Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with sharing

Best/fairest/easiest way to handle this new living situation?

Cosine — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 14:10:54 -0800

Seeking advice for a friend on safe and fair way to handle living arrangement. Asking for a friend:

My friend put a down payment on a new (to be built) condo a year or year and a half ago. Since then, maybe 8 months ago, he met a lovely girl and talk of co-habitation has naturally come up.

Currently they both rent separate places. His salary is probably double hers and he assumes he will pay a higher portion of the mortgage/costs if/when she moves in.

Currently the relationship is sunshine and lollypops and he doesn't want to send the wrong message but also wants to protect himself in case of complications down the road. Is there a normal way to handle this? If things go badly do they sell and each receive back the same percentage as what they have been paying? Should he pay the whole shot if he can and call it even? I think he's really just looking for experience and advice on how others would handle it.

How to extend WiFi to another building?

TheNewWazoo — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 10:24:52 -0800

I'm looking for a way to extend home WiFi into an adjoining building, where laying cable is not an option and packaging/LOS is a concern. I'd also like to reduce equipment cost, while not compromising endpoint throughput. Specific details inside. I've currently got a Cisco Linksys E3000 running DD-WRT, and I'd like to share my 802.11n WiFi link with my neighbors (on the same lot). My link is fast and we've got a lot of extra capacity, so it makes sense. The E3000 doesn't have external antennae and I can't mount it up high, so getting LOS to the other building is hard. We're separated by a privacy fence, too, so the path is blocked by wood. The buildings are about 60' apart, but their house extends another 50' or so, and I'd like good signal to cover their entire house.

Is there a good solution here? Ideally I could hand them a box and say "here, this replaces your cable modem/wifi box", and it would Just Work, with good speeds and coverage while still providing them with options for locating the equipment and also allowing a twisted-pair PHY if they need it. I have some admin chops, so technically involved solutions are okay, but I'd like not to spend much money on specialized equipment. What are my options?

Please explain this style of emotional disclosure/intimacy to me.

abirdinthehand — Sun, 02 Jun 2013 15:28:09 -0800

I have been getting closer to a friend of mine recently. He has a very particular way of sharing his feelings or more meaningful thoughts that I find a bit off putting and perhaps a little wary? Can you explain to me this one-sided monologue style of sharing when I am used to more of a back and forth? At first this style made me think he was going to tell me of a horrible childhood trauma or some equally devastating and intimate matter, but the disclosures are usually just normal feelings about various day to day events, though somewhat dramatically presented. To my mind, they are things friends normally share with one another, like how he feels about his life, things that have been troubling him lately, etc. For me I am used to these types of conversations taking place in a back and forth, freely and mixed in with more mundane conversation.

Whenever he is of the mood to share something personal, he gets very quiet, does not make eye contact and must 'have the stage' if you will, meaning any interruption from me ruins the openness and he feels 'unsafe'(not his words, my observation).

He will say I want to share something with you, then pause for a very long time as though it is very difficult for him to say these things at all, then proceed to speak very slowly and deliberately often taking many pauses to collect his thoughts while talking. He will stare out into space or down at the floor. The whole time I seem to have to stay quiet, or he will quit talking and get a bit sulky.

These disclosures have sometimes gone on for a good 15-20 minutes, often getting so abstract and full of pauses that I am not even sure I know exactly what he is referring to. The few times it has happened, I have expected to get to some 'big ending' to warrant all this, but there has never been a big reveal. I find myself feeling impatient while he is talking and pausing and talking, sometimes annoyed that he requires such delicate handling, and really sort of forced into this intense focus on him which is kinda strange in a friendship- then I feel badly for having these reactions, after all maybe it's just a cultural thing?

Strangely, otherwise he is a very boisterous person, always laughing and joking with people. He is full of energy and very animated, so this other side of him puts me a little on edge because it's such a contrast-

For some reason it feels like a red flag for me, though I'm not really sure why.

He has so much trouble talking openly about feelings that I'm very hesitant to ask him about this and make him feel even more uncomfortable.

Can anyone explain this behavior to me? Is he actually planning to tell me something else, then chickening out and saying other stuff? Is he just not normally close with people, so feels very vulnerable?

Do I have to share a hotel room with my coworker?

aabbbiee — Thu, 09 May 2013 15:40:51 -0800

Is it common in your academic workplace for people to share hotel rooms at conferences with colleagues? I have been in my position as an academic librarian at a state university for 7 years. Last year, following a reorganization, my position was reclassified as academic (non-regular academic). Travel policy and culture is different for staff versus faculty, and I've been confused while navigating these differences. My question is about the cultural aspect of this.

I travel 2-3 times a year for conferences, usually staying 3-4 nights. Before I was reclassified as academic, all of my travel was considered administrative, and all of my expenses were reimbursed. (Assume moderate expenses- conference rate hotel, per diem, airfare with shared-ride airport shuttles, etc.)
Now, following my reclassification, I have two types of travel. The first is administrative, as it's part of my job duties, and fully reimbursed. The second is travel for professional/academic development, such as presenting at conferences, for which I am allotted funds (equal to about 2/3 of one typical trip) from which I will be reimbursed.

To save money on this latter kind of travel, most of my co-workers get roommates for the conference. These might be coworkers, an old friend/colleague, or even a stranger picked from a listserv. Recently, I attended a conference with several coworkers. I was the only one who didn't have a roommate. One of my coworkers even roomed with her boss (though they are both in their 50s-60s). This is mostly to save money, but some have noted that they like the social aspect of having a roommate, and that it gives them a chance to chat (say, if they're old colleagues who now live far apart.)
This was the first time that the question of sharing a room on a work trip has come up for me. My boss did ask me about it, but didn't press the issue too much. Because I'd saved a huge amount on travel costs, my allotted funds covered my hotel room in total, so I didn't have to eat the extra costs of not having a roommate.
However, I am concerned that this might be pressed in the future, and that I might be requested to get a roommate for my administrative travel. This is often to conferences where I am the only attendee from my institution and where a roommate would be a stranger or acquaintance at best. While this hasn't been asked of me yet, I see the writing on the wall. I don't have any travel scheduled anytime soon. I want to figure out whether this is something that is so part of the culture that my best bet is to just learn to deal with it, or the kind of thing where I should limit my professional development only for conferences where I can afford to eat half the cost of lodging just to avoid sharing a hotel room with a stranger.

Maybe that sounds a little overkill, but I'm obviously having some issues with this idea. I really do not want to see my coworkers in their pajamas, hear their nighttime noises, or have to have them see/hear me/mine. Conferences are exhausting, and my hotel room is my area of respite. I'm an introvert; sharing a hotel room would mean that I would feel pressure to be "on" when I want to zone out. There are a lot of reasons why I don't want to share a room with people I know professionally. But this is clearly not the case for everyone.

My question: Is this a common cultural aspect of academia? Is it common for academic professionals (not students) to share hotel rooms? Do you? Did you have to get over some mild discomfort with the idea? Do you have any words of wisdom from me on this?

Sub-question*:
I am also interested in your thoughts as to whether there's a gender thing in play here. Are female librarians expected to share hotel rooms while male librarians might not be? Does a more male-dominated academic field have a different culture of room sharing?
*Sub-question is not intended to provoke an argument. I am purely speculating in that way that we sometimes do when we want to think there are unfair reasons for asking us to do things we don't want to do. I really want to learn about the broader culture of academia when it comes to this, and librarianship is very female-dominated.

New Parentsfilter: What's the best and easiest way to share photos?

zooropa — Sun, 24 Feb 2013 10:05:05 -0800

Earlier this week, Mrs. Zooropa gave birth to our son, Elias (we call him Eli). He is our first, so of course, we are taking all sorts of photos and video on our phones, and have received a ton of requests from grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc. Here's my question: what's the best and easiest way to share photos and videos with all these folks? Here are some criteria:

* It should be EASY (many folks in our families are tech-challenged and I'm too pooped to play tech support).

* It should be secure.

* Free would be preferable, but I don't mind paying a few bucks per month if necessary.

* Cross-platform is a must. I have an iPhone 5 and my wife had an older Android device.

Thanks in advance!

How can I get Home Sharing in iTunes to stay connected?

Twicketface — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 10:54:30 -0800

I can Home Share via iTunes (from PC to laptop), but can't get the connection to stay. I work from home and want to stream music from my (home) PC to my (work) laptop.

Both machines have iTunes installed and I have Home Sharing turned on for the PC (source of music). I can access my all my PC music on my laptop...but only for about three hours at a time (it varies). It will abruptly stop and my PC library no longer shows up on my laptop's Shared area.

I also have the option checked to keep track of play counts (so when I'm done with a podcast on the laptop, it shows the Play count as '1' on the PC's iTunes), but this too works occasionally and inconsistently. I've also tried turning on Home Sharing on the laptop as well (sharing the laptop's library with my PC) but the problem still persists.

My PC is hard wired to the internet and I use WiFi for the laptop. Signal is strong. I've never lost internet connectivity to the laptop (I guess I could have for a second or two without noticing, but I've never had a webpage not load when losing connectivity with iTunes). I have my PC set to never go into sleep mode (I leave it on with the monitor off when I'm working).

Once the connection is lost, if I go back to the PC's iTunes it still shows Home Sharing as turned on. If I turn it off and then turn it back on again, the laptop will 'rediscover' it.

Searching has brought up more issues with AppleTV rather than just home sharing within iTunes. Any help/suggestions is appreciated!

Recreate Google's "Share in Reader" bookmarklet

billtron — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 13:08:19 -0800

I want this: 1) highlight portion of any website, including embedded youtube, images, text, what have you. 2) click bookmarklet. Optional step 3) a new window pops up, allowing me to add a note. 4) a subscribeable RSS feed receives a new entry, whose title is a link back to the website in step one, and whose body is the highlighted portion from step one as well as my note. 5) share RSS with friends. Does it exist? Back in the day, my favorite thing about Google Reader was the creativity with which people shared links using the "Note in Reader" bookmarklet. Then Google went and made Google+, abandoning the social aspect of reader. Now a bunch of former reader users have gathered at theoldreader.com, which is only missing the "note in reader" functionality that Google took away. While its creators work on scaleability and stability, this seems like a useful temporary solution, if it exists.

Sharing a car with roommates. What's the right price?

chrysanthemum — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 15:26:24 -0800

I bought a new car. What is a reasonable and fair way to split car usage expenses with roommates? I've looked at past discussions of car sharing, but these have involved much older cars and I'm not sure about the insurance. Any suggestions for my circumstances?

I live with 3 other people in Chicago. We share rent, utilities, food, chores, pets and other household things. Earlier this year we thought about buying a used car together because we would all appreciate having one available from time to time. After much searching and not much success on the used car market, I decided to buy new with a financing plan.

I bought a new 2012 manual little car with great gas mileage to commute to work just outside the city. I, as the owner, am the primary driver. I drive about 250 miles per week. My 3 roommates are all listed on the car insurance and we all split that fairly. Roommate #1 is a 20 yo male, so his rates are higher. This insurance policy covers us as drivers of other uninsured or underinsured cars, which some of my roommates wanted regardless of whether I bought a car or not.

I have an arrangement with roommates #1 and #2 that they take the car one day per week to work (I carpool that day), they drive at least 40 miles, sometimes more. I taught #1 to drive stick on this car and will be teaching #2 soon. Roommate #2 also uses the car most weekends when I don't need it, for variable distances. Roommate #3 uses the car less often, maybe once or twice a month. Occasionally the car gets taken on longer weekend road trips by all of us, together or separately.

Currently #1 and #2 pay me $100 per month (total, arbitrarily determined) for use of the car. I fill up the gas because it's cheaper where I work and they reimburse me based on mileage. The price we set for use of the car should reflect depreciation, maintenance, and gas, but not insurance since we pay that separately. Because we wouldn't include insurance, the IRS rate of 55.5 cents per mile would be an overestimate and not useful for our calculations.

What is a good way to fairly charge for car usage? This isn't the initial situation we planned on, of buying a beater to use for a few years that we would all contribute to more or less equally. I made the decision to go new because I was suddenly driving more and I will also take the car with me after moving out, if that happens. My roommates do appreciate having a car to use and want to contribute, but we don't know how to set an amount. Help!

Printer sharing XP and Windows 8

queue_strategy — Wed, 26 Dec 2012 19:46:27 -0800

Windows networking woes. Windows 8 laptop will not install the drivers for an HP printer that is attached to an XP desktop. Help! Both machines are connected to a wireless network. The printer is visible to the Win 8 laptop, and the driver installation starts, but ends with the 0x00000214 error.
Tried a lot to remedy this including setting up a local port and entering the full network name of the printer. The printer is an expensive high speed model, so its not just a matter of buying a new wireless printer.

Anybody had this problem and found solutions to make this work? Help!

Help me spread the wifi through the trees into this log cabin.

cosmicbandito — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 13:27:35 -0800

Can you help me share WiFi between 2 distant houses with strange construction materials? Need antenna and setup recommendations. I am trying to connect my mother's house to my sister's house via WiFi for the purposes of sharing an internet connection. The houses are about 150 yards apart. Both are of unusual construction, with poor wireless penetration. (Log and motar/cordwood respectively) Previous questions about WiFi sharing are helpful, but leave me with unanswered questions. Please enlighten me...

Running a wire is out. I don't want to bury it, and the distance is too great.
I suspect I will need to mount antennas externally on both houses.

What I want to do: ISP connection at sisters house, connected to a modded WRT54g. Externally mount an antenna, but am clueless as to which ones are good/desirable and which ones WRT can handle.
On Mom's house end, which is approx 150 yards away through trees/brush and up a 50 foot hill, I'd like to externally mount a high gain antenna and connect to another modded WRT54 in bridge mode. Again, no idea which antenna to use.

Does this seem doable? Am I missing something obvious? I have line of sight, but it's obscured by trees. I can trim trees if necessary, but no clear-cutting.

Latency on my mom's end is a non-issue. No gaming or anything like that going on.

Budget is probably around $200.

Reverse Chrome to Phone?

Aanidaani — Sat, 17 Nov 2012 09:09:48 -0800

I love using the Chrome to Phone extension to send websites from Chrome to my Android phone. Does anyone know of a program that does the reverse?

Sharing OUTSIDE contacts nightmare!

Guyatoffice — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 09:18:54 -0800

How can my small company share OUTSIDE contacts across our organization and have access to them on our phones? My company is small (5) employees, but we have hundreds of clients and about 30 suppliers. We need those contacts accessible on all our smart phone and our computers. How can this be done? Can it be done so that they are accessible through apples address book? On Android? Has any one tackled this?

Bookmarking Utility That Can Group and Organize Links

aabbbiee — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 12:09:35 -0800

I'm looking for a collaborative bookmarking utility that can group links and organize links within the groups. It should be easy. We have no budget. I do a weekly radio show with three other co-hosts on the topic of technology news. Each week, we collect stories from online sources. Before the show, we put the stories in order: main stories go on top, with headlines at the bottom. There are usually about 40-50 links each week: 10 for the main story, and the rest for the headline reporting.

I am looking for a way to effectively and efficiently bookmark and share these links.
I want to be able to
- have 4 different people bookmark links to share
- save the links in a group for each week's show
- easily rank or organize the links within the group for each week's show
- have a permalink to the group for each week's show
- This should be accessible on the web and also by iOS if possible.

We used Delicious for awhile this year and it was a big improvement. Then Delicious discontinued the use of "stacks" (groups of links) and told us that we should just use tags instead. But we can't organize/rank the links within the tag group, and that's pretty critical because otherwise it's just a mess of links and hard to parse while flipping between stories live on the air.
Prior to Delicious, our main host would save links in a text file and then email us the text file on the day of the show, sometimes just 30 minutes prior. That gave us very little time to review the day's stories. He's now posting them all to Delicious. I think he's given up on the tags because they're a huge hassle with the volume of links that he saves. But I started pushing each new link from Delicious to Twitter, and they're slightly easier to peruse on Twitter than on Delicious. But they're still not organized.

This is a long-running show on a community radio station and I'm the newest co-host. I think the show is long and slow and drags at times, especially when we're pausing to look for our links while we're on the air. I try to hit the ground running every week, but that is hard to do as is. If the stories aren't organized, we have to take time to search. If we don't share the stories before the show, none of us are familiar with the news. But my co-hosts don't really see much of a problem, and I don't have much leverage to change their processes. They're comfortable, but it's not good radio.
However, they were disappointed when Delicious dropped the "stacks" option. I think they would migrate to a new system if it promised to be a good solution. But it has to be super easy. And we have no budget.

Do you know of a utility or tool that would work for me? I'm looking for any solution from stupidly simple to out of the box ideas. Please share!

Using a cellphone for an office LAN

thanotopsis — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 07:34:39 -0800

In the aftermath of Sandy, my office in Stamford, CT, is still out of elecrical grid power and out of internet. Now, the building has diesel power and is letting workers back in today, so I'm trying to brainstorm a way to get them online. Our main email server is 2k3 w/Exchange. We've got a file server on 2k8 as well. Our typical connection is via Cable Modem -> firewall -> patch panel -> LAN. Sitting on the LAN we've got a Wifi interface as well. Cable is currently out for the entire city, so I doubt we'll have any luck, there.

But, cell phones still work, with a variety of companies in the area offering 4G (no LTE) service. What are the chances of rigging up a tether and using Internet Connection Sharing on the primary domain controller (or something like that) to get a small but serviceable connection?

Issues I can see by thinking about this:

* I'd have to change the DNS for the mail server toward whatever random IP the phone gives me. God forbid it changes (which I'm sure it will), or I'll have to change the DNS all over again.

* There's no telling if the cell phone company in question will block inbound or outbound specific ports. It'll probably allow for SMTP, but I'm doubtful that it'll allow the more esoteric Windows-related network queries that go on.

* I'd have to shut off all cloud-based services (online backup, etc) or all the setup would be for naught, as those services would flood the connection.

* The first person in the office who innocently turns on music streaming gets shot.

Turns out AT&T still has running DSL over copper service in the area, and all the phones are functioning, so that would normally be an option. Asking if I could get an installer in there produced a rueful laugh from the sales rep, however, so that's out.

Any other concerns? Would this even work?

Laser printer won't share itself

dance — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 13:24:45 -0800

Are some laser printers wholly resistant to sharing? I have a Samsung ML1660 and I cannot share it via the network no matter what I try. I get the "access is denied" message. I've tried the "add a local port" trick, I've tried various enablings of guest accounts and enablings of file/printer sharing. I've tried creating an identical user account to the connecting account on the host machine....

I've even tried connecting the printer via USB to an Airport Express and trying to print via Bonjour. No dice.

Any tips? As I say, are some printers just not sharable?

Many thanks

Sharing vs. Privacy: Showdown

fishingforthewhale — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 08:32:59 -0800

How much should you expect to share in a relationship? Hello. First time poster here. You are all so wise I could keep quiet no longer.

I grew up in a pretty healthy environment. Had a great girlfriend for a few years as a late teenager/young adult; we probably learnt a lot from each other without really realising it. We shared a lot and I never really felt there was anything 'off limits' which she wouldn't tell or I couldn't ask.

Skip forward nine (solitary, single) years (I'm 27) and I again have a wonderful girlfriend of nine months - although this is a different kettle of fish altogether. She is huge talker, and it's all interesting and intelligent - she's not a witterer. Conversely, she's huge on privacy, something which slowly became apparent through little things like her keeping a list on her phone of songs she means to find online. This list is totally off-limits and under no circumstances can I know its contents. That seemed bizarre initially but is now fine as I know these little things can act as bellwethers for her views on sharing and privacy more generally.

Problem is, I always imagined a 'successful' relationship as one where two people completely open up to one another. We've spoken about this. She regards her personal space and privacy as sacred. She's been through some difficult things, including an extremely violent rape and resultant mental illness, which are naturally difficult for her to talk about. [As an aside, this has been tricky for me as I want to talk to somebody about it just to air the thing, but I don't want to bring it up with her and she's asked me not to tell anyone, so I pretty much carry it around in my head the whole time, which surely isn't healthy.]

I get that people have different ways and speeds of unfolding to would-be partners. I am pretty cagey - for longer than I need to be perhaps - and then I let my guard down completely. She is very open about some things (she asked how many people I'd slept with after 6 weeks or so - way too early for me, and something I'm still struggling with slightly) but at other times I get a really strong feeling that there are things going on in there which she just won't talk to me about.

I think at least to some extent my confusion is owing to a lack of experience in more mature (i.e. post-teenage) relationships, but has anyone else been in a similar situation? Is it simply that couples find what's right for them? The intimacy of sharing everything with someone means a lot to me. Should I look elsewhere for someone that can give me that? Or should I accept that (maybe in part due to her past problems) she may never fully open up? Is that need to share everything something which other people simply don't get? Is it something to do with power dynamics in the relationship? Am I being controlling?

As you can see, this breeds a lot of questions, and I'd be very interested to hear other people's takes on this and how much that sense of closeness means to others.

Thanks in advance.

You can't sit under your apple tree unless you gimme dem apples!

HopperFan — Sat, 06 Oct 2012 09:36:01 -0800

How best to ask my neighbors if I can gather their apples? I live next to a house that has a beautiful little apple tree in the backyard. From the couple of times I've seen the occupants of the house, I think at least a couple of early 20-something guys live there (this is a campus neighborhood).

I didn't ask about the initial haul of apples in September, because I thought - well, it's their tree, maybe they want them. Last week, someone came by to mow and clean up the yard, and the whole load of apples went straight into the dumpster out back. That was kind of sad.

There's still quite a few good apples left on the tree, and some on the ground, so I'd like to ask the neighbors if I can harvest them.

This is complicated by the fact that these guys don't ever seem to be home (I've gone over and knocked a couple of times) - so I'd like to leave a note.

So - what kind of note from a neighbor would make you more amenable to apple sharing?

Note : I can't just go over and get the apples, they'd have to let me in - their entire back yard is surrounded by a 7 foot high wooden fence.

Share this - Facebook sharing is going to kill me

UMDirector — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 09:21:21 -0800

How can I create custom content for a Facebook share? I want to be able to control the image, text and headline that are displayed when sharing. I know Facebook isn't pushing sharing anymore, they are focused on like, but for our purposes it works.

I actually got it working but didn't save the file (yep I'm an idiot) now I can't find where I located the code that made it work.

I have Googled my brains out and have yet to find it. I have come close.

For example: http://garethhooper.com/articles/social-media/45-integration/145-share-on-facebook-customizing-the-text-and-images-that-are-posted-when-your-web-pages-are-shared-on-facebook.html

Heads in the right direction but none of the meta items work.

VPN NAS H.E.L.P

CodeMonkey — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 07:08:39 -0800

What router / NAS combination (or just NAS) do I need to pre-configure and ship to a friend of mine so that I can send files to the NAS over the internet? He is not at all computer savy. What I am hoping for is a VPN or similar that I can log into without his help and push files / pull files from the drive.

Photo Hunt

kidsleepy — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 11:12:07 -0800

Where can all of my wedding guests post their photos to a group site, in the most painless way possible? There are similar questions (Looking for a photo sharing site, Event photo hosting, and Where to upload our party photos) but they're from 2007 and 2008.

What's the best way to tackle this these days? Facebook group (most but not all guests have Facebook)? Shared Flickr account (most but not all guests understand Flickr)? Some other wonderful new thing that has been invented in the past four years? Bonus: how do I get our guests to actually follow through with uploading?

Bike sharing in Chicago

bluelight — Sun, 22 Jul 2012 11:29:13 -0800

Does anyone know what's going on with Chicago's bike sharing system? I'll be visiting in October for 1.5 weeks and planned to sign up for a month-long membership with b-cycle but am not so sure anymore. I've googled the news but I'm guessing my google-fu is not up to snuff. I'm getting returns that claimed the city was going expand its bike-sharing program with another company in 2012 (not b-cycle) but then some other company cried foul and well. It's now the middle of summer in 2012 and with Chicago's winter, I'm guessing there will be no bike share program expansion this year (sucks). Is this right? Can anyone shed any light on the progress?

Or can anyone actually recommend the b-cycle program in Chicago? It's gotten pretty bad reviews on yelp and I notice that the station locations are very, very limited. That being said, however, I will be in the city for 1.5 weeks. I'm not sure where I'll be staying in the city yet but I'm planning to do a lot of sight-seeing and exploring. Bicycle rentals per day are really expensive, like $35 per day, whereas a month-long membership with b-cycle is $35 and the first hour is free and $5 per additional half-hour. It seems like the more cost-effective option if I can keep track of my time. Is Chicago bike-friendly? Should I just buy a week-long CTA pass instead?

Thoughts?

What are examples of apps/sites/experiments that have shamed/exposed people sharing their info online?

waxpancake — Tue, 03 Jul 2012 15:50:19 -0800

I'm looking for examples of apps, websites, or experiments that have exposed people sharing their information online, or that sought to raise awareness about info being explicitly or accidentally shared. I'd love your help. The new Twitter account @NeedADebitCard and Facebook-driven We Know What You're Doing have come out in the last week or so, joining a number of older apps intended to increase awareness about the info they're sharing online (or just mock them for entertainment).

Please Rob Me, Creepy, and I Can Stalk U all worked similarly. FireSheep was more about making session hijacking easy, but had a similar effect. Going further back, Jason Fortuny's Craigslist Experiment was an extreme example of someone exploiting expectations of privacy for entertainment.

What other examples am I missing?

Help me help my marriage

Anonymous — Tue, 22 May 2012 12:02:25 -0800

My wife of 14 years never tells me she loves me. She never initiates sex. She never holds my hand, kisses or casually touches me. No pillow talk. No thoughtful little gifts. I do all of these things for her as often as I can. A few years ago a marriage counselor (my idea) determined we speak two different “love languages”. My wife agrees with the counselor and says she shows/communicates her love for me by doing things around the house (laundry, dishes, taking out the trash, helping kids with homework). She and the counselor feel that should be sufficient for me and that I need to learn to understand her love language.

So we go through these cycles…4 to 6 months of focusing on working, taking care of the house and kids and having sex 2-3 times a month (very normal, always initiated by me); then resentment builds up in me and I point out (not angrily) that she hasn’t told me she loves me, initiated touch or otherwise indicated her love for me for months. I remind her this is VERY important to me and she promises to try harder. We go another 4-6 months and the cycle continues but things never improve.

She’s not a mean-spirited person and I SERIOUSLY doubt she is cheating, so I have a hard time understanding her behavior. Sometimes she almost seems borderline Asperger.

Any advice or shared experiences appreciated.

Looking for social media buttons with counter

NekulturnY — Tue, 22 May 2012 05:22:30 -0800

Social buttons for website. I want the HuffPo ones. I can't have them unless we custom build them, sez dev. My developer informs me that there's really no good way to present social media buttons uniformly (like on HuffPo, say) unless we develop them ourselves. Reason: the open source buttons differ in sizes, some have counters and some don't etcetera. The result is an unappealing hodgepodge of almost similar looking buttons that, for me, don't make the grade.

I can't imagine that no one has ever developed uniform looking buttons + counters and made them available. What I'm looking for is LinkedIn share, FB share, Twitter, Pinterest, G+ buttons WITH counter. Like on HuffPo.

Can anyone help? Thanks.

How do I get my photos onto somebody else's iphone?

yankeefog — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 08:20:18 -0800

I'd like photos that I take on my iPhone to automatically turn up on my mom's iPhone. I'd prefer to do this without setting up my iCloud account on her phone, since we don't need to share contacts, calendars, etc. Ideally the solution would be completely transparent for her, and require little or no ongoing effort from me once it's set up. Any tips on the best way to do this?