I have become a Mac user

My old Windows PC, after almost 5 years of serving us at home with the occasional interruptions, finally decided that it was enough. Lately it was giving us some problems which, made me buy an external HDD to keep a backup. But a couple of weeks ago no amount of restarting managed to make it come back.

So anyway, for a while I have wanted to get a Mac, and now that I needed to buy a new computer seemed like the best opportunity to finally take the plunge. So I went to the Apple website to check the MacBook Pros. No one can deny that Apple knows how to make their products look good and sexy. After checking carefully the MacBook Pro pages for a while, and after being convinced of all their design features, specs and amazing technological advances, the only thing stopping me from making the decision was the price. I searched the Internet looking for reviews about these machines that would justify spending the extra money, and found rumours about the release of new MacBook Pro models. Well, lucky enough the rumour was true and the very next day these new models were released. They had bigger HDD, more RAM, faster processors, increased battery life, and the best of all they were $200 less! That was enough to make the decision and buy a shiny and new 15-inch MacBook Pro. Yippee!

I ordered the new machine and two days later this beautiful computer was already at home.

#fixreplies - Is it really a problem?

I don't think people really understand what the change that Twitter made about replies was, but still, a lot of people are complaining about it.

Here is the Twitter announcement about the change:

http://blog.twitter.com/2009/05/small-settings-update.html

When you go to your Twitter page on the web, and click on Settings, one of the tabs that you get is Notices. In there was an option that actually was a bit difficult to understand in the first place, especially if you are not familiar with Twitter. This option allowed you to manage the replies that person A (@personA - someone you follow) sends to person X (@personX). Just to clarify, you are not @personA or @personX.

These are the three options that this setting used to offer:

@replies to the people I'm following. This was the default option; the one that the huge majority of people had, and the one that Twitter now uses. It means that you receive the replies that @personA sends to @personX, but only if you follow person A and person X. If you don't follow person X you don't see the replies that A sends to X. Example: More than a million people follow Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk). If you follow him, do you really want to receive the replies that @aplusk sends to his followers? You probably want to see the replies he sends to people you follow, but not the replies he sends to everybody else. If you do, I suggest you simply go to his profile. There you can see everything he writes to everybody else.

All @replies. Now this option doesn't exist anymore. This is the one that lets you see all the replies that all the people you follow send to all the people they follow. Who wants that?!?!

No @replies. Well, easy to understand you receive no replies. The only replies you receive are those send to you, but that's it.

Again, is people really in need of seeing all the replies that people you follow are sending? I think people are complaining without a real reason. If you never changed that @replies option in your Settings this change in Twitter won't affect you.

I was not Ashton Kutcher's 1 millionth follower

I noticed something on the CNN (@cnnbrk) vs Kutcher (@aplusk) race on Twitter to reach 1 million followers, which I haven't seen mentioned anywhere else. Something that, in a way, decided the race some hours before it actually finished.

Like many (becuase I am sure I was not the only one) I wanted to be Kutcher's 1 millionth follower. So I started checking Kutcher's number of followers, refreshing the page and writing the number and time on a spreadsheet. My idea was to try and predict when the 1 millionth follower would occur and that way clicking the Follow button at that time. I knew my chances would be slim but, like when you play lotto, at least I'd have a chance, and a better chance if my predictions were correct.

In this sort of situation, when there's a deadline (in this case the deadline was 1 million followers), there's always a bigger influx of followers as the deadline is getting closer. The same thing happens when people bet on horses, where most of the bets would occur right at the end. That was a situation I was considering, I was expecting the rate number of followers to start increasing rapidly at the end.

The interesting thing is, it never happened. The number of followers were increasing at a constant rate, at around 66 - 67 followers per minute. This rate never increased towards the end. So, you could predict with a couple of hours in advance when the number of followers would reach 1 million.

To me, what this shows is that the Twitter servers showed a maximum capacity on the number of followers it can process; and on that day it was about 66 to 67 followers for Kutcher. Have a look at this image posted by Ashton Kutcher http://twitpic.com/3fzvy which shows this nice line. The line didn't go up at the end as I expected. The line shows a constant rate of followers for both Kutcher and CNN.

This might explain why people complained about finding it difficult to follow Kutcher. Many also complained that it was not possible to unfollow. I don't know if there's an official word from Twitter on the unfollow thing but I would dare to say it was caused by the same server capacity.

So I tried to follow when my calculations indicated Kutcher would reach 1 million, but of course, it didn't work. I had to click several times on that Follow button without success. And so, I was not the 1 millionth follower, but I learn something about Twitter to write on this blog.

The 15th week - Mothership photo

External photo of the mothership the day our bellynaut completed 15 weeks of journey.

The 14th week - Contact

One day after our bellynaut completed 14 weeks of journey, we stablished a communication link with the mothership to take a look inside and spy our traveler. This is the best look we have had so far. The technician in the control room told us that with a 70% accuracy it can be said that our bellynaut is of the "male" gender. All vital measurements were normal. We are very happy about the news.

The next communication link is scheduled for week 20.

A definition

belly•naut [bel-ee-not] n. Derived from the English word belly, meaning "womb"; and the Greek word nautes, meaning "sailor".

The 12th week - first public news

Our bellynaut has reached the 12th week of journey.

Communications with our bellynaut are planned for week 14.

Looking forward to having this visual contact to assess the conditions of the mothership and health of the bellynaut.

Peanuts

Peanuts, peanuts...

There's peanuts on the way