Brendan Young Blag » internet

Microsoft China rips off Plurk

Brendan — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 16:24:52 +0000

About a year ago before I started using Twitter, I used a pretty neat service called Plurk. It’s similar to Twitter in that you send out a small update about yourself and people who are following you can see it, but Plurk does it with a clever charming horizontal scrolling layout. Eventually everyone in my “internet crowd” made the move to Twitter, so I followed suite.

Jump to today, or yesterday rather. I stumbled upon this article from Plurk’s blog: http://blog.plurk.com/2009/12/14/microsoft-rips-plurk/. Basically, Microsoft China made their own version of Plurk, going as far as to copy Plurk’s layout and change some colors, steal Plurk’s code, change some function names and add some soft returns.

That’s pretty low, Microsoft China.

I’m posting this to help get the word out. If you use Plurk or just want to spread the word, I suggest sending the above article to people you know who would be interested.

Tumblingr. Tumblring? Tumblring.

Brendan — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 18:04:02 +0000

I heard about Tumblr a long time ago, but for some reason it didn’t seem as appealing as it does now.

If you haven’t heard of it, its basically a blog site like Wordpress or Blogger but instead of just making posts, you choose from six different kind of posts: Text, Photo, Quote, Link, Chat, and Audio. I think it’s a pretty neat idea, but I’m not sure if I should use it since I have a blag already. I might use it if I think of an idea for a second blog.

I’m trying it out here.

Also: There’s a really cool Tumblr iPhone app that can use the camera and microphone to make Photo and Audio posts, so that’s pretty neat.

How to Unlock Your iPhone’s Secret Emoticons

Brendan — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 04:16:46 +0000

That’s a lot of emoticons.

I don’t know the specifics, but a little bird told me that the iPhone has always had these emoticons and that Apple had to lock them away for some reason. Same bird also showed me a way to unlock them, and any iPhone you send these to will be able to render them.

Here’s how:

Download this free app onto your iPhone: Spell Number

Open Spell Number and type in this number: 91929394.59

Click return, and close the app (press the Home button)

Go to Settings -> General -> Keyboard -> International Keyboards -> Japanese

Turn “Emoji” ON.

There you have it. Now whenever you want to type an emote just click the little globe in your keyboard and type away. Again, anyone who has an iPhone will be able to see these in an SMS (and I’ve seen it work on twitter).

EDIT:
Here’s an article about “Emoji”

Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A

Brendan — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 20:48:34 +0000

Try it out.

15 Minutes of Flickr Fame

Brendan — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 02:23:49 +0000

Checking my email today I found there was an alarming amount of Flickr notifications about people commenting on and favorite-ing some of my pictures. When I logged in to check my stats I saw that I had over 2500 hits for today alone, with over 2000 of them being from this picture. Looking at my Flickr Stats page when I got home (and had the internet installed. WOO!) I saw this:

I’m not sure why it thinks it’s tomorrow, but the stats I’m talking about are for June 4th.

Looking at the referrers, it seems all the hits originated from that Door Note picture being featured in a Flickr Blog post.

I doubt I’ll ever see these kind of stats again. Unless I starting taking really really great photos:P

Moving Day: Enter No Internet

Brendan — Sun, 31 May 2009 14:22:06 +0000

Well today’s the big day. As i write this everything is in boxes and ready to go over to the new place (except for the computer, of course).

The crappy thing is that I’m not going to have internet until the Shaw technician comes over on Thursday, so unless I find some unsecured wifi it looks like I’m going dark for a few days. If I don’t make it out, make sure the government runs good…

…make sure the government runs good.

Project 365

Brendan — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 23:42:55 +0000

A couple weeks ago I started what some people have dubbed “Project 365“, where you take a picture a day for a year. I haven’t blagged about it ’til now because now I have a few weeks worth of pictures to show off. I had already seen other people I know doing it, and when I stumbled across my digital camera and reflected on how little I actually use it, I figured I’d give it a shot. It was a redundant roundabout process, but I managed to resurrect my old Flickr account, so if you’re interested you can see what I have so far here. You can totally feel free to leave some comments or critiques.

It’s been real fun so far, and I haven’t even figured out all my camera’s functions yet. So watch out world-of-really-really-amateur-photography, here I come.

Chyrp quirk

Brendan — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 23:00:32 +0000

After seeing a tweet about Chyrp, I decided to try it out on my blag and it’s been pretty neat. Chyrp is – their website says it the best – “a blogging engine designed to be very lightweight while retaining functionality.” Lightweight, indeed. Stuff like the ability to tag posts, WYSIWYG text editing, and allowing users to sign up or comment are all examples of optional modules that you can download and install reasonably quickly. I don’t think I’ll be making the switch from wordpress just yet however. Chyrp feels a little slower while having less plug-ins and a smaller dev community than wordpress, but it’s definitely something I’ll be keeping my eye on.

My Music, Wordle’d

Brendan — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 17:55:02 +0000

I tried out Last.fm’s Boffin at iamthejeff’s suggestion, and I got some cool results:

This isn’t even its primary function. You should try it out.

Bunch o’ things

Brendan — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 20:45:08 +0000

Some friends at work discovered this youtube video of this goodle lady’s laughs spliced together…

…and here it is an mp3 of just the laughs.

Fans of Left 4 Dead (or people who hate everything) will like this:

And to follow Jeff and Keith’s example, here’s a wordle cloud of my blog so far: