GeekSugar

Hollywood's URL: Fake Movie Dot-Coms

GeekSugar — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 05:47:51 -0700

Facebook getting a feature film about its origins got me thinking about how the Internet has been portrayed on film - particularly the dot-com business side and the fake websites that movies have to create to further their plot. Check out a few of my favorite fake URLs from the big screen!

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Use Social Whale to Quickly Shorten URLs

GeekSugar — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 13:05:07 -0700

The uber helpful Tinyurl is great for sending shortened links to friends and posting on Twitter, but it sure does take a lot of steps to complete the task. First you have to copy the link, go to Tinyurl, paste, make your link tiny, then go back over to your Twitter page (or email draft, IM, whatever) and paste the shortened link. Sounds like a lot of steps, right?

With the new Firefox extension called Social Whale, the process of shortening a URL has been reduced to two steps. Yes, two. Social Whale is free to download to Firefox, and adds a small whale icon to the bottom right of your browser for safe keeping. Once you're on a page you want to link to, all you have to do is click on the whale icon, and Social Whale automatically shortens the link and copies it to your clipboard. Then, the only thing you have to do is paste the link into your email, IM, or Twitter page. You're then free to continue your web browsing, knowing you just saved yourself like a whole 10 to 20 seconds of time. Personally, I need all the time I can get.

But Social Whale isn't just a one-trick pony. See what else it can do, when you read more.

Social Whale also works hand-in-hand with Twitpic to upload photos to Twitter as well. Just by right clicking on the whale icon, you'll get an option to upload a photo. Simple, and so so easy.

6 Useful URL Shorteners

GeekSugar — Fri, 08 May 2009 01:45:46 -0700

With Twitter capping our tweets at 140 characters, many of us have had to find creative ways to make sure we can say what we want to say, without going over the character limit. Want to include a long link in your tweet? Forget about it. But thanks to some handy URL shortening sites, you can include all the links you want (well don't go overboard) . . . It's amazing what you can cram into 140 characters!

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Geek Tip: Quickly Adding The .com in Firefox

GeekSugar — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 10:30:59 -0700

Here's a helpful shortcut tip from tips4mac for all you
Firefox users. The next time you go to type in a URL in the address bar, stop typing before the ".com" part and hit "command-enter." This shortcut key sequence will instantly insert the ".com" part and direct you to a particular site. Try with geeksugar and hit "command+enter," it will instantly add the .com! "Shift +enter" will also add ".net" and "shift+command+enter" will add ".org."

This is a great tip, but I've also found that hitting enter will sometimes add the ".com" as well so I guess you just never know (although for the .net and .org this is really useful).

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Geek Tip: Quickly Emailing A URL Link

GeekSugar — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 11:00:05 -0700

If you're looking for a quick and easy way to email co-workers, friends, or family members cool links from your MacBook, give this geek tip a whirl.

Press command-shift-I, which will open your email and automatically insert the URL from the website you were visiting into the body of your email. Just type in the recipient's name, give it a subject and click send, and in seconds your website will be shared with others.

Geek Tip: Fix Misspelled URLs With URL Fixer

GeekSugar — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 10:00:49 -0700

I love typing in www.google.con or yelp.lom to be told that the address cannot be found. I freak out, tell Firefox it's an idiot, and then head to downforeveryoneorjustme.con, at which point I develop an ulcer until I realize that it was just my butterfingers making me enter typos into the address bar.

URL Fixer is like my Zen-master - it keeps me calm by fixing my misspelled urls. After you tell it to confirm confirmations, you'll get a pop up asking you if you meant their suggestion (which appear to be pretty accurate so far!). Butterfingers, you've met your match.

Not Happy With Your FB Name? You Can Now Change It!

GeekSugar — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 11:46:54 -0700

Now that the Facebook name grab has quieted down and millions of users have secured their favorite vanity name, Facebook is giving everyone a second chance. If your new username URL is a tad racy for your business cards, or you don't want your entire full name exposed on Facebook, just go into Account Settings and then click "change" under Username. Keep in mind that this is your one chance, one opportunity because Facebook will only let you change it once (for now, anyways), so make sure you are 100 percent certain it's the name you want. And if you've read all this and are wondering what the heck I'm talking about, this is how you can get your own Facebook username URL.

Geek Tip: Another iPhone Typing Shortcut

GeekSugar — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:30:48 -0800

I'm starting to think Apple might be reading my mind - every time I find something I don't like about my iPhone, I realize they've already thought of a solution. Similar to learning how to quickly scroll to the top of the screen on my iPhone, I wish I would have known about this quick shortcut months ago.

If you're typing a URL into Safari on your phone, there's a convenient ".com" button on the keyboard - great when the suffix to the site you're trying to visit is .com. Not so great when it's a .net or .org site and you have to type it out - or so I thought! Turns out, you just have to touch and hold the ".com" button for a few seconds and a pop-up window appears, displaying .edu, .net, and .org suffix options. Brilliant!

I love learning new tricks for my iPhone, so if you have any to share, please tell me in the comments below.

Facebook Begins Use of Usernames: Why I'm Worried

GeekSugar — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 01:44:40 -0700

Hey, good news! Facebook now lets you use usernames in the URL for your Facebook page, rather than the series of crazy numbers to distinguish your personal URL. Why am I a little unenthused? The announcement also says, "We expect to offer even more ways to use your Facebook username in the future."

So if you don't get to use your first and last name (as Facebook has championed all along) as this new username, we may see a lot of reverting to the use of handles or screennames - something I don't necessarily miss.

Here's the thing: I dumped MySpace for Facebook a couple years ago like I was moving on to a new, uncomplicated boyfriend from a messy relationship with a crazy, complicated guy. I loved Facebook for being what MySpace wasn't: clean and straightforward. Now it feels like they're going back toward that messy complicated world I loathed. And Facebook hasn't exactly been making the masses happy in these last few months.

What do you think of Facebook using usernames?

Should Celebrities Be Given Seniority to Online Usernames?

GeekSugar — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 06:02:26 -0700

One word of advice, don't register any Jennifer Lopez URLs in the near future. The entertainer and mother of two just won her cybersquatting (must add this one to the geek dictionary) case against a man who registered jenniferlopez.net and jenniferlopez.org to send users to a pay-per-click ad site.

And speaking of celebrities and names, Twitter is now taking celebrity usernames and giving them back to the real celebrity. That's right, say you register your Twitter username under the alias Lindsay Lohan (probably already taken) but say you did secure that name, Twitter would probably take it from you later and tell you to pick a different name.

What is going on here? Is Twitter realizing that their popularity is increasing due to celebrity participation and therefore is striving to give them preferential treatment over other users? And how do they determine who a real "celeb" is? Is every A, B, C, and even D list celeb going to be knocking on Twitter's door begging for their name back?

What are your thoughts on this? Should celebs be given any preferential URL and/or username treatment when it comes to the web? In the meantime, this non-celeb geek will keep using Namechk to see what sites I can and can't use my real name for.