I created a GetGlue account late last year in November 2010. Before that time, I admit that I had not heard of the service either. I discovered it after noticing friends post their GetGlue check-ins to Twitter. I was intrigued, and created my own account.

During the past year, I’ve made nearly 300 check-ins and have unlocked 32 stickers. Stickers are unlocked as you become a fan of whatever you’re checking-in to. Your fan status is determined by the number of times you have checked-in to any one topic. Topics include books, movies, television shows, music, podcasts, games, and much more.

I personally happen to enjoy check-in services of all kinds, so GetGlue is a natural fit for my Internet lifestyle. Not only do I find it enjoyable, the service helps me to discover similar musicians and movies that are likely to cater to my taste. I’ve discovered several things that I may not have known about otherwise. In addition, when I make a check-in, I can participate in a conversation thread surrounding that topic that other users have generated.

When I launch GetGlue, I am presented with a feed list of check-ins that my friends have made, allowing me to to see the things that they are enjoying as well. To date, I only have 10 friends that I’m following on the service, but I have more users than that who are following me. My username is Blitzcraig. Unlike Twitter, new followers must be approved by the user.

If you think GetGlue sounds like an interesting service, I encourage you to check it out. Naturally, they also offer convenient apps for the popular mobile platforms.

Some time ago, my friend Chad created a Facebook fan page called “Rabbit Rabbit.” He generously made me an administrator of the page. In the early days the fan page only had a dozen fans. We are now up to nearly 100 fans. I would like to see that number rise to 1000 and beyond. This week I created a permanent username for the page so that it now has its own direct URL on Facebook. I’m hoping that by giving the page it’s own unique URL that it will start to appear on search engines and elsewhere. The address is: facebook.com/rabbitrabbitpage

Any Facebook user who is a fan of the page is allowed to make posts to the wall and even post pictures! That said, I monitor this very closely. Last week a user posted a spam advertisement for a website selling rabbit food. I believe that spam showed up on the news feeds of everyone who is a fan of the page. Let me be clear that I will not tolerate junk posts to our page, and I will bring the hammer down on anybody who does. So behave yourselves!

It’s also worth nothing that there is a page on Wikipedia that explains the origins of Rabbit Rabbit. It’s an interesting read, but Chad and I had nothing to do its creation or content.

I love location-based services and I’ve been turning others on to the idea as well. I always call out Foursquare, but they are not the only player in this game. Others include Gowalla, Loopt, Facebook Places, Google Latitude, and more. I don’t care much about the others, as Foursquare is by far my service of choice.

Foursquare now allows its users to view their complete check-in history! Simply add the word “history” to your username URL at Foursquare and you can view every place you’ve ever been with the service. For example, the address would read: foursquare.com/username/history. In addition to your past locations, your history includes your comments, tips, photos, and a list of other users who were checked in there at the time. Cool!

A few days ago I wrote a post called “My Advice To Twitter,” where I suggested that Twitter add an archive view of users tweets. The URL structure I suggested in that post is the same as the one that Foursquare has now enabled. I don’t know when Foursquare officially launched their new history view, but I was not aware of it at the time when I wrote my post about Twitter. I guess irony can be pretty ironic sometimes.

If you want to see my complete history, you’re out of luck. You have to be my explicit friend on Foursquare, or be logged in as me. Random Internet passersby cannot view any of my location history. This is true for all Foursquare users and this cannot be changed. I’d say that is a smart decision by the company.

Foursquare has done it right. I applaud the company for creating this new complete history view for its users. It is an awesome way to look back at everywhere you’ve been and what you’ve been doing. I wish that Twitter would take notice.

My tweet was clearly over-the-top, as I often am, but I do have genuine thoughts on this matter. Therefore, I have crafted and submitted the following list of advice and suggestions to the “powers-that-be” at Twitter.

Faster Pageloads

I would like the “New Twitter” site to be a little more responsive and serve faster page loads. I can’t help but feel like the Twitter website as a whole has gotten slower over time; even more so since the redesign this year. I am well aware that their servers process a mind-boggling mass of data every second, but the end-user experience at my computer can be less than ideal at times. This is one reason why I like to use external Twitter applications like Tweetie, and not use the website unless I need to.

Exporting Features

Twitter seriously needs to offer better exporting options for users accounts. I want to be able to download a complete archive of all of my current Twitter data in a variety of different formats at any given time. I’ve grown tired of fiddling with Twitter backup companies, and I’ve used several of them. I’ll say outright that Tweetbackup doesn’t work at all. I’ve never had that service work for me even once! Backupify is a reliable service that conveniently archives all of my tweets on a schedule, but I can only download that data in CSV format, which I have to load as a huge spreadsheet in Excel.

More importantly, exporting in general is currently limited by Twitter to your last 3,200 tweets. That is all you can view or access, period! They promised some time ago that this artificial cap would ultimately be lifted. To date, that hasn’t happened. As users accounts grow ever larger, this issue needs to be addressed. Longtime users can have upward of 10,000 tweets. Today, those users are left in the cold if they want to roll back to the tweets in their early years. Fix this now!

Archive View

I would like for the Twitter website to add a new dimension where you can view all of the tweets in your entire archive in an elegant presentation. One example of this today is Tweet Nest, a solution to archive your tweets on your own web server and display them on a page. The resulting page looks clean and has a wealth of information. Twitter doesn’t have to copy this model, but it is an example of what I’d like to see them create for its users. Users could access this theoretical new archive display by adding the world “archive” to their URL. For example: twitter.com/username/archive. I think this is a fantastic idea, and long overdue.

Longer Tweets

I still insist that tweets could be a little longer to make use for longer links and retweets. As I’ve said in a previous post, I’d like to see the current 140-character limit raised to 160 (thereby matching the traditional phone text message limit), or even all the way to 200. I’ve already mentioned this in detail in the past, so I won’t go on about that again here.

Tweet Counts

In my experience, Twitter’s total tweet count for me is fluid and seldom completely accurate. This is especially noticeable with the count in the Favorites feature. I can log in on the site and have 25 favorite tweets that I’ve previously starred. After I’m finished reading some of them and unstar a few, it takes a very long time (hours) for my Favorites count to show lower than the original count of 25. It’s annoying, and I wish something could be done about it.

Having said the above, the count numbers get even whackier when using the Twitter iPhone app, where it sometimes takes days to reflect a profile picture change or update my total tweet count. Why this this? Surely Twitter itself must be deliberately limiting calls for this data in its API structure. Can’t this policy be changed to allow more accurate information?

In Closing…

This is just a few of the ideas and suggestions I’ve sent to Twitter. The tweet count issue is complex and really not a big deal, but account exporting and a complete archive view are both essential. I’m growing tired of relying on countless third party solutions to compensate for Twitter’s built-in limitations. I hope they heed my words and make my suggestions a reality.

Back in my younger days, if I wanted to keep a journal, it was likely bound to paper. Paper has a few benefits, but also carries many drawbacks. First and foremost, a journal is meant to be private. That isn’t possible in physical form. Fortunately, today there are many avenues to explore for keeping a virtual private journal.

I have complained for years that there was not a good solution for maintaining a journal on my computer. I always found the crop of journaling software to be outdated and lackluster. Old journaling programs would trap you in with limited exporting abilities. I tried a few Windows clients in years past, but never liked any of them. I suppose that one could use a simple text editor or Microsoft Word to write entries, but that practice would not be secure, nor could you easily search across multiple files for segments of text. This all makes me wonder what computer program Doogie Howser was using back in 1989? Hmmm.

For the Mac user, the best journaling program by far is MacJournal. I’ve used it several times in trial modes and it is great. The problem for me is that it has too many features. It’s extensive features threaten to turn it into more of a virtual scrapbook than a simple journal. Personally, I want to type words, and words only. I don’t want to embed video clips, web links, fonts, and all that fluffy jazz. MacJournal is also a pricey $40 to purchase. The software is superb, but I don’t want to invest that much in an activity I only occasionally engage in.

An online cloud solution seems to be the way to go for most users today. A few benefits are that your data is safely stored offsite and backed up, plus you can use more than one machine to access or write to your journal. I’ll mention two that I’ve had experience with.

LiveJournal has been around for many years. It is a decent off-the-cuff solution, but the service is geared by default toward sharing your content. You have to deliberately change your account settings to make all entries private and to hide your profile from site searches. The default stance of this site encouraging public engagement turns me off a little. LiveJournal does let users export their entries into a monthly CSV format, which is a nice.

The online journaling service that I like best is Penzu.com. It’s been around for a few years now. Penzu is solely aimed toward complete privacy. It is a very private experience, not a social one. It also has a clever interface that lets you go old-school and type on lined notebook paper. Free users get unlimited storage. Though, to be able to export your data, you have to pay for a Pro account at $19/year. Penzu exports to PDF, XML, and TXT formats. Penzu has a lot of clever features and falls very much along the lines of what I’ve looked for in a journaling solution. The interface and slickness of the website as a whole make it fun to use.

Having said all of the above, I’ve saved the best for last.

I read about the following solution recently and it is brilliantly simple: If you are a GMail user, simply create a “Journal” label in your mail account. When you want to write in your journal, write yourself an email using the new label. This solution is free, secure and amazingly simple. If you think about it, your email account is already its own journal in many ways. You can already look back through messages and read what you were up to and the mood you were in at any given time. Therefore, adding the direct “Journal” label and writing yourself a simple email of private thoughts makes complete sense. Boom! It’s funny how the simple solution will often elude us.

Even worse is listening to music on the go and using my iPhone to do a Google search in Safari for the lyrics of what I’m listening to. Pages load slowly with the crazy amount of ad content that comes with them. Usually once a page is usable, it’s typical for a pop-up ad to show up about something stupid (like buying ringtones) and I have to zoom the page to click a tiny “X” to close the overlaying window box. Horrible! I wish that everyone would make mobile-friendly sites. As for using apps, lyric-specific apps are a little lacking, as they have their own ads or incomplete catalogs.

I’m not trying to plug the site, but I tend to generally use 1SongLyrics. This site is a little less bloated than the others, but absent a better solution, I’ve chosen to settle for it.

I’ve long been calling for a lyrics site with leaner ads, but perhaps the perfect solution would be if Google would just give me the lyrics right inside the search results. They already do that with the weather and sports results. I don’t know if this would create a copyright issue, but I just want the words to a song without the fluff.

If anyone thinks they have a better solution, then I’m all ears.

I wanted to make this second post about the Ta-da List site primarily to mention the simplistic beauty of the mobile site, which I’ve recently started using. I’ve sampled a few iPhone apps and have tried to maintain a to-do list that way, but I’ve found that the Ta-da List mobile website is the perfect solution. In essence, I can add and check things off on the go or from my desktop, while always managing the same list. It’s all in one place, so no syncing is necessary. I use it to maintain many lists, including holiday gift ideas, hate list ideas, blogging ideas, shopping lists, and beyond.

I doubt anyone reading this has even heard of this service. Go check it out and marvel at its simplicity.

Twitter recently completely revamped their website, dubbed “New Twitter” by many of its users. Among the many great new features of the new site is that tweets you’ve flagged as favorites are clearly visible in their own group on the website. For example, if I read a tweet from a tech site that links to a page listing the top ten newest WordPress themes, I can simply star that particular tweet as a favorite in my phone. When I later pull up the Twitter website on my computer, it cleverly appears in my list of favorite tweets for me to review at my convenience.

Twitter Favorites are a very useful and handy feature. If you haven’t been putting them to use, you’ve been missing out.

Scott and Turpster make for a very funny duo. Turpster in particular is hilarious and amazingly witty. This podcast is squarely in the comedy category. While their advice can be good at times, they make it clear that they aren’t trying to be serious in any way.

You can listen to the show on their website, or you can subscribe in iTunes. Give it a listen. As of today, they have produced 22 episodes of the weekly podcast. I look forward to many more.

Kevin and Alex are usually sitting on a couch, downing beers, and talking about anything that comes to mind. Within the show, they choose various stories submitted to Digg.com and discuss them. Their banter is quite addicting. I haven’t missed a show since I first started watching it. It is hilarious.

Occasionally, Diggnation is hosted live with a studio audience. They have done shows in many places, including New York City, Austin, Phoenix, Las Vegas, and even Tokyo. I’m happy to hear they are going to try to do more live shows. I wish they would come to Raleigh, NC. I would most certainly attend!

The show is pretty geeky. If that appeals to you, you’re sure to enjoy Diggnation. Check it out their website, or their YouTube channel.

Foursquare is an app for your mobile phone that allows you to check-in to places around town, meet up with friends, and explore your city. Foursquare users collect achievement badges and become the official mayor of places that they visit more often than other users.

I originally heard about Foursquare on the TWiT podcast network. Once I finally got an iPhone a few weeks ago, I was eager to try Foursquare, having heard so much about it. I installed Foursquare on my iPhone, as well as GoWalla, a Foursquare competitor. I’ll go ahead and say that I prefer Foursquare, largely because of the badges and overall fun nature of the app. It also helps that it is much more popular in my area than GoWalla. I’ve never had to add a location into Foursquare in any of my check-ins.

I found GoWalla to be adequate. The user interface is nice. The problem for me was that after many check-ins using both services, GoWalla did not have the place I was visiting in their database even once. I found myself having to add places manually, which eventually wore on my nerves and took some of the fun out of using the app. If it is popular where you live, you may feel otherwise.

Give Foursquare a try. You can install it on iPhone, Android, Palm, and Blackberry devices. I have my check-ins forwarded to my Facebook account so that my friends can see where I am even if they aren’t using Foursquare. Sure, it’s kind of nerdy, but I enjoy it.

Some of Adam’s theories truly live up to his crackpot title. I certainly don’t subscribe to all of them. I admit that I don’t often agree with all of their political leanings either, but the dynamic of these two guys is fun to listen to. I enjoy it when they tear into the propaganda embedded in a lot of commercials and TV dramas that air today, as well as all of the celebrity media “distractions” that are thrown at the public.

John C. Dvorak is my favorite of the two, and his pet peeve of the day is always amusing. Together, their laid back, unscripted conversation-style show combined with their refusal to spoil it with sponsors makes for an enjoyable listen. Check it out.

Of more than a hundred iPhone apps installed on my iPod Touch, Tweetie2 has become my favorite. It’s often the first app I click when I turn it on. I often take the iPod in the bathroom (ha) or in the bed to scroll through the latest tweets and trending topics. Tweetie2 is a fantastic Twitter client and I recommend it above the competition.

I post at least one tweet to Twitter every day. That much is easy. I’ve been try to post daily to this blog. Due to the long form format, it takes time, and I won’t be able to continue it indefinitely. Often times when I see a great movie or find out about something amazing, I’ll tweet about it, versus hammering out an essay on the topic. I suppose that I’ve become lazy by the 140 character limit of Twitter.

Twitter is valuable. Over time, I have carefully managed the list of people that I follow. Today, I follow 175 people and companies, and I read their messages daily. I find out about things the instant they happen. With Twitter, I feel completely plugged in. This is especially true for tech news, of which I am very fond.

If you aren’t using it, I don’t know why. Everyone can sign up, and nobody forces you to post messages of your own. The value in crafting a list to follow of people who are important to you is immeasurable. In fact, I have exchanged direct messages with people such as the editor of MacWorld magazine, and others. It’s quite a community. I foresee using it for a very long time.

My latest Twitter updates are on display in the right sidebar of this blog. You can follow me @blitzcraig.

Whether you are a novice or a pro web coder, W3Schools is the best site to visit for all of your coding answers.

Another terrific online learning destination is at HowStuffWorks.com. At HowStuffWorks, they have a plethora of fantastic articles on just about any topic you could imagine. The site is updated daily, and jam packed with articles, blogs, and podcasts. I’ve spent hours reading through their articles and blogs. There is something here for everyone.

In addition to written content, HowStuffWorks.com has a large selection of podcasts as well. I got hooked on the site after subscribing to the Stuff You Should Know podcast with Josh Clark and Charles Bryant. Their podcast is always interesting and entertaining. Those two guys play off each other very well. I also subscribe to Stuff You Missed in History Class, as well as Tech Stuff. I feel confident in recommending any of their podcasts because all of them are well produced.

Check out the site sometime when you have time to sit back and learn a thing or two.

The service is simply amazing, and so very easy to use. Simply create an account at their website, then download the iPhone app from the App Store (free). You can then create simple voice recordings using your iPhone or iPod Touch and upload them to AudioBoo. The quality and clarity of the recordings is stunningly good. You can even have AudioBoo automatically post a link to your recordings via Twitter or Facebook.

I just signed up today for AudioBoo, and I’ve made my first recording. You can hear all of my boos on my AudioBoo page.

Bing appears to produce solid search results, and displays those results in a clever format that Google currently lacks. Results for video and images are displayed in a clean layout. Simply hovering your mouse over a video box provides an instant preview of the video. I am very impressed with the seamless video preview! Previews are likewise provided for page links in the search results. Related searches and your personal search history are listed in a pane on the left side of the page.

Overall, I think Bing is a big move in the right direction. While some have mocked its name, it has the potential to make major waves in the realm of Internet search. Microsoft may have finally got it right this time. Nicely done.

Some have a growing concern about the security and stability of such services, and the potential fallout from their long term use. These concerns range from hacks to the sites themselves, potentially turning innocent links into malicious ones, masking the true address of the site you are about to visit, and the adding of a middleman layer that adds more bulk to the entire web.

Here are some links to a few popular URL shorteners. A simple search on Google or Yahoo will bring back dozens of such sites hoping to snip your URLs. It’s become quite a field day of startups.

• tinyurl.com
• is.gd
• bit.ly
• tr.im
• u.nu

• Ubuntu Christian Edition
• Ubuntu Satanic Edition

After a few days, I can say that I am impressed with Mozy. It performs out of sight, backing up my critical information to a space in the “cloud”. I am pleased with the ease and simplicity of Mozy. However, being a Mac user, I am somewhat discouraged by the advanced options referenced in the program documentation, most of which must be available only to Windows users. That aside, Mozy is a simple, sleek backup option if you can stay within the 2 GB of free space, or are willing to pay for more storage.

My security doubts were laid to rest when I read the details. My passwords are stored locally in a highly encrypted file. The owners of LastPass only have an encrypted file of your passwords and can never see them. At no point do they see the unencrypted version of your passwords.

Until now, I’d been using the Firefox password manager to store my basic web passwords. I bit the bullet and downloaded LastPass. I opted for the simple Firefox extension, not the executable download. I am thoroughly impressed.

One cool feature of LastPass worth noting is that you can use a graphical keyboard via their web page to click out your password with a mouse. This would be very handy in public computing situations such as hotels or Internet cafes, where dubious computer users may attempt to capture your keystrokes.

I’m now a happy LastPass user. I can now access my passwords from any machine where I sign in with LastPass. This enables me to use complex passwords for all of my sites and not have to remember each one. And my sensitive data is stored on my machine much more securely than the included Firefox password manager. Bravo.

I believe that this new online approach gives much more direct access to information for the citizens of the country, and will also bring young Americans into being interested in following the actions of their government. Check out the website and the corresponding YouTube channel. You’ll find them both to be first class.

1. OVGuide.com
2. Ninjavideo.net
3. Truveo.com

The official website is: www.annualcreditreport.com

It is indeed free with no strings attached. Don’t fall for commercials for “free credit report dot com”, which is only free after you sign up for a monthly credit monitoring service that is ridiculously priced. I wasn’t about to enter my information on just any website, and I’m thankful the magazine has cleared up. And now I’m telling you.

It also appears that traffic directed to their traditional del.icio.us address is now redirected to delicious.com. I don’t know how long it has been that way. I just noticed it, myself.

Fast-forward to today, and I’m hooked on Facebook! I prefer it to MySpace by about 10-to-1. I’ve become addicted all all of the apps you can add to Facebook. I’ve come to enjoy apps like: Word Challenge, Pieces of Flair, The Hatchery, Super Wall, Battle Masters, SimmBook, and so on. I find myself signing in several times a day to check up on things and to boost my standings.

The recent addition of integrated instant messaging in Facebook has only sweetened the deal. It works very well. I like being able to see at a single glance if I have any friends online, regardless of what page I’m viewing on the site.

While MySpace has grown stale to me, Facebook is evolving. I’ve read a few articles predicting a type of “Facebook fatigue” would eventually set in for most users. So far, for me, this has not been the case.

The available extension(s) for Firefox confuse me a little. I like using the traditional Del.icio.us Bookmarks extension, which simply puts two buttons on your toolbar (this extension still is not compatible with Firefox 3.0). At the same time, the site also has another extension, called Del.icio.us, which is much more bulky. It adds a sidebar, and integration with your local bookmarks. I don’t care for that much overlay. On top of that, while searching the site, Del.icio.us offered two local bookmarks to add to Firefox that uses some Javascript code to take you to the Del.icio.us site in a new tab, and you can add a bookmark to the page you were just viewing. Personally, I like the last approach the best. No extension is required, and it is very simple.

I do love the simplicty of the Del.icio.us site, but it feels like it’s in need of a bit of an overhaul. It is a little slow at responding sometimes, too, despite it’s lack of graphical flair. I still love it, and use it daily, it’s just that it’s starting to feel neglected by its owners. Hopefully that isn’t the case, Yahoo!

Fortunately, most of the sites I visited have a 20-character limit. That is way more than I will use, but a good number to use as a ceiling. Limiting passwords these days to 8-10 digits is surprising to me.

In using Yahoo Mail some lately, I found it to be so littered with large, animated ads, it is painful to use. The new Yahoo Mail is worse in that aspect than the Classic view. Ads are everywhere–and they are big. I had several tabs open within the Mail window (Home, Inbox, Sent, etc.), and each tab had animating ads running all at the same time. Also, after composing a new message and sending it, an ad is displayed on the right side of the screen that is so large, it literally takes up almost half of my monitor.

It isn’t only the flashy ads in the Mail site itself. The advertisement taglines sent with all outgoing messages are really annoying, too. Yahoo used to have ones that simply mentioned the message having been sent by Yahoo. Today, it is a random text ad, shown below a horizontal line that doesn’t quite line up with the message window, or the text below it. Obnoxious and tacky! Fortunately, Gmail doesn’t do this.

One can sign up for Yahoo Mail Plus ($20 yearly) to ditch the ads. That is too expensive for my taste, especially since free accounts already get unlimited storage. I suppose anyone could use AdBlock for Firefox to block the ads within Yahoo Mail, but it won’t do anything about the taglines in your outgoing messages.

Overall, Gmail has so much more class and tact. Google doesn’t charge for the extras that Yahoo is asking users to pay for. If you use Yahoo and are willing to change your email address, I’d suggest ditching it. Gmail is so much faster and snappier than Yahoo, by a mile. You’ll certainly be thankful when you don’t see anymore flashing ads!

Once you enable page themes, you are able to preview and choose themes from a cool AJAX-style slider. Of course, you can go with no theme, while still using the new layout. This new layout reminds me a lot of Facebook, especially after MySpace added friend updates, and other such goodies which I have been accustomed to with Facebook. Spaces are organized neatly, and the ads seem to be a little more tame. I really can’t say if the ads are calmer in their content, but their placement feels less intrusive than previously. I think MySpace has finally evolved into something actually usable.

• worldtimeserver.com
• timeticker.com
• atomictime.net
• time.gov

I have added my new creation to my Contact page. It shows my online status in the window. If I am not logged in, you can still leave offline messages and I’ll receive them the next time I log into Meebo. I think this is really cool. For now, I’ll certainly keep it on my page.

Enter your zip code and you get an added section for local news. Doing so added WRAL, my local newspaper, and a few more to this part of my page. Perhaps the greatest selling point for me about Yahoo News is that fact hovering your mouse over each news story gives you a small popup box giving you a small synopsis. This is such a time saver for me. I don’t have to load another page to get the jist of most of what is going on. If it is important enough, I’ll read the article as a whole.

There are a ton of news sites online today, and I still visit plenty of them. I see now more than ever how convenient it is to visit Yahoo first because they are pulling news from all of the sources I would visit individually, anyway. Check it out for yourself and customize it the way you like.

The site is indeed a little cluttered with all of the ads and tables of information, but you can access so many resources that you can become your own expert. The site offers up code that you can include on your own website to display the weather stats. During my last visit, I found they have integrated the local temperature and reading stations with Google Maps. See the screenshot, below. I think it is so awesome.

Wouldn’t it be great if we had a single protocol to use for instant messaging, as we do for email? I want the medium to create a single way of making it all work as one, with companies competing to have the best application to serve computer users. Friends and Buddies would be universal, and everyone could be active on the same network, mobile users included.

Personally, I hate IRC, which is indeed a standard prototol, but I am not talking about that in this discussion. I am keeping this specifically about the traditional instant messenger programs. Today, there are an awful lot of chat solutions out there. I want the networks of AOL, Yahoo, MSN, ICQ, Google (Jabber), etc. to become a single, industry-standard network. I have friends scattered all over the three big networks and it is ridiculous to manage. Having so many people spread so thin over these networks makes for everyone’s suffering in the end. With new technologies like MySpace becoming so overwhelmingly popular, I think the IM programs of yesterday need to merge into one to create a force that won’t become replaced or abandoned.

I’d actually read about this kind of proposal years ago. I heard that AOL was going to open up their network for use by everyone, and write a draft for an IM standard. At the time, AOL was the most popular IM service. I do not know if that is still true today. Obviously, the opening up of their network never happened and an industry standard was never created. I wonder if the will is still there today for this type of idea. We desperately need it, or I fear everyone’s buddy list will start to dry up as people switch to whatever the latest thing happens to be at the moment.

Until such a day, I’ll continue to use Adium on my Mac and Meebo on my PC as a way to access all of my chat services in one place. Vendor chat software like the real AOL Instant Messenger have become so bloated and full of ads, it is a wonder why anyone would even consider using them. Yahoo does make a good product, but the amount of memory it consumes is a little staggering, as is true with about all of them, as more features are stacked on to compete with the other guys. Perhaps some of the bloat in these programs can be trimmed by merging, as well. Sounds like a winning idea to me.

Pogo, on the other hand, mostly has Java-coded web games, which work on my PC platform. A few of the games do require IE and Active X (like Bejeweled), but I have found there to be decent alternatives to these that use Java (i.e. Sweet Tooth). Pogo is a product of EA Games, who I have much more admiration for than Microsoft. I love the reward of earning tokens. You can use them to buy in to nightly, weekly, or monthly drawings…for real money! Overall, the site itself it is a pleasure to navigate and use. Adding friends is also easy, allowing you to join your buddies in a game.

I now use Pogo exclusively for web gaming. I think it is the best of its kind. Laura is now a Club Pogo member. She is enjoying ad-free gaming, with access to 30+ games that I cannot access on my free account. Sweet. It is easy to lose a couple of hours on the site without even realizing it.

I often log on to IM services (usually with AOL and Yahoo). I don’t use the native software for any of them. I don’t need to, but keep in mind that in order to do some advanced features, you may need to use the actual native programs. Ads, feature bloat, and memory hogging are the mean reasons why I don’t download a one of them. I usually use an all-in-one chat program, such as Trillian (Win), Adium (Mac), and Gaim (now called Pidgin), which lets me log on to most any network there is today. But you really don’t need to install any of these programs. You can chat with all of your buddies on any service via Meebo. I used it exclusively when I first bought my Mac. I found that I really didn’t need anything more.

It has all the features you need and it works fantastically. You’ll soon forget you are using a website at all. You can sign on to any single chat service outright, but if you use more than one, I recommend creating a Meebo username so you can store all of your accounts under one roof. That way you need only sign on to their site with a single username and password.

I hear they have a sweet new mobile version of the site as well, for phone users. I have no interest in that, but if you want to sign on to your account from anyone’s computer, or your own at home without all the feature bloat, try Meebo. You won’t be disappointed. It finally does for instant messaging what webmail has done for email. All of your friends and contacts are automatically pulled from the server for each service, so absolutely no effort is required. Let’s hope this service is around for years to come.

Well, tonight I pull up my movie queue and a message comes onscreen telling me that users can now reorder their titles by simply dragging and dropping, in true AJAX style. Totally freakin’ awesome. Hooray!

Fast forward to today and you’ll find plugs for Gmail and GoogleDocs, business solutions, advertising programs, and a link to info about Google. In addition, there is a bar across the top of the page with links for other search methods (web, images, news, etc.). In the right corner on that bar is your Gmail account name, a link to account info, and a link to sign out.

I predict that some day Google will adopt a more Yahoo-style home page and move their once basic search page to a subdomain such as search.google.com (that link as of this post takes you to the same page as google.com, in case you were wondering.) Time will tell on my predictions. Google has a lot of services and applications under its belt now. Surely they don’t want the company’s front page to be as extremely basic as it once was. As for the users, we can look back and cherish a time when it was more simple. We can still enjoy the page as it is today, but I’ll bet it will slowly start to get filled in over time.

Below is a screenshot I just made tonight of the current state of google.com:

It has finally caught my attention and I have started using it. I must say that I really like it. The site is snappy, clean, and easy to use. Adding contacts and controlling the sharing of your photos is simple and clearly defined. The slideshows are cool, and viewing multiple sizes of any single picture is easy. Viewing the full-sized version of any large photo is only allowed on Pro accounts ($24 annually). Still, with the free account, my photos can be viewed up to 1024×768, which is just fine by me. One bummer is that free accounts are limited to 100 MB per month for uploads. I can’t find any specific limits on your overall disk use, however. For now, I am sticking with the free version.

I still need to download an uploader to make things easier. At the moment, I am still adding pictures one-by-one. That is been okay for my trials, but to really upload a “roll” of film would be ridiculous doing it this way. Still, I am very impressed with the site. After years of making Photoshop and Picasa web galleries, and using sites like Shutterfly, I am now comfortably using Flickr and my #1 choice. I surely recommend it.

Second Life is more sophisticated than There. Not only are the graphics better, the application itself is a lot more grown up. It loads and responds quickly, despite its very advanced features. A plethora of options are available, detailing every aspect of your Second Life experience. The interface and controls are less cartoonish than There’s offering. The software feels tighter, more responsive, and runs smoother with less system resources. At least that is my experience. Controlling the software’s use of resources, graphics detail, and networking are all easy to change in the preferences. Updates come out regularly, some of which are optional, and some of which are required in order to log in. I have had the application crash once (on my Mac). This was unsettling, but the program generated an error report which was immediately sent to the creators to help identify software bugs.

Second Life uses Linden dollars, which are purchased using real life money. There are ways to earn Linden dollars, but that is beyond the scope of this post. To date, I have not had any need for any currency. In contrast to There, where you have to pay a one-time membership fee to utilize advanced features (such as voice, setting landmarks, etc.), with Second Life, most of this is available at no cost. You can customize your head, body, and clothing in stunning detail. There is no need to purchase anything unless you want to acquire some new items and fabrics beyond your original set. You can buy and sell land, and rent space for online business. Why anyone would need to do any of that is beyond me. For example, I have read you can rent an apartment and things like that. I do not understand what that is for. Why would one need a residence when you can do anywhere you want? Not to mention that a lot of the space in Second Life is deserted.

Flying is incredible in Second Life. There is no need to buy a jetpack or take out a machine. Simply tapping the Home key on your keyboard makes you soar up into the air, where you can then fly around Superman-style. Flying around is my favorite aspect of the entire Second Life experience. Everyone can do this in an instant. I love it! It far surpasses the way you have to get around in There. Your avatar flies around fast, but often travels more quickly than the graphics are able to fill in around you. It is not uncommon to be flying through the air, only to smack into a wall that hasn’t yet loaded. While that can be frustrating, it just comes with the territory.

As with There, this 3D world leans heavily on your Internet connection, as all graphics, sounds, communications, and worldly details must be transferred to your computer as you travel. No matter how powerful your PC or connection, you’ll never experience the same performance as you would playing a 3D game that is installed locally. That is just the way it is. You can help matters by turning off music or video streaming, or limiting their bandwidth.

There are a lot of places to go in Second Life, and many things to see. The landscape is ever expanding and changing. A few major companies are setting up virtual shops in Second Life. Dell is one of these companies. I went to their online store. You can sit down at a workstation and customize a PC to purchase in the real world. While this is really, really cool, I have doubts that I’d purchase a product this way. It simply isn’t as informative or reliable as a traditional two dimensional web page. Still, I applaud the effort by Dell and others.

I think Second Life is the best 3D virtual world available today. If you are interested, try this one out. Chatting, traveling, teleporting, and gesturing are all much easier than what There has to offer, in my opinion. And you can enjoy yourself without spending a single cent. Still, the fun wears off after a while. Besides exploring and occasionally chatting with strangers, I am not sure what you are supposed to do. After the initial trials, it is fun now and again, but unless there are more users logged in and more events, you’ll find yourself bored sooner or later. It will be interesting to see how the new “3D Internet” (as I have heard it called) will pan out in the future. Second Life already has a great foundation for this already in place. People all over the world are scheduling meetings and training classes using it. While this type of thing has a niche market, I doubt that the average computer user will want to interact with the world in this way. Time will tell.

If you like a simple page, like Google’s page, but also want a couple of important news headlines on the screen, try making your start page search.yahoo.com. I much prefer Google as a search engine, but this is just for something to look at when I load the browser. Yahoo Search has an extremely basic, clean page with a few links to the top news headlines so that you don’t miss anything important, as well as indicators from Yahoo Mail. I have my browser set to Yahoo Search for now, though I am bound to change it without notice.

My biggest irk with the website is that I have an old email account listed as my address and it is a mailbox that I disabled and cannot access anymore. In order to change my email with MySpace, they send me a permission request message to my current address that must be verified before I can change my address. Well, this does not work for me. I can’t access that account, you dummies! They used to have a link next to that information saying that if you couldn’t access that account, to click to write customer service. I did that at least twice over a period of two months and never got a single response. Astonishingly, they even ask you to include your MySpace password when writing customer service! What?! That is not cool. Against my better judgment, I did just that (just to try to get the job done), but still I never heard a word from them or ever got my address changed. Therefore, I don’t get any notifications via email from MySpace, so I have to log in from time to time to find out for myself.

I don’t really use MySpace much at all. I don’t know how it is so popular and remains one of the most visited sites on the web. I am a little surprised. Granted, I don’t use every nook and cranny of the site, but there isn’t much to do when I’m on there. Apart from it being easy to find my old friends on the site, if I want to correspond with them, I’ll send a regular email. I don’t want to use the half-assed MySpace mail, which is crummy and where old messages are automatically purged. Posting comments is a nice gesture now and again, but you can’t easily communicate two ways doing that. I guess I don’t use most of their offerings because I have better ones elsewhere.

There are a lot of other things that annoy me, too. Creating and choosing a theme for your page has never improved, and is as difficult as ever. The service should not rely on third party sites to provide HTML code for you to copy and paste in order to change your page’s appearance. That is ridiculous. Also, the video ads I see plastered all over the site are very annoying, and are just a waste of my time and resources. Seriously, the number, size, and frequency of the ads on the MySpace site are enough to turn me off after just minutes of being signed in. They are flashy and cheesy like the ones back in the day when Internet ads first got started, like “punch the monkey” and stupid junk like that.

All in all, the service doesn’t feel very polished. It feels like a work in progress, and that progress is slow moving. I think the website needs a total overhaul, personally.

To enhance There, pay a visit to the Thumdar website. On this site, you can download add-ons and make use of scripts to alter the There environment. So far, I have only tried the sound replacements, but the amount of stuff to tinker with is intriguing. Also on their site, they have a complete list of all the emotes that can be used in There. Not all of them work for me, leading me to believe that I need to use a Thumdar add-on to enable the entire list. I don’t yet know how easy it is to uninstall these add-ons.

If you want to ratchet up your skill levels, search the Groups for “Whippaa’s Hillside Mansion.” Once you are invited in, it keeps your avatar from going to an away status when you are not using the computer. While in the mansion, jump on your board, backpack, or bike and walk away from the computer. When you come back later, the game will have raised your skill rating on that particular item, thinking you were really using it the whole time. As you raise your skill rating, you are awarded more freebies, and ultimately increase your There FunPass. The other day I earned a silver FunPass! For more for tips and tricks, visit Therefan.com.

I find have found Delicious to be very useful, especially if you are using two computers. I tag pages when I am surfing with my laptop and can pull them up on another computer by visiting my Delicious bookmarks page. If you use Firefox, make sure you download the Delicious extension, that adds the site’s features to the browser toolbar and menus.

My favorite use for this website isn’t so much to store my own bookmarks, but instead to find other sites. It is an excellent place to visit if you want to branch out and find new places online. Every link has a popularity score based on the overall number of tags it is has received. I can’t tell you how many cool places I have found since I first visited Delicious. Once you start using this service, you’ll soon get hooked. The only downside is a slight delay from the servers when tagging new websites. The site response feels a bit lacking, but that primarily affects adding new links, not browsing the site itself.

In fact, I like it more now than when I first began. It takes some getting used to. You learn shortcuts after a while. One worth mentioning is that to make a gesture in chat, such as a laugh or a wave, simply type the command ‘wave or ‘smile. It’s easier than using the mouse if you are already typing.

There.com is an incredibly easy way to meet people. Everyone I have met has been very positive and helpful with my learning how to use it and offering ideas. Unlike old-school chat rooms, this 3-D world has hoards of people standing or walking around. People freely walk up and exchange words all the time. You can join games and competitions, too. My only problem is that I have found that most everyone I meet is a lot younger than I am. At 30, I guess I am in the older bracket of users who try this kind of stuff out.

Last week, I bit the bullet and upgraded my free account to become a premium member. It is well worth it. It is only a one-time fee of $9.95. With that you get a lot, including favorites, a compass, and voice chat. I was stunned when the voice chat first turned on. I could hear people talking into their headsets who were standing nearby. You can’t get this in the free version. It takes it to a whole new level. Since you only pay that one time, I would suggest doing it. Also, as a free member, I used to be locked out of half of the places on the map. No longer. I can own property, attend auctions, and go anywhere I want now.

I also picked up a hover bike which has been wonderful. It helps me get around everywhere much faster and also rides uphill, nearly in a vertical state if you are on a steep slope. One frustrating feature of There is that some areas are designated “No Dropping Zone”. Which means you cannot pull out your hoverboard, buggy, or whatever. Sometimes this is not clearly indicated.

I installed There on my Dell notebook computer, which is faster than my older desktop PC. It ran great, but I noticed that the computer was getting very hot from the constant activity. I eventually decided to use my desktop computer when I want to log on. It takes a lot out of the computer and I notice that the hard drive is usually very busy. I thought that over time, I may wear out the small drive that is in my notebook. Also, I’ll mention that it would probably be wise to have a 7200 RPM speed drive to keep things smooth.

See you There.

Nothing matches the speed and simplicity of GMail. It has the most storage of any service, only uses text advertising, has the awesome “conversation” way of viewing email, killer search within your mailbox, and it responds as fast as a desktop mail client. I like how it automatically checks my mail continuously without me having to hit a “check mail” button all the time. And most of all, I love how it displays pictures in email attachments. When I click “view”, I actually get to view the full-sized picture in a new browser tab. In Yahoo, even after all these years, you still have to have it virus-certified, choose to download it, then save it, or open it on your PC in an image viewer to see the full-sized version. That is nonsense.

If that isn’t enough, GMail even offers free POP mail access to your mailbox from a desktop email client. Yahoo users must subscribe and pay a yearly fee to have this feature. Don’t even get me started on Hotmail. I quit that horrible service many years ago. It isn’t even a consideration.

The only annoying thing about GMail that I have found is the silly Google Chat that is now built-in that lets you instant message other GMail users that are logged in. I don’t care for that. At work, it tells me it cannot find the service (probably due a company firewall), but luckily, you can turn that off in the options at the bottom of the page. I find it cleans up the interface a little and (I think) makes things run faster. Who uses it, anyway?

Time has passed, and today when I sign on to AOL and Yahoo, there is usually nobody online. Is this just my experience, or have others noticed it to? Maybe I just have fewer friends than I used to or something. But it is only every now and then that someone on my list logs on.

Today, I use Gaim to connect to the services all at once. It uses less memory, has no ads, and isn’t intrusive. Although I am almost never engaged in actual chat, I sign onto it anyway, just to tow the line and try to keep it alive. I figure if my buddies log on and see at least one person, they’ll be more inclined in the future to keep logging on.

Perhaps newer technologies like text messaging, Skype, MySpace, and There.com have siphoned away users from traditional instant messaging software. I don’t know the reason, or if the problem is as bad as I see it from my point of view, but I sure wish more people would continue to use these services. If the original programs have grown too bloated and bulky for you, try using Gaim or Trillian instead. Either is usually a better alternative to the real programs.

There.com requires you to download the software before you sign-in. From what I understand, the software is based on ActiveX (which explains why Internet Explorer is the only browser supported) and naturally, you must be connected to the Internet at all times to use it. The initial download will be around 60 MB in size, but it ultimately consumes nearly 400 MB once installed on the computer. There is so much to the service that it isn’t surprising that it takes so much space and computer resources.

There are many things to do in There.com, from chatting with friends and strangers, to games, puzzles, paintball, driving, flying, and so on. You personalize your online character with hair styles, clothes, accessories, and more. Everything you do in the game involves moving around in the virtual world. For example, when editing your body characteristics, you must first walk or teleport to a spa.

The game has a wealth of items and surroundings to experiment with. Some items are not free and must be purchased using ThereBucks, the money system in the There.com world. You can earn ThereBucks by participating in events, trading with others, or adding them using real cash. One real world dollar buys you 1,900 Therebucks. The game developers have even provided users with a developer program, used to create new items and material for the game. If your creations meet their standard of quality, they will buy it from you and pay you in ThereBucks.

The concept behind this whole thing is absolutely amazing. It is very creative and turns the idea of two dimensional text chat into a thing of the past. I don’t know how long the fun of There.com will last, but for now, I am having a great time. Try it yourself. The basic membership is free. Just be prepared to lose a whole lot of your free time.

]]> http://www.blitzcraig.com/blog/85/feed 0 http://www.blitzcraig.com/blog/79 http://www.blitzcraig.com/blog/79#comments Sun, 24 Sep 2006 01:55:20 +0000 Craig http://www.blitzcraig.org/?p=79 Tonight I was browsing the Digg.com site and found a link to a website that offers up every single episode of the Simpsons, for free. All 18 seasons are online to stream to your PC. Only the Flash player is needed. If you are Simpsons fan, head over to allsimps.com and be prepared to waste a few hours. Enjoy!

The problem is that the service is slow, and so full of ads and clutter, it gets bogged down. Creating graphics and styled pages for your profile is unexplained and difficult work. Too many profiles have audio and video files that play automatically when you view the page. In a short while, all of its bells and whistles become overpowering and obnoxious. Searching for people, the whole point of the site, is usually slow and cumbersome.

Beyond finding friends, I am not sure what else to do with it. Once I finally figured out how to spruce up my profile, and had added most my friends, there isn’t anything else to do. The mail and instant messaging features leave a lot to be desired. I just want to find people on the service and then use regular email and IM software to communicate. Browsing random profiles is somewhat fun, but the site is mostly filled with teenagers who post the stupidest crap.

I don’t know if MySpace will survive ultimately. I want a better, sleeker service to come along and take over. MySpace is too junk-filled to actually be useful. Of course, the more social networking sites that crop up, the more spread out everyone is. I like that there is one big game in town, but MySpace needs an overhaul.

Link: My profile on MySpace.

I hate Blockbuster with a passion, so I cringe when someone tells me they use Blockbuster’s new subscription service. Netflix beat them at their own game, so they had to follow suit and try to ruin them. I’ll stand up for them. I’ll be a loyal Netflix customer for years to come.