The reason I prefer Gowalla to FourSquare was quite simple, you could check in from anywhere and you didn’t have to know the address because the Gowalla iPhone application relied on the GPS in the iPhone to mark the spot.  FourSquare’s requirement that you input an address was both annoying and (to me) a major reason to stop using the service.  Well as of about two weeks ago, FourSquare announced that they would all you to check in from anywhere and that the next iPhone application update would use the GPS component to check in with, entering a address was now optional.

Since this change, FourSquare’s iPhone application has seen more use from me.  It’s still not on my first iPhone screen (Gowalla’s not going away anytime soon), but it’s on my second and I have found the overall experience of FourSquare to be much more enjoyable then before.  Gowalla still has a better overall user experience in my opinion, its more consistent.  Also, being from Texas, I have to give a little love to Texas companies and Gowalla is stationed here.  So for the time being I’ll use both services.  I still like FourSquare’s game better than Gowalla’s.  The point system on FourSquare is nifty and the mayor concept adds just a little more competition amongst friends.  The people at Gowalla have long proven that they are not just sitting around so it will be interesting to see how the combat FourSquare’s latest changes.

While I haven’t uploaded my new resume to places like Monster.com or HotJobs, in the past I was lucky if 10-12 people clicked on my resume on those sites.  The difference it has made in my search for a job is this, when I began to call people back, return emails, and Twitter direct messages I had 2 phone calls from two different recruiters, 1 email from a corporate recruiter for a consulting company, and 2 Twitter direct messages about possible jobs.  I went from having zero opportunities at 8am yesterday (when I was laid off) to having at least 4 real possible job opportunities in 24 hours.

This really goes to show the power of social networks and having good followers.  I would not have some of the opportunities if it wasn’t for my Twitter followers who retweeted my resume and LinkedIn links like wildfire yesterday.  And on Facebook, I was given instructions for no less than 2 companies on how to apply and send my resume, from real people that I know. Not bots or spam people that can you deal with on places like Monster.

Remember, next time you’re looking for a job, look to your social networks, a lot of good can come from them.

1. Was easy to use
2. Had decent iPhone integration
3. Gave me the most features for free

With those three objectives in mind, I set out about my task.  The contenders ended up being

• Remember the Milk
• reQall
• ToodleDo

Lets look at these services in a little more detail.

Remember the Milk

When I decided to start using an online task management system, I immediately went to Remember the Milk and accessed by long standing (but mostly underused) account.  Recommended to me by Derek Alfonso when the service was first introduced years ago, I figured this would be the only stop I needed to make.

As you can see, the interface is very simple, non-intrusive, and makes it easy to see what you need to get done.  The interface is no-frills, but very powerful.  When I moved onto the iPhone app, things only continued to be awesome from an interface perspective.  The Remember the Milk iPhone application is as simple to use as its web counterpart.

Best thing about the iPhone application is it that it’s a free download.  But that’s where things start to turn sour for Remember the Milk.

When it comes to iPhone integration, the application is free, but you can’t use it without a Pro Remember the Milk account.  The cost on a Pro account is $25 a year.  While not excessive by any means, you don’t get much more than mobile phone integration (at least at this point).

To me, this was the largest turn off for Remember the Milk.  I can justify a $25 a year membership fee if I get something for it.  I pay for Flickr’s Pro account service because it basically gives me a place to back up my photos online.  However, RTM (Remember the Milk’s popular internet shorthand) only really gives you mobile integration.  We’re almost a full decade into the 21st century and I have to pay for mobile integration and not much else?  Sorry but no dice.

reQall

After being soured by Remember the Milk’s need for a pro account to use their iPhone app, I continued my search and found reQall.  The first thing I immediately checked was if they had an iPhone application (which they do), the second thing I checked was if I had to pay anything to use it (I didn’t).  So right away I had fixed at least 1 issue I had with RTM.  I began to use the service post haste.  The interface for reQall is only slightly more complicated than Remember the Milk, but only because they try to do some automatic organization for you.

For example, if I type in a task like “Buy AA Batteries” it will add that as a task, but will add it to a “Shopping List” task list.

The web interface for reQall works great even if it might look slightly more complicated that Remember the Milk.  Also, reQall lets you sync with Google or Outlook calendars, call a number to enter tasks by phone, and gives you a lower end version of what they call a “memory jogger” for free.  The pay version ($25/year) gives you some additional features like an improved “memory jogger,” geo-based reminders, and adding items via email.  So right away, you get more for free from reQall than you do from Remember the Milk.

With some tasks entered in via the web interface, I downloaded the iPhone application.  Right away I noticed that i could add tasks via text and voice.  I also noticed that i was in trial mode for “pro” services, so I got the additional features for 30 days.  I added a few more tasks from the iPhone and liked the integration.

I thought I had a winner here with reQall.  They offered quality services, for free and allowed me to use my iPhone to interact with the service.  These guys hit all three of my requirements.

ToodleDo

While I figured I had a winner with reQall, I decided to google search for other online task managers.  Doing so, I came across ToodleDo.  Apparently I already had an account with ToodleDo that I had forgotten about (probably found them originally through LifeHacker or some other productivity website).  Once I logged in, I noticed the straight forwardness of the web site.

Somewhat similar to Remember the Milk in simplistic interface design, I could easily see that ToodleDo could be used in a much more powerful way.  The sight focuses heavily on a “Getting Things Done” approach to task management.  Tasks work inside contexts (“Work”, “Home”, “Phone”, etc) and can be a part of a much larger goal.  This made sense to me because I didn’t just want a random list of tasks, I wanted to be able to sort them with larger tasks/goals.  I tried entering tasks and found the interface to be easy to use but slightly more complicated than I would have liked.  For example, when adding a task, if you do not have a goal set up, there is no way to add a new goal and set the task being entered to that newly created goal.  You have to finish creating the task, then go create the goal, and finally set the task to the goal.  So the interface could be connected a little better.

As far as overall features, ToodleDo has a ton of them.  They have some of the same stuff reQall has, it does lack the intelligent adding of items to their appropriate lists (adding items to a shopping list).  The interface also isn’t overly refined like reQall or even RTM.  But what it lacks in interface, it does make up for in available features and service plans.  If you’d like to see a comprehensive comparison list, they have taken the liberty of creating one for you.

The next question was iPhone application.  Yes, ToodleDo does have an iPhone app.  The downside however is that it costs $3.99.  So while the service offers up a ton of free features, to use a native iPhone app, you’re going to have to pony up some cash.  While I initially found this to be a bummer, I discovered their iPhone ready website (what they call “slim”).

As you can probably tell from the image (left), the iPhone web version looks pretty nice (even though the screen capture is in Firefox).  In Safari, on the iPhone it looks pretty slick and allows me to quickly view my tasks and add new ones.

While it is not a native iPhone application, it does allow me almost the same functionality as the native application.  A plus side to using Safari is the ability to utilize the landscape keyboard that is currently not available in most native applications allowing me to type in tasks and make edits much more quickly.

After using ToodleDo for a couple of weeks, I completely abandoned reQall (actually deleted my account) and went to using ToodleDo exclusively for my task management.  I haven’t completed all of my integration (ie Outlook & Calendars) but I’m working my way there.

Conclusion

After all is said and done, I’m using ToodleDo to handle my tasks.  While I would have loved to use Remember the Milk, I couldn’t justify the cost when considering what that $25 dollars a year would get me.  Especially when compared to what other services are offering with their free accounts.

Remember the Milk is getting by solely on name recognition and as an incumbent.  As proven in my research, there are other services offering more for free and even the other services pay accounts offer at least some justification for their price.  Remember the Milk has a nice service if all you need is task management and don’t wish to integrate with too much.  However to really use the service in an effective way, you pretty much have to pay for it.

While ToodleDo didn’t meet all of my expectations in a manner I would have liked, it did meet them.  I have a service that I can use fairly easily (even with it’s interface hiccups) and has decent iPhone integration.  Is it the native app I would have preferred? No, it is not but that option still exists if I want to spend $4.  Right now, I’m doing just fine with the “slim” version running in Safari.

It has long been said that it would take someone truly famous (not web famous) to bring Twitter into the mainstream.  Last year, Britney Spears signed up for the service but used it more as a public relations tool rather than actually using the service herself.  Spears’ use of the service didn’t really attract the mainstream audience, probably because her popularity had faltered some by that point.  Ashton Kutcher seems to have been the star the service was looking for.  As since his involvement I have seen people who I would never think to look for on the service sign up and begin following me.

But what does all this mean for Twitter?  Well for one, they need to handle the new load of users coming on to the service.  Twitter has a reputation for instability when a large number of people are using the service at the same time.  The “Fail Whale” is often referenced and has even become something of an internet meme when a service or website fails consistently for a period of time.  But I think that we’ll have a while before this truly becomes an issue since it takes people at least 3-6 months to really understand and find a way to use Twitter that suits them.  But the fail whale will probably be making regular appearances again soon.

Twitter will also, more than likely, become a haven for spammers.  There is already a decent amount of spammers on the service and Twitter has done a decent job of keeping the spam cleaned up.  They routinely deactivate accounts and remove followers from people when spammers are found.  As the service increases in popularity, you can expect this to become an increasing problem and a longer turn around on the spammer clean up.

As the service continues to grow in popularity, I think that early adopters are going to be looking for ways to keep their following list cleaned up.  The great thing about Twitter is that as a user, you control the flow of information you see.  For example, I don’t follow Ashton, and probably never will.  You can control your noise level by simply not following people that follow you.  One thing that I think Twitter might want to look into doing is to add a way for a user to group their followers.  I follow different people for different reasons and there would be a benefit to being able to turn off certain groups at certain times, thus controlling the stream more.

What we saw last week was just the tipping point.  The point at which a service becomes know to a wide range of folks.  We’re still a long way from a true mainstream adoption.  Several people are just signing up to see what all the hype is about and many of them will probably never update more than two or three times.  But as more people start seeing how it can be used, Twitter will definitely see an increase in traffic, and users can (at least for a short time) expect the “Fail Whale” to make frequent appearances.  Now that a large number of people know about the service, what do you think will happen?

Lets start with the basics, because many people might now know what Jaiku is.  Jaiku is a combination microblog and life streaming service that was purchased by Google and is currently invite only.  The thing is, Jaiku’s lifestreaming feature was similar to FriendFeed but was around before FriendFeed.  I will say that FriendFeed definitely implemented the lifestreaming idea better than Jaiku.

So to answer Mr. Scoble’s question, the reason that Jaiku is not discussed as a Twitter competitor is primarily due to its invite only status.  About 6 months ago, when I first got into the micro-blogging, I used Jaiku exclusively and they had their own set of downtime issues.  However, these might get resolved with Jaiku moving the Google App Engine.  However, the larger issue is that people can’t really use service because they need an invite to be a part of the conversations that take place there.

Robert Scoble is on record as stating that he will go where ever he can have interesting conversations so for him, a place that has a wall up on people’s ability to access the service, is not going to work so well for him.  This is why he has embraced FriendFeed with feverish zeal.

My opinion?  Jaiku had promise.  With the advent of FriendFeed I’m not sure what they can offer in the way of lifestreaming.  FriendFeed has really implemented this feature really well.  Also, now that Twitter is really looking into their stability issues and taking them more seriously, Jaiku might become a needless service within the next 6 months.  If Jaiku can finish their move to the Google App Engine and open up to let everyone sign up, they might have a chance at bring people over from Twitter (since it’s going to take them a while to fix their stability issues).  However, convincing folks to move from Twitter to Jaiku is going to be difficult, even given Twitters issues.

Twitter’s problems have revolved around 2 things 1) stability and 2) lack of features.  Well FriendFeed has pretty much solved both issues, though it is a different kind of service.  People for some reason stick with Twitter regardless of its issues.  With that in mind and the fact that FriendFeed has a solid lock on the lifestreaming concept, I think that Jaiku will die and dissappear into the ether of the internet.  Of course, Google could have plans for it with regards to their mobile OS, Android but I’m not going to hold my breath.

I have to say, that this does give Comcast a nice collection of personal information on several of their customers (and their customers’ contacts).  So I have to wonder if deleting all my information and contacts out of Plaxo might be the way to go.  I haven’t made any drastic moves yet, just thinking about what I should do.

Doing so would mean I’d have to find a new place to backup my contacts, now if I could just find a place that offers over-the-air BlackBerry contact/calendar sync and does it for free (or a really cheap yearly fee like Plaxo).

This is the second album that Nine Inch Nails has released in 2 months (the first Ghosts costs $5 for a digital download).  Sure, you have to give them your email address which no doubt puts you on some kind of mailing list.  But for free music, I really don’t mind. 

What does any of this have to do with the title of this post? I’m glad you asked.  You see, I don’t really like Nine Inch Nails musically.  Why?  I’ve never really been the “mad at the world” type.  Stuff happens, I deal, and move on as best as possible.  I’m not saying that Trent Reznor is not talented, in fact I think quite the contrary and find him to be an incredibly talented musician.  I just don’t like his music.  And a person does not have to like everything.  Also, there are a couple of NIN songs that I do like but most of them are the singles (”Hand that Feeds” and “Head Like a Hole” for example).

Did I sign up and download this latest effort though?  You betcha.  I’ll listen to almost anything once.  And I will especially listen to anything at least once that didn’t cost me any money to hear it in the first place.  Sure, I could have probably found the album via BitTorrent sites and not had to sign up for the mailing list, but I’d rather get the free music directly from the person providing it.  So Nine Inch Nails got one more person (someone who doesn’t normally listen to their music) to download and listen to their new album.  All because it was free.

For the record, I also bought Ghosts I-IV because it was five dollars for full lossless files.  That’s a hard deal to turn down.  Also, I did it because I want to prove that distribution methods like that can work.  Also to help prove that if you offer cheap or free music, there will be people to download and promote it.  But think about these facts:

• I don’t really care too much for Nine Inch Nails musically (even though I think Mr. Reznor has talent).
• I paid $5 dollars for a NIN album because it was $5 dollars which is darn cheap for 36 tracks in complete lossless format.
• Finally, I downloaded a free album provided by Nine Inch Nails
• Nine Inch Nails made a sale off of someone not really into their music too much and got another another set of ears to listen to 2 of their albums because they offered cheap and free music.

This is a new approach to social media.  Everyone is a friend (both onine and offline), and everyone has something interesting to say.  This is a far cry from the tech/bloging elite that used to be in the game (and which many consider Scoble to be a part of).  It is interesting that someone on Scoble’s level would take such a drastic step away from that blogging elite in search of the smaller voice.  But he might be onto something.

You see lately, I’ve moved away from sites like Digg, where I used to get a nice chunk of my daily news (both tech and other kinds) to sites like FriendFeed (via AlertThingy or Twhirl) to get my news.  Sure I subscribe to a lot of the more “famous” bloggers on FriendFeed, but I’ve taken the outlook of subscribing to everyone that subscribes to me (assuming it doesn’t look like spam when i look at the account) on FriendFeed and Twitter in hopes of finding new and more interesting content.

I think part of the idea behind this is the concept that not everyone thinks like you do.  If you only listen to like-minded people you never really learn anything.  The search to learn more and gain more knowledge about all areas of a subject, be it tech, parenting, or even personal finance can lead to a better understanding of the world around you.  As an “on record” republican, I like having discussions with democrats and other more liberal than me.  Because I learn things.  This is much of the same reason for following so many people on various social sites.  The more input you have, the more you are likely to be able to output because you understand so much more.  Occasionally though, you will get a person who just wants to be rude.  Fortunately, you can decide whom to follow and unfollow at your convenience.  This makes it easy to control the input you receive.

Of course I’m not suggesting that constant input is the road to complete understanding or enlightenment.  And just because you read something does not mean you understand it.  But there is some benefit to listening to a constant flow of opinions both agreeable and not.  It also brings you more voices.  As more people subscribe to you, you can subscribe back and hear what they have to say on things.  This is a great way to keep up with both the A-Listers and the new listers.

Kinds of Net Neutrality

Before we go any further we need to consider the fact that there are two kinds of net neutrality in existence.  The first is the kind described above where service providers can make deals with the content makers to ensure that the content is delivered faster than those that don’t pay the premium for this “advantage”.  The other kind of net neutrality (which is not really net neutrality) is the QoS-ing (Quality of Service) the proverbial “pipes” to give less priority to certain kinds of traffic (ie BitTorrent).

In my opinion the first kind of net neutrality is bad, wrong, and just plain stupid.  It should be stopped at all costs.  However, the second kind is something I could be in favor of, as long as it was done correctly.  I mean, lets face it, more and more people are using bandwidth hogging kinds of applications, like bit torrent.  There needs to be some level of prioritizing these bandwidth hogging protocols during peak usage hours.  It should be done, but it should only be done where network resources are scarce and it should only be done to offset load during peak hours.

Why Net Neutrality is Bad

Obviously you can see why the first kind of net neutrality described above could be bad.  If the service providers are controlling what content gets to us faster then they are controlling the flow of information even more.  Several of these service providers also own television stations, news corporations, and so forth.  If they can control the news and information we get, this has populace control written all over it.  Of course that view is rather extreme but do not think for one second that that this couldn’t be used to push an agenda.

There are other reasons it is bad.  The main is a freedom of choice issue.  I should be able to use my internet as I want to, not as someone else decides I should.  I should be able to access all data fairly equally and with little issue.  The idea that someone can pay to have their data delivered to the internet users at a faster rate, is really just asking to be spoon fed information.  Yes, you could still go to other websites, but people will naturally gravitate towards those sites that have quicker response times, it’s just human nature.  We live in a world now where whatever site gets me the information I need more quickly, is where I’m going to go.  This is mainly because, as a society we have become accustomed to the instant gratification the internet has come to offer.

I think that if we start letting the service providers decide what content we should get and at what efficiency is just asking to let people tell us how to think and what opinion we should side with.

You see, I am a blogger and an internet user.  I read RSS feeds, I Twitter, I Digg, del.icio.us, and even submit links to Mahalo.  I have a life stream on Jaiku and on FriendFeed.  So when it comes to Web 2.0 companies, I like to think that I am in the know.  My day job is IT consulting and I work with other consultants.  I assume (and wrongfully) that these people are up on these technologies.  I figure, they understand.  It amazes me that people who have a job that requires to them to be "in the know" on the latest technology do not know what Twitter is.  I can understand not "getting it" because a lot of people don’t but some of these folks have never even heard of the service or several other Web 2.0 companies.

I guess there is some element of non-shock over this, everyone can’t possibly know about everything.  Even iJustine encountered something similar at SXSW Music, just on a much larger scale due to the large non-tech participants.  It is interesting that with all the new startups coming out that there are people in the "industry" that are not aware yet.  I guess there is some form of Web 2.0 minority in place.  People like Robert Scoble, Michael Arrington, and even Kevin Rose are part of new "tech elite" that has defined (at least to some degree) a group of folks that are "in-the-know" on these new technologies and emerging startups.  This group decides what sites live and die just by using the service.

Am I wrong?  Is there not a Web 2.0 minority?  I really get the feeling that there is sometimes.  Maybe this experience is just limited to me.  Has anyone else experienced the blank stare of "I have no idea what you are talking about" when mentioning something like Pownce or Magnolia?

Let me start by explaining what Mahalo is.  Mahalo is described as a "human powered search engine" and the basic idea consists of two basic concepts:

1. People submit the pages they find interesting
2. A team of people weed through the submitted sites and find other sites to create pages of results for search requests

The main difference is that the search results are based on the results of people working to find the best and most relevant sites as opposed to a computer running pages through algorithms.

People will claim that this was done before and didn’t succeed, but so did sites similar to YouTube, MySpace, and just about every other popular website today.  But I think that most people miss the point when they say things like that.  For one the internet has always been about improving upon the ideas that have come before it.  And most people forget that just because something did not work previously does not mean it won’t work this time around.  Besides if we stuck to that kind of thinking, we’d all be still listening to vinyl records on record players.

Why Mahalo is Important

The idea that a search company could beat Google, is ludicrous at best.  Google practically owns search.  That does not mean they return the best results, however.  In fact, sometimes you have to search two or three times to get the desired results.  It has taken many a search for me to get to where I am in regards to search ability.  But what if I could type in the exact thing I wanted and get a page of results dedicated to just that subject?  That’s what Mahalo tries to do.

Everyone knows that this feat is next to impossible.  You will never get every possible search, but you can get the more popular and the more logical.  For example, of this past weekend I wanted some information on caring for my lawn so I typed in "Lawn Care" into Google and was greeted with tons of results.  Results that I had to wade through to find the sites that would give me the information I needed.  Do I really want to sit down and weed (no pun intended) through those links?  Not really.

However, when I went over to Mahalo, I got a page that told me "we have not made this page yet" and while a little disheating, I was able to click a button to request that page to be made.  And to help out I went back to Google and started recommending links to Mahalo using their toolbar.  I know that there will soon be a "Lawn Care" search result on Mahalo.  This is fantastic.  For one thing, I know that I can’t possibly be the only person who wants to learn how to care for their lawn.  Secondly, Mahalo has turned themselves into a free "research on request" company where millions of people can enjoy the labor of my request.

While you might think that the above example shows a failing in Mahalo, I find it to be one of its charms.  To request the page, to help contribute, and to know that others will help make a page that will help me find the information I need is good to know.

Furthering Search Engines

Some people might say, that Google has more information overall, and they would be right.  There is something to be said for "indexing the internet" and I do not believe that Mahalo and the idea of human search is going to break into Google’s usage percentage.  I do think that how we search for data on the internet needs to change somewhat.  People want to be able to find the information they want quickly and with little fuss.  The idea of human powered search does have a certain appeal, but it can get expensive.  The more people who use the site, the more people will be need to create pages, research links, submit pages, and so forth.

The good news is, eventually sites based off the human search concept will be filled with hundreds of result pages and people will be able to find what they want quickly.  If they want to dig further then the 40-60 links on the human powered results pages, they can still flip over to Google and dig through the millions of pages.  I think that both systems can exist and survive in the same space.

I think that sites like Mahalo might encourage Google to find ways to return better results thus improving their own product.  Competition is healthy and can lead to innovation, here’s hoping that sites like Mahalo can lead to further innovation in the search engine market.

Yep, that’s right.  Yours truly has won Chris Garrett’s "Follow Me Friday" contest today.  Every week Chris picks a random Twitter follower for a prize.  This weeks’ prize was three free months of training from SEOBook.com (a $300 value).  I’m very excited to have won, mainly because I usually don’t win these kinds of things.

If you are a blogger and don’t know who Chris Garrett is, run and don’t walk to check out his site for some top rate blogging tips.

So thanks to Chris for an awesome prize.  Can’t wait to start my SEO training.

But one extra cool thing about AllTop is the "People" section which has two sections of extreme interest: Egos and Twitterati.  Think of some of the most popular "internet celebrities" and you will find all their blogs under the "Egos" sub-topic.  This includes Fake Steve Jobs, Seth Godin, Michael Arrington, Fred Wilson, and many, many more.  The Twitterati section contains many of these same people’s twitter accounts and their latest posts.

AllTop allows you to skim the more popular blogs and egos of the internet in a quick manner.  It is great for finding interesting things to read and post about.  You can use it to contribute to the current conversation on the internets and since that is one of the major parts of blogging, it makes this much simpler.

AllTop is definitely one of my new favorite websites.

The people of the Firefox community have posted a couple of really nice posts that explain the memory problems and what they have done to fix them.

• Firefox 3 Memory Usage – Pavlov
• Follow Up to Pavolv’s Post on Memory Usage

These posts are a great read if you are interested in seeing performance numbers and stuff like that.  If you are not into that kind of thing, well then that’s okay, you’re not missing much.  The only thing that really matters is the fact that Firefox 3 will help quell the memory complaints a lot of people have with Firefox.

Go Firefox team!

Development Possibilities

As I mentioned above, APIs have become important in today’s web world.  People want their favorites sites to publish methods for developers to utilize and interact with the site.  Twitter’s API is a perfect example of allowing developers to create features that many feel Twitter might be missing.

Twitter is not really a complicated website.  In fact it is simplicity at its best.  You type a message that is less than 140 characters, and you click the "update" button.  Clicking that button sends that message to the masses.  No fuss, no muss.  There is no more to Twitter than that.  However, Twitter released a full-featured application programmable interface (API) that allowed developers all over the world create functionality built on top of Twitter.  Take for example the desktop application Twhirl.

Twhirl is a desktop Twitter client built on Adobe’s AIR runtime.  The application is pretty nifty.  You install it, feed it your Twitter login information, and off you go.  You will receive updates from those you are following and you can post to Twitter.  All without opening a web browser.  This is just one example, and its relative to the heart of what I want to focus on today.

Desktop Applications

Why, when in a world where web applications are getting so sophisticated would you want desktop applications for those same web apps?  To some people it just doesn’t make sense but there is value in desktop applications.

You see, not everyone can open a web browser all the time.  A lot of times it is just a bad idea to open a web browser, especially at work.  But there are times when you nee to access that all important web application when you can’t open a browser.  Twitter for example is home to some interesting conversations, but it is not in my best interest to have Twitter open in a web browser all day.  For one thing, it can be distracting.  But with Twhirl, I can monitor Twitter activity and when a comment that I feel deserves a response from me pops up, I can quickly respond and get back to my work.

That is just one example, another is the Google Gear concept that allows users to run some of the more popular Google applications "offline" and from the desktop.  This is a great concept and really shows that even though the web application is really cool, you might not be able to access it at all times.  Allowing an "offline" desktop application to be used is a great method to keeping people connected to their data.  Google Docs offers document syncing applications so that people can bring their online applications to their computers.

The ability to interact with a website or service without having to go to the webpage is becoming increasingly important even as web applications grow in functionality and sophistication.  And as a result, a value is placed on having programmable interfaces that developers can build on.  This also shows that, even though web applications are offering functionality, there is still a place for desktop applications in this day and age.

Replacement?

Does this mean that we will never move away completely from desktop applications?  Personally, I don’t see that happening any time soon.  The desktop is still where a lot of stuff happens and the general (read non-geek) public does not know about web applications or even understand them in some cases.  They are use to desktop applications, they won’t use Google Docs because they have Microsoft Word installed and to them it doesn’t make sense to use Google Docs because its on the web.  There are still a lot of folks out there who do not like going to a website to do anything, and they really don’t like the idea of having to keep a website open to keep up with things.  This is where desktop applications come in real handy and why I don’t think we’ll see the end of them any time soon.

Its What You Say

When you are limited to one hundred forty characters to say something in, you try to find the best way to say it.  You have to make every character count.  If you can do it in less and have the same (or better) effect, then more power to you.  The trick with such a limited amount of space is vocabulary.  You have to almost become a thesaurus or a word smith in order to find the correct words, in the right order to say what you want with the premium effect.  This makes you stop and really think about what you want to say.  Is it worth saying?  Does it matter if anyone sees it (chances are it will be lost to the masses posting at the same time)?  Is it insightful, witty, or just a status update?  Does it convey an idea, feeling, or emotion?  When you are limited in space, you really think about what you have to say.  Sometimes you don’t have to, and that’s part of the fun.

Its How You Say It

Like I said above, when you have limited space to make your statement, you really think about it.  Not just what you have to say, but also in how you say it.  The simple, yet obnoxious, "ROFL STFU NOOB!" just isn’t going to cut like you might have thought (who knows there might be a situation where it fits).  But you really need to ensure you strike proper tone, emotion, and inflection in those 140 letters, numbers, spaces, and symbols.  This requires you to stretch that writers brain, it makes you consider every word, comma, and letter.  If you are replying to someone then you are limited to even less space because you need space for the "@username" in the message.  When you have only so much time, you have to make every part count.

But is There Value?

I think that when it comes to the micro-blogging websites, it is the same as anything else.  The concept of "garbage in, garbage out" really starts to take on new meaning when you choose whom you are going to follow.  You have to ask yourself with each message a person sends, "Do I want to see stuff like that on a consistent basis?" and that says a lot.  I am currently following 32 people on my Twitter account.  I have a couple of people local to my area, some "internet famous" folk like Leo Laporte and Robert Scoble, and I have returned the "follow" of some that have been kind enough to follow me.  Not everyone is set to that phone chiming "Notifications On" setting but a good number of peeps are.  This keeps me inundated with interesting conversation.  I have learned about interesting sites, had a debate about Silverlight/Moonlight, and have even found out about some cool local happenings.  So I would have to say that, yes, there is at the very least some value in these short messaged conversations that are happening on the internet today.

Look at it like this, there is definitely value in blogs.  If there was not, then so many wouldn’t be popping up and many would not be making the kind of scratch they are from blogs.  Micro-blogging is just that, blogging at a much smaller scale (in terms of words at least).  Making a point or conveying a thought in as little space as possible.  There’s something to it, and as such something to be gained from it.  However, I doubt that some of these folks who are following hundreds or even thousands of people are really getting much value from the conversation.  I doubt they even see much of a conversation anyway.  Remember, garbage in garbage out folks.

The "let it die" comments I will leave be.  These people offer no reason as to why TechCrunch should stop writing about the still very much active service, they just want to troll.  It is the other set of comments I want address.  Those comments that say things like, "I can do this with email or instant messaging.  Why do I need Pownce?" seem to really be forgetting one thing the internet is about, choice. 

Sure, you could use email, instant messaging, your blog, facebook, myspace, or some other site or application to accomplish the same goals you can with Pownce.  The problem is the same could be said about a blog, email, instant messaging, twitter, facebook, myspace, and about a million other sites that exist on the internet.  You could instant message, text message, or email your friends; but Twitter is extremely popular.  Why is this argument not applied to Twitter?  Same thing could be said about Facebook and your personal address book.  Why do you need to write on somone’s "wall" to tell them something when you could do it with a phone call, text message, or an email?  It seems to me that people saying "we can do all this with something else" don’t want their argument to apply to social network and other websites they probably use on a daily basis.  If we were to follow these people’s logic then blogs are completely pointless because we have newspapers.

One of the greatest things about the internet is the fact that you can release a product that is almost exactly like another product and if your product is better, then it will be more popular and people will come to it in droves.  Now, the reverse to that on the internet is the "first" concept.  If you have a nifty product concept and you go public first, then the end result is you will be the popular product regardless of stability, usability, and feature set.  Want examples?  Try Twitter and MySpace.  Twitter breaks constantly and MySpace is just horrible to look at where as Facebook actually works as a social network.  But Twitter and MySpace were here first, so guess what?  They have the userbase, which means they are the popular product.

Just because someone was first to release a cool concept does not mean that they are the best at delivering that concept.  Facebook and MySpace is a perfect example of this.  I find Facebook to be far superior to MySpace (I realize that’s a personal opinion).  Pownce works as the micro-blog that lets you display photos, movies, and music.  It also lets you easily share links, something that Twitter does but not all that well.  I am not saying that Pownce is better than Twitter, because I think they serve two different purposes.  They can be used in a similar manner, however.  The thing is, Pownce doesn’t have an easy way to update while on the go and until I can update it via SMS or IM, it really will not get Twitter’s following.  Twitter, on the other hand needs to get its act together otherwise people will jump ship eventually.

So, just because someone doesn’t use a particular service, does not mean the service does not have merit.  On the internet, just about everything has its place.  If it doesn’t then it goes away.  The fact that Pownce is still around, still being actively worked on, and that people actively post to it, shows that its not ready to go away just yet.

This works great for connecting yourself to others you know and communicate with via the internet. If you have a lot of friends that you connect to via your web blog, there is almost no better way to connect everyone than by using FOAF. However, this only focuses on the who and how of your social network. What about the problem of where you are social?

Where are You Social?

We should face it, there are a ton of social networks out there. In fact the whole Web 2.0 concept is based largely around the concept of social networks. We have places to store bookmarks, network with friends and colleagues, there are even networks that allow you to share your photos with both your friends and the world at large. There are social networks built around reading, sending 140 character messages, and news articles. Point is, there is a lot of social websites out there and you probably have accounts on several of them (I know I do).

Why do I bring this up? Well this weekend, I signed up for a couple sites that had social aspects of them. Four out of five of the websites asked for either my profile addresses on other social networks, or it asked for RSS feeds of my updates on those social networks. That means I had to input the same data for 4 different websites. I don’t know about you but by the third site, I was thinking there has to be a better way.

Your Social OPML

If you have done any RSS reading, you have probably heard of an OPML file. This is a file that contains a list of the RSS feeds you subscribe to, the names of those feeds, and the actual feed addresses associated with the feeds. And as I mentioned above there is the FOAF format for social graphing on the internet. So why can we not combine these two technologies into a new technology (or more of an extension that utilizes aspects of both).

I am not really into creating new standards for the sake of creating a new standard. Especially when an existing standard or a combination of existing standards will already do the job. So why not a FOAF OPML for your profiles on all the social networks?

Imagine having a link on your website that you could point users to, or even type in to websites that you are signing up for. The file that link points at would have the following information

• The name of the social network
• Your user name on that social network
• The URL for your profile on that social network
• And finally, the RSS feed address (or a group of them if applicable)

So for example my Flickr entry might look like:

<siteentry>
  <site>Flickr</site>
  <siteusername>mkoby</siteusername>
  <siteprofile>
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/mkoby
  </siteprofile>
  <siterss>
     <siterssentry>
        <siterssname
          >mkoby's Latest Photos
        </siterssname>
        <siterssurl>
          http://flickr.com/services/feeds/mkoby/latest
        </siterssurl>
     </siterssentry>
     <siterssentry>
              <siterssname>
                mkoby's Flickr geoFeed
              </siterssname>
              <siterssurl>
                http://flickr.com/services/feeds/mkoby/geo
              </siterssurl>
     </siterssentry>
  </siterss>
</siteentry>

I realize that the above snippit is probably not considered “well formed” but hopefully you see where I’m going with this concept. You might also notice that RSS entries can be arrays of RSS addresses. Now imagine an entry for each social site you are a member of (Facebook, GoodReads, Twitter, and so on). Imagine never having to type that information into another website, just upload this file to the site and they can parse it for you.

Does this Already Exist?

Now I guess the question I should ask is, does this already exist somewhere? If it does, I haven’t heard of it. I know some stuff like the FOAF is similar but not quite this. Maybe a new standard would need to be created for something like this. I am not real sure. This does have a lot of practical use though. Think of it in terms of the more popular bloggers like Robert Scoble (Scobleizer), who have a tremendous internet following. There is an entire website dedicated to Scoble’s RSS presence on the net already, something like this would make it easy for anyone to follow everything Mr. Scoble is doing online (ie, it would make stalking easier).

I think that this idea has merit but I have no idea how to get it off the ground. And maybe this already exists somewhere in some form I do not know about. Any thoughts?

I am so glad I did.  This is one fantastic piece of software.  It really does make blogging easier.  At least for me.  It grabs my blogs style so that when I edit posts, I see what they will look like in real time.  No more guessing on those photo dimensions to make sure everything lines up right.  I can post-date posts, which is a big deal for me since I (try to) write posts in advance.  I can edit categories, tags, and even my excerpts without ever having to log into Wordpress’s administration page.  Pretty slick stuff.

No, I wasn’t paid by anyone to say this stuff.  I really do enjoy the product and I’ve only had it installed for a couple of days.  It really seems to fill my needs quite nicely.  So, if you haven’t tried it yet, download Windows Live Writer, and give it a try.

What’s the point?

I mean a part of me gets it. You don’t want the entire world to read your updates. But at the same time, why sign up for an overly social site if you’re going to basically be anti-social? It seems counter-productive to me. Maybe, I’m just a little more open with my updates, but I also wouldn’t post something that I was not comfortable with the whole world knowing anyway. I guess I’m just careful like that.

Anyone have any thoughts on this matter? Are you someone who has their Twitter updates set to private? If so, why? I would really like to know and understand.