Apps and Freedom

The Republican Mother has posted a good video summarizing the dangers of the protect IP act. Contact your congress person today and tell them to get their hands out of the internet.

Take action right now. Go to the Electronic Frontier Foundation and send a pre-written email directly from their site.

While surfing the net, there are a number of times that you don’t want to give out your real email address. For example, you come across a site that says you must enter an email address to view the content of a help article. Why do they need your email address?

Now, there is an easy solution: Disposable email addresses!

Just enter any address at mailinator.com, then go to their site, type in the address, and presto, your mail awaits.

1. Make it unique: Of course the catch is that none of the email is password protected. So you may want to choose a unique name that someone will not guess. Don’t choose bob@mailinator.com. Instead, choose bobddcc8888d3df@mailinator.com. That way,
2. Don’t use for private information: Someone could view the email besides you, so don’t use it for private information.
3. Delete the message: It works when camping. Leave the site as you found it! You can delete the messages. So if you really want to hide your trail, just delete it.

Twitter Pollution

Excessive targeted marketing using a social network’s status updates.

Most people have at least heard of Twitter by now. The mini social network seemed like a great idea when it was born out of Odeo (a podcasting company). It can be highly addictive, and can even save you money on your text messaging bill.

Twitter does have a major problem. The biggest of these is money. As of this writing, Twitter still has not found a way to generate income. If Twitter does find a way to generate advertising revenue, will it’s users continue to embrace the service?

But an even bigger problem looms for the messaging site. Twitter has opened the floodgates of a very open protocal. Marketing companies, universities, and even politicians are utilizing the networking site to flood users with advertising. As twitter grows more popular, more companies and organizations will get on board.

Unless something drastically changes, Twitter will likely see it’s peak within one to two years. Afterwards, it is quite possible that user-ship will decrease as as rapidly as advertising (from inside and outside) increases.

The biggest problem with advertisements on Twitter is that there are no “banners”. Banners were designed to take a portion of the message on a website and turn it into revenue.

With only 140 characters per message, there is no way to insert advertising into these messages. Therefore, advertisers are forced to send separate messages for advertisements. This is the equivilent of a website sending popup messages throughout the day because you accessed the website at some point. Nobody would agree to such a proposition.

This advertising can be seen as “Twitter Pollution.” Unfortunately, Twitter itself may be the final casualty of Twitter pollution.

I am on a broadband connection this week, but it is nothing like my connection at home. So I decided to look for some ways to speed up my web browser. Fortunately, I use Firefox, so it is highly customizable.

I found a great article on Free Republic, that really speeds up my web browsing experience. I have included it below for your use.

1.Type “about:config” into the address bar and hit return. Scroll down and look for the following entries:

network.http.pipelining network.http.proxy.pipelining network.http.pipelining.maxrequests

Normally the browser will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipelining it will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading.

2. Alter the entries as follows:

Set “network.http.pipelining” to “true”

Set “network.http.proxy.pipelining” to “true”

Set “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” to some number like 30. This means it will make 30 requests at once.

3. Lastly right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” and set its value to “0″. This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it recieves.

Have you ever gone to a website’s login page, typed in your user name and password, only to find that Firefox does not ask to save your password. This usually happens with banks, credit card companies, etc.

The problem is not with Firefox. The issue actually arises from the Javascript used on the website. Many companies feel that they create a more secure environment for their users by not allowing passwords to be saved.

Sometimes, the risk of a Mozilla Firefox password list being compromised is incredibly low. Sometimes, you may just not care about securing your passwords. The risk should be up to you.

So how do you save those “unsavable” passwords in Firefox?

1. Save the Javascript to enable password storage. Drag the following link to your bookmark bar: Enable Password Saver.
2. Whenever you come to a website where passwords can’t be saved, just click on the “Enable Password Saver”.
3. Finally, enter the password as normal, and submit the form.
4. Firefox will ask if you want to save the password. Tell it you would like to do that!

Some great news broke today. MySpace will utilize Google’s new Social Network API, OpenSocial.

According to TechCrunch, the APIs allow applications to run on multiple social networks and use standard web development tools like html, javascript, and flash.

Using the API, you can access Profile Information, Friends Information, and Activities (i.e. profile changes).

These APIs will be incredibly useful for those who have their own website. It finally allows us to realize the goal of a “Social” web environment.

For those looking to get extra help with the APIs, there are already sites being created to help developers build websites based on OpenSocial standards. One such site is OpenSocialStuff.com.

In the news today, Vonage lost their patent trial against Sprint. That means that there may be one less player in the internet phone service market. They are still in business, but with huge fines and the big phone companies suing whenever possible, it could be the beginning of the end for the first major Voice Over IP Carrier.

Now there is a new company emerging onto the VoIP scene. Only this is better. ThePudding.com is offering free Telephone service through your web browser.

It seems a typical setup, but there is an interesting twist. ThePudding.com uses voice recognition to display advertisements and websites relating to your conversation while you talk on the phone. It takes context sensitive ads to a whole new level.

If you have an email address, and you sometimes check it, you do get spam. Modifying Benjamin Franklin’s original saying, it now reads: “There are three things certain in life, Death, Taxes, and Email Spam.”

Email hosts and ISPs have their own problems with spam (infrastructure, bandwidth, etc.). I could go on about that, but it is not why you are here.

You are probably reading this because you just received that one additional spam (or1000) that put you over the edge. You now want to take charge and stop the spam at any cost.

Marking your message as spam usually only blocks the one address that sent you the garbage. There are other ways of automatically deleting all messages from specified spammer domains.

One “solution” is to use email filters. Follow these steps to begin weeding out those unwanted messages.

1. First, find a domain of a known spammer. If you don’t know of any, check the email headers (“Show Original”) of your latest spam message. Otherwise, use one or all of the following (they are known scam/spam artists who should be on everyone’s blocked list):

• messagereach.com,
  
• premiereglobal.com,
• venturedirect.com,
  
• xmr1.com ,
  
• xmr2.com,
  
• xmr3.com,
  
• xmr4.com,
• xmr5.com,
• xmr6.com,
• xmr7.com,
  
• xmr8.com,
• xmr9.com,
  
• xmr10.com,
• xmr11.com,
  
• xmr12.com,
• xmr13.com,
  
• xmr14.com,
• xmr15.com

2. Click on the “Create a Filter” link next to the search box at the top. A box will open up letting you enter in criteria for your filter.
3. In the “From” box, type “*@” followed by the the domain name of the spammer. This will block all email from that domain.
4. If you have more than one domain you would like to add, see below.
   • You can add many domains to your custom spam filter by separating each one with a “|” (This is called a “pipe” character and can be created by pressing SHIFT and “\” at the same time). The pipe between domains means “filter the email if it comes from domain1.com or domain2.com”.
   • Your from box should now look something like this: messagereach.com|*premiereglobal.com|*venturedirect.com|*xmr1.com|*xmr2.com|*xmr3.com|*xmr4.com|*xmr5.com|*xmr6.com|*xmr7.com|*xmr8.com|*xmr9.com|*xmr10.com|*xmr11.com|*xmr12.com|*xmr13.com|*xmr14.com|*xmr15.com
5. Click the “Next Step” Button.
6. Now there will be a list of check boxes. Click the one that says “Delete It.”
7. Then click the “Create Filter” button.
8. Your auto deletion of spam has now begun.

If you are curious about other ways to use Gmail Filters, check out LifeHack’s 20 ways to use Gmail Filters for great tips and advice.

Everyone enjoys surfing the internet. Many enjoy it so much that they don’t even use their TV. If they do want to watch programs, they do it online. Some people use Bittorrent, others YouTube, and still others go to special TV websites.

I have found that most websites limit quality for the free content, but good TV websites exist. Here are a few:

• TV-Video.NET- Contains a comprehensive list of programming. They use flash player to play on a small screen, or a nearly full screen, depending on your preference.
• EZTV – If you prefer to download the latest shows and then watch them, this BitTorrent site may be for you.
• CBS InnerTube – Never afraid to almost violate trademarks (i.e. YouTube), CBS has a great list of shows. Be sure to watch them within a couple weeks of the broadcast. The archive only goes back a few weeks, but it is good quality.
• Fox On Demand – Seems good, but a little slow when loading for the first time (even though my internet connection is VERY fast).
• Joost – This one could be good. I have not had much success getting their player to work. Other people swear by this internet TV. I would wait for the beta period to be over if you want a non-error-filled player.
• Finally, you can purchase High Quality Videos of TV shows you missed from Amazon.com