Chris Charabaruk

Finally, Taskerrific is live

Chris Charabaruk — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 17:03:31 -0700

Image by coldacid via Flickr

It took long enough, but in my defence, I'm only one guy. But yeah, Taskerrific is up and in private beta, although it feels more like an alpha release to me.

Like I said on the Taskerrific blog, I'm going to be pushing weekly updates to the site for a while, then eventually going down to every other week as things settle in and functionality increases. Right now, the goal is to have a first draft of search pushed to the site before I go to the cottage for the long weekend, and teams functionality by the end of September.

At some point I also need to change from using CSS and tags for the main body layout to tables, to avoid the need for Javascript just to make the design work. (That is a horrible, horrible hack, and I'm still ashamed of it.) I know tables for layout are taboo, but I don't care. Call me when my layout works on CSS alone.

I need to work on monetization, too. Considering the self-employment program I'm currently in has income targets (I need to make minimum $750 by mid-December) it's important that I start getting ads sold, and quick. I'm working out rates, but they feel a bit steep for a brand-new service. So I might put up a donations box as well. I juts hope that I can hit the target to keep Taskerrific alive.

Anyway, go check it out. Let me know what you think. Even if you have to wait to get your invite code, it won't be too long (at this point, certainly under 24 hours, although if there's a lot of demand I'll need to start rationing). Have fun.

Facebook buys FriendFeed – is this the end of a good thing?

Chris Charabaruk — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 13:02:54 -0700

Image via FriendFeed

Bret Taylor of FriendFeed broke the news today that the social aggregator service has been purchased by none other than Facebook. In the short term, things will remain the same as they've always been. But Bret's post on the company blog suggests that plans are already afoot to integrate FriendFeed into the current black hole of social networking.

For me, and apparently a good deal of other FriendFeed users, this isn't good. One the one hand, I won't deny that being bought by Facebook means more resources for FriendFeed, as well as the opportunity to further grow the service's user base. On the other hand, it shows that Facebook intends to put the service to use as part of itself, or put the service to sleep.

One of the main reasons I use FriendFeed is because it lets me connect with others without all the cruft and crap that comes with Facebook. If the services are merged, then what? FriendFeed is to Facebook as Blellow is to Twitter; both serve a professionally-oriented niche compared to the bigger services, but it's an important niche. Clearing out FriendFeed for the general service doesn't serve anyone but Facebook and its investors.

While I hope the best for FriendFeed and its team, I'll be expecting the worst from this point on. And I'll be keeping my eyes open for any new, professional social aggregators that come along.

If you're not showing up in Twitter Search, that means Twitter thinks you suck

Chris Charabaruk — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 16:01:44 -0700

Image via CrunchBase

Or at least that's how it appears to me, now two weeks without being indexed, with this recent update to a Twitter Support report regarding people missing from People Search and regular Twitter Search:

Find People search index should be up to date. It is now updating regularly, on a daily basis. If you're still not listed in search, your tweets may be filtered for search quality; find out more about this here. Search filtering is done automatically, and cannot be un-done by Twitter Support.

I've updated my own ticket regarding my situation with a demand for an explanation to this. But knowing how Twitter generally handles problems and how they deal with their users, chances are there won't be any.

My advice? Perhaps it's time to abandon Twitter and use something better instead, like Blellow or FriendFeed. Twitter doesn't care about you or me or anyone. It's apparent in their nightmarish customer service.

I'm not being indexed and I must scream

Chris Charabaruk — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 06:34:17 -0700

Image via CrunchBase

I'm currently dealing with a Big F**king Crisis on Twitter. Given the importance of real-time search, and the way Twitter Search has become its poster child, the fact that my tweets newer than June 30 haven't been showing up in searches has really been driving me crazy.

It doesn't help that Twitter's support site has the form for reporting problems buried under "Contesting account suspension". Or that they systematically ignore their space on Get Satisfaction. Or any of the other ways they seem to pretend that users don't have any problems. Fortunately I've been able to report the problem, and with luck, Twitter might soon again include my tweets in their search results.

UPDATE 10:14 EDT: It seems that Twitter's support site is set up so that problem tickets are private, so that link to mine won't work unless you're me or you work for Twitter. In the meantime, this link will let you file your own trouble tickets, in case you're having problems with Twitter, yourself.

UPDATE 17:25 EDT: Sometime in the past few hours, Twitter closed my ticket, passing it off as potentially being the same as the problem which causes new Twitter accounts to be missing from People Search. As that's not my problem at all (I show up perfectly fine in People Search) I've reopened the ticket to further clarify the issue.

What's missing from the social web?

Chris Charabaruk — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 12:03:30 -0700

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

What's missing from the social web? The ability to just hang out and throw back a few. Really. The missing element from the new, social media driven internet is quite ironically the ability to socialize with people directly, rather than mediated through various services online. And why is this important? Because no matter how much we can expand our social lives online, what matters most is our social lives offline.

You see, we all have a need to have friends, people we can hang out with for no reason at all. The story of social networking services has been "we can let you find new friends and have lots of fun with them". But how often is it that said fun gets translated from the internet into real life? After all, a few games on Facebook does not match throwing a few darts at the pub. Or battling it out in paintball. Meeting someone on FriendFeed is not the same as an encounter with an attractive stranger at the local nightclub. What we get online are digital analogues (no joke intended) to the activities we look forward to online, but they aren't really replacements for those activities, no matter how much they seem to be.

I'd love to get to simply hang out with friends and meet strangers in the real world. But I don't get that online. Sure, I get to hang out with people. I get to meet real people. But I never get the same satisfaction, the same thrill, as doing so off of the net.

If you find that for all the interaction and social behaviour you enjoy online, there's still something missing, perhaps you should get off the computer for a while, head out to the bar, and enjoy some real, face-to-face socialization.

First Scientology, now Ahmadinejad

Chris Charabaruk — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 18:04:29 -0700

Image via Wikipedia

Anonymous strikes again! Once again, some anon has created a warning video directed at an enemy of Anonymous and stuck it up on YouTube. This time, the enemy is not Scientology but rather Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose government is currently cracking down on pro-democracy protests and killing people who only want freedom and fair elections.

Question is, is this for the lulz, or does Anonymous actually care about democracy in Iran?

MG Siegler, you owe the hungry an apology

Chris Charabaruk — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 23:43:29 -0700

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

I’m pissed off right now. MG Siegler, currently a writer over at well-known Web2.0 news site TechCrunch, has decided to use people who rely on food assistance as ammunition for a poorly researched and certainly misguided attack on Microsoft. And as someone who has had to rely on the services of food banks in the past just to have enough to eat, I am personally insulted by the gall and brazenness of MG’s attack.

Now, I don’t like that Microsoft’s campaign to donate to Feeding America for each IE8 download is capped at only $1,000,000. That’s pretty lame, especially for a company that has donated almost half a billion dollars in 2008 alone. But to see the misinformation being passed off by MG over at TechCrunch, like the laughable claim that the donation per download is supposed to cover 8 meals (actually, Feeding America reports each $1 donated gets them 10lbs of food for the hungry), what’s really happening in this article are that the people who will eventually receive the food are being used just to gain page hits and knock a few blows at Microsoft.

I strongly believe that MG Siegler owes an apology to the beneficiaries of Feeding America, and in fact, to every person who relies or has relied on charitable support just to keep from starving in the developed world. This was an absurdly low blow that insults the people who need this help every bit as much as it insults Microsoft.

MG, I’m waiting for that apology.

Just when I thought Blip.fm could solve my music woes, it too starts to hate non-Americans

Chris Charabaruk — Fri, 15 May 2009 09:04:39 -0700

Image via CrunchBase

I was recently introduced to Blip.fm, a service TechCrunch proclaimed a "Twitter for music" – find songs you want to hear, and play them with a short message. After Last.fm decided to hate on anyone not in the US, UK, or Germany, I thought that Blip.fm would be a better way to find new music to enjoy. But nope!

Blip.fm just recently announced that they're going to be changing some things due to the "perfect storm" through which the company is navigating. And these changes aren't very good at all for anyone who doesn't live in the USA. To begin, they're going to be cutting back on providing URLs to music they themselves are getting from all over the internet, and will be using imeem to provide a lot of the music now.

Of course, the imeem decision means that most international users will only get 30 seconds of a song, not the entire song. So, if you're not in the USA, expect Blip.fm to become practically useless for you. They state that they'll add an option to skip the 30 second clips, but that won't leave international users with much music at all.

While the guys behind Blip.fm won't say it, it's pretty clear where the real blame for all this trouble lies: With the music industry. It's like those idiots at the RIAA and their international counterparts want people to download music instead. These fools and their spiteful behaviour are screwing over decent online services and making it impossible for people to legally and easily access music they can get easily enough with a stereo and a tape deck.

Unfortunately, though, the net result is that those good online services have to start hating on anyone who doesn't live in the USA. And that totally sucks.

Twitter and Telus, friends again?

Chris Charabaruk — Thu, 07 May 2009 04:22:38 -0700

Image via CrunchBase

Image via Wikipedia

So, I just found out that my mobile service provider, Telus, is now on Twitter! Not only that, but they're asking Telus users on Twitter if they want full SMS support again, like Bell customers have. The only problem is that if you want to say yes, you need to be followed by Telus. Why? Because they want responses via direct message.

You know, it'd be great to get this back. On the other hand, what's the cost going to be? When Twitter returned to Bell, there was a lot of fuss about Bell deciding to charge users 15¢ per incoming tweet. Bell backpedalled, and let it all go for free. Rogers, now that it is working to send tweets to clients, is doing it gratis from the get-go, but brought in the tweet charge that Bell and Telus have for regular users without a text plan.

I certainly hope that Telus does this the right way, too, and offers them free. It'd be nice to get direct messages and replies straight to my phone, for when I'm on the move. It might mean I'll keep using Twitter directly, instead of moving over completely to FriendFeed and just use Twitter for broadcasting anything I post there (or on other services).

If you're a Telus user, start following @telus and pester them to follow you back. Then you can DM them and let them know you want to get Twitter back on your phone.

I'm not dead, just really busy

Chris Charabaruk — Tue, 05 May 2009 11:26:06 -0700

I've not abandoned coldacid.net either, despite how things appear. There will be new content coming over the next week or so. I just need to clear out a lot of what I'm working on first. Sorry for any inconvenience!

Chris Charabaruk

Finally, Taskerrific is live

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