The Facebook Virus

Lets get it out of the way right off: NO There is, to my knowledge, no actual computer virus on Facebook.

What I refer to is those abominable Facebook Apps.

I used to like Facebook as a place to keep up to date contace information for a number of friends and aquaintences from college. It was easy to use and very clean (even sparse).

But then the apps came.

Thats like saying: and then the giant, man-eating fungus came over for dinner.

Oh, I use a couple of apps. Catbook is minorly cute. And I like having a lightsabre on the side of my page. But it seems that every page I go to now is chock full of stupid “grow a plant” and “what color are your teeth” and “my top ten AND top five AND overall bestest friends ever (except that each list is different)” apps.

And the worst thing is that they are viral.

Example: You go to take a simple quiz (because you, like me, have a minor adiction to dumb online quizzes, which was only minorly lessened by leaving Livejournal)… but then a page pops up informing you that the results of your quiz are locked until you invite 12 freinds.

HA!

No thank you.

-otto

Book Obsession Online

Andy Ihnatko points me to the Bookshelf Project group on Flickr. A group with the highly entertaining purpose of collecting pictures of people’s bookshelves. As one of those types who always ends up scanning the shelves in whatever home he is visiting, I find this idea to be absolutely fantastic. I do not yet have a Flickr account, but I am tempted to start one for the expresss purpose of joining this group. Of course, that would lead to the question of which bookshelf I should photograph. We could begin with the overloaded wall shelf over my computer, the stuffed vertical shelf beside the bed, the stacks of books on my closet shelf, the piles of books upon my desk, or any of the three (or is it five?) bookshelves downstairs.

Enjoy.
-Otto

Leaking Soundboards

This has been an evening of sound leaking through channels in soundboards.

The lesser: At church this afternoon the solo preview channel kept leaking into the stage monitors. I have no idea how, but it caused a lot of trouble when we were trying to preview audio.

The better: During a live recording of TWiT this evening, Dvorak asked Leo Laporte if a friend of his could call up from New York to talk about sound recording. Leo said sure, and proceeded to begin giving out his cell number. He only got through the area code and first three numbers before he realized that he was live. Then he reached over and turned down the sound, but somehow the sound leaked through to another channel. And now, everyone who watched the live stream and stayed on for the aftershow has Leo’s cell number.

No, I am not posting it.

But it feels kinds neat to have Leo Laporte’s cell phone number in my Mac address book.

Free Book

Just a quick note to point you in the direction of Neil Gaiman’s blog where, in honor of its 7th anniversary, he intends to post the entire text of one of his novels… for free! Full details are available on the site. This week he is holding a vote to determine which novel will be released. Personally, I am rooting for Anansi Boys or Neverwhere… but right now it looks like American Gods might win out.

Go. Vote. And get yourself a free book.

-otto

Mac Whine

Short and unsweet: Firefox is a memory hog and Safari doesn’t post to WordPress correctly. -otto

Macworld 2008

Yes, I am a crazy tech addict. My primary interest is Macintosh, but I do keep an eye on Windows, Linux, and tech in general. A relaxing weekend for me is putting around the house with various TWiT Podcasts playing on my computer or iPod. And this is the time of year when it gets interesting.Macworld is next week, and with it comes the return of MacBreak Weekly and This Week in Tech. *sigh* if only I were still a slack college student, able to spend the entire day reading blog updates and listening to the Podcasts as soon as they come out. Here’s hoping for some interesting announcements. 

Flock Update

Just a quick word on my use of the web browser Flock.

On my desktop computer (a 3 year old G5 iMac) I really cannot use Flock (or Firefox2, upon which it is based). The memory leak “feature” simply bogs down a machine that is, otherwise, still incredibly fast. Flock seems to have the same problem still (version 1.0.5). On that computer, I use Safari for everything except WordPress and eBay, which seem to have issued with form entries.

Here on the MacBook (about a year and an half old), I use Safari and Flock. If I’m just going to be tooling around the net, I use Safari because it is a bit snappier. If I am checking Facebook or WordPress, or just feeling like something different, I use flock.

So Safari is still my primary browser, but I do like some of flock’s features. Here are the things that would easily make me switch entirely over to Flock:

1. Less resource hungry
(This may come when Firefox 3 is finalized and Flock switches codebases if it does).

2. Support for WordPress Tags
(I like the wordpress tags, and I find it annoying that the tagging in Flock goes through another site).

3. Support for Google bookmarks.
(One thing that keeps me in Safari is that it syncs bookmarks with my iTouch. Give me Google bookmarks in Flock, and I will be happy).

4. Google live search.
(One of the best features of Safari is a plug in called Inquisitor, which makes searching for anything online amazingly fast and simple.)

With those feature requests, I don’t know if I will ever be 100% Flock… but I do have some hope. Flock is a very good browser, especially for blogging, social, and media… it just still needs a bit of work.

New Voice

I’m excited to announce that the incomparable Ms. Bean will soon be joining this site as a contributor. She is quite busy these days, but seeking an outlet through which to express her love of all things musical. Indeed, she is to the world of music and Frankophilia what I am to technology and books, and probably much more.

Look for a new posting soon… I, for one, wonder what her username will be, as Ms. Bean is merely the name by which I call her in public…

It Wasn’t Dead Already?

Just read at Wired that AOL has announced the end of life for Netscape.

Personally, I thought that Netscape had gone away years ago. I certainly knew of it in its heyday though. In fact, I remember when my family paid something like $30 for Netscape Navigator 4.6 Communications Suite.

Remember those days? When we actually paid for web browsers. Oh, there are still some browsers out there that cost money (although OmniWeb is the only one that I can think of, now that Opera has gone free).

Personally, Netscape 3 was my favorite. Back then it was competing against the miserably unstable Internet Explorer 2. And it was free. But then came Communicator Suite, and suddenly Netscape cost money and was loaded with extra features that did little more than slow everything down.

Of course, I cannot say anything about Netscape without mentioning that it formed the basis of the Mozilla Project which, among other things, spawned the Firefox web browser.