Living Large in Los Angeles

I had a chance to head to Los Angeles this past week for an opportunity to take part in a holiday commercial for my employer. They had originally put out a request for employees to participate that received hundreds of responses, of which they picked 200 to fly into our corporate campus to do a video interview. From there, they picked 30 employees for the trip to California.

The flight in was comfortable and the September weather in Los Angeles was amazing, coming from Ohio. Although I was only going to be in town 2 days, and working most of the 2nd day, I made sure to get out into the Burbank area surrounding the hotel I was put in.

Monday came quicker than I expected, which meant lots of preparation before going into the stage area. There were wardrobe and make-up trailers to be gone through, forms to be filled out and directions to be given. Eventually, I was taken into stage 6.

The technology on the set was fascinating, with wires and monitors everywhere. Having a black and white uniform, with its stark and contrasting colors, meant that the lighting crew had to spend extra time trying to get the light and shadows in the area just right so that everything would look its best. However, the crew was polite and patient, so things went pretty smoothly and comfortably.

Once they were ready, I spent the better part of the next hour and a half standing in front of the green screen answering questions about my job for the director and following his directions on where to look and speak. It flew by, though, and before I knew it, I was back in the trailer where the other employees to be filmed that day were.

Although I have no idea if anything I filmed will make it into the holiday commercials, I’m still extremely glad I had the opportunity to participate.

Missing Ohio Votes Raises Technology Concern

We all have seen what can happen when a computer crashes and valuable work is lost. Many people swear a few curses towards their PCs, but then resolve themselves to the idea that this is just “one of those things” you have to accept when it comes to dealing with computers.

What if, however, those computers are touch screen voting machines and that lost data are votes in a national election?

This is a question that faces Premier Election Solutions, the company formerly known as Diebold Election Systems, which recently admitted that a programming error in their voting equipment has been responsible for dropping votes in some of the Ohio counties that use the devices.

According to the Columbus Dispatch, the company had originally claimed the issue stemmed from an incompatibility between software on the voting machines and anti-virus software installed to protect them. However, in August, the president of the company sent a letter to Ohio’s Secretary of State confirming that the problem is with a programming error that under the wrong conditions can lose votes when the system memory cards have their contents uploaded.

Because the admission comes just a few months before the November election season, it’s unlikely that the programming error can be corrected in time. This has resulted in guidelines being issued jointly by Premier Election Solutions and Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner to Ohio counties on how to work around the issue in the meantime.

The issues with the touch-screen voting machines raises another issue, though, which is how to handle what is a technical issue using the already understaffed polling station volunteers in Ohio. Equally important is the lack of tech-savvy volunteers willing to man those positions.

This has lead to widespread calls for technically-inclined citizens, especially in Ohio, to reach out to their local Ohio County Board of Elections to help reduce the technology problems that may negatively impact every voter’s right to have their vote count.

This story also serves as a good reminder for all of us to start the discussion in our communities about how much impact technology may play within future elections and how we can help our counties and states overcome those issues.

Google Chrome Now Available for Download

Google has just released their first public beta for Google Chrome, a brand new web browser based on the Webkit codebase. Currently, only Microsoft Windows is supported with an available download, though there are links to register for updates for Linux and OS X.

For a detailed, though entertaining, explanation on why the company is working on their own web browser, visit the Behind the Open Source Browser Project comic.

Exactly how much of an impact the release of yet another web browser will have is still undetermined, but if any company can make it big, it would probably be Google.