Omniblog

This is a comment I recently posted to a friend’s status about, well, broken ice makers and tea using Facebook’s new Email reply feature.

I was using Gmail when I did it, so I am not sure if other email providers would cause this same issue.

So, it does work, but they obviously have some kinks to work out.

Facebook Email Reply – Use at your own discretion and don’t expect it to look pretty.

It’s that time again. Time for a big ass music festival that rocks. And, thank God it’s in October.

It doesn’t look like it’s going to be near 90 the entire weekend. Sweet. Now, I have not been to ACL since 2003 (its second year). I volunteered the first 2 years, but things got in the way and I never really went back.

This should be fun, but that’s not the purpose of this post. This post is meant to show up somewhere in Google for people that have AT&T and a 3G phone (in my case, an iPhone), and they are attending ACL this weekend.

As most of us know, AT&T’s 3G infrastructure in Austin blows donkey wang. I mean, seriously big donkey wang. So, there’s a possible solution that actually never entered my train of thought:

If you are going to ACL, turn off 3G this weekend.

See if it helps. Rumor has it, any major event: UT game, festival, etc, it’s best to turn off 3G if you use AT&T.

Yes, your ACL iPhone App or Facebook or whatever else might run a little slower, but damn you can make calls and send text messages to find your buddies. And in a big ass festival like this, that is quite important.

Happy festivaling! Stay hydrated and cool and I’ll see you around Pearl Jam, Kings of Leon or Dave!

Dear Adobe and posters on FML,

1. I’m starting to think the “Me and my spouse were having sex, when they stopped so they could harvest their crops in Farmwhatever in Facebook” posts on FML are fake. I mean, sure there are some really stupid people out there, but still, this is a little ridiculous. On the flip side, they could be true, and if they are, then I think my head just exploded.

2. Adobe – You’ve had long enough. Isn’t it about time you released a 64-bit Flash Player? I think Flash 10 is done. So, chip-chop with 64-bit.

Sincerely,
-Me

All excited about Windows 7!? C’mon, you know you are! I know I kinda was because it wasn’t Vista.

I liked Vista for a little while, then when I started doing stuff with my photographs, I learned that the Vista file exploring interface can go right to hell, now.

So, I installed Windows 7 Professional in a Virtual Machine, and played with it for all of 10 minutes before I decided:

1. No way in hell am I installing this as a production OS now
2. The file browsing is still stupid
3. If I do install it, I’m installing Home Premium.

If I still hate it after the first service pack, maybe I’ll just get a Macbook Pro (15 inch screen please). If I’m going to keep doing photography as a serious hobby, I need to do it on a Mac, not a PC.

I will still, however, use a PC, with Vista, for my desktop.

But seriously, Windows 7 – Not as impressed as I thought it would be. On the outside, it’s all shiny and new, on the inside it’s a steaming pile of crap, so far.

So, with Tweetdeck 0.26.4, you cannot see your own tweets like you can with other clients, and older versions of Tweetdeck.

However, if you try to add yourself to a group, this is what you get:

What’s wrong with that picture? I mean, seriously.

I’m afraid to hit “Follow”. I really am. I’m afraid I might cause TweetDeck to spontaneously combust.

As I posted a while back, I was testing something with Twitter with regards to who you follow and what you type, and how that relates to robo-follows.

Well, just today, I decided to do something. I took my test account and followed everyone it suggested.

In the span of an hour, I had 15-25 followers. I then followed a few more random people, and I had 5-10 more followers.

Right now I’m sitting at 228 following, 38 followers with 3 random updates I did (one is a recent RT cause I could).

This could get interesting. I am going to start doing more random follows soonish and see if I can get above 50-60 followers without really doing anything.

Stay tuned….

Facebook Usernames are Coming!

I had a totally clever post about this whole thing in my head and then once I decided to write this blog post I though “Who the hell cares?” If you do a search, there’s a blog post that someone did outlining what might happen when this all takes effect. Wow, I’m sorry that you wasted your time with that blog post Mr/Mrs/Ms Blogger. I did this one in a lot less time, and got my point across. Is it humorous, yes, but kinda stupid IMO.

As far as user names: MySpace does this, and did this very early on, LinkedIn does this, Flickr does this, a lot of other sites do this.

Attention people freaking out: Get a damn life. I think I see Perez Hilton hitting on Ashley Simpson’s husband. Now, go, fetch and have fun.

This is nothing new and innovative. Facebook is simply playing catch-up.

Yea, I’m done. Carry on, nothing to see here.

I have been on Twitter for a little over 6-7 months now, I think, and I have always wondered “Where the hell do these random people that follow me come from?” Granted, half of them are spam type accounts that get removed, but still, we humans are a curious bunch.

So, I have decided to embark upon a little experiment involving a test Twitter account, and keywords.

Every few hours or so, or when I think about it, I will post tweets to my test account with nothing but random keywords that I think might trigger a follow. I will then keep track of which keywords generated followers. I can probably partially figure out why certain people followed me based on the keywords I used.

Now, here’s the part that makes this kind of tricky, I am not sure if just posting a few keywords every so often will trigger a suspicious activity warning. I am thinking not because I am not mass following people and tweeting spam. If you’ve ever seen a suspicious account before it gets suspended, you can tell.

The test account will not follow anyone, yet. As time passes, I might start following news accounts, and maybe some interesting news people, and some sports stuff. That will all depend on how many followers my keywords generate.

I will track how many are legit accounts, how many are spammish type accounts trying to promote crap, and how many are suspended accounts (or ones that eventually get suspended).

As a side note, I like the name I came up with for my test account, so I might make a different one because if it ends up my test account gets suspended, that’s gonna suck. Hm…

Some results will be posted here in a few weeks, and then again in a month.

Recently, someone at Time decided to write an article expressing their opinion on what not to do on Facebook. A list of 10 things that are big nono’s if you don’t want to lose friends, respect, or anything else.

“How Not to be Hated on Facebook” – Time.com.

After reading said article, my first thought was “This should be, well, read the subject of this Blog post.”

Now, I will give them some credit on a few things that do make some sense, but 98% of it is just way off base, IMO.

Let’s start at #1 “Stop taking quizzes….”

• These have existed for quite some time in other various formats, and are just plain silly. They are nothing new, just new to Facebook. Sure, most people probably don’t care what fruit you are, but at the same time, they’re all in fun. I am guilty of doing a few just to see what the outcome is. No one should remove you as a friend because you choose to have fun on Facebook. God forbid we have fun. Your friends can also click something to make the results not publish. I’ve done that on a few to spare my friends the spam, but if the outcome is somewhat funny, sure, I’ll publish the results.

#2 (This one probably irritates me the most) “If you sync your Twitter account to Facebook so that you fill others’ news feeds with a constant stream of mundane updates and references to people with little @ symbols before their names, be prepared for people to de-friend you”

• Holy shit. Did I just read that? Hello, what age are we in again? Last I checked, Twitter was mini updates about oneself without all the Facebook garbage. Plus, it’s a great RSS replacement. So, if there are people on your friends list that don’t understand what Twitter is, and there were some on mine but I helped them out, then for the love of technology, explain it to them. I have 2 friends on Facebook that post the occasional Twitter type message in their status (with the Twitter @), and I don’t care. What do you think Facebook is you fuckchimp? It’s full of updates without the Twitterish stuff, or did you miss the part of “Facebook Status”? Sounds like you did. Thanks for trying to make people understand that Twitter and Facebook can’t coexist. You failed.
• Besides, who the hell would de-friend you because you sync up your Facebook and Twitter. Some friend you have there, eh? Facebook is full of silly updates like *gasp* Twitter. I think my head just exploded from reading this one.
• Also, most people I know don’t sync every single retweet or anything else up with their Facebook. They use their own judgement on what to publish to both, and what to leave on just Twitter or just Facebook.

#3 “Don’t friend someone you don’t actually know”

• Now, 99.9% of the time, I would agree with this one; however, with the explosion of friend type games on Facebook like Mafia Wars, there are groups to have people add others to their friends list for the sole purpose of growing their little family in the game. Chances are, most of your friends don’t play. So, you are going to add complete strangers. Is it risky? Sure, but I have not had a single privacy issue with these people I add. We only add each other for one purpose. I block their updates, and I’ve had a few make complete inane comments about something I posted, so I removed them from my friends list. But in general, yea this is a bad idea. However use your discretion on who you add, but then again, you have a brain and probably already know this.

#4 “If you must friend someone you don’t know, include a message explaining why you are doing so. For example, ‘Hi, I’m your cousin’s roommate!’ would suffice.”

• I have one word to say about this, and then I will leave it alone: “Duh” Moving on…

#5 “Actually, no. Why would your cousin’s roommate want to be your friend? That’s still weird.”

• You could’ve rolled #3, #4, and #5 all into one list item. I think you are stretching to find 10 things not to do in Facebook, so you take one item and stretch it to 3 because you can’t think of 2 other things to write. Again, you fail. And, unfortunately I must use this phrase: epic fail.

#6 “Don’t invite people to events if they don’t live in your city. I’m glad you still live in our old college town, but guess what? I don’t. Even if I did, I still wouldn’t waste my Friday night listening to you play music at that vegan coffee shop I frequented when I was 19 because I couldn’t get into bars.”

• Ok, I have a real issue with this one too. This person who wrote this sounds like Cameron from Ferris Bueller “If you stuck a lump of coal up this person’s ass, in 2 weeks you’d have a diamond.” God, lighten up. Chances are they did a blanket invite so they didn’t have to figure out who to invite and who not to invite. I’ve gotten some pretty cool invites to some events that were not in Austin that I actually thought about going to. Example: a friend of mine from high school, his band was playing with Tenacious D for NYE in LA. That would’ve been a blast.
• Besides, how unsupportive can you be of your friends. If you don’t like them, nor like what they do, why did you add them in the first place? You are sounding more stupid with each number. “[W]ouldn’t waste my time…”, you can politely click “No” in the invite and move on. I do it. So can you. I have more to write on this, but it’s all garbled in my head, so I will move on. I think you all get my point.

#7 “I’m sorry your grandfather died of emphysema, but I will not join your ’cause.’”

• See above: unsupportive. Yes, I do understand the reasoning here, but they just lost someone they loved, and that was close to them. I have not really gotten many of these cause invitations for the reason listed here. Again, you can politely click “No” and move on.

#8 “Make sure all your photos are rotated in the proper direction. How will people know how fun your Fourth of July barbecue was if every picture looks like you fell over?”

• Ok, this one I do agree with 100%.

#9 “If you create a group called ‘Lost my cell phone; need your numbers!,’ I will join, but I won’t give you my number.”

• Can I just say something: If you, yes you – author of this article, have friends that do this, then, well, ugh. Plus, if they are your friend, they should have other ways of contacting you besides Facebook. Chances are they will send an email outside of Facebook requesting numbers or what not. or you will have common friends and it will trickle down that way. Without getting really mean, I am just going to leave it at that and move on to the last one.

#10 “Cryptic status updates about your mental state — ‘Rachel is trying so hard,’ ‘Rachel wishes things were different,’ ‘Rachel is starting her life over’ — don’t make you sound intriguing, just lonely and pathetic.”

• Fortunately I kind of agree with this one too, however most of the people I know don’t do this. Sounds like the author of this article has some pretty interesting friends.

That’s it, I think I figured it out. The author of this article has friends that have done one of the ten things listed here at some point, and so they figured they’d write an article about it. I think most of the stuff listed here has probably happened to most of us, but I think all ten things listed here have probably only happened to the author.

Be careful with your Facebook kids, use your discretion and common sense with anything: status updates, pictures, even your cell phone number.

There are more articles from Time on Facebook, and I will surely be commenting on those in the coming days. They are just as much fun to read as this one.

If you own an iPHone or an iPod Touch, and you like doing Sudoku puzzles, then y0u must have:

Sudoku Grab

For only $0.99, you can get the coolest, and best, app I have seen yet.

What does it do? Easy:

1. Find a sudoku puzzle online, in a newspaper, etc.
2. Open Sudoku Grab.
3. Take a picture of the puzzle (Yes! A picture! Even take a picture of a puzzle from a computer screen.)
4. Let the program figure out where the puzzle is located in the picture.
5. Fix the numbers in the puzzle if necessary.
6. Save it.

Voila, instant Sudoku puzzle. The whole process takes maybe a minute. It has a lot of cool features once you get the puzzle into the program and start working on it. I have not yet gotten that far into using these features. One thing is for sure, it will buzz at you when you enter a number in the wrong spot.

Well worth the $0.99.

You can read more about it here: http://sudokugrab.blogspot.com/2009/03/getting-started-with-version-11.html

Now go get it, and happy Sudokuing.