Mark Baard has a knack for fringe science and, let’s say, odd areas of technology.

The renown Boston tech writer and Boston Globe columnist will get to explore Boston’s boldest and outwardly oddest people and discoveries in the world of science, technology, gadgetry, medicine, research, and much more with today’s launch of THE SCI-TECH HERETIC on BlastMagazine.com

“Boston is home to the world’s biggest risk-takers in science. Doctors dosing their patients with “Phase 0″ super-longevity compounds. Cyborgs trolling about with augmented vision and artificial smarts — and tracking chips under their skin. College professors moonlighting as UFOlogists and crypto-zoologists,” quipped Baard. “Now, the only place to meet these people is at Blast, and The Sci-Tech Heretic. I’m here because John Guilfoil knows a bit of our future lies inside all of that ‘crazy talk’ about science.”

The blog, located at http://heretic.blastmagazine.com covers everything from Scooby-Doo’s connection to Cryptology to artificial reality. It is the latest addition to BLAST: BOSTON’S ONLINE MAGAZINE, a 250,000-reader Generation Y-themed lifestyle publication founded here in Boston.

“This is simply a perfect fit for Blast,” said John M. Guilfoil, a Boston news reporter and the founder and editor-in-chief of Blast. “Our readers have a thirst for the latest technology. The weirder, the better.”

“Mark Baard is a name in the field of sci-tech in Boston,” Guilfoil continued. “He adds to Blast his level of professionalism, expertise, and name recognition in the local scene. We’re ecstatic to have him with is.”

“Blast is an outpost for real world journalism, in a world made surreal by out-of-control technology. There is simply no other place in Boston where you will find this kind of reporting, or The Sci-Tech Heretic,” said Baard. “John is brave and smart enough to try something different.”

ABOUT BLAST:

Launched at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve 2007, BlastMagazine.com, Blast: Boston’s Online Magazine, has grown like a weed for three years. It is a Generation Y publication focused on young, hip Bostonia with a global vision. Blast covers music, movies, tv, video games, fashion, food, sex, relationships, science, health, technology, and more. The site also covers world, local and national news. According to Alexa.org, Blast is the third most followed online publication in Boston behind Boston.com and BostonHerald.com. Blast has more than 100 contributing writers, bureaus in New York and San Diego, and reporters on three continents.

We talked to Barracuda Networks, a California-based company best known for its spam and virus firewalls. The company also offers storage, backup and e-mail archiving solutions.

The controversy originated from a Boston Globe request to review e-mails from advisers to Mayor Thomas M. Menino. But city hall could only account for 18 e-mails sent or received in a six month period from Michael J. Kineavy, Menino’s Cabinet chief of policy and planning and one of his closest advisers. City hall acknowledged that Kineavy deletes his e-mails on a daily basis, which circumvents the city’s nightly backup process. The city has said Kineavy’s actions exploited a glitch in the backup process because he both deleted his messages from his inbox and cleared his deleted items folder.

Government officials’ e-mails are a matter of public record.

Kineavy has since taken an unpaid leave of absence. But could this all have been prevented?

After talking with Barracuda and doing some of our own research, it is clear that City Hall addressed the issue of preserving its e-mail messages incorrectly. Boston’s backup process is a poor solution for archiving e-mails, and it runs contrary to accepted best practices.

“Relying on users to save e-mails (i.e. ‘do the right thing’) and not delete e-mails is prone to failure as people can mistakes,” said Barracuda spokeswoman Kylie Heintz.

Having faith in traditional backup systems is not the right answer. Even without the “glitch” that allowed e-mails to be permanently deleted, the City of Boston’s approach to ensuring all e-mails are saved by backing up the e-mail system was not ideal.

–

There is a functional difference between “archiving” and “backing up.”

Archiving is like storing e-mails in a filing cabinet in your office or an alphabetized library card catalog. Backup is like locking them all in a safe deposit box in the bank, behind a time-lock and a password that only the bank manager knows.

Backup systems typically compress all the files and messages into a single file — similar to “zipping” your photos so they take up less room on your hard drive. This creates another problem, because it’s more difficult to search inside these compressed files.

Even if Kineavy hadn’t deleted his e-mails, it still may have been difficult for the city to find, isolate and release his messages.

A backup process is routine, predictable and easy for an end-user to avoid. These processes rely on the end-user’s system. Products like the Barracuda Message Archiver and many of its competitors completely take the end-user out of the equation. An archiver is ideal in these situations, because these products save messages at the server level. Whenever an e-mail is sent or received by the server, the archiver takes it, copies it, saves it and makes a search-able index so that messages can be found later on.

Since public officials’ e-mails need to be saved, it is expected that they will need to be searched through at some point in time — like if a journalist requests copies of them. Backup systems are not designed with archiving in mind. The only way to access e-mails from backup systems is to restore the backup file and then manually search through the results. This is very time consuming, error prone and expensive.

Several cities in Massachusetts use hardware archiving solutions, and Heintz confirmed that some used Barracuda’s Message Archiver. None of the cities would go on the record for Blast, however, given the controversy surrounding e-mail

Boston’s backup script was a good solution for a disaster or system failure, but not necessarily the best solution for a public records request. Archiving is a superior method for public records requests.

“Organizations have needs for both,” according to Aseem Asthana, Message Archiver Product Manager at Barracuda Networks. Backup is vital to organizations. If something happens to an e-mail server, or a natural disaster wipes the server out, a backup can be used to restore all the data present at the time of the backup. But pulling individual files is more difficult. Often, an information technology professional is required to restore individual files from a backup.

An archiver, as opposed to a backup, allows e-mails to be accessed readily and seamlessly.

Menino’s office did not respond to a request to comment on this story.

We acknowledge that Barracuda is a for-profit company. Its Message Archiver starts at $1,999, but it would cost about 10 times that for a model amped up to serve a major city like Boston.

But it would also have saved a few headaches and maybe prevented Boston’s E-mailgate scandal.

John M. Guilfoil of the Blast staff contributed to this report.

Clarification: We changed the sentence “A backup process is routine, predictable and avoidable.” to “A backup process is routine, predictable and easy for an end-user to avoid.”

I actually really like writing about the weather, and I love weather maps and statistics and even lightening storms.

But I wasn’t prepared for the response I’d get for a simple story about advection fog rolling over Boston on Tuesday.

There were emails about conspiracy theories — people thought the government was sending Swing Flu through the fog. There were emails calling my an idiot, telling me to get a real job and write about real things. There were references about Kennedy flatulence. And there were cool emails with photos.

Here are the photos.

Three children are also being treated at Children’s Hospital Boston, according to Boston’s Channel 7.

According to The Boston Globe, the truck may have lost its brakes coming down a steep hill and lost control.

Turn to The Globe for more information on this story.

Blast will have its review up by midnight with a second review to follow by our renown “Twilight” detractor, Kellen Rice.

Not since 8-track tapes to cassettes have cars seen as dramatic a shift in accompaniment than with paper maps or printed driving directions to GPS units.

They’ll get you where you have to go. They’ll show you where to eat, sleep, fill the tank, and bring the kids.

Blast teamed with Boston.com and tested nine of the latest, greatest portable car GPS units recently to see what the easiest way was to get from point A to point B. The results surprised us.

We tested the Garmin Nuvi 880 and TomTom Go 930. We paired those with the Garmin Nuvi 205 w and TomTom XL 330 S. We also tested the affordable Navigon 2100 max and pushed three Magellans to the limit: The Maestro 5310, Maestro 3250, and RoadMate 1430.

We also tested the cartoony Knight Rider GPS by Mio, featuring the voice of K.I.T.T., the talking car from the 80s television show that’s making a return to the airwaves.

We were ok with the blinking red lights and talking car voice of the Mio Knight Rider. What we couldn’t get past were the inaccurate maps and addresses. This surprised and disappointed because the Knight Rider GPS is brand new (actually it doesn’t come out for another week) and many maps in suburban Massachusetts needed updating.

Knight Rider by Mio
$299-$269
Now available

Pros: Fans of the 80s television show (new series premieres Sept. 24) will love it. It greets you by name and with blinky red lights. You can turn all that off if you want.

Cons: Outdated maps and poor directions mar the good visuals and intuitive destination searching. The Mio also has a poor docking cradle that doesn’t charge the unit and is bound to break on you. Awful battery life that crapped out in an hour.

Overall: It seems like the Knight Rider would have been better at $199. Mio makes a decent GPS though, and they offer great value, especially considering their Mio Moov 200 sells for under $150 and gets the job done.

We tested the Garmin Nuvi 880 and TomTom Go 930. We paired those with the Garmin Nuvi 205 w and TomTom XL 330 S. We laughed at the Knight Rider GPS by Mio, featuring the voice of K.I.T.T., the talking car from the 80s TV show that’s making a comebac. And we pushed three Magellans to the limit: The Maestro 5310, Maestro 3250, and RoadMate 1430.

We also tested the affordable Navigon 2100 max with the lane assist and ZAGAT point of interest features turned on.

The Navigon 2100, at $199, is a great buy for a no-nonsense navigator. It’s a cheap GPS without all the bells and whistles. You can add bells (real-time traffic updates) for a one-time fee of $99; and whistles (ZAGAT survey ratings and reviews) for $39.99.

You can also buy Navigon’s FreshMaps service, which offers 12 map updates over a three year period for a one-time cost of $79.99.

But then you’re not really dealing with a cheap GPS anymore.

Let’s say you don’t want any of these features. The 2100 still has a bunch of built-in features like Lane Asisstant Pro, which visually shows you what lane you should be in for a merger or upcoming highway exit. This was a very, very useful, free feature.

Navigon 2100 max

$199
3.5 out of 5 stars

Pros: A surprising amount of features come packed into the $199 Navigon 2100 max. It speaks street names and shows 3D images of road signs when you’re approaching splits and complicated intersections. For an extra charge, you can also add traffic updates, 3-years of map updates, and Zagat restaurant reviews.

Cons: It’s low on the points of interest, delivering “only” 1.6 million. Most GPS units give you 6 million. The cradle is a bit tricky to put together. The font displayed on the screen is WAY too small. The last thing you want to do is squint to see the text while you’re driving. The interface is intuitive, but the “buttons” on the touch screen are too small.

Overall: It’s a value GPS, but it has the same size screen as the Garmin and TomTom we tested. If you don’t want the extras like traffic and Zagat, you don’t have to buy them. This keeps the base price low. At $199, what have you got to lose?

It’s grilling season. In celebration of all things eating, I wrote two most fun articles in The Boston Globe — one about eating al fresco all over Boston and the other where I got to test out four different grills, eat a ton of food and see which grill cooked them the best.

Yeah, life is rough.

Following up on my grilling story, Weber shared a few ridiculously good-looking burger recipes, and I think you need to have a look.

Weber’s Hollywood Cheeseburgers with Mushrooms and Brie

Prep time: 10 minutes

Grilling time: 8 to 10 minutes

Burgers

1 ounce dried mushrooms, such as shiitake
1-1/2 pounds ground chuck (80% lean)
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon dried tarragon
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon granulated garlic
1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

2 ounces brie cheese, thinly sliced
8 slices sourdough bread, each 1/2 inch thick
5 lettuce leaves
Wholegrain mustard

To prepare the burgers: In a medium bowl, cover mushrooms with boiling water and allow them to soak until soft, about 45 minutes. Drain the mushrooms and squeeze out the excess water. Blot the mushrooms with paper towels, cut out the tough stems and discard. In a food processor, process the mushrooms until finely chopped and place them in a medium bowl. Add the remaining burger ingredients and gently mix with your hands. Shape into four patties, each about 3/4 inch thick.

Grill the patties over Direct High heat until medium, 8 to 10 minutes, turning once. During the last 30 seconds, top the burgers with the brie and grill the bread until lightly toasted. Serve the burgers hot on the toasted bread with the lettuce and mustard.

Makes four.

Weber’s Cheeseburger of Champions

Prep time: 10 minutes

Grilling time: 8 to 10 minutes

1 ½  pounds ground chuck (80% lean)

1  tablespoon ketchup

1  teaspoon dried basil

1/2  teaspoon dried thyme

1/2  teaspoon kosher salt

1/2  teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

1/2  teaspoon Tabasco® sauce

1/4 teaspoon fres

hly ground black pepper

4 thin slices Monterey Jack Cheese

4 hamburger buns

4  lettuce leaves

4 tomato slices

In a medium bowl, using your hands, gently combine the ground chuck with the ketchup, basil, thyme, salt, Worcestershire, Tabasco, and pepper.  Gently shape into 4 patties, each about ¾ inch thick.

Grill the patties over Direct High heat until medium, 8 to 10 minutes, turning once.  During the last minute of grilling place a slice of cheese on each patty to melt, and grill the hamburger buns, cut side down, until toasted.  Assemble the cheeseburgers with lettuce, tomato, and ketchup and/or mustard, if desired.  Serve warm.

Makes 4 servings

©2005 Weber-Stephen Products Co. Recipe from Weber’s Real Grilling™ by Jamie Purviance. Used with permission

The collection has all 30-episodes on 6 discs, giving you almost 19 hours of one of the best programs on television.

Discovery put out the entire fourth season “as they debunk, decode and demystify some of the most popular urban myths and legends. Using modern-day science, they put each myth to the test – from concrete gliders to anti-gravity devices – separating the real from the really out there,” they said recently.

They don’t just tell myths, they put them to the test. Watch for Earthquake Machine, which ends with some really surprising results. Also, Killer Cable Snaps ends by disproving that a tension cable snapping away will cut a man in half. They also revisit several myths that viewers questioned the results of.

This one is a must have. Mythbusters is one of the most popular shows around, and here’s your chance to avoid having to buy them episode-by-episode. Get the whole season in one box.

On that note, I humbly submit this news story that I recently wrote for The Boston Globe.

On December 27, a mobile home trailer exploded in the driveway of a home in Plympton, Mass., sending its occupant flying out through the front door and into the nearby woods. The lucky man was not seriously injured. The explosion was caused when the man, who had no sense of smell from a previous injury, was fixing the heat on the trailer. The trailer filled with gas and exploded.

“His eyebrows were gone and his hair was singed, but he was OK,” fire officials said. The occupant, whom Rich did not identify, refused medical treatment.

There you go, Adam and Jamie!

Episodes include:

• Confederate Rocket
• Vodka Myths
• Steel Toe Amputation
• Seasickness: Kill or Cure
• Paper Crossbow
• Shredded Plane
• Archimedes Death Ray
• Helium Football
• Franklin’s Kite
• Cell Phones on Planes
• Bullets Fired Up
• Myths Reopened
• Mind Control
• Exploding Pants
• Steam Cannon
• Killer Whirlpool
• Crimes and Myth-Demeanors 1
• Crimes and Myth-Demeanors 2
• Shattering Subwoofer
• Deadly Straw
• Earthquake Machine
• Diet Coke and Mentos
• Killer Cable Snaps
• Concrete Glider
• Air Cylinder Rocket
• More Myths Revisited
• Exploding Lighter
• Anti-Gravity Device
• Firearms Folklore
• 22,000-Foot Fall

Let’s all congratulate Dan Peleschuk for having the main story on page one of The Boston Globe today!

It’s not the happiest article in the world, but its excellent reporting and writing showing just how amazing our humble Culture Editor is.