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This blog is now here: http://xackit.blogspot.com . So if anybody was actually reading this..go there now.

Geek Heaven

Okay, before I was a geek, I was a guy. Now I'm a guy geek. This movie with the contrast between Jolie's fab stab at retro and Leah's stylish way of looking like she doesn't care what you think mixed in this white room with nice rays hitting walls and subjects makes this the closest thing I've seen to geeky cinema d'vive. Yep mark me down as fanboy. Props to JO one of the best writers at RWW one of my fav online reads.

Programming the Real-Time Web with Leah Culver from ReadWriteWeb on Vimeo.

Google’s New Wonderwheel

Just cranked up a Google search to get this new sidebar – not like the one I had been prepared to get. This one let me narrow the search to the most recent results, the past hour, and more.  Under all results was this new option called the “wonder wheel”. Which in it’s own wonderful way links “twitter tools 2009” to “bible verses.” Interesting for sure, but wonderful? Hmmmmm.

Microsoft When Will You Learn?

I set up a laptop with Windows 7 last night. Man, I love running a clean install. Super fast. I've been thinking maybe Microsoft is learning to work and play well with others. The next thing I installed is my FireFox which I have to have. I then decided to install Windows Live Writer which is a great blogging tool. I also installed Windows Live Photo Gallery and Windows Live Movie Maker.

Run my Firefox afterwards and Microsoft has installed a ChoiceGuard add-on, changed my home page, and changed my search provider to Bing not inside IE which I wouldn't care - but inside my FireFox. None of which I asked for or wanted. Don't remember Microsoft explicitly saying we will change your homepage in your Firefox browser either. Not surprising though, that's the old Microsoft that I remember.

I've really wanted to like Microsoft for years. I've tried harder than anyone I know and defending them in a full on nest of Macabees. But they keep doing this kind of crap which is a complete turn off. Would your bottom line really suffer that much if you just did it straight up and made a great product and let it stand on it's own merit?

I guess for payback I'll have to put the Chrome in IE and speed up my Ubuntu testing schedule.

Bug In Google Toolbar?

I’ve been getting tons of these…

It’s not always Hungarian, sometimes it’s Croation and others, but it’s never right. The page is in English.

Hmmm.

Fun with Google Sidewiki

I don’t know if I am thrilled or disappointed yet with Google Sidewiki. Google’s new public “slambook.” I like the disruptive, democratic aspects of being able to “tag” anyone’s web page but I’m not thrilled about having yet another thing to check on all my pages. I did discover a little twink too that I’ll share with you. When I first discovered Sidewiki, I went to the site and claimed our primary site so I could put a permalink at the top of the page. You do that with Google’s Webmaster Tools. If you haven’t done it yet I recommend doing it now. By putting a meta tag you can write the always topmost sidewiki entry.

The hiccup I ran into is I originally added www.netfishbowl.com so when I accessed it at netfishbowl.com the comments weren’t there. A little quirky, I can’t check if deleting the www still covers the subdomain just yet. It takes 24 hours to kick in.

I also went to other pages, I’m NOT the webmaster of and tried to add the first sidewiki entry there too. Just in case some clever chap wanted to bash me secretly. This brings up my other “scary” moment with Google sidewiki. On my Xackr twitter page I wrote a banal “hi there” entry. And when I went back I got this…

I hadn’t seen this before on the other posts I made. The yellow block suggesting my entry “may be less useful” was new. I would guess because it is short and maybe at some algorithmic lower reading level, it doesn’t meet up to their standards maybe?

Which leads to the bigger question. Someday in the near future will I be adapting what I say and do to please the robots at Google? I know we already do to get our pages ranked higher but me on my own twitter page? Seems a tad F’dUp.

On pages that are “mine” but I’m not the webmaster on – like http://www.twitter.com/xackr. This could be source of concern. You can’t really choose to opt out because you have to manage your “brand”. And technically they could say they are not modifying the page. The only recourse I can imagine at this point is that Xackr is my copyright and they must be using it to tag their sidewikis but I can’t imagine how I could (or even if I would want to) pursue that.

Again, I’m not opposed to sidewiki. I’m not even down on Google yet. I love and use a lot of their stuff. Xackr.com is a Google app. I do pause at the idea of being so into it, that I don’t step back and keep perspective on it.

Finally, if you really want to help me, are a Firefox user, have the Google Toolbar and have sidewiki – go to http://www.twitter.com/xackr and rank my comment useful. It will really help my sagging self esteem.

I Get The Feeling I Haven’t Mastered Squidoo Yet