Neato Stumbleupon Trick!

You might not realize this, but you can tell if a website has been reviewed on Stumbleupon by simply looking at the Stumbleupon toolbar! Here's how:

If the comment bubble has no lines in it, there have been no text reviews.

One line means there has been one review,

two lines means three reviews, and

three lines means three or more reviews.


Don't believe me? Try it!

~jw

You're doing it wrong...

I was at Target looking for a Dirty Santa gift when I came across this...

Something is wrong here...

See, this is what a knight is supposed to look like:

 

...and THIS is what this kid looks like:

WTF, Target? Its not a hat. Its like they just grabbed some 12 year old kid that was waaaaay too big for the costume and shoved him in it anyway. FAIL.


~jw

Gmail Capacity Experiment

Gmail's storage capacity is growing at an exponential rate. You can even watch it grow live at gmail's login screen! As of this writing, a single Gmail account can hold 7262 MB of data. That's 7 gigabites of data, and growing fast. That leaves me with one question... is it actually possible to fill up a gmail account?

In order to test this theory, I've decided to start a little experiment. Simply email capacity.experiment@gmail.com as often as you want with as much as you want, and I'll update this page daily to let you know it's progress.

Here are some tips to keep in mind:
1. Text emails are small in size, so throw in an attachment or two if you've got the time!
2. Want to sign it up for spam? Go for it!
3. I will be checking the account daily and will post anything that's interesting here. Please don't send any personal data, so watch your default signatures!

Want to follow the experiment? Go to this discussion on the forum to see the "best of" emails that come in, or check back here every so often to see updates!

Any comments are welcome!

~jw

~~~~~~~~~~~

UPDATE: User Ziyonex suggests that people should subscribe the email address to Google Groups to receive more emails!

Also, jaffermaniar was worried that this was a big scam to collect email addresses. Well, its not. If you still are worried and don't want to risk it, send the message through one of these anonymous email websites:

• www.sendanonymousemail.net/
• anonymouse.org/anonemail.html

Graph via ubergizmo.com

~~~~UPDATE (November 20th, 2008)~~~~~

"You are currently using 84 MB (1%) of your 7265 MB."

     So it's been about one week and so far the response has been a little week. If we're gonna fill this puppy up, we need all the help we can get, so spread the word! Special thanks to all of you who have emailed already! Keep it up guys! 99% left to go...

~jw

StumbleUpon "Experiments" suck

They always start off the same way...

"Hey guys, I wanna try an experiment! Everyone give this website a thumbs up on StumbleUpon and lets see what happens!"

Who do you think you're kidding, jerk? You know EXACTLY what will happen. 20 or 30 new StumbleUpon users will give you the thumbs up, and two hours later, BAM. You've got 30,000 hits.

BUT YOU SUCK. You know why? Because you've just ruined the point of StumbleUpon. You have to earn a thumbs up, you can't just ask for it. You are essentially just raping the system, and because of that, YOU SUCK.

...and people know it. Look at these reviews from this "experiment:" (click to see it bigger)


Even though you've just earned almost 10 dollars in one day from all the hits, you've essentially shot yourself in the foot. Your blog now has a crappy reputation, and its gonna take a lot more than a few thumbs up to over come that.

So in conclusion, I think I speak for all of us SU users when I say, YOU SUCK.

~jw

P.S. Stumble Cards also suck. Click here to see why.

New Facebook layout installs Adware

I believe the new Facebook installs adware on your computer every time you visit their website, and I can prove it.

Here's what happened. As many of you may know, I'm an active user of the social network StumbleUpon. Today, when browsing StumbleUpon's video site, I saw this:


Seems pretty normal so far... WAIT. ...What's that?


That share button looks really out of place. For one, the text has a white background, while all the other buttons have a nice dark background. Also, notice that this share button is next to the default share button.

This led me to a theory... I recently swapped over from the old Facebook to the new Facebook layout. Perhaps Facebook installed some kind of code into Firefox when I made the transition to add their "share" link to different sites.

To test this theory, I swapped over to Internet Explorer (a browser I never use to visit Facebook with) and reload the same page. This is what I saw:


See? No share link in IE. After I cleared out my cookies and cache in Firefox, the link disappears. Every time I visit the new Facebook and come back to Stumble Video, the link returns until I clear my cache again. Facebook puts what is essentially adware on my computer every time I visit their website.

Got something to say? Discuss in the comments.

~jw

Mozilla Firefox 3.0.1, Portable Edition for U3

After searching unsuccessfully for a U3 version of Mozilla Firefox 3, I decided to create my own with the help of PackageFactory. The file is in *.u3p format and is about 11.2 MB download.

DOWNLOAD

Source 1:
MegaUpload

Source 2:
Rapidshare

Enjoy!

~jw

Dear GrandCentral...

For those of you who don't know, GrandCentral is Google's new baby phone service that I was lucky enough to become a beta tester for. According to GrandCentral's FAQ,

"Based in Fremont, California, GrandCentral provides an innovative web-based voice communications platform that helps you manage all your phones and phone numbers through one simple interface. You get a single phone number that forwards to all of your phones, giving you one number for life."

It's thanks to GrandCentral that I can safely put the "Call Me" button on the right side of this page. One of the ways GrandCentral helps its users manage their phone numbers is through the use of online contact managing. When I get a call at my GrandCentral phone number, the first thing I hear is a recorded voice politely saying, "Call from... (name). Push one to accept, two to ignore, three to pick up and record..." If the person calling is one of your contacts online, then the computers does its best to say the name on its own. If it's a number that GrandCentral doesn't recognize, then it asks the caller to state their name when they first dial. This feature in particular has a tendency to confuse callers at first, but its great for screening calls from my end of the deal.

When I first started using GrandCentral at the beginning of 2008, there was an option on the "Address Book" tab to import contacts from Microsoft Outlook or other digital contact managing software. Unfortunately, that feature mysteriously went into "update mode" and stopped working for about seven months. After waiting anxiously for the feature to return, the feature decided to disappear this week all together. Heartbroken, I wrote this letter to the Grand Central team (picture added for dramatic effect):

From: John Wesley
Subject: Import/Export contacts
Date: Sun, 27 Jul 2008 15:27:47 -0700

For a while the Import contacts feature was having an "Upgrade," but recently it simply disappeared! What's going on? Will it ever come back? This is one feature that I'm not sure I can easily live without. :(

Please respond to let me know the GrandCentral workers are real and
that this service has not simply been abandoned. I love grandcentral, but you're letting me down... It's almost like being cheated on by a girl you've only dated for like six months but still felt really connected too. Yea, it probably wasn't going to work, but damn it was
nice while it was working. Maybe, just maybe, we could make this work. If we try. Together. GrandCentral, let's forget the past. All those things that happened? Let's leave those behind and move on with our lives... NO. Let's move on to a BETTER life. I believe in US. Don't let me down. <3

Immediately after sending this email, I received an email stating how it was unlikely for me to get a return email concerning my issue, "...due to the large number of emails received daily." Luckily, my love note was heart warming enough to generate a response:

Hello,

Thanks for your report.

The import and export functionality in the GrandCentral Address Book are currently unavailable. Our engineers are working diligently to find a solution.

We apologize for any inconvenience this issue may have caused and appreciate your patience and cooperation.

Sincerely,

The GrandCentral Team

Well, that's better than nothing, but not by much.

I still love you, GrandCentral, but you have to stop these games. STOP TOYING WITH MY HEART! :'(

~jw

P.S. All pictures found via Google Images. If you feel I have misused or stolen and of your work, please tell me in the comments and I will remove the picture. Thanks!

What's lower than "lol?"

If you're reading this article, then you hopefully know what the internet is. If you know what the internet is, then you've probably heard this expression: "lol." Lol (pronounced "lowl") is an acronym for the phrase "laugh out loud," and is commonly overused to fill silences in online conversation. Don't have anything to say? Then just type "lol" and move on with your life.

Unfortunately, this blatant abuse of the term ultimately forced internet users to come up with a more powerful version of the expression when something comical made them actually laugh. This led to the birth of "LMAO," or "laughing my ass off." Sadly, even "LMAO" is loosing its meaning as people begin to misuse it more and more as well.

Well today, no more. If you do audibly laugh at something, I propose using the old acronym, "lol." For simply humorous moments, I propose the use of a new acronym: "jag," which stands for "just a grin." While it might sound a little strange at first, it will catch on through proper use. To help explain, I've created a brief chart. Observe:
Get it? Stop the abuse. Spread the word.

~jw

P.S. Thanks to the comment from "Hmm," I've fixed a typo I made. Thanks! You're right. :)

5 more reasons the RIAA is retarded

As of June 26, 2008, the RIAA has sued the following people:

Homeless people

"In Warner v. Berry, where the RIAA was suing a man who lives in a homeless shelter, the Magistrate Judge -- Hon. Kevin Nathaniel Fox -- recommended that the plaintiffs' application for a default judgment be denied, and that the plaintiffs be ordered to show cause why they should not be sanctioned under Rule 11. The Judge agreed that the default judgment should be denied, but chose not to sanction plaintiffs' attorneys."

Dead people

"Lawyers representing several record companies have filed suit against an 83 year-old woman who died in December, claiming that she made more than 700 songs available on the Internet."

People without computers *or* internet

“Plaintiffs are informed and believe that Defendant, without the permission or consent of Plaintiffs, has used, and continues to use, an online media distribution system to download the copyrighted recordings, to distribute the copyrighted recordings to the public, and/or to make the copyrighted recordings available for distribution to others’.”

Interesting: “has used, and continues to use”. However, the Walls don’t even own a computer.

People in a stroke

"The defendant John Paladuk was living in Florida at the time of the alleged copyright infringement, and had notified the RIAA that he had not engaged in any copyright infringement. Despite the fact that Mr. Paladuk suffered a stroke last year (pdf), rendering him disabled, the RIAA commenced suit against him on February 27, 2007. Suing the disabled is not new to the RIAA."

The wrong person knowingly for two years

"On Monday, the RIAA conceded that, after nearly two years of litigation, it was targeting the wrong person."

~jw

How to use your gmail account as a disposable email account!

Starting about two years ago, web users started using temporary email accounts to sign up for web services and to avoid spam. Well, instead of using one of the many fake-email-address-generating websites, you can use your very own Gmail accounts with no worries! Here's how!

1. Once you're logged into your Gmail account, click "settings" in the upper right section of the page.

2. Now change to the "Filters" tab.
3. Now click "Create a new filter" on the bottom of the page.
4. In the "To:" form, enter your regular Gmail account address, but add two periods between the last two letters of your email account. Because Gmail ignores the periods, emails sent to that address would normally end up in your inbox.
5. On the next page, select "Skip the Inbox" and "Delete it," and then select "Update Filter." Optionally, you can also select the check box next to the "Update" button to remove all previous emails sent to this version of your email address.

Congratulations! Next time you want to sign up for something online but don't want to receive spam, give them your email account with the two additional periods. All emails sent to this address will automatically be put into the trash and marked as read, never to bother you again! If you need to receive an email to activate your account, just look in the trash. Also, this means that your "spam" folder doesn't fill up with unread mail. Awesome!

~jw

Sad Pokemon

WARNING! Some of these are NSFW.
I stumbled upon these pictures HERE a while back and couldn't find any other sources, so I thought I would post them here to make them easier to view! Click on the pictures to see them at their original size. Enjoy!