Increasing Your Quality of Life with Tech
Gaming Foursquare
I guess you can’t really game a game, can you? One man, armed with the Foursquare API and a little coding knowledge, aimed to show potential flaws in the Foursquare checkin system. He checked in at a bunch of locations repeatedly, taking over mayorships across the globe. He mostly targeted well-known landmarks. Being that […]
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High-quality video site Vimeo has made a few upgrades that show they’re keeping an eye on changes in the web. They’ve added support for mobile phones and also optional support for 1080p. More interesting is their beta support for HTML5, which could result in us no longer needing Flash to view streaming video.
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Chatroulette is a service that takes video chat to a whole new level. Not really a level above what you might expect these days on the net, but definitely a different level than what you might be used to. It allows you to video and text chat one-on-one with a random stranger. If you guys […]
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With Google Buzz recently launching inside of your Gmail, many people immediately became concerned about their privacy. The primary reason being that there was a social component inside their email inbox, a place normally reserved for private discussion.
The other concern that arose was the way Google built your network. Most social networks are built, brick-by-brick, by the user. This is a huge pain to repeat every time you join something new. What Google did was use the wealth of information it already has on your to build your network for you and get you started. What they also did was make this new friend’s list visible to the public on your Google Profile page, just like any other social network.
Buzz also has location sharing available, which is a whole other can of worms when it comes to privacy concerns. Which brings us to the website PleaseRobMe.com. It’s a website that monitors location-based checkins and lets the world know when you are not home. Does that scare you?
Regardless of the various arguments, anecdotes, and opinions that can be expressed by these privacy “issues,” there is one thread that remains constant and true:
These so-called privacy concerns are just scare tactics to boost traffic
Think about this logically for a moment. Do your contacts on any social network immediately imply any connection between you and another individual besides the fact that you interact with them on that social network? If my Buzz contacts include Robert Scoble, Louis Gray, P. Diddy, and Barrack Obama, does that mean anything? The answer to both of these questions is Absolutely Not. In order to be afraid (and yes, it is only fear that motivates privacy concerns) of my contacts being made public, I have to make the assumption that someone besides me can make sense of that data. My contacts alone mean nothing to an outside observer.
The same goes for PleaseRobMe. I check in at the grocery store. Suddenly, the world knows I’m not at home. Oh no! Now I’m gonna get robbed because I’m not home. Nevermind the fact that I have a family, a security system, several dogs, a platoon of security ninjas, and nosy neighbors. Regardless of whether the world knows I’m home or not, a potential robber still has to go through the same procedure of casing the house and whatnot before they can actually rob me successfully. Again, in order to be worried about this data being public, I have to make assumptions.
I do not mean to imply that location sharing has never led to a robbery. I also don’t mean to imply that having a public contact list has ever resulted in some other type of misfortune, but these are edge cases. These situations are not the norm. Also, people were being robbed way before location sharing existed.
So, before you go getting excited about the latest privacy scare as it relates to technology, take a moment and think about it. Is it a legit privacy concern, or is it just something being drummed up by the media or the blogosphere to boost their traffic?
h/t Hutch Carpenter
One thing I always find common among people who use a browser all day is the shear amount of tab hoarding they do. I find this totally insane for a number of reasons. The first being that it’s completely counter-productive. You may not realize it, but each tab you open becomes a weight on your […]
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I accidentally stumbled across this in looking at the Quix bookmarklet. I’m a heavy bookmarklet user, especially after switching to Google Chrome. One of the bookmarklets I use the most is for the PassPack password manager. This allows me to login to any website with a single click.
The problem is that, if I’m using an application shortcut or pop-up window, I can’t access my Passpack bookmarklet or any of my bookmarks. Then, I came across the Shortcut Manager Chrome extension. It allows you to assign a shortcut key to a block of javascript code. So, I can assign a key sequence that executes any of my bookmarklets. The steps are simple:
Now, you can hit Ctrl+Shift+l to run your Passpack bookmarklet inside of any Chrome window. This works in App shortcuts as well as in any popup windows (which I encounter with Posterous all the time). If you’re looking for a geekier solution, check out my Bookmarklet Key Bindings AHK script.
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Google Buzz pretty much came out of nowhere and nobody has stopped talking about it since. Even people that have nothing to do with the tech world noticed that new link in their Gmail sidebar. Whether you’re already using Buzz or you’re not sure what to do with it, here are a few tips to make your experience a little better:
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Google Buzz
First, they released stuff like FriendConnect and started messing around with the Social Graph and Google Profiles. Next, they dropped Google Wave. Contrary to popular belief, I don’t think Wave was Google’s big jump into social networking. Finally, taking a hint from Facebook’s acquisition of FriendFeed, Google creates Google Buzz. It lives in your […]
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Earlier today, we posted about Qhub, a service that lets you create your very own Questions and Answers website. You could use it to get much needed feedback from your community and keep your ear to the streets. Qhub is in private beta, but has been generous enough to give us some invites.
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Qhub is a new service offering a simple method for creating a Questions and Answers website. If you ever dreamed of running your very own Yahoo Answers, your prayers have been answered in Qhub. Unlike more general solutions, Qhub is aims to be a more targeted community. Each one can be focused on a specific […]
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Flavors.me is a simple and elegant solution that helps you create an automatic lifestream of all your online content. It connects with your various social media accounts, pulls in your content from them, and displays it in a flexible and customizable interface. It was created by the team at Hiidef Inc., “a web product incubator […]
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Image via Wikipedia
This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Coldwell Banker. All opinions are 100% mine.
Many people have developed a culture of thinking small. We lament about stuff we can’t afford. We talk about how broke we are. We make jokes about how messed up our credit is and we would never be able to do something like buy the car of our dreams or purchase a house. Thinking in this way is a downward spiral, a race to the bottom. Even when you’re joking, thinking negative brings you negativity.
One example of thinking bigger can be found in the concept of buying a home. It seems like such a huge and difficult thing to do, especially if you’re not confident in your credit history or feel like you don’t make enough money. Just as with anything else in life, though, you won’t know unless you try.
“Not bothering to try is the same as failing, except that you don’t learn anything from it.”
With the 2010 Homebuyer Tax Credits, this is even more incentive to step out and try something you didn’t think was possible. This federal income tax credit has been extended and expanded to include homeowners who wish to “move on” after 5 years of living in their current property, as well as first-time homebuyers. If you have one of these properties, make sure you get covered by property and casualty insurance so they can cover you just in case of any disasters or damages caused by other people. If you end up finding a broker, make sure they use this p&c software.
“Live in your new house mentally until it takes form around you physically” –Wallace D. Wattles
If you make less than $125,000 as an individual or $225,000 as a family or have lived in your current home consecutively for 5 of the last 8 years, you are eligible to receive a tax credit ranging from $6,500 to $8,000. To say it a different way, the federal government wants to pay you thousands of dollars for getting a new house and stimulating the economy. You have to act now as there may not be another extension. You need a written, binding contract by April 30, 2010 (close by June 30, 2010.)
“Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss it you will land among the stars.” –Les Brown
Start thinking bigger and stop sabotaging your own success before you ever get started.
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MyBlackJourney.com is a microsite set up by Amtrak as part of their Black History Month celebration. As you can tell from the name, the focus is on African-American passengers. The site has a wealth of information regarding popular “African-American cultural destinations” that happen to be served by Amtrak. They also have information and travel advice […]
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Appcelerator Titanium is an API that empowers web developers to create native applications for multiple platforms. A large percentage of developers are web developers, strong in Javascript, HTML, and CSS. If these developers are looking to develop native applications, they would have a pretty steep learning curve ahead. With Appcelerator, you can take your basic […]
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Twitter.com Gets Hovercards (finally)
Twitter seems to be getting serious about making the Twitter.com interface more useful to users. Following the complete redesign they did a while back, addition of lists, and new retweet feature, they have now added Hovercards. If you’ve used FriendFeed, Seesmic desktop, Hootsuite, and just about any Twitter client or social media […]
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