Miscellaneous

/ Don

SML

SML

SML

I thought of a funny idea for a t-shirt today that was simple, esoteric and capitalizes on the FML meme that has been creeping across the internet for the last year or so. I googled it, thinking that surely someone else had thought of it first — particularly in the wake of the feature film. To my surprise, it seems original. I doubt I’d be able convince Hanna-Barbera that a kitschy, risqué pun would be worth granting me permission to use their trademark, so I’m publishing it to the web for those who are ambitious enough to do it themselves.

Fun fact: The Smurfs are Les Schtroumpfs in French. 

/ Don

Why Aren’t You Following Me on Pinterest?

Pin Me on Pinterest (You Have My Permission)
After noticing I only have a handful of followers on Pinterest, I recently updated my Facebook status with the question: why aren’t you following me on Pinterest? To which I received a rather snarky, but provocative reply from a friend: Because pinterest is for chicks dude.

And he’s 80% right, too. Pinterest’s user base is predominantly women. According to recent data from Google Ad Planner, as presented by Ignite Social Media, only 20% of their users are guys. Pinterest’s popularity among women in their late 20s and early 30s is illustrated (quite literally, ReadWriteWeb says) by the proliferation of images related to wedding planning and home decor.

But is Pinterest really for chicks, dude? Yes and no. Read more

/ Don

Google Plus Contacts Flooding Google Talk

It took me a little while to find this, so I thought it might be helpful to post it on [d]online in case others are having the same issue.

After signing up for Google Plus, I noticed that my Pidgin contact list was getting flooded with contacts. Many of those contacts had a Google Plus email address rather than a normal one. I’d recognized a few names but not all of them. So I went to Google Plus and realized that these were all contacts that were in my Circles – friends of friends, subscription lists, companies under profiles of users, etc.

If I clicked “Block Friend,” “Remove Friend,” and/or “Hide Friend” from Pidgin, Google Talk (on my Android) or Google Talk on my Gmail sidebar, the users either remained in the list or disappeared until the next time I logged in. As you can probably imagine, it’s frustrating to see a wealth of users flooding a buddy list when they’re not, indeed, buddies.

After poking around online, I found a number of other users were dealing with the same issues. I tried a few recommendations and hacks, recommended by some of the more proficient users, but none of them seemed to work. Finally, I landed on a post in a Google Plus Help forum that seemed to do the trick. If you’re experiencing the same issues, try the following: Read more

/ Don

Free, Online

As we all know too well, free doesn’t always mean free. How often have you clicked on a link in emails or from search results only to be brought to a page that informs you that you must enter a credit card or complete a series of obstacles in order to get access to the elusive free product? Television offers for games, such as McDonald’s Monopoly game, always boast the “no purchase necessary” option to play. Gevalia touts a free percolator while also subscribing you to a coffee-o-the-month club for outrageously overpriced java. And dozens of pop-up “Free iPad” sites require you to enlist friends, sign-up for credit cards or buy magazine subscriptions in order to qualify for free products that you probably will never see. In fact, most spam blockers specifically look for the word “free” in the subjects or bodies of emails to elevate the email’s spam ranking simply because they know that free, online, isn’t always free. Free, online, means “free trial,” “free if you enter a credit card,” “free if you complete these tasks,” and “free*“. Read more