Block Unwanted #ZwaratKhames Tweets & More with “Go Away Tweets”
If there is one good thing that can come of those endless Ramadan shows, it’s the motivation to build something to filter them out. It wasn’t really bothering me that much, but it was getting loud enough that it seems there is nothing but this #ZwaratKhames to talk about on twitter that I decided to finally jump on board Greasemonkey world. After all I am a monkey fan!
So I wrote a little script, call it Go Away Tweets, to remove tweets that include the word zwaratkhames (Yeah that’s right!), and you can easily edit it to your liking to include whatever you want. To use it, for Firefox users first make sure you have Greasemonkey add-on installed. next, get the Go Away Tweets script installed.
If all you want is to block zwaratkhames then your job is done. Vuvuzela filter is also added as a bonus. I’m trying to do some good deeds to the world here! If not, you need to do little editing to the script as follows.
1- Go to Tools -> Greasemonkey -> Manage User Scripts
2- Select the Go Away Tweets script and click Edit
3- There is a list of keywords in the form
keywords[0] = “your word here”
keywords[1] = “your word here”
Set your word where it says so. You can add more keywords by duplicating the line and incrementing the counter, e.g.
keywords[2]…
Google Chrome users are better using Blank Canvas Script Handler to enable easy editing of the script. Do so first, then download the Go Away Tweets, and edit it as explained above.
LIMITATIONS: Currently the script only runs at first time. If you fetch new tweets on the fly without refresh, your evil tweets will come back. SORRY :>
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Khalid Al-Zanki Confirms copy/pasting his content
Few days ago I posted on Posterous about the fraud Khalid Al-Zanki is involved with, which ended up with the help of friends and the social web being circulated around the web massively. Today Khalid has posted a blog post which vaguely replies to ours, and is ironically mostly a copy paste from Wikipedia, but that’s alright, at least this time he was clear about it. Now before I start my response to the article, I would to make clear of some points:
1- Few months before the post, I have commented on Khalid’s blog highlighting the massive copy paste in his site. He deleted my comment and never got back to me by email.
2- This time, when my friend MBH comment on his post after I published the photos, he deleted it again, but replied to him politely via email, confirming what his latest blog post tries to explain. You can see the details here with snapshot of the email.
3- Since we posted about it, Khalid never made any attempt to publicly reply to our claims.
4- His Twitter account turned private and is still at the time of writing. Obviously he didn’t want us to get involved in the discussions.
Now, his post is basically a copy/paste of the definitions of Private Label, Private Label Rights, and Royalty-free stuff. I won’t redo the explanation here you can read it off Wikipedia or his blog. But about his post, he smartly wrote it without any mention of what’s been going around in the blogsphere, or without specifying that his is how he got his blog posts and all the rest of the content. But why else would this post come out of the blue? If it’s not to reply to his critics.
So what does his latest post really tell us?
Khalid Al-Zanki copies his content from various sources. He claims to have legal rights in all cases that he does. But is it the case really? Are all his blog posts? His famous eBook, Terms of Use? All of these are copied? Even if legally, where does that leave Khalid Al-Zanki? The famous online marketing and product launch expert, who’s value is so high no company in Kuwait can hire him, according to him. it only leaves him with an About Page that is also a copy paste (see last post)! Did he have right for that About page too? If yes, what kind of a celebrity figure can’t afford to write his own few lines about him selves, or at least hire someone to write real personal biography that is exclusive to him?
It basically all sums up to the point that Khalid is a copy/paste person, and for that, I can’t understand the thousands of KD he charges for his expertise and talks.
From another angle, Private Label and royalty-free content are well known and quite legitimate. But to what extent and in what context? For example, I personally bought royalty-free music to mix with my videos, since I don’t have the skills, and I need legitimate music alongside my videos. But I own the main thing, the video, and I aid it with music. I could pay someone to write for my company or write a book under our brand. But never claim I personally wrote it, let alone brag about it all over the social networks. And what’s worse is when this book or content isn’t exclusive, and you end up seeing tens or hundreds of people claim to have written this content to them selves. Something is completely missing from all this… Credibility!
Things don’t stop here however. It’s not someone who is buying content to publish on his website and monetize the ads beside it, no. He is using it to claim it to him self, pretend to be skillful writer, man of thought and vision, something valuable that he can demand thousands of KDs for his consultancy to companies, who have fallen times and times for his trap.
I only got one last thing to say to Khalid… Thank you for admitting to it. It’s up to the people to judge now.
UPDATE (10:11 PM):
My friend MBH commented on Khalid Al-Zanki’s post and guess what? Khalid deleted the comment. You can still see snapshot here. Khalid once said that he never ever got a bad review. Guess this is how, he more or less meant he never lets a bad review on his site.
But that’s not all. I found this on his Facebook Fan Page status:
Most Arabs in the 3rd world don’t know about private label. Hmm, so this is how you cashed in on it? Buy your self lots of private label content from western world, post is here as yours, then charge big bucks for what you claim to know?
Luckily I know enough about Private Labeling, especially online, and I know enough to spot a scam when I see one. And thanks once again for bringing the Arab in the 3rd world up to speed with your ploy.
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Use Gmail Filters to auto-arrange your email tasks
So often do I come across an interesting article or video while browsing the web, especially using my mobile. I want to read the article, or I have something to do with that article, but I just don’t have the time (or iphone is too slow to keep up with the new OS 4) that I decide to email the link to my Gmail address for later reading.
And since I have like everybody else tons of emails, I start labeling emails as TODO and Worthy for things I need to do, or really want to read later on. So this requires that I go to my Gmail Inbox and label my sent email accordingly. But you can use Gmail filters effectively to skip this last step. Here is how:
1- From Gmail, go to Settings, Filters
2- Click Create a new filter
3- In the From field, insert your email address, so that only you can use that filter. After all, you don’t want outsiders to add things to your todo list do you? I know I’d like to do that to others, so for your sake, keep your email :).
4- In the Subject field, add a specific tag that is unlikely to appear in emails. For instance, I use Google similar syntax to filter as in is:todo. But keep in mind you need to escape the colon character “:” with backslach, so it will be “is\:todo”.
5- Click Next Step
6- Check the Apply the label: box and select your preferred label from the dropdown list, or create new one if you like.
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Toy Story 3 Video Game, Just How All Movie Games Should Be
How many movie games are released each year? How many movie games have you tried in your life time? How many did you really like? The answer would be I bet very close to zero! Well I can say I added one to mine. The moment I saw Toy Story 3 video game trailer it felt like something different. Like something with a hope of enjoying it. Having gone through the story mode game now, the game really delivered the promise, setting an example of how video games should be made.
First of all, voice actors are all real not a replacement like many other Disney games I tried, this by it self tells you the company is taking the game seriously. Graphics was really great as well, and the game followed the real story to a very good extent, and added some extra fun levels as side stories that won’t really spoil the game, but rather add extra spice to it. Yes there were some critical scenes I thought should be included, like what happened to the bear. They made it look like he was no evil or anything, just a side character you pass by. Other characters were also missing, but nothing that spoiled the joy in my opinion.
What’s the best part for me was the multi-player mode. For the first time I’m really able to enjoy a game with my kid, playing together through the story mode, making our through the obstacles, helping each other, and most of the time, the lack of one player doesn’t hardly affect the other. You die, the other player resumes play until you respawn at next point. So this was for real a family + gaming time in one. I was kinda pushing him to play it over other games toward the end really :).
Is this because of the Avalanche Software? I never liked THQ games, but UP demo sounded a bit nice for kids.
Either way, I hope this isn’t an incidental success but a sign of better Pixar movie games to come. And why don’t other movie studios give such focus to their games? Have you ever heard of a good Harry Potter game? Yes Lego version was probably fun for kids, but that’s a lame shift after the successive failure the movie games have seen. I guess massive movie game failures have given them a bad reputation. It’s just something they have to get done, get quick cash from and leave.
NOTE: Zurg character is playable on PS3 version of the game.
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It’s happening… 3D Bluray Movies
That’s one movie I definitely wanna get.
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Monkey Island Playground
Without any relation to the game (but it should), HERE IT IS!
Why not real one? You know with hidden dirty T-Shirt treasures, lovely governors, spit contests, real grave digging and all. That would be much cooler.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Amazon Kindle for $189
Like it?
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