JC - Technology and Stuff

What with one thing and another I’ve had a bit of time to get to know both Facebook and Twitter extremely well over the past few weeks. I think it’s about time I wrote an unbiased opinion on the two, purely from the point of view of how I use them.

I’ve come to the opinion that Facebook is more about games and photos and scattered status updates. Sure it has groups and fan pages and you can use it to contact other friends, but it’s mostly a one-way pleasure / communication vehicle. That is not to say I want to give up my Facebook. No, I like my Facebook. I like my Facebook friends. It’s just that I don’t get most of my social interactions via Facebook (except maybe the odd argument conversation with someone).

Twitter, on the other hand, is purely about social interaction and conversation. I hardly ever see a photo of someone’s kids, or a note that they are just like Arnie from Terminator. I don’t even get sea creatures or good karma from fellow tweeps. No, what I get is the thoughts and discoveries of these people, 140 characters at a time. When I watch all the conversations flash past on Tweetdeck, I try and keep up with those that interest me. I send a few notes to ‘Joe in Australia’ or ‘Connie in Cleveland’ and they return the favor and we laugh together. If I need information on a good coffee shop in Seattle (yeah, right!), hundreds of fellow tweeps will give me their opinion. What’s more, everyone is posting links to the Internet; constantly. There is a plethora of wonderful information for my consumption on an hourly basis. How did I ever get work done before Twitter?

Twitter is HOT, very HOT. If you want to connect with like-minded people and you have 57 hours a day to spare then Twitter is for you. It’s addictive. It’s informative. It’s fun. And, you know what, it’s actually really frickin’ useful. I have improved myself and learned so many things during my brief sojourn with Twitter.

Twitter is better than email. Want to know something? Just ask a question. People will respond. Want to ask a celebrity something? Just do it. Sometimes even they respond. That’s something you can’t do with email. Most celebrities are human too. And, let’s face it, if they only have to write 140 characters to you, it’s no big deal. They can manage that. Twitter is bringing the world together, 140 characters at a time. I know, that’s a bold statement, but I really think it can do it. For once there’s something that has no boundaries. Use a PC, use a phone, just send your tweet out.

Another thing I’ve found is that if you’re an interesting kind of person then people will follow you. Slowly, one by one, you’ll grow your network. I’ve been growing my network organically and it’s really starting to snowball a little now. My followers are growing by over 100 a day and increasing exponentially. Yes, there are some people that have created artificial numbers, and some that abuse the system, but others use it like it’s supposed to be used. I hope I am one of those people.

One of the side effects of growing your followers is that as you gain more and keep on twittering, more and more people take notice of what you’re writing and more and more people start to follow you. So it goes on. It sounds a little like Multi-Level Marketing (MLM), but you’re not selling anything. Of course there are some people out there who do use Twitter for MLM, and that’s up to them.

So, is Twitter hotter than Facebook? A resounding ‘YES’ on that one. Some people argue the two services are growing more and more similar every day, but I don’t see it that way at all. Facebook cannot emulate what Twitter does and Twitter deosn’t need all those photos and games. I love Twitter just the way it is.

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.

Well it’s been just about 3 weeks since I wrote my ‘controversial’ blog post about whether you should complain about your local pub or restaurant. I have had a lot of feedback, both public, private, wanted and unwanted. It’s been a very interesting experience and something I felt I needed to follow up on.

The good news (for me) is that I am still alive! No one took out a contract on me (although I think a couple of people were close to it!). The other piece of good news is that some actions have been taken in the pub in question and little by little, improvements are showing up. So, credit where credit is due. I’m going to run over some of the differences that have been observed in the last couple of weeks and you can judge for yourself how ‘complaining about your local pub or restaurant‘ actually can make a difference.

So, what have been the ‘big’ changes? Here is a list of some of the observed differences during the past 3 weeks:

• Kitchen is now open an extra hour in the evenings on Friday and Saturday (let’s hope that gets extended to the whole week)
• New ‘buzzer’ system installed so that servers know when their food order is ready
• Full-time food expediter/runner employed to help with service
• Extra person added to busy shifts (I think this one is still a work in progress and being monitored)
• More attention paid to restroom and table cleanliness
• Better restraint shown with regard to taking breaks and personal calls
• I think a new system of allocating tables to servers is being / has been introduced to better handle customer load and service (but I can’t be absolutely certain on this one)
• Website updated to match ‘happy hour’ and main menu in pub
• Slightly better presence from management during busy shifts to observe pub ‘workings’

There are still some gaps, but I am confident that those, too, will be closed as time moves forward.

So, was it worth me writing the original article? Was it worth encouraging the wrath of all that work in a place I enjoy going to? I have to emphatically say ‘yes’. I believe my words have benefited the experience of others and ultimately benefited the long term reputation of my local pub.

To quote a part of my original article:

“So, should you ever complain about your local pub or restaurant? YES - You have an investment in it, whether you realize it or not. Your investment is not in shares, but in time and a contribution to the atmosphere and ambiance and clientele. You as a regular customer often see more of the workings of the place than the management. I urge you for the sake of the business and your relationship to let them know.”

Don’t let life pass you by. Don’t put up with things you are not happy with. Make your thoughts and feelings known. No one is a mind reader. No one can change something they know nothing about. You are ultimately responsible for the experiences in your life.

“When I’m working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.” - R. Buckminster Fuller (1895 - 1983)

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

In a change from the normal technology things I write about, I decided to post one of my poems today. I hope you enjoy it:

The New Baby

We’re having a baby, my mummy and me
It’s something to do with our eggs.
Not the sort that you have for breakfast with toast,
But the sort that grows long arms and legs.

We’re having a baby, my mummy and me
Just before Christmas, I’m told.
It’s so long to wait, it seems such a shame,
By then I’ll be ever so old.

We’re having a baby, my mummy and me
We’ve got to eat masses of food.
Our tummies are growing ever so big,
And it’s looking a little bit rude.

We’re having a baby, my mummy and me
We went to the clinic today.
My mummy’s baby kicked ever so hard
But mine had got nothing to say.

We’re having a baby, my mummy and me
Daddy’s taken my mum for a test.
He said they wouldn’t be gone very long
And he’s sent me to Granny’s to rest.

We’re having a baby, my mummy and me
Mum’s bought back a new baby boy.
I prodded and poked it, he started to scream;
Daddy told me it wasn’t a toy.

We’re having a baby, my mummy and me
He screams and he shouts every day.
He feeds and he burps, then changed, falls asleep
And he never comes outside to play.

We’re having a baby, my mummy and me
It’s such a big burden I’ve carried.
But I don’t think I’m ready to have one just now
I think that I’ll wait ’til I’m married.

(C) John Cox - Not to be reproduced in part or in whole without permission.

Well I packed up my desk today. My comfy compact corporate cubicle is now empty of any personality it once had and the dusty photos of the family are stored in my backpack for safe-keeping. My on-off relationship with T-Mobile is once again heading to an ‘off’ cycle. Maybe I’ll be back there again some time in the future. In the meantime it’s an opportunity to do something different - in the middle of a recession.

I have worked at T-Mobile in Seattle several times since early in 2002, both as a contractor and as an employee. I have enjoyed watching a small telecoms company grow into something that is now challenging the behemoths of Verizon and AT&T. Their phones and their phone plans are second to none and time and time again they have won Customer Service and innovation awards. They are fundamentally a good company.

Unfortunately though like so many relationships, especially ones that are realistically one-way, there often comes a time when a period of break-up is necessary. Now is one of those times. T-Mobile has bid me a ‘bon voyage’ and sent me out into the wilderness to fend for myself. Now I’ll have to learn a new daily routine. No more 7:30am trips to the kitchen to fill my coffee cup; no more 11:45am visits to the Chinese restaurant; no more meeting-packed days in conference room 4H; and no more all-hands meetings to learn the scoop on the upcoming phones. Now I’m merely a customer once again.

It’ll be nice to be in charge of my days again. It’ll be nice to have lunch with my wife. It’ll even be nice to be a little scared about where the next pay check is coming from. Change is inevitable in life and ultimately change is a good thing.

You can expect a change in direction and content on my blog going forward. I always write about whatever is on my mind, and that is one thing that is not going to change. It’s just that now there will be different things on my mind, and those are the things I will write about. It’s time to devote more time to writing. It’s time to get out and help some people develop better life skills. There are lots of things to do.

T-Mobile? Yes, I’ll miss you, of course I will. Breaking up is never easy. But there’s a big wide world out there that’s calling my name.

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…