I love Boxee.  I’ve use it off and on, and I am anxious to get a HDTV so I can get a Neuros Link connected and use Boxee even more.  Boxee is almost ready to unveil their Beta in New York on December 7th at the Music Hall of Williamsburg.  I am really looking forward to seeing what is in this Beta.  Boxee has been the same for me for a while so it would be nice to see a few new things.  Maybe integration with Hulu Desktop??  Who knows!  We’ll just have to wait another month.  In the meantime, I am gorkon on Boxee, so feel free to friend me!

Sooner or later it was inevitable.  I’ve started seeing fishing emails posing as Facebook communications.  Simply “click” to update your password.

After that, they use a Bot to get into your account, and push out spam messages to all those that follow you, friends, family etc.

As always, no matter how legitamate looking an email is, assume  it is a phishing expedition.    Most email programs and sites have a way to check the links.  In Microsoft Outlook, simply hover over the linke (The underlined “here” above) and you’ll see the full link.  Most scammers will put the legitimate name within the domain such as http://facebook.com.slkjsdf.eu  in hopes that somebody will see the facebook and not realize the only thing that really matters is the characters before the final period in the URL.  In this case, slkjsdf which is, obviously, not facebook.

By now you’ve probably heard that both Bing and Google will integrate real time Twitter feeds into their search results. The Bing page appears to be live already at http://www.bing.com/twitter and Google say’s their results will be coming soon. Unknown is how both search engines will filter through what probably will be an enormous uptick in Twitter spam sent in an attempt to game search results. It seems likely that Twitter will be forced to create some type of trust system to assign to individual Twitter accounts or it would seem to be a field day for automated script (or a billion) to pump out tweets about cheap mortgage loans and v1a9ra.

via Bing and Google

There’s been a lot of talk lately about how Twitter has changed the corporate culture for Comcast.  In  fact, the chatter first started back in January with a big to-do in Business Week. So, is Twitter actually helping provide real customer service?  Is this just a Public Relations gimick, or is it truly — um — Comcastic?

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Twitter has started to offer the ability to create lists of contacts within your Twitter account. This feature is being rolled out to a few users right now so if you don’t see the feature in your account when you log in then you’ll likely have to wait for it to be added. What do Twitter lists add? Well for one it’s an opportunity to quickly view similar types of contacts. For example I’ve set one list to display my company contacts and another list displays all the Gear Diary team writers.

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I am used to getting random spam instant messages through my Live Messenger account, but today has been a banner day, and I say that with total sarcasm. Today I have received at least five random IMs from a different address (which I immediately block after the message arrives), and each one has been completely trashy.

I’m posting the least offensive here, and the truly offensive ones after the break. Bear in mind that I have my Live account set so that I am not supposed to get any messages from people who aren’t contacts, and yet…they keep coming, and I can’t make them stop.

Once again, I am warning you that the IMs posted are completely offensive, so no freaking out when you see them. Okay? Okay.

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Just in case you missed it two exciting new applications hit the iTunes App Store a few days ago.

Tweetie 2 and Adobe Photoshop Mobile have both only been out a few days but have both been receiving high praise from iPhone users everywhere.

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Twitter, the social networking site which allows individuals to update their followers with short 140 characters messages on what they’re up to seems to be experiencing some sort of outage.

Many users across Twitter are reporting their Twitter feeds not being updated over the last few hours.  I’m seeing all my own tweets (messages) post to my time line but none of the tweets from the people I’m following appear.

Tweets are getting posted to the Twitter servers though.  Just check out the time line of one of the people you follow and you’ll see their recent tweets, they just don’t show in your personal time line.  The problem seems to be related to followers.  I’ve read a few reports of people seeing their list of followers disappear and then come back and same for the list of people they’re following.

Let’s hope Twitter hasn’t fallen victim to another DOS attack and that this is just a temporary glitch.

UPDATE:  The phrase “Twitter is Frozen” is number 2 on the list of trends.  Twitter says The Twitter status blog has been updated to reflect a known issue with time line delays.

UPDATE:  Twitter is back.   All is right in the world again.

One of my favorite YouTubers, “AppStoreReviewer” launched his very own iPhone OS application a few weeks ago.  And best of all it’s now free in the iTunes App Store.

ChillTwit is a simple and elegant Twitter client for the iPhone and iPod Touch.  The application has two features which seem to separate it from the other Twitter clients in the App Store.

First, you have the ability to change the background the appears behind tweets  and second, you can change the bubble colors from nine different options.

It may not be the most robust Twitter client around, but it includes all the basic features and functions you’d expect from a free Twitter client.  The layout makes Tweets very easy to read and the colors are a nice way to customize your viewing experience.

You can watch a video demo of the application here.

ChillTwit is available in the iTunes App Store.  Get it now while it’s still free.

I wrote about the Mac application EventBox back in July. It’s a nice little application that allows you gather together a number of your different social media and keep it in one place. For example, I use it for my Google Reader feeds, and to keep track of both Twitter and Facebook. At the time the application was described in this way

Do you use many social services? Annoyed that you have to run 6 different applications? Enter the new revolutionary social app, EventBox. All your services in one place, integrated.
When you are busy doing your work, you don’t want anything to disrupt your focus. But you still want to read that message which just came in. This is where the HUD window comes in handy.

Well, it turns out I wasn’t the only one who was keeping an eye on application. The folks at RealMac, the people behind RapidWeaver and LittleSnapper (two of my most frequently used Mac applications) were as well. They liked it so much, in fact, that they purchased it and are renaming it Socialite. Continue Reading

With so many Gear Diary Team members spread geographically throughout the world (who knew there were tech-o-holics in Australia!?!) we need the best communication method possible. Google Wave may be just what the doctor ordered, but it won’t be here for a bit. In the meantime, we have been using Yammer and it does a pretty good job of keeping us in touch.

For those of you not familiar with Yammer it,

is a tool for making companies and organizations more productive through the exchange of short frequent answers to one simple question: ‘What are you working on?’ As employees answer that question, a feed is created in one central location enabling co-workers to discuss ideas, post news, ask questions, and share links and other information. Yammer also serves as a company directory in which every employee has a profile and as a knowledge base where past conversations can be easily accessed and referenced.

A recent update to the Yammer iPhone app added some nice features. One, in particular, stands out… Continue Reading

Twitter, the social networking site that allows you to let your “followers” know what you’re doing, has been officially banned from the Texas Tech football program.

This action comes after one of the team’s players tweeted an unflattering message about the team’s coach while the player was in a team meeting.  The player, a linebacker, voiced his displeasure over the team’s head coach being late for meetings.

The team’s head coach Mike Leach says his team does not need distractions like Twitter or Facebook and called the services “stupid.”  He stated that players of college football get enough attention and called those who use such services  “a bunch of narcissists that want to sit and type stuff about themselves all the time.”

So the question around Gear Diary is how long before our own Coach bans Twitter from his team?

There’s a new version of the popular Twitter iPhone client Tweetie coming soon. Instead of updating the old Tweetie program, the developer atebits has opted to create a newly named Tweetie 2 which will be sold as a separate program complete with a separate $2.99 fee. That’s totally within the developer’s rights to price their current and future releases in any manner that they like. I don’t dispute that. However does this pricing usher in a new era of abandonware for the iPhone. Where original apps aren’t updated but instead are left for dead while the new 2.0 (or 3.x, 4,x, etc) are sold for full price to existing users. This is one of the first times that we’ve seen the issue of a major iPhone App upgrade not being free. Patrick over at Justanotheriphoneblog has capture my thoughts perfectly – especially the part about “utter BS”. Yes on the surface it’s only $3 – until you think about it. I have well over 50 apps on my iPhone. Am I soon going to be hit up for $3 a piece to upgrade? If so, how many times per year will I be forced to upgrade? Patrick’s post raises some interesting questions. I suggest you read more at the link below.

Justanotheriphoneblog: Tweetie 2- ‘New App’ – will spit on existing ‘old app’ users

OK, so the name alone makes me think of that mind numbing “Jitterbug” jingle (don’t even try to deny that you just blurted out that little tune!). But what we have is Twitterlerts for BlackBerry smart phones, and the app is for Berries running OS 4.3 or higher. Twitterlerts, by Electric Pocket, gives BlackBerry users the ability to receive notifications when any keyword is discussed on Twitter. I find it to be a great tool for marketing research, because you can use it to determine how often a product or company name is talked about on Twitter. For instance, I might set it to track anything Buckeyes or Cowboys, but that’s just me! Users can also easily tweet or share tweets directly from their phone.  For those of you that haven’t caught on to the Twitter craze yet, this app does not require you to have an account to track tweets!

Twitterlerts is available directly from the Developer for US$4.99, or you can get it for 15% off at the Gear Diary Store, with the code GDFallTweets.

Has anyone read the recently updated Twitter Terms of Service? Our own Thomas R. Hall has, and points you to compare the differences between the previous and current versions. Personally I think it is pretty cool that they have enough transparency to let you compare so easily. Early this year Twitter gained more popular notice due to Oprah and the CNN / Ashton Kutcher race for 1 million followers. After that, the already popular practice of pretending to be a celebrity exploded, and in response Twitter started ‘verified’ accounts. Continue Reading