How to Live » webservices

An Anti-social Network is here

admin — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 01:20:00 +0000

Web 2.0.

Social Network.

Wisdom of Crowds.

These are few buzzwords that have become obsolete because of their overuse. Welcome to isolation.

Isolator , a ~~social~~ personal ~~network~~ anti-network for pure fun. The creator of Isolator will answer no more questions other than those found on their faq page.

There are more than 1000+ social network sites and applications available on the web and you can not easily differentiate between them. Here’s is a megalist of social networks and social web applications available on the web. Yep, you can download it as a spreadsheet.

But, on a serious note, do you know how many people on the internet actively uses at least one social network?

You will be in a shock to know this – just under 7% of all the internet traffic goes to social networks.

Looks like we are living in a bubble, huh? Come on people, join us – dont get left behind.

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Love shopping? You can support a Charity as well

admin — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 23:47:00 +0000

If you do online shopping, then without spending another penny, you can donate a percentage of your spendings to a charity. Confused? Usually, the affiliate marketers and publishers get a percentage for every referral they make to such online stores. Giveness springs from the same concept but they help to direct such commissions (affiliate sales) to charity programs.

Giveness is a social network for philanthropists who love shopping. When you buy something from online stores such as Amazon or eBay, via Giveness, they donate a percentage of their earnings to a charity of your choice directly.

Giveness lists a big basket of about 134 online charities ranging from Children of Rural Africa to Sustainable Harvest International. When you sign up to Giveness, you can choose your favourite charities, before you do shopping. When the online stores send the commissions, all 100% of the money is sent to the charities. Now, you would have had a double joy as your shopping has not only fulfilled your need, but also some percentage of your spendings went to fulfill some higher cause.

Apart from this, Giveness is all about social networking, you will find people who are interested in common things. You can have a personal page, share things, chat or message friends. They should be good souls as they believe they can make a positive difference in this world by doing a small bit for the world.

Oh, I almost forgot to tell a thing. You can also start a charity fund. You can define a purpose – it could be a global problem or it could be even a neighbourhood’s issue. You can organize a charity and start your social service.

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How to ignore a Facebook request in a polite way?

admin — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 19:27:00 +0000

One of my friends asked her if there is a polite way to ignore a friend request in Facebook? She did not want to be too rude and she feared if facebook will send a “your request rejected” message to her friend.

Fear not. Facebook is nice.

The official facebook help section says, “Facebook never notifies anyone that you have ignored a friend request.”

So, when you decline a friend’s request, facebook never sends any notification to the person. So, the first tip is you can safely reject the unwanted requests immediately.

But, you can not cancel the request sent by your friend, also.

What if your colleague or your uni mate asks you next time, ‘Hey, did you receive my facebook invite?’. This is tricky to deal with.

Prepare a set of standard answers, and provide them.

For instance,

“I really dont have a clue. I did ‘Accept’ your request, but, it gives some javascript/invlaid function error on my PC.”

“I am not big on facebook. I would prefer to be in touch in the real world!”

Be creative, make up your own reason, blabber something and vanish from the scene.

Enjoy facebooking!

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Do this if you want your PC to do a meaningful Spell Check

admin — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 16:57:00 +0000

Are you using Spell Check feature in Ourlook, Word or Powerpoint? Do you think it gives crappy, incorrect suggestions as the right spellings?

If you are living in Australia, you know that there are few things that are not written in the same way as others do. One good source to get used to the Australian spellings is to refer the Macquarie English dictionary. For instance, Australians prefer to use ‘-ise’ for ‘prioritise’ instead of ‘prioritize’. But, when I typed the ‘ise’ firefox will show as an error.

Quick fix (for only firefox): Tools –> Options –> Advanced–> General –> Languages — Add ‘English [Au]‘ to your list and hit ‘Move up’ till it reaches the top of the list.

Another way to overcome this problem is to edit the “Custom.dic” file that comes with the most of the applications such as Word, Outlook or Firefox.

Where to find the custom dictionary file to edit:

Firefox
C:\Documents and Settings\\Application Data\Mozilla\Profiles\ \persdict.dat

Word / Outlook /Powerpoint
C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\Application Data\Microsoft\Proof\Custom.Dic

Now, all set except the typing of every word in the dictionary file, you can do this manually by typing one word per line.

There are pre-built custom dictionaries available for free around the web. For Australian English (rejoice), such dictionaries are available at justlocal.com.au (courtesy of Kelvin) for FREE.

You can download the dictionary for openoffice.org and use it for firefox, outlook or word. For instance, download the kelvin_en_AU_V2.2.0.zip file from the site and unzip it. You will find a text file that can be opened with notepad. Copy and paste the list into your application’s custom dictionary.

There’s also an Aussie slang dictionary available at their blog.

That’s it, a perfect spell check from next time onwards.

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Visualize your Facebook Friends network

admin — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 12:20:00 +0000

After facebook made their API public, beautiful applications are being developed by programmers around the world.

In the last few months, facebook is the fastest growing social network on the web.

Touchgraph has developed a facebook application that allows you to visualize your facebook friends network.

You can browse through your friends shared photos, follow their network through tags and browse the common friends interactively.

You need a latest java plugin and you can run the application from Touchgraph facebook site.

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250 fun things to do on web

admin — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 07:22:00 +0000

when you are bored, try some of these

A to Z listing of fun things (blog posts) published so far in this blog. Click on a topic to know more!

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Want some free Schwags – Stickers, Buttons and T-shirts?

admin — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 18:40:00 +0000

Schwags are buttons, stickers and t-shirts that companies give to people to publicize their brands. As most of the web 2.0 companies do not spend much money in advertising, they are generous in promoting their brand by giving away ‘branded schwags’ to the users.

How do you get hold of such free schwags. If you happen to visit the web conferences, tech fests and seminars, you will get a loads of such stuff.

If not, you can email them using their contact page and ask them. Not all the web companies encourage the users openly as the following few.

Flickr Schwags: FREE
For example, Flickr says in its blog page that if you need stickers, buttons, balloons – you could send an email to them. I did and got a pack of goodies which are really cool.

“When you are organising a flickr meer, if you let us know in addition to adding your event to the Upcoming Flickr group — we can send you some Flickr schwag: stickers, buttons and name tags. Please include your postal address and let us know as soon as you can, ideally, at least a month before the event.” – Flickr blog

Visit http://www.flickr.com/help/contact to let them know you want some flickr goodies. Within few weeks, the parcel should arrive you.

Feedburner Stickers: FREE

Taking a cue from Flickr, now Feedburner provides stickers, but you need to send them some pre-paid, self-addressed envelopes to their address.

Read this announcement on the Feedburner official blog.

Startup Schwag:
There is much an easy way, if you can shell some out some money ($25-$30), startupschwag will collect all such cool schwags (with one T-shirt guaranteed) every month to your address.

There was a startup named ValleySchwag which got shut down earlier because, they could not cope with the users demand. Now, the home page link leads to a 404 page.

Other FREE Stickers:

You can get a free 2007 Ferrari Stickers given away by Shell.

Have you requested such goodies from companies? Whats your experience?

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Wired Magazine presents a community-editable "How to Wiki"

admin — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 05:03:00 +0000

Wired Magazine has put together a ‘How to Wiki‘ for us. We can almost write, edit and provide tips on anything as long as it is useful to web users. All you need is a login to edit.

Some wiki articles for samples:

Save Face on Facebook: Facebook Etiquette

One should not friend another whom they have no association or connection with whatsoever. Doing so makes you what I like to call a ‘creeper’.

Poke with moderation and caution (I stand firmly by this etiquette principle).

When speaking with someone whom you have been casually ‘facebook stalking’, try to pretend you do not know everything about them. Avoid comments like: “So, I saw you and Mike broke up on facebook…”

Get Back Into Work Mode After Vacation

If possible, take a few afternoons off. Or at least, leave early. Most people, especially after a relatively isolated vacation, find themselves easily distracted and often waste the day away dawdling or worse yet, reminiscing about vacation. After vacations is the best time to exercise your flex time.
Take an extra day. Schedule your vacation so that it ends one day before you’re due back into the office. This allows time for you to get back into your regular routine. Pretend it’s Sunday… okay Sunday evening. Unpack, do some laundry, check your email, and rinse that crazy notion of early retirement out of your hair.

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I have a Web 2.0 idea – “Who are you?”

admin — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 21:39:00 +0000

With Twitter, you answer “What are you doing?”

At 43 things, you say, “What you want to do?”

At WAYN, they ask, “Where are you now?”

Now, I propose a new idea for another web service. Answer a simple question, “Who are you?”

Huh, you don’t say a thing. Let your friends say all about you. Let your friends add tags (sort of one-word testimonials) on you saying, ‘sexy’, ‘brave’, ‘good guy’, ‘SOB’, ‘BS’ or whatever. Part this idea is inspired by the movie “Citizen Kane”. What if we sit back and ask our friends to describe us. We can borrow a dictionary of adjectives; let the users tag their friends. We need not develop this as a web service (enough of existing social networks), this service can be developed as a facebook application.

Ok, you heard this idea from me. But, I no nothing about programming or APIs (I know there are geeks out there, come on!). I can give more details on this idea, we can develop a cool widget.

Wants to get famous, Precious?

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Feedrer – a social network for RSS feed lovers

admin — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 04:02:00 +0000

Feedrer is a social network for feed readers. Before you ask, I will explain what it is about. We all track our favourite blogs and websites via the RSS feeds to save time and to read all the favourite items at one place.

Google reader allows you to make certain things public (the feeds that you can share with others), and google offers those rss items on a public page as this one, Thiru’s shared items (sorry, you are not supposed to monetize those feeds, ok?

Google can build a social network around such shared RSS feeds by us and they can put together a Digg like site. They have not done it yet. Here’s where Feedrer is coming in.

Feedrer is a social network where you can add friends, and see what others are reading currently. Now, you can get a list of mini-feeds that your friends have subscribed. If you like a friend’s feed then, you can subscribe to them with a click.

Feedrer is a start-up and they are working on the site to add more features. What they can do is to add a front page showing, “most liked feeds”, “most read feeds” to use the wisdom of the crowd to bring the best feeds on top.

What are the benefits of joining Feedrer?
If you are looking to publicize your blog’s RSS feed, or find new readers for your blog then, these tips are for you.

1) If you have a blog, then you can get a RSS feed at the free Feedburner service (Google’s) and register it with feedrer. Make friends at feedrer, generously subscribe to their feeds. Since the people in the community are already loving RSS feeds, they would subscribe to your RSS feeds. The feeds are mini-feeds, so, readers need to visit your blog (more page visits) to read them. So, you win all the way.

2) One of my SEO friend at gridpro tipped me that every links from feedrer is considered by search engines as Google /Yahoo as one way, inbound web links. So, if you have 10 friends subscribing to your blog’s feed, you are going to get 10 links. When you pubish 10 posts , the links are going to be 10 by 10 = 100. Can’t get my head around this, I have to confirm this myself.

Update: To gain access to Feedrer (currenty in beta), you need to enter an invitation code “INVITEME” at the registration form (Thanks Anand, for pointing me). Enjoy!

There you go, another start up, social network, web 2.0.

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