Category: Internet
I joined the club!
Ok, so I’m part of the club…
…when do I get to learn the secret handshake?
For a long time, I’ve been watching the iPhone crowd. Inside of me, there was this want, want, want. And now, I’ve finally bought one myself.
I had this, “kid at Christmas” feeling when I opened the little box for the first time. For some reason, I was a bit disappointed with the box even though that shouldn’t mean anything. Apple usually have boxes almost as thought out as the actual product.
But if the box wasn’t what I expected, the phone itself extended all my expectactions and more. I haven’t had it for more than a few weeks, but I’m already addicted. Has been from the first day actually.
Now that I’m part of the secret club I suppose I should do as all the other members, list my favorite apps. It’s a bit difficult, since I’m not only iPhone addicted, but even more app addicted.
Here are my top 5 apps:
5: Brizzly – if you have more than one twitter account is this the perfect app for you.
4: WordPress: If you have a wordpress blog, you really need this app to blog whenever you want.
3: Skype – call for free from your phone. Sadly I’ve heard that soon it won’t be free anymore. I hope they reconsider.
2: Dropbox – bring all your important files with you everywhere. You can also use it to transfer your files to your computer from your phone.
… and the winner is …
1: PingChat! Want to send text messages and mms for free? Then PingChat is what you want. They’re not real mms and texts, but it’s great for sending messages to other iPhone users. This app is actually the only one I’ve paid for. I’m a big spender when it comes to texting, so the upgrade has already been paid for if you calculate how much I usually pay for my communication.
Why should I tweet?
There are a several reasons to get a twitter account. I can list a few here, but of course there are others and combinations of the reasons I put here.
* Business – You have a business and you want another way to market it.
Twitter is still a new medium and lots of companies want to jump this train too. Some with better result than others. Personally I never follow any business that only tweets about new deals. I have a few exceptions though, a few small businesses that tweet about other things too. Twitter is and should be personal. Endless tweets about marketing aren’t interesting.
* Special interests – You are very interested in a certain subject and want to either broadcast your message or follow others who do.
Here too, there’s a mixed result. We have all seen them. The bots that tweet out endless retweets where people have mentioned the interesting word, maybe totally out of context. Having said that, I have to admit I have a tweetbot. What I realized was that I can’t let it lose without any checking up. I also state clearly in the info that it is a bot and what it does. Some like the service and some don’t.
* Entertainment purposes
You tweet with likeminded people, maybe following a certain hashtag (will tell more about those in another post), like #Frys or #Writechat for instance.
* Networking purposes
You follow people that might help you in different areas. Could be for your career or a hobby. Remember that they are persons just like you. Twitter is like real life. It’s just as much about giving as about taking.
I have probably forgotten other reasons, but these are the ones I can think of right now.
You can classify tweeters like this:
* Broadcasters – These are mainly on twitter to send information and not to receive. Here you’ll find businesses, celebrities, organizations or pseudo-celebrities (people who consider themselves authorities in certain areas.
* Information seekers – They are mainly on twitter to find information. It can be fans of a celebrity, it can be customers hunting for deals or people interested in a certain topic. Those who fall into this group use twitter as a fancy rss reader and don’t tweet as much.
* Introspectors – They are mainly on twitter to broadcast what they are doing. Their main goal is to put their thoughts into words, not that anyone actually read them. Feedback is good, but not necessary.
* Communicators – They are on twitter to make friends or to network. It’s important for them to find like-minded people to follow. Feedback is really important.
* Collectors – They collect followers and follow as many as they can. It doesn’t matter as much if the followers have the same interests as themselves mostly the numbers counts.
Which twitter type are you?
Free donation sites
Apart from Care2 and their own ThePetitionSite (when you’ve signed, you can tweet it out to your friends), there are other sites where you can click daily to generate free donations. There are also other sites where you can sign petitions – The Hunger Site (where you can also send free postcards), Change and One spring to mind as well as Petition Online and Twitition, associated with Twitter (as you might have guessed, from the name).
EcologyFund
RedJellyFish
The Environment site
Klimatbalans
A click for the forest
Por los Chicos
Clique semi-arido
The Solar Site
Hungerfighters
Tarahumara Children’s hospital
Big Cat Rescue
Give Us a Home
Click to Give
BarkingMad
LandCareNiagara
Bhook
Hungry Children
One Click, One Meal
Okruszek – I think this one feeds hungry people, but I don’t know the language
Die Waldseite
Free Rice – this one is really fun – you have to use your word knowledge to donate free rice to starving people
Free Kibble
Free Kibblekat
More internet 2
Miscellaneous
OpenID is supposed to organize your login info so you can log on to any site using just one ID. So far it hasn’t worked out that way, but more and more sites recognize Open ID. I’ve signed up for it, but I still don’t know all the ins and outs of using it.
Another cool little site is Gravatar. Sign up and upload a photo. Connect it to one of your email addresses, then if you join a site that is associated with Gravatar (like WordPress.com – it owns it), your image will show up on that site without you having to upload it again.
Listography – this might not be particularly useful, but if you like making lists this is a nice site to do it.
Internet Movie Database – In theory, on this site you should be able to find every single movie or tv series made. There’s a list of the cast and crew, trivia etc. All the various cast and crew members also have their own pages, with photos, filmography, trivia etc.
Technology
If you’re interested in computers (macs) and/or mobile phones I have a few sites for you:
LowEndMac
Applelinks
GSMarena
Softpedia
Free downloads:
CNet Download.com – they also offer reviews of gadgets
Tucows
News
I read news online in a couple of different places mainly
BBC news
Guardian (not the snarky comments)
The Local – if you’re interested in European (mainly Swedish and German) news in English.
Bookmarks
If your computer has crashed, you’ll know how easy it is to lose valuable information. You might have lost your bookmarks too. Fortunately there are some sites where you can store your web browser bookmarks for free. The ones I’ve tried are Mybookmarks and Hampr. They have very nice features and are easy to use. You can log on to Hampr using Open ID.
Neopets is a really cute site with what you might describe as virtual pets. You can get up to four cute little figures to play with. There’s a whole system of buying and selling stuff for your Neopet – clothes (kind of lame), backgrounds for their images, food, toys etc. You can also play games and gain Neopoints. Unlike in Second Life (see below) this currency can never be converted to ‘real’ money, and on the contrary there’s also something called Neocash which you have to buy for ‘real’ money. Somewhat unexpectedly, perhaps, I love Neopets. It’s so cute and some of the games are actually fun, though normally I don’t like to play games. There are some spelling games and other word games that I like.
More internet
Chat/instant messenger
There are many different free chat programs/instant messengers. The ones I use now are Adium (for Mac users) and Skype (available for Mac and PC). If you’re on a PC, I’m told you can use Pidgin. Adium (and Pidgin) are multichat programs, which means you can use them for many different chats – ICQ, AIM (and/or iChat – for Macs), Yahoo etc.
You don’t necessarily have to use a chat program though. There’s a site that lets you chat, using most of the major instant messenger ID:s – Meebo. A note to LiveJournal users – if you don’t know how to use LJ talk and would like to, look no further. You can add it to the chat client of your choice or add it to your Meebo account. Even if you do use a chat program at home, you can access all your IM:s on the Meebo site. Very practical.
RIght now I’m only on LJ (a sort of Jabber chat) and Jabber (again). Skype uses a different software but that too is free to download and the cool thing about that is that you can use it almost as a telephone. In fact, you can buy a ‘real’ phone and use Skype in it. That means you can make phone calls for free (well, in this case they’re called voice chats, but it’s more or less the same). So for Skype you can choose between text chat (ordinary chat), voice chat and video chats. The sound quality is usually very good.
Online fiction archives
If you like to write stories, like me, you might want to upload them to an online archive. For original fiction, I’ve used Fiction.Press. It’s a sort of spinoff from FanFiction.net. It’s easy to use and posting your fics there can get you feedback from your readers. Or you can read other people’s stories and comment on them.
If you write fan fiction, there are several different options. I use
FanFiction.net
FanWorks.org
and
Archive of Our Own.
They all work pretty much the same (FictionPress too). You have to use ratings and warnings. Usually, there are different categories too.
Search engines
Many people agree that Google is the best search engine. For various reasons that I’m not going to go into, I haven’t used Google for years, but it seems I might change my mind about that. In the meantime I’ve found alternatives. Some of them are very nice.
Dogpile
Ask
Zakta
Clusty
Mamma – as everyone knows, mother knows best… 😉
Gigablast
Wikipedia – not really an ordinary search engine, it’s far more than that, but it works fine as one anyway. Available in many different languages.
For anything you do online, basically, you’ll need an email address. Sometimes your internet provider offers one, included in your internet connection, but that’s getting less and less common these days. Having more than one email address can be useful. You might want to use them for different things, for instance to separate your work email and your personal email.
Whatever you want to use your email address for these are good, free email providers:
Webmail
It’s like you’d guess – email available through a web page. Of course, you’ll need to sign up through a web page for all kinds of email accounts. You’ll also need an internet connection to check your email, but you must know that already.
I use the following free providers:
Icerocket webmail
Care2 webmail
MailPuppy
Caring4Animals.com
They’re all good, and offer quite a lot of storage space. Of course they’re nothing like Gmail, which I haven’t tried myself. I’ve heard they keep all your emails indefinitely and they use your emails to display ads (which is reasonable, since they offer so much space, but I’m not sure I’d like it).
Then there’s something in between webmail and POP mail. It’s called imap. You can use that exactly as a webmail address, and just log on to the site, but if you prefer you can also set up your email program to check your email and download it onto your computer. Well, in a way. There’s also a copy left on the email server. That’s the main difference. You can check your email from home or from work or wherever you are.
Fastmail is a very good email provider. You get to choose between several different domain names for your email, but to tell the truth, most of them are kind of lame. I’d just go with fastmail.fm or something like that.
Then there’s POP mail, which means you really download your email to your computer and usually you get to email out as well. That means you won’t be able to access the same emails from somewhere other than where your email program is.
GMX offers a fantastic email service. You can collect all your other email accounts into one and you get lots of storage, again, not like Gmail, but good enough.
I also use Gmx.net (a German service) but now you’ll need to have a postal address in one of the German-speaking countries and the signup process is all in German. The same goes for any potential customer support. It’s all in German.
If you pay for your own web space, chances are you’ll get email addresses there too.
I use Eudora as my email program. If you’re a Mac user, like me, you also get Mail with your computer or you can download it. In the end, I decided to use Eudora, but Mail is very good too.
More online communities 2
I’m very interested in learning new languages and practicising the ones I already know (to some extent). Over the years I’ve been a member of a couple of different ones. The one I’ve liked best is LiveMocha. It works like this: if you’re studying a language, you can get help from native speakers. Or you can help someone studying your language. Many people ask me for help with Swedish language exercises and once someone even asked me for help with one in French. It wasn’t hard, fortunately, something like what I did when I first began to study French at the age of 13.
Since I’m a major booklover, I’ve joined three (four if you count a Swedish one) book sites.
LibraryThing
GoodReads
Shelfari
You can post all your books (or as in my case, the titles I can remember – long story), read reviews or post reviews. There are more features but those are the ones I’ve used. You can post a LibraryThing author tag cloud in the sidebar of your WordPress blog or in some other places too, if you want them to show up on your blog. There are other widgets that you can post too.
Second Life is a community, but it’s a bit different from many others. It’s in 3D. You get an avatar (not quite like in the movie) that can move around and interact with other avatars. You can customize that avatar pretty much any way you like, add virtual pets, change hairdos and go on shopping sprees with it. If you’re interested in building/creating things in a 3D environment, you can, but you’ll need to pay a little to upload your ‘textures’. You can ‘buy’ or rent ‘land’ and all kinds of things. And you can chat. Voicechat or text chat, whatever you like.
I’m not entirely happy about SL. You hardly ever run into so many nutcases as you do there. Some can be very annoying. Many people have ‘sexual’ relations in there. Cartoon sex. Pretend sex. LOL. (I didn’t make this up, but it’s too funny not to share it: Second Life – where men are men, and so are the women, and the children are FBI.) It’s also very much about money, though you can experience SL without paying for anything other than your computer, software and internet connection. There are an almost limilless number of ‘sims’ – regions – that can be beautiful and intricate and fascinating. And you can go ‘shopping’ in huge stores. Strangely enough, it’s very relaxing. I’m not really into shopping in real life, but in SL I love to browse those stores, even though most of the clothes in there are slutty, to put it bluntly. My sister and I have had to learn to design our own, but that’s another story.
There are real businesses in SL and some universities teach courses in the 3D environment, so it’s not all ‘fake’. I’ve heard companies have staff meetings in SL and I know real famous singers have concerts there. The trouble is I always get to hear about it too late. Apparently, you can also ‘watch tv/movies’ too, but I’ve never tried that. You can also display your photos or art work. It’s a bit difficult to learn to move around in there, but I’m living proof you can learn how to do it. I even made a good friend in there, which was totally unexpected.
More online communities
At one time or another I’ve been on most of the major social networks (MySpace, HI5 and Friendster). I suppose I liked MySpace the best, but in the end, I left (twice). I read somewhere that it’s a bit like coming to a major central railway station hoping to meet people. It won’t work. You’ll need to get to know them from somewhere else or get someone you know already to introduce you. That’s very true. I never made any friends, and the only contacts I really had were with people I knew from somewhere else.
Ning is a social network for – creating social networks. You get to have your own network or networks. It’s really quite cool. You get most features that you get on other social networks, but this one is all yours and you can customize it, invite the members you like etc. There’s a photo gallery feature, a chat room, a forum and a blog among other things. You can also add widgets – little mini programs that can do all kinds of things.
My favorite social networks are special interest sites. Some of them will undoubtedly be interests you don’t share, so you’ll just have to skip them.
First of all, I’m a vegan, animal lover and animal rights advocate. I’m also concerned about the environment.
One of the biggest’green’ social networks I’ve joined, is Care2. You can get a free webmail address, a photo album with unlimited storage – limited per month, send virtual e-cards that help save the rainforest, join groups (some of them are very active), sign online petitions, click to generate free donations and much more. There are also many interesting articles about all kinds of causes – the environment, politics, human rights, animal rights (they call it *welfare* and that’s one of the things I don’t like so much about it) etc. You also get a profile page you can customize. Recently, they added a sort of payment system where you can earn ‘credits’ and then use them to pay for something or other, for instance, give a cup of clean water to a Haitian child. When you’ve donated or redeemed your credits or signed a petition you can tweet it to your friends or share it some other way. Care2 makes sharing easy.
I’ve also joined several vegan and animal rights sites. Feel free to ignore this bit.
VegSpace
VeganWorld
VeganForce
Vegppl
AnimalRights Community Online
So far I haven’t made any new friends at any of these, so maybe I shouldn’t even have recommended them, but for me it’s important to be a part of the veg*an community. I like them, but they feel very much like MySpace except with a cause I can relate to. I’ve also joined several vegan dating sites. (You can specify you’re just looking for friends, if that’s what you want). I’ve actually made a few friends that way, but unfortunately, just like all other friends, online or otherwise, some have drifted away. It’s been quite a long time since I made any new friends, so maybe the sites have changed or rather the people using them. In fact, though I’m still single, I’m not really looking for dates online anymore. In any case, these are the ones I’ve tried:
VeggieConnection
VeggieDate.org
VeganPassions (there are many other passions sites – for just about any interest you might have) and you don’t have to look for a partner, just friends will do.
Since i’m an animal lover, I’m also a member of several sites for animal lovers.
Petster
Dogster
Catster
Bunspace
You get to upload photos, fill out a profile page, mainly for your baby, but also for yourself – on Petster. On Catster and Dogster there are also plenty of articles about cats or dogs and groups with forums for people who love the same type of animals you do.
Photo storage sites
For most blogs, if you want to post photos (or other media) you’ll need to upload your content elsewhere, then link to it (hotlink) which means that you can display your photo from your photo site on your blog or homepage, though it isn’t actually there.
My favorite photo storage site is Zooomr. You get unlimited storage space, but you do get ads. They don’t show up on your blog, just on the Zooomr site. There’s also a Zipline – which is very much like Twitter, only built-in.
Another great photo site that in theory at least, offers unlimited space, is LenzUs. You get photo albums here (a limited number on the basic accounts). The catch is that you can’t upload more than a certain quota of files per month.
You also get photo albums with other memberships (social networks etc) and I’ll mention that when I get to each site.
If you want to post photos on Twitter you can link directly to your Zooomr account (or whatever you have – others have Flickr, Photobucket etc), or you can use TwitPic, which is connected to Twitter. There are other photo storage sites meant for use with Twitter – TweetPhoto is another I’ve tried and liked. You just post the photo (you sign up by logging in with your Twitter ID.), then the photo appears on your Twitter page. I really like TwitPic and TweetPhoto. They’re very easy to use, very practical. And remember, people love to see your photos.