Archive for category Internet

How to stop those annoying auto DM Twitter messages

Posted by Johann in Internet on June 17th, 2009

One of the most annoying things about Twitter is auto direct messages. Someone follows you, you follow back out of courtesy, and in return you get an automated message from that person thanking you for following them. Multiply this by 10 or 20 new followers each day, and a new form of spam is born. I must confess that shortly after I joined Twitter I signed up at TweetLaterand I enabled an auto DM to anyone who followed me. However, once I started using Twitter I realised how much of an annoyance this is and I disabled it on my account. Because of automated DM’s I started ignoring all DM’s.

Fortunately, it’s possible to disable most automated direct messages. Most automated messages comes from two service providers: SocialToo and TweetLater To opt out of automated DM’s from TweetLater, just visit their opt out Twitter account and follow the instructions.
1.    Follow @optmemout
2.    Wait for the follow back
3.    Send @optmeout any DM
4.    Unfollow @optmeout

To opt out of SocialToo:
1.    Visit www.socialtoo.com
2.    Register for an account, filling in your Twitter account details
3.    Once logged in, click on the Preferences tab at the top right corner of the window.
4.    Enable the option “Turn off automatic Direct Messages from other users”

Since I’ve completed these steps, I’ve seen a drastic reduction in the number of automated direct messages. A few still comes through, but it’s not nearly as spammy as it was before.

Twitter

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“FEAR GRIPS GOOGLE!” – Oh really?

Posted by Johann in Internet on June 16th, 2009

nypmasthead2

I just stumbled across this article, about Microsoft’s new search engine Bing, which was written by the New York Post. The article has a sensationalist headline, implying that Microsoft has finally built a Google killer, which has been acknowledged by Google in the form of a crisis management team. This is just silly. Of course Google will investigate any new possible competitors, to ensure that they don’t have any obvious advantage. As is written in the article itself, most people use Google and will continue using it. There is a certain amount of inertia involved before people will change their habits, and although Bing is good, it’s not really better than Google.

I guess this article just demonstrates that news sells, and there’s no news like bad news.

Bing, Google, NYPost

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Google docs support Office 2007 formats

Posted by Johann in Internet, Technology on June 3rd, 2009

logo_docs

I read about this on iMod,and thought I’d write a short entry about it myself. Google Docs can now open Office 2007 documents, making it the simplest and most universal way of converting Office documents. It has been hugely frustrating that Microsoft changed their file formats. Now thanks to Google, there’s no more asking someone to save their document in an older format, just because you don’t want to spend a couple of R1000 on the new version of Office.

Google, Microsoft Office

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Google Local Business Center

Posted by Johann in Internet on June 3rd, 2009

Google just launched yet another awesome product. You can now add your business details to Google Maps. That way anyone browsing the maps will be able to find your business (if they have the local business layers enabled):

Sample business screen shot

It’s really simple to add your business.

1. Navigate to http://www.google.com/local/add. If you have a Google account already, you can just sign in with that. Otherwise you’ll have to create a Google account first.

2. Once you’re logged in, you’ll be presented with the following screen:

Screen shot 1

3. Next, you’ll be able to specify various other properties related to your business, such as pictures, videos and other things.

Screen shot 2 4. Finally, Google will have to verify your business by either telephone or SMS. They even supports the local cellphone networks!

Screen shot 3 Now anyone can find your business when they search Google maps. Google will display detailed analytics data when you log into your Local Business Center. It will display the number of times your business was viewed, as well as how many people clicked on your listing.

More info:

Google

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Tuks FM’s website is an epic fail

Posted by Johann in Internet on May 31st, 2009

I recently visited the new TuksFM website, and was apalled at what I saw. The site is completely flash driven, with mystery meat navigation everywhere. You can’t really figure out what’s what, you need to hover and click on stuff to see what happens. And whenever you click on anything you need to wait another minute or so until the next flash page loads. Extremely frustrating.

Hovering over some of the buildings will let it pop up, and become clickable. The thing is, what is "The Diner"? What info will I access if I click it?

Even the sitemap is a disaster. Some of the text are links, others are not.

Tuks FM

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Archive for category Internet