I am a blog, go figure…

Myspace has added a long overdue Friends Update notification feature. This feature lets you get updates on when your friends add new photos, add new videos, update their profile, and post blogs(we had this already). I’d love to have the option to know when other people have comments posted on their profiles but I suspect that would invade privacy. I wouldn’t mind it myself, but then again I have no drama or secrets in my comments.

So what does this mean to me? It means I can actually visit MySpace less and yet still know more about my friends profile updates at the same time.

Don’t get me wrong, unlike many people I still like and use MySpace. But I have been using it less and less as time goes on. That is natural. MySpace is showing its age and only growing older by the minute. It’s interface is outdated. They are slowly revamping it but even their “new” interface upgrades leave me disappointed usually. In many cases they are trying to soup up the old interface to look a little prettier while adding features. From a business point of view it makes sense. Go with what has already worked and made you lots of money, try not to alienate your base with any drastic changes, and slowly work towards a better interface generationally if you have to. This means you want it to still feel like the MySpace you know and love (or love to hate). In recent months they have also declared war on the spammers which was my biggest complaint with the site and, as far as I can tell, the war is going well.

However, I selfishly just want them to do a total or much bigger revamp. I know it’s hard with such a complex site with a less than amazing code infrastructure but hey, that’s not my problem! I’d like an interface with a good sleek consistant user interface across the board, more profile customization options like better layout/css options, widgets, applications, etc and tighter intergration with social bookmark sites like Digg, Reddit, and Stumbleupon or more realistically a new feature that lets users share links in that way.

As a side note, I recently tried Virb and I gotta say… wow, what’s all the fuss about? I was highly disappointed there. No offense to Virb community, but it’s so incomplete and lacks any sort of “pop”. I also visited Ortuk.com and was surprisingly pleased with the way Google always seems to have some of the best usability and interfaces around. Less is more for sure. I ended up on Imeem.com also somehow and it looked very promising but I did not stop to make a profile. Supposedly the fastest growing site of it’s kind currently.

But back to the main topic at hand, I welcome the friends updates from MySpace. I like knowing when my friends have new pictures especially. Knowing when a profile is changed could be nice too especially if that includes both layout coding and information fields. All this without any effort on my part! I hope it actually works!

Now to find a way to exploit it!

First a quick note. I have removed a great many posts from being visible on this blog. They were more personal or quirky posts that I don’t think anyone wanted to read anyways I just removed them. Hey I said it would be quick didn’t I?! Anyways…

If you like seeing your profile view number go up there are a number of ways to actually do it. Most involve you basically whoring yourself by adding friends, posting comments, posting on the forums, joining groups, etc. This probably the fastest way.

However if you wanted a more low key approach, wanted to add a couple more views to your profile to reach some magic number, or simply wanted to see if this works you can use a website called Browsershots.org.

Browsershots actually has several uses. It’s primary function is as a web designer tool to show you how your website looks across various browsers, this way you can make sure your website looks the same and works for everyone. You to submit websites and in roughly 15-30 min it will return screenshots for you to look at. This in itself is pretty cool for myspace because you can check to see how your page looks for everyone. All that layout code doesn’t always work for everyone.

It uses computers around the world to take these screenshots. You enter the URL for your website and these computers will try and visit the site. This is where those profile views come from. Just enter your myspace (example, www.myspace.com/iamsonson) and shortly after they will visit. Each of them will add to your profile views. The more browsers you select the better (just select them all, most are selected by default). Remember that they can’t actually see your page if it’s set to private though.

I don’t actually care about my profile views so I don’t do this, but it’s an interesting by product of the website. Basically you have a website that sends out drones for you. I am sure you can use it for more sinister things too. I imagine you can use it to trigger google impressions, flickr views, etc.

I had a dream that I went to a restaurant with family. We ordered a lot of food, so much in fact that we had to split into two tables because the original just couldn’t hold it all. But really there was just barely enough room, so the people at my table got up to chat with the others but never came back so I was all alone the whole time and no one noticed. The waitress was very nice. She was japanese american. They brought me my food(yes I know this is out of order, but hey it’s a dream) but ended up forgetting my drinks. I felt so bad in the dream that I did not even mention it until the end when the nice japanese american waitress came and asked if everything was ok. The meal and such, like they usually ask, not me. I told her about the drinks and she and the manager both felt bad and apologized. The drinks had gone to the other table, no one there noticed. At this point I became aware it was a dream and woke up.

This is just a personal entry. The point being that even when I dream, I seem to feel and be alone and/or have those feelings of low worth, being unimportant, being unnoticed, being insignificant, etc.

As a side note,

oddly enough the waitress seemed to be the only center figure besides me. I remember her face and she was genuinely nice, not fake. the family were actually faceless and not specified individually at all and mostly unimportant.

British 3 year old Madeleine McCann was abducted from her apartment bedroom in Praia da Luz holiday village(Algarve, Portugal) on Thursday 3rd ofMay 2007. There is currently a £100,000 reward for the safe return of Madeleine.
If you have any information please call the police on (00 351) 218 641 000.

www.myspace.com/findmadeline or obviously just google/search for more information

First of all, what is this post about? It’s a MySpace tip. I use it myself. It helps me keep track of when certain people update their profiles precisely without having to visit the profile as often wondering if anything changed. It’s very simple, nice to know, and under used.

Ok so let’s face it. Most of us are nosey, snoops, like to know things, may be obsessed, crushing, or infatuated at times. I like to call it snooping or in the more serious cases…all out stalking. Now I certainly don’t encourage stalking people, however being nosey or curious is human nature so that is ok to me.

I’m gonna show you a great yet under used MySpace feature. The “Add To Favorites” button on a users contact table.

That feature is always available even if a users profile is private. Most people never notice it.

A few things it’s good for :

• Keeping track of someone who’s profile is private. You still can’t see their profile, however you’ll know when they update it even though you can’t see it. That way if you have a way to view the profile, such as a friends login who is their friend or other work arounds, you can just check your Favorites to see if there was any change without having to log out of your regular account.
• Keeping track of friends without visiting their profile or by spending MUCH less time on their profile.

Draw backs:

• This will not tell you when pictures were updated, however this is an easy and quick check if you have access to the profile. If you do not have access and the “Default Picture” was changed. I have another tutorial on how to snag it. Check it out.

So anyways… here is what the Favorites page looks like. I’ll explain what you see below it.

To get to the favorites, simply click the “Favorites” link on the top of the page.

You have a drop down combo box with two options. Look at people you added, or look at people that added you. Since this feature is so underused, it is unlikely anyone will have shown you they were added (more explaination on this below).

Each time you add someone to your favorites, it is left as private by default. What this means is THEY CANNOT SEE THAT YOU ADDED THEM. Which is excellent when stealth and secrecy is of importance.

You can however make it known that you added them by clicking the “Make Public” button for that user. This is on a profile to profile basis, meaning you can keep some private and some publicly known. I recommend leaving them the default always (private).

Do not confuse the above option for whether a profile is public or private in the sense that anyone can see it, or anyone cannot see it. That is an entirely seperate thing. Don’t get confused! If you got confused, just ignore the last few paragraphs and continue!

As you probably saw by now, there is a “Profile Updated:” line next to each profile. This tells you when a person last updated their profile. THIS WORKS EVEN WHEN THE PROFILE IS SET TO PRIVATE AND YOU CANNOT SEE IT.

I find this feature very handy personally. I like to know things >:)

comment me! seriously! please?