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Starbucks’ AT&T Shift Still Glitchy

July 3rd, 2008 | No Comments | Posted in Just My Nerdiness, Just My Rant

I celebrated the day I got free internet access at Starbucks through the new contract with AT&T and my family’s AT&T Uverse subscription.  Secondly, I have access though my Starbucks Rewards card.

Sadly, the transition from T-Mobile to AT&T hasn’t been too smooth.

AT&T or T-Mobile

Today I logged in to my AT&T.net account only to be logged into a T-Mobile account.  It doesn’t change the quality of my service but just goes to show that no one has their head in the game.

A few weeks ago when we were in Chicago, the entire AT&T WiFi network was down, for hours.  Randomly I cannot login to my account and a few friends of mine have never been able to access their two hour per day Starbucks Rewards internet.

Come on Starbucks, AT&T and T-Mobile, get your act together!  Furthermore, where’s my free iPhone internet AT&T?!  Hmph.

Zemanta Pixie
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Possibly the Best Part of Union Square

IMG_0428

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Zemanta for Wordpress

July 1st, 2008 | 1 Comment | Posted in Just My Nerdiness

I have been using this awesome plugin for a while now called Zemanta.  You have probably noticed all of the helpful links to other sites in my posts.  Whenever I mention something like Google or The New York Times, Zemanta makes a link to their site.

If I say something like, I was walking through The Castro District in San Francisco, it will put a link to a wikipedia article about Castro.  And if I say, while in Castro Ryan and I saw the movie Wanted starring Angelina Jolie, it will make links to the Internet Movie Database (IMDB).

Tonto National Forest - Ansel Adams Style

Image by davidanthonyporter via Flickr

Another cool feature is the image embedding.  If I said something like, “I was really look forward to seeing the Ansel Adams exhibit”, Zemanta will find a relevant picture.  And if I wrote about all of the fires in California from the lightening storm, Zemanta will allow me to embed a snippet of a related news article discussing the fires across California.

It even suggests tags for blog posts!

But it isn’t perfect, write about San Francisco and it will suggest these tags:

  1. San Francisco
  2. San Francisco California

Sometimes it will suggest tags that seem to have no relation to the posts.  “United Kingdom” pops up a lot.  I’m not exactly sure why.

Overall it has to be the most used plugin on my blog.  I have used it on every post since its installation on the site and recommend it to anyone else blogging.  Linking to other articles, embedding meta-tagged images and posting links to news articles will at the very least increase your chance of being picked up in a relevant search.

Get Zemanta, it will change the way you blog.

Zemanta Pixie
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All a Twitter

July 1st, 2008 | No Comments | Posted in Just My Nerdiness, Just My Thoughts

I’ve been using Twitter for a good while now but have been such a slacker in actually using it.  While in San Francisco I made a pledge to be more active on Twitter.

For those who don’t know what Twitter is, let me explain.

Twitter, in brief, is a social network based on instant messages to a public audience.  You “twit” when you are going to a movie, when you’re stuck at the DMV (as I have been twice in the past week) or when you want company for dinner.

As people discover your tweets, they have the option to follow you.  By following you, they will receive all of your updates to Twitter on their email, their phone, their IM or whatever other format they choose.
You can direct “tweets” at something by typing @ before the person’s name.  If I wanted to ask Nick Starr out to dinner, I might say, “@NickStarr want to get dinner at Sapporo?” and he could reply “@justex07 yeah, how about 8?”.

I could also put an open invitation for people to join me at a movie by simply twittering, “going to see the 10 o’clock showing of Wanted if anyone wants to join me”.  All of your followers will get the message and can reply to you if they plan on joining.

As you begin to acquire get a large number of followers, you essentially make it impossible to be lonely.  During South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin last year, people were Twittering about the best Bar-B-Que and ending up with over 40 people joining them at places like Stub’s for dinner!

Strangers uniting in a Web 2.0 world.  It’s something else.  It’s something great.

With the iPhone 3G coming out and all of the Twitter Apps expected in the iPhone 2.0 App Store, twitting on the go will just get easier and easier.

I am going to be researching good Twitter plugins so I can have my tweets streaming through this blog on the sidebar.  If you know of any good ones, please forward them to me through a comment on this post.

If you want to follow me on Twitter, my name is justex07 and you can find me on Twitter here.

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Nothing Suprises Me

July 1st, 2008 | No Comments | Posted in Just My Thoughts

Besides Chris Kattan marring a woman (a pretty one at that) this whole section of the news paper just isn’t too surprising.

News is Predicable

Now who didn’t see that last one coming?  Yeah, that’s what I thought.

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