internet explorer

Facebook Gets Like Microsoft While Getting Like Twitter

by on September 16, 2011

in consumer

Facebook LogoStarting back on September 14th, Facebook is offering what is called a Twitter-like option that will allow fellow Facebook users to “subscribe” to an account rather than needing to “like” a page or become “friends” with an entity.  So where is it?  How do you find it?  Bear with me but a moment as I lead up to why you may now have the ability to follow Facebook accounts:

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A Flashback!

Do you remember during the massive growth days of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer?  They would release a new version of IE and then someone would improve on it.  Then suddenly the next rendition of MS’s browser would either have a similar function or just buy up the smaller company and add their functionality to their own.  (Very Borg-like actually.  Huh.)  A prime example would be tabs, which FireFox sported long before IE started deploying them.

Much like when smaller websites have great ideas but then those ideas get sucked up by the larger sites who dwarf them…  and you’ll never know.  On the bright side… in the long run everyone wins. Well, most everyone.

But right now, the big change at Facebook is that they seem to be following suit in the footsteps of Twitter, making their own follow mode available through their application.  Or this could be a response to Google+ and how it’s been operating.

Facebook is getting it from all sides these days.

Can Facebook Pull This Off?

This could be good for Facebook and very bad for Twitter, depending on many factors.  One of those factors is how abused or ignored Facebook users feel as time goes on.

Users have been the butt of changes that Facebook continually makes, plus with Zuckerberg’s promiscuous outlook on your online privacy, there’s a hard pitch to sell as some users just aren’t pleased with how they’re handled.

Just recently Facebook made a change to the email notification update frequency.  During that update, users profiles were adjusted in the background so that if you want to continue to receive updates, you have to go to your profile and change this new setting back.  Grr.

But with Facebook addressing the ease of subscribing, they are becoming much more like Twitter has been, but with a strong established presence and an already successful business model.  All the while Twitter is still trying to find its own footing in how to make itself popular.

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Black Bars on Your Internet Explorer Toolbar? [Consumer Bits]

by on June 13, 2011

in consumer

MICROSOFT Internet Explorer (IE)For the 2nd time in three years, my Internet Explorer (IE8) cratered visually on me and the tool bars and shortcut bars all turned black on me.  For me, that’s not such a big deal because I’ve gotten out of the habit of using IE8 because some of the automated features don’t agree with me.

But finally after a few weeks, I decided, “what the heck!” and went for fixing my Internet Explorer because I remember the last time I had this problem, I recall it being a simple fix.

Trying to find the fix was interesting at best.  Over on the Microsoft side of things, the most prominent result for your web inquiry brings up a chat stream.  The first MS rep to answer only says that the question was posted in the wrong forum.  That was helpful… or not.

Then someone from MS more sensible stepped up and answered the question…  there seem to be several methods to attack this problem.  That is once you get past the finger-pointing at third-party firewalls, add-ons and the such.

Start IE with No Add-Ons

For one, I tried starting IE with no add-ons.  (You can do this by going to

  1. START,
  2. PROGRAMS,
  3. ACCESSORIES,
  4. SYSTEM TOOLS,

and pick “Internet Explorer (No Add-Ons)”

That didn’t do it.  Next!

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Facebook Is Not Optimized for IE8 & How To Fix Your IE8 Facebook Problems [Consumer]

by on August 14, 2010

in consumer

MICROSOFT Internet Explorer (IE)The other day a family member sent a post to “Facebook” using “IE8″ (Internet Explorer 8), but then we immediately noticed a typo. Like any user can do, we went to delete the wayward “Facebook” post and re-post it with the corrected version of the post but to our chagrin, we discovered that we could not delete the last post. In fact, in “IE8,” we couldn’t fix any post. We tinkered a little bit and I found that we could do what we needed to do in “Google Chrome.” After a bit of research I found that it would seem that there is a lack of support code on FB’s end is what keeps “IE8″ from interacting with Mark Zuckerberg’s “Facebook.”

After a bit of tooling around on the web, I found the following information on how to get everything to work right once again between your Facebook account and IE8, and it has to do with IE8′s “Compatibility View.”

When you’re on your Facebook page, do the following:

  • Clock on “Tools”
  • Click on “Compatibility View Settings”.

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Microsoft’s IE8 Shoves Lack of Visual Options Down Consumers Throats

by on August 7, 2010

in consumer

MICROSOFT Internet Explorer (IE)I want to start this out by saying that I am using Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) because some websites won’t operate without it and some of the updated Java functionality that they are employing. In other words, shoved down the consumer‘s throat, much like many MS operating systems themselves.

IE8 does what Microsoft has classically done over the years and that is to take something good or innovative with another program and installs it in their own process. (Kind of like when a larger website gets it’s ideas for features from smaller, smarter websites.) There’s not much the smaller company can do about it, at least in the beginning.

Sometimes it’s glaringly obvious when an improved feature is installed, like tabbed page viewing, which has been around in the innovative FireFox. Other times, the new feature might come from a smaller company that most users weren’t aware of and it never gets the credit or recognition because the basic user just plods onward with IE8 and doesn’t think twice.  Yes, the business environment can be sharky, as can the computer internet browser war.

Some of the many complaints I’ve seen and experience are items like

  • Menu Bar on top (Can’t)
  • Classic Toolbar Buttons (Can’t)
  • Very difficult to remove search bar
  • IE8 Changed Desktop Icon Appearance

My personal annoyance with IE8 is that I can’t set auto-populate text fields on. OK, yes, I can, but I would seem to also have to allow IE8 to remember passwords in the same fell swoop. Are you fracking kidding me? Sorry gang, I just can’t trust a piece of software to store my passwords.

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Google Search For Images Big Change

by on August 1, 2010

in consumer

GoogleAs anyone may have noticed, Google changed how it presents image results these days. My jury is still out on this one. But I’m leaning towards a “boo” on the image search effectiveness.  I did a search from my computer for a particular name of an executive producer and received 65 rows of image results. But of the 65 rows of approximately 7 to 8 images each, I was stumped at how few images of the actual person showed up.

From the first 5 rows, I had 14 results of what I wanted while the rest of the imagery was merely related to the person in a round-a-bout way. Hence, 14 of approximately 40 images were for what I wanted.

It seems on the cover of this new book of searching for images, that this new methodology of image search from Google is a fail.

In previous renditions of the image search, I’d search for something and get it. Today I search for something and I’m getting pictures of Paris Hilton, obscure art, directly related art, … True Blood ?(not even remotely related)?, anime promo art and the likes.  That previous search was without quotes. With quotes, I get 15 images of what I’m looking for (vs. the first result of 14).

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WordPress Alert: WordPress 2.9.1 Is Out!

by on January 4, 2010

in consumer

Alert to all WordPress Users:  WordPress 2.9.1 is out and in the wild!  If you’ve made the tragic or fatal error of installing version 2.9 and have been cussing a lot lately, GO GET 2.9.1 and UPGRADE.  upgrade yesterday!  Or not!

To be honest, no one is at fault for the greivous existence I’ve lived over the last few weeks.  S* happens!

Let’s see what my pain has been:

  • Publishing, though successful, gave me a blank page in response.
  • Adding links gave me a blank response page.
  • My control panels would disappear from the right side.
  • My right side columns would disappear.
  • Images would load, but not center, if they showed up.

At times, if FireFox didn’t work, Internet Explorer would.  If neither worked, then Google Chrome would work.

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