So I got an email today from the folks at Gizmo5, the SIP voice over IP service provider bought by Google back in November 2009. Here’s what it said: Hello, Gizmo5 is writing to let you know that we will no longer be providing service starting on April 3, 2011. A week from today, March 11, 2011, you will no longer be able to add credit to your account.

For years I’ve been using the same link structure on every Wordpress site I operate: example.com/year/month/day/post-title. I opted for this method because I liked that it gave time context to the content right inside the URL. Plus, my links looked fancier & more impressive! Recently I’ve decided I don’t like this so much anymore, mainly for one reason: it’s not easy to tell somebody a link like that in conversation.

For the past couple of weeks I’ve been an entrant in a competition called the Ultimate Blogger. When I submitted my entry & started promoting it, I figured I’d get a respectable number of votes, but it would be a ludicrous understatement to say that about what’s actually happened. Within a couple of days I’d managed to grab 2nd place and pass 1000 votes. At this point I’m a little more than 2 weeks in & have almost 4200 votes, putting me in 3rd out of nearly 500 entrants!

We’ve all seen them: links in somebody’s Facebook or Twitter post to something through bit.ly, goo.gl, j.mp, etc. These services are a great way to consolidate big, long, ugly links into something more manageable & space-saving. However, they’re also fairly anonymous. You’ve probably also seen short URLs that are associated with a certain brand or company, such as Amazon’s amzn.to, The New York Times’ nyti.ms, or even Christiaan Conover’s cnvr.

I don’t typically like to do things like ask for votes or otherwise campaign for my own stuff on this site, but this one’s pretty big and I need your help. You see, Endras BMW in Toronto is running a contest to find a blogger to hire full time. In addition to the opportunity to try out a new & unique experience, the perks list is pretty significant. Plus, it’s great exposure & opportunity to make connections as I work to establish myself in this industry.

It must be security month here on my blog, since I’ve already written a couple of posts on that subject, with one or two more on the way. Regardless, I felt this was important enough to share with readers. Google announced yesterday that they’re enabling two part authentication on all Google accounts. Originally offered back in September 2010 to Google Apps customers, this security enhancement feature is now rolling out to users of standard Google/Gmail accounts.

As anyone who knows me well will tell you, I’m kind of a security geek. I’m fascinated by encryption, data protection, strong passwords, and generally locking things down just because I can. For a long time there was a challenge with some of my friends to see if any of them could get into my computer, or at the very least figure out one of the 4 passwords required to boot it up to a desktop.

Like 111 million other Americans, I watched the 45th Super Bowl, though my team unfortunately didn’t make it. Unlike a number of years past, I actually watched for the football, but of course I watched the ads as well. There were a number of funny, amusing, clever & cute ads, and even some that were downright bizarre or straight up hot. Some of the car commercials avoided the humor route and went straight to the point.

I realize that this is actually kind of old news (a week or so), but I still felt it was important enough to share with my readers that may not be aware of this feature, and the reason for needing it. Facebook recently enabled the ability to use a persistent secure connection to their servers when accessing the Facebook site. What this means is that, once you turn it on in your account settings, all data sent between your computer and Facebook will be fully encrypted.

Yesterday I received a new piece of equipment for doing shows & field recordings: the Zoom H4n. This is a portable stereo recorder which can support up to 4 channel simultaneous recording, using a combination of the built-in stereo condenser mics & the XLR & ¼” combination inputs. This is just an unboxing video; the demo & review video will follow shortly after.