TruXter

Facebook Trend Slaughters Search Engines

Posted on2010/12/04AuthorTruXter

Looking on Alexa.com’s “What’s hot” page you see what the current internet trends are.

if you are a Facebook user, you know that right now everyone is complying with the latest trend of changing your Facebook photo to a cartoon character of your choice. The object of this is to not pick the same cartoon character anyone else uses. So people are searching for images steadily and contsantly.

Here is the current most searched.

Alexa What's hot because of Facebook

And here is a brief explanation of how to play along. facebook end of the year photo.

I have not yet seen a Voltron or a superman, nor a HeMan for that matter.
But hey, a facebook Cartoon Doesn’t have to be the coolest.

I am personalizing my Facebook Cartoon Profile picture.

Superman Over Houston

PC Game Of the Year

Posted on2010/11/292010/11/29AuthorTruXter

PC Game Of the Year 2010

You are now required to select the Game of the year for Pc gaming.
Duplicate answers will be removed.
We are proud to give everyone the chance to select the PC Game Of the Year for TruXterTech.Com.
If you have a game that you have tried that is in the choices below, and you find yourself playing that game more than any other game in the poll selections, then by all mean, please vote for that PC game.
[poll id=”4″]
PC Game Of the Year for the pc game of your choice, you get to vote for PCGOTY.
Some of the PC games here in the Poll are not straight out of the box for pc only. Some of these game were first produced for console and then brought to pc in 2010. These are games that are on PC though. World of Warcraft: Cataclysm is not out yet as of the time this was posted, but three weeks, anything can happen
If we missed a game, please leave a message below, no sign up needed.
SO VOTE!!!!!!! for one these pc games
Starcraft II,Grand Theft Auto: Episodes From Liberty City,Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2,Call of Duty: Black Ops,World of Warcraft: Cataclysm,Fallout: New Vegas,Mass Effect 2,Need for Speed World,Need for Speed Hot Pursuit,Battlefield: Bad Company

Or leave an additional game below. Additional games will be added at the end of each day.

Call of Duty Black Ops pc Review

Posted on2010/11/282010/12/14AuthorTruXter

We are inviting you guys to participate in the review of Call of Duty Black Ops for PC. There will be a poll at the end.

Minimum System Requirements

OS: Windows® Vista / XP / 7

Processor:Intel® Core™2 Duo E6600 or AMD Phenom™ X3 8750 or better

Memory: 2GB

HDD:12GB

Video: Shader 3.0 or better 256MB NVIDIA® GeForce® 8600GT / ATI Radeon® X1950Pro or better

Sound: DirectX 9.0c-compatible

DirectX: 9.0c

The two computers we tested Call of Duty Black ops for Pc,

Computer 1

cpu – Intell 2200 Dual core 2.2 GHZ

GPU – Nvidia 220 1 gig

MEM – 4 gigs pc6400

OS – Windows 7 Ultimate

Computer 2

cpu – AMD Athlon II X3 440 3.00 GHZ

GPU – Nvidia 250 1 gig

MEM – 4 gigs pc 6400

OS – Windows 7 Ultimate

Call of Duty Black ops Splash

The default video settings for Call of Duty Black ops Was already decent enough for me to start the game, just had to change from 1280×768 to 1440×900. Of course I did not try turning anything up because I wanted to try the game right out of the box at default standards. You know what, I was quite happy with the game-play.

Menu Black Ops Pc

You can move the mouse and look around the room as if you are the head of Mason the main character in Call of Duty Black Ops. You are restrained in a chair, you have blood on your shirt.

First Cut-scene Call Of Duty Black Ops

This of course is the first Cutscene of the single Player version Call of Duty Black Ops for pc.

We Played all three versions of Call of Duty Black Ops, We played Multiplayer We played Zombie and We Played Single player. Gave about one Hour to the Zombie game play. Both computers handled the game very well. We took the game to multiplayer and both computers held up great, even on maps with 16/16 players. No noticeable lag at all. but single player. We played single player mode at veteran level for two Hours. about the second hour, the Intel machine began to lag heavily. Could have been a heating issue.
Best First Person Shooter I have played this year. Nice FPS action, Excellent FPS View
Call of Duty Black Ops, Is now my new favorite First Person Shooter.
[kaltura-widget uiconfid=”534″ entryid=”0_14qhvbi7″ width=”400″ height=”255″ addpermission=”” editpermission=”” /]

Single player is very hard, graphics are amazing. Ai is a bit repetitive non intuitive. But Ai is very hard.

Multyplayer is small space hardly any place to camp as a sniper. Rounds are short like 10 minutes cap. Multyplayer is fast paced extreme action. Weapons are earned. That’s kind of cool, but those who make it to the good weapons first, keep the others from upgrading.

Straight to the scoring I give, but you can give yours below.
multiplayer fun 9/10
Graphics 10/10
single player fun 8/10
Sound 10/10
control 10/10
Final Score over all 9/10

[poll id=”3″]

Mac Lion App Store

Posted on2010/11/24AuthorTruXter

As always, misleading buzzwords.
“mission control” yet they further remove YOUR CONTROL. you don’t get to select where or how you install this stuff to your computer. sure they have a well organized set up

Watch the video and come to your own opinion about mac/apple

FACEBOOK Privacy Issue yet again.

Posted on2010/11/21AuthorTruXter2 Comments

FACEBOOK Privacy Issue yet again.

Got this on my Facebook account today. From one of the less techy people on my friends list.
They talked about this coming for some time. Well it’s here.
Privacy issues.

FYI: ALERT* As of yesterday, NEW PRIVACY setting called “Instant
Personalization” that shares data with non-Facebook websites and it is
automatically set to “Enable.” Go to Account >Privacy Settings >
Applications and Websites >Instant Personalization > Edit or
customize Settings, and un-check “Enable”. BTW, if your friends don’t do
this, they will be sharing information about you. PLEASE
POST THIS TO FACEBOOK

One of the downsides is this can and probably will lead to many accounts getting stolen once this is exploited by the curious.
Another thing is, your friends might not fix their stuff because they aren’t worried about it.
Ever get that phone call from a fake debt collector who actually names people you know?
It’s easier than most people think.
There is a scam going on where some people are Calling people and saying that you have a friend who got a loan and used you as a reference and they even say your friend’s name. They tell you that you are responsible for their loan and debt. How do they get your friend’s information? how do they get your name ? How did they get your phone number ?
Look at your privacy settings on facebook. You most likely have your phone number visible to everyone, or friends of friends. All they have to do is get your friend to add them. Then they dig through their friends and see who’s phone number is showing. Another scarier one is they tell you that you got a loan and they mention your friends and family members if you have them categorized.

People, Facebook is not holy ground safe from the evil. Yes you had more safety on myspace. More spam on Myspace, but that is slowly changing now… Isn’t it ?

Look, it’s not just your safety and security and privacy, it is your friend’s safety and privacy. If you feel that it’s just paranoid blah blah, at least change your settings for your friends. but truth is, in the end, you will never know it’s your fault.

Are Google Ads Safe To Click

Posted on2010/11/192010/11/19AuthorTruXter2 Comments

Are Google Ads Safe To Click

I have received a few emails lately, (I guess because of the upcoming holidays and all of the online shopping to be expected) and people are asking me if it is ok or safe to click on Google advertisements. Also I have been asked if it is safe to purchase items advertised through Google advertisements. As much I rant about about Google not being what I expected in many ways, I have to say that Google advertisements are safe. 90% of their reports on the Better Business Bureau have been positive. Considering how huge Google is, and knowing that the only people to typically leave a review or a comment would be angry people. This is great news.
There are other advertisement companies that have just the opposite in scoring.
See at this time of the year, and knowing how sales people are, knowing the salesman might jack the price up a bit to sweeten his pocket, would lead you into paying even more for an item that this little snot had no responsibility in the making of, shipping of or even the concept of the product, I can easily see why you would prefer to shop online for your products. Why pay the middleman who works for the middle man? By straight from the source.

So I have been looking online to find angry posts from people who shopped by, like lets say clicking an advertisement on a website somewhere because the advertisement was relevant to their query. I have yet to find someone complaining about a Google advertisement misleading them.

Now there are tons of rants about how people feel they are not being compensated well enough for their efforts. but that is complete not relevant to theis topic. But yes it will come up while you search for complaints about google advertisement results.

In the past, we have been burned by many crooked advertisers and lazy advertisement agents who do not scan/screen/ filter their advertisements. So of course people are curious and cautious about clicking any advertisement. I can whole heartedly assure you that you have less than a 5% chance of getting harmed by an advertisement you click from Google. Even if you are in that five percent, it is still better than what the salespeople do to you. Jacking prices 35% higher because you look like you are able to afford more than the last guy, this is just wrong. Wrong , Wrong, Wrong!

I trust Google advertisements and have yet to be burned by Google when I click an ad.

a way to be sure it is a google ad, look in the corner of the advertisement, you should see the word “Google”. If you do not see the word “Google” then that is not a google advertisement.

If I am on a website about black Friday sales, or Christmas sales or any kind of Holiday deals or Holiday Sales and I want to understand them and then I see an advertisement that shows the perfect holiday deal I am looking for and I see the Google logo, I feel 95% safe (plenty enough) clicking that advertisement to get the product or sales or deals that I want. but any other advertisement, I’m not so comfortable with. I may click to look but if it takes me to site that looks funny or not right, I will shut my browser and begin my search in Google again.

Try it for yourself. Most of the sites you find in google advertisements are reputable sites. If you have no idea who they are, check the company name at ripoff report, search bbb (Better Business Bureau). Try it with other advertisers also. You will be very satisfied with the results you find in Google advertisements.

Has Social Media Innovation Stopped?

Posted on2010/11/16AuthorTruXter

Has the innovative race of creating the next useful social website come to a stop? why? and how long?
The last known Social site that has made an impact is over 4 years old. So there is no social site that has been invented or created, no idea has come to anyone’s creation table since 06. There have been evolutions and “reinventions” of websites, but nothing that can 100% be called creative or new. We have seen Social websites pop up that are clones of or hybrids of other websites, but that isn’t quite creation or new.
Twitter and Jaiku. That’s it. Jaiku is older than twitter. So Twitter it’s self is in theory a rip off of Jaiku. Before that was Joost. Joost of course came out with a messenger when it was first created. You would install Joost so you can watch movies on your computer, but there was also a movie voting system, along with the movie voting system there was also a messenger/chat system. So you could talk to other Joost users who are watching the same movie or tv show as what you are watching.
Today there is one. Only one social network out there that everyone still uses. That social network is the one that all tech people were certain would flop. Facebook. Facebook of course is the website that really wants you to only add people to your friends that you already know. Now that isn’t very social. Is it? It’s more of an address book. Some modifications to Facebook have allowed you to add more features and add more friends, and add annoying nagging video games.
We did see Myspace fall recently. We just saw Myspace build it’s self over again. But no one came to see the new place. The few that looked hated Myspace. because well, Myspace was over bloated.
Chatrooms are completely gone. Forums are all trolled up and spam flooded. Unless someone reinvented the chatroom, that venue seems to be dead.
Revision 3 needs what techtv had. A Live show that people could interact with. like Chris pirillo’s show. Live.Pirillo.com . That would save Revision3. Especially if they did this with diggnation. Maybe once or twice a month
Is communication dying?
If anyone knows of a new social network that seems to be ground breaking or potentially ground breaking, tell people about it. Post it here. I would love to try this social network/ social media.

Is Adwords Dying?

Posted on2010/11/14AuthorTruXter

Is Adwords Dying?

Rumor is that Adwords is losing it’s power. and the number of users are diminishing. Also another rumor is that the Adwords team knows this.
To me, this completely nuts. unless it’s just the current Economy. If so, then it’s kind of to late for that to be the cause. If for some reason, another company is offering their advertisement spots at a lower cost, cool. but the ads will not be seen by nearly as many people as they would be seen on Adwords. Google Adsense is the way that Adwords get seen on other websites. more sites are signed to Adsense, than any other 4 affiliate companies, together.
Maybe this is true. Maybe Google has been nipping and skimping here and there over the years on Adwords just as they had done with Adsense over the years. I do not know this. I don’t use Adwords, because I have nothing to sell. but I do use Adsense, and I have seen a huge decrease in payout. Maybe less people are using Adwords because of changes. I do not know.

But I do know what would help Google, or another Affiliate company out there that wants to try it.

A mix of adsense for search and adsense affiliate ads. with selective phrases. What this means is if google would let you have a user code like your typical affiliate code, (ok here’s a fake code for examples) like “x-011-0-11truxter” and say someone asked em to help them locate a specific item and item such as duck food. So to help that person I would type “http://www.google.com/x-011-0-11truxter/duck+food+feed+mallard”. When a person clicks that link, the user would be directed to a search result page that shows food and feed for ducks and mallards. I then would be helping that user locate their item, I would in turn be helping Google send their ads out to users, and I would be helping the person who is in the most attractive link the user decides to click, and the best part, I would be paid by Google for my efforts. since normally I would just search Google and send the user a link.. if i knew that much about ducks =-\ .

but as of now, there a bunch of sites stating that Google is not making any money from Adwords.

Facebook Email Coming soon

Posted on2010/11/13AuthorTruXter

Facebook Email Coming soon

Is the latest rumor of Facebook.

Facebook Now owns FB.COM. FB.Com is said now be the server of Facebook email. So soon you can your email delivered to yourname@fb.com.

Some people call this the Gmail Killer. Right now as it stands, fb.com redirects you to Facebook.com and if you type fb.com/yourname your browser will direct you to your account profile on Facebook.com. Great work on the Facebook team’s part covering that base.

Right now the whole Facebook email is just speculation and theory. To me it looks like the Facebook team is saying ” Screw you” to Google because they are large enough to not care if Google frowns upon multiple domains pointing to the same website. I really do not see the whole Facebook email thing happening. I would more suspect they will create their own search engine and go after Google that way. I don’t see that being very effect just as I don’t see Bing being very effective, unless they create an affiliate program so people can embed the search into their personal websites, I mean who would be so goofy as to want to put a search on their personal website, for free? Especially when Google pays you for that same act ? Google has it right.

But again, for now, all it looks like is that Facebook is making it even easier for people to use Facebook. And it could reduce the number of people who open a browser, click in the search bar (yes search bar, not the address bar) and type Facebook.com then click the top link in their search. but again, that is only speculation.

We will see what comes of this.