My experience so far:

• MySpace: Perfect. They have a fully automated process of deleting the account permanently. After verifying the wish for deletion via email myspace says it will take up to 48 hours until my account is gone.
• Facebook: Seem pretty straight forward too. The automated process says that my account is in deactivated state for another 14 days. If I do not login in the meantime it will be removed permanently automatically.
• Xing: I guess the deletion process would be quite easy for non-premium-members. In my case I had to contact the support team. My premium account still lasts until the end of april. But I want my life back now. Let’s see when I get feedback.
• LinkedIn: I always hated the clumsy interface and I even hate the process of account deletion even more. The only way to delete the account is to send an email to the support team. Funny thing is that I got an error when sending the support form. I tried a second time and the system said there was already a message from my email address within the process queue. So I guess my first request got delivered although there was an error message. We’ll see.

To find the “delete account” option on the platforms I mostly used google to get hints faster on how to do it. For every platform there are good pages online giving the right directions.

Before deleting your account be sure to remove all your personal information. On some platforms it seems as if not all your information gets automatically purged. Especially LinkedIn seems to be kind of funny. I don’t know if it is true but it is rumoured that they remove your login but keep your data publicly. So please remove everything personal and change what is not removable to something different.

Especially on LinkedIn again there were several things I was not able to remove. Maybe you can remove everything somehow but with my constant struggle with the interface I decided to overwrite some entries. Luckily removing the connections to other people is pretty easy. On Xing for e.g. you have to remove all your connections manually. Removing about 150 links eventually takes up to 3 minutes.

I am still keeping my twitter account. I really like the concept of the global shoutbox and I am using it’s content on some mashups. Also all my instant messaging accounts are still valid. I expect to gain an additional one to two hours per day which I will redistribute to my own online projects and my real life.

I love the concept. Oh… did I mention to visit worufu.myminicity.com?

MPX now supports Multi-Touch! Watch this video and see what he means…

Click here to view the embedded video.

I can’t wait until the new features have found their way into the core X server. It might take some more months but I think they are already working on that. Let’s hope for the best.

As a sidenote: This piece of software was developed on a Ubuntu machine but I know that he also likes to work on MacBooks. Maybe we will see some Mac OS or Windows port some day too. I myself currently operate on three different platforms (windows sometimes for work, mac and gnu/linux at work and home) and it is so great to have most of the everyday applications on all of the three platforms. That is why I want to thank all those ingenious developers out there who make such great software which enables us (the not so ingenious people) to focus on our tasks in our convenient working environments.

Update: …and he did it again. This time right at the front page (and on digg and gizmodo and …..).

Ogg Vorbis is a professional-grade media format. It’s like MP3 but better—and it respects your freedom. When you see a file with the Ogg extension – musicfile.ogg – Play it!

Now you might think why should you switch to Ogg Vorbis if you are already so familiar with MP3?

The use of MP3 is restricted by patents, while Ogg Vorbis is not. Unlike MP3, there are never any licensing costs for using Ogg Vorbis, and you do not have to worry about anyone suing you for using it without a license. You might have heard about Microsoft’s recent loss in a $1.5 billion suit over their use of MP3.

These patent lawsuits might never affect you directly, but they create a culture where creative and skilled individuals cannot develop multimedia software without fear of being legally attacked. Using Ogg is one way to support them in their efforts and to encourage a better culture.

Most of my digital music files are in the MP3 format at the moment but I can assure you that the usage of Ogg is not different than using MP3. You simply use your favourite music player and add the files to your playlists. The difference for you is that the file does not end with .mp3 but with .ogg.
On my GNU/Linux system Ogg-Support is already pre-installed so I simply can play the files without any additional effort. On older Windows Systems you might want to go to playogg.org and download the VLC mediaplayer which is able to play Ogg files. Or you might download a plugin for your favourite mediaplayer software (e.g. a Plugin for WinAmp mediaplayer).
Eventually you have done a similar procedure already when you taught your workstation to play DIVx video files. After installing the Plugin/Codec you enabled your PC to play Ogg Vorbis constantly.

This is also a way to contribute to the open source community. You do not have to be a programmer or experienced PC user. It is enough if you demand open source alternatives to be used in standard products. That is already enough. Every additional help is very appreciated but this supports already a change. If you are ready to try something new you also can look out for music devices which are Ogg enabled. There are lots of them out there and they are not more or less expensive than anything else. It also is OK if the device play MP3 and OGG. That way it is an easy transition which does not force you to convert your existing music collection to the free standard.