Facebook…Facebook…Facebook…  I mean what more can you say about the Social Media darling with over 400 Million registered users.  While the light has been shining bright for Facebook there seems to be a new back lash of users who are either deleting their account, or limiting what they say and do on the social site.

I’m not one to speak too much about one website or the other, but at first Facebook was trying real hard to be the top social site on the internet and they have done it for sure.  What is the cost they had to pay to obtain that elusive status?  As of recent there have been reports of privacy concerns and other things that has Facebook under the microscope from the casual user to the seasoned Social Media Junkie.

I ran across an article on the NYDailyNews.com titled “Step-by-step tips to protect your Facebook infomation from ending up on other sites” please take a look at this article if your unsure about how your privacy settings are administered.  I think you might just be amazed at how much infomation your really exposing to the world.

TBTR

Tr.im is resurrected along with the fire storm that started it all, We discuss the new Microsoft Zune HD which is gonna try once again to compete with the Apple iPod, and last we discuss the New Mac OS X snow leopard software that hit shelves on 8/28/2009.

Thanks,

TBTR

FriendFeed was acquired by Facebook, we talk about that and we had our First Official caller into the Podcast Michelle called and we are overwhelmed and delighted to have had her voice introduced into the podcast.

Thanks so much Michelle

iTunes link here

As always comments are welcome

TBTR

While Microsoft and Yahoo pounded out a new long awaited partnership, a small company has firmly placed it’s hat into the arena as a Real-time search engine, Twitter.com.  Twitter has long been seen as a site for uber geeks, and that thing people do for fun, but today Biz Stone one of the founders of Twitter announced on the Official Twitter blog about the new home page redesign.

It looks like they have made a change for the better or maybe the worst (more about that later).  The new design shows a focus on topics that are hot by the minute, day, and month.  This is showing up as a fire storm on the internet it’s obvious that twitter is really trying to make money by positioning themselves in a better way to grow and create revenue.

Twitter began as a rudimentary social tool based on the concept of status messages but together with those who use it every day, the service has taught us what it wants to be. From features invented by users to applications built on the platform, we’re still discovering potential. Twitter has moved from simple social networking into a new kind of communication and a valuable source of timely information. Also, it’s fun.

We all know how many companies have failed at trying to change the original concept of having fun while being different from the rest of the pack.  Twitter will remain different from Bing.com and Yahoo.com which are both horrible in there own little ways.  A head of twitter I see a lot of changes to the culture and pure awesomeness of the site I have come to know and love.  You see twitter while a darling in the social world is burning through cash like Netscape was during the Internet Explorer invasion.  The only way for twitter to survive and stay a float is to do something that gives them more appeal and makes us all look at them like the kid that got beat up on the playground.  You feel sorry for the poor guy, but those who were his friends from the beginning will remain loyal and now tell more friends just how awesome he really is.

The internet has long been buzzing about what twitter can do to start making money, I think this is one of the items on the radar along with paid accounts, which hopefully will give you more capability.  I think the problem with twitter coming up with paid capabilities is the fact that most of what they think up will have already been made by a third party app using the Open twitter API.

While it has been a challenge trying to explain what twitter is to a lot of my friends who are not twitter users, this looks like at least I can tell them use twitter when you want to search a topic that is right now Real-time.  If a huge news story hits the wire, it’s almost a given it was first reported in 140 characters on twitter.  The appeal to a lot of people is the always on and current topics that seem to find it’s way into twitter.  Only time will tell if this “Search Engine direction” is a good move or not, we do know this twitter is here to stay and I’m loving every minute of my 140 characters.

Tell me what you think about twitters new direction by leaving a comment

TBTR

I just gotta say WOW I am amazed at the Google Voice Application for my blackberry.  You can read about it here “Google Voice for Android and Blackberry) While those iPhone users are pissed they didn’t get an application for their OS, I’m so excited I was able to download and update my new Google Voice Application on my Blackberry.

From the Google Blog: So with that, we’re excited to release the Google Voice app for Android and Blackberry. You can use the app to make outgoing SMS messages and calls from your Google Voice number. What’s more, this app improves the mobile experience of Google Voice in a number of ways.

Google released the application today and when I saw the topic trending I went to get a copy immediately m.google.com/voice the site started my OTA download and I was able to input my information to get the application working.  At first it didn’t seem to want to download my info, but after a few minutes it showed my last few calls, and also all the text messages I still had in my Google Voice messages area.

If you want a invite to Google Voice please signup at the google voice invitation link

TBTR

Mashable ran a blog post today called Followformation: Quickly Follow Dozens of Categorized Twitter Users.  The problem with the story in my opinion is it looks like someone at Mashable or someone with close ties to Mashable created this BS service. I mean when you goto the twitter site http://twitter.com/followformation it shows only 130 friends, and 19 updates. The service was started by http://www.aermarketing.com/

It’s not even a well tested services, so what gives Mashable the thought to post about story about it.  I know they report Social Media stuff but damn some things just look weird now days.  It seems everyone is posting links for people in their twitter streams, and they don’t always say “PAID AD”.  You be the judge but there are many services that I don’t have to sign up for to get the same kind of information.

This story is just bland in my Opinion.

TBTR

I ran across a story just a while ago from Mashable: Bing Now Bigger Than Digg, Twitter and CNN.  People seem to wanna give Bing.com it’s props for being a initial success.  Well from the statistics it seems that’s true, but tell me what is the major reason they are getting all this traction?  I have used Bing.com a couple of times but it’s nothing special, it’s just a new search engine.  Microsoft finally got it right don’t try to build off the old search system build a whole new search system.  That is part of the success, but the truth Bing is successful for one reason and one TRUE reason alone ONE HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS.  That is the advertising budget that has been alocated for the serach engine.  Tell me who can’t succeed with that kind of money at their disposal.  Now take that to the bank, IMO the jury is still out on bing.  Lets see how much traction they keep after the money is gone.  You can call me a hater or fill in the _________, but you know how things go with Microsoft they copy successful companies instead of innovate as they claim.

Please leave me your comments about Bing.com and what you think.

TBTR

WordPress hands down might be the best blogging platform around, but with so many changes so quickly do you really need to upgrade today?  I always say when it comes to upgrades on blogs or on standard Operating systems, unless the update is a critical patch don’t upgrade immediately.  Most of the time you find that if you don’t need to upgrade then take your time and let the experts do all the break fix testing.

New WordPress 2.8 Blog Post

Give the community time to download and install especially those who are new to blogging and WordPress.  I would say give it about a month before going for the upgrade and if there are plug-ins that you use check out the developers site to see if they have checked that it works or is having issues before you upgrade.  WordPress is at version 2.8 which means in my opinion if your at anything below 2.7 you need to a least upgrade to 2.7.  With that said please check your plug-ins before upgrading this will help you in the long run.

On the other hand WordPress 2.8 seems to be another great release from the guys/gals at wordpress.org.  They say that over 700 fixes have been made to this version.  WordPress has release a video that shows some of the improvements and I would say those improvements alone are reason to upgrade, but again wait a month and I think you well be out of hot water by then.

Enjoy,

TBTR

Spammers

Looking over my friendfeed today I came across a post from Lockergnome that simply said “Spammers Harvesting Sorrow From Twitter“.
The post talks about how spammers could be harvesting email addresses
directly from your own steam on twitter.  Lockergnome referenced the
article from ZDNet “Spammers harvesting emails from Twitter – in real time”
And while the article talks about a script that can be run to harvest
the emails in real time, we further get a understanding of the Twitter
TOS (Terms of Service).

You are solely responsible for your conduct and any data, text, information, screen names, graphics, photos, profiles, audio and video clips, links (“Content”) that you submit, post, and display on the Twitter.com service.

- meaning your on your own if you tweet something you didn’t like

After reading the ZDNet article I decided to do my own test with tweetgrid.  If you do a little bit of search for things such as “email me at” you can see all kinds of addresses.  A sample search on search.twitter.com using gmail.com OR hotmail.com OR “email me at” Weather these email addresses are valid or not is a whole other story but look at the image below.

Savvy internet users who have their own domains know you can create a temporary address such as info@mydomain.com.  Send that out as a tweet and then after they are done, delete that address.  Situation solved and over in my opinion.  Although for people just coming to twitter and the internet for that matter a little help with this is understandable.  Some people were posting in comments on those blogs that “Well your stupid if you tweet your address.”  While I understand why they say that, most people forget we all come to the internet with limited skills and over time we understand more and more.

Just know this email harvesting is not new, but with twitter gaining warp speed traction in some of our everyday lives we are opening up to those who want to do harm with the info we tweet, always be cautious.

TBTR

((Video attached))

Over the weekend twitter was exposed to what they dubbed the “Stalkdaily worm.”  I got wind of this worm as a tweet from one of my followers on twitter then I followed up and found the techcrunch.com article also twitter talked about it on their blog http://blog.twitter.com/ this weekend.

Next I talked about Smallaa which is a new site that was launched by CEO Tim Lai here is how they describe the service at http://www.smallaa.com

Smallaa helps you bring relevancy to your social interactions by enabling you to follow the most interesting aspects of your friends. The feeds in your multiple social networking sites are combined at Smallaa. Everything you post at Smallaa will automatically goes to those websites. When you and your friends post to different topic of interests, you get to pick and follow what really interests you from them. Friends will in turn want to post more things about your interests.

Last but not least I talk about the Dasher Project this is one of the coolest things I have ever seen, In my opinion the applications for this project are endless, not to mention immobile, and paryalized individuals can type with limited movement using this application here is a youtube video showing how it works. At first it’s confusing, but continue to watch you will get it I swear.  If you want to test for yourself make sure you go to this (java applet) link it’s an awesome product.

Comments are appreciated, enjoy

TBTR

Blackberry App World was launched on 4/1/2009 we tell you some of the detailed info about the service. Tweetgrid is another tool in the arsonal of twitter applications/websites you can explore. Seesmic desktop launched on 4/6/2009 and seems to have put everything in the application including the kitchen sink.

Leave a comment or email at thebtr[at]gmail.com

Enjoy

Tweetgrid has created an accessible page for the iPhone or iPod Touch.  While it’s not a App Store application it does give those iPhone users access to the custom searches and real time updates that makes Tweetgrid a widely used website.

Look here for the iPhone site

Leave comments and tell me how you like it.

TBTR

It looks like someone has finally said, the hell with twitter search I’m gonna create a Plurk search site.  If you don’t already know Plurk is another social site much like Twitter but no where near the mass appeal of Twitter.  I don’t want to make this a Twitter vs Plurk post but lets face it Twitter has some great search resources and while that’s all good.  It looks like someone decided to dive into the Plurk API and create a search site for us plurk lovers.

Plurk History v1.0 beta has arrived and I have to say it looks like they are just getting started so it reminds you of the store bought brands bland but functional.  No flashy icons on the site no catchy name but it does one thing good.  It shows me my old Plurks month by month going back to when Plurk lunched.

Honestly sometimes I have wanted to go back in my stream on Plurk and look at something I posted along time ago but could not do it.  Well now with this site I’m able to look at plurks from November of 2008 with amazing speed.

The cool thing about Plurk is that every update creates a Plurk page where your update is listed with all comments associated with that Plurk.  That is one of the selling points of Plurk a conversation you can follow.

I was able to put in my Nick name and chose the month and year I wanted to go back and within seconds I was looking at my stream of previous plurks.  Since my account is not protected I didn’t have to enter my password.  I’m not too sure about the project yet so I would say if your account is protected on Plurk you probably don’t want to enter you password yet.  At least not until we find out about the publisher of this project.  It’s not affiliated with Plurk so we have to approach this with caution.

This is posted on the site to help those with doubts of entering their passwords… “If you still don’t feel safe enough and you have a private time line you can also change your password temporarily so that even if we stored it (we promise we don’t) we wouldn’t be able to access your data”

I hope that the project finds legs and can stand somewhere on the net because it really has a purpose.

TBTR

Plurk History Link

Plurk History is not affiliated with Plurk.com

It’s always exciting to find new things in the social realm but Social Treehouse seems to be a dud.  Ok here’s the deal I get the concept, but the UI is dismal at best.  It seems someone needs to redesign the UI before I will take this concept seriously.

SocialTreehouse.com is a unique website that brings people together to share videos about events and activities nationwide. People are encouraged to find fun events based on fellow user event reviews and of course by sharing their own view of the event afterwards.

This is one of those site’s built as a “If we build it they will come concept” but you have to have a better UI before the masses will come IMHO.

The concept of SocialTreehouse is kind of cool but it’s needs more work in my opinion, take it for a test drive and tell me what you think?

TBTR

This morning I got wind that Google has worked on giving us loyal users new themes in a blog post called“iGoogle’s got game… themes!”.  It seems they have taken this to another level giving us gamers enough themes to last weeks maybe even months.  As a kid I loved the old arcade games just like the author of the blog post from Google.  I too spent many a weekend in the local arcade at South Dekalb Mall in Georgia.  With the edition of these new themes you can enjoy some of the games you loved as a child and as a grown up.

iGoogle now has graphics from all sorts of games that I know will excite my fellow gamers. Picture your homepage with “Burnout” cars zooming in the background, Ryu from “Street Fighter” blasting hadoukens across your page, or rock stars jamming out to tunes from “Guitar Hero.” It doesn’t end there. For those of you who used to dream about completing the Triforce or getting out of tombs alive, choose from “Zelda” or “Tomb Raider.” Want more? Try “Dungeons & Dragons,” “The Sims 3,” or “World of Warcraft” on for size.

The new themes are located here www.google.com/gamingthemes or you can choose a setting that uses a random theme daily at game theme of the day.

Enjoy
TBTR

Last year I had a problem and couldn’t really attend the SXSW conference in Austin Texas.  This year I begged, begged, and begged some more.  This morning I’m going to Texas.  I hope to bring a little bit of the conference to my users and let you know more about SXSW and also network with other people who are interested in this social interactive world.

Tell me if there is something you want to know about the conference or the attendees of SXSW, leave your comments.

Stay tuned,

TBTR

So it seems once again we are back to the hackers being smarter than the designers. According to recent reports Facebook the popular social site has been infected again with hackers trying and succeeding in stealing your profile password. The worm gets people to click on a bogus adobe plugin that installs a Trojan Horse that allows the hackers to take over your facebook profile and send notices to everyone one on your list so it keeps happening over and over.

TrendMicro has documented the the new strain here.

The key here is to remember the hackers have gotten very good and tricking people into clicking on things and if you really want to be secure just don’t click on links from anyone for a while. This will help but just like a car, if the theifs really want your car they will get it no matter what.

Be careful out there.

TBTR

Google latitude is a new service where you can share your location with friends or anyone else you trust.  Certain cell phone users can use this new service also it runs as a gadget on igoogle.  If you don’t download the phone app you have to manually update the location by typing in your city and state.

Google Video Explaining Google Latitude

If you don’t have a cell phone but, want a real time update of location you can download Gears plug in which uses your wireless signal to determine your computers location. You can also update your status which is tied into your Google talk.  Pictures can even be updated on the fly so you can change your icon.

When I tried to change my pictures from my Blackberry Curve 8320 it froze my phone for a few minutes while it accessed my Media Card, but it was back to normal soon after

Remember this service is opt-in so you don’t have to add all the people you know.  You can even deny people from seeing your location but add them to see their location only.

I think this will change the laws for stalkers, it’s so easy for people to follow you now a days on the net.  As social networking grows, it gets harder and harder to hide from a stalker.  So watch who you follow and more importantly who you allow to follow you.

So as a G33K I had to ask myself how this service works.  I think Google Latitude works by knowing which cell towers your transmitting with.  Then by knowing your carrier they can guess with in so much distance where you are located.  I’m pretty sure their are some other things involved, but I like to guess.

Visit google.com/latitude for the mobile info, and the gears info

Also more links to Google latitude resources:

• See where friends are with Google Latitude
• Locate your friends in real time with Google Latitude
• Official Google Latitude site

We have hit 2009 and some people started their case for world dominance before me, damn you. Over the past couple of days twitter has been all a buzz over a phishing scam that someone is using. While the scam seem to only be a way to send out spam to your followers again here we go with the what if scenarios.

What is a phishing?

(wikipedia.org description)
Phishing is the criminally fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. Communications purporting to be from popular social web sites.

So now that you know what phishing is let me tell you why it’s gonna be around for a long time. Users are gullible, sometimes we click things we should not, sometime we are curious, sometimes the joke is on us. Gone are the days of sending you to a website that pops up 50 windows and it’s like a duck hunt game trying to shot your way out of the maze. Now what people, thieves, and yes sometimes companies, do is make you think that what you saw was real.

Twitter has a API that has been open for a long time, and the authentication has always been a question to me. Coders have no behind the scenes way with twitter to authenticate with any other way but to have users enter their username and password on an off site.

What makes this phishing scam work is the fact that with all the fail whale, and network issues of the past. When people saw the screen shot below at first glance that thought oh here we go again. Twitter is on the fritz but what most failed to do was to just look at the URL and see that it was not twitter.com that was serving up the page.

Will this ever stop?

Probably not but if you have other sites where you socialize you will notice some distinct things that try to help curb users from falling victim. A lot of other sites that have OPEN API’s allow you one password to log on to that service, then when you want to login or tie your account to another site they give you a alternative password. This helps to ensure that you don’t give out your real login password and shall we say hand over the keys to the house. Twitter knows all about this authentication method, why they have chosen not to implement is beyond me.

I think it’s time twitter give it a second look, other wise I for see some people changing their strategy of using twitter as the first line in micro blogging and move on to something like friendfeed, brightkite, or even jaiku (no one really uses jaiku so I’m only kidding on this one) none of these sites do things much better but when people get feed up they move on to the next ship.

Remember boys and girls your password is a very important thing, I blogged about this here in I wonder how many computers will be infected and I still feel people are sleeping on good passwords for access to their online life. Keep your password in your pants that way no one can steal it, for the most part. But seriously just be aware of whats going on, and remember two things if nothing else in this post.

1. No the King of some small country does not really want to deposit 28,000,000 in your account
2. You bank will never send you anything online saying change your password it’s been compromised

Twitter get it right or get lost oh and don’t forget to follow us on twitter.com/thebtr

TBTR

You mean to tell me you have 12 seconds to leave a video about what your doing? Don’t we already have Micro-blogging sites by the dozen. How much time and effort went into making a service or site called 12 seconds. Talk about trying to get the VC money, and then some ridiculous conglomerate to buy you out. I’m so sick and tired of people piggy backing on other services. They say ” oh well what if we decided to take what they do but flip it.” 12 seconds will not be along for the ride too much longer. They want money, they need money to keep it going, so who’s gonna pay up some VC that has nothing but money to hang out the window. When you think about it 12 seconds as a company should last about 12 seconds long.

Most of the videos I see on the site, suck because they try to go past the 12 seconds and then the video looks stupid. The thing just cuts off WTH, I’m listening and your cutting off the video because you forgot this is only 12 seconds long. Think about why it’s only 12 seconds and you will see it’s not because of some crap about we figured that 12 seconds is about as long as the brain can stand to watch some online webclip crap. It’s because the ratio of video to users with 12 seconds cost less then just letting your user go crazy with unlimited time to do nothing but record their living room. One thing is that with the time constraints it does make for interesting videos if done right, I will agree with that.

12seconds.tv allows friends and family to record and share short video updates about what they are doing or where they are. You can use a webcam or a cellphone. It’s a FREE, easy, and fun way to stay in touch.

This is my rant and the truth is we should all be ashamed to follow as the mass of people try every new service or web 2.blah out. Right now this micro-blogging is all over the place and honestly it’s getting out of hand. Who’s gonna take the lead and stay in it for the long haul. We all know Twitters problems about money they turned off SMS for overseas users, and in Japan they have turned on the ads which also lets you know the ads are coming soon. Is it just me or is Pownce the only one that could see, if you give the users something great they can use we will pay for it. Or was pownce so hard up for money that they had to ask for money up front just to keep things going with out losing the farm if you know what I mean.

My prediction is that 12 seconds will only last just about that long 12 months, then some VC or competitor will come in and buy the thing lock, stock, and barrel. I guess I’m a little upset that I didn’t think of such an idea cause the truth this I want an account but I’m so tired of signing up for stuff all over the net.

Enjoy the success 12 seconds,

TBTR

Just a couple of nights ago I was taking a picture with my blackberry, I usually post these pictures to twitpic. Twitpic is a picture service that post to your twitter account from your cell phone, since there had not really been any other services that let me post once to multiple sites. I started thinking wouldn’t it be nice to be able to post to a picture service that can post to not only my twitter account by all my other micro blogging sites? Well I found such a service it’s called Pikchur and this service lets me post to all of my sites with one email.

Pikchur is a simple service that updates your social networks / micro-blogging platforms with pictures!

Supported platforms are:

• Plurk
• Pownce
• tumblr
• Jauiku
• Facebook
• Friendfeed
• Identi.ca
• Twitter
• and Rejaw

Now that you know how many services Pikchur can post to now I’ll walk you through some of the process of setting it up.

Send your piks via phone, mms, email or upload

1. You have to first login to one of your micro blogging sites on the Pikchur website I choose my twitter account.
2. Next you have to configure your posting email address.
3. The system tells you to create a PIN which will go at the end of the email address just before the @ symbol (this PIN is very important so do not make it simple) ( In my opinion the PIN needs to be more than 4 numbers, but that is all Pikchur will allow in the PIN section at this time)
   

After this process you have some settings you can configure

• Additional settings such as Triggers, and Status messages

All and all I tried the system out and it worked perfect from upload but when I tried to email from my blackberry it never showed up, I’ll have to fix that soon or try and figure out the reason why it didn’t work.

Overall Pikchur has a great idea with a lot of potential.

Enjoy,

TBTR

It seems that Jaiku’s website is down as of 9:50PM Est, if you didn’t know Jaiku is another MicroBlogging site. The problem with Jaiku is that no one cares about them anymore. Google bought the company out some time ago and since has done nothing to this service. In my opinion it’s a loss for all of us because it started out with such promise then got bought out and died.

Along came everyone else to show em how it’s done Plurk, rejaw, and others.

I saw this picture on the website tonight and had to post it:

I wonder what they are doing, one thing we know they are not adding features Jaiku still SUCKS!!!

TBTR

Photosynth has failed to deliver the demand was high and the Server Administrators were higher. Photosynth from Microsoft launched just over 12 hours ago and the website is down, and you thought Microsoft does not have these type of issues. Photosynth is a cool new program from MS that takes pictures and kind of turns them into a 3D pic it’s some amazing stuff check this video out:

Maybe they will have the site up and working soon but we all should remember just because you have Billions in the bank don’t think it can’t happen to you..

Enjoy,

TBTR

Yesterday (read the story here) we reported that the popular game Scrabulous had been taken down for the US and Canada customers of Facebook because of a lawsuit filed by Hasbro. Well I won’t say chalk one up for the little guy I will just say, damn the little guys are smart.

The Agarwalla brothers in a very short amount of time have gone back to the drawing board. They have come up with a new Facebook application called “WordScraper” talk about punking someone.

We know Hasbro had every right to file the lawsuit they did against the brothers and Facebook I mean the name was just to similar but now the boys have gone back to the drawing board and created something else similar but with some different rules, now that’s Pimpin to me.

I wonder how Hasbro feels now, not only did they start a storm that according to others could have been avoided but now the brand in some circles may have even been hurt permanently. I mean we know the large number of people on Facebook are probably early to mid twenties. Working successful young people that lets face it don’t like to be told too much on what to do. The Hasbro brand is really faced with a challenge, to fix a wrong they could have avoided. The lawyers that were used in this lawsuit are probably right now trying to figure out another way to create a revenue stream to line there pockets.

Do I think this will hurt Hasbro in the long run probably not most of the people using it didn’t have kids anyways. I will say that this is probably not over and we have just seen the little guy Pimp the big fish.

Wordscraper on Facebook

Hasbro

TBTR

A few weeks ago I discussed my fascination with Meebo in my article “What? You can’t log on at work…I got a solutions” an Online IM program that works from your web browser no application install needed. I found another IM program that goes a step further, the Digsby application has the following connections which any well connected person should have especially a social geek:

······IM (Instant Messenger) – AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, Google Talk, Jabber, Facebook
······Email – Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, AIM, IMAP, POP
······Social Networking – Facebook, Twitter, Myspace

With all those connections from one applicaiton, oh and a recommendation by a reader of this blog I decided to add this program and try it out so here are my findings.

The Digsby interface is fully customizable from the layout to the fonts the whole experience

After downloading the applicaiton from Digsby.com I was able to install the program with no problems. I did like the fact that I could Signup right from the application and create my name with digsby. Once the application was installed I decided to kick the tires and set up all my accounts. I noticed the interface was pleasing to the eyes and was not just thrown together it worked.

It just so happens that a friend of mine was online while I was setting all this up and started a conversation with me. I noticed the window popped up and we started chatting as ususal. Sometimes at work you want things to be a little more private so I minimized the chat window and to my suprise a little little window popped up which I could see what my friend was saying and at the same time it was big enough that I could reply back without opening up the huge chat window cool feature.

While the program has given me some issues once I got it up and running properly this application has turned out to work very nice

Because the system is logged into my Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail account I can see the number of messages or emails that are waiting for me to look at, another cool feature. Everytime a new email is received the Digsby interface shows me a small blurb of the subject line, I also have a small ICON in the bottom right hand corner that represents my Gmail account with a small number that shows how many emails are waiting for me.

The Digsby interface is fully customizable from the layout to the fonts to the whole expericence. Now for the really cool part if you have a blog or website and you want to interact with your customers and/or friends you can place a chat widget on your site. When people see this they can start talking to you right from your website as long as you have Digsby running on your computer at that time, if not I beleive it leaves you a message. This is cool when you want real time communications on your site, no tons of time trying to set everthing up you paste the code on your site and it’s working.

Click here to send me a message in the test area of my site.

All and all i had a great time using Digsby and I’m going to continue to use it for the future, there was only one problem I had which might get a little technical. After using Digsby for a couple of days I noticed now when I start my laptop in the morning I see digsby boot, then display a message from some user who sent the note overnight my Digsby program then freezes. It has happened two days in a row. So the only thing I can do is press Ctrl+Atl+Delete and end task on the Digsby program.

I have gone into the preferences and changed it so Digsby no longer boots on my computer during startup. I’m hoping to get a better response when I boot again, UPDATE>>>well I have booted the system again and now it works properly.

While the program has given me some issues once I got it up and running this application has turned out very nice.

If you are going to download this program remember you have to have administrative right on your machine especially if this is a work machine, if you don’t have rights like that remember to use meebo which I talked about before right here.

TBTR

What is Flock?

Flock is a cross platform browser meaning you can install the browser on Windows, Mac, and Linux machines. Flock is build on another favorite of mine from Mozilla called Firefox. Since Flock comes from the Open Source movement you don’t have to pay a dime for it, remember nadda, nothing. A better introduction on what Flock does is here:

When was Flock Build?

Flock was founded in 2005. The flock founders in my opinion, noticed that the internet was changing when social websites started popping up on the net. They have positioned themselves to understand first what was happening, and make a move in a different direction from a browser/surfing perspective.

Why use Flock?

If your into social sites and you want to better surf the web and stay connected Flock. The Flock browser lets you reach across multiple networks, such as Facebook, Twitter, Pownce, Flickr, and others. Flock lets you share things easily such as photo’s Video’s and links. The Flock browser even gives you a build in blog editor to make blogging even easier right from the browser. More about social surfing of the internet with Flock here:

Conclusion

Try out Flock if your really starting to get bogged down by all the social sites out there Flock has a great way of keeping this stuff in a nice group. The experience is enlightening and I think you will see the rewards very quickly. Remember Flock is different so take your time getting to understand Flock, but I assure you once you get the hang of it your in love.

Get your copy of Flock now

Comments about your experience and recommendations are appreciated.

TBTR

Everyday I learn something new on this thing they call the internet. I wanted to make a couple of tweaks to this blog by adding some graphics and badges.

Badges are used by bloggers to showcase the different social networks they are on with your screen name so others can join or follow you. I was having the hardest time trying to find some for twitter so to my trusted resource google.

While searching google I am no longer surprised at what I find or the quality of the items. I came across a website called randaclay.com which to my amazement had just posted FREE use twitter badges on April 21, 2008. Here is what they look like and a link to them.

(Please do not link directly to these images, I did not show you all of the images on my site.)

http://randaclay.com/freebies/free-twitter-graphics/

I just wanna say thank you to Randa of randaclay.com you saved me a lot of time. Cause trying to come up with a good twitter badge with my Photo Shop skills, might have taken me days. This is a nice way of getting your name out there give it away and they will come another lesson learned today.

TBTR

These days Micro Blogging sites are popping up week by week every since twitter has had their most recent meltdown. Don’t get me wrong twitter still has love in my heart, but that is fading fast with all the issues they keep having read more about that here.

To my surprise this morning around 7:30 or so I got a note from a little birdy named Peety she lives in the Netherlands, ( I follow her on twitter) she hipped me to a new Micro Blogging service called Plurk. Although the names is a bit childish in my opinion I guess twitter was the same when I first heard the name. Plurk explains why that name and gives a pretty good answer about it here.

Plurk as they say on the website is:

“A really snazzy site that allows you to showcase the events that make up your life and follow event of the people that matter to you.”

They have posted a nice FAQ (Frequently Ask Questions) page here. Also if you want to understand Plurk more they have a Plurk rule book. I commend Plurk for these two links because sometimes we don’t get that from websites, to me it shows they want to interact and help the users unlike some sites.

I’m currently giving Plurk a chance, you can add me here or join through this link to automatically friend me. I don’t get paid for this write up so be assured I’m not going to become a millionaire over night this time…

Plurk is not the first.

I want to make sure you guys/gals know there are others in the Micro Blogging world such as Jaiku, Pownce, twitter, and now Plurk. Please understand that each one is a little different but they all share common interest Micro Blogging. I have and account on each site, but I gotta say Plurk has come a long at a wonderful time. Twitter has been on meltdown over the past couple of months people are gathering the pitch forks, Molotov cocktails and ready for a riot over the unstable service that twitter has been so unapologetic about.

Why all the hype now?

It seems the popularity over the weekend for plurk came when Leo Laporte mentioned him I would guess on his radio show, along with others such as Scobleizer and Tech Crunch. This put a lot of demand on Plurk, but they say that they are ready for the challenge lets just hope they can live up to that statement. I see a great place for Plurk in the market place let see how they run this ship.

TBTR

I got wind of a story about twitter today while I was viewing some articles in my google reader (da bomb btw). The story stated that the company Pingdom.com has been monitoring the up-time of social networking sites. Well it should come to no one’s surprise that Twitter.com is the worst out of all the sites listed. The downtime is to the tune of about 37 hours so far this year. The stats have only been recorded since January 2008. As I keep saying Twitter needs to get on the ball and fix the issues at hand cause we the users are feed up at the spotty sometimes unreliable stability of the system. I mean we are already subjected to 140 characters to say what we are doing, just make sure I can post when I want to please powers that be…. Someone at Twitter has to take the position of “Yes…I give a damn” and fix the issues, and while I’m talking about that, can the people who make changes to twitter stop doing things over the weekend that affect my usability. Maybe a couple of apple engineers from the UI department can help us with a better pleasing interface that does not change on a whim. One day I know they will get it right I just hope that happens before we start jumping ship….Please for the love of (Politically correct) who ever you think is the higher power in your life, not letting the other powers that people can thank of down.

TBTR

I ran across an article on Crankygeeks.com about Ruby on Rails. Warning this post might get a bit technical and thus not really interest you, but hear me out for a moment. I heard about ruby on rails, oh 2 or so years ago. Just like some of the other programming languages it has it’s good and bad points. Some would say it takes less time to code in RoR but others would argue your sacrificing something. If you have ever run code, or created code you know the computer systems have a hand in the speed. Sometimes people create code on the slowest computers and never try to upgrade the systems for lack of money, bloated code, or lack of expertise. As many of you know that Twitter has been very slow at times and while that is a burden when your trying to follow a conversation it also gives you a hint to get back to work instead of killing your productivity.

A week or so ago I saw a post from someone saying that a key employee at twitter was fired (The Guy on the Far Left) and no longer working with them. As my understanding this guy had been brought in to help with the spotty and unreliability of twitter in the past few months. To know the guy got fired was a bit dis-hearting to say the least, I mean I didn’t know the guy but for someone who was bought in at the beginning of the year and to be fired already says a lot to me. (btw his twitter account still works)

Twitter sucks as a company has the potential to be a great company and while I don’t live in San Francisco or California for that matter. I wonder if management is jumping to conclusion already about there new hires? Its plain to see that if you hire someone in January and fire them in March or April something didn’t mesh. It could have been a culture shock for both employee and employer but what ever the case. When someone is fired fairly fast it means something just ain’t right. I hope that twitter get a hold of the reigns it seems money is starting to talk and starts to pull in the issues they have on their plate at this time. If management does not get a hold of the issue at hand when the next darling comes along we will all jump ship. Don’t doubt that people won’t jump, look at the Lifecasting relm justin.tv, ustream, and others we jumped for features and reliability this could definitely happen to twitter if the parts don’t start to assemble properly.

Conclusion Ruby on Rails is great…RoR+Twitter=jury still out…twitter management might just need an enema before they lost traction.

Just my two cents (with run on sentences, misspellings, incorrect punctuation, and procrastination laced)

TBTR

Not everyone works from home, and for that matter not everyone connects to the Internet from home. Have you ever been at a place using free WiFi or at work and tried to log on to a Instant Messenger such as Yahoo, MSN, AIM or others? If you have only to be denied access a bit of help is here. While everyone probably knows about these IM clients the world over many people don’t know about the other IM services that are just as good and even better.

If your looking for a IM client that’s great and helps you log into all the other services such as AIM, Yahoo, MSN, and others Meebo is the one for you. Their website explains it best:

Meebo lets you access your buddies on all the major networks (AIM, Yahoo!, MSN, Google Talk, ICQ, Jabber) in a single buddylist, right from your browser.

The main reason for this post is because Meebo has something new if your red bull addicted network administrator has locked down access and you can no longer use your IM client try Meebo. You can log in to the system through your browser, no download and at most companies this works perfect. Understand that on the off chance he or she has done a one up and gone even further. Meebo has now implemented something new called the Meebo repeater they explain it best here:

Meebo Repeater is a software download for people who want to chat safely when their IM access is restricted.

Just install the repeater on a computer that can access the Web freely, and then use that computer to bounce the signal to Meebo. It’s simple and secure.

Although there are other ways that Network Administrators can lock down access to these applications like AIM, Yahoo, and MSN, Admins can implement Group Policies that restrict the use of these applications, and also deny the installation of the programs. The reason why Meebo is great in my opinion is because it works inside of the Internet browser, as I understand it all the browsers from IE, Firefox, Opera and others.

This video shows a little bit about the Meebo experience, The last part of the video is about Meebo me which is online chat but that’s for a more experienced individual if you want more about that click here Meebo me:

No longer do you need to be denied access to your friends, and or clients you now have a real solution that works great. Just for the pundits who might say there are other sites that do this I wanted to link to them here although I have not tried them they are there none the less Miranda, Adium (for Mac Users), and Pidgin (Although I’ve heard reliability problems persist maybe not anymore tho)

TBTR

]]> http://www.theblacktechreport.com/index.php/2008/04/30/what-you-cant-log-on-im-at-worki-got-a-solution/feed/ 1 http://www.theblacktechreport.com/index.php/2008/04/15/twitterplease-dont-do-it-advertising-no-please-dont/ http://www.theblacktechreport.com/index.php/2008/04/15/twitterplease-dont-do-it-advertising-no-please-dont/#comments Tue, 15 Apr 2008 19:40:12 +0000 black http://www.theblacktechreport.com/?p=42

While I was reading my Google Reader post from various RSS feeds. I came across a post that is both exciting and disturbing at the same time. In the article that TechCrunch has posed it seems last night or Sunday Night 4/13/08 twitter was doing a little knocking of the gears and some people said they saw ad’s being attached to their tweets or in the stream of tweets. While the excitement comes for a company that has yet to monetize twitter, the disturbing or disappointing fact remains that we all subcomb to the beast. The all mighty dollar, $$$$, money, duckets, cnotes, hundeds.

As we all know when you run a business it makes sense to operate in a fashion that will eventually make money. Those of us who run businesses and also twitter for business understand the audience is there and ripe for the pickens. I mean it’s not easy to make money from a service that post in 140 characters or less what your doing who would have thunk it.

So it seems like the big bucks have taken a hold of what I considered to be one the truest forms of communications, the talons that the VC’s have now sunk into the twitter head honchos is pretty tight. We always get to see something great turn into something foolish and eventully dead because of the VC’s fast method of “making money”.

I really hope the story is not true but if it is get ready for your post just like your gmail to show you wanted and unwanted ads telling you how great this product is that your twittering about.

Twitter just remember to make a pay subscription so I can immediately turn off my ad as soon as you go live on May 1.

Just my 2 cents.

TheBlackTechReport.com

Podcast #1 July 16, 2007 Show Notes

I am excited to post my first podcast for The Black Tech Report.com I hope you enjoy this and shoot me feedback about the show. I am also posting the video of this show they are both the same although the mp3 has been edited, and the videocast has all the ummms you could ever want to hear. I hope to get better so I don’t spend 2 hours editing the ummms out of the podcast.

Thanks,

Jayson