Jerome's TOTs

In their recent Mashable article, HUGE: Twitter Lets You Automatically Follow Your Facebook Friends, we learn that we can now use Twitter’s Facebook Application to find friends to follow in Twitter.

It looks like it was short lived because minutes after this article was published, it seems that Facebook blocked that capability:

Really wondering what game is being played right now! The Twitter Facebook app allow you (as an option) to publish your tweets to Facebook and it now seems that you can’t find new friends through Facebook so you can follow them on Twitter (and optionally post back to Facebook!). Strange!

Facebook was really quick in blocking Twitter and I’m wondering which Term of Service Facebook thinks Twitter did not respect.

UPDATE: on Techcrunch, there’s now an update article from MG Siegler which says this might be an issue on Facebook’s end. Maybe a coding error or, more probable: a) an API problem on Facebook’s end or b) Facebook really blocked Twitter.

UPDATE 2: it seems it is not intentional. Facebook is working with Twitter to solve the problem.

My wife Kim is the successful editor behind At Home with Kim Vallee. She uses the WordPress platform.

With success and a popular platform, problems with comment and contact form spam becomes quickly a pain to manage. That’s why you need a good toolset to keep your sanity intact. Good WordPress plugins to protect against spamming and keep your installation secure include:

• Akismet – protects against spam
• Login LockDown – adds extra security to your login form
• WP Security Scan – security
• WP-SpamFree – extra spam protection

WP-SpamFree is quite invaluable against robots and contact form spam. However, it came to our attention that some people would see the following message instead of the contact form:

Your location has been identified as part of a reported spam network. Contact form has been disabled to prevent spam.

See the message when it would appear instead of Kim’s contact form:

This was really annoying. People were telling Kim they couldn’t send comments.

By chance, one PC at our office had this bug. The unique IP address assigned to our network by Videotron seemed clean. So I dug further and looked at the plugin code to understand and debug what’s happening. It seems some browsers in some configurations (in our case a particular Firefox installation on Windows XP) do not transmit the HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE variable to servers. There is a check in the WP-SpamFree plugin that identifies the visitor as a spammer if this variable is empty.

Once the problem identified, the fix is easy: simply disable this verification. The quick fix to the plugin is to modify the wp-spamfree.php file in the plugin directory to put this condition in comment. See my changes in red:

/*
            $user_http_accept_language = trim($_SERVER['HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE']);
            if ( !$user_http_accept_language ) {
                $contact_form_blacklist_status = ’2′;
                $spamfree_error_code .= ‘ CF-HAL1001′;
                }
*/
            // Add blacklist check – IP’s only though.

            if ( $contact_form_blacklist_status ) {
                $spamfree_contact_form_content = ‘<strong>Your location has been identified as part of a reported spam network. Contact form has been disabled to prevent spam.</strong>’;
                }
            $content_new = str_replace(‘<!–spamfree-contact–>’, $spamfree_contact_form_content, $content);

That’s it. No more false positives for Kim’s visitors!

I’ll send this issues to the WP-SpamFree devs.

So, I decided to join the bandwagon and give my predictions for 2010 in technology and social media.

1. We’ll see a new breed of social media curating

As we are more than ever overloaded with information, implicit filtering becomes a must. Are you able to keep up with your RSS feed? I can’t! Do you feel like you’re missing on a lot of interesting conversations shared across your networks? I sure do!
We’ve already seen a bunch of aggregators in the social media landscape as destination sites. The next wave, which will happen this year, will focus on personalized our social media streams based on our social interactions and preferences. We’ll see a lot of innovation in this space.

2. Telcos start adopting a single Android platform

Google’s upcoming Nexus One Android phone proves that Google can’t afford to have a platform where it does not better control the experience in its fight against Apple’s iPhone. I predict we will see many telcos start adopting a unified Android which will be a packaged version of the Nexus One and thelcos will start dropping other Android implementations.

3. It will be the year of BuddyPress

As more and more bloggers become media empires and as different brands want to embrace social media, we’ll see an impressive number of mainstream sites adopt BuddyPress to build their own communities.

4. Bing will integrate social shopping features

As innovation in e-commerce is stagnating outside of Amazon, social shopping will continue to boom. We’ll see major players such as Google, Microsoft and even Apple jump into social shopping. Bing, which already has some focus on shopping, will integrate social features in its search engine.

5. There will be at least one high profile lawsuit against Apple

Losers love their lawyers and success breads jealousy. A major company will have a major lawsuit against Apple. Easy prediction. There probably will be more than one high profile lawsuit against Apple. As a bonus, Apple will fend these off.

6. 2010: the year of the tablet

Another easy prediction. Everyone’s making it. I had to.

The real questions are: Will Windows 7 stand of the crowd with its multi-touch features? Will Android be majorly used? Will Apple’s tablet be great enough? As a side prediction it is sure that Apple fans will drink to cool-aid.

7. More anti-trust investigations against Google

The American Department of Justice and the European Union will open both new probes and investigations into Google’s activities. At least another high profile acquisition will be blocked. It a rite a passage Microsoft had to go through and its Google turn.

8. Facebook to become the next Paypal

In 2010, Facebook will finally launch a payment platform that can be used as a virtual currency. Eventually, users can exchange credits.

9. Facebook e-commerce applications

We will see adoption of Facebook’s payment platform outside of social gaming and we will see it adopted on Facebook Connect sites too. Want to make a donation through Facebook?

10. We’ll see innovation in e-commerce outside of Amazon

I had to make this prediction because I feel e-commerce is still at the 1.0 stage. It’s a matter of time before we begin to see innovation outside of Amazon. I’m making this prediction because you’ll have to stay tuned to Shwowp a new startup from Tara Hunt and yours truly. If others don’t start to innovate, at least there will be us! In any case, it will become true if #9 becomes true.

Image copyright: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Glaskugel_CrystalBall.jpg

Notre amie Renée nous a quitté hier. Difficile encore de le croire et encore plus de l’accepter.

De Renée Wathelet une bonne amie, je retiens joie, bonheur et extrème bonté.

J’ai discuté avec elle via Skype il y a seulement quelques jours. Nous parlions de notre visite éventuelle, Kim et moi-même, à Isla Mujeres, l’Ile qu’elle avait récemment adoptée pour de bon. Son dernier billet reflète bien pourquoi elle avait décidé de s’y installer en permanence. D’ailleurs, voici sa dernière photo Flickr, prise encore hier matin :

Parlant d’adoption. Renée adorait les chats. Que ce soit à Montréal ou Mexique, elle partageait son domicile avec ses chats. Elle était dévouée à aider le docteur Delfino Guevara et sa clinique vétérinaire Clinica de Chipie sur son île d’Isla Mujeres. Un autre blogue de Renée, Petits minous et gatitos en fait foi :

Être un chat au Mexique n’est pas toujours chose facile. Nous, les chats de l’Isla Mujeres, sommes privilégiés: depuis quelques années, le Dr. Delfino Guevara s’occupe de nous tous à sa Clinica de Chipie, que nous ayons ou non une famille. Bien sûr, il soigne aussi les chiens et les autres animaux de l’île!

Ce n’est pas facile pour les chats parce que plusieurs sont abandonnés ou maltraités pour causes d’ignorance ou de bêtise humaine. Les chats ne sont généralement pas vaccinés et opérés, ce qui exacerbe le problème. Heureusement, Dr. Delfino fait de son mieux pour essayer d’aider les chats abandonnés, les vacciner et les opérer. Idéalement, il faut leur trouver une famille d’adoption. Une page Facebook est aussi dédiée aux chats de l’île.

Tout ça pour dire que depuis près d’un an, je suis l’heureux propriétaire adoptif de Leeloo, un chat rescapé du Mexique. C’est Renée qui s’est chargé, avec son amie Line, de faire immigrer Leeloo à Montréal. Même chose pour notre bon ami commun, Philippe Martin, qui a adopté Coba avec qui il était tombé en amour lorsqu’il avait visité Renée sur son île mexicaine.

Voici Leeloo et Coba à l’aéroport YUL lorsque Renée, Kim et moi-même étions allé accueillir Line et nos deux nouveaux résidents félins (Kim, Renée et Line sur la photo) :

Voici Leeloo qui découvrait son nouveau maître:

Pour terminer, en essayant de vivre notre deuil, je ne peux qu’avoir des pensées pour sa famille et ses enfants que je ne connais pas vraiment. Ce que je sais, c’est que ses enfants ont eu une mère qui personnifie la joie de vivre et la bonté. Je leur offre mes plus sincères condoléances.

UPDATE: TweetDeck finally added sync support.

I use multiple PCs. I have a Windows Vista laptop at work, a desktop Windows XP computer always on at home and a MacBook for work and pleasure. I also love using TweetDeck and it’s groups feature is invaluable when you follow a lot of people. I needed a solution to sync group definitions and settings so that when I add someone to a group, the change follows me on my 3 computers.

Here’s my solution.

Sign up for Live Mesh and add your computers

I find Live Mesh very useful to sync folders between computers and now has support for Mac OS X. It is free and I thought it would be the perfect answer to my problem. To set up your computer with Live Mesh:

• First visit the Live Mesh Web site and sign up.
• On each computer, click the “Add Device” button and install the Live Mesh software on your computer

Adding TweetDeck’s data folder to Live Mesh using Windows

Start with the computer that has the TweetDeck data you want to keep.
You first need to find your TweetDeck folder. On Windows Vista it will be located here:

C:\Users\[Your Username]\AppData\Roaming\TweetDeckFast.FXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX.1\Local Store

On Windows XP, the path would be something like:

C:\Documents and Settings\[Your UserName]\Application Data\TweetDeckFast.FXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX.1\Local Store

The TweetDeck folder name begins with “TweetDeckFast.F” and is followed by a bunch of numbers. Inside this folder is the “Local Store” folder which contains the settings for your TweetDeck installation. It contains two files and a folder:

• An XML file with your TweetDeck settings (mine is named: preferences_JeromeParadis.xml)
• A database files that contain your TweetDeckdata (mine is named: td_26_JeromeParadis.db)
• A folder named “#ApplicationUpdater” which contains information about your latest TweetDeck version

Our strategy is that we don’t want to synchronize the “#ApplicationUpdater” folder. It is used by TweetDeck updating process. When we’ update TweetDeck we don’t want other PCs to think TweetDeck is updated. We cannot simply sync the hole “Local Store” and Live Mesh syncs all the content of a folder, including subfolders. So what do we do? Well, Live Mesh will not sync an hidden Windows folder.
To add the folder to your Live Mesh, here’s what you need to do on Windows:

1. Right-click the “#ApplicationUpdater” folder inside the “Local Store” folder
2. Select “Properties” in the menu
3. In the “Attributes” section, check the “Hidden” option
4. Right-click the “Local Store” folder
5. Select the “Add folder to Live Mesh…” menu option
6. Give it a name you will remember like “TweetDeck Local Store”
7. After a moment, Live Mesh should begin uploading your xml and db files to Live Mesh

Syncing other TweetDeck instances under Windows

On a Windows computer, here’s what you need to do to sync a second (or more) computer:

1. Make sure TweekDeck is closed
2. Locate your “Local Store” folder
3. Make a backup copy of the db and xml files inside the “Local Store” folder, just in case you mess up
4. Delete the db and xml files
5. Mark the exiting “#ApplicationUpdater” folder as “Hidden”
6. Open the “TweetDeck Local Store” shortcut that Live Mesh will have added to your Desktop
7. Live Mesh will ask you to enter a destination folder. Be sure that this path points to TweetDeck’s existing “Local Store” folder
8. Answer Yes when warned that your folder will be merged with the Live Mesh folder
9. You should see the Live Mesh icon in your task bar flash which means it is active downloading.

How to selectively sync under Mac OS X

Remember that we don’t want to sync the “#ApplicationUpdater” folder. We need a strategy to ignore this folder from the Live Mesh synchronization. Since I don’t know the equivalent of hiding a file from Live Mesh under Mac OS X, here’s a summary of what we should do:

1. Instead of directly syncing TweetDeck Data Store folder, we will sync with a second folder, say “TweetDeck Data Store”
2. We will make hard links between the xml and db files in TweetDeck’s actual folder and the “TweetDeck Data Store” folder. Making an alias using the Finder won’t work. We need to open a bash console using the Terminal utility and use the command line. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, I recommend you to stop reading now or that you proceed with care.
3. Then, we use the “TweedDeck Data Store” folder to sync with Live Mesh. The “#ApplicationUpdater” will therefore not be present in that new folder and not synced with Live Mesh.

Adding TweetDeck’s data folder to Live Mesh using Mac OS X

If your computer containing your groups and settings to keep is Mac, you will want to first add your TweekDeck folder in Live Mesh from this computer. Here’s how to proceed:

1. Locate your TweekDeck Local Store directory using the Finder by opening your hard drive icon. It should be something like [Your User Name]/Library/TweetDeckFast.FXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX.1/Local Store
2. Make a backup copy of the xml and db files in the “Local Store” folder in case something goes wrong. Note their names.
3. Add a folder named “TweetDeck Local Store” in your Documents folder
4. Open the Terminal application (in Applications/Utilities).
5. In the command prompt, navigate your new “TweetDeck Local Store” folder:
   1. cd /Volumes/Macintosh HD/Users/[Your User Name]/Documents/TweetDeck Local Store
6. Create hard links from your xml and db files to you “TweetDeck Local Store” folder:
   1. ln “../../Library/Preferences /TweetDeckFast.FXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX.1/Local Store/preferences_[TwitterName].xml” ./preferences_[TwitterName].xml
   2. ln “../../Library/Preferences /TweetDeckFast.FXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX.1/Local Store/td_26[YourUserName].db” ./td_26_[TwitterName].db
7. Then, add the “TweetDeck Local Store” folder to Live Mesh.
8. It should soon begin syncing your files to Live Mesh.

Syncing other TweetDeck instances under Mac OS X

To sync TweetDeck settings already on Live Mesh from Mac OS X, you follow these steps:

1. Using the Live Mesh application, add your existing “TweetDeck Local Store” Live Mesh folder to your Mac. Create the Mac folder in “Documents/TweetDeck Local Store”.
2. Wait that Live Mesh has finished syncronizing the folder.
3. Locate TweetDeck’s “Local Store” folder.
4. Make a backup copy of the xml and db files in TweetDeck’s “Local Store” folder in case something goes wrong. Note their names. Delete them.
5. Open the Terminal applications and make hard links from your Live Mesh xml anbd db files in the “TweetDeck Local Store” folder to TweetDeck’s “Local Store” folder:

cd /Volumes/Macintosh HD/Users/[Your User Name]/Documents/TweetDeck Local Store

ln ./preferences_[TwitterName].xml “../../Library/Preferences/TweetDeckFast.FXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX.1/ Local Store/preferences_[TwitterName].xml”

ln ./td_26_[TwitterName].db “../../Library/Preferences/TweetDeckFast.FXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX.1/ Local Store/td_26_[TwitterName].db”

Caveat

When syncing with Live Mesh, the downside is that files should not be in use for syncing to proceed.
This means that to sync your TweetDeck settings, to other computers, you will need to close TweetDeck for the Live Mesh syncing to proceed. When using another computer, if it was shut down, you will need for the Live Mesh sync to finish before using TweetDeck. In my case, it means that:

• When using my desktop at home, I leave TweetDeck open. When going to work, I close TweetDeck. My upload connection is slow; this takes about 15 minutes.
• When arriving at work and boot up my Windows Vista laptop, I wait for the Live Mesh syncing to finish before opening TweetDeck. It takes a few minutes. 15 minutes before leaving work, I close TweetDeck for the syncing to start and finish.
• It’s the same when using my MacBook: I also wait for the syncing to end before opening TweetDeck and before shutting it down, I close TweetDeck and wait for the syncing to end.

Note that my TweetDeck db file is quite large. It is 45 MB. I’ve looked at its content and it is due to the fact that TweetDeck used to store messages locally. I have a bunch of old tweets stored in it. TweetDeck never cleaned up nor compressed my database. If you started using TweetDeck recently, it shouldn’t be a problem for you.

Compacting the TweetDeck database

If you’ve been a long-time TweetDeck user, your database is big enough that it’s an inconvenient to sync. To compact the database, you need to clean up stored tweets that take too much space and compact the database. Follow these steps:

• Download the SQLite command-line tool at http://www.sqlite.org/download.html
• Make a backup copy of your db file.
• Execute the tool with your database as a parameter:
  • sqlite3.exe “[path to your db file]“
• In the command-line utility, delete the tweets, compact the database and quit:
  • delete from tweets;
  • vacuum;
  • .quit

That’s it. Doing this my database shrank from 45MB to 1MB. Doing this, my upload syncs went from about 15 minutes to less than a minute!