Further conversation on de-friending
I know I’ve blogged on this topic before, but I can’t seem to find the original post at the moment.
What is the point of de-friending? I’ve maybe only done it once and it was right after I started playing Farmville when I added a bunch of people I didn’t know in order to get free gifts. I de-friended these people because I have no idea who they are, and I don’t want them accessing my private info. But other than that, I’ve never had the urge to de-friend someone I actually know. The closest thing would be not friending someone because I don’t know them that well.
At what point does someone say to themselves, “Hey, this jerk! DEFRIENDED!”? Is there something I’m missing here? I was kinda under the impression that a social netowork was about building a network of people you know, not de-friending people that you haven’t talked to in 2 months.
I probably don’t talk to 95% of my friends list on any kind of a regular basis, but that’s because the fact that we are in a network changes that. Just because I haven’t talked to someone doesn’t mean I can see whats going on in their life, that’s what the activity stream is for. It’s like we are talking, just not directly to each other. I can see that they got a new job, broke up, moved to a new town, and so forth. It’s passive conversation.
1/30 SGA Meeting, Live on Ustream
Tune in to mattmccullough.net/live today around 2:30 for the live broadcast. It will most likely suck, as all I have is my built in isight on my macbook pro, But it’s something if you are interested.
So I have reverted into the illogical trend that is Microblogging. Here I have WordPress for public entries, Livejournal for private random entries. And now Twitter for public, even more random entries.
I should probably be thankful for my sanity that there aren’t more people to follow, but you should make one anyways.
Facebooking, and the new tier of communication
Email is dead. Admit it, when was the last time you said, “Hey, let me email you this cool video”. No, you just send it on facebook, or del.icio.us for the more geek inclined.
No, email is more or less a notification system now. To tell us when our Chinese food is getting delivered, or when someone wants to add us as a friend. Just as email was built on top of legacy protocols, facebook is built on top of email. And even still, there are applications built on top of facebook. Do you get this tier-ing concept now?
So, with this new communication standard established, why is it that people continue to invite strangers to random events and applications. The way I treat facebook, is that getting invited to an event on facebook is the equivalent to a phone call, or an IM. And yet people don’t take these things seriously like I do. Am I taking social netoworking too seriously, or is the rest of the community just behind on this one?
Significant Improvements with campus internet.
We have not only begun campus upgrades of network utilities, But I have also optimized my TCP/IP settings with a piece of windows freeware called TCP optimizer. Below are the new results, and compare them with the results in my old post below. The difference is almost 100x!
Network issues on campus
The claims that our campus’s networking hardware is near it’s end is starting to become visible. I’ve always had crappy internet when I lived in Bohn Hall. But this is getting out of hand.
The Thursday before spring break I was questing in World of Warcraft with Rhiannon, when all of a sudden I was disconnected from WoW. It was late so I didn’t think much of it, but I later learned that WoW was completely inaccessible from the MSU network. Yet I had no problem playing from home.
Now that I am back on campus, I tried to play again in Russ on Sunday night. I was able to play fine, but yesterday was a different story. I could login for a few moments, but every player and list wouldn’t load.
Sure the games are bad. I’ve heard issues about Asheron’s Call from my lab parter, to people calling the Helpdesk with issues in Star Wars Galaxy. But recently its begun to effect me at work.
Yesterday I had a call where the solution was to download a 20MB file from the Novell website. At 10 mins+ per download to 8 computers, you can imagine that it took up more time just waiting for the file to download than it should have.
Another call I had yesterday, I received an [all students] email from a client who’s computer I was working on. Upon closer look, I noticed the email was timestamped at 9am, and I received it at 4pm. (It’s a series of tubes!)
Here is how MSU’s Wireless Broadband Network clocks in with a test from Speedtest.net
Pathetic. Watching the download speed it didn’t even tick above the 256k mark, the Very first mark!
I know MSU finds itself in a financial table vice at the moment, but this is ridiculous. The MSU ISP should be considered a utility at this point, because it is vital to the operation of this campus. And speeds like this are just embarrassing and are hurting the university as a whole.
Flickr Collections
Flickr has just unveiled its collections feature, which I think is genius
. Its basically a set of sets. I made a few quick ones that made sense to me. Check em out.
Save the Internet!
If you still do not know the argument about net neutrality, YOU MUST WATCH THIS VIDEO!
Myspace e-mails working again.
The solution came to me earlier this week. I simply changed my login email from gmail, to MSU, and back to gmail. very simple, took 2 mins.
But to test it, since I am not a whore, I waited to see if they came. And sure enough, today I got one.
So for those random visitors who commented on the entry before about myspace, this is my answer. Change your email, and then change it back.
Myspace provides the Worst customer suport ever!
recently, according to my archived email actually, may 29th was the last notification email i received from myspace. for a while now i’ve delt with it, but now i want the notifications back. but according to my account settings i should be receiving them, and its not going into my spam folder.
so i sent an email to customer support. forgot what it said exactly but i clearly explained the situation. here is myspaces response.
Hello!
To change your email your e-mail address go to “Account Settings.” Start by clicking on “Home” in the top navigation menu from any MySpace web page. Once on your personal home page, click on “Account Settings,” appearing in the upper left portion of the page, next to your picture. You will be taken to your “Account Settings” page. Once there, type in the new email address you want to use and click on “Change”. You will receive an email to your old address asking you to confirm the email change. Follow the link in the email and confirm the code and your email will be changed.
If you do not have access to your old email account, please reply to this email with the old email address, the password for the account and the email address you want to change it to.
Still having trouble? Please click here:
http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=misc.contactThanks
MySpace.com
to which i reply-ed
I really wish you fuckers would read shit before you send out generic responses.
of course that got no reply. so yesterday i sent this email. i saved this one lol
I am getting tired of this half assed customer support. The only time i get any positive response from you guys is when i am reporting underaged profiles.
Listen closely to my problem. If i get another half assed response i am escalating this problem. is that clear? i will use small words so you can understand my problem.
Email notifications no work! the option is set so that i should be recieving them. it was never touched. they just stoped coming. i have double checked it again. according to my options i should be recieving notification emails, but i am not.
I do not want to change my email address, i want notifications sent to my email.
FIX IT!
to which they replyed
Hello!
To change your email your e-mail address go to “Account Settings.” Start by clicking on “Home” in the top navigation menu from any MySpace web page. Once on your personal home page, click on “Account Settings,” appearing in the upper left portion of the page, next to your picture. You will be taken to your “Account Settings” page. Once there, type in the new email address you want to use and click on “Change”. You will receive an email to your old address asking you to confirm the email change. Follow the link in the email and confirm the code and your email will be changed.
If you do not have access to your old email account, please reply to this email with the old email address, the password for the account and the email address you want to change it to.
Still having trouble? Please click here:
http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=misc.contactThanks
someone please tell me where i go to escalate this problem. i’ll stay on the phone all damn day if i have to, i’m pissed at these guys.
I just sent this email to privacy@myspace.com because i am almost certain that there are intellegent humans reading this inbox.
I have an issue with your customer support that i would like to escalate, please give me a phone number that i can call.
P.S. my emails are now working. Update has been posted here.
Myspace Deleting Underage Profiles
This is a post I've been meaning to make for a while now.
In case you didn't hear this gem about Myspace deleting Underage profiles, It apparantly doesnt just apply to the youngins. Anyone who lies about their profile gets their profile deleted.
There is this kid Nick, who is a friend of Bern's family, who is one of those annoying kids that just bug the crap out of you. So one day I noticed his Myspace profile age was set as 22 years old. So as a joke, i reported him. Within a week, he got the following E-mail.
Subject: MySpace Account Cancellation
Hello,Please note that you do not meet the required age limit as per MySpace.com's Terms of Service, or you have misrepresented your
age on the MySpace.com system.
We deleted your account because you have violated the Terms of Service.
Do not create another account on MySpace.com until you reach the required age, or use the correct age on your profile if you are old enough to have an account.If you meet our required age limit, please sign up with your correct age.
Thank you,
MySpace
And as a reward, i got this E-mail about a week later.
Hello,
Thank you for reporting this profile. The profile in question is
scheduled to be deleted.Thank you,
MySpace.com
Now isn't a little unfair that the first step is account deletion. It even states in that first E-mail, that the account age could have been entered in-correctly. So what if someone does accidently enter the wrong age, and they eventually get caught. It's a bit unfair that they delete the account first thing IMHO. At the very least, there should be a stern warning E-mail before the deletion step. Myspace has once again, become a giant douche bag.
As long as we are talking about Myspace, go download the Brand New MyspaceIM that you will never use. And go buy the Myspace phone, so you can send out brainless bulletins while you are AFK.
I should just go back to boycotting Myspace, the whole thing makes no sense.
Introducing Podzinger
When i started podcasting, i also started listening to other peoples podcasts to get inspiration. It also turned out to be very interesting. Instead of listening to music while walking to class, or eating, i could catch up on things.
One of my favorite podcasts is Inside the net. They talk about a different website, or service every week, and interview someone from there and get the inside scoop.
This week they had Podzinger. This website, is like Google for podcasts! How? They use speech to text software to create a transcript for your podcast, then when you search something, it searches through all the transcripts to get your results. Once you find them, you can listen to the excerpt from the podcast, the whole episode, or subscribe to it for good, right there in the search results. Can you say AWESOME!
They also take that and get some really cool features out of it, like Most talked about person of the week.
I submitted my feed, so hopefully i can get listed there soon, they said they would send me an email when my first episode had been transcribed. This should trun out to be really cool.
Matthew McCullough on Wordpress 