How not to miss another reply?

Replies are very important in communication. Specially where there isn’t a direct real time connectivity between people who communicate, replies are vital. In modern days comment replies on your blog, Twitter replies & all kinds of replies you get on your online activities are so important, even though web2.0 seem to be fading. Today you’ll learn how not to miss replies On comments(on blogs), social news sites & Twitter.

First Let’s see ‘How not to miss another reply on Twitter’. Yes Twitter is still the big thing (at least for me :D ) .

Twitter only shows up messages from people you follow on your time line. Same thing happens to @replies addressed to you by people you don’t follow. But @replies are so important. You better be aware of @replies come your way, to have a healthy Twitter life. After all “being in conversation” is the most important thing in Twitter. So here’s how not to miss that @reply.

Method 1: Get Twitter @replies as an RSS feed.
1. Go to Twitter serach page.
2. Search for your Twitter id with @ sign. ex: @chanux . If you wanna track multiple IDs do it like this ‘@myID OR @myFriend’ ex: @chanux OR @sinhalenFOSS. Of course there’s Twitter advanced search for you to tweak your query to match your needs.
3. Once you get the search results page Find the RSS for the query on top right hand side of search page.

4. Subscribe to the feed with your favorite RSS reader or Get updates right in your mail inbox with RSSFWD.

Method 2: Get Twitter @replies on Gtalk(jabber)
1. Invite twitterspy@jabber.org to chat.
2. Twitter spy will Auto reply you & then you can setup Twitter tracks. send following commands to twitterspy on IM.
on – Activates notifications.
track – track key words (ex: track @myID).
tracks – list the key words you track now.
untrack – Discard tracks (ex: untrack @myID)

Here is an intuitive howto for setting up TwitterSpy.

Now Let’s see How not to miss another reply on your comments on blogs/social news sites.

For this there is that great service called Backtype. You just sign Up, (maybe) complete four initial steps & steup alerts on your own key words.

1. Signup & Login to Bactype.com.
2. Go to Alerts page & put your key words in (ex: @yourID ) & Choose the Alert type. And create Alert.

Backtype

3. Keep commenting :D

There are more you can do with your comments in Backtype. You just discover the great service by yourself.

And never miss another reply :) .

Ubuntu on HP mini note.

Okay here I am again on HP mini. This time about Ubuntu on HP mini note. Not that I’m trying to flaunt my mini note but this post comes because there was a request. Anyway let me go on.

Installing Ubuntu on HP mini note
Installing ubuntu or anything on HP mini note is not going to be a problem since I bought an external DVD R/W drive along with mini. Even if you don’t have one you can still install Ubuntu (or technically any GNU/Linux distro) with pendrive Linux, or some other way. However I have things far easier here. If you have an external drive plug it, switch on the mini, press F9 & choose optical drive.
And all other details/guidelines you need to get Ubuntu working fine on mini are found here on Ubuntu wiki. (I don’t want to add garbage to internet ;) ).

There are some issues I faced which were not mentioned on above resource. So I’m going to discuss them here.

When I boot Ubuntu live CD on my mini, at somestage I lost everything for white screen. I was lucky to have gadget guru geekaholic around & he came up with the solution. I’ll list the steps down as if I invented it :evil: .

Press Alt+Ctrl+F2 to go to somewhere(a virtual console) you can rule. And type the following.

$ sudo -s

$ nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf
or use vi or any available text editor of your choice.

Look for something like following.

section        “Device”
something    “something else”

You have to add

driver        “vesa”

finally it will look like

section        “Device”
something    “something else”
driver        “vesa”

Now save the modifications (Ctrl+O, enter, Ctrl+x on nano & Shift+:, wq, enter on vi).

Now press Alt+Ctrl+F7 to find that white screen again. And restart X server pressing Alt+Ctrl+Backspace

Now you’ll see ubuntu again, If you are lucky ;).

Before You start installing You better read above mentioned howto.

The rest is for you to do. Happy installing.

How is Ubuntu on HP mini?

Once I installed & got everything working on my ubuntu installation I started doing all my stuff with it & I never felt that this machine has any limitations. Ubuntu runs very well on HP mini. So far HP mini, Ubuntu duo treats me far better than any of earlier primary machines (desktops).

I didn’t try to get 3D support on, so no compiz I candy yet. And also I couldn’t do the hack for CPU scaling, but I have plans to try it once I finish my exams. It’ll help reduce the heat & increase battery life. That’s why I wanted you to read that howto, before you install ubuntu on mini. That howto has steps to get CPU scaling enabled & it starts with the installation process. And 2nd tip of this post of ubuntu kung fu will help to actually work it out once you get CPU scaling on.

Conclusion: My completely biased Idea is that “a GNU/Linux distro is the best OS option for any netbook including HP 2133 mini note :) “.

IM presence on your blog AIM, Gtalk, MSN, Yahoo!.

You want to show your readers that you are available to share Ideas? And you didn’t know how to? Here’s the short & (may be) sweet or either simple how to for that.

AIM
1. Go and register for the AOL dev account at http://dev.aol.com/aim.
2. Find Your AIM presence HTML code at AIM presence page.

Gtalk
1.Go to Gtalk badge generation page.
2.You will find out what to do there.

NOTE: WordPress.com blog users be carefull with the badges with frames. AFAIK WP.com don’t allow iframe.

MSN
1.Edit Following HTML code.
<span><img border=”0″ height=”12″ width=”12″ src=”/_layouts/images/imnhdr.gif” onload=”IMNRC(‘YOUR_MSN_ID‘)” ShowOfflinePawn=”1″ id=”MSNID1″ />your name</span>

2.Paste it where you want.

Yahoo!
1.Edit Following HTML code.

<a href=”http://edit.yahoo.com/config/send_webmesg?.target=YOUR_YAHOO_ID&.src=pg”>
<img border=0 src=”http://opi.yahoo.com/online?u=YOUR_YAHOO_ID&m=g&t=0“></a>

replace YOUR_YAHOO_ID with your yahoo ID (just the user name)

Change t=0 in to any number you like from 0 to 16.

2.Paste it where you want.

Is it just for me or?

How many times you have felt like that? How many times you wanted to know if that damn thing is only happened to you? if it was just a web site fail to load you would use downforeveryoneorjustme.com . But if it is about something else, err… something about Firefox or a GNU/Linux problem or just any random thing? There’s something better you can use.

The Twitterverse. Lot’s of people share their experiences there and isn’t it great if you can check Twitterverse for that random thing. But how? summize.com [search.twitter.com now] which is now acquired by Twitter itself does search the Twitterverse real time & give you the answers. I’ve already used it few times & succeeded :D . As an example I checked whether Twitter RSS feed is down, using summize ;)

What Twitter has become ultimately?.

It’s like the whole world has gone atwitter. At least I am feeling so as a net addict. Everyone ‘I feel like wanna know of’ are just a tweet away. And it’s not just that…

Some people use it to get NEWS. There are lot of giant & famous NEWS providers who do twitter. So it’s easy to “know your world” or may be universe. Since Twitter comes even on to your mobile phone NEWS is just a matter of a tweet.

Some people use it as a markweting device. Since it helps to inform your followers by just a matter of a tweet, it’s so easy & productive to use twitter for marketing.

Some people use it to share ideas & news. This work great in a community who think alike. Personally I feel the greatness of this. All my friends who love Gnu/Linux & Free Software share ideas & news, hacks or anything tweetable on my Twitter network. Even if one of us are in a problem tweeting help! works greater than shouting Heeelpppp!!!.

Some people use it as a stress reducer or let me call it a “pain killer”. If you feel like the “world is on your shoulders” Tweeting out aloud might help reduce the burden. I’ve personally done that & I know lot of people who use Twitter mostly for that very reason :) . The reason why it actually works is because people who care about you are gonna read it & your mind knows that. Sometimes, someone out of those people will feel kind enough to reply you, then you’ll see “words from heaven”, not Twitter.

And some people use it as an IM platform :P . Yes I lie not. There are people who chat via Twitter. We can say it’s twitter if they use @messages to replay. But when they just converse sending tweets back & forth it’s an IM platform. I personally have problems with 250 dvice updates/week thanx to this IM thing. This is the latest thing that makes Twitter a swiss army knife of communication.

This is only a very short list of various usage of Twitter. I’m sure you have your own benefits of using Twitter. I wrote all this to say that “Twitter is really actually a Social networking platform”.
Thank you so much Twitter for keeping my life atwitter.