I’ve come to rely on Mahalo for those times when Google spits back too many results for me to filter. Mahalo does a great job in bringing the most relevant results to the top of the page. I also like how they keep the presentation to a minimum. It’s clean and easy to navigate.

But I noticed one major problem today: The guides that create the pages cannot be informed about every topic, and some topics will require a person who really knows the product, service or brand to understand what others will be looking for and expect in a results page.

I’ll give you an example: Find the Mahalo page for the BMW 3 Series. Granted this is a product that has many rabid fans and BMW owners are a demanding bunch. They not only understand the history and culture surrounding the car, but they will be well-versed in its competitors and community. In a nutshell, they will know more about the car than a guide at Mahalo who has never owned a BMW and is creating the page based on Google search results.

I spent less than 15 seconds looking over the Mahalo page for the 3 series and could tell you it was created by someone who doesn’t own a BMW or knows much about them. And that’s a problem, because I expect this page to have been created by someone who knows MORE (or at least as much) about the BMW 3 series than myself. Corvette, 911, GTI, WRX, S4 and a host of other enthusiast car owners will expect the same.

Under the section “BMW 3 Series Competitors” the guide has listed the Lexus ES at the top followed by the Mercedes Benz C-Class and Audi A4. When I saw this, the page lost all credibility. The ES is not a competitor to the 3 Series. But the Lexus IS 250/350 is. The first competitor that comes to mind is left off the list: The Infinity G35/G37 which isn’t listed on Mahalo yet.

Mahalo’s results are still better than a basic Google search. But I expect more. I’m sure it will improve over time. Mahalo has a “recommend a link” feature that, if utilized, will help shore up the results. I created a Squidoo lens that I feel is a lot more in tune with what a 3 series owner or researcher would be after but it took 10+ hours to create.  Some of what I have under the 3 Series Basics should be on Mahalo’s Top 7. Mahalo’s top 7 links to “Car Domain” and some guy named Danny’s tricked out 3 series. Huh? This is just sloppy work.

I will still use Mahalo, but will be watching to see if the guides really do implement user feedback into the pages. Each Mahalo page needs to be more than what anyone could slap together in an hour. Jason Calacanis and his team have been open to suggestions so I have hope this will be improved. I’ll even volunteer to update the 3 Series page for free. 🙂

One of the least favorite parts of my job is doing  the occasional laptop audit at our office. This means I have to look for illegal music and software as well as pornographic material. It’s usually pretty clear when someone has been downloading and collecting such material. We aren’t after the one of two questionable files that could show up through an unintentional pop-up banner. Yet, it never feels good going through someone’s computer even if it belongs to the company. One of the main problems with doing an audit is making sure the procedure is uniform and fair for everyone. It’s one thing to search for illegal mp3 files, but another thing to look through someone’s browser cache.

Recently I read a positive review about a product called Guardware File Audit that appears to be a good solution for the way we check machines. In short, it’s a USB stick with software that checks for pornographic images, video and illegal music. Each stick costs $195 and can be used on an unlimited number of machines. So I bought two of them.

The two USB sticks arrived today and I decided to test it on my home system. I plugged one into a USB port and the drivers installed without a problem. Here is the first screen you see.

I unchecked “Music Files” because I don’t want it telling me the MP3s I trade with my brother and dad are illegal. I left everything else as is and started the scan. Everything seemed to go fine for the first minute and then it hung and popped up good ole’ Doctor Watson. I had to kill the good Doctor which killed the scanning. I tried several more times before realizing it was a single file in my Adobe folder that was causing the problem. Guardware even went so far to show a reminder screen asking that I email the suspected file which is a tiny Adobe icon graphic in .png format to them. I moved the file to my D: drive and started the scan again. About 5 minutes later it finished and presented me with a report of its findings as seen in the screen below.

 I like how it presents the images it suspects are pornographic. All but a few of pictures it suspected were stock photos found in my Adobe directory. The first two pictures of the girl in the hat are of my 6 year old daughter. I’m not sure what they contain that triggers Guardware. As I suspected, my machine is PORN FREE!

Overall, the scan was quick and I think it will work well for our needs at work.

Just for fun, I decided to download a picture of Paris, Britney and Clay Aiken. I selected these three for the following reasons: 

Paris is showing her newfound cleavage but otherwise she’d look at home in a Land’s End catalog. Britney needs to pull up her pants and put on a shirt. But she’s still covered. And I chose Clay for his seductive pose. Guardware says they check for this stuff so maybe Clay’s pose is just too over the top to pass the audit.

I started the scan like I did before and about four minutes later I was presented with the following results which gave me a good laugh. (Click image to enlarge)
 So it’s now clear that Guardware heavily weighs a person’s posture in determining what items to flag. It’s so certain that Clay is porn that he’s flagged 22 times! Paris only gets flagged 6 times and Britney minus her shirt but plenty of plumbers crack doesn’t show up once in the results. Could it be she’s not flagged because the picture is black and white?

I’m not sure what to make of these results, but I’ll bet Britney would be really bummed about them.

A photographer and journalist traveled around the world to see what families eat during a weeks time. They covered 30 families spanning 24 countries. The most expensive weekly total for food belonged to a family from Germany at $500. The least expensive family from Mali was able to feed a family of twelve for under $27 a week.

Their book is called Hungry Planet: What the World Eats and is available from Amazon. Below are a handful of the family photos published by Time Magazine.

Notice how the poorer countries eat far less processed or boxed food. They eat a lot more fruits and vegetables it appears from these pictures. And I sure didn’t know that Canadians eat polar bear!

Click picture to begin slideshow.

Guatemala: The Mendozas of Todos Santos
Food expenditure for one week: 573 Quetzales or $75.70
Family Recipe: Turkey Stew and Susana Perez Matias’s Sheep Soup