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@alderina ampun deh.. Ga mudeng soal gituan.. Ngliat nomor2 brush saja dah pusing.. :P #replytelat §
I don’t use Google Maps on daily basis. Now, it offers a short URL for map location link (reference). Now, compare this:
With this: http://goo.gl/maps/vDOY. For me, shorter is better. This feature is still available under Google Maps Labs. So, the first thing you need to do is to enable “Short URL” feature from Google Maps Labs page.
In my previous post, I mentioned about YouTube’s new player design. Right now, it only works on YouTube site — not for videos embed externally. But, with a small modification on its player parameter, we can have the new player design for the video. Example? This is the original embed code:
<object width="560" height="340"> <param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/XdQxtQFfxiM&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0"></param> <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param> <embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/XdQxtQFfxiM&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="340"></embed> </object>
Now, look at the this line of code:
http://www.youtube.com/v/XdQxtQFfxiM&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0
To have the video inserted using a new player design, just put version=3 parameter there. So, it will be like this:
http://www.youtube.com/v/XdQxtQFfxiM&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&version=3
You will have YouTube video displayed like what you see below. Of course, you can still modify out it looks using another player parameters.
I personally like the new player design. So, I modified all video codes used at my videoblog to have the new look. It didn’t take much time since I replaced the codes using search and replace plugin. :)
I have Gravity installed on my Nokia 5800 XM mobile phone, and so far this is one of my favorite application. If you’re not familiar with Gravity, it’s a Twitter client for S60 platform. It also support Foursquare, Facebook and also Google Reader. Very nice! It’s not free, but it’s not expensive also — I bought it for less than US$10. You only need to purchase a license once.
Today, Jan Ole Suhr (Gravity developer) tweeted an update and he put a link to his Flickr photo page. Right now, I’m using Gravity version 1.30 build 6501. Gravity already support direct photo upload to some services like Twitpic, MobyPicture, Yfrog and also img.ly. But, seeing the screenshot above, it will support Flickr also. Yes, this is good since I use Flickr. Now, waiting for an update.
Some of you probably have heard about this news: Nokia and Yahoo! have an agreement to work on they really’re really good at. According to the press release:
Today, Yahoo! and Nokia announced a worldwide strategic alliance to extend the reach of their industry leading online services and offer people rich experiences that keep them connected to their world and the world around them.
Building on more than five years of collaboration, Nokia and Yahoo! ® will leverage each others’ strengths in e-mail, instant messaging and maps and navigation services, to provide consumers with access to world-class experiences on both PC and mobile devices.
You can also find the press release at Yahoo! Yodel Anecdotal. So, what does it mean for you? Probably… nothing. But, for me it means something. Let me tell you why.
I use Flickr — and I’m really enjoying it. Sometime, I take advantage of its geo-location feature. I can put my photos into map. You can do it manually, or automatically using geo-location meta data captured from your mobile device. I did it using my mobile device. Flickr photos with geo-location information will be integrated with Yahoo! Map. You can see my Flickr map page to see it in action. Is it good? Yes, but not that good. Why?
With the new partnership I mention above, I hope I can see improvements. Ovi Maps has a great database of location, and it works really well. I know, sometime it has some mistakes on the street naming, but… still, it’s a great tool.
I put Facebook Like Box at my videoblog site and so far it works really well. It shows how many Facebook users who “Like” my videoblog page. It worked really well, but not in the last few days. I thought it only happened to my site, but when I randomly visit some blogs using this Facebook Like Box, the same thing happened.
But, this ‘problem’ didn’t happen if the box is displayed using <iframe>. I use XFBML, so do the sites using the same code. Hmm… not sure what happen, but it’s not working really well right now. Any thoughts?
Good news from Facebook after they bright Facebook Lite offline. There is 0.facebook.com now. According to the announcement:
Yet when using the mobile internet, people around the world face two main challenges–sometimes the experience is too slow to be fun and the cost of data plans and understanding them can be daunting. We have designed 0.facebook.com to help solve these two barriers and we hope that even more people will discover the mobile Internet with Facebook as a result.
Since this site focuses on speed, the design looks very simple, of course. For Facebook users in Indonesia, there are three mobile operators supporting this site: 3, AXIS and Telkomsel. Well, I’m using XL Axiata right now and I think it’s not cheap.
I’m using Google Calendar, but not under my Gmail account. I use it under Google Apps service. Right now, if you use use Google Calendar under Gmail account, you should have a new look.
After signing-in, I was greeted with this message:
We’ve updated Google Calendar to make it more consistent with other Google Apps. Everything works the same as before, with one exception: we’ve removed the Tasks link. Now to turn tasks on and off, just click the Tasks calendar in your calendar list.
It’s more polished now. Look at the screenshot below (Click to enlarge)
‘
Now, let’s compare with the “old” one — Google Calendar design for Google Apps domain I’m having right now.
In most cases, Google Apps for domain service will have the same features (including design) with primary accounts under Google account. I think, I just need to wait. The new design looks better.
I’m using Facebook, and I really want to take my profile privacy settings seriously. I mean, this is my account and I want to have every settings (especially related to privacy) are correct. I know, it’s something personal. Some people also think that privacy is dead. You can have your own settings. I think more people does not really care about this. Well, not that they don’t care, but it’s more about ignoring it. No?
I just found a tool (hat tip: Read Write Web) to check my Facebook privacy settings. This tool will help me — and you, too — to check one more time about my privacy settings. This tool can be found at ReclaimPrivacy.org. What does this tool do? When you’re using this tool:
You will see a series of privacy scans that inspect your privacy settings and warn you about settings that might be unexpectedly public.
So, it’s a web-based tool. You don’t have to download any software. Just use the simple bookmarklet there. About the result, you can follow the advisory, or ignore it. I checked mine, and I got this (based on my current privacy settings):
In the last few weeks, I (and lots of people) noticed that Justin Beiber was becoming on the Twitter trending topic list. But, not now. For Bieber’s fans, of course this was something cool. For lots of people, it might be something they didn’t care about. Other people also thought that it should be removed. Recently Twitter changed its trending topic algorithm.
The new algorithm identifies topics that are immediately popular, rather than topics that have been popular for a while or on a daily basis, to help people discover the “most breaking” news stories from across the world. (We had previously built in this ‘emergent’ algorithm for all local trends, described below.) We think that trending topics which capture the hottest emerging trends and topics of discussion on Twitter are the most interesting. While this is very much a work in progress, with this tweak we have taken a big step toward capturing how trends quickly emerge and grow on Twitter. We also think it’s compelling to know what the “most popular” topics are, and we will look to capture this in some way in the future.
Source: Twitter Help Source: About Trending Topic.
Like what I wrote in the first paragraph, it’s interesting to see what Bieber’s fans think about this. :)
I have to blame @snydez for his tweet about Geocities-izer. Because I also used Geocities when I jumped into website creation. Did I have websites hosted at Geocities? I did. Who didn’t? :D Yahoo! closed Geocities last year, on October 26. I just find out also that Geocities was the third most visited website back in 1999.
Back to Geocities-izer. It’s a website/tool for you if you want to see how popular websites designed using Geocities-like styles. Just enter the website domain name, and this tool will ‘redesign’ the website.
I tried it and got lots of entertaining looks. Here are some:
I just visited dadio.tv channel on YouTube, I saw something different with the video player design. Looking at the new design in brief, I think I like the new one — all the player elements are there without any significant changes. I’m not sure whether it’s already announced or not, but it’s new for me. Here’s a new video player on YouTube.
And, this is the previous design:
Compared to the previous video player design, here are few things to notice:
This new player design is only visible when you visit videos directly on YouTube. If you embed YouTube videos in your site/blog, they’re still using the old one. Maybe later.
If you haven’t tried Posterous, you should. It offers lots of great features. Recently, Posterous added a new feature on its theme. If you open Posterous-powered sites using mobile device, they will be presented in a nice interface. You don’t have to tweak any settings, it just works.
This mobile theme was designed with readability in mind. We stripped out as much as we possibly could, and ended up with a very minimal mobile theme that we think you’re going to love.
In addition, we optimize all of your uploaded media for smaller screens! We automatically resize your image galleries and videos so that viewers on smaller screens can have the best experience possible.
When I create a new post using Posterous, I also cross-post it to Twitter, or — sometime — Facebook. By this new feature, those who use Twitter in mobile don’t have to worry about loading heavy page on Posterous. Nice.
Today, I got an email from Amazon informing about new location of Amazon CloudFront. Now, it has a new location in Singapore. Previously, Amazon only has its CloudFront server located in Tokyo and Hongkong. Here’s the news delivered in the email:
Starting immediately, Amazon CloudFront will begin using the Singapore edge location for requests for your content. There’s no need for you to change anything in order for this to happen — Amazon CloudFront will automatically route requests for your content to the Singapore location when it’s appropriate to do so. Prices for content delivered from the Singapore location are the same as prices for content delivered from Hong Kong; you can see these at http://aws.amazon.com/cloudfront.
Is it a good news? Of course! About the prices, content delivered from Singapore location has the same prices like from Hongkong: $0.190 per GB — first 10 TB / month data transfer out and $0.012 per 10,000 GET requests. Compared with Europe or US prices, it’s a little bit higher ($0.150 per GB – first 10TB / month data transfer out). But still, the price is still reasonable.
A simple answer: You can, but it might be a bad decision.
This month, I renewed my Flickr Pro account for another one year. The main reason is that I already have more than 6,000 photos. If you use Flickr and you’ve upgraded — and also have hundreds or maybe thousands of photos — I think you have two options: renew or leave your license.
I have to agree with what Matt said about this:
My Flickr Pro account is about to expire, I don’t really see any value in renewing it, and I’m also pissed off they only show the latest 200 photos for free members, which means if I don’t pay a $25 ransom more than 800 photos going back to the year 2003 (6 years!) are going to be hidden from the world. That sucks.
But, he is lucky since he has the solution for his problem. But, I don’t think I can do the same. For me, $25/year is still reasonable. Downloading all photos and move them somewhere? Not an easy job.
Few days ago, when I went to Kalibata Street and Pasar Minggu, I also made some videos. Yesterday, all videos were ready to upload. My plan was to upload them to Vimeo, not blip.tv or YouTube. Reason? No personal reason. I uploaded using browser in classic mode.
But, it did not work. When it was about to finish, the upload page brought me to http://settings/. I asked this to Vimeo Staff. They gave me a link for a solution. Then, I pushed my luck by giving Vimeo Desktop Uploader a try.
And, it worked!
I think I’ll use this uploader as my primary tool when I upload my videos to Vimeo.
Among various Twitter applications available, I only use Echofon. I also check Twitter’s website regularly when checking updates from my list, follow/unfollow other people and some other activities that can be done from the website. Of course, there some Twitter text commands I can use.
Twitter made some changes on its website recently. Some of you might witness it, too. Here are few things I found since yesterday until today.
The update button now says “Tweet”. Previously, it was “Update”. Hmm.. any change the word “Tweet” included in the dictionary? Or, is it already there? And for the update notification, the background color is now light blue, not yellow.
Other actions like following/unfollowing, blocking should be easier now. Just put your mouse on the username and a nice popup will come out. This work also on the avatar. The menus provided will be based on your ‘relationship’ with the users — whether you’re following them or not. See screenshots below:
I tweeted a Twitter wishlist. I want to see a new feature called “Mute” on Twitter. So, why I want to have this, or how it should be useful for user (at least for me)? Here’s a situation:
I follow some people on Twitter. I follow them because I know them well — have a personal relationship like friend. They’re actually a nice person. But, sometime they’re annoying. Or for whatever reason they’re just flood my timeline with something I don’t really care about. They might do this in a certain period. I like their updates, but sometime I don’t. I don’t want to block or unfollow them because some people will put it into something personal. It might break something.
So, rather than blocking them, I want to hide their updates from my timeline. It’s like “I want certain people I follow do not appear in my timeline”.
“You’re stupid! There is a feature called ‘Unfollow’. There’s also ‘Block this user’!
I know. But,’Mute’ is a little bit different. It’s simply like ‘filtering timeline’. Not permanently so that I can put some muted users back to my timeline. This feature will not killing the features appears when I follow someone — or someone follows me. They’re not blocked. They’re just muted. So, when two Twitter users are following each other, they’re still have all features. They still can send/receive direct messages each other. They don’t have to receive a notification when someone is unfollowing and then following back.
“Unfollow them and put them on a list/group!”
This might work, but again this is more like grouping some Twitter users into a list. It might work when I don’t want to use Twitter as communication tool. When some people on Twitter don’t want to see my updates in their timelines, they can simply mute me.
When I use Blogger service few years ago, one of my favorite feature was FTP Publishing. Using this feature, I had Blogger publish my post to my own web hosting account. The main reason was that I can use my own custom domain for my Blogger-powered blog. If you’re using this, I think we had a same reason.
But, it was the time when blogging was not so easy like today. Right now, some people find that finding a free blog service is challenging. I mean, there are lots of options available. You can have WordPress.com, Posterous, Tumblr and more. Web hosting and domain service are also much cheaper. Most hosted service also offers a custom domain feature so that we can use our own domain using service’s infrastructure.
Blogger says that there are only 5% of active blogs published via FTP. And, it’s a reason to stop this feature. Probably, it’s a bad news for those 5% users. This FTP Publishing feature will not be supported after March 26, 2010. So, what should you do if you’re using FTP Publishing feature? You can switch to Blogger’s Custom Domain OR use the Blogspot.com domain. This migration tool will be available on February 22, 2010. All traffics will be redirected.
For this FTP Publishing related information, Blogger already setup a blog to give updates of the situation at http://blogger-ftp.blogspot.com.
Today, I tried another WordPress plugin called “Automatic WordPress Backup”. This plugin will help blog owners to create backup remotely to Amazon S3 service. Since I’m using it and pretty satisfied with the billing usage, I installed it at some WordPress-powered blogs I maintain.
I use one of the available buckets under my account. For this bucket, I set its ACL (Access Control List) to private, of course. After this plugin installed and activated, I only needed to put my Access Key ID and Secret Access Key.
I decided not to include all files for my backup. I only need the database and uploaded contents. After the settings were saved, I simply hit the backup button. The process depends on the disk and database usage. I found that it was pretty fast. One of my backup files was around 300 MB, and it only took less than 5 minutes to complete the process. Also, the backup file was compressed. This should be useful to cut the usage process as you only need to store a single file for each backup.
The backup files will be automatically delivered to my Amazon S3 bucket and when the process completed, I can see the backup history. To download the backup, I only need to click on the backup links.
The backup links are built using pre-signed URLs so that only the account holder (or someone who knows the URLs) can download them.
In last September, I started to use Amazon S3 for some experimental purposes. And, it’s not that difficult — of course, I only use some basic action. CloudBerry Explorer and S3Fox are really helpful. Now, if you want to know the billing calculation — just in case you’re interested to try Amazon S3 (also with CloudFront), I have uploaded a sample billing statement from Amazon (click the thumbnail to enlarge).
For me, I think the price is still reasonable. Anyway, CloudFront service is optional. Of course, this billing statement is not only based on my blog usage. I have multiple sites and accounts there. Not all of my backup files are also available for public.
Now, I want to introduce another Posterous-powered blog. This time, there are more than one author — well, only two anyway. It’s called Capture and Share. I created this blog as a place to put my — and Lala — mobile streams. All posts in this blog are created using mobile devices (Nokia N78 and Nokia 5800 XpressMusic). But, not all of them are directly uploaded from the devices. Why? Well, we’re not using unlimited internet package for our devices. :)
Why Posterous? Because it just works. Sending photos, videos, screenshots from email is our option. And, Posterous handles this perfectly. Here are few things about the setup:
Of course, I will not leave my own Posterous page. So, meet Capture and Share at http://mobile.orangescale.com.
Two days ago, I gave Nokia Messaging for Social Networks Beta a try on my Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. This application will help Nokia users to keep update with the social media services — in this case Facebook and Twitter. Of course, it’s still in beta so I should not expect too much.
The installation process was easy and I didn’t have any problems. Everything was smooth. This early preview is available on the Nokia N97, Nokia N97 Mini, Nokia 5530, Nokia 5800, and the Nokia X6 devices. Go to messaging.nokia.com if you want to see applications from Nokia Messenging for your device.
After having this application installed, I used it right away. When running the application for the first time, I got this welcome screen:
I use Twitter more than Facebook. First, I use the Twitter feature. Here’s the login sreen:
I’m using Facebook, and found this useful post about privacy settings. In short:
Of course, every user has its own privacy level settings. But, I think most of them are few good points to consider. See details about each setting.
I have been using Yahoo! Messenger for few years, and I got a problem using it yesterday. The error dialog box gave me message like this:
There was a problem signing you in to Yahoo! Messenger.
Your account has been locked. Please click “Forgot Password…” to start the unlocking process. (81003003)
The problem was that I used it few hours before and everything was right. I’m using Yahoo! Messenger 10.0.0.1102-us. So, I tried to logged in to my Yahoo! account. Username and password combination did not work. Not good. I was sure that I put correct details. I tried again. And, it worked! And, when I went back to my Yahoo! Messenger and tried to log in, everything was back to normal. OK, there was a little problem there. Not sure what it was, but it’s fine now.
I just enabled one of Google Mail Labs features. It’s “Inserting images” feature. What is it?
Allows you to insert images into a message body. You can upload and insert image files in your computer, or insert images by URLs. This lab will not work if you have offline enabled.
If you’re using Google Mail — I’m using Google Apps for domain, anyway — you can visit Google Labs page directly from your mail dashboard. The menu is at the upper right. Scroll down there to choose which labs features you want to activate.
Now, if you write an email in Rich Text format, you should see a new icon there. Click on the icon and you can choose the image you want to insert in your email. You can upload it first, or using a remote image address.
But, why did I enable this feature? For a simple reason: it helps me dealing with Posterous. Creating a new post by email to my Posterous page should be easier now.
Right now, I only have an active Posterous-powered site. But, if you manage multiple posterous sites, you should love the improvements. Posterous introduced a new dashboard interface. This is a page where you can manage your Posterous sites easier. In September, Posterous already introduced some features. Now, you have more reasons to start using Posterous.
I like the changes anyway. The navigation help its users to identify the current active site they’re managing. Also, the new design is easier to navigate. All site-related menus are placed in a tab-style navigation.
The other additional menus are presented below. Previously, I think it was not easy to find the “Theme Settings”, now it’s clearly visible there. Great job, Posterous!
Also, if someone subscribe to your Posterous sites, they should get the new posts faster as Posterous now works together with PubSubHubbub.
In addition, we’ve just added support for PubSubHubbub with the help of our friends at Superfeedr. For everyone, this will mean your posts will appear in Google Reader much faster, as they’re gradually rolling out PubSubHubbub support. This is in addition to our SUP realtime support that we added to make your posts show up in FriendFeed even faster. Both SUP and PubSubHubbub are enabled now for all posterous blogs. If you’re a developer and want to take advantage of this, head on over to our PubSubHubbub hub. (source)
Last year, there were 2,000 photos in my Flickr photostream. And few days ago, I just noticed that I’ve been uploading another 2,000+ photos. So far, I’m satisfied with Flickr service — at least, I never experienced bad service. I bought a new camera few months ago (Canon EOS 450D), and I took more photos using it. The “problem” was that I don’t have too much time to upload many selected photos. This month, I decided to stop my other internet connection — yes, I use two internet providers in the last few months. The reason was simple: it was because I had to cut my internet budget.
I had no problem with my internet connection backup. In fact, I’m really satisfied with the upload speed. The upload speed also helped me working with my videoblog. Right now, I think I consider upload an download speed as “okay”. It’s not super fast. It’s okay. So, I need to be more patient dealing with uploading activity now. I’m using Telkom Speedy now.
Back to Flickr, I just realize that I need to work on the photo “sets” and “collections” management. Right now, I don’t have any “collections” for all my 4,000+ photos. All photos are managed only in “sets”. I’m still finding the best way to manage them.
I don’t know when Flickr rolled out this changes, but I see now that notification email subject about new photos from my Flickr contact is more useful now. Previously, when my contacts uploaded photos to their Flickr photostream, I get notification with subject like this: [Flickr] New items from friends.
Now email subject is something like: [Flickr] New items from {his/her name}. This is more useful because I can see who just uploaded the photos. Information delivered in the email is similar with the previous one, anyway.
After using Posterous in the last few weeks more frequenlty, I feel that I like it more than before. It feels right. These are 10 reasons why I like Posterous — and why you should love it, too.
One of the internet feature I regularly check is email inbox. Sometime, I want to post something directly from email sent into my inbox. Posterous is about working directly from the email — web-based email or email clients.
It’s a free service. Right now, I have 1 GB of free storage. Since it does not offer types of account (free or paid account), Posterous said that we can have more than 1 GB if we hit the limit. If I have to pay to get more storage or features, I will consider to subscribe. But, I hope it offers the right price/package. And, we can have multiple Posterous sites using a single email address.
How many social media accounts I have? How to distribute or send something to those service easily — if I want to share something using those services? The autopost feature is just perfect. I can send photos to Flickr, send videos to YouTube, post something to my own blog. But, I can do them all automagically from Posterous. And, I can choose whether I want to share them directly or not. Or, I can share only to specific targets.
Few weeks ago, I posted a question about media/image sharing provider as Twitter companion. I asked about the better solution between TwitPic or TweetPhoto. Andre Siregar (@dregar) mentioned about using Posterous as the image sharing provider. Right now, I’m enjoying Posterous. Posterous offers many features that are easy to use, especially — of course — when it has something to do with email.
When we share media files (photos/videos) — related to Twitter — the idea is to put the image somewhere in the internet, and broadcast the URL to our Twitter account. Most services offers similar mechanism. And, most of them also have ‘post by email’ feature. Now, I think I will use my Posterous account as my primary service to do this. The main reason is that I like using ‘send by email’ feature.
Other reason is about personal preference. Posterous has flexibility on the design. I have made some modifications for my Posterous page. It’s still simple, anyway. Also, Posterous can handle multiple media formats so that it’s not limited to photos/image only, but audio, audio or any other files. If I want to share to Twitter — for example — I can do it easily using Autopost feature, or send it to a certain email address. Nice!
This September, Posterous blogging service released some new features and improvements. If you’re not familiar with Posterous — or never heard about it before, it’s a service that will help you put something online. You can post text, photos, videos and also documents. The big difference is that you can do it directly from your email. This service was launched back in July 2008. And, this is my Posterous page. If you have a Posterous account but you haven’t logged in for few months — or want to try it, here are some new features:
If someone subscribe to your Posterous RSS feed, you can find out how many feed subscribers you have. This process should be easy because you can integrate your feed to Feedburner account. Using this, you can use all Feedburner’s features.
Posterous offers auto post ability. Using this, you can send your posts from Posterous to different websites/service. If you send a document, you can deliver it directly to Scribd.
If you want to have your own custom look for your Posterous page, you can do it easily now. There are some themes available. Once you select your theme, you can do some modifications like colors, custom image header, etc. If you’re good at HTML and CSS, and want to create your very own theme, an advanced customization feature is also available. For some people — at least for me — this is a killer feature!
If you want to embed audio files from Lala.com and videos from Viddler and Google Video, you don’t have to deal with embed codes. Just put the links, and Posterous will do the rest for you.
In my previous post, I mentioned an Amazon S3 tool called CloudBerry S3 Explorer. I also have S3Fox organizer addon installed. I use them both, and I feel that I’m more comfortable with CloudBerry Explorer.
CloudBerry Explorer makes managing files in Amazon S3 storage EASY. By providing a user interface to Amazon S3 accounts, files, and buckets, CloudBerry lets you manage your files on cloud just as you would on your own local computer. (source)
Now, I want to share how I use CloudBerry S3 Explorer to manage my Amazon S3 Account.
CloudBerry Explorer is availble as a freeware software. We can download it for free. It offers many features we need to manage Amazon S3 account, from a simple to complicated tasks. After I downloaded and installed it, I can start using it. First, I need to add my Amazon S3 account into the application. Go to File > Amazon S3 Accounts.
After I signed up for Amazon S3 and CloudFront last week, I started to use it right away. Before that, I tried to get as many information as possible. It seemed easy. I had to deal with some new words like “bucket“, “Access Key ID“, and also “Secret Access Key“.
Amazon S3 — just like its name — is a storage service. What makes it different from “storage” in webhosting is that there is no FTP access. But, the mechanism of “moving your data to a storage server” is similar to FTP. In FTP, we will connect to your server using some basic information like hostname, username and password. In some cases, we will need an FTP port. And we can do it easily using FTP clients like Filezilla, CrossFTP, WinSCP, etc.
Amazon S3 uses a little bit different process. Just imagine “Access Key ID” as “username”, and “Server Access Key” as the FTP password. Both information are generated by the system and they’re not easy to remember.
Two months ago, I heard that Facebook had 250 millions users in the system. Today, they just announced that there are more than 300 millions users. So, it’s like 50M new users in two months? The numbers is debatable — you know, duplicate accounts, real people, etc. But, the number is HUGE.
When I heard about Yahoo! Meme and looked its website, in brief I was thinking about tumblelog. Seriuosly, I couldn’t fine any new features, compared to similar service like Tumblr (my Tumblr) or Posterous (my Posterous page). That was before I got a chance to try Yahoo! Meme.
Yahoo! describes Yahoo! Meme as “where you share everything you find that’s interesting”. If we go to Yahoo! Meme page, Yahoo! tells us about these following details:
I’ve been using Tumblr for few months, and when I firstly logged in to Yahoo! Meme (after got an invitation), I see nothing but similar features — like Tumblr. This is Yahoo! Meme’s dashboard when you’re ready to post/share something:
Currently, it supports some post types: text, photo, video and music (audio). For non-text contents, you can directly upload (only images) or embed external contents. So, some contents should be “somewhere” on the internet first. Anyway, Yahoo! already has a video service called Yahoo! Video, but its videos can’t be inserted? Yahoo! Meme only supports YouTube and Vimeo now. What about other video sharing providers like blip.tv or Metacafe? Or, what about any video files that can be inserted using embed codes?
Now, let’s compare it to Tumblr. Tumblr offers more type of posts. And it’s so easy. We don’t need to deal with complex post customizations. For example, we post video embed codes, it will be automagically processed by Tumblr system. Neat.
And, let’s not forget about various features including theme customization, custom domain, and more. I know, Yahoo! Meme is still new. They might have improvements in the future. Or, it will be closed down just like Yahoo! 360? Anyone can give me a good reason to use Yahoo! Meme?
In the last two days, I was working on an experiment to use Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) and Amazon CloudFront together with WordPress. It’s not primary for my blog, but for my friend. There are many tutorials and good recommendation on this. Since my friend using WordPress as the publishing platform, and it is easy to integrate with S3 and CloudFront, I gave it a try. But, what is Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3)?
Amazon S3 provides a simple web services interface that can be used to store and retrieve any amount of data, at any time, from anywhere on the web. It gives any developer access to the same highly scalable, reliable, fast, inexpensive data storage infrastructure that Amazon uses to run its own global network of web sites. The service aims to maximize benefits of scale and to pass those benefits on to developers. (from Amazon S3 website)
Actually, using Amazon S3 might be just fine. Since I want to make experiment, I decided to subscribe to Amazon CloudFront, too.
Amazon CloudFront delivers your content using a global network of edge locations. Requests for your objects are automatically routed to the nearest edge location, so content is delivered with the best possible performance. Amazon CloudFront works seamlessly with Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) which durably stores the original, definitive versions of your files. Like other Amazon Web Services, there are no contracts or monthly commitments for using Amazon CloudFront — you pay only for as much or as little content as you actually deliver through the service. (from Amazon CloudFront website)
This is my first attempt using those two service. The subscription is easy. Create an account at Amazon, fill in the billing information, and start subscribing. That’s all. After few attempts, I finally have it working. I hope it’s working without any issues. Anyway, for WordPress integration, I use Amazon S3 for WordPress plugin. Let’s wait until the end of the month to get the billing statement.
I know some points about actions on Facebook related to friend requests. Facebook has some more detailed notes about this. Here are some points:
It has been a month since I started using Telkom Speedy service. So far, I have nothing but positive service. I’m an active internet user and I use internet everyday. I haven’t experienced any connection problem.
Few days after I had my internet connection, I had a phone call from Telkom Speedy representative. She asked me whether I have my internet connection working or not. She also welcomed me and said thank you for using Telkom service. I got information also if I have problem with the connection, I can call the customer support. I already know about this but I never try it until today.
Today, I got another call from them. They informed me that they’ve received my payment and asked me about their service so far. I told the guy that I don’t have problem so far. I’m not sure about the other customers in other city, but here in Jogjakarta (in my place), I have a good experience.
Anyway, I tried to pay my Speedy bill using bank transfer (from ATM), but it seemed that the system is not ready yet here in Jogjakarta. Anyone got the same experienced?
Recently, I see many updates in my Twitter timeline containing updates about that so called “get more free followers”. The idea is to encourage you to join a service that will boost your number of followers. Sounds familiar? A simple question: what does those number mean (for me)? What do I want to prove by having hundreds or thousand followers? Nothing.
If you try to find service like this, you will find many. They share some common characteristics:
If you’re aware that there’s something wrong with this practice, you can stop doing this. But, if you don’t check Twitter regularly, don’t be surprised if you flood your timeline with those rubbish. Also, you will flood people with useless updates, too. This happens usually because you don’t know when and how those services updates your account. Remember, you gave them permission to access your account when you started using them.
Few weeks ago, I saw one one people I follow used a service like this. His account sent updates few times a day. Not sure about the frequency, but he had more than ten updates promoting the service. And, it seemed that he did not login to his account during that time. What happened next? He got his Twitter account suspended. OK, probably I had a wrong conclusion, but I couldn’t find any other reasons about the suspension.
Personally, I always spend few minutes reading about the service using Twitter login mechanism. I try to get some basic information, e.g:
UPDATE (added later):
Here are some websites that you provide what so called “get more followers” AND you’d better be careful!
tweeterfollow.com and tweeteradder.com — Both are using the same rules. They will ask you to follow other users first, and will give you new followers as “reward”. Here’s what a user experienced:
tweeterfollow.com was sending messages from my username, so I closed my account with them and then changed my Twitter password. Now I’m locked out of Twitter…it tells me I am trying to login too many times with the wrong password. I assume this is because tweeterfollow is still trying to tweet on my account?! Ugh!! (story source)
There is another story about tweeteradder.com, and from Twitter’s Get Satisfaction forum.
There are another services here twitter-train.com and twittertrain.info, but their websites are suspended by the hosting provider already.
Twitter‘s popularity increases very fast among the other microblogging application these days. You already know that in 2004, Merriam-Webster dictionary included the word “blog” as Merriam-Webster’s #1 Word of the Year for 2004. Blog is defined as:
[short for Weblog] (1999) : a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer
Back to Twitter, it has gained academic respectability with inclusion in the Collins English Dictionary:
The entry under noun will read: “a website where people can post short messages about their current activities” and under verb it will read: “to write short messages on the Twitter website”.
The word Twitterati, referring to users of the website, will also be entered, as will Twitterverse, which defines the website and its users.
News source: Telegraph
Today, I got my Twitter account suspended. I’m still not sure why, but it seemed because Twitter mistakenly suspended my account. I was a little bit panic, but I believed that there was a solution for this situation. I just hoped that Twitter listened and did something on my issue. Of course, I was only one of hundreds, or thousands, or maybe millions of users who got such problem (at that moment).
To make the story short, I finally got my account un-suspended in two hours or less. So, what did I do to get my account back?
Being suspended, it does not mean that you don’t have access to your Twitter account. When my status was suspended, I could still login to Twitter. I could see the timeline updates from people I follow. Being suspended means that I can’t change any data, it’s like being in “read-only” mode. If you think you don’t do any illegal activities (see Twitter rules), and you want to have your account back, just do the standard procedure.
The first thing I did was filling a ticket, explaining the situation. I also mentioned about the situation I wrote in my blog. I was not sure whether the information was useful or not, but at least I provide more details.
Few minutes after that, I was happy because my ticket status marked as “Solved”. Here, “solved” does not mean “Hurray, I get my account back!”. “Solved” also means “assigned to staff”, or “someone had been notified about the issue”.
I did not want to flood the staff by updating my tickets, asking for an emergency actions. It was around 1 AM (my time), and I could wait until morning, if needed. I was not sure about my ticket status. I also was not sure whether Twitter staff reviewed my request or not. I did not know what happened exactly with account. I just waited for feedback/action from Twitter staff.
I reloaded Twitter page randomly, just to check the status. Suspended, still. And then — after around 2 hours — I had my Twitter account back to normal. I was happy, and checked my ticket status, nothing changed. No comments, no feedbacks, … nothing. I was fine with that. Twitter was probably busy with other issues. The most important thing is that Twitter did something from there. Even if the machine did this, I’m still happy. :)
Lessons learned: it’s fine to be panic but the next things are: don’t panic, follow the procedure, and be patient.
Few minutes ago, Twitter got a problem. Not sure about the real problem, but when I opened Twiter website, it said something about “Over Capacity”. I waited. Probably this was the best thing I could do. Usually, Twitter heals its problem in minutes. And, Twitter was back.
Was the problem solved? I thought so. But, I got a bigger problem. My account was suspended. I was logged in to my account at that time and got a warning message.
OK, my account was suspended and I got this message (this is a notification for suspended account):
This account is currently suspended and is being investigated due to strange activity. If we have suspended your account mistakenly, please let us know. See Suspended Accounts for more information.
Strange activity? Well, I think I do no strange activities using my Twitter account, and I think my followers know this. Maybe, Twitter suspended my account by mistake. Maybe, the system did it. I’m just unlucky right now. I’ll contact the staff now, and let see how it goes.
Update 2:40 AM: My Twitter is un-suspended. Yay! I’m not sure the exact time, but it took less than two hours to have my issue resolved. Thank you Twitter staff! Will post about this experience later.
A good news! YouTube will stop its support for old browser — in this case, Internet Explrorer 6. Visitors who visit YouTube website using IE6 will have an alert like this (click to enlarge). Let’s bring IE6 down!
(info via TechCrunch)
There are many tools and applications to work with Twitter, but right now, I use Twitterfox as my primary tool to interact with my Twitter account. I also have some applications installed like Seesmic desktop, DestroyTwitter, and TweetDeck. But, when I start working with my browsers, I rarely open other Twitter desktop client(s).
Seesmic introduced its web-based Twitter client. If you’re using the desktop version, it’s very similar. The web-based version recreates the desktop application. I tried it, and it looks good. The main reason using Twitterfox is because it offers simplicity with very basic features (updates, checking replies/mentioned, and direct message).
So far, my favorite feature of Seeismic (web-based version) is the Gmail-like style. Simple. And, it’s auto-updated, too.
Of course, if you have wide-screen monitor, you can switch to multi-column interface.
Today, I tried another Flickr feature. It’s similar to what they have right now — upload by email. The difference is that after the photo uploaded, it will send a notification to Twitter, send an update status. If you’re familiar with Flickr’s Upload by Email, it should not be difficult at all.
First, you have to link your Flickr and Twitter account. Add your Twitter account into your Flickr profile, and do the next authentication process. After that, you should see the integration status (see image below).
You will have a special email address. Any photos sent to that address will be uploaded to your Flickr and a status update will be broadcasted to your Twitter status. The email address is similar to your regular email you use to upload photos to Flickr (by email). For example, if your private email address is something21rate@photos.flickr.com, your other email will be: something21rate2twitter@photos.flickr.com.
I tried it, and it works without any problem. The photo address will be shorten. (see image below)
I’m not actively using this upload-by-email feature, but it’s something useful and glad Flickr has it.
Few days ago, I installed a toolbar in this site (see footer). It’s a hosted toolbar service from Wibiya. I was not sure whether I really need that or not, but because I got invite to try the service — after asking for invite — I decided to try it.
Go display the toolbar, we only need to customize the toolbar. There are some “application bars” available such as Blog Search, Translation, Posts Navigator, Twitter, Sharing Tool, RSS, Gallery (Flickr), Live Notifications and Community (via Facebook). We can also edit the toolbar color from “Change Toolbar Theme”. There are some toolbar color availble.
I decided not to install all applications because the I did not need some of them this time. The other reason is because of application feature. For example, for the “Gallery” application, we need to provide “Flickr Set ID”. I think I will put this “Gallery” application when Wibiya give me another option to display recent photos from my Flickr photostream. asked about this, and they responded.
It’s not open for public, but if you’re interested just go to Wibiya website and ask for an invite. I got my invitation token in a same day.
For the email service, I use Gmail and Yahoo! Mail. I almost never got any problem with them. Because they did great job filtering the email spams, I almost never checked my email spam folder. If they’re spams, why bother checking the spam folder?
But, I sometime check the spam/junk folder. Reading the email subjects in brief, just to see what emails are identified as spams. Recently, Mike Aquino was in a bad problem with Yahoo! Mail spam filtering feature. He got a job offer flagged as spam. This kind of case is rarely happened. But, this is a bad situation. Luckily, he did checked the spam folder.
Finally, I have a chance to try my new internet connection. I’m using Telkom Speedy’s Multi Speed package. Actually, I’m satisfied with my current provider. I decided to get another internet connection so that my sister can get her own connection, from her own room.
My current provider does not allow me to share the connection. I can subscribe for an additional line, but considering the cost — because I need to buy other peripherals — and also internet connection backup solution, I chose Speedy. The registration process was simple. I signed up, filed some forms. I signed up on Friday when I visited a computer exhibition. Speedy offered discount at that time. Today, two technicians came to my house and they setup everything.
When I tried it, it’s fast. I read many complains about Speedy service. There are many negative comments — and also the positives one. I think I’m lucky. I hope I can get reliable connection using this Speedy. Let’s see…
Facebook introduces Facebook Usernames. And, now it’s available for public. Now, we can create a personalized and easier-to-remember web address for our Facebook profile page. For those who like ‘shorter is better’ in URL, this should be interesting. Facebook explains:
Your new Facebook URL is like your personal destination, or home, on the Web. People can enter a Facebook username as a search term on Facebook or a popular search engine like Google, for example, which will make it much easier for people to find friends with common names.
Before choosing a final username, here are few things we might want to know (you can read detailed info on the Help Center), so choose wisely.
If you want more about this new Facebook Usernames, please check Anil’s Exclusive: The Future of Facebook Usernames. Anyway, I’ve created my personalized URL, it’s facebook.com/thomasarie. Of course, it’s easy. Who’s on earth want to choose that name? :D Yours?
Today, when I logged in to my Paypal account, I see a notification about the improved design for Account Overview and History pages. After reading the details, I went to my Account Overview page.
On the landing page (after logging in), as a buyer I see something what I call “these are information I want to see after getting into the dashboard”. Compared to the previous design, the page presents almost similar details, but the position and design are improved — in my taste.
Paypal balance is more visible now. It helps me to decide whether I want to spend my money, or not. The transaction activity page has some menu and shortcuts to track the history. Finding a trasaction, seeing recent and past activities, filtering by currencies are things that can be done easier. There are also some filter shortcuts.
I think it will be useful if I can see the current currency rate in dashboard — USD to my currency setting. :)
This time, the new design works. It offers solution. Thank you, Paypal!
Dadio.TV is a videoblog I created with my friend. Most contents are about Indonesia.
1,059 posts since Nov 2002
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