Virtually Here

During my searches on the internet (often done by using StumbeUpon) I have - maybe not unsurprisingly - come across more useless and questionable sites than useful ones. One recent site that I literally stumbled onto is file-swap.com.

You upload a photo or text file - and in return you get another one back that have been uploaded by other users (suckers?) such as yourself.

The material you upload must be yours to distribute and not be copyright protected. I decided to give the site a try and uploaded a photo I had taken. The upload process is easy. You simply browse to the file on your harddrive and click upload. Once the upload is complete you receive a link on screen that you can click on to display what you in turn received back (and the option to download it should you chose to). I, for the record, received this photo ‘in return’.

I then decided to try out uploading a text file and simply wrote down a short jokea and uploaded it as a text file. Seconds later I was presented with this . So it appears that text files doesn’t always generate a text file reply. Oh well.

Is it a useful site? Uh..no.

Is it a fun site. Well, for maybe two-three times.

Is it an odd site? Very.

Maybe the best thing about the site was this feedback that they had received from one of their users and that was posted in the ‘About’ portion of the site:

“hey guys, your page sucks a** bigtime, i was able to swap only one file, then i was just getting anoyyed by the fu***ng “that file already exists” or “invalid characters in name” or different kinds of buillshit from you.(i was trying to swap different files)
So I just wanted to say F*** YOU, you just ruined my day, so i’m gonna f*** somebody’s day too, because s**t like this really pisses me off.
Hope you rott in hell b*tches. so long”

At least they seem to have a sense of humor

I could write pages upon pages about StumbleUpon and judging from the popularity this site has seen (over 5,000,000 members) odds are you are either already a subscriber or at least know of it. If not - the short description of Stumble is that it’s a site that learns what sites you like based on your own ratings and it also allows you to find sites that like-minded members enjoy.

The long description of Stumble can still somewhat be summarized into four main points;

a)  Discovering sites are based on your own personal site preferences or you can view sites that other like-minded members are enjoying.

b)  You need a tool installed in your browser that will allow you to ‘thumbs up’ or ‘thumbs down’ sites that you come across (TiVo much?).

c) Low-quality/traffic sites are filtered out. As sites grow out of date (example: you search for “Lollapalooza schedule”. Odds are you want to see the current or next year’s schedule and not the one for 2006. As sites becomes less visited they also disappear from your search hits).

d) On-line community. You can interact with people through the site’s many forums and even find people that are geographically near you and with similar interests. Tell people about sites you enjoy, get recommendations - and who knows meet up for a cup of Java. No, not the programming language…I mean actual coffee.

I dislike the need to install any kind of tool with a passion but I must admit I’ve had my Stumble add-on in my Firefox browser for longer than I can remember and even though I’m not the most frequent ‘thumber’ when I go to a site I do enjoy doing it from time to time and going back to Stumble to see what sites I am getting recommended.

It’s a great site and tool and the forums are very active.  If you have your own blog Stumble is also a very good way to drive new traffic to your site.

Hurry up if you want to grab some beta testing spots on Google’s entry into Social Gaming: Lively .

There have been persistent rumors for a long time that Google had a project in the works in this area but it is still unclear if this offering is ‘it’. Getting started is very straightforward (if you are running Windows that is..). Download a browser extension, register on the site and off you are ready to enter a brand new SecondLife’ish world where you can create your very own avatar with a lot of clothing options, create and furnish your room and interact with others that join the game. Nothing too novel when it comes to Social gaming and that is why many people find themselves questioning this move by Google. For a company that already have so many popular online applications ranging from maps and emails to content sharing sites it does open up some rather interesting possibilities in regards to how some of these could get ties into a social gaming platform.

Who knows, in a years time you may be lounging in your virtual chair on planet XyzEboo reading your Gmails as your favorite YouTube videos blast from your equally virtual TV set. Then again - would you want to?

A short video of the game can be found here: YouTube Video

Opened today so go check it out.

Finding yourself aimlessly searching the internet after having exhausted the social networking generated entertainment for the evening? Feeling lost..? Well, why not head over to ffffound.com and discover how what your image taste really looks like?

Ffffound.com (I swear I still have to count the number of f’s every time to get it right..) is a rather novel ‘image bookmarking tool’ that allows you to search for images that are reminiscent of images you tag or bookmark as images you find pleasing/interesting. The further you ‘train’ the site the more interesting and accurate are the results that come back. You can also share the images you bookmark with other users (which is the weak tie-in to social networks, I really like the concept of the site and wanted to post something about it).

The downside, and I still haven’t figured out exactly why this is needed, is that you have to download and install either an IE extension (who the heck uses IE these days apart from people forced by their company to do so?) or a bookmarklet (for all browsers). I am not particularly keen on installing anything from sites as I a) change computers a lot and b) am a very fickle user and don’t want to end up with too much crud wasting away. But if that is no deterrent to you then head on over and give it a spin and see if you can ffffind (I counted…) your refined image taste.

In a previous post I brought up the issue of cyber stalkers that may be out to get more information about you and your ‘real life’ through your online persona(s). This post turns that spotlight onto the corporate world and their want/need to know more about what you have been up to on your Social Networks as it may be a significant factor in for instance a hiring decision. Sites like Spokeo.com targets the corporate HR departments and allows them to with a few simple key strokes identify photos, videos, blog posts and social networks associated with your email account. Thought you were ’safe’ because you used a different user-name? In case you used your same email account you may end up exposing parts of your private life that you, well, would had preferred to keep ‘private’.

The site claims that it scans about forty social networks when it gathers the information about you. In less than a minute it return it’s findings in a easy to read and print format. Thought no one would find that drunken video of you that you posted five years ago or that post you did on MySpace one night when you were sooo mad. Think again.

Social Networks is a wonderful asset to the online communities but they do come with a price tag - and requires you to think twice before what you post. Maybe the old ‘count to ten before you say it’ - now should read ‘count to ten before you post it’.

Even though you won’t be able to see the details of what Spokeo’s search engine returns you can still type in your email account and see how many hits it finds and how many photos and videos may be associated with your email account.

Note: Spokeo, quite correctly, makes the statement that any information that they do gather is information that is public and visible to anyone that would had gone to the individual sites - they just simply the search for the busy HR department.

In a previous post I brought up a service found on SocialURL.com where you can establish one ‘base URL’ for all your social networks you participate on. Ping.fm is a very simple, yet so useful, service that makes updating your social networks as easy as, well, pinging them.

Got ten social networks and you just broke up with your boyfriend? Well, since sharing that news with thousands of semi-strangers on the internet will be on top of your to-do list you are in for a bit of typing and posting.

To the rescue: Ping.fm makes sharing your utmost personal updates with the internet masses, instanteneously, on a number of sites (Twitter, Tumblr, Pownce, Blogspot, plaxo, facebook, MySpace, bebo,..the list goes on) as simple as sending an email.

How does it work you ask?

Well, as you ride the bus home from that eventful party, you may pull out your cell phone (or wait until you get home and get some perspective on things..) and send your update (“Tom and I broke up, he is such a loser. It feels hella good to be free again! Hells yeah!”) from your AIM, email, Facebook, Yahoo IM, etc) and a few seconds later it is plastered all over the internet on every Social Network you have registered at Ping.fm.

Instant sharing of personal information with name-/faceless masses have never been easier and you know you want to.

Sharing things about yourself, your thoughts or simply things you’ve read or heard of is one of the fundamentals of any social network. On the internet this often manifests itself into blog posts that you can either send to people you want to inform - or have random people stumbling upon.

Setting up a blog of your own simply to get a place to get links to your thoughts and ideas is a daunting task for many people that simply doesn’t have the skill or time to do so. Well, queue Posterous.com - it’s your instant (not even a signup is required) blog/document sharing site.

All you do is sending your post to their main email account (post@posterous.com) and a few seconds later you receive a link to your post that you can share with anyone you send it to. More frequent users of the service may opt to sign up for an account so that all their posts are kept in one place for others to browse (more like a traditional blog) and you get your very own site URL as per http://[name].posterous.com.

So, if you’re looking for a no frills site that is probably the easiest one I’ve ever come across to post your thoughts, photos, documents or audio files this may be the site for you. As a registered user you start off with 1 Gig of site space which should be plenty to at least allow you to get a sense for how you like the site.

It had to happen sooner or later - a social network/blog tool that ‘helps you’ keep track of your bed partners and the number of times you’ve had sex. Bedposted.com is still in beta testing but you can request an early user-id and access to the site already now.

The site has some rather…interesting..potentials as far as social networking goes. The mind boggles when you start thinking of the potential of a ‘clean’, blog-/social networking version of say AdultFriendFinder.com (I deliberately didn’t make that a link…) but it also raises the question (again) if there are some aspects of your personal life that should be just - private - and not used for online exposure and recording. This is a comment in general and not directed to bedposted.com in particular as handled well the concept could have a rather amusing outcome.

The decision for what you share is obviously your own but a few words of caution to anyone venturing into area like this: as anonymous as you think you may be online the truth is that most people leave ‘traces’ that anyone bent on tracking you down can and will use to do so. Have fun - but remember to be careful out there.

Note: I received this email from bedposted today:

“Hi! Thanks for taking the time to blog about this, but the idea is actually that it (and your data) would be 100% private. No social networking at all, in fact. No public profiles, no blogging, no linking your friends to your latest post. It’s entirely for personal use and self-awareness.

The idea is to provide a place for people to better understand their lives, that’s all. Thanks again!”