Category Technology

Here is a new update to this post –

Please read this latest version of the best tool for this, viable as of Friday, August 20th, 2010

How to mass follow and unfollow on twitter FOR FREE?!?!?

Here is an update to this post – Be sure to check out this updated version for the >10k club!

How to mass follow and unfollow on twitter: over 10k club!

So you’re sitting there wondering “I wonder who is following me that I’m not following back!” or the more realistic question “Which of these folks that I’m following are not following me!”

Here is our good friend Friend or Follow!

It’s actually very simple to use.  Simply browse to their site, enter your name hit submit and you’re off!

Pet the bunny! :)

Then suddenly you’re brought to this wonderful page!

At that point, you can click on their names and decide if you want to continue following them or not.  It’s a useful way to see who it is that you are following who is not following you.   But the benefits don’t end there!

Simply by clicking on Fans, you’ll get a list of people who are following you, but YOU are not following back!

This happens to the best of us, or they’re spammers which haven’t been removed yet, in either case you can click on them and choose to follow or not!

Here is where it gets tricky.   Let’s say you chose to follow ‘x’ number of folks and they’re not reciprocating, and you decide “Alright, I’ve had enough of this!” I hear it more often than not.

Well, with Friend or Follow here, you can open up every page, perform your 3-4 clicks and remove them as friends.  Oh I forgot, I don’t have that kind of time and carpal tunnel, do you have another option?

Introducing Twitter Karma!

The security conscious folks abound will be concerned about using this as it does require you to enter your password (It will be performing calls on your behalf so that’s understandable that it needs credentials)

You need to be cautious when using this, if your API limit is close to being maxed as it may “appear” as though it’s not working.   Just try again in an hour if it’s not working as expected.

(Infact, merely connecting the first time is often enough to exceed your rate limit – Be warned)

Then simply change the “Show” field to “Only Following:”

Pop on down to the bottom and make your decision:

If you’re looking to drop everyone, do a “check all” and “Bulk Unfollow” and it’ll go through and unfollow them.

A bit of warning, this may take some time, so please be patient.  I find the best way to keep up on whether it is working (Because it goes into work mode the instant you click it: Would be to go to your twitter homepage, and watch the numbers increase/decrease appropriately.

One of the hardest parts for me to unfollow people is, I enjoy reading their conversations and interacting with them, regardless of whether they’re following me.  But Twitter Limits and other restrictions force you into these situations! :)

One of the nicest parts is it will show you when they “Last Updated” so you can feel better removing people who haven’t updated “Ever” or “not in a year” or so.

So remember, if you’re looking to mass follow, mass unfollow, or take any kind of mass actions (Or even just get a feeling of how unbalanced things may be)  – The two tools mentioned above will help you achieve that!

Be sure to be running the latest version of TweetDeck and Adobe Air also, just in general :)

And be sure to add me @cxi on Twitter and @cxi on 12seconds!

Raise your hand if you use Tweetdeck! Yes I know you do, we all do.

You ever sit there and wonder what that little   is up in the control section? A click on it will reveal much excitement to be had!

Simply clicking that little 12 will bring up this prompt: Asking you for your 12seconds.tv creds!

Then, get ready for it, because all of a sudden you have access to Video in Tweetdeck!

OMFG What is going on here? Why are there videos in Tweet Deck? This is actually kind of cool!

Hovering over it will prompt you to Play the clip, or click the arrow and Whoa! Wait a minute you can RT from here as well?!

RT cxi: 12seconds – http://12seconds.tv/channel/cxi/64782

#Playing in TweetDeck

It’ll grey out your background while it displays video! 

Okay, this all seems a bit weird.  I thought we could only interact with each other in 140 character segments (Less in a reply) but now we can suddenly interact in 12 second segments?    Sure, you might think 12 seconds doesn’t seem like a lot, You say I want more, I want 12 times 12 seconds to get my point across! But seriously, that’s Gross But seriously, you can say a lot in 12 seconds and this gets to that point.  The first time you’ll realize just how long of a time 12 seconds indeed is :)

*I won’t even mention the iPhone Application they announced on the 18th! ;*

How cool can this possibly be? Think about it.  It’s been integrated into Tweetdeck for how long now? And we’ve never even noticed it?  I think it’s time we take notice (Especially with the TweetDeck Holiday update coming Dec 24th! hooray! :))

As always you can find me on twitter at @cxi but you can also find me on 12seconds @cxi!

So get out there, give it a try, add me in my shaven and unshaven form and lets celebrate the 12 seconds of christmas together!

Bought any Picture Frames recently? They might be hacked! (Or vulnerable) If you’ve purchased the SPF-85H (From Amazon) or in general, you should be aware of this!  By the looks of it, “some” of the media have been delivered with the W32.Sality.AE worm on the install media! WTF?

Get your removal on if you’re affected!

Greetings from Amazon.com.
We have recently learned that Samsung has issued an alert affecting its SPF-85H 8-Inch Digital Photo Frame. Our records indicate that you have purchased one of the digital photo frames through the Amazon.com website and are therefore affected by this alert.
The alert involves the SPF-85H 8-Inch Digital Photo Frames w/1GB Internal Memory, designed to work with Windows-based PCs via a USB connector. They were sold between October and December 2008 for about $150.
The alert concerns discovery of the W32.Sality.AE worm on the installation disc SAMSUNG FRAME MANAGER XP VERSION 1.08, which is needed for using the SPF-85H as a USB monitor. If you are using Vista or a different version of Frame Manager, this issue does not affect you.
If your anti-virus software displays a Virus Alert after you have installed Samsung Frame Manger 1.08 using the installation CD, please perform the following procedure:
1. Quarantine or delete the W32.Sality.AE worm.
2. Uninstall the current version of Frame Manager 1.08 you installed from the install CD. (Click Start –> Settings –> ; Control Panel ->; Add or Remove Programs. Find and then click Frame Manager in the Add or Remove Programs dialog, and then click Remove.)
3. Download and install the updated version of Frame Manager XP 1.082 from the Samsung Download Center
4. After you install Samsung Frame Manager 1.082, reboot your computer to complete the process.
If these steps do not correct the problem, please call Samsung Service Hotline at 1.800.SAMSUNG (800-726-7864).
If you purchased this item as a gift for someone, please notify the recipient immediately and provide them with the information in the Samsung Alert concerning this issue.
We regret the inconvenience this alert has caused you but trust you will understand that the safety of our customers is our highest priority.
Thanks for shopping at Amazon.com.
Sincerely,
Customer Service
Amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com/

Happy Holidays and keep yourself Malware free! Thanks to @silvakreuz for the heads up!

For those of you who know me, I’m passionate.  Infact I’m a bit too much over the top “OMG I want to share this with you” type of passionate, which is why I convey a lot of the information that I do in the form of this blog.

For the longest time (since I’ve started at NetApp) There has been information I’ve wanted to share.    However, the NDA, Protective and other natures of me has prevented from really transmitting and transferring that “OMFG! This is sooo cool! You should know about it! It will make your life so much easier, faster, etc!”

Luckily for me! Some of those things which I find absoluteledly cool like you wouldn’t believe, I will be allowed to talk about! (Yay me! Yay you!)  so look forward to a series of segments on process simplification, some excerpts of my undelivered Accelerate training session (Which I still need to finish the full write-up of, for posterity) and a whole other series of cool stuff I absolutely love to talk about, especially when there’s noone to share the knowledge with!

Do let me know if there’s something in particular you want me to talk about and I’ll see if I can without getting into too much trouble! I honestly have had a whole slew of topics which I’ve self-squelched myself so as not to get into any sticky situations discussing things I’m not supposed to!

I’m looking forward to this!

It’s a dark night, you’re in a cold murky alley.   There’s a random file found in the root of your drive (or mount point).   Suddenly, your cluster goes offline.   WTF!

If you’re thinking, “Damnit, what did my storage vendor do now!” You’d be mistaken.

There’s this little doozy out there:

“A physical disk resource may unexpectedly fail or go offline when the IsAlive function is executed on a Windows Server 2008 cluster node” to the tune of Q953652

Microsoft declares it to happen when you meet the following scenario:

• You have a Windows Server 2008 cluster node.
• The IsAlive function is executed on the cluster node while a file is being accessed in the root folder of the cluster disk.

In this scenario, a physical disk resource on the Windows Server 2008 cluster node may unexpectedly fail or go offline. This behavior occurs randomly.

Or otherwise read as: If you have a file in the root of Drive letter or Mount point, the drive may ‘disappear’ when you have this configured in a cluster (This does not apply to Server 2008 single servers)

Quite often this is blamed on the storage (regardless of vendor) so be sure to keep your clusters up to spec and make sure to apply this Hotfix from Microsoft, especially if you meet this criteria!

Good luck Clusters, and those cold dark alleys won’t be so bad.