Increasing Your Quality of Life with Tech
One of the biggest criticisms of Apple’s iPhone is it’s lack of multitasking support. The basic ability to run more than one application at a time. Pretty surprising given that a large part of their business involves people buying apps from their store. According to inside sources, it looks like Apple may be adding this […]
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Opera software has launched Opera Mini 5 Beta for Android today. This is the newest beta of the world’s most popular mobile phone browser, according to them. Any handset running Android can now get a fast and cost-efficient browser in Opera Mini, which already has 50 million users worldwide on Blackberry and Windows mobile devices.
The […]
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Stickybits is an app for iPhone and Android that allows you to literally tag the real world objects around you and create a digital history or story around them. It works by scanning barcodes. You can scan any existing barcode that you might find on anything from a can of soda to a pack of […]
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Twitter Helps Bring Free SMS to Haiti
Twitter has set up a deal with Digicel to provide users of that service with free SMS tweets. This will assist those in Haiti with communicating with the world because it gets rid of the per-message charges. To set up the service, all the users need to do is […]
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The latest updates for the popular Seesmic Web Twitter client are very interesting and add some much needed functionality. Updates include viewing threads and retweets, geolocation, drag-n-drop list management, tweetmeme integration, and an enhanced contact manager.
Retweets and Threads
Being able to keep up with a conversation on Twitter is always difficult. If it draws multiple participants…
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Indaba Music is a site that aims to help us ride the current waves of change in the music industry. Their focus is on making it simple for artists to collaborate to create new music and on allowing fans to connect directly with artists and become involved in the creative process. This is actually something […]
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Google Buzz has had the Internet buzzing since it’s launch. Despite alleged privacy issues, feature omissions, and even a lawsuit, Buzz is still gaining popularity. One major thing missing is an actual developer API. Twitter’s API is what allows 3rd party apps like Tweetdeck and Hootsuite to interface with Twitter and most other web applications […]
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I have a Facebook Fan page, but I rarely post there because they make it so difficult to do so. There is no bookmarklet that facilitates this action. I’m sure there is some obscure Facebook application that might help with this, but I haven’t found it yet. My only recourse has been to actually visit the page and cut/paste a link. Very time consuming and inefficient if you’re working at the level I am when it comes to social media.
I came across a discussion on piping reader shares into Twitter using Reader2Twitter. This got me thinking about Hootsuite‘s RSS/Atom feature, which lets you pipe a feed through Hootsuite and out to the social networks you choose. Rather than have to deal with yet another 3rd party web application, why not just use an existing feature in an application I already use daily?
The first step is to connect your Facebook Fan Page to Hootsuite. I actually stumbled across this by accident in simply trying to get my GReader shares into Twitter. Note that once you have done this, you can easily post updates to your Fan Page from within Hootsuite on a per-update basis, making it simple to keep your page updated with fresh content for your fans.
Adding your Shared Items feed is simple. The hardest part is finding the actual feed link. I found my Shares page from my Google Profile (your Google Profile is here). It should be listed as one of your websites. You should see the actual feed link on the right side of that page, just copy it. Alternately, you can go into Google Reader, click Shared Items on the left, and then show details on the right. The feed URL should appear, right-click and copy it.
Back in Hootsuite and under Settings choose the RSS/Atom tab and Add New Feed. Paste your shared items feed URL into the first text box and decide how often you want the feed checked and how many tweets you want Hootsuite to send out each time. Be conservative here. If you send any more than a couple of tweets out at a time, you will look like a spammer or a n00b. Make sure you choose which accounts you want updates from this feed sent to at the bottom. Check the screenshot below to see how I have mine setup.
If you need any further assistance or clarification, please comment here. I would appreciate your feedback and would be happy to help. Also, if you have a better or alternate way of doing this, I’d love to hear it.
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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