Planet Bloggerian » Thomas

Lunch at the office.

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I tweeted a Twitter wishlist. I want to see a new feature called “Mute” on Twitter. So, why I want to have this, or how it should be useful for user (at least for me)? Here’s a situation:

I follow some people on Twitter. I follow them because I know them well — have a personal relationship like friend. They’re actually a nice person. But, sometime they’re annoying. Or for whatever reason they’re just flood my timeline with something I don’t really care about. They might do this in a certain period. I like their updates, but sometime I don’t. I don’t want to block or unfollow them because some people will put it into something personal. It might break something.

So, rather than blocking them, I want to hide their updates from my timeline. It’s like “I want certain people I follow do not appear in my timeline”.

“You’re stupid! There is a feature called ‘Unfollow’. There’s also ‘Block this user’!

I know. But,’Mute’ is a little bit different. It’s simply like ‘filtering timeline’. Not permanently so that I can put some muted users back to my timeline. This feature will not killing the features appears when I follow someone — or someone follows me. They’re not blocked. They’re just muted. So, when two Twitter users are following each other, they’re still have all features. They still can send/receive direct messages each other. They don’t have to receive a notification when someone is unfollowing and then following back.

“Unfollow them and put them on a list/group!”

This might work, but again this is more like grouping some Twitter users into a list. It might work when I don’t want to use Twitter as communication tool. When some people on Twitter don’t want to see my updates in their timelines, they can simply mute me.

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When I use Blogger service few years ago, one of my favorite feature was FTP Publishing. Using this feature, I had Blogger publish my post to my own web hosting account. The main reason was that I can use my own custom domain for my Blogger-powered blog. If you’re using this, I think we had a same reason.

But, it was the time when blogging was not so easy like today. Right now, some people find that finding a free blog service is challenging. I mean, there are lots of options available. You can have WordPress.com, Posterous, Tumblr and more. Web hosting and domain service are also much cheaper. Most hosted service also offers a custom domain feature so that we can use our own domain using service’s infrastructure.

Blogger says that there are only 5% of active blogs published via FTP. And, it’s a reason to stop this feature. Probably, it’s a bad news for those 5% users. This FTP Publishing feature will not be supported after March 26, 2010. So, what should you do if you’re using FTP Publishing feature? You can switch to Blogger’s Custom Domain OR use the Blogspot.com domain. This migration tool will be available on February 22, 2010. All traffics will be redirected.

For this FTP Publishing related information, Blogger already setup a blog to give updates of the situation at http://blogger-ftp.blogspot.com.

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Today, I tried another WordPress plugin called “Automatic WordPress Backup”. This plugin will help blog owners to create backup remotely to Amazon S3 service. Since I’m using it and pretty satisfied with the billing usage, I installed it at some WordPress-powered blogs I maintain.

I use one of the available buckets under my account. For this bucket, I set its ACL (Access Control List) to private, of course. After this plugin installed and activated, I only needed to put my Access Key ID and Secret Access Key.

I decided not to include all files for my backup. I only need the database and uploaded contents. After the settings were saved, I simply hit the backup button. The process depends on the disk and database usage. I found that it was pretty fast. One of my backup files was around 300 MB, and it only took less than 5 minutes to complete the process. Also, the backup file was compressed. This should be useful to cut the usage process as you only need to store a single file for each backup.

The backup files will be automatically delivered to my Amazon S3 bucket and when the process completed, I can see the backup history. To download the backup, I only need to click on the backup links.

The backup links are built using pre-signed URLs so that only the account holder (or someone who knows the URLs) can download them.

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In last September, I started to use Amazon S3 for some experimental purposes. And, it’s not that difficult — of course, I only use some basic action. CloudBerry Explorer and S3Fox are really helpful. Now, if you want to know the billing calculation — just in case you’re interested to try Amazon S3 (also with CloudFront), I have uploaded a sample billing statement from Amazon (click the thumbnail to enlarge).

For me, I think the price is still reasonable. Anyway, CloudFront service is optional. Of course, this billing statement is not only based on my blog usage. I have multiple sites and accounts there. Not all of my backup files are also available for public.

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Now, I want to introduce another Posterous-powered blog. This time, there are more than one author — well, only two anyway. It’s called Capture and Share. I created this blog as a place to put my — and Lala — mobile streams. All posts in this blog are created using mobile devices (Nokia N78 and Nokia 5800 XpressMusic). But, not all of them are directly uploaded from the devices. Why? Well, we’re not using unlimited internet package for our devices. :)

Why Posterous? Because it just works. Sending photos, videos, screenshots from email is our option. And, Posterous handles this perfectly. Here are few things about the setup:

• We use custom domain feature. It’s mobile.orangescale.com
• Some theme modifications. Yes, we use custom theme, only adding few lines in the stylesheet
• Created this Posterous blog as/with Group Profile

Of course, I will not leave my own Posterous page. So, meet Capture and Share at [mobile.orangescale.com].

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This month, I saw that there are more than 5,000 photos in my Flickr photostream. In last October, there were 4,000 photos. So, in less than two months, there are more than 1,000 photos uploaded? Of course, not all of them are displayed for public. There are lots of private photos there. I think, the increasing number of photos happens after I purchased my Canon EOS 450D few months ago.

Here are some numbers related to my Flickr photostream — when I write this post:

• 5,403 photos in total: 3,872 public photos, 1,218 private photos, 18 friend-only photos, 262 family-only photos, 33 friend-and-family only photos.
• In total, there are 5,400 photos and 3 videos. Right, Flickr also support videos.
• About photo tagging, there are 2,914 photos with tags (2,489 untagged)
• Sometime, I uploaded some photos with geotagging info. Also, I put some photos on the Flickr map. I have 849 photos geotagged.
• I manage my photos in sets and 5,163 photos among total collections are in sets.
• My photostream has 120 sets and 7 collections.
• In December 2009, I uploaded 962 photos, but in September 2009 there was only one photos uploaded.
• In total, I made 8 transactions (buying Flickr Pro credits). But, I only use two credits. The other credits were bought for my friends who want Flickr Pro upgrade (Flickr Gifts).

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Two days ago, I gave Nokia Messaging for Social Networks Beta a try on my Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. This application will help Nokia users to keep update with the social media services — in this case Facebook and Twitter. Of course, it’s still in beta so I should not expect too much.

The installation process was easy and I didn’t have any problems. Everything was smooth. This early preview is available on the Nokia N97, Nokia N97 Mini, Nokia 5530, Nokia 5800, and the Nokia X6 devices. Go to messaging.nokia.com if you want to see applications from Nokia Messenging for your device.

After having this application installed, I used it right away. When running the application for the first time, I got this welcome screen:

I use Twitter more than Facebook. First, I use the Twitter feature. Here’s the login sreen:

I am not sure what’s wrong but it took time to load the timeline screen after logging in. It might be the internet connection. Or, was it because the application was pretty heavy? Not sure. I wait for few seconds, and finally I got my Twitter timeline. I spent another few seconds to explore the screen. There are some icons related to Twitter menus like icons for home, direct message, friend list, ‘mentioned’, etc. Looks good. Some features did not work yet. Still many “Comming soon” notification there. But, I think I can see how it will look like.

I haven’t found super feature here. I mean, as a Twitter (and Nokia) user, I couldn’t decide right away whether this is the application I really want. Again, it’s still in very early development stage. The design is smooth and I think I like it. It seems that there are some unfinished design elements like some jaggy corner — or was it my phone?

I didn’t continue exploring the Facebook feature from this application. I stopped on the Facebook home screen — even it was not fully loaded. I closed this application.

If it’s related to how I work with Twitter and Facebook using my mobile device, right now I’m really satisfied with Gravity. Seriously, I think Gravity is much better than this Nokia’s social network application. I think Gravity has the ‘this is it!’ features. Multiple accounts, GPS integration, send photos to some photo sharing services, even Google Reader. Right now, Nokia and Gravity is a really great combination. I must say that I’m curious about the Nokia Messaging development. Anyway, if you want to find out some features offered, a video is available. So, Nokia… surprise me! :D

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I’m using Facebook, and found this useful post about privacy settings. In short:

1. Understand your friend lists
2. Remove yourself from Facebook search results
3. Remove yourself from Google
4. Avoid the infamous photo tag mistake
5. Protect your albums
6. Avoid the post-breakup Facebook effect
7. Control what information applications can access
8. Make contact information private
9. Avoid embarrassing wall posts
10. Keep friendships private

Of course, every user has its own privacy level settings. But, I think most of them are few good points to consider. See details about each setting.

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I have been using Yahoo! Messenger for few years, and I got a problem using it yesterday. The error dialog box gave me message like this:

There was a problem signing you in to Yahoo! Messenger.
Your account has been locked. Please click “Forgot Password…” to start the unlocking process.  (81003003)

The problem was that I used it few hours before and everything was right. I’m using Yahoo! Messenger 10.0.0.1102-us. So, I tried to logged in to my Yahoo! account. Username and password combination did not work. Not good. I was sure that I put correct details. I tried again. And, it worked! And, when I went back to my Yahoo! Messenger and tried to log in, everything was back to normal. OK, there was a little problem there. Not sure what it was, but it’s fine now.

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