The Simian Downtime Analyst

It is Blog Day and I am ashamed I had no idea until I saw a post on Roundpeg. On blog day, the thing is to showcase 5 new blogs that you like and to let them know that you gave them a shout. I’m going to just list the blogs sans description, so its a surprise when you get there.

THE LIST:

1. Mike Fruchter

2. Shey Smith

3. The Foray

4. Edythe

5. Cliotech

Enjoy

Image via CrunchBase, source unknown

zintin, on the iPhone Appstore, oh what a fun and interesting piece of world connectiveness ye are.

With the exception of the 12 year olds constantly asking for, and posting mature content, you are quite an interesting take on the social networking genre. A good take in my opinion, on this ever so missing in quantity field (sarcasm much?) and the only thing I honestly feel is missing is the ability to add a friend without having to share your contact details.

Start it up, set your name and status, and your browsing a list of people in the nearby area. Bored? Tap on someone and you can view their “wall,” a place where you can scribble something, post a picture or leave a note. Like a picture already on there? Tap it, hit options and choose to add it to your own wall. Someone put something on your wall you don’t like, or you feel may be illegal, delete it or report it right from your own wall.

Wanna get to know someone better beyond their wall on zintin? Offer to exchange your contact details. I haven’t had a chance to test this out yet, but so far no one has really piqued my interest in the past week on there to exchange with.

There is even and option to filter out mature content, and when you post a picture, you’re asked if it’s mature or not, thank you very much for this addition. You honestly have no idea how many times I’ve given up on various crap over the years because of the 12 year olds constantly saying derogatory terms, or posting the same old Playboy pictures I’ve seen since the 60’s.

There are also “City Walls” based on the ip address (wifi connection,) or triangulation of your cell towers for where ever you are. Travel around and leave your permanent mark on a virtual graffiti quest to tag the whole world.

My opinion? Go out on your iPhone’s and download zintin now, if you’re in the Louisville Ky area, find me and strike up a conversation, names Teh James in Tha Ville. Just don’t expect me to send you pictures of my wonderous vacation to the 7th moon of Saturn.

Fake Follow is the social media equivalent of being at a party, running into someone you sort of know, having empty conversation with them before awkwardly being offered their phone number. You write the number down on paper because you intentionally left the phone in the car, and dump your pockets later.

Friends shouldn’t let friends “fake follow”.

If you really could care less what someone has going on in their feed, don’t click the button. It actually takes more effort to think about “fake following” someone you do not want updates from. Be lazy. They will not cry over you not following them (unless they already need help)  and if you have enough people subscribing to you, they will probably realize you have notifications turned off.

Advocating “fake follow” just makes you look arrogant, and possibly a bit distant from your readers. Is that the social part of social media/networking? I thought people who did the fake friend thing were on MySpace. Do you really want to be in the same category as Tila Tequila?

Stupid “fake follow”.

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Edit: Stupid spammer aiding “fake follow”.

We all love getting our hands on a good piece of software, some of us are even willing to shell out a few bucks for it.  Well this is why Software Saturday was born. Freeware/Shareware/ Payware needs a home and we want to help. We will showcase them in every edition of Software Saturday. This time we showcase the underloved apps. Notepad ++ , Filezilla, Miro, Comodo Firewall, Songza. All the apps this week are freeware…cuz thats how I like it.

Notepad ++

Such a lovely app. Notepad for programmers and coders. The lines are numbered so you can figure out what line WordPress is talking about when it gives you that error. Since my PHP education is self taught this saves me lots of time when I break my plugins. This software is unloved because mostly the coders and the nerdy folk flock to it, but Notepad+Tabs=Win for Everyone. You can also theme it if you don’t like to code in black on white. You must have to have this.

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It’s actually a shame that I am not thrilled about SocialGO. The user interface is intuitive, the sites are nice looking like Ning but with KickApps functionality.  I had a video uploaded really quickly with no problems — it did limit the video to about a minute.

It did give me a bit of an issue with my desire to test betas with complex passwords, causing me to have to reset the thing at least four or five times.  Since I took the time to calm down before the review, I’ll chalk that issue up to special characters or 4am and let it go.

I had a network setup with kickapps that is not fully deployed yet which I do not have time to go through and style. Might change it to SocialGO.  Its just difficult to get excited about white label social networks anymore since a new one shows up once a week. Its mostly Ning, but you can set your network to private.

Hiya folks, sorry for my long absence, had a lot of personal family issues going on the past couple months, but that’s for another site and time.

On to the subject at hand; I have been using both Qik and Flixwagon over the past month and a half with my iPhone and I have some opinions about both of them, which I would like to share with you.

For those who don’t know about these sites/programs, lemme give you the low down Qik and Flixwagon are both live streaming video sites that allow users to broadcast live audio and video from anywhere in teh world, through their camera phone. These are both very fun and interesting sites, and have many useful features, functions, and an endless (more…)