Misc
Cool YouTube Tip : Seek
Mar 20th
Youtube TIP: You can link and seek to a specific point in a video using #t=2m13s at the end of a URL.
The t=2m13s means
t = time
m = minutes
s = seconds
Example
As shown in the video below you can specify a particular part of a video. For example, I really like the verse in this song and it starts during the first minute at the 44 second mark.
Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcqSnENcunQ#t=0m44 –> This says, open this video at zero minutes at the 44 second mark
To enable this for embedding videos use the start parameter on the querystring which is specified in “seconds”
e.g.:
http://www.youtube.com/v/CcqSnENcunQ&fs=1&start=44 specifies the video to start at 44 seconds.
http://www.youtube.com/v/CcqSnENcunQ&fs=1&start=75 specifies the video to start at 75 seconds.
MNGroups
Jan 30th
I’ve started a new online group: MNGroups. This group is a culmination of many different groups throughout the Minnesota area.
The reason for the group is simple: Collaboration.
Here in the Twin Cities we have many different groups that help solve a vast array of different problems but unfortunately we don’t have a group that is local that encompasses all of them as a whole. This group can hopefully bridge that gap and enable us all to communicate across our own “Process boundaries” per say. 
Feel free to post updates about groups, new meetings, new groups, tech talk lunches, geek dinners, or even better – questions to problems that your having with technical problems.
You can access the group here: http://groups.google.com/group/mngroups
I advise using a GMail account simply because the interface for GMail is conducive to conversation style threads (IMO). See you online.
Stereotyping Social-Network Users
Jan 2nd
I’ve been using a social network of sorts for as long as I’ve been using the Internet. From bulletin boards to Twitter, I’ve been there and still use them all to this day. Their importance is worth its weight in diamonds. Through the years of using these networks user patterns have developed and I’ve grown accustomed to stereotyping certain users in different categories. This post is a list of some of the stereotypes I’ve noticed. Enjoy.
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Weekday Warrior The Weekday Warrior is your normal Nine-Five desk job worker. Accountant, engineer, software developer. They only post while at work because after 9+ hours of being in front of the computer they cant handle it anymore. They post while at work and usually post about work related items. Complaining about the boss, about coworkers, etc. They are the next generation gossip queens. |
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Weekend Warrior The Weekend Warrior posts only on the weekends. Perhaps he or she have a day job that is not a desk job. Therefore they only post when they are in front of a computer, usually the weekends. However, sometimes they’ll pull a fast one on you and post during the evening or the middle of the night. Sneaky, sneaky. They usually post about their hobbies. |
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The Text Message Marauder This person is a notorious text messaging addict. They would rather text you than call you. If their house was burning down they would rather text a message to 911 than call them directly. These users are also text users on Twitter. They get all of their timeline updates via text messages and their phone are constantly “blowing up” with SMS messages from Twitter Updates. They soon find that if they follow an Extremist (below) they will have to “Unfollow” them because their text messaging plans cannot handle the flow of data that the Extremist pours out. They usually post about daily happenings as they occur. They are also avid fans of “Twitpic” because they can visually document their findings and comment on them. |
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The Extremist The Extremist is one who updates their social network sites so much that you’d think that they never left the computer. They update so much during the week that you begin to wonder how the hell they have a job and have not got fired yet. If these users are on twitter they are churning out an average of 20-30 updates an hour. They literally fill your timeline with every single thought they have. Extremists are also known to have in depth conversations via social networks. On sites such as Twitter where updates are limited to 140 characters, these conversations can span tens to hundreds of messages. The Extremist posts about everything: Work, opinions, politics, life, family, they food they just ate and if they preferred it to be cooked with more or less spice than it had. Extremists tend to have lots of friends on social networks because they act as the voice of the silent internet at times. They are, well… the entertainers of the networks. Extremists are extreme. EXTREME. EXTREME. Say it out loud, EXTREME. Now with with a deep voice “EXXXTTRRRREEEEMMMMEEEEE”. Yeah, its that serious. Like whoa. |
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Dependency Driven Doppelganger There is a song that has a lyric that goes something like this … “Dependency can be your best friend once you know that drugs and alcohol is all you’ve got that’s dependable”. Yeah, that pretty much sums it up. These users are the drunk dialers of the social networks. They only post when they are inebriated and the posts usually look like this .. “hye man,.. listn… we ned to hanng out mre. Serisly bro wh ere have u been? Dood, im so wasted. ill call you bro. l8r” You cant escape these people because these people are our friends and family, but they only come out when the booze is out. You cannot pinpoint what they are going to post, but you can usually guarantee the posting will occur after 5pm on any given day an the chance of posting Thursday through Saturday is elevated quite a bit (as is their mind state after 6 Summit Extra Pale Ales). |
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The Promoter These users are advertisers, promoters, sales guys. These users are only part of the social network scene because everyone else is. They use it as a tool to advertise something that will benefit them in the end. They use the social network as a news media outlet for what they are doing on a day-to-day basis. If these users are on Twitter, they usually have TONS of followers (1000 +) and they follow ZERO people. This is a key indicator if the person is a promoter. They update, but they don’t follow. Sometimes they even look as cool as “Mr. Cool Ice” here on the left. What a stud. |
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The Politician The politician and the promoter are VERY similar. The only difference is that the Politician wants to be your friend. If the politician is on Twitter, they may have 50,000 followers and they may be following 50,000 people as well. Its a sales technique… make them feel like they are your buddy. Don’t expect them to reply to your messages or even read them for that matter. Hell, the politicians never actually see your messages, their assistants do, and their assistants probably make fun of your messages. |
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The Dictator They are the IRON FIST of the social networks. The Dictator is someone who runs their own social network. The classic location of a Dictator is a message board for a company that sells some type of widget and has a support forum for that widget. Be careful what you say on the forum though because the Dictator will axe your post and possibly ban you from their site if they do not agree with you or if you make them or their company look bad. They get insulted easily and when on their site it feels like you’re walking on eggshells. Before you hit “submit” you ask your self “crap, will I get banned for typing this?” The unfortunate thing is that most companies with message boards are this way. So create a separate account on their site and use it strictly for being a tough guy. Then when you get banned, your “normal” account is good still. Its funnier this way, you can play games on Mr. Dictator. I used to do it when I worked for a Dictator type company. I’d make fun of the moderator … and… well… he sat directly across from me. He used to get so pissed at user “ThisSiteSucks” all the time. Hours of fun. |
Sometimes you just have to burn one
Dec 30th
This is really old news to some blogger’s,but I’m posting it again because a lot of people I know are just starting off in the blogging space.
If you have a blog you’re probably wondering how many people are reading it. You can get some decent statistics from your feed (RSS/ATOM, etc). However, most blog engines do not provide a way for you to get at the really good statistics of your blog.
For a lot of people your RSS feed is your interface into your blog. Personally, I NEVER go straight to a blog from typing in the URL. I use Google IG as a feed aggregator. There are tons of other tools for this, but I personally like Google IG. I set it to my home page and I can read stuff as I encounter it and I don’t have to open ANOTHER program to read WEB items.
Ok, so you already have an RSS feed. So what? Do you know how many people subscribe to it? Do you know what types of browsers they use? Do you know how many people you had 1 month ago? Probably not.
Would you like to know?
If so, then Feed Burner could be of some use.
Benefits of Feed Burner include:
- Less bandwidth pull on your RSS feed. Hanselman (among many others) have stated that their RSS bandwidth is crazy huge. Moving it to Feed Burner can remove that bandwidth polling.
- Statistics on how many subscribers you have to your feed.
- If you move locations your feed stays the same. Just update the location of your blog in Feed Burner. This is especially useful if you are part of a community such as Blogspot and then decide to move your blog to your own domain or another community. You don’t loose subscribers when you move (muy importante).
- Ping Shot – Notifies feed reading services that your blog has been updated.
- Email Subscriptions – Allow people to get updated via email when your blog is updated.
- Stats… graphs, and pictures… as shown below ….
- And a lot more ….
The best part is… its free.
So what’s the downfall?
Single point of failure. If Feed Burner goes down, your blog is down to readers. I think I’ve only see this happen ONCE in the years I’ve used it. It was only down for maybe an hour or so. This could have been scheduled, who knows.
Also, no, I did not get paid to write this … I actually like the service so much that I wanted to write about it.
Subscriber Reader Type Break Down
Feed Dashboard – See what’s happening and when
New GMail Mobile Version
Nov 6th
For those of you who use GMail mobile (as I do) there is a new version out. Go to http://m.google.com/mail to get it.
New Features
I’m not looking at the exact features, but these are the ones I noticed right away.
Pros
- Account Switching – This is huge. I have multiple Gmail Accounts. The two I use most are my personal one and the one for my newsgroups. Normally on the phone I’d check one, log out, then log into the other one and read. It was kind of a pain, but it worked. Now you can just add multiple accounts and switch between them with a few clicks. AWESOME.
- Offline reading. I can open my email that I opened yesterday without being connected via the phone (if I have no signal I can still read some email)
- Better interface – The scrolling is smooth. The error handling is a ‘bit’ better and the loading of the app initially is still great.
Cons
- On my Windows Mobile 6 Device (T-Mobile Shadow) the app is STILL in JAVA. Come on now Google. … you gave me a Google Maps app that runs as a Windows Mobile App. However you give me Gmail (which is used 10 times as much) and its in JAVA? In order to get to this I have to go to Apps, To Java, Start Java, Then Start Gmail, Then log in. Google Maps? Click the icon and go. Simple.
- Error Handling Sucks. Above I said it was better, but still.. it sucks. On a scale of 1-10, last version it was a -2, right now its a 1. Examples: Sometimes I’ll send an email and it will just crash the app. Click send == SUPER FAIL. If I click on a link in an email Windows Mobile will raise a warning informing you that it may cost money if you don’t have an unlimited data plan (I have unlimited so it didnt matter) … but… I decided I didnt want to load the link anyway so I clicked no and got a Java Exception that hung the app. I reloaded it again and tried the same exact operation, yup, same error. FAIL.
- The Address book is COMPLETELY BROKEN on two letter keyboards (shown below). If I add a recipient via the address book and type 4 for “D or F” (which is what I would expect as this is how the keyboard is laid out) I get “G, H or I”. What the hell? Apparently the app is hard coded to treat all keyboards as if they were a normal phone. A normal phone’s #4’s letter combo is “GHI”. So that’s very frustrating. Its unusable.
Even though there are some very frustrating items with Gmail Mobile, its support for threaded conversations is the real reason I use it. If Microsoft every developed a Threaded conversation that mimicked Gmails, hmmm… I might have to kiss Gmail good bye.