I just dinna get the Twitter thang.

Little snippets of nothing that apparently mean something. Sounds like a Milky Way Ad.

My problem, I think aside from my other idiot-syncrasies, is that Twitter is little more than the status updates from Facebook but just with a little added Ashton and Oprah.

Isn’t it?

Maybe I’m narrow minded. But according to this article, 60% of people who try Twitter stop trying the next month. Forever.

That’s crap. Facebook is at least lots of percents more.

Anyhoo. Sorry for the delay in the posts. Except from my Tweets on the right hand side. Pass the Duchy, Twitter does have a use. Micro-updates to blogs.

What a hypocrite.

I read on a blog somewhere, some chatter about Tomizone. Users of iiNet are likely to be aware of the link between the two. But if you have no idea what I’m talking about then here’s the abridged version.

• Take one broadband connection from a participating isp.
• Take one Tomizone compatible router.
• Load up the Tomizone firmware.
• Share your internet connection with the world.
• Earn 50% of the income generated by sharing said connection.

Now the earnings may be ok if you get a bit of traffic past your place, like near the MCG or a busy shopping strip. You’ll be looking at 1/2 of the $3 hour pass/$6 day pass/$30 week pass, as long as the user remains connected to your router. You get pro-rata otherwise.

When you sign up for Tomizone you appear on their map. Just type in your location and shazaam!

Then comes the problaymos!

I thought I’d give the system a go. I typed in my location and found some likely culprits. I then trundled around and like a stalker tried to connect to their hotspot.

Hotspot #1: No hotspot found. Nice. Great to see that the Tomizone map is up to date or could the signal be too weak? Hang on I’ll just climb their back fence and get a little closer. It Rubs The Lotion On It’s Skin. Nah, not doin’ it.

Hotspot #2: Hotspot found! Huzzah! Connecting…failed to connect…wait…connecting…Back fence again? Nah.

Hotspot #3: No hotspot found. Big dog peering through the fence. Definately no back fence action.

So there lies the erm…rub.

People shell out for these “Tomizone” routers and expect to recoup the costs. But the fact of the matter is that if you want to earn cashola you’ll need to upgrade the antenna and make sure you live in a decently trafficked area.

The other side of the coin is that if a road warrior wants to use your connection they have to park outside of your house like they’re casing the joint. Some people may not be comfortable doing that.

I reckon the most legitimate way to go is to get the big antenna or repeater and do a letter drop in to the neighbours. They don’t need to know it’s you but it may get you some cash from their casual use and they won’t feel like stalking.

When you should be doing some work on the old ‘puter, we all end up glazing over and clicking on random links and googling random things.

That’s when I stumbled across a great site called Etsy.

If you’re looking for a gift that is unique, or more particularly handmade, then this is the site for you.

The idea is that if you’re an “artist” you can create an account with these guys and set up your store. You then pay just 20 cents to list an item for 4 months. On top of that Etsy takes a 3.5% sliver for each sale. Nice and cheap.

What can you sell?

• Items handmade by you.
• Commercial and handmade craft supplies.
• Vintage items older than 20 years . Nice slacks!

Etsy.com also utilises some nice features on their site, one of which is the Shop Local feature. Just type your location (e.g. Melbourne ~100 shops) and it will search the ~170,000 shops to find the ones closest to you.

Or use the graphical Colour picker. This helps find gifts that match a colour. Nice touch.

All of these great buying tools are logically placed in the “Buy” section. Creepy.

Azureblues on Etsy.com

As for the selling side of things, I’ve already told you about the costs. As for the funcionality, I’ll try and find someone who’s using it and get back to you. But from the outside looking in, the “shop” Etsy provides is neatly laid out and I’m sure, easy to set up.

Well, check back at some stage and I’ll have a seller to chat to.

Overall, Etsy.com, Nice.

In my little post about cloud computing, I talked about the ability to set up a remote server using Amazons’s Elastic Compute Cloud or EC2 for short.

You just pay a small fee per hour. You could link that to their S3 cloud storage. This would give you a remote computer running your software and with a feasibly unlimited storage space. All for, let me find my calculator, um, not much by way of dollars.

Now some bright spark has thought to use this power for evil instead of good. I originally read about this idea on Hackzine and subsequently at the original authors site.

He uses some server side, php based, bittorrent software called TorrentFlux. This allows the server to act as your torrent downloading machine, freeing up your own bandwidth so you don’t get stung by your ISP’s excess usage charges and also prevents your torrent habit ruining your web browsing/VOIP/gaming experience by hogging all the bandwidth. Clever.

For the average user this may take some learnin’ but it could really open up the possibilities of left of centre cloud computer usage. I just can’t think of any at this point in time. Give me a bit and I’ll get back to you.

Cheers.

Little posts like this normally start with sentences like, “once the nerd hobbyists plaything, but now…”. And I suppose I just did the same. But I digress.

This little postette is about taking one old PC or a really cheap new PC and not spending a cent on software. That can equate to quite a saving. To pile it all up this adds up to roughly (at CentreCom prices):

• Windows Vista Home Premium – $300.
• Windows Office 2007 standard – $600.
• Adobe Photoshop Elements – $160.
• Norton Systemworks (antivirus/antispyware) – $74.

All up that’s more than fingers and toes for software that has an operating system, an office suite, a photo editing program and an antivirus/antispyware program. On the other hand you could download and install a Linux distribution. All for nix.

The problem with all of this is in its history. People are scared of Linux because it used to be scary. No graphical user interfaces, just a text based operating system. But now the super brains have created operating systems based on Linux that are more user friendly than Windows and Apple flavours.

I recently installed the Ubuntu flavour of Linux on a Grandad’s computer. His computer was running Windows XP and had slowed down over time until it became lethargic and unreliable. When it came to reinstalling XP we didn’t have a usable serial number, something about something falling off the back of a truck/bittorrent.

Anyhoo, the install involved downloading Ubuntu from their website (or from your ISP as they sometimes have a “freezone” for downloading these sort of things and the download then doesn’t count towards your monthly allowances, nice). The software is normally in an ISO format which when burnt correctly to a CD/DVD ends up like a “bought” copy. I then restarted the computer with the disk in the CD drive and followed the on screen prompts. Username, password, pc name, done.

Once all of this is completed you’re greeted with a desktop that is in some ways better designed than windows and one that is really intuitive. It’s already loaded with office software of the Open Office variety, all MS office compatible. Also included is “The Gimp”. Scary name but not scary software. In effect it’s a Adobe Photoshop challenger.

The only problem I experienced was when I tried to play a DVD. It popped up that it needed some extra codecs to play the movie. It then, with a click of the button, installed what was needed. Extra nice.

However, if you don’t want to bother with the extra little installs, head on over to here and download the “Super” version of the latest Ubuntu package. This includes all of those pesky codecs and just about everything you’ll need for a great home PC including Skype.

Now if you’re really after an operating system that caters to those of little computer expertise then give gOS a try. This, according to themselves is, “Linux for the rest of us”.

With gOS, or in a way, “google operating system” gives you the stability and features of the Ubuntu system with a simplified interface. Big “apple-ish” buttons run along the bottom of the screen allowing you to run the fantastic Firefox browser, access gmail, google docs, google calendar, skype, open office word processor, spreadsheets, and publisher clone, as well as other bits and pieces. You can also have the google gadgets floating all over the desktop like the “water-able” pot plant, laptop battery meters, the weather and assorted clocks. All very nice and easy in a google-centric way. But the quality of these google products makes this a worthwhile choice. Especially great for the road warrior, the salesperson out on the road, or the student.

A snippet from the gOS website.

So there we go. I’ll sum up by saying this. If you’ve go a spare old/new pc that needs some software to get it running then give Ubuntu or gOS a go. Try and break the shackles set in place by Microsoft because you’ll still be able to handle those word documents that get sent to you or the funny Christmas slide show in office format. Don’t get me wrong, MS products are generally great, I’ve never really had a problem with them. Feed Bill’s coffers for all I care, but if you, like me don’t have the big bucks to splash around then download one of these fellas. Make a nerd near you proud.