Toch twijfelen over Twitter

Nee, ik vind het geen goed systeem ineens. Sterker nog, mijn afkeer ervan is zo mogelijk nog groter geworden.

Het enige nadeel van mijn standpunt is dat er enorm veel bedrijven en interessante personen niet (meer) bloggen, maar wel twitteren.

De halve whisky industrie zit tegenwoordig op Twitter en dat maakt het toch wel interessant om te volgen.

Vooralsnog zit er sterk aan te denken om een accountje aan te maken en puur en alleen dingen te volgen. Informatie verzamelen zeg maar…

Interactive Blog

Vanaf afgelopen maandag heeft het bedrijf waar ik werk, Interactive Studios, een bedrijfs-blog.

Op dit blog zullen we vooral dingen zetten die, volgens ons, ook interessant zijn voor de buitenwereld, zoals je er ook kan lezen.

Spam

Wegens te veel troep in mijn mailbox met daarin reacties met hele epistels in het Russisch (of een andere taal die het cyrillisch schrift gebruikt), mensen die ervan overtuigd zijn dat ik gebaat ben bij een groter geslachtsdeel of personen die mij vragen waar ze een eenhoorn kunnen kopen is vanaf nu de mogelijkheid om te reageren beperkt tot de feed op Hyves, en niet meer op www.agentgraves.nl.

Dus Flos, als je je maandelijkse reactie daar wil plaatsen in de toekomst, dan zijn we beide tevreden :)

Omschakeling

Ik ben dit blog ooit in het Engels begonnen vanwege allerlei redenen, waaronder de samenwerking met mensen in Belarus. Tegenwoordig is dat niet meer zo, en mijn Google Analytics wijst me erop dat er behalve een plaatje via Google Images nooit iets of iemand uit het buitenland op mijn site komt.

Vandaar dat ik nu de switch naar Nederlands maak. Gaat toch iets handiger en het leest voor de sporadische lezer ook weer iets makkelijker.

Nieuwtjes:

• Afgelopen donderdag is de keuken geplaatst. Heel erg tevreden en het ziet er supergaaf uit. Nu nog een tegelzetter die snel kan, zodat over 3 weken het blad erop kan en dan alles ook echt af is.
• We hebben Kikker voor het eerst naar buiten gedaan dit weekend. Aan een lijntje, gezien hij nog nooit eerder in zijn leven buiten geweest is. Volgens ons vindt ie het wel wat, maar we gaan het langzaam opbouwen.
• We hebben dit weekend vloeren uitgezocht voor de gang/keuken/wc en de woonkamer. Als het goed is ligt alles er voor de kerst nog in, dus dan hopen we dit jaar alles nog af te hebben.
• We hebben de gang de eerste laag verf gegeven gisteren. We moeten nog een paar hoekjes bijtippen, maar daar konden we zonder ladder niet bij. Die halen we vanavond zodat het voor het weekend netjes is.

-Twitter

I have already deleted my Twitter account. I found that there is nothing on there that I can’t find anywhere else (for example, Facebook, Hyves, RSS) and it is just too messy.

People say it is like a bar and you can hook up to all conversations. While that sounds nice, I felt it was more like Taiwanese government meeting where everyone is yelling something at the same time, and no actual information is spread.

So, no more Twitter for me because:

• There is no added value in having Twitter when I already have everyone there on another social network.
• No intersting information is spread that I cannot find somewhere else.
• It is hard to track a subject, since there is only one screen available and that is where everything goes. No filters.
• It is not possible to NOT get the replies by followed people to messages by unknown people. You pick up bits of conversation that make absolutely no sense whatsoever.
• Messages are too short, since you can only get 140 characters in there. A lot of people post shortcuts to blogs, news items and other links, which means that you get half a line of pointless text in your screen.

Added value by twitter:

• None.

Since officially researched by some institute 91% of what is on twitter is non-sense and has no actual information, I am not going to waste my ‘precious’ time with sifting though that to find the 9% that has any worth.

Internet Explorer 8?

Today, at 5PM Internet Explorer 8 is being released. It has been available for download in a beta form, but the final will be out this afternoon.

Being a good nerd, I decided to download and install the so called ‘release candidate’. After installing, which went well, I started using it and I was pleasantly surprised by some of the new functionalities for blogging, google maps and some other things. +1 for MicroSoft.

Then I went to www.bol.com to see if any cool new cds have been released and that site looked like shit. Which means there still are CSS issues as there have been since the first release of Internet Explorer years ago. Too bad, but there is a compatibility mode. Click, and the site looked all right again. +1 for MicroSoft.

Then I went to my favorite whisky forum to see if anybody had spilled any semi-usefull information about my favorite drink.

On that site, my cookie with username and password didn’t work anymore. No problem, I thought, I just enter those again and off we go. I clicked another page, and to my surprise I was logged out again (and no, I did not click the log-out page). Google came in handy and told me I had to remove my cookies before setting them again. Simple solution, but no kudos for MicroSoft: –1.

Then, for some reason the compatibility mode kicked in again, while I thought the page looked all right. And again, I was logged out. I logged in again. and tried to visit that same page. Poof, logged out. At that point I started to get annoyed. I turned off the compatibility mode and tried to log in again. Logging in is, as usual a page-change. Then because I ‘went to a new page’ IE8 checked for compatibility issues and kicked in that mode again. Poof: logged out. GRRRRR. –1 for Microsoft.

Compatibility mode options was quickly found in one of the menus. I turned www.levenswater.nl off, so it would not be corrected by IE8 again. Also, I turned off any automatic checking there, so no more compatibilty issues, I thought. Wrong, of course, since there is another setting, in a different menu and a different set of options that has to be turned off as well, or else the mode will kick back in any time. Annoying and –1 for MicroSoft.

Why, you ask, am I not using FireFox? Simple, because I develop for the web and most people still have Internet Explorer. Also, FireFox is damn slow in starting. Third, the updates really really suck.

Result: I have been using IE8 for a few hours and I am getting really annoyed by it. I hope these issues are gone in the final that is released this afternoon. If not, I will probably still use it since most issues I have found are solved with one action, or several options and will not occur several times. So in the end, I will not have these issues again, and I am a happy surfer again.

PC broke down

Yesterday my computer broke down. At some point during the afternoon all systems crashed and nothing worked anymore. Rebooting doesn't work either. Nothing appears on screen most of the time, and some times it just shows the windows loading screen before it crashes again.

Most likely causes: Motherboard, Internal memory, or the video adapter. Replacement parts: difficult. The system is already four years old which means most parts are hard to get. The memory is free checking, since it is unlikely that all bits have broken at the same time, I can just perform a little trial-and-error testing. The video adapter is only about 40 bucks to replace, but still cash I don't want to spend if it is not necessary.

The main board is a different situation. Hard to know what you have in the first place. Replacing is something I can likely do myself, but I have almost no relevant experience in that. Apart from that I have to find one that fits my machine and other hardware...

I hope to find some other solution, since I have been looking for a new laptop instead of a big ass home computer anyway. Might have to speed that up now. The laptop from work solves the first line of problems, but downloading films is a different case :-)

I hope to be able to get my hands on a Dell XPS system. They are awesome and have great upgrade possibilities...

Credit Cards and me

I have always prevented myself from having a credit card. But before our holiday to Mexico we got one, since we had lots of troubles last year in Barcelona to get money from an ATM.

Now I have started using it on the Internet. Not that this is a problem, but I need to keep myself in check. I tend to go wild in a momentary lapse of reason. Now I have ordered a bottle of whisky for the first time, and a little while ago I placed a huge order at Amazon. The books are not just for me, but the whisky is (of course).

It just so happens to be that that bottle of scotch is a limited release, most likely not easily available elsewhere. 5000 bottles world wide. The current value of the Pound Stirling is quite nice too, which made it even more attractive.

Lately I have been very good at buying whiskies I never tasted and have not bought a bottle of so so whisky for a long time. This one will fit in that line of things, since it it Ardbeg! Was looking for a new Ardbeg anyway...

How did that happen?

This morning when I turned on my computer, it did nothing. Well, almost nothing. It looked like Windows was booting properly, but then the screen went black. Reboot. Same thing.

I tried starting it in safe mode. That worked, but when I tried normally again the screen went black again. Luckily I could do a system recovery with a roll back to yesterday afternoon.

The only thing that I changed in my setup since yesterday is that I removed the Internet Explorer plugin from Skype. That annoying thing which screws layouts because it wants phone numbers to be clickable.

Annoying feature, but apparently I have to watch out uninstalling it. Lucky me, the system recovery worked (never done that before) and I can use my computer again...

Wilders

Yesterday was the day on which Fitna saw the light of day. Fitna probably needs no explanation, but for you who live in a cave: Fitna is a movie made by Geert Wilders, a Dutch politician who is really scared of people with different beliefs. It shows a compilation of already known material, all referring to Islam and related events.

The days before Fitna's release were filled with news of expected problems and riots within and outside of the Netherlands. Now the movie has been released and nobody seems to care, since there is absolutely nothing new in it.

Fun fact: Wilders used a Danish cartoon about Mohammed, which caused a lot of trouble a couple of years back. Now the artists who drew the cartoon was in the news again, because no agreements on copyright have been made. Wilders illegally used the cartoon...

What an idiot...

I really can't believe anybody actually listens to what he has to say. The only thing he seems to do is try to cause riots and fear, which, I hope, the Dutch prove to smart for...

A first time for everything!

Since the beginning of my Last.fm account, CocoRosie has been my overall top 1 artist. Until last Sunday! For the first time in a year, the #1 spot has switched to Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.

I expected it to happen much more early, since Mr. Cave has almost 30 years of work to listen to, and CocoRosie is something of the last 3 years. But apparently I really like it that much.

Social Networking

The web 2.0 principle with all its kinds of interactive systems and user based experience is really cool. I love social networking. Therefore I have too many accounts to remember. Probably about 15 forum accounts, facebook, last.fm, pandora (even though it is not working in the Netherlands anymore) and so on.

Although I really like this all, Hyves always had some kind of a negative image with me. I never really liked it. Too many crappy looking pages and so on. It looks like an out of hand hobby project of some PHP script kiddy.

Facebook, however, works like a charm. Clear controls, proper support, worldwide access, good performance, and so on and so on. But, because Hyves is so much bigger in the Netherlands, it works like a fly in a zoo. As long as it is very much in your face, you won't even notice the elephant in the background. Facebook is bigger and better, and empty for me. Almost no one I know is on Facebook, and even less people actively work with it.

So, yesterday, my mission failed. I reactivated my Hyves account and am using it now. My account has grown, I got back in touch with heaps of people. All these things can be done much better with Facebook, but still.

I am a bit ashamed of myself, since I always evangelized against Hyves... this sucks...

Plaxo

Woohoo! One of my collegues pointed me towards Plaxo. Plaxo is an online addressbook, that integrates with Outlook (Express).

This is just the thing for me. I usually reinstall my computer once every year and I always forget to backup my contacts, calendar and tasks from Outlook. So, now I can add all my contacts to Plaxo, keep them up to date online, and after a Reinstall I only have to reinstall the plugin and off we go.

So, now I added some contacts. It has proper checkboxes so it does not automatically spam all my contacts from Hotmail, Gmail and Outlook. Great!

See the "add me to you plaxo address book" link on the right, just below the Last.fm quilt.