Since Los Angeles is in the midst of a heat wave, I’m going to have to make this one short. Effin’ Nerds has finally stepped up our game from the Little Leagues to the Minor Leagues in the blog promotion biz. We’re making banners in hopes that someone will steal them and post them all over the Internet. No fancy downloading service here… just right click for the full size and steal away after the jump.
In my ever evolving love-hate relationship with revealing too much online, I’ve decided to take the plunge and give the Internet a peep inside of my world for 1,000 days. Read on Citizens of the Interweb, this story is made in social networking heaven.
It all began when I downloaded the Hipstamatic app on my iPhone to take some graduations pictures. When I finally tried the app, I had a cross processing love affair. For a buck ninety-nine, I got my passion for photography back. Two snaps up and a bottle of non-toxic developer. Mkay?
A few days later on my Facebook feed, I noticed a friend of mine uploading her mobile pictures to posterous.com, as an all mobile photos blog. Then bing! The lightbulb in my tiny brain went off and I decided to start my photo blog right away.
I have a handful of friends who have done 365 photo projects and they were fun to flip through. So I leaped onto the bandwagon with no hesitation. This project is no different, but I did set up a few arbitrary ground rules for myself.
1.Photos will be taken with the Hipstamatic App.
2.Photos will be mailed in directly from the iPhone.
3.All pictures posted must be taken on the same day.
4.One day = one picture. No more, no less. Any tubular left-over pics will be spit out into my Twitter feed.
5.An even larger collection of out takes will eventually show up on this blog.
6.I am allowed to take as many photos of food or objects around my house as I please. My daily mantra will be, “Not everyday is a fabulous and adventurous day. We do what we can.”
7.If I don’t make it to even 100 days, no big whoop. There are thousands of cat pictures to keep the Internet happy, right?
I finally made the decision to autopost to effinnerds.com today — Day 50. Can you believe it? If all goes well, posterous will be sending a picture a day to this blog. So ladies and gentleman, I’d like to present:
1,000 Days of Chenda
VIEW ARCHIVES OF PHOTOS SO FAR:
If you’ve gotten an e-mail from Gmail asking you to verify your Google account, step away from your e-mail box. That’s not Google — the most powerful information gathering company in the world — who is asking for your personal info. The e-mail is simple and plays on your fear of losing your Google account. The e-mail continues to ask for your account name, password, and country. These red flags are so obvious for those of us who are addicted to the Internet, but let’s reiterate for the tech novice. NEVER give out your password or personal information in your e-mail, unless you know for sure that it is a trusted source. [editorial note: The red bar with the message from Google did not appear until I reported this e-mail as a phishing e-mail. This screen shot was taken out of my SPAM folder, as an afterthought.]
It says it's from Gmail... It replies to Google, right? WRONG.
The problem with this e-mail is that it is cloaked and looks like it is sent by the Gmail team. But let’s looks deeper.
Gmail has a nifty option to “Show Original” e-mail. Once you click on this option, you will see a page like this pop up…
Now, let’s look at the return path. You’ll see who is getting the reply e-mail that you send with all of your personal info. This address should reflect the address that you see in your actual e-mail. In this case, your reply e-mail will be going to alexsan@mastercoolman.net. I know Google is pretty cool, but “mastercoolman.net” is not one of their many domain names. This is a phishing scam. You should report this to Google right away.
So, I went to the website to see who this mastercoolman was, but it was pulled down. If you’re neurotic like me, you’ll probably take it to the next step and search the Who Is database for mastercoolman.net. Well, I did. And this is what I found.
It looks like Go Daddy pulled the plug on this domain name for spam and abuse. Yay! But let this be a lesson to us all. We are in an age where we cannot afford to take our electronic communications for face value. Please dig deeper and be sure you’re sending your information to the intended recipients.
The case of the Google Verification Gmail Scam is closed!
OK, so I am a Google fan and haven’t used Bing.com much, but that all changed tonight. I was cruising around the site and found it to be incredibly deep and useful. And I’m not just swayed by the fact that Cambodia was on the main page today. I searched True Blood and found that my results were broken down into relevant categories like: News, DVD, Cast, Wallpaper, Theme Song, Quotes, Videos, and Images. This isn’t enough for me to switch from Google for quick and dirty searches, but for depth and fun factor I will definitely be adding Bing to the menu.
Yep. I keep seeing these scams online. This one is exactly like the rest. The websites associated with this scam are erinsgrantblog.com and grantsmoney.com.
WHAT “ERIN” SAYS
I went to the grant website and paid the $3.95 shipping fee, but seriously, for the amount I got back from this, it seems like a joke to me now. After getting this program, I was immediately able to apply for thousands of grants that most people don’t know about.
Here’s what you’re really signing up for…
It all starts with a 1-day “Free” trial for a $1.95 shipping fee. If you don’t cancel after 1-day, you will be charged $57.61. (Come on! They couldn’t even match the dollar amount? Amateurs!)
OFFER DETAILS
Clicking the buy button will activate your trial membership with Grants Money and provide instructions to the supplied email address! To activate your trial membership to Grants Money your card will be charged $1.95 and then you can immediately take advantage of the exciting savings Grants Money has to offer! After your 1 day trial period it’s just $57.61 for each 30 days for Grants Money. Remember, you can chat with a live operator by calling 1.866.955.1671 within the 1 day period to cancel or emailing us at support@grantsmoney.com and providing detailed information to enable us to process your request, and you will not be charged. As an exclusive bonus we are offering our customers 2 days of unlimited access to our work from home guide for a charge of $1.95. Cancel anytime during the trial period to avoid any further charges. Otherwise, a one-time fee of $38.21 will be charged to your credit card. Marking the checkbox and submitting the form constitutes an agrement to these terms on your part.
IN ALL FAIRNESS
I didn’t sign up for this service, so I don’t know if the grants are real, but no one likes fees that are hidden in the small print.
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I saw this on my Facebook feed last night. What a great way to prepare for the start of the new season — August 16! Can’t wait!! You can Mad Men yourself at AMC.com.
Whew. My blog is slowing down for a bit while I get adjusted to a new work schedule. I’ll be getting into a proper schedule soon. In the meanwhile, take a peek at my friends blog Thing of it is… It’s a mix of cute pics, tech news, funny stuff, and random musings. Check it out!
Just when you thought Google was slowing down, here they come with their own operating system. On a personal note, it was an OMFG moment for me. I’m amazed. Although, this operating system is not directly competing with Microsoft or Apple, it is definitely drifting into that territory. And as you already know, with the release of Android and Chrome, Google has already been making moves. They’ve got gumption, that’s for sure. I guess that is why they rule the Internet. Here are some key quotes from their news release:
“However, the operating systems that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no web. So today, we’re announcing a new project that’s a natural extension of Google Chrome — the Google Chrome Operating System. It’s our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be.”
“Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010.”
“Google Chrome OS is a new project, separate from Android….While there are areas where Google Chrome OS and Android overlap, we believe choice will drive innovation for the benefit of everyone, including Google.”
Posted by Sundar Pichai, VP Product Management and Linus Upson, Engineering Director (googleblog.blogspot.com)
YouTube is a great site, but it can’t possibly contain every video on the planet, so here are a few great sites that will fill your International needs.
I only wanted to write this post because I discovered tudou.com the other day. I was on the hunt for the elusive full episodes of TV shows and such online. At first I was doubt-ridden because video sites, like YouTube, are brimming with bad videos. Not to say that YouTube has bad quality, on the contrary, but that the sheer volume of videos makes it difficult to find the quality videos. I successfully watched my precious episodes of True Blood (I would have watched on HBO — which I tried to order twice — but the post on my problems with Comcast would lead down a dark and angry tangent.)
Anyway, I posted the link on my FaceBook page and got a response from a FB friend, Kat McCarty, who suggested watchme.tv. Great site! So I thought that I would take the next step and find a few more international video sharing sites. Enjoy!
tudou.com (Chinese)
Tuduo is like the Holy Grail of videos that you can’t get in the U.S. We all know how China feels about copyright laws. Wink. Wink. The bizarre thing about this site is that all of the love scenes get censored. No surprise, since all of the bootleg videos from China are also censored. It just feels like you’re on Bizarro YouTube.
viikii.net (Multi-national)
ViiKii is a great site for multi-lingual folk. They offer a great variety of videos in different languages. With enough users and videos, this could be a great hub for finding and categorizing videos in various languages. I have my language settings as: English, Cambodian, and Spanish. It’s amazing!
watchme.tv (Japanese)
I haven’t spend a whole lot of time at WatchMe TV, but I have a feeling that when I get a hankering for weird and wonderful game shows or anime, this will be the first place I go.
aajkatv.com (South Asian)
Everyone needs a little Bollywood in their lives and this is a great place to get your fill. I just love those dance routines. And I love the cooking videos! We are addicted to South Asian food in our home, so this is an incredible feature. The also have a category just for Cricket. Can’t get that on YouTube. Jai Ho!
videos.sapo.pt (Portuguese)
Sapo.pt is portal site, like Yahoo! for all of our Portuguese needs. The video site has everything other video sites have, except that it’s in Portuguese. The one thing that I did notice was a category called “Erotisimo.” Then I remembered that Europe is way more open about their sexuality than we are in the States. While it’s not Xtube or YouPorn, the Erotisimo section of this site has a lot of NSFW goodness. I was totally fascinated!
After my three week ordeal being without cable or Internet, I’m slowly but surely getting back into the swing of things. Here’s something to keep you all entertained in the meanwhile. These are some of the best articles from my Yahoo! Shine blog. Enjoy!
5 Ways To Support Your Boyfriend’s Video Game Habit
What do guys think of girls who play video games?
5 games to play on your morning commute
5 Ways to Prevent Video Game Addiction in Your Child
I stole this screen shot from kevinrose.com. But here you you Tweeps. Yet another App to add to your phone. I’m not currently using TweetDeck, so I don’t know yet if I’ll switch over. I don’t have a desktop Twitter App and I’m using TwitterFon on my iPhone. But Mr. Rose seems to be sold, so I’m guessing millions of fanboys an girls will follow suit. On a personal note, I like how KR takes a screen shot at 11:11AM… superstious?
More stolen screen shots…
I’ll make this post short and link to the L.A. Tribute post. This is the same deal as before: Legit-looking website peddling easy money from home. This time it’s called The Foster City Daily News and the website is securecartcenter.com, but the scam remains the same. For those of you who haven’t read about this before, these news sites make it seem easy to earn money from home by spending just $1. The reality is that you’ll end up spending anywhere from $80-100 per month. Messed up, right?
Welcome to Smak News — a site that allows you to vote on stories, much like Digg.com. But instead of voting up and down, you “follow” stories and “talk smak.” The culture is a more positive space, not like the nasty comment trolls on Digg or Reddit. The site seems fairly new and membership seems low, but I’m glad that a site like this is around for women. As much as I like those other sites, they are male-centric, so I’ll never see links to hot guys.
It looks like the masterminds at Google have taken their best applications and smashed them all together into one big browser-application thing. At the moment, they are only collecting e-mail addresses for the big announcement. Looks interesting, right? Here’s what Google has to say about their new baby.
