Category Social Media

Wow! New Version of TweetDeck! Lots of new Features! Lots to get used to, and some things to get annoyed by!

Firstly.. there is a new Icon! And to tell you the truth, I keep losing it in my application list! doh!  But once I get past that (Yes I keep trying to get past it) I am fine!

Many people are really intrigued by the “Facebook” integration, though that has been there since v0.22b, so I’m not really going to talk about it too much here! – Just to say you’ll end up seeing this:   which will show your friends status on Facebook below it! – You are limited to a single Facebook account (FYI :)) Oh, and part of that is the functionality to post to Twitter, Facebook or both!   Again, not a big deal to me – especially as I use the Facebook plugin app to auto-pull my tweets and update my status (To the semi-annoyance of my Facebook friends, but I use Twitter more formally anyway, so people need to get over that :))

On to Options! (re: Settings)

Look at some of these new settings!.. The big ones is really.. “Show preview information for short URLs” which looks something like this:

So, that is pretty cool, and yes I have that enabled so I can see what kind of content it will be! When you do click on the URL it will still launch via the ‘short’ URL meaning if it’s an Adjix, Bit.ly or other type of ‘tracking’ link, it’ll still get the tracking on it

Oh, and last but not least.. If you’ve ever heard me complain about the Resource Usage of TweetDeck, and how it will tend to eat up >1gb of ram on my system.  Well, it seems the memory leak is fixed (for the moment.. I’ll leave it on over night and see how much I rack up) but it’s been going pretty good to stay in the ~200mb range!

So, good luck out there on your upgrades – Upgrade now! I’ll continue to monitor my resources and more, and if I find out anything new that I’d really like to complain about.. I will :)

What do you get when you bring a bunch of technical people together in a community setting to learn about technology and ask them to bring food for charity? Well, I hope to see more food than we can carry!

In an effort of community interest, good will, and what I rightly see as a good Experiment at this point, this month (March 19th) CWUG will involve not only a brown bag lunch, but also a request to bring unopened items to donate to the Northern Illinois Food Bank.

Honestly, it sounds like an amazing idea, one of which I think every user group, or even “Meet Up” and “Tweet Up” in Chicagoland and beyond should start doing on a regular basis – What better way to bring community together than by helping build out a part of community which is in need.

The agenda for next week’s CWUG is as follows:

Bring an item for the Pot Luck Dinner:

Last name A – F: Loaf of Bread + 1 bag Chips
Last name G – L: 6 pack Bottled Water
Last name M – R: Peanut butter
Last name S – Z: Jelly

5:00 – 5:30 Brown Bag Potluck and Networking
5:30 – 6:00 Room Introductions
6:00 – 6:15 Welcome/Meeting Kickoff
6:15 – 7:30 Microsoft Virtualization Technologies (App-V, MED-V, Hyper-V and Boot to VHD)
7:30 – 7:45 Break
7:45 – 9:00 Hands on labs – Windows 7 boot to VHD

Event URL : http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032407001&Culture=en-US
Event Title : CWUG: March Meeting – Chicago Loop
Event Date: Thursday, March 19th
Event Address : 200 E. Randolph, Suite 200, Chicago, IL 60601

Event URL : http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032407003&Culture=en-US

Event Title : CWUG: March Meeting – Downers Grove
Event Date: Thursday, March 19th
Event Address : 3025 Highland Pkwy. Suite 300, Downers Grove, IL 60515

Also, check out the group online, on Facebook and on Twitter!

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to let me know via email, @cxi on twitter, etc!

I’ve had this in my inbox… for a presentation on a whole series of “Twitter Saves Lives” type scenarios.   For those who remember the tragic events of 9/11, we all know, if we had Twitter in those days, communication would have spread like wild-fire and countless lives would have been saved when Cell networks went down, but SMS stayed up.

This has been said for lives being saved and communication on Twitter during EarthQuakes and other situations, but here is a direct story of how lives were saved recently with Lost Skiers’.

Twitter, Google Maps Used To Track Down Two Missing Skiers – from TechCrunch

by Robin Wauters on March 3, 2009

Update: Tragically, one of the skiers, Rob Williams, was not able to be saved. Our thoughts go out to his family.

Yesterday, a group of technology entrepreneurs from the UK on a skiing vacation in the Swiss Alps (Verbier) lost two of their party around 4 PM CET. Other members of the group put out arequest on Twitter in order to learn the numbers of their mobile phones, so they could use the signals to track them down.

According to follow-up tweets, one person (Jason) was rescued using a combination of GPS, Google Maps to determine longitude and latitude, and the signals returned from his iPhone, but another one (Rob) was still missing as the two had apparently been split up. It’s been 7 to 10 hours since the last Twitter messages at this point, so unfortunately we can only hope and not confirm if Rob has been found by now.

Below are a number of screenshots with Twitter messages from some of the group, includingAlex Hoye (CEO of digital marketing agency Latitude, Michael Acton Smith from Mind Candy,Joshua Marsh and Hermione Way (TechFluff.tv) Michelle Dewbs (winner of The Apprentice).

Let’s hope everything is alright. We’re frantically tracking Twitter to learn more, and we’re not the only ones.

(Hat tip to Google Maps Mania)

Hats off to those who took advantage of the medium, and TechCrunch for covering it.  And it just goes to show, Twitter is a community of people who want to share information, but also share in the lives of others, often including saving lives whether it is something as direct as freezing cold or even losing ones job and needing to find a new way.

This isn’t the first time Twitter has helped save someone’s life, and it won’t be the last.

I did a quick search on this (before writing this) and didn’t find anything so I thought “Maybe I’m not the only one wondering about the special loot, Collections and the Vault on Mafia Wars!

Extra! Extra! New Post! – Zynga Mafia Wars – How to win a fight, best weapons, armor and vehicles

First: Special Jobs!

If you’ve been playing Mafia wars at all (I blame Jeff and Aviva for asking me to join)  You will notice there are tiers of skill-sets in the Jobs you are to pull off.

And as you go through these ranks you’ll eventually finish out at level 3 with 3 Stars!

So, what good does this do? What’s the purpose behind actually finishing all this BS on these levels?  Well, here are your winnings!

	This gives you +4% damage dealt in fights. (I thought it was just +4, didn’t even notice the %, omfg!)
	-7% damage received in fights
	A 30 second reduction on your health regen timer
	A 5% discount on property purchases

Additional collectables, based upon comments by Johnny! And Special thanks to Keith for providing the images!

	a 30 second reduction on your stamina regen timer
	a 5% discount on property repairs
	A 30 second reduction on your energy regen timer
	a 5% bonus on job experience
	2x the energy regenerated per regen period

Once you’ve gotten past that… you’ll eventually find yourself winning various prizes while you do your jobs and missions.  The list will look similar to this: (These are your collections)

Eventually while you develop your collection, you’ll obtain 7 of a single type, and you can then vault it.   The two things I’ve vaulted look like this:

If you cannot make that out, that is +6 energy, +2 energy and +5 defense.. all for playing the game in general.

So, nothing special otherwise has been revealed.

Okay – Some updates! Also if you happen to have the entries which are missing, let me know and I’ll be sure to update the list here!

I’ve also included what I have so far as Cuba stuff, and the other added NY things!

Also, the new Cuban Business Model is interesting

Be sure to invest your money in cuban businesses early and sell often if it nears filling up, because money is very difficult to come by in Cuba, even the top missions pay out at around a 3k max.

Though, here is a little ‘tip’ for those of who you get bored of constantly fighting and having to search/click.   Right click on an opponent who has a listing which you can defeat.  Copy the url, then open a new tab,  paste it, and keep click/entering on the url until you need to visit the hospital or are out of Stamina.   Yes, I am lame, but hey a lot of stamina gets boring!

Let me know if this is helpful, and when I come across other cool revelations I’ll list what those are here.

Also, if you’d like to join my Mafia in Mafia wars, or be my friend on Facebook in general, feel free to add me ;)

Also, if you’re on twitter, I love friends there too :) @cxi on twitter!

And for more information, check out my updated post

What’s new in Zynga’s Mafia Wars

Extra! Extra! New Post! – Zynga Mafia Wars – How to win a fight, best weapons, armor and vehicles

Wow, Seattle is a long walk from Chicago, so I wasn’t able to attend!

But that doesn’t mean I couldn’t be involved!

However in hind-sight I do want to be able to catch up on the resources, and I know others will, so here is a listing of some resources which were available and accessible for the CloudCamp Seattle event!

For those of you who are on Twitter, there was definitely some activity out there on the Tweetosphere!  Lots of activity on the hashtag #cloudcamp which was actively hit up by these folks as well. – @DanielleMORRILL @SecureSun @krishnan @mediaphyter @bmw

Special thanks to @DanielleMORRILL and @bmw for the live feed and moderation as well :)

The links! The links!  Some must visit links are…

Video Feed from the back of the room (This has direct links to the video :))

A similar feed on that was found here

Danielle Morrill’s live feed during Cloud Camps

Special thanks to  :)

And ofcourse, :)