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Posts with tag accounts

Filed under: Internet, Web services

Twitter to kill spammy accounts

Twitter may seem nice and innocent to a nonchalant user, but they may soon start killing spammy accounts with one stone. According to a recent News.com article, accounts flagged as spam will be removed. Employees of Twitter have been chirping up a storm about the new policy in their Google group forum.

Previously, blacklisted accounts were simply frozen to adding new followers, but as the amount of users on the service has increased, so have the spammers -- therefore, new policies had to be put into place. Users will be notified prior to their accounts being removed and have a chance to plead their case to the big bird in Twitterville.

Filed under: Internet, E-mail, Productivity, Google

All your address are belong to Google

Associate email addresses with your Google account
Google now allows you to associate non-Gmail accounts with your Google account. Why does this matter? Well, by associating other e-mail accounts, invites such as events for your Google Calendar will be automatically added, even when sent to a non-Gmail account. Also, you get the benefit of using your non-Gmail address to log into Google instead of your Google credentials.

So where is this little feat accomplished? If you sign in to "My account" on Google, and hit "edit" by personal information, a dialog that allows you to add additional email addresses should be visible below your usual info. If you try to add other Google addresses you will quickly be denied, convenient as that would otherwise be. Once you add an acceptable address, you'll have to verify your account via a little confirmation email sent to your non-Gmail account. Then you'll be set.

Functionality at this point, in terms of synchronicity, still seems limited to Google Calendar. But hopefully this will be expanded to other Google services that allow sharing and invites. Considering that we can already use Gmail to check and send email from non-Gmail accounts, this brings us just a little closer to having our non-Google accounts behave as if they were.

Filed under: Internet, News, Web services, Yahoo!, Social Software

Upcoming.org Redesigns, Merges With Yahoo Accounts, Gives Stuff Away


Yesterday afternoon, popular social event website and Yahoo! property Upcoming.org surprised users by redesigning and requiring the merging of existing accounts with Yahoo! accounts. The changes came without warning, possibly in an attempt to avoid a user backlash similar to that which erupted after big brother Flickra few months ago. announced the merging of accounts As way of making it up to their users, Upcoming is giving away a bunch of special Upcoming.org t-shirts to 'old skool' users who've been using the site for a while.

On the redesign side of the news, the new look is cleaner, faster to load, and introduces a whole new way of browsing events which centers around more specific metro's and integrated maps. The new interface is overall more media driven, and resembles in a way the recent Facebook redesign.

In addition to the most obvious changes mentioned above, Upcoming.org is no longer actually upcoming.org, but upcoming.yahoo.com.

Update: Apparently the updates were not unannounced; they were posted on the official blog multiple times. They did not, however, send an email notice to users in the same way Flickr did.

Filed under: Business, Internet, E-mail, Web services, Google

Google accidentally disabled Gmail accounts

gmail accounts disabledWhat would you do if you woke up one morning to check your email, and for some reason you can't login? It seems as though Google has recently done the unthinkable, deleted some Gmail accounts.

Google came across spammers who setup accounts at Gmail, and began to actively monitor and investigate them. Through the process, a number of legit Google accounts were accidentally disabled.

Google is working on restoring the accounts, but it looks like several which have been re-enabled do not link properly to email attachments. Some people have even been locked out of important information they had stored in their Gmail accounts, and out of their Google Accounts that control blogs, Docs and even AdSense for seven days so far.

This new development is surely going to make people think twice about the extreme side effects that can come with storing information online. We just rarely assume it could happen with Google.

Featured Time Waster

Forumwarz - a potentially offensive time waster

I pwn UAfter spending the better part of an hour on Forumwarz I still can't decide if it's just sick or if it's kind of fun. It's a bit like a car wreck on the highway. I know I shouldn't be looking but I can't quite turn away.

It's sick, it's twisted, it's the internet on it's worst level and darn it, it's kind of fun. At least for a little while.

Forumwarz is a parody role-playing game that takes place on the internet - or at least the Forumwarz version of it. Your goal is to complete missions that are given to you through a mock up of GoogleTalk called Sentrillion.

Your first "friend" is ShallowEsophagus who begins giving you missions to pwn various forums by being a troll. Depending on the character type you are assigned at start up, you have tools like drooling on the keyboard or bashing your head on the keyboard that you can use to destroy forum threads and eventually, pwn a forum.

Future missions involve buying illegal software from the Russians, pwning more difficult forums and other internet oddness.

Completing missions gives you cash, called Flezz in game, and items that you can pawn or use in other missions. The game is NOT for those easily offended. It's crass, coarse and there are frequent f-bombs in the fake chat sessions.

This is also a game for a more mature audience as it requires you to shop at the Drugs R Fun store to get various concoctions to improve your playing, engage in certain cyber activities to get more Flezz and just generally use a more adult perspective.

If you can get past that, here are the more enjoyable and time-wasting aspects.

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