To understand why I left Facebook, you have to know why I joined i the first place. Those of you who know me, are aware that I had spent the last 20 odd years trying to find my brother- and my Facebook profile was a last ditch effort to make it easy for him to find me and vice versa. Well, it worked and we did find each other thanks to the site. However, as an unexpected side effect, a LOT of people also got in contact with me- mostly people who I went to high school with back in Africa, even an Australian penpal I had in elementary school. At first, it was exciting to pore through everyone's photos, seeing their kids, families and what they had generally been up to in the last 15 years.

Once I had caught up, however, I became more aware of how many emails, requests and notifications I was getting every day.  It felt like every moment I was getting something forwarded to my Superwall, superpoked, sent hotness, or being added as a friend by people I didn't know-and frankly, didn't want to know. There were fewer and fewer people with actual things to say.

It just became too much. My days are already so filled between IM'ing and Skype chatting with friends, Twitter-ing, not to mention my real life stuff going on that I barely have time to dedicate to people who want to have a conversation. So yesterday I deleted my photo albums and deactivated my  Facebook account. I may go back in the future, who knows, but for now I'm enjoying the sweet silence of a sheep-free day.

1. I knew Vista was on its way, but I was still surprised the first time I saw it.

2. Preparing for Vista was time-consuming and somewhat expensive.

3. Programs that worked before, no longer worked properly once Vista arrived.

4. In spite of all the reading I had done, I still found myself unprepared for Vista when it got here.

5. Sometimes Vista would 'forget' things I had already taught it.

6. Everyone who saw Vista when it came out thought it was adorable. But no one wanted to have to live with it.

7. Vista kept me up some nights trying to get it all together.

8. Once I had Vista, there was no sending it back.

9. Every now and again Vista makes a big old mess that I have to clean up.

10. Still, I love my Vista and wouldn't trade it in for anything else.

Here's a good one I discovered on Geekbrief- it's called CommonCraft and it explains tech phenomenons in terms that even Granny can understand. Here's their video explaining what Twitter is. Bear with me, embedded YouTube videos play at snail's pace!

This cool animation demonstrates where we might be if the 'computer' hadn't been invented!
Reality Desktop - video powered by Metacafe

Netvibes is a customizable page that acts as a kind of all-encompassing dashboard. You can put information from most of your social networking sites, Update your Twitter status, check your email headers, read your RSS feeds and much more. But here's the killer feature- build your page and not only can you use it on various devices, but there is also a mobile version that I can access easily from my Ubi! So, if you're like me and have accumulated an arsenal of devices, Netvibes can help bring them all together.

This looks like it could be the application once its fully developed and released- in fact there isn't even something comparable to this for the desktop! The world just keeps getting smaller with cool networking applications like this.

Here's more information from the Yahoo site:

 

EXPECTED Q2 2008

Yahoo! oneConnect™

A whole new way to communicate on your phone.

• Overview
• Contacts
• Conversations
• Email
• Status
• Pulse

Mobile communications that will bring your world to life.

It’s time for a revolution—for a new way of communicating that starts with your mobile phone. Yahoo! oneConnect™ will be the first product that brings it all together—your people, your life, the ways you communicate—seamlessly, into the palm of your hand.

Stay in touch with anyone, any way you want.

With Yahoo! oneConnect you’ll be free to use all your favorite communications tools and services to connect with anyone, at anytime. From IM or text, email or social networks; Yahoo! oneConnect intends to integrate all the ways you communicate into a unique, mobile experience. Imagine having all your contact information at your fingertips; email, phone numbers, text, and IM addresses; in one location—your phone.

See your friends in a whole new light.

Keep up with your social life with Yahoo! oneConnect and stay in the moment with your people. It’s designed to let you view new postings on Facebook®, photos on MySpace or a connection on LinkedIn®. See who’s online, available or nearby, based on your friends’ up-to-the-minute actions. Yahoo! oneConnect keeps a pulse on your people, delivering the most current action, right to your phone.

Yahoo! oneConnect product details are not finalized and subject to change. Descriptions and screen images are for informational purposes only. All third party marks are the trademarks of their respective owners. Neither this site nor the Yahoo! oneConnect service are endorsed by or affiliated with the third parties shown.

Get the latest news
on Yahoo! oneConnect

Download the press release

View your favorite networks

Yahoo! oneConnect™ will bring together your communities, social and professional networks. We plan to support:

• Bebo
• Dopplr
• Facebook®
• Flickr™
• Friendster®
• hi5
• Last.fm
• LinkedIn®
• MySpace®
• Twitter™

 

 

PC Magazine is celebrating its 25th anniversary, and the edition features a lot of articles with both real and imagined computing solutions for the next 25 years.

Well, it seems to be that time of year when I am generally disatisfied with my Live Space. I don't exactly know why, but I just feel a bit blah about it. Vox has recently caught my eye after I got an email notifying me that Splashblog was closing its doors. It took a short time for me to set up a new blog over there and they have a phone application which is almost as convenient as Splashblog was.  Head on over to my Vox Page and see what you think. Jury is still out on if this will mean I finally say goodbye to Windows Live!

As promised, here's a shot of my new PC (well, at least the screen and keyboard). It certainly hits my sweet spot!

I've just been loading it up with some of my standard goodies, but now I am truly able to get the Sidebar gadgets I reaally want without worrying about them slowing me down! Which means that I can use the i-See gadget and catch up on all my Geekbriefs!

Yeah, I said it. They really effing suck! Here's the saga of the royal mess they have made of our connectivity:

On Monday I called to tell them we would be moving on the 29th and would like our service cancelled on the 30th, The MORON  that I spoke to went ahead and cancelled the service effective immediately. As soon as I got the confirmation email and saw the effective date I called back and tried to get the situation rectified. But, here's the delightful thing...even though it was their error to disconnect the service, they claim they have no way to quickly restore the service. So we have had no internet in the house for the past 3 days, and now they tell us that the service "should be" back on by May 22nd.

I hate Verizon, and I would never use them again because they are completely useless, have sucky customer service and have outsourced to the absolute dregs of call centers where you are forced to repeat yourself over and over before they tell you that there is no way they can help you.

*Rant off*

Wow! Here's a pretty cool sight- today I picked up the cables needed and was able to hook up my laptop to a television.  What you can see in the pictures is my desktop showing on the TV.The major advantage to doing that is that all the movie clips that I have on my laptop, our shared external 250GB hard drive, and the recorded shows I have from Tivo To Go can be watched on the large TV screen.

If my post from yesterday seemed a bit odd and brief, it was-that's because I was testing out the new Windows Live Writer beta. This is one neat program which makes blogging from my pcs so much easier. Its almost like just typing into a Word document and then you 'publish' the entry into the web. It also lets you blog offline and then publish at a later time.

For me, the crucial selling point is the way it handles images. The image above of the Live Writer was obtained as easily as doing usingthe print screen and then pasting it right into the text field! (Hey, Quikboy-Michael- there's your answer!) It also works for Blogger and a couple of other blogs. Love it!

I downloaded the upgrade to IE7 on my desktop PC but its only within the context of Vista that it really shines. One of the features which I use all the time now is the built-in RSS reader. I don't know why I have always been hung up on having a third-party RSS reader (probably just habit from PDA devices) but this makes perfect sense:

Another program which is already available with the Vista UI is Mobipocket. This is what I use for all of my eBook reading, and it nicely synchronizes my bookmarks with my Blackjack.

For TV watching, the best applications hands down is SlingPlayer...seriously, this app is a stroke of genius! But now you can take it to the next level with Tivo Desktop if you have a Series2 or higher TiVo box. (Please keep the laughter about my MTV shows to a minimum, thank you!)

And one of my most recent finds is Sharpcast photos. This great freeware lets you sync photos across PCs and mobile devices (Windows mobile). Plus you can access your photos from anywhere via the web. I find this to be a less invasive alternative to Orb, and your computer doesn't have to be on.

Lately I spotted one of those uber-annoying Mac-PC commercials which attempted to poke fun at the security warning on Vista

Call me crazy, but I like the warnings as it lets me know exactly what's happening. And even though I've never tried a Mac, if they will make me as clueless as these commercials I will happily stay with PC.

An awful thing happened yesterday....my laptop wouldnt boot. Apparently my system32 file had become corrupt or was missing and wondows couldnt load. The reason why this REALLY sucked is because I had no recovery disk and no backup of my data. So I spent the better part of the evening poring throught the internet to see if anyone had some pearl of wisdom to share. Unfortunately, most of the options included utilities to create floppy recovery or boot disks, which is great unless your pc has no floppy disk drive (read: ME!!!) Finally we decided that we would just spend the money and go to BestBuy and have GeekSquad fix the problem.

Okay, so Geeksquad is basically the reason why I am now convinced that I need to own a tech support company. Seriously. The guy I spoke to said I needed to contact HP and have them send me the recovery disc, bring it to them and pay them $129 to fix the problem. I probably would have done that as absurd as it sounds until he told me thta it would take about a week for them to resolve the issue. No good.

Disappointed and despondent, we headed home and Dean pointed out a CompUSA on the way. We pulled in and figured we'd see if they could help. It was pretty much the same story, except the guy there pointed out that I could upgrade to Vista which would do a clean install of the system. I pondered it for a bit....I mean, this whole problem was because I had gone a bit with installing programs to make my laptop LOOK like Vista anyway. But to be honest, I wasnt sure that my laptop had that kind of horsepower in it anymore. But the whole Vista thing stuck in my head until I couldnt shake it. All those shiny new laptops in the store were running the 3D Flip interface, taunting me! I HAD to do it- I got a new laptop. As always, Dean's only contingency for my frivolity was that I try to break as close to even as possible by selling my old one once I got it fixed by the manufacturer.

After getting the new laptop home I opened the box and a very important piece of paper fluttered to the ground. I must have missed it in the packaging for my older one. Evidently, HP and Compaq Presario notebooks have a hidden feature, and if you press F11 during any part of the boot process it triggers the Recovery Boot program!.So I tried this, and lo and behold, after about half an hour my older laptop was almost as new with all my documents and installed programs intact (configurations and personal preferences were lost though). Tomorrow my older laptop (actually only about 4 months old) goes up on Ebay and I am a very Vista happy chick!!!

I accomplished this look by hiding all my desktop icons (right click on desktop, highlight "Arrange icons by" and uncheck 'Show Desktop Icons') then I changed by background to a tiger wallpaper (Bye Julian!) and installed ObjectDock. Here is a great article from Engadget that really helped.

I also installed WindowBlinds to give my interface a Maclike feel. Heres my internet explorer screen:

The only thing missing that I'd love to get is the windows exchange interface that Mac uses, kind of the swapping motion it uses in a row. Anyone have any ideas? Or better yet, if you have a Mac can you tell me what its called? I saw a demo movie the other day but I can't remember where I saw it or what it was called.

I think I'm in love. No, not with McNamara and Troy of Nip/Tuck...with my new laptop. Okay, maybe I do have a minor crush on Julian McMahon (Christian Troy), but thats a story for a different blog entry!

My laptop arrived on Wednesday, but right off the bat I couldnt figure out how to connect my wireless connection. Unfortunately, this frustration lasted 2 whole days and prevented me from enjoying anything else about it until it was fixed. Finally on Friday night I ended up bringing our entire home network down, forcing me to finally call Verizon for help. I didn't have high hopes, I find that most service call centers waste my time with long hold times then a recap of all the solutions I have already tried. My best successes seem to come from blogs and forums, but as we had no connection throughout the house, that was out. This time I was shocked and pleasantly suprised to find that the person I got on the phone, Adrienne, was extremely knowledgeable and asked me what I had tried already. She then connected remotely to my computer and worked some magic to allow my laptop to connect wirelessly, yeah!

Having had the wireless setup, I was then comfortably able to set up my Compaq the way that I wanted it. After seeing several shots of Vista, I already knew that I had to get Widgets on my desktop....but which ones? I went back and forth between the Google Sidebar and the offerings that I found at TGSoft. Finally it was the Yahoo Widgets that won me over and gave me a warm fuzzy widget-y feeling. There are thousands of Yahoo widgets available, but most of them are specifically created to look similar and have the same skin. Another neat feature it has is that it is that you can press F8 and it will show just your widgets with everything else faded out. Neat!

As I already said, the dual core processors are great for Second Life and I can actually multi-task while running it! I have decided to use my Notebook primarily as an entertainment device so I will not be installing or syncing Calendar and work information on it. Woo-hoo! I've got Windows live messenger running and a cool RSS reader called Active Web Reader. If you know of any other entertainment-centric applications, leave a comment and let me know!