I always wondered if Twitter would make it to the mainstream. I wasn’t sure if it would. Most people were too busy “poking” each other on Facebook or stalking lil’ kids on MySpace. But, it made it…and I’m a bit surprised to be honest.

Twitter just hit the one-billion tweets milestone today. Its not official or anything. The number of tweets were being counted by a 3rd party site called GigaTweet. Twitter might have hit this milestone long time ago since we don’t know when GigaTweet started counting. But, at least we know that we have more than a billion tweets.

You know Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart? Well anyone with a TV knows them. So, they were talking about Twitter on Indecision 2008. That probably got the whole “Twittosphere” twittering. Colbert and Stewart? They like took Twitter to the next level that day. Now the average Joe knows about Twitter and probably even started using it (or at least gave it a shot).

What really convinced me that Twitter got into the mainstream was when I was seeing this presentation by a few folks from a local tech company at my school. They were talking about Facebook, MySpace, Xbox Live, etc. And then they mentioned something that really surprised. Guess what it was? Yeah, it was Twitter.

I was like “Woah! WTF! They know about Twitter? They don’t look like the type of people who would use Twitter. WOAH! Holy shit! That means little birdie made it to the mainstream.” I was really happy for Twitter actually. Its a great, unique idea and its pretty useful too. It deserves to be more popular than Facebook (not kidding).

Well Twitter just took its first step into the mainstream. I’m not sure if it will be as popular as Facebook. It might. It might not. Who knows. But, it sure is on the right path and its getting more popular everyday. Until then follow my tweets!

Yep that’s right folks, Twitter got a shiny new design and its lookin’ good.

Its funny how moving a few things here and there can it more user-friendly. Twitter now has that little at home, warm and welcome feeling. Makes you wanna use it more and go on a tweet-rampage. Just go check it out and you’ll know what I’m talking about.

Here’s the changes I’ve noticed:

1. Moved the tabs from the top to the sidebar.
2. Displays the number of followers, followings and updates under your name.
3. Got that whole round corner thing going on.
4. Displays your latest tweet at the top.
5. Got a colour wheel on the custom profile design’s page.
6. Put a tab for favourites on your public profile.

Apparently they added some AJAX magic on the Home and @Replies tabs, but I don’t see them. I checked both in IE and Firefox. Weird. Maybe they’re still working on it.

Well anyways, here’s the official post from Twitter about the redesign. Check it out since its got everything detailed. So, how do you like the new design? I love it.

BTW, this is like the get-a-new-design-day since FriendFeed also rolled out theirs today. I didn’t post about it because I don’t really use it since I don’t see what’s the point of it. Like… oh whatever. And yo, follow my sweet lil’ tweets (please).

Update (Sept 19): There’s a little bug when you go to someone’s profile and click on “Follow” it doesn’t change to “Following” right away, you need to refresh the page.

Disclaimer: No, this is not some horrible joke. I’m serious and I wasn’t paid by Microsoft to post this.

Last week I tried out IE8 (Beta 2) and I freakin’ loved it. I’m just really surprised to see how things improved. Like IE8 is pretty much taken to the next level. And you know what? I’m thinking about switching to it (not joking).

Isolated tabs

You may have already heard of this feature. Like the tabs run individually and they’re isolated. So, if something goes wrong only that tab will crash rather than the whole browser. And then IE8 will automatically recover the tab later on. Now that’s pretty smart shit.

Chrome has this and everyone was like going “wow” and everything. But, guess what? IE8 had it first. And one thing I know for sure is that a lot of people are now going to say “well its not that cool”. (IE haters!)

Privacy mode (aka pr0n-mode)

Pr0n mode, that’s what most people call it. I gotta say that its a funny name and describes it properly too. The official name is “InPrivate” but you can just call it pr0n mode if you want. Anyways, I’m not really sure what else you could use this feature for, but it might come in handy. Like when you’re at a public computer for example.

It is fast!

This is the part that really shocked me. I was like “WTF?”. Sites load pretty much in a snap. IE8 beats FF3 at speed. I never tried Chrome (and I don’t plan on), so I can’t compare them. But, still this is like a huge improvement. Good job IE team!

They care about web developers, finally

Oh yeah, that’s right! They care about web developers. Well its about time. IE8 has this built-in feature called “developer tools” that lets you mess with a site’s HTML, CSS, script, disable stuff, outline DIVs and the cookies. There are tons of other features too. These are just the one’s that I felt was important and to give you basic idea of what they have.

Compatibility mode

You’re going to a lot find sites that were designed for old browsers. And those sites probably won’t work well with the newer ones. So, IE8 got this feature to fix that problem. There’s a button near the refresh button which just fixes everything for you. Just click on it and it works like charm. Everything just works fine.

Oh and you can also browse in IE7, IE8 or the IE8 compatibility style. Like the site would work like it would if you were using IE7, for example. You can do this straight from the developer tools.

My own suggestion for a feature

I really like IE8 and there’s a little feature that I would love to see. I wish IE8 was able to run FF plugins since most of IE’s plugins are a piece of shit. FF plugins are simply awesome and they make your life a lot easier. I hope they consider doing this.

Well there are tons of other features in IE8. I didn’t talk about all of them. Check this out for some more info. And one more thing, take IE8 for test-drive! Takes a few minutes to install it. And after you’ve done that let me know if you like it (or hate it), and if you’re thinking about switching over to it.

Yep, that’s right! You better watch out on Digg. Well actually you don’t have to watch out since its only for the people who use scripts to digg stuff. Unless you are one of them!

Okay so here’s the deal. Digg officials have been hunting people who use scripts. And do you know what they’re doing after they find an “evil” digger? They ban him/her. Now that sucks donkey ass. You worked hard to get all those submissions popular, got good loyal friends, got the spotlight on yourself, and other bla blah. But, too bad it all just goes away.

Now are you wondering how they’ll find out who’s using scripts or not? Well I’m pretty sure that the officials get alerted when a particular digger is digging, shouting and deleting shouts at a rate that humans possibly couldn’t do. For example, digging all the stories on the front page within less than a second.

Oh and if you can’t login to your account, and you’re sure the password is correct then you’re probably banned. And I don’t think they’ll ever unban you. But, I do know a digger who managed to get himself unbanned. Hold on! He was a power digger. So, don’t get your hopes up. They couldn’t care less about unbanning a digger that isn’t any good to Digg.

So, you better stop using your little toys (or at least keep a low profile by doing things at a more… humanly rate). And post a comment if you got banned, know anyone who got banned and the reason behind getting banned. Plus if you support this or if you’re pissed off about this.

Oh look what I found. Google’s CAPTCHA doesn’t work properly. Wait. Do you think I’m joking? Do you? Well I’m gonna prove it!

Okay head over to www.google.com/addurl and enter a random URL. But, don’t enter the CAPTCHA correctly. Just type something random there. What do you get? Well I get this message:

Thank you

Your site URL has been successfully added to our list of URLs to crawl. Please note that we do not add all submitted URLs to our index, and we cannot make any predictions or guarantees about when or if they will appear.

Can they not afford a decent programmer? Damn! What kind of lazy (and dumb) bastards are they hiring? See that’s why you shouldn’t treat your employees like a king. Don’t give them toys, free food and other luxuries. Make them work their ass off!

I’m sure this is how the conversation about the CAPTCHA over at Google went:

Manager (or whatever they call the guy): Are the captures working?

Programmer: Yes they are. I just finished making them yesterday. They are the best CAPTCHAs on the web.

Manager: Good! Google must have the best of everything! May I test it?

Programmer: Sure. Just enter the letters you see in the picture.

Manager: Good. It works perfect. You can go play with everyone now.

Dude you gotta try it the other way too! Enter a wrong CAPTCHA. Oh man, this is just hilarious. Well Google I work freelance and I’m free right now. Feel free to drop me an email. I can fix that for you guys. Ha! You wish. I was joking. I’m not helping you guys.

Okay spammers its your time to have some fun with the big G. Big G? What’s it stand for again? Gangsta? More like ghetto right now. Oh well. Let me know if you did anything big.

Update: I just tried to contact Matt Cutts, Google’s head of webspam by commenting on his blog. I just wanted to tell him about this and I found something interesting (once again!). Mr Cutts has built is own custom spam protection. It asked me what the sum of 10 + 6 and I entered 16. It said I was wrong. (Hmm the head of spam can’t build a working spam protection.)

Update again: Okay the spam protection finally worked and I could leave the comment on his blog. Well he deleted my comment. I guess he was too ashamed of his and Google’s epic failure at making a simple CAPTCHA.

Update #3: Matt Cutts is saying that they do this on purpose. But, when I asked him why they do this he didn’t have an answer. Very convincing I must say. I wonder if he’s just saying because he doesn’t want him and Google to look like a total loser. Hmm?

Sorry don’t mean to ruin it for them, but there are bots that can read and enter CAPTCHAs. So, people who make a mistake while entering the CAPTCHA is considered a bot? And their submission is just thrown away? And the bots that can correctly enter the CAPTCHA gets added to the list? What a brilliant idea!

I wonder if I’ll find the CAPTCHA working correctly if I go there next week (or when we all forget about this). I’m thinking yes.

Update #4: This was submitted to Digg and it was going pretty good. It was second in Industry New’s upcoming with most diggs. But, suddenly it just went poof! It got buried. How is that possible? Just like that? And it was only 1 bury that buried the whole story. Was it by a moderator?

Do you think Google contacted Digg and told them to make sure that this doesn’t go front page? Or is this some kind of Digg censorship? I’ve heard stories of Digg censoring things out. Oh and Google is also dropping me from SERPs. Do a Google search for webrampage and you’ll see. Coincidence?