.

Most of the services do something essentially similar: you enter a song name or an artist, and you'll be provided music that somehow relates. Grooveshark (www.grooveshark.com) adds the neat feature of throwing just about everything an artist has created up when you enter the name of that group. You can then select a particular song, and you'll be shown all the other cuts on that album. You have an option to create a playlist based on genre or artist (or whatever other criteria you might have - like Spotify's "mood," for example); you can link to your social media accounts (if you favorite a song); you'll get album cover art; you can "pin" a song to your profile; and you can see videos created to accompany the music by other fans. Of course there is a "community" where you can meet up with like-minded listeners. The service will supply you similar artists, and offers you the opportunity to buy a song or album. All nice, and while I love Pandora Radio for discovering similar artists and songs to things that I already enjoy, and while I use Blip.fm for both discovery and creating a saved song playlist, I much prefer the idea of being able to program a playlist that I can return to again and again. One of Blip's failures (for me) is that even if I save a song, it's often lost if/when a particular link or version is moved or lost. I'll have to see how long my playlists persist on Grooveshark. The basic account is free (with ads), or you can opt for $5 a month (no ads, online) or the mobile version (again, no ads, $9/month). I may even consider this, as I'd be able to listen via my iPhone while traveling.

In addition to searching for music, you can use the Explore option, which provides artists by type, "tastemakers" playlists, or look for a genre. One small gripe: the play/pause controls are, for me, and on the browser Firefox 9, hidden at the bottom of the screen. But otherwise, you're right, Kevin, this is a service to watch!

His other recommendation, Deezer, isn't new - it was launched in 2007, in Paris, but unaccountably has not yet made it to the U.S.! I'm going to guess this has something to do with DRM (digital rights management). As Wikipedia explains it, "Deezer has negotiated rights to make 165,000 songs available for streaming legally via an agreement with Sony, as well as some of Universal's catalog. After its launch, there were legal issues relating to the uploading and sharing of music on Deezer, but this was resolved when Deezer updated its site on 9 February 2009.

"Deezer was the first music site based in France to sign an agreement with a publisher rights' organization to reimburse artists through advertising revenue.

"There are four million registered Deezer users according to the home page of the website. In September 2011, Deezer stated that there were 13 million songs available on their service."

Deezer evidently allows users to download playlists to their smart phones, and listen when away from their computers. Other features include "the ability to create blind tests, in which one or more songs is played and questions asked about them, and send them to friends on the site. Users can also create a blog page where they can present themselves, copy or share playlists with other members or add other members to their friend list. Also, a mail feature is available to members, allowing them to talk with other members and a music news feature, also available to non-members, which displays recent music news."

Decisions, decisions. I guess my choice of music service will depend on what most intrigues me on a given day: discovery, sharing, playlist playback, and naturally, what music is in the collection. All in all, though, I can't help but wonder what all this is telling us about the future of radio, particularly as these services go mobile - and our ability to connect our portable devices to our car's and home's sound systems.