Tech It Like A Man!

If you have an iPhone and love it, you won’t want to miss the information you can get from fraternizing with other iPhone lovers. You can also get the skinny on Apple iPhone accessories from users of the products. There are a number of features that the website offers even before you enter the forum.

You can look at the photographs in the gallery, check out the wiki about the iPhone, and stay on top of the news by subscribing to the free newsletter. The Web 2.0 interface will definitely quell your love for the iPhone’s sleek look. Those of us who don’t have the phone, but want one can go and salivate over the pictures and features. You can also enter to win an iPhone and satisfy your craving for technology.

While you are looking, make sure to take a gander at the downloadable wallpapers available from the site or share your own. You will also notice that other “I” products are welcome on the forums. If you decide to check it out, let me know what you thought of the site.

The Bloggers Choice Awards owned and started by the PayPerPost crew has made a few changes of late. Here is the outlined comment from the post that started it all on Pointless Drivel… an official statement by Jamie a coder at PPP:

on April 24, 2007 at 4:24 pm

…just a couple replies and I’ll get back to coding…

1. All of the PayPerPost employee votes have been removed from the site. It didn’t change any of the leader-boards, but we were happy to do it because we didn’t want to be responsible for any kind of skew in the votes.

2. The blog images are pulled directly from Alexa’s cache, which they update every few months (more or less often depending on your Alexa score). Have them (Alexa) update your image and we’ll be happy to grab the latest.

3. The user who submits the original blog nomination gets tagged in every category the site is nominated for. So a PPP employee nominated Dooce for Hottest Mommy Blogger and Best Blog of All Time, but someone else nominated her for a couple of other categories later on. Working on a fix for that little quirk.

4. We’ve explained this several times, but PPP nominations will not be removed because a nomination does not equal a vote. The blogs we nominated are just ones we (and thousands of others) read on a regular basis. I can guarantee you they would have been nominated eventually anyway, and it is unfair to ban them from the contest for that reason. There are over 4800 blogs in the system, a handful of which were used to populate the site before it launched. Keep in mind the number 1 blog on the site was nominated after the launch, not by a PPP employee.

5. The outcome is not decided by us. It’s decided by YOU.

I guess complaining will evoke change within a flawed system after all. Will it be enough to legitimize the contest in the eyes of bloggers? I don’t really think so… scroll down on the original post and see what Jimi said about the contest. I have to agree with him. It’s the Internet, people. When has anything been fair here?

Technorati Tags: Bloggers Choice Awards, PayPerPost, bloggers

Microsoft Outlook users should be aware of a program that allows them to utilize better security in their email activities. You can get a free full version data security download right now and try it out for yourself. This program serves as an encryption mechanism for sensitive information that you may have to transmit through email. SecureZIP – The next generation of ZIP, isn’t a tool specifically for businesses, but will also work well for the every day user. You need to use your email address to get the download link. Check it out and let me know what you think. I will be testing this out more myself and will write a follow up review of the program soon.
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edited to add

I did finally get my email from www.securezip.com to download the program. I am still in testing phases. I thought that the email would come right away, but for whatever reason it took till the next day to receive. Make sure to check your junk mail folder for the email so you don’t miss it. It didn’t go to mine, but that’s just a precaution for anyone who decides to try the program for themselves. Let me know what you think of it when you get it working for you.

It seems that there are a few people who are up in arms about some of the practices of those running the Blogger’s Choice Awards. One blogger has been asking the question : Whats the Big Deal? Another blogger states that the big deal is the preferential treatment that many PayPerPost posties believe certain bloggers have within the system. The fact that some bloggers were given advance notice of the BCA website and were able to test out the system by nominating and voting for different blogs only validates the suspicions as facts, in some people’s opinions. These votes and nominations are in question as well. There is the belief that all the votes and nominations made before the official launch of the site should be stricken from the records. Another blogger also points out that PPP owns the Blogger’s Choice Awards, a fact that is now under scrutiny.

Others, including Ted (the owner of PayPerPost) believe that one day’s notice to very few people is not worth noting either way. Those bloggers who are on the other side of this coin believe that no ill was done and there is no reason that these nominations should not stand. They contend that the votes and nominations would have been going through the system on the official date of the launch anyway, so what’s the difference? Here is PPP’s official statement about that and other controversy surrounding the awards. The controversy was also brought up in the town meeting today and Ted said:

i don’t see any problem with that. a vote is a vote. one day doesn’t change that

What do you all think of the situation?

Technorati Tags: Blogger’s Choice Awards, PayPerPost, controversy

I have tried, unsuccessfully, to build a lens on Squidoo before. It’s a shame that someone who is considered tech/web savvy would have such an issue. I must admit that I am embarrassed, but I know that others have done it. It seems like all the rage for Online Businesses. Lenses bring lots of attention to your business and product. You can even make money from your lens. I don’t know if that will ever be a realization for me, but maybe I can learn a few tips from the greats and figure out how to make Squidoo work for me.

Technorati Tags: Squidoo, lens