My new(ish) phone: Sprint HTC EVO…

Back on June 4th, I took a half day off work to go to Best Buy and get a new cell phone. What I ended up walking away with was far more than a phone. It was a little computer that has nearly constant access to the internet.

I ended up getting the HTC EVO on Sprint. The EVO runs the Android mobile operating system and does some pretty amazing stuff. As such, I wanted to touch on a couple of cool applications that I’ve been using. If you have an Android phone, you should use them too. Just pop over to the Android Market and search for the name.

• Twicca – This is the best Twitter app for Android, in my opinion. It is quick, customizable, and looks fantastic. Also, follow me on Twitter if you don’t already.
• Astro File Browser – I love this for 1) copying and moving files around my phone, mostly music and 2) it has a handy backup feature which will save copies of all your apps. If something happens to your phone, you don’t have to worry about searching the market and reinstalling everything. This app just takes care of it.
• Listen – This is a podcast manager by Google. It is still a little rough around the edges, but I love it thus far. I’ve never listened to podcasts before, but there is just so much interesting stuff out there.

I’ll be back with some more recommendations soon and some more in depth info on the EVO, including some screenshots of some of the great features and apps.

FYIJSYK: Facebook Privacy Update…

Look at this: two FYI-just-so-you-know posts within the span of a week. That is certainly a record. It’s for good reason though.

Facebook announced the other day that they are changing some aspects of Facebook – “Share on Facebook” is giving way to “Like on Facebook”, further integration between third party sites like CNN will be implemented, and your privacy on Facebook is becoming even less important than it already is.

Mark Zuckerberg spoke about this at the Facebook conference called F8. To read about the stuff that he unveiled, you can check out this PC World article which gives a very similar voice to my concerns.

Here is my main thought though: When I post on Twitter, everything I post there is going to be publicly seen. I know that and so I’m cautious about what ends up there. With Facebook, I post things there and I expect a level of privacy. Why? Because I specifically went in and adjusted my privacy settings to my preferences. Too bad that during a redesign, Facebook decided to make me re-opt into my privacy settings, but actually changed them all to be much more revealing than my originally chosen settings.

As a result of my concerns, I posted a message on Facebook asking if anyone would miss me if I closed my Facebook account and nobody responded. I probably won’t go as far as to close it, but I certainly am considering removing a good portion of the information I put there. Additionally, I am removing any applications I have loaded and will continue to monitor my privacy settings.

Facebook has destroyed a large portion of the trust I had built up with them when it was just my friends and those in my closed network (college, city) that could access my information. Now it feels like it is going to be the whole world.

Have you re-evaluated your privacy settings in Facebook? How do you feel about Facebook integrating into the rest of your online world? Let me know in the comments.

FYIJSYK: Your Tweets and the Library of Congress…

Did you know you are published in the Library of Congress? Well, if you use Twitter, you soon may be.

On their blog, the Library of Congress announced that they will be storing every public tweet ever. This quite obviously does not mean Direct Messages or any tweets on accounts that are set to private.

Just so the LOC knows what they are getting into, they can expect gems like this from me:

Uh oh, I’m totally self-conscious. I had to put a different flavor of deodorant on each pit. Please don’t make fun if you see me today.

None of the archiving has been done yet but it sounds like more details should be forthcoming in the near future. Get tweeting so you can secure your place on the shelves of the Library of Congress!

Tweets by Email…

I was super busy on Monday and Wednesday this week, but don’t worry, it was work related: I had a pitch for a potential client on Monday and I helped a client with some computer issues last night.

Based on my discussions with that client, I just want to remind everyone to PLEASE stop paying for antivirus software. If you are spending $70 a year on McAfee or Norton you are wasting your money and slowing your computer down. Check out this post I wrote to learn more about what antivirus you SHOULD be using (specifically see point #5, Microsoft Security Essentials).

Before we get started, if you don’t know what Twitter is, check out this link.

If you are a Twitter user, you may receive tweets from others via SMS text message, one the web at Twitter.com, or a desktop or mobile phone application. The big hole that notification scheme is email. If you are a Twitter user and interested in receiving your friends’ tweets via email, here is how you get it set up.

1. Be sure you are logged into the Twitter account you want to link with your email account. You can do that at the Twitter login page.
2. Head to the TweetyMail.com home page. About halfway down the page you’ll notice a sign-in box. Click it.
   
3. You need to authorize TweetyMail to connect to your account. At no time does TweetyMail have your login information such as your password. You can deny access to TweetyMail at any time by heading to the Connections page in your Twitter settings.
4. After connecting with Twitter, you need to connect an email address to your account. It can be a different email address than you signed up for Twitter with. The TweetyMail site also includes a list of email addresses and commands you can use to interact with Twitter.

Here are a couple of the email addresses and what they do:

• latest@tweetymail.com – Sending an email to latest@tweetymail.com with a blank subject and body will send you the last 20 tweets, regardless of who tweeted them. You can added a Twitter name such as ‘thedigitante’ to the subject to get the last 20 tweets by me. You can also add a number from 1 to 200 to change the number of updates that are returned.
• tweet@tweetymail.com – No subject is needed and the body will be the tweet. It the tweet is more than 140 characters (Twitter’s limit), you will get an email telling you that the tweet did not post. You can attach a picture up to 4Mb and it will be linked in your tweet.
• message@tweetymail.com – The subject tells who to send a Direct Message to and the body contains the message you want the user to receive.
• block@tweetymail.com, follow@tweetymail.com, and unfollow@tweetymail.com – The subject is the person you want to block, follow, or unfollow, and the body is ignored.

So there you go. A service like this adds tons of convenience and flexibility to a website already is a great tool for quick, mobile communication.

Got anymore tips on how you follow Twitter? Any similar services out there that people use to email tweets?

Backupify…

Recently, I’ve been thinking about my Gmail account: I have nearly 15,ooo emails spanning nearly 6 years. If anything were to happen to my account – it gets hacked, Google deletes it on accident, or you get locked out by forgetting your password – I would not have any back up of all those messages. Additionally, if I ever wanted to use a different mail service, I would definitely want to take all those messages to my new account.

Backupify is a service that not only backs up Gmail, but will also back up your Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, and a number of other services, protecting your online data.

If you think you might like to have your online data set up for a recurring back ups using Backupify for $50, please contact me by going to the About The Digitante page and fill out the contact form or give me a call anytime. If you prefer to do it yourself, read on.

Signing up for Backupify is simple. Just enter your name, email address, choose a password, and select the Free account for now. You can back up 1Gb of stuff with the Free account. We’ll discuss the paid version of Backupify in a bit.

You are immediately deposited on the Settings page. Before you continue, go to your email account and be sure to click the link in the confirmation email. Actually backing up your accounts fairly simple. I’ll go through an example with Twitter.

1. Be sure you are logged into the Twitter account that you want to back up.
2. Click on the Manage link to the right of the Twitter icon.
   
3. There are two check boxes and a text box. You have the option to tweet that you are protecting your account with Backupify (I did that just for fun). You can customize the message to say whatever you like. I added a note that this post would be up in the morning.
4. You can choose to follow Backupify on Twitter to get updates when new services are added and other good information.
5. Once you are squared away on those two items, click the Twitter Authentication link.
   
6. In order to finish the process, you must allow Backupify to have access to your Twitter data. I do want to clarify that Backupify will NOT have access to your Twitter password and can be denied access to your account at any time by going to the Connections page in the Settings for your Twitter account. (On an aside: Gmail does require you to enter your password, but it is encrypted, so just be aware of that).

After being redirected to the Twitter setup page, you will see your Twitter account listed at the top. Need to add another Twitter account? Repeat the above steps, but sign into Twitter with another account.

You can repeat a similar process or each service you want to back up. There are some nuances depending on what you are backing up: Facebook allows you to choose what information you back up – pictures, wall posts, profile, etc.

Size limits

As I mentioned earlier, the Free account allows you to back up a total of 1Gb of data. My Gmail account alone has well over 2Gb of emails in it, so I can’t back it up via Backupify directly. Instead, I am required to open an Amazon S3 account. Amazon S3 is online storage space that you pay a monthly fee for. For most people the cost is going to be $0.15 per Gb per month.

You may wonder why someone would pay a fee to back up things like Twitter and Facebook, and for most individuals you would be correct in wondering. However, the reason I decided to write this post was because a local restaurant owner named Scott (of Scotty’s Brewhouse) uses Twitter and Facebook extensively to market his business to his customers (about 4,000 of them actually).

As such, it would very bad if something happened at Facebook and he ended up losing all those connections, so for him, it may make sense to spend the extra couple of dollars.

In the end, I ended up going with another method to back up my Gmail but in the future it will be something I write about here.

Before I wrap things up, I need to make a little complaint: I cannot for the life of me figure out how much space my back ups I’ve created thus far are taking up. It seems like there would be a dashboard front and center telling you how much space you are using. Secondly, I wish it would at least give me an approximation of how much space my next back up is going to be consuming. It says my back ups may not complete for 24-48 hours, so if something pops up later, I’ll be sure to post a follow up.

Survey Results…

Last week, I tossed up a survey to find out what my readers (and even non-readers) thought of my site. Please be sure that if you have questions, suggestions or just want to chat about tech stuff, you contact me by heading to the About page and fill out the contact form or give me a call.

To reward a few lucky survey takers, I ended up passing out a few Amazon giftcards. Congratulations to ima, jordan, and buss on the huge $10 wins.

On to the results! I’m not going to cover everything, but we’ll hit some highlights:

• A total of 18 people took the survey and 6 of them were first time visitors. Those first timers mostly came from Twitter. All of the 6 were likely to visit the site again in the future.
  Additionally, two people wrote in suggestions. The first new visitor suggested that they would like to see a bit more mix between tech and non-tech. The second new visitor said that from the front page, it was impossible to tell what the blog was about. That is why you see the return of the ‘About The Digitante’ box along the top of each page.
• Half of the survey takers show up and read directly on the site. About 1/3 read via an RSS reader.
  
  If you read the site directly and you are interested in a simpler way to follow along and not miss a thing, be sure to check this post out as it has great tips for keeping up with me. You can check The Digitante out on RSS, email, Facebook, and Twitter. Recently I added an app for both iPhones and iPod Touches.
• The most popular types of posts are How To’s, posts with pictures, and feature. The least popular by a wide margin was my Back to School series from last fall. Apparently college-age isn’t my niche.
• A majority (11) said they would want to see 2-4 posts per week and everyone else (7) said they would want to see 5+ posts per week. Here is the plan from here on out: I plan on posting a full post on Monday and Wednesdays. Tuesday will consist of Tuesday Quick Tips. Thursday will be an archive post since my readership has grown immensely over the past 8 months and some of my old stuff may have been missed. I will do some updates and add screenshots to stuff that doesn’t have it. Friday will be Friday Night Links as always.Most everyone said they didn’t care when the posts were published, therefore I’m going to stick with the current schedule which consists of me typing up the post in the evenings and setting it to post for 6am EST the next morning. The exception: I’m going to shoot for publishing Friday Night Links as soon as it’s done on Friday evening.
• One of the comments from a reader was that some of the subjects, not matter how dumbed down, still turn into “Blah, blah, blah” after about one or two paragraphs. As such, I’m going to start making a little intro paragraph getting into how what I’m about to describe will benefit you and how much I would charge to take care of it for you. Then you can decide whether to skip the reading and call me or do it yourself. I would really love some feedback as to whether you think this will work or not.

Hopefully this hasn’t been too boring. It was really about me trying to wrap my head around how I can better serve my readers and make improvements in how I do things.

Although the Amazon giftcards are no longer available, you are still welcome to take the survey and give me your feedback. In the meantime, you can leave any questions, comments, or insights in the comments below!

Following Along with The Digitante…

I wanted to remind you of some tools for reading and keeping up with The Digitante.

• The Web Site – As always, you can simply visit www.thedigitante.com and check out the new content. I attempt to write one new post per weekday. If I find something quick and easy, I might post twice. I generally publish the posts around midnight, on average.
• RSS Feed – This is my method of choice for keeping up with blogs and other websites. You simply click the little orange button and your feed reader gets updated every time there is a new post. It’s one stop for all your reading.If you need to know how an RSS feed works or how to sign up, check out this post. Also, it’s one of the first posts I ever wrote.

  

• Twitter – I usually tweet (post on Twitter) through my personal account, @ahow628. Most of those posts are about my day-to-day activities. I use my personal account to retweet (RT) any postings I make with @thedigitante. I use that account to mostly tweet new posts and tech related news I find interesting. If you don’t care about my personal shenanigans, just follow @thedigitante. Also, if you want to know about Twitter, check out my Twitter post and you can also learn about Twitter lists so you can better organize your tweet reading.
• Facebook – I’ve got a Fanpage for The Digitante set up. Mostly I post a link to the post. Usually these are about a day behind due to my schedule and when I have access to Facebook. Similar to my Twitter retweets, I try to do these at reasonable times when lots of people are using the service. In addition to links, I also have a forum that you can ask questions.
• Email – If you want an email to arrive in your inbox whenever a new post is published, you can use the box over to the right of the posts on the main page of the site. Or you can simply use the one I’ve included below in this post. It will require you to submit your email address and then click a confirmation link in a message sent to your email address. This method would be idea for those wanting the latest Digitante news but may not be able to access blogs, RSS feeds, Facebook, or Twitter at work.
  Enter your email address:

  Delivered by FeedBurner

If you are interested in contacting me directly, you are welcome to email me. In addition, I have a Google Voice widget that allows you to simply click and enter your phone number. Google Voice will then call you and it will then ask you to wait a moment to be connected to me.
https://clients4.google.com/voice/embed/webCallButton
You can find this contact information on the About page as well.

Posting Tweets to Facebook…

Twitter and Facebook are easily the two most popular social networks around currently. Up until now, I’ve always posted on one or the other. As a result, Facebook has been more or less ignored since I started using Twitter. However, Twitter has a feature that allows your posts on Twitter to show up as posts on Facebook. This is an easy one, so if you haven’t, sign up for Twitter, and then carry on with the instructions.

Connecting Twitter and Facebook

First things first: login in to both your Twitter and Facebook accounts. Then you need to navigate to the Twitter app on Facebook.

By clicking the Allow button, you are affirming that you will allow Twitter and Facebook to interact. Note that your current privacy settings on Facebook will apply to your tweets that post to your Facebook stream. Be sure to review you privacy settings before posting any tweets.

You can also bookmark the Twitter app so it appears at the bottom of your Facebook page at all times for easy access.

Are you using Twitter and Facebook in conjunction? Do you have a favorite app or trick to keep both updated at the same time? Let me know in the comments!

PS Can anyone explain why I have a Twitter widget in my Boxes box on my Facebook profile page but Mrs. Digitante does not? I’m baffled as to how that happened, so if you know, let me know…

Friday Night Links (12/11/2009)…

Alright, in The Digitante family, numbers pretty much rule our lives. Me and Mrs. Digitante went to school for math and statistics, we work in math oriented fields, and we do calculus each night before we go to bed. No need to get rusty on those integration skills. Please note when I say ‘integration,’ I obviously don’t mean integration into society. Who would want to hang with a math nerd like me?

Anyway, since this IS the FNL, we are going to go easy with the numbers. Here you go:

• 10 Signs You Are a Social Media Douchebag (http://thedig.in/7r) – What is social media? Facebook and Twitter are two prominent examples. Pretty much anything that is meant to intertwine peoples’ lives together. Unfortunately some people don’t really know how to treat those around them and its never more obvious than when they are online.
• Top 10 of Everything in 2009 (http://thedig.in/7s) – They say everything, but I’m not sure they ACTUALLY mean everything. However, they’ve covered quite a bit of what happened over the last year. It might take awhile, but I”m going to plow through all 500 entries.
• 10 Laptop Tools for a Road Warrior (http://thedig.in/7t) – If you do any work on a laptop, this list is very helpful for everything from accessing your home computer from the road to various tools for managing your battery life. I especially like the Firefox extension for tracking your laptop’s location.
• 5 Memorable Sports Tweets (http://thedig.in/7u) – I follow quite a few celebrities on Twitter, but somehow I missed all these tweets. Plus the list was put together former Indiana Pacer great, Jalen Rose. My favorite is the Sports Guy tweet. Given that I have two little daughters, I’m going to have to heed his advice and keep a copy of Taken around.

Guest post: Noobie.com…

I’m racing against the cold medicine, so I need to make this quick:

A fellow techie and acquaintance of mine, Patric aka Mr. Noobie, runs a website called noobie.com. I am a guest poster on his blog over there with my post from a couple of nights ago about Twitter lists.

Feel free to head over and read (or re-read) the Twitter lists post. Also be sure to comment and let him know you came from The Digitante website!

I am hoping to have some more guest posts at various locations around the internet. I’ll be sure to keep you updated with my other appearances.