delicio.us 2.0 -OMG they’re PURE genius!

So I read on techcrunch.com that delicio.us 2.0 launched. Apparently the new site is: 1. faster 2. easier to learn with an 3. updated, simpler interface. Awesome!
I took a trip over to the site, and indeed the UI is updated and simple. But something about it looked VAAAAAUGELY familiar. And it hit me.

Delicious

Chris Pirillo‘s iphone app site

Aside from the obvious differences -header image, tags, and search fields.
Look at the similarities:

1. Both sites have tabbed pages
2. Both site have user votes
3. Both have unique log-ins AND free to sign up! :)

Delicious 2.0 launched its preview site in September… 2007. That’s almost nine months ago. A whole human being is developed in nine months!

It took Chris 5 minutes to build his site, on http://slinkset.com. And um, Chris’ site is made specifically for the.. iPhone. The layout is the way it is, so it’s easy to navigate from mobile Safari…..

It took Delicious this long to well… launch that?

Then I realized: Delicious could be PURE genius. With the redesign, they don’t need two style sheets!! They just need that ONE site for easy iPhone access. They might have something, and be TOTALLY ahead of the game! HA

What do you think of the redesign? Do you use Delicious? If not, what bookmarking site do YOU use?

Pictures from inside the iPhone Factory -two blurry, one not

“My mother bought an iPhone this morning. Got it home, ripped off all the factory sealed packing, registered it and while changing the wallpaper, found three photos in the camera roll. Two are blurry, but this one is something else…” source

Hey, Cuil. Got glasses?

So FriendFeed, has been buzzing about Cuil, a new search engine founded by two ex-Google employees, and some random guy. Cuil claims to have more than 120 billion pages in the index. Apparently, that’s “three times as many as Google and ten times as many as Microsoft.”

Wow. That’s a pretty bold statement.

I had no interest in Cuil, yet – since the site’s still brand new, but after reading the above? Curiosity got the best of me. I reach the site, and put it through my extreeeeemely reliable QA (quality assurance) test.

I punch in my search:

The results:

=O Blasphemy!
Kevin Bacon, the actor, has nothing to do with ilovebacon dot com, a site dedicated to bacon, the food. WHY is his picture next to the top result?

FAIL

Thank goodness I can tell Bacon (the actor) apart from bacon (the food). I would’ve been screwed if I were doing research on the Tuamotu archipelago, or needed to know what the IUPAC nomenclature was, or had to find a PLU number, STAT -since I don’t know anything about the above. And isn’t that why I would be um, searching? On an uhhhh… search engine?? To find answers on topics I know nothing about???

Until Cuil can accurately differentiate the actor from a piece of meat, I am staying FAR away. Why it’s getting all this attention is beyond me.

Have you tried it? What do you think? Did you run into any bizarre search results? Share!

Thank you, Everyone – but Seriously, What am I Even Doing Here?

Tomorrow is PixelBits’ one week anniversary, and all I can say is wow, what a week.

Everyone on FriendFeed is supportive, encouraging, and even kind enough to visit this blog and leave comments. Thank you everyone, you really don’t know how much it means to me :) Two extended thank yous to Louis Gray and Chris Pirillo for re-sharing mine, and the other FriendFeeders’ items. You two do so much for the FriendFeed community, and it feels… good to be included. I’ve just started blogging, and the both of you have already given me so much direction -not with what you say, but with what you do. So thank you so much.

With that said, I am having my very first identity crisis.

And it’s on the Internet. Go figure.

Back to the old Facebook – YES PLEASE

UPDATE: September 21st, 2011
If you want to go back to the Facebook pre September 21, 2011, change the language of the site to anything BUT English US. You can put it in British English (English UK).
Hope that helps.
___________________________________________________

The day after Facebook rolled out its redesign, I made a great discovery.

before

then by clicking that link on the upper right hand corner

ta-daaaaaaaa!
after clicking that link on the upper right corner

+1 to Facebook for providing options.
I prefer the former. You?

Anyone speak Bolivian around here? This CAN’T be real…

Weather information board from the Bolivian Meteorological Institute.

That dangling rock in front of the sign?
Determines the weather condition, according to the text.

The rock is wet – It is raining
The rock is dry – It is dry
The rock is covered in light – It’s sunny
The rock is in the shade – It’s cloudy
The rock is shaking – Earthquake
The rock isn’t there – Hurricane
You can can’t see the rock – It’s night time
You can see the rock – It’s day time

Are you EFin kidding me? I refuse to believe it until further proof.
Anyone read and speak Bolivian?

Source

Adobe AIR: Deleting Locally Stored Encrypted Data

The main advantage to Windows for me, is that I am familiar with maintenance. I go straight into registry files, poke, shift, and delete stuff – confident my actions will not interfere with my PC’s innards. I know Windows. OS X is a whoooole different story. Everything is so simple, but that’s what scares me. The simplicity.

Call me paranoid, but because of my past experiences with Windows, 3rd party native apps freak me out, since I’m don’t know what’s going into where… and the biggest problem? I am an OS X moron.

So looking into 3rd party publishing tools for Twitter was confusing. All of the apps I use (personal and professionally) are web based. I do not have a need for Silverlight or Adobe Air, so I had to learn about those app before deciding on a Twitter app, since most Twitter apps require AIR or Silverlight. See? Confusing.

Long story short, I decided on Twhirl, since it came so highly recommended, installed AIR and Twhirl, then uninstalled immediately after running them for 30minutes. I am one of those that keeps separate windows to a minimum and accustomed to only a few windows: my browsers (Firefox, Safari, nightly build), documents, and Adium. Plus it slowed down my computer and it was just too busy. (for me).

So when it came to uninstalling Twhirl and AIR, I wondered if there were any files both apps plugged or hid locally. Especially since the data is encrypted and uses KeyChain to store data from the application to user. Digging through my hard drive did nothing for me, not to mention all the questions: Dragging and dropping apps don’t really make all the files… disappear. Do they? Can it truly be that simple? It seems too good to be true; and the questions go on and on. (Hmmm, note to self: learn OS X.)

So I did the next best thing. Googled.

Well lo and behold, turns out I was correct. Adobe Air doesn’t automatically delete files.

From their site:

Click for larger image

“The encrypted local store may perform more slowly if the stored data exceeds 10MB.

When you uninstall an AIR application, the uninstaller does not delete data stored in the encrypted local store.

Encrypted local store data is put in a subdirectory of the user’s application data directory; the subdirectory path is Adobe/AIR/ELS/ followed by the application ID.” via Adobe’s site

And there you have it, folks.

Do any of you use Adobe Air? Am I missing out on good apps? Do you use Twhirl or another client?

iPhone Timeline 12/15/99~ ….WOW it’s been THAT long?!

Pictures speak a thousand words
Click to enlarge (1550 x 800)

Do YOU have an iphone 3g? Why or why not??
via iphonegold

Extra Large, Jumbo, and Brown – Where Do You Come From?

So, like… I was at the supermarket earlier – and in the dairy section, a question suddenly popped into my mind: why are there so many different eggs???

And where do they come from???

Which totally made my imagination take off. In my mind….

Dear Facebook, please don’t turn into a bigger mess than you already are.

I’m seeing Facebook announces “Great Apps”, “new tools” stories everywhere and I can’t be the only who doesn’t care about it… am I? Actually, the first thought that came to mind was do.not.want. I don’t know about you, but I’ve yet to come across an application I would actually log into Facebook for.

Seriously.. how useless are these applications?

Wiki has a Knol page but there’s no Knol page for Wiki -how rude!

I wanted to see if Knol had a Wikipedia page – and sure enough, it did:

Check this out (highlighted):

Several experts see Knol as Google’s attempt to compete with Wikipedia.[6]

“attempt to compete” – and it’s referenced haha. Correct me if I’m wrong but I went on Knol to look for Wiki, but they didn’t have one. FAIL.

Techsmith acquires Jing project… uhhh why is this exciting?

Just got an email from Jing project they were acquired by Techsmith… well, the exact wording is

And we are pleased to announce that Jing is officially becoming a TechSmith product offering!

No offense but I’m more excited that Jing is still going to be free AND it’s Jing’s 1st birthday. Happy Birthday Jing project! :)

Screw Facebook, I’m Learning How to Unclog Toilets from Knol (Google’s “Wikipedia”)

Google’s Wikipedia equivalent, Knol, launched today (see the announcement on their blog) Of course, I went to see it. I mean… it’s Google? Why wouldn’t I? Annnnd here’s what I found:

(click to enlarge)

My first impression? Baffled. Seriously. “Where do I start?”

So I clicked on a featured article, “How to Unclog Toilets”, and was pleasantly surprised. Unlike the homepage, it was more intuitive to scan and navigate (read: user friendly). Added bonus for the visuals accompanying the step by step guide! Visuals = WIN

Tweetsnap: a non Java/Flash based Twitter widget

So I’ve been looking to somehow put my Twitter -or would it be Tweets?..whatever, who cares- into my WordPress. I randomly came across Tweetsnap and didn’t see it on Twitter’s pbwiki so I decided to share. At first I thought it was a screen capping app but turns out it’s a widget. See? (points below)

Basically it’s HTML generated code so if your site doesn’t support Twitter badges like this one (or maybe I’m too stupid to figure it out…), it seemed like a solution. How perfect. JUST what I was looking for.

What in the Sam Hill is Going On and What the EF is Techmeme?

Alright, call me ignorant, naive, dumb, blind, retarded, or whatever name you choose fit but seriously. What is Techmeme and why am I getting IM’s and phone calls telling me to wake up, log into my blog, and double check my grammar?

It is 5am in California.
Seriously. W T F ?

mindmeister.com

Not FriendFeed related but this site is so rad, I thought I’d share :)

MindMap’in via mindmeister dot com

Last month, I had the biggest, monstrous, ugliest zit in the whole entire universe and couldn’t leave the house. Well ok, I’m being a little dramatic but I basically refused to leave. Yes it was THAT gnarly. But because of that ultimate zit FAIL’age, I finally took time to explore a site I heard about but never.. well.. took time to explore. And when I finally started playing with it, I was amazed.

Mindmeister is an interactive brainstorming-charting-simple flowgramming site that enables multiple user updating real time. There’s a one touch Skype button so if need be BAM an instant con call while composing the chart. How awesome is that? Seriously.

And it gets better.

The art of reciprocation and my ultimate “Like” FAIL’age

Do you remember sending and receiving Christmas, Valentine’s, or Easter cards in elementary school?

I remember it clearly. Every holiday I gave each and every single kid in the class a card (well it was mandated but it’s the thought that counts, right?) But I always gave special ones to my best friends and they would return the favor. Granted, special card giving and receiving discussions were always held amongst my friends to make sure we were on the same page. There was no way I was giving a special card to someone blind sighted.

Anyway, I’ve kept all the cards I received throughout the years in two separate boxes. One for the ‘special ones’ and another for the mandated cards and randomly look through them. Depending on my day and mood, I can choose if I want to see the special one of a kind cards, or the cards the entire class received. Both have same sentimental values, but different sentimental meanings. And that’s how I differentiate FriendFeed’s “like” and “comment” features. Lost? Well let me try and explain.

Since my number one FriendFeed utilization resource Louis Gray’s super useful FriendFeed posts doesn’t have the “like” or commenting features detailed yet (damnit!!), I’m going to give a quick rundown.

WordPress is trying to rip me off!

edit: Thank you everyone, I figured it out. ME = FAIL

Does this mean I have to pay to link people???
EF YOU WORD PRESS! I’ll make my OWN BlogRoll page. K? Thanks.

Subscribing, unsubscribing, do you like me? Do you hate me?

I never want to relive high school, but at times, Friend Feed sure as heck feels like it.

Unlike Myspace or Facebook, where approval is needed to become ‘friends’, FriendFeed is more Twitter-esque, where people subscribe to you and you choose to subscribe back to them or not. Which seems pretty.. simple? But in actuality is super complicated since I noticed a lot of people take this ‘subscribing’ thing a little too seriously.

In this short month, I’ve had people send me FaceBook messages asking me why I haven’t subscribed back. I’ve also had people subscribing one day, unsubscribing the next, then re-subscribing to me (I get email notifications). All this time, I’m completely baffled since most of these said actions are from people I’ve NEVER interacted with.

So I’m going to get this out once and for all.

For ME, and ME only, I will subscribe back to anyone I interact with, who makes me laugh, and well.. actively participates on FriendFeed. Not exclusively on my feed, but people who I know are actually… people. Meaning your feed consists of more than imported feeds. If I don’t subscribe back, it’s NOT PERSONAL! So please, don’t be afraid to introduce yourselves, engage in conversations, and participate in threads. I’m a nice person, I really am! As are the other FF’ers!

However, there is one exception to the rule, per se. If your feed looks like this: (points below)

No offense but a Rubik’s Cube x4 of RSS orange squares kinda sorta scares me, so I most likely won’t subscribe back. I don’t know how to handle constant updates from ALL the blogs… It’s really not you, it’s me. Sorry =(

Well that’s my criteria, what’s yours?

What is this, a cult???

So about a month ago, I started actively participating in a Social Networking Site called FriendFeed, and one month later I was re-reminded of the power of the internet. For those unfamiliar with FriendFeed, Louis Gray has concise, easy to read write ups detailing FriendFeed (or FF) and how to get the most out of the site. His posts are definitely recommended, I don’t think I can explain FF better than him.

Now that the formalities are out of the way, Friend Feed in my own words.

Short version: I thought it was a cult.
Long version: Ok, cult may be taking it a little too far.