Tag Archives: Technology

More Twitter Please, How Do You Take Yours?

I almost can’t believe how people are starting to jump on the Twitter pipe, but it’s not the individual users that surprises me.  No, not at all.  People do that sort of thing.  It’s that businesses are not only signing up for accounts but that they are also actively Tweeting.  Sure, anyone can use an automated TweetFeed to share new posts with followers, but it takes a real life person to carry on conversations and respond to fellow Tweeters.  (I can only imagine it’s the daily duty of an intern, but still.  Someone is getting paid to Tweet.)

I’m particularly pleased with @News10_CA and their posting.  We’ll see how long it lasts, though.  I’ve found that a lot of these company accounts don’t last long when it comes to updating regularly.  Time will tell.

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Wesabe Or Mint, Which To Use

I’ve been using both Wesabe and Mint for a little over a year now and still I’m not ready to give a full review.  Each service manages my money and spending habits a little differently, but mostly the same.  The one very big difference is the Social experience available at Mint, but it’s not a feature I use.  If we were to measure my use in minutes, we’d find that I probably log more hours using Wesabe than I do using Mint , but at the end of the day it’s still the Excel sheets I created some ten years ago that I rely upon to keep track of my money and spending habits.  It’s not nearly as automated as the online servcies, but I have way more control over how the data is manipulated and that’s truly what I’m looking for.

Calm Your Latitude

Someone had to say it, right?  Hahaha…I know.

I want people to calm down over Google’s latest app Latitude .  The privacy advocates specifically.  It’s not like anyone is being forced to install or use the application.  (Although, it does come bundled with Maps for the mobile phones.)  Even if Maps is installed, someone still needs to sign in with a user name and password to allow Latitude access to the phone’s GPS information.  Even still, a user can specify what amount of location based information is available (near exact, city-wide, or not at all.)  So please, dear everyone who is upset, please calm yourselves.

Not that I’m a fan of advertising, but location based advertisements seem like a cool idea.  I can only imagine walking through town, Google knowing exactly where I am and alerting me to a nearby Happy Hour deal.  Stellar move, Google.  And I don’t have to share my actual location with anyone, which I already am willing to do with services such as Brightkite . (Again, only to select people.)

I want all these services to continue improving, so I hope Google doesn’t cave and shut down its Latitude service.  I think Google did a pretty good job preempting the privacy nuts with a lot of privacy-control features already built-in, but we’ll see what happens.  In the meanwhile, you can catch my Brightkite updates through Twitter or Friendfeed.  Feel free to buy me a coffee if you’re in the area.

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Video Call Via Mobile Phone, It's Coming

It was right around the end of October in 2008 when I started telling anyone who would listen that we were roughly a year away from having enough mobile bandwidth and hardware to sustain mobile-to-mobile video calls.  (Actually being able to see the person you’re talking to while you’re walking through town on opposite ends of the US.)  Now rumors are traveling the Internet that Apple could possibly be the first to offer such a thing.  who knows what the other big players have in the works.  It definitely creates a new demand for a full screen mobile phone, like the iPhone or Storm.

It’s not anything I could see myself using, at least not initially, but I definitely want to see this feature/service go mainstream.  Too cool for school, that’s what I say.

Video Call Via Mobile Phone, It’s Coming

It was right around the end of October in 2008 when I started telling anyone who would listen that we were roughly a year away from having enough mobile bandwidth and hardware to sustain mobile-to-mobile video calls.  (Actually being able to see the person you’re talking to while you’re walking through town on opposite ends of the US.)  Now rumors are traveling the Internet that Apple could possibly be the first to offer such a thing.  who knows what the other big players have in the works.  It definitely creates a new demand for a full screen mobile phone, like the iPhone or Storm.

It’s not anything I could see myself using, at least not initially, but I definitely want to see this feature/service go mainstream.  Too cool for school, that’s what I say.

SiriusXM Making Changes, Good Or Bad

SiriusXM It took me a second to adjust to the new station lineup when the two companies merged and started consolidating their content, but I eventually came around and accepted its newness even if I wasn’t all that interested in what was new and what was lost.  They’ve even recently returned the BackSpin station (Sirius channel 39), which they had removed for about a month.  These changes are ultimately good moves for the satellite radio giant drowning in debt.

Merging was step one, consolidating content was step two, but now that we’re at step 3 I’m even less excited and find myself wondering if I’ll continue my subscriptions when they expire.  Step 3 is pricing overhaul.  Translation:  my cost to enjoy is going up.  Not a fan.

The two big cost changes: 1) eliminating free internet service.  It will now be an additional $2.99 to.  2) Second, third, and fourth radios will be offered at $8.99 rather than the current $6.99.  Now I’m not sure it’s worth it to keep two radios.  But, we’ll see when it comes time to renew, which SiriusXM is urging subscribers to do before March 11th when the changes kick in.  (If you extend subscriptions now, you can also extend the current benefits for the life of the extension.)

I couldn’t say for sure whether or not these moves will have any positive impact to the company’s stock which is ridiculously low these days in the ten cent range, but it surely can’t hurt the cash flows, which have been in the red for years.  Hence the massive amounts of debt, a billion of which is coming due this year.  I sure hope they are able to refinance the debt, but if they can’t, who knows what will happen.  Why should I pay more for a service that may not be around this time next year.  (A bit dramatic, but you get the idea.)

All is well and good I suppose in a world where we pay for things we want but don’t really need. In the meantime, I’m going to keep enjoying my last.fm stations.  Hopefully last.fm will soon be accessible from my car stereo unit.

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RIAA Won’t Leave Slashdot

I first started following Slashdot back in 1997, right around the time pop music was popping up on file servers across the US in college dorm rooms for thousands of audiophiles to download illegally.  Sure.  And ever since then the RIAA has appeared in many a topic and been the subject of many debates over on Slashdot for any and every step they’ve taken to combat/thwart such activities online.  Even in 2009, the RIAA continues to crawl the web looking for folks to fight, and they continue to show up in Slashdot conversations, which would almost be fine, except nothing has changed.  When it comes to talking about the RIAA, we’ve been having the same conversations for twelve years.  Why?

Of course we have to talk about it on Slashdot because the RIAA continues to make decisions that a lot of folks want to complain about, at least those of us who know the actions are taking place.  Which many of us probably wouldn’t know if we weren’t reading Slashdot, and I can guess with certainty that it’s why I stopped reading daily for a couple years.  (It’s in my feed reader now.)

I’m not really interested in collecting music because I can’t be bothered to make time for it, and I have SiriusXM subscriptions.  I have plenty of legal music.  (I did buy two CDs last year, which I wrote about here .)

How can we get the RIAA to spend its time plotting to help consumers rather than hunting them?  I don’t have the answer, but I sure wish someone would figure it out so we can stop having to hear all the negative chatter on Slashdot.  It’s only a matter of time, right?  I don’t know about you, but I can’t take it anymore, and I’m disappointed that the music industry hasn’t found a whole bunch of ways to keep making money in the digital world.  In the meantime, I’ll just keep skipping those articles.

RIAA Won't Leave Slashdot

I first started following Slashdot back in 1997, right around the time pop music was popping up on file servers across the US in college dorm rooms for thousands of audiophiles to download illegally.  Sure.  And ever since then the RIAA has appeared in many a topic and been the subject of many debates over on Slashdot for any and every step they’ve taken to combat/thwart such activities online.  Even in 2009, the RIAA continues to crawl the web looking for folks to fight, and they continue to show up in Slashdot conversations, which would almost be fine, except nothing has changed.  When it comes to talking about the RIAA, we’ve been having the same conversations for twelve years.  Why?

Of course we have to talk about it on Slashdot because the RIAA continues to make decisions that a lot of folks want to complain about, at least those of us who know the actions are taking place.  Which many of us probably wouldn’t know if we weren’t reading Slashdot, and I can guess with certainty that it’s why I stopped reading daily for a couple years.  (It’s in my feed reader now.)

I’m not really interested in collecting music because I can’t be bothered to make time for it, and I have SiriusXM subscriptions.  I have plenty of legal music.  (I did buy two CDs last year, which I wrote about here .)

How can we get the RIAA to spend its time plotting to help consumers rather than hunting them?  I don’t have the answer, but I sure wish someone would figure it out so we can stop having to hear all the negative chatter on Slashdot.  It’s only a matter of time, right?  I don’t know about you, but I can’t take it anymore, and I’m disappointed that the music industry hasn’t found a whole bunch of ways to keep making money in the digital world.  In the meantime, I’ll just keep skipping those articles.

Google Labs Adds Gmail Tasks, Requires Chat Enabled

I only need tasks in one of my GoogleApp domains, and that just happened to be the one where I was receiving the error "tasks could not be open" after enabling the feature.  What?  Why?  This is stupid.  Thankfully it didn’t take long to realize the one difference between that domain and the others I manage was the disabled chat feature.  Apparently Tasks uses the same API as Chat for making the in-window window and the pop-out window.  (Who knows what else.)

Of course now I have chat enabled somewhere a client doesn’t want or need it.  Not sure if this issue will resolve itself in the future or if we’re stuck with both features having to be enabled.  In the meanwhile, if you or someone you know are having trouble getting tasks to work in Gmail, hope this helps.

Update: Seems this issue was added to the Google Labs Help Tasks group discussion earlier today, and a fix is in the works.  You really have to enjoy the process.

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Google Friend Connect or Facebook Connect?

I thought it would be a difficult decision, but when it came time to push the publish button, it was no contest.  Google’s Friend Connect was the social connect tool that best suited my preferences.  Whether or not it suits my needs is a different argument, since I’m still not sure I actually need a social network component.  Generally, I intend for my posts to be read in your feed reader, which is the most efficient way to deal with blagger entries.  Still, on the off chance that anyone does want to congregate around my content, I’ve now made available the option to share within a specific social circle, Friend Connect.

I’m still learning about all the available features and gadgets, but if you look in the second sidebar you’ll see the members gadget.  Check it out and let me know what you think.  All you need to join or sign in is your Google account information.  For most people, it’s probably the same name and password you use with Gmail.  But if you’re one of those paranoids like myself, your Google account name and password is not exactly the same as your Gmail.

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