Personal Technology Tips in Plain English
Rants
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? 
Is 46% Taxes Reasonable?
Jan 10th
VoIP is one of the best things that the Internet era has brought to the world, even if Vonage is having trouble right now staying afloat.
While it’s here, you surely should look at Vonage and other VoIP providers for cheaper long distance for your home or business. That’s one of the main reasons why you get a broadband phone line – save money.
But after looking at your bill, you may not think that VoIP is really there to save you money. Take a look at one of my VoIP line bills that I received from Vonage recently:
Webkinz.com Site Down For Christmas And New Year’s
Dec 28th
One of the current crazes for kids is WEBKINZ.
If you have a child 5-10 or know one, then you’ve probably have already heard of name already. Cute little stuffed animals that come in new different varieties constantly come with a tag and unique code.
With that code, you can log onto www.webkinz.com and “adopt” it within Webkinz World. Kids then can build rooms, decorate them, and place their pet in the virtual home. They can feed the pet, talk to the pet, make it do things and monitor it’s health, happiness, tiredness, etc. You can even make them exercise on treadmills.
One twist is that your child can then go out and earn “KinzCash” by playing different games. The more W Bucks you have the more you can buy for your pet. You can get fancy wall paper, clothes, toys, luxury foods, buy an extension room or two to give your pet more space, etc.
Surely enough, tons of kids got Webkinz pets for Christmas this year. But guess what? Your anxiously excited child will hop onto the internet, type in www.webkinz.com only to be greeted by Read the rest of this entry »
Did You Know You’re Living Under Soviet Rules?
Nov 10th
Walt Mossberg recently shared a common and significant rant about cell phone companies in the USA — that they are making us living under the Soviet government model when it comes to how we talk!
He makes some great points and articulates one of the widespread frustrations we – the customers – all feel, yet just live since we don’t really have any power to change it as an individual.
DivShare.com is Down (again)! Anyone else having problems?
Sep 7th
A little while ago, I came across a wonderful site called DivShare.com for image hosting. It was been pretty well accepted and they put out a neat WordPress Plugin that basically allows me to upload images or videos from the WP Compose page and the insert it into the blog post directly.
But now I’ve been experiencing a lot of problems with DivShare recently such as Read the rest of this entry »
24 Real Apple iPhone Drawbacks and Downsides
Jun 27th
There’s enough hype and hoopla about how great the Apple iPhone is. People are even paying others $300 to sit in line outside the store for them overnight – on top of the $599 they’ll pay for the device – on top of the $800 they’ll pay the 1st year to AT&T Wireless for basic service.
After reading some of the press, like in the Walt Mossberg’s WSJ column or David Pogue’s review in the NY Times, etc, I thought I’d jot down a bunch of the cons of the iPhone cell phone for anyone that’s really trying to make a rational decision to abandon their current cell phone or smart phone like the Blackberry or Samsung Blackjack.
Is it worth $500 or $600 + ($60/month + tax) x 24 months = $2196.13+ for the 2 year contract at the very lowest rate plan? You decide.
Here goes for the 24 Downsides of the Apple iPhone: Read the rest of this entry »
RegisterFly.com Is Dead – ICANN Terminated ICANN-accredited status
Jun 20th
Over the last couple of weeks, Registerfly officially died. Finally.
As a Registerfly.com customer myself, I can personally tell you that it’s a relief to have access to my domains again.
It all started for me as an affordable way to purchase some domains. They had decent pricing – about $8/domaid and had a workable control panel that I was able to use self-serve pretty well. I found out that they had an office in West Orange, NJ which was nearby enough to make me feel good about supporting a local hosting company. As time went by the number of domains they registered grew and grew it seemed…they were supposedly the 15th largest registrar in the US.
In addition, their hosting packages seemed to mirror the value they were selling in domain registrations. Hosting with Registerfly seemed ok for some of my NON-mission-critical businesses on the web.
Over the last year however, DNS settings were lost and reset without warning, I couldn’t make any changes to certain domains, when I tried to transfer them Registerfly would give me tons of hassles and hurdles to get an “authorization code” to do so, etc. Read the rest of this entry »
I love tech, gadgets and the web. Hope you pick-up a useful tip or two here today that helps you use technology to your advantage! Better yet, why not share your own expertise in a comment on a post today to help the other readers that land here for answers!