YQ writes about most things tech

Cool cross-posting example by The Verge

Mon, 26 Dec 2011 19:30:00 -0800

I was surfing around tumblr and I found The Verge's tumblr.

I've been wondering for sometime how a blog can cross post in tumblr and I think I found the best example.

My first meme: Mr T

Mon, 26 Dec 2011 04:57:00 -0800

While watching the remake of A-Team on TV while on holiday (I do not have a TV at home), I realized that my love for memes started waaaay back with Mr T.

IT was around the early 2000s and I didn't have internet connection at home while I was in high school so I surfed at Internet stations or at the library.

I don't remember how I stumbled upon Mr T vs Everything. But whenever I surf and I have exhausted things to read up on (Wikipedia didn't even exist then), I would go in search of the funny comic strips.

Here a sample of Mr T vs Titanic.

Till today, I find Internet memes funny. I even subscribed to almost all of the Cheezburger sites' RSS.

Memes forever!

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I'm in a techy video

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 13:50:00 -0700

I'm in red.

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Bye bye mouse

Sun, 09 Oct 2011 08:15:00 -0700

I had been using this transparent mouse since year 1 of univeristy.

It was 6-years-old plus when I dropped it on the floor and the flap that joins the clicking to the inside IC fell off and disappeared.

I wrapped its cord around itself and tossed it into the bin.

Good bye mouse.

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My thoughts on TripIt

Sun, 18 Sep 2011 09:04:00 -0700

I caught an unfortunately bad case of travel bug from a (now-ex) colleague. I don't know how I am able to cure this illness except to travel more and more and more.

I love all the chores of preparing for a trip: Buying airtickets/bus tickets, booking hotels, reading tavel guides for cool sites, packing my luggage. Unfortunately, I do not like any of the chores of coming back from a trip: packing for return trip, rushing for return flight/bus, unpacking.

While I love to travel and research about my next destination, I am not very good at keeping all the relevant data in in one place. Here comes TripIt to help with this part of the journey.

I admit that I signed up for an account only because it can auto-post (brag) about my upcoming trips on my social networks.

I keyed in my travel details into the my member account and felt awfully proud when I saw all my future trips presented in a page. (Ha! One trip a month!)

However, soon the novelty wore off, I got bored and left it alone.

It wasn't until much later that I discovered that I could automatically forward my flight ticket to an e-mail and it will turn the information into a nice itinerary.

I also found out that it is very useful for longer trips where you have many different hotels or transportation that you will be using. I gave all the details of my 10-day Japan trip to the site and it churned out a nice itinerary.

I like it very much! Now to find an app that can help me unpack my suitcase.

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China's Twitter

Sat, 18 Jun 2011 22:01:00 -0700

I signed up for a Weibo account yesterday. (weibo.com/okbandaid)

Although I am very proud of my Chinese language skills, as well as my tech skills, I cannot figure out how I can make my migroblogging account public!

What is the use of a blog which no one can see without signing up for an account?

I have been trying out Sina Weibo's iPhone app. I must say it is more delighful than twitter's or even tweetdeck.

You can upload photos, add emoticons, state your location, add hastag etc (everything regular apps have but in a prettier way).

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What does your phone's first screen looks like?

Thu, 17 Mar 2011 05:27:06 -0700

I went on a blind date last week. Fortunately, things did not turn out too well in the end.
However, before the meetup, I was very tempted to ask Mr Blind Date for a screenshot of the first page of his phone. I didn't ask in the end because I was already acting not too normally and didn't want to freak him out more than that.
I'm very curious because our phones are very personal and the first page to greet you should be the one with the apps that you like to be able to access quickly (but not as quick as Quick Access apps).
Here is my first screen. I try leaving an empty space at the bottom because I swipe there most often. Aside from games, I use Instagram the most and love to upload my food to Foodspotting.

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New family member

Mon, 14 Mar 2011 07:51:21 -0700

You might not know this but I give names to my tech products. It started with my desktop PC which I decided to name "Lucy", after a Beatles song that got stuck in my head.
Since then, I've continued giving my tech stuff names (inspired by Beatles' songs.) There's Rita my camera and Lady Madonna my iPhone.
On Saturday, I went shopping for a netbook and picked up a pink little thing. I've decided to name her (yes, it's a she.) Yesterday.

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Internet banking experience

Sat, 12 Mar 2011 04:46:00 -0800

I love Internet banking. I love how I'm able to see how much money I have in my accounts (that's a topic for another day) down to the last cent.

But, I am still not as comfortable with money transfer to other people's account on Internet banking. It just seems a bit more scary than sending money from the ATM.

Another reason I never did money transfer to third-party accounts is that the process is so tedious. Just telliing the bank that I want to send money over means I need to give it: the person's bank account number, bank code (what?!) and some other information.

One night, I really had to send money over so I sat in front of my computer with my online banking token ready.

I hit the "transfer to third party" link and was sent to a page with small print. I read and clicked the link but was sent back.

I finally realized that I needed to sign up my phone for alerts before I could use the service, so I clicked on a link and filled up the form.

Tragedy struck.

But it resulted in this comic.

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Posting directly from my phone

Sat, 12 Mar 2011 04:43:36 -0800

Just downloaded the Posterous iPhone app. Updating on the go is possible! Hurray.

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Tech + flights = hopefully not boring flights

Sun, 05 Dec 2010 07:49:38 -0800

I just (though I do not know how long after I would be posting this) found out about Planely.com.

It's a social media type of site (what isn't these days?) where you key in your flight information and it will match other users who are on the same flight. From there, you can plan your pre-flight- in-flight or post-flight activities together.

I usually am not exciting about new tech. It took me a long time (and much inner persuasion) to sign up for a social media account.

And I have a record of signing up as an early adopter to social media that my other friends so not care much about (e.g. blippy), making it a not-social media account and not fun.

I'm really excited about a Web service like Planely though. Since coming to Singapore, I've always thought about setting up a Yahoo Groups or some sort for the other Sabahans where we would post about our flight details so we can make plans to meet up before the flight (share a cab) or stuff to do on the flight (sit together to avoid chatty old men).

Unfortunately, I have been quite anti-social so I did not have a chance to influence the rest to join this online imaginary group.

I hope Planely kicks off so my little dream can come true. And, I get to meet new people (something I do not do often enough).

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First post: Which blog platform to use?

Mon, 20 Sep 2010 09:28:00 -0700

I'm finally starting the "work blog" I had promised myself I would write.

It won't be a blog of what happened at work, what I ate for lunch and what I had for dinner after work. There will not be any job tips or Things you should do to climb the corporate ladder.

This will be a place I write about things that had caught my attention during work and which I would like to share with the world. Being in a job related to tech, most of my posts will be about tech.

I'm going to leave "Why I want another blog?" for another post, another day. At time of writing, I have two active blogs--one in English while the other in Chinese so I don't lose my Chinese typing skills. I have another three dormant blogs just sleeping there, plus two from university class projects.

TechCrunch asks, the people responds

My topic for today is inspired by a post on TechCrunch I saw today. Readers of the tech blog (who subscribe to RSS or read it religiously) would have seen two posts from Paul Carr talking about whether he should move his blog from Wordpress to Tumblr. (I saw the second first because I was reading it in anti-chronological order in my RSS reader.)

His answer: No. Reason being Tumblr isn't that suited for long form blog posts. Instead, it's good for building a community as it allows others to repost to your community of friends (and cyberfriends).

I've tried out a few blog/microblog services and I decided to use Posterous in the end. Why? Because I feel like it. Yes, that's why.

Maybe we should do it another way around: Why didn't I choose other blog platforms? Shall we?

First contender: Wordpress.

Oh yes, Wordpress, the darling of the blogging community. I'm talking about Wordpress.com, not Wordpress.org (the second I have absolutely no idea what it is about).

When my old Yahoo 360 blog platform closed down (another story), I decided to import everything to Wordpress. I must say I like Wordpress even more than what 360 did. I especially like the photo upload function it has, although it is very annoying to be forced to insert one photo at a time. (Note to self: Figure out photo upload in Posterous.)

To me, Wordpress is "a serious blog" (Yes, I will try peppering my posts with quote marks because I'm not supposed to use too much of them at work.) I do not want to have a serious blog for now so I decided not to use Wordpress for this blog. However, in the future I might port it over. Who knows?

Second contender: Xanga

Yes, the cringey teen-oriented blogging platform. I found out about it through a friend who used it as her then main blog.

I used Xanga during my trip to Japan and loved its photo upload function very much for making it easy to insert my photos.

I also loved my theme for the blog. It was yellow all over with the header image of a lady with 60s nice permed hair holding a coffee cup. The text next to her read: DRINK COFFEE. Do Stupid Things Faster with More Energy. I thought the slogan fitted me very well.

After my Japan travel was over, the site pretty much gathered dust. I ported the whole blog over to Posterous some weeks ago, but I dislike the lack of good themes to go with it. Sigh.

Third contender: Tumblr

I discovered Tumblr one day when a friend linked in her Twitter post. Her theme was a gorgeous Victorian-styled full of flower, girly theme. And I fell in love with it again.

I signed up for an account but didn't really continue with it. Later, when I decided that I wanted to have a Chinese blog, I started using it.

My main gripe is that my text were all centered and I am too lazy to figure out how to align left for it so I left it that way. And later left the blog for Posterous.

Almost forgot--Blogger: not even in my list of contenders

It's ugly.

Winner: Posterous

Yes, Posterous does allow you to post by e-mail. But for me, I use this function (which I am also using now) mainly because its Web post interface for Chrome stinks--Firefox works fine. I wouldn't be evangelizing its "post from e-mail" function.

A nice touch is that Posterous reposts links to your post for you. Others do too, you say. I have no retorrt.

But I think the part that I like best about Posterous is that it grabs your old blog for you. I know many blog platforms do too, but for me, the porting from xanga and Tumblr worked like a charm. So I'll be using this for now.

A function that I hadn't used but thought was pretty neat is the everyone can contribute to one blog function--the example they gave was a family blog where people from different parts of the country update the family on one blog. Sweet.

My main complain is that there are too few themes and I stink at CSS editing.

Closing thoughts

Blog platforms are mostly about trial-and-error. Everyone will have their own opinion of which they like best. For me, I'm sticking to Posterous for now, and hope they fix the Chrome post soon.

I might have missed out some platforms that you think is the best. Care to share which blog platforn you use and why?

Disclaimer: This blog post does not represent views of my employer. I also did not receive compensation for any of the brands mentioned above, nor am I paid for links to other sites. It is just a blog.

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