Foreword/Edit: I just realized that it is immensely easier to use the script as a bookmark, it only takes 4 steps and also works on Chrome.
Check it out here!

Yup. Now you can add yourself, from your browser, the Google  +1 button to every site you visit.
It's the very fisrt version, and it needs much improvement.
I'm thinking of triggering it from a keyboard shortcut and adding some more features.

If you don't know how to use it yet, just check out the tutorial I wrote here, the steps are the same :)

Here is the little bugger, just for you guys:

_______________________________________

 

// ==UserScript==
// @name           PlusOneEverything
// @namespace      PlusOneEverything
// @include        *
// ==/UserScript==

if (window.top == window.self)
 {

var oHead = document.getElementsByTagName('HEAD').item(0);
var oScript= document.createElement("script");
oScript.type = "text/javascript";
oScript.src="https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js";
oHead.appendChild( oScript);

var oBody = document.getElementsByTagName('body').item(0);
var oButton= document.createElement("div");
oButton.style.position = "fixed";
oButton.style.zIndex = "10000";
oButton.style.top = "25px";
oButton.style.left = "15px";
oButton.innerHTML = "<g:plusone></g:plusone>";
oBody.appendChild( oButton );
}

_______________________________________

I'll turn that into a Firefox extension soon. Stay tuned :) (Edit: ...not :D)

 

Yeah yeah yeah.
I just stumbled on a Yahoo! article (in Indonesian) calling all internet users to arms, with a strong password as their weapon.

So, all along the article, they beat around the 'please do not use 123456 as a password' theme and leave it at that. Good one, Yahoo! I still have friends who never ever remember their passwords.

Chosing a strong password is good, but how the heck are you supposed to remember " h4Xxx0|2l337fgalFUb@r30" ?
Hint: you're not.

 

But here, I am going to give you a trick that will make you feel like you have some sort of super power:
I am going to make you remember D4nFr&&Bl0g11.

Just follow the rules:

1. Pick a name you're sure to remember, nickname or pet name : Dan
2. Pick your family name, or a second nickname in relation with the first one: DanFr
3. Pick a random separator: DanFr&& (and)
4. Pick a word that has someting to do with the site you're using: DanFr&&Blog
5. Add the date (birhday, year of creation, last 2 or 3 digits): DanFr&&Blog11
6. Replace all vocals with numbers: D4nFr&&Bl0g11

Why you will remember?

Because the password is separated is two parts: your name, and the context. You won't forget your name unless you had that many beers, and the context will be pretty obvious. Now, if you're not an used to the technique yet, you can still write down the template somewhere safe: NameOtherNameANDx2ContextYear.
Oh and yes, you can actually read it aloud: Dan Efer And Blog Eleven :)

I know it looks a bit complex, so here is another way to make your passwords hard to guess for both machines and humans alike, with passwords such as: donkey123&&098yeknod

1. Pick a word you like: donkey
2. Add the 3 first digits on the second keyboard row: donkey123
3. Pick a random separators: donkey123&&
4. Add the 3 last digit on the second keyboad row, backward: donkey123&&098
5. Add the word you just picked, backward: donkey123&&098yeknod

 

Why you will remember?

Because the password is symmetrical. You type the same thing twice, but after the separator, you type it backward ;)

Why are these passwords safe?

• You can create your own rules and rely on the templates
• They mix lower case, upper case, numbers and special characters (neither machines nor humans are good at guessing all that)
• They use words that don't exist, limiting dictionnary based attacks
• They are long enough to discourage even a computer

You're still desperate?

If you're in search for the simplest solution... try that: &wakeupgrababrushandputalittlemakeup&.
These are the lyrics of a song you love, plus a couple of special character to frame them, like a nice picture in your mind.
It's not as strong as the first two methods, but that can do for an emergency ;)

Keep safe!

(picture source: http://www.worldofantiques.net/74.jpg)

 

 

This morning I received an email from a very dear friend.

The email:

Dear,

Hope all is well with you? sorry to bother you at this time, please I need your urgent assistance, I had a trip to United Kingdom yesterday for a program, and I was attacked last night by some robbers on my way to the hotel and they took all my money from me, including my phone, right now I don't have any cash on me and I need to pay for a return ticket and make arrangement back home. I want you to kindly assist me with £750 (GBP) or any amount you can afford to help me, I will pay you back when I return. I had to walk down to a public cafe to quickly send you this mail as I do not have access to any phone.
I will be waiting for your urgent response.

She is a music reporter, so she tends to travel a lot. We hadn't been talking for a little while and the story was kind of plausible.
After I replied, I received another mail containing this:

Thanks for the mail and concern, I am somewhere in London at the moment and I have lost contact with everyone ever since the incident took place. I am still not in total control of my self and the bad news is that, I cant access a phone at the moment.

That's where common sense came into play. My friend is smart, way smarter than that. If she's in a hotel, she can use the phone there, she can call the police, the ambassy... She has a twitter account, a facebook account, she cannot have lost contact with anybody at all.

Passed the knee jerk reflex of helping a friend in need, I smell fish and give a try to her BBM, which I should have done in the very first place. She replied.

I know, my email has been hacked

It's sad when you have to doubt your best friend's words. And it's sad when you are rewarded for your lack of trust.
But that's the reality of things, especially on the internet.
So, one more time, I'm giving you a checklist here, in case of doubt.

The anti scam checklist:

• Doubt everything councerning money
• Call your contacts on their phone
• Check their social media account as well
• Ask for proof of identity, something personal
• Use common sense
• Never communicate sensitive info online

Happy I didn't fall for it, happier if you don't ;)

Ever received a weird message from one of your friends mentionning some bizzare malfunction of your instant messenging service business plan or claiming to have uploaded pics of you poledancing with a lobster?
That's a hoax.
Here are three patterns you can learn about, so next time, I swear, you don't fall for it.

1) Facebook/Twitter/Yahoo!/YourDog/BBM is going to shut down

I you have used an IM service for more than a couple of month, you have already seen this one.

How it usually looks like:

• The big boss of your favorite IM service woke up this morning and decided to commit corporate suicide
• He took the decision to close/charge for it's star service because it's not making enough money/their servers are full/they are fed up of being rich
• Unless everybody forwards the message they are reading right now

Ask youself:

The smallest number for an IM service I know of is about 33 million users worldwide, and that's BBM. , Twitter must be around 200 million now, Yahoo! has around 250 million users, Live Messenger more than 300 million and Facebook 500 million.

All these service have more users than many countries have inhabitants.
We're not all supposed to know about these numbers, but look around you, isn't literaly everybody you know already using them?
Why would they close the gold mine? Wouldn't such a decision make the news, be documented?

Oh and yes, why would the CEO of Big Fat Internet Company bother sending you an...IM for something that important, instead of caling a press conference and making it a headline on the first page of their website?

Because it never happened, the CEO/Message/Broadcast/Cake is a lie.

What if you do what they say?

Someone, at one point, will come to your office with a fully loaded chicken launcher and chase you around untill you collapse.
Seriously, chain messages are pointless and everybody will end up hating you for relaying them.

What to do?

Don't forward, and tell the contact who forwarded the hoax to try and think about it for two minutes. And to never do that ever again. Ever.Again.

2) Hey is that you in that terrible picture/video ?

This one is a bit trickier. It usually comes via a legit contact, is not a broadcast and provides you a link to check what terrible deeds you have been immortalized doing. Man these blackouts are annoying.

How it looks like:

• A contact has tagged/seen you in a photo/video
• What you did is often either terrible or wonderful, or both
• The links points to a website you never use, or worse, it's a shortened URL full of crunchy garble

Ask yourself:

What have you been doing lately? Do you really pass out that often that you don't remember who takes your pic and puts them on totally unknown websites hidden behing completely incomprehensible urls?

If week long hangovers are not your favorite hobby, there are hudge chances that message is a scam.

What if you do what they say?

You're in for a whole lot of trouble. Sometimes these links are just there to attract visitors to badly coded, ugly ad-ridden website about poultry dating and the likes.
Most of the time, a virus is patiently waiting for your click to turn your computer into a scam broadcasting zombie machine.

What to do?

Do not, under any circumstance, click on the link.
Copy-paste the message and send it to your contact, followed by the questions "Did you just send me that?" and, to be extra sure, a more personal question such as "How many Swiss cheese can I ingest before turning into a dafodil?".

You'll know wether the answer make sense. If not, your contact is infected already, advise her to use a better anti-virus and to stop clicking on random links.

3) Just a random link

I won't develop here, the scams use the same methods as the photo/video links, they are just too lazy to ellaborate: A legit contact sends you a random URL without any other information.

The consequences are the same, you'll end up infected or redirected to avianDating.info

Again, same method, check with your contact: Did she really send you that?

Bonus advices:

Just because I'm a good guy, here are some bonus tips when in doubt:

• Never give away your password, websites never ask for it
• Never give away any sensitive information (bank account number, phone number...)
• If you believe the contact is legit, use the phone
• Never forward a message when you're asked to
• Use common sense (would your mother send you a link containing " \/iag|2a" ?)

Hope it helped. Forward this blogpost to 400 of your contacts or your dog will get his car stolen.

 

 

 

Earlier in this blog I've told you about things that irritate me on Twitter.
And, surprise I'm getting back with more.

1. The tunnel vision self-advertiser

Still human but barely so, they have one thing in mid. ONE.
They have achieved a ghost written e-book about the marvels of the gag reflex, and now they are going to let the whole world know about it.
They have developed a near-godly ability to relate any topic to their product, and whatever the cost they will do it to advise their marvelous e-pamphlet on the virtues of dried crab neck whenever you feel happy, suicidal, or your car broke down.

Block, choke with recycled e-paper.

2. The bloggers

140 characters are not always enough to express what you mean.
14.000 characters are still not enough for them.

They are the TL;DR kings of the TMI land, and will, not once, sir, not twice mam, but systematically, flood your timeline with novelettes about every single frame of their morning floss ritual.

Block, report for spam, poke in the leg with a hot needle for ever extra character.

3. The jokers

I'm inappropriate and often offensive.
But when it comes to be downright infuriating, I'm a baby compared to them.

Everything is laughable, everything is funny. They probably spawn from places such as /b/ (don't go if you don't know), and are always happy tobring the fun back in your agonizing grandmother, the last natural disaster or your sexual orientation.

Block, invite them to a lawyer-only rally and watch them melt in lava-hot lawsuits.

4. The dirties

Here I quote

" @porkknuckle ;) RT: @killmenow #ouch #Iknewit RT: @vampireunicorn Totally #mommy #eyebleach RT:@killmenow http://too.short...(snip)"

You really want to have a part in that. You know you do.

Block, force them to pay for the eye surgery they just brought on you.

5. The liberated army of sexual innuendoistas

Men and women who think sexual liberation equals tweeting about their genitals every other minute.

They usually try being smart about it and lamentably fail while letting all of us know about their renewed excitement for all the alphabeticvariations of the F-word.
They are not exhibitionists either, which make them totally unworthy of any interest.

Block, compliment them about the quality of their content, quoting them aloud, in a public place, preferably a church or a kindergarten.

Anything I missed?
I could turn it into a comic if you had an idea ;)

So, have you ever had to deal with this frustrating experience: blocking a user on Twitter, and seeing that user back and again in your timeline through RTs an mentions?
If yes, this little script can help you.

It will replace any tweet containing that user's name with "Just another tweet", so your adrenalin never spikes again.

You will need Mozilla Firefox and Greasemmonkey to run it. I can't host .js files, so you will have to follow the tutorial below in order to install the script. It's currently designed for one username only, but I could enhance it later, if ever you asked and treated me for a pizza.

Here is the tutorial:

1) Install the GreaseMonkey add-on . After installation, you should see a monkey icon on the botton-right of your browser, that's where you can manage your scripts, deactivate and reactivate Greasemonkey.

2) After installing, go to Tools -> Greasemonkey -> New user script

3) Fill in the blanks:

4) Greasemonkey will ask you for your favorite text editor, notepad or textedit will do

5) Copy and paste the following, fill the blank space between the quotes with the username you want to block (keep the quote marks, no need for a @), save and close.

For Twitter:

// ==UserScript==
// @name           TwErazer
// @namespace      TwErazer
// @include        http://www.twitter.com/
// @include        http://twitter.com
// @include           http://*.twitter.com/*
// ==/UserScript==

erazeme = "     ";
setInterval(function()
{
    el = document.getElementsByTagName('span');
    for(i=0;i<el.length;i++)
    {
        if (el[i].className == "entry-content")
            {
                str = el[i].innerHTML;
                if (str.match(erazeme))
                {
                    el[i].innerHTML = "Just another tweet";
                }
             }
    }
    el = "";
}
, 5000);

For "New Twitter"

// ==UserScript==
// @name           TwErazer_new
// @namespace      TwErazer_new
// @include        http://www.twitter.com/
// @include        http://twitter.com
// @include        http://*.twitter.com/*
// ==/UserScript==

erazeme = "    ";
setInterval(function()
{
    el = document.getElementsByTagName('div');
    for(i=0;i<el.length;i++)
    {
    if (el[i].className == "stream-item")
        {
        subEl = el[i].children[1].children[2].children[1];
        str = subEl.innerHTML;
            if (str.match(erazeme))
            {
            subEl.innerHTML = "Just another tweet";
            }
        }

    }
    el = "";
    srt = "";
}
,5000);

 

6) Go to Twitter,  breathe.

7) You can test the script with any word or username you want.

Voila, hope it's helpful :)

Your Twitter timeline is a bloody mess? You've created lists but it doesn't matter?
The probability is that you are both using Twitter to look for information to share and to keep in touch with some friends.
The probability is, now your timeline is gorged with non-sequitur quotes and repeated bad marketing attempts, that you failed.
Like I did.

So what now? It's time to unfollow everybody, yessir, and re-follow the Tweeps you really bear in your little heart.

I have some easy steps for you:

1. Tell everyone you are cleaning up and starting from zero. You don't hate them, you just need to get rid of all the bots, you were a victim of your own eagerness to make friends and followed too many accounts, people forced you at gunpoint, you're saving the trees...
2. Do that a day or two before you actually press the big red nuke button, some people don't tweet everyday and might be surprised if it happens too fast. Who wouldn't?
   
3. Make a new list with people you will re-follow. Unfollowing them will not delete them from the list. A good way to do so is to check your mentions and private messages, it will give you a good hint about who dialogs with you the most.
4. Once you're sure you really, really want to do it, go to http://www.unfollowall.com/
5. Enter your ID, Password, validate and check your account.
   
6. If your 'following' counter is not showing zero yet, go back to Unfollowall.com and repeat/refres.
7. Time to re-follow everybody in that new list you created.
8. As a couple of extra steps I'd recommend to create some special lists such as "Info only" and "real people" or "nice dialog"  and keep these strictly separated. If you are using a tool such as hootsuite or tweetdeck, it's pricelessly handy.

Notice that you will inevitably experience a drop in your followers, since all the accounts using automated mutual follow will also unfollow you. But then again, you're in there for a reason that doesn't include pleasing the bots. Be tough!

Wishing you a happy reboot!

Facebook is everywhere now. I won't emphasize on it, just go to any tech site and you will see what everybody is taking about now.
I've never liked wearing a uniform, and I am thinking of closing my Facebook account.

But I've been thinking, I still have some friends I want to keep in touch with, and there is still a part of my work I want to share (show off, really). Of course, I don't want any of my friends to feel obliged to subscribe to any service to give their feedback, so I am looking for the most open ways to share my life. You'll see, you can even gain more control on your privacy.

Here are the features Facebook proposes, and what you can do to replace them:

Sharing Photos

If you only need to let your friends know about how wonderful your last drunk pole dancing was, there are two pretty discrete ways:

Posterous, the service I use to blog, can also double as a password protected (that's optional) site to share your pictures, you just need to send them from your email. It allows "anonymous" comments, meaning that you don't have to sign in to leave your feedback.
All you need to subscribe is an email address and 3 minutes of your time.

E-mails are still a very good solution. I sounds old school and much less grandma-friendly, but the truth is my 76 years-old auntie knows how to use it.

If you're more into sharing for the show, Deviant Art is the best solution out there, with plenty of features (enough to make you forget there is a premium version). The community is wonderful and you'll even get advices on what you publish. Only subscribers can comment, this is the exception on the list.

Sharing Links

Delicious, if it's not the ultimate solution, allows you to make your bookmarks public. Your friends can view your delicious bookmarks and even subscribe to your RSS feed.

While you're at it...just send them the link by email or messenger. Copy-paste is not that difficult.

Sharing Thoughts/Status/Chat

Who doesn't have MSN messenger, Y!M, Google Talk or BBM? Seriously?
The question is: Do you want to let the whole world know what you had for breakfast, or just your friends?

Here I'll refer to Posterous again. You can open a blog there and everybody can comment, commenter can see each other's comments, no worries here :)

Dialog online

Facebook inbox or email?  Same use, without the updates from all the groups you joined out of fear of disappointing your contacts. Email has more features too.

Organizing events

A phone call. Seriously. I've never had any difficulty organizing something with a simple phone call or a couple of sms.
If it involves more than 3 people, just send an email.

Discovering content

The whole web.
You don't need "real life" friends to discover content, and joining Twitter, Delicious, Flick, Picasa, YouTube... random googling are as many ways to extend your views on the intertubes.
I've discovered many awesome bands, comics, rss feeds. Funnily enough nothing I have ever been tagged in on Facebook has ever had any value to me.

Finding friends/Keeping in touch

If you're thinking of getting rid of your Facebook account, you probably are the type of user who only added people you really know anyway. Keeping in touch with them is not really a problem then. Phone, emails, blogs, they are available for you to use at will.
You might be asking: What if we lose contact? My answer is: Up to you to foster your relationship with the person you love. Friendships are a lot more than tagging a picture.

The password thingie

With that many services (well, really a blog and an email), you may wonder how you are going to manage all the credentials.
That's actually pretty easy. All browsers have a "remember password" function. Write you credentials somewhere safe (on you home computer, a note on your phone, somewhere only you can access) for the sake of having them remembered and just forget them :)

I might close mine soon, I'll blog about it if it happens. Stay tuned!

I've ranted a lot about this phone, I know.
But now it's cracked and enhanced, I love it again, and I found it the perfect companion.
The fist pic is the free and dirt easy way (provided you don't have to smoke the whole pack before taking your picture)
The second and third pics are the slightly harder way, where the same pack is used for both landscape and portrait mode.

You won't look like a pro,but at least your videos will be stable :)

Go shoot now! :D

So, the iPad is out.

One of the first questions coming to my mind : how good is the soft keyboard.
Answer: not good enough so there is no need for an optional keyboard/docking system.

It made me think. Handhelds are now in more or less everybody's life, and are sometimes said to increase productivity.
While receiving and composing emails on the go is for sure an improvement, bringing it to the next level would mean editing document without getting the curly thumb syndrome.

And, sorry to say, there is nothing better then a real keyboard to be productive or simply do more stuff, here is why:

1. 10 fingers typing

Nothing can beat typing with all of your fingers. The learning curve is pretty fast, and professional typists can achieve speeds above one hundred and twenty words per minute. A Blackberry keyboard won't usually allow you to go over sixty five for a very skilled user.
You can see how fast you can go here, it's a cool test, try comparing with your thumb typing skills.

2. Comfort

That one is easy. Lots of big keys and space to rest your hands. Nothing can beat that, ever.

3. Keys

Yes, it seems easy, logical and whatnot, but a clear delimitation between the keys helps the fingers keep on striking the right spots, take a closer look at the "F" and "J" keys on your own keyboard.

4. Keyboard shortcut

A keyboard shortcut takes no more time than typing two letters or three letters in a row. Many users, on all operating systems, are used to shortcut. Undo, redo, cut, paste, open, close, save and exit... at least. When working on a text document, shortcuts are also available for bold, italics, underlined and more.
Nice gestures are now available, notably on Apple products, but I doubt they can all help you to navigate and format a text as quickly as shortcuts.

5. Hotkeys

Keyboards... have space, a lot of space, and usually twelve function key that can act a hotkeys anyway. The best example I can find is the MacBook Pro keyboard, where the functions keys double with systems hotkeys for screen brightness, volume and so on.

6. Gaming

I'm not talking about Mafia Wars here. Take WoW, Command and Conquer, any first person shooter (all the descendants of "Doom" and "Quake")  and ask the players if they want to drop their mouse+keyboard combination. Then run.

Just for fun, here is what a pro gaming keyboard may look like:

7. Stock food

Well that's not properly speaking an advantage and it could be the perfect place for an ants colony to dwell in, I have seen it happening in a MacBook. But hey, that's still a story to tell.

Are our thumbs doomed?

No, not really. At least not always.

Editing documents won't happen in the bus, and more rarely (though it does happen) in a taxi. If you want to carry a brain heaving editing task outside your office, you may as well do it in a cafe, where you have some more space for these little monsters down there.

The bluetooth folding keyboard is my favorite because of the hard finish, you can feel the key response, it's important to me (laugh, I hear you).
Here is a version compatible with Symbian S60, Poket PC/Smartphone under Windows mobile and Palm OS:

Ok, it looks taken straight out from a Terry Gilliam's movie, but Oh So Practical.