Microsoft and Bill Gates (The riches man in the world) should be proud and over joyed at the soon to be success of the new Windows 7 OS.  PC manufactures, along with others should be burning the midnight oil with glee knowing they have a product that we can all stand behind. According to CNNMoney article “Windows 7 ready to launch” Experts expect that PC users will change their operating system for the first time in about eight years when Windows 7 launches today.

We all know someone or heard about someone that had horrific experiences with Vista.  As a network administrator I gave recommendations to my superiors about what technology we should implement, and what we should wait on.  I always stated that we should wait out the Vista movement for the next flavor, and I was 120% right from a support stand point.  Vista came along and gave us too many issues I felt like from a support stand point it would have been a true nightmare not only for me but for management as well.

Windows 7

I don’t see the issues of the past with Windows 7 I see an operating system that has been tested, tested, and tested again.  Personally back before the summer started I started using Windows 7 on a older less powerful machine.  “Wow” are the words I uttered when using Windows 7 for the first time, because I think Microsoft finally got it, the bells and whistles don’t mean a thing if the OS does not perform some of the most basic functions with ease.  I can speak from experience that Windows 7 is a great OS to use on your current system, and also on a older system that you would have normally thrown away.  Don’t listen to the clutter that’s gonna start about well you should just buy a new computer, I would presume that those Tech support places will all be saying this, but resist my friendly computer user unless your computer is a Pentium II or lower with less than 512MB.  If it’s any better than that I’m tell you Windows 7 should be an eye opener.

What about Windows XP?

Well for those of you who have used Windows XP in my opinion you will gain a better Operating System in Windows 7, and workhorse right out of the box, new features, speed, and the capability to take off where Windows XP ended are clear indications that you should go for it.  Lets just say with the introduction of Windows 7, in 6 months no one will remember that thing called Vista in my opinion.  Now if your using XP at this point and you are going to install Windows 7 your gonna have a problem upgrading.  This has always been the Microsoft policy when upgrading, if your two generations back in Operating systems, they don’t make it very easy for you to upgrade with a “One click solution” I would guess there will be many companies taking advange of this (creating software to help Windows XP users upgrade).  My best advise for anyone looking to upgrade from Windows XP to Windows7 please do yourself a favor, make a backup of your critical data, such as documents, pictures, program data for specific programs and such.  Then insert your new Windows 7 OS CD and choose to do a clean install on your computer or laptop.  Then place your data and programs on the new OS.

Windows XP all flavors (Pro, Home, Media Center, Tablet, and x64) will be unsupported in the next two years so upgrade is eminent

Don’t let the experts scare you into buying a new computer, the one thing I have noticed is that with older machines I have had great success with Windows 7.  Currently I run Windows 7 in VMWare on my MacBook Pro and it’s been working like a charm, to my credit I had to tweak some stuff, but that’s what I do.  I hope your success with Windows 7 comes soon, I will say that you will not be disappointed going from any other OS to Windows7

Chime in and tell me if you have been using Windows 7 or if you plan on upgrading to the new OS in the comments?

TBTR

Password Leak

As many of you may have heard about the Hotmail Password leak that occurred early this week.  The administrator of Pastebin.com has written a sweet and simple blog post.  He has removed the names and email addresses, but as a last effort to tell the community how to fix this issue he says

please don’t ask if your name was on the list. I have no way of knowing. Just change your password.

Sounds simple but as the administrator those of us who are admins know the truth.  If your the admin of a domain or a site, your “GOD” meaning you can see everything and anything you want.  At larger companies they take many precautions to ensure that only 1 person really has the full access to the system, but regulations are in place to police that person in the system.  Remember when things like this happen, just change your password and move on, don’t worry about it any more than that.

P.S. Any system can be cracked no matter how good a password you have but I would upgrade to a different email system be it Google, Yahoo, or your own domain email.

TBTR

Its amazing how my brain works and what seems to be just a post out of the sky about Dropbox on Monday has now turned into a second post about Dropbox.  So you might ask yourself why would I post another story about Dropbox one reason is because Dropbox is just flat out Cool.  The other reason is because Dropbox has launch an iPhone app which can be downloaded as of now.

• Access your Dropbox on the go
• Download files for offline viewing
• Sync photos and videos to your Dropbox
• Share links to files in your Dropbox

Just as I was about to download the Dropbox App I found out that you must have Ver 3.1 installed on your iPhone or iTouch.  I was using the iTouch, so since I can’t use the App at this time if any of my iPhone toting friends can let me know what they think in the comments I would appreciate it very much.

Data, no matter how much you have now days, your needs keep growing year over year, and for some people it’s month over month.  Recently I’ve been reading more and more about storage devices, and backup solutions, stay tuned for more coverage of these topics.  I recently blogged about Dropbox where I talked a little bit about how you can use this service to share, and backup data.  Sometime ago I also talked about Google Docs which gives you online space for documents and other files. I recently ran across a press release about the new Seagate FreeAgent DockStar $99.99, the name reminds me of DeathStar but maybe that’s because I’m a StarWars Fan.

Anyways the FreeAgent DockStar by itself does nothing, it’s just a docking station, with a power adapter and a ethernet port, but when you couple this device with FreeAgent Go portable storage solution you get a large amount of data that you can now store and access from across the internet which means anywhere in the world.  The device as stated has a dock port for the FreeAgent Go device, 3 USB ports to plug in other storage devices including USB thumb drives, and NON Seagate storage devices, a power adapter and ethernet cable.

So you ask the question what is this product just supposed to do for me?

You get a device that can enable your storage to be placed on the internet (encrypted) so you can access your iTunes music, your pictures, your video, your documents etc.  It can even create a RSS feed for each of those directories, which now enables you to give that to anyone who can plug the feed info into a feed reader so as changes are made to your directories they get updates showing the changes without the traditional notification of calling someone, or having to email them to say take a look at the new data I uploaded. Here are some of the highlights:

• File sharing at its simplest with a clean, web-based interface.
• Access files from any networked PC or Mac® computer in your home.
• After service activation, access and share files with friends, over the internet — no special software required.
• Enables friends to upload content as well, creating a comprehensive share space.
• Appears as a local drive whether in the home or accessed through the internet, for simple drag-and-drop access.
• Dock a FreeAgent Go™ drive and connect up to three USB storage devices.
• Send pictures straight from your iPhone® to the FreeAgent DockStar network adapter.
• Gigabit Ethernet connectivity.

Think about this…

Imagine your out of town, visiting a friend or loved one, and you want to show them that video from this summer. Without a device like this or some kind of web service you would just have to wait till you got home, figured out a way to upload all the videos you want to show them, then pray that they know how to access the files.  This solutions eliminates that issue, all you have to do is connect to the internet using any computer and supply your username and password, then start streaming the video directly to this computer.  That is awesome, an just down right cool when you think about all the other things you would have to do otherwise.

In my case it now eliminates the fact that I had to keep my server running at home while traveling hoping and praying that something didn’t happen to my hard drive on the computer or it didn’t over heat and start a fire.  Those days are long gone in my book with the FreeAgent DockStar.

Conclusion

I think that Seagate is obviously on the right track to supply us with a solution that makes things easy, but the one draw back I have is the fact that the device uses the underlining technology of pogoplug.com which is not a bad thing it’s just that DockStar only comes with a 1 year pogoplug subscription for internet sharing after that first year you have to pay $29.99 to continue usage that is where the device fails in my eyes.  Why should we have to pay after 1 year, when if we just purchase a pogoplug for $99.99 the Internet Sharing is FREE for ever.  Most people who purchase this device would not know this if they didn’t know the underlining technology is pogoplug.  Shame on you Seagate for trying to pad the bottom line when you really don’t have to this way.

TBTR

The cost of computers has come down so much so that now days a lot of people have more than one computer in their home.  Some have a desktop computer for the kids, while others have the desktop for gaming, and a laptop for mobile, or job work.  What ever the situation lets face it, the more computers you bring into the home, the more data i.e files, music etc that is spawned all over your multiple computers.

To fix this issue of data everywhere, you could create a home network, but unless you have the money that option is just not feasible.  On the other hand you could use a large USB thumb drive to keep your most precious files with you at all time, but lets face it.  If you lose the thumb drive, you also loose all your data, with personal and confidential files included for who ever finds it to see.

Dropbox is here to help you with trying to keep your data in one place, and on top of that it’s easy to use from a PC, Mac or Linux OS.  How about 2GB of storage space in the cloud (online) for FREE? I have personally been using Dropbox for over a year, and while I use it in different ways you may find this as a solution for you in a couple of areas:

• Keeping your iTunes music files synced in one place
• Personal documents follow you no matter what platform
• Pictures can be located in one place on each system
• Collaboration should be much easier since you can share the system with any number of installs
• You never have to email files to yourself for safe keeping
• This space could be used as a permanent backup solutions for you
• Sharing a file on the internet is easy
• Do you have alot of MP3 files for your podcast you wanna share, Dropbox can help with that too

Dropbox is software that syncs your files online and across your computers.

Since I can only say so many good things about Dropbox, and you won’t get it until you try it, here is a full list of the features.  Remember this is free for 2GB of space, there are pay plans and I would encourage you to purchase more space if you really need an online repository for all your data.  The files are encrypted on and over the internet so hackers can’t get into your account.  Now if you use one username and one password on the internet, then your a target for someone to hack your accounts, but thats a whole other story.

It just works,

TBTR

Samson the makers of premiere Audio devices is set to make a splash with it’s new Video Recorder dubbed “Q3″.  This device is cabable of recording video at 640 x 480 resolution, althought I don’t see any references to HD quality I’m sure the video image is usable.  Lets face it even if you have have a HD video camera, sites such as Youtube don’t allow you to upload in HD quality, so your audience never gets HD quality. 

Sampson known for audio equipment is trying to take a way the bad audio stigma, that comes with these small video devices. Sampson’s Q3 has True Stereo Sound, which makes for a awesome device that can definitely make bad video much better with quality audio. 

This true audio is achieved by the Q3 having two condenser mics on-board, arranged in such a way that gives you the best stereo recording possible. When I see the Q3 it’s look clunky and futuristic but when you think about it, that could be an advantge when holding the device, it probably provides a better grip.  The unit also includes audio meters so you can set and monitor your levels as you shoot, this is an added plus when you look at the other video recorders that don’t give you any choice in the matter when it comes to audio settings.

Overall the Sampson Q3 looks like a winner although I predict that most will overlook the Q3 as a novelty because The Flip, and Kodak Zi units get most of the coverage and are seen in a lot of online circles.

Features:

Built-in stereo condenser microphones with X/Y configuration for true stereo imaging
Get up to 1 hour of video with bundled 2GB SD card
Accepts up to a 32GB SDHC card for 16 hours of recording time
Large 2.4″ LCD display with a resolution of 320 x 240
Video resolution of 640 x 480 at 30 frames/sec
Video Format: MPEG-4 SP
NTSC / PAL TV output
Optics Lens Type: Fixed Focus (0.8m to infinity)
Audio formats with video include 44.1/48kHz 16/24-bit Linear PCM WAV or MP3 up to 320kbps
Audio only formats include 96kHz 16/24-bit Linear PCM WAV
Auto Record Level automatically adjusts audio levels during recordings
Uses two standard AA batteries or NiMH rechargeable batteries
USB 2.0 with built-in cable
Windows and Mac OS compatible
Built-in speaker and tripod mount
Includes on-board editing software, YouTube up loader software, Apple Quicktime, TV cable, softcase, windscreen, 2GB SD card, two AA Batteries

P.S. Promise me if you get a hold of one before I do, you’ll pass it along so I can review this puppy.

TBTR

I came across a post today from Gizmodo.com the headline read “Remember The AT&T Ads About the Future? You will” This short story written by Danny Allen reminded me of one thing, Vision.  Through out the history of time we have come across people that have for one reason or another been ahead of their time.  AT&T back in 1993 was ahead of it’s time, each thought they displayed about the future has come true, but it’s not all because of AT&T.  It’s in my opinion because of some one there that had a great vision for the future and you know what they were probably called a crackpot, or lun in one or more circles.

This is why you have to just let people be who they are, technology is a place where dreamers can dream and create.  This is why I love Technology, here are the ads that we are talking about.  Everyone has vision, will you use it? or let someone defeat your vision, I pray you understand what I mean.  Enjoy this old collage of videos from AT&T 1993.

Hp is about to introduce a new digital frame that seems to go far beyond the normal viewing of photos.  The HP DreamScreen will allow you to show photos, connect to the internet, access social media and more.  For the suggested price of $249 you can have one.

We all know how these devices show you pictures, but what about your friends latest pictures from Facebook, or their most recent status updates?  Now that’s what I’m talking about, remember it’s not a full time computer, so don’t think you will be responding back on the unit, and it does not have a touch pad.  (YES I’M STILL WAITING FOR THE APPLE TABLET) That kind of makes me sad, but come on they gotta keep the cost down somehow.  Imagine Pandora streaming music for you, the DreamScreen does that too. I’m finding a weather forecast is pretty important in Florida, DreamScreen has you covered.

This seems to be just the beginning for the digital photo frame revolution which for 2009 is a $25 million dollar industry, projected for $50 million by 2013.  When twitter, and a open API are available (I hope)  I’ll be more able to really show my geekness to those who visit me and my HP DreamScreen.

Recently Google celebrated a milestone the 1 year anniversary launch of the Google Chrome browser.  I remember when it was swirling around the internet that Google was about to drop a browser on the Internet community we were all a buzz over it.  That was over 366+ days ago and what have the super geeks at Google been up to, well they have been making improvements in the Google Chrome browser.  They say that the Google browser now has quicker load times, and runs web applications faster.

The stable release of Chrome under windows was released yesterday some of the benefits are listed below:

• 150% increase in javascript performance
• Redesigned new tab page
• Some HTML 5 features are included
• Form auto fill
• Side by side view
• Ability to remove items from the tabs

Give the stable version a try here

For those of us who use a Mac or Linux they state that at this time, there is no release, but they are making rapid progress.  You can download a copy of the developers version for Mac & Linux which will let you try Chrome on your Mac or Linux, but understand it’s not a stable release.  Us geeks can try it out anyways and at least see how things are coming along.

TBTR

So imagine looking at the web as a virtual magazine of content, you get to see the stories of the day.  The stories can be any of the vast number of topics your interested in everyday.  Google Labs has a new item called Google Fast Flip it’s described as:

Google Fast Flip is a web application that lets users discover and share news articles. It combines qualities of print and the Web, with the ability to “flip” through pages online as quickly as flipping through a magazine. It also enables users to follow friends and topics, discover new content and create their own custom magazines around searches.

It’s simple you visit the site and skim, the news content that interest you and your friends, or just choose a subject and start viewing your virtual magazine.  One day when they put this into a reader like Kindle from Amazon.com, then we might really have something on our hands for now I’ll just play around with it for the rest of the day.

At present it’s only available on the Google Labs website in English, but International users should be able to see it.  You can also view a full list of the headline sources here http://fastflip.googlelabs.com/sources.

TBTR

With the introduction of Windows 7, we are at another crossroads in time. Microsoft is releasing Windows 7 in late October, in my opinion that day will be the death of Vista. The major reason is because worldwide acceptance was never on the radar for Vista, EVER! and Windows 7 is ready to pounce. Microsoft can show the share holders the value of Vista but when that value is inflated with numbers that come from new PC sales, not existing customers upgrading, also not tied to the number of New PC sold with the Windows XP downgrade, I hope you see the point I’m making.  Vista was never accepted in very wide circles, you had to take it when buying a new computer and this made the numbers looked very good for Microsoft in doing that kind of a move.

Many small to medium sized businesses never moved from Windows XP, and we know why that never happen. Microsoft had finally over time gotten something right with the release of Windows XP SP2 and the OS (Operating System) was so stable, that you were in awe that it could continue to run for weeks and even months without crapping out. Microsoft had to push back the end of Lifecycle on Windows XP, because it was so stable, and the heat they took for saying it was coming to an end without a good alternative had many people crying foul.

One of the other major problems with Vista was the overly abundant versions of the OS from the simple OS to the most complex and secure model, I believe there were 6 different versions, and for a consumer wanting to upgrade from any other OS they had a technical decision that most just could not make so the easiest thing to do was just to stay with what you had.

Windows 7 is coming on October 22, 2009

I remember when Windows XP dropped and people were at the Mall ready to purchase it at 12:01AM. Some people were camped out at the door steps of the local best buy looking to grab a first copy. Microsoft had that kind of effect on people (geeks) but now days everyone knows bugs are gonna be an issue with any brand new OS. My father always said “Never buy a new car the first year it’s in production” in my opinion my father knew what a beta tester was even way back then.  Even Mac has had it share of bugs with the Snow Leopard release. Since we all know how Microsoft is famous for releasing a product, to the masses knowing damn well it’s an unstable release, some will fear the same with Window 7 and will not brave the weather to be in a store at 12:01AM to purchase the OS.

You have a decision to make, upgrade of clean install?

With any OS you have to make a very important decision about weather you should upgrade, or install the new OS as a clean install (meaning you delete the data on the hard drive and install the new OS on the formatted hard drive). Upgrades are an unknown factor when it comes to computer systems, meaning that you could have a smooth install or one that deletes all your hard work that you have acquired over the years. It’s always a good idea to have a full backup of your computer system, from software files, to personal photos, and personal data files from your most used applications.

Once you start the process of upgrading you can’t turn back so weigh the decision very seriously. Take the time to read the information about the upgrade process. One thing I will say is that Microsoft will throw a ton of PDF’s at you explaining how to do something with their OS. It’s truly a Google, or should I say Bing search away.

Why upgrade?

The major reason you should upgrade to any OS is because of the new capabilities of the software, along with refinements in speed, access, and security to name a few. It’s amazing how much faster a system will run with the right equipment inside your computer. Understand that a lot of times when someone upgrades their PC they are doing this for reasons only they know. Some people notice how much faster the new OS will access their data, some people will notice how finding items, and doing normal task will speed up with a simple upgrade. The upgrade is supposed to give you access to possible new features that were not included in the older previous versions of the OS.

Why Clean install?

Clean install, is the best way to start your OS life with a existing computer. Note: If you already have a brand new computer with Windows 7 installed you will not need to even read this post. Clean install means you wipe the hard drive of your computer with many of the free (disk erase) tools on the net. Understand this will totally delete all Software, and Personal files from your PC. You will never be able to get them back so make sure you backup your data and personal files, there I said it again. Backup, Backup, Backup oh and don’t forget to look at the backups once your done. I’ve seen first hand a company backup data, but the never looked at said data before wiping out a hard drive and poof, the damage is done. One company I know of was totally down for 7 days, they had no computer systems to use and lost a lot of business because backups were never checked.

That clean install is just like having a new computer, remember when you first bought your computer home from the store and you took the time to set it up and when you turned it on it was so fast you thought it was a mistake. That is what a clean install will do for you, if you just upgrade some of those old files and programs are gonna start up as your new systems starts, thus slowing down your computer. I suggest you either consult a real technology professional, when doing a upgrade or clean install. Or at least I suggest you take the time to view some of the thousands of pages that Microsoft has out there to help you upgrade your system.

The jury is still out on how popular the new Windows 7 OS will be, but I can say this, I’ve been using a version of Windows 7 that seems to be working like a charm and I have had no issues, oh except the time I closed my laptop while using VMWare on my Macbook Pro, while Windows 7 was running in the background processing a programs data (blue Screen of Death). I will probably say I caused that crash, with all my awesome geekness.

TBTR

As an avid blackberry user and former Network Administrator I have come across a ton of scenarios where backup was needed but not practiced.  Some methods I’ve used to fix these problems come from knowledge base articles, to online forums, to just plain old common sense.  There is one thing that as a tech junkie I have to talk about today.  That subject is about Backing up your data, While there are many articles on the net about backing up your personal (Computer) data many don’t talk about backing up your cell phone data.

I have been a blackberry user for over 5 years now, and in that time it’s come to my attention over and over again, the question is not if I will lose data it’s when?  That “when” you may never know, but since blackberries and Smart Phones in general are the norm now days.  We all have to take the proper precautions to save our data.  Some of us have saved data for years, and while most people can’t understand why someone would want to save so much useless data.  I have a ton of reasons I’ll go into on another post some day.

Why Backup your Smart Phone

Simply you have over time added more and more task, contacts, memo’s, notes, and other things to your Smart Phone that if you lost today, you have no where to get it back.  A lot of these phones can carry an enormous amount of data including files, pictures, calendars and other things.  These items are usually stored in the ROM of your smart phone.  Wikipedia.org defines ROM as Read-only memory (usually known by its acronym, ROM) is a class of storage media used in computers and other electronic devices. Because data stored in ROM cannot be modified (at least not very quickly or easily), it is mainly used to distribute firmware (software that is very closely tied to specific hardware, and unlikely to require frequent updates). ROM cannot be removed from your phone, it’s a permanent storage area within your device.

This ROM is your internal MEMORY which saves your data, pictures, and other items to your device.  Some smart phones also have a memory flash card that lets you create a place to store more data, that you can also remove from your phone and even access with a computer given the right software sometimes. Usually this flash card only saves pictures, music, video, and items that you record, but it does not save any contacts, calendar, task or other items that are part of the phones software.

I understand ROM, but tell me why I need to backup

A Smart phone is just like a computer it can fail, and if it does will you be able to recover that special number, or contact calendar from your device?  In most cases NO, you will never get that data back and it’s over.  You have to start from scratch with entering all your contacts again, which means an enormous amount of your personal time, not to mention the loss of critical items that are gone forever.  Don’t even think about sending your device to a specialty tech shop that deals in lost data, if you do plan on spending hundreds of dollars.

You don’t need to lost your data, at least you can always have a backup with in reach at any given moment.  Most Smart phones come with software that you can use to import contacts, task, calendar functions and other things that help.  Along with that most of them allow you to backup your data right to the same computer that you use to do all these functions.  I’m only going to discuss the blackberry method today but remember there are many manufactures out there that also do this, please consult your device manual for more information.  Better yet call your carrier, and ask for the data team or someone that can help you set up backups with your phone and the accompanying software, that is what they are there for in my opinion.

Blackberry backup method

You will need:

• Blackberry device
• USB Cable

Since I’m all about saving time and allowing you to get the best resources for answers I took the time to sift the net and found some resoruces that should help you in the process.  They tell you how to make that backup of your device and should help as a written example of how to do this, I hope my words hit home.  Remember this can happen to anyone, it’s only a matter of time.

Indiana University With a Blackberry, how do I backup and restore data

BlackBerry Cool Backing up your Blackberry (Cool Screenshots)

BlackBerry Rocks How to backup and restore your Blackberry (Even Cooler updated Screenshots)

TBTR (Comments are always welcome)

Tr.im is resurrected along with the fire storm that started it all, We discuss the new Microsoft Zune HD which is gonna try once again to compete with the Apple iPod, and last we discuss the New Mac OS X snow leopard software that hit shelves on 8/28/2009.

Thanks,

TBTR

FriendFeed was acquired by Facebook, we talk about that and we had our First Official caller into the Podcast Michelle called and we are overwhelmed and delighted to have had her voice introduced into the podcast.

Thanks so much Michelle

iTunes link here

As always comments are welcome

TBTR

In this edition of TBTR we talk about Google Chrome beta, Google OS and netbook plans for 2010, and the Twitter DDoS Attack from Thursday morning.

TBTR

Today’s podcast talks about the Sony and Kindle e-reader, The Microsoft & Yahoo deal, Twitters redesigned homepage, The current Apple Revolt over Approval then Removal of applications, including the Google Voice debacle, The USMC bans the usage of Social Sites on there network for the enlisted, and Apples warning about those who jail break the iPhone.

TBTR

While Microsoft and Yahoo pounded out a new long awaited partnership, a small company has firmly placed it’s hat into the arena as a Real-time search engine, Twitter.com.  Twitter has long been seen as a site for uber geeks, and that thing people do for fun, but today Biz Stone one of the founders of Twitter announced on the Official Twitter blog about the new home page redesign.

It looks like they have made a change for the better or maybe the worst (more about that later).  The new design shows a focus on topics that are hot by the minute, day, and month.  This is showing up as a fire storm on the internet it’s obvious that twitter is really trying to make money by positioning themselves in a better way to grow and create revenue.

Twitter began as a rudimentary social tool based on the concept of status messages but together with those who use it every day, the service has taught us what it wants to be. From features invented by users to applications built on the platform, we’re still discovering potential. Twitter has moved from simple social networking into a new kind of communication and a valuable source of timely information. Also, it’s fun.

We all know how many companies have failed at trying to change the original concept of having fun while being different from the rest of the pack.  Twitter will remain different from Bing.com and Yahoo.com which are both horrible in there own little ways.  A head of twitter I see a lot of changes to the culture and pure awesomeness of the site I have come to know and love.  You see twitter while a darling in the social world is burning through cash like Netscape was during the Internet Explorer invasion.  The only way for twitter to survive and stay a float is to do something that gives them more appeal and makes us all look at them like the kid that got beat up on the playground.  You feel sorry for the poor guy, but those who were his friends from the beginning will remain loyal and now tell more friends just how awesome he really is.

The internet has long been buzzing about what twitter can do to start making money, I think this is one of the items on the radar along with paid accounts, which hopefully will give you more capability.  I think the problem with twitter coming up with paid capabilities is the fact that most of what they think up will have already been made by a third party app using the Open twitter API.

While it has been a challenge trying to explain what twitter is to a lot of my friends who are not twitter users, this looks like at least I can tell them use twitter when you want to search a topic that is right now Real-time.  If a huge news story hits the wire, it’s almost a given it was first reported in 140 characters on twitter.  The appeal to a lot of people is the always on and current topics that seem to find it’s way into twitter.  Only time will tell if this “Search Engine direction” is a good move or not, we do know this twitter is here to stay and I’m loving every minute of my 140 characters.

Tell me what you think about twitters new direction by leaving a comment

TBTR

I just gotta say WOW I am amazed at the Google Voice Application for my blackberry.  You can read about it here “Google Voice for Android and Blackberry) While those iPhone users are pissed they didn’t get an application for their OS, I’m so excited I was able to download and update my new Google Voice Application on my Blackberry.

From the Google Blog: So with that, we’re excited to release the Google Voice app for Android and Blackberry. You can use the app to make outgoing SMS messages and calls from your Google Voice number. What’s more, this app improves the mobile experience of Google Voice in a number of ways.

Google released the application today and when I saw the topic trending I went to get a copy immediately m.google.com/voice the site started my OTA download and I was able to input my information to get the application working.  At first it didn’t seem to want to download my info, but after a few minutes it showed my last few calls, and also all the text messages I still had in my Google Voice messages area.

If you want a invite to Google Voice please signup at the google voice invitation link

TBTR

Mashable ran a blog post today called Followformation: Quickly Follow Dozens of Categorized Twitter Users.  The problem with the story in my opinion is it looks like someone at Mashable or someone with close ties to Mashable created this BS service. I mean when you goto the twitter site http://twitter.com/followformation it shows only 130 friends, and 19 updates. The service was started by http://www.aermarketing.com/

It’s not even a well tested services, so what gives Mashable the thought to post about story about it.  I know they report Social Media stuff but damn some things just look weird now days.  It seems everyone is posting links for people in their twitter streams, and they don’t always say “PAID AD”.  You be the judge but there are many services that I don’t have to sign up for to get the same kind of information.

This story is just bland in my Opinion.

TBTR

I ran across a story just a while ago from Mashable: Bing Now Bigger Than Digg, Twitter and CNN.  People seem to wanna give Bing.com it’s props for being a initial success.  Well from the statistics it seems that’s true, but tell me what is the major reason they are getting all this traction?  I have used Bing.com a couple of times but it’s nothing special, it’s just a new search engine.  Microsoft finally got it right don’t try to build off the old search system build a whole new search system.  That is part of the success, but the truth Bing is successful for one reason and one TRUE reason alone ONE HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS.  That is the advertising budget that has been alocated for the serach engine.  Tell me who can’t succeed with that kind of money at their disposal.  Now take that to the bank, IMO the jury is still out on bing.  Lets see how much traction they keep after the money is gone.  You can call me a hater or fill in the _________, but you know how things go with Microsoft they copy successful companies instead of innovate as they claim.

Please leave me your comments about Bing.com and what you think.

TBTR

These days it seems everyone is trying to intergrate Visual voicemail into their wireless service.  I ran across a post where YouMail has brought the service to the iPhone in a post here from Cnet’s Jessica Dolcourt.

I also heard Verizon charges for this service, while everyone is trying to make money off the Visual voicemail one service is not.  Google’s former service GrandCentral has been providing this feature for over two years now it’s been renamed Google Voice.  At one time you could invite people to the service, but that option has been turned off for some time.  This is the latest post about Google Voice:

To clear up any confusion, please note that there are no Google Voice invites available at this time. There has been no distribution of any sort of Google Voice invites, as these invites do not exist. The best way to be informed when Google Voice becomes available for sign up is by providing your information at https://services.google.com/fb/forms/googlevoiceinvite/.

I would suggest you signup, also if you already use Google Voice leave a comment about how you like the service.

Thanks,
TBTR

WordPress hands down might be the best blogging platform around, but with so many changes so quickly do you really need to upgrade today?  I always say when it comes to upgrades on blogs or on standard Operating systems, unless the update is a critical patch don’t upgrade immediately.  Most of the time you find that if you don’t need to upgrade then take your time and let the experts do all the break fix testing.

New WordPress 2.8 Blog Post

Give the community time to download and install especially those who are new to blogging and WordPress.  I would say give it about a month before going for the upgrade and if there are plug-ins that you use check out the developers site to see if they have checked that it works or is having issues before you upgrade.  WordPress is at version 2.8 which means in my opinion if your at anything below 2.7 you need to a least upgrade to 2.7.  With that said please check your plug-ins before upgrading this will help you in the long run.

On the other hand WordPress 2.8 seems to be another great release from the guys/gals at wordpress.org.  They say that over 700 fixes have been made to this version.  WordPress has release a video that shows some of the improvements and I would say those improvements alone are reason to upgrade, but again wait a month and I think you well be out of hot water by then.

Enjoy,

TBTR

Symbaloo is a personal online desktop, in my opinion a customizable home page of sorts, it’s currently in beta but has been around for a couple of years over seas.  The service is free and there is no need to signup unless you want to customize this home page for viewing in more than one place/computer.  Symbaloo is very similar to iGoogle which is miles above Symbaloo, but as we all know competition is always welcome.

Give it a try and tell me if you like it Symbaloo

Spammers

Looking over my friendfeed today I came across a post from Lockergnome that simply said “Spammers Harvesting Sorrow From Twitter“.
The post talks about how spammers could be harvesting email addresses
directly from your own steam on twitter.  Lockergnome referenced the
article from ZDNet “Spammers harvesting emails from Twitter – in real time”
And while the article talks about a script that can be run to harvest
the emails in real time, we further get a understanding of the Twitter
TOS (Terms of Service).

You are solely responsible for your conduct and any data, text, information, screen names, graphics, photos, profiles, audio and video clips, links (”Content”) that you submit, post, and display on the Twitter.com service.

- meaning your on your own if you tweet something you didn’t like

After reading the ZDNet article I decided to do my own test with tweetgrid.  If you do a little bit of search for things such as “email me at” you can see all kinds of addresses.  A sample search on search.twitter.com using gmail.com OR hotmail.com OR “email me at” Weather these email addresses are valid or not is a whole other story but look at the image below.

Savvy internet users who have their own domains know you can create a temporary address such as info@mydomain.com.  Send that out as a tweet and then after they are done, delete that address.  Situation solved and over in my opinion.  Although for people just coming to twitter and the internet for that matter a little help with this is understandable.  Some people were posting in comments on those blogs that “Well your stupid if you tweet your address.”  While I understand why they say that, most people forget we all come to the internet with limited skills and over time we understand more and more.

Just know this email harvesting is not new, but with twitter gaining warp speed traction in some of our everyday lives we are opening up to those who want to do harm with the info we tweet, always be cautious.

TBTR

One of my twitter friends posted on her blog “Palm Wanted To Know If I “Got Opinions?” I just happen to find this post in over 1000 RSS feeds which I should clean up, but that’s another story.  Anyways Tessa took the challenge and answered the call.

If you can tweet your opinions about Palm phones in 140 characters or less, we want to hear from you.

Palm on their blog ask the question “Got Opinions? Become a Real Reviewer (and get a new phone courtesy of Palm).  I’m super excited about this, and I’ll tell you why.

Back in 2000 I moved out to Denver Colorado, it was a time in my life when I felt I had to get away from the comforts of home (Atlanta).  While in Denver I started working for USWest wireless which later became Qwest Wireless.  I was part of a data team which was started to test, teach, and help troubleshoot phones used for data communications.

The team was great I learned a lot, one of the phones we used was the Kyocera Smartphone 6035.  As a techie you don’t know the joy I got using this phone.  It was my first introduction to a true Smartphone, and while I use a Blackberry now I would be very open to the new Palm phone.  I am the type of person that can give you accolades and in the same sentence tell you that your missing the mark.  It looks like Palm wants both sides of the coin.  That’s the kind of review that makes change and improvement possible.

So anyone who wants to become a reviewer for Palm should take the survey here.  If your selected you will be notified on May 8th good luck to us all.

It would be a pleasure and honor to be one of the choosen few.

((Video attached))

Over the weekend twitter was exposed to what they dubbed the “Stalkdaily worm.”  I got wind of this worm as a tweet from one of my followers on twitter then I followed up and found the techcrunch.com article also twitter talked about it on their blog http://blog.twitter.com/ this weekend.

Next I talked about Smallaa which is a new site that was launched by CEO Tim Lai here is how they describe the service at http://www.smallaa.com

Smallaa helps you bring relevancy to your social interactions by enabling you to follow the most interesting aspects of your friends. The feeds in your multiple social networking sites are combined at Smallaa. Everything you post at Smallaa will automatically goes to those websites. When you and your friends post to different topic of interests, you get to pick and follow what really interests you from them. Friends will in turn want to post more things about your interests.

Last but not least I talk about the Dasher Project this is one of the coolest things I have ever seen, In my opinion the applications for this project are endless, not to mention immobile, and paryalized individuals can type with limited movement using this application here is a youtube video showing how it works. At first it’s confusing, but continue to watch you will get it I swear.  If you want to test for yourself make sure you go to this (java applet) link it’s an awesome product.

Comments are appreciated, enjoy

TBTR

Blackberry App World was launched on 4/1/2009 we tell you some of the detailed info about the service. Tweetgrid is another tool in the arsonal of twitter applications/websites you can explore. Seesmic desktop launched on 4/6/2009 and seems to have put everything in the application including the kitchen sink.

Leave a comment or email at thebtr[at]gmail.com

Enjoy

Why on April 1 would you open or launch your signature product?  I guess the buzz you create could carry you into the next year, or people could take it as a joke and over look you all together.  RIM the makers of the Blackberry Smart phones have launched what they hope is the defect o home for bb users.

The Blackberry App World ( I guess they didn’t use store because Apple would probably sue) is now open for business.  When I got in this morning I saw the buzz and decided to jump on the bandwagon.  I went to the signature page with my Blackberry www.blackberry.com/appworld/download to download the icon OTA (over the airwaves) but I had and issue just like Larry Dignan said in his post “First impressions and a weird IE requirement.” so I turned to the blackberry desktop software.  I had to download the app this way.  It worked perfect and I was able to get in the application.

Put more of your life on your BlackBerry smartphone! Download BlackBerry App World for free to load up your BlackBerry smartphone with games, social networking, online shopping, personal productivity, organization tools and other fun and functional apps. It’s your world – bring more of it with you with BlackBerry App World!

While most of the featured applications we probably all have on your Blackberries as an out of the box application.  I did some research inside of the app world and found a lot of apps I never knew existed.  During the coming weeks and days we will review some applications and give our take on the success or failure of the Blackberry App World.

BlackBerry App World is a free download. To purchase applications from BlackBerry App World, a PayPal account is required.

Application makers can also take the time to create new apps, and place them in the app world just like on apples itunes app store.  This is opening up the devices to innovation from small programmers, and also opens them up like apple to foolish applications that do nothing but charge money for access.  Lets sit back and watch the paint dry, or you can get involved if your an avid Blackberry user.

I plan to get involved, just wait an see

Leave us comments

TBTR

Tweetgrid has created an accessible page for the iPhone or iPod Touch.  While it’s not a App Store application it does give those iPhone users access to the custom searches and real time updates that makes Tweetgrid a widely used website.

Look here for the iPhone site

Leave comments and tell me how you like it.

TBTR

It looks like someone has finally said, the hell with twitter search I’m gonna create a Plurk search site.  If you don’t already know Plurk is another social site much like Twitter but no where near the mass appeal of Twitter.  I don’t want to make this a Twitter vs Plurk post but lets face it Twitter has some great search resources and while that’s all good.  It looks like someone decided to dive into the Plurk API and create a search site for us plurk lovers.

Plurk History v1.0 beta has arrived and I have to say it looks like they are just getting started so it reminds you of the store bought brands bland but functional.  No flashy icons on the site no catchy name but it does one thing good.  It shows me my old Plurks month by month going back to when Plurk lunched.

Honestly sometimes I have wanted to go back in my stream on Plurk and look at something I posted along time ago but could not do it.  Well now with this site I’m able to look at plurks from November of 2008 with amazing speed.

The cool thing about Plurk is that every update creates a Plurk page where your update is listed with all comments associated with that Plurk.  That is one of the selling points of Plurk a conversation you can follow.

I was able to put in my Nick name and chose the month and year I wanted to go back and within seconds I was looking at my stream of previous plurks.  Since my account is not protected I didn’t have to enter my password.  I’m not too sure about the project yet so I would say if your account is protected on Plurk you probably don’t want to enter you password yet.  At least not until we find out about the publisher of this project.  It’s not affiliated with Plurk so we have to approach this with caution.

This is posted on the site to help those with doubts of entering their passwords… “If you still don’t feel safe enough and you have a private time line you can also change your password temporarily so that even if we stored it (we promise we don’t) we wouldn’t be able to access your data”

I hope that the project finds legs and can stand somewhere on the net because it really has a purpose.

TBTR

Plurk History Link

Plurk History is not affiliated with Plurk.com

It’s always exciting to find new things in the social realm but Social Treehouse seems to be a dud.  Ok here’s the deal I get the concept, but the UI is dismal at best.  It seems someone needs to redesign the UI before I will take this concept seriously.

SocialTreehouse.com is a unique website that brings people together to share videos about events and activities nationwide. People are encouraged to find fun events based on fellow user event reviews and of course by sharing their own view of the event afterwards.

This is one of those site’s built as a “If we build it they will come concept” but you have to have a better UI before the masses will come IMHO.

The concept of SocialTreehouse is kind of cool but it’s needs more work in my opinion, take it for a test drive and tell me what you think?

TBTR

This morning I got wind that Google has worked on giving us loyal users new themes in a blog post called“iGoogle’s got game… themes!”.  It seems they have taken this to another level giving us gamers enough themes to last weeks maybe even months.  As a kid I loved the old arcade games just like the author of the blog post from Google.  I too spent many a weekend in the local arcade at South Dekalb Mall in Georgia.  With the edition of these new themes you can enjoy some of the games you loved as a child and as a grown up.

iGoogle now has graphics from all sorts of games that I know will excite my fellow gamers. Picture your homepage with “Burnout” cars zooming in the background, Ryu from “Street Fighter” blasting hadoukens across your page, or rock stars jamming out to tunes from “Guitar Hero.” It doesn’t end there. For those of you who used to dream about completing the Triforce or getting out of tombs alive, choose from “Zelda” or “Tomb Raider.” Want more? Try “Dungeons & Dragons,” “The Sims 3,” or “World of Warcraft” on for size.

The new themes are located here www.google.com/gamingthemes or you can choose a setting that uses a random theme daily at game theme of the day.

Enjoy
TBTR

As many of you know I’m attending SXSW Conference in Austin, Tx and Today @waynesutton of Talksocialnews.com was saying that he was going to post a podcast tomorrow here at the Pepsico podcast play ground. So I had to go way back in my archives to find these resources they are some of the first shows I ever did. It was on “How to Podcast” I discussed a lot about what you need and how to do it.

If your interested check these links out to that resource and send this out to anyone you want or retweet the link if you enjoyed.

Thanks,

TBTR

Podcast #2-a July 18, 2007 Part 1 of 3
http://www.theblacktechreport.com/index.php/2007/07/18/podcast-2-july-18-2007/

Podcast #2-b July 22, 2007 Part 2 of 3
http://www.theblacktechreport.com/index.php/2007/07/23/podcast-2-b-july-22-2007/

Podcast #2-c July 23, 2007 Part 3 of
http://www.theblacktechreport.com/index.php/2007/07/23/podcast-2-c-july-23-2007-part-3-of-3/

So I’m at the South By Southwest conference and last night as I was still nursing my stomach in bed my room mates came home and in the middle of a conversation.  The talk turned about how so many people are at SXSW but lacking power, everyone is always charging a device but it seems like it’s all the iphone or apple users for the most part.

I just got a message from a twitter friend @waynesutton they launch the site which they just talked about last night alwaysbecharging.com  Sometimes an idea is birthed and formed in the blink of an eye.  Hanging out with George G. Smith Jr.  - @georgegsmithjr Kipp Bodnar – @kbodnar32 Jason Keath – @jakrose Brian Cary – @briancary
Wayne Sutton  - @waynesutton and others I’ve learned something.

Dont’ talk about it Just do it, otherwise what are you doing???

Thanks guys yall are awesome

Last year I had a problem and couldn’t really attend the SXSW conference in Austin Texas.  This year I begged, begged, and begged some more.  This morning I’m going to Texas.  I hope to bring a little bit of the conference to my users and let you know more about SXSW and also network with other people who are interested in this social interactive world.

Tell me if there is something you want to know about the conference or the attendees of SXSW, leave your comments.

Stay tuned,

TBTR

So it seems once again we are back to the hackers being smarter than the designers. According to recent reports Facebook the popular social site has been infected again with hackers trying and succeeding in stealing your profile password. The worm gets people to click on a bogus adobe plugin that installs a Trojan Horse that allows the hackers to take over your facebook profile and send notices to everyone one on your list so it keeps happening over and over.

TrendMicro has documented the the new strain here.

The key here is to remember the hackers have gotten very good and tricking people into clicking on things and if you really want to be secure just don’t click on links from anyone for a while. This will help but just like a car, if the theifs really want your car they will get it no matter what.

Be careful out there.

TBTR

Google latitude is a new service where you can share your location with friends or anyone else you trust.  Certain cell phone users can use this new service also it runs as a gadget on igoogle.  If you don’t download the phone app you have to manually update the location by typing in your city and state.

Google Video Explaining Google Latitude

If you don’t have a cell phone but, want a real time update of location you can download Gears plug in which uses your wireless signal to determine your computers location. You can also update your status which is tied into your Google talk.  Pictures can even be updated on the fly so you can change your icon.

When I tried to change my pictures from my Blackberry Curve 8320 it froze my phone for a few minutes while it accessed my Media Card, but it was back to normal soon after

Remember this service is opt-in so you don’t have to add all the people you know.  You can even deny people from seeing your location but add them to see their location only.

I think this will change the laws for stalkers, it’s so easy for people to follow you now a days on the net.  As social networking grows, it gets harder and harder to hide from a stalker.  So watch who you follow and more importantly who you allow to follow you.

So as a G33K I had to ask myself how this service works.  I think Google Latitude works by knowing which cell towers your transmitting with.  Then by knowing your carrier they can guess with in so much distance where you are located.  I’m pretty sure their are some other things involved, but I like to guess.

Visit google.com/latitude for the mobile info, and the gears info

Also more links to Google latitude resources:

• See where friends are with Google Latitude
• Locate your friends in real time with Google Latitude
• Official Google Latitude site

I was reading my RSS feeds in Google Reader today and came across a post by TechCrunch where they showed a video from Microsoft promoting some new software called Songsmith.  While the thought of software that helps you create songs is not new, the thought that they paid for this video is a clue that MS must be hurting pretty bad.  Sometimes it’s not a good thing to promote your child’s acting career with a cheesy MS video.  Although in years to come she will probably be a superstar…mark my words…

Judge for yourself!

TBTR

We have hit 2009 and some people started their case for world dominance before me, damn you. Over the past couple of days twitter has been all a buzz over a phishing scam that someone is using. While the scam seem to only be a way to send out spam to your followers again here we go with the what if scenarios.

What is a phishing?

(wikipedia.org description)
Phishing is the criminally fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. Communications purporting to be from popular social web sites.

So now that you know what phishing is let me tell you why it’s gonna be around for a long time. Users are gullible, sometimes we click things we should not, sometime we are curious, sometimes the joke is on us. Gone are the days of sending you to a website that pops up 50 windows and it’s like a duck hunt game trying to shot your way out of the maze. Now what people, thieves, and yes sometimes companies, do is make you think that what you saw was real.

Twitter has a API that has been open for a long time, and the authentication has always been a question to me. Coders have no behind the scenes way with twitter to authenticate with any other way but to have users enter their username and password on an off site.

What makes this phishing scam work is the fact that with all the fail whale, and network issues of the past. When people saw the screen shot below at first glance that thought oh here we go again. Twitter is on the fritz but what most failed to do was to just look at the URL and see that it was not twitter.com that was serving up the page.

Will this ever stop?

Probably not but if you have other sites where you socialize you will notice some distinct things that try to help curb users from falling victim. A lot of other sites that have OPEN API’s allow you one password to log on to that service, then when you want to login or tie your account to another site they give you a alternative password. This helps to ensure that you don’t give out your real login password and shall we say hand over the keys to the house. Twitter knows all about this authentication method, why they have chosen not to implement is beyond me.

I think it’s time twitter give it a second look, other wise I for see some people changing their strategy of using twitter as the first line in micro blogging and move on to something like friendfeed, brightkite, or even jaiku (no one really uses jaiku so I’m only kidding on this one) none of these sites do things much better but when people get feed up they move on to the next ship.

Remember boys and girls your password is a very important thing, I blogged about this here in I wonder how many computers will be infected and I still feel people are sleeping on good passwords for access to their online life. Keep your password in your pants that way no one can steal it, for the most part. But seriously just be aware of whats going on, and remember two things if nothing else in this post.

1. No the King of some small country does not really want to deposit 28,000,000 in your account
2. You bank will never send you anything online saying change your password it’s been compromised

Twitter get it right or get lost oh and don’t forget to follow us on twitter.com/thebtr

TBTR

We have all come across this issue more than once, your looking for that email from 3 months ago in your Microsoft Outlook email program. You try to search for it using the built in Outlook search but it’s so complex that after 3 or 4 tries you give up and start looking through all your email one by one. After 5 minutes of searching you finally find it at the bottom of every email that was pulled up, frustrating.

You don’t use Windows desktop search or Google Desktop because you don’t need to index everything on your entire computer just your Outlook email program. The wasted time and effort has you ready to drop kick your computer. Who or what program are you gonna call on to help?

The Xobni plug-in for Outlook has come to the rescue, and I wanna share it with you. Xobni is FREE, yes you heard that right FREE. Xobni creates a profile for each person that emails you. The profiles contain relationship statistics, contact information, social connections, threaded conversations, and attachments all in one easy to use interface. Xobni was founded by Adam Smith and Matt Brezina in the spring of 2006 but with the recent updates has made major headlines as of late.

Bill Gates called Xobni the next generation of social networking

The Xobni download and install process was very easy. I clicked on the download link closed my Inbox, a window popped up asking if I wanted to find out more about my contact such as Skype, Linkedin, Facebook, and Hoovers info, you can enable or ignore this request. The setup process was not drawn out or confusing just a couple of quick questions to answer.

Once the program is started it has to index your emails, which means depending on how many contacts, and how much email you have can take a while to finish. While this did temporally freeze up my mailbox I just took it upon myself to go on a quick break and by the time I had returned all was working.

While this program shows great promise I can only imagine the things that I can now do with my email being much more easy to find.

Xobni System Requirements:

• Windows XP or Vista
• Outlook 2003 or 2007
• Cached Exchange Mode
• 2 GHz processor
• 1+ GB RAM

Xobni download link

This product video is less than 5 minutes in length if your serious view this video for more information it answered a lot of questions:

When you view the Xobni Analytics it will blow your mind.

Tell me what you think about Xobni in the comments section.

TBTR

I just got wind of a potential malware problem with Youtube videos.  It seems someone has finally figured out how to install software on your computer through Youtube, according to this update from CrunchGear.

The virus is called Actns/Swif.T and seems to contain a redirect to a phishing website embedded within a SWF file.

Embedding Malware & Spyware in software has been the norm for a long time, but if this is true and if you just watch a video and get software installed this could be a potentially huge issue for Google.

Lets hope they get a hold on this quickly.

To protect yourself always watch what you click on when surfing the net.

TBTR

Since the early days of IM (instant messaging) people have been looking for ways to connect better online.  I mean connect with something other than typing LMAO (Laughing my ass off) or LOL (Laugh out loud) these are short acronyms we use when chatting online.  They have been around since the early days and now instead of typing those letters we can now actually laugh, talk, and hide on Video Cam.

Voice and video in Gmail only works with the newer version of Gmail in supported browsers: FF 2.0+, IE 6.0+, Safari 3.0+, and Google Chrome.

Google has release a download plug-in that lets you use your Voice and Video with GMail.  I had the joy of testing it today with some of my twitter friends.  Once the download is done it makes you close your browser then it reopens and now lets you connect your voice and video.  While there are other services out there that let you do this with minimal cost Gmail lets you do this for FREE.  Yes understand that this happens only with Gmail and your browser, you can not tie this to your Gtalk application.  This confused me at first because I downloaded the plug-in and then tried to use it with Gtalk.  So remember this it will help you save about 15 minutes of troubleshooting, why it’s not working.

Google as usual gives you alot of information at the following link http://www.google/videochat

Something that I didn’t expect was the 30% off Logitech webcams on the link above this alone is a better saving than any where on the net at this time, also FREE Shipping please use the link on the Gmail/videochat site for the discount.  This is in place until November 30th, 2008 so order soon.

Have fun with the product, you know I did.

TBTR

Not more than a couple of weeks ago I wrote a story called “Talk about EPIC Fail, I got a Colossal EPIC FUCKING FAIL LHW.com” I wrote the story because of my disappointment with LHW.com and how they handled a admited colossal FAIL. It looks like the powers that be have decided to enrich the community and try this promotion again but with better results.

They have enlisted the help of Akamai Technologies, Inc. to help provide the needed bandwidth for this promotion, something they should have done in the first place but were either to cheap, or didn’t know the old network would bog down and Fail. Regardless I’m happy they have fixed the issue and I’m also happy the are going to try the promotion again details to follow on October 17, 2008.

Check the website often and see if you can get in on booking one of the Leading Hotels of the World at the amazing rate of $19.28 per night rooms.

Promotion Link to rooms for $19.28

TBTR

EPIC Fail

I truly believe that some system administrators don’t get it when it comes to internet traffic and the power of the media. So yesterday I was surfing the local news site AJC.com and found the following story Luxury hotels offer $19.28 per night needless to say I fell for this hook line and sinker others did too. At Hotelchatter.com they posted Yeah, We Got Totally Shut Out of the LHW $19.28 Sale Too. As I understood it the World Luxury hotels were going to offer rooms in some of the worlds best hotels for $19.28 in celebration of being in existence since 1928. This was all supposed to unfold at 8AM Est time on October 1, 2008.

I show up at the website ON Freaking Time and I hit the link http://www.lhw.com/1928 and this is what I got immediately:

Needless to say I hit update like a gazillion times trying to make sure I was not gonna get cut out of my share of low cost hotel rooms.

Anyone who works on the internet or makes a living on the internet knew this was gonna be a huge deal when it comes to internet traffic and system resources. So Truth is I was at the website early, I made a point to get up and out of the house just to make sure I was at work and in line to get one of the rooms at a great rate. I really feel for the people on the Pacific coast they were truly hoodwinked, the constant updates or refresh of the website did nothing for me, until about 10AM when I got the second message saying this:

I’m sitting in my chair at work like WTF, these bastards made me get up early get to work, take the time out and your not even gonna have the promotion now because some snot nosed kid in your data center can’t figure out how to off load some traffic through routing and sever timeouts. I was ready for a revolt against all hotels today then the next message came:

Oh I’m still pissed and unsatisfied I don’t think they understand what they just did, I don’t have many friends who stay and luxury hotels but hell I really did want to try out The James in Chicago. I guess that won’t happen now or maybe one day it will I am still pissed and not happy but this goes to show you, idiots are all over the world.

Next time you guys at LHW.com decide to do something like this call some fucking experts not your cousin Johnny who thinks he knows networking you guys truly suck MONKEY BALLS. IMHO

Thanks,

TBTR

Cuil is the name of the enormous search engine that launch back in July of this year. The media was a buzz, bloggers were ready for what we all thought would be a new take on search engines. Have you ever heard the words EPIC Fail? To everyones dismay the launch of the search engine did nothing more then explain why Google and a couple of other search engines are gonna be #1 and #2 for a long time. Cuil tries to explain a lot about the system on the FAQ page.

Cuil’s claim to fame was two fold 1.)It was started by a former Google employee and 2.)It was supposed to have indexed billions more pages than Google or any other search engine combined. What they didn’t tell you was just be cause we have indexed billions upon billions of pages does not mean its in a readable wonderful interface.

As Cuil launched back in July the strain was so heavy on Cuil that the whole system crashed, I guess us geeks got the word and started searching. All of my searches were like the bridge to now where I searched for my name and found some other guys picture over my name it was weird and since then I have not really been back to Cuil.com until today.

On September 24, 2008 Cuil posted on their blog saying they are putting their heads down and getting back to work on Cuil, I guess that bridge to no where didn’t work for them either http://www.cuil.com/info/blog/2008/09/24/welcome-to-the-blog. It’s amazing how the launch gained so much exposure but the reality is that cuil was not ready for prime time.

Opinion: In my opinion the only way you get listed in Cuil correctly is if your a star or your site is mega huge. Test your searches against google.com and you will see what I’m talking about. Cuil had to go back to the drawing board because what they created was just Hype, now it seems it’s just too late to make a difference. To reinvent your self less than 2 months after launch is ludicrous and on top of that has to be very costly I would hate to be the VC watching all this unfold.

TBTR

Micro blogging has been around for a while now but lately it has taken off growing by leaps and bounds. Can you update your friends and colleges in 140 characters? It’s harder then you think and by no means is it easy when the real estate is so limited. So what happens when you want to save and share a URL link? As we all know some URL links could be 50 characters all by it self. so the shorter a URL is the better that is for you and what you want to say to the world.

Tweetburner lets you track what happens with the links you share on Twitter.

Last week I came across a URL shortner called Tweetburner. Not the shortest name for URL shortners but it ties statistics to those URL’s so you can gauge how many people click the link. It’s always good to know if people are really clicking your links. There are a number of URL shortners on the net, I found a blogger at cusumingexperience.com who created a blog post back in May of 2008 about is.gd called “Shorten URLs via is.gd – free bookmarklet for URL redirection“.  Mashable created a post showing “90 of the top URL shortening services”

The reason why I’m talking about tweetburner is two fold, not only does it work but you can create your tweet right from the tweetburner website which will let you login to your twitter account and/or friendfeed to send a post right from the site. Most of the other URL shortners don’t do that cause they were not made with twitter specifically in mind. Give tweetburner a try if you want statistics or give is.gd a try if you just absolutely have to have the shortest URL.

I found a video of Tweetburner which explains a bit and shows you what it does check this out:

Enjoy,

TBTR

If your like me you surf the internet quite often. The free time you have at work to the free time you have at home. Sometimes you want to show your friends what you come across that you think would interest them. You don’t want to pass your friends everything but maybe just specific sites. You can create a boring email with links all over the place which might be filtered as SPAM or you can use Agglom. Agglom lets you share the good stuff with your friends and maybe even some new friends.

Easily save and publish your sets of links

The cool thing about Agglom is that you can share a multimedia webpage as a RSS Feed or as a Web Slideshow. It’s like sending a book to your online friends. You can make them for public or private viewing. You can recommend other organized webs sessions that are created by other members.

Share them as a multimedia web page, as an RSS feed or as a Web Slideshow

To view most of the web sessions you don’t even need to sign up, but If you want the full experience it’s not hard to sign up which gives you access to your own page, with RSS access.

Agglom works by letting you tie together URL links, Presentations, & Videos into one easy to use bundle. A Permalink is created along with a RSS link. As you pass this out to your friends by URL, or email they can then view, each of the areas. The Slideshows are kind of cool it adds a little top bar to the site where you can click the arrow to navigate through each link like a powerpoint presentation. You also get a RSS feed to the user which would update each time they add a new content.

Make them private or public

Say you come across a web scene and you know of a link that would go great you can suggest this link to the person who created this Slideshow. The creator then has the option to include your link as added benefit, or dis-approve it as non relevent.

Example: vctr a user over at Agglom created a resource called Social Network basics concepts – how to build one with a Permalink: http://agglom.com/agglom/490/Social_Network_basics_concepts_how_to_build_one oh don’t forget an RSS is also created take a look and you will see why I’m liking Agglom.com

I think Agglom has a lot of potential to succeed, people just need to know about this site. It seems they are improving it (the creators) all the time. The only thing they need now is someone to really design the site, not that I don’t like it, but I just think it needs a web 3.0 look.

Enjoy,

TBTR

It’s not everyday that you will need a utility like WinMerge but, I will tell you this it can save you a ton of time. WinMerge 2.8.6 is another great Open Source tool created with you the user in mind. Why do you need WinMerge? Why should you even give WinMerge a chance to grace your desktop real estate? I think if you work with text based files such as HTML, CSS, or just Text files in general then this tool will help you a lot.

Visual differencing and merging of text files

Say your working on a new project where a client has updated his HTML code and your trying to fix the problem they are having because something is just not right. If you use WinMerge you can input the old HTML code on one side, and the New HTML code on another and compare the files. You can see where the changes have been made and with that being said, fix the issue without having to go line for line in a HTML document that could be pretty long. WinMerge will color code the changes and show you where the differences are no longer will you have to rely on site alone.

Handles DOS, UNIX and MAC text file formats

Not only does this tool let you see the differences of files, but if you want it can Merge the files together to create a new document. This is a great feature where changes have been made and you want to make sure to keep all text streamlined and in working order. WinMerge will do the trick with ease.

Website: http://www.winmerge.org/

Download Link: WinMerge 2.8.6

Enjoy,

TBTR

Please don’t forget the doors to this years Black Weblog Awards is closing on 8/31/2008 if you have not voted please take the time to do so here.

Remember if you feel this blog has potential and you would like to see us win something then please vote for us under:

Best Science/Technology Blog
The Black Tech Report

Thanks so much for all those who voted and I hope you have a wonderful Labor Day weekend.

TBTR

How many passwords do you enter on a daily basis? If you answered more than 4 you need SuperGenPass. SuperGenPass is a password generator but not in the normal sense. Normally with password generators you have to install a program. That puts another software program on your computer and that takes up precious system resources. Installing a program means when you want to use it you have to find the program, start the program, and use the program that’s time consuming.

SuperGenPass allows you to remember just one password (your “master password”), which is used to generate unique, complex passwords for the Web sites you visit.

The great thing about SuperGenPass is you don’t install any software on your computer. Remember when I reviewed Password safe & Any Password here each one of those programs had to be installed on your computer.

SuperGenPass uses MD5, a one-way hash algorithm, which means that no one can determine your master password from your generated passwords.

As we know the biggest problem on the internet now days is keeping up with every single new site we join and keeping up with that password. You could do what most people do and that is to create one to two password that you use all over the internet. In other words you use that for your email, bank account, and even your computer logon password.

Nothing is ever transmitted by SuperGenPass, and your passwords are not stored anywhere.

We all know this is not the smartest thing to do, you see if a hacker gets a hold of just one password, they could potentially have access to your whole internet life. Trying to keep up with all the different passwords is the issue here and SuperGenPass lets you use one Master Password and that generates the passwords for each site.

Don’t worry SuperGenPass does not save passwords to your computer it’s a bookmark that you save to your browser.

See the video I created to show you how this works:

More about how it works

Link to SuperGenPass Website

Enjoy,

TBTR

You mean to tell me you have 12 seconds to leave a video about what your doing? Don’t we already have Micro-blogging sites by the dozen. How much time and effort went into making a service or site called 12 seconds. Talk about trying to get the VC money, and then some ridiculous conglomerate to buy you out. I’m so sick and tired of people piggy backing on other services. They say ” oh well what if we decided to take what they do but flip it.” 12 seconds will not be along for the ride too much longer. They want money, they need money to keep it going, so who’s gonna pay up some VC that has nothing but money to hang out the window. When you think about it 12 seconds as a company should last about 12 seconds long.

Most of the videos I see on the site, suck because they try to go past the 12 seconds and then the video looks stupid. The thing just cuts off WTH, I’m listening and your cutting off the video because you forgot this is only 12 seconds long. Think about why it’s only 12 seconds and you will see it’s not because of some crap about we figured that 12 seconds is about as long as the brain can stand to watch some online webclip crap. It’s because the ratio of video to users with 12 seconds cost less then just letting your user go crazy with unlimited time to do nothing but record their living room. One thing is that with the time constraints it does make for interesting videos if done right, I will agree with that.

12seconds.tv allows friends and family to record and share short video updates about what they are doing or where they are. You can use a webcam or a cellphone. It’s a FREE, easy, and fun way to stay in touch.

This is my rant and the truth is we should all be ashamed to follow as the mass of people try every new service or web 2.blah out. Right now this micro-blogging is all over the place and honestly it’s getting out of hand. Who’s gonna take the lead and stay in it for the long haul. We all know Twitters problems about money they turned off SMS for overseas users, and in Japan they have turned on the ads which also lets you know the ads are coming soon. Is it just me or is Pownce the only one that could see, if you give the users something great they can use we will pay for it. Or was pownce so hard up for money that they had to ask for money up front just to keep things going with out losing the farm if you know what I mean.

My prediction is that 12 seconds will only last just about that long 12 months, then some VC or competitor will come in and buy the thing lock, stock, and barrel. I guess I’m a little upset that I didn’t think of such an idea cause the truth this I want an account but I’m so tired of signing up for stuff all over the net.

Enjoy the success 12 seconds,

TBTR

Just a couple of nights ago I was taking a picture with my blackberry, I usually post these pictures to twitpic. Twitpic is a picture service that post to your twitter account from your cell phone, since there had not really been any other services that let me post once to multiple sites. I started thinking wouldn’t it be nice to be able to post to a picture service that can post to not only my twitter account by all my other micro blogging sites? Well I found such a service it’s called Pikchur and this service lets me post to all of my sites with one email.

Pikchur is a simple service that updates your social networks / micro-blogging platforms with pictures!

Supported platforms are:

• Plurk
• Pownce
• tumblr
• Jauiku
• Facebook
• Friendfeed
• Identi.ca
• Twitter
• and Rejaw

Now that you know how many services Pikchur can post to now I’ll walk you through some of the process of setting it up.

Send your piks via phone, mms, email or upload

1. You have to first login to one of your micro blogging sites on the Pikchur website I choose my twitter account.
2. Next you have to configure your posting email address.
3. The system tells you to create a PIN which will go at the end of the email address just before the @ symbol (this PIN is very important so do not make it simple) ( In my opinion the PIN needs to be more than 4 numbers, but that is all Pikchur will allow in the PIN section at this time)
   

After this process you have some settings you can configure

• Additional settings such as Triggers, and Status messages

All and all I tried the system out and it worked perfect from upload but when I tried to email from my blackberry it never showed up, I’ll have to fix that soon or try and figure out the reason why it didn’t work.

Overall Pikchur has a great idea with a lot of potential.

Enjoy,

TBTR

It seems that Jaiku’s website is down as of 9:50PM Est, if you didn’t know Jaiku is another MicroBlogging site. The problem with Jaiku is that no one cares about them anymore. Google bought the company out some time ago and since has done nothing to this service. In my opinion it’s a loss for all of us because it started out with such promise then got bought out and died.

Along came everyone else to show em how it’s done Plurk, rejaw, and others.

I saw this picture on the website tonight and had to post it:

I wonder what they are doing, one thing we know they are not adding features Jaiku still SUCKS!!!

TBTR

Photosynth has failed to deliver the demand was high and the Server Administrators were higher. Photosynth from Microsoft launched just over 12 hours ago and the website is down, and you thought Microsoft does not have these type of issues. Photosynth is a cool new program from MS that takes pictures and kind of turns them into a 3D pic it’s some amazing stuff check this video out:

Maybe they will have the site up and working soon but we all should remember just because you have Billions in the bank don’t think it can’t happen to you..

Enjoy,

TBTR

Remember when I said this as a joke?

Just for shits and giggles lets assume your out somewhere ladies and you see a hot guy with an iPhone, tell him if he can cut, copy, and paste on his iPhone you will go home with him no questions asked and do all the things he likes… Then when he has racked his brain and figured out he can’t do it say, I’m going over to the guy with the blackberry curve cause he can cut, copy and paste… Full Post here

Well Copy and paste on the iPhone is here…well…sort of. It seems the feature should be coming to the iPhone pretty damn soon. Take are look at this article from GeekBrief.tv. For me this might mean I’ll finally buy one, not really but I’ll look at them more now when I’m in the apple store.

It seems that Zac White a college student has figured out how to implement copy and past on any iPhone App without violating the iPhone SDK agreement. He has started a website called Openclip.org to introduce it take a look here. Ah…. an you thought it was not there because of some coding crap when it turns out that Apple just said it wasn’t a priority.

Here is the Video Explaining how it works:

Cut and Paste for iPhone from Cali Lewis on Vimeo.

So remember “Don’t play my little joke on anyone, you just might wake up next to them”

Enjoy,

TBTR

Imagine a program that many of the top podcasters use on a daily basis. When you want to record, mix, and master your recordings use Audacity. Audacity is a FREE Open Source software for recording and editing sound.

With Audacity you can:

• Record Live Audio
• Convert tapes & records into digital files
• See a massive list of features here

Audacity runs on:

• Linux
• Os X
• Windows (from 98 to Vista)

Personally I use Audacity to record & edit my podcast for TheBlackTechReport. I absolutely love this program the ease of use and shear horsepower of this program is internationally known. A great plus to using Audacity is the great community input and resources created by the developers and users of audacity.

5 Audacity resources:

• File Management Tips
• Navigation Tips
• Podcasting with Audacity (full resources)
• Noise Removal
• Official Audacity User Manual

Remember with any program it might take a little time getting used to it, but don’t let that scare you I wanna see you using this wonderful program.

Enjoy,

TBTR

I want to take time to say thank you to all of those people that saw my previous post about the Black Weblog Awards and then nominated this blog. At times I am amazed at what we can do as a community of ONE when we come together. If I could only interest you all in giving to my MacBook Pro Fund, but that is a whole different rant.

We made it, 2008 Black Weblog Award Finalist List

Now the nominations are over and the real voting begins. Over the next 14 days I need as many of you to vote for me again by August 31. This time I want you to please tell a friend about this event and ask them to vote for me. Anyone can vote…

I’m only under the Following Category:

Best Science/Technology Blog

Click here to vote

I really appreciate all the nominations now lets win this thing. If you vote for me again please let me know I want to connect with you. As a tech blogger I need feedback.

Thanks,

TBTR

When it comes to download Wednesday I’m always thinking of new and exciting FREE software to write about. Today’s Free download comes from Pidgin which formally had the name GAIM.

I remember using GAIM along time ago when you had to download and install the 3 major players in IM AIM, Yahoo, and MSN. GAIM was one of the first but they changed the name to Pidgin. I heard they changed the name for legal reasons but that’s another story.

Pidgin is a multi-protocol Instant Messenger client that allows you to use all of your IM account at once from ONE program.

Pidgin runs on all Windows and UNIX platforms.

Pidgin can work with:

• AIM
• YAHOO
• Google Talk
• MSN
• IRC (Wowzer I’m excited about this one)

And about 12 other services

Give Pidgin a try you just might like it.

Link to Pidgin Site
Link to Download Page
Link to Third Party Plugins

Enjoy,

TBTR

We have all heard the saying “Nothing is Free” I guess it depends. Today one of my Twitter friends posted a link to a free download from ZoneAlarm. It seems ZoneAlarm is trying to get the word out about a product called ForceField.

The product creates a virtual bubble while you surf so if you hit the wrong website by accident it will protect you. Lately the best way hackers have figured how to install software on your computer is by creating websites that mirror the original site like instead of you going to google.com you type goolge.com by accident. This is only an example but if you hit the site goolge.com there is code that installs on your computer through your browser and with in seconds your infected. ForceField is supposed to help you ward off these threats.

Totally FREE Patch Tuesday – for 24-hours (ending Wednesday August 13 at 6am PST), you can download a free copy of ZoneAlarm ForceField, a $29.95 value.

ZoneAlarm ForceField provides a protective layer around your browser, shielding you from drive-by downloads, browser exploits, phishing attempts, spyware and keyloggers. So your passwords, your confidential information, and your financial data remain protected.

Here are some links to help you understand why you should take advantage of this opportunity.

Well the video does nothing for really explaining what ForceField does but I added it anyways.

I found the better video to explain what ForceField does…YES….FTW

This is the link for the offer:http://www.zonealarm.com/patchtuesday

Don’t forget to pass this link along to others TODAY.

TBTR

We all need email in today’s world for a host of reasons.  To communicate with staff, friends, and family not in that order.  Since email is so important I wanted to bring to the table a product that will help you out with your everyday emails.  If your a PC user then your probably familiar with Outlook Express, and Outlook.  Outlook Express was created as a free email client included in your computer build.  Outlook Express has been around for a long time and gone through various revision I think we are up to Version 6 at this time.

If your smart or wealthy you probably upgraded to Outlook which was created on the same platform as Outlook Express but with the intent of the business user in mind.  When this happened many people said Outlook Express would die and by all accounts in my opinion it has.  Microsoft has done no active updates to Outlook Express in years thus leaving another dinosaur in the dust.  While we could argue the point of weather Outlook or Outlook Express is a good product we will save that for another post.

The Open source movement has created great products in my opinion Thunderbird from Mozilla.org is one of the best email clients I’ve used.  Since today is Download Wednesday I just had to bring Thunderbird into the picture Thunderbird has won numerous awards and we have to remember the product is FREE.

Thunderbird provides you with a fast robust email client that can not only hand emails but RSS feeds, and newsgroups all in this one product.  While I like to personally keep all those in separate programs I have to commend Mozilla.org for including this sort of as a one stop shop.

I have created two screencast that show you the process from downloading the product, to install, and the configuration or setup.

Video 1: Download, and Install

Video 2: Configuration

More information about Thunderbird features here and Thunderbird download link.

Popular Thunderbird addons listed under this article on Makeuseof.com

Enjoy and leave comments.

TBTR

I have been looking to add a little more flavor to the blog in recent weeks all this reading and writing has my head hurting.  I must say that as a technical guy I sometimes can get into a story and go off the deep end i try and pull it back most times.  Since I’m always looking for ways to keep people coming back and keep people looking to TBTR as a resource starting today I’m gonna put screencast into my post.

The article for today’s Download Wedensday will include the first screencast I hope you enjoy and as always leave your comments that always helps me out.

Thanks,

TBTR

A co-worker of mine passed me this URL from Youtube for a video. I have to say as a network administrator this has to be one of the truest videos about what people do and say when they call you for tech help at work. The video shows how we goof off and how we always get the job done no matter what.

I am not kidding you most of the stuff in the video I have done and if you know a network administrator anywhere please pass them to my website http://www.theblacktechreport.com to see this, they will thank you in the morning.

Classic stuff…

TBTR

This post might get a little technical please forgive me a head of time for showing my full geekyness.

Wireless routers get older and older every day, if you were an early adopter of WiFi technology. The price and headache you paid in the early days is now a thing of the past. All good things must come to an end or end of life cycle in geek terms.

Most wireless routers were made with the future in mind by way of something called a firmware update.

What is firmware? According to wikipedia.org firmware is a computer program that is embedded in a hardware device. It can also be provided on flash memory or as a binary image file. This can be uploaded onto existing old or new hardware by a user.

Usually this gives the device new code that can fix issues (software bugs), add features, or totally change a device to do new, different and exciting things.

New is what happens when you install Tomato Firmaware on your old Linksys WRT54G, GL, GS, Buffalo WHR-G54S/WHR-HP-G54 and other Broadcom based routers.

Routers that are known to work with Tomato:

• Linksys WRT54G v1-v4, WRT54GS v1-v4, WRT54GL v1.x, WRTSL54GS (no USB support)
• Buffalo WHR-G54S, WHR-HP-G54, WZR-G54, WBR2-G54, WBR-G54, WZR-HP-G54, WZR-RS-G54, WZR-RS-G54HP, WVR-G54-NF, WHR2-A54-G54, WHR3-AG54
• Asus WL500G Premium (no USB support), WL500GE
• Sparklan WX6615GT, Fuji RT390W, Microsoft MN-700

This will not work on Linksys WRT54G/GS v5 or newer WRT54G/GS routers.

Your probably asking yourself why do I need this? Well the truth is you don’t need this at all. The reason why we talk about this today is to let you know that if you have an old wireless router mentioned above, and it’s crashing or your always having to reboot the unit. You don’t have to toss it you can update the unit and turn it into a super router.

With any firmware updates you run the risk of bricking your unit just be sure you can afford to do this before ever doing a unlicensed firmware update.

Other programs that do the same thing listed here:

• DD-WRT
• FreeWRT
• HyperWRT Thibor
• OpenWRT
• Tarifa
• X-Wrt

Have Fun.

TBTR

The 2008 Black Weblog Awards is under way, this is my first time trying to get noticed. While I have never won an award for what I do with my blog the honor of being included is a great thing so help me out yall.

A twitter friend already ask me what category (Science/Technology) and my URL (http://www.theblacktechreport.com), I was overwhelmed with happiness to say the least I’m excited this is how it works.

The Black Weblog Awards has been around since 2005 with entries from over 83 countries. The doors for Nominating your favorite blog just opened today August 1, 2008 and will stay open till August 15, 2008. Then they will close the doors for Nominating and open the doors on August 16, 2008 (my birthday of course) for your votes on the finalist this ends on August 31, 2008. The results and winners will be announced on September 4, 2008.

Just a few more things you can find more information here:

Facebook
MySpace
Twitter
Forums
Promotional Graphics

I started asking myself everyone will not know what catagory to put me in or they have no idea I wanted to be included on their potential list of bloggers for the BWA’s. So I decided to try something different since I use Twitter twitter.com/thebtr I decided to use the twitter search so others could see the buzz on twitter about the BWA’s and also put up some queries so you can have a direct link into the channels that are talking.

Vote for me under Science/Technology Blog also to everyone who gets voted on good luck…

Based on twitters with blackweblogawards.com
http://search.twitter.com/search?q=blackweblogawards

Based on twitters with Black Weblog Awards
http://search.twitter.com/search?q=black+weblog+awards

Based on twitters with BWA’s
http://search.twitter.com/search?q=BWA%27s
http://search.twitter.com/search?q=bwa (other references to bwa show up in this query)

Yesterday (read the story here) we reported that the popular game Scrabulous had been taken down for the US and Canada customers of Facebook because of a lawsuit filed by Hasbro. Well I won’t say chalk one up for the little guy I will just say, damn the little guys are smart.

The Agarwalla brothers in a very short amount of time have gone back to the drawing board. They have come up with a new Facebook application called “WordScraper” talk about punking someone.

We know Hasbro had every right to file the lawsuit they did against the brothers and Facebook I mean the name was just to similar but now the boys have gone back to the drawing board and created something else similar but with some different rules, now that’s Pimpin to me.

I wonder how Hasbro feels now, not only did they start a storm that according to others could have been avoided but now the brand in some circles may have even been hurt permanently. I mean we know the large number of people on Facebook are probably early to mid twenties. Working successful young people that lets face it don’t like to be told too much on what to do. The Hasbro brand is really faced with a challenge, to fix a wrong they could have avoided. The lawyers that were used in this lawsuit are probably right now trying to figure out another way to create a revenue stream to line there pockets.

Do I think this will hurt Hasbro in the long run probably not most of the people using it didn’t have kids anyways. I will say that this is probably not over and we have just seen the little guy Pimp the big fish.

Wordscraper on Facebook

Hasbro

TBTR

Today came word that the very popular game Scrabulous was taken down by Facebook.  It seems the program was infringing on a little well known game called Scrabble owned by Hasbro.  While I never played this game online I always saw many people who did.  What’s up with Hasbro?  Are they just haters on the Agarwalla brothers, and their company, RJ Softwares.

The Brothers created the game and have been in my opinion reaping the rewards.  While Face book took down the application it seems they really didn’t want to get the middle of this feud.  The website Scrabulous is still operational and the facebook application is no longer being used in the US or Canada but in other countries Hasbro has no rights to the name that is owned by Mattel.

It seems at this time Mattel has not filed any suits to rights overseas but if one starts you can bet the other is going to do it.  While this is news nothings really new with this we all know how people create something better than the original, but instead of going to the company and trying to license the rights they keep building on a application that’s stolen.

On another note Facebook users are fighting back by creating groups to try and get the Scrabulous application back all I can say is Good luck with that.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=37928471248

http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=75441

www.Scrabulous.com

www.scrabble.com

TBTR

Working a full time job you probably sit at a computer for 8 hours then go home and you have another computer your using. Using so many computers there are gonna be times when you wish you had access to your documents from any computer at any time. If you have Google Docs your not missing a thing in fact your probably laughing right now saying “Is this really news TBTR, I mean honestly.”

There’s nothing to download; you access your documents, spreadsheets and presentations from any computer with an Internet connection and a standard browser. And it’s free.

Scenario your at work taking care of some last minute changes to a document, you get a call and leave in haste. When you get home your winding down about to watch your favorite TV show when you get a call that your friend she needs the list of things you were writing ASAP. You think back did I email that document before I left work? Then you remember it’s saved to your hard drive at work not at home. This leaves your friend with out the document and there is nothing you can do about it. Well sort of, if you had written and saved that document in Google Docs you could use your computer to login find the document and then edit or just send the document to your friend. Thus fixing a situation that may have been disastorious.

Online storage and auto-save mean you needn’t fear local hard drive failures or power outages.

While this is little far fetched it’s still true Google Docs is an online application that lets you create documents, spreadsheets, and presentations online at anytime from any computer. Google has set up the system to enable anyone to share, and collaborate in real time. Google Docs accepts most popular file formats, including DOC, XLS, ODT, ODS, RTF, CSV, PPT, etc. Access to your documents can be emailed to anyone you want and they get instant access.

You can publish to the entire world, just a few people or no one — it’s up to you. (You can also un-publish at any time.)

With Google Docs there is nothing to download it’s all done over the internet that also helps with backup of documents. No longer do you have to worry about a hard drive failure or misplacing some important documents you have access from anywhere. Google Docs even lets you post a document to the web with a single click you can set this for viewing by select people or anyone around the world.

You can now track how much traffic a particular published document is getting through Google Analytics.

While most of this article is written for the newbie in mind here is where I explain some of the NEW features that have been placed in this Online Application.

• A host of free templates for documents, spreadsheets or presentations
• Analytics tracking on published documents is now available
• Custom Colors can now be chosen for documents or slides
• Output can be to a PDF file so no need for Adobe Acrobat
• Tech-Savvy users can now apply CSS to documents
• Notes can now be added to your slide presentations
• Off line access to your Google docs, sync when internet connection established
• Presentations can be saved as PPT
• View Google Docs on your mobile phone
• Many more features

While Microsoft has stepped up and offered some of the same things with Office Live, Google Docs 100% FREE. While they do offer this for free there is a pay service if your a organization and want to put the whole company on it’s called Google Apps check it out.

This video explains a lot enjoy.

video by: leelefever

Try out Google Docs it helps you live longer

TBTR

While looking for great sites to write about I stumbled across Snapter. Snapter uses your digital camera as a mobile scanner to scan documents, business cards, white boards, and books into your computer in .jpg or .pdf format. Snapter claims to make your camera photos of documents look like scanned documents.

The software automatically crops, stretches, flattens and converts photos into more portable images. I downloaded Snapter installed the application and started using the system. I decided first to take a picture of my receipt from a laptop purchase I had on my desk. I took this picture with my BlackBerry Curve. The picture while nice is not the best of quality when I later zoomed in on the text. Then I decided to take the same picture with my Canon Powershot SD750 I got 100% better quality.

Use your digital camera as a mobile scanner to scan documents, business cards, whiteboards, and books.

Next I decided to try the book I used my recently purchased HTML, XMTML & CSS Book by Peachpit Press. I turned to a random page and clicked a good picture. The image came up but when I clicked to process the output that’s when It went south. Although it worked I could only see one half of the book after the image processed. The picture was of both sides but it seems that some how the light or dark area in the ream of the book wigged the processor in Snapter out. I tried several times to move the line to tell the software that I wanted the other page included on the scan but I could never get it to go far enough.

Snapter makes camera photos look like scanned documents!

Snapter says they have improved the image process algorithms, but in my opinion it still seems to be an issue. Again it could be user error but I tried 3 times with the same results. I will say this if I really took the time to sit back take great pictures of documents and then tried to make .pdf files I would probably get better results but my frustration factor reached critical mass and I stopped trying to tweak it. To help others there is a Getting Started Guide.

The software is not Freeware that is why this was not included on the Wednesday download tag. You get a 14 day trial to use the software with no limits, after that you get a watermark over every scan that you make. The best part is after the 14 days it still works. Kudo’s to the Snapter team for allowing that you know some students would like to use this but cost is a factor.

While I only did limited examples of what you can do here the website will shed more light on the advantages of Snapter.

3 Thumbs out of 5

TBTR

Today I wanted to let you know about OpenOffice which is the clone of Microsoft’s costly product Office. OpenOffice while different gives you some great features such as:

• Text Documents
• Spreadsheets
• Presentation
• Drawing
• Database

The products listed are FREE you don’t pay for them because OpenOffice is a Open Source product. If you don’t have the money to purchase the most popular product Microsoft Office, download OpenOffice here.

Enjoy

TBTR

Wow the internet is a buzz today with so many stories from godaddys meltdown to the apology from apple’s mobileme service.

I found a post from www.scripting.com’s Dave Winer titled “Identi.ca implements the Twitter API” Identi.ca is another twitter clone that has come along recently that looks and feels very much like twitter.

I gather this means that the other apps that have been built for twitter can now be ported over to identi.ca with very minimal changes to your code as a developer.

It will be interesting in the coming days and weeks to see how much of a foot hold identi.ca can really get with this new news.

TBTR

Surfing the net I always come across websites that are just too damn interesting.  Today I found a website called MiniAjax.com they have posted alot of DHTML and AJax code from various sites.

Here are just a few titles that you will find on MiniAjax.com

• Ajax Star Rating Bar
• Heat map for your website
• Bubble Tool tips
• Browser-based instant messaging client
• Gmail style, Ajax check user name sign up

There are about 20 or so others that are great too, enjoy.

TBTR

First of I didn’t even know about the .me domain coming up for registration.  Sometimes I think I’m in the loop only to find that I am not, well tonight I thought up a great domain to register and when I went to find Godaddy.com it was blank.

It seems the site is down, I would guess from all the registrations trying to go through, well I’m glad it’s down, now maybe the name I want will still be available.

One thing I do know about Godaddy is that Bob Parsons the owner of Godaddy, he will make it right mark my words.

I started a ping to see when the site comes back up, I’m just waiting right now so I can get this domain I’m thinking is great..

As you can see the ping is not answering back, but they could have turned off ICMP request, or they could be hit with a DOS attack we will find out soon.  Just for fun I checked bobparsons.tv his personal blog and it’s down too….

I know Godaddy.com to be a great company with a great guy at the helm, he’s awesome in my opinion and I have a ton of domains with them I would go no where else. I hope they get it fixed before I go to bed… I need that domain.

TBTR

While I love technology I decided when the iphone came out not to even think about spending that kind of money to be what I called a “BETA tester”. If you were one of the lucky ones who was able to plop down the money then great for you, but I gotta ask how does it feel to pay Apple to test the iphone?

Fast Forward to last weeks introduction of the 3G iphone cost lower, but not really it’s hidden. Now I will not call the new iphone users “BETA testers” but I will say I envy you all and wish I could buy one but that’s a whole nother story.

Now to the problem yesterday I sent a co-worker here who has a new 3G iphone the corporate wifi key he wanted to connect with his new iphone. This wifi has the longest wireless key I have ever created about 63 characters and symbols long. Today I get an email from the users saying the key is wrong. I advised him it’s not wrong and if he paste and copy correctly he will then be able to use said wifi.

This is when I got the shocker…. he said he can’t copy and paste with the iphone. I was like WTF you got to be kidding me dude that’s some Bullshit. So I took a stroll down to his desk to see what the hell is wrong with this guy and I was about to caulk this up as another person with money that does not know how to use technology.

But to my surprise when I got there he was right I tried everything in the world to get this thing to copy and paste, well in the end it did not work. I guess this does not work because of the interface they use to make the screen touchable. To me I think they could have figured out a way to do it, but whateva.

While looking up how to cut and paste on the iphone I came across this video which shows you how this could work if they figured out a way to do it at Apple.

iPhone Copy and Paste from lonelysandwich on Vimeo.

I guess when you pay all that money they have to figure out a way to keep you pissed off waiting for the next update release in hopes of new features.

You would think that something so simple would already be built into the iphone, oh well.

Just for shits and giggles lets assume your out somewhere ladies and you see a hot guy with an iphone, tell him if he can cut, copy, and paste on his iphone you will go home with him no questions asked and do all the things he likes… Then when he has racked his brain and figured out he can’t do it say, I’m going over to the guy with the blackberry curve cause he can cut, copy and paste…

Disclaimer one day they will figure it out and when they do, don’t blame me if you didn’t get the memo and your still using the above joke, the joke will be on you, or maybe not…

TBTR

While I love taking pictures I don’t like the high cost of photo editing software such as Corel, Paint Shop Pro, and Photoshop. I have always looked for a free way to edit and do cool things with photo software then I came across GIMP.

GIMP is released under the GNU free software license which lets you use the program for free. The GIMP software project has been around for a long time since about 1996 according to the website. Currently the stable version of GIMP is 2.51.

GIMP was created because Linux users wanted a way to be able to use great photo editing software on a Linux computer build.  So they did what they always do, make a better mouse trap. It was later compiled for Windows but the first intention of GIMP were for Linux users. Plug-ins have been created for GIMP to expand the capabilities.

While I would love to really go into the specifics and show you how it really works, I’m gonna let you look the GIMP website over and see for yourself. Tons of Tutorial sites have been created to show you how to set up GIMP and how to do simple things with this extensive software.

• The tutorials here go from beginner to expert helping you to get aclimated to GIMP
• Tons of YouTube videos have been created showing you how to use GIMP here, last count was about 946 videos.
• An awesome Wiki has been created here

Remember you can complain but why? It’s FREE

TBTR

As a new blogger I’m always looking for ways to gain subscribers.  Sometimes you find a great solution, but more then often you find a dud.  As Dave Kinsella said on his blog webdeveloper 2.0 article “Scoutle, great in principle but lacking something” I seem to agree great in principle but lacking something.  I came across scoutle when I was reading a forum where somone from scoutle posted a link.  I was going to chaulk this up as SPAM but I clicked the link.

Scoutle is supposed to be a new form of social networking as their website states.  Scoutle says you do not have to do anything which is correct.  You set a scout

and it goes out and surfs other sites to help you find content that interest you.

I have been using Scoutle for a while now over a good month or two.  At this time it seems this service is a dud.  I never meet any new bloggers, as the number on my scout grew to over 400.  I don’t know what the number represented because in my opinion it was there for no reason at all.  I never held one conversation with another Scoutle user.  While my scout had meetings with other scouts on the scoutle system but, I never saw anything that showed this helping me. ( you have to see the site to understand a meeting)

In the end I think that my scout only promoted one person which is scoutle.com

An update has been mentioned for September which they say will make scout much better and useful, I hope this is true but for now I’m going to delete my scout, and my scoutle account.

TBTR

This morning I was holding a conversation with other people on Plurk the Social/microblogging site. We started talking about flickr and if there are any reasons not to like flickr. One person mentioned that there was not an application that you could use to download in bulk your pictures from flickr.

Just as that was said someone posted the link to a program called flickrdown.

The program is not an official program from flickr but the guy who made it has posted a download link.

The last update to the software was June of 2007 so I’m not sure if it still works.

**ATTENTION** I have not tested this software you download and use at your own risk

Testing changes to my twitterfeed, and twitter tools sorry, but thanks for reading.

TBTR

A few weeks ago I discussed my fascination with Meebo in my article “What? You can’t log on at work…I got a solutions” an Online IM program that works from your web browser no application install needed. I found another IM program that goes a step further, the Digsby application has the following connections which any well connected person should have especially a social geek:

······IM (Instant Messenger) – AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, Google Talk, Jabber, Facebook
······Email – Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, AIM, IMAP, POP
······Social Networking – Facebook, Twitter, Myspace

With all those connections from one applicaiton, oh and a recommendation by a reader of this blog I decided to add this program and try it out so here are my findings.

The Digsby interface is fully customizable from the layout to the fonts the whole experience

After downloading the applicaiton from Digsby.com I was able to install the program with no problems. I did like the fact that I could Signup right from the application and create my name with digsby. Once the application was installed I decided to kick the tires and set up all my accounts. I noticed the interface was pleasing to the eyes and was not just thrown together it worked.

It just so happens that a friend of mine was online while I was setting all this up and started a conversation with me. I noticed the window popped up and we started chatting as ususal. Sometimes at work you want things to be a little more private so I minimized the chat window and to my suprise a little little window popped up which I could see what my friend was saying and at the same time it was big enough that I could reply back without opening up the huge chat window cool feature.

While the program has given me some issues once I got it up and running properly this application has turned out to work very nice

Because the system is logged into my Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail account I can see the number of messages or emails that are waiting for me to look at, another cool feature. Everytime a new email is received the Digsby interface shows me a small blurb of the subject line, I also have a small ICON in the bottom right hand corner that represents my Gmail account with a small number that shows how many emails are waiting for me.

The Digsby interface is fully customizable from the layout to the fonts to the whole expericence. Now for the really cool part if you have a blog or website and you want to interact with your customers and/or friends you can place a chat widget on your site. When people see this they can start talking to you right from your website as long as you have Digsby running on your computer at that time, if not I beleive it leaves you a message. This is cool when you want real time communications on your site, no tons of time trying to set everthing up you paste the code on your site and it’s working.

Click here to send me a message in the test area of my site.

All and all i had a great time using Digsby and I’m going to continue to use it for the future, there was only one problem I had which might get a little technical. After using Digsby for a couple of days I noticed now when I start my laptop in the morning I see digsby boot, then display a message from some user who sent the note overnight my Digsby program then freezes. It has happened two days in a row. So the only thing I can do is press Ctrl+Atl+Delete and end task on the Digsby program.

I have gone into the preferences and changed it so Digsby no longer boots on my computer during startup. I’m hoping to get a better response when I boot again, UPDATE>>>well I have booted the system again and now it works properly.

While the program has given me some issues once I got it up and running this application has turned out very nice.

If you are going to download this program remember you have to have administrative right on your machine especially if this is a work machine, if you don’t have rights like that remember to use meebo which I talked about before right here.

TBTR

Have you ever spent money today only to find out tomorrow you could have downloaded that program for free? Today’s Wednesday download brings you a great tested, tweaked, and seasoned free Anti-Virus program.

We all know how important it is to have a Virus program installed and actively running on your computer.

Most new computers come with commercial grade Virus Programs but after just 90 days those programs deactivate leaving you high and dry.

While you could just purchase the upgrade for that Virus program your using, what about alternatives. Free programs are always great and AVG free is the one I recommend.

I have used AVG commercial and Free Versions for over 4 years with great success. So if your looking for a Virus program or your pre-installed Virus program has deactivated after trial try AVG. Understand again there is a commercial version of this program which has many more features, so if you like the free version, please purchase the product in the future.

Click here to download this free program

Enjoy,

TBTR

I have been a Trillian fan since the company introduced one of the first Instant messenger that tie messengers together. This is an application download you get the best of both worlds you can install the client and use it to connect to Yahoo, MSN, and AIM. While others have come along such as jabber, and others trillian still holds a soft spot in my heart.

Its a great thing when you can log in all the messengers you want including IRC then only use one application. No longer do you need to download Yahoo messenger, MSN messenger now Live messenger, AIM messenger, and ICQ messenger they are all in this one program. Oh and I forgot to tell you it’s FREE the Basic version, there is a Pro version and if you like Trillian I encourage you to purchase the Pro version.

TBTR

I will be on vacation all of this week so any emails or comments will not get approved until my return. I’m probably on a beach somewhere in ST. Thomas right about now sippin on something.

I HOPE TO POST PICTURES THROUGH OUT MY TRIP… CHECK OUT MY FLICKR ACCOUNT:

http://flickr.com/photos/jaymoney71

Have fun and keep learning technology until I return.

P.S. This was a picture on the house keeping managers door, I thought this was too damn funny…. Grammer and all.

TBTR

HTTrack is a Free/Open Source program that can copy a website to your local hard drive. You could set it up to copy a small website or even a huge website, but I would caution you from downloading a site with gigs and gigs of data. The program has some settings you can change but for the most part out of the box it’s ready to go.

Why would you copy a website 1.) To show people how a website works, 2.) To Grab all images out of folders. I could give you many more reason but lets just stop here. As you look at the HTTrack website there are alot of things from documentation, FAQ information, to how not to use this program.

The following video is one I found on youtube Mike explains this pretty well the video is about 4 1/2 minutes enjoy:

Video by: Mike from Northern Kentucky University

TBTR

Twitter the social micro-blogging site that helps you make online friends, promote your business or just have fun has a new helper service. Less friends is a cool little site that helps you find out who’s following you. When you first start using twitter it’s easy to know who follows you all you have to do is look at the number your following and the number of followers if they are close then most likely most of your friends are following what you say. As your status and friends grow on twitter it becomes very hard to keep up. In comes less friends I was a little leary at first to sign in to see if this works, but I used an account that I don’t always login to and thus not to worried about it.

WOW it really worked I was able to notice about 16 people that follow me but I was not following them. The number on my twitter page showed me following 46 people and 60 followers, that means when I’m done adding them I’ll be at about 62 i think. I would tell you it works perfect but I’m not sure the guys at Less Everthing that made this are kwel in my book. Here is a link to the Less friends blog

TBTR

Today is the incredible attempt by Mozilla.org to set a Guinness World Record for the most downloads in a 24 hour period. Today while I was Plurking (Plurk is a social site much like twitter for micro-blogging) a conversation started and I just had to write this post.

Conversation link: http://www.plurk.com/p/hmpq

See some people got the link to the FF3 download ahead of time and started

posting this on twitter, plurk, pownce, friendfeed, and other places on the net. This got me to thinking “What if phishing (phishing is an attempt to criminally and fraudulently acquire sensitive information, such as user names, passwords and credit card details, by masquerading as a trustworthy entity), and hacker websites decided to put a fake link out there? What kind of damage could they do on such a historic occasion?

4 quick ways people could exploit this day in history:

• Today would have been the perfect day for the internet marketer to make a fake site and send out a fake link by email
  • ···The response would have been enormous everyone waiting on the FF3 link would have clicked
• Web hosting companies could have directed tons of people to there landing page for new hosting accounts.
  • ···This would only work for those techies looking for hosting
• Weight loss blogs, and companies that make weight loss products could have rode the mother load on this one.
  • ···Do you know how many people are over weight, the link alone saying how to lose 10 pounds in 2 days, would have prompted sign ups.
• You can’t forget about Porn sites looking for more passengers on the boat of love would have found new subscribers.
  • ···One picture with the hottest girl of 2008 could have gained millions of hits and new subscribers
• Hackers could have made a page that looks just like the FF3 landing page and redirected millions of people to sites that steal information, or install A Trojan horse.
  • …If you think your safe, your not everyone can get a Trojan horse if the hacker is well seasoned.

I could go on thinking of the perfect ways people could have gotten you to click on a fake link today just because you wanted to download FireFox 3. Since I kind of got your attention now I’m just gonna say this Please be careful today downloading FF3. You will see tons of links posted where you can download the latest FF3 but there is only one offical link and that is:

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/

TBTR

Are there times when you wish you had done something amazing, something special, interesting, or even by the seat of your pants? Tomorrow is one of those days in technology when you want to be a part of something big maybe even huge.

Mozilla’s new Firefox 3 browser is ready for release tomorrow June 17th. Mozilla hopes to set a Guinness World Record for the most software downloaded in 24 hours. They have been working on a new version of the popular browser for a while. Honestly version 2.0 didn’t need much help it’s stable, and fast, but progression is the name of the game in technology.

This event reminds me of when the latest record would come out and I would watch the stats to see who was the top selling Album of the week. I had to ask myself if I even cared about this launch and this attempt at a world record.

I’ll give you 5 reasons why I’m overly interested:

1. I want to support the Open Source movement. (Free Software)
2. Firefox helps me surf the internet without harm from IE(Internet Explorer) exploits.
3. In years past this browser has beat other browsers (IE, Opera, Etc) in testing over and over.
4. Cool features in Firefox let me customize my browser, and adds plug-ins to extend the functionality without alot of time and effort.
5. I wanna be a part of history once again.

My last check on the number of people who have pledged to join this attempt was at 1.34 Million and growing check here.

So if you want a better browser then the auto installed Internet Explorer join me in helping the open source community and possibly setting a World Record on Tuesday June 17th 2008.

Spread the Word

Follow Firefox’s Twitter Account

FAQ (Frequently Ask Questions)

TBTR

Another invite to a beta site I have access to evernote. Evernote allows you to easily capture information in any environment using whatever device or platform you find most convenient, and makes this information accessible and searchable at any time, from anywhere.

On the web. On your desktop. On your phone.

Everything you put into Evernote is always synchronized across all of your devices. That way, all your memories are available to you wherever you are.

Downloads

• Mac OS X Leopard
• Windows XP/Vista
• Windows Mobile
• Web Clippers

Have fun with Evernote they just added support for .pdf files, and they have widgets you can install on your blog, OMG if you don’t have Evernote your CRAZY.

I have 20 invites if you want one please send me an email to thebtr [at] gmail [dot] com

TBTR

Tags: evernote, web clips, searchable text, cool apps

Micro-blogging is the best here is another clone

Those of you who don’t know what brightkite is I wanted to bring it to ya. I have been a brightkite user for a while but really didn’t understand why I wanted it in my life until about a week ago. Twitter another micro-blogging platform is great for telling people what your doing in small blurbs such as going to the store, visiting the country, eating a bagel.

Where are you located is a question on my mind.

What your doing is great, but wouldn’t it be nice to give someone the exact location of where you are along with what your doing? At first thought it kind of scares you to know that in a public place such as the internet you will post where you are physically. Let me assure you everyone CAN NOT see exactly where you are, because of some safety nets that brightkite has in place. Understand that you need to read about brightkite before you just start posting locations and addresses all over the place.

Like twitter you can still post your thoughts and sayings in 140 characters, but now with location you could meet people you didn’t know. You could post your location at the Starbucks your going to and someone in the area on brightkite might be in the neighborhood and drop by. You will see how this happens, not everyone in the world knows your exact location, only the people you have marked as trusted friends. You could visit the botanical gardens while taking amazing pictures which you can post to brightkite along with the location of where the pictures were taken.

The possibility’s are endless so if your interested in brightkite please send me an email to thebtr {at} gmail {dot} com. I have 5…4 invites that I presume will go very fast.

If you have an account add me:

http://brightkite.com/people/JayMoney

TBTR

What is Flock?

Flock is a cross platform browser meaning you can install the browser on Windows, Mac, and Linux machines. Flock is build on another favorite of mine from Mozilla called Firefox. Since Flock comes from the Open Source movement you don’t have to pay a dime for it, remember nadda, nothing. A better introduction on what Flock does is here:

When was Flock Build?

Flock was founded in 2005. The flock founders in my opinion, noticed that the internet was changing when social websites started popping up on the net. They have positioned themselves to understand first what was happening, and make a move in a different direction from a browser/surfing perspective.

Why use Flock?

If your into social sites and you want to better surf the web and stay connected Flock. The Flock browser lets you reach across multiple networks, such as Facebook, Twitter, Pownce, Flickr, and others. Flock lets you share things easily such as photo’s Video’s and links. The Flock browser even gives you a build in blog editor to make blogging even easier right from the browser. More about social surfing of the internet with Flock here:

Conclusion

Try out Flock if your really starting to get bogged down by all the social sites out there Flock has a great way of keeping this stuff in a nice group. The experience is enlightening and I think you will see the rewards very quickly. Remember Flock is different so take your time getting to understand Flock, but I assure you once you get the hang of it your in love.

Get your copy of Flock now

Comments about your experience and recommendations are appreciated.

TBTR

I have been reading more and more information about monetizing your blog, and turning your hobby into a business. This created a situation that this weekend worked me to the bone and I made some changes that reflect as of now. Did I really think that I could make money with this blog this fast?

What was I thinking?

Somehow I came across the problogger site and got into my head the thought of making money from this technology blog. So after reading an article or two about blogging for money I decided to sign up for Ad sense to run Ads on my blog. That was the first of my many mistakes here are some the lessons I learned.

Don’t monetize your blog unless you have readers.

• If there is no one to click on your ads then why have them there in the first place.

Money from blogging is not easy, don’t believe the hype.

• A lot of people, websites and others will say it’s easy just follow my 12 step program it’s far more than that I assure you.

Time is your friend

• Time is on your side the more you do and the more time and effort you put into blogging will help you out in the long run.

Make a plan of what you want and set goals that help you move forward.

• In any business you can’t get to where you want to go until you plan for it, set obtainable goals that help you reach the finish line.

Everyone does not make money blogging

• Most of the people making money from blogging have been around for a long time with tons of resources that keep people coming back, you have to create something that compels people to visit over and over again.

Hope for the best plan for the worst

• Just one of those saying that you forget when it’s your turn to do something, just a reminder to Plan, Plan, Plan…

You will probably not make money your first 6 months of consistent blogging

Making money from blogging takes time, traffic, planning, and understanding you want it to grow not fizzle out and die.

Are you a pro or not!

I’ve learned that to call yourself a Pro you need to have posted more then 20 articles about something you like or love.

While that is a joke you have to understand people want resources and something to visit over and over again. Your passion has to be there even if your readers are not. In the beginning you can only rely on yourself and no one else. You need to read some of the resources out there by these pioneers, now once you have read these blogs don’t get in your head that all of the sudden you are a blog PRO. Your far from that title and need to understand this is a hobby for most with some having a goal of a full time endeavor. Visit these sites with caution they will take up hours of your time:

Problogger by Darren Rowse
DoshDosh
Remarkablogger
Seth
Chris G

When will the change from novice to Pro happen.

That question will plague you over the coming days, weeks, months, and maybe even years. It is my belief that once your readers ship and viewers of your site are at a level such as 500 viewers and 500 readers. To me this is where you have a following that will continue to come back to read. As you create more and better content your numbers and influence will begin to help you grow from Novice to Semi-Pro. Those numbers are my own indicator for me, see what others think out there and use the FREE resources that are available to you.

In conclusion I know I have not even scratched the surface of blogging, let alone I can’t be called a Pro. So back to the content I will go. As I grow I will ocassionally share with you but my main objective is to keep this blog about technology. Also to keep it simple.

Everyday I learn something new on this thing they call the internet. I wanted to make a couple of tweaks to this blog by adding some graphics and badges.

Badges are used by bloggers to showcase the different social networks they are on with your screen name so others can join or follow you. I was having the hardest time trying to find some for twitter so to my trusted resource google.

While searching google I am no longer surprised at what I find or the quality of the items. I came across a website called randaclay.com which to my amazement had just posted FREE use twitter badges on April 21, 2008. Here is what they look like and a link to them.

(Please do not link directly to these images, I did not show you all of the images on my site.)

http://randaclay.com/freebies/free-twitter-graphics/

I just wanna say thank you to Randa of randaclay.com you saved me a lot of time. Cause trying to come up with a good twitter badge with my Photo Shop skills, might have taken me days. This is a nice way of getting your name out there give it away and they will come another lesson learned today.

TBTR

FileZilla (website link) is a FREE FTP program which has been released under the GNU Gneral Public License. FTP stands for file transfer protocol and is used to transfer data from one computer to another through a network, such as over the Internet. You can use this program to upload pictures to your website or blog, you can also use it to download files from companies on the internet such has documents, instructions, drivers and much more. Click here for more information on FTP from wikipedia.org

I came across this program one day while I was looking to purchase a FTP program. This program makes it very easy to upload and download files over the internet.

Here are the features:

• Easy to use
• Supports FTP, FTP over SSL/TLS (FTPS) and SSH File Transfer Protocol (SFTP)
• Cross-platform. Runs on Windows, Linux, *BSD, OSX and more
• Available in many languages
• Supports resume and transfer of large files >4GB
• Powerful Site Manager and transfer queue
• Drag & drop support
• Configurable Speed limits
• Filename filters
• Network configuration wizard
• Remote file editing
• Keep-alive
• FTP-Proxy support

The program can be installed on Windows, Linux, and get this Mac OS X. I personally have been using the program for about 2 years, it has the guts to stand up to any of the price heavy programs such as cuteftp, smartftp, and others.

Leave comments about your experience and recommendations are appreciated.

TBTR

Today is download Wedensday here at The Black Tech Report, from this day on we will be bringing you a host of programs that refect our Free Commitment to the readers of this blog.

We will post a small bit of information about a product that we have found or that we use. We chose Wedensday because it’s the middle of the week and its the day you kind of look up and say well what’s new around my blogsphere.

We are making a commitment to the readers that you can depend on something intresting every time we post on “Download Wedensday”. You can be assured the programs will be useful and FREE (nadda, zero), so check back often and see what we have in store for you.

Remember to pass on this link for the story to any of your friends who are interested in technology or are new to the internet.

Thanks,

TBTR

These days Micro Blogging sites are popping up week by week every since twitter has had their most recent meltdown. Don’t get me wrong twitter still has love in my heart, but that is fading fast with all the issues they keep having read more about that here.

To my surprise this morning around 7:30 or so I got a note from a little birdy named Peety she lives in the Netherlands, ( I follow her on twitter) she hipped me to a new Micro Blogging service called Plurk. Although the names is a bit childish in my opinion I guess twitter was the same when I first heard the name. Plurk explains why that name and gives a pretty good answer about it here.

Plurk as they say on the website is:

“A really snazzy site that allows you to showcase the events that make up your life and follow event of the people that matter to you.”

They have posted a nice FAQ (Frequently Ask Questions) page here. Also if you want to understand Plurk more they have a Plurk rule book. I commend Plurk for these two links because sometimes we don’t get that from websites, to me it shows they want to interact and help the users unlike some sites.

I’m currently giving Plurk a chance, you can add me here or join through this link to automatically friend me. I don’t get paid for this write up so be assured I’m not going to become a millionaire over night this time…

Plurk is not the first.

I want to make sure you guys/gals know there are others in the Micro Blogging world such as Jaiku, Pownce, twitter, and now Plurk. Please understand that each one is a little different but they all share common interest Micro Blogging. I have and account on each site, but I gotta say Plurk has come a long at a wonderful time. Twitter has been on meltdown over the past couple of months people are gathering the pitch forks, Molotov cocktails and ready for a riot over the unstable service that twitter has been so unapologetic about.

Why all the hype now?

It seems the popularity over the weekend for plurk came when Leo Laporte mentioned him I would guess on his radio show, along with others such as Scobleizer and Tech Crunch. This put a lot of demand on Plurk, but they say that they are ready for the challenge lets just hope they can live up to that statement. I see a great place for Plurk in the market place let see how they run this ship.

TBTR

Here is the podcast about RSS Feeds.

Enjoy

Do you check multiple websites such as news sites, health sites, community sites and others on a daily, even hourly basis? The answer for me is indeed yes I could even go further, and sometimes say I check certain sites by the minute although that just shows my OCD boredom. Do you ever ask yourself “there has to be a better way?” Let me tell you a secret there truly is a better way, start looking for RSS feeds on those sites it just makes your life a lot easier.

What is RSS?
Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is a Web feed format used to publish frequently updated content such as blogs, news headlines, and podcasts in a standardized format. RSS documents contain a summary of content from an associated web site or the full text. RSS makes it possible for people to keep up with web sites in an automated manner. RSS essentially is a specially formed XML document that can be displayed in a pretty readable format by RSS reader programs.

So what is XML?
Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a general-purpose specification for creating custom markup languages. It is classified as an extensible language because it allows its users to define their own elements. Its primary purpose is to facilitate the sharing of structured data across different information systems, particularly via the Internet.

How is all this going to help me?
Well the truth of the matter is that RSS feeds will help to eliminate your need to check websites for updates or the latest headlines. In my opinion this helps you out in the long run with being able to access one program to view all your data about the latest headlines and stories. This does not eliminate you viewing the websites that you always view but think about how much time it will save you when you open a program and all the latest stories are right in front of you.

Now that I have told you what RSS and XML are you need to know how to view them. In order to view the RSS feeds you need a computer feed reader or aggregator (program).

For a list of reader programs click here

How will you know the website you visit frequently is using RSS feeds?
You have probably seen the icon for RSS feeds and not even paid it any mind. The icon shown here (small) (Large) this icon is universal. When you see these icons you should be able to click on the icon or the words next to the icon. This will start the RSS feed program you choose to install from the link above. Sometimes you will need to copy and paste the RSS Feed URL which will look something like this http://www.theblacktechreport.com/?feed=rss

In closing RSS feeds help you sift through all the junk to get right to the point of the matter the infomation you need right now. There are so many reader programs out there that I suggest you download and try a veriety of them before you choose. Personally I was using feedreader for a long time but have switched over to google/reader recently with great success. I have looked at my stats to see what programs are downloading my feeds personally and the majority over 50% comes from people who use google reader that speaks volumes to me.

If in the end I have confused you beyond belief view this video that expalines RSS. Enjoy

Take your time and leave comments.

TBTR