Today a fire hit a major datacenter in Seattle, taking money processor Authorize.Net down . This has caused many web-based financial transactions to grind to a halt, but Authorize.Net isn’t the only website that’s gone offline today. Another popular website has fallen, Geocaching.com , a worldwide GPS-based treasure hunting game, leaving thousands of people trying to figure out just what’s going on and why it went down. Wikipedia explains the game’s worldwide reach: Geocaching is an outdoor treasure-hunting game in which the participants use a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver or other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers (called “geocaches” or “caches”) anywhere in the world. A typical cache is a small waterproof container (usually a tupperware or ammo box) containing a logbook and “treasure,” usually toys or trinkets of little value. Geocaches are currently placed in over 100 countries around the world and on all seven continents, including Antarctica. There are over 820,000 active geocaches in the world right now. While the fire may or may not be responsible for this specific outage (we cannot confirm), it’s clearly had an effect on the entire web. Even Microsoft’s search engine Bing was affected, specifically Bing Travel . We will provide updates on Geocaching and Authorize.Net as we receive the information. Reviews: Wikipedia , bing Tags: geocaching

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Geocaching Down, Too

A somewhat distressing tech story today: a female employee at the Arlington Apple Store was shot in the shoulder this morning by a man who rang the doorbell at the back of the store. Fortunately the employee is said to be recovering in hospital. It’s thought the motive was attempted robbery. According to ABC7 news, the shooting happened shortly after 10 a.m. at the Apple Store located at 2700 Clarendon Blvd. A search for the suspect is underway. The Washington Post adds that the suspect is “a black male, between the ages of 35 and 45, with a medium build and facial hair. He was last seen fleeing the area on foot, wearing a light-colored, short sleeve shirt, light-colored long pants and a dark baseball cap. He was carrying a handgun.”

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Shooting at Arlington Apple Store [News Video]

For marketers, Twitter has been a dream come true. It’s an open platform growing at a phenomenal rate. This combination can allow a single tweet to be seen by thousands of potential customers. But as Twitter continues its mainstream ascent, it has been targeted by spammers and scammers , something that doesn’t help legitimate marketers or users at all. Yet despite its spam woes, Twitter has somehow avoided an overflow of content from one of the Internet’s biggest industries: porn. Well, until recently that is. An interesting article in MediaPost describes both marketers and Twitter users noticing an increase in pr0n-related spam, and they are not liking it. The issue makes us wonder: should Twitter stamp out pornography; and how should they go about it? Twitter Users’ Feedback on Pornography The MediaPost piece essentially quotes some of Twitter’s active marketers on the issue of Twitter and porn. What they have to say, though, is not pretty at all. While you can guess how users react in the piece, Ben Smith of MerchantCircle sums up the problem best: MerchantCircle has begun to offer a portfolio of local city-specific coupons via Twitter feeds. “As we have found with any new communication form, pornography and other types of issues creep in,” says Ben Smith, MerchantCircle CEO. “The problem with this type of activity is that it undermines the trust in the communication channel, which will have a disastrous effect on the channel.” Has pornography taken over Twitter

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Should Twitter Crack Down on Pornography?

For a complete collection of Twitter resources, check out The Twitter Guide Book , Mashable’s hub for all things Twitter. – Most Twitter users probably follow under a thousand other people, but that’s enough to make it hard to keep track of the real-time stream. I actually started having trouble keeping up when I hit about 50 follows — and depending on how prolific the people you’re following are, you could be dealing with a hard-to-parse Twitter stream even following just a handful of people. But while people like social media fanatic Robert Scoble , who follows over 100,000 people, appear to have the superhuman ability to stay on top of things, the rest of us need help filtering the Twitter stream. Fortunately, there are a good number of methods and applications we can put to work to filter tweets from the people we’re following. Which work best for you? Let us know in the comments. (Please note that a few of the apps in this post actually do multiple types of filtering, and so could have theoretically been added to more than one category.) By Keyword One way to filter Twitter is by keyword. Filttr is a full-featured, web-based Twitter app that includes keyword-based filtering. You can both blacklist and whitelist key phrases and Filtter will block or allow those tweets. Flittr, though, has a pretty steep learning curve, and before I even added any keywords it started filtering tweets — and took a particular dislike to a few of my Twitter friends. I’m not sure what criteria it was using for those initial filters. Another full web-based client that includes keyword filtering is Mixero , which is in private beta. Philtro , which is also in private beta, learns what types of tweets you like based on your ratings. Give thumbs up and thumbs down ratings to tweets, and Philtro slowly figures out what you like and attempts only to bother you with tweets you’d be likely to want to read.

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Twitter Better: 20 Ways to Filter Your Tweets

Readers may have noticed that Google changed the way it displays search results this week: the Google logo is smaller, results are indented and spacing has been added above the search box. Google also removed the page size indicator, which gives you a hint of how long the page might take to load. Reader Marek Foss sent us screenshots comparing the old and the new layout (below), which he feels looks more like Google AdSense than a page of Google search results. And yet we know that such changes can have a significant effect of Google’s revenue and page load times – removal of features (eg. page size indicator) gains a fractional boost in load times, for instance. We also know that Google is meticulous in optimizing pages, and that asking the user what they want (as we do here) might not result in the correct answer, as a CNET article last year explained: For example, Mayer said, the company wanted to find out how many search results to show users–the customary 10, or 20, 25, or 30? When asked directly, users said they’d like more results on a page, but testing showed otherwise. Specifically, Google found that when the results increased to 30 per page, people searched 20 percent less overall, Mayer said. After much analysis of server logs, the company found it was because it took about twice as long to display the longer results list for the user, and speed matters. Google’s latest layout change, then, isn’t likely to be for aesthetic purposes: it’s for speed and revenue. The question is: do you, like Mark, find it less aesthetically appealing? Are you a fan of the new Google layout?

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Google’s New Layout: Love it or Hate It?

We’ve noted before that China’s Green Dam , web filtering program supposedly designed to block pornography, but in reality a serious threat to privacy and security, was obviously created in a haste, with many of its shortcomings being revealed as the story unwinds. Now, besides the fact that it doesn’t work on 64-bit operating systems, we have another one: it doesn’t support Macs. Thus, Apple’s computers seem to be – at least for the time being – exempt from the order that all PC makers must include Green Dam with new PCs sold in China. This is probably just another temporary setback to the controversial Green Dam initiative, as the program will undoubtedly get updated to include support for currently unsupported operating systems. IDG writes : “ A service representative at a sister company to Green Dam’s main developer, Jinhui Computer System Engineering, said the company is testing the software on non-Windows platforms and will release an updated version if compatibility is added for other OSes. “ Yes, the program is a possible security threat, and yes, the entire initiative was launched before it was actually possible to implement. But judging by the fact that most PC makers have already started to comply with the demands of Chinese authorities – even with the actual initiative being postponed – proves that all those shortcomings probably won’t be enough to stop it. Tags: censorship , china , Green Dam

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Want to Circumvent Green Dam? Buy a Mac

This is a re-write on an article I did about finding and using symbols in a well-known word processor software, as the latter was apparently construed as an advertisement. I still believe it to be good information, and that I can re-publish it… Recent Article published on 7/2/2009 by PrairieSage

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How to Find © ® ¢ Symbols for Writing

Sophie Milch runs the basics of Computer Speakers for beginners, do you need them? What they are exactly, how they work and what to look for when buying a pair for your shiny new computer. Recent Article published on 7/2/2009 by Sophie Milch

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How to understand Computer Speakers

If you are like me and are a World of Warcraft Fanatic, then you know how important it is to aquire gold. Gold allows you to obviously buy better weapons, armor and the likes. There are a few techniques to gaining more gold as I will discuss in… Recent Article published on 7/2/2009 by killjoy99

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How to get A LOT of GOLD in World of Warcraft

Do you have Google Sketchup 6 and Google Sketchup 7? Have you ever wondered how to put Sketchup 6 BP (Bonus Packs) into Sketchup 7? Well here’s your answer! Recent Article published on 7/2/2009 by chris-h

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How to put Google Sketchup 6 Bonus Packs on Google Sketchup 7