Google's gift to the King of Pop

Today is the late Michael Jackson's birthday. What better way for Google to show a perfect tribute to the King of Pop by dedicating their homepage to the legend who forever changed the game in music and entertainment. Jackson who died on June 25, 2009 would've been 51 today.

In the meantime, his primary doctor Conrad Murray is being investigated for manslaughter and the L.A. coroner is ruling Michael's death a homicide.

The dedicated image links to an automatic search page for Michael Jackson.

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The Storm

My wife sent these photos to me while she was running errands. Thought I'd share.
Sent from my BlackBerry Smartphone provided by Alltel

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from In my Lifetime

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Unfollow Them! (Twitter Ettiquette)

As I get more into blogging and trying to figure out the advantages of how social media will affect me professionally, I came to a startling realization; I may have to unfollow a lot of my friends (who I'm following). I told myself that I should, "Be cautious to who I follow on Twitter." This sure is easier said than done, however as I further pondered this, some points came to mind that I thought was interesting as to why I should consider cleaning my Following list on Twitter.

1. How are the people that you follow furthering you professionally?

I tend to follow people that are knowledgeable in the areas that interest me. I love technology and I love my guitar. Befriending people that are up on technology and some that play guitar fluently helps me to stay abreast on what's hot. This indeed is a plus for me.


2. Stay away from Negativity

Where should I begin? Tweets that are depressing can sometimes in turn depress you. Stay away from them. Why follow someone that picks fights with other tweeters or will tell you the day is cloudy even though you see sunshine. I recall one Gospel guitarist, tweeting about being in church and saying a worship service sucked. Not amusing at all and it's certainly not encouraging.


3. Trending Topics

Social Media connoisseur Wayne Sutton once said something that rings true. "Partaking in Trending Topics may be fun, but think before you tweet." Sometimes those you follow participate in topics that are entertaining. However many are crass and if you yourself have fun with it, people who are trying to take you seriously, won't. I say this to point out that sometimes your "friends" can drag you into these topics that may get you in trouble in the long run. Be very cautious.


4. You're not following me, Why am I following you?

They have nothing informative to say except they woke up in the morning, eating frosted flakes and watching the BET Awards on Tivo instead of working. Yet they have 30,000 followers and following merely 500 people. (Most of their follows are celebs and they're most likely not following them back.) This certainly is not helping you. Unfollow them!


5. Celebrities are just like you

The only difference is that they have lots of money and are very popular. That's all they have. Following them won't further your networking, especially if they're not there to help you get you to where you need to be.

I challenge those that are looking for Twitter to help them further them in their prospective careers to ask themselves these questions. I'm curious to know any more factors that should be looked at when following and unfollowing people. Do you know any? I'd love to hear from you.

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Will users pay for an Ad-Free ÜberTwitter?

Last week, the famed Twitter client for BlackBerrys, ÜberTwitter, rolled out its latest update to the liking and dismay of BlackBerry and Twitter users alike. While an update was definitely needed, ÜberTwitter, faced much scrutiny for rolling out their ads feature with their Beta-4 release. While this shouldn't have came as a surprise, the TwitterBerry crusher never explained how they would roll out the ads and "bam" just like that, they showed up. However, after many complaints, ÜberTwitter heard the call and got rid of the annoying ads, that showed up at the of the tweet timeline.

Today, ÜberTwitter releases this announcement:

While the idea may be understandable, it may not be a smart one? Since Twitter's DDOS a couple of weeks, ÜberTwitter has been encountering many API issues with no fault of their own. Tweets ingoing and outgoing have been delayed despite user settings. Not to mention, there are still a few bugs that the developers have to fix before they consider a paid option.

My 2 cents to ÜberTwitter
Let's not jump the gun too soon yet. You may be jumping the shark here and I would advice you to hold off a while before you make a decision that may cost you down the line.

What are your thoughts? Would you pay money for an Ads Free ÜberTwitter, would you remain loyal to ÜberTwitter and go with the Ads, or will you find another client? I would love to hear from you.

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The C3 Church: Awesome Place of Worship

My friend and I used to always argue about church. Every time I invited him to come and worship at my church he constantly refused. I recall us arguing for hours and hours about why he didn't attend church and why I thought he needed to. It finally got to a point where we would "agreed to disagree." It wasn't that he wasn't a Christian, that he was, but I always wondered why he would rather sit at home, turn on the TV and send his tithes without the real fellowship. It wasn't until he moved away and he began to tweet more, he would start attending a church that he felt welcomed and obligated to join some kind of ministry.

After repeated tweets about this church my friend joined, I kept asking to myself, "What church made him get his tail out of bed, out of the house and into a sanctuary of worship." Today, I finally got that answer: The C3 Church.

The C3 Church, or Connecting Communities to Christ Church, truly lives up to its name. Breaking the boundaries of traditional worship, this church with their friendly and loving members believe in a true cause: Sending souls to Christ, and it shows. When my wife and I walked in for the 11:30 service (they also have a 9:30 service), we automatically felt welcomed. Funny thing is we felt so overdressed. To me when you say casual wear, I think of jeans, a nice button up and some nice shoes. This church is truly a come as you are church. People with shorts, sandals and t-shirts dominate the membership of this House of Worship.

Smiling faces and gestures of warmth, the C3 Church make it their priority to make you feel as comfortable as possible. The nursery that they run is safe and secure. The awesome bookstore is there for your needs. But what got me the most is the C3 café with, get this a Starbucks franchise!! On top of that, you are more than welcome to drink your coffee and pastry in the sanctuary as you worship and hear the word of God. That is way too cool to me.

Also, Mega churches always seem to have a certain stereotype about them. Primary example: the pastor doesn't have the time to fellowship with his members. Not so with this church. Matt Fry, the pastor, took the time to meet with guests by the beautiful water fountain outside of the church and seems to be easily accessible. Pastor Matt's delivery of the Word is nothing but gospel truth. Feeding your spirit with the truth, he backs them up with Scripture. It is no wonder that they were able to grow from a small congregation at an Elementary school to over 2,000 members at the state of the art facility they have today.

By accident, I forgot to bring my Bible before I left town. At C3 church, they help you out by providing the scriptures that Pastor Matt is deriving his message from (Don't make this a habit though, if you have a Bible, I would advise you to bring it *winks*). Also with their awesome Technical team, you're able to follow along with Praise & Worship, because the words are right there on the screen.

Whenever you're in Clayton, NC through a Sunday, check out the C3 Church. I promise, you will be amazed at their hospitality and of their mission to worship Christ.

Pastor Matt said during his sermon today, "We are a Rock & Roll church..." I say to him and the rest of the members at C3 Church, "KEEP ROCKIN' FOR CHRIST! And I will be back!"

On the web
C3 Church
Matt Fry

On Twitter
@C3_Church
@mattfry

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Hello. I'm a Saggitarius and I Tweet (Why Twitter)

Image by Matt Hamm via Flickr

In June of this year, I had a pleasure of attending Word Camp 2009 in Raleigh, NC. Being fairly new to Twitter at the time, I was amazed at the amount of people who I encountered that actually tweets. As I approached people at the convention I introduced myself with general conversation and then asked, "Do you tweet?" As I left the convention, I left with Twitter handles like phone numbers (Fellas try asking a potential date for her Twitter handle in lieu of her number. I kid, I kid).

I tell that story to bring an importance of tweeting and networking. While many non-tweeters call people that do tweet "tweetaholics," they can't seem to grasp the potential that using Twitter may have.

Everyone is not on Twitter, but EVERYONE is on Twitter
Minu what are you talking about? Allow me to explain: You may not be on Twitter, but everyone else may be. Yes, you don't want to go with the "status quo," but in this case it may be behoove you to do so. From Pastors to Entertainers to Professors to even Neo-Soul singer's Dwele's pet puggle Rockstar, everyone is on Twitter. It's interesting to read how these people (or animals) spend their time daily.

Tweeting is a major business booster
Yeah, you can have a website. You can do FaceBook. You can even attempt to use Myspace, though I wouldn't advise you to. But you'd be surprised at the amount of traffic your business could encounter if you tweeted. Everyday, people are looking for the who's who on Twitter. What if you have a great restaurant and someone (like me) tweets on how great it is. Someone is going to want to go on your Twitter page to see what you're all about and any key announcements that you may have. With people using mobile apps to tweet these days, they can use their device to read what's going on with your business if their not close to a computer.

Man!!! I didn't know Larry King had another baby!!!
You would've easily heard about this if you tweeted. Either Larry King would've announced it himself, or you'd read about it in the Trending Topics section. Twitter is known for the "what's hot, what's not." You want to know what's people are saying about a TV show you're watching, or what's the big deal with Google Voice? Try twitter and you'll easily get your answer.

Personally, I use Twitter for the sole purpose of networking, but it's always cool to goof off every once in a while. Especially now that I have a blog, it's a great tool to announce a new post so folks can go and quickly and deeply read what else is on my mind. Go on meet new people and don't be scared to ask for their twitter handle, trust me, they'd want to keep up with you if they don't have the time to pick up the phone to call you.

Do you or do you not Tweet? What do you think about it? I would love to hear from you.

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Will Facebook become the Microsoft of Social Media?

The big news yesterday, taking the tech world by storm, "Facebook Acquires FriendFeed." This news totally trumped the previous technology news when it was announced that bit.ly was interested in acquiring tr.im who were ending their operation of shortening URLs. As Facebook becomes ahead of the Social Media game, nearly killing defeated MySpace in battle and taking FriendFeed's hand in friendship, or marriage for that matter, one has to ask: will Facebook continue to dominate the social media world?

I was introduced to FriendFeed just a few months ago and I admit, I wasn't comprehending the full capabilities of the site. It wasn't until recently that I got chance to use the site and get ultra excited about its effectiveness. See with FriendFeed, or FF, you stay connected with several media outlets and all of your feeds can be embedded into your profile. With FF, I was able to feed my various networks without missing a beat. Everyone of course has their networks set up differently. With mine, I was able to update FF via Youtube, Google Reader, Del.i.cious, and Twitter. With my permissions, FF would update my Google Talk status as well as Twitter and then when the feed hits my Twitter Status, Tweetpo.st (a great tool!) would then in turn post my FF feed to my Facebook. Are you still with me? I hope so.

With this latest acquisition, the game has definitely changed.

Am I upset about this? I can't give you a definite answer. I am definitely concerned about a potential Facebook monopoly. Mind you, unless they have already, Facebook hasn't announced their future plans for FriendFeed. We're not sure whether it will continue to run as a stand alone site or merge with FaceBook's site. I am sincerely hoping though that FaceBook would begin the works of allowing FriendFeed to have a mobile app, preferrably for BlackBerry (in the event that it's stand alone site).

The news is indeed surprising and I doubt anyone saw this coming; I know I didn't. But this indeed gives the rest of the Social World something to be worried about. Facebook has the resources and the power to be a force to be reckoned with. According to reports

What are your thoughts on this latest news? I'd love to hear from you.

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To be or not to be (A Jack of All Trades); that is the Question.

Ever since I was a young lad I wanted to be an astronaut. No a doctor. No a lawyer. No an entertainer. I sounded confused huh? It wasn't until I got ready to go into college was when I decided that I wanted to pursue a career in the music business. When I got there, I studied voice and was already a drummer, but then I wanted to be an actor. So I got heavily involved into plays. Then my favorite professor Billy C. Hines, director of my university choir, said something to me that stuck and I'm sure stuck with many other students that crossed his path: "You have to focus on just one thing and do it exceptionally well in order for you to succeed." What?!? What does that mean?!?

By 2003 I picked up the guitar as my primary instrument while partially abandoning voice and fully abandoning the drums.

As I got further into my studies, I then realized that I no longer wanted to study about the music business as me along with my fellow constituents felt that we had no support from our own faculty to make it in the business. So then I abandoned studying the music business, but held on to the guitar, but had no options for a career. It wasn't until a good friend introduced to me into his profession of Technology, primarily web design and development. As I continued to grow in the field (I'm still learning), this was something that I felt that I could do and then I became interested in Technology all together.

Now married, a guitarist, a web designer/developer, a future business owner, a future producer, a future piano player, a future concert organizer, who wants to start playing the drums again, who wants to go back to being in plays, become a database administrator full time, own an incorporated business and... *whew* the list goes on. It seems I paid no attention to Professor Hines' words of wisdom.

As I meet people daily, I find that there are those just like me. Perhaps my list is not as extensive as theirs, but like me they find themselves torn between doing just one thing and fulfilling their dreams of doing everything and as the intelligent mouse once said, "Taking over the world."

Are you in this same exact predicament? Are you a Jack-of-all-trades? Seems like the guy above is juggling with just one.

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Myspace claims responsibilty for Twitter and Facebook DDOS attack

Early yesterday afternoon, Twitter had issues with connectivity. Twitter members can attest that they were going bonkers when service was down for 2 hours. 2 hours? You're not asleep and you can't send a tweet for 2 hours? Either we're serious addicts or we're just serious addicts. It wasn't until the infamous Mashable blog announced that Twitter and Facebook were under heavy attack by the dreaded DDOS.

So what the heck is a DDOS attack? Well according to Wikipedia, "A denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) or distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS attack) is an attempt to make a computer resource unavailable to its intended users." In lamens terms, when a site receives a DDOS attack, you, the web surfer, can't surf the attacked site. Pretty ironic seeing that around the same week, we hear reports that Myspace's popularity has dwindled and that their cutting about 30% of its workforce. Bummer. So what better way to stay in the race by stealing the traffic from Twitter and Facebook and give users an alternative. Makes sense right? Let's be honest, of course Myspace wouldn't really take responsibility for the attack, but wouldn't it be funny if disgruntled Myspace employees, including Tom himself, attacked the "pop sites" to make their employment seem useful?

Let's go a little deeper. I'm sure like TV shows, sites at times jump the shark and then they are considered obsolete and unpopular. What was Myspace's reason? Was it when they were sold to News Corp for $327 million? The same parent company to conservative news channel Fox News. Maybe people were just annoyed by Tom; I know I was.

Whatever the case may be, Myspace as reckoning force is over. Users are now finding other ways to connect to people rather than spend time building Myspace pages for people to leave comments. With Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook and even Youtube (MySpace's video nemisis) becoming more interactive, Myspace honestly doesn't stand a chance of survival.

In conclusion, applications like TweetDeck, UberTwitter and URL shortner bit.ly may be having API issues with Twitter since the attack, and Twitter itself is staggering like a boxer that gets up at the 9th count before being K.O.'ed. But unless News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch decides to liquidate his asset and sell Myspace to a dominating web powerhouse like Google, these dominant social media outlets will continue to be popular; or will they soon to jump the shark too? Only time will tell...

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Stay away from the BlackBerry Messenger 5.0 Beta

RIM (Research In Motion, LTD.) needs to be proactive and fire the person that "leaked" their product that's still in development. Never have I seen so many BlackBerry fanatics excite themselves by downloading the latest "leak" that hit the OTA (I'm also speaking about myself). But with the issues that I have seen and read about, this app, if it was a leak at all, has more issues than Orangatame's TwitterBerry. The fact that in the applications list the alias for the program is "BBM 5.0" is a bit suspect, but I digress. There are some awesome features that BBM 5.0 has that will put them ahead of the game, but a very sincere warning for you: STAY AWAY FROM BLACKBERRY MESSENGER 5.0 (BETA)!

When I first ran across BlackBerry Messenger (4.5) for the first time, I fell in love with it's professional features. Very simple and easy to use, I wanted everyone, that I knew that possessed a BlackBerry, to give me their PIN so I can stay in contact with them via Messenger. Yes, the version probably needed some upgrading, but I would've been content with keeping it the same, with it's simple layout. (Compare with the pic above.) The new version, 5.0 has a totally different look to it; perhaps to appeal more to people who own the BlackBerry Storm or even the newly released Tour that are both only available to Verizon customers. Not a very bad look, but maybe I'm just old fashioned.

While the features on the proposed release are astonishing, there are a lot of issues and risks that you may go through messing with this leaked beta release.

The Positives

• You can add contacts by scanning your friend's Barcode with your device.
• You're able to Broadcast a message to multiple contacts.
• Avatars are now enabled
• Backing up your contact list is now made possible by saving them on to your media card. So, if you switch devices or have to wipe it clean, you wouldn't have to worry about re-adding all of your messenger contacts
  
• Friends can have access to your GPS location
• Stored on your Media Card, chat history can be accessed.

The Negatives

• Although it gives you the option to enable it, when Pinged, the device doesn't vibrate
• The smileys do not look at all 3 Dimensional as it did in the previous release. Pretty cheesy.
• Messages are not delivered at times or there is a long delay. Usually this is solved by restarting your device by battery pull or LShift+RShift+Del. This gets rather annoying.
• Careful, it was brought to my attention that some of your messages will be sent to someone else rather than your intended recipient
• It has the tendency of showing some friends as "unreachable" but they really aren't

(More will be added later)

When RIM finishes with his software, it will have the potential of beating the leading mobile versions of Yahoo and Google Talk into being a top notch mobile messenger. But who knows when they'll be done developing, testing and fixing bugs. If you're stuck with this app like me, the only way to restore the previous version is to reinstall your OS on your device. For those that are thinking about installing the app, don't risk it. The bugs are way too tremendous and you'll be crying with agonizing pain. Maybe I was a bit too harsh in calling for the termination of the RIM employed App Leaker, however, fix the bugs!

There are all sorts of snapshots of this app on the web. Check out BlackBerryRocks for examples.

Ciao...

P.S. What do you think about this app? Love it? Hate it? I would love to hear from you.

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Introduction: Mbote na Bino (Hello Everyone)

I'm surprised I'm actually blogging; never thought I would. But I'm here so hello to everyone. After taking nearly a week to finally finding the right template and to do some tweaking I was wondering what my first post would be about. So I guess what I should really consider doing is to introduce myself to my readers. That would be the smart thing to do right?

Who I am:
My name is Minu. I'm a musician in his mid-20s that loves technology. I have a lovely wife with no kids and I work at Elizabeth City State University as a Student HelpDesk operator. I'm also an aspiring web developer who hopes to open his own business in the future called Obsidian Web Services. If you see me with no BlackBerry, then there's an issue; I frickin' love my BlackBerry. :-) I have 2 younger brothers and I'm the son of Congolese immigrants. I guess you can say I'm an authentic African-American. My favorite pastime is playing my Fender Stratocaster and yes, I play for church. I love all sorts of music, but I prefer gospel, jazz, neo-soul and rumba. To sum it all up, I'm just an average guy!

About this blog:
I named this blog "Mokili ya Minu" or "The World of Minu" (in the Lingala language) because my world involves many different things. You will be reading about mostly generally topics but mainly topics of my interests. I'm very excited about this blog because I will be having guest bloggers on here from time to time for your enjoyment and also awareness. I hope that you will find this read very enjoyable and I also like constructive critism, so if there's something that I can do to make this blog more interesting, by all means, enlighten me: There are no bad ideas. ;-)

To sum it all up, Welcome to My World. Enjoy and I look forward to hearing from all of you.

*ignore the corny picture of me. lol*

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