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Scalr – A Scaleable Cloud Solution

Scalrscalr.com
Works with Amazon EC2. Scales on the fly according to demand.

Ian May’s profile on MyLikes

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Why Pay Roaming Charges when visiting the UK?

Very useful if you’re travelling to the UK! International roaming charges are always horrendously expensive otherwise

Ian May’s profile on MyLikes

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Does Twitter Encourage Disloyalty?

A few days ago I read a comment from Jesse Stay in which he was suggesting that Twitter encourages disloyalty.

He feels that Twitter encourages potential blog subscribers to not subscribe, but rely on Twitter links instead to reach the content that they want to read.

I’m not so sure that this is vastly different from subscribing to a blog’s RSS feed, and then only reading the articles that have headers that look potentially interesting. We’re using the RSS feed as a filter in that case, and surely this is what we’re doing with Twitter.

Combined with search strings and hashtags, this does make using Tweets to find the content you want very appealing. It’s certainly much quicker than wading through a whole blog, and perhaps even quicker than scanning down a list from that RSS feed too.

If you’re already a frequent Twitter user, you’re probably already set up with a Twitter client such as Seesmic or Tweetdeck, where it’s easy to set up these searches. I have a few set up in Tweetdeck, in a separate column.

Of course there are many other ways to find content, search engines being the obvious one. There’s also real-time search such as Collecta, and services such as Backtype. I use these two.

Having said all this, if I find a really interesting blog, with a high proportion of posts of interest to me, then I will subscribe, and it goes on my small reading list. (I have to keep it small or I’d never read most of it, and that would defeat the point of having a reading list in the first place).

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Geek Fuel!

Healthy Coffeewww.perkins.organogold.com
It’s always a real pleasure to drink good coffee and tea


Ian May’s profile on MyLikes

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Subeta – Your Very Own Virtual Pet

Subetawww.subeta.net
It’s good for a bit of harmless fun.

Ian May’s profile on MyLikes

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How To Remove A Non-Empty Directory in Ubuntu

It’s really very simple.

Bring up a terminal window.

At the command prompt type sudo rm -r <directory-name>

So, if you wanted to remove a directory called ’spare’ that was in the directory ‘etc’ which is itself off the home directory you would simply type without the quotes ’sudo rm -r /etc/spare’

The system will prompt you for your administrative password. Enter that, hit enter, and the job is done.

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Charleston Co-Working Group

Wikipedia says: "Co working is an emerging trend for a new pattern for working. Typically work-at-home professionals or independent contractors or people who travel frequently end up working in relative isolation. Co working is the social gathering of a group of people, who are still working independently, but who share values and who are interested in the synergy that can happen from working with talented people in the same space."

Google Groups
Subscribe to CHSCoWork
Email:
Visit this group
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Google Public DNS

Google has announced the launch of Google Public DNS. It’s an alternative domain name service available to any Internet user.

IT can replace the DNS that are typically provided by Internet Service Providers or Domain Registration companies

Google’s Announcement says  “Google Public DNS [can] serve many DNS requests in the round trip time it takes a packet to travel to our servers and back… Google Public DNS makes it more difficult for attackers to spoof valid responses by randomizing the case of query names and including additional data in its DNS messages… Google Public DNS complies with the DNS standards and gives the user the exact response his or her computer expects without performing any blocking, filtering, or redirection that may hamper a user’s browsing experience.”

Anyone who wants to give the new service a try and knows how to reconfigure their network settings should use 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 as DNS addresses.

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Emergency Cell Phone Charger

Visiting friends this afternoon, they wanted to go to their local Big Lots.

Now I’m not one for shopping unless I want something, but I thought best not to be unsociaable and wander along with them anyway.

It took me under ten minutes to go around the whole store. Just before I finished I found this one useful gadget.

It was only five dollars, and it has an LED light that cab be used as a flashlight, and with the attached cable and adapters will fit many phones including my Blackberry.

While it wouldn’t be feasible to try and recharge the cellphone battery completely, a cranking of about three minutes will give up to fifeteen minutes of talk time depending on the brand of phone.

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How To Tweet From Google Wave

Using Tweety-Wave

Add “tweety-wave@appspot.com” to your Contacts.

Create a new Wave and drag and drop Tweety-Wave in to the Wave.

Then the Gadget will be automatically be opened within the  box.

Remember to enable popup(s) for the Wave webpage.

A Twitter oAuth page will appear asking you to authorize Tweety-Wave

You can tweet directly from this wave.

Through TwitterGadget

Create a new private wave. Click on the “Add Gadgets by URL” and enter “http://www.twittergadget.com/gadget_gmail.xml”

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