The Stand-up Philosopher

Social Media Overload

I’m getting tired of invites to new social media sites. I have nothing against new sites popping up. I’m a great fan of competition. The more competition, the more everybody wins. But I’m getting tired of getting spammed with tons and tons of copycat social media sites. One of my Plaxo contacts keeps sending me invites to something called ecademy. It’s supposed to be a place for professionals to hook up. Oh, you mean, like, LINKEDIN?

I got the following just now:

Hey Eric,
Have you heard of Faves? It's an easy way to save and share links to the stuff you find on the web - stuff like videos, articles, music and just about anything else. You just click a button when you see something you want to share, and you've created a Fave that all your friends can see.
It's really easy to sign up, and it's completely free! Come check out the cool stuff I've been sharing.

If you'd like, check out some of my top interests at Faves: onlywire, money, business

I’m not sure what this is supposed to be. “an easy way to save and share links to the stuff you find on the web”. I already have that. It’s called Delicious. You can follow the stuff I save and want to share here. Oh, and I can “click a button when I see something I want to share” using delicious. I’ve been doing it for years. I can also save and share videos on Twitter, my blog right here, YouTube, and several others that I can’t think of right now.

Come on, Faves, you’re late to the party. I know this wasn’t personal. This email came through a contact that I have on another social network. It’s somebody I don’t really know. Somehow we became “friends” on that network, so he signs up for Faves, they access his address book, and I get an email.

I would like to see somebody come up with a concept that is truly unique. Then I might be interested. Twitter was new, MySpace was new, FaceBook was new, and I jumped on all of them. I’m honestly not very excited to get an invitation to yet another copycat of the stuff that already works and I’m already using. This is almost as bad and unoriginal as another distribution of Linux. I will, however, give points to Hannah Montana Linux. That’s unique.

Fix YouTube Jumpiness in Firefox

I’m going to experiment with this fix. I’ve avoided watching YouTube videos on my Acer Netbook because the videos jump. I figured it was the limited hardware of my netbook, although I’ve watched YouTube on much lesser hardware with Windows XP. Heck, it’s a 1.6Ghz processor with 1GB of RAM. Even if I am running several programs, this computer should be able to handle a YouTube video.

Apparently, it has to do with the session restore feature in Firefox. It’s set to a default save of 10 seconds. Even I am not that paranoid.

When my wife got me this Acer for my birthday (yes, I sort of asked for it since I needed a new laptop and it fit within our budget), I was wary. I push my computers pretty hard. So far, this Acer AspireOne is a pretty respectable little computer.

Reader's Digest Is Filing Bankrutcy? I'm Happy

My title might be a little bit attention grabbing. I came across an article stating that Reader's Digest is filing bankruptcy. Please keep in mind that bankruptcy does not mean "going out of business". It simply gives the company some court protection to rearrange finances and try to come out from under financial problems. Some bankrupt companies actually do survive. Remember when K-mart filed bankruptcy almost 8 or 9  years ago? They came out of it stronger and bought Sears. All they had to do was get rid of the idiot criminals who were running the company into the ground.

So why does Reader's Digest filing bankruptcy sort of make me happy? It's a fine magazine, but when I did business with the company, I came away from it with a horrible taste in my mouth and a vow to never again let my money fall into their hands.

I was a sailor once. I think it was about the time when I was 23 (around 1997). My poor ability to handle money left me with more month left at the end of my paycheck. I paid all my bills and blew plenty of money, but I never got ahead. I was feeling the pinch one particular month. I used to buy Reader's Digest, and I enjoyed reading it. I normally had a copy on the ship to read. Sometimes people would send them to me, and some of my shipmates read it so I never lacked a copy.

Neat Use of Google Reader for Twitter

This is bound to have a serious effect on my use of Google Reader. Lifehacker posted a utility allowing you to create an RSS feed for your Twitter account. I just massively increased my feed list, but this might overcome a problem I've been having with Twitterific on my iPhone. For some reason, I can't mark a post as a favorite anymore. Maybe I need to wait for the next update.

Check it out. This will allow you to mark posts for further action, or to search through your Twitter list. Twitter's archive and search functions are far from perfect, and this is bound to help a lot.

Windows 7 Upgrade: How Much Harder Can Microsoft Make This?

I was excited about Windows Vista. I can't say I'm that happy about Windows 7. I installed it on my netbook, but I barely even use it anymore. I'm annoyed about a few things in Windows XP, but Windows 7, at least the release candidate, is less stable. It looks nice; very visually appealing, and the wallpaper is wonderful. I have a problem with Firefox crashing incessantly on Windows 7 though, which on my netbook makes it intolerable.

Fake Steve Jobs took on the Windows 7 upgrade path, which looks painful. (He also provided Apple's upgrade path). I can't imagine why Microsoft has to release so many versions of the same thing, especially considering that every single Windows DVD contains the exact same information. You can install any version of Windows Vista or Windows 7 from the same DVD. The only thing different is the license key. For instance, my Windows Vista Home Premium Upgrade CD can install Windows Vista Ultimate Full, provided I have a license key. The license key on the box only works with Windows Vista Home Premium Upgrade though.

Before Windows Vista came out, I worked really hard on "switching" to Linux. I was sick of Microsoft, and I couldn't afford a Mac, so I tried to get Linux to work. I couldn't. I got tired of spending hours hacking away on my wireless chipset, only to have to repeat the process the next time I rebooted. I also had trouble with Flash and Java. I'm not a big fan of the command line. I don't like having to remember to type sudo before every command, or su to root before I try to do anything. I have heard that Linux has improved over the years. I haven't had the time or desire to mess with it lately, but I did come across something interesting: Ubuntu has a Netbook Remix. That might be worth checking out.