More MySpace “friend” nonsense.

This afternoon, the following subject line graced my email summary:

MySpace Friend Request Trista would like to be added as one of your friends!

Hi Gene,

Trista would like to be added to your MySpace friends list.

Et cetera.

So, I logged into my MySpace account to check this “Trista” out. The control panel blinked happily “New Friend Request!” I clicked on it. The friend request page was blank. Nothing. “No friend requests pending.”

Huh. Now what was that about?

MySpace sends out an email when someone supposedly wants to be your friend, but nothing if they take it back. I think they should send a second email in such cases, something like:

MySpace Friend Request The biatch changed her mind

Hi Gene,

Um, forget we said anything.

Posted: April 16th, 2008 under Life Journals, The Funny Side of Life, Websites.
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So, the other day I wrote about getting my first MySpace friend, whom I decided to approve even though they were obviously a spammer. Today I went to my MySpace dashboard and noticed “she” was gone.

I originally wondered if spam-ella had put in the request hoping I would give a shout out to her web page the way I had to my first Twitter follower. (It’s possible spam-ella had somehow seen that, either through some blog watching service or Twitter itself.) When she (assuming it really was a she, a dubious assumption) disappeared, I wondered if she got miffed at me not only not giving her a shout out and a link, but calling her out as a probable spammer.

I didn’t have the address of spam-ella’s profile page to go look at. After a brief tiptoe through the browser history, though, I found it. Lo and behold, the MySpace equivalent of the blue screen of death — the user account has been deleted.

Looks like spam-ella’s spamming ways caught up to her. Which leaves me back with only old “default-Tom” as a “friend.” Sheesh. Next thing you know I’ll be paying for it. “Hey, baby, wanna make $5? Got MySpace? Wanna be my friend?”

Posted: April 15th, 2008 under Life Journals, Websites.
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Hot on the heels of getting my first Twitter “follower,” I just got my first MySpace “friend,” a (supposedly) 21 year old female from San Diego.

Unlike the Twitter follower, though, I won’t be giving a shout out, mainly because I believe it is a spam type situation. The profile has no picture and the only information entered is a text graphic which talks about how shy she is, but her friends encourage her to post nude pictures, which, of course, MySpace won’t allow, but if you’ll just click through to this dating site and search on her name….

Yeah, right. SPAM! So why’d I allow the friend request? Eh, no-one else has requested, I’m tired of seeing only the one default friend (the mythical “Tom”), and I’m “seeding the tip jar,” under the theory that maybe this will help bring in more, hopefully legit, “friends.” MySpace is a numbers game, and my score is too low to be picky.

But that doesn’t mean I’m going to give said spammer any links from here — though, of course, you can go to my MySpace page and follow the trail down the rabbit’s hole if you like. (I almost wrote “down the spammer’s hole” but given the nature of the spam, that just sounded way inappropriate. :/ )

Coincidentally (or not), the only other communication I’ve so far received on MySpace was also spammish in nature. Someone (again, supposedly female) sent me an email saying she hoped I was single and would write her. Oh, but don’t respond here, she’s using a friend’s account, write her at this completely separate and untraceable Yahoo account….

Yeah, right. SPAM! Ah, if only it were true, but it has all the earmarks: generic in nature, “I’m using a friend’s account,” trying to take things to another location (outside MySpace’s reach), no truly personal information available about the sender (or the friend, for that matter), and most of the “friend’s comments” on the “friend’s” page were spammish in nature, as well (”Wow, this really makes you $90 gazillion in 3 days! Check it out!”). And, really, why would a 20-something girl be emailing hoping to date a nearly 40 year old man when there is so little information about me on the MySpace page? It’s ridiculous.

They can sometimes (not in this case, but still…) make these things very convincing, but I’m not biting, sorry.

Posted: April 12th, 2008 under Blogging, Websites.
Comments: none

Tweetbar is a freeware Firefox-sidebar based client for the Twitter web service. It’s a nice idea, but I found it didn’t work too well (for me, anyway).

• It conflicted with the security add-on NoScript. Tweetbar could not log on to Twitter unless I temporarily turned off NoScript. (After logging on, it had no problems retrieving information, though.) There’s probably a workaround for this I would try to find if I wanted to keep using Tweetbar, but, for the following reasons, I don’t.
• Loss of spell-check. I use Firefox’s built in spell-check — a lot. Right click on a text field, select “Spell check this field,” and you’re off to the races. Not available (apparently) with Tweetbar, meaning I’d have to add steps (i.e. difficulty) to post with Tweetbar. Why, when I could just open Twitter itself and still have fully functioning spell-check?
• Entry box display mangling. When I tried entering a tweet which scrolled past the initial size of Tweetbar’s entry box, the display did not properly follow and I could no longer see what I was typing. It’s bad enough I can’t check the spelling mechanically, but I can’t even see what I’ve typed to use my own brain for spell checking? Uh-uh. No thank you.
• The key combination to bring up Tweetbar (Shift + Ctrl + T) didn’t work for me. I don’t know why. Nothing happened. I had to manually open it using the menu. Annoying process.

There’s probably more, but that’s enough. Overall I was left wondering, as long as I already have Firefox open, why not just load Twitter itself into a tab of its own? It works far better and easier as far as I can tell.

Posted: March 31st, 2008 under Product Reviews, Software Reviews.
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