I was going to start this post by saying this is a “plea” but that really isn’t the approach I am taking. I would like to introduce you TechJuicer readers to a great podcast created by 2 of the TechJuicer writers. James and Alistair host a really cool technology news podcast called “Tuck In To Tech”.

The podcast is based on discussions about the latest technology news, with focuses on web apps, iPhone apps, gaming and conflicts about which is better, PC or Mac! I am a subscriber to the podcast as it is just my cup of tea, guys talking casually about technology. Plus I got to help co-host episode 9 when James went on holiday.

The following quote is from the about section of the Tuck In To Tech the website:

Broadcasted by two 18 year olds from the north of England, the show briefly covers some of the top technology news from a UK perspective. With the guys’ light hearted banter and coverage of obscure news this show is a must-listen.

I really think you should have a listen, if you do then please feel free to comment here about what you think of it. As a taster I have added the latest episode (at the time of writing).

You can subscribe to the podcast using the following links:

• Podcast feed
• iTunes feed
• tuckintotech.com
• twitter.com/tuckintotech

This article was first posted on ollieparsley.com and full permission to reprint has been granted.

I was watching the keynote by Gary Vaynerchuk at the New Media Expo. He was talking about personal brand and the fact he regrets getting the @garyvee username. The reason for this was that it had not relation to his e-mail addresses or other usernames. For example his e-mail address is garyv[at]winelibrary.com and his website is garyvaynerchuk.com. Obviously this has no relation to his Twitter username. An example of this is use is when a fan tries to e-mail him at Wine Library after seeing his Twitter account, if the fan tries to e-mail garyvee@winelibrary.com it will not get to him (I assume they have set up an e-mail forwarder in this case), but you get what I mean.

Anyway when I signed up for twitter I used a username I use for everything “olliedude2k”. I started using this name in the year 200 (y2k etc) and just use it for everything. As I am starting to pick up, and use my name as my brand I have used the username “ollieparsley“. For instance this site is ollieparsley.com, my viddler username is ollieparsley etc. So using @olliedude2k on Twitter seems to be counter productive as noone could make the link between olliedude2k and Ollie Parsley.

Anyway when I initially realised that i just signed up a separate Twitter account using the name @ollieparsley. I then posted one tweet with a link to my @olliedude2k account.

It was than after seeing Gary’s keynote I went straight to some websites and saw what the impact of name changing would be. There are some points that I needed to know and looked at the list of effects the name change would have.

1. You do not lose your followers or people you are following
2. Everything about your account stays the same (except your username)
3. People replying to your old name will NOT get to you.

With that in mind I decided to take the plunge. In my case I have 2 Twitter accounts and really just wanted to swap the names over.

Changing Twitter username

Please follow these instructions carefully. The aim of this process is to simply change your username and use a second account to capture possible tweets to your “old” username.

1. Set up a user with the username you want to change to
2. Open up a separate browser (for instance I used Firefox and safari) This is because you can have 2 accounts open at the same time. If you do not have 2 browsers just log in and out of each account instead of swapping browsers.
3. This stage needs to be done quickly. If you have a popular username there is a change it might get take in the few seconds between swapping names round.
4. Log in to the new account and rename by just placing a letter after it. For instance I put ollieparsley2. Then save it. This allows your current account to use the username.
5. Log in to your current Twitter account and change the username to the new username. For instance I changed olliedude2k to ollieparsley. Save your changes.
6. Swap back to the old account (remember you changed the name). So I logged in as ollieparsley2.
7. Change the username to your old name. So I changed ollieparsley2 to olliedude2k.

Now you will have successfully swapped your usernames over. Once done put a message on your old account saying you changed your username etc. Also don’t forget ot log in for the new week or so to check noone has messages the wrong account.

All you need to do is make sure people are using the correct username and also make sure that any web address links point to the right username.

If you have any questions please use the contact form. I really hope this was useful, any comments on this post area welcomed.

Hi All. Thought i would take a moment to mention a project we have been working on (with others including Anna Debenham, Jamie Knight and Teifon Jordan).

The holding page for ScrunchUp (ScrunchUp.com) was launched today with a little fanfare. We received hundreds of email addresses from interested parties within the first few minutes of going live. As mentioned on the site ScrunchUp is a project designed to help and encourage young web designers and developers just entering the field.

There is a plethora of information out there and not all of it is accurate. We found that a resource is needed that covers everything from the very simple (choosing your first domain name/ hosting package for example) to the more advanced (e.g. starting your first web app and getting a job in the field).

We have chosen to publish regularly in a magazine-style format and attempt to encourage a healthy community. Thanks to all those who have made the inital stage of this project possible and I emplore people to sign up for more info on the ScrunchUp site.

James

The not-so-recent ‘Steve Jobs health scare’  caused chaos to Apple stock. The seemingly endless list of triumphs for the company, which is performing better than ever before, was deemed irrelevant in comparison to speculation that it’s benevolent leader could be suffering from a second bout of cancer.

Many were questioning what relevance Steve’s health had to the company. After all… these issues are a ‘private matter’. There seemed to be a general acceptance among the tech community that Steve should be left alone and, so long as his performance was not affected, any private issues ignored.

I say different. Steve Jobs doesn’t belong to the company; he is the company! We saw with our own eyes the fall of Apple after he was removed from the board the first time. Now he is back he has done a fine job of ensuring Apple cannot exist without him. In the business world we break leaders down into five tiers. The fifth tier belongs to those who build greatness and aspire to make the company the best it can be. With or without them at the helm. The fourth tier belongs to leaders who are ambitious, egocentric and set up their successors for failure (or set up no successors at all)… sound familiar?
This technique can also be called the ‘Genius with a thousand helpers’ model - one genius at the helm and everyone trained or employed as ‘yes men’ or as ‘do-ers’ rather than leaders.

Microsoft, meanwhile have embraced a more commonly accepted model. Whilst they may be seen as a lumbering corporate machine they understand that the right people lead on to the right decisions. We have seen evidence of ‘Level 5′ leadership recently as Bill stepped down without consequence and barely a blip in the share price. Google are another example where the huge amount of talent ensures adequate leadership will follow on from Larry and Sergey.

Many would argue this self-protection is very prudent of the great man. That his micro-managing and simple brilliance is unrivalled in the industry and this has put Apple in a very strong position. However as we may be reaching the end of the reign of Steve it is important to consider whether the company can continue without him. Many bigger companies than Apple have failed due to over-reliance and it is essential for a successor to be adopted soon, otherwise we could quickly see a once successful company floundering without a head and struggling to recover from it’s biggest and most important asset’s demise. Is Steve’s health important? You decide, but there is no doubting that - as things stand - our beloved Apple cannot fall far from the tree.

James

What is TwitterLeague? It is a simple web app where you can create a league of any Twitter users that is based on Twitter follower counts. For instance check out the diggnation league embedded below.

Instead of the snipped of JavaScript embedded above you can also get an XML feed of the league. This means you can display it however you like as it has all the information available in the JavaScript version including the profile image urls, username, full name and follower count. Have a look at the example below, also taken from the Diggnation league.

Diggnation league XML feed

For now it is in invite-only beta and therefore needs an invitation code in order to login. So I have on here just for the readers of this blog! But hurry, there are only 500 invites!

Go to twitterleague.com and enter the invite code: techjuicer

Are you like me? Do you hate Internet Explorer 6? Do you find it a real pain in the ass to make web apps work with the shitty browser? Well there is a new group out there that want to Save the Developers!

All you have to do is go to their site and add a small line of javascript to your site. (I cannot add it to a Wordpress.com hoted blog) but I will be adding it to the websites I develop.

Please add it to your sites and you might save a developer!

Ollie

By the way I found this on TechCrunch and the original post of this is on my blog ollieparsley.com

I have opened the BBC iPlayer download manager and I saw it had an update. So I downloaded the update and followed the instructions.

I know that the iPlayer can only download videos in Firefox. Which was a pain before they added the flash player to the site. I hated opening the old IE browser just to download atv show.

But! When I did this update I had Firefox open and a message came up. “Restart Firefox before going to the iPlayer”(or words to that effect). A smile came on my face and I shut down all the tabs I had open and restarted Firefox and went to the iPlayer website. I can now download TV shows from Firefox! Finally!

It is a big step forward. Ages ago I reported on the fact that iPlayer would only be supported on a Windows PC running Internet Explorer. No Macs and no other browsers. Which I think was ridiculous and it should have been launched with as many systems and browsers supported as possible. Now I don’t know what other browsers were newly supported in this update but It is good to see the BBC on the right track, even if I think they have gone about it all wrong.

Yes this is not quite true. But technically the way they have written the introduction to the Google Accessible Search, means they have created a search page for ugly people.

This came about after I was at the Future of Web Apps and watched a talk by Robin Christopherson from AbilityNet. One comment I really remember well is that the proper technical term is “Vision Impairment” because “visually impaired” implies the person look ugly!

The Google Accessible Search page:

It is still in the Google labs so it has time to change it before they make it live! Does anyone think I am nit picking?? If you do then don’t bother e-mailing, thought this was a funny observation.

Barely a month after taking most of its videos off of iTunes and going home, NBC is ready to play again. In a story about NBC CEO Jeff Zucker, the Financial Times reports:

Mr Zucker appears to have patched up relations with Apple after a pricing dispute last year led NBC to pull its shows from the iTunes digital media store. “We’ve said all along that we admire Apple, that we want to be in business with Apple,” he said. “We’re great fans of Steve Jobs.”

The shows that were removed are not back on yet, but i will keep a look out. But it looks more and more like NBC’s walkout may have just been a negotiating tactic. Almost a baby throwing its toys out of the pram to get what it wants!

Source: TechCrunch

In addition to the news from earlier this week that Yahoo has joined the OpenID movement.

So Google has also been testing the OpenID system with its users. But more specifically Google’s Blogger users. This has been done for 2 obvious reasons. One the best people to use the technology are the technology based people. The most prominent is the bloggin community. But also as each user gets a subdomain they can link their OpenID directly to their blog.

This is all live now and can be accessed at draft.blogger.com this then enables their blog URL to be used as their OpenId. Although I cannot find the option anywhere!

At a guess some people have been reporting that the number of blogger users are somewhere between 10 million and 50 million. So not quite on the Yahoo scale!