1. May
    20

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    The Perks of Being a Geek

    There is some stuff that will ultimately piss you off when you’re in the IT business, and a geek as myself. People tend to think you know it all because “that’s what you do”. This is a tipical conversation from someone who barely knows you:

    Them: “Hey, how do I make a macro in excel that i can edit myself and… (its all bla bla from here) bla bla bla bla bla…? ”

    Me: “Uh what? I have no idea…”

    Them: “But didn’t you go and study (insert IT-related career name here, in my case Software Engineering)?”

    Me: “Well I’m sorry but I seem to have failed my Office I, Office II, and Office III courses”

    WTF?, srsly, NO I DID NOT GET TAUGHT EVERYTHING THERE IS IN THE SOFTWARE UNIVERSE, and I couldn’t care less about it either.

    So with no more preamble, here is the ultimate “Perks of being a Geek” list:

    1. You will always get a call from a family member asking a random Windows-related problem they are having.

    2. You are supposed to have the answer to item #1 with the following problem description: “It locked up.”

    3. Family friends are supposed to get free tech support 24/7. You won’t get paid more than the occasional soda or cookie while making the house call.

    4. You are THE ms office guru.

    5. Web designer = FREE WEBSITES FOR ALL

    6. You become tech support not only for their PC but also their ISP, cable company, microwave oven, remote controls, surround sound systems, digital watches, lamps and all sorts of electrical installations

    7. You are expected to know where everything is located in every existing piece of software by hard

    I’m sure I’m missing a lot of other perks… I’ll be adding more along the way =)

    Filed Under rants, tech, top lists


  2. May
    15

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    Music Service Done Right

    The folks at http://musicovery.com/ have got it right. I must say I am quite impressed. Basically, they’re an online webradio which finds music for you according to your mood and genres. The mood feature is really quite nice and hits the spot, not to mention they do have an amazing music selection.

    Now this is a service I wouldn’t mind paying $4 a month for a premium account (gives you higher radio quality).

    Filed Under software, tech


  3. May
    12

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    The Race For Social Network Dominance

    Google just anounced this morning Friend Connect, it’s own data portability network. It while require almost no programming knowledge to add social network features to your site, according to google:

    Websites that are not social networks may still want to be social — and now they can be, easily. With Google Friend Connect (see http://www.google.com/friendconnect following this evening’s Campfire One), any website owner can add a snippet of code to his or her site and get social features up and running immediately without programming — picking and choosing from built-in functionality like user registration, invitations, members gallery, message posting, and reviews, as well as third-party applications built by the OpenSocial developer community.

    Visitors to any site using Google Friend Connect will be able to see, invite, and interact with new friends, or, using secure authorization APIs, with existing friends from social sites on the web, including Facebook, Google Talk, hi5, orkut, Plaxo, and more.

    They include api connection to other netwroking platforms, also they add open id to the package. Nice.

    Ok so someone else jumped in the wagon, sho would have their services adopted massively? Who knows , but the race is on. I would honestly have Google to handle all of this rather than Facebook.

    Filed Under software, tech


  4. May
    9

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    Facebook Connect: The next big thing?

    Techcrunch released an article today on Facebook Connect. Short description:

    It will allow users to “connect” their Facebook identity, friends and privacy to any website. Third party websites will be able to implement and offer more features of the Facebook Platform off of Facebook – the same features available to third party applications today on Facebook.

    This is huge news, I can’t even start to imagine how huge. If Facebook plays their hand of cards right, they well very well take the web to its next stage, and become the social and identity backbone of the internet. Yes you read that right. They will hold your data, they will hold your picture, they will hold your profile and all other websites will only connect and fetch your profile data off Facebook. Wow. I mean, WOW!

    So I guess OpenID will take a huge hit now, maybe? It all depends as I said on how well Facebook plays their hand of cards and on the willingness of users to adopt Facebook Connect.

    Personally, I am tired of registering and haven a gazillion accounts all over the net. But at the same time this worsens privacy issues.

    Filed Under software, tech