Hero Inc.

Recently I wrote a post about the state of social media in my eyes and somewhat on the potential of many of the most popular outlets that exist for presenting many of the most mundane and daily activities.  Within this post I didn’t paint a picture of love or anything stronger than basic like for Twitter.

Well since that time, I have actually signed up for an account on twitter and my thoughts have changed.  But why have they changed?  Simply put it is because of the following:

• Let Twitter be my Facebook status update - I don’t like logging into Facebook because I’m lazy and often I just want to post a quick update without getting sucked in to seeing the latest updates from random people.  I’d rather see updates from specific people instead of my entire Facebook social graph.
• I can follow those interest me – As I stated above, I want to have the control of who will provide updates to me.  It can almost be compared to having a speed dial for life updates.
• Shortened Blog Posts – I have many ideas running through my head but never enough time to write them down for a complete blog post.  Hell, I have about 10 ideas in draft for my site but haven’t sat down to finish them.  Forcing me to stay under 140 characters makes things fast and easy.
• Connection to many regardless of status – I can connect to friends in the same way that I “connect” to celebrities.  My celebs range from Leo Laporte to Conan O’Brien to Brent Grimes.  By following them, I can stay informed on those that interest me without requiring them to approve my access.
• Access is granted where otherwise its blocked – I recently began following the Atlanta Falcons and I’m certainly glad that I did.  I receive the latest updates regarding the team (injuries, stats, trivia, etc.) but I also stay informed during games.  Now that I’m on the west coast, I can’t always enjoy watching my team play, but the twitter account gives me fast in-game updates that are greatly appreciated.
• Information from strangers – While recently attempting to troubleshoot a computer issue I was facing, I decided to reach out to complete strangers via twitter.  If my updates are already entirely public, what’s it matter if I reach out to someone I don’t even know?  Therefore, I performed a real time google search on my topic and replied to another user who was just installing the same application.  Within a few hours (time difference I’m assuming), I received a reply.  Didn’t solve my issue but provided me added information.

Having myself enjoy twitter might still be weird for some, but I’m enjoying it.  Feel free to follow me if I don’t bore you too much with my lame tweets.

…or at least I think how I was able to vote multiple times for a Polldaddy, erm, poll.

Quick backstory, a friend of mine was recently in a contest that required a community to vote on the best. Most votes wins the contest. Therefore, of course we wanted to vote as many times as possible but the contest was using Polldaddy which allowed only a single vote per day. That’s no fun and I assumed there had to be some other way.

My first step was to see how votes were being blocked. I cleared the cache and cookies.  Well that didn’t work as that would have been just too easy for anyone to do.  Therefore, I began to assume it was IP based as that’s probably the best way to ensure a single vote for users, but it also prevents say a house of roommates for voting.  It’s a single vote per household and not the more accurate single vote per person per day.

I setup to research the tools that I would need and came up with the following:

• polipo – Polipo is a small web proxy to funnel my requests through.  This was my first time using it.
• iMacro for Firefox – This is an easy tool for scripting tasks within a browser.  I’ve used in the past to vote daily in contests where I’m too lazy to navigate to the site myself.
• Firefox – If I’m using iMacro for Firefox, then I have to use Firefox.
• Torbutton for Firefox – This is another Firefox extension that I had not used before.  It allows a browser to use Tor for online anonymity.
• wmctrl – This is a command line tool for interacting with X Window Manager.  You’ll see how this is used in my bash script below.
• Bash – I am using linux and not the best programmer so I just used what was available to me.  Please no jokes about my terrible scripts.  Everyone’s learning here.

Now that I have the tools, I need to write two scripts.  The first script is the iMacro which is really easy to do.  The second script is the one to integrate the various components.

Upon installing iMacro, open the command window for it within Firefox.  It should open by default after installation.  You will find a record button.  Once pressed, anything you do in the browser will be recorded for playback or “automated browsing.”  Here’s my script for polldaddy:

VERSION BUILD=6700624 RECORDER=FX
TAB T=1
URL GOTO=http://polldaddy.com/poll/[INSERT POLL ID NUMBER HERE]
TAG POS=1 TYPE=INPUT:RADIO FORM=NAME:formPoll ATTR=ID:[SELECTED VALUE FOR POLL]
TAG POS=1 TYPE=INPUT:BUTTON ATTR=VALUE:Vote!

Now that the simple script is out of the way, its on to the more “difficult” one because my real scripting skills are beginner at best. But armed with the internet, one can do almost anything.  I needed the bash script to do the following:

1. Start Polipo
2. Start Firefox
3. Initiate the iMacro script I wrote above
4. Close Firefox correctly instead of just killing the process
5. Kill the Polipo task

Well, here’s what I did with comments to state what each line is doing:

#!/bin/bash

echo "#####################################";
echo "###     VoteOnPolldaddy Script   ###";
echo "##   created by Benjamin Trice   ###";
echo "###         July 06, 2010        ###";
echo "####################################";
echo;
echo;
echo;

echo "START SCRIPT";
#echo "Clear cahce for polipo";
#gnome-terminal -e "polipo -x";
#echo "Sleep for 2 seconds";
#sleep 2;
echo "Start Polipo";
gnome-terminal -e polipo;
echo "Sleep for 10 seconds";
sleep 10;
echo "Start Firefox";
gnome-terminal -e "firefox http://www.google.com";
echo "Sleep for 5 seconds"
sleep 5;
echo "Start Firefox with iMacro"
gnome-terminal -e "firefox http://run.imacros.net/?m=[INSERT IMACRO NAME].iim";
echo "Sleep for 75 seconds"
sleep 75;
echo "Close Firefox correctly"
wmctrl -c firefox;
sleep 5;
wmctrl -c firefox;
sleep 5;
pkill -f polipo;
echo "END SCRIPT";

Here’s a few extra notes about setup.

• Not sure if it helps or not, but go into Firefox and set the preferences to clear the cookies and cache when Firefox is closed.  This option is why I had to use wmctrl to properly shutdown Firefox.  Killing the process, in my limited testing, seemed to not clear the cache and cookies properly.
• Setting up Polipo with Tor and Firefox is simple.  The Tor Project even has a great guide for that.
• Setup a cronjob or other automated task launcher to run the bash script every 10 minutes or so.  I ended up using kalarm (yes, in Ubuntu) as my cronjob didn’t seem to run and I was getting aggravated at this point and went the lazy GUI route.  I did have some issues with the script not starting properly, but I attributed that to kAlarm and not the script itself.

Now before any potential readers who care about this subject start attacking me, I know this solution isn’t perfect nor does it vote an infinite number of times.  It seemed to be limited by the IP addresses that Tor masked me as and as Polldaddy learns what anonymous IPs exist they will begin to block them.  My original goal was to figure out how to vote an infinite number of times in a day.  That goal failed but I was able to at least get the 5+ votes in a day that Polldaddy was blocking for myself and roommates.

Anyone have a better solution?

Yeah, I ripped the title of this post from the infamous viral video (probably NSFW, wiki link) but it was funny and worked well here.

For those who have been following me somewhat, I recently joined into a venture of sorts with friends in order to post our many movie reviews collectively under a single banner known as The Amateur Critics Guild.  It was a simple idea and tons of fun to actually build the branding, especially the About page, which still cracks me up when I look at it.

Anyway, back to the original purpose in this post.  We needed a domain for the site and finally settled on theacguild.net because we liked the name and it was available.  Mostly it was available.  We only wanted to pay for the domain and not the hosting since my current site, this one, was probably only using about 30% of its full capacity.  We knew we could just forward the domain and be done with it.

I setup wordpress for The ACG within a new directory on my site and set the forwarding rule through my provider (1and1).  The site was up and running, but one glaring issue continued to bother me as the URL of the site would always be something like “heroinc.org/theacguild/<some post naming structure>”.  This may have been a cheaper route than purchasing more hosting space but I knew that I had not had this issue earlier when I had the domain apenguinandme.com.  After a few bad attempts, here’s how to have it work so you can have 2 domains and 1 host (recursion anyone?).

Setup The Second Domain

1. Buy the second domain.
2. Within the domain, setup a forwarding rule.  1and1 allowed me 2 options for forwarding the domain:  1)  Provide a url, 2) Provide a home directory for the domain.
3. Choose the option to “provide a home directory for the domain”.  Option 1 would just forward the url and you would always have “domain1.com/domain2directory” for your website.  Option 2 allows for “domain2.com” and “domain1.com” without anyone needing to know the difference.

I assume that the option of forwarding to a particular directory will only work if the domains are purchased from the same hosting company where the site is hosted. I could be wrong on that, but I doubt it.

Now that the forwarding is setup, you are good to go.  However, what if you were like me and setup the wordpress site improperly the first time?  Well, good thing I did this first for you.  Here’s how you correct your wordpress installation.

Bad WordPress Installation Fix
Perform these steps during offhours for your site so that you don’t cause problems if issues come up.

1. Backup the database associated with wordpress installation.  I’m always a fan of backing up so that you can revert back to the original if things go wrong.
2. Backup the wordpress directory where wordpress is installed.  Like I said, I’m a fan of backups.
3. Within the admin page of your wordpress installation, navigate to the Settings / General page.
4. Change the “WordPress address (URL)”.  For example, before mine was “http://heroinc.org/theacguild”.  After I updated it, it said “http://theacguild.net”.
5. Change the “Site address (URL)”.  Same example as before.  Mine was “http://heroinc.org/theacguild”.  After I updated it, it said “http://theacguild.net”.
6. Save the changes.  The site might act up for a second but don’t worry about it.
7. NEXT STEPS ARE DANGEROUS WHICH IS WHY WE TOOK BACKUPS.  If you skipped steps 1 and 2, do them NOW.  I’ll wait….
8. Navigate to the database for your wordpress installation.  With my site, I use phpMyAdmin.
9. Use the search function to query the database tables for the old domain name.  The returned tables from the search all need to be updated to remove the old references so that all of your site links work.
   

   

10. Using a sql query, you can do a quick replace throughout the database table. The following sql query will do the replace for you and it should be repeated for each table that was returned by the query. Just remember that the query will replace all instances and that may not be what you always need so use caution. I know that I had a post or two on the new site where I linked to my actual real site and I had to manually make those changes so not to override what my post was meant to use.
    

    UPDATE wp_posts SET INSERT_TABLE_NAME_HERE = REPLACE (
    INSERT_TABLE_NAME_HERE,
    'olddomain.com',
    'newdomain.com');

11. Within your wordpress installation directory, search for “olddomain.com”. I believe it was within 4 of my files (404.php, header.php, sidebar.php, and style.css).
12. Within each returned file from the search, do a find and replace to change “olddomain.com” to “newdomain.com”.
13. Finally, in the words of the great wordpress instructions, go do something nice for yourself as you are now finished in updating your site to properly use the new domain.

Here’s hoping this will help other people who made a stupid mistake like I did.

Dear Steve Jobs,

While walking to work earlier this week, I happened upon a woman who was starting her day with music from the world’s most popular music player. Now I can’t guarantee it was an iPod, iPod Touch, iPhone, or whatever the next overpriced item maybe, but I can guarantee she was using those white earbuds that come with each fruity musical purchase.

Now let me preface the rest of this letter that I have never been a fan of Apple. I don’t own any “i” or “mac” product nor will I. I personally believe that the products are overpriced for the functions they perform. The “mac” products are even farther away from my wallet since the extra charges for beauty can also be provided with open source (FREE) alternatives. However, it is a free world for the consumer and they can purchase whatever they so choose. But with all of my negatives, I must state that Steve Jobs, good or bad, has done so much to spread the modern age of music to the world.

With that being said, I believe that Steve better begin working on the next input devices for his devices that will be centered around touch, smell, or sight. Basically anything not related to hearing because all of his consumers will soon be death or at least everyone around them will be. Those white earbuds are going to kill everyone’s hearing and that’s coming from someone that loves to turn up the music loud and “rock” out. But its not good when, back to my original story above, that I could hear every lyric perfectly and the earbuds were NOT IN MY EARS. In college, I remember sitting 5 rows (yes 5 rows) away from someone using the same earbuds and the same result.

Steve, you claim to be a music purist, an audiophile. You stated:

“I’m an audiophile. I’ve had stereos costing, well I won’t say because you’ll think I’m crazy. But, costing a lot more. And, I’m thinking of getting rid of mine for this.”

Maybe there should be less iPod HiFi and more work providing people with better earbuds that actually push the sounds into the ear instead of to everyone around them. The thought might have been that if others heard the music they’d be interested in the device. Just the opposite is true. When I hear the music from 3+ feet away, I want to rip the earbuds out, stomp on the device, and promptly smile at the sound of silence.

Just spend the extra 20 dollars or so and provide decent headphones. Your consumers won’t even notice the extra price since it is only a two digit number change.

Sincerely a non-customer,
Ben

Ok, so recently I made it known for my dislike on the current direction of facebook and not so promptly deleted my account….and then created another account to start anew. With that account running in full public force, I wanted to further explain the reason for the change by not really explaining it.

Facebook, like many of the other social sites, is in the business of making money and staying in business. As a site that is quickly becoming the home for one’s identity on the web, one needs to understand what an identity entails and why it is important.

Now according to a quick google search, an identity is “the individual characteristics by which a thing or person is recognized or known.”

For my purposes here, I want to split up the explanation and value of an identity into two main components: personal and business.

Business
The business identity is probably the easiest to explain and handle as it is being managed by one’s employer. Essentially, the business identity describes:

• who you are at your company or place of employment
• what you can and can’t do
• who you report to and who reports to you

Now the most important part of this description is item 2. Access is the key that opens the doors for all of the work you are intended to perform, but it can also be the key that refuses to unlock the systems or information that are outside of your acceptable range. If you are writing checks, should you be able to cash them? If you work in the graphics department, do you really need to access the HR or Finance systems? Of course not and there in lies the worth/value of one’s identity at a business. Without valuing that worth, terrible things can happen by preventing you from doing your job or someone attempting the company from being able to do theirs.

Personal
In the current world of sharing as much information as possible online, people quickly lose site of how valuable the personal identity can be. The quickest explanation could be provided when discussing identity theft. With just a few basic tidbits of information, an identity can be stolen.

Take a quick second to think about security questions that you are asked in order to verify yourself and all of the passwords you currently have to remember. Got them? Good. Now go look at all of the public information you have provided online via Facebook, Twitter, etc. If I wanted to guess your passwords or security question answers, how long might it take me if armed with a quick look at one’s online profiles? If you are now (hopefully) rushing to remove certain elements of your profile, good for you, but you need to realize that maybe you should not have placed that information there first. This is basically why I made my facebook profile default privacy settings as public because it forces me to rethink anything that I post. If I wouldn’t scream the information from a megaphone, why would I post it online via a website controlled by some 3rd party?

Still doubting any of what I have said about your personal identity? Just quickly use one of the many people search sites out there and be prepared to be scared within the few seconds it takes for the search to return. Now that was for free and even more information can be returned by paying a small fee to retrieve public records.

I guess basically my rant here is to think before you post and protect your identity no matter if it is based in your personal or business life.

As I write this, I have begun the process of terminating my current Facebook account.  This does not mean that I will be gone forever from the social time waster.  It just means that I am starting anew.

For those that have not been keeping up with twitter posts, the media, or some dude on the street, it seems that the new hip thing to do is complain about Facebook and point the finger the other way. Now I’m not an advocate for Facebook in anyway, but I have tried to hold back in what I have posted to Facebook in an effort to control my privacy.

However, I know that others have not used the same form of caution.  Some have treated the internet as a private conversation between friends when the basic principle of the internet is public.  From the moment you connect to a website, you have already created an open channel between three people (you, the website, and your ISP).  Therefore, I will be creating a new Facebook account and deleting my old one.

Why not leave altogether?  Well, when treated with caution and care, Facebook is a great tool to keep in touch with people.  Notice I didn’t say a great tool to find out what people are up to because that would defeat one of my reasons for creating the new “me.”  Basically, I envision my new facebook account to:

1. Limit the “who the crap is this person” factor.  When I first joined Facebook I was a simple minded freshman in college.  I just wanted to have as many friends as possible in an effort to seem cooler and more connected.  Now I am a simple minded post graduate who knows that’s just stupid.  I don’t need to accept invites from people I know from someone’s 3rd grade best friend’s dog’s original owner twice removed cousin.  If I don’t know you, I won’t add you.  [Let's just see how long this one lasts....]
2. Reduce my use of the social site even further.  Currently, I only login to facebook to make a comment here or there on someone’s status or create a link back to this site.  Why do I even need to go that far?  Why not try to connect on a more personal level via email, phone call, or meet in person?
3. Contain the amount of personal identity information that is present on the web concerning myself.  With Facebook’s ever growing love of making one’s privates public (yeah, I know how that sounds but its true), I think I need to pull as much off to make a baseline minimum and then decide piece by piece what to add.  If I wouldn’t state where I work by name on my website, why would I do it on Facebook?

Now for those thinking to follow in my (and others) footsteps, check out this handy guide.  As I started the process, I even began to rethink joining Facebook again thanks to the message provided to me when I wanted to limit my full name to the site.

Click above for bigger image

If you don’t want to delete and recreate, then at least check out another handy tool, so that at least you know what is or can be out there related to your identity.

I’ve finished writing, but I haven’t finished migrating to my new facebook account.  Well I guess I know what will be taking up my time later this week.

I’m not sure if it was fate or f8 (pronounced the same) that brought my interest into creating a post pertaining to social media but nevertheless, I’m here and proud of it.

The last few years, the buzz terms in the internet mainstream world have been centered around the aspect of each person on the web interacting socially thanks to new products and services.  We’ve all heard of social media this and that, and I know a few of us are getting sick and tired of it (but not as much as the term iPhone killer).  However, each day it seems that the aspect of the social mediasphere comes out to help or hurt us.

Let’s take a look at is out there (and of course do so in alphabetical order).

Social Media	Description/Thoughts
	Use?: NO It’s a shame that this is the first on our alphabetical journey because when I first describe it to people the reaction explains where most think it is headed. According to the website, Blippy is “a fun and easy way to see and discuss what everyone is buying.” That basically translate to a service that syncs with your credit cards and shares with your friends any and all of the purchases that you are making. Sure, there are controls to allow one to moderate what purchases are shared, but essentially the concept is over sharing one’s pride in the capitalistic society. I can see why businesses would want people to use the system because there is big money in providing consumers with a close relationship in the items people want to purchase and people they know that purchase it. Think about it. Aren’t you more likely to buy a product that one of your friends as purchased because you have real feedback you can trust on if the money was well spent? Since this is the latest social media site (started in December of 2009), we will just have to see if it catches on, even though I know I’m just not that interested in it.
	Use?: PUSH Back during my days in college, Digg (that’s D-i-g-g.com) was my premier site for receiving my news of all flavors. I participated in its social aspect by “digging” stories in order to inform the masses of the particular interest in the story. Wait, I’ve gone too far ahead of myself. Back up. Digg was created by Kevin Rose as a social news website. The basic idea is that the masses now have the power to dictate what stories should be of interest. Everyone’s been there. You go to your favorite news site (CNN, BBC, and yes even FoxNews for some) but the stories that you see presented are not what you find important or interesting. Digg provides you the ability to submit stories from across the web and other users can “digg” the story in order to move it to the front page for more people to see it. The more diggs a story receives, the more popular it is. Each story can also be commented on from Digg as opposed to going to the story’s source. However, outside of college I just don’t have time to participate in the “digg” process as I once could. I still go to digg, but only to view the first view pages of content or the top diggs of the day. And sometimes, I’m even drawn back to leave a comment here or there just because I can.
	Use?: YES Wow, where do I begin on this one? Facebook is one of the fastest growing websites out there, but it is also one that I see becoming the most flawed and dangerous. We all enjoy using Facebook as a way to reconnect and catch up on all of our friends, but how many people really stop to think about all of the information we are providing to it. Its current and potential track record of not giving a crap about the information they are storing or its potential for security issues is shocking. The most recent issue that allowed one to see the personal chats and other information of anyone’s friends was met with a “oops” from the website instead of “we will make sure this never happens again.” I have many friends that are looking to take down their pages which is their choice. I don’t know if I am going to go that far because I can really connect to so many people so quickly. However, I will be looking to minimize the data that I provide to them in order to protect myself and identity online. Maybe their policies and thoughts on security/privacy will change in the future so that we can all be more comfortable in using a site that started with a great idea.
	Use?: YES I originally was against the idea of social media being used to track my movements. Then I changed my mind about the whole thing. Was it the aspect of my new smartphone or just becoming more aware of how something like Foursquare worked? Who knows! At least I do know that Foursquare is just as addicting as it was to play four square with my roommates back in college. Foursquare allows one to “checkin” to locations while out and about. I was drawn to this application with my recent move to San Francisco, which is a major user of the application. Having more people in my general vicinity using it really pushes me to get out and learn the city’s ins and outs. I also control when I want to “checkin” and I can easily track where I have been as well as what places I want to return for business. Overall though, the most addicting part of Foursquare is the ability to earn badges. I often feel like I’m a Boy Scout again, except this time I’m more interested. The badges can be humorous or based on the regular tasks one might perform (such as riding the BART). 10 badges and 4 mayorships and I’m craving more and more and more.
	Use?: MAYBE Ah yes, Linkedin. For those not in the know, Linkedin is the facebook of the business world. Instead of “private” (yes I know that is a relative term after my comments above), it is “public”. It is almost the aspect of posting your resume and network contacts to others online. Your network of “friends” is your network of colleagues. I have previously pushed to not join another online system, but my work has encouraged it for recruitment purposes. Maybe it isn’t a terrible idea to join so that I can connect others professionally as opposed to just socially. Anyone else have thoughts here, besides “yeah join”? So far I’d say Linkedin is working out well because any news stories I hear about it are few and far between which means it is either on its way out (which I doubt) or it is doing something right and people don’t have anything to complain about.
	Use?: NO Here it is. If Facebook is the king of social media, Twitter is the queen or co-king. Since its inception, I have had a hatred for Twitter and its community. I didn’t understand the point of sharing public 144 character messages to the world. Do I really want to know one’s bowel movements cycle? Do I care about the sudden idiotic thoughts that enter one’s mind? I certainly do not. However, as I become more aware of the service’s capabilities, my feelings towards Twitter are changing. In the best example I can give, recently there was a virus issue that affected many across the US and rendered many computers useless for several hours. In order to find out how widespread the issue was, I turned to a recent update by Google where you can search the real time tweets. That day, I searched for “virus” and saw that the issue was not centered to just me, but many locations across the US (Clemson, Chicago, Kentucky, etc.). I continued following the google search and found that many were leading me to why the error was occurring thanks to McAfee’s screw up in an update. Twitter in this scenario worked perfectly for a global messaging system. Just think of its uses during disasters or other real time tracking (epidemics, political situations, etc.). I’ve also used it to find out updates regarding the Android 2.1 update for my HTC Eris. Now this does not mean I’m going to go out and join, but at least my mood when I hear other’s make references to it doesn’t result to pure hatred. And I will still wait with anticipation for my twitter based idea to be implemented.

*YES => I am a member of the social club
*NO => I am not a member of the social club
*PUSH => I am a member but the account stays idle
*MAYBE => I am not currently a member but the status of our relationship could change

So what’s next? Well if I had to guess it would follow the movement of turning the tv into the next social revolution. With TV’s moving to integrating internet capabilities, one could interact with other viewers of a TV show in real time and also encourage others to check out a new show or upcoming episode.

our score and many months ago, I attempted to help out in fixing a wordpress plugin that I wanted for my site.  In an effort to reach more people to share my stupidity and no real depth or knowledge, I wanted to utilize Facebook’s notes to pull my blog posts to Facebook and then pull any comments posted there back to my website.

After a few successful tries, I started to slowly realize that something was not quite right with Facebook.  The constant change of the site’s HTML made the plugin become a complete waste after a week of quality use after every fix.  I soon decided to take my last effort and release it back to the wordpress community for them to continue updating if desired.

Since releasing it back to others, I’ve always secretly wanted someone to find a solution.  Well, I’m now here to say I don’t want anyone to fix it.  Instead if people want to post to the facebook population, then just use the status messages and inform friends to exit from facebook for a great read.

Facebook, knowingly and purposefully make these consistent changes to the site’s design in order to deter any developers in coding solutions that will crawl the site for any data that Facebook does not allow one to receive via their APIs.  The reason for this has nothing to do with preventing your identity from being taken away from Facebook for security purposes.  They just want full control so that they can exploit the identity and sell the data for their profit as well as force users to stay within the Facebook walls in order to dictate what the web experience can and will be.

Therefore, until Facebook changes their current stance and opens the API to allow access to specific information externally for enhancing the social interaction outside of Facebook, my limited (and terrible developing) skills will not be used for pushing my traffic into Facebook, but to push Facebook traffic out.

Now that I have settled into my new city and been placed on a new project at work, it is time to deal with the commute.  Please understand that this commute is by no means terrible even if it is about an hour and forty minutes each way (morning and afternoon).  The trip is a straight shot based on the MUNI (if it is running correctly that day) and BART.  I am able to have a internet connection for about 90-95% of the trip so if I need to do work I have that option.  Some may say the BART is terrible, but I am provided an easy laugh twice a day as I read the “Committed to Excellence” Oakland Raiders sign that rests on the stadium.

However, there are those days where I don’t need to do any work and I can just sit back and enjoy the ride.  Now my sister will tell me that I should pick up a book to read.  Well I have picked up a book, which is just a book I started while at the beach this summer but never finished.  It’s just that I can’t force myself to read along this trip because I’m very picky about my reading spots.  That and I’m of the generation who doesn’t know what reading is.  We won’t laugh about that in the future, but we can laugh now.

Anyway, I decided to get back into listening to podcasts on my Creative Zen Vision W, or the Betamax player as it is known on my project team.  I have been away from podcasting in general for several years so I wasn’t sure what was still out there or what new good ones were available.  Here’s a quick list of the ones I have found that I have enjoyed so far.

Podcast Name	Description
	DiggNation is pretty much where my world of podcasting started out. DiggNation, hosted by Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht, discusses the week’s top stories from the social news site, Digg.com. I truly enjoy the way the two hosts play off of each other and the topics can range from tech, news, sports, etc. It is usually a random assortment of “news” selected by those that post to Digg. I have listened to this podcast since it was first started as just audio. Now with video, so much more is added to the experience.
	I’m not a huge fan of the news, mainly because it is usually so depressing and only certain stories are stressed in the political realm. NPR’s 7AM news report provides me a fast and effective update for the day’s news stories. The report is offered in the audio clarity that only NPR can offer and usually is not much longer than 5 minutes in length. Perfect for a quick update.
	Pardon The Interruption has become my true DVR pleasure. Michael Wilbon and Tony Kornheiser are always entertaining and provide a quick shot of all the latest sports news. I love watching this show daily but I ran into an issue recently where I didn’t have time to watch the show each day. Thanks to the podcast, I don’t miss a beat. The audio only version of the show is not as good as the real thing but it is as close as you are going to get if you just don’t have the time to sit in front of a TV to enjoy. This one is not a push (Wilbon’s trademark).
	If DiggNation was my first podcast, then This Week In Tech is my tied first. A weekly discussion of the week’s tech stories is hosted by Leo Laporte. This is truely a geek’s show but I still find my chance ot laugh and enjoy another dose of tech talk.
	Provided by the same group that produces This Week In Tech and Security Now, TWIG (as it is known) follows the top stories related to Google or cloud computing. I’ve only had a chance to enjoy a single episode, but I did find it interesting enough to give it another shot. I’m just wondering if too much Leo Laporte in one week is good for me.
	Not long after I was listening to TWIT and DiggNation while in college, Security Now! began. I gave it a listen a few times in order to find out more within the security industry (might need this for work), but I just haven’t been able to consistently enjoy it. That basically means I’ll drop it soon, but for those that are concerned with their computer security, then give the show a chance. The show does find itself able to explain even the high level security issues so that normal users can understand them and how they could be affected.
	DiggNation was the first of many shows to come for the Revision3 online network. For those familiar with the days of TechTV, you’ll notice many old faces. AppJudgement provides a simple review of applications or “apps” for smartphones. These reviews are for both iPhone and Android phones. Since I’m close to purchasing a smartphone (NOT AN IPHONE), I thought it’d be a great idea to begin finding some apps that I’d find useful. The show runs between 5-10 minutes so it is easy to get in, learn, and get out.
	With my enjoyment of Alex Albrecht from DiggNation (that’s too many plugs for that show), I thought I would try his second Revision3 show, The Totally Rad Show. TRS discusses movies, video games, and comic books. I tried a single episode and enjoyed it but not sure if I will continue thanks to a few of the other shows below.
	Need a review of current and future video games? Well, CO-OP is a well produced show that does just that. My introduction to the show was an older episode that discussed Uncharted 2 and Super Mario Bros. Wii since I had just played both of them recently. My time to spend playing games is not what it used to be but I might follow this show every now and then if I’m looking to find a new game to try.
	InstMsgs had the most interesting concept in that they dramatize all things web. From instant messages to craigslist ads, they do it all. I first heard of this show from the first podcast listed above (I can’t name it again or I might have to start paying fees) and thought “Why not?” Well I jumped on for episode 8(Mad Men?) and that’s about as far as I’m going to get. The show was good and interesting but I don’t know if it is enough for me to keep going with it. Those who find lolcats funny might want to try episode 10.
	A podcast about comics? I’m so there! The discussion is sporadic in the episode (I’m only one in as of posting), but that’s the only way to describe comic book stories. Finding new comics, diving deeper into stories, or providing interviews, this is a great stop to keep up or find out more about the world of comics.
	Since moving to Linux, I wanted a chance to learn more on a more consistent basis. When I found Linux Outlaws, I thought that a podcast could be the perfect place if it was done correctly. Well I’m only one show in (Simple Doesn’t Equal Shit) and I have a few thoughts. First, I will not continue with this one if the running time is around 2 hours for each show. I need shows that are an hour or under to truly enjoy a show during the commute. Two hours is just way too much for me. Second, the content is there in this one. They discuss different flavors/distros, new application updates, and news within the Linux world. As long as the time is shortened for future episodes, I’ll continue listening along.

Anyone have any others I should try? I am interested in checking out others that are not only tech based but I do like what I like.

Don’t get your hopes up WordPress users. I have not fixed the Facebook Comments plugin. I’ve received countless comments and emails regarding the plugin so I decided the best I could do for now is to aid the community by passing out more of the work I have performed in order to get this plugin working.

Currently, the plugin pulls back information from Facebook for the Notes comments, but the values stored in the WordPress database are not correct because of the regular expressions used and Facebook’s constant HTML updates.

However, I have added a feature so that you can see what the plugin does return in order to give a way of visually testing the plugin without harming your WordPress database. Hopefully someone else can take a look at the plugin, much like I did originally, and offer a solution. Keep the community updated on changes and fixes and perhaps we can get this plugin going again. If you find fixes, I’ll add them here or update with links to your own site.

Change Log;

• 0.38D – July 30, 2009 – Let’s term this version as D for Development. It’s far from working that it isn’t good enough for a Beta or Alpha label for now. Utilizing the “Test Import” function one can see what the plugin returns from Facebook.

Update for April 30, 2010: I have decided to end all development and future development related to this plugin. The reasoning for this change can be found here. I have closed the ability to post comments to this post and hope any further comments will be directed at my reasoning post.