Dec12

What your favorite ‘80s band says about you

Posted at 5:59 PM • No Comments

Tears For Fears: You have used whiteout on a pair of white loafers.

Art of Noise: You have been paid to be furniture at a party.

Pat Benatar: You have had three or more Superball bruises at one time.

Air Supply: You have punched an arcade game hard enough to injure yourself.

Eddie Money: You have eaten several Shrinky-Dinks on purpose.

Bryan Adams: Your hair smells faintly like barbecue sauce.

Dexy’s Midnight Runners: Your shower smells like Skittles and unfiltered cigarettes.

Dead or Alive: Your pet smells like Goldschlager.

Tangerine Dream: You have a half-full can of Sanka at the back of your cupboard.

Devo: You have dissected a Nintendo game.

Simple Minds: You have tasted a scented pen.
Read the rest of this entry »

Oct5

R.I.P. Steve Jobs

Posted at 7:01 PM • No Comments

It’s been reported only minutes ago… Steve Jobs has passed away.

Steve Jobs 1955-2011

Statement by Apple’s Board of Directors

CUPERTINO, Calif. — We are deeply saddened to announce that Steve Jobs passed away today.

Steve’s brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives. The world is immeasurably better because of Steve.

His greatest love was for his wife, Laurene, and his family. Our hearts go out to them and to all who were touched by his extraordinary gifts.

I am at a loss for words, but I do want to say…

Thank you for everything you did, Steve. Thank you for touching our lives & making them better. We will all deeply miss you.

Aug14

Battle of the Twitter Apps

Posted at 5:14 PM • No Comments

I’ve been using Twittelator Pro for probably about three years now. I try out other Twitter apps that seem promising only to quickly be back using Twittelator Pro again. I’ve always said that Twittelator Pro is the best full-featured Twitter app out for the iPhone. I jumped from the free version to the pro version ($4.99) based on my early usage of it and a recommendation from a friend. It was well worth the $5 for the pro version. Both versions are packed with a lot of great features that any hardcore Twitter user could need, but it does have a few flaws, which one of my biggest is that the app doesn’t load more tweets prior to the most current 200.

After a good night of sleep, some Twitter users wake up and want to see what’s been happening on their feed for the past 8 hours. Open up Twittelator Pro and it loads the last 200 tweets. For some people that follow more people than others, one could have a lot more than 200 tweets from people that they’re following since they went to bed or even during a long, busy day at work. Normally I would go to my computer and open up Twitter’s website and scroll back through all of the tweets that I missed. That is just a pain though. It would be so much easier to just load more than the last 200 tweets so one can get caught up on everything.

Twittelator Pro Icon VS Tweetbot Icon

Along comes Tweetbot from Tapbots, makers of Calcbot, Weightbot, Pastebot, & Convertbot. Tapbots makes some great looking & functioning apps and this includes their latest app, Tweetbot. It was billed as a great replacement for the official Twitter iPhone app (formally Tweetie). Seeing how Tapbots already made some great apps, I decided to buy Tweetbot when it first came out and give it a good work out. Normally, I don’t buy Twitter apps, but since Tapbots has great apps, I thought it was a no-brainer. Currently, the price is $2.99 from the App Store.

After trying out Tweetbot, I did find it lacking some (what I thought) basic features and functionality that I was used to in Twittelator Pro, but it was only the first version of the app and the developers already had updates planned out. So I went back to my favorite, Twittelator Pro and patiently waited for updates to Tweetbot.

A few more updates to Tweetbot and I was very happy with the way it was progressing, but still disappointed that some functionality was not there in the app that was used to in Twittelator Pro. Another update and now Tweetbot had notifications and I was quick to get in on that, due to the limited amount available at the time. The notifications worked great, but I was still using Boxcar to get notifications from Twitter.

Recently, I’ve been getting more and more frustrated with Twittelator Pro and its inability to load more than 200 tweets after a long period of time not opening the app. I know there is the feature there, but it doesn’t work. And what’s the point of having a feature listed if it doesn’t work? I decided to use Tweetbot to catch up on tweets I missed from my friend feed and eventually just kept opening it up to view tweets on a regular basis.

The design of the app is just as nice as any of the previous apps from Tapbots. No complaint there. And I can even report spammers to Twitter in the app and TweetBot removes the spam tweet from my @mentions. It’s nice when it you can report spammers, but for some reason, that function is not working in Tweetbot. I believe that it’s probably someone on Twitter’s side that is causing it, but I have tweeted to several of Tapbots Twitter accounts with no reply from them. That’s just bad customer service and puts a big frown on my face. Andrew Stone, the developer of Twittelator, has also not replied to a few of my recent tweets to him in regard to a few issues I’ve noticed in Twittelator Pro (another big frown on my face).

After just playing with this feature again in Twittelator Pro, it just doesn’t work smoothly for me. It seems to load only a few tweets more at a time (maybe about 20-50). ARGH. That’s a lot of tapping the “More” button to load more tweets. With Tweetbot, it’s about 2 taps and I have all of my missing tweets I want to read.

For the past 2 weeks I’ve been using Tweetbot 98% of the time now and will continue to use it for now. Sometimes people jump from app to app to app to app until they find one that works the best for them. I’m usually pretty loyal to people and companies that treat me well. Both app developers have done so in the past, but sometimes just a simple little thing can cause a change. I’ll continue to have both on my iPhone, but don’t know who will eventually come out as my primary Twitter app.

Pros & Cons of both Apps

    Tweetbot – Pros
  • Loads more (200+) tweets more effectively.
  • In-app web browser has back, forward, stop buttons.
  • Notifications in app
  • Removes spam tweet from @mentions after reporting spammer
    Tweetbot – Cons
  • No ability to use TwitLonger
  • Unable to RT tweets from users set as private
    Twittelator – Pros
  • Displays images in the tweet
  • UI for tweets – contains reply/RT, view conversation, view user
  • Easy to display user’s RTs, RTs to user, RTs by user on refresh
  • Ability to use TwitLonger
  • Able to RT tweets from users set as private
  • Webdings & emoji built into the app
    Twittelator – Cons
  • Unable to load more tweets than the max 200 tweets.
  • Does not remove spam tweet from @mentions after reporting spammer
Jul28

Fuck You foursquare

Posted at 6:13 PM • No Comments

Fuck you foursquare. You are the 2nd biggest group of douchebags in a startup, right after Gowalla. Yeah. You both suck. Thank you for turning me down a second time to be a super user. For the first year of your existence, you gave out super user account upgrades like it was going out of style. You gave them to people that had only ONE check in, you gave them to people that were never active, you gave them to people that didn’t even care, and then you stopped upgrading people like you hit a brick wall. And a few months ago you started some new process. I had one of your smarter super users recommend me, because of my diligence and eagerness to fix bad venues in my area. So after the first application, you denied me. Why, I have no idea. Your form letter gives no answers and only leaves more questions. I waited 30 days and submitted another application to become a super user. 30 days later I finally get the same form letter that you sent last time.

foursquare Superuser Application Denial Email
click to enlarge

So, it seems that you, foursquare, do not want me to help you correct the hundreds of bad venues in my area. You’d rather let them continue to build up and multiply through your databases instead of fixing/removing them. After 2 months of not using your app, I found a lot more new bad venues in my area. A LOT more. And none of the super users in my state of Delaware are doing a damn thing about them. The venue threads on your support forum on GetSatisfaction.com are a fucking joke! The way that they’re operated does not lend itself to fixing the integretiy of your database. You have more bad venues that need to be merged, fixed, or moved being deleted from those threads than you have being fixed.

Since you don’t want me to help fix the bad venues, I will then help the majority of your clueless users contribute to the fucking increasing mess of bad venues in my area and wherever I travel to. Duplicates venues (how many venues for I-95 can there’s be in your database? I’ll guess 1000. At least!). Venues that you say people shouldn’t create (“traffic”, “I’m on a plane”, “your mom’s bed”, etc…), yet still do and your super users & staff refuse to delete. Venues that are spelled incorrectly. Venues in the completely wrong real, physical locations. Eventually, your venue databases will be full with more bad venues than good ones.

That’s the fucking mess you continue to let grow. The system you have to “supposedly” fix this doesn’t work like it should. You piss on your users that want to help you.

Fuck You foursquare

Fuck you foursquare. Fuck you!

And if you delete my account, I will create another one. And another. And another.

Jul27

Captain America: History of the Shield

Posted at 5:50 PM • No Comments

Have you seen Captain America: The First Avenger yet? It’s not the perfect Captain America movie, but it does a damn good job! Below is an infographic with EVERYTHING you could possible know about Captain America.

Captain America: History of the Shield
Click to enlarge

Jul27

PETA Is Lying To You

Posted at 4:39 PM • No Comments

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again… PETA is an evil organization that has a para-military part to it, just like Sinn Féin & the IRA. Take a look at the info graphic below and then take a look at PetaKillsAnimals.com. PETA isn’t so cute & innocent like the animals they SAY they’re trying to save… Beware. PETA IS LYING TO YOU!

Fuck PETA! PETA KILLS ANIMALS!
Click to enlarge

Jun29

Carp Attack

Posted at 5:05 PM • No Comments


A man, his brother, nephews and a friend go “fishing” down a small drainage ditch in the flooded Spoon River. They counted 70+ 5-10lb carp jumping into their boat. The man’s youngest nephew, was curled up in the fetal position in the front of the boat the entire time, although you never see him.
[via YouTube]

May25

Denied by Foursquare

Posted at 6:06 PM • 4 Comments

So, I signed up on foursquare’s website a few years ago. After trying out their app I was quickly disappointed that their GPS system was very inaccurate when it came to where I lived. They tried to blame my iPhone’s GPS for the issue, but I was playing with Gowalla at the same time too and their GPS location for me was spot on. So I ranted a little bit about them & then forgot about them…

foursquare logo

And that was until last summer when I was backstabbed by Gowalla. Do you remember that set of blog posts I did? I quickly jumped back into foursquare and soon got aggravated by all of the duplicate and inappropriate venues in my area. I jumped back onto GetSatisfaction.com and posted under foursquare’s threads to get the venues I found fixed. I check back in a few day to a few weeks later and most of the duplicates and inappropriate venues were still there. So, I would repost the venues that weren’t fixed. Eventually some got fixed. And this same reposting of duplicate and inappropriate venues that were never merged or deleted continued, for months. One time a superuser from outside of the US tried to correct some venues for me. I guess his English wasn’t all that great because it took several different locations of company’s venue I was trying to get fixed and merged them all into one location. That’s a bit aggravating.

So I decided that I wanted to help foursquare clean up their venue database for Delaware up. I found out that you have to be active on foursquare’s GetSatisfaction.com support forum to get noticed. OK. I kept posting venues that needed to get merge, moved, or deleted.

As time went on there would be more and more new duplicate & inappropriate venues popping up and I would continue to post them to get fixed. Funny how foursquare is slow to react to venues that they state themselves are inappropriate and will be deleted. They don’t delete them or the superusers that read the posts on GetSatisfaction.com don’t mark them for foursquare to delete. You can still do a search for “traffic” in Delaware or “on a plane” at the Philadelphia International Airport from foursquare’s website and get a lot of venues popping up that match those key words.

I wanted to get noticed by foursquare. Another funny thing is the only time they do notice me is when I had issues with them, so I decided I would start the “Make @The_BORG A Superuser” campaign. I wrote up my blog post and tweeted it to my followers. Many regular followers gladly retweeted the tweets I had for this. To those followers, I thank you dearly. Thank you for showing me your support. Then there were a few that maybe retweeted my tweets once. Thanks for trying fellas. You heart wasn’t into it, was it? And then many other followers of mine that didn’t even bother. Thanks. You’re some good friends & followers.

Then I started to tweet, mentioning a few foursquare (official & unofficial), about how the venues I posted onto GetSatisfaction.com were not getting fixed. Mostly this is because whoever runs the foursquare forum on GetSatisfaction.com only allows like 15 posts to be listed under the thread for fixing venues in my part of the US. So, another 15 people post on that same thread and my posts get deleted. Not too smart of a system… Well, back to the story: So I got a reply from Chris at @aboutfoursquare. We sent a few tweets back. One of his last tweets to me was that he was endorsing me to become a superuser to foursquare.

foursquare Superuser Endorsement Email
click to enlarge

And shortly after I got an email from foursquare stating this and to fill out a short superuser application & submit it. I read everything, answered the questions, and submitted it. Chris, THANK YOU for your endorsement. So now it was just a matter a time before I heard back from foursquare.

Last night I get home from work and there’s an email from foursquare. Look. It’s a form letter stating that my application to become a superuser has been denied, but don’t worry, you can try again in 30 days.

foursquare Superuser Application Denial Email
click to enlarge

In the letter they give a list of possible reasons for being denied to be made a superuser. Not much help there in determining why I was denied. It’s pretty vague. And they basically gave you the answers in the application itself before you submitted it. And I’ve been a foursquare user for 2+ years. In the past foursquare has made superusers from BRAND SPANKING NEW users that have only checked in a handful of venues only a few times. SO I DON’T GET IT!

I have not seen anyone from this area take any public interest in becoming a superuser to help clean up the mess of bad venues in Delaware. I have been the only one and foursquare denied YOU, the people of Delaware, the one person that was actually interested in doing so and working with a local organization, a local chapter of a nationwide company, and every other foursquare user in Delaware to help clean up the mess that’s here.

Now, what are my choices? Well, (1) I could do nothing and wait 30 days to try again, (2) delete my foursquare account and remove it (and other apps tied to their venue database) from my iPhone and rip foursquare apart for this, or (3) Use the account of a co-worker that is an inactive foursquare user and a superuser.

Option #1 doesn’t seem so good when it feels like I’ve been stabbed in the back again or getting pissed on by foursquare while they’re shaking my hand & smiling. And that doesn’t sit well with my boys and girls. Option #2 I’ve thought about. One thing that has slightly irked me was the quest for badges in foursquare and in other apps like GetGlue and Miso. Do we really need these stinkin’ badges? “(We don’t need no stinkin’ badges!” – The Wild Bunch). And then there is the ever-present “mayor” thing. Finally there is option #3. I would have preferred that foursquare acknowledge me by making me a superuser and help them and their users out by cleaning up all of the bad venues and not do it by sneaking around their backs with another loophole that they have open (They have had many loopholes open over the past few years.).

There is another option, but that mainly entails me sticking around and seeing what happens with a few things. Is it possible for a large US organization request that I be made a superuser on the condition of uploading their database to foursquare? How about the Governor of Delaware? The Vice President of the United States? Would they help me?

For now, I’ve been put off from using foursquare. The biggest losers in all of this is foursquare and their users in Delaware.

May22

13 Quick Twitter Tips

Posted at 8:58 AM • No Comments

I’ve been on Twitter for over three years now and I’ve compiled a short list of 13 (it’s a lucky number) quick Twitter tips that’s I’ve collected over that period of time. Read, enjoy, follow, disregard. Do whatever you wish with them.

  1. Tweet about what motivates you.
  2. Tweet about what you’re doing or what you’ve done today even if you might think it’s insignificant.
  3. Don’t be afraid to express yourself.
  4. Be aware of who is following you. You never know who is following you, so be careful what you tweet.
  5. Have a profile picture bigger than 100×100 pixels. People can’t see a tiny picture of you.
  6. Put some info in the bio of your profile. If you have a blog or other website, include that URL.
  7. Don’t auto follow someone because of guilt or “Team Follow Back”.
  8. Don’t follow boring people.
  9. Don’t tweet advertisements repeatedly.
  10. Don’t tweet all quotes from famous people.
  11. Before you link your Twitter and Facebook sites together, make sure you want your tweets and status update appearing on the other site.
  12. Don’t fill your Twitter feed up with only updates from third party apps like Foursquare, GetGlue, or others.
  13. Don’t be afraid to engage others in conversation.
May6

Foursquare Super User Campaign

Posted at 10:07 AM • One Comment

To the the Delaware foursquare users:

I am trying to get the attention of foursquare to make me a super user. I have found that their support via GetSatisfaction.com is lacking in getting venues corrected in a timely manner & that local super users do not correct duplicates, misspelled names, or follow foursquare’s own rules for venues named for traffic jams, people’s beds or other inappropriate venues. I have posted multiple times to get the same venues moved, renamed, or deleted. It is very frustrating trying to get people from outside our area to fix these venues when they have no clue of where they are.

I do have a co-worker that is a super user, but I can not rely on him to make all of the fixes that I come across, and there are A LOT. And he’s not an active foursquare user.

Also, I will gladly take emails from local foursquare users (YOU) to fix venues that might have issues. Haven’t you come across a venue where you found there there’s multiple ones listed in foursquare and you feel frustrated that it would be like pulling teeth from a lion to get them all merged?

If you would please retweet the following tweet below as many times as you can so that foursquare & their support Twitter accounts notice:

Please make @The_BORG a @foursquare super user in Delaware. We need him! He’ll actually fix venues! @4sqSupport

Not just once, but twice or three or four or more times during the day…

Even if you’re not in Delaware, you can still help by retweeting the above tweet!

This is kind of like a campaign speech, but I feel the need to reach as many Delaware foursquare users as possible to help get the attention of foursquare on this.

Thank you for your help.