Adam's Blog

Last week, Google announced their part of the social networking world with Google Buzz. This is a service that operates like Twitter where you are able to post a status message, except it doesn’t look like there is any limit to how many characters there are in the message. Not only can you post regular messages, you can also sync it with other Google services, such as Picasa, Reader, etc. However, there are a few things that it needs to get for me to use it more. First of all, it needs a Ping.FM support. Secondly, it needs its own page, outside of Gmail, with a better UI and more customizable settings. Lastly, it needs an official iPhone app other then the mobile site. Other than that, I think it is a good start and this has a lot of potential and I urge anyone that uses Google and its services to test it out at least for a few days.

At first, I thought foursquare was stupid and a waste of time and space on your phone. From what I have heard, a lot of people thought the same thing. However, at the beginning of December, I decided to give it a try and see what the fuss was all about. It is a pretty fun app, as useless as it seems. The main idea of it is that you check-in to places you go and it posts it on either FaceBook or Twitter. Whenever you check in somewhere, you get points. Eventually, if you check in to a certain place often, you may become the “mayor” of that certain place. It is really cool when you go to a restaurant, some people who have previously been there may have left a comment or suggestion about the place. Overall, this is a really cool app and is definitely worth trying out, especially because it’s free.

A little less than a month ago, I bought a domain to try to get an IRC network community together. Last week or the week before, I opened the network. I call it, The Geek Place. It is still quite small, but there is always room for expansion, which takes time. We only have 2 staff members, myself and Dom, and only 1 server linked to us. They are all running great and we do have a few users on there that we know from other IRC networks, which is great. We have a Twitter and a Website that we regularly update with new policies and network news. If you would like to take a gander at The Geek Place, head over to the website for more information.

There are many URL shorteners out there such as bit.ly and tr.im. However, Jeff from BestTechie has just recently come out with his own URL shortening service called bt.gd. It is the same basic concept as any other URL shortening service, but since it is brand new, it has shorter links. Yes, this won’t last forever, but it is still a great service to use.  It is still in the early stages of development but it still works good. There is a Mac OS X widget out now available for free from here. Also, I would like to thank Mike for assisting Jeff with this and making the desktop widget.

For all of my domains, instead of setting up a mail server on all of my servers, I use Google Apps instead. Google apps is like having your own Google account, except for your domain. The main feature I use is Email, but there is also Docs, Chat, Mobile, and much more. It is very easy to setup, more so than setting up a mail server of your own, because all you have to do is put in a few MX records. There are a few versions of Google Apps, one is free and the other isn’t. I use the free version because I only need about 5 accounts maximum on each domain. I really encourage you to get Google Apps if you have your own business or just for your own domain rather than setting up your own mail server.

If you have a website that you would like to automatically update your Twitter every time you make a blog post, then TwitterFeed is for you. This is basically a free service that allows you to plug in your Twitter (and Facebook) account in and asks for some RSS Feed information from your site. You can make it so that the TwitterFeed bot checks your RSS feed every so often. You can also tell TwitterFeed what format you want your tweet to be along with what URL shortening service you would like to use. It is a really great service, and I highly recommend it  because I have been using it for months for my other site, Super Deal Finder, and it has never let me down.

About a week or 2 ago, I opened a new site called Geeky Tutorials. Just like the name says, it is a site that has tutorials about geeky like things. So far we have under 12 posts, and it is just me and my friend John writing for it now. We have an average of 30 unique visitors per day, which isn’t terrible for a site that just opened. As of now, I have written tutorials on mostly Linux stuff and my friend, John, wrote a tutorial on batch. Anyone can become an author, as long as you have knowledge of the subject your talking about. So, if you want to check it out, you can visit the site here.

For years now I have been using a website called GameSpot to get all of the latest news, reviews, and videos about video games. Just over a year ago, I finally joined as a total access member. The site is basically a game news site where they post everything about video games on any platform. They provide live shows, coverage of E3, Reviews, Game Guides and much more. I highly encourage you use GameSpot for your latest news. There is a free account you can get, but for only $3.33 a month, you can get full access to complete game guides, HD videos, and many other benefits throughout the site. The site can be found at http://www.gamespot.com.