TechnoMagicians Blog

Found this to be very interesting and actually I did notice a drop in spam today.

Well, I’ve been a long time Bloglines fan for ages but once again it seems to be having problems updating feeds. This is nothing new in the last month or so as pointed out by the x-cofounder here.

I’ve been forced to checkout Google Reader and so far am liking it. At first I thought there were not keyboard shortcuts which is an important feature to me but then found this. You can also get the shortcuts by pressing “?” from the webpage.

Of course I still like some of the things Bloglines allowed me to do that you can’t do easily with Google Reader but there are some things I do like about Google Reader that were not in Bloglines.

I also like the trends thing in Google Reader. I’ve only been using it for a few days so there really isn’t much to trend but I can see it being useful. It can show you what feeds you read most, what feeds are frequently updated, which ones are inactive etc.

I haven’t had the need to search for anything recently in Google Groups but was doing so today and stumbled upon this. The results not only showed entries in Google Groups (usenet newsgroups and Google Groups) but also posts from a ton of other random forums around the net.

Not sure how new this is or whether Google has announced this as it is the first I’ve seen or heard of it. For all I know this has been a feature for quite some time.

New iTouch

Great, 9 days after I purchased my iTouch, Apple announces a new one. I should be able to return mine however to get the new one. In my previous post I mentioned the only negative I had about the device, however in the meantime, I found another very annoying problem with the device. And that was lack of easy volume and pause / play features without navigating around the touch screen. Anyone that walks around a city knows that you need to adjust the volume quite a bit due to different noise levels either along a busy street, in a store, etc. etc. On a Nano, with its scroll, wheel this is easy to do without looking at it. I can even use the scroll wheel through the fabric of my pants pocket. This is impossible to do on the iTouch until now. Or at least it will be a bit easier with physical volume controls on the side like the iPhone has always had (as far as I know).

I hope that it also has a pause / play button but I haven’t read anything about that.

There is a new OS version but I don’t see any mention of running multiple apps at the same time. We’ll see when more details come out.

Writing this from my new iTouch. Really nice device as one would expect from Apple.

The only negative I have to say about it so far is that it only supports one running application at a time. To me that is just about unacceptable. For instance if I start an IM application and then switch over to check email, then I get signed out of IM. So it’s worthless as a real OS.

I predict that we will see iTouch’s in larger screen sizes. Especially if they make the OS multitasking, this device would make a fantastic tablet “pc”.

I really don’t know why a lot of the tech community and others look up to “hackers”.

I had to write this due to the recent report that the MySpace cofounder, Tom Anderson, was arrested in the 80’s for hacking into a Chase Manhatten Computer system. There is nothing impressive about this at all. Breaking into computer systems in the 80’s was not very difficult whatsoever.

I would not hire a so called “hacker” as an expert on anything, just like I wouldn’t hire a serial killer if I was in law enforcement and wanted to know how a serial killer thinks etc. etc. I don’t see OJ Simpson consulting himself out to every police force around the world.

Some blog posts about this Anderson loser:

MySpace Cofounder Tom Anderson Was A Real Life “WarGames” Hacker in 1980s.

Anderson: Would you like to play a game?

It is amazing how telco’s treat their customers.

For the last few years, various connectivity providers sold “unlimited” data plans when the reality was the plans weren’t unlimited at all. Many providers are now changing the plans and instituting more clear caps, but it still seems a bit ridiculous to have marketed unlimited data plans and then pulled the rug out from under those who bought exactly what you sold them. Up in Canada, it seems that TELUS is taking it a step further. Not only did it sell people “unlimited” plans that it now regrets, it’s exercising some vague language in its contract that allows them to simply cancel the plans of those who had bought into the “unlimited” plan even just a short while ago. The company is forcing users to switch from a $75 unlimited plan to a $65 plan that is limited to just one GB per month, and dumping anyone who won’t switch. That would seem to be a pretty strong bait-and-switch claim. Sure, perhaps the telcos oversold these unlimited plans, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be required to live up to what they sold.

Source: Techdirt: Telus Kicks Customers Off Of Unlimited Plan It Sold Them Not Too Long Ago.

I can’t wait until new players like Globalive come into the mobile market and disrupt the big 3.

Image via Wikipedia

Zemanta is an interesting tool that works with a bunch of blogging and social networking sites. It will work as a firefox extension or plugin and provides related image, article and links as you type up your blog post. Basically just writing this to see what it will suggest. The only thing I don’t like so far is it seems it makes a suggestion for every 300 characters written. Then again, that might make sense.

The 4 previous links were suggested by the system. Not bad. They mostly link to Wikipedia at the moment but that works for me I think.

Seems it also suggests tags here too. I don’t typically use tags on blog posts but use categories instead. Maybe I’ll start tagging stuff as well since this is suggesting stuff for me and that makes it easy to come up with useful tags to tag with.

This is one of the related articles it suggested so far: Zemanta getting there

It also suggests useful images so just including an image for Wikipedia.

I’ve used mailinator for ages. Noticed recently that they have a thing called Talkinator. Very much like BlogChat.

Here is a sample of it:

Another interesting mapping service called uMapper to create embeddable flash maps. Checkout Boston and directly south to the Vineyard. You can click on the marker, line, and polygon to get the info popups: