Category Archive

Everything is gearing towards that catch phrase.

The functional-minimalistic views the Japanese have on living are now translated to a lot of areas. When I was in college, minimalism was the secret for avoiding too much cost when staging plays for the class or the university in general. These days, even household implements, office spaces and what have you have caught up on  — I can’t say fad, for it has stuck somehow — that.

The cellular phones of the 80s have been transformed to third generation (3G) of mobile phone standards that can fit in your pocket with all the added features as video and music players, mini-TV feeds, radio broadcast, a camera, a bluetooth device, online accessibility, global system, and other wide and wireless spectral efficiency, where most data can be downloaded to a computer unit and vice versa.

Cellular phone technology really made life easier for it reduced a lot of what goes inside your bag before you leave for work. It has also empowered you, somehow, to gain access to any information you need by scrolling down on your phone’s features. All in a singular gadget.

Similarly, the internet made life easier. It has provided a lot of ways by which we can update relatives, friends, co-workers and social networks of anything we want to share, and which we can access anywhere by cellphone, laptop or the usual desktop computer — without lifting the telephone or doing legwork to the post office.

I just signed in to my hotmail account to check if it is still active, as I don’t really use it that much. I think I sign in every three months. Well, as I navigated through the new features hotmail provides, I finally got to smile.

Like Yahoo!, they have adapted a new look in their mail features. Except that they do not provide stationery features yet. But unlike Yahoo! it has less of the nuisance ads that keep popping out on the right side (if you are using the new mail feature). Gmail also has those “related” ads that appear when you open your mail. It does not provide a chat service within your mail, unlike the other two. But it has the Spaces, a version of Yahoo! 360 or Google’s blogspot (?). Now it is in to social networking, as well.

It also has for you a personalized page, like My Yahoo! or the iGoogle type.

What made me smile was the Skydrive. It is an online storage system adjacent to your mail. I have seen other storage sites before, but what makes hotmail’s special is that it is on the same site, on a different tab, where you find your mails. Yahoo! and Google’s bloated mail storage size is different, even if you can store files in your email. It is still email.

Skydrive is not in the mail. It is a different tab you can access from your mail page and therefore can store video, music, document files, and even your bookmarks under a different page. It is up to you if you want to keep it, share it with friends, or make it public for all the world to see. An all-in-one thing. It initially provides 5GB storage space for all that. That is enough for an office to fit in all its files. If not, then create another hotmail account.

What’s the catch? We all know that all files stored online are NOT secure no matter how much the developers or site owners say. It is for the user to choose what files he or she wants to store or upload that she can access later. It is really the portability that sells sites like this. For highly critical files, do not even save them in your My Documents folder that Windows created in the C drive. Save them in a different (NOT C) drive!

Hotmail has other features to offer, check it yourself!

I started using Mac in the workplace the minute I got out of college to join the working force. It was a time when PC was the unpopular choice for doing all the computing work. Why? There was no Windows operating system then; everything was done through DOS― that direct operating system with the black screen that somehow turned its users into semi-programmers for having to memorize all the commands for a better and quicker performance in computing. Just imagine how long ago that was.

In those days, there had been nothing of the viruses, worms and what –have-you that pervade the computing scenario these days. It was a ‘safe haven’ kind of working situation. It could be because the internet was not yet out for the rest of the world to enjoy. When the Microsoft team broke off with the guys from the Apple company, the first Windows OS became available to the PC. I wanted to keep on working with the Mac (I forgot which old version, but it was the one with the small screen and during that time only a company named DPSI had the sole dealership of all Apples/Macs in the country).

Friends dissuaded me from the Mac obsession/possession as the cost was not worth the frequent upgrades in the system. “It is cheaper by the piece with a PC”, they used to say. And besides, there was only one company who can supply all the tech support by warranty, or some extended agreements. Eventually, DPSI also disappeared or the sole hold on dealership disappeared, I don’t know.

It took a long while for the dissuading to lodge into me. You see, then ― and I believe even now for some reason ― the Mac is the most beautiful functional thing man ever invented on this planet. But then I ended up with a PC during the time the transit from Windows 95 to 98 caused quite a stir. I settled for an internet-ready machine equipped with the 98 version of Windows and installed all other applications I used in my office Mac. It was a major drawback with all the shortcut commands! Later on, though, I started appreciating the PC; but there really is no way one can make it feel or work like a Mac.

The machine was internet-ready but I had no internet connection. I had no anti-virus protection for then what was that? I’m just a user, not a programmer; the technical language is foreign to me. But one day, my PC’s performance slowed. I had to literally bring that CPU to a tech guy in his house and pay him for the service while I waited and watched the major surgery he did. He was generous of his time, I was in his house for 18 hours and he gave an awful lot of advice. After that, I never allowed anyone to just insert any foreign matter into the floppy drives. I opted for MacAfee’s anti-virus pack although MacAfee’s graphics of the virus was kind of looking like lice and roaches, somehow with that in place, I felt a little safe, meaning, computing work would go on smoothly for me.

After some time, I finally got my digital subscriber line but not without a thorough pros-and-cons dialogue I had with myself. Oh, but the virus, they mutate into something stronger and worse. They wreak havoc on any machine, simultaneously. And the anti-virus either expires, or it stops protecting you as the list of known viruses it has in its pack is only good until the next strong virus comes, or it simply won’t work anymore. Before you know it, you had a legion of low-to-medium strength viruses in your machine while your expired anti-virus merely maintains its status quo. Sadly, there are limits to the protection it can provide. I thought then, someone is making millions out of all this!

And then also, you had to guard your data and your machine from the worms, the phishing, the spammers, the spywares, the malwares, and so on. Mere users must be spared!

After several anti-virus packs and whatever invasions and system reformats and upgrades, nothing beats safe computing from the side of the user. Most viruses come from sites that seem as tamed as game sites. The porn sites that maliciously creep into your email by phishing or viral campaigns must be reported as spam immediately. Unexpected emails must also be reported as spam. Lottery winnings and most letters from Nigeria are all spam or phishing gambits; report them. Forwarded messages by people you know also carry some worms and spyware in them. So advice them not to send you anymore of the FWDs or the FWD: FWD: FWDs.

There are more. People with malicious minds have always something new up their sleeves so be careful what you click or double-click. If it is unexpected and it is in your email, don’t trash it; report it. Your mail service provider will note the address (source/origin) of the data and will prevent any and all data from that source to fester your mailbox again. Activate the pop-up blocker and your anti-spyware in your browsers. If you don’t have it, by all means google it. Read the reviews before you download any add-ons to your browser/s. Turn on your system firewall, too.

Staying safe, you must be vigilant. If you share computers with others, tell them your stand on staying safe, otherwise, don’t let them use your machine. Or create a log for guests so the users cannot access administrative rights. Stick a note on a surface where users can see the safe computing practices you want them to adapt. And warn them that if anything happens to the computer during or after their use, they will be charged for any technical support that is required to keep your machine back in shape.

I’m still a mere user but here’s a Tech Security Guide from my favorite Christopher Null. The article might be what you need if you’re in a dire fix right now.

More likely than not, if you have a Yahoo! email account, you also have the Yahoo! 360° — Yahoo!’s social networking brand. So what’s happening? Yahoo! 360° is changing. Developments are taking place in all its products and services features. Mash, that’s what they will replace Yahoo! 360° with. Don’t ask me why they chose that name.

According to what I have read so far, Yahoo! developers are trying to centralize all features and services of one account (your account, for instance) into one dynamic page. So you don’t have to open the messenger, your emails, your Yahoo! 360°, etc in different platforms or pages. (I’m using Internet Explorer 7 and I’m not sure if these changes can be seen in lower versions of IE. If you can’t relate to what I’m saying, upgrade and enjoy all the cool additions!) Yahoo! is trying to do away with too much clutter on your desktop. That sounds so good to me!

The Mash operates on beta (a trial thing) and is given out by invitation, just as the Yahoo! mail beta last year. The beta version checks out all the bugs before they launch it, uhmmm, almost like early next year. If you have an invitation to the Mash beta version try it, mess around with it, and write down all your comments and suggestions because what you say really means a lot to the developers. It doesn’t matter whether you have a slow or a fast machine, they will accommodate your every word.

I hope there is also the user option to click out advertisements you don’t want to see popping out everywhere on the page when Mash finally comes out. The succeeding photos below are from Yahoo!.

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The obsolete Y! 360°.

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The Y! 360° replacement, the actual page. Y! developers say users now have the option to personalize everything in here from scratch. Mash is powered by Wordpress. If you have a friend who is mashing, or if you have it, please invite me!

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Well, yeah, I did my part, too. I went to the Mash site myself and I got this: strictly by invitation only.

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Y!’s new mail has tab feature. A tab is generated by what you click on the left sidebar menu. Aside from the usual folders you created and the old features, the sidebar now holds your calendar, your RSS feeds while the new bar at the bottom shows you the weather, the date and some events you made on your Y! calendar. If you don’t like the look of this new mail, you always have the option to switch back to the old one, which Y! now calls Mail Classic.

Here’s how it looks when you click on the Inbox tab. The reading pane can be resized. Notice that bar at the bottom? It’s your Y! calendar. I clicked out the ad (Y! has lots of them), which usually appears on the right like a sidebar, so I can only see what I want.

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Yahoo! has a lot of more features to reveal to you. It’s absolutely up to you to make use of them!

Your Yahoo! 360° account will automatically transform to the new Mash when all the bugs in the beta version are eliminated or fixed. So just wait. Patience, though not a common commodity, but as the saying goes, is a virtue.

Did you notice that your new Yahoo! mail is limitless? Yahoo! says limit is obsolete; so you can now store everything in your mail, like a virtual office which you can access anywhere without the physical bulk!

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Disclaimer: This article is not sponsored although I wish it was.

Who the ____ is Jonathan Abrams?

Here’s the what. I received a message—that either looks like a spam or a chain— from a friend around here in Friendster last week. The subject of the message read: “Friendster is canceling account (REAL)” (wanting to look kind of urgent) and the message enumerated a list of names introduced by “Original message from —”. There are about 30 names there, and then down the list, it read:

Original message from Toni:— Friendster system is getting too crowded!! We need you to forward this to at least 30 people. I know this seems like a large number, but we need to find out who is really using their account. If you do not send this to at least 10 Friendster members, we will delete your account.

WARNING! We want to find out which users are act -

The message was cut there. And there’s no telling how many names and messages were included in the note, the message space did not allow it. But you might find a similar message in your inbox one of these days!

Well, what do you know; there could be others like me experiencing some problems with Friendster, after all. I had a hard time doing things around here at first. I just got around the problem and am still testing its full capacity, though; so far, I get by. Aside from the complaints I cited from that trackback up there, other concerns are browser issues, which Friendster could’ve warned its users about. Call the cold shrug Friendster’s brand of customer relations.

I kind of thought, now, how can that be when Friendster just won a patent; Friendster brags about it there on the page when you log in. So I made a search on what’s going on behind Friendster, whether the rumor was true or not.

Here’s what I found: the full story (the Filipino phenomenon is on page 5); and a follow up note. From those, I was able to fit the pieces together regarding site problems they do not take care of here.

The brains behind Friendster, which started running on a prototype social networking website (and it still does, I guess), is no other than Jonathan Abrams, also dubbed the friendliest man in 2003 for setting it up and getting millions (both in cash and people count) to log on in this social networking project (read: Friendster!), which is the first of its kind in internet history. He truly is a visionary. Having experienced what he had when he let the big guys jumped in on Friendster, he’s set not to make the same mistakes again. Good luck.

Here’s the recent from Abrams, Socializr.

Not wanting to commit the same mistakes he did at Friendster, Abrams made Socializr available only in one place and with less venture capitalists on board.

Abrams can’t be unforgiven, but those big guys still remain so — by me.

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Reference:

Abrams photo came from his website.

Socializr pages came from socializr.com.

I had been raring to update my blog sites but I got so chomped up in a lot of projects lately in varying levels of client demands. But whenever I ran into a mental block, I turn to the internet for a refresh.

Since I’ve been mostly using the internet explorer, javas and active x run fairly well here in IE 8, that is), whenever I want to Google something, this add google toolbar always appears, which I kind of find too perplexing already. Yahoo has it also, but it doesn’t always appear. It has more finesse with the way it wants you to get it. Have you seen that floating ad?!

Hence, somewhat hurriedly, I clicked on that add google toolbar (aware that it could be a trap) so I could get on with the refresh I so badly needed. And (it truly was a trap!) voila! A lot of other things happened after that! Although the Google toolbar is relatively not new (version 4.0.1601.4978-big/en GZHZ © 2006), iGoogle, their version of My Yahoo!, is new to me. It appeared after the toolbar added itself and along with it came the Yahoo! toolbar, as well, which I never liked evah! I got stuck with iGoogle for a long time, adding stuffs and all in the page I had to create. Trapped! Then I added another tab and another and another and filled them with stuffs I wanted. Now it is a conglomeration of gadgets, widgets, links, games and everything separated by tab titles specific to my particular requirements.

GIZMOS ALÁ WEB. The stuffs are so cool; but before I added each, I right-clicked on the link first (to open a new tab or window) to find out some ratings from users. By their ratings you can gauge the viability of the stuff you’d add. When I’m finally convinced that stuff works perfectly, I’d add it. Although there were a few times when I just added stuffs without checking first (because they look so good), removing them later on your page is a breeze, you just have to x it and it’s gone. Righteous!

This is how my page looks like. Just see how some stuffs are so weird enough. My theme changes color with the season. If you’d notice why my clock is green, that’s because yesterday everything was green and I changed its skin to green. Today, it’s different and I’m not a pink person; but I will leave it like that. Tomorrow it could be different again. I’ll just stick with the green clock. Oh, and the photo of the guy down there, in case your paths cross in the future, he is wanted by the FBI since 2002. Take a real good look at him so you’d know.

I was expecting a what-you-see-is-what-you-get stuff that would appear on my page based on the icon I selected from the add stuff; but that is definitely not the case here. You have to accept the simple html rendition of the stuff you added to appear on your page. Somehow, there is uniformity there with all the other stuffs. Meanwhile, the web gizmos from labpixies are really wysiwyg! Check them out! Start creating your own iGoogle! (Warning: it is a trap!)

You can not only add the Labpixies’ widgets in your iGoogle, you may also add them to your own webpage or your blog site/s! Yeah, and I personally gave it a try. I chose Friendster! (I-choose –you! Pokémon-style! hehehe) if it will work. The adding process was quick; while adding the widget on your iGoogle page, you can also add it on your Friendster Profile without leaving the page you’re working on. Just click on the Friendster icon on the page where the widget or gadget is featured. You will be required to enter your Friendster account name and password so Labpixies can deliver your widget/gadget there; this is not simultaneously done, though.

I added about 7 to 8 widgets/gadgets (whoa!), including the personal rss, itunes, y!music on the media box of Friendster. When I checked on Friendster, they were there all right but they were so static and so small! Besides, they were all centered and you have to scroll down to see them all. With that size, Labpixies should’ve included an option to arrange them side by side, five widgets/gadgets per row.

I tried to tweak the html code for the re-size in the edit profile: customize tab. It was a dizzying experience as I had to check a small box line by line to look for all that.

I always get a hard time loading photos and links here. It takes me ten times, minimum, reloading my posts and still could not get the desired views.

Most of the time, I encounter that UNABLE TO SWITCH TO RICH TEXT MODE. THIS MAY BE CAUSED BY OVERLY COMPLEX or MALFORMED HTML, when it is mainly FRIENDSTER doing all that. So even if it’s not OK, the only option is to click OK; ain’t that a weird thing! And most of the time, I end up editing my posts in HTML because that is the only available option to edit, and just to make sure the page looks good enough as others would see it. But I should not be editing the entire article in HTML, only some specific items I would like to change.

It’s good I have enough background on the HTM language; but what about those who do not? They’d just be satisfied with however their pages appear even if they don’t like it?

The guys behind FRIENDSTER must look into this area because it’s really a freak-out thing when the behaviour of texts, links and photo uploads go haywire, even in the editing phase.

And I’m not finished yet. POINT ONE: there is no option for video or audio uploads in the blog page when it is in this site where people stay longer and interact. Could it be the guys from FRIENDSTER don’t know or they just don’t care?

POINT TWO: As I made a promise to myself to update and manage all my blog sites here and elsewhere this year, I expect that it will be easier to syndicate my pages around all of them. Was I so disappointed when I tried doing that from this side to another blog site; the XML would not load! Does FRIENDSTER know about this?

What is the use of placing that item on the blog page if it won’t work?

POINT THREE: The editing options / choices are so limited. In the other blog sites, there is much, much more freedom to make the page speak and look more like YOU. That slack alone is already a really great DRAB. There must also be an option for editing the HTML when you want to add another paragraph carriage to separate the subtopics because this issue cannot be achieved in the RICH TEXT FORMAT, guys.

But that is not to say that I will leave FRIENDSTER now. Not yet. I will try to go around this problem even if the guys behind FRIENDSTER don’t care at all. Think about competitiveness, guys, even for once. FRIENDSTER badly needs it.

POINT FOUR: The PREVIEW button in the POST area should send you to a page where you can exactly see how your actual article looks in the actual page, or else, what are you previewing?

POINT FIVE: I’m not really sure about this, but I believe every time I edit my post and save it, it sends a message to some email inbox of friends linked to me. So if I make ten edits, they’d receive exactly ten messages saying, TILDE HAS JUST UPDATED HER FRIENDSTER BLOG. I do receive messages like that in my email from friends linked to me here when they update anything in FRIENDSTER. It is an automatic mechanism embedded in the process when you save your post but it’s something else when you receive it ten times in your inbox saying the same message over and over.

POINT SIX: After making a lot of edits or corrections, some fonts don’t appear as they should. Sometimes they are smaller, sometimes, bigger than the regular font size I use. Now. why is that? Artifact issues in CSS?

What I’m really saying is, I’ve tried to look into the limitations of FRIENDSTER and what I have found, at the beginning phases, are some serious problem areas that FRIENDSTER should really look into.

Yeah, yeah, FRIENDSTER links people together but if the site is not that capable in presenting your message beyond MALFORMED HTML, what would the link benefit from? Much more the persons using it?

There is a great need for people to understand image communication, even from the point-of-view of the medium, which, in this case, is FRIENDSTER. I’m doing this to make you see the point. Did it link you exactly to that item when you clicked it?

It must. But I have to SAVE this article (meaning, POST it) first to get the exact url (uniform resource locator) of that article when it should be available already on the POSTs tab so you can link to your previous articles with ease. Exactly my point.

There, I’m finished now.