Bnpositive's Blog

There are hundreds of websites, if not more, that have sprung up from nowhere to help people manage their twitter accounts, updates and stay on top of everything else going on in the twitterverse. One of those sites is TweetGrid.

Most people who want to track and manage a variety of topics that are being discussed on twitter would prefer using a twitter client like TweetDeck, DestroyTwitter, Twhirl or Seesmic Desktop to help keep up-to-date on what’s being tweeted.

All the clients work very similarly, but the TweetGrid website manages to keep everything on a webpage so there’s nothing to keep managed on your own computer or system. This might be helpful for use at a conference or a trade show. You could setup a TweetGrid with a variety of search terms on each grid and see the dynamic results update in real-time as those terms are mentioned.

TweetGrid allows you to setup a grid of varying sizes depending on how many terms you are wanting to track. I’ve found from my own experience that the more grids you have going the less you can really manage and follow with what’s going on in each section of the grid.

This evening, at the request of my wife, I’ve been playing around with iTunes on her computer. I’ve got to say I haven’t missed anything. I’m simply trying to get her library to update itself and remove references to songs that are no longer available to her on our home network.

The songs aren’t available because the computer they were stored on is now offline and I’m not sure when it will be getting fixed again. You’d think there would be an easy way to get this done. If there is, I haven’t found it. That’s one of the reasons I really do not like iTunes and haven’t missed it not being on my own computer.

After not finding anything I did a quick Google search and came across this post where people other than me seem to be wanting to accomplish the same thing and can’t very easily.

That post didn’t really give me the answer either.

Here’s what I ended up doing. I selected every file in the iTunes library and selected “Delete”. This prompted me with a warning about the fact that I’d also be removing all of these songs from any iPod or iPhone that was also synch’d to the computer.

I was then prompted on whether or not I wanted to send all the music files to the Recycle Bin or leave them in the iTunes folder. I chose to leave them in the folder. After the library was shown as empty I then added the same iTunes folder back to the library.

It the refreshed everything in the library and only showed those songs that were actually available. Bingo! Now, wouldn’t a “Refresh” button have been much more helpful? As someone in the forum post mentioned earlier, yes it would have, but Apple just wants us to “Think Different”.

Image: iTunes 8 from Apple.com

It’s that time of year again. Fantasy Football time! I’ve got two drafts going on right now. Which is not helpful because I have plenty of other stuff I’m also working on as well! It looks like this year is going to be another stretched out season for me.

I’m going to have fantasy football teams on loads of websites.

• Fox Sports Fantasy Football
• ESPN Fantasy Football League
• Yahoo! Sports Fantasy Football
• CBS Sports Fantasy Football

I’m sure it’s going to be quite a bit to keep up with. I know last year I couldn’t remember what player I had on what team. With this many leagues going I felt like I had every player in the league on one of my teams or another one.

My experience has been that I like ESPN Fantasy Football League interface the best, but I’m probably most familiar with Fox Sports Fantasy Football. CBS Sports Fantasy Football is a new one for me this year, so we’ll see how that goes.

What’s been your experience with the various online fantasy football leagues? Which site gives you the best options and experience while you’re watching the game?

I can tell you one thing, I DO NOT like a snake draft league. I got 2nd pick in one league and felt like I wasn’t picking again until the following day. It was crazy!

I’ve been spending a little bit of time recently going through the thousands of bookmarks I’ve got saved in my local Firefox browser. I’ve been a happy user of the Google Toolbar for quite some time now and have relied on it for keeping most of my bookmarks.

I stayed away from del.icio.us for quite awhile, but have recently started using that as well to organize my websites. My thoughts behind using del.icio.us was to export all my existing bookmarks to it, but then also use it as a storage place for all the interesting websites I came across regularly.

I’ve got Firefox bookmarks, I run Internet Explorer because I have a number of clients that have their as their corporate default browser so I have IE favorites as well. Then there’s the Google toolbar bookmarks and my del.icio.us links going too. Although not quite a favorite or bookmark, I’ve also got all my RSS feeds stored in Bloglines. How do you keep everything organized?

There’s a challenge with me of trying to figure out how to effectively use everything as needed without duplicating effort or usefulness. I think the best way to move forward is to really look at each tool and determine how you want to use each one for yourself. As you’re using it, then remember how and when you’ve decided to use each one for it’s own specific task.

I don’t know about you, but I’m not really interested in working with my bank anymore for much. They don’t seem very interested in working with me either with everything going on with the credit industry and the economy.

I used to think it was just my bank that was annoying to work with and seemed to make their processes so ambiguous they could charge you fees for seemingly nothing. After speaking with more people about their banks though and it appears it’s just status quo.

The Zopa website lets you avoid all the official banking institutions and borrow money from the people you may not know, but you probably trust a little more. The reason you trust them is because they’re just like you. Average people online that have a generous spirit about them.

Social Lending is a smarter, fairer and more human way of doing money. It’s like borrowing and lending with your friends and family – except there are thousands of people you can lend and borrow with.

Zopa currently is established in four different countries: Zopa Italy, Zopa Japan, Zopa UK and Zopa USA. It looks like most of the other locations are a little bit more established with networks than the Zopa USA site.

Uncover a new way to loan and borrow money and help your fellow man. Visit Zopa and learn more about how it all works and leave those banks behind.

My dad is trying to do something with his wi-fi that I’m not sure he can do so I’m going to present the situation to all of you and get your input. My dad is the pastor of a small church in rural Indiana. Their house is across the street from the church.

They have broadband Internet at the house and have it run into a wireless switch which they’re able to use successfully. His office is located across the street at the church. Luckily the office is on the front side of the church that’s closest to the house. They have a wi-fi antennae hooked up that grabs the wi-fi signal from the house and amplifies it and then sends it into the office via a USB cord.

They’ve gotten a USB splitting device that they’re trying to plug the antennae in on one end. Then run USB cables from his desktop and another computer into the splitter on the other end. Their challenge was that they needed a USB Male A to USB Male A adapter to get things to plugin correctly.

I still don’t think this setup will work because of the functionality of the USB and needing to register the devices separately. Does anyone have experience doing this type of thing?

Image: sxc.hu

How many times have you been startled to realize just how late it was in the day and you haven’t thought about what’s going to happen for dinner? You don’t really have time, or perhaps the money, to run to the store and fix something, and you don’t want to spend the money to go out and eat.

What you need is a website that will let you put in the ingredients you have available and spit out a suggestion or two along with recipes on what you can fix. The LeftOver Chef website delivers exactly that service.

Use the online form to enter your main ingredients available and then add some of the other items you’ve got in the kitchen available to you. If you’ve got an idea of what you could fix, you can even include some keywords for what you think you want. Then just click "Find Recipes". How cool is that?

After putting in chicken, bacon, bread, bread crumbs and something else now I can’t remember, the LeftOver Chef website presented me with pages of options that might be available to me.

Uncover a great meal and in the meantime don’t go hungry and clean out your pantry with the LeftOver Chef website.

I’ve got rejection letters from every NBA team packed away somewhere. I’m not sure if that’s something I should be proud of or should just not talk about. When I was wrapping up college my goal for employment was to work in PR or marketing for a professional sports team.

When I was finishing college though, the web wasn’t near what it is today and I didn’t have a nice resource like the Work In Sports website to help me find a job with a professional sports team.

Like most job search and employment sites you’d think of, the Work In Sports websites does all the gathering of jobs for you and presents them to you easily. Currently they list over 2000 jobs and internships on their website. You can search by job type like PR, marketing, sales, finance, facilities. At the same time you can narrow down to geographic area and whether or not you’re looking for full-time, part-time or an internship. I think it would be helpful to search by state, but I’m sure many states don’t have any jobs to list.

In order to apply for the jobs you must sign-up for a membership to the site. You can join under one of the following levels:

• 1 week – $9.95
• 4 weeks – $29.95
• 3 months – $49.95
• 6 months – $89.95

Many times these types of positions are very competitive compared to other "normal" jobs, so having an inside scoop could really help your efforts. If you’re looking to work in sports, then go uncover your next job lead at the Work In Sports website.

A while back my brother gave me the heads up about a website called Radar.net. Today another twitter friend recommended the site to me. Normally I’m pretty good with peer pressure, but since two people asked me to check it out, I figure I will.

The basics of the site are a place and a service for you to share videos and photos with others whether it be on the Radar.net site, twitter, Facebook, flickr or your own blog. All the features you’d expect are here and then some.

I’ve normally been a fan of TwitPic to share photos on twitter, but since they’re still not taking advantage of the Oauth functionality, I haven’t been using them as much. I still haven’t gotten Facebook to allow me to post images from my phone yet for some reason either, so I’m hoping this service will kill these two birds (well, one bird and one face) with one stone.

Sign-up for an account on Radar, link your twitter, Facebook and flickr accounts and you’re ready to roll. You’ll get a private Radar email address to use to send images to when you want to share them. There’s also a mobile app you can download to make it even easier to send images from your phone while you’re on the go.

When you make an update to Radar, you can decide whether or not to include the update to your twitter or Facebook feeds as well. Very nice and very easy to get going on.

I haven’t seen G.I.Joe: The Rise of Cobra yet, but I really want to. I know the critics have given mixed reviews but one thing I’ve found over the years is that most of the times I love the movies that the critics hate. Not sure what that really means though.

I guess it’s not really that important at all though. What’s really important is me knowing what I like in a movie. My interests are so varied though, I’ve seen so many movies, I’m not sure I could really tell you what I like. There was a time in my life (when I was single) where I would spend an entire Saturday in the theater watching movies back-to-back.

The Criticker website allows me to go through all the movies I’ve watched and rate them. It then takes those scores and recommends other movies to me that it believes I would like based on my ratings.

Criticker has more than just movie recommendations though, there’s also a nice social community around the site. What good intentioned site these days wouldn’t have a social community component anyway?

Criticker aims to match you with the people who share your taste in film most exactly. By using the Taste Compatibility Index (TCI), you can identify with whom you most agree, out of thousands. It’s more than just movie recommendations: you’re paired with the people whose tastes are most compatible with your own, and thus get the most accurate advice possible.

If you’re bored tonight and looking for something to do this weekend. Sign-up with Criticker and rate a few movies, then get a list of recommendations on what to watch this weekend.

When you’re out and about surfing the intarwebs you should stop by and make a comment or two when you stumble across a post you like. Leaving comments around the web allow people to get to know you online.

Another great way for people to get to know you is to show your face around the web too. You can combine both methods of letting people know who you are by using Gravatar.

Gravatar is a service that works in coordination with WordPress, Intense Debate, VideoPress and PollDaddy. Gravatar is a development from Automattic, which are the same people behind WordPress itself.

One of the things I really like about Gravatar is that I’m able to login to the Gravatar website with a single login, but setup multiple avatars to be used for multiple email addresses. With this functionality I can login and comment on various blogs and represent different entities with each comment. I blog for a variety of sites and like to be able to comment on sites and represent each of them independently. Gravatar allows me to do this very easily.

In the last couple of weeks I’ve had two instances of a computer not powering up as expected. First it was my own family desktop. Then last week a client asked me if I could replace the power supply in her desktop.

Her cousin had ensured her that the problem with her laptop not starting up was due to a fried power supply due to a severe lightning and thunderstorm that knocked out the electricity to the house.

It makes obvious sense. Occam’s razor theory would suggest that the most logical and simple cause is more than likely the one you’re looking for as a solution. The only problem this time though is that it didn’t work. I replaced the power supply as suggested and still no power to the machine.

I’ll be the first to admit that when it comes to hardware on a computer, the power supply is an area I have the least amount of experience. But I followed the instructions as suggested and made sure all wires were reconnected as needed from the original power supply.

No power though.

That leads me to the remaining question then for this person’s desktop and my own. Why won’t it power up? How do you go about troubleshooting an issue like this? Is there some easier way to narrow down where the problem might be coming from?

I’d really like to not have to replace the desktop if it’s something simple, but I’d also like to not waste a bunch of time trying to diagnose and issue that will end up costing more to fix than the $300-400 to replace the entire unit.

Image: knowprose on flickr