The humans at Kettle River Consulting and Brainy Marketing have come up with a way of preventing spam-bots from following you on Twitter. It’s called “TrueTwit”.

From the website: -

“Twitter spam is a drag. What if you could know for sure that your followers are truly human, and not some cyborg? TrueTwit is designed to help you:

• Verify people from robots
• Avoid Twitter spam
• Save time managing your followers”

The service asks people who follow the subscriber to go to a URL and verify their desire to follow by reading CAPTCHA in the standard way.

“By signing up now for free, all of your new followers will get a validation notice via direct message. If they too are TrueTwit users or pass the CAPTCHA test, you get an email indicating they are a TrueTwit validated human!”

I see problems with this, though: -

The URL link that I received in the email from Twitter when I followed someone who was using True Twit wasn’t a clickable URL; it was just plain text: That meant that I had to copy the URL, go to my browser and open another tab, paste the URL into the browser-bar, and visit the verification page. Having done that I then had to read and interpret two CAPTCHA words, type them in, and submit.

If I were selling product that got your interest; you’d want to be able to click a link or banner that took you straight to a page that explained the product, gave you more information, recommendations, testimonials, money-back-guarantee, etc, and once you’d looked at all that you’d either buy it or not; yes?

If I were selling you the same product that got your interest, but I left a non-clickable, plain-text link, with instructions to copy and paste the link into your browser bar to discover more, you probably wouldn’t bother with all that, yes, and I’d lose out on around 90% of sales because many people would think likewise and simply wouldn’t bother with it.

- So if I appeal to you in some way on Twitter, and you decide that you’d like to follow me, you do so, because it’s a simple single-click process. If you then get sent an email saying that you have to confirm that you’re not a spam-bot then you dubiously and begrudgingly look for where to click to do so. – But you can’t click the verification URL; you instead have to copy and paste it into your browser bar… As a result 90% or more of people who have been “pre-sold” the idea of following me don’t do so because it requires too much effort. – And this applies to everybody who uses the same system.

… And that, therefore, shows that TrueTwit, as it is now, is placing a number of obstacles in the way of getting Twitter followers: It’s given that you’ll not be followed by spam-bots, and it’s fairly definite that only family and people who really like you will follow you, or maybe someone who solely wants to find out about True Twit.

If you’re trying to amass Twitter-followers from the general like-minded population who have, in honesty, no idea who you are, then you’re onto a loser with True Twit.

Do you agree; or do you see things differently? Please do comment.

In many ways I’m an easy-going and tolerant person; but I can also be rather sharp-tongued and intolerant too, when things start to get my goat, having built up for some time. I’m a logical-thinker, and may at times appear to suffer from overindulgence in my own intellectual-prowess: Nevertheless I try to stay on a level and retain an heir of consistency and competence.

There are a number of things, though, that make me see red fairly quickly; although I usually successfully contain any over-emotional reaction to a certain degree in most cases. Here are a few of them: -

1) Drunkenness and associated inarticulate vulgarities and depraved fuckwittery: Everyone likes a drink but nobody likes a drunk; particularly me, if the drunk in question happens to use it as an excuse to behave in a delinquent and irresponsible manner. Very very occasionally I get drunk myself; once or twice a year at most, but I tend to just shut up and do and say nothing, as there’s probably nothing sensible to say if my head’s swimming, and as I already know, if there’s nothing to be said some idiot usually has to go and say it: I just don’t want it to be me.

2) Huge sales letters: Do marketers honestly think that I’m going to read all 30,000+ words covering an equivalent of 48 single-sides of A4 paper? The way I see it; there are several points to be made: -

1. What the product is.
2. What the product does.
3. How the product will help the customer.
4. Why the customer should buy this particular product.
5. What other people think of the product and/or the vendor.
6. The money-back guarantee of satisfaction.
7. Re-affirmations and closing remarks.

That’s it; no more is needed. While touching on how using the methods or whatever contained within the product has helped the vendor personally is a very good thing, I honestly don’t want to spend an hour reading about how much money the vendor has had since birth, and how they are now the greatest marketer in the history of the internet because they have been bringing in $20,000 a day in the last 3 months using the “secret formula to success” that is only and exclusively contained in their publication. (The “secret formula to success” that they mention is, usually, set up a website/blog and sell the “secret formula to success” to everyone else.)

(A video-presentation helps too; because it’s more interesting than reading reams of multi-coloured typeface, as well as the fact that it can eliminate the need for all the said typeface.)

Don’t get me wrong here, though: There are some genuine products out there from genuine vendors and authors that don’t claim that they’re going to make you an instant success overnight; but sometimes do nevertheless: It’s a matter of knowing how to filter golden-nuggets these out from the detritus. – and that’s what I attempt to do with regard to anything I offer via this blog, before I advertise it. – I’m just nearing the end of the Blog Masters Club course by David Risley myself; so yes I do buy and try some of the products before I offer them here. If they are no good then I ask for a refund and forget them. If I benefit from them then I advertise them here. (Yes; I will be promoting the Blog Masters Club; because it’s an excellent product.): This includes physical as well as online products too.

At times I’ll see a product and get a gut-feeling about it, after which I’ll do a little research and then promote it if the gut-feeling remains. Also at times I see a product that makes me curious, but after looking into it I can say “No” to it and move onwards.

3) Spammers – That includes Twitter-spammers, email-spammers, and every other kind of spammer out there.

Now, surprisingly, I actually do admire the tenacity and dedication of some spammers in a way, in that they have the persistence and unerring dedication to continuously flood the market with their dodgy offers of dodgy goods, and that, even though any spammer has a bad reputation by designation, people still, nevertheless, buy their goods: Well you don’t think that spammers would be spamming if it didn’t work do you? Some people even if only 1 in almost a million, buy from a spammer: Therefore, if the spammer sends out 100 million spams a day, or get 100 million views a day, then they make 100 or more sales a day.

Don’t get me wrong, though; spammers annoy me just as much as they annoy anyone else, and I definitely don’t condone or encourage spamming: It’s irresponsible and selfish; it puts a vital public utility; namely the world wide web, in jeopardy by consuming too much bandwidth, it’s usually a criminal activity supporting other criminal activities, and it’s illegal: There are 3 good-enough-reasons not to do it.

But the public; even if it’s just 1 in a million people, keep the spammers in profit, because they buy from them: therefore there will always be spammers because there will always be dodgy or criminal or stupid or any combination of the three members of the public who use the internet.

4) Brainless egocentric men. Please note that I intend no sexism here: I mentioned “men” rather than “people” because brainless egocentric women don’t annoy me; they actually entertain me to some extent, despite the fact that I treat them with the contempt that they deserve in many cases. I have creased up so many times because of this that I’m surprised I still have all my ribs intact. I have a knack of making such females appear and feel 1/2 inch tall.

Men with this trait, on the other hand, bore me to tears, and if I ever manage to get a word in edgeways through their mindless, brainless, senseless drivel about how big they are, how they scare everyone else, who they’ve beaten up + stories of fights from the past, and how they always make a perfect sexual conquest of some poor victim-girl afterwards who is amazed at their macho-ness… zzz, it usually angers them because the comment I make out of sheer intellectual-unbelievability, boredom, and tedium, is guaranteed to be pointed with a poison-tip and hurts their inflated male-pride.

5) Christmas – Yes Christmas; a time for giving, a time for sharing, the season where we show our love and compassion towards our fellow humans… OK let’s cut the BS:

Christmas; take 2, and action: A time for some people to get as much as they can, no matter what the cost; particularly if they’re a teenager. A time for being bored to tears by the in-laws and having to listen to their boring tedium of an excuse for conversation again. A time for drunkenness and gluttony…

Enough! – That’s the negative bit.

On the positive side; a time for stores and other retail outlets to do a roaring trade and balance their books against any losses accrued at lean-times in the trading-calendar. A time when the year’s profits can be estimated fairly accurately from the season’s overall profit when run against projected losses in the coming post-Christmas lean-time.

I don’t intend to labour this: There is one winner from Christmas: Commerce – Everyone else loses at the end of the day.

It’s not about Christ, other than the token “away in a manger” stuff as performed by schoolchildren, nor is it about anything religious any longer; be it Pagan, Christian, whatever.

Me? I hibernate: Not literally; I mean I hermit-ise. – I lock myself away with a computer and an internet connection and a coffee machine, and before I know it the day’s over. Relief! ‘Only another 250 or so days to go before everything starts gearing towards the following damn Christmas again… and before that we have Valentine’s Day, Easter, Halloween… Now I don’t mind Halloween, but all the Christianisation and the Westernisation and the Hollywood influence, etc, has detracted far away from its real meaning…

Enough of this: It’s coffee-time. Bye.

Hi

I thought it prudent just to write a quick note to apologise for the fact that this blog hasn’t been displaying the pictures within articles for around 24 hours. As you see; this problem has now been resolved: –

The issue was due to a file-permission change on this blog’s Ubuntu Linux server, which occurred for reasons unknown.

The problem is now corrected and, hopefully, will not recur.

I sincerely apologise for any inconvenience caused.

Sharron Field

Owner and Creator of kkomp.com
http://kkomp.com

Follow me on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/shazzalive

Find me on Friendfeed:
http://friendfeed.com/kkomp

On Facebook too:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/shazzalive?ref=name

This was searched for on my blog: The temptation is just too great, and so, my 64-bit-fixation not yet retired to the back of my mind, I’ll answer it directly: -

Some people think it’s a sign of idiocy to answer a question with a question. Personally I don’t. – Although I myself don’t profess to be a Christian; according to the Christian Bible, Jesus Christ himself often answered a question with a question. Look at the number of followers he has, even after 2000+ years! ( – If only Twitter were around in His day.)

So in answer I’d ask the inquirer posing the question: -

‘Why aren’t new 16-bit, 8-bit, and 4-bit computers available any more?’

Do you remember the days of DOS, when 8MBs of RAM were considered a big-deal? 16-bit-processing was the standard, and DOS, which is still in a way a large part of the framework that Windows is constructed upon, was originally a 16-bit operating system. – Nobody much programs in DOS these days. I used to write the odd batch-file in Windows 98 to freak people out at college, much to my tutor’s displeasure; particularly in view of the fact that I was on an electronics course rather than a computer course – but I think that was the last time I used it.

(‘Remember Fortran and Cobol? – That’s another subject entirely. Going back even further; machine-code: It’s still at the heart of all computing, and is the original computing language… Kind of. ‘Remember that board with one of the first 1MHz processors on it, that you could only program in machine-code? (‘Around 1977/8-time if I remember correctly. – It cost about £600GBP!) – I knew someone who had one; but I still never learned to program in machine-code, to my discredit.)

Did you know you can build your own 4-bit analogue-to-digital/D – A converter from just 4 quad 2-input TTL NAND-gate chips? – Those were the days; eh?

Why does this person want a 32-bit new computer anyway? Do I hear “I have old peripheral hardware that won’t operate in a 64-bit environment.”?

- Run 32-bit XP Pro in a virtual machine inside 64-bit Windows 7. – That’s one way round it. – See this article. ( It was quite astounding to find out that I wrote that article as long ago as 25th June: It seems like only a couple of weeks ago!) – Better still; get new hardware, whatever.

It sounds like our enquirer needs something like an Atari, maybe? : That was actually a very good computer for its time.

Joking and sarcastic quips aside, though; progress rules: Technology moves ever onwards.

On that note I am, actually, looking forwards to the first 128-bit commercially-available operating system’s release. A few supercomputers are already using a 128-bit operating-system; so I very much doubt that it’ll stay in the ultra-geek-world only for that much longer.

Please do use that little-used comments-box and state your opinion.

- Oh and if you’re wondering why it’s so small, and why it asks you to log in: The reason is that I’m using the Disqus comment system – which gives comments a little more social ‘oomph’. – Join Disqus why not: It’s free, and there are many other bloggers using it as well as me.

Don’t be shy; and it’s quite safe.

Logging in on someone else’s computer isn’t a wise move – Here’s why:

Let’s look at this fictional example: -

The unusual situation that you find yourself in one day is that your computer’s not working for whatever reason, and your laptop or netbook or iPhone is already in for repair. – Therefore you have no computer of your own available. – But your friend very kindly offers to let you use theirs for a session, just to get your pressing business sorted out in the interim until you can get online.

You arrive at your friend’s house, and after swapping pleasantries you sit at their waiting computer and log in to your important accounts, such as your bank, email, Twitter, etc, see to your important pressing matters, thank your friend, and after another coffee, you start out merrily on your way back home.

The following day the geek you phoned for help the day before gets your desktop working again, and you also are informed that your other hardware is ready to pick up and working perfectly. – But when you attempt to get the money from your bank account to pay for the repairs, you find that your balance is in the red. You also find that you can’t log in to your email account, and someone’s spamming Twitter using your account.

Someone has possibly stolen your identity. Definitely they’ve hijacked your Twitter and email accounts, and stolen all your bank balance. – All just at the worst time that you could have had it happen to you.

How did it happen?

Spyware Woes

Since your friend’s machine is a computer that you don’t normally have control of; you have no idea whether or not keylogger spyware on that machine is recording every keystroke you make and sending resultant data to hacker somewhere on the planet. Your friend had no idea that their machine was so infected either, until all their own accounts were hacked into as well. Other types of spyware were also recording which sites and web pages you visited, for how long, what passwords you used…etc, and the criminals raced each other to see who could get a hold of major parts of your entire online identity first.

… But spyware is not the only worry you would have in using someone else’s computer for personal business: -

Browser Memories

In the browser, form fields in particular, the same ones that you enter your banking account ID and passwords into, are remembered. Sometimes they’re remembered automatically, along with the password entered. Therefore someone could possibly see your user name, select it, and be able to login to your account with your password on the computer you’ve just used: Whether it’s your friend’s machine, a public computer, or even a retailer’s box.

Malice Aforethought

- Even your best friend’s little geeky brother, or sister even, could log on as soon as nobody was watching, enter the username that they overheard in conversation, and have full access to your account(s) from the passwords that the browser remembered.

Let’s not forget, it’s fairly easy to purposely install software or set up browser features to record your user name and password automatically. – So if you don’t trust the computer’s owner 101% then this is a particular reason to not use their machine to log on to your personal accounts. – Even if – in fact especially if – they offer to pay you to do so.

On the other side of the coin the person who allows you to use their computer also can get stung with accusations and/or probing from you and from the authorities during investigation into the crime. – I assure you that this will strain even the strongest of friendships up to or beyond breaking point in many cases.

- So, if necessary, let others who won’t listen to your explanations use terminology about you such as “tight”, “selfish”, “stingy”, “mean”, whatever. – It’s a lot better to have some shallow half-brained person insult you than to lose everything.

 The Friday Moan

It’s great to see that you lot are so rich. I thought there was meant to be a recession on; but obviously that was just negative-media-hype. I’m still looking for the destitute impoverished homeless masses sleeping in the park, but all I’ve seen is a couple of winos. – Should I add that I smelled them first:  Aroma d’vagrant et l’alcohol. I also fail to see the long queues for mostly–empty shelves at the local supermarket. – So much for recession. This one is meant to be as bad as the one in the 1930’s; yet all the evidence seems to point to it being fairly superficial. Both the British and American economies have started to show signs of growth incidentally.

The reason I started off in this way is because, a few weeks back, I launched a small competition that had a small cash-prize associated with it. In the first week 2 people submitted 4 entries between them, and I published one from each person. The first one went straight to Number 10 in the kkomp Top 10 and then sank. The second went straight to Number 9 and floated around between Number 8 and 16 for a week before also sinking.

The object of the exercise was to write a post that would get to Number 1 and stay there over the Xmas Holiday Season. – Impossible? – No; I’ve already written a post that stayed at No 1 for over 6 months. I imagined that my 150+ original visitors per day might like to write something, get published, grab a free piece of internet real-estate, partake in a bit of link-love, and maybe win a small cash prize too.

I was wrong, so you lot miss out: However, since the Season of Goodwill to all Gluttonous Temporary-Alcoholics looms in the not-too-distant future, I’m going to offer a prize to anyone who can get their post to the Number 1 spot in the kkomp Top 10 on Christmas Day and stay there all day, or longer than any other post can on that day.

I don’t quite know why I’m offering to do this, as it appears obvious that you lot are all wealthy and happily well-off thank you very much. However, since I’ve scrapped the original competition due to lack of support, there’s the part of the prize-fund that I haven’t spent on eBay, namely £10UKP still up for grabs. -  If you want it then get submitting your guest posts now to drafts at kustomkomputa dot co dot uk. Whoever is at Number 1 with their post in the kkomp.com Top 10 on Xmas day and stays there the longest wins the tenner. – And yes, if it’s me with any of my posts at Number 1 on that day, I will donate the £10UKP to the Overworked Female Blogger’s Benevolent Fund, of which I am the proprietor and sole benefactor. – So if you want it, rather than allow me to have it, then get writing.

Furthermore…

Furthermore, on a totally different topic, Windows 7 is fantastic: If you don’t have a copy yet then get one: Home Premium is good enough for most people, including myself. If you don’t have a computer capable of running it then get one or build one and run it. I encourage everyone to use the 64-bit version, which requires around 2GBs of RAM minimum. Pretty much all computers built in the last 3 years are capable of running the 64-bit version; except for netbooks, which might find it rather heavy-going, don’t have 2 GB RAM as a rule, and would be better off with the 32-bit version.

RC Running Out of Time

On that note I will remind all of you skinflints and freeloaders who are determined to stick with the Release Candidate of Windows 7 because it costs zilch, nothing; that your free Windows operating system will shut down every 2 hours starting on March 1st 2010. – There really is no point staying in the Freeloader’s Legs all winter in a pokey little room with a packet of extra-strong mints for warmth and an ancient laptop with Windows 7 RC on it ‘til shutdown do you part. – Splash out: The RTM version is more stable than the RC anyway.

Seasoned

Suddenly it’s Autumn / Fall; well it is in the UK anyway: No sooner do the clocks go back than the balmy Indian summer turns into a facsimile of a monsoon, temperatures drop, deciduous trees shed their leaves… Actually it’s not all that bad so far: Despite the early darkness I’ve seen a bumblebee hard at work on my still-blooming lavender on October 25th, and the following day I saw a black ladybird with red spots on a bush…No the red spots were on the ladybird, not the bush, silly.

Enjoy this mild weather in the UK; because I predict that it’ll stay mild with a few exceptions right into early December, and then it’ll unexpectedly turn bitterly cold – I mean arctic cold – for a couple or a few weeks. I predict that there is a 50/50 chance of a traditional Victorian Christmas Day being entirely possible this year due to the natural weather.

What makes me predict this? – The way that nature’s behaving, that’s what. I’m a Witch: I could well be right: Then again, the last time I made a massive and well-publicised weather prediction, that time a prediction of a blazing June and a tropical July, we had one of the worst and wettest summers on record. (1997 if I remember rightly.)

Blog Matters

I’ve recently done some work on improving the design of this blog. – As you will appreciate, although I’m not a designer by trade, I am learning more about aspects of blog design and the science behind it.

You’ll notice that a few months ago I’ve changed the colour-scheme to blue and black with a smattering of red, from pink and red with a smattering of everything else.

This blog actually started off fairly aimlessly and directionless back in June 2008 with a not-very-good pink theme. – I never changed the theme since; I just hacked and customised the heck out of it. What you see today is still using the original basic theme framework called “Serenity Pink”. The logo started life as a pink line that was part of the original theme, would you believe.

On the subject of the logo; you’ll notice that at long last it’s relatively decent: It’s actually a brand, rather than a brand confusion. There is a reason why it’s been so crappy for so long until now: That reason is because I was trying to minimise the work involved by enhancement and recycling of the older crappy logos – aka laziness at its most sneaky. They say that lazy people always end up doing the most work; and in this case that was true. At the end of the day I had to scrap the multiply-re-enhanced design; if one can actually call it a design, and start again from scratch: Something which I should have done in the case of the logo some time ago, like a year ago.

Please understand that when I started this blog I was totally inexperienced with regard to blogging. – Yes really 100% inexperienced and completely without a clue: I’d heard of a blog before, although I wasn’t sure what a blog was; even though I’d read quite a few blogs and didn’t even realise that they were blogs. – That was my total knowledge of blogging at the time. I knew how to use html, was clueless about php, knew a bit about javascript, and was a corporate addict who avoided open-source software as I perceived it as dodgy stuff.

An online acquaintance, namely David Risley, who is now a top problogger, and was rising to that status at the time, suggested that I started a blog and recommended that I do so using WordPress. After further talking with him and mulling the issue over in my mind I decided to give it a go.

Installing WordPress was something that actually made me freak. – Honestly; I unzipped the files, downloaded them to the server, looked again, and screamed!

- I’m a trained and qualified electronics technician. I was never trained in blogging. I’d self-trained in software-maintenance plus basic-peripheral devices-setup-and-maintenance, and made a living from it for a short-time. I learned about hardware initially from sitting in on lectures at college for the computer course, and realised how actually simplistic it was to me on the basis of my electronics background. (I’d actually been studying and practicing practical electronics (Mainly analogue electronics.) as a hobby since age 7. – I only actually qualified in it later in life when I took the initiative to enhance my hobby at an academic level.)

- So I’ve learned and gained experience of computing at both a software and a hardware level, having an electronics background. I’m still learning and gaining experience of blogging right now. I’ve done Yaro Starak’s BecomeaBlogger course, which competently teaches the basics of blogging, and I’m currently undergoing David Risley’s BlogMasters course, which teaches how to blog professionally and properly, as well as how to generate an income from one’s blog as a problogger.

Time is a great hurdle to me currently, as I don’t have oodles of time to spend blogging: However, having said that, when I decide to fully throw my oar into the problogger pond I’ll be devoting most if not all of my time to this blog on a full-time professional basis, and hopefully generating a living from it too.

Does that mean I’m a problogger? Give me a chance; I haven’t even finished the course yet. Could I currently live on the earnings I’m making from this blog? Only if I were a nun with a vow of poverty and all my living expenses paid for by the church and/or state.

Do I intend to become a problogger? Eventually, yes: Hopefully in the not-too-distant future. Do I intend to make a living from this blog? Eventually yes; though maybe not just from this blog. Can I start making a living from and/or monetising this blog now? Well, in a way I am starting to monetise it in line with the BlogMasters training; although there’s a long way to go yet.

I’m not knowledgeable enough or in a position to tell you a lot about problogging at this time: However, when I’ve finished the BlogMasters course I’ll be trained in a lot of the aspects of problogging and will have more to say on the matter, as well as more to practice and implement too.

If you’re interested in problogging as a means of generating a living, then I’ll be advertising the BlogMasters course at some point in early 2010, when I’ve finished it and the doors open again to allow in more students. What I can tell you now is that it’s a six-month course spread out over 19 modules; each with multiple training videos downloadable online, along with transcripts and to-do lists. During the course you’ll get direct access to David Risley himself, to ask questions, make suggestions for enhancing the course material, say what you’d like to learn about, and generally gain the benefit of his expertise in the realm of problogging.

David Risley been blogging, initially as a hobby. since before blogging was called blogging, and he’s gained a wealth of experience over the years by buying lots and lots of training materials from a variety of other bloggers and interacting with them. Also he’s what you might describe as a born-problogger, so he’s used a lot of common-sense and integrated his natural abilities into his rise to success.

On another thread; I currently have a survey running on this blog, and I’d appreciate it if all my readers would complete it for me. It’s a fairly short survey which is conducted via Survey Monkey on behalf of kkomp.com. I forget when it closes; either today or in a week I think. Nobody who takes the survey will be personally identified in any way. The answers that you give to the survey will assist me to enhance this blog further and in a way that you readers would like to see happening. To take part in the survey please click here.

Back to technology

I do like to have a decent working pair of computers at all times: Why a pair? Well, if one should fail then I can always use the other while I’m repairing the failed one. Also I can try out new software on one of them and use the other for more mundane office work.

It is with this in mind that I once again encourage everyone to upgrade to Windows 7: With possibly a few exceptions for the time being. Read the article Windows 7 is Out There: Should You Upgrade? for more on this matter.

Other posts on the subject of Windows 7 recently include: -

How to Create a Task Manager Desktop Icon in Windows 7

Windows 7 has made using your computer much easier –except for one aspect: Calling up the task manager.

In this article we learn how to very simply create a Task Manager icon on your Windows 7 Desktop to simplify the process of calling up the Task Manager.

Can I Run Windows 7 64-bit on the XP Machine I Ran 32-bit on?

In which we look at running Windows 7 64-bit on your existing box.

There is a particular post which I feel will be very valuable to anybody running an online business. In fact it will be beneficial also to anyone who runs a physical corporate business also: -

Expert Help to Boost Your Business – For Free!

Seriously–this "Group Think Tank" process has the capability to increase your profits by up to 1,000%–or more–before the year is over.

A number of top-business experts have got together to share their valuable experience with you at no cost. – Yes that’s right; it’s free of charge expertise from top businesspeople. Can you really afford to miss it? The next session is this coming Thursday. I know I’ll be listening in.

On the subject of business; you might find this post useful also: -

Monetise Your RSS Feed

You could be leaving money on the table if you’re not making the most of monetising your RSS feed.

Yaro Starak’s had the doors open to another of his courses this last week. Oh you didn’t take advantage of it? Well you’ll have to wait until the doors open again in 2010 then. – I did publicise it rather much. – I even had an advert on Google for it: -

Doors Closing Soon … Oops; too late.

Lisa Jackson’s been video-making again: See her Halloween production here: -

Halloween Rules

- Totally off-topic for this blog; but what the heck? A little laughter never hurt anyone.

… And finally; here’s a rundown of the rest of the articles published since the last Public Newsletter: -

Benefits of Doing Your Own Upgrades

All you need is some basic electronics knowledge, general software knowledge,… a steady hand and relatively good hand-eye-coordination, and you’re away.

Keep Your Drivers Up-To-Date

To help get optimum performance from your computer, you should keep your drivers up to date.

How to Back-up Social Media – Bonus Article

Social media has no built-in backup; but there are applications out there which can do the job as far as Facebook and Twitter are concerned.

Computer of The Future: 2020

In this post I project my predictions, based upon my impressions of quickly-advancing technology, of how a computer could be in the year 2020.

An Introduction to Wireless Computer Speakers

Andy Zain tells us a bit about wireless computer speakers in this article: I don’t think this idea will ever go mainstream; but I’m sure that it has its uses.

Fake Antivirus Software is Infecting on a Massive Scale

Partly due to the corporate greed of the kosher affiliate networks, there are now criminal affiliate networks peddling malware. Criminals are making a fortune!

- That’s it for this Public Newsletter then: Enjoy your weekend, and if you’re in the Northern Hemisphere then remember, it’s getting cold outside lately; so why not stay in more, sit in front of the computer, and among other things, read kkomp.com.

There’s no option to backup a Twitter, or Facebook inbox on site – So If your social network accounts should disappear overnight for any reason, then so does any and all data contained in them and you’ll never see it again.

Some of you might just ask “Who cares?” and not be bothered about it. Others, devotees of social media, may be extremely concerned about this. – To them this data is very important as they’ve devoted so much time and effort to it.

Were you aware that, although everything you send to social media is archived to at least some extent by third parties, that Twitter itself only stores your 3200 most recent tweets at any given time. As I said, everything is archived in some way by third parties such as search-engines like Google; but not always exactly as it was sent or presented on the social media site, not always completely either, and it can at times be rather difficult to find.

- Yet most people have no idea of this, and assume that their data will always be there should they need it, exactly as they first typed it, in full, forever. -This despite the numerous periods of downtime experienced by Twitter, and the bugs that Facebook is affected by at times too. There are always hackers to worry about, who could delete your account if they could get into it, or empty it and use it for spam.

Alternatively, you might want to be able to back up your social media accounts so that you can access the information when offline. Offline access to postings to social networks can be valuable, because it allows you to get hold of contact information, comments, photos, and anything else that may be important to you. Offline access also lets you sort and organize the data that’s contained in your social networking account for easier analysis and access. Having such backups will also allow you to find messages that have been deleted, should you need to do so. 

A social media backup tool can provide you with peace of mind, as well as save you a lot of aggravation and misery if you need to restore your account or remember what you once had after it’s gone: There is no guarantee that any free social networking site will still be there tomorrow. – So with that in mind, let’s look at two pieces of social media backup software:

Backup My Tweets

Backup My Tweets is a social media backup solution. It works with Twitter, and it’s free. With it you can back up all of your tweets. – remember, though, that Twitter only stores your latest 3200 tweets.which is a huge advantage since Twitter does not store more than 3200 tweets at a time. These backups will allow you to save your social media files in XML, JSON, or HTML format. The makers also do another program called BackupMyMail, which works with Gmail, Hotmail, and Windows Live accounts. Why not check it out too?

SocialSafe

Another of the backup options that you have for your Facebook account, among others,  is called SocialSafe. This one is not free, but it’ll only set you back $2.99 including add-ons and updates. It runs in Adobe Air; so you’ll need to download that if you don’t already have it installed Having done that you can then backup everything in your Facebook account, including photos, photos you were tagged in, posts, and profile information. SocialSafe works as a multiplatform tool for Windows or Mac. After you’ve backed up your Facebook account, you can access all the files offline with a text editor, word processor, or photo editing software.

(Backing up MySpace profiles etc is maybe the least straightforward of all. ( – As most of it is teenage-style low-quality graphics.) However do read this tutorial which explains how to backup your MySpace messages.)

Do you know of any others? If so then please do let us know in a comment.

There are a number of email backup apps out there at the moment; some online, some locally stored on your computer, and saving the backups to said computer, One thing you might not hear a lot about are backups for your online social-networking. In the face of that I thought I’d tell you about a couple of apps that will back up some of your social networking activities:

The first of these is a service called Backup My Tweets. It’s a social media backup service that works with Twitter, and it’s absolutely free.  As Twitter doesn’t store more than 3200 tweets at a time, it’s a good idea to use this service.  The backups via this service will allow you to save your social media files as an XML file, a JSON file, or an HTML file.

Another backup service for social media sites is called SocialSafe. SocialSafe backs up your Facebook account. It does cost, but only $2.99, including add-ons and updates. It runs in Adobe Air, which you’ll need to install on your machine before installing and running this app. Having done so, you can backup everything in your Facebook account; photos, photos you were tagged in, posts and profile information, the lot. SocialSafe is platform-independent; so it won’t matter whether you run Windows, Linux, or Mac OS. Once you’ve backed up, you can access all the files from your local machine via a text editor (Notepad, Wordpad…), word processor, (Microsoft Word, Open Office…) and via photo-editing software if you so desire.

SocialSafe say that they intend to cover other social-networking services in addition to Facebook; and may indeed already do so by the time this article is published.

Statistics just in from compete.com indicate that microblogging service Twitter’s growth was vastly down during the month of May 2009. Twitter.com had been enjoying progressive cumulative traffic growth Since November 2008, with an exceptional growth-spurt during March of this year. However, the figures of traffic growth for May of this year indicate a growth of just 1% on the month, to 19.7 million unique visitors. (If 19.7 million unique visitors feel the urge to visit this site then I wouldn’t turn anyone away if they clicked on a link somewhere.)

During the month of May I reported on the statistics compiled by Quantcast ’s rival, compete.com, which showed a huge traffic growth trend with regard to Twitter; particularly for the months of March and April.

Despite the fact that Twitter has outgrown the New York Times in unique visitor numbers, and, although the figures dwarf in comparison to earlier records, it nevertheless continued to grow during May. But it appears that the good times may be at last coming to an end for Twitter; at least as far as traffic volume with regard to UVs is concerned.

What now? Well twitter still has enough traffic, even if not enough structure, to begin generating a lot of hard income for itself. If they were to use this opportunity wisely in the face of previous growth figures; notwithstanding a forthcoming possible slump in UVs, then they’d be well in the money.

Is this just an end to the previous unsustainable growth; or forewarnings and ominous signs of decline? Your thoughts please.

(Microsoft, on the other hand, have had a busy month: Having piled more of their bounteous supply of megabucks into the launch of Bing, as well as throwing money at a new version of their Zune player; it appears that their efforts have at least begun to pull it off, with traffic to zune.net increasing by a figure of 13% to 708,000 UVs, while Bing managed to pull 635,000 people in: Not bad for a newbie, eh?

Perhaps this will cause the UK Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, to take heart in the now proven fact that things can indeed start working if you throw enough money at them. Hopefully the UK’s financial institutions will follow suit.)

Back at the end of March my hosting company, Fasthosts.co.uk, penalised me for accidentally using too many resources on the server, by moving this blog to a restricted scripting server. I thought this was a bit draconian, and I posted to that effect soon afterwards: This happened just after I had installed the Apture plugin. I removed the Apture plugin the following day, and I understood, from their response during a subsequent phone call, that they had put this blog back on the normal shared-platform server.

Today I find that I’m having problems resolving this blog’s IP, as are all other computers and servers. (This is today only in this case; every other day I’ve had no problem with access.) – So I phone the hosting company, who, after a 45-minute phone-call at 10p (About 13 cents or more US.) a minute, informed me that it seems that I was never taken off the restricted scripting server after all.

No wonder my visitor count has been fairly static recently, despite site improvements and traffic-generating tweaks etc. I can only apologise profusely to you if you’ve had problems resolving this site: If the hosting people are telling the truth that is. – I’m wondering why every day other than this one it only takes seconds to resolve this IP and with a 99/100 success-rate; whereas today it takes up to 10 minutes with a 1/3 success rate.

In all honesty it seems that this hosting company I’m with don’t appear to know their arse from their elbow. I’m seriously considering changing the hosting company for this blog as it is. If they piss me off much more I will do just that.

Since the last newsletter I’ve posted a few articles. – I wish I could remember which ones. – Since I can’t call up the contents page without an up-to-10-minute wait; if it resolves at all, I will have to now do that, rather than relying on memory and guesswork. (Honestly if this problem is still the same this time tomorrow I am changing hosting on this blog: I’ve come to the conclusion that British web-hosting is utter crap.) I’ll have a bite to eat while I try to find the contents page, and write the rest of this afterwards, considering it’s a quarter past one PM now.

(Just before I go; I think that this is all something to do with the British love of red-tape and bureaucracy: You see the chap on the phone earlier today told me that he was unable to find an official email from me requesting return of this site to the normal server; so here’s what I think happened: -

I got the email telling me that I’d been penalised for using a few too many bytes on their precious stiff-upper-lipped British what-ho-chaps servers. – Wot-wot. I phoned them and made some hoo-hah about it; (If you’re having trouble making sense of these Brit expressions then just read on regardless.) – so the person I spoke to was reasonable, checked the resources that my site was using after I claimed to have resolved the issue, and popped it back on the normal shared-platform server.

During an audit today, some weeks later; it came to the attention of a “jobsworth” technician that this blog was back on the normal server, had been authorised to be replaced, but a formal request from me by email for it to be so replaced was missing. Therefore; in true British/fascist fashion, since mine papers were not in order; the technician reported to the Server-Houser Obersturnbahnfuhrer in the scripting bunker, who in turn requested permission from the red-tape Gestapo Commandant to replace this blog on the scripting server pending further contact and official email request from myself, my having finally noticed that something was wrong, without any notification. – All this because the trail of red-tape had a tiny piece missing. (Honestly; we Brits can be such mundane tossers at times!)

- That’s what I think happened, being a renowned cynic. If it actually did happen that way then I will go utterly apeshit! – Though possibly to no avail: Watch this space.)

After 1/2 hour I managed to get an awful Blog Contents page. This is foxing ridiculous! – It’s ten times worse than it’s ever been before. Please forgive this dreadful service: I’m ringing the hosting people straight away: This is a joke.

I just spent another £3.00 phoning them, and all they’d say was to all but confirm what I suspected above, and to tell me that they had no idea what the problem was, when or if the problem would be resolved as they didn’t communicate between departments, and that they didn’t care what sort of service I was getting as I was on a scripting server – Which was my own fault as I didn’t reply to the email and join up the trail of red tape. – ‘Mad: I’m firkin furious!

Enough! I’m going to check for loose ends and if there are any then I’ll tie them up; after which I’ll be moving hosting for this blog to another hosting company over the following fortnight. Fasthosts have shot themselves in the foot when they messed with me. – Now they can stick their weapon up their own ass and pull the trigger repeatedly for all I care.

-In the meantime I managed to retrieve the last 5 post-titles: -

(I hope I’m able to post this article having written it. The standards of service of fasthosts.co uk leaves masses to be desired. I’ll do my best. They should change it to slowhosts or uselesshosts.co.uk if you ask me. They’ve made an almighty balls-up somewhere by the feel of it; and I’m certain there’s a lot that they’re not telling me. They’re being extremely and noticeably evasive; even for a bureaucratic British business. In the meantime I’ll carry on typing:)

Beware: Twitter Scammers are Active

- Was the last thing I posted to this blog. – Yesterday I may add; when everything was working well. – Watch out for scam-mongers posing as “friends” on Twitter. Just like Fasthosts all they want is your money. They don’t care about anything else.

The Twitter Bloom Booms Ever Onward

Twitter again: This one’s about the massive growth in Twitter’s traffic over the last 2 months. – Something I missed out on as far as this blog is concerned because of incompetent hosting.

The Importance of a UPS

If you’re not using a UPS to protect your system from sudden power outages then now is a good time to start doing so.

Safety in The Computer Room

If you’re not Fasthosts then you might benefit from a few safety tips contained in the UK HASAW legislation. If you are Fasthosts then you can pull the power lead out, shove it where the sun don’t shine, and switch the power on for all I care.

Electrical Resistors

What exactly is a resistor and how is it constructed? Find out inside this article.

If you haven’t read any of these articles then please do so; (If you can get the page to display properly on your computer.) they’re educational. – Meanwhile I’m going to metaphorically kick some asses by remote I hope. Wish me luck.

I just read an article on another blog concerning the matter that Twitter scammers are getting people to play what appears to be an innocent game in which they inadvertently divulge security information so that the scammers can just walk right in and steal their identity. I thought this matter to be of concern enough to write an article on it.

The scam is the porno name game. It entails getting users to make up a unique name, which is their so-called “porno-name”, by joining together the name of your first pet and add the name of the street you grew up on, or your mother’s maiden name. This then becomes your porno name. – So, for instance, if your first pet was called Trixie, and your mother’s maiden name is Smith; then your porno-name is Trixie Smith. – It’s that simple.

Many Twitter users are disclosing their porno-names to one another. They don’t realise that they’ve just compromised their security in a big way. – Especially those who add the hash tag to it, then even people who don’t follow them can see their answers by  running a Twitter search.

Why is this such a big security risk? Well think for a minute: When you sign up for an account somewhere, (Such as a bank or a website, even Twitter itself.) you have to enter a security question which is used to prove who you are, should you lose access to your own account for reasons such as identity theft. Typical questions include “What is the name of your first pet?” and “What is your mother’s maiden name?” – It’s good that you’ve disclosed the answers on Twitter; just in case you should forget them. – NOT.

The scammers then become your “friends” and provide you with links to bogus Twitter-look-alike websites which record your login information. – It’s now a race to try to change your password before they change it for you.

It’s still a den of rogues out there; and probably always will be to some extent.

Be alert: Your country needs lerts. Be wise, be careful.

Microblogging service Twitter has yet again surpassed all traffic expectations.

Below are the traffic statistics from Compete. Quantcast says the figures are even higher than that.

This is good news for Twitter in a way. – Although having said that, they have missed and continue to miss out on the incredible revenue-generation opportunities that come with having that much traffic. I personally don’t have a master plan for Twitter to put such into place; and it’s not my responsibility to come up with one either. I have to admit that it’s difficult to know exactly what would be the best option for revenue generation with regard to Twitter. It seems that the Twitter staff are having the same dilemma.

Whatever the case with Twitter itself; there are potentials for personal income generation by using the service. I won’t list them here; but perhaps you would be good enough to suggest some ideas in the comment box below?

Maybe you can come up with suggestion(s) with regard to this? Maybe you take the old-school view and think Twitter is just a waste-of-time used by sad people? Maybe you understand the enormous potential of the service and are utilising it for your interests right now? It would be interesting to hear your thoughts.

Further reading: This article from readwriteweb.com, also see this article.

Social media has proved to be a great means for getting traffic to your blog: Once you have your web-presence, in the form of a social-circle on networks such as Twitter and Facebook, you can publicise your posts by this means in addition to socially interacting.

There are plugins that you can add to a Wordpress blog, (I’m speaking from experience here.) that will aid you in doing this: They automatically send notifications of your articles to Twitter, Facebook, Ping.fm, and the like. You can also set these networks to notify other networks too.

There’s a single drawback there though, in that notifications are restricted to your own network alone. Whilst the faithful followers are notified, it can become somewhat of a cut-off clique in a sense of the phrase. Unless someone notices and retweets your tweet on Twitter, for instance, it’ll stay within your own personal following to a greater extent.

Having said all that; here’s a plugin that could get some great publicity for your Wordpress blog posts. It’s called the Tweetmeme Button. It’s a plugin for Wordpress that adds a retweet button to your blog, so that readers can retweet the main subject matter of your article on Twitter to their own social-circle.

From the plugin’s home page on wordpress.org: -

“The tweetmeme button easily allows your blog to be retweeted. The button also provides a current count of how many times your story has been retweeted throughout twitter.

Features

• Integrates the ability to retweet your post with one click
• Shows the current number of times your post has been retweeted on twitter
• Easily installed
• Allows you to specify when the button should go (e.g. top or bottom) “

From the button page on the tweetmeme.com website: -

“The Retweet button is for website and blog publishers that want to encourage their audience to retweet their content on twitter.

We have made our button really smart, with one simple piece of javascript we are clever enough to give you up to date tweet counts and shorten your title and link for the retweets. Best of all it will work on any web page, anywhere!”

Yes it’s not solely restricted to use with WordPress blogs. Any blog or otherwise can use it. The relevant code etc is available on this page linked here. The Wordpress plugin itself will only work on Wordpress, of course. Otherwise it’s a multi-platform sensation.

‘Pretty neat eh? – And I know that a number of probloggers are using it already. – So what are you waiting for? You gotta be in it to win it.

P.S. : Don’t forget to retweet this post.

The sun is out and the daffodils are blooming in the UK; in fact they’re all but over. Spring is in the air; life returning everywhere. Eostre is just around the corner.

The spring has sprung; the grass has ris’:

I wonder where the birdie is?

It’s on the wing? – Well that’s absurd:

I thought the wing was on the bird!

( – Source Unknown.)

*It’s been quite a week: With the publication of the Akamai report it appears that the figures show that microblogging service Twitter had too much downtime last year; almost doubling that of the second-placed runner.

Twitter’s Fail-Whale Outperforms All Other Social Network Downtime Indicators

*Also in the report is not-exactly-unexpected news that UK broadband is lagging behind a lot of the rest of the world; although the spam and malicious traffic appears to be coming from elsewhere. (Well I suppose if you’re flooding the net with spam you’d want to do it on a broadband connection that’s capable of handling the traffic at a decent speed without overloading.)

The New British Snail

*Is your software up to date and clean? A computer requires servicing regularly or it’ll screw up. – Not the hardware so much as the software.

Service Your Software

*Last week I installed Apture and started using it on my blog. – This resulted in complaints from my hosting service about using too many server resources. Has anyone else had a similar problem?

Why I Had to Stop Using Apture

When you view a website you might not be viewing the most current content: You might be looking at a snapshot taken by your computer.

How to Flush Your Local DNS Cache

*April 1st; April Fools Day; and I wrote an April Fool. – The problem was that as far as I’m aware nobody read it until 2nd April!

Zalman’s Wireless Power

And lastly: These days computer-makers aren’t including floppy-drives in their product; – which is fine and dandy unless the user happens to be running Windows XP and wants to use the Automated System Recovery function.

Using Windows Automated System Recovery With No Floppy Drive: Is it Possible?

Hopefully you’ll find these new articles both interesting and/or useful.

Let’s hope that the good weather and renewal of life continues at its already brisk pace: There’s just too much of Winter in the UK. (It must be utterly awful in places like Siberia!)

I discovered something recently that I feel you might find rather useful. I won’t rabbit on about it here: I’ll just link you to the relevant page.

Whatever you’re doing in whatever place on the planet; have a prosperous and blessed week.

Yes indeedy; micro-blogging service Twitter are in a league of their own when it comes to downtime. Their poor fail whale is overworked; just like their servers, it seems: –

Akamai research reveals that Twitter had markedly more downtime than even a few of its rivals put together. With over 80 hours of fail-whale-fuelled failure during 2008; Twitter almost doubled second-placed LinkedIn’s downtime of 45.8 hours.

If Facebook only have 7.2 hours of downtime, then why do Twitter need to have over ten times that much?

During 2008 Twitter had its problems; and in June/July the fail-whale became a sensation; with entire blogs and followings devoted to it. In recent times however, since Twitter have got their act together with a new content delivery infrastructure, CEO, and marketing strategy; so we are led to believe, the fail-whale’s appearances has been relatively scarce. In my opinion the massive amount of downtime was just a one-off teething-pain as Twitter grew.

Although these figures could be seen as bad news for Twitter in the corporate environment, combined with the recent spate of fake accounts delivering malicious spam on the network; it is my opinion that Twitter will continue to grow and flourish, given the right management strategies. Only time will tell if my predictions are correct.

What do you think? Will Twitter continue to expand and grow; or will such reports inevitably stunt its growth? Please comment.

I like writing blog-entries like this one: The fully-descriptive videos save me much typing.

Are you getting frustrated with Twitter? Do you have a  lot of hassle in following tweeted conversations? If so you need the Apture. Play the video below for more: -

But Apture isn’t limited to viewing Twitter. – Oh no. Apture can dramatically enhance your blog too; giving your readers a rich and meaningful multimedia experience. Play the video below for more: -

This may give the impression that these are two separate products: In fact I thought that at first; but it’s all one platform which can accomplish several individual purposes.

I’ve recently discovered Apture; and I’m so glad I did. I have now  installed Apture on this blog; and I’m looking forwards to treating my readers to a vivid and unique range of choices in onsite and offsite content from this point onwards.

Don’t fret; it’s not only me who can benefit from it. Other bloggers across a number of blogging platforms can also benefit from it too:

– And the best thing is it’s FREE! – Yes I had trouble believing it too when I saw it; but I tried it out and it really is indeed free to use.

I know what you’re thinking; but they said Twitter wouldn’t last long too initially. – Well let’s hope it continues going strong; and the same applies to Apture too.

I’ll rabbit on no further: Get yourself over to apture.com and take a full look at what’s on offer. – Remember it’ll cost you nothing whatsoever.

Please let me know what you think of Apture.

I am still working on this and another blog right at this moment as promised. The changes will be largely unseen as regards this one. The other blog is my new second blog called Shazza-Live – which you can view now if you like. It’s still in its infancy at the moment and is extremely light on content. Even the pages and posts that exist are in most cases only half-built and need further attention. Nevertheless, if you’d like to check out the proceedings then please feel free to mosey on over using this link.

Although the blog has a dot co dot UK URL, you can also use the dot com URL as an alternative, which redirects to the former.

“OK; so what’s going down then?” You ask. “In the last post you made on this site you said that you were working hard and wouldn’t be posting anything until Monday. You’re not very consistent at sticking to your decisions are you?”

You may have a point there, to some extent. The reason I’m making this post is due to a number of circumstances. I thought it prudent at this point, although it may be a little late in the day for some, to post the following: –

Part of the work that I was intending to undertake was a manual upgrade of my Wordpress installation. had I done this it would have been a first for me, as I’ve only done the initial install, – twice now, with both this blog and also Shazza-Live too, – but I’ve always relied on automatic upgrades. These have all gone smoothly for me up until recently: -

…And that is the main reason for this unscheduled post. – That, as well as the fact that I have possibly cut an hour or two out of the weekends’ schedule by avoiding manually upgrading.

Wordpress 2.7 has a built-in upgrading feature; whereas in previous versions of Wordpress you either had to rely on a plugin to do the auto-upgrade, or manually do it yourself. I always used the plugin option without any problems other than fear that things would screw up in the middle of the process and I’d have to take an on-the-job crash-course in rebuilding the database. Fortunately that never happened under the old WP Auto-Upgrade plugin; at least not in my case anyway.

When I upgraded to WP 2.7; almost as soon as it was released in RTM format, I noticed that it had its own built-in upgrading feature, and I wondered if the WP Auto-Upgrade plugin would interfere with that. – Despite the fact that it had handled the upgrade to 2.7 without problem. I made a mental note and put it to the back of my mind… And forgot all about it.

When it came to upgrading from 2.7 to 2.7.1; which I wanted to get done as 2.7 was rather overly buggy for an RTM release, I clicked on the “Upgrade Automatically” button: CRASH! : -

Upgrade WordPress

Downloading update from http://wordpress.org/wordpress-2.7.1.zip

Unpacking the core update

Fatal error: Cannot redeclare pclziputilpathreduction() (previously declared in /538/linux/kkomp.com/hdoc/content/plugins/wordpress-automatic-upgrade/lib/pclzip.lib.php:5421) in /538/linux/kkomp.com/hdoc/admin/includes/class-pclzip.php on line 5498

‘Pretty obvious really – Like RTFM (Read The F…ing Manual.). I failed to spot the obvious, however, and nothing jogged my memory either. I even showed this to an alleged php expert; who said that it was probably due to a fault in the server’s php and that I should get on to the host about it. I did; and even the advisor at Fasthosts.co.uk missed the obvious; advising me that my Wordpress install had screwed up and that I’d have to manually upgrade to fix the problem.

Fortunately I’d also put out on Twitter, but not getting a decent response for 24 hours wasn’t helping. I took my attention off Twitter and began planning the manual upgrade; going through every step with a fine-toothed comb.

I was distracted by my older computer, which had been acting strangely for a while, crashing with a repeated BSOD. I put that problem right, and as I reinstalled Twhirl I looked at the replies in my Twitter account: –

My thanks to @kwbridge, who came straight up with the solution:

“Do you have the WP Auto-Upgrade plugin installed? If so, delete it and try again.” Brilliant!

I found and deleted the WP Auto Upgrade folder in Root\WP-content\Plugins directory, attempted the auto-upgrade, and everything was accomplished in a matter of seconds.

Target neutralised.

I’m rather embarrassed that I failed to spot the obvious though. Rather than “RTFM”, analyse, diagnose, rectify; it was more a case of LATFM (Look At The F…ing Manual.) and panic:

“Oh sh.t my blog’s crashed: There goes my blogging career before it even started properly.”

Panic stations. Dial 999 and ask for the technical assistance squad. Shut down all operations. ‘Houston we have a problem.’ Gather all available financial resources and put them on standby. Go to red alert status. Battle stations. Evacuate all non-essential personnel. Mayday, mayday…

In hindsight the problem was obvious: The php code had already declared and set a value for the function “pclziputilpathreduction()” when the plugin activated, hence when the built-in Auto-Upgrade function was activated and attempted to redeclare it, it was unable to do so and caused the fatal error. It’s all there in the error description FFS; but me being a php novice caused me to go into a flap.

As @kwbridge said in a reply to my reply:

“…I wonder how many people have that plugin installed and are going to run into the same problem?”

Well if any of those people happen to be you then here’s the solution in case you missed it like I did.

Kkomp.com – Taking you beyond the comfort zone and ensuring that you don’t miss out in getting your geek on. I so hope pcmech.com don’t mind me combining their motto with mine. Lol.

And now, with that out of the way, back to the grindstone. Onwards and upwards with panic asunder…

There is no doubt that microblogging service Twitter is growing in popularity: Twitter’s traffic increased by nearly 1000%  over previous rates during 2008. The question is: Can Twitter utilise that vast amount of traffic in order to survive?

Robin Goad, research director at internet traffic analyst Hitwise, says that computing enthusiasts more than any other group are responsible for the sharp increase in Twitter’s popularity.

"Technology is absolutely the most popular category discussed in Twitter. Probably the most talked-about topic in Twitter is Twitter itself. All the sort of more ‘geeky’ stuff is what people talk about most."

So a pat on the back for us geeks from Twitter; but realistically we’re using the service for free anyway; so we owe Twitter nothing financially and Twitter owes us nothing in return at this point in time.

"It’s instant and it’s an easy way of communicating," said Goad. "If you’ve got 1,000 followers you can put out a quick 140-character ‘tweet’ and you can immediately communicate to those 1,000 people. Some of those people might pick up what you said and then tweet it to their network and it creates a knock-on effect."

Twitter is even taking off in the UK to an extent; although I don’t under the current circumstances see its usage becoming prominent to the same degree as in the United States: This is partly due to the fact that in the USA a user is able to tweet from their mobile device for no charge; whereas  in the UK this is not possible, thanks largely to the greedy UK telecommunication companies’ reluctance to provide anything without making a huge profit from it.

The leader of the Twitter popularity charts in the UK is Stephen Fry, with over 50,000 followers, seeking intellectual edification no doubt. TV Presenter Jonathan Ross has over 13,000 followers. I wonder if Andrew Sachs is one of them? In the US and also worldwide, Barack Obama is the most popular, with almost 150,000 followers.

"Those are the big celebrity names, but a lot of the people who are big in the ‘Twittersphere’ are people who are into social media or technology and are big bloggers," explained Goad. According to Hitwise, the fastest growing age group of users is 35-44 year olds, who now account for 17.3 per cent of all UK Twitter visitors.

Twitter’s business model; or at least what there is of it, has recently been under scrutiny from a number of sources. Twitter has the ability, bearing in mind its huge traffic numbers, to generate massive potential revenues. To do so, however, it will need to implement strategies that don’t put people off of using it. This area is one of difficulty. At the moment; Twitter doesn’t seem to be making much, if any, money for itself. As a business it will need to do so for its very survival.

The management structure have plans; although they remain somewhat tight-lipped over exactly what those plans are. Slowly but surely there is something going on, as many Twitter users will have noticed; but are plans and subtle changes enough to ensure its survival? The dilemmas it faces may be problematic in the long run unless Twitter’s management balance their actions precisely.

What do you think? Is Twitter here to stay? Can it pull it off and continue growth in its traffic whilst at the same time generate a revenue stream without alienating at least some users? – Or will it be another “here today, gone tomorrow” sensation, like many others before it? I look forward to your comments.

In his article of 19th January 2009 for cnet.com; Don Reisinger presents several ways in which he feels micro-blogging service Twitter could improve. This article is an analysis of his article with comment from a different perspective; albeit limited to an extent.

(You’ll need to read and cross reference his article in places.)

I too like Twitter; although an addiction it is not in my case. Nevertheless I do find it a useful and well-presented social-network, with some interesting content contributed by many of its users. – Which runs straight on to my first point: Groups:

Reisinger states that he doesn’t know why Twitter didn’t add groups to the service. He further goes on to state that “Maybe the company believes that groups would make it too closely resemble a social network…”

It IS a social network. Adding groups to it would make it just like most of the others; a clique network. If groups are added to twitter it would lose all of its individuality: That is the downside of it.

Friendfeed and Facebook do just that, and I find it a concept that sucks. I tried opening a room in Friendfeed, and instantly saw it as a waste of time. If I wanted to form a clique I’d start a forum. (Yet it might nevertheless prevent Scoble from flooding Friendfeed if he used one. )

Stick with the open-format Twitter: It’s probably a part of the reason you’re number 1.

A Tweet Filter: ‘Good idea: Read Don Reisinger ’s article on that.

Unfollow Notices: There is a site called “Twitterless” that does just that:

Google listing :-

Twitterless :: Get Updates When Someone Stops Following You on Twitter

Twitterless tells you who stops following you and graphs your follower history over time, making this info available in a variety of useful views. …
twitterless.com/ – 7k – Cached – Similar pages –

For whatever reason I’m having trouble connecting to it right now. Eventually it loaded. I note it’s still in beta: That so smacks of Google, even though it has nothing to do with Google.

As Reisinger states: –

“Maybe some wouldn’t like receiving additional e-mails announcing when a user decides to unfollow them, but I think it provides significant value. It can give you hints about what your followers do and don’t like and it makes you a better Twitter user, since the last thing you should be doing is annoying your followers.”

Profile stats:

“I’d love to know how many people view my Twitter page each day. It’s not that I have a vain desire to see how many people are looking me up. Instead, I’d like to know how many of those people become followers.”

“Twitter is all about being part of a community. Knowing what that community likes and doing what you can to appeal to that community is incumbent upon us all. Twitter stream stats would help in that endeavour.”

Hmm; I’m in two minds about that: I’ll throw that totally to my readers to comment on.

200 characters

No;  I don’t buy Don Reisinger ’s argument. Twitter just wouldn’t be Twitter anymore if it changed in that way. 140 is fine. If it’s more you’re looking for then use Friendfeed.

I’ve left this wide open: I invite comments from readers on these matters.

As I often do on this blog; I’m going to once again give my readers something for free. This is a bit of a double-edged sword in fact; as the advice comes from me. This part is free. That will hopefully lead you onto part 2, which will involve you shelling out a few dollars to someone else for the purpose of hopefully ensuring that you are recession-proofed.

"Recession-proofed? What on earth is she on about?" You ask.

In answer to that I’ll share with you an email which I received today from David Risley. I’ve added some commentary to intersperse the text for further explanation so that you can follow the drift of what he’s saying: -

"News From Dave

As we move into 2009, we all think about our New Year’s resolutions…What are your resolutions for 2009?

This … newsletter was written in advance because, as you get this, I’m on a cruise. My wife and I finally took a vacation – our first since our honeymoon. We went straight into parenthood after we tied the knot, and kids have this funny habit of anchoring you to home when they’re young."

[Maybe it would have been an idea to tie a knot in... 'Never mind. - Moving on: - ]

"I’ve also been working very hard, and 2009 is going to be even more fast-faced. While I am pursuing other projects, too, the PCMech Premium membership program is certainly a top priority…"

[The PCMech Premium membership is something I need to explain to you:-

PCMech, if you haven't heard of it, is David Risley's internet brainchild. It's a blog that was started a number of years ago as a hobby; but over the last few years has become not only one of the web's top-rated technology information and online-career-building sites; but also David's source of income for him and his immediate family, from which he lives comfortably.

He continues: - ]

"You guys [and girls] saw me do several videos last week about our membership program. This week, while I’m gone, I have all channels open to make sure that people know that they can sign up for our premium program at the old, 2008 rates. See, once I get back into town, I’m turning off registration to our program. During that time, I’ll be re-working some things in order to execute my 2009 enhancements to the program. When I reopen the doors, the price will be higher to reflect the increased value to our program."

[I hear brains ticking over: Some thinking "I like the sound of this. - It must cost a fair bit!"

That's not actually the case with this. - Not yet anyway. How much it does actually cost depends on when you sign up for it: Like David said earlier, - and I can vouch that this is quite genuine: "The price will be higher to reflect the increased value to our program."

When will the price be higher? Looking at the countdown; 4 days, 18 hours, 14 minutes, and 2 seconds ...At time of writing. 'Less now.]

"2009 is a recession year. It is time to put the pedal to the metal, to learn new skills, and to take action. If you learn the right skills and follow the right strategies, you can come out the other end of 2009 doing very well. This time next year, we can all be taking cruises!

…You’ve gotta DO it. And this year, I plan to work closely with PCMech Premium members to do exactly that.

‘You onboard?"

"Yeah, right. – All to make you some money eh?"

I realise that the first thing you’ll think is that I get paid for introducing people; therefore I’m not giving you "free" advice exactly. Honestly this is really totally free advice: Due to circumstances beyond my control, the corresponding affiliate program that I signed up to last year was deactivated, – The program itself, that is; not just my membership. – in anticipation of reactivation in a better format prior to this date. It didn’t happen as planned, and I was informed, so i haven’t been cheated in any way. However this opportunity that I’m telling you about is permanently advertised only on pcmech.com . There are various tweets about it on Twitter, which find their way onto FriendFeed, and onto David’s profile on Facebook. -But if you don’t use Twitter or FriendFeed, aren’t David’s friend on Facebook, and have never visited pcmech.com; you’ll be left completely in the dark, will never hear about it, and will miss the chance of taking advantage of this opportunity. – And time is ticking away as you’re reading this.

- That’s why I’m advertising this to you. I’d have liked to have made money from telling people about it; but it wasn’t to be. Nevertheless I choose to advertise it regardless. I want to bring my readers value. I’m doing so now by telling you about this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

‘More from David: – ]

"PCMech Premium is like no other membership program on the Internet. We combine insider tools and tactics in the world of computers and technology with powerful information on using the Internet to make money and improve your life. You will not find this mix of information anywhere else. It reflects MY approach to the world of technology. I make my entire living on the Internet as a professional blogger. I am a geek, a computer enthusiast, but I am also an online entrepreneur. Together we can live the ultimate, high-tech lifestyle. Learn More About PCMech Premium.

David Risley

Click here to to learn more about the premium program for 2009. "

Because I’m not getting paid for this, – David Risley had no idea that I was going to write this article either. Neither did I until a couple of hours ago – I can honestly say in a totally unbiased and from-the-heart manner that the only person who’ll be missing out is you yourself if you don’t take advantage of this offer. If you don’t believe me then don’t sign up through any links in this article: Go directly to http://www.pcmech.com by typing that URL into your browser-bar and sign up there if you distrust me that much. It makes no difference to me any way you do it or don’t do it.

Why am I advertising this for free? I want my blog to be known as a blog that provides real value to my readers, as I already said. This value is in the form of an amazing offer from someone else: if you hadn’t read this article you possibly wouldn’t be any the wiser. – I want my blog to have that reputation so that my traffic increases: That’s my ’selfish’ motive. Also I feel that this is an opportunity that nobody should miss out on the chance of taking at an incredibly-low price.

  Hmm…Convince me some more.

"Incredibly-low price eh?" You ask in a suspicious manner. "Exactly what is this "incredibly-low price"? – $400, $300, $250?"

I’ve been a member of PCMech Premium, in its previous incarnation if you like, for 6 months so far. I can quite honestly value the program as it was then at somewhere around those figures; put very loosely. However you’d be mightily surprised to learn that a year’s membership is currently less than $100 (£69) - Considerably less in fact.

‘Not convinced? Go see for yourself: http://www.pcmech.com . Near the top of the page you’ll see a countdown sequence, ticking away: That’s how long you’ve got left in real time.

If you missed it I’m afraid to tell you that the countdown has ended and all PCMech Premium registrations are currently closed. You can, however, set up a free, restricted, account and go on a waiting list in anticipation of registration reopening. (Target date 30th January 2009.)

Here’s what David Risley himself wrote: -

“I invite you to sign up for our waiting list. If you raise your hand and tell me you’re interested (by signing up for the mailing list), I will provide you first crack at registration when I relaunch the program. I might even throw you a little bonus (hint hint)!”

To get onto the waiting list and show willing, click here

I have a feeling you might be lucky and get in at 2008 prices IF you join this waiting list; but please don’t hold me to that.

33 Twitter users including Barack Obama (Yes; President – Elect Barack Obama.), Britney Spears, Rick Sanchez, Huffington Post, Facebook, and Fox News, have recently has their accounts hacked. Reports say that the hacker who did it compromised some of the Twitter tools; although no other information is currently forthcoming.

"Help! – I’ve been hacked!"

 There are also the phishing attacks going around Twitter, – Which I hope the Twitterite community are all aware of by now. – to try and steal your Twitter details: An email arrives containing a link to a web page. When you click the link it takes you to a phoney Twitter login page that asks for and subsequently harvests your details.

Be wary of these emails and don’t disclose details; as it looks like the phishers will use your account to send out other links which might lead to botnets, spam sites, and the like.

Yes they’re everywhere; even now infiltrating Twitter. Is there any surefire way, other than safe computing practices, of stopping them? Someone, somewhere, is illegitimately making a small fortune from this racket: if they weren’t they would try something else.

They can be tracked down eventually, shut down and prosecuted: I’t not always a successful exercise, but it has at least some effectiveness overall. Also we, as computer users, can help to thwart them by not falling into their trap and not being fooled by their tactics. Neither method is completely watertight though. Is there any way to snuff them out altogether? – Legally that is?

Your ideas please: -?

Yesterday I opened the post "Dwindling Economy Hits US Trade Shows" with the words:- "Steve Jobs has not had a heart-attack; indeed Steve Jobs [aka "Jobsweh"] is not in poor health, nor is he dying."

My timing was impeccable considering the announcement today by Jobs himself. My information sources may not be quite right though:

According to Scientific American website:

"Apple co-founder and chief executive Steve Jobs posted an open letter to customers on his company’s Web site today in which he says that he’s being treated for an unspecified "hormone imbalance" that has caused severe weight loss and kept him out of the public eye."  http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=apples-jobs-hormone-imbalance 

‘Maybe not quite as much  weight loss as suggested in the illustration left; but it is nevertheless apparent that Jobs is suffering from a bit too much lean-ness.

INTERLUDE

At this point during writing this article the power went out. Fortunately I have 2 UPS’s looking after my entire system; so I was able to finish the line I was on and shut down everything without data loss or damage of any kind to my systems. For further reading see http://www.pcmech.com/article/avert-disasters-with-a-ups/ .

Is that the way to lose weight without trying? Hormone imbalance? If so then perhaps I should find hormones to start taking at random? I’ll just have to be careful I don’t start speaking in a gruff voice, or grow wings, or something. – Not that I’m particularly overweight; but I could do with a little weight-loss nevertheless.

Perhaps the hormone imbalance explains Jobs’ overly aggressive marketing, combined with his control-freak style? Whatever the case; I didn’t get it quite right:

I stated the information that I’d heard from Robert Scoble on Twitter. – This was largely accurate; but not 100% so.

Anyway that’s cleared up the misunderstanding; so now onwards and upwards: I have another article which I’m intending to get written and published; hopefully today.

Do please comment on this article.

Microblogging service Twitter used to allow users worldwide to update their status via free SMS from their mobile phones. In August of this year, 2008, the available 250 free SMS updates were withdrawn from European countries and Australia due to the greed of the mobile-phone companies causing Twitter to be unable to strike a reasonable-priced deal with them in order to subsidise these free SMS updates.

Three months later in November 2008 the same fate has befallen Canadian users, once again due to the greed of the service providers.

Writing for Venture Beat; M G Siegler expresses disgust at AT&T’s charging another $15 a month for conveying such a tiny amount of data.

Like Siegler; I don’t blame Twitter: it’s the greedy mobile operators that are slowly choking Twitter who should bear the brunt of any anger.

When India becomes Twitterless as far as mobile phones are concerned; will the US eventually follow suit and Twitter’s free SMS service be a thing of the past? Will this be a state-by-state shutdown or a nationwide outage? How will this affect the many Twittereers and Twitteresses in the USA who rely on SMS to tweet?

ank

There’s a rumour going around on Twitter that Twitterank is no more than a rather clever phishing scam.

Twittereers and some Twitteresses world-wide have disclosed their details to discover their numerical rating for the purpose of massaging their egos. This colossal waste-of-time venture appears to be just another no-brainer Twitter App that is doomed. However there are suspicions that it may be more of a waste than at first thought.

Oliver Marks of ZD Net saw the following retweet on Twitter:-

"@t RT @brianoberkirch Twitterank is a vast conspiracy I created to steal all of ur passwords + shame Twitter into OAuthing. + make u look vain."

My advice, if you’ve got your Twitterank, is to look at this, read this, and then change your Twitter password – just to be on the safe side.

Paul Boutin today claimed on Wired magazine that blogs are a 2004 relic that have been superceded by the likes of Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook etc:-

“The blogosphere, once a freshwater oasis of folksy self-expression and clever thought, has been flooded by a tsunami of paid bilge. Cut-rate journalists and underground marketing campaigns now drown out the authentic voices of amateur wordsmiths.

It’s almost impossible to get noticed, except by hecklers. And why bother? The time it takes to craft sharp, witty blog prose is better spent expressing yourself on Flickr, Facebook, or Twitter.”

This argument was later described as "flamebait", and at least one blogger admitted that they had fallen for it.

If indeed it was such, then this would be tantamount to trolling in the blogosphere: An open invitation to the kooks to migrate from the realms of Usenet and various esoteric online forums to infest the alleged "tsunami of paid bilge" with their incessant idiosyncrasies and four-letter-word-laden flame-wars.

Is the blogosphere really destined to become a domain of Kadaitcha-Man-like supertrolls and macho insult-contests run by over-testosteronised individuals attempting to score points off one another by means of character-assassination and flagrant depersonalisation of lesser mortals deemed as "f*ckwits"?

Hopefully not: That kind of thing has its rightful place in certain newsgroups on Usenet and the like; but hopefully won’t be spilling over into the adult blogosphere anytime soon.

As mathewingram.com puts it:-

"I’m hoping that Boutin’s post took about the same amount of time as it did to come up with that Twitter message, because it has about as much value. Is everyone going to have a blog? No — and they never were. Facebook and Twitter are probably enough for many people. Not writing at all is enough for many people. But why does it have to be all or nothing? What we have now is the option to micro-blog (i.e., Twitter) some thoughts, post others to Facebook, share things on FriendFeed or through Google Reader, and blog things that take longer to think through. But I guess that’s not as catchy as a “blogs are dead, Twitter killed them” scenario."

It is my sincere hope that blogs will remain a focal point of online self-expression without invasion from kooks and trolls from Usenet or anywhere else. It would be a great shame to see this proud channel of online-individuality fall victim to the cyber-thuggery and neo-macho-egoism of the newsgroup terrorist or die out as a result of the rise of microbloggers. I very much doubt that this is or will ever be a realistic scenario in all honesty. The mere possibility of it ever being the case could be quite unsettling to some people though.

Do you think it possible? Is there any danger of an "asswipe-invasion" at any point? Your thoughts please:-

Panic set in at kkomp.com office when first it was discovered that the blog posts were no longer being notified on Facebook, followed by the discovery that Ping.fm had vanished. In the broadcasting social-network’s place was a Go-Daddy advertisment but no ping.fm dashboard.

kkomp.com use ping.fm’s free broadcasting notification service by means of a plugin attached to the WordPress blog which you’re reading now. This plugin allows notification of any new posts to be sent to ping.fm, and then subsequently onwards from ping.fm to Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, FriendFeed, Plurk, and the like.

I immediately Googled for any further news; of which there was none, and consulted Twitter. I was told that ping.fm were having domain problems. During the short rally of tweets the ping.fm site reappeared and seems to be back to normal operation. I have no idea how long exactly the site was down for: All I know is that it was for somewhere between 0 and 36 hours.

This post is partially news and partially a request for further enlightenment: If anyone knows any further details then perhaps they’d be good enough to add a comment below? Is there an ongoing problem or was it a one off outage? How long were they down for? … And other information of that nature.

Microblogging service Twitter seems to be on the up. Following the replacement of CEO Jack Dorsey by fellow co-founder Evan Williams on Thursday; Twitter’s backers have announced that new revenue models will be unveiled in the first half of next year.

It has long been a contentious issue as to how Twitter is going to make any money to keep itself afloat, and is a question that still continues to be bandied around in cyberspace, with well-meaning folks making all kinds of suggestions.

With a current estimated value of $80 million, it’s on a near level-par with Facebook, which has dropped considerably in value in the last couple of months according to unspecified reports. Twitter has been spending the last few months remedying the not-uncommon service-outages with which it was regularly plagued, making the famous fail-whale into an iconic character with its own cult following. These outages were a positive sign for Twitter; showing a huge demand for its services…And Twitter has certainly grabbed people’s attention: Wired.com even estimated that Twitter will eventually top the 1 billion figure and continue growing.

In his article on the subject for Silicon Alley Insider; Henry Blodget makes an interesting analysis:-

"Why is Twitter different than the 9,000 other Web 2.0 companies that are intending to figure out a revenue model eventually? Because people are obsessed with it.  Don’t forget that this company was founded last year.  Google wasn’t anywhere near this ubiquitous in its second year, and neither was Facebook."

With the economy in the current state who knows what may happen? Overall though, it appears that the future for Twitter is bright. What do you think? Greatness or collapse? Maybe something in between?

This report has been the big rumour of the day today; as you may have heard – Setting the gossip lines, blogs, and Twitter, alight with chat:

Apple says the Steve Jobs Heart Attack Report Is Not True.

Of course it’s not true: For one to have a heart attack one must first posses a heart.

Jobsweh may posses an organ that keeps the blood circulating throughout his body; but any outgoing emotion from that organ appears to have been stemmed by his control-freak nature and love of profit at any cost.

Using tactics of mass-mind-control akin to those used on the German people during and just before the second-world war by Hitler and the Third Reich; Jobs has conned the world into buying his substandard products in a hypnotic marketing ploy using deceptive yet convincing tactics to deceive the minds of the masses into thinking that anything bearing the Apple name is the best thing since sliced bread.

What is a Mac? A Mac is a PC with a sturdy chassis and an inflated price tag. What is an iPhone? An iPhone is a small programmable handheld computer/phone with a weak non-user-replaceable battery that is remote-controllable and block-able at the behest of Steve Jobs. What is OSX? Well-developed Linux with its own special flavour – No more and no less.

So an Apple system is no more a sturdy PC made of Apple-approved components in an Apple-defined design configuration running a specialised flavour of Linux called OSX written by Apple, all of which costs twice as much as a normal PC running a normal Linux distro. Maybe this Apple system’s overall operation is slightly better than average; provided that all software is approved by and provided by Steve Jobs at an inflated price. It’s not anything different from the norm in reality: It’s the ultimate con.

Is Steve Jobs worried that he’s taking the public for a bunch of mugs. No; not even an iota of shame or guilt. Does he care that he’s selling a PC as a specialised improved type of technological evolution?

Having said that though – I must admit that I definitely do admire him for his unbelievable nerve. Not even Bill Gates with all his wealth and genius pulled such a massive confidence-trick on so many to get where he is today.

If you’ve seen the 1970/1980s BBC TV comedy series “Only Fools and Horses” then you may remember the episode where Del and Rodney are bottling tap water and selling it wholesale for a profit as “Peckham Spring”. ‘Far-fetched you think? No more far-fetched than Del Boy Jobs selling a PC running Unix as a Mac at an inflated price. No more far-fetched than a mentally-unstable Corporal putting on a display of authority and conning an entire nation into following him and his Third Reich.

The same old confidence-trick in another guise is still just the same old confidence-trick. As Shakespeare wrote in his famous play Romeo and Juliet:-

“That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”

Prologue Rabbit:

Quite some time ago – 2 years plus; I’m not exactly sure how long, I got an invite from a friend to join Facebook. I’d heard a lot about it but wasn’t really into social networking at that time: Times were good economically, and I was concentrating on getting a computer-building enterprise running. I wasn’t that fussed on spending hours posting my life online and getting chatted-up by lonely losers using the internet as a last-ditch attempt at getting a date with anyone they could find.

Anyway I eventually gave Facebook a try – And I found it so sucky at the time that after not long I closed down my account in protest. I kept a MySpace account going but abandoned it and forgot the login details.

More than two years later; having become a Twitter, FriendFeed, etc, user – I found that everyone and anyone was using Facebook. Yesterday I made up my mind to give them a second chance and opened an account: The new look Facebook is so much better, more user-friendly, and functional.

The Guts:

…And so to the purpose of this article; having released and dispensed with the drivel:-

I’m going to be honest and say that I’m not an iPhone owner or user. What? A geek without an iPhone?!: Dracula without fangs, a tree not made of wood! Well, approve or disapprove; I’m a Wintard and I use Windows Mobile on my mobile phone supplied by BT, and some Linux variant on my Sony Ericsson X750i, I think it is. I simply don’t see the point of buying an iPhone, and I have possible gripes with Apple – But that’s another story. Since I don’t own an iPhone I can’t tell you much about this App from experience: So I’m going to cheat and quote a little from TechCrunch.com:

“While previous releases of the Facebook application supported the News Feed feature, only mobile photo uploads and status updates were displayed. In version 2.0, the News Feed has been completely overhauled to match item-for-item with that of the site itself, throwing news posts, relationship and interest updates, and all photo uploads into the mix. Furthermore, users are now able to comment on any given bit of news, or limit the feed to only the categories they wish to peruse.”

Ah what the heck: Click the link below and read:

Facebook Rolls Out Version 2.0 of their iPhone Application

Yes; maybe it’s not standard practice to just hand over to another blog mid-story: A little deviation from the norm won’t hurt anyone nevertheless; plus I’ve done Michael Arrington, Greg Kumparak, and the rest of the TC crew a favour.

…And Finally…

Something else that’s hitting the headlines is the House of Representatives’  Web site – Which has been overwhelmed this week by a tidal-wave of visitors trying to e-mail their Congressperson and/or download George Bush’s Financial Bailout Bill that the House rejected. The site saw three to four times its normal traffic yesterday, 29th September,, according to Jeff Ventura, a spokesman for the House Chief Administrative Officer.

That’ll teach ‘em to vote “no”: DDOS ‘em as punishment, lol.

And now; Some advertising:

Yahoo is planning another redesign; and it’s already happening. In keeping with others such as social micro-blogging site Twitter – which started to implement a phased series of changes to its site design last week – Yahoo; allegedly the most heavily-trafficked site on the internet, is already moving ahead with redesigning its home page. The changes are to be initially tested on a small group of users in alpha form, and will eventually move on up through beta, to a full-scale overhaul at a later date.

Yahoo plans to invite a random sample of of around 1% of its audience to test the alpha upgrades. The tests will be conducted in Britain, France, India and the United States, according to a Yahoo executive.

Tapan Bhat; senior vice-president in charge of “front doors” – The main destinations at Yahoo, such as Yahoo.com. My Yahoo, and the Yahoo Toolbar – explained that the last redesign two years ago took six months to fully implement. Yahoo are aiming to deliver on past promises from around a year ago. “We are going to put what matters to you most at your fingertips” Explains Bhat.

The new Yahoo home page will feature a tab on the left hand column of the page with  links to the user’s favourite sites. It functions as an alternative to navigation methods such as bookmarks, link bars, and browser tabs.

“For the first time, we are going to marrying Yahoo.com and MyYahoo to take the best of both,” Bhat promises.

Yahoo is using a new technology it calls the Content Optimisation Knowledge Engine to enable its computers to determine what the most engaging content may be to a specific user, and to present that, combined with relevant advertising tied to users’ particular interests, to users, based on their prior surfing habits.

Yahoo is taking a rather cautious approach with this personalisation, in the knowledge that less than 15% of its current users subscribe to My Yahoo; its existing personalisation service.

Flickr, a Yahoo company, is already offering some of its pro users in the UK a beta of its new look homepage: This author is currently running the new look Flickr homepage on her Flickr profile.

- Also, as an incidental point, users in the UK subscribed to BT/Yahoo Broadband service are able to sign up for a pro account on Flickr free of charge, provided that, and for as long as, they continue to subscribe to their BT/Yahoo internet services. (That’ll at least partially make up for BT’s Home Hub 2.0 con in a manner of speaking perhaps?)

Have you started to trial Yahoo’s new designs; and if so what do you think of them?

It started with a follow request: I asked Rich Menga of pcmech.com to follow me on several social media sites such as Twitter, FriendFeed, MySpace, etc… I even tempted him with the offer of a topless photo of me: I sent him, online, a picture of me with the top half cut off…

To cut a long story short he asked if I’d send him a packet of John Player Special cigarettes – Which aren’t sold in America:

Getting them there was quite a feat: The first lot I sent never turned up; so 2 1/2 weeks later I sent a second mini-parcel which was better wrapped and didn’t appear to be a pack of ciggies. The disguise worked, and whoever realised, in whichever country’s postal service, that they were cigarettes and “tested” them the first time – was fooled by the disguise the second time; and about a month after the whole thing started they arrived safely – At PC Mech’s PO Box.

A week later and they finally got to Rich; who made the following video regarding the purpose of the internet, using the cigarettes as a prop.

…And so people; please take your seats, having bought your popcorn and ice-lollies, as -

kkomp.com proudly presents:-

The Purpose of the Internet

A PCMech film starring

Rich Menga

Cert 15

The End.

At 01:40GMT (02:40 BST) this morning the following email was delivered to my inbox. I’ve added my comments to it in regular Arial 12pt text:

“I’m sending you this note because you registered a mobile device
to work with Twitter over our UK number. I wanted to let you
know that we are making some changes to the way SMS works on
Twitter. There is some good news and some bad news.”

“I’ll start with the bad news. Beginning today, Twitter is no
longer delivering outbound SMS over our UK number. If you enjoy
receiving updates from Twitter via    +44 762 480 1423   , we are
recommending that you explore some suggested alternatives.
Note: You will still be able to UPDATE over our UK number.”

What this means is that UK telephone companies are refusing any concessions to Twitter in the interests of their own continued 100% profit; as if they needed to do so – The greedy money-grabbing penny-pinching slimeballs! Doing so might reduce their profits by a fraction of a percent; which might mean the Director will only get 5 paid-holidays and less than £500G a year or something equally ridiculous.

“Before I go into more detail, here’s a bit of good news: Twitter
will be introducing several new, local SMS numbers in countries
throughout Europe in the coming weeks and months. These new
numbers will make Twittering more accessible for you if you’ve
been using SMS to send long-distance updates from outside the UK.”

Note the absence of the word “free” or “Freephone”.

Fire Your Computer Guy or Girl!

A computer technician spills the beans and makes available the knowledge he has charged clients hundreds in service fees for.

Computer Secrets Unleashed

To find out more

CLICK HERE

Starring:

Sharron (Me) 

DedRyzing 

davidrisley 

Bitch that I am I can never resist a bit of “I told you so” bragging: So when David Risley posted the following tweet on twitter:

  “Went to use my Iphone and, sure enough, it’s dead. Frickin’ battery. No comment from @kkomp please. ”

- This war happened:

Me: @davidrisley iPhone, iPhone, falla-diddle-iPhone. iPhone, iPhone, falla-diddle-i…No more need be said…ROFLMFAO!

- At this point DedRyzing opened up on target: 

DedRyzing @davidrisley Well ya know Dave…everyone was saying the iphone battery is dung.  And ya bought two…sad. I feel for ya

DedRyzing @davidrisley Don’t fret though. Disabling the phone will increase batt life for important things like ibeer and the lightsaber thingy 

A feeble response of counter-fire: 

davidrisley @kkomp @DedRyzing Its still the best phone out there, guys. I haven’t seen a phone yet with the same balance of features.

It’s war:

DedRyzing @davidrisley Honestly, yer right. Which says less about how good the iphone is and more about how BAD other phones are.

A shot across the boughs from me:

Me: @davidrisley That’s only because you never bothered to get a Viewty.

A veiled attempt at opening negotiation from the target: 

davidrisley @kkomp Looked at Viewty. Good camera phone. But, it is no Iphone.

Fire 1:

Me: That’s the beauty of a Viewty: It’s not an iPhone! – I ought to do their PR; they’d sell more product than apple!

Fire 2: 

Me: @davidrisley That’s the beauty of a Viewty: It’s not an iPhone! – I ought to do their PR; they’d sell more product than apple!

Fire 3: 

Me: @davidrisley I – Phone but the battery’s dead; so I use the beauty of my Viewty and get straight through: iPhone + dead battery = No phone.

Incoming communication from allied force: 

DedRyzing @kkomp It boils down to this. Other phones do a few things crappy.  The iPhone can do a lot more things crappy.

Incoming challenge from target: 

davidrisley @kkomp DedRyzing Hope you guys will be in the show chatroom tonight so I can argue with you.

Reload tubes. Response to allied force: 

Me: @DedRyzing That says it all : Let’s email LG today and offer to jointly run their PR campaign: KompDedRyzing Promotions Present…

Fire 1: 

Me: @davidrisley LOL you’d better beleive it. Topic = The iPhone battery life and ways to improve it other than not using the iPhone at all.

Fire 2: 

Me: @davidrisley On second thoughts that’ll be the shortest topic discussion ever.

Small-arms attack on target from allied force: 

DedRyzing @davidrisley Geez man…every show I argue with either you or @frostedside. Man…stop picking fights.

Fire 3: 

Me: @davidrisley I hope Apple never develop an electric car…

Incoming communication from allied force: 

DedRyzing @davidrisley Just start running OpenBSD and use an OpenMoko Freerunner and everything will be ok

Response to allied force: 

Me: @DedRyzing …Or he could always invest in a Viewty; as I suggested before he wasted his money on a dead battery – I mean an iPhone.

Nothing further from target – Scanners detect target neutralised.

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Twitter, the No.1 micro blogging site, has been targeted in the same kind of attack that befell MySpace and Facebook yesterday. A bogus Twitter profile with a malicious payload has been spotted by security firm Kaspersky.

The link; which says that it is a link to a pornographic video, downloads the dodgy version of Adobe Flash Player; the file “codecsetup.exe”; just as with the occurrences reported yesterday: http://kkomp.com/archives/827 And exactly the same result too: You’re suddenly a part of a botnet, sending span, phishing attacks, and DOS attacks.

Variants of the worms are already appearing according to security firm Kaspersky; who spotted this and yesterday’s two attacks also.

The attack appears to originate in Brazil, a conclusion based upon the use of the Portuguese language, the location of the servers that download the trojans, and the email addresses used also.

Once again only Windows users are vulnerable to these worms etc; so therefore would it be logical to conclude that the perpetrator is a South-American Linux zealot with an axe to grind?

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Read on; you’ll soon feel better

Today I was wondering what to write about. I have a folder full of text-files going right back to the year 2000, most of which are complete junk. I thought I’d have a look through it to see if I could gain any inspiration. I found several parts of a series of advisories I’d written in 2003 with regard to setting up an FTP and web server in IIS in Windows XP – but I decided that was a bit old-hat for this point in time.

One of the items I found was one that I posted on Twitter, and would, I feel, be a must-have for any male geek:

http://www.thermaltakeusa.com/product/Accessory/DriveBay/a2021/a2021.asp

(See website for image.)

An ashtray and cigarette-lighter fitted to a spare 5.25 drive-bay would be just the thing for the macho motor-enthusiast geeks.

Next we come to the one that I mentioned that I have designed into the novelty G1RL-P0W3R range from Kustom Komputa:

http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/41/ezbake.shtml

Personally I think this in-computer oven is a great little novelty: Cook while you compute.

For the third gadget – What can I say? Al Bundy eat your heart out. (Al Bundy never actually did use a computer in Married With Children as far as I recall, not even a 386.)

http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/pcmods/8095

Think Geek themselves describe this device as “High-tech Laziness at its Finest”.

Oh what a shame that our next device is out of stock or discontinued!

http://tekgems.com/Products/et-15783-cmo-yel-paradise-bay.htm

Damn! I think it’s quite a useful idea; providing you have enough drive-bays to sacrifice one for storage.

Now you might, like myself, have hundreds of old cassette tape cartridges with all your favourite 70s, 80s and early 90s music on them – But try buying anything to play them on and it’s virtually impossible to get a cassette-player these days. (I have an old Ferguson Cassiever analogue radio/cassette deck which I used to play the cassettes on and used it also to transfer the content to my computer: Unfortunately the cassette-deck gave up the ghost last year.)

Now, however, using our next gadget, playing and transferring cassettes is even easier:

http://www.firebox.com/product/1700/Plus-Deck-Cassette-Converter?src_t=sbk&src_id=cassette&currency_conversion=1

Just in case nothing out of those took your fancy there’s a whole lot more similar weird geeky gadgets for you to browse at http://www.thermaltakeusa.com/product/Accessory/DriveBay/drvbay_index.asp

-And no, I gain nothing, whether or not you buy any of these products.

Enjoy.

Since its US launch in March 2006, preceding its European launch in November 2007, Amazon’s Simple Storage Service has now hit the buffers twice at time of writing; affecting sites such as Twitter, a fast-growing micro-blogging social-networking site who use S3 for static file hosting. This is also affecting Twitter clients such as Twhirl.

When working, the scalable storage infrastructure stores over 14 billion files of differing types for a variety of users including small start-ups and enterprise clients, who use the S3 service as a web-hosting service as well as a file-backup service, among other uses.

Amazon’s S3 Service last went down in February 2008, only around 5 months before this outage: Could this indicate an ongoing problem arising within the infrastructure? No such reports have been generated by any sources as far as I am aware; and if any such internal reports are circulating within Amazon then none have been leaked as far as I am aware.

The latest update on the situation that I have read at the time of writing; posted at 2:35PM PDT on this Sunday 20th, indicates that Amazon have the situation under control and that they are making good progress towards a resolution:-

“2:36 PM PDT We have restored all internal communication across Amazon S3 hosts. We have started the multi-step process to begin accepting requests across Amazon S3 locations.”

With luck it won’t be too long before the problem is totally eradicated, at least for the time being and the foreseeable future – But will there be a third outage this year? Any such further downtime would indicate serious problems and severely affect customer confidence in S3. Keep watching that space for maybe more downtime…

You are reading the third edition (Final Retail) which has replaced all other editions. Each edition is extremely similar to the previous edition but with added content.

Ok here’s my first thoughts about the whole damn thing:-

Today everywhere has been alive with iPhone buzz: FFS it’s only a phone! Networks are overcharging, Apple are overcharging, but the crowds just keep charging up to the counters for the pleasure of getting ripped off so they can say “Ooh look at me; I’ve got the latest gadget -Just like everyone else!” Pfft!

Big deal! Clever you with your new toy – Moving on: In a case of perfect timing WordPress have announced WordPress for the iPhone: Now you can blog with your new toy too if you know how to read and write. Remember that thing called school that you tried to avoid? At school they taught you how to read and write…Oh never mind; go play with your iPhone.

Don’t hold your breath on wpiPhone though. (That’s WordPress for the iPhone for the benefit of iPhone owners.) I have a weird premonition that it might just go to pot as they try to make it bloom. Keep watching for nipples and if you see more than one then wpiPhone has probably gone tits-up.

I just cannot credit the hysteria about a phone – Holy carp!

I set out to be brief on this article; and brief I shall be. When the hype has ceased to have any residual effect and networks send people their bills for using the phone.

(Phone is what it is and it’s not mine and probably never will be, so why call it an iPhone? Information – pah! Try reading classes first. ROFL. I wonder; can Chris Pirillo’s followers read the instructions? PMSL!

Google – Help; I’m in hysterics!

Chris Pirillo <—Yay! AVG 8. 

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=pirillo

I always and without fail crease up every time Pirillo announces an apology in his posts that certain things may involve reading. I bet Apple never thought to include a text-reader in their new phone though did they? – Hey don’t take it personally; you got great advertising out of it.)

The new iPhone – The perfect escapism for the cyber-escapist – Until the first bill arrives: You just wait. <chuckle>

iPhone, iPhone, folla-diddle-i-phone; iPhone, iPhone, folla-diddle-i.

iPhone, rip-off, overcharged by networks; goon-fad, boy’s toy, I will never buy.

I could be wrong; I have been known to be so before; but I reckon it’s all a big hyped up load of trash and people will end up regretting the day they ever set eyes on an – Oh I’ll utter it then. – iPhone. <shiver>

That’s all; that’s my twopennethworth.

No it isn’t: I lied: ‘Still same day and already the problems have started!

“Software problems bug Apple’s launch of new iPhone” Friday July 11, 1:59 pm ET

My thanks to David Risley of  PCMech for providing the following link via Twitter

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080711/apple_iphone.html?.v=27

And so it begins:

“”Steve Jobs knows what people want,” Web developer Lucinda McCullough told the Christchurch Press newspaper, referring to Apple’s chief executive. “And I need a new phone.”"

-Quoted from that linked site.

Then why the hell am I trying to sell unique quality desktop computers? If Steve Jobs really does know what people want I’ll get a few old wrecks that no longer work properly out of the spares cabinet, give them a quick identical case mod, and sell them at an exaggerated price: Who cares whether they work or not provided they all look the same and are the latest fad eh Mr Jobs? While we’re at it Steve Jobs; perhaps you’d inform me why it is that you’re named after a polite english slang term for crap?

Brilliant Headline from Gizmodo.com:-

“Apple and AT&T Stores Having Difficulty Activating iPhones (UPDATE: It’s the iPocalypse)” (Linked)

“Even the iTunes link on Apple is gone. “

Throughout the entire United States and Canada; in fact seemingly worldwide, Apple’s servers have crashed or are over-capacity

“So How Did This Happen:
The source of the iTunes crash/slowdown seems not be those buying iPhone 3Gs from Apple/AT&T stores at all but the millions of people updating to the new firmware at home. Firmware 2.0 isn’t like other firmwares in that it needs to update the phone and reauthenticate the service. And in turn, when the servers are slammed and the phone reaches for reauthentication, the server isn’t always there to reactivate the service. This is how some of those newly bricked iPhones are occurring, and a source tells us that even first gen iPhones are susceptible.”

Unacceptable: There is no other word for it. The internet isn’t to blame: The wiring isn’t stretched to capacity, the isps are taking the load without trouble. The problem is Apple – Nobody else: Sheer incompetence!

“iTunes activation servers go down, iPhone 3G customers being sent home unactivated, first-gen iPhone customers stuck with dead iPhones.”

From http://www.engadget.com/2008/07/11/itunes-activation-servers-go-down-iphone-3g-customers-being-sen/

“Update: Apple has confirmed to us that activation is down, and that customers are being asked to take the phone home and activate via iTunes later. We’re not sure what good that’ll do, since the servers are down no matter where you are, but Apple says it’s “working on a solution.” In the meantime, it looks like the new SIM works in first-gen units, so at least upgraders aren’t totally phone-deprived. Oh, and remember that updating a first-gen iPhone to 2.0 requires hitting the server as well, so if you haven’t taken the plunge we’d say hold off until this all gets sorted.”

“Update 2: In related news, those updating their first-gen iPhone to 2.0 are also getting caught in the activation shuffle, leaving some with bricked iPhones. In our test case, the activation servers came back up after about 45 minutes just long enough to get 2.0 running on our first-gen iPhone, but not all have been so lucky.”

<Fits of laughter>

“This does not look good. Apparently people at home can’t even upgrade to firmware 2.0 and the problem is afflicting iTunes on an international scale.”

This is the end of my coverage for this article: Follow this link for the continuing saga:

http://gizmodo.com/5024187/apple-and-att-stores-having-difficulty-activating-iphones-update-its-the-ipocalypse

The Joke is on Apple.

Why not go buy a Mac?… ROTFLMAO!

 I just have to add this: It had me in stitches:-

From Steve Rubel on Flickr:

 I’m going to use this opportunity to republish the original article that was originally published last month, whilst at the same time introducing another, at least equally valuable computer troubleshooting resource; that being http://kadaitcha.cx

The Author

This resource is created by  Australian Rick Mathers aka Kadaitcha Man; emphatic tech guru and Usenet kook who doesn’t endure fools lightly in any way whatsoever. Renowned for at times having a verbiage in common with a backyard dunny when dealing with idiots, and known throughout the Usenet community for his extreme technical prowess and contemptuous distaste for what he describes as “fuckwittery”; the K-Man has survived “death” twice through a clever piece of trolling, and has played a part in dispelling the useless or incorrect advice so plentifully available on Usenet. He was renowned for creating the infamous “Peanut Gallery”, into which he would “cast” those advisors on Usenet who were guilty of extreme technical ineptitude and dispensing incompetent advice. He’s an extremely male type of man, and this may appear in some ways evident from his site: Nevertheless it doesn’t detract in any way from the useful content therein.

The Site

Kadaitcha.cx is a well-designed website with good graphics and a thoughtful layout. Its greatest achievement is in indexing most of  the Microsoft.com website into easy-to-find links indexed into well-designed individual help sections complete with additional technically-informative commentary. The site is aimed primarily at XP users, but also has some sections and commentaries designed for those using or thinking of moving to Vista.

Overall…

Overall the site is a gem of competency and accuracy in a cyber-world of dodgy and unhelpful, even at times counterproductive “advice”. I myself have used this resource on numerous occasions and would recommend http://kadaitcha.cx to my readers.

I’ve read a very interesting article on “Ask Leo” recently that I thought was extremely perceptive and in pretty much every way spot on – So much did it strike a chord with me, in fact, that I’ve decided to feature a link to the article on this site. The introductory words below are Leo Notenbloom’s (Microsoft MVP and ex-employee.) words quoted from the first paragraph of the article.

If you like what you see on Leo’s site then I would suggest that you subscribe to his newsletter, which raises some useful points of interest, tips, and help articles. I personally get nothing from your subscription or lack of it: I don’t know Leo personally, don’t have a contract to advertise his site, and am simply another subscriber. The motivation for advertising his site here is for information purposes alone, in the hope that it might assist readers in their computing experience:

The Plight of the Average User

“Over the course of the last four years of doing Ask Leo! I’ve also learned a lot about computer and technology myself. The old adage about learning something by teaching it is very, very true.”

“But I’ve also learned a thing or two about you, the people trying to use computers, too.”

And these are things I wish a lot more people would realize and understand. People from the executives at my former employer, to some of the people that comment on my answers.

“The “average computer user” is not who you think.”

Continue reading: “The Plight of the Average User”

Addendum

“Isn’t that cheating;” You ask.”republishing an existing article alongside a new article?”

Well it is true that it does add to the page’s content somewhat using previously published information; but I felt it would be an enhancement to bring together these two useful resource commentaries so that Windows users are able to benefit from links to both in one place. Convenience and interoperability being buzzwords in cyberspace lately it does little if any harm to reduce the number of clicks a user must make to find the information that they need. Bearing this in mind the resultant compilation and semi-repost is surely nothing less than beneficial.

With that in mind I’ll go on to advertise, although completely off-topic for this posting, that I now am subscribed to identi.ca and FriendFeed in addition to Twitter; Username = kkomp: Your following would be greatly appreciated, and I will return the favour and follow you too, therefore we all benefit.

ALSO:-

PC Mech Live streaming on kkomp : You can watch, listen, and learn, by viewing the streaming video feed, or if you want to go interactive and sign up/sign in just click the link at the top of the page. (Most of the content is pre-recorded.) PC Mech Live

If you want to go straight to PC Mech.com then just click here.

Immediately after posting the Free Screensaver post I saw a link to this on Twitter; so I thought I’d have a look.

I haven’t tried any of the software he recommends yet at time of writing; but it sounds like good stuff: Here’s his video.

Of course I tweeted back to him via twitter to have a free screensaver on me; well one good deed deserves another. and since he presented himself so charismatically I included his vid on this blog.

(For some reason I’m not doing too well with the html on this entry; so rather than spend ages messing with it I’ll just republish with this apology included for any sloppiness in the design/layout of this post.)

Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/kkomp