Tag Archives: networking

Yes, I’m still talking about Twitter

Posted on April 9, 2008 | Leave a comment

I thought this word cloud from what I’ve been tweeting was kinda cool. I created it at TweetCloud.com. These whow the most common words I’ve tweeted, bigger means I’ve tweeted more.
Picture 1-2 Continue reading →

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TweetStats

Posted on April 6, 2008 | 1 comment

twwetstats interfaceSo I’ve been trying to use Twitter more and I found TweetStats to show me how much.

To give some background: Picture 4TwitterFeed is actually how my blog posts get cross-posted to Twitter so those really don’t count much (started using this Oct 15, 2007). And I just discovered FriendFeed recently. But you can see that tweeting with Twitterific (w/phone and web) I’ve far surpassed that. Significant if you look at the below chart and see most of it’s in the last month. And by looking at my blog post counts (to the left) for the last few months, you can see blogging has declined. But I’ll blame the low blogging on 3 things: Twitter (but I am micro-blogging), busier at work (to tired at night to blog) and being sick this season.

monthtweetstats

Thanks to Julia Roy for pointing it out to me (via Twitter).

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I’m looking for Detroit Local Tweeters (Twitters)

Posted on March 30, 2008 | 2 comments

Can you suggest some Detroit-area people to follow on Twitter? I’m looking for something that has a local geographic flavor, like Dearborn (or Detroit) Michigan.

I’m always looking for more people to follow, but today I’m soliciting suggestions for the Detroit area just to get a slightly less global feel for this Twittery goodness/chaos. I’ve got a lot of great people that I follow, but I’d love to see some tweets about local restaurants, bars and music.

So send me a message @GaryLaPointe with suggestions or tell someone you know to follow me and I’ll find them or just leave a comment. Thanks!

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Understanding Twitter

Posted on March 16, 2008 | 3 comments

So I’ve really been trying to use Twitter more. I read and tweet more at my computer than when I’m out. When I’m out I tweet some but don’t generally read. I do have it set to get a text message on my phone automagically if someone tweets my name. If you don’t know what Twitter is:

  • You can see what I tweet. All my personal blog posts get tweeted automatically.
  • You can see who I follow with twitter.
  • You can “follow me” (but you have to set up a free account with them) and get all my tweets sent to your cell phone so you can see what I’m thinking about an blogging about.
  • There is a nice mobile interface and you can even subscribe via RSS.

    I really got on the blogging boat late because I didn’t get it, but once I started I was hooked immediately. This isn’t working for me yet, but I’m still trying. On GeekBrief I saw the folks at CommonCraft created a video called Twitter in Plain English and it’s a pretty good explanation with interesting animation.

    But it still feels like Instant Messenger (IM) to me, but only 140 characters. It’s definitely more than IM, but it really just feels like the next step in its evolution. The clients feel like IM, and using the web interface at Twitter fells more and more like a web chat client.

    The biggest difference is that you direct your message to everyone in your group, not to a specific person. So occasionally you see a comment directed to someone else that you never saw the preceding comment, so then you can go see what they said and see if it’s someone else that interests you. You can send direct messages, but I don’t think that’s very common and I can never remember the command (it’s “D TwitterUserName TheText“).

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    Buffalo High Speed wireless router – Mini-review (and DD-WRT info)

    Posted on March 12, 2007 | 1 comment

    So I picked up a Buffalo WHR-G54S Wireless Broadband Router because you can never have too many routers in your house but mostly because ever since wireless existed I’ve wanted someway to bridge across my house (mostly to hook some old non-WiFi equipment that was in the living room hooked to the stereo) for older equipment that wireless wasn’t an option. So I just wanted a box with an ethernet and an antenna that would then connect to the network. The stuff I tried was too expensive (although that was a few years back) didn’t work as advertised or didn’t pass Appletalk packets. In general, my favorite home router is the Netgear brand wireless routers but I thought I’d try thing.

    So the packaging on the Buffalo WHR-G54S made me think it would work (or that I could make it work). It seemed like a nice wireless router but it looked like it wouldn’t do what I wanted, but more importantly I knew I could make it work with the DD-WRT project. This is pretty much a way to put a different OS inside the router and it supports a lot more options, it’s kind of a mini-linux (it might actually be all linux now, mildly confused on that) and there are a few projects like this out there. The most important option (for me) is by being a bridge (a mega-bridge that I can hook 5 computers up to). But it’ll also support radius authentication (if you need it, it’s a big deal), a mini web-server and even a way to power (and charge) your internet cafe.

    Warning the content gets pretty geeky from here on. Continue reading →

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    What is a Network?

    Posted on March 9, 2007 | 3 comments

    So my Mom asks me what her network is, I tell her the name of it but she wants to know what it is. We talked for a bit but she’s not liking any of my (wonderful) analogies. Plus the fact that she’s wireless now means I can’t just say it’s the wire…

    The closest on a home scale I could come up with was her phone network. She’s got the phone wires just like the computer wires and a cordless phone in the house. It’s not weird that she doesn’t understand the computer network, it’s weird that she thinks she understands the phone network…

    It’s funny the questions people ask when they use technology that they never asked before (I don’t mean just my Mom, I’m picking on millions of people here). There are just so many computer similarities with phones, cable tv, and plumbing but people just never seem wonder about it; but when they get a computer they want an answer. I’m thinking that when she’s over my house next she’ll see all the other wireless networks (in my neighborhood) in her list and that’ll help (at least the why of why it has a name). I was sure to leave out the fact that her phone now goes over the cable with the internet and the television channels. Continue reading →

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    Technorati Problems

    Posted on February 5, 2007 | 9 comments

    Maybe someone can help me with this: When I look at my Technorati page for Gary Said… it hasn’t been showing my posts lately. Any suggestions on how to make my posts show up consistantly in their listing? Continue reading →

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    I made the 2000 Bloggers List!

    Posted on February 4, 2007 | 49 comments

    2000Bloggers2000Bloggers-GarySo I made the 2000 bloggers list that I mentioned last week. It was kinda hard to find my picture (the one to the left) buried in with the other (almost) 2000 but I found it. As of today it looks like there’s still room for about 400 or so more (nope see the update below).

    If you arrived here from a 2000 bloggers list PLEASE leave a comment! Continue reading →

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    Posted in me + myself + i

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