John at myITforum.com : Internet

Tech Support Caller Warning System

jgormly — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 23:02:36 GMT

This was so good I had to share…I’ve been in the red zone most of my career…

Docs for Facebook

jgormly — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 16:42:07 GMT

Discover. Create. Share.

Now you can discover, create, and share Microsoft Office documents with your Facebook friends. Built using Microsoft Office 2010 – Docs for Facebook provides the best possible document service for the Facebook environment. Seamless integration with Facebook means that the service is all about sharing your documents. Finally docs can be friendly too!

http://docs.com/

Google Reader not updating all feeds

jgormly — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 12:04:53 GMT

I’m a big fan of RSS feeds. I’ve tried lots of different news readers to get the fastest, best experience from reading the RSS feeds I subscribe to. I won’t comment on how many feeds I subscribe to…it’s a lot. Over the last week I’ve been using three different news readers to see how they operate with my feeds. One big thing I’ve noticed. Google Reader may be web based to use on multiple computers, and may be fast, and may look nice, but Google doesn’t update all of my feeds. Either something is broke again (I went weeks with some of my feeds not updating and then they all updated), or Google just decides for itself what feeds to update and what feeds to ignore. One entire group of feeds has not updated on Google Reader for three days, yet the two other news readers I’m testing have shown a minimum of 15 new articles posted.

For someone who has to stay up on current events, Google Reader just isn’t cutting it. How do they decide when to update feeds and how often? No need to comment, that was more of a rhetorical question than anything. I know how often it’s supposed to update. Fact of the matter is, it doesn’t work. Why subscribe to RSS feeds if the feeds don’t update and you have to go to the website to look?

As an aside, I’ve also noticed the date/time stamp for Google Reader in some cases does not coincide with the date/time stamp of the actual article. In some cases, it’s way off (as in over 12 hours), in other cases, its several hours off. Again, not that big a deal but some of them are my primary feeds and I DO notice.

AV-Test.org Certifies Microsoft Security Essentials 1.0

jgormly — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 11:56:49 GMT

Use Microsoft Security Essentials 1.0? AV-Test.org has certified the product with a score of 14 out of 18 in their latest round of certification testing.

It appears three products, Kaspersky Internet Security 2010, Panda Internet Security 2010 and Symantec Norton Internet Security received the highest ratings at 16 out of 18.

The major difference? Kasperky IS is $80, Panda IS is $60.95, Norton IS is $69.99, and Microsoft SE is FREE. Interestingly, all six products that scored higher are a minimum of $40. Do you get what you pay for?

You can read the full reports here and decide for yourself.

10 ways to get the most out of Bing

jgormly — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 12:12:27 GMT

Interesting list over at TechRepublic on 10 ways to get the most out of Bing.

Some of the features I wasn’t aware of. Just one of the “ways” posted:

Use it as a Decision Engine

Microsoft may be competing with Google by spending advertising dollars in the search universe, but it seems that the actual product has a slightly different aim. Microsoft is calling Bing a Decision Engine and positioning it as a new kind of tool, as described in this press release:

Bing is specifically designed to build on the benefits of today’s search engines but begins to move beyond this experience with a new approach to user experience and intuitive tools to help customers make better decisions, focusing initially on four key vertical areas: making a purchase decision, planning a trip, researching a health condition or finding a local business.

The next time you’re using the Web to make a decision about buying something, going somewhere, improving your health, or finding directions, give Bing a shot.

http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/10things/?p=957

Add Twitter Search to Internet Explorer

jgormly — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 19:54:31 GMT

Want a quicker way to search Twitter rather than going to http://search.twitter.com? How about this.

Go to search.twitter.com:

Click the Install Search Plugin. Once you add it, it will show up in your default list of search providers:

Now you can search directly from Internet Explorer and include Twitter with your research.

Another great way to not miss those Twitter posts

jgormly — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 14:29:02 GMT

I know…I know…another Twitter post. I’ll return to regular programming soon, I promise. I just thought I’d share another great way I discovered to find the posts I’m after quickly.

I’m a news junkie. After checking email, my next check is my RSS feeds. Once I’ve cleared email and my news feeds, I can move on to other business. I’ve been experimenting with Twitter’s search site, http://search.twitter.com. I use OutTwit regularly and it helps find the posts I need, but this is actually a pretty neat way to find things.

Let’s say I want to find posts from certain folks to make sure I didn’t miss any. By this I mean, yes, I use OutTwit but if I exit OutTwit or Outlook, stay disconnected for a few hours, say for a flight, then log back in, it doesn’t catch me up like email. It only pulls the most recent, and certainly not all posts for the last two or three hours. So, search.twitter.com to the rescue.

Back to my example. In this case, let’s say I want to find all of Rod’s posts or Reed’s posts. Using Twitter’s search terms, I enter below:

Once I click the Search button, it will display all of the posts from Reed or from Rod. But, here’s the neat trick:

Once I’ve completed the search, notice the links in the right hand column. One of the links is “Feed for this query”. What will this do? That’s right, it will create an RSS feed for the search query just created that can be inserted in to your news reader. It’s just a matter of copying and pasting the shortcut in to the news reader. As I’ve posted before, Twitter has some great advanced search features, and after each search, you can create feeds for your news reader. When you launch your newsreader the next time, it will read the RSS feed and display the posts. Since I’ve started doing this for posts I don’t want to miss, I catch them since I’m already checking RSS feeds. So, if I want to stay caught up with what @lancearmstrong, or @levarburton, or @jerryrice have been up to, yep, I create a search and drop it in to my newsfeeds.

Once they’ve downloaded to my news reader, there’s an option obviously to view the link. Once you click the link, you’re taken to the actual post to reply, retweet, view, and all of the other options. Some readers, like Snarfer, actually have a Twitter add-in that allow you to post directly from the news reader. It’s not pretty, no, but it’s a great way to stay caught up with folks, even if you don’t have your favorite Twitter client loaded all the time.

Tweetdeck makes a run…

jgormly — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 19:42:12 GMT

I’ve been watching the stats for Twitter clients posting to Twitter. Tweetdeck is making a run up the charts for the most popular Twitter client:

Using the web and sending text messages also remain popular, and those using Twitterfeed and Twitterrific round out the top five clients. Clearly 72% of Twitter users prefer to post to Twitter with the methods listed in the top five.

Out of curiosity, I scanned the clients for where OutTwit may be lurking in the polls. The results?

You can see for yourself…315 posts were made to Twitter from 143 users. Much lower than I expected.

Does OutTwit not have avatars?

jgormly — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 04:39:29 GMT

One of the draws to Twitter is seeing the avatars of those that you follow. Some are real pictures, some are funny, others just express the mood the person happens to be in. One thing I see a lot of in the twitter stream though is that OutTwit doesn’t display the avatars and that’s part of what they miss. To answer the question, yes, OutTwit displays the avatars, and now with the latest release, you even get avatars in the tweet preview:

The avatar of the preview toolbar now displays the avatar for quick glance. But what about while your reading? Yes, looking at the Twitter stream as the posts hit it appears there’s no avatar:

From the above snapshot, yes, it appears that avatars are not there but that is at the folder level. It looks like an icon from posts to a newsgroup or SharePoint site, but if you select the message itself, which is how I read (using my up/down arrow keys on my keyboard or the scroll wheel on my mouse), you can see the avatar:

Does it have a slick GUI and look pretty on the surface? No, it doesn’t. Can you see all the pretty avatars at the top level? No, it doesn’t. Do I care? No. Why? One, I don’t need to load Adobe Air to make anything work (or blame Adobe Air when there are problems). Two, does it actually work and keep the posts organized to make Twitter use efficient? Yes, it does. By that I mean, a lot of the popular clients (like Tweetdeck) have a tendency to error out due to too many API calls. I can honestly say that I have not seen a single error since starting to use OutTwit, and using Tweetdeck and Twhirl caused issues for me. And I can honestly say that I monitor the Twitter API website for resets/too many API calls and OutTwit has figured out how to be efficient, even checking for new tweets every minute or two.

To answer the question, yes, OutTwit does display the avatars.

The power of OutTwit Search/Track Keyword on Twitter

jgormly — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 01:16:01 GMT

I’ve discussed OutTwit (from @techhit) in previous posts. Over the last several weeks, I’ve really expanded my Search/Track Keywords and finding some really interesting folks, and really interesting topics, all by using OutTwit’s Search/Track Keyword functionality.

By this I mean, I’ve mentioned previously that Twitter has a 100 per hour pull limit from remote Twitter tools. Understandable given the number of users and the number of Tweets. In any event, Search/Track Keywords dramatically increases your ability to find things quickly. Yes, Following a bunch of people and using Search Folders as I’ve mentioned does the same thing, but again, requires API usage where Search/Track Keywords does not. For the last several weeks, I’ve been using Search/Track Keywords and it’s pulling faster than Following.

A couple of examples of how I’m using Search/Track Keywords:

I’m a fan of mobility so I like to follow conversations on mobility in general. So, I created a Search Track Keyword for Windows Mobile that’s going to a Windows Mobile folder. This search will find any posts made to Twitter where the user uses the words Windows Mobile.

I also want to follow certain trade shows, and those attending trade shows, so obviously creating searches for things like CES or CTIA will work:

I’m also a Cub Scout Den Leader, so want to find others on Twitter that are in to scouting (and obviously also find those who aren’t), so I’ve created a search for Scouts. This will find any posts made to Twitter where the users uses the words Scouts, however the term is used. I’ve meet some other great den leaders in the process.

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, you can obviously search for users and “follow” them without adding to your following count. So, searches can be made to follow people (and those that reply to them) by searching for the twitter username, such as levarburton or lancearmstrong or michael_phelps or jerryrice or the_real_shaq (yes, they all use twitter). Or, I can refine the search further by finding any posts just from them, and weed out those replying to them, or trying to get their attention. For this, I use the from: in my search term:

This will only pull posts made from user lancearmstrong, and weed out all replies. If I wanted to follow the entire conversations, I’d leave off the from: and pull any referring to that username. There are many powerful search terms that can be used. You can find a few of them by clicking the underline:

Again, Search/Track Keyword does not utilize or take your API so you can create as many as you want, or use them as often as you want, without fear of running in to the dreaded API limit issue. I won’t tell you how many I’ve created, but there are a lot, and it’s greatly improved my twitter experience.

Palm Reports Q2 FY09 Results

jgormly — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 02:32:15 GMT

SUNNYVALE, Calif., Dec. 18, 2008 -- Palm, Inc. (NASDAQ: PALM) today reported that total revenue in the second quarter of fiscal year 2009, which ended Nov. 28, 2008, was $191.6 million. Smartphone sell-through for the quarter was 599,000 units, down 13 percent year over year. Smartphone revenue was $171.0 million, down 39 percent from the year-ago period.

“We’re working through an undeniably difficult period,” said Ed Colligan, Palm president and chief executive officer, “but near-term challenges shouldn’t overshadow the fact that we are on track to deliver a breakthrough new platform and products that will bring a truly differentiated smartphone experience to our customers and reestablish Palm as a leading innovator in the mobile industry.”

The second quarter of fiscal year 2009 net loss applicable to common shareholders included a non-cash charge with a net impact of $396.7 million to the tax provision pertaining to the increase of the valuation allowance for the Company’s U.S. deferred tax assets. This non-cash charge was the primary driver of a net loss applicable to common shareholders for the second quarter of fiscal year 2009 of $(508.6) million, or $(4.64) per diluted common share on a GAAP basis. The increase in the valuation allowance does not reflect a change in the company’s outlook, nor does it alter the company’s ability to utilize the underlying net operating loss carry forwards. “We have reserved against these assets in accordance with GAAP, however we still expect to utilize our net operating loss to offset future U.S. cash taxes once we become profitable,” said Andy Brown, chief financial officer.

Quiet OutTwit down for awhile…

jgormly — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 19:31:14 GMT

There may be times when you just need to unplug, particularly this time of the year to stay caught up with other things. Or you just may be in one of those “I can’t be bothered” moods. There’s an easy way to do this with OutTwit. As a side note, you should also do this if you plan on being away from your computer and checking Twitter from a mobile client at the same time (unless it’s the mobile website), otherwise you’ll probably bump against hourly account limits.

Just uncheck the box in OutTwit, Options, Receiving. This will easily stop checking for new posts. Once you’re ready to start receiving again, go back to the same place and recheck the box.

Managing Posts in OutTwit

jgormly — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 17:43:51 GMT

I probably should have posted this one earlier, but how do I manage my Twitter folder itself?

Well, there’s a couple of way. First, I create a search folder (using previous tips), and the only criteria I have is to show my unread posts (found on the More Choices tab):

This search folder is then added to my search folder which shows me all posts I have yet to scan and read. That’s my first tip.

The second tip is to set default Archive properties for this folder. The settings are really up to you. Right-click on the folder storing all your posts (not a search folder):

The AutoArchive lets you choose what you want the posts to do. You can choose not to archive at all, use default settings, or set specific settings for that particular folder. In the example above, I’m instructing Outlook to permanently delete posts after 1 week, but obviously you can set it for any number of days, weeks, or months.

This will keep the overall folder manageable. Using these tips and others I’ve posted, I keep the folder itself manageable while not missing the good stuff. Yes, one of the other benefits of using OutTwit is that it does in fact store locally all posts coming from Twitter allowing me to utilize the full search capabilities of Outlook. I can’t begin to tell you how many times I knew I read a post, couldn’t remember where or when, and searched on keywords:

This quickly pulls up all posts matching my search criteria to quickly find that link or post I’m looking for.

Skipping Tweets in OutTwit

jgormly — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 17:25:27 GMT

Have you ever followed someone in Twitter, only to discover you probably shouldn’t have? There could be many reasons for it, including personality mismatches, or not as much in common as you’d hoped. Yes, in Twitter you can go to your Followers list and click remove, and therefore prune your list down. But, what if your not certain you want to unfollow?

Or, what if you’ve had a REALLY BUSY DAY, and you check your posts folder, realize you’re way behind? How do you catch up without missing some posts you want to read?

My answer in OutTwit makes this one simple. Create a custom search folder, add the usernames in the From line (similar to my post on peeps or news service), and call the folder whatever you want (I’ve called mine Skippers).

Now, all the posts from your skippers will be pushed to a separate search folder. You can quickly scan, or just right click and mark them all read, and not have to worry about them. If your skippers stay on the list for too long, or you find you just really aren’t reading them, well, you’re choice, but at least you now have options.

What’s retweeting and how do you do it in OutTwit?

jgormly — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 17:06:35 GMT

You may have read a recent posting from Rod that there is a function with Twitter called “retweeting”. Retweeting allows you to acknowledge someone else’s post within Twitter, and help spread the word to other followers utilizing Twitter. In my opinion, it’s the same courtesy and respect you should show while blogging to acknowledge that the information you are blogging about didn’t originate with you and you shouldn’t be taking credit for it. If you like it, copy it, but acknowledge the source. In Twitter speak, it can be shown as RT or Retweet.

There are many ways to retweet. Some just retweet and send. Others retweet, and add their own comments to let folks know why they are retweeting.

OutTwit makes it easy to retweet. In the dropdown list in the OutTwit toolbar, you’ll see Retweet…

It’s simple. Just highlight the post you want to push through twitterverse, and hit Retweet:

Up pops the OutTwit dialog box that populates the post with Retweeting, followed by the post. In the above example, you can see that after hitting Retweet, I have 43 additional characters in which to add my own comments. Again, this is a great way to acknowledge that you found someone else’s post interesting. Of course, just like anything, I could very easily remove any reference to @rodtrent above, or retweeting, and just send the link again with my comments. That may be ok in some instances depending on the context, but if you truly want to acknowledge the post, retweeting is the best way. This gives the original poster the credit, and also allows them to see you are retweeting (because the @rodtrent is there and will show in his timeline) and found it interesting. This keeps them posting as well.

Happy retweeting.