Some funny Twitter graphs. This funny charts will show you about some Twitter-related observation. :) For example: “Who’s Big On Twitter?”, “The Best Thing About Celebrities Being On Twitter Is…”, “Things You Do On Twitter That Annoy Your Friends”, and more. And, here are some of my favorites:
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.
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)
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.
Mozilla just released its new theme screenshots for Mozilla Firefox 3.7 and 4.0. Compared to the current version — I’m using Firefox 3.5.3 — I think the design is much better. I like it. But, it’s still a mockup and it’s still far(?) from finish.
These are the mockups of Firefox 3.7 for Windows Vista/7 and XP:
And, this is for Mozilla Firefox 4.0.
More screenshots are available at Mozilla Wiki (Firefox 3.7 and 4.0 theme mockups). About the interface design, I think Opera has a great visual design.
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.
I just downloaded Opera Mini 5 beta for my Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. This new version of Opera Mini offers many new features like Speed Dial, Tabbed browsing, Password Manager, and much more. I think, “Tabbed browsing” feature is a super feature — with other new features, of course. If you want to download, you can go directly to m.opera.com/next/ from your phone web browser, or download it to computer first. Anyway, I still keep my Opera Mini 4 installed. So far, I’m happy with this new Opera Mini 5!
Here are some screenshots (click to enlarge):
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:
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
Mark Zuckerberg (Wikipedia profile) announced that Facebook has more than 250 million users around the globe. It’s almost the same with the country population. According to a report, Facebook had 200 million users in last April. I’m amazed to see the growth.
This is how “250 million users” in a world map. (click to enlarge, or watch the video)
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)
I think I like the concept behind new Automattic’s website. The products and descriptions are haiku-powered. This is how they explain about WordPress.com service:
Hassle-free blogging
Even with your own domain
Freemium model
About Akismet:
Remember the days
Innocent inboxes gleam
Be spam-free again.
For complele list, go to Automattic’s site.
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.
This is a list of Indonesia’s presidential debates in audio podcast format. I didn’t have the forth episode (vice-presidential debate) since I wasn’t at home.
To download the files, just click on the podcast titles or use right-click menu and choose “Save Link As…” if you’re using Firefox, or “Save Target As…” if you’re using Internet Explorer.
You are free to download and share the information about this podcast. Enjoy!
Presidential candidates: “How to Create Good Governance” hosted by Anies Baswedan.
Presidential candidates: “Unemployment and Poverty” hosted by Aviliani.
Vice-presidential candidates: “How to Develop National Identity” hosted by Komaruddin Hidayat.
Presidential candidates: “National Unity, Democracy, and Regional Autonomy” hosted by Pratikno
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.
For the upcoming Mozilla Firefox 3.5 release, Firefox will have its new logo. The current logo is designed by Jon Hicks (see article).
And, this is the new Firefox 3.5 logo.
The new logo and other variations are available to download.
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?
Found an interesting conversation between Gagah Putra — a blogger — and one of the political campaign team. It’s interesting because it’s done virtually, using Twitter. Also, because I’m curious about who the person/group of people behind @megabowo’s Twitter account.
Let’s start it. First, the conversation started with this:
@megabowo skrg misi ekonomi kerakyatan, sementara dulu Mega menjual aset negara ke asing. Apa ibu Mega mengakui kebijakannya dulu salah?
@gagahput3ra Ya. Pada saat menjabat sebagai presiden, ibu Mega banyak menyetujui saran-saran yang diberikan oleh Mentri Keuangan Budiono.
@gagahput3ra Sekarang, ibu Mega secara jelas menyerahkan kewenangan ekonomi kepada pak Prabowo / Partai Gerindra u/ ekonomi kerakyatan
@megabowo oh, berarti sy bisa ambil kesimpulan dulu Megawati tdk berkemampuan memveto kebijakan mentrinya ya. Good luck utk Mega-Bowo!
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!
YouTube introduced a new way to enjoy videos. It’s called YouTube XL. Unlike the default design (web browser-based design), the interface is simple and straight forward: large text and simple navigation.
I just tried WordPress 2.8 Beta 1. The upcoming version will offers many new features. So far, the syntax highlighting is a great addition. It is available on theme and plugin editor pages.
Not following VIVAnews doesn’t make me stop reading people’s comments about it. There are some blogs brought this Twitter account into discussion. Today, I noticed that @vivanews_com account had been deleted by the account holder. Maybe, it’s because the Twitter users’ (especially in Indonesia and its followers) responses.
Now, the question: Is it — deleting its Twitter — a smart move? Is it the best option? I think, it’s not. Let’s figure out why the account was closed.
I think, rather than closing/deactivated its account, the account holder should stop the auto-update and show that they’re listening. They can do it by removing its feed(s) from Twitterfeed. Then, they give respond also via Twitter. Why? Because it’s the medium. They can ask for feedback, and how they can make it better next time.
It can be a better counter for the negative comments on Twitter. If they think that closing account will remove the negative comments, they’re wrong. It’s still accessible in Twitter database, unless people who wrote tweets delete them. See these screenshots: one and two. Those screenshots were taken, even the referenced account has been deleted.
Now, will they join Twitter again? I’m curious.
I think I forgot when I joined (got invitation) to try Topify and started using it. Until now, Topify is really useful. It’s a timesaver! Topify is a simple service that will send notification (by email), and it’s related to Twitter. Two important keywords: Twitter and email account.
Sometime, we got notification from Twitter when other Twitter users start following us. Or, if we receive direct message. Is it good? It is. But, what can we do with the email we receive? What’s next?
Previously Twitter sends email notification in flat text. The notification only provides some basic details like Twitter username, real name, and link to Twitter profile page. The last thing is a link to our Twitter dashboard page to modify the notification settings.
Recently, Twitter provides more details, and it’s in HTML format. It includes these following details when we have a new follower:
When we receive a direct message, we will also get information about the sender and link to reply. I use Topify to handle my Twitter-related email notification. And, I’m satisfied. How?
Not sure whether this application is right for me or not. It’s called FlickrSync.
FlickrSync is a freeware photo synchronization application for flickr users. It displays your local folders and your flickr sets and it can establish synchronization rules between them. This way you can manage all your photos locally and FlickrSync will keep them updated in flickr.
Available for Windows XP SP2 and .Net 3.0 only.
If you’re using Twitter, you might get some new followers in the last few days. One of them might be VIVAnews. I had VIVAnews followed me, but I didn’t follow it back. Why?
I do follow some bots on Twitter to get updates as long as they don’t flood my timeline. Some media (portal) in Indonesia start using Twitter as a tool to gain readership — sometime they just want to do it. What makes it wrong is that they don’t do it nicely. Sometime, I think they don’t have any strategy.
The only news portal on Twitter I follow is @thejakartaglobe. Why, because it does not send tweets automatically using so called RSS to Twitter tool. And, they’re joining the conversation, not killing it. For example, few months ago they joined the discussion on Plumpang tragedy. I still remembered when someone on Twitter gave updates, @thejakartaglobe responded. Asking some questions for clarification. That’s a good example, I think. So, there’s someone behind — a real human.
I’m not sure wheter VIVAnews’ Twitter account is managed by VIVAnews or not. Because:
OK, this account tried to get more followers by following other users. This is a usual strategy. Does it work? May be. May be not. What people — the followers — think about it? You can read their responds. :)
Update: To find out the conversation on VIVANews’ Twitter account:
Brand Republic released a list of 100 most mentioned brands on popular microblogging service, Twitter. Here are the top ten (order by how many these brands were mentioned):
Do all of those brands — and the rest on the list — have their own Twitter account? No. The list does not discuss about why Twitter users mentioned those brands. Not clear whether they got positive or negative comments. They’re just mentioned and popular on Twitter.
(via Doug Bowman)
When I heard about White House Photostream page from Yan Arief Twitter status, I visited it right away. No waiting. I’m an Indonesian, and I love seeing the topic like this — related to my own country — but, it’s not easy to find. Do we have great pictures of our President, or Istana Negara? Anyone?
I like seeing what happen in the White House. Not from political perspective. I just like it. If I have to choose some, here are some photos I like.
I think, this Google Image Search’s “filter by color” feature is very useful. I can filter image search results not only by size (extra large, large, medium, and small) and image type (news content, faces, clip art, line drawing and photos) but also by color.
There are twelve colors available to be used as filter. I think it will be great if there are more colors to choose, or even custom color? But so far, it IS very useful.
I almost have no problems accessing Facebook site using many different browsers. But, I sometime I found problems when using Opera 10 browser. It says that I’m using incompatible web browser. But, it only happens randomly, even when I do the same actions like reloading pages, clicking on the links. And so far, it only happens on Facebook-related pages.
The error page suggests me to use these browsers: Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Safari, Microsoft Internet Explorer, and Flock. I do using Opera, but not the latest stable release. So, is it Facebook? Or, Opera 10 doesn’t play nice with Facebook yet? I’m using Opera Version 10.00 1 Build 1355 on Windows XP when I experience this problem.
If you want to see — or, should I say “listen”? — your site with a screen reader, there is a free and open source screen reader called NonVisual Desktop Access (NVDA). What is it?
NonVisual Desktop Access (NVDA) is a free and open source screen reader for the Microsoft Windows operating system. Providing feedback via synthetic speech and Braille, it enables blind or vision impaired people to access computers running Windows for no more cost than a sighted person. Major features include support for over 20 languages and the ability to run entirely from a USB drive with no installation.
Yes, right now it’s only available in Microsoft Windows platform.
1,016 posts since Nov 2002