I try some homemade solutions, as I liked to have total control over my data. Then, since there were many problems - security, reliability, speed - I chose to use a solution that's already done. I opened an account on

• Parse.com
• Kinvey
• StackMob

and I evaluated all of them. I found them almost the same. At the time, Parse was recently acquired by Facebook, and StackMob was joking on their quality of service, publishing a guide to migrate to their servers. I trusted them, and I wasted some months developing my app over their cloud.

Then, in december, I go on their website and I read a shock news: StackMob is enthusiast to join PayPal!!! This is a disaster!!! PayPal/eBay is known to pay millions to buy companies to cripple them (for example: Stumbleupon) or even just close them!!!

What a pity…

I told myself: "Well, for my next apps, I'll use Parse, for now I gonna keep StackMob"

Then, just randomly, I go to see their website and I see that their service is under immediate closing!!! THEY CLOSE TODAY!!!! Again, a vital service shuts down without sending a fucking email to their customers!!! What the hell!!!

Luckily I managed to export my data, but I have to waste a lot of time to replace every StackMob function with a Parse equivalente.

Assholes.

A few days ago in Google Play appeared iMessage for Android.

It's not a fake app, it actually works: the problem is how it works.

Since Apple doesn't allow chat between other brands' devices, messages are sent to a Mac Mini located in China, and then sent to the final destination.

The app is free and doesn't show any ads. They don't have a way to make money from this app, yet this "Daniel Zweigart" pays at least $100/month to house his Mac Mini in an internet datacenter: how he could pay for it?

There are two ways:

1. he is a philantropist and does it for the glory
2. it's a smart way to steal your Apple ID

Now, if your Apple ID, is "fake" like mine, registered without a credit card just for downloading the free single of the week from iTunes, there are no problems.

If your Apple ID is real, stealing the password leads to problems like those:

• They can buy apps for thousands of dollars, especially if those apps are made by their "friends"
• They can see all your iPhone photos
• They can block your iPhone just for fun, making a nice $600 decoration for your shelf
• They can reset your iPhone, losing all your data
• They can delete all your data from your Mac, as happened to that Wired journalist who lost years of personal photos
• They can see your passwords if you were crazy enough to sync the keychain on the cloud
• They can see your iWork documents, if you saved on the cloud
• They can send spam to your iMessage friends
• They can impersonate yourself and scam your iMessage friends
• and so on...

Ps: works perfectly on BlackBerry 10, but it's not available on BlackBerry World. If you want to download it, connect your Google Play account on barinstall.com

If I wanted google.com as my homepage, I would have just set it up!

In the latest updates, they already hid all the extensions under a submenu (hint: move on the side, you can widen the bar and show them again), now they remove the most used feature in their browser?

Are they trying to ruin it?

Luckily there is a way to restore it to its classical style.

Just go on chrome://flags and search for a setting called "Extended Instant API". Disable it, scroll at the bottom of the page and press save. Chrome will restart and everything would work as before.

Waze is a free GPS navigator that uses users contributions to update maps and give information about traffic and speed traps. It's the most popular free alternative to Google Maps.

If the acquisition won't be forbidden by regulators, in a few months it will be disabled, as it happened for Sparrow, Meebo, BumpTop, Wavii...

What a pity...

It was Reader, then the XMPP protocol in Google Talk, this time the Gmail sneak peek lab is gone: when enabled, you could get a preview of the message by simply right-clicking it, saving a lot of time!

The reason it's the useless Gmail redesign, to access quickly to promotions, offers and other Google+ notifications!

Always like this! Every silly decision they take it's for trying to make Google+ more popular!

I think that Google+ is a failure, nobody use it, just accept it and place it on the right place, on a shelf next to Buzz and Wave.

Just take a random article on the Internet, look the comparison between Tweets, Likes, and +1

Google+ has millions of accounts set up, they are flaunting to be the biggest social network, but... nobody is actually using it!

Every attempt to make it become more populare is super stupid, like that idea to force every Android app review to be signed with name, surname real picture and link to the real profile! Why do I need to publish publicly my personal data when I review an Android app??? Maybe someone downloads some "risky" app (something sexual, or about politics, something like that), likes it, makes a review and it GETS SIGNED WITH NAME AND PHOTO, and linked to the actual profile, where more personal details may be available, like work place, address, friends.

For example a neonazi homophobic group could get a list of people to harass by just reading the public Grindr reviews! Or a girl, by simply searching on Google, could discover that her boyfriend, just a few days ago, left a "5 stars, omg this app works great" review on the "Find sex buddies". And I could continue with thousands of examples of why this linking reviews to people is an extremely dumb idea!

Similar approach on YouTube and Blogger.com - they are pushing for Google+ comments! Where is my privacy???

So, I decided to give them an hint: I just deleted myself from Google+.

It's easy and other Google features won't be deleted. (Picasa, Docs, YouTube, ecc...)

You won't miss it at all (how many of you are using it???), and will make Google a bit less the core of your life.

Just after seven minutes I got an email! With much excitement I open it:

It comes from "g.....a.g.....n.....e...r.......ademan...d....e@gmail.com" (uhm... what's this address? On gmail dots are ignored, it has been edited this way to avoid searching on Google, the real address is gagnerademande@gmail.com) and it says "I am interested to that phone, it's still on sale?"

I answer from my disposable email account: "Of course it's still on sale, I posted it less than 10 minutes ago"

I get immediately a response (from a different email, gagnerademande1@outlook.fr) he says he is an Italian but for work reasons he is temporarily located in Abidjan, and he needs my Z10 so badly to happily pay 100 euro more than my asking price, if I can send it immediately via ITALIAN POSTAL SERVICE.

This is the proof that the guy isn't an Italian, otherwise he would have NEVER asked to rely on the ITALIAN POSTAL SERVICE to deliver such an expensive and fragile item!

However, I answer "sure, send money to this email, and I will send the phone immediately"

Just a few seconds later I get a phishing email from paypal-assistenza@ymail.com (I guess PayPal is cutting on budget, can't afford professional email, must use the free yahoo mail) written in bad Italian: money is arrived, if I click and insert my PayPal password, I will receive the money.

Super cool! In this way the scammer gets my phone for free and at the same time he steals my PayPal password, for having a free shopping spree!

So, I click the fake link in the fake email, and I get a fake site where, inserting my fake email with a fake password like "omgimdumb", I see that the fake payment has been credited on my fake account, cool!

I answer "Whoa, that's a fast payment! I send it quickly via italian postal service, it will arrive very fast, I'm sure about it."

Not understanding my irony, he answers me "Thank you! Send it to:

Name: CHANTAL  KOUAKOU
Address: COCODY RUE DES PRINCES LOTTO:748
ZIP code:12 BP 2479
City: ABIDJAN
Country: Ivory Coast
TEL: +225 66751492

I answer him: Wait for it impatiently, will arrive very soon

Maybe isn't that clear in my image, but the core of my digital life is Google. And what about your?

Unfortunately, for now there is no Springpad app for BlackBerry 10, so I am left without my hundreds of useful notes.

Yes, BlackBerry 10 integrates natively with Evernote, automatically syncing with Evernote text notes, memos and voice notes, but I don't like Evernote.

Luckily, how I wrote in my previous post, you can manually install most Android apps.

This is how Springpad is working on BlackBerry 10:

Unfortunately, it has two limitations:

1. For now "shares" are confined inside the Android subsystem. You can share pages and news to and from other Android apps, like Taptu, but you can't share to and from "native" apps. This limitation should be removed with BlackBerry 10.2, coming in a few months.
2. Push notifications aren't supported:
   

Well... I can live without those functions, if I want to "share" I can manually do it with copy/paste, and I don't use notifications.

If you want to try it, download pre-converted Springpad below and load it on your device by following this guide:

Springpad 4.0.3

Springpad 4.0.4

Springpad 4.0.5 (it's erroneously recognized as a widget and it's not converted correctly)

1. Private browsing mode now works as it should, as Chrome was doing back in 2008
2. There is a new download manager

Personally, I hate the new download manager, it's mixed in the Library, with browsing history, bookmarks: I hate it. What to do?A me il nuovo download manager, mischiato con la libreria dei preferiti la cronologia, non piace per niente. Come facciamo?

Easy, I found the solution here:

1. Open a new tab.
2. Type about:config, then press Enter.
3. Paste the following into the search field: browser.download.useToolkitUI
4. Under the Value field, right-click false and then click Toggle. That should set the Value to "true."
5. Restart Firefox.

Brightly - Preflight Nerves

While the music video is shown on the background, the lyrics are shown on the foreground, citating existing tweets.

It's brilliant.

Also in that occasion it was a shock for me: I wrote hundreds of notes on it and I got addicted on it. Find, suddenly, all my notes "imported" in a single, huge, useless word file made me very angry!

Then I found Springpad and I got my replacement...

Guess what? Now they are pushing it again, but with a different name!

Yay! That's great!

Well, I can't trust them anymore, maybe I get used to it and use it daily to jot my notes and then, BOOM, it gets wiped again during a "spring cleaning" 

Its sudden demise left a big space for new, innovative products, here are the alternatives:

Feedly

Feedly it's nice and free.

Pro:

• They plan to be compatible with Google Reader application programming interfaces, so existing apps can support it with a trivial updateo.
• They make money with a small ad in the right sidebar in the home page, it's almost invisible.
• It imports feeds and starred items from Google Reader, creating your account with just one click.
• Can be customized in a lot of styles.
• You can find new blogs to follow.
• Did I mention that it's free?
• App for Android/iPhone

Cons:

• You must install an app or browser extension to use it. (That means it works only with Firefox, Safari, iPhone, Android)
• It's based on Google App Engine, that means that if they have a lot of users, they have a lot of expenses. Will the money coming from the very small ad in the home page be enough to pay bills?

Newsblur

It's an impressive one-man job, Newsblur looks like it's a perfect alternative:

• Open Source
• Programming interfaces for building mobile applications
• Suggests new content
• Browser based: you don't need to install an app or an extension
• Ad-free
• App for Android/iPhone

But, it has a fatal flaw: it's not free, and it's understandable, having no other ways to pay bills, but I don't like the behaviour of the developer. Instead of showing a sign "we are managing a horde of new Google Reader users and our servers are busy, try again later", he practically disabled the free version (max 12 sites to follow) and doubled the monthly fee. He says that when things are stabilized, prices will be back to normal points, but I hate this way to greet new users. If you don't pay, you can't import your items from Google Reader, that means you have to pay and subscribe first, then try.

The Old Reader

Then, there is also The Old Reader, but, when I tried two days ago, they required too many authorizations when I connected my Google account. Why they want complete access to my contacts?

If I try again, they don't ask it anymore, maybe it was a temporary configuration erro, but for now I don't want to try again, because they don't offer smartphone apps.

I might try again after some weeks/months, when a smartphone app is available.

For example, we can set a custom-domain email on Outlook.com on my new domain Forexperiments.com

1. Go on http://domains.live.com
2. Insert the domain name and set Windows Live Hotmail
   
3. Create an Admin user
4. Accept the terms of use
5. Set the DNS as instructed (Unfortunately, if you use a cheap registrar like mine, you can't set TXT field and make messenger and the domain verification work...)
6. Wait some minutes for the DNS records to propagate (If you use a cheap registrar like mine, wait some hours...)
7. Done! Configure users and give them an Outlook.com account, instead of a Gmail one! Moreover, the new interface is very nice and easy to use, even for newbies

Then I noticed the tooltip: "Clic and drag"

So I clicked and dragged the image on the right

"Oh, cool, there is a little world here"

And I continued to drag

Again

Again

Again

Is it endless??? It's an huge comic, undoubtedly the biggest in the world!

Fortunately for our wrists, there is who made a keyboard-friendly version, making the exploration a pleasant experience!

You can also zoom backwards, finding easter eggs as a Falling Icarus, two falling whales, or someone doing surf on a Jet that it would be *impossibile* to find with "click and drag"

The first question is "What would happen if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90% the speed of light?"

It's interesting because he gives a scientific yet funny answer:

I'm talking about Payphone, from Maroon 5.

In the USA it has been released on 16th April, making almost 500k downloads in the first week.

Instead in UK they decided to release it on 17th June, as if nowadays music goes back to the old world on a caravel.

What happened?

A cover, released on 17th April, entered on the sales top10 before the official song was available for purchase!

The reasons to the waiting are a mystery for me. They did it to protect sales of the full album? Marketing?

The moral is: if people wants to PAY for a song, why deny it???

Otherwise people is forced to illegally download the mp3 from eMule 3 months befor the official release... and then they say that piracy hurts sales...

If you do, you might have noticed that, after the nth Firefox update, you can't open it anymore.

What to do?

The problem is that Firefox 13 (or 14, if you read this article tomorrow, or 18, if you read this article next month) wants to use the hardware acceleration of the video card, but they forgot that, in remote desktop mode, the video card is virtual, hance without hardware acceleration, making Firefox freeze at startup...

We will solve the problem in two easy steps:

Start Firefox in safe mode

Some time ago, in the start menu there was an icon "Firefox (safe mode)", then they had the great idea to make it much more intuitive. To start it in safe mode you have to press SHIFT (on Windows) or OPTION (on Mac), (on Linux instead they opted for a command line switch, because it's cooler).

It's SO OBVIOUS that pressing SHIFT will start it in safe mode, how I couldn't think it before???

Don't check any checkbox, otherwise you will reset all the settings!! Just press continue!

Ps: if you get a message that Firefox it's already running, close it from the task manager.

Disable the hardware acceleration in Firefox

Now, Firefox will startm go to Options=>Advanced Tab=>General Tab=>Use hardware acceleration

Done! Firefox will work again!

Long answer: Kickstarter is a crowdsourcing website where some inventors can find investors to launch their idea. How does it work?

Who has an idea writes a project, calculates how much time and money needs, makes a prototype and an interesting video to promote it.

If you like that idea you can contribute with your hard-earned money, if the project becomes propular and reaches the objective in some time, it will be financed, otherwise the money will be given back automatically.

To thank investors, every project has some "donation tiers", for example they can say "I will send the final product to anyone who will donate more than $200".

Happens that people can be confused and think that it works like Amazon, that the product is almost ready for production (if it is, why asking money for research&develop?) and ready to be shipped. Instead the product is in name only, and it needs money to be realized. If you pay, you are not buying the product, but you are helping the inventor to finance the project. (And then, as with all investments, you will be compensated in some way, for example by getting the prototype in previe at discounted price, or something else)

Let's do an example:

The ZionEyez, and HD camcorder integrated in a pair of glasses. The production should have started in october, instead in april they are still trying to solve a problem with cable wear, and the electronics is up in the air.

The buyers investors got very angry, for example, I take this comment from a fellow citizen of mine:

is this ZionEyez Team of Naples?
ready to line up me to an eventual one class action against this group in swindle odor greet all the swindled ones, I think that I will lose mine 300€ [...]

Besides the awful English "made in Google", is he really serious to ask for a class action? For $300? Who will pay the lawyers? In a recent case about a security breach, the 11 victims got a $1925 compensation, but the lawyers got millions ($600k + $2mil).

• Google Maps 8-bit
• Gmail tap, the morse keyboard is much more practical than the normal keyboard
• Autopiloted cars at nascar
• Chrome multitask, for who wants to use two mices at a time
• The YouTube Collection, All YouTube in 126 trucks full of DVDs
• Google Fiber Bar

Probably the Florence university researcher that wrote the article did not know English (well, on that course - biotech - the mandatory English exam it's just of the European level A2: Elementary English - can communicate in simple and routine tasks) so he translated using Google Translatore.

In this way, the title "From sheep to pecorino cheese", become "From sheep to doggy style" 

This is the original text from the Ministry website:

The project represents the implementation of a study at the local level already achieved by an individual dairy producers and confer, is developed through the use of components for the detection and recording of events, apply a methodology that uses hardware and software between their integrated.
Each collection rounds is uniquely identified through the development of a communication protocol based on GPS technology, with the possibility of recognition of the coolant tank manufacturers, tank truck and tank at the dairy.

This is the text in italian, automatically translated: (edits in bold)

The project represents the implementation of a study at the local level already achieved by an individual dairy producers and confer, is developed through the use of components for the detection and recording of events, applied a methodology that uses hardware and software between their integrated.
Each collection rounds is uniquely identified through the development of a communication protocol based on GPS technology, with the possibility of recognition of the coolant tank manufacturers, tank trucks and tank at the dairy.

There is a reason if I translate Dandandin.net by myself... yes, maybe it is not 100% accurate; maybe sometimes I write nonsense, sometimes it's tiring to translate my long posts, but at least I won't write nonsense like that.