Paul O'Flaherty

Destroy The Computer

I hope this is sarcasm

I sincerely hope that this protester was really just demonstrating a penchant for sarcasm and didn’t really want the homo’s devil machine computer destroyed because Alan Turing was gay!

Via Pharyngula

Just An FYI About Email Forwards

Just in case you were wondering why I never reply to or forward any of your “hilarious” and “cute” emails!

(Via Bear).

Google Thinks The Irish Are Ugly

Google really must have a disliking for us Irish or maybe just for me!

I was about to do a search today and got as far as typing in “why” when “Google suggest” kicked in and offered me the following:

Why is my poop green? WTF? Maybe I’m drinking too much stout or something because apparently Google thinks all us Irish are ugly, stupid, alcoholic micks!

  I love you too Google. Really!

Hack Sociable to work with YOURLS – Quick and Dirty

Code

Since we’ve created Scrw.us and started using our own custom short URLs for our domains we’ve run into a few issues with other WordPress plugins not working quite the way we would like them to.

The biggest issue we’ve had is with the awesome sociable plugin by Joost De Valk (now taken over by BlogPlay) which adds social bookmarking buttons to all your posts. It’s an amazing plugin and even allows you to use it with URL shortening service awe.sm, but of course we wanted to use our own service which runs on Yourls.

When I first made the modifications to Sociable I didn’t realized that some services, such as StumbleUpon, would throw a fit when they got passed the scrw.us URL. Essentially they were having problems with the 301 redirect, so I went back and did it a second time.

I didn’t want to strip out the awe.sm shortening functionality (in case I ever needed to fall back on it) from the script and wanted to be able to selectively decide which services to send a short URL to and which to send the original URL to.

My solutions isn’t exactly elegant and there are certainly other ways to approach it, but it works.

First working with version 3.4.4 of Sociable, open the file “sociable.php” in your favorite editor (I’m working in Dreamweaver) and find line 605.

Line 605 should look like this:

$permalink = urlencode(get_permalink($post->ID));

Replace it with the following:

$permalink = urlencode(get_permalink($post->ID));
$shortlink = urlencode(wp_ozh_yourls_raw_url());

Next find line 679 which reads:

$url = str_replace(‘PERMALINK’, $permalink, $url);

Replace line 679 with the following:

$url = str_replace(‘PERMALINK’, $permalink, $url);
$url = str_replace(‘SHORTLINK’, $shortlink, $url);

All that we’ve done here is create new variable called “$shortlink” which grabs the short URL via a call to the YOURLS API (more info on the API here) and allows us to place the short URL into the array which is used to construct the URL used in the bookmarks.

The array for constructing the URLS is between lines 62 and 552.  The section for posting to Twitter looks like this:

‘Twitter’ => Array(
‘favicon’ => ‘twitter.png’,
‘awesm_channel’ => ‘twitter’,
‘url’ => ‘http://twitter.com/home?status=TITLE%20-%20PERMALINK’,

As it is above, the twitter bookmark that appears on the bottom of your post will send the full URL of your post to twitter along with the title. In order to make it work with your short URL just swap out “PERMALINK” for “SHORTLINK”:

‘Twitter’ => Array(
‘favicon’ => ‘twitter.png’,
‘awesm_channel’ => ‘twitter’,
‘url’ => ‘http://twitter.com/home?status=TITLE%20-%20SHORTLINK’,

Now all you have to do is decide which services you want to send short URLs to and which you want to get the full URL and replace as necessary inside the array.

As a note, we’re using the short URL for Facebook, Twitter, Email and Friendfeed and using the full URL for Digg and StumbleUpon. You may need to test which ones work for you, depending on the services you use, as they don’t all accept the short URL.

How Twitter Can Reduce User Headaches

Twitter Fail Whale

Twitter are looking to improve the user experience by changing how retweets work and while I applaud them for attempting to improve their service, I have two things that I’d like to see changed to improve things.

1. Add pagination to the list of people you’re following.

I’m currently following about 1250 people and today I wanted to go through the list and clean out some of the folks that I’ve lost interest in or simply never should have followed in the first place.

As there is no pagination on the ” people you’re following” page, I would have to push the “next” button 62 times to get to the first people that I ever followed. That makes cleaning out the list just a little too much work for my liking.

As a side note, you used to be able to go back through the pages rapidly by manipulating the URL but with Twitters recent changes that is no longer possible.

2. Add a time limit before you can unfollow someone.

People who follow you and immediately unfollow you as soon as you follow them back drive me mental. It’s one of the most annoying forms of twitter spam sued by unscrupulous marketers and self promoters attempt to build an “audience” (I use the term audience likely, as I believe that doing this may get you “followers” but there is little chance of them being an actual audience).

Adding a follower should be a two step process which includes a confirmation click.

In order to follow me you would click the follow button on my profile, then it would ask you “are you sure you want to follow PaulOFlaherty?”.

Once you’ve clicked the confirmation you are then doomed to follow that person for a minimum of 30 days.

That would reduce marketing spam dramatically as it would be more time consuming to add massive amounts of followers manually (I know there are automatic services, but we’ll address them in another post) and will make people a hell of a lot more selective about who they follow in the first place.

They’re my to ideas for improving Twitter. What would you like to see changed on Twitter to improve the user experience?

I Should Have Kept My Mouth Shut

My friend Steven Hodson, got hot under the collar this week because posts of his from the Inquisitr weren’t making it on to Techmeme.

Steven’s problems weren’t caused by badly timed posts or lack of links, but apparently because Gabe Rivera doesn’t trust The Inquistr owner Duncan Riley.

I left this comment on Stevens post:

Steven, first off let me say I agree with Corvida on this one. Sit back, take a deep breath, a shot of brandy and don’t let this stuff get to you.

It’s hard to tell how much Gabe is influenced by Mike Arrington in this, if at all, (even though they are friends) and it would appear that Gabe has a genuine problem with Duncans integrity.

As for the truth behind it, I know not a jot, but I would trust that it is probably misguided as I trust YOUR judgement and wouldn’t expect that you would work anywhere that would reflect badly on your integrity.

I would suspect that until both Gabe and Duncan settle this issue then Techmeme is destined to be an Inquisitr free zone and getting yourself all worked up about it is futile my friend.

Again I recommend sitting back, relaxing, having a brandy, whiskey (or 2, or 2 of each) and let it all slide by.

That said, it would be great if Gabe and Duncan would settle this.

Damn I wish I had kept my mouth shut. Mostly.

Two days ago the story broke that there would be no more Techcrunch50 events. Loren Feldman posted a video interview with Jason Calacanis about it in the middle of the (U.S.) night, which just happened to be my Irish morning.

I quickly ran a post about it wondering if their was any truth to the puppet interview. 10 minutes later I found confirmation on Jasons twitter stream and posted again.

Needless to say I got a lot of traffic from twitter and the other networks that morning but not a sniff from Techmeme. That honor went to Paul Boutin at Venture Beat.

My post didn’t even make the discussion list even though I’d broken the story hours before anyone else (Sara and I were tracking it as we worked on other stuff).

Now, I’m aware that there are a number of reasons why my post may not have made it up there. I know it’s got nothing to do with Gabe not liking me and more than likely due to lack of linkage as this site is still building up it’s authority since the move from the old domain.

This post, is really just to say: “Steve, I know how you feel”.

I wish I’d kept my mouth shut, because even though I know why my post didn’t make it on to Techmeme, I know now how it stings when you feel you should be getting credit for something and aren’t.

I’m going to head off now for some of that brandy I recommended to Steven…

Breaking: No More Techcrunch 50! Confirmed

I just posted about whether Arrington and Calacanis had a falling out that would result in the death of TechCrunch 50, but now it appears it’s been confirmed by  Calacanis himself on his Twitter Stream.

Calacanis' Twitter

This begs the question, if there was a bust up, how bad was it and what comes next?

No More Techcrunch 50? Did Arrington And Calacanis Have a Lovers Tiff?

Arrington and Calacanis

I know it’s hard to believe a lot of what you see in Loren Feldmans satirical puppet videos but there is sometimes truth buried in them. Especially in this one which features a very real Jason Calacanis saying that there will be no more Techcrunch 50 event.

Calacanis looks a little more than rather sincere when he says it.

So, if there is any truth to this, why have Calacanis and Arrington thrown in the towel. Feldman alludes to a falling out between the two?

There is a second video posted a little later that features Calacanis and an Arrington puppet where Calacanis says that there might be another Techcrunch 50 if they “make up tonight”.

Again, Calacanis looks a little too serious.

Here are the two videos so you can see for yourself.

First up Calacanis with the Feldman puppet:

Now Calacanis with the Arrington puppet:

It’s all conjecture and “reading between the lines” at this point.

It may be nothing, it may be everything.

Opinion?  Did Arrington and Calacanis have a lovers tiff? If they did, what does it mean for the future of Techcrunch 50?

Update: It’s been confirmed that there will be no more Techcrunch50’s!

What XP Netbook Manufactures Aren’t Telling You?

Your XP Netbook that you just bought isn’t secure. Nor will it ever be. It’s running an 8 year old operating system for which support has been discontinued since April of 2009. There will not be any new security patches or updates for your XP netbook. Not from Microsoft at least.

Microsoft announced on April 3rd last year ( 2008 ) that it had bowed to demand of manufacturers and would allow them to sell Windows XP Home for ULCPCs (ultra low cost personal computers or netbooks) will be until June 30, 2010, or one year after general availability of the next version of Windows.

Michael Dix, General Manager of Windows Client Product Management, also made it very clear in the same interview that just because OEMs could sell netbooks with XP on it, did not mean they were going to be supporting it beyond April 2009:

I should also note that there will also be no impact on our technical support plans—mainstream technical support will continue to be available until April 2009 and extended support will continue until April 2014.

Now I know some of you are baying for Steve Ballmers blood at this point and ready to blame Microsoft for this apparent “injustice” or trickery, but step back and think for a minute about who really is to blame on this occasion. Here’s a hint: It’s not Microsoft.

This all came to my attention today when I read that Microsoft would not be patching a bug in XP that it had already fixed in Vista, citing the age of XPs code as making it unfeasible and I ended up in a lengthy discussion on Twitter trying to explain why it was not Microsoft people should be mad at, but the manufacturers, the OEM’s.

The fact of the matter is that when the manufactures approached Microsoft, due to consumer demand, they entered into the arrangement knowing Microsofts support lifecycle and exactly when support for XP was due to end. Microsoft have never hid or even glossed over the fact that support for XP would be ending last April and I would hazard a guess that the OEM partners involved got a pretty good deal on XP due to that fact.

Yet, this knowledge in hand, the netbook manufacturers have sold and continue to sell and advertise machines that are running an operating system that will not be receiving an more support, bug fixes or security upgrades.

On the whole XP is a dead horse to Microsoft and their only interest in providing any support for it is at business level, which means businesses with XP Professional (and even they would like to bump those up to Windows 7 ASAP ). These are the only licenses that may qualify for extended support as XP Home is a consumer product and does not qualify as business or development software.

Microsoft are more interested in the imminent release of the excellent Windows 7 and erasing the memory of Vista while moving on to the next project.

So where does this leave you? It leaves you with a bone to pick with the company that produced your netbook and quite possibly with your retailer as well.

Questions have to be asked of both. Why weren’t consumers informed when purchasing these machines that the operating system was going, or at this point, is out of date and no longer supported?

Of course, I’m sure that the OEM’s and retailers alike will push the responsibility back on the consumer, stating that if they’re savvy enough to be looking for a netbook they should be savvy enough to do some research on the product they’re about to drop a lot of hard earned cash for.

Frankly I agree with the manufactures and retailers on that score, but it doesn’t eliminate the fact that they should have actively informed customers that this was the situation when they were purchasing the netbooks and included it in the advertising literature. After all, it’s a serious thing and a big deciding factor to know that the operating system is no longer supported.

One last thing, considering the OEM’s decided to go with XP knowing that the OS was about to end it’s support lifecycle, should they be held accountable to move into an paid support arrangement with Microsoft similar to what they have in place for business software?

Friendship Is More Than 140 Characters

9 days after I posted about reducing the number of shared links I was posting to Twitter, I received this from a friend via a series of direct messages:

Hey Paul, I just wanted to let you know why I am unfollowing before I do so. I followed you to follow *You* not your blog, and it seems that is all you do on Twitter (for the most part), now. I’d recommend going back to this being your personal Twitter and having a separate account for your blog posts, especially since you post so often. Let me know when you’ve reduced the linkspam in your Twitter stream as Twitter doesn’t give me the ability to filter your many links out like Facebook does.

While keeping my friends name private, I wanted to respond to this publicly as it is very much an important matter to me and I believe, something which faces everyone who runs their own site and builds their brand around themselves rather than a domain or company name.

First let me point out that I am my blog and for all intents and purposes, my blog is me.

PaulOFlaherty.com contains content covering my blogging on several different domains going back to the beginning of 2004. Prior to that I blogged on a number of proprietary platforms from which I could not export my content.

I have always promoted by blogs, vidcasts and podcasts through my social media accounts. I actively encourage readers of this blog to follow my blog and personal updates by subscribing to my Twitter account.

You say that you signed up to follow me, well I am what I write. I am what I produce. My posts and netcasts are as much a part of me, hell more a part of me, than a lot of the inane chatter and babble I engage in on Twitter.

In other words, when people followed me on Twitter they were following my blog. It has never been any different.

I converse with my friends and audience on Twitter but my blog is where you will find the real me and I use tools such as Facebook, Twitter and other social networks to draw people in to where I can actually express my opinions. To draw people into my blog where I can vocalize (yeah I know it’s written) my opinions without the restrictions of 140 characters that reduce even the most simple of ideas to little more than monosyllabic grunts.

I guess some people are more involved with the day to day minutiae of my life but I am not my Twitter messages. No more than I am my SMS messages and following my Twitter account will never give you an accurate picture of me.

If you’re interested in “following me” then links to my blog posts, the things which truly demonstrate my opinion and how I think, should not be a problem going through my twitter stream.

With regards to the statement of linkspam. How do my own links, to my own content on my account qualify as spam? I post 7 (sometimes 8 ) links a day on my account, to my own content. 6 links to Daily Shite content which go out approximately 1 every 2 and a half to 3 hours (although sometimes they get clumped together depending on how Twitterfeed is feeling) and 1 (2 if it’s a day like today) to my personal blog.

Quite frankly I find having my content, in my stream called “linkspam” offensive. I am not selling anything, pitching anything, trying to get you on a pyramid scheme or any such crap. Yet you call my content linkspam?

Take a look at other peoples twitter streams. Take a look at your own stream. The average stream consists of hundreds of posts which are little more than nonsensical babble describing what they’re having for breakfast, where they are, who they’re meeting and weighing in on exactly what type of douchebag Kanye West is.  Hundreds of posts, every single day, but no content. No substance.

I talk with people on Twitter most days. Some days I don’t. Some days I’m just not in the mood. But not being in the mood doesn’t stop me producing content. It doesn’t preclude me from being me and it doesn’t preclude me from wanting to share what I have created, my opinions and what I feel passionate about, with the rest of the world.

If you don’t want to see my content, then quite frankly, tough. Unsubscribe or unfollow. For everyone person that unfollows because I post my own content to my stream, there will be others who are looking for intelligent discussion and are actually interested in what I have to say rather than just where I am going or what I had for dinner tonight.

It’s times like this that make me realize the fallacy of the term “friend” in social media circles. It is something so shallow as to be discarded because your “friend” has thoughts that require more than 140 characters to express?

Why Ask A Question If People Can’t Answer?

I’ve always believed that blogs were about conversation.

You put your ideas out there and people give you feedback. Sometimes they agree, sometimes they disagree, sometimes they end up ranting like a loon but you always have conversation.

Needless to say I’m one of those people who believe that a blog without the ability to comment, isn’t!

Sara posted a link to Psychology Today, where Satoshi Kanazawa was spouting conspiracy theories about the Joe “You Lie!” Wilson photograph published after he embarrassed himself during Obama’s recent speech.

The title of Kanazawas post was “Who took the picture of Joe Wilson? And how?” and the final sentence of the post was also a question. Yet for all their questioning, they don’t have anywhere for readers to respond. They don’t have a comment form.

My question is simple: Why ask people a question if you’re not going to give them the opportunity to respond?

Is it that they are:

• Afraid of being wrong?
• Afraid that someone will question their assumptions?
• Too lazy to engage readers in conversation?
• Pretending to be involved in social media while simply talking at, instead of to people?

Am I missing some other possible reasons?