It looks like Gmail is sending me one of their spiffy T-shirts!

Yeah, it’s just a T-shirt, but truth be told I’m crazy about Gmail.

Of all the dozens of email clients that I’ve tried, Gmail (or Google Mail for those of you in Germany) is my favorite Google product which rescued me from Microsoft Outlook, Hotmail & Juno eons ago (in geek time).

It’s awesome spam filters coupled with Priority Inbox have made email fun again (not to mention useable) unlike many of their rivals.

Despite the fact that other companies offer more space (like Yahoo), I have thus far refused to switch as Gmail is the only player to solve “the email problem” (which is “help me read the emails that I love and ignore the ones that I loathe”).

Anyways the company was holding a Haiku for a T-shirt competition on Twitter, and for fun I decided to submit this Haiku to them expecting to not make “the cut.”

Haiku @Gmail:
Spam free email plus | Priority inbox is |
Why I love Gmail!

The T-shirt should compliment my Blogger beanie (yes folks, despite using WordPress, I’m still a fan of my first geek love, aka Blogger).

After it arrives I’ll take a picture with me wearing it. Too bad they don’t actually have a real bow tie with Gmail in the center.

–Posted from my iPhone

Read More

Right on the heels of encountering problems after attempting to migrate my blog to a WordPress only host (long story short: redirecting the name servers was producing “freaky” results), I’ve now come across another error: My wireless router is once again blocking FTP access.

I am not sure why it keeps doing this (yes, I’ve looked at the settings and they all “appear normal”) and after suspecting the firewall (turning it off, along with anti-virus) I received the same “no dice for Darnell” error.

Last time I googled around for answers and a few experts weighed in with analysis of the issue (validating that it can block FTP) but no solution.

Since I REALLY want to migrate my blog, what I’m going to do is do it all manually. Basically create all the folders and upload the data to the server “the old fashioned way” by simply importing my WordPress data and uploading the media files later.

I’ll save this for the weekend job, but fortunately this should be a lot easier thanks to VaultPress.

Note: While I do like my wireless router, sometimes I think its “too protective.”

Image Credit: Linux Home Networking

Read More

I think I’ve finally found the perfect birthday gift for _____! Hopefully _____ likes it (if not I’ll be pissed very upset) but even if _____ hated it, at least _____’s friends will be envious.

I think I’ll pick it up from the Apple store next week (provided they still have it), but if not I’ll order one via the iPhone app.

Since _____ is not on AT&T, this is the closest thing to an iPhone without contracting ones self to Ma Bell.

While this will delay my iPhone purchase (I’m pushing it back to Halloween as I want the 32 GB version), it will be worth it as it will help introduce _____ to the iFaith, and prove that Steve Jobs is an enlightened man.

PS

No I’m not telling who it is, so don’t even bother asking.

And yes it’s someone special and if you think that I’m referring to you, then you’re probably 99% wrong.

–Posted from my iPhone

Read More

I think I’ve officially “resolved” the data portability drama with Facebook, and this post (more or less) will serve as my catharsis regarding my dispute with what I consider to be my biggest regrets in geek hood.

Vanity Of Vanities

When I joined Facebook many years ago, I did it for the sole purpose of forming closer relationships with friends I’ve met in person or communicated with extensively over email, twitter, blogs, etc.

I’ve never been fond of their chat programs, or even their spammy games like Farmville, Mafia wars, and the zillion clones that popped no matter how hard I tried filtering them out.

But I tolerated it because I wanted to connect with my friends as all of them were using it.

Until that is…

Rage Against The Machine

…Facebook decided to make everyone’s private profiles public.

Outraged, many of my friends threatened deletion (some actually did), while others abandoned Facebook altogether.

I debated against either option and still kept Facebooking on.

At least until I discovered that the social network lacked true data portability, which is geek speak for “all your contacts, images and videos belong to Facebook!”

Exodus And The Digital Death

I quickly discovered that all of the legal ways of removing your data off of Facebook’s servers were “mysteriously” not working, after becoming too popular.

After trying dozens of services (freemium, premium and free) to legally export my data off of Facebook’s servers for safe keeping (at least according to their API), I became frustrated and almost deleted my account (I actually found the one click button after a long search).

A wiser friend talked me out of doing that (30 seconds before I was going to click the button too), so instead I removed 99% of my personal data from the site & temporarily disconnected every service from Facebook (which pissed off my friend, hence this long post).

The Back Door

Later on my friend kept bugging me on when I would return to Facebook (as I had already deleted the app off of my iPhone) which I replied “when they allow me to export my images off site” (I had already given up on videos being exported).

I later agreed I would return if I could export my images off site.

After an hour of us Googling, we discovered a WordPress plugin that Facebook “broke,” but the author had figured out a way to download our images in high quality (you can contact me for more info regarding the plugin as I’m not sure how long it will remain functional).

The plugin worked like a charm and now I have all of my images on my own server.

Left Overs For Facebook

After this whole dilemma my trust of Facebook is at a all time low, and while I did rejoin the Facecult, I’m no longer uploading my primary data (images, videos, etc.) to the site, but instead will push data to Facebook from other platforms (so my friend can stop bugging me).

I purchased a Flickr premium account to host my images and short videos, while YouTube will host the longer ones over 90 seconds.

My private Twitter account will update my statices while Tumblr will fill in the gap.

As far as social goes, I’m now becoming a more active member of iRovr, which has a hyper active community (I’ll post my thoughts about them later).

So while Facebook will still be able to collect info regarding my geek habits (unless I’m on iRovr), they will no longer be privileged to receive primary access to my data (key words are “my data”), but instead view them through the lens of rival third party clients.

< /catharsis >

–Posted from my iPhone

Read More

So if you haven’t heard, it looks like Sean Kovacs Google Voice app has returned to the app store in full glory!

For those of you unfamiliar with the story, Apple was upset to see Google third party apps dominate the app store (when it was much smaller) and decided to throw a tantrum by banning the app from the app store then lying to the public about why it was thrown out.

Soon after I jail broke my iPhone only to discover later on the disadvantage of jailbroken iPhone’s (i.e. Skype, etc. stop working). Since then I’ve had a high mistrust for Apple, despite their quality products.

Fast forward to today and now GV Mobile (now known as GV Mobile +) is back in the app store again, which means I can save more minuets and texts.

The GV Mobile still has to propagate around iTunes servers (as I still have yet to access it, even though I can see it).

Despite paying 299 pennies for it previously, I’ve decided to pay the fee again in order to support Sean (who was caught in the middle of this iSaga unfortunately).

Once that happens, I’m going to have Google take over my voicemails, that way I can actually archive them off of my iPhone.

Read More