If you are like me and heavily use several Firefox add-ons, chances are that Gmail Manager is one of them. It is a great add-on to manage multiple Gmail accounts (as the name implies).

However, with the latest Firefox update (v. 6.0.2) it broke and wouldn’t login.
No worries, after a bit of searching I came across a solution that worked for me.

In Firefox, go to

https://github.com/downloads/athomas/mozilla-firefox-addons/gmail_manager-0.6.4.1.3-fx+sm.xpi

when asked restart your web browser and the Gmail Manager add-on should work once again.

Updated on 12/22/11 for Firefox 9.0.1: https://github.com/downloads/athomas/mozilla-firefox-addons/gmail_manager-0.6.4.1.5-fx+sm.xpi

Post from: Milos Topic

Gmail Manager for Firefox works again

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Facebook updated their news feed, made it real-time and moved it to the right (right above chat).
This could be a nice change considering the growth of both screen resolutions and monitor sizes and as well all know instant gratification is highly rated nowadays, so the real-time component will be much appreciated. Now, if I could only opt-out of being displayed in news feeds that would be great.

Post from: Milos Topic

Facebook updates its news feed and makes it real-time

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For the second time 1and1.com ‘s technical support has proven amazing. They have been hosting several of my websites for years now and while I’ve been lucky enough not to have any technical issues, last night around midnight EST I had to contact them for assistance. Last night, I called about an issue with php version while modifying a plugin for another WordPress website. Not to bore you with details, but the site went blank and they were able to identify and correct a semantic error in the following line of my .htaccess file:

“AddType x-mapp-php5 .php .php4″       - I was missing a “-” before php5     

In any event, crisis was averted, I was reminded to double check my work and all were happy. Their responsiveness and availability are exemplary along with their great up-times. While this was only my second time interacting with them in years of service, both times my issues were resolved in matter of minutes.

In short, if you are looking for a new (or replacement) hosting company give 1and1.com a shot – I highly recommend them.

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1and1.com’s tech support rocks!

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This past weekend my wife’s iPhone was stolen from a store in Secaucus, NJ. While in store, she placed it down to try on a pair of shoes and then moved an isle down to take a look at another item which was long enough for the phone to “disappear”. Once she realized that she was missing her phone it was too late. The phone was gone, it was nowhere in sight. We traced our steps back and looked everywhere, I called it several times, but it was nowhere to be heard either. Then I remembered that I installed Find My iPhone on both phones and have tried tracking it from my phone. After a couple of failed attempts to locate the lost (stolen?) iPhone it finally displayed on a map, it was somewhere in the parking lot. We ran out to try and get a better location when all of a sudden it started moving. Its next stop was a Walmart parking lot in and this time we were able to narrow it down to within a few parking spots. Unfortunately, several cars were leaving that area as we arrived and the phone was on the move once again. Here’s where the fun really begins.

After a brief detour to fill my car’s gas tank and to drop my wife off to enjoy a sunny day by the pool (no sense in both of us spending time on this potentially useless chase) I was back on the trail of the stolen iPhone. Now, the app was showing it to be at a church’s parking lot in Fairview where it actually stayed for quite a while (at least it felt that way considering I was refreshing the screen every 30 seconds). This was good news as it gave me time to catch up, but as I was within a few blocks of that location, it started moving again – this time, heading back down towards Route 3. If you are familiar with that area (Fairview and North Bergen) you know that quite a few streets are one way which made my tracking a bit more difficult, but I finally caught up to my “blinking dot” in Union City, NJ.

License plate is obscured to protect the not-so-innocent

At a particular intersection, the app was showing the phone right in front of me (and as I remembered seeing this Volvo leaving Walmart’s parking lot) it all made perfect sense – I found him. The driver (who I also recognized from Secaucus) fed a parking meter and walked into a bar. So did I…

Bar where we had our chat

After a brief conversation (where he tried to come off as a good Samaritan) he was very apologetic and accommodating in returning the phone to me. It was in the trunk of his car under a bunch of towels and blankets – luckily none of them could interfere with the GPS signal.

iPhone recovered!

While the search lasted a bit longer, the actual conversation was very quick. Within a couple of minutes of arriving at the GPS location I had my wife’s phone back. All in all, a very happy ending to this escapade (for me at least).

In short: If you own an iPhone (or any other iOS device) make sure you install this app now. As you can see, it can be very useful in getting your stuff back.

Approximate path traveled by the iPhone - Secaucus to Fairview to Union City (NJ)

Find My iPhone app (along with Google Maps app) was instrumental in recovering the stolen iPhone, but I would like to see it further developed to include the following:

• Real-time updates as the phone moves
• Show both devices on the map, my current location and the location of the device being tracked, then provide directions – similar to their (Google) Maps app

Post from: Milos Topic

How I tracked and recovered a stolen iPhone

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Geotagging and location based services are all the rage these days. While they are very useful at times, these features should not be taken for granted nor should they be enabled on all of your devices and applications. Certain parts of your life are meant to be private and they should remain that way. Geotagging every move online for all to see could pose serious security and safety concerns.

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Geotagging your life online? Be careful.

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Facebook used as an online identity management solution? Yeah, that puzzled look on your face compares to my initial reaction when I started noticing this trend (among websites from all kinds of industries) of using Facebook as their (blog) commenting system. Some large tech websites, such as TechCrunch have completely moved over to Facebook’s Social Comments Box plugin as their solution while others allow for multiple comment options, including Google accounts.

Using FB comments can provide clear benefits to content providers as it eliminates most of the spam and dumb/evil/malicious comments, something TechCrunch for instance had a serious problem with in the past. Ideally, using someone’s real identity (assuming their FB profile is authentic) should bring up the quality of exchanges and improve the conversation. On the other hand, don’t we already have tools in place to combat spam? How about Akismet and Bad Behavior to name a couple. So why Facebook then? It is easy to see why, it’s slowly becoming the core online “hang out spot” for most and as such people can simply continue using their identities across other multiple sites. This is a great move by Facebook as the more we use them across internet the more they learn about us which they can then use for targeted marketing (among other things). Effective ads bring revenue.

However, could this push to use FB profiles also have a negative impact? Yes it can and here’s where I see that come into play. In the not so distant days of internet, chat rooms and blogs, people were (and still are) leaving comments under their pseudonyms which lead to more open and honest discussion (along with an occasional argument or two), but it’s what people liked about being online, being able to search, roam, comment and explore without being tied to their proper, socially accepted persona. Furthermore, some folks would expect their comments to serve as traffic baits in hopes that they could get some of the visitors to follow them to their business, website or a blog. Now, that that that’s no longer an option, I wonder if the participation has decreased on TechCrunch and other sites which have completely moved over to Facebook comments? It would be interesting to know if this change had any negative impact on the volume of comments and interaction between readers/viewers and publishers. Based on some preliminary tests and my gut feeling, the answer is yes. Unfortunately, on most websites this is not a win-win situation.

Using Facebook comments presents clear benefits for publishers and potential drawbacks for both publishers and readers. To answer who wins in the end, one must ask the question: Who is the website’s intended audience?

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Facebook, an online identity management solution?

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Most technology services used at work, school, or home are looked at by users as commodity services, similar to water and electricity, they are simply expected to be available and work properly. When it comes to network; access to websites, chat services, e-mail (from both computers and smartphones – iPhone, Android, Windows based phones…) along with many other services are simply expected to work. People outside Information Technology (and sadly a few who are part of it) don’t understand or care, nor should they, how all these things work.

On the other hand, what happens when these services fail, when you can’t go online, or your computer doesn’t print; or even worse, you deleted a file by accident/your computer is constantly crashing and is infected with some type of malware. Who do you turn to and how well do they perform? Is your local team overworked or maybe they don’t work hard enough? Are they knowledgeable and responsive; can they help you with other non-standard questions, concerns and ideas? How helpful is your IT team, are they aware of your needs or are they more of a “dictatorship” (as the graphic above suggests) when it comes to what can be used and how? How responsive are they to your technical issues?

I’m always interested in streamlining and improving the things we do and support every day while at the same time finding additional resources to get involved into bringing new and interesting services to our clients. It is very important for IT staff to be valuable and contribute to the overall goals or otherwise they should be replaced, even outsourced*. If you work with a tech team of any kind (work, school, home…) please take a few minutes of your time to share what your experience has been and how they could improve.

* What can or should be outsourced and where (local vs. offshore) is a topic worthy of separate discussion at great length.

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How reliable and responsive is your local IT team

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About a week ago I noticed (as I’m sure many of you did) a new feature of Google Search, Social Search (BETA). It basically leverages your Google Profile and the information you provided to expand your search into online posts of those you consider friends, followers, etc. While this is another great advancement coming from Google inline toward the “ultimate” goal of semantic search this could potentially cause privacy concerns for some.

Let’s say you have posted an article and didn’t share it with your Twitter followers (for any number of valid reasons), this new search feature could find it and make it available to them anyway. What if you don’t want this to happen? Well, segregating online content is becoming increasingly difficult (but not impossible thanks to Robots.txt and a few other techniques) due to search engines so it is important to remember that once you post something online it’s there for ALL to find and see.

Overall, I think that unifying search across all of your social networks will be a positive experience for most, but keep in mind that “Results from your social circle” will most likely include EVERYTHING you post online under one of your online identities/profiles.

Once online, always online (and now indexed and nicely organized as well)

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Google social search

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Internet is filled with dozens of online backup/storage services which provide different levels of functionality, reliability, security and space to users. In order to cut through some of this clutter here are four online services that I have used and found to be reliable, functional and secure.

While putting this short list together I focused on three requirements:

1. services had to provide a FREE option
2. even that free option needed to be SECURE*
3. and it should be available to both major OS platforms, Windows and Mac

While I didn’t focus on their support for mobile clients and saw those options as bonus features most of these services also work on mobile platforms (some with native apps) such as Android, Blackberry and iOS.

So without getting into details on what I like (or don’t) about each of these services here they are (in alphabetical order):

• Dropbox 2 GB free
• Mozy 2 GB free
• SkyDrive 25 GB free
• SugarSync 5 GB free

If you know of other FREE and SECURE online backup solutions please leave a comment and share your thoughts.

* While security is always questionable and could be discussed at great lengths, these services provide default encryption to all users which is a step in the right direction.

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4 FREE and SECURE online backup services

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This past weekend a friend of mine got engaged, and while immediate families were informed of these great news that same day (hour?) the rest of us were finding out gradually over the past couple of days. However, the notification to the masses happened today as she changed her Facebook relationship status to engaged. Almost immediately the news spread like wildfire across the internet, across the world. People were calling, texting, e-mailing her within minutes of that status change. It is wild to even think how powerful the social networking sites are in spreading the word; their impact is instantaneous for better or worse. The moment you announce something it becomes available to dozens, hundreds, thousands,…of people across the world who happen to find you “interesting” in one way or another.

For the sake of pure comparison of the advancement of technology and services, let’s go “back in time” some 20 years to 1991 (if you really think about it, this wasn’t that long ago). Imagine if this same event occurred in 1991, how would you find out about it if you lived in another state, country, on another continent? 20 years ago there were no online social networking sites, no Facebook, no Twitter, no [insert your site of choice]…average person had no online social networking concept. In 1991 masses were first introduced to the web browser a piece of software we all use today without giving it much thought. That same year, Internet reached 1 million users which has grown to close to 2 billion today (more on Internet 2010 in numbers). It’s only been 20 years and look were we are today and try to imagine where we will be in another two decades, in 2031 (maybe we will finally see those flying cars and jet-packs). Possibilities are endless.

Until then we get to use and enjoy what’s available to us today: a simple selection from a drop down menu, clicking on a “save” button which informs everyone and frees up time which can be used to look at that ring again and begin planning the wedding. Amazing!

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Social networking travels fast

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