AskLG

Series Note: This is one part of a series about enhancing your life with technology.  The series deals with computer based tools created with the intent of making your life easier so you can focus on other things, like life.

Are you a socialite?  Do you spend every weekend out and about with friends?  Do you have several different groups of friends to go out with?  Why not let technology help you organize that busy social life of yours.  I’ll show you a few tools that’ll help.
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Facebook has long been the “up and coming” social network, especially popular with college and web folk alike.  As a direct competitor to MySpace, they have pretty much stayed at #2 in traffic (according to Alexa).  Facebook needed that extra edge, something to push it over the top.  I think the time has come with Facebook’s new features: integrated chat.

Here’s why its good

A large portion of my friends do have Facebook.  I personally also love to chat on Google Talk.  Put two and two together and an issue arises: How to get my friends from Facebook on GTalk?  I have converted a dozen or so friends with my fanatical persuasion skills, but there are many friends that I just don’t wish to put forth the effort to chat with.  I mean it’d be nice if one day they added me on GTalk and we started chatting it up, but its not something I’m going to go out of my way to do.  I think many people face these same issues regardless of chat network preference.  With an integrated client in Facebook, this immediately alleviates the problem.  It also has a very GTalk-ish feel, so its something many web chatters are used to.  Best of all, its just there.  There isn’t anywhere to sign up or anything to download.  It works straight out of the box as soon as you sign on.  I can guarantee 100% of my friends will have access to it as soon as they sign on.  The only other network that can make that guarantee is Gmail, but is that really considered a social network?

And now, any bad points?

First and foremost, privacy is always a concern.  Fortunately, Facebook is smart enough to take that into consideration by employing an opt-out strategy for chat access.  Since I think GTalk and FTalk (yeah, I’ll dub it that for now) are near-directly comparative, I would have liked to of seen chat logging.  If you’re anything like me, you get a ton of links sent to you via chat daily.  While I try to bookmark or save every address I like or want to refer to later, I do tend to miss some (a ton).  Chat logs have been a blessing to go back and get the information I need.  I’m sure everyone has run into this scenario at least once in their online career.  Facebook, being socially active and aware as it is, is somewhat dumb for not having this feature available.  Seriously guys, non-logging was so 2003!

My final complaint with FTalk is the exclusivity property applied.  You can either talk with all your friends, or none of them.  I’m not nieve.  I know all chat networks implement this type of a policy, but Facebook isn’t your typical chat network.  I would really appreciate a method to appear offline for certain individuals and online to others.  Sort of like a seperation of personal and work life?  Close friends and acquantances?  Maybe thats too much to ask for at this point in our technological evolution, but it is definitely something they should consider to further seperate their brand from others.

Overall?

All in all, its great to see Facebook taking another step forward.  I haven’t agreed with everything they’ve done in the past but this idea is stellar.  Kudos.

Woah I’m really late today.  It seems like my days are lasting longer and longer into the night.  Tonight I was helping a friend work on some beautiful PHP code.  Anyways, something miraculous happened today that will probably never happen again: I actually understood the majority of what my professor said.  Its a huge breakthrough for me.  Maybe even a small battle won between me and myself.  Damn, I really should have put money or something on it.

Remember yesterday when I mentioned how Psystar is building OpenMac computers?  Well people naturally become a little more interested in these whole Psystar people and dug up some information.  Gizmodo coincidently noticed that during the writing of one of their blog articles, the Psystar corporate address had changed online.  Now if that doesn’t scream legit, I just don’t know what does.  [Via Gizmodo]

In other news, Facebook has released a few social features from 3rd party sites. Currently it doesn’t support much but it does include my beloved Flickr.  At this point its in its infancy but is a step in the right direction.  Score one for Facebook.  Now if only it supported all my other favorite services.  I just really hope these updates maintain tasty and throttleable.  I’d hate to stop liking Facebook because I’m being spammed and can’t weed out the news I actually care about.  You can set this up by going to your profile and hitting “Import” in your mini-feed.  [Via The Facebook Blog]

When my new MacBook Pro came in December, I decided to try something new. In this case, it was Flock. I have tried it out in its wee-bit early stages, but it wasn’t yet stable enough for daily use. Now that a few revisions have come down the pipe and I have used it for a few months, I can officially endorse its awesomeness. Well, granted awesomeness is even a word.

What is Flock?

For those not quite savvy on the what Flock is, lets talk about it. First and foremost, Flock is an internet browser. So it competes with Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, and Safari/Webkit. It is actually based on the same code Firefox is which means everything Firefox can do, so can Flock. So what’s the big deal? Flock takes a different angle on the web market scheme rather than just delivering you the internet page you oh so love. It wants you to be a social butterfly.  While it won’t completely help your unsocial self, It does have tools that link your browser quite conveniently with social services you might use already. These services are places such as: Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Flickr, Magnolia, Delicious, and so forth.

So, Here’s what I like:

1. Its just Firefox, but with a sexy face lift.

Generally speaking, anything you can do in Firefox can also be achieved in Flock. That includes Extensions/Add-Ons, live bookmarking, and whatever else you do. Tapping into all those Firefox Extensions was huge for Flock.  The Flock community also builds other extensions just for Flock so it has two sources of add-on glory.  Here’s a look at the user interface:

2. Its really easy to Get Started

You have all this stuff setup on you old browser and you’re too lazy to set it up again. Thats OK, Flock imports all that junk on installation. At least it does Firefox (haven’t tried any others).  Yes, Flock does import all extensions as well.  See:

3. Its social!

You can easily hook up with most social sites. They are introduced in an unobtrusive manner so its not annoying/counter productive. I’ve actually found myself spending less time on these sites since Flock makes using these quite efficient. Supported Services are: Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, YouTube, Photobucket, Piczo, Blogger, Blogsome, LiveJournal, Typepad, Wordpress, Xanga, Delicious, and Magnolia. MySpace support is in the works for all those wondering. Setting up these services involves (in most cases) just visiting the website and logging in.  Once logged in, Flock recognizes the site and asks permission to link the browser with that account.  When you log out and log back in once more, it is completely setup.  Simple, indeed.

4. Searching made easy.

Just like most browsers these days, Flock has a miniature search box to the right of the address box. It also allows you to search from any site that has a search box. For example, I visited YouTube and clicked on the “Add Search” button. Now anytime I want to search for a Video instead of going to Google/Yahoo, I can use YouTube. I also setup Wikipedia about a month ago. Pretty much any search box can be used, so Flock is quite tailorable to your interests which makes finding what you want much quicker.  This is what was resulting when I searched for Flock.  Obviously, you can search any of search engine installed as well as view pages you have previously visited.

5. Flock handles media well. Very well.

I admit this probably goes under the 3rd point, but the media stuff is cool enough to have its own section. I can view any of my friends images from Facebook, Flickr and such without actually visiting those websites. It comes in a nice little banner across the top of the page which is scroll-able and search-able. This allows me to quickly find any image I’m looking for. Once found, I can click on it to visit the site hosting it. Flock also provides ways to upload your images. Its very easy to do, completely tag-able, and just plain nice.  Speaking of images, there is a built in web clipboard.  You can drag any image, text or link to the clipboard for convenient safekeeping or later use.  Here is the search-able, configurable media bar:

There must be a catch. What’s wrong with it?

Yes, Flock is very powerful indeed but it has some flaws. First, the blog writer doesn’t work well on AskLG. I have a self-hosted Wordpress blog. It does correctly post, but tags are improperly posted. This makes it unusable for my purposes. Sometimes, Flock alerts me up updates when those updates aren’t there. That isn’t a very big issue though, but I’m a perfectionist so I’ll complain about it. Finally, I loathe the RSS reader. Maybe I’m spoiled using Google Reader, but Flock’s RSS reader is out of date. It would be nice if Flock could link up with some popular readers to provide content through them. That idea is probably out of the realm of Flock’s powers though, since most haven’t released an API as of yet.

But you still like it?

Overall I love Flock. I use it daily. I will continue to use it, and I recommend you start. Just visit Flock.com, download, and enjoy.  When you do, be sure to hit me up on Twitter or Flickr or something of that sort. Its time to be social people, join the community. 

At this time of the year everyone is conversing about their latest and greatest resolution.  They devise this elaborate plan to ensure they actually remember it by years end.  Sure it sounds great and might have even worked, but then you remember a year is 365 days long.  That is a very long time to be dedicated to anything, much less something you’re not good at.

I would love to give some inspiring advice about how you can make it this year, but I’m a realist.  Its just not going to happen.  With that said, I would like to recommend a nice technique to at least make it further into the year.  This method has been passed through from generation to generation and gets lost in translation quite often.  You should use the “buddy system.”  I don’t mean you should have the same resolution as your best friend.  That would be stupid, unless you and your friend were just that similar and equally terrible at the same things.  I mean, you should help your friends stay true to their resolutions by catching them when they don’t follow it and offering support when the temptation to sway is strong.  In return, they should help you maintain yours.  It is so much easier to listen to someone whose opinion you value than to listen to yourself.  So buddy up and maybe, just maybe you’ll make it to summer.

As for me, I would like to enlist your help in making my resolution a dream come true.  I am an extroverted person, constantly conversing and going out with others.  Still I have found I’ve become shy or possibly even alienating when in the presence of individuals I don’t know very well.  Some consider this a typical response to an unknown environment, but I consider it a character flaw.  For 2008, I would like to “be bold.”  Thats a huge statement and can be narrowed down to a niche category like social events, I know.  Instead of narrowing it down though, I’d like to span the boldness throughout my life, touching and embracing every aspect of it.  So if you happen to see me out in Houston or read a post that isn’t living up to the bold potential you deem necessary, let me know.  Without the power of you, I won’t be able to be a better person and that my friends is very bad.

Now that I’ve let you in on my resolution, what’s yours?  I’m interested to see what everyone is doing in the new year and will help you stay off that beaten track however I can.