I have to give it to Verizon Wireless. They actually have quite an expansive Twitter presence that provides quality help and information to all that follow. Of course, with a fair bit of marketing spin and promotional materials/links too, but that’s expected. They let their Twitter folks post what they like (it would seem), so they aren’t a complete and total bore to follow.

That said, I think they might be keeping them on the short end of the information leash. This isn’t the first time I’ve gotten a response like this from them. Shocking? It was, but not really.

You see, VZW is a huge company. Like massive. And, since it is a spin off of the company that sprang from Ma Bell’s loin’s herself, there is still a little bit of what the kids like to call bureaucracy. And everyone know the best way for information to not get passed around is to turn it loose in a bureaucracy, right?

Not familiar with the Nexus One, not familiar with the HTC Incredible (idiot name, but that’s for another post), not all that up on Blackberry stuff either. Of course, this particular person is a just marketing wag…oh, wait.

I guess my point here is this. Just because a company has a Twitter/Facebook/Orkut/Pornhub presence doesn’t necessarily mean they are truly plugged in to what is going on out here in the wild west known as the Internet. I would even go so far as to guess that most Corporate Twitter Users don’t have access to sources like Engadget, Gizmodo, BGR or Crackberry. Most likely blocked by the neck bearded admins who think sites like those will crash their Novell Networks and make IE6 do crazy shit.

I’m just saying.

The latest, greatest thing to come from Google was announced this week and has been rolling out to Gmail users as well. I finally got mine turned on yesterday and have a few thoughts.

If you want more information about what Google Buzz is, checkthis news search.

It most closely resembles FriendFeed, but it works like a cross between Twitter and Facebook. Being built into Gmail is a bonus, so you get one stop shopping. It seems to be pretty cool, but there are a few things I’m noticing.

• When sharing items from other sites, they double post
• It would appear that I’m limited to following only my friends or friends of friends
• It’s slow. Maybe not so much slow as it is laggy, especially when opening images.
• Sharing a video is slightly cumbersome and, as far as I know, it only works with YouTube. More testing is still needed
• Unlike FriendFeed, I’m not able to add any site to my feed that I like via XML. I thought that it was tied to the sites listed in my Google Profile, but that is not the case

I think it’s cool, but I have the distinct impression that it is not quite done. Yet.

Found on Twitter

First up in my find isn’t so much an app as it is a browser bookmarklet called Readability. I didn’t find this one as an add, but from following a link in a tweet in someone I follow (apologies if this was you, it’s been a while so I do not remember). Readability is by far the handiest thing I’ve used in quite some time.

Imagine if you will, going to a website like, oh, I don’t know, this one.

That is the Droid review at PCWorld.com as viewed in Google Chrome on my Mac. What a mess, until you click on the Readability bookmarklet. Instead of that mess up there, you instead get this wonderful page to read.

Wonderful. No ads, no cruft, just the story I want to read in large type with wide margins. You can customize the experience in many ways and it only takes a few minutes to setup. Oh yea, and it’s free. You really need to try this out.

The app that I found via an advertisement in Tweetie is a brilliant interface to Gmail called MailPlane. Yes, it is a desktop app to access a web based app. But it makes using Gmail so much better! I’m not sure if any of you have tried Fluid with Gmail, but it is very similiar to that experience.

With MailPlane you get drag and drop support, multiple account support that makes switching between accounts a snap, Growl support for messages and the ability to easily make it your default mail client. I’ve been using this for almost a month on the free trial and can tell you that I will be handing over my $24.95 happily next week. I’ve been looking for something exactly like this for quite a while now and am very pleased with how it works, especially when comparing to only using Gmail in a browser.

Sadly, MailPlane is Mac only. If you are a Gmail user and a Mac user, you should take the time to download this and check it out. The first 30 days are free, so why not.

If I were to go back and modified my top 5 mac applications, these 2 would definitely make the cut. If you try them out, I’m sure the rest of the class would be interested in what you thought about them. Comment below with your thoughts or opinions.

That’s right, I said it. I hate Safari.

Gasp! Boo! Hiss! Go on, get it out of your system.

There are many things that this brilliant iMac sitting on my desk does that I absolutely adore. There are many apps that I run on a daily or almost daily basis that I also think are quite keen. Keen enough to remember their name so I can fire them up in QuickSilver or that they have earned a place in the all mighty dock.

Safari is not one of them.

It’s not the way Safari looks, because it is a good looking app. And, it’s not because of how it displays websites. It is the way Safari works with a few websites, sometimes, stability and how tabs work.

In Firefox (all versions, all operating systems) and Internet Explorer v7 & v8 and Google Chrome (and, quite possibly Opera, although I never use that) you can close a tab 2 different ways using the mouse. You can either click on the ‘X’ (which, on all of these browsers is on the right, Safari is on the left) or you can press the middle/scroll wheel of your mouse anywhere on the tab. That might sound niggling, but it really slows me down. Having the use the CMD key with a mouse click has never worked for me. I’m either using a keyboard shortcut or the mouse, not both.

Then there is stability. I have recently discovered that by not keeping my cache and history tidy and neat, Safari does nothing more than crash while trying to start. Not only does it crash repeatedly when trying to start, it will sometimes crash altogether with the only fix being a complete system restart. And, since there isn’t an internet options in System Preferences (like Windows), there is no way that I’m aware of to correct it. In all of the other browsers, having a messy cache or lots of history just slows things down a bit.

Another minor thing is the lack of a status bar by default. I always check where links go in the status bar, and not having it seriously annoys me. I shouldn’t have to do a google search to find how to turn this on. Sure, it’s a hold over from my Windows days, but better safe than sorry, right?

And, finally, there is Gmail. And also, there isn’t Gmail. But, it is. Gmail is my email application. While I don’t live in there all the time, it is what I use to send and receive email (since replaced by Mailplane, more on that later). And with Safari (or Webkit, but not Chrome oddly enough) it just acts weird. And, only sometimes.

For example, on occasion when replying to an email, I click reply and start typing. Normally, the text just shows up in the email box like it is supposed to. Sometimes, and again, only with Safari, the reply window fails to grab focus, so when I start typing, the Gmail keyboard shortcuts kick in and do everything from deleting the message entirely to opening my task window. The annoying part is that it is hit or miss. If it did this consistently, I could work around it. But that’s the problem. It only seems to happen when Safari is having a bad day.

For the record, I have been using Google Chrome since it was released for the Mac and, at least for me, it’s been fantastic. It’s been my default browser for more than a month and so far so good. On occasion I do have to duck into Firefox for something specific or to use an extension, but for daily browsing, Chrome is it for me. Bonus it’s fast. Fastest on my Mac by a long shot.

Comments are open. Go ahead, do your best!

You do not need any fancy, over priced software to ‘clean up’ your PC or ‘fix’ your Windows registry. Those programs do nothing but separate your from your hard earned cash and, sometimes, make your problems worse.

Instead, let us take a stab at doing a little bit of PC maintenance ourselves. You will be amazed at how a few minutes of work on your part will make things faster. This is easy stuff and there isn’t anything I’m about to explain that will cause your computer to stop working. Honest!

This is for those of you still running Windows XP. Many of these steps also apply to Vista and Windows 7, but the folders are in different locations.

First thing is go into the Control Panel and find the icon labeled Add/Remove Programs. Open that and get a beverage while you wait for it to load. Once it’s loaded, go through the list and start removing programs that you no longer need or use like Real Player or Music Match or any of the many games that might have been preinstalled by the computer maker. You can uninstall anything you want as long as it isn’t something by Microsoft (short of Works) or your Anti Virus software. If you don’t know what A/V you are running STOP! This tutorial is not for you. Please contact me for personal assistance.

Once you have cleaned up your programs, reboot your computer and be prepared to tackle the start menu. Right click on the Start button and choose Explore all users. Navigate to the folder called Startup and remove everything that might be listed there. You don’t need any of it. Trust me.

Reboot again.

You should notice some speed increases by now. And you are almost done. Go ahead and empty the Recycle Bin by right clicking on it and choose empty. Once that is done, go into your My Computer and right click on your C: drive. Choose Properties and click on the Tools tab. There, click on the button labeled Defragment and run that. It will take a bit of time, so go refill your beverage while it runs.

Once it’s done, reboot once more.

Voila!

Your computer should be running noticeably faster by now. Not bad for less than an hours work, right?

If yours is still creeping along, contact me and I will be able to further assist you.

I’ve not had the chance to work on many Windows Vista machines. Most of my customers are still way behind the technology curve with their Windows XP. But, on the rare occassion I have worked with Vista, it’s almost always for the same thing.

There is/was a problem with some of the Vista updates and how they interact with early OEM installation images. Particularly Dell, HP and Compaq. Turns out when you apply said updates, the computer get stuck in the following reboot loop.

Configuring updates 3 of 3. 0% complete

It does that, goes to a screen that says shutting down and reboots. Right back to this screen. Neat.

Before I go further, you can search google all you want, but the only way to reliably fix this is to reinstall Windows Vista. Try all the other stuff if you are getting paid by the hour, but if you have other things to do, back up the users data and reinstall Windows.

But how do you kill it? That’s the easy part. After watching this happen 3 times and thinking this is the time it’s going to work when it doesn’t, then it’s time to do a system restore. System restored to a point prior to the update installation, computer reboots.

Of course, upon reboot, the updates are still there, waiting to be applied. And, if the computer is set to apply updates automatically and you don’t pay attention, they do just that. Which then causes the reboot loops again.

Rinse. Repeat.

After a few of these, voila! One Blue Screen of Death. Of course, at that point, a reload is the only option since even a system restore only repeats the process. Not only that, but the computer still doesn’t update.

From what I understand, the real best fix for this is to install Windows 7. I’ve only seen it in passing, so I’m not yet very familiar with it but hope to be fixing that shortly after 2010 starts.

This is something that I’ve been thinking about for the past few months and I finally have enough of a thought about to put words to screen. Today, I would like to discuss with you, the fine donburnside.com readership, the like button.

The Like Button is what I’m going to call the process in which, at certain sites, you mark something in such a way to signify the fact that you appreciate it. The favorite star on Flickr, the pink heart on Tumblr, or the star on Twitter. Clicking that device tells the author that you liked it while at the same time acts as a bookmark for you, within that site, for the stuff that you really like. And that’s exactly how I use it. I like things because I think they are cool and I want to be able to go back to them at a later time for whatever reason.

Did you notice that I did not include the Facebook like function in the above paragraph? It’s because I think that feature is broken.

On Facebook, clicking like only lets the author of the post know that you like it and automatically subscribes you to updates on that post (if you have those settings enabled). That’s too bad.

There are posts all the time on Facebook that I wish I could revisit for many reasons. Funny posts, cool links or videos. But when I click the like button, the only thing that happens is I get bothered with updates and comments that I’m usually not interested in.

I don’t have a solution for this but really wish I did. I would be nice to have an archive of likes on Facebook, just like the other sites.

Maybe someday.

Does this feature exist? Do you have a good system? Let us know below! Comments are back open, go nuts!

Holiday Computer Updates

Since you are going to be there anyway, now would be a great time to check the computers of your users for updates, security issues and other crazy things that they usually bug you about during the year. Here is a quick list of those things that you can do quickly to save them, and you, headaches for the new year.

Windows

• Put them on OpenDNS. You could use GoogleDNS, but I still prefer OpenDNS for the safety factor and I think, at least for me, it’s faster. Those addresses are:
• 208.67.222.222
• 208.67.220.220
• Run Windows update. If they are on XP, make sure you get Service Pack 3 and Internet Explorer v8
• Run a full adware/virus scan with Malwarebytes. It’s free, takes about 20 minutes and will remove just about anything that is bad on their systems
• Check the status of their AntiVirus. Make sure it’s still working and up-to-date. If it’s not a current version, uninstall it and install AVG Free.
• Go into Add/Remove programs. Uninstall Realplayer, MusicMatch and anything else that is no longer relevant and probably not used
• If you are feeling brave, clean up their startup. Check All Users –> Start Menu –>Start Up and delete anything there that isn’t needed.
• Continue with the startup clean up. Open the registry (Start->Run->regedit) and navigate to HKEY Local Machine ->Software ->Microsoft ->Windows ->Current Version ->Run. Delete anything there that doesn’t need to be running when the computer starts.
• You could install FireFox, Chrome or Safari. Make sure to set it as the default browser. There was a zero day problem with IE8 last week, so it’s still not safe.
• **Updated**. If you are sending a PC to the UK, make sure to hit the voltage switch on the power supply to avoid any explosions or fuse blowing.

Mac

• Restart the computer

No matter what, make this the year you really bug your users about backing up. Anymore, external hard drives are so cheap, there is no excuse. Get one and install Crash Plan (Free, Win/Mac/Linux) and set it up.

Start to finish, this should take you about an hour. It’s also going to make your users computer experience better, faster and safer. Not only that, but it will save you from those phone calls later in the year. They will be forever grateful.

Good morning internet. How was your weekend? Mine was great, thanks for asking!

Last week Facebook updated their privacy settings again. I would bet that most of you just clicked through and ignored them like you usually do.

You shouldn’t have done that.

If you’ve never modified your privacy settings before, congratulations! All of your profile information is now 100% open to the public, completely searchable by sites like Google, Yahoo and Bing. Exciting stuff, right?

Wait? What? You don’t want your information to be public? Now would be a great time to click the settings link in the top right hand corner of your screen and choose the option called Privacy Settings. It’s going to take a few minutes and you can even preview your public profile to tune it just right. And you can change the privacy settings on your photo galleries while you are there too. Good times! Finally, when you are doing this, you can even preview your public profile so you can really fine tune the settings.

Now, before anyone gets all crazy over this, just relax. Facebook isn’t automatically indexing your information on Google or the other search sites, they are just making your information publicly available so that the search sites (among others. Google your name to see more) will be able to see your profile. It’s really not that big of a deal and definitely isn’t something that requires ALL CAPITAL LETTERS AND MAKE SURE YOU REPOST THIS ON YOUR PROFILE FACEBOOK IS A BIG EVIL MONSTER GAAAAHHHHHH! Back in the shop we call that F.U.D. And nobody likes that.

Have a great week! It was nice to see you again. We should get together to do this again soon.

Don’t be a stranger.

Don

I came across a fun article at Wired (thanks CJ (again)!) today that uses the following the describe the difference between RAM and a hard drive.

You employ your best explanation about the difference between HD gigabytes and RAM gigabytes (my favorite is to say that RAM is the kitchen countertop and the HD is the store-cupboard. The bigger the countertop, the less trips you make to the store cupboard, and the faster you cook). You’re done, happy that you have made things clear. “So if I add more RAM, I can keep more photos?” Gah!

That’s good, sure. But, I prefer the following.

Think of RAM as being a desk of a fixed size. On a small desk, it’s gets cluttered quickly and you run our of room to work. If you could make the desk larger, you would have more room to work or could work on more projects at the same time. Then, imagine when you turn off your office light light and turn it back on, your desk is clean and ready to be worked on again. This is RAM.

Hard drive is where everything gets stored, or saved, so you can access it later. That’s where your photos and documents and music is stored. This is more like a file cabinet. When you turn your office light off, everything in the file cabinet stays put and is all there, ready to to be used next time you need them.

But, that’s just me.

No related, if you haven’t checked out Tumblr lately, you should. It’s my new favorite thing and I’m really having a good time with it.