I always thought that it was something of a scam to become a mystery shopper, where you pretend you are a real customer on behalf of a survey or customer experience vendor. Turns out that I was almost right, and lately a number of “opportunities” have turned out to be scams. The New York State Attorney General recently shut down several of them who attempt to pay you in advance with a bogus check. After you deposit their check, you are asked to wire a portion of the funds to someplace else. Guess what? The check bounces, and your payday turns into mayday when the bank now wants to collect the funds that you thought you had.

True mystery shoppers do exist, but they typically handle smaller jobs, and don’t get paid in advance: indeed, it can take 45 or 60 days before they collect their “wages.” That isn’t a way to get rich quick. But there are a number of legit opportunities out there, and if you browse on over at this website, you can search for dozens of them in your particular area from reputable companies.

Yes, they have a trade association, and a conference next month in San Diego, and certification for those legit vendors that are out there. Plus a great video too that highlight the key points from the association and the NYS AG too. (That is where the pic of our bad guy above is taken from.)

You should be suspicious of any checks or work-at-home opportunities that come to you unsolicited via mail or email. Promises of easy money are almost certainly scams. Remember, if it seems too good to be true, it generally is.

If you are asked to pay a fee to join one of these programs, run in the other direction. The legit operations all have you sign up for free.

There is virtually no legitimate reason for anyone to give you a check or money order and in turn ask you to transfer funds via Western Union, MoneyGram or any other wire service. No legitimate company conducts business in this manner. They are playing the float game and taking advantage of you.

Mystery shoppers set up through legitimate companies are generally paid after completing their assignments and returning their evaluations to the companies that hired them. They do not receive checks up front.

Individuals hired as mystery shoppers are often provided gift cards to the specific retail locations they are being asked to review. Any out-of-pocket expenses are nominal, and reimbursed by the employer. The payments that I saw on the association’s jobs board were around $10 for each assignment. Some were for $20. Again, you are not going to get rich doing this.

A familiar name does not guarantee legitimacy. The website above lists their certified vendors. Use it.

What would you do if the US Government shut down the entire text messaging system for all business users who wanted to send out more than five texts at one time? Think it would never happen? Well, not right now in the States, but for the past several weeks this is the case in India. The government feared that hate speech was being transmitted via SMS and also shut down several Twitter users and websites as well. When people complained, they changed the ban from five to 20 concurrent texts, but as far as I know, the ban is still in place.

As I read these reports over the last week, I got chills running up my back. And India is supposedly the world’s largest democracy. With close to a billion cell phone users, it probably has more technology in one place than perhaps anywhere else. The stakes are high.

In July, “some multimedia messages and websites contained video footage purposely doctored to incite violence. In some cases, altered archival video was portrayed as contemporary footage from the northeast [of India]”, according to the IEEE Spectrum. The messages led to a mass exodus from the northeast as people panicked, thinking the violence was more widespread than it was.

The ban was for all commercial texts that had 5 (or 20) recipients: individuals’ texts weren’t part of the ban but were limited to sending no more than 25 KB of data through their mobile phones. The Indian government has done this before two years ago, facing similar domestic unrest.

We Americans tend to take for granted our freedoms of speech and freedoms of electronics. Most of us can access the Internet freely at home and at work, and at any number of places in between: libraries, coffee shops, even the jury assembly room where I am sitting right now typing this out in downtown St. Louis. We expect that our Internet access isn’t filtered or blocked, and that we can say what we want when we want with whatever device we choose to use.

And certainly it would take a lot of work to censor the Internet in the USA: there are numerous ISPs and redundant pathways that would have to be taken care of to truly isolate or block someone or something, and then chances are someone else would find a work-around, such as any number of data to SMS services that have been around for several years (Google has one, for example). Senator Lieberman had this crazy idea several years ago for a simple Internet kill switch: it was nothing more than political rhetoric and he later backed away from the characterization, although still insisting that the government needed a way to turn off parts of the Internet during crises.

There will always be bad actors using the Interwebs, and have been since its invention and early use. We need to be more skeptical when getting texts, emails, and Facebook requests and ensure that what is being said is accurate before we pass it along to our own chain of contacts.

I had a meeting yesterday that drove home the dichotomy of our virtual connections. It was supposed to be a standard have-a-drink-to-meet-the-vendor-after-the-conference kind of thing, a chance to see a new company (who will remain nameless) at the Gartner Catalyst show that I am attending and covering for HP’s Input/Output website this week in San Diego.

I had never met anyone from the vendor, nor my intended companion, but both sounded interesting. He brought along his chief nerd and the meeting started falling apart quickly, as Mr. N (let’s call him that) proceeded to fiddle with his iPad. I thought he was queuing up a presentation or a demo for me, so I didn’t give it much thought.

But then I noticed something odd: as long as I was talking to my companion, the marcom guy, N wasn’t part of the conversation. When I asked a technical question, N immediately piped up with an extended and quite cogent answer. It was as if he was present in two different places: online (or in iSpace, or whatever he was doing with his tablet) and in the here and now, part of my press briefing. It was a bit offputting, to say the least.

It became clear that N was socially inept, perhaps somewhere that could be diagnosed, and didn’t want to be part of my briefing. He also brought along his smartphone, and just as I thought I would get at least a nanosecond of his direct attention, he picked that up and started messing with that.

In all of my years of taking these kinds of meetings, this was a new one for me.

It brought home the point: Never have we have so connected virtually and so removed when we are in person. How many times have you gone to dinner and had one of your companions proceed to have a conversation with a caller, one that lasted not just a few seconds but several minutes? Or a series of text messages? A few years ago, I met a friend of a friend who brought two cell phones to the table, and alternated back and forth with calls from both of them. I thought that was rude and odd behavior, but I am seeing that more and more.

According to Pew, we have an average of 229 (or 245) Facebook friends, and we make seven new ones each month. In my generation of older boomers, we have 85 friends in our network on average. More often, I am hearing from my “real” friends who are going dark on Facebook, or defriending their networks down to a reasonable number.

Indeed, history was made this month when I finally topped my 20-something daughter in terms of Facebook friends: but not by my adding more of them. She was doing a mass delete of people that she didn’t remember that were on her network.

I guess this is a natural backlash of being too connected. But I wish we would just learn the basic social graces of in-person connections, too. Take a moment to exit that electronic cocoon and meet someone eye-to-eye and have a conversation. And thank you.

Are you as Mars-obsessed as I have been in the past week or so? Maybe I shouldn’t have started things off by watching the original Total Recall movie starring Arnold in all of his campy best. The current remake doesn’t even take place on Mars, which is truer to the original Philip K. Dick short story. And the more that I have been learning about the JPL rover Curiosity, the more I want to know. It is almost as if I once had a memory implant like the characters in the movie.

Certainly, the successful landing of Curiosity is something for all geeks to celebrate. It is an amazing achievement of science and engineering, and kudos to the many men and women that have played a role in getting us to the Martian surface once again. One look at the record of attempts and you can see that the Russians haven’t done so well as the Americans. It is another space race in the making. You might remember that the Mars Climate Orbiter failed when engineers mistook metric system measurements in their calculations. The probe burnt up on its too-fast descent.

To get a better feeling about how many different moving pieces it took for this mission, watch this NASA video called Seven Minutes of Terror. NASA really knows how to put together a great story.

The problem is that the landing had to happen completely under computer control, because Mars is so far away that the human mission controllers couldn’t do much in real time. It takes radio signals about 14 minutes to reach Mars, and the landing sequence is about half that time. During those seven minutes, the spacecraft is transformed several times as bits and pieces do their jobs and are then discarded. If you have ever seen the original Saturn V rocket that powered us to go to the moon and compared its huge mass with the tiny capsule that actually delivered the three astronauts back home, you get the idea.

Curiosity had to deploy the largest supersonic parachute but that wasn’t enough to slow it down in the thin Martian atmosphere. It also needed a special rocket braking maneuver, and then was lowered gently to the surface with a series of cables. All of this gear had to work, and about half a million lines of computer code too. And did I mention the two orbiting communications satellites that are part of the total package? Curiosity needed those to enable the data and pictures from Curiosity to reach us back here on earth.

Curiosity is Plutonium powered, rather than solar panels. The previous Mars rovers had solar panels but because Mars is so dusty the panels wouldn’t collect much energy over time. Plus, Curiosity is about the size and weight of a small car, which makes it more power-hungry.

And of course the coda to Curiosity can be found with one of its mission controllers, Bobak Ferdowsi, who became an Internet meme after the landing. Thanks to an odd Mohawk, a great Twitter ID (@tweetsoutloud) and a heavy female fan base, he now has his place in history as the modern-day replacement for Gene Kranz’ white vest. More on that vest here from the Smithsonian.

Now all we need is an updated replacement for Tang.

I got to attend an event sponsored by Ford last week in Detroit. They hosted more than 250 bloggers to hear their take on trends in the car industry. I came as someone who is not much of a car nut, but interested in what they had to say.

Photo c/o jcrivasdiaz on Instagram

Some brief personal history: I have owned less than five cars in my life, buying my first car at age 30 when I move to Los Angeles. For most of my life, I have shared a car with my wives (I know that sounds funny but anyway), and have lived in areas that rate high on the WalkScore.com scale. More on that in a moment.

Over the past several years, I have driven several Fords as part of their press reviewer program, and indeed this experience got me to buy my current car, a Lincoln MKZ.

At the event, we heard from Bill Ford, the great-grandson of Henry and board chairman. I came into this session with a very cynical attitude and came away very impressed with his down-to-earth, matter-of-fact manner. Bill Ford isn’t trying to take over other transportation modes but cooperate and indeed layer cars on top of them and encourage more multi-modal travel. For those of us that live in urban areas, this is basicall how we live our lives. When I have to go to the airport, I try to take our light rail line. When I have a meeting that is less than 5 miles away, I try to bike or use transit. Or schedule meetings that are in walking distance of my office.

While coopetition is the natural way of the IT world, it was nice to see it coming from such an old industry as cars. Bill Ford said he has been an environmentalist since 1979, and wants to make small, efficient cars fun to drive and compelling outside of their green cred. That makes sense to me. Ford was one of the first companies toput lots of tech into the lower-end models, and still does. Yes, you can buy a fancier infotainment system from BMW and Mercedes, but that isn’t the point. Ford combines small cars loaded with technology, and deliberately so.

At Ford’s clay modeling studios.

It also seems that Bill Ford is trying to be the Mark Zukerberg of the mobility industry. Or maybe the other way around. Both want to provide more tools to make the experience (driving, networking) easier, cheaper and more ubiquitous.

Part of this democratization is taking a new turn. In the post-war era when I (and the rest of the boomers) was born, that meant buying a house in the suburbs and buying at least one if not two cars. That model is officially over. Today, the cool GenY kids are moving near the central business district (CBD) of urban areas. It isn’t the picket fence that is important, but being closer together.

Ford demo of its biometric real-time analyzers at their R&D center. You can see heart and respiratory monitors on screen.

At the conference, we heard some interesting stats. In 1980, young people were 10% more likely to move near CBDs. Now GenY is 42% more likely to be near the CBD. If they have graduated college, even more so. Gen Y is getting their driving licenses later and driving fewer miles. They are putting more money into technology and replacing car trips with online socializing.

Clearly, cities are attracting smarter and younger people.

Why is the CBD attractive? It is because they have access to more stuff to do, and that stuff attracts more and younger and better-educated people to live there. “Stumble on to the fun” is the concept that I heard at the Ford conference from urbanist Carol Coletta.

People are choosing to be closer to where they shop, eat, and entertain themselves. It is a powerful motivation. There is research to show that people are paying a premium to live in these more walkable neighborhoods. I am one of them.

The website WalkScore.com has attempted to quantify this by rating your address by how close you are to that stuff. If you haven’t seen this, you can go over there now and get your rating. Mine is 86 or “very walkable.”

But what does this to do with anything? Having this influx of talented young folks help to drive a higher quality of life and in turn helps to attract and create more jobs.

The idea of doing “buffalo hunting” by cities – looking for big employers to bag and bring to their areas—is passe. I attended a press conference last week at our mayor’s office where he celebrated adding 25 new jobs from 15 startup companies who are moving into the CBD of St. Louis. Think about that – in years past he probably wouldn’t have taken a phone call from any of the entrepreneurs that were standing up with him at the event. Our mayor, like many, realizes that making these entrepreneurs succeed will bring more jobs and more smart people into town.

Just as this represents a big sea change for economic development and city planning, it also is a big change for corporate America, such as Ford. Look how far they have come in the 100 years since Henry first started building cheap cars for Everyman.

Back then Ford enabled the suburbs by making these cheap cars. But that doesn’t fly now. They have to make the cheap cars fun to drive.  “We want to offer a premium experience to the mainstream customer,” said one Ford executive. Call it the democratization of design. Why is Martha Stewart doing products in Target, and $30 Payless shoes being designed by mainstream designers like Christian Siriano?

Ford is no longer “just” a car company, but a full-service mobility provider. It was exciting to see some of this at their event. Here are some of the photos that I took during the trip.

If it is April in St. Louis, it is time for our downtown to be swarming with thousands of the smartest kids on the planet. They are here to participate in another First Robotics Global Competition, one of my favorite events to cover. For those of you that haven’t yet heard about this, the kids take part in this very fun and challenging event. They have to build and operate robots of varying shapes and sizes, depending on their age group.

The event is held in our indoor football stadium-cum-conference center, and it is big: both buildings are filled with so much positive energy and the level of activity is enormous and loud. There is an area where the robots are being tweaked and fine-tuned, called “the pits” which is as active as a pit crew in an auto race. There are conference sessions where mentors talk about techniques that will help the teams develop the skills they need. And then in the actual football arena is the competition area where the robots do their thing. This year the older kids’ robots have to gather and shoot basketballs, which sounds easy until you see it in action. The younger kids have Lego Mindstorm obstacle courses to navigate.

The amount of team-to-team cooperation is awesome: One team based in Detroit lost its sponsor and another team took the time to build its robot. Another team from Arizona helped draw attention to its mostly Hispanic composition to bring other teams into the competition and to bring awareness to science and math education in the state. A team in Hawaii needed to bring the number of total teams up to become a regional event: they started with four teams and this year they have more than 30. Last year one team’s robot was lost by the airline baggage handlers, and within a few hours after a call had gone out the team had enough spare parts to rebuild their own robot and get back into the competition. Imagine if our World Series or Superbowl gave out awards for this kind of team spirit rather than honoring a single player.

As Dean Kamen, the originator of the event and the inventor of the Segway told me this week, “There are no losers to this competition.”

I am amazed how many girls make up the contestants: some teams have more girls than boys on them. In a sense participating in First is like building an actual business that has just a few weeks to operate. There are lots of different roles besides building the bots: there is marketing, creating a business plan, publicity, fundraising and other tasks. One of the kids told me, “you need to have a team that has to have a long-term sustainability plan; you have to have money and community partnerships.” Does this sound like a child talking? Exactly: what is going on here is building character, building entrepreneurism, and celebrating smarts. Where can you find all of that in one neat package?

First attracts a boatload of corporate sponsors. Many of them are your typical high tech corporations that have a lot of science and engineering talent and want to promote their brands. I spoke to a representative from the Gates Corporation, which is a century old and makes rubber belts. They have been a sponsor for many years and also provide a set of college scholarships along with a trip for high school seniors to tour their engineering plant. You would at first think that a company like this would be the last place to be here. But no: every robot has some kind of gearing mechanism, and this low-tech company is actually working on some interesting high tech materials for bicycles, for example. They donate a half million dollars worth of belts each year to the various teams, in addition to their scholarships.

Speaking of scholarships, First isn’t just about bots shooting hoops. There is serious money on the line for the graduating high school seniors, and one part of the convention is devoted to schools that are trying to snag the kids to come apply.

Can’t come downtown this week? Don’t worry: you can watch a video that I did last year if you want to get some sense of the activity and energy of the kids at the competition.

One of my first careers after getting out of college was being a professional photographer in upstate New York. It didn’t last long, once I realized how competitive it was and how long I would have to work at menial tasks if I wanted to break into the big time in New York City. But for many years I had a home darkroom and could develop my own pictures. I had some adventures, such as meeting the great documentary photographer W. Eugene Smith and even had an exhibit on a city bus. But despite these excitements, the job seems like being an employee in a buggy whip factory. Now don’t get me wrong: I don’t miss the lengthy process of all that chemical preparation and expensive equipment to make a print.

The story of Mike Daisey and Foxconn’s labor practices is a story of our times: what is truth and what is fiction, how workers at a Chinese factory that supplies many tech products are treated, and how we as Americans should feel about the people who make our iThings and other tech toys.

Daisey is the monologist of the widely popular stage play, “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs” that just finished a second run at New York’s Public Theater, one of my favorite venues. In the show, he describes the state of the Foxconn factory that he visited several years ago: the employment of underage workers, their long hours, a worker who is maimed, guards at the gates and other details. Turns out he didn’t really observe much of this, and took liberties with the facts.

This all came undone when Ira Glass, the producer of “This American Life” radio program put Daisey on one of his shows in January, at about the same time that various news reports appeared in the New York Times and elsewhere about Chinese tech labor abuses.

Glass is one of my heroes: I have seen him live do a stage version of how he puts together his show, and I am an avid listener too. He was uncomfortable with Daisey’s portrayal and when one of radio colleagues who covers China raised red flags, he dug deeper. So deep that he ended up retracting much of what Daisey stated as “fact” in a radio show broadcast last week. I believe this is the first such time that Glass has done this in many years on the air and with producing hundreds of broadcasts. It is an extraordinary piece of radio.

The hour-long broadcast is at times painful to listen to but shows the efforts that Glass and his staff had to go through to get at exactly what happened, and what is happening at Foxconn. Daisey squirms and evades direct questions. He posits that there are two levels of factual accuracy: one for journalists and one for the theater. He apologizes to Glass, but only for allowing his work to be aired on a news show, not for lying to his listeners. Daisey, on his blog, states in his defense about his monologue: “It uses a combination of fact, memoir, and dramatic license to tell its story, and I believe it does so with integrity….What I do is not journalism. The tools of the theater are not the same as the tools of journalism.”

Well, let’s just say that I have a different definition of integrity than Daisey does. When I write my stories that you read, I try to make sure that I have accurate information ALL THE TIME. To me, my veracity is a non-renewable resource: once it is gone, you the reader aren’t coming back.

The whole Daisey dust-up is doubly ironic, since one of his earlier monologues was called Truth. It follows the fictional and nonfictional stories of James Frey. Frey, you might remember, was outed on Oprah as making up many of the elements in his own memoirs (and from which our lead icon was taken).

But no matter whether what is and isn’t true, there is a bigger issue, and one that Glass gets to in the waning moments of his broadcast last week. How do we, as consumers of tech, feel about using products that are produced from less than humane working conditions? A hundred years ago or so, American factories employed underage workers (you can see the fine documentary photos of Lewis Hine here and one sample above that brought this practice to an end), long hours, and unsafe working conditions. It is as if, as Glass says, that we have exported this time capsule to China.

Daisey’s efforts and other actual news reports have shed some light on these practices, that much is true. And eventually Foxconn was motivated to raise their workers’ salaries, as the Times reported here last month. But that could be because of increased competition, not increased compassion.

In the meantime, if you have the time, listen to Glass’ program. And think about these issues the next time you buy your tech gear.