Month: May 2012

Direct Messages (DM) in Twitter apps

‘Direct Messages’ in Twitter is as important as ‘Mentions’, yet it does not enjoy the same conspicuousness to facilitate quick access as the latter in the official iOS and Android apps.

In order to get to the Direct Messages section you need to go to Me >> and then Direct Messages. If you are new to the app, you might not be able to find it at all.

Good thing there are a lot of better alternative Twitter apps for iOS devices, case in point: Tweetbot, that give as much importance to Direct Messages.

As for Android users, well, good luck with finding a really good Twitter client alternative in the first place. Otherwise, you’re stuck with the official Twitter app.

When Twitter’s ‘t.co’ Expands Rather Than Shortens Links

In the beginning, people flocked to Twitter because of its one simple but great feature: to publish each thought or message in 140 characters. In some instances that feature proved to be a constraint, but that’s really where creativity comes into play. While sharing links, long URL’s[1. URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator, which is usually the permanent link you find in your browser’s address bar when browsing the web.] posed even more challenges. That’s when URL shorteners came into being, Tinyurl was one of the first (if not the first) of its kind.

Then on June 2011, Twitter rolled out its very own (and) automatic link shortening feature/service — t.co. The “root” domain name itself is limited to only 4 characters (including the dot) so it sure could produce shorter links. In its blog post, Twitter promised links as short as 19 total characters (including the ‘http://‘ prefix).

The good thing about t.co is that link shortening is automatic. There’s no need anymore to go to the website of the URL shortening service, convert the link to its shortened form and pasting the same to Twitter. Instead, just paste any URL, regardless of length, to your Twitter post, and that will only eventually cost you 19 or 20 characters from expressing the complete message. Continue reading

SugarSync – A Cloud Service with No Search Functionality

If you are a cloud service to backup, access, sync and share documents, photos, music and movies across devices across different platforms, then I don’t need to stress enough the importance of a search functionality. We’re not talking about sharing one or two documents only here to start with.

In the case of SugarSync, the Search Feature has been requested for as early as October 2010. It has been at the top of their priority list ever since, as they have indicated in their responses. In my opinion, to be at the top of the priority list for almost two years is not priority enough.

No need for full content search of each document. It borders on the breach of privacy anyway. A simple file name search is acceptable!

It is funny how SugarSync can brag about their offerings, and even bashed Dropbox for the upgrade (but still inferior) in their referral bonus program and Google for being late in the game, but they can’t even implement the simple but basic functionality of search.

NBA 2012 PlayOffs Fearless Forecast

I remember tweeting yesterday:

Fearless forecast? It’s gonna be PHI vs. IND in the Eastern Conf. Finals, and OKC vs. IND in the Finals. And OKC will sweep it all the way. — deuts

These forecasts can be further broken down into 6 detailed predictions based on the ongoing Conference Semifinals as follows:

  1. The Oklahoma City Thunder will sweep the Lakers (4-0) in the Western Conference Semifinals;
  2. The Oklahoma City Thunder will sweep (4-0) whoever they play with in the Western Conference Finals;
  3. The Oklahoma City Thunder will sweep (4-0) whoever they play with in the NBA 2012 Finals;
  4. The Philadelphia 76ers will beat Boston Celtics in the Eastern Conference Semifinals;
  5. The Indiana Pacers will beat Miami Heat in the Eastern Conference Semifinals; and
  6. The Indiana Pacers will beat the Sixers in the Eastern Conference Finals.

After the Thunder lost to the Lakers earlier, one of my predictions is already down. Let’s see which of the other 5 will come out correct.

Payphone

I suppose nostalgia just hit me. Saw this payphone sitting idly at the corner of the mall. Makes one wonder, when was the last time you used a payphone?

I doubt it if kids of today (maybe even the adults in their early 20’s) do still know what you mean if you say you’re gonna call “collect”. Do they even know the concept of an “operator”?

Blame it on the iPhone I used to take this picture.

Let Us Opt Out of EMail Newsletters in One Click

If you are an internet service sending newsletters to email addresses, regardless of whether they were legitimately obtained, there should be a one-click unsubscribe link at the bottom of the message.

There are times when I sign up with an internet service, I just want to get over with all the check-marks and options at once just to “test out” the service. If I decide the service is not for me, I just ignore it and never come back. The problem is they already have my email address. And now they are regularly sending me newsletters I didn’t even want in the first place.

A good internet service places a quick unsubscribe/opt out link at the bottom of any message they send out to users. The bad ones, they put a footer message informing that you can opt out of their newsletter by logging in and changing your preferences from their website.

Unsubscribing should be a one click process (or two at the most). I can’t recall what my username and password were anymore (I use different passwords for different sites). So the quick remedy, I report it as spam.

And you know what happens when I report your message (thus, your email address) as spam in Gmail? The system will learn from that and may mark all your other messages to other Gmail users as spam as well.