Almost everyone has at least one social networking account, whether that would be Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, or LinkedIn. You probably started it because someone said that you should. Now social networking isn’t for everyone. I know that Twitter isn’t popular among my friends, but I tried to force it onto some people. Some of my friends gave in a created a Twitter and that was it, they didn’t do anything else with it.

Some people (I call them crazy) may have made a new year’s resolution to clean up or completely get rid of their online presence. I’m not really sure why anyone would do that, but if they did that, it’s their choice.  Maybe they have a million accounts and want to clean up some of those that they don’t use (that is understandable). Someone saw an opportunity from this and created Web 2.0 Suicide Machine.

Suicide Machine is a web app that will delete your Twitter, Myspace, LinkedIn, and (until recently) Facebook accounts. There has been a little bit of controversy over this app. Facebook blocked this app and made some pretty out there claims (see post from Cnet). They said that user information, including pictures, were being downloaded onto their server before the account deletion.

I guess the way that it deleted accounts was a little weird too. It would change the profile picture to a noose, change your password (so you no longer have access to your account), and then go through your friends one by one deleting them. According to the article at Cnet, some ‘killed’ accounts still had friends.

If you want to get rid of your account, it’s not that hard. Every site has a function that can delete your account.

On Facebook go to settings and there is a link that will deactivate your account. On Twitter, go to settings and there is a delete account link on the bottom. See how easy it is? Why give your account information to someone else, when you can easily do it yourself?

What I’m trying to say here is if you do decide to leave a social networking site, it is more secure and just as easy to do it your self. And besides we’re here for DIY (do it yourself)!

Do you hate having to type google.com into your browser every time you need to go Google? Would you rather type something like g and have it go to Google? Good news, you can. There is a system file that deals with re-routing your internet traffic. It’s called the hosts file.

These instructions are specifically for Windows XP and up. This works on Mac and Linux, but the host file is in a different place.

To get started you need the IP Address of the server you want to make a shortcut to. You can do this by running a ping command. Go to Start then Run, when the Run Dialog comes up type in “cmd”. The command line will come up. Type in “ping url” replacing url with the domain name of the site you want. Something like this will come up:

Pinging google.com [74.125.53.100] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 74.125.53.100: bytes=32 time=83ms TTL=48
Reply from 74.125.53.100: bytes=32 time=83ms TTL=48
Reply from 74.125.53.100: bytes=32 time=83ms TTL=48
Reply from 74.125.53.100: bytes=32 time=83ms TTL=48

Ping statistics for 74.125.53.100:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 83ms, Maximum = 83ms, Average = 83ms

The bold is the IP Address, remember this, as you need it to edit the hosts file.

The next step is to modify the hosts file. This is located at C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts. The easiest way to edit is by typing C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts in the Run Dialog. An open with file will come up, choose to open with Notepad. At the end of the hosts file there should be this line:

127.0.0.1 localhost

Now we get to add some shortcuts. It’s very easy to do, one a new line, enter the IP Address you want to go to then a space or tab and what you want to type in to go there. So for example:

74.125.53.100 g

Now when you type “g” into your browser, it should take you to Google’s homepage.

You can do this with any IP address. You can also have fun with someone and make a web site point somewhere else. I pulled this on my brother by making runescape.com point to a web page I made that said his account had been canceled.

Have fun with this one.