Author: vdebolt

Speed tests, manly pin boards, and passwords

There were three stories I wanted to write about this week. I debated with myself about which one to tell you about and couldn’t make up my mind. I decided to give you a quick version of all three. You’ll find out about an iPhone 4G speed test, some new sites similar to Pinterest aimed at men, and how some colleges and employers are asking for Twitter and Facebook passwords.

iPhone Speed Test

Ramsey Mohsen wanted to know if the iPhone iOS update from 5.1 to 5.01 really ran faster using 4G. He tested with both AT&T and Verizon using both 3G and 4G. The results were interesting!

These results confirm rumors I’ve heard that devices can use 4G, but the networks don’t have it up and running much of anywhere yet. Something to think about when you are looking at device price points, perhaps.

Pin Boards for Men

Imagine the scene on the pin board playground. The girls are having a great time pinning things. They are showing massive growth in traffic, links, sales, and all sorts of metrics that might translate into money using a little thing called Pinterest. The boys want to play, but Pinterest seems filled with girl cooties and isn’t manly enough for them.

Well, some of the fellas checked out Pinterest – Mark Zuckerberg from Facebook for one. This either means Zuckerberg isn’t scared of girl cooties, or Facebook may soon have a pin board function.

Mark Zuckerberg aside, the boys want to pin, too. Who could resist the sharing fun, spreading great ideas such as where to find the best set of socket wrenches. Manly stuff. Soon enough, there were reports like 3 Pinterest Alternatives for Men. The 3 mentioned included gentlemint.com, DartItUp, and MANteresting. Some of these are still in beta. Yes, the boys are playing catch up.

Capioomnia reported on some Pinterest alternatives, too, and mentioned one that is attempting to be gender-free called Chill. Chill is for video pinning. At Chill, you can pin videos about socket wrenches and sexy high heeled shoes for Valentine’s Day ensembles. Pins everyone can love.

May We Have Your Password, Please?

Finally, we come to the privacy invasion attempts by some employers and some colleges. They are asking potential employees and potential athletes to provide passwords for Twitter and Facebook. They want a look at your private stuff.

ReadWriteWeb posted What Should You Do If Your Employer Asks for Your Facebook Password? The article quoted career coach Sandra Lamb, who said,

If your Facebook or other social media website password is requested (or required) that goes beyond a red flag–it’s a deal breaker.

In this video from CBS This Morning, Cornell University professor Jeffrey Hancock said that asking for passwords is illegal, period. It’s not okay. Also part of the password conversation in this clip from CBS is the idea of digital estates, which BlogHer featured in Are You Prepared with a “Digital Estate”.

Legal or not, this is an growing practice. With jobs so hard to find, articles like Job Seeker Balks at Request to Provide Facebook Login emphasize the difficulty someone who needs the work faces when asked to provide a password.

Have you had any experience with 4G speeds, alternatives to Pinterest, or misguided requests for your passwords? Tell us about it.

This post was originally posted on BlogHer.

Is this how you find your bliss?

Have you looked at Bliss Control? Start from there and adjust settings for all the things shown in the screen grab:

settings to change

After you pick the thing you want to change, you pick the place where you want to make the change. The app will connect you directly to the right spot in each of the sites shown below:

sites

The interesting thing about this service is that they don’t retain any login information – they simply guide you straight to the relevant place on the site in question to do whatever it is you want to do.

The young guys behind this interesting app are @benin, @Altryne, and @TboyTim.

Dear City of Austin Traffic Gurus: an open letter

Traffic is a mess during SXSW. Everyone knows this. Part of the problem is not the traffic but the pedestrians. Pedestrians are everywhere! This is a good thing because the foot traffic is not auto traffic. But the foot traffic is impeding the progress of the auto traffic.

I drive to the convention center when I’m at SXSW, because my daughter lives in the Austin area and I stay with her rather than at a hotel. One morning I sat on Cesar Chavez through 7 light changes on Cesar Chavez and Brazos and never moved an inch.

Another morning a very irritating man in a state trooper vest waved me off from using the perfectly good Brazos entrance to the parking structure and made me go around the block to use the San Jacinto entrance. It took me 15 minutes to go around the block.

That’s a lot of sitting still in traffic, polluting the air and burning gas unnecessarily. The reason? Pedestrians use the same traffic lights as cars. When a light turns green, mobs of people hit the crosswalk and cars cannot move. As soon as the walkers clear, the light is red again.

So here’s my advice, City of Austin traffic gurus. (I know you are trying to find ways to reduce congestion.) Change the light set up. Have a green moment in every direction for pedestrians from any corner to any corner. No cars, just people. Then have a green light for cars – no pedestrians allowed in the crosswalks during that time. The people move, the cars move. Everyone gets a turn all their own. It would help.

Flickr, Picnik, and potential replacements

If you are a Flickr user you know that the online image editor Picnik that was integrated with Flickr is going away. What’s a photographer to do when all they want is a quick crop or to rotate a photo while looking at Flickr?

If you are a Google + user, you’ve probably noticed that the Picnik technology has moved into Google + and can be used to edit photos there. That’s nice, as long as you’re a Google + user.

There are alternatives to Picnik.

FotoFlexer will work with photos from Flickr (and Picasa and Facebook and other places) and will do pretty much what Picnik does.

PicMonkey was built by some of the folks who worked on Picnik, and does much of the same type of image editing. The hang-up right now is that it only works on photos you have stored on your hard drive. Not that having a free online tool to edit photos isn’t fabulous, but it needs to allow you to choose photos from online storage places and then save the changed image back to its original location.

Are you aware of others that make sense as replacements for Picnik?

A few useful links I gathered at SXSWi

Anna finds nonprofit projects to support for Groupon

Did you know Groupon works with nonprofits to help them fund projects? I did not. I met @annaholombe, who is in charge of such programs at Groupon.

Jeremy Keith

I talked a bit with Jeremy Keith, who gave out cards promoting his talk at SXSW rather than promoting his own site or blog. Interesting idea, that.

young blogger and her dad

I chatted with a very young woman who has a blog at bleucloud.com. She was there with her dad in tow and had her nose buried in her iPad just like all the adults around her. She’s from North Dakota and is definitely someone to watch as she blogs her way into adulthood.

Jen Simmons

Jen Simmons gave a great session and says the best place to find her is 5by5.tv/webahead, where she does a weekly podcast about the future of the web.