Why You Must Use twitter

The short answer: Twitter can enable osmotic communication in virtual teams, and avoid social isolation.

Twitter, or any Twitter-style equivalent, is an endless stream of short messages created by millions of people around the globe. These messages can contain every type of information: a weather condition, the content of a fridge, a stock tip in response to someone asking; if you can fit the message in 140 characters, you can throw it in the Twitter information river.

Sender

You can add a message into the stream for no particular receiver, or you can address your information package to a particular person. If you want to sent me a message on Twitter, you do this by starting the 140 characters with @projectshrink.

Receiver

If you are plugged into Twitter you can try to follow every bit of information that flows by. Within 10 seconds you will drown by the sheer amount of bits. Twitter provides two ways to slice and dice the flow to get the information you might consider relevant. By person and by content.

• Person: you can follow every Twitter user you want. By selecting a person his or her Tweets (messages) will be shown to you.
• Content: you can create searches with keywords, and Twitter will provide you with a stream of all messages containing this keyword.

Real Time Small Messages

The most prominent characteristics of Twitter are “real time” and “small messages”. That is why it feels like “conversations in the background”.

If you run Twitter in the background (using tools like Tweetdeck) it is almost like listening to people talking in the background. Sometimes something catches you attention and you mentally zoom in.

It provides a virtual connection with the people you are following. Where ever you are with your laptop or iPhone, you get subtle impressions of what “the others” are up to. It creates a sense of “group”.

Osmotic Communication

Alistair Cockburn introduced in his book “Agile Software Development” the concept of osmotic communication - indirect information transfer through overhearing conversations or simply noticing things happening around you. To me personally it happens very often that a talk between people in the same room morphs from murmur in the background to a conversation you find yourself all of a sudden eavesdropping on.

Osmotic communication is a very important type of communication. It provides “missing” information, you don’t know you are missing. It provides sources you normally would not think about. It provides information in a context you haven’t considered.

The “triggers” for zooming in to chatter on the background are patterns. With Twitter we can use keywords popping up in a message as a trigger. If someone is talking about your project, mentioning it by its name, you will zoom in.

Sense of Group

The project landscape is turning mobile, multi-cultural, 24×7, highly distributed and in ever flux. The group you are working with can be scattered all over the world, in every time zone, but also just in the building across the street. Projects are allocated cutting almost every boundary in existence. This working environment increases the risk of isolation. Even in a room full of people one can have a sense of not belonging to any group. Feeling left out.

People need to feel part of a group. In the end we are social animals. Luckily for us, Twitter is social media. By following the people you want to form a group with, want to create a social connection with, you can have each other’s “presence” in the background at all time. As with all forms of communication, to create a real connection you need to participate, have a genuine two-way conversation.

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Why You Must Use RSS

It's come to the point where nonprofit staff who aren't using RSS aren't really doing their entire job.

I know, I know - you don't believe me, and you don't care.

You already use the Internet, so why take time you don't have to learn some new way to get the information you already get? Especially when the first thing an evangelist says about RSS is that it's actually like 11 different data formats and nobody can even agree what the acronym means?

I know because I've been there. It was about 1995, and the .sig files people used on Usenet started saying "Visit my page on the World Wide Web!" I ignored it for months, because who needs some crummy new platform when I've got all the text-based newsgroups goodness my heart could ever desire?

The answer, then as now, is that it will totally change the way you relate to information. It's like being myopic and then putting on glasses.

If you're resisting RSS, that's understandable. Only a minority of Web users have adopted it, and that'll probably be true for some time. But it's the thought leaders, the proverbial creative class (dreadful term), that are using it ... and if that's the kind of organization you have or the kind of career you're building, it's time to get over that resistance.

If You're a Nonprofit Manager Right Now and You're not Using RSS, You're Falling Behind

You're not getting information - about your cause, about your people, about your profession - efficiently enough, which means you're not getting enough information, period.

And someone else is getting that information, or will be soon.

They'll know when someone writes about your issue or blogs about your cause or has something to say about your organization, and know it without refreshing dozens of links and scouring dozens of mailing lists so their hands are free for the other hundred things they have to do.

If they know it, you'd better know it too.

Luckily, it's easy as pie.

Ready? It might seem daunting, but RSS (used interchangeably here with the word "feed") is really pretty simple to use ... sort of like adding Tivo to your Web experience. You're about to go from zero to RSS expert in three easy steps.

1. Get a Feed Aggregator

You need an email application to read email, and you need a feed aggregator to read RSS. (Note: Newer generations of Web browsers actually have RSS-reading capabilities baked in. For tracking large numbers of feeds, it's still more efficient to use an aggregator ... and to the extent the two drive towards convergence, everything else in this primer will hold for either.) Like mail programs, some are Web-based, and some are locally installed. If you're starting, don't get bogged down in feature sets as the essential elements are pretty generic; just pick one and go.

The old Web-based standby is Bloglines. The new hotness is Google Reader. I personally dig SharpReader. There are lots of others.

The end result for almost any option is probably going to look something like a mail reader: a list of feeds subscribed to, a list of headlines for a particular feed (or folder of feeds) you've selected, and the text of a particular story you've selected from the headlines.

And this is where the payoff is.

Your list of feeds will highlight themselves when there's new material in them, and your headlines present scanable registers of material into which you can quickly drill without maneuvering around banners, clicking through subsections, or losing track when something interrupts you. Now, instead of a hundred different Web sites with different navigations and update schedules, you've got everything in one place.

2. Find Some Feeds

Congratulations! You've done the hard part. Now you just need to start locating the feeds for things you want to track.

It might take some getting used to, but once you start looking, they're everywhere ... although often in disguise. Increasingly, the icon above is becoming a standard RSS symbol - and looks sharp; you'll often see it in the browser bar, where it's a clickable link. For instance:

Instead or as well, you might find feeds linked as plain text with a title like "subscribe" or "syndicate," or as clouds of linklets like this:

That's a confusing hash of ingredients, but like casserole, it's all ending up in the same place. The branded links (Bloglines, NewsGator, My Yahoo) allow one-click selection if you're using one of the associated services, but you'll undoubtedly want to subscribe to someone - like, say, us - that doesn't trifle with that sort of thing or doesn't happen to support yours. Fortunately, the "long" way around is one whole additional click.

You don't need to care about the distinctions between RSS, Atom, XML, and the rest, any more than you need to care about the distinctions between an HTML page and a PHP page to browse the Web. Just click on one of the links so named - it won't look very nice, but don't worry; it's not meant to be read by you in this form - copy the URL, open your feed reader, select "Add" or "Subscribe", and paste in the URL.

3. Repeat Step 2 (Times 20, 50, or 500)

There's no need to use RSS if there's only one blog you read. The value is in culling information from all over the Internet, alerting you of updates, and allowing stories from multiple sources to be quickly scanned and sorted.

So now, you start adding. What to add?

All the Major Bloggers in Your Sector

Whoever you normally read that writes about your issue or your line of work that's interesting, persuasive, or simply widely read.

As this pool grows with the blogosphere, just keep adding them to a common file. Keeping up with the daily output of 40 bloggers is a lot less daunting with RSS.

Whoever Is Blogging Against You

Opposition research made easy: Use the same process to keep tabs on the most influential voices opposing you.

Bloggers Who Write about Your Particular Line of Work

Networks of blogs - about, say, fundraising, or media work, or organizing - are a copious professional-development resource that are easy enough not to get to if you have to click a bookmark every day but an absolute trove when RSS is doing all the work for you.

Webzines in Your Sector

It doesn't have to be a blog to have a feed. Most publications that are more like traditional news outlets, now a feed of their own that updates when they publish - whether that's monthly or repeatedly throughout the day.

Everything pretty easy so far? Now, we get a little more interesting.

Persistent Web Searches on Keywords

Let's say you're doing work on health care and you want to know every time there's a news story about health care. A few years ago, you'd need to be a relentless human information aggregator. Today, it's a snap.

• 1. Start with a site that channels news from all over, like Google News.
• 2. Search on "health care."
• 3. Click the RSS link. (Or Atom - remember, it all amounts to the same thing.)

Add to your feed reader.

Voila! Google lets you know every time it adds a new article with that term.

(More verbose descriptions of this procedure at NetSquared and The Bivings Report.)

And on Tags, and on...

The same trick can be employed with searches almost everywhere, and once you get the hang of it, it's an amazingly powerful way to keep a searchlight trained on the obscurest crannies of your cause.

• For instance, you can get a Technorati feed of the search "health care" to see every time a blog mentions it.
• Maybe that's a lot of dross. You could instead limit it only to blogs with a lot of authority (for instance, those that are frequently linked to by other blogs) - and subscribe to a feed of that search.
• You could get every del.icio.us bookmark tagged "healthcare."
• You could keep tabs on the results pulled up by a search on "health care" so you know every time they change.
• And maybe you'd want to keep an eye on Craigslist "health care" job listings in your city.
• For an example of how this might look in practice, you can visit this small public demo of health care feeds I just set up in Bloglines. Of course, this public display doesn't give you all the features you'll have with your own feed reader.
• This Quick Start Guide for Educators (PDF) can guide you through the basic setup of increasingly specific persistent searches of various kinds - on particular sites and in particular newsgroups, for instance.

You don't have to go to that level of detail to start. One or two basic searches on obvious keywords are like a whole new universe when you haven't been doing them. That might be all you need, or you might find yourself adding more over time.

But don't worry as you start about eventually having to drink all the RSS kool-aid on offer. There's a ridiculous amount of low-hanging fruit available at the most casual and readily comprehensible level of adoption.

All you have to do is take it. With RSS, 90 percent of success is just showing up.

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why Facebook attacks are so easy

Facebook is the new playground for phishers. Why? The social networking site has made things relatively easy for computer criminals. So far, the consequences have been relatively mild -- mostly, some annoying emails. But if Facebook and other social networking sites don't get a handle on security issues soon, a serious outbreak could occur.

Behind every successful criminal computer hack a simple two-step process: gain trust, then exploit that trust with an attack. Computer criminals will tell you that gaining trust is the hard part. Consider a real-world parallel: Breaking into a bank is difficult. But if you befriend a guard, he’ll eventually let you walk right in through the front door.

That's why Facebook attacks are so easy, says Mary Landesman, senior researcher at computer security firm ScanSafe.

"Facebook users assume a level of trust they just should not assume when using the site," she said.

Phishing attacks have been popping up nearly every week on Facebook and other social sites like Twitter. Victims receive e-mails from friends with innocent-sounding messages, such as "click on this video." Those who are duped then surrender their login information on a rogue Web site, and then a criminal is off to the races with their identity.

People who would never fall for an old-fashioned phishing note are getting tripped up by Facebook phish for one simple reason: They trust the sender.

"People are pretty unguarded in the social networking environment," said Kevin Haley, director of Symantec Corp.'s security response team. "You figure you're surrounded by friends, so why have your guard up?"

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Windows 7 sale October 22nd

We knew good and well the next iteration of Windows would be generally available this fall, but now we've a date to circle in our datebooks: October 22nd. Yep, the fourth Thursday in the tenth month of this year will mark the first date in which you -- the general consumer -- can purchase Win7, which gives you plenty of time to figure out which of the 94 variants will suit you best. Have fun!

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Speed Up your PC now

It’s all fine and dandy when you have a brand new PC nested on your desktop that runs as smooth as a smoldering broadsword through a carton of butter, but if your PC’s as slow as a government employee, you know it’s time to do something about it. If you’re one of the rich folk who has money flowing out of every orifice in the body, by all means - buy a new PC (and write me a hefty cheque if you’re feeling extra generous); but if you’re like the majority of us and wish to juice your PC till its hair goes gray, we’ve got a couple of tips to keep your work-horse running as speedy as it possibly can

Tip 1: Clean Your PC

We can understand if someone might not wish to bathe for a while, but unlike humans, PCs need to be cleaned in order to run efficiently. This doesn’t mean that you should give it a bath of course. You should clean your PC’s innards every few months, to keep it dust free and unclogged. When dust accumulates on your processor and other fans, they start running sluggishly, cooling your PC less, causing all sorts of slowdowns and even crashes.

Just as a surgeon wouldn’t mess around or juggle with the organs of a sliced up patient, you need to take care while handling the insides of your PC. Make sure to touch any metallic part on the inner frame of your PC before you touch your motherboard or any delicate hardware, since the static discharge from your hand can fry your PC’s circuitry. Touching a metallic object on the inside helps get rid of any static charge your hand might have.

Once that’s done, you’re all set to clean your PC. To rid your graphic card and other easily removable components of dust, just plug them out of your mother board and gently blow into the fan. Don’t blow too hard though, else you’ll have dust in your eyes. You can use a piece of clean cotton cloth to rid your PC’s components off the dust that might have settled on the surface.

Just ensure that you’re gentle. If you’re lucky enough to find caned air at your local hardware store (it’s quite rare in India unfortunately), you can use this to blow air out of the hard to reach corners in your PC. Alternately, you can use the special attachments you get with modern-day vacuum cleaners that are meant for cleaning those hard-to-reach places inside your PC.

Tip 2: Keep your PC Light on Apps

It may sound trivia to some of you, but it’s a good habit to uninstall any applications you don’t use on your PC. If you let your PC clutter up with all the world’s apps, there are bound to be more than few that start a particular service or two that you wouldn’t normally require on your PC, or they might run some apps in the background, hogging system resources. Such resource leeches are a major reason for slow-downs, making it critical to keep your PC light on applications. If you’re the kind who likes installing loads of little programs on your rig, make it a habit to check your Add/Remove programs every week or so for any applications you think you’re not going to need in the near future.

Settings

If the Best Performance settings make your OS look too bland for you, you might want to play around with the custom settings, to enable some of the basic visual tweaks to satisfy the shallow PC user within, that needs them shiny features to stay interested. If you mess up your settings, you can always move back to the Best Performance preset.

Tip 5: Update!

Update

I know that most of you hate that little message that pops up every now and then, stating that Windows needs to be updated (provided windows auto-update is activated, that is). Let’s face it though, both Windows Vista and XP are far from perfect and Microsoft knows that pretty well. To address that, they keep releasing updates that fix everything from security loop holes to application compatibility issues.

It’s a good idea to keep your OS, as well as other applications up-to-date since many such updates improve memory usage, and you won’t know which ones do unless you either read each and every patch note or update everything installed.

Tip 6: Disk Defragmentation

Imagine looking for a something in a house full of scattered crap. Now imagine looking for the same thing in a room full of neatly arranged stuff. That’s pretty much what disk defragmentation does with the data on your hard-drive; it takes all the little bits of data that take up and entire clusters, organizes them and stacks them together, making finding, reading and writing them easier and faster. This feature helps increase the amount of usable free space on your hard-drive, as well as speeds your PC to quite an extent.

Defragment

It’s a good habit to defragment your PC from time to time. Bare in mind that it takes a while for the entire process to complete itself, so you might want to start it before you sleep or if you’re heading out for a few hours, while leaving your PC on.

Tip 7: Clean Start-up

System Config

A slow start-up usually means that you have a crap load of applications running in the background, which are sure to slow down almost anything intensive you’ve got going on your PC. To help cure this ailment, you can disable applications from starting up along with your PC, by using MSCONFIG (Click on the Start Menu -> Run -> Type in ‘MSCONFIG’ -> Press OK -> Click on the Startup Tab).

Beware though — disabling the wrong service/start-up item could handicap many programs on your PC, so you might want to refer to a guide to show you what processes are ok to disable on startup. It has details on over 18000 processes. It’s best to check which applications are not required, in order to disable them from your startup.

Tip 8: End Background Processes

End Process

In spite of knocking many processes/applications off your PC’s startup, you might have a ton running in the background that you may not need, that may kick in when you launch different programs. That said, it’s a good idea to be vigilant and keep a constant check on what goes on on your PC. To monitor your system processes, press CTRL+Alt+Delete to bring up your Task Manager, and click on the Processes tab. End any process that you don’t need, but be informed of what it does before you do so. The more you know about what’s going on on your PC, the better you can optimize it.

Tip 9: Optimal Virtual Memory

If your system slows down often due to RAM limitations, you can always increase the amount of Virtual Memory (or System Paging File). Virtual Memory’s a part of the hard-drive assigned to be used as part of the Random Access Memory. Here are how you can reach them:

In Vista:
Control Panel -> System and Maintenance System ->
Advanced System Properties (on the right hand side) ->
Advanced Tab -> Performance Settings Button ->
Advanced Tab -> See Virtual Memory for Change ->
Uncheck Automatically manage ->
Set your Custom Size (in Megabytes) ->
Click on Set and restart your computer.

Memory

In XP (Category View):
Control Panel -> Performance and Maintenance System ->
Administrative Tools -> Computer Management ->
In the Window that opens, right click on “Computer Management” (not the one on the window’s header) -> Select Properties ->
Click on the Advanced Tab -> Performance Options ->
Click on the “Change button” Under ‘Virtual Memory’ ->
Set an initial and Maximum Size according to your requirements.

If you don’t know how much memory to assign, the recommended amount is twice to size of your RAM. Make sure that you don’t use up most of the free space available though, and keep enough space for your daily use, and for saving other files/downloads you might have planned, should you be strapped for space.

Tip 10: Indexing

Indexing is Windows’ equivalent of a book’s index, where the location of each chapter (files in this case) have been registered. While this feature helps boost the time it takes to look for files tremendously, it can slow down older PCs quite a bit since it keeps track of files and folders constantly. It’s completely optional to switch off Indexing, since its effect on your PC’s speed may vary depending on how many small files you have on your hard-drive, how big your hard-drive is, how many folders you access actively, and many such variables. The best thing to do is to turn this feature off and judge whether it effects performance in anyway. If it doesn’t, you can always turn it back on. Bare in mind that if you use your PC’s search feature quite often, you might not want to turn Indexing off.

Index

Here’s how you can turn it off:

Start Menu -> Run -> Type in Services.msc and press Enter
Look for “Indexing Service” in the list that follows ->
Right click on it and click on properties ->
Change the Startup type to Disabled

Tip 11: Power Plan

If your PC takes an ass-load of time to get out of sleep or hibernation, and your Power Plan puts it into hibernation every time you stay away for a while, it can become incredibly frustrating to move in and out of it. To ensure that your PC’s set to keep performance to the max, you can change your power plan to inch towards that goal. You should know though, that doing this will negate all Power Saving features that you might have on. If you wish to do so anyway, here’s how you can do it:

In Vista:
Start Menu -> Control Panel -> Hardware and Sound ->
Power Options -> Set it to High Peformance.

If you wish to customize the plan futher you can always click on “Change Plan Settings” to switch off or on any feature.

Power

In XP (Category View):
Start Menu -> Control Panel -> Performance
and Maintainence -> Power Options ->
Set the Power Scheme to Minimal Power management.

Follow this step only if your PC’s really sluggish. If you can avoid it altogether, it would be nice since while in this mode, your PC will conserve no electricity.

Tip 12: ReadyBoost (For Windows Vista)

ReadyBoost is Vista’s feature to help you boost your system’s Virtual Memory using a Pen Drive. You can find the ReadyBoost settings by right clicking on your pendrive in Windows Explorer and clicking on Properties. In properties, all the ReadyBoost settings will be under the ReadyBoost tab.

Ready Boost

While using ReadyBoost isn’t as great as adding extra RAM, it can cause a massive performance jump if your PC’s low on RAM. To see a difference, we recommend a higher capacity pendrive, such as 2 or 4 GB; anything lower won’t be noticeable. Note: You can even add an SD card or an external Hard-drive with ReadyBoost. Just ensure that they all use USB 2.0.

Tip 13: CCleaner

CCleaner

CCleaner is an awesome freeware program that allows you to keep your system registry clean, helping you rid your PC of any registry errors/inconsistencies, and any registries left behind from crappy uninstallation. The program’s designed for the end-user, meaning its really easy to use and built for safety

Tip 14: Disconnect any External Memory

If you’re one who keeps external memory constantly connected to your rig, as a hub for music or movies, or just out of habit, you should know that this can slow your start-up time significantly. This is especially true if your external drives slow or damaged.

HDD

While on the subject, let me inform you that having an old hard-drive connected to your system (one that has many bad sectors) can really slow down your PC’s performance too. It’s a good idea to replace such a drive, or format it if you’re hell-bent of using it.

Tip 15: Last resort

And now for the most obvious and painful tip. You know, the tip you don’t wanna hear: UPGRADE YOUR RIG!

If your PC’s running painfully slow in spite of all of this, you might want to format your hard-drive, reinstall all you need and see if that helps. If it doesn’t, I’m afraid it’s time for the inevitable upgrade! So stop being cheap and spend some dough on your beloved PC.

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Microsoft Bing Security Covers Familiar Ground

Microsoft's new Bing search engine may not break new ground when it comes to safe search, but the company is largely in line with efforts by Yahoo and Google to combat phishing and other malicious sites.

A search engine isn’t worth much if the results it produces lead users to malware.

An obvious statement no doubt, but one Microsoft kept in mind with its new ‘Bing’ search engine. Following the footsteps of other search engines, Bing may not break new ground when it comes to security, but it doesn’t really fall behind its competitors either.

“Bing’s malware detection consists of two things,” a Microsoft spokesperson said. “The first is Drive-by-Download detection where Bing warns [end users] that the site is hacked and won’t take them directly to the site when they click, instead providing a warning. Secondly, for social engineering malware sites, Bing manually blocks such sites from showing up in the search results.”

For drive-by downloads, users get the warning when they click on the query title, the spokesperson added. If they still want to visit the page, they can click on the “visit the website” link in the warning pop-up. Microsoft scans the sites and also consumes lists from various sources. The frequency of the scans varies from site to site.

Microsoft did not say much on how they are working to prevent hackers from poisoning search engine results, stating only that they are continuing to work on improving their technology.

Microsoft’s main rival in the search business is of course Google. Like Google, Bing offers users the opportunity to set 'SafeSearch' Web filter preferences to weed out sexually explicit images, videos and text from search results. Bing has actually taken a bit of criticism in the press around this, as the search engine prompts users to adjust their security settings if, for example, they are searching for porn and it is blocked by the filter.

When it comes to detecting rogue sites, Google has set up a number of automated systems to scour its index for rogue sites. When offenders are found playing host to drive-by downloads or phishers, the search engine labels them as a warning to users. The search engine also works with Web masters to help them keep their sites secure by alerting users of Google Webmaster Tools if their software is vulnerable.

“We publish our list of potentially dangerous sites via our Safe Browsing API to browsers such as Firefox, Safari, and Google Chrome,” a Google spokesperson said. “We believe that we all need to work together to identify threats and stamp them out to help make the Web a safer place for everyone.”

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Registry Can Affect Your Computer

Computer are very widely being used in every part of the work we do nowadays. It has become inseparable from human being needs. It has helped us in many ways and is still doing. It is the greatest invention of technology so far. Internal working of the computer is very complex. It is not easy to understand. You will need a lot of things to learn before beginning to understand how computer works. Today I am going to discuss with you about registry of computer.

Registry of computer is a very complicated things, it is a database which stores the settings and options for windows operating system probably the Microsoft windows operating systems. It contains information and settings for hardware, operating system software, most non-operating software like we use to install third-party software’s etc and also contains information of per-user settings. Every kind of work we do on the computer through software and software behavior like how the software are working is all monitored by the registry because it has settings of all the software’s being installed and uninstalled.

Registry is very important part of the computer; it’s like a heart of it. If you have knowledge of registry then you can do any kind of manipulation and make software’s work according to your choice. Isn’t it cool? Well but the first thing is that registry is not an easy task to master. It is very hard. If you make some mistake in the manipulation then some of your software’s might not work and if by mistake the windows registry file gets corrupted then the system will not working urging you to fix and repair your registry first. So it’s very important, you should only do those manipulation things if you think and know what you are doing.

I do have little knowledge about registry and have done some work in it. In my computer tips and tricks blog, I have wrote some work I have done like changing some figure in the yahoo messenger registry which later enable us to work in 2 yahoo messenger simultaneously. In the same way you can also make partition of hard drives by making some changes in the registry. There are lots of works and wonders we can do by registry manipulation. The only thing is that you should be aware of what you are doing. By the way you can always back up your computer before playing around with your computer. There is a restore point in the computer which very less people use. I have made very good use of them earlier and I still use them when needed. Always make sure you create a restore point in your computer before doing any risky work. If things go wrong, this restore point will bring your computer to normalcy. So don’t forget back up and restore point facility.

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