There has been a lot of talk about a website called PleaseRobMe.com that lists people as the check into different locations, meaning that they aren’t home creating the perfect opportunity for the twittering burglar. This brings up the issue with publically displaying you’re whereabouts and the location of your home. I find it annoying and stupid that people check in and twitter it when they get home it the first place; it seems somewhat narcissistic to me.
Photo:Pleaserobme.com
This had we wondering what if a blood thirsty red neck (hey, I live in Texas, we are not in short supply) that is tired of hunting game and tweets that they are going to be away for the weekend so they could wait for the would be burglar to break in. The soon to be burglarized homeowner siting in his la-z-boy recliner sipping a lone star with one hand while the other perspiring, holding the loaded shot-gun with finger quivering on the trigger just waiting for the burglar to break in to take aim at his next kill.
Certainly this is all hypothetical, but it would make for a good episode of CSI.
Buddypress is a great plugin (and to say it’s just a plugin is to demean it somewhat) that was originally built for Wordpress Mu installations, but the new version 1.2 now works with standard Wordpress installations as well. I’ve used Buddypress to build a site I started called PodcasterTech.com and really like the community functionality and built-in forum feature.
With the update to 1.2 also a new default Buddypress theme is released, and I immediately switched over. The new default theme was exactly the look I was going for when I installed Buddypress and tried to squeeze out of the old default theme. The new version is also easier to install and increases the social interaction features with greater support in the activity pane. It incorporates some twitter like features like @username support.
At the end of this week’s Diggnation (episode 221) Kevin and Alex show a trailer for a new show Revision3 that is launching on October 7th. The show, Web Zeroes, is a departure from the normal variety and current events programs that make up the rest of the Rev3 lineup. The show is centered around three best friends living in Houston, TX that aspire to become internet superstars. Check out the trailer below.
Many twitterers awoke Friday morning to find that they had a significant drop in the number of people following them. On Thursday, twitter admins pushed several changes through the system to help identify and clean out spam accounts as well as clear up some lingering database issues that reported incorrect data for some users. I, myself, saw a drop of more that 60 followers following the recent change. As one might imagine, the sudden and drastic change in follower count alarmed and angered many users. I feel these users don’t really “get” twitter and are fixated on increasing the number of followers they have, but I feel they are really missing out on what twitter can offer to those who engage in the community and provide useful content.
Having been a twitter user since January 2007, I can regale new users of a time when there was free access to the public time-line, and the top users were almost exclusively the nerd famous, with the top user with the most followers switching back and forth between Leo Laporte and Kevin Rose. Those times are now just a distant memory as twitter has become infiltrated by spammers and self branded social media experts. Not long after twitter integrated the trending topics section into the main site design, did those topics become the opponent’s flag in a online capture the flag game where spammers latched on to twitter and spew forth their wares in attempts to gain the recognition of being on the trending topics list. Trending topics is a whole other issue as its usefulness has decreased and doesn’t give any back story as to why something is a trending topic. When you click on a trending topic in hopes to find out why it is a trending topic, you are bombarded with dozens of users tweeting out that same question as well as an alarming amount of users that send out tweets just listing all the trending topics in hopes that someone will click and follow them.
Fighting spam is something that twitter has to be very proactive in if they are not turn into a myspace of friendster. If twitter were a comedy club, spammers would be hecklers shouting out nonsense in attempts to get attention. The spammers feel they have a right to be there, but are ruining the show for everyone else that came to the show. To the people dismayed at their loss of their fake followers, I say get evolved, and engage users; if you provide value to people they will follow you. The true value of twitter is in the conversation.
This weekend is the second year for Wordcamp Dallas. The two day event is being held at the UT Dallas School of Management. I didn’t go last year and I signed up months ago and have been counting the days till the geekout event this weekend. I really like the power that Wordpress gives me to mange my content and I use Wordpress on most of my sites. I think it will be a great opportunity to meet with other geeks and since its at UTD its my home turf. It will be a great networking oportunity (even though I really hate the “N” word) and hope to learn some things to help step up my game. I’ll be blogging and twittering a lot this weekend, so let me appologize right now.
It may by April, but with a quarter of this year already behind me I have a better idea and a better chance of keeping with my New Year’s Resolutions. More of a todo list than normal resolutions.
(in no particular order)
1. Start my own business
2. Loose weight
3. Start video podcast
4. Graduate college
5. Pay down credit card debt
6. Learn to play the guitar. (real kind, not just the rockband kind)
7. Brew my own beer
8. Apply to grad school
This weekend is the second annual Makerfaire Austin at the Travis county fair grounds. I went last year and really liked seeing everything and whole community of Makers there. This years Makerfaire in Austin promises to be even bigger and better than last year. I’m looking forward to seeing some of the robogames competition and the eppy birds. Last year I spent most of the day walking around and visiting booths, but this year I want to go to some of the sessions.
There have been a lot of big changes going on in my life. I got a new job and I am headed back to college in a couple of weeks. I am getting back into programming and have spent the past few days working on servers and refreshing my programming skills. Right now I’m installing xcode tools on my iMac so I can try doing some coco apps. I have been to Fry’s twice in the past two days needing to pick up parts and books on PHP and Facebook programming. Back to the grindstone.
I have been going through some twitter withdrawl lately with the downtime and loss of IM intergration as Twitter goes through some scalability issues as the micro blogging service becomes more and more popular with people. I like to use Twitter through GTalk on my blackberry because I don’t have the cost of using SMS on the phone. But with the rapid growth this feature has been turned off leaving me to only use Twitter through the web interface or twitterrific on my MacBook. One of two things will happen: 1. Twitter comes back to full service 2. I buy iPhone 3G (just another reason why)
Also, tommorrow is the release of Firefox 3 and their attempt to break the record for the most downloaded program in one day. I have been using RC 2 and 3 and have really like the improvements in speed and I haven’t noticed the memory leak problems that I have had in the past with Firefox 2. Go to http://spreadfirefox.com to join in the fun.
After checking my email on the blackberry and finding that CNN was reporting that Apple did announce the 3G iPhone, I rushed to much to my dismay that the new iPhone isn’t coming out until July 11th. At first look I was ready to buy with the faster 3G network and much lighter price, but there are a couple of things that I really thought that this iPhone would have.
The biggest thing that I would have like to see in this new iPhone is a video camera. There is a lot of good things the Nokia’s are able to do with services like QIK. It seems like the ability to do video and upload it with the iPhone would be great for mobile journalism. I’ve been a crackberry user for years and am really torn between getting the new blackberry bold or the new iPhone when they come out. Maybe I’ll get both
Photo:Pleaserobme.com
