Free Ring Tones – No gimmick

Being that it’s Christmas season, I figured I give some of you free ring tones. How you ask? I been playing around with ring tones for a while, shortening music files, making alterations, configuring MIME and creating XML. In that time, I realized, there are easier ways to do it. Moreover, there are sites that offer the free files. I have not tested on many phones, so it will be a trial and error for some.
First step, you visit  a website with ringtones, I use www.tuneusin.com or try www.coolfreeringtones.com. Next, select the music genre and select a song. Here is where it varies. On a smartphone, play the song, or sample, directly on the browser. Copy the link and send as an SMS to yourself. Read below on how to do this. Another way to do this is visit the site directly from your phone and do the same steps, however, it is not a mobile friendly site. When you receive the text or visited the link of the MP3 or MDI, you have an option to save the file on your smartphone, At this time, true on Moto Queue and Blackberry, you have the option to save as a Ring Tone. Voila!
For phone without online access, follow the first step, then opt to save the file or download the file to your computer. Next, you email yourself the file to your phone as an MMS and attach the file. (see how below). When you receive the MMS on your phone, for most flip phones including most LG and Razors, you play the MMS and select the option to save. At that save time, you have the option to save a Ringtone as well.
Sending SMS and MMS messages via email Go to your email client of choice and send an email accordingly to the table below. Remember, phone number, with area code first, no dashed "-" or parenthesis "()" followed by the @ sign and SMS or MMS extension. Example: 2125551212@message.alltel.com

Carrier	SMS Address	MMS Address
Alltel	@message.alltel.com
AT&T	@txt.att.ne	@mms.att.com
Boost Mobile	@myboostmobile.com
Sprint PCS	@messaging.sprintpcs.com	@pm.sprint.com
T-Mobile	@tmomail.net
Verizon	@vtext.com	@vzwpix.com
Virgin Mobile USA	@vmobl.com

My Tech Tools 2009

Friday was “ShareWare Day”. It turned me to share my top 20 tools of 2009. Although previously mentioned on my Tools I use on a daily basis, this list is compiled in order, with a summary on my top 10.

1. Google Voice: I use this as a personal VOIP manager. I have the ability to give out one phone number, and I can mange call to my office or cell phone. Moreover, voicemails are transcribed and sent via SMS or email. 
2. Chrome Browser: This is my default browser.
3. Pidgin: I utilize this to connect instant messenger accounts, including AIM, Live, Google Talk and Facebook Chat.
4. Gmail: My default email client. I connect any POP account in addition to Hotmail and Gmail accounts.
5. Google Calendar: Online calendar, you can share public and private meetings.
6. Google Sync: This is a great tool, I can sync my Google Voice Contacts and Google Calendar appointment to my Outlook and Blackberry.
7. Virtual Box: This is Sun Microsystems virtual machine application. i have flawlessly ran multiple operating systems using Virtual Box rather than VM Ware, or Virtual PC.
8. Fedora Linux: I was introduced to linux via Red Hat Linux 7. After Redhat 9, the FOSS OS took Red Hat to the enterprise level and created Fedora Linux, the same OS open to the community.
9. Ping.fm: With Ping.fm,  you can configure one social network update to post on multiple sites, including Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Linkedin and more.
10. VLC media player: It the ultimate media player. I have note found a media file it will not play.
11. CCleaner
12. Last.fm
13. Rapid Share Downloader
14. Live Writer
15. DropBox
16. WinRAR
17. FireFox
18. Spybot - Search & Destroy
19. Juice
20. Tooble

Chrome OS out for a Ride

Google had a preview of their much talked about operating system. Incase you haven't heard, Google announced earlier this year they were working on an operating system for the Internet. After their release of the Chrome web browser, the Chrome OS news was simple to interpret, Linux + Chrome Browser.
Google is releasing the operating system as open source as they have with the Chrome Web Browser. Thanks to an engineer at www.gdgt.com, the OS is readily available for download for virtual machine or like most Linux distros, Live (USB Bootable).
After downloading the VirtualBox version, I gave it a test run.

Ever since the Internet has evolved into a monstrous realm of web applications for both work and personal, social networking and email, it’s safe to say having an operating system that only connects to the web is a good idea. Even a fast computer boots up from it’s slumber in about a minute, while as my test reveals, you can be up and ready to check email or anything of importance in half the time. And yet, you wonder what about files, documents, etc. As I continue to test the Chrome OS, I will explain the importance for Cloud computing and using applications such as Google Apps and Gmail.
Finally, if you use a Live OS, you can boot up to the internet off a USB drive. Chrome OS Bootable version fits on a 1 GB USB. Consider when you have a cold computer, and need to log onto the web to check an account or email, utilizing a bootable version of Chrome OS will have you online immediately. Consider it.

Google Voice

With Apple’s media fest last week filled with iPod and gaming introductions, I noted it’s time to announce what tool I think is best suitable for me (at this point and time) and take Apple out of the limelight for a second. Quite frankly, how often does one need to get a new iPod or upgrade their iPhone OS? Not I. But I have been using a tool worth looking at. I’ll have to stick with Google Apps this time, the most recent of my explorations is that of Google Voice.
I got a Google Voice number not too long ago, and it’s like managing your private VoIP network. With Google Voice, you get one phone number and that number will call you on as many devices as you would want. When someone calls you on your Google number, the devices you added will all ring, depending on your setting of course. I included my personal and work cell numbers, as well as my office number. Now I only need to give out one phone number, and I can choose to answer either device. What’s convenient is that  you can route the calls are you wish. For instance, my office number will not ring after 5PM, nor weekends.  You can also choose to screen unknown callers. A great feature is your voicemail. If a call goes to your voicemail, Google Voice can email the transcribed message or sent as a text (SMS) message to a mobile device of your choice.
The tricky part is that you may have a Google number, but you need to download a Google app on your mobile to call as that number, otherwise you will be calling as the number on your device. This is convenient if you have a work cell number or a personal cell number that you rather not give out. You can also make a call direct for the http://voice.google.com website. What else can you do from your website? When you login, you may send SMS messages as well, that is very convenient if you are not quick on a qwerty keyboard.
Other features on Google Voice include recording conversations and managing contacts.

Make Money on YouTube

Don’t we often wonder, can we make money on video’s we upload on YouTube. There are followers of the crazed YouTube video like “David after dentist”,  and you wonder why would someone even upload it. Now, Google has a reason. With Google’s YouTube Partnership Program, if you uploaded a video that accumulates a large number or views, you might have a chance to profit ad revenue from Google. You must apply for a YouTube Partnership to get started.
Once you enrolled in the Partner Program, and uploaded videos, Google will determine if the video qualifies for revenue based on their criteria, including number of views and content. If your video is eligible for, you will receive an email and see an "Enable Revenue Sharing" message next to your video on the watch page and in other places in YouTube your account. If you want to earn income from your YouTube video, you will need to have a Google AdSense account.

My take on Time’s top 50 sites

Time magazine released the 50 Best Websites of 2009. First, there’s the obvious on Time’s list, Google, Wikipedia, Youtube, Flickr (ranked no.1 ), Facebook and Twitter all made the parade. Then there’s my take on the list, based on bookmarks, there’s five sites (10% of the list) I recommend highly.
First, there’s Popurls, an aggregator, unlike Google Reader an such. This site I recommend rather than other aggregators for it recommends the most popular links (at the time)  from NY Times, Google and Yahoo News, Digg, Youtube and more. Second on my bookmarks is Wolfram Alpha, a search engine with a touch or artificial intelligence. Wolfram understands your questions and tries to figure out answers rather than return a variety of links to visit to “find your answer yourself”. Although, like most computers, you must ask correctly, therefore there is a learning curve on the users side, but worth it. Next, a site I love, Fora.tv, a antidote for the poison that is YouTube. Fora.tv is a video site with content such as conferences, seminars, lectures, and news from international forums by intellectuals touching the subjects of the economy, environment, politics, science and technology. Of course, there’s Aardvark, the newest kind of search that asks your inquiries to your network. Finally, Pandora and Last.fm are considered twins and therefore tied at 32. The music sites play your choice of tunes based on artirst and songs you plant as seeds.
I award special recognition to both Metafilter and BoingBoing, having made the top 50 Best of 2009 sites and the Top 25 Blogs list.

Seeing Chrome is more places

Yesterday I was told by a computer support technician at a particular school district, that they were going to install Google Chrome on all the schools in their district. This was revealed to them this week, having to complete that task in all grade K through 12 before the first day of school this Monday. Although, Chrome has been received well among IT professional, NSS Labs tested IE 8 to be the most secure browser at this moment. Although, an article by Microsoft Watch revealed the NSS Labs test was founded my, Microsoft, surprised?
Even though IE 8 tested well, it won’t be long before malicious attackers will find more vulnerabilities on the browser. Moreover,  while Google engineers can patch and improve their product rigorously, IE 8 won’t see an update to new found problems unless it’s the second Tuesday of each month.

Social Networking for Dummies – nay, Beginners Part 2

Twitter

In continuation to my original Social Networking for Dummies (Part 1), Twitter is a broadcasting tool for social networking. Much like Facebook, you follow people or brands and post your status, also known as a tweet, to those following you. It's an effective tool for sharing information, such as an interesting news article, or even a funny YouTube video. However, you do not want to become a statistic where studies proved that the majority of tweets are meaningless chatter. I will admit, out of 100% of my tweets, maybe 4% to 6.5% fall into that category (don't ask how I got that number). Yesterday, ZDnet release a list of 100 technology experts on Twitter, it was a part of a three part series I recommend reading. I plugged in a few of my favorites that I know of that I hadn't added to my list, and to my dismay, I came to the conclusion that a good amount of higher ranked "Tech Experts", had many meaningless tweets. Which is surprising, and perhaps ZDNet generated the list based on the quantity of tweets, not quality, tech relative tweets. You can judge for yourself on a page I built that links to the users tweets.
I leave you with this, Twitter, as described in the picture below, is a young social networking tool, but smart nonetheless. Of course, as part of this series of Social Networking for Dummies, the almost popular comic by ~elontirien, stereotypes the social network sites. MySpace being the obnoxious, albeit, jokey site, versus Facebook, smart and cool, Wikipedia is the nerd with no style and without a girlfriend, while Google is the “know it all”. Finally devianArt is the creative type and YouTube, ruthless future drop-out.

Internet University Cast by ~elontirien on deviantART

The Cloud, be aware

On a Facebook comment, a friend of mine  brought up “Cloud Computing” when he said “this will change eventually with cloud computing, once we have gone back to the mainframe paradigm”. Wait a minute, mainframe, nay. Let me explain. The “Cloud” is a buzz word for the Internet. Since in network diagrams, a cloud represents the Internet in the drawing. This is not a lesson on Cloud Computing, rather a precaution on Cloud Computing.
The comment on Facebook was in reference to a netbook, and my friend mentioned a mainframe. Cloud computing is not about connecting to a 1960’s IBM System 360 Mainframe machine, rather, the concept is that of dumb terminals connecting to the Internet, which is interconnecting to a network of networks, or network servers. The network servers are much like mainframes, ranging from Power Volt Data Storage servers to Apache Servers on Linux or SQL Database Servers on Windows. In Cloud Computing, all you will need is a computer with a browser. Much like a netbook, which is a small computer, scalable enough to run web applications. The goal of Cloud Computing to have functional software on the internet known as Web Apps. Google is a perfect example with Google Apps, where you can utilize online to create or modify Word and Excel documents to databases. With Cloud Computing, everything will be online, or on a server.
I recently signed up with DropBox, and I began to worry about Cloud Computing. Like DropBox, you can utilize up to 50 Gigs of space to store file data. Anything from picture to research papers. I’m not 100% comfortable with leaving data online that I’m not sure I want to share. Services like DropBox have terms and conditions, perhaps not all your data you save on their “cloud” is safe. Possible it might be shared for research or educational purposes. If the next generation is in the “cloud”, be aware, I rather carry an external harddrive, or write my own cipher.

Password Strength and Protection

How does one protect their password, and what damage can be done if someone obtains your password? If you have a computer, you should know how important a password is by now. However, you probably are not sure how vulnerable your password might be. Obtaining a password can cause havoc, especially if you use the same password on all your accounts. Therefore, anything from your email to bank accounts can be access by unwanted crackers.
It's very simple to do this. Remember the Sarah Palin incident with Yahoo mail, even Paris Hilton's mobile phone book of celebrities. The majority of people have email accounts on multiple free networks such as MSN, Gmail or Yahoo. These services offer a password recovery page where anyone can access just by knowing your email address. The recovery pages asks a number of questions about you, and anyone that can guess the answer, can pretty much access your email. How is this relevant if it simply resets your password? Well, clever as one can be, they can attempt to access another account, maybe a bank or credit card account, and have the password sent to the email account they already have access to. And so it begins, anything tied to that email address, or forwarded to that address is now valuable to an attack.
How can this be avoided. I have recommendations to avoid a simple attack. First off, on your free email accounts, named above, make sure they are still active. If you haven't used that account and it is disabled, anyone can reuse that account and receive email as you. Also, don't use birthdates, or spouses middle names, even pet names as a recovery question. Select any question as your recover question and use a simple work you can remember, like "pancake" for the answer. This will be harder for anyone who knows you to attempt in recovering your password. Secondly, choose a strong password. With so many pins and account password one needs to remember, it's easier for people to choose "oreocookie" or "iloveyou" as a password. These passwords are easier to crack. Simple words or compound words even can be cracked in seconds by dictionary brute force software.
A good password must be tested by security expert recommended tools. I suggest a convention where you use a long word and utilize numbers, uppercase and special characters on words you will remember. Take a word you will remember, in this case we'll use my full name, gabrielvilla. My name is a weak password, however, if I utilize uppercase letters and a special character in the middle, Gabriel_Villa, it's stronger. However, names can also be compromised with brute force attacks very easily. Therefore, I suggest using more special characters and numbers to lieu or letters, therefore you remember the password and you get in the habit of utilizing more special characters. For instance, use "$" instead of "S", or "3" instead of "E". Therefore, when plugging in the password, Gabri3l_Vill@, it results it to be a strong password. You can use password generators that create passwords like mvE@6m8!, also strong, however, it's hard for one to remember that at times.
Now that you created a strong password, do you need to create a different password for every account you have? The real answer is “Yes”. However, I recommend a tip to utilize your same password and adding an extension to each account you use. For instance, think of the color of the header in the site your will log into, and perhaps that could be the extension, like at Yahoo, your password could be 'Gabri3l_Vill@-white' and at MSN 'Gabri3l_Vill@-blue'.

Web Elements

As part of Google Services for Websites, Google's new Web Elements are handy segments, or widgets if you will, of Google products for your sites. Among the products include Goggles Maps, Calendar, YouTube News and more. Google's Web Elements makes is easier to include content to your site. For instance, If you have data that you want to share on your site, or graphs based on data, you can use the spreadsheet web element which allows you to upload a spreadsheet to Google Docs, and share the data on your site. If and when you change the data on your spreadsheet online with Google Docs, the data on the site is updates. This is a wonderful tool is you need to provide pricing for products or services. I will demonstrate the ease of this service.
You do this by going to Google Web Elements, and selecting the segment you want. Let's take for instance YouTube News. You select a News Provider, in this case, Fox News. You will see a preview of it and immediately below you have the code you need to copy and past to your site, as I will do below.

Google provides API's to utilize Google Services for Website to further enhance your sites. Among Web Elements, which is my favorite thus far, Google has added more services such as Page Speed and Google Translator.

Facebook Agrees to Acquire Sharing Service FriendFeed

Breaking News from Mashable states that Facebook has acquired Friendfeed. This is a perfect example of the Grasshopper becoming the master.
News Release from Facebook.com:
PALO ALTO, Calif. — August 10, 2009 — Facebook today announced that it has agreed to acquire FriendFeed, the innovative service for sharing online. As part of the agreement, all FriendFeed employees will join Facebook and FriendFeed’s four founders will hold senior roles on Facebook’s engineering and product teams.
“Facebook and FriendFeed share a common vision of giving people tools to share and connect with their friends,” said Bret Taylor, a FriendFeed co-founder and, previously, the group product manager who launched Google Maps. “We can’t wait to join the team and bring many of the innovations we’ve developed at FriendFeed to Facebook’s 250 million users around the world.”
“As we spent time with Mark and his leadership team, we were impressed by the open, creative culture they’ve built and their desire to have us contribute to it,” said Paul Buchheit, another FriendFeed co-founders. Buchheit, the Google engineer behind Gmail and the originator of Google’s “Don’t be evil” motto, added, “It was immediately obvious to us how passionate Facebook’s engineers are about creating simple, ground-breaking ways for people to share, and we are extremely excited to join such a like-minded group.”
Taylor and Buchheit founded FriendFeed along with Jim Norris and Sanjeev Singh in October 2007 after all four played key roles at Google for products like Gmail and Google Maps. At FriendFeed, they’ve brought together a world-class team of engineers and designers.
“Since I first tried FriendFeed, I’ve admired their team for creating such a simple and elegant service for people to share information,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO. "As this shows, our culture continues to make Facebook a place where the best engineers come to build things quickly that lots of people will use."
FriendFeed is based in Mountain View, Calif. and has 12 employees. FriendFeed.com will continue to operate normally for the time being as the teams determine the longer term plans for the product.
Financial terms of the acquisition were not released.

Vark! Then next method of search

You hear of Bing, and of course Google and Yahoo. Of course, each have their own algorithm of searching, and for the most part, many of the search engines return similar results. These search engines are considered the three major search engines, battling out to return top web sites. At times, you might need a more specific answer, or in many cases, suggestions. Where the big three search engines return web sites, sometimes you need real answers. In comes Aardvark. at Vark.com.
Aardvark, or Vark, works unlike any other search. When you join, you configure your profile to search your questions via instant messenger including Google Talk, AIM, iChat, MSN Messenger and even Twitter. You may also be configured to receive questions and answer back, you are not going to be spammed with IM's all day. When you create a profile, you will be asked for topics you may fit in to answer question when necessary. Topics range from Theater to Psychology and jQuery and Engineering to my favorite, computer programming. You may even ask about animals or even math homework. The way this works is the network you are part of will be consulted first on your questions on the search. For each questions, six people will be contacted based on your questions category or topic. Not all six will accept your question, however, you may receive up to two answers, and within five minutes. All this is done via your instant messenger of your choice. When you configure the IM on your profile, you will receive a member or contact, Aardvark. You enter your question as a message to Aardvark on your IM, and will receive the answer from there as well.
I highly recommend Aardvark. If you find yourself in forums asking question with no results in days, or you sometimes want to get a suggestions form live persons rather that a search engine, you defiantly need Aardvark. Join here, Vark.com.

Tech Tools for Daily Use

Being that I work in technology, there are certain tools that I recommend for daily use. These tools are essential to consolidate the already overwhelming accounts for email, messaging and social networks. I will assume you have some or all the following services: Twitter, Facebook, MS, Yahoo and/or AOL instant massagers and various email accounts. Lets begin with Gmail. Utilize Gmail to consolidate all your email accounts into one. Gmail will enable you to receive mail from other accounts by setting them as a POP account. The other great feature of it is that you may reply from the email as the account it pertains to. When you use Gmail, you will save time checking emails, avoiding having to log into various accounts.  Here are Ten ways Gmail makes email easy. If you need an invite to Gmail, leave a Comment beginning with "GMAIL INVITE".
Moving on to social networks. To broadcast news and information, people like me utilize Facebook and Twitter. There are other social networks such as MySpace, Friendfeed, etc. When posting a feed, many either post a message to one site and a different message to the other. To keep with the consistency, I use a tool called Twhril with Ping.fm. Twhril is a tool for Twitter,posting a message to your account page. When applying Ping.fm, your Twitter message will also post to a social site that you configure, in my case, Facebook. This is done by utilizing an application key, creating an account on Ping.fm, configure Ping.fm to send messages to you Facebook account and create an application key. Then add the application key to the Thwril program's setting.
Finally, even with all the new technologies, I still use my Instant Messengers. With, account on MSN, Yahoo and AOL, I refuse to install all three IM programs. Therefore, I utilize Trillian. Trillian is a tool where with that one application, you may configure up to three IM's (AOL, MSN and Yahoo so far.) There is nothing too complicated to it.
These are essential applications to me, making it easier on my day to day activities and keeping in touch.

Apple Microsoft Partnership Anniversary and Twitter is Down

What a day! On this date 12 years ago, big Redmond (Microsoft) invested $150 Million worth of market priced non-voting shares of Apple, Inc. If you fallowed the Yahoo-Microsoft story, or what people are calling Micro-Hoo, it seems like déjà-vu to the Apple-Microsoft partnership.

In other news on this date, Twitter was hit hard by a Denial of Service attack, bringing Twitter.com to it's knees. The service has been down all morning. Oddly enough, I added my Twitter feed to this blog yesterday and I haven't been able to view it at all.

Ongoing Frustration over Microsoft

I have an ongoing battle regarding technology intellectual property versus the ability to buy that intellectual property. In the technology world, many have grown to dislike Microsoft’s brand. That is, in the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) or the Mac World, it’s understood that the big boy from Redmond, WA is not as cutting edge as it tries to present itself. Rather, it’s a technology player with deep pockets. Or as another analogy; Microsoft (MS) is the starting, weaker first baseman for a baseball team only because his father bought the uniforms and the equipment for the team. It is unfortunate that corporate America relies on “branding” rather than knowledge. It is my opinion that MS's brand almost never has developed innovative technology.
Take for instance, the contents of MS Office. MS Word was not the first of it’s kind for word processing. The concept was brought forth by the original graphical user interface (GUI) word processor called “Bravo”, developed by the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC).  MS Excel was known as a clone to the original VisiCalc. As for the rest of the Office Suite,  the list of buyouts goes on and on. Power Point was developed by Forethought, acquired by MS in 1987. FrontPage was developed by Vermeer Technologies, acquired in 1994 by MS. And the Visio Corporation, creator of Visio, was acquired in 2001. MS Project was developed by a company contracted by MS in 1984, and later purchased all the rights to Project in 1985.
You may ask yourself, “What about DOS? What about Windows?” Historically, MS DOS (Disk Operating System) was created for the IBM PC in 1982. However, MS did not have an operating system to sell, so they bought the rights to 86-DOS, aka, Q-DOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System) from Seattle Computer Products for $75,000. Small price to pay, for an operating system that now makes MS worth billions. When the computer world was getting tired of texted based operating systems, MS came out with Windows, the graphical user interface (GUI) operating system – or did they?
The first GUI operating system was created by the Xerox PARC. When Xerox executives in New York refused to commercialize their GUI operating system, and the concept of the mouse, Apple offered Xerox stock. In turn, Apple asked to allow their engineers to visit PARC to understand how their GUI works in order to create their own. At that time, MS was developing software for Apple and was accused of violating its copyright by appropriating the use of the "look and feel" of the Macintosh GUI.
From buyouts to settlements, MS has used their deep pockets to, in my opinion, “get their way”. The ever so popular MS Internet Explorer was originally coded by Spyglass, Inc. in 1994 and was know as Mosaic. MS licensed the code for a quarterly fee, and sold their Internet Explorer until they bundled it with Windows, making no revenue off the browser and still paying the fee. When Spyglass attempted to audit MS, big Redmond settled for $8 Million USD. In another case, MS license from Sun Microsystems the Java programming language. MS created J++ and the MSJVM (Microsoft Java Virtual Machine), the equivalent to Sun’s Java and JVM.  The MSJVM was to be in compliance with Sun, in order for Java and/or J++ to work on the MSJVM. In 2001 MS settled with Sun putting an end to J++ and the MSJVM. The concept of the MSJVM is similar to the CLR (Common Language Runtime) on .Net, and J++ was revived as J# on the .Net platform. J# was designed in attempt to migrate J++ programmers and Java programmers to the .Net platform. Eventually MS recycled J# into C#, MS’s primary language for the .Net platform.
To this day, I use MS products like Windows, Visual Studio and Outlook. I don’t negate the fact that their products, at times, are okay but expensive, I simply frustrate at the idea that MS comes off as the best brand in computing. MS is not an innovator,  nor an early adopter. MS is capitalism at it’s best, not a cutting edge technology force as many believe it is. Software developers around the globe develop new, innovative technology, and might possibly be the next victim to MS money web. I recommend to look for options, not brands. If you think the brand is more important than the technology, consider the list of MS products that they didn’t create, only stamps their name and logo on the box. If their is Free and Open Source Software to rely on, I choose it. Often times is it developed by early adopters and set the new trends on technology before corporate copycats get “influenced” to do the same.
I compiled a list of MS products I use or have used, their originator and alternate Free and Open Source Software I highly recommend.

MS Product	Originator	Alternative
Power Point	Forethought	OpenOffice
Word	“Bravo”	OpenOffice
Excel	“VisiCalc”	OpenOffice
Fox Pro	Fox Software	MySQL
Internet Explorer	SpyGlass	FireFox or Chrome
Outlook	Microsoft	Thunderbird
Windows	Xerox PARC	Linux

Social Networking for Dummies - nay, Beginners

Part 1

What is Social Networking anyway? We all know what socializing is, and a network is comprised of individuals or groups gathering or connected together. I’m not here to explain the technical structure of network nodes, and protocols, nay, this post was inspired by a few of my family members that in 2009, have yet to have experienced the likes of Facebook, Twitter, blogging, even instant messengers.
The first question you want to ask yourself if you want to be on social networks is, “Do I want to have a presence online?” The Internet is a huge place, when you’re online, you make the decision whether you want to be personal or professional, fun or boring, be yourself or your alter ego. Social Networks can be used for business or personal, in the sense that you can join groups within a network, for instance, audio engineering, or underwater basket weaving. You can reconnect with old friends or make new ones.
Let me try to put it all together for you now beginning with Facebook. Facebook is a social --- a website, where you can share thoughts, stories, experiences, feelings, so on and so on. As I mentioned, while online, you be or say what you want. I’d be careful though, I’ll tell you why later. You may choose to write about work or hobbies and interests, even studies. Facebook was create by a Harvard student to connect with other students in Harvard, to socialize or assist in their studies. You may create a Facebook account for free. Once you have, you could search for people by their names, emails, or companies. You might be surprised how many people are online, (200 million subscribers). As you look for people, Facebook automatically calls them your “Friends” if you add them even if they’re just acquaintances, you could also search for groups. The groups are where you could find new friends, people who share your interest. When you join groups, you can find yourself chatting with others and it’s your call if you want to add some members of said groups to your friends list.
So for beginners, why Facebook and not MySpace? First of all, that’s the social network. I have a MySpace, but it’s bombarded with spam (junk mail). To prove my point further, MySpace is currently changing their executives, Tom, those who know of MySpace, will be the New CEO while the current CEO will stepping down. This MySpace decision is mainly due to the lack of technology advances made on MySpace compared to Facebook. Moreover, I read an article on TechNewsWorld regarding user participation and how the users participation is part of their business model.
Now you know how to get started on Facebook, what now? Here are a few things you can do with a Facebook account:

• Update your list of friends with comments that you prefer to share. “I’m sleepy” or “I’m hungry” are pathetic updates. The comments could be business, or personal, for instance, “Any recommendations on Firewall Software” or “I hope the Cowboys draft a much needed back-up quarterback at this weekends draft.” Those comments may attract Computer Professionals or Cowboy fans that might likely comment back to you.
• Add pictures you want to share with your friends along with commentary like, “My kids and I caught a 5 lbs. Bass this weekend”.
• There are also online games you can play and share with your friends online as well.
• Share links to interesting websites or interesting articles online worth mentioning.
• And of course, what social gathering can resist an array of barter, sale or favor advertising. Free of charge you can barter, sell/buy or plainly ask for anything.

In essence, Facebook is a tool that you could use for fun or business. I will very gladly walk readers through more if need be by commenting on this blog of on my Facebook.
Gabriel Villa's Profile | Create Your Badge

Stay tuned for more social networking, Twitter, Blogging and Instant Messaging is next.

Ken Radio and Work Visas

A guy like me, loves technology, I try to be an early adopter of cutting edge technology when feasible, and will share my thoughts or recommendations to friends even strangers. For years I been reading blogs and technology audio or video shows. I think RSS (Real Simple Syndication) is an amazing invention. RSS is the format used to submit a web feed over the Internet. With RSS, Podcasting became possible, and I jumped on the bandwagon to listen to some incredible technologist on subjects from programming, hacking to media entertainment and technology, like Ken Radio.

I listen to Ken Radio’s “World Technology Round Up” and have been for about 6 yrs. now, maybe more. Yesterday’s show, and I think the subject began on April 1st show, disappointed me a little. Ken Rutkowski, the host, talked about Microsoft seeking fewer H-1B visas then in previous years. Of course, due to the recession in the US, the software giants is not the only one seeking employees within the United States in good faith to boost the economy and reduce the unemployment rate. For some reason, Rutkowski mentioned that was a bad move; seeking employees in the States. He claimed that countries like India and Singapore had more qualified candidates to work for a company like Microsoft than in the United States. He gave an example of Singapore mandates their people to be educated in three languages, and made a joke; “What do you call person that speaks two languages – bi-lingual. What do you call a person that speaks one language – American.” I think it was in poor taste for Rutkowski to air what he said. I’m a software developer, have a bachelors degree in Information Technology and an Associates in Mass Communications, and I am bi-lingual, did I mention I live in the United States. I don’t negate the fact the there are great engineers around the globe. I've worked in facilities with engineers from India, China and Nigeria but I have also with Americans from Wyoming, Texas, New Mexico, Colorado and Arizona.

Confiker – April Fools????

Take precaution, the Conficker virus, or variants of the virus, will attack to the masses on April 1st. Or is is a Joke? The Conficker virus is a worm that shuts down your defenses on your computer, i.e. security updates on both Windows update and virus software, making it difficult to detect, much less remove. The worm in turn connects to the Internet connecting with other infected computers, creating a botnet, or a network or computer collaborating in an effort. Botnets are used as servers to send spam email, or send DOS (Denial-of-service) attacks. Much like the “I Love You” Bug or similar virus attacks have capabilities to maliciously bring down servers or super computers in banks, stock firms even government offices. If you are infected, your computer will seem slow, especially the Internet speed.

It’s not recommended that you search for Conficker protection or “FREE” protection software, for those site may already by contaminated. I recommend to take extreme measure and follow these few steps:

Update virus software (If you don’t have virus software, get Norton Security Scan from Google Pack.)

Update you operating system (Microsoft Update) – if you’re a Mac or Linux user, ignore this step.

Don’t open email from unknown senders .

Permanently delete Junk Mail, don't leave in the Junk Mail Box or on the Trash Bin.

Scan ALL attachments, with your updated virus software.

Don't accept friends on instant messengers or IRC chats that you don't recognize.

Don't click on ANY pop-up screens.

Chrome Problems

I been browsing the Web looking for problems on Chrome that I have encountered, and frankly, Google search doesn’t have any recent results in problems with Chrome. I’m not a huge social network kinda guy, but I find that Chrome does not do too well on Facebook or Flickr, for me in this case. If you recall, I defaulted Chrome as my main browser, and since then, I been pretty happy at the speed of it until now. Google Chrome has crashed or frozen on me on sites such as Facebook and Flickr and music site Pandora. I’m still on the latest build, 2.0.169.1. I will continue testing Chrome, while searching for the problem and posting an update whether this is a patch problem or a simple configuration issue.

Earth Hour

Being that today, Earth Hour will be celebrated, I figure I put my two cents in. I still don’t know what I will do at 8:30 tonight. It’s Saturday night, the kids like to sleep late, usually watching new episodes of Zack and Cody or Phineas and Ferb. The good thing is that my boys (6 and 8 yr) are interested in being Green. We recycle plastic bottles, and recently began collecting organic left over's to create our own compost for our trees and plants. I hope our baby (9 mo.) will sleep during that time, but we will turn off all our lights, and TV for one hour. In addition, from work, I will turn off our neon signs, and all the lights from 7 pm. on until tomorrow.

IE 8 Hacked…. as was Safari and Firefox

The CanSecWest Conference in Vancouver going on now until tomorrow, March 20th, 2009, reported the IE 8 has been hacked by a hacker who calls himself Nils. Soon, Nils successfully hacked the latest versions of Safari and Firefox. A competition called PWN2OWN was put on yesterday to exploit IE 8, Firefox and Chrome on Windows 7 platform and Safari and Firefox on Macintosh. Along with desktop browser, the competition includes exploiting mobile devices of the following popular platforms; Blackberry, Android, iPhone, Nokia and Windows Mobile.

Based on the information from this article and as of this post, the only successful hacks were IE 8, Safari and Firefox. Hackers at the conference state there is less research on mobile devices to find possible bugs to exploit the phone.

Whoa! Google Chrome

This September, Google released an open source web browser, Chrome. A comic posted by Google, “Google Chrome – Behind the Open Source Browser Project” explains the browser in it’s entirely – read it. Based on my messing with the browser, it is faster, more secure, and most importantly, free and open source. Google states instead of rolling out one version with tons of features having to wait a year for a release candidate, they update two version as often as possible. Of the two releases, being stable and developer versions, I've use build 1.0.154.48 without a problem. Chrome didn’t need add-on installation or configuration at first run. Flash and PDF’s easily ran on sites with those files.

With the release of the developer Beta, I decided to make Chrome my sole default browser yesterday, utilizing version 2.0.169.1. The new Beta is 25% faster than the previous, and reports it was 35% faster than the first release. I didn’t see much of a difference between my now version and previous builds. However I did see a faster reaction in Chrome compared to Firefox (my old default browser), and defiantly faster than IE 7. Did someone say Internet Explorer? This week will probably be a busy browser testing week, with IE releasing version 8 today. So far, comparing Chrome to Firefox, both are open source, however, as you install add-ons to Firefox, it slows performance. Chrome renders quicker resulting in faster loading times. JavaScript processes quicker as well in Chrome.

Chrome also release Chrome Experiments, 15 projects showcasing complex JavaScript on Chrome, versus other browsers. When Apple released its public beta for Safari 4 last month, it claimed that Safari was "the world's fastest and most innovative browser." Today Microsoft’s IE 8 was released, and it previously reported to come out on top of Chrome 1.0 and Firefox 3.05 loading 12 out of the top 25 Web sites. Check out Google Experiments, I think Google Gravity was the best, using JavaScript to shatter the Google Homepage, shifting and shaking it around as you resize or move your window. I tested them myself on Chrome and Firefox…. I yet to install IE 8 to try this. Another favorite, was DOMTRS, utilizing the Document Object Model and JavaScript for an old favorite.

I did manage to to stall Chrome, for some reason, while trying to import my bookmarks from another browser it crashed. I realized it only imported my IE bookmarks and not Firefox.

iPhone News; apple + x and apple + v

Does anyone get tired of iPhone news? And here it is, more news about the iPhone. What is the BIG news now, cut and paste. That’s right, cut and past (ctl + x and ctl + v) or for you Apple fans, (apple + x and apple + v). Now I’m a mobile device user myself, Windows Mobile, and I know how that can be useful, however, enough to make news of it is uncalled for. Although the announcements of iPhone changes include peer-to-peer networking, which might makes any device connect directly to other devices. The more intriguing news of iPhone 3.0 take a back seat to cut and paste.

Kumo

If you haven't heard by now, Microsoft is renaming their search engine service to Kumo. Moving into the buzzword era of “Cloud Computing”, the word Kumo means “cloud” in Japanese. The giant who is infamous for codenaming projects, claims Kumo is a test program. Since http://kumo.com can not be accessed yet, nor can Microsoft confirm Kumo, I took the liberty to Whois the domain:

Registrant:

Microsoft Corporation

Domain Administrator

One Microsoft Way

Redmond, WA 98052

US

Email: domains@microsoft.com

DNS Servers:

ns1.msft.net

ns4.msft.net

ns5.msft.net

ns2.msft.net

ns3.msft.net

Based on Whois information, Kumo sits on the same domainname servers as live.com.

Since Microsoft failed to buy Yahoo, Kumo is meant to compete with Google head on. It claims its search results will include three pane results. Why panes, in a for instance, if the search was for a music artist, the panes would include categories such as lyrics, discography or biography. Still, the question remains, will MSN still be around.

When Live was launched, I figured it would replace MSN, yet, Internet browser IE will automatically homepage MSN in all versions to date, correction, I haven't seen IE 8. So how will Microsoft compete with Google and Yahoo when IE users, when searching, will use their homepage to search, and most cases MSN homepage? If Microsoft wants my 2 cents, I think IE 8 should tie in more with Kumo, or in the current case, Live.com, having the option to having the search service as it’s homepage and their search being the default search engine.

New Blade Servers…. from Cisco?

I’m not a big hardware guy, we recently switched to three new Dell PCs in one office, all to connect via Terminal Services to our Dell Servers. With the lingering login, error messages and printer problems, the news about Cisco Systems entering the server market caught my eye.

Cisco Systems, Inc. revealed that in the past two years have been developing and designing servers in secrecy. The Wall Street Journal published today that Cisco will start publicly building its own “blade” servers, putting Cisco head on with it’s own partner, HP co. The effort is in conjunction with Cisco’s Unified Computing System (UCS), a platform design for next generation datacenters. In the simplest terms, the servers were the missing piece necessary for Cisco to unite networks, data storage and virtualization. Already with a large market share in Cisco routers and switches, dominating the majority of the hardware components needed for UCS, Cisco on Monday partnered with software giants, Microsoft, VMware and BMC Software to name a few. Cisco will hold a BladeSystems summit in Las Vegas in April focusing on data center technologies.

Gnawing Back

I revived an old blog post that wasn’t time sensitive, and after a hiatus, I’m gnawing my way back into technology. I simply write about tech news that inspire me. I might do this daily, weekly, I don’t know. I had a good run of post before, then I fell off the technology world.

I traveled a lot this week, back and forth from Roswell, NM…. yes Roswell.

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So I was saying, I heard about the new iPod Shuffle. I didn’t like the new generation shuffle. The controls are on the headphone. Meaning, proprietary headphones, more money for Apple, and you can’t use your own headphones until some third party hardware company creates an adapter so you may comfortably use your favorite ear candy. Of course, the price is up a little, to $79. With it comes 40 gigs of space, and the ability to import playlist unlike the old shuffle I have. It’s still available in a variety of colors.

So I already mentioned I have a 1st generation shuffle, and I once had a 1st generation iPod, but I switched to Zune. It’s not too different from the iTouch, however, I hate the software companion. Which brings me to an iTunes hack I came across. I give iTunes two thumbs up vs. Zune software and lame “Marketplace”. . There’s scripting involved, which I can’t wait to dig into, but for now, that’s all I got. Like I said, I been traveling a lot, I yet to tried this out.