FulltimeCasual

Holy Crap. A Twitter and Facebook Application for the iPad, designed to look like the fucking computers from Star Trek TNG.

Captain’s Blog for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad on the iTunes App Store.

Yesterday I posted this on Twitter:

A few people asked me about it, so I thought I’d better explain.

A few months ago a perfect storm of boredom and douchebaggery made me ponder how hard it would be to create a Twitter spambot. A Google search appeared to answer “Pretty fucking easy”, so i did. Now Spambot is probably the wrong word, the bot doesn’t actually spam anyone. It’s more of a Social Media Expert bot, it just posts incredibly boring shit all the time -auto copied and pasted from a list of some of the most boring Experts on the planet. It also randomly thanks the people it follows for their insight and occasionally retweets.

It was designed to Auto-follow people from various lists of “top twitters”, cos i thought these people would be more likely to follow back. They didn’t let me down, and within a day the little bot had over 400 followers. It also follows anyone who follows it, making it a magnet for up and coming “top twitters” looking to boost their numbers. When it was finished with the top lists, Botty started following random people based on location, and by following the followers of its followers.  Real people (non-power users) tend to be less gullible so its follower growth has slowed, but it still has a respectable follow number of around 1,600.

So why did I create Botty? Well, mainly to see which experts and top twitters will just auto-follow something so bland. My theory was that the wankers that talk the loudest about ‘community’ and ‘value’ and being part of the ‘twitteratti’ were so fucking stupid and obsessed with their own follow numbers they couldn’t spot the bot, where as people who actually used Twitter to communicate with interesting people would avoid him. Apart from the odd heartbreaking exception, this has been the case.

At this point in the post a younger, angrier man might name and shame some of the douchebag expert fucks that have been following little botty from day one, but I’m too old for internet fights. I’d prefer to sit back and quietly judge them, and leave them wondering if they fell for and continue to fall for my bot.

As always, I need new hobbies.

While I was away Anthony was updating Mactalk (almost) daily on our adventures, so if you want to read the full story go there, but if you’d like a summary of the trip, Renai Lemay has a general overview of the trip, and an excellent follow up article. We’re also in the Herald Sun!

As for the review, i crashed out some time around 8pm and woke up at 2am, but i’ve been playing with the iPad ever since. I’ve tested about 100 apps and Mac utilities to get stuff on the iPad, so I’ll post as soon as i can form sentences.

Spoiler: Fuck the iPad is Awesome.

I’ve posted Merlin Mann videos here before, but i always feel i have to justify it. Yeah, its not really film related, but in my defense:

a) This was never meant to be a film only blog – it just kinda evolved into it.

b) Merlin’s advice is perfect for people wanting to find the time outside of their 9 to 5 to focus on creative pursuits.

c) Bite me.

So here he is, Merlin Dreamy Mann, on Time Management.

Wanna see more geeky stuff round here? Tell me in the comments.

Justin recently wrote one of the best posts on this here site about dudes who get it… Although this isn’t film related, today I’m equally inspired by The Guardian Newspaper . The first newspaper in the world to offer full articles in their RSS feed.

Dear ABC, Fairfax, News.com.au etc… I now suck in all ‘print’ knowledge purely via RSS, and only to feeds with full articles. Sadly this means i really don’t know what the hell is happening in the world outside of Tech News, Mac News, Film News, and LolCats. Thanks to The Guardian, i realise we’re still at war, which is a shame, and that there’s been a spot of bother with the economy lately. 

Thanks Guardian, for realising it is 2008.