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Wolfram Alpha Hits the Streets

I have a new favorite site to add to my list, right under icanhascheezburger – pundit kitchen, also known as Lol News. There’s humor, pun, irony, and all sorts of other witty remarks.

But enough about that – let’s talk about Wolfram Alpha. You ask it a question, it gives you an answer. Kind of like Google, but without you actually having to visit external sites to sift through various answers.

For example, if you put in a date – like your date of Birth, it’ll tell you exactly how much time has passed since then to the day, list noticeable events that happened on that date, when the sun rose and set on that day, and more. Unfortunately the information seems…lacking. Where are the more unique specifics, like sign of the zodiac, notable birthdays on that day, etc.? Out of 5 questions I asked – all of them being questions that can be answered factually and none of them being ‘emotional’ questions or questions of opinion – Wolfram Alpha only understood one!

Hate Groups Running Rampant on Facebook

Apparently hate groups are running rampant on social networking sites and websites like Facebook are promising to buckle down and start deleting these “organizations”. I realize that everyone is allowed to have their own opinion and all, but come on, people – making Nazi and other such groups on Facebook? Why? Don’t you have any real life Nazi friends to get together with? You know – go out to a little coffee shop down the street, maybe grab a beer or two, talk about how everyone except for you is so horrible and gossip about everyone who doesn’t have blonde hair and blue eyes? Isn’t that what you people are meant to be doing instead of sitting at the computer typing “OMGZ JEWZ ARE GAY” all day?

Google Users Pile Up Over Asia

First the internet breaks, then Google – what’s next?
Google visitors “piled up over Asia” this morning for about an hour according to the Google blog, comparing the slow to nonexistent loading times for Google services with planes.

YouTube – slow
Google search – slow
60% of the internet, which Google pretty much owns – slow.

I wonder how much money they will have lost over this, really. Of course everyone goes down and Google is usually very good with its uptime. But wow, what’s going on with the Internet and Google malfunctions lately?

Searchology 2009 – New Google Features Announced

Google’s Searchology 2009 event brings some big changes to Google search. We see the introduction of rich snippets (for example displaying a user rating and other information for a page in search results), a search option toolbar that allows users to filter results by dates of pages, types of pages (forums, videos, reviews), and more.

Another big feature which will be rolling out soon is Google Squared. Imagine if you’re looking for new types of flowers to plant in your garden. Google squared will create a spreadsheet for you with different types of flowers, their preferred climate, water requirements, color ranges, sizes, etc.

Is this a fundamental change in the way we search? I don’t think so – it just seems like another logical step. But there is certainly a lot of exploring to do when it comes to tailoring search engine marketing techniques to these new features.

Read more about the new Google changes presented in Searchnology 2009 on Matt Cutts’ blog.

Man on the Run – Tracked on Facebook

I’ve never been to New Zealand, but it sounds like fun. There’s a wanted man on the run from the police whose every step is being tracked on facebook by people reporting sightings and cheering him on. His name is William Stewart and he’s been going from town to town through New Zealand for 91 days. Facebook groups have been started in his honor, where members report sightings and encouragement. Stewart is armed and dangerous, according to very embarrassed police.  Even T-Shirts in his honor have been created, saying “Where’s Billy?”. They are being sold for $60 a pop to an eager public. 

I think Facebook members will get to him before the police will.

Someone Broke the Internet

Well, someone finally broke the internet. Here I was earlier today, peacefully doing link building and performance analysis at work, when I find out that my MSN is off and I can’t visit any U.S. sites. WTFOMGBBQ. Normally I would message someone over MSN and ask them if they’re getting this as well, but I can’t because my MSN is down. And now we don’t know if it’s just us or if it’s the entire world that is hanging by a very thin thread, sliding into anarchy as the internet collapses around us.

It’s back now. Crisis averted.

Having to Close Programs for Installation

It is very annoying that you have to shut down every single program you have running just to install Adobe CS4. I don’t have time to sit there and wait for it to take like an hour or two to finish installing – I want to browser the interweb, dammit! Which is why I am leaving this installation until bed time. How hard is it to let people have their browser open during installation? Really…I’m not grasping the concept of how or why this is difficult.

Editing Hosts File if Access is Denied

I was trying to edit the Windows 7 hosts file to install some programs, but got an error message saying access was denied.

So I figure I won’t be the only one having this issue. Therefore, here are very simple and quick instructions on how to edit your hosts file if you get the ‘access is denied‘ error message:

1) Go to Start
2) Find Notepad in the menu
3) Right click Notepad
4) Run as Administrator
5) Click File -> Open
6) Navigate to the hosts file location (should be C:\Windows\system32\drivers\etc )
7) Edit hosts file
Save

Done; this should let you edit your hosts file without a problem.

Hotmail vs Gmail & Other Email Providers

It seems that everybody is using GMail nowadays. I’m still chugging along with my several-years-old Hotmail account. I’ve never had a problem with Hotmail and I’ve tried using GMail a few times, but never could fully immerse myself in it for some reason. It just felt like way too much of a hassle to switch everything over. So right now I’m using Hotmail for personal e-mail and admin@techvixen.com for site-related e-mails.

What e-mail provider do you use?

Razer Diamondback 3G

So my boyfriend decided to get his brother the Razer Diamondback 3G mouse for his Birthday and he seems to really be enjoying it! He’s playing Chronicles of Riddick as we speak. I was hoping he’d get the Diamondback with the blue glow because it matches the light of the power button on his new TV/monitor, but for some reason the bf got orange instead. I’ll have to ask him about that when he gets home, but the mouse still looks awesome!