Category: internet

check SNOPES before forwarding that dumb email

On By Rick McIn internet10 Comments

I’m tempted to dream up some conspiracy theory, … then send it out to my entire email list.

How many would forward it to their friends?

How many would check snopes.com first?

Snopes.com (pronounced /ˈsnoʊps/), officially the Urban Legends Reference Pages, is a web site discussing urban legends, Internet rumors, e-mail forwards, and other stories of uncertain or questionable origin. It is the best-known resource for validating and debunking such stories in American popular culture.

Snopes is run by Barbara and David Mikkelson, a California couple …

wikipedia

No need to check that rumour, it’s a hoax. Barbara, a Canadian, and David Mikkelson are HEROS.

Facebook is EVIL … alternatives?

On By Rick McIn Google, internet, product complaints8 Comments

I love Facebook. Check it several times a day.

Wherever I travel, most laptops and netbooks are opened to Facebook.

Women, in particular, can’t resist.

But the company is evil. Facebook watchers pretty much all agree on this:

… “the act of creating deliberately confusing jargon and user-interfaces which trick your users into sharing more info about themselves than they really want to?” …

MSNBC – Facebook: The ‘Evil Interface?’

10. Facebook’s Terms Of Service are completely one-sided
9. Facebook’s CEO has a documented history of unethical behavior
8. Facebook has flat out declared war on privacy
7. Facebook is pulling a classic bait-and-swit
6. Facebook is a bully
5. Even your private data is shared with applications
4. Facebook is not technically competent enough to be trusted
3. Facebook makes it incredibly difficult to truly delete your account
2. Facebook doesn’t (really) support the Open Web
1. The Facebook application itself sucks

Gizmodo – Top Ten Reasons You Should Quit Facebook

EFF – Facebook’s Eroding Privacy Policy: A Timeline

Matt McKeon – The Evolution of Privacy on Facebook

The Consumerist – Facebook’s Privacy Settings Are Actually “Evil Interfaces”

NYT – Facebook Exodus

CNET News – Understanding Facebook’s privacy aftershocks

If you are as tech savvy as Luke Appleby, and tweak your privacy settings every time Facebook rolls out a change, then it’s no problem. He’s one of the very few defenders.

If you don’t like Facebook, wait. It will be as popular as MySpace in 5 years. My feed is already so bloated I’m tempted to start over with a new account.

Something will replace Facebook.

But what?

I want a service:

• open source
• non-profit
• privacy ON by default (only “friends” can see anything)
• no ads

That service would operate something like Wikipedia.

The business model, on a very small budget, would be to charge companies a tiny fee when users voluntarily friend them. For example, I would “friend” MEC, REI, and International Gymnast magazine … Each time one of those companies posts to my feed, they would have to pay a tiny fee.

The closest we’ve yet seen to what I want is Friendfeed. Here’s my feed, as a sample. (I only have 30 friends there, so don’t use the service.)

Unfortunately Facebook bought Friendfeed, and stopped adding new features.

Google is the company you’d think could quickly lure 50 million or so Facebook users over to a better competitor. They recently tried with Buzz, but that’s been a big FAIL, so far.

If I was to join a start-up tech company, it would be to launch a Facebook competitor. Optimized for smart phone / iPod updates.

_____

Update: The brilliant Jeff Jarvis linked to a Facebook alternative called Diaspora.

It’s only a proposal at this stage, but it’s certain I’d stop posting to Facebook. And switch to the Anti-Facebook, Diaspora, should it come to be.

the first YouTube video

On By Rick McIn internetLeave a comment

One of the founders, Jawed Karim, at the zoo, April 23, 2005.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

… The video doesn’t look much, but it sparked a revolution; by July 2006, more than 65,000 videos were uploaded to the site every day. In October that same year Google acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion – a reminder of how fast things move in the age of the internet. …

Mashable

Social media in the workplace

On By Rick McIn friends, internetLeave a comment

Now that Facebook has become the most popular site on the AmeriWWW, even your dinosaur boss needs to start putting in a social media strategy.

Rockin’ dumbs it down for the Vancouver Sun readership:

During the Winter Olympic Games I was often reminded of the power of social networks to make connections that were unimaginable just a few short years ago.

Case in point: on the first day of the Games, I was walking along Robson Street with some out-of-town guests when we caught sight of couple of giddy thrill-seekers hooting and flailing their arms and legs as they glided along the downtown zip line. I had heard the ride was free and I thought it might be fun for my guests’ teenage sons to give it a try. So I pulled out my smart phone and posted this on my Twitter feed: “Does anyone know how long the wait is for the Robson zip line?”

Within a few minutes the operator of the ride tweeted back: “Thanks for your interest. Right now the lineup is about three hours long. If you want to try tomorrow, the zip line is open at 8 a.m.” Amazing.

In the space of four years, social networks such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter have become woven into the fabric of our society. A recent study of global Internet use by Universal McCann reported some astounding statistics: more than 60 per cent of Internet users have a profile on a social network. More than 80 per cent view videos on YouTube, and close to 30 per cent don’t just watch; they’ve uploaded videos to the Web for others to see. …

Vancouver Sun

(via For Your Approval)

UPDATE: Steve Crescenzo posted a hilarious Rockin’ Ronnie story on his blog, Corporate Hallucinations. Thanks Kate.

terrible spelling / grammar …

On By Rick McIn internet1 Comment

That’s a given in blogs like this.

But have you noticed an increasing number of glaring errors in articles you read in old media? Newspapers, magazines, etc.

Old media has been firing copy editors as rapidly as possible. My buddy Tom edited for the San Jose Mercury News. He took a severance package and is now working online for TrailSpace.com.

Why don’t more sites add something like this link used by TheStar.com:

Crowdsource their editing. Some type-A characters like nothing better than to catch those errors.

how I back up my computer

On By Rick McIn Apple, internet, music, photos, product endorsements4 Comments

Happy, happy. I’ve got this system running now.

I have only one computer, a laptop, backing up automatically to the cloud using Carbonite. My cost is less than $3.50 / month. Very reliable, though not 100% foolproof.

I am backing-up whenever I connect to the internet. And can restore a file or an entire laptop from anywhere in the world.

My old back-up system I’ve still got running, too: a 1TB hard drive using Time Machine software. I must physically attach the drive with a cable to do this second back-up.

If you don’t back-up, please don’t complain when you lose all your music and photos in a hard drive crash or by theft. You deserve it for not signing up for Carbonite or Mozy.

death of Adobe Flash?

On By Rick McIn Apple, internet, product endorsements1 Comment

If a Mac browser crashes, or hangs with a spinning pizza of death, it’s almost certain that Adobe Flash, a “method for adding animation and interactivity to web pages”, is the cause.

Dana’s Mac laptop has been running slower-and-slower. Mine too, after 18 months, though I’ve taken many steps to try to speed it up.

Here’s the BEST thing I’ve done, so far, to improve speed and stability.

I installed ClickToFlash , the Flash-blocking plug-in for Safari on Mac OS X.

Works perfectly.

Instead of some distracting animated ads, I get this …

screenshot

If I really want to see something, the flash video centre screen for example, I click and it will load.

LOVE this feature.

For Windows use the FlashBlock Firefox add-on.

Leave a comment if you’ve any other advice on speeding up the computer experience.

=== Steve Jobs is on a personal mission to KILL Flash, Apple not supporting Flash on either the iPhone nor iPad.

But rumours of the death of Flash are premature. It will be around for a while, yet.

This is a great compromise.

ignorant YouTube comments

On By Rick McIn internet, product complaints10 Comments

Guys like Rockin’ are always touting the importance of interaction with the great unwashed via the internet.

For every good comment I see online, there are nine ignorant ones.

I’m all for freedom of speech …. But also for freedom from speech.

best online backup software?

On By Rick McIn internet, product endorsements1 Comment

The computer in your Hard Drive will crash, sooner or later. That disk spins at up to 15,000 RPM. It’s inevitable.

I hate all spinning disk technologies. They are unreliable.

Most missed if you lose data are the music files, photos and videos.

Best way to avoid that grief, is to backup to the “cloud”.

The two biggest players are Mozy and Carbonite.

Click PLAY to watch a video review on both on YouTube.

I tried the free trial of Carbonite for Mac. If I sign on, the cost is about $3.50/month. (That’s cheaper than buying external hard drives as I’ve been doing over the past few years.)

But Carbonite in 2009 admitted loss of backups of “over 7,500 customers”. So I’ll keep doing the local backup to a 1TB drive using Time Machine software, as well.

I do have important data I don’t want to lose. This way all of my files will be backed up at least twice in two different places, one being the cloud.

UPDATE: My free trial was successful. Carbonite worked. But since my ISP only allows about 4GB / day upload, not all the files could be backed up.

I will be signing up for one or the other service … but I’m a little irritated with Carbonite because their customer service department did not reply to an email I sent them. Perhaps I’ll email Mozy and see if they reply.

Sun newspaper beats Apple Tablet

On By Rick McIn Apple, internet3 Comments

The newspaper industry is falling over themselves in the fight to come up with an ever more impressive newspaper tablet. …

They all fear Steve Jobs. Can Apple redefine an industry as they did with the iPod. And then the iPhone?

Apple’s “tablet” computer is expected to be announced late January.

Analysts have said the tablet will include a subscription to a nationwide Wi-Fi wireless service and enable users to access the Internet, watch movies and television shows, as well as play games. They also say the tablet will let users read newspapers, magazines and textbooks in groundbreaking new ways.

The Journal reported that Apple believes it will “redefine” how people interact with various types of content.

The UK’s Sun newspaper is not worried. They reckon they’ve got Apple beat already.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.