Hello and welcome, to my blog.

Remove Your Deadbeat Friends:

Twitoria helps you find people on your follow list that haven’t tweeted in a set period of time (when it works). This is great for users who follow lots of people, as there is a natural rate of turn over with Twitter accounts.

http://twitoria.com/

Twitter Karma

By default, the list contains all your friends and followers and is sorted by last update, showing those who most recently updated first. You can sort the list alphabetically either ascending or descending by Twitter ID. You can filter the list in several ways: only friends or only followers, all friends or all followers, and mutual friends.

http://dossy.org/twitter/karma/

My Cleenr

My Cleenr is a brutally simple list trimming utility for Twitter that shows you a list of people you’re following, with the oldest tweeters on top. This allows you to remove accounts that may be dormant or abandoned.

http://www.mycleenr.com/

Tweet Buddy

Tweet buddy is another great utility that allows you to break down your list of follows based on who follows you, and who is not.

http://www.tweetbuddy.com/prune/

Friend or Follow

Friend or Follow is by far the best looking of these utilities, which means absolutely nothing, but they get brownie points from me for matching that ‘Twitter’ look very well. The list of your friends who are not following you uses your Twitter theme which is a nice touch.

http://friendorfollow.com/

Twitterless

Twitterless is the most comprehensive of all these tools, and works in a very different way. To signup you need to follow them (how clever) and the purpose is to allow you to group your friends, filter & search them, locate your followers, and see graphs on your Twitter usage.

http://twitterless.com/

From the official IE blog over at MSDN, Microsoft has announced that they’ll be pushing IE8 out the door via the Automatic Updates feature of Windows XP, and Vista. Users of the archaic IE6 and the soon to be ancient IE7 will get an ‘optional’ welcome screen asking them if they want Microsoft’s new browser hotness.

If you want to keep it retro and roll your old browser, Microsoft will simply nag you forever (as they should) about the new browser as an ‘optional’ update.

The most curious part of this announcement was that Microsoft will be releasing an “blocker” app which will allow system admins, and networking administrators (and other geek folk) to block the automatic roll out of IE8.

I think it’s pretty obvious that this is necessary (and also quite smart thinking by the folks at MS), but I think it speaks volumes to the differences between a small nimble company like Apple and Microsoft. Everyone is wowed by the small guy’s ability to shed the past and blaze a new trail, not ever thinking about the ones that are left behind. Microsoft’s approach is inclusive, and respectful to all the dinosaurs out there running the old stuff.

As usual TechCrunch, specifically a Jason Kincaid authored post led me to a new startup named Cucku recently launched that promises a P2P-like system for backing up your local files to a remote location. The system works by pairing you with a ‘buddy’ to which your files are backed up, encrypted and then stored in case you need to restore later.

“Cucku backs up your data locally and then sends a secure copy to a trusted friend or family member of your choice. It’s easy, trustworthy, and free!”

Now, I wonder if you need to have a friend or can the service pair you with someone random. Doesn’t it make sense to have the system automatically determine the closest/fastest partner and establish the pairing?

“You only need to set up Cucku Backup once. Cucku backs up automatically when you’re not using your computer. Remote backup sends new or changed files to your backup partner. It’s local and online backup combined — keeping you protected at all times.”

If they do *require* a friend, it might be a slick viral tool, in that each new member has to invite someone they know as a partner (potential for good growth rates).

Lastly their branding (logo) looks very Mozilla-ish, almost begging the question was this startup formed and molded with the idea of a Google/Mozilla buyout? Their website is strong though, if not a little heavy on the generic stock photography. Tip: If you don’t have good stock photo choices, use informative graphics instead, we don’t need the shiny happy people (unless their good).

I stumbled across the ALARMd.com Internet Alarm Clock a few months back, possibly via del.icio.us or Stumble Upon. I think the idea is great, and very well executed. With a large red font, and all black backdrop, the Internet Alarm clock is the perfect web based clock application I have found. The “Naken” mode makes it even better, eliminating the already minimal options and titles. For people that live with their computer, and try to eliminate all other necessities (like a cheap alarm clock) this clock is perfect.

The coolest feature I saw was the Alarm sound customization (pick an alarm), which allows you to open Pandora in a new window, which for most people with stored cookies should start playing your favorite music right away.

If you’re like me and you still have a few machines running good ol’ reliable and trustworthy (I keed, I keed) Windows XP than registry tweaks and optimization guides for XP are a very handy thing. Sure Vista is the new hotness, and to be really cutting edge I could publish information on how to tweak the registry of Microsoft’s newest OS. But I’ll play it safe and show you some tips on eeking every last bit of performance out of that old XP machine of yours. Kellys-Korner dot com has one of the best write ups for the Windows registry and it’s many tweaks I’ve seen in a long time. Totalling 399, you’re sure to find something useful in this guide.

I have recently added all of my blogs and websites into Google Analytics marketing resource online. If you want to keep track of how many people visit your blog or website daily, weekly, monthly and yearly than you should sign up for Google Analytics. This service is FREE and it is a great tool to use when you want to track your readers and to know how popular your website and or blog is. I have already gotten great stats for my blogs that I was unsure of how popular they were and they are getting more visits than I had thought. You can sign up for Google Analytics here.

Desktop two dot com is another application in a long list of online OS replacements competing to get a piece of this new market. The idea is that instead of your native OS like Windows Vista, Mac OSX or Linux, you’d run Desktoptwo, which is a purely online operating system that runs using Flash and Java.

The pros to this setup are a truly mobile and modular operating environment. Accessible from any web connected PC. The downsides or cons to online operating systems are the fact that they currently depend on an Internet connection (something that isn’t quite everyone yet) and also that it requires an existing operating system to run.

I’m going to repeat that last con so it sets in a little, “you need an existing operating system to run the online operating system”. This is a big con, and until PC’s can be built and deployed with a bios/light OS, online operating systems will remain a niche product reserved for uber geeks and specific users who require an online OS.

Do the owners of test.com check the email sent to test@test.com? If they do what do they do with the possible thousands of test messages being sent everyday? Is the volume substantial or moderate?

I develop Rich Internet Applications for a living and over the years (7 of them) I’ve used test@test.com countless times in development and also to bypass lame email checks/registration requirements.

Does anyone out there in the blogosphere know the owners of test.com?

From their “About” page:

Test.com has a successful twelve year track record providing hosted testing software to leading organizations.

Visit Test.com for organizations to learn more about Test.com’s flagship product, or contact us if you would like to learn more about Test.com and how you can request a free no obligation trial of our software.