How to stop those annoying auto DM Twitter messages
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.
“FEAR GRIPS GOOGLE!” – Oh really?
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.
BMW European Delivery – the ultimate way to buy a new Bimmer
BMW European delivery is an option very few people know about. Apparently this has been going on since the 80′s. I’m not sure if it’s available for South African customers, but many rich Americans have made use of it. Basically, what you do is to order your new BMW directly from BMW Germany. You then fly over there, collect your car from BMW Welt (an awesome experience in itself), drive around Europe and Germany (on the roads the car was designed for) and have a good time. You then drop the car off at any one of the pre-designated drop-off points and the car gets shipped to your home country.
This would be an awesome holiday. Yes, you can just fly over there and rent a car for your holiday. However, renting an M BMW for two weeks will probably cost you more than this program. I’ve put this on my want-list for when I win the lottery…
An interview with Keri-Lynn Shaw, manager of BMW European delivery: http://www.bmwblog.com/2008/10/29/interview-with-keri-lynn-shaw-manager-bmw-european-delivery.
Epic movie cars, together at last!
Posted by Johann in Cars, Cool stuff on June 3rd, 2009
[via Jalopnik]
Google docs support Office 2007 formats
Posted by Johann in Internet, Technology on June 3rd, 2009
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.
Social Links