Personal Technology Tips in Plain English
Ramblings
How To Bulk Unfollow Twitter Snoozers From Your List
Feb 20th
Twittering is a way of life. Either you tweet or you don’t. There’s no half-way in between.
You can’t just log in once in a blue moon and expect others to think you’re part of the Twitterverse community. What other group would embrace you with open arms if you showed up just 3 times in 2010 for example?
Spring is around the corner and that got me thinking of Spring cleaning for my Twitter follow list. It’s time to pare down my follow list to those that I really have a real interest, connection or excuse to follow.
I found a great little web-app at http://www.untweeps.com that lets you identify who on your Twitter follow lists has NOT tweeted in __ days.
Just input the cutoff and you’re ready for a 1-click bulk unfollow.
I filtered my follow list to see who hasn’t showed up in 100 days.
Just like that, my Twitter follow list was pared down by over a 100 people for one of my Twitter accounts.
There’s other bulk unfollow tools that let you see who’s not reciprocating a follow, those that are spammy, etc. But this is the first place I think most people should go when trying to clean out their following list.
What other Twitter UNFOLLOW sites do you use to manage your lists? Please leave a comment below!
Quickest Way To Look Up Movie Listings
Feb 19th
School’s out!
Winter break is here for the kids!
A whole week or two off to fill the kids’ schedules with fun stuff to do if you’re not going away on vacation.
A trip to the movie theater is in order since there are a couple of blockbuster movies that just came out and they pass the litmus test for child-appropriate as well.
Here’s a tip to find out which movies are playing now in your area:
Google has a search built just for movie theaters and listings. You can search by zip code, but movie, or by theater. There are links to reviews as well as listings for future dates so you can plan your movie nights out this weekend.
Just go to http://www.google.com/movies and type in your zip code to start your search!
Virtual Insanity: Facebook Edition
Feb 5th
The march goes on.
Social networks are continuously trying to climb the social ladder by upping the ante almost weekly. Any regular user has experienced the social media sites’ constant redesigning of their interfaces in hopes of getting us users to use their sites more than the competitor sites as well as just use them more often period.
For example, Twitter recently tweaked their retweeting feature, have added personal lists features, hover pop-ups and other small updates they push out continuously time goes on.
Facebook is no different. They just changed the “news feed” display by adding the “live” option (which no one I know has ever fully understood). Â FB has also changed navigation and various other things along the way as expected.
But I just logged into my Facebook account today and was pleasantly surprised to see the new welcome message on my Facebook homepage:
“Welcome to your new, simplified home page.” [EMPHASIS MINE]
I nearly had a heart attack when I saw that “new, simplified home page” on Facebook. Â It was just plain scary!!
Why they do things like this? Doesn’t anyone over there do any sort of user testing before they push out new features and functionality to the entire world?
I’m sitting here wondering, just where in the world on this page do you want me to look first?
Ironically, there’s a “Facebook Lite” promo link at the top of the page trying to push a “fast and simple” version of Facebook.
I know, I know, these changes are happening because Facebook wants to compete with Gmail and email in general. The Google generation doesn’t email their friends anymore anyway. . .unless you want to attach and send a file (hint to FB coders, this is one new feature which would make sense).
But in the meantime, is it time to create a “I wish Facebook would stop messing with Facebook” Facebook group? Will you join? 
How To Bulk Submit To Social Bookmarking Sites
Oct 26th
Social media is all the rage these days.
Anyone with a website knows they should be submitting their website pages to the various social bookmarking sites to gain better visibility on the web.
But we’re also talking about a time consuming task to do the repetitive submissions to the top social bookmarking sites like: Digg.com, Propeller, Delicious, Reddit.com, Stumbleupon, Technorati, Mixx, Twitter, Furl.net, etc.
There are completely automated tools that submit in bulk, but sometimes they can be seen as spam. The next best thing to manual hand submissions one at a time is to use a semi-automated tool. . .
SocialPoster.com allows you to set-up the basics first and then go through various filtered lists of social bookmarking sites and quick-click-thru to the posting page with the main data pre-populated for you.
Here’s a video walk-through tutorial of the process of using socialposter.com:
It won’t completely eliminate the time-consuming task of manually submitting to dozens of social bookmark sites, but it certainly will shave off a decent portion of time spent on the task. Moreover, it will help you to consistently submit to the top sites using socialposter.com’s list of sites.
Is Your Self-Worth Defined By Your Twitter Follower Count?
Oct 21st
The Pew Internet Research Study just came out stating the 19% of people use status updates in social media. That’s a BIG number which only means the social media is here to stay – and the Facebooks and Twitters of the world is changing how we communicate, connect and even identify ourselves.
The Twitter follower count is a huge narcissistic idol for almost everyone that jumps on board initially.
Thought it would be interested to see where you thought you were in the Twitter Self-Worth Maturity Ladder. Take the quick poll below and let’s see where everyone ends up.
BE HONEST now! 
Do You Call or Text While You Drive? Be Honest.
Sep 1st
According to a hush hush government study that wasn’t public until recently, people are 4 times as likely to cause an accident when they’re talking on a cell phone while driving than those that follow the law and don’t text or call while driving.
It all comes down to one reason apparently, you’re overestimating your abilities. You’re not truthful with yourself!
Here’s a great interactive tool that lets you really see the statistics for just how distracting it can be. The NY Times has a simple online game that you can play right now.
Other tactics to educate include a video that went viral with almost 2 million views on YouTube to date – graphic and intense, but serious and realistic:
None of this will probably change your actual behavior, but at least you’re officially informed of your shortcomings on the road the next time you reach for that mobile handset!
How To Get WiFi-N Signal Strength From WiFI-G or WiFI-B Routers
Aug 24th
Here’s an amazingly simple router hack that lets you boost your Wi-Fi signal strength (in truth, it works for 802.11N / G / B / etc) for about $0.25.
The secret is in the parabola. . . check out this video tutorial to see how to create the wifi signal extender in less than 10 minutes:
If you don’t want to risk 10 minutes of your time, here’s a video that shows all the steps in detail. It’s not that involved in making the wifi extender parabolic reflector from the printable template. Remember all you need is the printed template, aluminum foil, scissors and a glue stick.
Ok, now do you like what you see?
Here’s the link for the printable wifi-extender template:
