Back in April, I reported on how to smoothly send photos to your Flickr account via a Helio Drift. Thanks to a recent Helio UP software upgrade, you can now set your Helio device (Heat, Ocean, or Fin) to automatically upload your photos to Flickr complete with location tags, anytime you send them to Helio UP. What that means is that now your photos will appear on Flickr's world map interface, as expandable dots in the place where you took them. I've always wanted to do this with my Ocean, and it just makes sense as a smart feature given that Helio's devices have GPS functionality built-in.

The how-to of this entry really has two parts.

First, you have to set up Helio UP on your Helio device to reflect an upload email address for Flickr and to auto-upload. All of the information for that is in this knowledge base article. I don't know if this is still true, but I found back in April that when you set up your upload email address on Flickr, it's a good idea to keep asking it for a new one until it gives you something shortish, like 12 characters or fewer before the "@" sign.

Next, make sure that on the Flickr side, your preferences are set up to allow EXIF GPS data.

If you have those two things set up, you should be able to:

• Snap a photo on your Helio
  
• Choose "Helio UP"
  
• Set the photo to "public"
  
• Title and tag the photo
  
• Name (or select, if you've done this before from there) your physical location
  
• Hit "Post"
  

Here's proof that it worked with my Fin today.

Posted by dave coustan at 4:03 PM |

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Common Craft is at it again. In the video below, Lee breaks down the mechanics, how-to, and advantages of social bookmarking over using plain old web browser favorites or bookmarks. This is a topic that has come up several times on Earthling and the eLink newsletter, but if you are at all in the dark about why you'd bother using a site like EarthLink's myFavorites or Yahoo's Del.icio.us as your expanding accordion file of web finds, the explanation below is worth a look.

Click To Play

Posted by dave coustan at 4:33 PM |

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Today Google announced some new tools for webmasters or anyone looking to get some or all of their webpages removed from Google's index. I'm collecting links to and advice on getting stuff removed from various other places on the internet. Pass along any others you've found useful:

• Removing your address from Google PhoneBook
  
• Removing your address from Windows Live Search - I *think* to do this you have to remove yourself from MSN White Pages. If anyone knows otherwise please let me know.
  
• Removing yourself from Yahoo People Search
  
• Keeping yourself off of someone else's Flickr contact list
  
• Get your listing out of the Lexis-Nexis public database
  
• Mega-list of how to remove yourself from various information directories
  

Posted by dave coustan at 1:38 PM |

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Thanks to some teamwork between Helio and Flickr/Yahoo, a glitch that was stopping photos from making it from a Helio device to Flickr has been fixed. Last night I confirmed that you can easily send photos taken on a Drift at up to full 1600 x 1200 to your Flickr account via Pic Msg. I love Flickr, and I love my Drift, and I'm extremely happy that they are again playing nice together. In honor of the occasion, here's a detailed how-to on publishing your photos to Flickr straight from your Helio, turning your Drift into a Flickr machine:

(Note: These instructions were written for a Drift, but should work for all Helio phones. If you're rocking a Heat, Kickflip, Hero, or if you're in the future and using an Ocean or Plasmatron 2287, the steps might be slightly different but the process is the same)

The Preliminaries.

• Make sure you have a Flickr account. A free one is perfectly fine. In your Flickr account, go to the email tab on your account page (or just go straight here once you're logged in) and find the choice to set up an upload-to-flickr email address. You'll then be sent to this page with your new address, which will look something like letters45numbers@photos.flickr.com. *This is important*. Count the number of characters -- you want a reasonably-sized email address, one that's not over 30 characters in total. Hit "reset" under "refresh your address" until you get an address with 12 characters or fewer before the "@" sign. Note down the email address you stick with. From here, you can also specify a set of tags(some people use "moblog" or the name of their cameraphone) that will automatically be attached to all photos uploaded via email, if you like. That's about all you need to do on the Flickr side.
  
• On the Helio Drift side, create a new contact in your address book -- call it "Flickr". Assign it the email address you just made for yourself.
  
• Go to Menu -> Message ->Pic Messages -> Settings [5] and choose "Background". Choose "no background" just to make sure you're not adding any overhead to your pic messages. Use the "back" key (below the navigation pad) to go back one, and now choose "Photo size." Make sure "Original size" is chosen so that your photos will get uploaded in their full glory.
  
• (Optional:)Go to Menu->Snap->Settings->Auto Save and make sure Auto Save is off. This makes it easier to send on the fly, because it gives you a "SEND" button on screen right after you snap every photo. It should be set to "off" by default anyway.
  

Continue reading "How To Upload Photos To Flickr Via Helio Drift"

Posted by dave coustan at 11:24 AM |

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I've been looking for the smoothest possible way to work from two different Macs (one at home and one at work) with an absolute minimum of hassle and without resorting to all web applications. I stumbled upon a solution about two weeks ago, and it's been working out great.

In addition to the two computers, you need four things:

• A suitable USB flash drive - mine is 2 gigs but the bigger the better
  
• OSX Portable Apps
  
• A syncing utility for safekeeping (ChronoSync works, or an automator script would work too)
  
• A jaw to go slack with amazement
  

Continue reading "How To Make The Smallest Portable Mac Ever"

Posted by dave coustan at 5:04 PM |

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I saw a comment on the WordPress support forums from an EarthLink hosting customer wondering, among other things, how to do a custom installation of WordPress so that they can choose a different path, or have their blog live at the root level of their domain(right at, say, mydomain.com). With lots of help from my fellow EarthLinkers I've put together an unofficial how-to on skipping the easy install and doing your own manual install in your account.

Read on for the instructions. They have EarthLink-specific information sprinkled throughout the usual instructions for a standard WordPress installation. EarthLink-specific steps are set off and italicized:

Continue reading "How To Manually Install WordPress On An EarthLink Web Hosting Account"

Posted by dave coustan at 4:30 PM |

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A while back when I tried out the Helio Media Mover and PC Sync software, I offered to write a how-to about adding your own rings to the Helio Kickflip. This weekend I noticed that it's a perenially popular topic on cellphone message board Howard Forums. The regulars over there got it all figured out, and I just want to write it up for you in a clear, step-by-step sorta way. It's a few months overdue now, but hopefully still helpful.

The essential components are:

• Your Kickflip, USB connection, and WIndows XP computer
  
• VKSync3000 from Helio.
  
• An MMF converter tool, like Media Audio Cutter (there are a bunch more to choose from here, but I used Media Audio Cutter for the how-to)
  

Read on for the instructions.

Continue reading "How To Add A Custom Ringtone To A Helio Kickflip"

Posted by dave coustan at 4:45 PM |

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I had seen earlier builds, but I hadn't seen how myFavorites handles importing your data from del.icio.us prior to Friday. Seeing it in action really pleased me, in terms of both the user interface and the way it talks to you. The language is plain and direct and friendly, and the information is organized in a way that's easy to understand at a glance. Here's a peek at it, cropped and resized. Click it to see an un-resized version:

If you're a del.icio.us user now, it's not explicitly called out yet but you can bring your tags and URL's with you. We don't yet bring in the dates, but that's apparently something we could do. To bring your favorites in to myFavorites (heh, not *my* favorites, but myFavorites):

1. in del.icio.us go to settings>>export and hit "export to HTML". That will spit out a file or a screen of data. If it does the latter, save it as source and remember what you called it.
   
2. Now log in to myFavorites, and go to settings>>import bookmarks. Decide if you'd like them all to come in as public or private, and click next.
   
3. On the next screen, use the "browse" button to find the file you created in step 1 on your computer. If it’s a bad file or the wrong file, you’ll notice an error message and you’ll stay on that same page. (update:) Click "next" after you've selected the right file on your computer.
   
4. You’re done. The interface above appears, and tells you everything that just happened.

There's more stuff like this at the myFavorites product blog.

Posted by dave coustan at 1:04 PM |

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In case you didn't follow the Yapbrowser malware story a couple of weeks ago, spyware watchers were alarmed to find an application that, when installed, redirected all a user's searches to child porn sites. There's a full play-by-play with video here showing what would happen if you downloaded and installed the software on your computer. When last we left off with the story, Wayne Porter of Facetime Security Labs challenged the Yapbrowser people to an online discussion and they agreed.

Just last week Porter heard back from Yapbrowser. On May 5 he published spokesperson John Sandy's answers to his questions, without comment, as were the rules of engagement.

You can read the whole thing here. He's also made it available in Sandy's original language, Russian.

If nothing else, the interview highlights several gaps where testing the application should have revealed that it was incorrectly redirecting to really nasty places. It's an interesting read, and I urge you to draw your own conclusions.

But what if, for whatever reason, you found your computer on the receiving end of something like what Yapbrowser did? It would be frustrating enough to have a piece of software hijack your web browser, but what if in so doing it also started delivering something illegal like child pornography?

I spoke to EarthLink protection software Product Managers Ben Kaplan and Liza Barry-Kessler about this, and they've provided some tips for what to do if such a thing happens to you, and how best to avoid a browser hijacking in the first place.

Continue reading "How To Clean Up And Report A Yapbrowser Drive-by"

Posted by dave coustan at 3:25 PM |

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If you already have an AOL Instant Messenger, Jabber, Yahoo Messenger, or MSN Messenger account (Sean, how about supporting MindSpring?), you've got what you need to dip your toe into the personal publishing world. If you also already have a blog or web site presence, this how-to can benefit you as well.

I'm making an exception to the strict "no robot" policy on Earthling for Sabifoo, an instant messenger bot who is built to serve your personal publishing needs. Read on for care and feeding instructions.

Continue reading "How To Use Your Pre-existing Tools To Try Personal Publishing"

Posted by dave coustan at 10:07 AM |

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Do you remember the first time you fired up a web browser?

I'm not sure if this was my first time, but one of my strongest memories of early browser experience took place at Butler Library at Columbia while I was in college. A friend in the engineering school (was it Michael Feldman or Mike Malm maybe?) pointed out NCSA Mosaic on one of the X Window terminals. For old time's sake, here's the e-mail announcement that NCSA sent out when a Beta version of Mosaic was first available.

What if you were doing that today, for the very first time -- what's the one site you'd recommend a brand new internet user start with? Would you tell them to start with your favorite tutorial, or a Wikipedia entry, or something else?

Over the weekend, a brave reader named Brenda posted the following comment on Earthling:

As, I'm new to this web surfing business/play seeing a lot of abbreviations. Is there a place that has a dictionary just for this web world? For instance What is URL stand for.

In my reply I pointed her to the tutorials on the EarthLink Personal Support Center. I might also recommend checking out Answers.com and the BBC's Webwise site.

What else do you recommend, as the one site to hit if you were arriving at the information superhighway through a browser for the very first time? And if you're new to the web, which of these suggestions do you find most helpful?

Posted by dave coustan at 2:56 PM |

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If you're in the habit of storing and sharing your photos online regularly, something like Flickr is probably the service for you. But if someone is holding a gun to your head and demanding that you share photos online now now now, or if you only share photos occasionally and want the quickest and easiest path possible to photo-sharing completion, you might take a look at Bubbleshare.

I think the practice of sending photos to your friends as attachments is a pretty clumsy way to go. The one advantage I can think of over web-based sharing is that the people you send an attached photo to have a copy of the photo in their e-mail account automatically. But lots of people are using web-based e-mail these days, so you can't assume that if the attachment is in their e-mail account, it's on their computer. They might still have to be connected to the internet to see it.

Continue reading "How To Share Photos In A Hurry"

Posted by dave coustan at 2:52 PM |

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The how-to portion of this how-to is very very short:

For the beginner: Adopt at least one life hack. Today is fine, or January 2nd would work too.

For the expert: Less reading about them and grinning smugly, more putting them to use.

A life hack is a little trick or technique that helps you stay organized, save time, or automate tedious work. What it isn't is a big new system or complicated computer application that will mess up the current way you have of doing things.

In their purest form life hacks are often blindingly simple, like "Check your e-mail three times a day, and only three times a day." My personal definition also includes things that aren't really productivity or organization tips, but just simple tricks for successful living, like "Smile while talking on the phone and you will seem more friendly."

You can find tons of good life hack suggestions at 43 Folders and Lifehacker.

Continue reading "How To Be At Least Ten Percent More Productive"

Posted by dave coustan at 2:57 PM |

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What's RSS and why should I care?

If you don't know what RSS is, you're not alone. According to a Yahoo whitepaper, as of Fall 2005 only 12% of internet users are aware of RSS. Only 4% have knowingly used it. But if you've used a portal or start page, odds are you've used it without even knowing it.

In simple terms, RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, is the key part of a system for receiving some or all of a web site's content somewhere else. That somewhere else could be a special web site, a part of your web browser, or a separate application on your computer. So far you can't read RSS feeds on the back of a cereal box or on your naked arm, but give M.I.T. some time and they'll make it happen.

So? So if you read a lot of different web sites every day, or even just a few, you might find that knowing about RSS makes your web browsing faster and easier.

Continue reading "How To Get Your Arms Around RSS"

Posted by dave coustan at 11:51 AM |

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