JC - Technology and Stuff

Back in September last year I blogged about a Firefox add-on called ‘Read It Later‘. Since that time I’ve come to rely on it and it’s proved itself one of the most valuable Firefox add-ons on the market.

As is my wont, I have surfed the Internet and saved lots of pages I have come across, to process later. My current list is about 70 bookmarks long and the oldest one dates back 200 days. I have made several of them permanent and have deleted countless others along the way as I’ve finished with them. Overall I have to say I really like the service and because I also use FoxMarks (which synchronizes bookmarks across PCs), if I switch to my laptop for the evening I still have all my ‘Read It Later’ bookmarks for use.

However, recently my bookmarks have gotten a little out of control. I used to have only about 30 ‘Read It Later’ bookmarks, and they were always processed quite quickly. Like I said, it’s now 70 and I also have 143 ’starred’ RSS articles that I need to do something with. Aaaarrrrrgggghhhh! It’s time to do a spring clean on my bookmarks and saved RSS articles. I think I’m going to create a Microsoft Notes notebook and cut out the interesting pieces of the articles and ’stick’ them into it. At least that way I can then get rid of all the non-ordered bookmarks that contain something I know I want to make a note of or remember for later. Then, you never know, I may even Evernote it all for later lookup (Note to self: write article on Evernote at some later date!). It’s going to be a long couple of weeks. I’ll report back on progress and any hint and tips for others.

Is your PC suffering from slowness Problems? Does your PC take two minutes to wake up from screensaver? Are you running Windows Vista? Do you have SQL Server loaded?

If you answered ‘yes’ to all of these questions then SQL server is your problem. Deleting it off the face of the earth is your solution.

For the past few months my PC has taken ridiculous amounts of time to come back from screensaver to a normal window where I can actually do something. All I could hear was disk thrashing, but there didn’t seem to be excessive CPU usage. I thought at first I had some kind of virus, so I checked everything - at least three times. But I found nothing. It has really bugged me over the past few months. I even considered turning off the screensaver. In the end I started monitoring my processes really closely and I noticed from time to time that my hard drive thrashed around a lot and a SQL Server process seemed to be active. Now, I admit I have SQL Server loaded, but I have never used the thing. It came with a version of Visual Basic I downloaded from the Microsoft site and has been hanging out on my hard drive for a while.

Anyway in the end I decided to nuke SQL Server (a long winded process in itself) and that has cured my problem. Now my PC zaps back into life when I come out of screensaver mode. All is well in the plastic box.

So, if you are suffering similar problems to me and you have SQL Server loaded - nuke it for your own peace of mind!

Links:
MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-432): Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008 Implementation and Maintenance (PRO-Certification)
Microsoft SQL Server Developer Edition 2005 CD/DVD

One of the lesser known facts about Twitter, from a user’s perspective, is that there is a limit on how many times you can request updates on people’s tweets every hour. The official Twitter documentation states “Clients are allowed 100 requests per 60 sixty minute time period, starting from their first request”. This covers all Twitter clients (phone, desktop, etc.) except for the client on the actual Twitter website.

What does this mean? Well, put quite simply if you are using a Twitter client like Tweetdeck, or Digsby, or Twirl, or an iPhone equivalent, then the total number of requests that these clients make in any one hour cannot exceed 100. If you have a Twitter client on your iPhone or G1 and you are running a desktop client, then think very carefully how often you have update requests set for. If your phone updates every 5 minutes and your desktop app updates every 2 minutes, then that’s a total of 12 + 30 requests an hour, 42 in total (but see Gotchas later). But let’s say that you reset those updates periods to 1 minute on both devices, now you have 60 + 60 requests, or 120 per hour. After the first 100 requests are sent in an hour, Twitter will reply with a message saying you cannot have any more updates until your hour is up. Please note that every action you take on the official Twitter site does not have this limitation. You can tweet away there to your heart’s content.

What does this all mean in reality? Well, it really means that when you first start using Twitter, everything will work great and you’ll never notice a problem. But as you become a power Twitter user you’ll probably download a few clients and really start to follow updates more closely. No doubt you’ll have 2 or 3 clients open and be doing all sorts of things at any one time. This is where you are likely to fall foul of the Twitter api limit.

Other gotchas? Any time that any client makes a request to your Twitter account (think of some Twitter sites that ask for your username and password so they can get information for you) it counts as a request. Keep using these and you will quickly run out of api calls. Similarly on Tweetdeck for example if you ask for the profile of several of your followers, each one of these requests uses one of your 100 calls. Lastly, the most unknown gotcha is that each call for your ‘replies’ and ‘directs’ also uses one of the 100 allowed calls per hour. So, if you can limit how often your client checks for replies and directs in an hour that will really help. Otherwise you may be actually using 3 times the amount of calls to the api than you think. For example, one client checking for updates and replies and directs every two minutes is 30 x 3 requests, or 90 per hour. And that’s without any extras. Hmmm.

So, there you have it, a simple guide to how to abide to Twitters rules. A detailed explanation of the Twitter api can be found here: http://apiwiki.twitter.com/REST+API+Documentation

Have fun tweeps… Follow me on Twitter

Links:
Twitter For Dummies
Twitter Power: How to Dominate Your Market One Tweet at a Time
Twitter Revolution: How Social Media and Mobile Marketing is Changing the Way We Do Business & Market Online

Back at the end of August 2008 I blogged about my experiences with many social networking sites. Namely, LinkedIn, Plaxo, Facebook, Twitter, Hi5, FriendsReunited. It’s about time I updated some numbers…

My new numbers for each site are as follows, with the old numbers in parentheses:

• Address Book - 626 (550) - 14% increase
• LinkedIn - 212 (184) - 15% increase
• Plaxo - 86 (53) - 62% increase
• Facebook  - 150 (39) - 285% increase
• Twitter Followers - 340 (9) - 3678% increase

I’ve stopped using Hi5 now and hardly ever log onto FriendsReunited any more either.

So, the numbers are quite interesting some seven months after I last measured them. My Address Book and LinkedIn have shown ‘organic’ growth (that is new members that either I have found or they have found me). Plaxo has obviously attracted more followers over recent months, and so too has Facebook. Seven months ago, 90% of all my contacts were not on Facebook. That number is changing rapidly and daily. Lastly, Twitter is a different kind of animal altogether. The people who I follow on Twitter and those who follow me, are not necessarily in my Address Book. In fact it’s true to say that 90% of them are not.

I find myself spending a lot more time on Facebook and Twitter now than I ever did before. That will probably change over time as new trends come and go, but for now Social Networking is a big part of my day to day routine.

Business methods are changing too. Emails are going away. SMS messages are more popular. Virtual chatter is here to stay. I can see the day when we don’t need email any more. Is that scary or what?

I’ll report back in another couple of months.

Links:
Facebook For Dummies (For Dummies (Computer/Tech))
Twitter For Dummies
LinkedIn For Dummies (For Dummies (Computer/Tech))

It’s been a little while since I’ve blogged about the T-Mobile G1 Google phone so I thought I’d give my user perspective after having the phone for about 5 months now (Read previous article on G1 Hints & Tips).

Overall I have to say I’m pleased with it - very. My only remaining gripes are the shortish battery life and the back light on my keyboard (and I say my keyboard because I have the bronze version and that one is known for the problem - the black and white versions have different colored keys and don’t exhibit the same problem). Apart from that it’s amazingly good, and has been very resilient to my day by day use.

What have I done with it? - Well the main use I have for it is email I have to say. Far and above the most common use. Second is texting probably and third is actual phone calls. I don’t know, I’m just not a big talker on the phone! Then there’s Youtube - I use that quite a bit. Oh, and the Internet - a lot of Wikipedia and sites like that. Lastly, from time to time I use some of the applications to follow sports scores, to look up barcodes or to just show off its capabilities.

So, if you’re looking to buy a new phone I would wholeheartedly recommend the T-Mobile G1 Phone with Google, Black (T-Mobile)

So you’ve got Facebook, added a couple of photos, ‘friended’ a few people and added your birthday. Now what do you do? Well, actually this is more of a ‘now wind forward three weeks and what do I do?’ post.

One day hopefully you wake up and you suddenly have 50 friends on Facebook. It’s about this time you also realize that your ‘friends’ are from different pockets of humanity. Some are school-friends, some are work colleagues and some are just casual acquaintances. And that’s okay. Well it’s sort of okay. The problem is that you want to keep up with them in different ways and also perhaps not allow certain of your friends to see certain things (like the weird video you posted from Youtube). That’s where creating lists comes in very handy.

Lists of Friends

If you click on your ‘Friends’ tab on the homepage you’ll be taken to a page that shows all the latest status updates of your friends. But on the left hand side of the page there is a little graphic that says ‘Friends Lists’ and a button labeled ‘Make a New List’. This is your friend. Now before you go ahead and click the button, have a think about what groupings you want for your friends and who you want to be in which list (and don’t worry, you can put friends in multiple lists).

When you’ve worked out who should be in which list, click the button and type in the name of your new list. You will then be taken to a screen similar to below. At this point you can either type friends’ names in the box or click ‘Select Multiple Friends’, which will give you your complete friends list to choose from. It’s a pretty simple process to complete.

Okay, so now you’ve created your lists, what are you going to do with them? Here comes the tricky part of the operation. For the sake of an example I am going to demonstrate how I can hide my photos and wall posts from one of my groups ‘xLimited’. You can follow this procedure for any lists you have created.

Privacy - Wall Posts

As I mentioned, this is where it gets a little tricky. There are features in Facebook, hidden away in the bowels and this is one of them. It just feels like it is in the wrong place. Anyway, in my example, if I want to stop friends in the ‘xLimited’ list from being able to view my wall posts I do the following. Firstly, click on the tab at the top of the home page that says ‘Settings’. Then choose the ‘Privacy Settings’ option. You will get a screen as above. Now choose ‘Profile’ which seems a little odd to me as there is one called ‘…Wall’ further down. Anyway, click Profile and you will get something similar to below.

As you can see, I’ve already modified my privacy options to something that works for me. But on with the example. About halfway down there is an option for ‘Wall Posts’. First you get to choose whether friends are allowed to post to your wall at all. Assuming you say ‘Yes’ then you further get to choose exactly who. Clicking the dropdown for Wall Posts allows you choices of ‘Everyone’, ‘My Network and Friends’, ‘Friends of Friends’, ‘Only Friends’, ‘Only Me’, ‘No One’, ‘Customize’ and also any networks you belong to. The default is set to ‘My Network and Friends’. This means that anyone who is in, for example, ‘Seattle’ (if this is your network) and also all your friends, can post to your wall. They can post whatever they want on your wall. Hmmm.

So, decide who you want posting to your wall and if you have also created a list of friends (in my example ‘xLimited’) you don’t want to post to your wall, you need to select ‘Customize’ as your main option. If you do, the following screen will appear:

At the bottom of the box you get a chance to exclude whoever you want; individuals or lists. Lists make it easier in the long run to maintain. So, for me I just type in ‘xLimited’ and click ‘Okay’ and it’s done. Then click ‘Save Changes’ on the main page and no one from your ‘xLimited’ group will now be able to write on your wall (or see most things come to think of it!). Shame! Using this method you can change many of the options available to your friends.

Privacy - Photo Albums

The second thing I wanted to do was stop the ‘xLimited’ list from seeing my photos too. On the screen we were just on (where we modified the ‘Profile’) about halfway down there is a label that reads ‘Edit Photo Albums Privacy Settings’. If you click that you get taken to the page headed ‘Privacy - Photos’.

Then you can apply the same procedure as above to stop friends from seeing your photos. Hopefully, you’re starting to get the idea here. Play around with the Profile pages and make all the changes you want. There’s also an option to display your Facebook page as if you were a particular person. That way you can easily see if your intended changes did what they were supposed to do.

Hiding Friends’ Posts

There are times when all you want to do is hide individual friends’ statuses or messages. This is a relatively easy thing to do. Just go to your ‘home page’ (you know, the tab marked ‘Home’!) and hover your mouse over someone’s status or application message. A little ‘X’ will appear on the right hand side of the posting and if you move your mouse over that ‘X’ you will see a little message that displays ‘Hide xxx’ (where xxx is your friend). Simply click the ‘X’ and all the statuses from that person go away and will never darken your Facebook again.

If at any time you want to re-display a ‘hidden’ friend, just scroll to the bottom of the screen and find the message that looks like below.

Click it, and you can re-include that friend once more. Simple.

The Wall

Did you know that anyone who has you as a friend can see everything that people have posted on your wall? Maybe that’s a scary thought? Furthermore, if someone has you and the other person as friends, they can see the complete ‘wall-to-wall’ conversation! If that’s not what you want, then maybe you need to either change your privacy settings for ‘wall posts’ or think very carefully about what you write on people’s walls!

Bookmarks

Where did that amazing application that I started using go to? I’m sure I had it yesterday. Is this something you’ve said a few times?

Facebook hides away your applications unless you create bookmarks for them.

Click on the ‘Applications’ tab in the bottom left hand corner of the screen and a pop-up will appear showing your bookmarks (see above). The pop-up is split into three sections, ‘Recently Used’, ‘Bookmarks’ and more ‘Bookmarks’. The first section of bookmarks (6 of them) appear on your status bar too, for quick access. You can drag and drop items around on the pop-up as you wish. But what do you do if the application you want is not on the pop-up list? Easy - you click the ‘Edit’ button at the top of the list. Then the main screen above appears. At this point decide which application you want to be ‘bookmarked’ and press ‘Edit Settings’. The following screen will then appear:

You have four tabs available to you,the first of which, guess what, relates to your wall. This is where you can turn off that application specific stuff that is churned out. If you click the ‘Bookmark’ tab, you will get a screen (see below) that enables you to send the application to bookmarks and it will appear on the bottom of the bookmarked applications list when you click ‘Okay’. Then you can drag the bookmarked application to wherever you want on the list.

Summary

Well, I’ve covered a lot of topics in a short space of time, but I hope you have a better understanding of how to make Facebook work for you now. Let me know if there are other things you’d like me to post about and I’ll write a follow-up blog post in a couple of weeks.

Have fun…

These are all the people on Twitter that I’m currently following (courtesy of TwitterMosaic):

Anyone you know? You can click on a picture to look at their profile…

Ok, I’ll just come out and say it. I’m in love with Twitter!! It’s probably a bit of a one-sided relationship as I’m sure Twitter doesn’t care one bit about me. Oh well, an unrequited love!

I’ve been using Twitter seriously for a few months now and I’ve come to rely on it as my main means of getting my boring life out there on the Internet. My Twittersphere (if there’s such a word) is growing and I’m sensibly adding new ‘follows’ and getting ‘follows’ in return at a manageable rate. A lot of people think that you need to be following thousands and thousands of other tweeps (and that’s fine if that’s what they want), but if you do this there is no way you can sensibly keep up with things. I only have a couple of hundred and it’s already a small nightmare!

In this blog post I thought I’d write a little about how I’m using Twitter on a day-to-day basis and what software helps me. So, here goes:

Tweetdeck: I’ve written about Tweetdeck before, and on my main home PC this is my software of choice. It’s not perfect (it eats up memory voraciously) but it is the best of the bunch out there at present. What I like about it is the ability to create ‘groups’ of follows so that you can at least filter your Twittersphere a little. Doing this enables me to have several ‘columns’ for e.g. favorites, celebrities, writers, publishers, etc. Tweetdeck also gives me columns that show all my replies and direct messages separately. The service is augmented with URL shortening tools and picture sending abilities, as well as tweet shortening tools should you go over your 140 characters.

Twitpic: I have an account set up on Twitpic that allows me to send any pictures I take on my phone directly to Twitter. All I need to do is take the picture, opt to share it and then email it to the account I have at Twitpic. Then within a couple of minutes the picture appears on Twitter, with any comment I make about it. Cool!

Disgsby: I’ve written about Digsby before, and it’s sort of an all-over IM, Facebook, Twitter and social widget thingy! On any non-main PCs (like at work, or on my laptop) I use Digsby to communicate with all my networks. Of course, Digsby doesn’t split up all the tweets into categories, nor does it have any special tweet send features, but at least it lets me stay in touch.

Gmail and Twittergadget: If I want to send a Twitter on a PC that only has my Gmail, I use Twittergadget. It’s very simple, but has built-in URL shortening abilities, and easily manages sending and receiving tweets from my network.

Twitter: Of course, the standard fallback client is actually Twitter itself, although I have to say that the only time I really use this is if I want to look up people’s profiles and search for a few esoteric things.

Tweetgrid: Sometimes all you want to do is follow a few particular subjects (or hashtags), and this is where Tweetgrid comes in particularly handy. It’s a very simple web-based tool that allows you to split your screen into a number of ‘grids’ and put search criteria in each grid. Then Tweetgrid keeps these grids updated realtime, displaying every tweet out there that satisfies that criteria. You can also log into your account while you’re using Tweetgrid and send tweets using the tool. Depending on how you use Twitter, this may be a great tool for you.

So, there we go, a few ways to use Twitter in the real world. Of course, all I’ve covered here is the PC: it’s also perfectly possible to (and a lot of people actually do) use their phone to send tweets. Each phone has its own client, so I haven’t covered any of them here.

I also have Twitter update my Facebook status at the same time it posts my tweets too. That saves me updating in two places at once.

Whatever you want to do with Twitter, there’s a tool for you. Let everyone in the world know what you’re up to - in 140 characters or less at a time!

Now the only thing I’m waiting for is a company that can develop a web portal that looks like Facebook, but that is for Twitter. That way I can look at tweets of my friends individually and have other information more readily available. I live in hope!

If you’re interested in knowing about all your friends on Twitter and what their interests and biographies are all about, then TwitterSheep is for you! It generates a cloud picture (see below) where the most common words are bigger and bolder, the least common words are smaller and paler. It’s pretty cool…

I found another useful tool yesterday while I was reading my news feeds - Contxts, a place to store an electronic business card that fits into 140 characters. What does this mean? Well it means you can send someone all your relevant details in a simple automatic way.

How does it work? - So the first thing you have to do is create an account at Contxts.com. Then you enter a few default details and a SMS business card appears for you to complete. As you type, the number of remaining characters you have counts down. It’s actually quite amazing just how much you can fit into 140 characters if you really try. Then, the best part. You just tell your friends to txt your Username (created in step 1) to 50500. Your information gets sent to the phone that requested it. Voila! If you want to do the reverse and send someone your information then you just text ‘SEND 2065551212′ to 50500 where 2065551212 is your friend’s phone number. I have to say it’s simple things like this that make life easier…