Since the early days of IM (instant messaging) people have been looking for ways to connect better online.  I mean connect with something other than typing LMAO (Laughing my ass off) or LOL (Laugh out loud) these are short acronyms we use when chatting online.  They have been around since the early days and now instead of typing those letters we can now actually laugh, talk, and hide on Video Cam.

Voice and video in Gmail only works with the newer version of Gmail in supported browsers: FF 2.0+, IE 6.0+, Safari 3.0+, and Google Chrome.

Google has release a download plug-in that lets you use your Voice and Video with GMail.  I had the joy of testing it today with some of my twitter friends.  Once the download is done it makes you close your browser then it reopens and now lets you connect your voice and video.  While there are other services out there that let you do this with minimal cost Gmail lets you do this for FREE.  Yes understand that this happens only with Gmail and your browser, you can not tie this to your Gtalk application.  This confused me at first because I downloaded the plug-in and then tried to use it with Gtalk.  So remember this it will help you save about 15 minutes of troubleshooting, why it’s not working.

Google as usual gives you alot of information at the following link http://www.google/videochat

Something that I didn’t expect was the 30% off Logitech webcams on the link above this alone is a better saving than any where on the net at this time, also FREE Shipping please use the link on the Gmail/videochat site for the discount.  This is in place until November 30th, 2008 so order soon.

Have fun with the product, you know I did.

TBTR

Not more than a couple of weeks ago I wrote a story called “Talk about EPIC Fail, I got a Colossal EPIC FUCKING FAIL LHW.com” I wrote the story because of my disappointment with LHW.com and how they handled a admited colossal FAIL. It looks like the powers that be have decided to enrich the community and try this promotion again but with better results.

They have enlisted the help of Akamai Technologies, Inc. to help provide the needed bandwidth for this promotion, something they should have done in the first place but were either to cheap, or didn’t know the old network would bog down and Fail. Regardless I’m happy they have fixed the issue and I’m also happy the are going to try the promotion again details to follow on October 17, 2008.

Check the website often and see if you can get in on booking one of the Leading Hotels of the World at the amazing rate of $19.28 per night rooms.

Promotion Link to rooms for $19.28

TBTR

EPIC Fail

I truly believe that some system administrators don’t get it when it comes to internet traffic and the power of the media. So yesterday I was surfing the local news site AJC.com and found the following story Luxury hotels offer $19.28 per night needless to say I fell for this hook line and sinker others did too. At Hotelchatter.com they posted Yeah, We Got Totally Shut Out of the LHW $19.28 Sale Too. As I understood it the World Luxury hotels were going to offer rooms in some of the worlds best hotels for $19.28 in celebration of being in existence since 1928. This was all supposed to unfold at 8AM Est time on October 1, 2008.

I show up at the website ON Freaking Time and I hit the link http://www.lhw.com/1928 and this is what I got immediately:

Needless to say I hit update like a gazillion times trying to make sure I was not gonna get cut out of my share of low cost hotel rooms.

Anyone who works on the internet or makes a living on the internet knew this was gonna be a huge deal when it comes to internet traffic and system resources. So Truth is I was at the website early, I made a point to get up and out of the house just to make sure I was at work and in line to get one of the rooms at a great rate. I really feel for the people on the Pacific coast they were truly hoodwinked, the constant updates or refresh of the website did nothing for me, until about 10AM when I got the second message saying this:

I’m sitting in my chair at work like WTF, these bastards made me get up early get to work, take the time out and your not even gonna have the promotion now because some snot nosed kid in your data center can’t figure out how to off load some traffic through routing and sever timeouts. I was ready for a revolt against all hotels today then the next message came:

Oh I’m still pissed and unsatisfied I don’t think they understand what they just did, I don’t have many friends who stay and luxury hotels but hell I really did want to try out The James in Chicago. I guess that won’t happen now or maybe one day it will I am still pissed and not happy but this goes to show you, idiots are all over the world.

Next time you guys at LHW.com decide to do something like this call some fucking experts not your cousin Johnny who thinks he knows networking you guys truly suck MONKEY BALLS. IMHO

Thanks,

TBTR

Cuil is the name of the enormous search engine that launch back in July of this year. The media was a buzz, bloggers were ready for what we all thought would be a new take on search engines. Have you ever heard the words EPIC Fail? To everyones dismay the launch of the search engine did nothing more then explain why Google and a couple of other search engines are gonna be #1 and #2 for a long time. Cuil tries to explain a lot about the system on the FAQ page.

Cuil’s claim to fame was two fold 1.)It was started by a former Google employee and 2.)It was supposed to have indexed billions more pages than Google or any other search engine combined. What they didn’t tell you was just be cause we have indexed billions upon billions of pages does not mean its in a readable wonderful interface.

As Cuil launched back in July the strain was so heavy on Cuil that the whole system crashed, I guess us geeks got the word and started searching. All of my searches were like the bridge to now where I searched for my name and found some other guys picture over my name it was weird and since then I have not really been back to Cuil.com until today.

On September 24, 2008 Cuil posted on their blog saying they are putting their heads down and getting back to work on Cuil, I guess that bridge to no where didn’t work for them either http://www.cuil.com/info/blog/2008/09/24/welcome-to-the-blog. It’s amazing how the launch gained so much exposure but the reality is that cuil was not ready for prime time.

Opinion: In my opinion the only way you get listed in Cuil correctly is if your a star or your site is mega huge. Test your searches against google.com and you will see what I’m talking about. Cuil had to go back to the drawing board because what they created was just Hype, now it seems it’s just too late to make a difference. To reinvent your self less than 2 months after launch is ludicrous and on top of that has to be very costly I would hate to be the VC watching all this unfold.

TBTR

Micro blogging has been around for a while now but lately it has taken off growing by leaps and bounds. Can you update your friends and colleges in 140 characters? It’s harder then you think and by no means is it easy when the real estate is so limited. So what happens when you want to save and share a URL link? As we all know some URL links could be 50 characters all by it self. so the shorter a URL is the better that is for you and what you want to say to the world.

Tweetburner lets you track what happens with the links you share on Twitter.

Last week I came across a URL shortner called Tweetburner. Not the shortest name for URL shortners but it ties statistics to those URL’s so you can gauge how many people click the link. It’s always good to know if people are really clicking your links. There are a number of URL shortners on the net, I found a blogger at cusumingexperience.com who created a blog post back in May of 2008 about is.gd called “Shorten URLs via is.gd - free bookmarklet for URL redirection“.  Mashable created a post showing “90 of the top URL shortening services”

The reason why I’m talking about tweetburner is two fold, not only does it work but you can create your tweet right from the tweetburner website which will let you login to your twitter account and/or friendfeed to send a post right from the site. Most of the other URL shortners don’t do that cause they were not made with twitter specifically in mind. Give tweetburner a try if you want statistics or give is.gd a try if you just absolutely have to have the shortest URL.

I found a video of Tweetburner which explains a bit and shows you what it does check this out:

Enjoy,

TBTR