A pretty large update to Facebook led to about every friend I know to join about a million groups that somehow related to calling Facebook stalker-ish and the like. Since then, the creator of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, and company have added new updates for each user to limit what they want to be placed in the mini-feeds (which by the way, is the reason for the controversy to begin with, if you aren’t in the know). I think it’s great that the users championed something they wanted to be fixed, and the creators listened. But realistically, Facebook and MySpace and every other social networking site has been stalking forever anyway. If anything, even with the mini-feed, Facebook was still the safest way to play as someone had to already be a friend or in your network to see your stuff to begin with. Honestly, who doesn’t want to meet a new middle-aged friend named Jim from Alabama who enjoys the company of younger ladies.
Archive for the 'Web 2.0' Category
A while ago I came across this nice article about how to use Backpack for taking notes in school. The post is greatly informative and I learned loads from it, but my (and many other’s) complaint are the great amount of pages one would use in using this method. Theoretically, each day means a new page. If you have more than one class a day, we are talking several pages a day. In a few short weeks, you’ll be looking a quite a few pages and be moving toward the high-dollar Backpack account. For the power note taker, I guess this would be a great idea. However, I only take around 30 lines of notes a class. Instead of re-writing pagini’s article on how to use Backpack for notes, I will just add a few short points for those using it the minimalist way.
- Instead of doing a new page for each day, try breaking it down into each section of the book or class. For instance, in my English class we focus primarily on certain novels which take around 2-3 weeks each. I create a new Backpack page for A Raisin in the Sun and keep all my notes related to that book as well as lists for homework and other things to do with the book. I also keep links to Sparknotes and other helpful reference material. In other situations, you can break it down into chapters of the textbook, certain information material, or major test. Whatever way you choose…
- Instead of having a class master page, I just made my homepage the way pagini suggested (with the schedule) and added one note for each class. Then under the note I would add all the material needed for the class. Works great as I don’t have too much information for each class page. If you or I had any more I guess a full page for the class would be the most reasonable solution.
- Don’t keep the pages forever! I keep a nice three-ring binder labeled “Old Backpack Notes”. Whenever I am finished with the material I have in Backpack, I email the page to myself and print it out. I use dividers to keep everything together, and it frees up space. I do tend to keep the pages in Backpack for a few weeks even if I am not using it, just in case. You can also easily re-add the information into Backpack if need be by just creating the page again and emailing the self-sent email back to your secret address.
- Finally, if a project is too big (i.e. thesis papers, large reports, etc.) keep them in a separate page. Generally, I classify “big” as including more than two other pages (for instance, two books), having it’s only calendar in Backpack, or taking a pretty long while to complete.
Alright! Of course, this isn’t dogmatic and is just the way I use Backpack for my schoolin’. Let me know what you think and mix stuff up to create your own method. Cheers pagini and Backpack!
Ten Applications I am looking at right now…
Published August 17, 2006 Apple , Web 2.0 Leave a Comment1. Yojimbo
2. Backpack
3. OmniOutliner
4. Cocoalicious
5. Bloglines
6. MAMP
7. Xchat-Aqua
8. Firefox
9. MediaWiki
10. VooDoo Pad Lite
Ruby on Rails is fantastic. That’s probably the greatest way to describe it. For years, I have stuck my nose briefly into about every programming language known to nerd, starting with Python and ending in Objective-C. Ruby was found somewhere in there, a long time ago. After each and every failure, I usually respond to the situation by promising myself to never program (or try to program) again. But this is different. I have always claimed to hate Web apps, swearing by NetNewsWire and Mail.app rather than Newsgator and Gmail. There’s just something about Ruby that I always liked, and I love Backpack. What makes it great is it’s simplicity–something the Mac usually leads the race in.
I started my little adventure by roaming around the net like Babe the pig in the big city, and then I came across the Rails website. Hmmm, how great. But see the problem was, I am lazy. I am too lazy to install MySQL. Too lazy to get PHP to run. Too lazy to update my Ruby distribution, then install Rails…Just lazy. Lazy is a trait of mine. When all hope seemed lost, I came across MAMP, a great little Mac app that runs a MySQL database and Apache server right from within your Applications folder. The thing I love about it is there is almost no configuration, you just hit “Start the Servers!”, and they start! Well, sorta. I fucked around with MySQL for like two hours, and it wouldn’t work. Finally, I rebooted to clear out what processes were running, and sure enough there it went…Now onto Rails!
Rails was pretty easy, too. I went the lazy route again, and found myself another little friend named Locomotive. Locomotive is the exact same thing as MAMP, only it does Rails. They work together well, except for one little thing. Try as I did, I could not get my Rails apps to connect to MySQL server. So, if you have this problem too. Do what I did. Open your app folder, go into config, then open database.yml. In your development setup enter this:
socket: /Applications/MAMP/tmp/mysql/mysql.sock
That took me hours to figure out. I’m an idiot. Anyway, now I am watching videos and reading tutorials, and making all kinds of things. Scaffolding is such a great concept. It really is. Cocoa was great, but Rails has won my heart. Plus, like the dudes from SubEthaEdit, the developers have German accents. And everyone knows Germans kick ass. Literally.
Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of stuff. A lot of stuff. I have started doing a lot more work with my band, working on science papers and other things related to formal education and all that nonsense, and eating a lot of ice cream. A lot of ice cream. But probably the most important thing I have been doing is working on my blog, where you have found yourself. I am starting to get more and more hits, and I am seeing more and more of the potential of posting all sorts of things on my blog, and blogging in general. And as I see all of these things I look at WordPress.com at dismay. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t look at other blogs with jealousy, I just look at the potential of running WordPress on a prive server and having my own domain. And the happiness of being able to pick and choose my own theme, and maybe even change it up more than usual. And then be able to run WP plugins…the excitement is getting to me.
Another thing I really would love to have is a wiki. And I would like to do Google Adsense somewhere on my page. (But I would be damned if I am going to have it running everywhere like Mel Gibson at AA meeting). All of these things greatly excite me and make me just want to blog until I can’t blog anymore–which I more or less have been doing on WP.com. But WordPress.com can’t handle a lot of these things for security reasons, and that’s understandable. If I were to complain and drone on about this things to my friend Commonsense Suzy, she would reply, “Just host the blog and all the other stupid shit you want on your own server, and just run WordPress on it. “Oh but Suzy”, I would reply, “I have been down that road more than enough times. Buy the domain, buy the hosting, then from that point on watch it sit there and charge my credit card every month. Oh no, I am not going down that path”. Suzy realizes my dilemma and then proclaims “Just build the damn site before you buy the domain and hosting, dumb ass.” Suzy is right.
You probably won’t hear about it for a little while, but I am going to spend a lot of time working on building a complete site. I am thinking of even maybe getting a free subdomain and hosting for a little while from my computer so readers can check it out. Then buy the domain and get hosting (probably from Dreamhost). The new site will have a new theme, something based around Hemingway, a wiki, all sorts of Google and Flickr plugins, and best of all–all the posts from the blog you are reading. I am getting shivers just thinking about it.
In my last few blog entries one might find my ramblings about moving away from .Mac, and using Web 2.0-based alternatives, and all that nonsense. But until now, I have made no decisions to not renew my .Mac account. And as the phrase “But until now” would imply, I will not be a .Mac member starting December 26, 2006. I really don’t think its necessary to reiterate all the reasons I have mashed together throughout the last few days in several entries, so I will kindly redirect those who are interested there 
. But one thing that is worth reiterating is my utter dependence on .Mac. Everything related to my life on the internet and my Mac is on my iDisk. Emails, papers, presentations, backups, contacts, calendars…A lot of stuff, my friends. The biggest thing I am worried about is my email. The second my 365 days is up, my wonderful IMAP-based email becomes nonfunctional, and bounces everything back to the sender. There’s no way to get things forwarded or keep the same email unless I pay another $99.
Q: If my .Mac trial, full or sub-account expires, what happens to my data?
If your .Mac trial, full or sub-account expires, any web pages, files you have backed up to or stored in iDisk, messages left on the email server, contact information stored in Address Book, and websites saved in Bookmarks will be removed. Emails sent to your .Mac Mail address will bounce back to the sender. If you are the owner of any .Mac groups, group pages will no longer be accessible or visible to group members, and messages sent to the group email address will bounce back to the sender.
So for email, I will turn to my college to which I am applying in a few weeks. I think they should turn on my email accounts fairly early, hopefully before December. That way I can just move all my stuff there–they seem pretty dumb when it comes to space limits, too. So I should have a pretty good amount (even though I don’t use that much anyway). If it does take longer than I expect I will just move back to my old Gmail account, and wait it out. For calendars and contacts, I will use whatever email I am using at the time. Although HipCal looks pretty awesome. I don’t use .Mac for social networking on anything like that, so that isn’t any issue. And for Web space–you’re looking at it. Clearly the only thing I am going to have problems with is moving email addresses. Just think of all the different accounts, newsletters, contacts, and God knows what else I am going to have to update. But I guess we will cross that bridge when we come to it. All I can do now is tell .Mac not to automatically renew and say goodbye to Steve’s solution.
In other news, Thom Yorke’s new cd rocks.
Apparently, a hero of mine (one of the founders of Panic Software) doesn’t think .Mac is worth the cash with all kinds of much better, cheaper options out there. And I am slowly turning towards his opinion. Especially after yesterday, when I became a full-fledged Flickr Pro. Fuck yeah! 2GB of upload a month, with unlimited bandwidth and storage. Well worth the cash, I do believe. It’s really cool, because now I have an email set up to where I can just send one email with a photo from my RAZR phone and it automatically gets tagged and put on Flickr and automatically posted on this here blog. Neat! I have also been using Shadows.com a lot lately for keeping track of bookmarks. I am liking it a LOT better than del.icio.us. As for email, I am still undecided. I just don’t know how I am going to change every account I have’s email address; that seems like it will take a fucking year. Maybe there are solutions to that though.
In other news, I bought a PUR water filter yesterday at Wal-Mart. It kicks ass. Now I won’t die from disease and lead poisoning from my city’s crappy-ass water. By the way, I wrote and posted this entry with Flock, and I fucking love it.
A few months ago, my local newspaper tech section feautred the web browser Flock. Obviously the author had very little experience with “Web 2.0″–Flickr, del.icio.us, blogging, etcetera. So he gave it a mediocre review, only reviewing it as a browser and not the new product that it really was. So I gave it a try, and it wasn’t for me.
Fast forward to today, after browsing through some pictures on Flickr, I saw Flock’s official pics. Some crazy stuff, if you haven’t seen it. It brought back the fond memories of Flock, and then reminded me of how far I had come in terms of new ways of using the web. So I gave it another download. In general, Flock is looking great. Very great. As God (aka Steven Paul Jobs) would put it: “insanely great”. It still has quirks, but they usually are related to the fact that it is based on Mozilla. (For some reason Mozilla has really long initial launch times on my machine, but who knows?) The new photos and news thing is great. And since now I have a great little blog, I can use Flock for that too. I am glad to see it supports multiple sites now (del.icio.us and Shadows.com for bookmarks, and Photobucket and Flickr for pictures, and a slew of blogging sites). I have tried everything but the blogging tool since I have become very comfortable in blogging from within WordPress’ Dashboard. The UI is getting better than before, and so is the overall stability–I remember having a few crashes back in the day. Flock is just getting better overall, and I love it.
Now this doesn’t mean that it will replace Safari as my main browser, Steve has let his opinion be known as to which browser is best and I listen. But I wouldn’t be suprised to see Flock being used a lot as I do my Flickr and del.icio.us. It’s a pretty cool browser, with some pretty cool guys working on it. If you haven’t seen their Flickr account yet, you can find it here. You can also get a free download of the browser here
Originally uploaded by K*K.
For Christmas, one of my favorite gifts was the one year subscription to Apple’s .Mac internet service my mom bought me. But now that I have seen what the rest of the web has to offer (Flickr, Gmail, Del.icio.us, etc.), I don’t know if Apple will be able to eat yet another hole in my (or my mom’s) pocket. The services seem pretty good, and the intergration is awesome, but the only thing that really makes Dot Mac a great product is the email. Maybe it was because it was my first experience with IMAP mail, where my mail is constantly accessible. Or maybe it was the feeling of just being a “premium” Mac user. Nevertheless, I am seriously considering moving away from the whole .Mac thing.
A Flickr premium account (or whatever the hell it’s called) is like $25 a year–1/4 of what .Mac is. This allows unlimited storage with a 2GB upload limit a month. This beats the hell out of $99 for a year, constant 1GB of space for everything. Dot Mac does have the photocasting going for it, but I forsee Flickr having just has good options.
As for mail, Gmail is great. But .Mac does have great spam-prevention. I don’t think I have had one spam mail all year. Gmail is better than most, but it does have some spam going for it. But there’s no telling what some good ole-fashioned rules can do. The tags thing is pretty good, too. The talk thing rocks too. Plus, it’s like 3GB now or something.
Finally, Yahoo! has some petty good calendar and notepad software. Google has pretty much the same stuff, but they are still in beta. I simply can’t trust my dentist appointments and porn urls on an untested system. I could always just use iCal and write notes in MS Word or something–but I like having some web access. There are always more options.
As for backup, I will probably be getting a USB Flash drive pretty soon, so that’s far from an issue. While .Mac is still my friend–it definitely has some enemies this Christmas.
