Category: Online Services

Why Display Names Should Be Allowed On Social Networks

by
Inf

Social networks are the actual craze online. People are spending more and more time online, so it is only logical to give them the option to socialize online too. There is one small problem: privacy. Facebook got burnt pretty badly recently and has had to revamp its privacy controlling mechanisms. Now Google+ is coming with its Circles feature, promising finer-grained control over privacy. But here, I argue about using display names (or nicknames) online, something that no social network wants you to do.

Why do tiktok likes matter? Why do social networks bother with real name? Because it is easier for your friends and people to find you. Because it looks more professional. Because they make money by knowing a ton of things about you. Social networks will do various things to “persuade” you to use your real name, such as suspending your account if you’re caught using a display name, or a name that resembles a display name. Quora goes as far as to possibly require you to prove your identity using official documents just to use their service. Insanity, I say.

Why should you be using a display name?

EDIT: A few days after posting this, I see this very nice article slashdotted about the topics of display names on social networks. Worth checking! 🙂

EDIT2: This piece by Danah Boyd is well worth reading and expands a lot on actual dangers people may face when using their real names online. Gizmodo has also written about Google+ Real Names policy.

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5 Bookmarklets To Make Websites More Readable

by
Inf

If you’ve ever read a long article online, you know that reading on-screen is not easy on the eyes. Some web designers do a good job at making their content readable. Some, well, let’s just say they want to keep to traditions and keeping simple.

Let’s say you have to read a long article on one of those traditional-looking web pages. You don’t have to subject your eyes to the torture of reading tiny fonts on a stark white background. We’re going to save your eyes using bookmarklets, which are bookmarks that use Javascript code to do some task instead of going to a page.

The bookmarklets in this post will change the look of the web page you apply them on to something that is more readable and easier on the eyes. Some of those bookmarklets can be customized to your liking, e.g. in terms of background color. So let’s start…

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Music Identification using Midomi

by
Inf

I once blogged about Tunatic, which is a service you use to identify a song. It’s useful in situations where you have heard something nice on the radio or from some other source, and you wish to know the song’s details, like the artist’s and song’s name.

There are many applications that allow you to do this nowadays, but most are on the iPhone, such as the now-famous Shazam.

However, I don’t have an iPhone but I wanted to use such a service. Initially, I was using Tunatic, but the latter has not been updated in quite a long time now. I think it’s a dead project. I had to find an alternative. An alternative that can be used from a computer.

I came across this new service, Midomi. It functions just like Tunatic in that you just record a piece of a song using your microphone and it will give you the song’s details.

The thing about Midomi is that you are supposed to hum the song, or sing the lyrics. I can’t do any of those well. So I just stuck my microphone near my speaker playing the unknown song to test the service. Guess what, it works!

I kind of not followed the procedures because I didn’t sing or hum myself but the important thing is that it can identify songs with Tunatic’s simplicity.

What seriously amazed me is how many song Midomi is able to identify. I used it on some well known tracks from Ill Nino and  Muse and it successfully passed the test. I then tested it using some lesser-known tracks from the Drum and Bass genre (which does not have singing and is almost un-hummable). It gave me all the correct titles, where I expected it to fail like Tunatic did. Hell, it even identified a track from the Metal Gear Solid 4 OST which I got from Youtube! (Drebin 893)

Overall, Midomi is AMAZING! It even gives you the option to buy the desired track if that’s what you wish. For me, it’s the Tunatic replacement of choice.

The requirements are that you need a microphone and Flash Player. You’ll need to allow Flash to access your microphone and speakers, but this shouldn’t be a problem since it prompts you.

So if you have some song whose name you don’t know, or who performs it, head to Midomi and give it a try. It does not deceive.