Will punctuation help you get your point across?

There’s a thread on FriendFeed that quite appropriately warns people of the dangers of failing to use a comma when tweeting. Anyone who’s given it much thought understands that punctuation can be key in getting your point across (or mangling it). However, sometimes using or omitting punctuation properly is lost on those who don’t give it much thought, and reading that funny thread made me recall just such an occasion.

Years ago, a friend and I'd had a discussion about my frustration with UNIX help files. After he'd made yet another suggestion, I went home and tried it, then emailed him to complain. His response was basically "why are you telling me about your sex life?" His suggestion? Enter "man man." In my subject line, I told him I “did a man man;” In the body of the email, I told him I received useless information for my efforts. My lesson? Sometimes the comma—or lack, thereof--doesn't help.

I no longer tell anyone I did a “man man.” In fact, I just don’t do a “man man,” just to save myself from having to explain later. If I need to know anything while working in UNIX, I just may hit Google up for answers. Almost all of us are doing Google, and like one FriendFeeder said, he tried Binging someone and got a nasty rash!

 

 

Technorati Tags: UNIX

Playing with FaceBook apps: What Element Are You?

I used to find FaceBook apps immensely annoying, but they're starting to grow on me. I'm not sure if they are changing, or if I am. I'm still not going to be in any games that glorify crime or criminals, and I'm not so much into racing, but there seem to be plenty of things out there for the RPG-lover and strategy game addict I've been known to be. The latest of the apps I've given in to is the one that determines which element you resemble. As with my Inner Nationality Quiz results, I was not expecting the answer I got. Metal? me? really?

The new FriendFeed beta – what I want

If you don’t know about the new look and functionality that is being scrutinized by the FriendFeed beta users as of today, then you probably aren’t reading this (unless you’re a family member). There’s a lot of talk going on about whether or not the real-time feature should be the default, whether the color scheme is tragic, or even how much it might resemble a certain other popular social media service. Lindsay D., well-known FFer, suggested that we FFans (well, the graphically-oriented ones, anyway) draft a comp with how we want our FF to work. Never mind what I’ve been doing with my new Dell Mini 9, my little brain decided this was a blogging opportunity I couldn’t miss.

The above screenshot shows roughly what I see in the FriendFeed beta now. Compare/contrast with the below:

As you can see, my mock-up does away with the grey that seems to offend so many and replaces it with a lovely aqua. Sadly, I’m not graphically-oriented, so the uneven coloring is due to the edits I was doing with the grey background before I re-colored. More important than the color, though, is the ability (optional, of course) to have a preview of a subscription area before I click. How many times have I seen (under the current live UI) that there was an update to a room an hour ago, but I go to that room to find I’ve already read the latest news? If I could see the last two or three entries of certain rooms or contributors on my sidebar, I could determine beforehand if it might be worth a click-through; a plus would be that I could absorb more information without having to leave the main page (or, as I often do, open another tab or page) at all. Sure, this stuff all scrolls through the main feed, but sometimes it flies right past my face before I know it; that’s what happens to those of us who want to know it all.

These couple of features aren’t all I want out of FriendFeed, but this is something I wanted to get out there. Maybe I’ll have more later, but if you read this blog, you know how likely that really is!

 

Technorati Tags: FriendFeed,Social Media

iMage to the rescue? iPod Touch troubles

A co-worker was bummed out today, because she and her daughter had been trying for days to get the girl's iPod touch working. It seems that it stopped responding one day, when she tried to sync it, and calls to Apple support eventually resulted in being advised to take it to a Genius, with a caveat that even those hardy souls may not be able to bring the machine back from the dead. The closest Genius, however, is 60 miles away. The young iPod owner was so distraught over the device's apparent demise that she had been losing sleep (I fully understand!); throwing another $400 after the first bundle wasn't really an option. So what do you do when you're in this position and you see your PC support technician strolling down the hallway? Well, duh, you grab me--I mean her--and ask her if she knows anything about iPods.

I, of course, have extensive experience with iPod Touches, having had an iPhone for nearly three whole months and having been through the reset/jailbreak/awwcrapdoitalloveragain stage at least six times or seven times. Oh, wait, I mean I hesitantly told my co-worker that I knew something about iPods, wondering if I was lying. It took me a while to figure out that the multi-talented device was just stuck in recovery mode; you see, for the longest time, my iPhone has been showing me a drawing of Steve Jobs when it's in restore mode, and I must admit I had to resort to a YouTube video (embedded below) to confirm my suspicions. But, hey, being a good tech doesn't mean I know it all; it means I know where to get answers when I don't know enough. And it means that I got to show my co-worker the iPod's colorful home screen; hopefully it also means there's a young'un somewhere smiling tonight because of me.

iKeepass (and those of us who need it) waiting on Apple to recover from holiday binging

KeePass is an application I’ve relied upon for years. Not only does it keep my many passwords in one encrypted file, but there are builds for Windows, Pocket PC, Linux, OS X, BSD, BlackBerry, PalmOS and J2ME. In addition to that, it’s portable. Ever since I got my secondhand iPhone, I’ve been waiting for KeePass to be made available for that device. Until tonight, the last I’d read was that the developer was still working out the kinks; now I know from his blog that he’s simply playing the waiting game that’s so familiar to iPhone devs. I’m not a patient geek, so I’m blogging about this. I know Apple will never know, but I need to post something, anyway; why not “APPLE, GET OFF YOUR BAKED CORES AND FREE THIS APP; IT’S BEEN A MONTH!”

 

Technorati Tags: IPhone,KeePass,iKeePass,password management