We’re a nice bunch these days on the web. We like to hear great stories and tips, and usually the first thing we do when we read them is share with our online friends. We do this through Digg, Delicio.us, Twitter and Facebook usually, but a growing number of us use tools like Google Reader or Bloglines to get all our information from one page via feed subscriptions. However, the methods of sharing in these utilities are old-fashioned and hardly Web 2.0, as we like to think the web is these days. I had these ideas buzzing round my head a long time ago and when comments came into being on Google Reader I thought “Awesome, the Reader them and I think alike, this is getting social and if I sit tight at the table for just a while longer I’ll get my three courses of dessert at once. Sadly, I’ve sat at the table a long time now and am pretty hungry for pudding. So, here’s a few suggestions that I think would improve Feed Readers for all of us. I’ll be using Google reader as an example, as it’s one of the biggest and the one I use the most.
Comment on the Original Item straight from the Reader:
This is one I’ve always wanted. When I read a great blog post on Reader sometimes I want to comment on it, but I’m on another computer other than my own, so I have to go to the original item, wait for the page to load, type in my name, email and website and then comment. It’s be great if I hit comment in reader and could type my little bit and GReader automatically did the hard work, using OpenID perhaps and left the the comment on the original item for me . Sure it could be a bit messy for a while, but it would greatly increase my productivity and make me hesitate more when I hit “Next Item”
Make the experience much more social:
Let’s face it, Orkut was never going to be a real contender on the social space and now it’s a sinking ship, abate one that’s in very shallow water, so it’s still hanging around when all the passengers have long since abandoned it.When I read something awesome on Reader, I share it. When one of my GReader friends shares something, I usually do a Reshare with a note, since that’s what twitter has nailed into my skull. Adding “Originally shared by [Name]“, and for my own items “Reshared by [Name],[Name] and 4 others” would be a great start towards a more social experience. The GReader team introduced comments a long time ago, but they’re quite limited and don’t always work when they should. Maybe that’s just me though, I don’t know. Of coarse, when a article is shared a lot over the GReader network, The “Sort By Magic” option would know to send this valuable information to the top of my feed. I could then hit the link to the original sharer and follow them, making my stream that bit more valuable. This data is sent to twitter and people there start following me on GReader. Of coarse, this depends on GReader making it easier to find people you know, which is a feature in any modern social network. Suddenly data is flying all over the place. I’m following some of the best internet gold diggers on the internet and they’re sharing good articles, highlighting the bits I should read, adding theit own little notes throughout. Heck, Google could use some of that lovely new Wave technology and have articles popping up in my feed all over again because one of the internet’s design darlings has added his own experiences to the article.
So what do you think? Would it be great if 2010 was the year that Google Reader evolved into the Google Reader Network, and became the Internet’s top resource for data? Leave a comment, or if you’re reading this in Google Reader and don’t have time, Share with a note. I’ll understand, believe me 
Filed under: Internet | 3 Comments
Tags: Blogspot, Twitter, Google Reader, RSS, ATOM, OpenID, Web 2.0, Digg, Delicio.us, Facebook, Google Wave
I like to be on the cutting edge, but I don’t like the way if Facebook doesn’t recognise your useragent string it assumes you’re using an older non-compatible browser. This means you have to open chat in a new window, annoying at the best of times. So I did a little rummaging about and found a really easy fix for this.
- Go to your address bar and type in “about:config”. Click “I’ll be careful, I promise!”
- In the filter bar, type “general.useragent.extra.firefox”
- DoubleClick this to change the value. For me, it said “Shiretoko/3.5.7Pre”. I changed it t the nearest stable release I knew about, which was “Firefox/3.5.5″. For people using this guide in the future, you should go to http://getfirefox.com and find the name of the latest release.
- Close about:config and load/reload Facebook
- That’s it, your Facebook chat should now be working fine!
I have not tested this on a lot of websites, but it should not cause any problems as long as the version numbers are quite close. Let me know how this goes for you!
Filed under: Internet | 2 Comments
Tags: about:config, beta, daily build, facebook chat, firefox, prerelease, useragent
This Kind Of Shit Makes Me Sick
Well done random NUIG student, you’re insulting one massive sector of Irish people and reinforcing the idea that University students are snobby cunts for the rest. I’d urge anyone with morals to spot how these things don’t end up as jokes, they end in people getting hurt and report the page on the basis of inciting hate. Please leave a comment or link to this and let’s get this page removed, along with whatever idiot set it up.
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How Safe Is Your Privacy Online?
So I was just reading Paul O’Flaherty’s blog and came across this. Well I headed over to http://whattheinternetknowsaboutyou.com/ to see how safe I was, and I got this (Click for Full Size)
Good no? I don’t even wear a tinfoil hat So what about you, how safe are ya? The Internet at least now knows I use Linux Mint and Firefox, and in case you go pointing fingers, Transmission is downloading the latest Ubuntu Karmic alpha!
Filed under: Uncategorized | 1 Comment
Tags: firefox, Karmic Koala, Linux Mint, Online Privicy, Transmission, ubuntu
My laptop is a piece or crap, I know this. 512Mb of RAM, Intel graphics card and a Intel Centrino Duo processor is nothing to write home about. This is why when I read that Xubuntu is a Linux OS designed for low-end machines, I downloaded the ISO, burned a live CD and had it installed in little over two hours. Now, if you are new to Linux and would like to know what Xubuntu has to offer you (Or any Canonical distribution for that matter) I suggest you take a look here. For everyone else, I’ll cut to the chase.
I installed Xubuntu because I wanted a very fast desktop that was stable and made the best usage of resources available. Xubuntu disappointed me on all these points.
Speed: I had previously been using Ubuntu 9.04, which I found slightly sluggish when using applications like Firefox and XBMC. Xubuntu did seem a bit quicker when navigating folders (Xfce being the desktop environment and thunar the file manager) but not a lot faster with resource hungry apps open. Worse, Xubuntu proved ABSOLUTELY unusable while installing new packages, something both the experienced user and the curious newbie do frequently. I also experienced several bouts of CPU 100% during each day with no obvious offender.
Stability: I never had problems with stability in Ubuntu, save when upgrading to a new release rather than installing it fresh. Xfce suffered a bug in where the entire system would stall, and even hitting standby would produce no results. This could happen every 3-4 days, taking into account I shutdown at least every two days.
Ease of Use: Ubuntu comes with a strong suite of applications included such as OpenOfice, Tomboy Notes, Firefox and Pidgin. Xubuntu sacrifices some of these for faster equivalents which is understandable. However, with the amount I use the former two apps I mentioned, I had to install them myself, which means an extra 300+ MB download at each new release.
On Ubuntu, it is simple to toggle touchpad preferences, and within 5 mins of install I had turned off the dreaded “tap-to-click”. There was no such similar GUI for Xubuntu, and this led to stressful editing of config files.
Worth a Install?: Simply, no. I appreciate the amount of work the community puts into a release like Xubuntu but if you’re system can’t handle Ubuntu, then you should look to other distributions such as Crunchbang Linux or even DSL (Damn Small Linux)
If you have any problems with my review, or would like to share your own experiences, please leave a comment.
Filed under: Computers, linux | 4 Comments
Tags: crunchband linux, Damn small linux, firefox, linux, openOffice, pidgin, thunar, Tomboy Notes, ubuntu, XBMC, xfce, xubuntu
I got my college offers!
Well I knew from twitter leaks last night I’d gotten my coarse, but clicking accept on cao.ie is a whole different ballgame, and a relief to be perfectly honest. As of September I will be studying Software Development in Computing at GMIT Galway. I’m over the moon, and can’t wait to get started. Congratulations to all other Leaving Cert students, and to those of you in Galway, let’s do drinks sometime 
Filed under: Uncategorized | 4 Comments
Tags: cao, college, GMIT, Leaving Cert
I See Radiohead Have a New Song
Recently the last remaining UK veteran of the 1st world war Harry Patch died at the age of 111.
I had heard a very emotional interview with him a few years ago on the Today program on Radio4.
The way he talked about war had a profound effect on me.
It became the inspiration for a song that we happened to record a few weeks before his death.
It was done live in an abbey. The strings were arranged by Jonny.
I very much hope the song does justice to his memory as the last survivor.It would be very easy for our generation to forget the true horror of war, without the likes of Harry to remind us.
I hope we do not forget.As Harry himself said
“Irrespective of the uniforms we wore, we were all victims”.This morning the Today program played the song for the first time and now it is available to download from our website.
Please click here to download.
The proceeds of this song will go to the British Legion.
To peace and understanding.
Thom
Banging. Quite a beautiful song, and well worth a pound in my opinion.
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Tags: Harry Patch, Music, Radiohead
Wooo-ooooo-oooooh
Click picture for bigger version
Really got a kick out of this, not sure why. Maybe the fact someone went out of their way to write the lyrics to ‘Heard Them Stirring’. Ledge.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
Tags: fleet foxes, linux, lyrics, songbird
I know I’m not the only one who has really suffered this week with Eircom downtime (Apparently their DNS servers were hacked. The lady I asked about this on the phone convincingly said “Ah no, I don’t think they were hacked now, is that even possible?”) and just switched to OpenDNS, which was suggested by Komplett.ie’s blog (Thanks Komplett!). The process was relatively painless but if you’re not tech savvy, then the guide offered for Motorola routers likely puzzled you. Luckily Thomas is here to save the day and break down the process for you. I won’t provide screenshots as I don’t think they’re necessary as it’s quite quick, but if you hit a obstacle feel free to leave a comment and I’ll help you to the best of my ability.
1) First, open your router’s settings page by opening it’s address (http://192.168.1.254/ if you’re using the router Eircom provides for free)
2) Hit “Expert Mode” on the left sidebar
3) Confirm that you want to enter expert mode, then click “configure” and then “connection”
4) Scroll down to “Primary DNS Server” and change it to “208.67.222.222″. Change “Secondary DNS server” to “208.67.220.220″.
Hit “Save and Restart Connection” at the bottom of the page, wait a few moments, and complete registration on the OpenDNS site.
And that’s it! I hope this guide helped you with your switch, and I hope you’re happy with your much more secure connection, but don’t be afraid to let Eircom know how annoyed you are with this whole situation. I’ll be expecting some sort of compensation on my bill, or Eircom can expect one less customer next year.
Filed under: Uncategorized | 12 Comments
Tags: broadband issues, Eircom, OpenDNS
67% is better than 68%?
Seen first on Trust Tommy. A few months back I reckon I would have had a higher score. How addicted are you?
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