OT: Technology and Geek Stuff Thread

[Nick Pappageorgio]

I never used myspace.....al the kids at school raved about it but it sounded silly to me. By brother has been bugging me to do the facebook thing and in xmas day we did a video chat with one of my best friends from HS. So I decided to give it a shot.......started it two days ago and I have something like 30 friends already, and I know all of them in some capacity.

I will admit I'm from a small town (Central Lake) and you know how small towns are......everybody knows everybody, so I had quite a few ask me to be "friends" even though I hadn't seen them since jr year social studies (and even then we didn't really communicate) but I didn't have the heart to say no. I have already hooked up with about 15-20 college/HS friends, som I haven't seen in 15-20 years- but people I am interested in talking to.

I had a couple of people pop up that I didn't know, but after a little research it seems I did know them after all......people I called by a different name or a nickname.

I've only been using it for a couple of days but it doesn't seem sleezy or sexually oriented to me at all.

[unknown lions fan]

Their front page of the site is poor. I'd like to see some "how it works" information...

How does one find people? Are we putting in all kinds of searchable info such as where we went to school, and what years we attended, and people search on that information? Or where we lived in what years, etc?

Or is it all just a simple web page that you write about yourself on, and people find one another using raw text searches such as "Bath High School" or something?

[Nick Pappageorgio]

Their front page of the site is poor. I'd like to see some "how it works" information...

How does one find people? Are we putting in all kinds of searchable info such as where we went to school, and what years we attended, and people search on that information? Or where we lived in what years, etc?

Or is it all just a simple web page that you write about yourself on, and people find one another using raw text searches such as "Bath High School" or something?

the set-up of the site does seem very clunky.....i'm still trying to figure it all out.

As far a searches go I've been doing searches through college and HS.....but you can look at a list of friends friends. This was an easy was to do it because I just went to a girl I knew and we had many of the same friends, so you can add through there as well.

And when someone want to be "friends" with you or vise versa you/they have to approve before you can see their info.

[Nick Pappageorgio]

One problem, for me at least, is that when looking for friends their user pics are all very small........you can't get a large version until you are "friends". There is also setting that control how much info you want different levels of people to see.


My best friend from HS and I have been trading insults for 2 days now it's great!

[SeattleLionsFan]

does it support video chat well? I would love to set something like that up with my folks. I tried a few years back but the technology just wasn't there yet.

[Nick Pappageorgio]

Yeah, I have to speak to my brother to see how it works.....but it worked like a charm for me on xmas talked for like 25 minutes

Months ago my wife tried something simmilar with yahoo instant messenger and the shit would never work correctly for more that 2 minutes. but then we were linking to my mother-in-law......so I never invested any time into fixing the bugs

[SeattleLionsFan]

Yeah, I have to speak to my brother to see how it works.....but it worked like a charm for me on xmas talked for like 25 minutes

Months ago my wife tried something simmilar with yahoo instant messenger and the shit would never work correctly for more that 2 minutes. but then we were linking to my mother-in-law......so I never invested any time into fixing the bugs

That's the thing. My folks aren't into "fixing bugs," and I am not able to tell them how to fix them, so it has to be bug free out of the box more or less.

[Malto Marko]

Pick up the damn phone and call them, SLF.;-)

[Nick Pappageorgio]

I don't know the video thing was really cool, i was never much of a phone guy because I always hated not being able to see the other persons expressions and stuff.......my brother has a mac, I don't know if that makes some sort of difference.

[Darl McrBride]

SLF: Skype works fine for video calls - never had a problem and my 13 year old installed it, always sets it up, and makes calls for us. Gmail has a video mode now too that I hear works with no problem.

[mason reese]

Their front page of the site is poor. I'd like to see some "how it works" information...

How does one find people? Are we putting in all kinds of searchable info such as where we went to school, and what years we attended, and people search on that information? Or where we lived in what years, etc?

Or is it all just a simple web page that you write about yourself on, and people find one another using raw text searches such as "Bath High School" or something?

For the most part "friend searchs" are done either by email address or info you yourself posted, like which high school/college you went to. Once you make a connection with an "old" friend, often they have already made connections with other friends from the same circle.

Not sure how what kind of privacy levels they keep, but googling myself and my high school; the only thing that comes up was my classmates.com info, so they may keep it hidden outside of facebook

[mason reese]

does it support video chat well? I would love to set something like that up with my folks. I tried a few years back but the technology just wasn't there yet.

gmail has a free video chat that seems to work pretty well. All that's required is gmail account by both parties.

[-Deborah-]

I decided this week I wanted to try the Windows 7 beta but discovered my 80 gig HD was full. Crap. I keep all my data on a second hard drive, so somehow I have 80 gigs of just programs. Wow. Anyways, I really wasn't wanting to buy a new hard drive and start from scratch installing an OS and programs all over again just to get more room. So I looked around and was surprised to find a program that will basically burn your c: drive to a new hard drive, copying everything, and making it bootable. So I bought the program, installed a new 640 gig HD ($79 @ Amazon.com) as a second drive, burned the c: drive to it, took out the original c: drive, put the new drive in its place and booted and I'm in windows with all my programs and settings just as they were, but now with 560 gigs of space free!

Whee!!!

The program is called Migrate Easy by Acronis, in case anyone else has a similar need.

http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/migrateeasy/

[FVD]

Something like that could come in handy for me, considering my ipod has more space on it than my hard drive lol.

[-Deborah-]

lol! That's pretty bad.