The Twitter community has a very positive feel to it. This is in part because unfollowing other users is easy, and unless the people being unfollowed have special tools in place, they’ll never know.

But sometimes, simply unfollowing someone is just not enough. That’s why there’s now Gunfollow.com, the Twitter hitman. You can “hire” Gunfollow to unfollow and block a user. It’ll be quick an painless, and you can choose a message that gets delivered to the “victim”. If you prefer, this message can be delivered anonymously.

I had the basic idea for this website at six in the morning last Friday. I tweeted about it a few hours later, and @BruceJillis offered to help out. Working in our spare time only, we had a working prototype two days later, and now, after less than a week, the initial version is ready for you to try.

So, if you’re following someone who deserves to be unfollowed “with a vengeance”, give Gunfollow a try. You won’t regret it, but your victim will…

Related posts:

1. Introducing Snapatar: Update your Twitter avatar from your webcam Twitter by it’s very nature is a very limited service....
2. Why I’m not following you back on Twitter I’ve been using Twitter for a few months now(*), and...
3. Introducing haikoe.nl Less than two days ago, Blondmonster asked me to review...

I’ve been using computers daily since I was twelve, and I’ve never had any trouble with RSI or Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. When I look back at how I sat hunched over my Amiga 500 while playing games, that in itself is a small miracle. Nowadays, I pay close attention to my posture, and I can work long days without even the slightest hint of pain. Until I pick up one of my mobile devices that is.

Last night, I couldn’t sleep because my shoulder was sore. Had it been a Friday, this wouldn’t have surprised me, but this was Monday night, the end of my three-day weekend. When I started going over what I’d done the last couple of days, I started getting the suspicion that my iPod and phone were to blame. I’d not used my desktop PC in three days, and my laptop was still in it’s sleeve.

Think about it. If you’re the type of person who read long web pages on their phone and tweets often throughout the day, you end up holding that device up in front of you for extended periods of time. Modern smartphones are usually around 150 grams, so it’s no workout, but still. My current theory is that it’s mostly the weight of the arm itself.

At this point I’m going to try cutting back on my iPod and phone usage for a while, and see if that helps. I’m also not getting an iPad, because I’m pretty sure it would kill me. I’m also wondering whether other gadget freaks have similar issues. Are these mobile gadgets going to spawn a new RSI epidemic?

Related posts:

1. Idea: Corded DECT phone I bought a new home phone this weekend. Two of...
2. Opera just made browsing on Symbian fun again I while ago I wrote about how Gravity, a native...
3. Sync your Google Calendar with your phone I’ve always found syncing calendars to be troublesome at best....

Less than two days ago, Blondmonster asked me to review a haiku she’d written for (if I remember correctly) her employer’s Christmas greeting card. We both love haikus and we immediately started brainstorming. “Cow” stanslates as “koe” in Dutch, and we’d joked before about a “haikoe” (which is pronounced just like “haiku” in English). Sometimes you just need to act on impulses like this, so without further ado, I present to you: Haikoe.nl.

The website is extremely beta, and was hacked together from Snapatar leftovers, the Twitter API and some great artwork by Blondmonster. It will break. Possibly even today. But I’ll fix it when it does, and I hope that in the mean time you’ll feed our little bovine friend some haikus. Simply tweet a haiku and tag it #haikoe. You’ll then need to refresh the page to update.

Related posts:

1. Introducing Snapatar: Update your Twitter avatar from your webcam Twitter by it’s very nature is a very limited service....
2. Win a $50 iTunes gift card with Snapatar! To celebrate the launch of Snapatar, we’re having a little...
3. Introducing Gunfollow, the Twitter hitman The Twitter community has a very positive feel to it....

Netfirms just launched a contest to promote a pretty cool new feature they have. If you sign up with them you’ll be able to register domains by sending them a Twitter direct message. Not only does that save you from having to log into your account, it also allows you to snatch that cool domain name you just thought of anywhere you have access to Twitter. Clever. Here’s what you have to do to enter the Netfirms contest. You may just end up winning an iPod Touch or a MacBook.

How to enter

1. Tweet the following message
“Win a #free iPod Touch or Macbook from the @Netfirms #contest. Domain registration services via Twitter http://bit.ly/yJfJK”

2. Register a domain
Register a domain name via the Netfirms Twitter Domain Registration service for $7.99.

(One retweet equals one entry per day. One domain registered equals one entry.)

How Twitter DM domain registration works

You send a Direct Message to Netfirms via Twitter asking them to register a domain name for you. If the domain name is available they will register it for you and automatically add it to your existing Netfirms Control Panel and bill to your current billing profile. The only prerequisite is that you add your Twitter username to your Netfirms Control Panel. Please visit Netfirm’s tutorial with full details on setting yourself up for domain registration via Twitter. The instructions should be completed once only and you’re good to go after that.

1. Log in to your Twitter account (You can use any of the available Twitter apps)
2. Send a dm to @netfirms with the following: reg mynewdomain.com
3. They will confirm by replying to you via dm at which point the domain will be added to your Netfirms Control Panel. The domain is now ready to be used.

Easy and convenient, right? I love how so many new Twitter-based services are popping up. It proves how a very simple idea can grow into a really interesting phenomenon. Twitter now ties into so many aspects of my life. I get a tweet if my server does down, I use it to keep track of tons of events and services, and now I can use it to register new domains. Now all I need is a way to get my groceries delivered as a DM .

Go check out the contest and tell your friends!

Related posts:

1. Win a $50 iTunes gift card with Snapatar! To celebrate the launch of Snapatar, we’re having a little...
2. Snapatar now uses oAuth (phew!) As some of you may know, Twitter is fading out...
3. Introducing Snapatar: Update your Twitter avatar from your webcam Twitter by it’s very nature is a very limited service....

My latest pet project, snapatar.com is nearly ready to be launched. It’s been online for a few weeks now, and we’ve been fixing little bugs and adding features users have asked us about. The latest version, 0.9.5, adds two of those features.

Mirror mode

One of the first people to contact me with feedback asked if we could flip the camera image so it would be easier to position herself. While that made sense, there were also people showing items or notes in front of the camera. I didn’t want to force them to write backwards, so I made a little button to turn ‘mirror mode’ on and off.

Self-timer

Snapping your own picture can be quite tricky. It’s hard to get creative if you have to keep your finger on the mouse. Or look into the camera and hit the right button at the same time. Traditional photography has tackled this problem long ago with the self-timer, so it makes sense that Snapatar now has one too.

What’s next?

As far as we’re concerned, the first version of Snapatar is ‘feature complete’. If the new features prove stable we’re going to be releasing this version as 1.0. We’re completely new to releasing websites like this, so if you have any ideas on how to get this project on the front page of Digg, TechCrunch or create buzz any other way, please feel free to leave your suggestions in the comments.

Related posts:

1. Introducing Snapatar: Update your Twitter avatar from your webcam Twitter by it’s very nature is a very limited service....
2. Win a $50 iTunes gift card with Snapatar! To celebrate the launch of Snapatar, we’re having a little...
3. Snapatar now uses oAuth (phew!) As some of you may know, Twitter is fading out...

Not too long ago, a whole bunch of Twitter users made their avatar images green to show support for the Iranian people after the recent elections there. I’m not sure it had any effect, but it did (to my knowledge) introduce the concept of using a profile image overlay to communicate a message to your followers.

Recent startup Avartize picks up on this principle, and allows you to not only pick a predefined overlay (there are a whole bunch available already), but also allows your to create your own. Now everyone can start a campaign like the #iranelection one. All you have to do is become an ‘avartizer’.

For the average user, Avartize allows you to add an overlay in just a few easy steps. It even keeps your ‘old’ avatar, so you can revert back to it or choose another overlay without accidentally stacking multiple over each other. That could soon get messy, although I have to admit I found out that it works this way when I tried applying all the overlays to my profile image to see just how big that mess would be . Unfortunately for me, the Sneaker Entrepreneurs were way ahead of me, which goes to show how well-executed the website is.

Adding an overlay may be great fun or politically important at times, but I think the name ‘avartize’ hints at its commercial potential as well. I can imagine advertisers creating Avartize campaigns where having a certain overlay qualifies you to win a price, or gets you a free sample product. I can’t believe this domain name was available up until now, and the concept basically unexplored. The potential is overwhelming. I can’t wait to see where this will go.

Related posts:

1. Introducing Snapatar: Update your Twitter avatar from your webcam Twitter by it’s very nature is a very limited service....
2. Introducing Gunfollow, the Twitter hitman The Twitter community has a very positive feel to it....
3. Why I’m not following you back on Twitter I’ve been using Twitter for a few months now(*), and...

Twitter by it’s very nature is a very limited service. That’s what’s fun about it. Some people manage to be really clever and witty in 140 characters. But there’s only so much you can express in a tweet. The other main way to express your personality on Twitter is through your avatar image (or ‘profile picture’ as Twitter calls them).

Many of the people I follow have carefully designed avatars that they don’t change very often. But what if you could have your avatar be as current as your tweets. Showing you exactly the way you look today, doing what you’re doing right now? That’s where Snapatar comes in.

Snapatar lets you create a new Twitter profile image from your webcam in two very easy steps. You snap a picture, and if it looks right to you you enter your Twitter account details and upload it. That’s all. You can do this as often as you like, there’s currently no API limit for avatar updates. Of course it’s also a great way to create your first avatar if you’re new to Twitter and don’t have one yet.

Two days ago, Snapatar was nothing but a vague notion in my head. I’d thought of it while on vacation, and when I couldn’t find a similar service I decided to see if I could create a proof of concept application. I soon enlisted the help of my PHP guru Bernalyn, and from there things started to really gain momentum. This post is meant to announce the project to the world, and I hope we’ll get some Twitter users to try it. It’s still pretty beta, so we’d love to know what you run into. Please post any errors you come across, suggestions and feedback in the comments.

(Oh and yes, I know I need a better webcam…)

Related posts:

1. Avartize: Easily add overlays to your Twitter Avatar Not too long ago, a whole bunch of Twitter users...
2. Win a $50 iTunes gift card with Snapatar! To celebrate the launch of Snapatar, we’re having a little...
3. Snapatar 0.9.5 adds a self-timer and mirror mode My latest pet project, snapatar.com is nearly ready to be...

It’s been over a year since I first posted the idea of a USB hub that would let you switch each port on or off. To save energy, avoid peripherals from waking up each time you fire up your PC or simply because you won’t be needing the USB missile launcher today. Soon after that, Brando actually released one, but it wasn’t quite what I had envisioned.

Buffalo seems to have done a far better job, with what look to be decent switches and a power supply in case you need to connect things that need the full 500 mW of power that USB can supply. I’m sure I wasn’t the first person to think of this, especially since the Brando came out a month after my blog post. But it’s nice to see the idea catch on.

Related posts:

1. USB hub with on/off switches: It’s here! I wrote about this a while back, and it seems...
2. Idea: USB hub with on/off switches for each device I use lots of USB devices. External hard drives, a...
3. A new rig I haven’t bought a new PC for years. Not this...

I bought a new home phone this weekend. Two of the extra handsets from my Siemens Gigaset setup had given up after years of daily use, and since new add-on handsets are nearly impossible to find (and very expensive), I decided to go for an all new system. One thing I noticed was that it’s very hard to find anything really nice. When DECT was a new technology, getting a new phone was exciting. There were lots of models to choose from, and some of them were really sexy.

It may be the current recession, but all three stores I visited had the same bland, boring and cheap models. None of them offered anything special, and the only model with a decent color screen was gathering dust in the back of the display and had only a single handset.

But anyway. I was walking back to my car when this idea hit me. A corded DECT phone. But not like this one which only has a corded base station. My idea is to create a desk phone that uses a cord between the phone itself and the horn, while using DECT to talk to the base station. This would allow small offices to get rid of a lot of cables, but without the trouble of changing handset batteries or the possibility of running out of juice in the middle of a business conversation. The phone would simply be plugged into a power socket. And if they ever promote you to that nice corner office, all you need to do is pick up the phone and take it with you.

The total number of handsets that base stations accept could be a limiting factor, but I’m not sure what the maximum number is that the GAP standard allows. DECT itself has become incredibly cheap over the years. My new a-brand 3-handset setup cost less than $100. So I guess phones like this wouldn’t have to be expensive.

What do you think. Should office desk phones go wireless? Or will mobile phones or computer based VOIP setups eventually replace them altogether?

Related posts:

1. Logitech MX400 corded laser mouse My Logitech MX1000 mouse stopped working yesterday. The mouse pointer...
2. Sync your Google Calendar with your phone I’ve always found syncing calendars to be troublesome at best....
3. Idea: USB hub with on/off switches for each device I use lots of USB devices. External hard drives, a...

I’ve been meaning to convert some of the output of my TIME/SPACE experiment on YouTube for a while now. Unfortunately the current incarnation of that project is a Flash movie, and Flash doesn’t let you simply save the images you generate. At least not very conveniently.

I’d been looking into complicated stuff like mmsave, when it dawned on me that there are plenty of tools out there that let you simply record whatever’s on your screen. I ended up using Windows Media Encoder to grab these and VirtualDub to crop and convert them. Took just a few minutes.

The movie above is a shot from Aeon Flux with the time and X axis reversed. You’re basically seeing the every moment in the shot at once, while traveling along the X axis (whereas usually you’d see the full width while moving through time). Here’s what that does to Finding Nemo’s turtle scene:

And to a scene from Out of Sight.

The reason I wanted to put these on YouTube is be able to post them on my blog without the risk of my server being overrun. The web page I put up for this experiment is very heavy and could potentially cause high server loads. However, if you feel you absolutely must play with the effect yourself, please feel free to take a look.

TIME/SPACE

Related posts:

1. WordPress plugin: Youtuber Youtuber has moved to WordPress.org. The information on this page...
2. Youtuber 1.1 This video was embedded using the YouTuber plugin by Roy...
3. Help me test WP-Cumulus unicode support The one feature I’ve always wanted to add to WP-Cumulus...