The Internet

After seeing the HTC Flyer over the weekend I am now dying to get my hands on one. After a recent search to see what other tablets were available at this price range or for even less I stumbled upon this:

Yes… You have read it right. The 3G/WiFi version of the HTC Flyer for the price of the WiFi HTC Flyer. To me this looks like a mistake for the very reason just mentioned (they have got it mixed up with the price of the WiFi Flyer). However it is not just that. They clearly State that it has a 32GB capacity which is ONLY available for the 3G version and my other theory that this was the US version (without a pen) was proved wrong by the description.

Obviously I had no choice but to buy one of these at that bargain price and you can do the same, providing they don’t change anything! I will keep you updated with the status of my order and obviously when it arrives I will do a FULL unboxing and review!

UPDATE: The description on the best buy page has now been modified for the WiFi, 16GB version. However, the tablet I ordered has arrived and it is indeed the 32GB, 3G version. Hope you all took my advice and ordered when you could in order to save £120 on the HTC Flyer. I suppose I owe a big thank-you to Best Buy for sending what the desription said and honouring their part of the transaction.

Last night chaos erupted on twitter when hundreds of thousands of people started seeing tweets in their time line from a mysterious Rob Twizz. Most people’s initial reaction (including mine after my sister told me about the strange tweets popping up in her time line) was that their accounts had been hacked to start following him, or RTwizz had found an exploit to get people to follow him without permission (similar to a bug twitter had a few years ago) however after some research I found this to be quite different.

Apparently this Robert Twizz is a “Rapper with a sense of humour”. He already had a moderate on-line presence before this event with YouTube videos and a group of fans following him on his ‘old’ and supposedly hacked twitter account. Apparently for this wannabe rapper, his 2,000 followers on his old profile just wasn’t enough and he needed to do something big to get more followers and he had been planning this for a very long time.

Despite not being as interesting or as ingenious as finding an exploit to make users follow him or being able to hack into peoples account directly and change make them follow him, what Robert Twizz did was more deceptive, cunning and to be totally honest; simple. Robert Twizz (or a friend of his if you are to take his tweets in defence as truth) had an account under the name of Justin Lee Collins which he created 2 years ago and left dormant for people to start following, in the thought that it was the official Justin Lee Collins. After accumulating 130,000 followers under the name of someone else the account was then totally re-branded to the identity of RTwizz in every way possible. The user name and name on the account were change, the profile picture and background picture, the bio and anything else that could link this account with its previous identity was removed and then last night Robert Twizz sent his first tweet.

If you look over all of Rob’s tweets he is trying to come across as genuine in an attempt to keep the followers that he has ‘obtained’ and in some cases is close to begging people not to unfollow however it is these tweets on his feed that allowed me to uncover everything about what Rob was up to. The first clue was thanks to a response which lead me to a tweet sent to him from @CarlyBunny.

Not only did this tweet make me realise that these people were probably following this user before (as he was not showing in any of the affected users recent follows) but also gave me a name to work with. Despite having this, I was still uncertain on whether on not this was a fake account just re-branded or a famous person’s account hacked or if it was something all together different. What really confirmed that it was not a twitter exploit of some sort was his later tweets to other people accusing him of hacking.

In all of his responses he mentions that someone else “built” the twitter account. The way it was phrased was subtle but most certainly suggests that the account was created through deception. Now armed with the method and a possible name for the previous identity of this account I had to find some convincing evidence that this account was previously owned by Justin Lee Collins or was under his name. To do this I thought of something that identifies a twitter account that not only would be impossible for Rob to remove but would actually be something that he would want to keep: the places that the account was listed.

Surely enough this lead to confirmation. The lists were typical of all the sorts of things that Justin Lee Collins would be listed in: “celebs”, “comedians”, “famous”, “tv” and my personal favourite, a list for all the Justin’s of the world, “@justingould/justins“.

After speaking with many people who this has affected they have all confirmed that they may have followed a fake Justin Lee Collins account or even a real Justin Lee Collins account that was hacked. To clear up the arguments I was having on twitter as to whether or not this was the real account of Justin Lee Collins hacked or a fake one built with the intention of re-branding in this way I had a bit more investigation to do. I did a search on the net for the official account of Justin Lee Collins and soon stumbled upon a website confirming that there was a fake twitter account set up in Justin Lee Collins’ name.

Unfortunately the site didn’t mention the user name of this account or give a link to it but what it did give was some dates. The post shown above was published on the 4th of February 2009 with the confirmation from Justin’s Agent on the 16th. Looking at these dates I notice something. Earlier in my investigations I was interested to see when the account was set up to see if that would give any clues. As soon as I saw the date on this article I instantly realised!

If this wasn’t confirmation enough then I don’t know what is. In the fast moving world of twitter and the internet, if a mildly convincing fake twitter account was set up for a relatively famous person, it would not have taken long from the date of creation to the date when the fake was uncovered and confirmed. The dates here line up perfectly and with the other facts (especially that all affected users seem to know who Justin Lee Collins is and think they may have followed him some time in the past) there is no arguing that Rob Twizz (or someone he knew) set up the account in 2009 with this outcome in mind.

In conclusion, whether you are now following @officialrtwizz or not we need to show Mr. Twizz that deception is not the way to get followers – you need to do it the hard way like everyone else. Please block and report that account for spam. When enough people have done this, the account will flag up for twitter as suspicious activity and will then hopefully get deleted as in my opinion this is just as bad as spamming these people, who don’t want to read his tweets or even be following him! Oh and if you really don’t like R. Twizz’s audacity, feel free to block his old account too: @rtwizz!

UPDATE: He has now named himself @newforyou321 and once again attempted to delete all identifying features of his account, including tweets and profile picture and name! Think he is waiting for the heat to die down to make ANOTHER attempt! Will this guy ever give up?

UPDATE: He changed to @MatthewKader for a bit and now he is @Shallowking! I don’t quite know what he is up to? Is this another fake identity he is taking to try and boost his following again? Does he not realise that as tweeting as Matthew Kline Kader he is still going to loose followers that wanted to follow Justin Lee Collins? Has it now been sold on to someone else?

YouTube has just increased their use of HTML5 by integrating the drag and drop features for uploading video files. When you click upload you can now just drag and drop a video file onto the page and the upload for those video files will automatically be initiated! This is a nifty little feature and can save you navigating around a bunch of folders in the file explorer if you already have the folder with the file open!

A few weeks ago when uploading a video I noticed this message. After some internet research I discovered that this was not just for me but that a lot of users were getting this. It appears that Google is rolling out upload larger than 15 minutes for those people who’s accounts are in good standing in terms of following community guidlines and copyright. This come just shortly after they raised the standard upload length to 15 minutes from 10!

This is a great feature and something I have been trying to do for years. When registering I was told that being a Director got you access to the longer video sizes but this did nothing! This should bring the end to the mess of Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, etc. on longer youtube videos! On feature that might now be needed on YouTube is a way of setting chapters for scene selection in large videos so  someone can leave a video and quickly jump back to where they left off before!

I primarily created this blog post for my followers who want to know what I am up to and read my tweets but don’t want the annoyance of my famous #RTTime, however the details outlined in this guide will work for any twitter user who ReTweets more than you can handle! It is a very simple little trick that I am surprised is so unheard of but to bulk what would be a very quick blog post I will also explain how to disable/enable mobile notifications for a user.

In the photo to the right I have highlighted (with coloured circles in an orange box) the two tiny buttons that so easily go unnoticed. These buttons will only appear if you are following the user (if you are not following them the “Following” will say “Follow” – click that to start following the user and get these options shown).

The icon with the red ring is the one you need to make sure is greyed out if you don’t want to see the ReTweets of the user who’s profile you are viewing. If this is green (and it is by default after following a user) then this means that their ReTweets will appear in your time line!

The icon with the blue ring enables or disables mobile notifications. If this icon is green (enabled) and you have your mobile phone set up to receive twitter updates, then you will be alerted by sms whenever this user tweets! this can get quite annoying if the person who you are following sends a lot of tweets. To disable (as with the ReTweets option) click the icon so that it becomes greyed out  (disabled).

Note that although this will stop new style ReTweets from appearing on your time line, where classic ReTweets are used they will still be displayed.

Also note that if you disable my ReTweets you may miss when I ReTweet blog updates. To make sure you get instant notification of new blog posts, follow @FlungoBlog.

I just ran a speedtest on the site, speedtest.net to discover that even though I only pay for 50Mbps, I am getting an amazing 61.34Mbps. Usually speedtest.net is the most reliable speed testing service their is with a great choice of server but this really shocked me:

Is it possible I actually got 61.34Mbps or was this a little blip? Maybe Virgin Media is starting to roll out their 100Mbps Scheme which should be coming next year! Have you ever got MORE speed than your paying for?

Xbox 360 Live Gold Membership Card for PlayStation 3 that looks like MotoGP 08. Something is not right on this Amazon fail; the title says “Xbox 360 Live Gold Membership Card (12 Month) (12 Month)” but the photo shows MotoGP 08 and even more confusing, the platform for this product is PlayStation 3!

Often people don’t know what to use when picking a username for their Twitter (and other online social networks or websites), so I have written a few tips that I recommend you follow when thinking of a username:

• Try to use your name
  If you can I always recommend picking a username that is just your name or parts of your name as this is something you will never change. It is also very memorable for friends and people who know you.
• Don’t use other people’s names
  You might thing to use a celebrities name in your username. Don’t. This might cause confusion and you do not want to be accused as posing as someone else. If, for example, you chose to put your favourite artist in your username this would not be recommended as if your opinion of them were to change you would regret your username.
• Keep it relevant
  Don’t pick a totally random name or something that is associate with a small part of your life. If you are going to pick something related to you try and pick something you are really passionate about and that will stay with you for your whole life. You should avoid having a username that you regret or want to change in the future
• Keep it Short
  On twitter it is all about the characters so avoid having long names as when people want to send you a message or mention you it will cut down the amount of characters that they have available for their message. The sorter your username the better.
• Make it flow
  Picking a name that does not flow and cannot be pronounced easily makes it harder for friends and followers to remember your username. For example, my username flungo can be said as if it were one word. This makes it easier to remember when people want to mention you.
• Avoid numbers and symbols
  Numbers and symbols will make your username difficult to remember so avoid using them at all costs. Lots of people add their year of birth to the end of their username if their desired username is taken because it is easy for you to remember but it might not be as easy for your followers to remember when they want to mention you.
• Make it unique
  Having a username that is similar to other peoples with only slight variations may cause confusion and result in people sending their tweets to the wrong person.
• Make it quirky
  If your username has a bit of quirk to it then people will be more likely to remember it! Try and find something that is relevant yet quirky! You want people to remember your twitter name and for it not to be forgotten. Having a quirky username may also make you seem more fun and interesting to prospective followers!
• Pick something you are happy to stick with
  You can change your username on twitter but I strongly recommend against it. In my opinion, you should under no circumstances change your user name. This causes so many problems in the Twitter ecosystem! To start with, friend who don’t know you have changed username may try to contact you using the wrong username and even if they do know you have changed username it is often difficult to remember and takes some time to get used to the change; if you are used to typing one thing in order to get in contact with someone you have to unlearn this and relearn their new username. It also causes problems with Twitter Apps and Statistics. You will sometimes loose data used in some apps and cause problems with yours and other people’s statistics! Pick a good username to begin with and you wont need to change it!

After reading a blog post that I found when it was ReTweeted by @windowsphone, I discovered the Odiogo plugin for wordpress. It is a nifty little plugin that you can install onto your wordpress blog which allows your, more lazy readers have each blog post read to them.

What you get is the standard sort of robotic voice (after a little Odiogo jingle for branding ) reading the blog post. The quality is quite good and can be very fluent at times but is nowhere near perfect. It does try and be natural but siome times the tone used is all wrong and in very logn sentences where a pause would be used even where there are no commas, the reader picks up in pace and it becomes very fast!

The main problems comes when you start having abreviations for things or non-english words (which is very often on a technology blog like this). Sometimes it will try and make the abreviations into a word rather than spelling it letter by letter and other times you get the oposite; you may have a word in capitals which it assumes is an abreviation and so reads letter by letter!

Overall the Odigio plugin is a nice feature which I will leave running but it is nowhere near perfect!

On twitter there are so many things that annoy me, and frustrate me. Many are probably quite stupid and you may not agree with some but I felt like sharing them with you with the explanation and reasoning for these things that annoy me! They are in no particular order except the order that I thought of them.

• Not Clicking Reply
  If you don’t click reply, how will I know what you are replying to? A lot of newbies to Twitter do not realise that when you click reply it add reply data which gives you the ability to view what the tweet was replying to by clicking “in reply to…” or your applications equivalent.
• Clicking Reply to the wrong tweet
  This is just as bad as not clicking reply. To be honest it is probably worse as it will confuse the hell out of me as I try to work out how the tweets could have been related!
• Replying to 2 tweets in one!
  Similar problem again. I will know what part of your tweet is replying to but will get confused with the rest. Reply to each tweet individually to keep things clear and organised! It is a major problem in places where you have the ability to show conversations as it becomes confusing!
• Not using @replies where appropriate
  If you are talking about someone and they have twitter then mention them! It is really annoying when people write the names of people who are on Twitter. The main reason for this is so that your friend will know you are talking about them but it also helps followers who don’t know your friend to find them and learn more about them!
• Random username changes
  In my opinion, you should under no circumstances (other than changing from a ridiculously stupid username to a more relevant one) change your user name. This causes so many problems in the Twitter ecosystem! To start with, friend who don’t know you have changed username may try to contact you using the wrong username and even if they do know you have changed username it is often difficult to remember and takes some time to get used to the change; if you are used to typing one thing in order to get in contact with someone you have to unlearn this and relearn their new username. It also causes problems with Twitter Apps and Statistics. You will sometimes loose data used in some apps and cause problems with yours and other people’s statistics! View my guide on picking a good username.
• Stupid usernames
  Stupid username just bug me! If they have no relevance and were just chosen because that was what was available then you should really pick a better username! If it is hard to remember it causes problems when I want to mention you and it gets annoying if people add numbers or “_x” for the sakes of it! For more info on getting a decent username,  view my guide on picking a good username.
• Sending a DM when it could be made public
  DMs are designed for private chat! WHY would you DM me about things that are not private? If you can make it public then its always better that way! I hate using DM so much that I have told TweetDeck to only check it once ever half hour! You want to talk to me? You mention me! The reason I dislike DM so much is that it does not help with building a Tweet count or with Twitter statistics and it means that no one else can see the conversation and contribute!
• Having no profile picture
  I generally identify twitter users when reading through my timelines by looking at their profile picture and if they don’t have one then it means I have to waste my time reading their username! Your picture is a big part of your identity and should be set up as soon as you get onto twitter!
• Changing your profile pic a lot
  This can get really confusing! As I said, I use twitter pictures to identify username so if you constantly change username I have to constantly re-associate an image with your twitter account to recognise your tweets! This wastes a lot of time for me and is unnecessary! I personal think that you should pick a picture and stick with it for a few years. My profile pictures last about 3 years each!
• Having a profile picture with more than one person
  I would like to be able to see you in your profile picture and if there is more than one person this is often not possible. It also means that if I know both pople in the photo, I would have to check who’s twitter account the tweet came from.
• Having a profile picture that is not of your face
  As I said, I want to be able to see you. Having a picture of a celebrity or even just a random photo will not help me identify you and be able to associate with you. Even if I don’t know you it is always nice to know what the person you are talking to looks like.
• Twibbons
  If you don’t know what a Twibbon is, it is a little icon you can put in the corner of your profile picture to support things you are interested in (companies, bands, artists, people, etc.) but I have two problems with twibbons:
  1. They can take over your picture consuming a great deal of space and obstructing the view of the person in the photo.
  2. When Twibbon saves you image back to twitter it saves a ridiculously small file so if I wanted to see something in your profile picture I would be unable to zoom in!
• Moaning about excessive RTing
  You don’t actually have to see RTs if you don’t want to! There are a few things you can do to stop from seeing them:
  1. Unfollow the user that ReTweets too much
  2. Disable ReTweets for the user who ReTweets too much
  3. View your timeline in lists (ReTweets are stripped out of lists)
• Saying BRB
  Twitter is not an instant messenger; I do not expect an instant reply to saying brb to me makes no difference!n If you want to make clear to the people you are talking to then use twitter the way it should be and send a public tweet saying you are going to do something! This makes so much more sense in the context of Twitter than saying brb!
• Sending a message that should be public as an @reply
  If what you want to say to me could be relevant to more people than just me, publicly tweet it! Unless it is in the context of a conversation, tweets like telling people what you are doing should just be public!
  
• Asking someone what they are doing
  It’s twitter: if someone wanted to tell you what they were doing don’t you think they would have tweeted it?
• Leaving a space before the apostrophe in: @reply ‘s
  Just to inform you all, you don’t need a space between the @username and the ‘s! You can quite happily write “@username’s” without any problem – I even use the apostrophe for plurals on #hashtag’s (better than using a space in my opinion)!
• Fake Twitter accounts
  Fake Twitter accounts just make it so hard to find the real person! Just because your life is not good enough for you, there is no need to go round pretending to be someone else! The worst ones are the ones who actually think they are the celebrity and try to convince others they are! Not only are they annoying and a waste of time but they often steal good usernames from the people who truly deserve them!
• Twam (Twitter Spam)
  The amount of spam you get on twitter is just ridiculous! If you are unfortunate enough to mention any brand that’s popular at the time (to be honest, mainly Apple) you will get bombarded with tweet telling you you can get free products (iPhones and MacBooks in the case of Apple) by just clicking a link! As if life is that easy! The worst spell of Spam was the Britney Porn Spam attack which attacked millions of users of hundreds of account spamming. In this attack there was no need to tweet anything in particular to get yourself flagged up on these spambots radars they would just find and spam you!
• General ignorance!
  General twitter ignorance is so annoying! There are so many people who don’t know the basics of twitter like how to find out what someone is replying to and always end up asking or just don’t get things. I don’t mind new people not getting thing (that’s fair enough) but people who have had twitter for a long time and just not bothered to learn or find out! Its not hard to find out all the nifty features in twitter, just play around and click everywhere!