Tech Humor: Justice in the digital world

Funny little cartoon for those (ANNOYING!!) folks that comment-spam. Bloggers – you know what I’m talking ’bout!

Image by Rob Cottingham of Noise to Signal: http://www.socialsignal.com/image/rough-justice-on-the-digital-frontier

What is Twitter? Better yet – what’s a tweet??

Twitter. Funny word for the latest trend in online social networking. There are a ton of posts, articles, videos and more on twitter. Here are two I particularly enjoyed:

Why Twitter is worth the risk – this is a post from Jochen Lillich discussing the benefits of using Twitter and why you might want to take the plunge. Here’s an excerpt:

Twitter asks its users: “What are you doing?” and puts a 140 character limit to your answers. Those “tweets” get sent to everyone who subscribed to your Twitter account, either by the Twitter website, via email or over SMS sent to their mobile phone.


You can also mark tweets that are meant for a certain person by starting them with “@username” (an at sign followed by their Twitter name). If you’d like to send them a non-public message, start it with “d username”.


In a way, Twitter is the virtual equivalent to your pub at the corner. You periodically spend some time there and, over time, start conversations and learn to know the other regulars. Sometimes, you even engage in a deeper discussion, but most of the time it’s just smalltalk. Nonetheless, you learn about what people are doing, what happens in the community or in the lives of your friends.


Twitter does the same for you, but you are able to choose the people whose messages you get. It’s your decision who you’d like to “follow”, as Twitter puts it. By posting what you’re doing or thinking, you let people participate in a little bit of your life. Over time, your followers will recognize things they share with you, be it that you are a Mac user or going to be a parent. You can direct people to interesting websites, maybe your own. Pose a question and often you’ll get responses from your followers in a matter of minutes.

Read more of this informative post here: http://www.jochen-lillich.de/why-twitter-worth-risk

Another source of great info on using Twitter was found via McGee’s Musings, and includes an embedded video introduction to the service. Video: Twitter in Plain English is worth the watch if you want to learn more about what the creators refer to as “micro-blogging service Twitter“.

Click here to access McGee’s post and watch the embedded video from Lee and Sachi LeFever.

BONUS: Here’s a third  post from Caroline Middlebrook with TONS of great info: Twitter Guide Part #1: What is Twitter?

Now, before you ask, no – I’m not yet a member. I blog too much and between that and the real world I don’t think I’d have the time to manage another network. The service does sound interetsting though and I can see the appeal. I wonder how long I can hold out before I drink the kool aid??

Related info:

• What is Twitter, and is there any reason I should care?
• What is Twitter? (ask Bob Rankin)
• What Twitter is (Scripting News)
• Twitter — what is it good for? Absolutely Something!

Aminals – more pics of oh-so cute cats & dogs

Here’s the latest bunch of Aminals Pics – Click here for the rest of the series.

 

 Stay tuned for the next batch of Aminals!

Related posts:

• Aminals – Cute Pics of Kitties, Doggies, Duckies, Deer and more!
• Aminals – more cute cats, adorable dogs and even a few chicks for fun
• Aminals – Get a dog!
• Aminals Part Deux
• Aminals: A new category for those so-cute-it’s-sick pics!

Disclaimer: One of the unfortunate things about the email forwards these images come from is they often contain no reference to the original photo- where it came from, who to credit, who the animals/owners are, etc. Credit is given if possible. If you see ANY photo here and know it’s origin or who should receive proper credit – please contact me and I’ll update asap.

Use Google Docs Loader To Get Documents Online In ONE Click!

I’m just getting started with using Google Docs and found a great tip via lifehacker: put-documents-online-in-one-click-with-google-docs-uploader. Here’s a clip:

Windows only: Google has released a simple one-purpose application that lets you upload multiple documents at once to a Google Docs account, as well as add right-click uploading options for all the document types accepted by the free online office suit. Before the free app’s release, meant to show off the Google Docs API, your best bet for posting multiple files was through email, but even that had a 500KB size restriction and only worked with certain document types. Not much more to say—it’s a simple, effective tool, and it seems to work pretty quickly. Google Docs Uploader is a free download for Windows only and requires .NET Framework 2.0.

Read more: http://lifehacker.com/348887/put-documents-online-in-one-click-with-google-docs-uploader

You can learn more in a related post: Easily upload your documents to Google Docs!

To demonstrate the functionality of the Documents List Data API, I have released a new sample application that makes uploading your documents even easier. The application works on Windows PCs running the .NET Framework 2.0 or higher.

Download the Documents List Uploader.

Files can be uploaded to Google Docs either by enabling a right-click menu item or through drag-and-drop functionality. This makes it simple to browse through your local files and selectively upload the ones you want to edit, share, or publish using Google Docs.

Read more here: http://googledataapis.blogspot.com/2008/01/easily-upload-your-documents-to-google.html

Related reading:

• Welcome to Google Docs
• Google Docs Tour
• Official Google Docs Blog
• Google Makes it Easier to Share Documents with Co-Workers
• YouTube – Google Docs in Plain English
• 5 things you probably didn’t know you could do in Google Docs …

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Good Tips: Update Twitter, Facebook & other status messages simultaneously

Here’s an interesting post for twitterites, Facebookies, MySpacers and other’s using status messaging: Update your Twitter, Facebook and other status messages simultaneously:

HelloTxt makes it easy to make sure all of your friends know what you’re up to all the time, no matter what social networking services they use. Actually, that might be a bit of an exaggeration, but HelloTxt does let you post messages simultaneously to a whole slew of social networking sites that allow you to frequently update your status.

You don’t need to register for an account to use HelloTxt, but as you’ve probably guessed, you do need to enter your login information for your various social networking sites. If you do register for an account, you only have to enter this data once, and then you can broadcast your updates to your hearts content. Registered users can also see a timeline with your latest updates and responses from their friends.

Read more here: http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/02/03/update-your-twitter-facebook-and-other-status-messages-simultan/

Visit HelloTxt directly: http://www.hellotxt.com/dashboard

Related reading:

• Social Networks: Update Your Status Across Social Networks with …
• HelloTxt – Making Microblogging Quicker And Easier
• HelloTxt Sends Messages to Twitter and the Rest
• HelloTXT: Post to Twitter, Pownce, Facebook … Simultaneously …
• HelloTxt: Centralize Your Microblogging Services – Rev2.org
• Update all microblogs once with HelloTxt
• HelloTxt is like Meebo for Microblogging

How to add your URL, Website or Blog to Google

A pretty easy solution is offered by Google itself – Add your URL to Google. Here’s a bit’o info from the page:

Share your place on the net with us.
We add and update new sites to our index each time we crawl the web, and we invite you to submit your URL here. We do not add all submitted URLs to our index, and we cannot make any predictions or guarantees about when or if they will appear.

Please enter your full URL, including the http:// prefix. For example: http://www.google.com/. You may also add comments or keywords that describe the content of your page. These are used only for our information and do not affect how your page is indexed or used by Google.

Please note: Only the top-level page from a host is necessary; you do not need to submit each individual page. Our crawler, Googlebot, will be able to find the rest. Google updates its index on a regular basis, so updated or outdated link submissions are not necessary. Dead links will ‘fade out’ of our index on our next crawl when we update our entire index.

Read more here: http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl 

The process itself is very simple. At the page above there is a text box where you enter your site URL and a second for optional comments on your site or blog. Once the info is entered you type in the security letters from the image on the page and click “Add URL”. Your site should be crawled by Googlebots on the next run.

If for some reason you should ever need to remove your site or blog from Google click here for more information.

What is anonymous web browsing or web surfing?

Ever wondered what anonymous web surfing really is and why you might want to use it? Here’s some info from a post titled What is anonymous surfing?

Anonymous surfing is browsing web sites privately.

Anonymous surfing encompasses two different forms of privacy:

• Privacy protection from the web site you are browsing.
• Privacy protection from eavesdroppers who may be watching your network connection.

Anonymous web surfing works by putting a proxy server between the user and the web site. The web browser talks to the proxy server, and the proxy server talks to the web site.

The web site does not know who you are, it only knows who the anonymous proxy server is. The anonymous proxy server does know who you are — so you had better choose an anonymous proxy server that you trust.

Going online and browsing anonymous isn’t just for people looking to hide bad habits, it protects your privacy and will stop websites from dumping cookies and temporary internet files on your system, and also help stave off phishing attacks, identify theft and more:

There are many reasons why someone would want to do anonymous surfing. People surf anonymously to protect themselves from the government, their employers, or nosy family members.

People in Iran use anonymous surfing to prevent being executed in the streets. People in corporate America use anonymous surfing to avoid sharing the details of their personal lives with their employers. Everyone uses anonymous surfing to protect their privacy from nosy web sites and annoying advertisers.

There are different types of anonymous web surfing:

• Anonymous surfing through a web site — With these systems, you browse the web site of the anonymous proxy server and enter in the URL of the web page you actually want to surf.
• Anonymous surfing through client applications — With these systems, you download and install a client application which manages the details of anonymous surfing for you.
• Anonymous surfing though an anonymous web proxy service — With these services, you configure your browser to point to an anonymous web proxy. These systems are public and are setup and advertised for anonymous proxy usage.
• Anonymous surfing though an anonymous server — With these systems, you configure your browser to point to an anonymous web proxy. These systems are published in constantly updated lists on many web sites on the Internet. You normally do not know who is running each of these anonymous proxy servers. You hope it isn’t someone who is recording your traffic.

As for the “best” free anonymous browsing website or proxy service, it’s hard to say since new sites and services are popping up all the time, while others fade to black. Your best bet will be to do a quick internet search and weed through the current top dogs.

Did Ya Know? Microsoft to Force IE7 Update on February 12th

A post over at Slashdot caught my attention: Microsoft to Force IE7 Update on February 12th:

“InfoWorld is reporting that on February 12th, Microsoft will roll out Internet Explorer 7 through Windows Server Update Services to all systems – regardless of whether or not the update had been requested previously. The piece also mentions ways to prevent the update from occurring, for sysadmins who do not want to use IE7 on their systems. Microsoft claims that the decision was made due to ‘security concerns’.”

After a quick check of the InfoWorld Article Microsoft warns businesses of impending autoupdate to IE7, it does appear that an Internet Explorer update to version 7 will be forced down IE users throats. Luckily the article provides info on how to work around the auto-update for sys admins and I bet the average user isn’t even aware of the coming changes or how it might affect them. This interesting stat shows that IE6 still has a decent user base, more than I’d have guessed:

More than one in every three people still relies on IE6, according to data gathered by Web metrics vendor Net Applications. During December 2007, IE6 accounted for 35 percent of the browsers that visited the 40,000-some sites monitored by the company.

Additional reading:

• Microsoft to force IE7 update
• Microsoft reveals how to avoid forced IE7 upgrade
• Just say no (or yes) to a forced IE7 upgrade | NetworkWorld.com …

Aminals: A new category for those so-cute-it’s-sick pics!

Aminals. Say it enough times and it’ll (almost) come naturally. A-m-i-n-a-l-s. Yea, that’s it! So I often receive emails with photos of adorable animals, mostly cats and dogs, that are soo cute you just w-a-n-t to forward them to everyone you know.  So instead of filling inboxes with image files and losing friends and loved ones due to my over zealous forwarding of cute kitty pics *I* find adorable, I’m creating a new category here. If you’re a cat and/or dog lover I think you’ll enjoy this section. If you are afraid of dogs (because they can sense evil??) or hate cats (because they are the true rulers??), you might as well skip these posts. Onward!

Aminals: The Good, The Bad And The Cuddly

Click any image to enlarge

 

I’d love to hear your thoughts on captions for any of these great pictures. Also, if you have a cute animal picture to share please reference it in the comments.  We’ll see how much interest there is in my new Aminal category and go from there.

Disclaimer: One of the unfortunate things about the email forwards these images come from is they often contain no reference to the original photo- where it came from, who to credit, who the animals/owners are, etc. If you see ANY photo here and know it’s origin or who should receive proper credit – please contact me and I’ll update asap.

Video To Learn About Online Photo Sharing

elearnspace has a post to a video that provides an easy to understand overview of online photo sharing:

Not using flickr or similar online photo sharing service? Interested in learning how to? Common Craft just released a new video on Online Photo Sharing in Plain English. We’re finding these video resources quite useful for our wiki on using social tools in higher education.