GuruStump.com

I am a nerd.

Saturday, October 20th, 2007

Maybe I’m just a geek. Whatever. I challenge you to a game of Word Racer.

http://games.yahoo.com/play/ww&ss=1

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Recommendations for people who spend too much time online, Part 3: DIGG

Saturday, October 20th, 2007

Recommendation 3:
DIGG!

You may have heard of something called “Web 2.0,” if you run around in geeky enough circles. The general idea is that the latest, coolest websites all share certain stylistic attributes as well as some similar methodologies. YouTube, FaceBook, Pandora, Wikipedia and MySpace are all representatives of this new movement, and so, perhaps, is the entire Blogosphere. Perhaps the most common feature of Web 2.0 is user submitted content. The videos on YouTube, the profiles and blogs on MySpace and Facebook, the articles on Wikipedia, and even the radio channel programming on Pandora are all produced not by employees of the companies, but by Schmoes like us.

Digg.com is another website where the content is submitted by the end users. Digg is basically just a webpage with links to news stories on it. The ingenious thing is the way the stories are chosen to show up on the page. Instead of a team of editors deciding what we should know and what we should not, we decide for ourselves. Anyone who has signed up (for free) to be a Digg member can submit a story. All they have to do is type in a URL, come up with a headline, and click a button. Then, any member of Digg can see the story and either Digg it (give it a thumbs up) or bury it (well..it’s not thumbs sideways). Stories, pictures, videos, webpages, or anything else that can be identified by a URL that receive enough “Diggs” appear on the front page of Digg.com.

Professionally, Digg leans towards techno-geeks and politically it leans to the left. Nevertheless, I have found that it’s a wonderful addendum to my usual means of keeping up with the news (Reuters & AP top stories as well as Los Angeles Times headlines, all available online…and maybe a little Daily Show ). If you want to keep up with technology and internet news, keep track of political races, get a smattering of injustices that need to see the light of day, the occasional crackpot conspiracy theory article, and a couple of funny pictures every day, this could be the site for you.

http://www.digg.com

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Recommendations for people who spend too much time online, Part 2: ISPs

Saturday, October 20th, 2007

Recommendation 2:
Take advantage of your provider.

Lately the buzz on Internet Service Providers (ISPs) has seemed pretty negative. From reports that providers are unplugging people who use too much bandwidth (article) to scarier reports that they might even be filtering e-mail off their servers for political reasons (article) the news hasn’t been particularly pretty (sorry those are both Comcast stories, fanboys). Let’s face it, they’re great big monopolies that often control all the cable television and high-speed internet in a geographic area, and they know it. Nevertheless, I would like to suggest a couple of ways that you can make that fat bill you pay your provider every month a little more worth it.

Way 1:
Free Customer Service and Technical Support

A lot of people have horror stories about trying to connect with a live human being to get help with anything technology related. After pushing 1 for English, 3 for Support, 2 for Technical, 3 for does not apply, and so on for 15 minutes, only to be put on hold for 20 minutes, and then finally to be disconnected for an unknown reason, a person can be prone to just give up. Well hang in there little buckaroo, it’s not so bad as all that. I have found that most automated phone systems have a fast track to a live person if you just wait long enough to hear the right option. After a list of options, there is usually a “for all other queries” or “to speak to an operator” or something that gets you to that nice human being you’ve been hoping for.

What’s more, in my experience, technical support people at ISPs seem to be computer geniuses. Whereas their bosses want them only to stay on the line with you long enough to make sure that whatever is wrong on your end isn’t the ISP’s fault, I find that it takes very little cajoling (if any) to get them to go through every single thing that is wrong with your machine and help you fix it. I think it’s just their way of sticking it to the man. So since they seem so willing, you might as well use them. Also, just in case you get a support tech who is having a bad day and doesn’t want to be all that useful…you can always call back and get somebody else.

Way 2:
Free Software

Anyone out there getting that bug from the Norton Security Suite that came bundled on their computer last year when they bought it that says their subscription is up and it’s time to get out the credit card to keep the thing running for another year? If you have Comcast or Time Warner, you can just ignore it. Comcast offers it’s users the popular McAfee Security Suite absolutely free, including upgrades and renewals. Likewise, Time Warner will give you EA Anti-virus and Firewall for nothing. All you have to do is go to your provider’s home page and find the link. Be on the lookout for other free junk from your ISP. It wouldn’t hurt to visit their home page from time to time.

Comcast home:
http://www.comcast.net

Time Warner RoadRunner internet home:
http://www.rr.com or http://help.rr.com

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Some recommendations for people who spend too much time online, Part 1: FIREFOX

Saturday, October 20th, 2007

Recommendation 1:
Get Firefox.

If you are currently reading this blog with Internet Exlporer as your browser, may I humbly recommend that you stick it to Microsoft and their occasional monopolistic behavior by downloading Mozilla Firefox.  Mozilla is the name of the company and Firefox is the name of the browser.

For those of you who don’t know, a browser is a program you use to go look at the internet.  That little blue “e” that you click on to “turn on the internet” is in fact not the internet itself.  It’s actually just a shortcut on your computer that turns on a program through which you can “browse” the internet.  The name of the program that came bundled on your computer for internet browsing (assuming you have a PC) is the aptly named “Internet Explorer,” commonly shorthanded as “IE.”

So you have IE, and it seems to work fine…you can see the internet without a hitch…so why would you want to change all of the sudden?  Well, I can think of a couple of reasons that are less personal to you: like helping to break up the Microsoft monopoly (since Microsoft makes Internet Explorer) or like choosing a browser that actually follows web standards more closely (for the sake of the people who write web pages, who apparently spend 70% writing hacks to make IE work correctly).

But what if you’re not the sort of person who cares about the rest of the world and you need a nice selfish reason to change your status quo?  Well, if such be the case, then here is your reason: coolness.

Firefox gives you a bunch of capabilities that you can’t have in IE through the use of what they call “Extensions.”  Extensions are little bits of programs that various Joe Schmoes throughout the world have written as additions to the main Firefox code.  You can go to the Firefox home page and download these extensions into your Firefox to make it more powerful (and more pretty, actually).

What can you do with Firefox extensions?  I’ll give you a few examples.  When I use Firefox to visit YouTube, I can download any video I’m watching to my own machine using an extension called “VideoDownloader.”  I have another one called “Download Embedded” that allows me to grab other kinds of videos that are stuck in other websites, but that don’t have any system set up for you to save them.  I have an extension called “Split Browser” that allows me to have two, or three, or five, or whatever number of internet windows open, all in the same window.  I have an extension called “Download Statusbar” that tells me how far along any downloads I’m running have gone.  For the web developers out there, I have “FireFTP” as a simple FTP client that I can run right in my browser window, and I have “Web Developer” which gives me a whole throng of functions I can run on web pages to see how they tick.  For normal humans, I have “ReminderFox” that pops up whenever a loved one’s birthday or other event I have put into it is coming up, and I have “Forecast Fox,” which gives me a 5 day local forecast right in the bottom of my browser window.

Beyond all that, as I am a bit of a skinning junkie, I can go to Firefox’s homepage and download free themes to make the browser just look cooler.  I’m currently running a theme based on the film 300 about the Spartan holding action against the Persians.  It just looks a lot cooler than a plain blue and grey box like you get with IE.  Read more...

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Back on the Horse

Saturday, October 20th, 2007

Wow…it’s been over a year since I put anything on here.  Guess I had better get back to it.

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