TweetPhoto Shoots to Take Out TwitPic and Scores

TwitPic has always been the go to application for sharing photos on twitter but a new service, TweetPhoto, aims to changes that.  If you've ever used TwitPic you know it does what it aims to do, share photos, which is nice but I've always felt wanting for more.   The feature set is downright sparse compared to TweetPhoto and you'll see the difference right off the bat.  In addition to signing in with your Twitter user name there are photo and meta-data filters, photo favorites, friends photos, customizable widgets, expansive API and a seamless integration into Twitter and Facebook Connect.  In fact it not only is probably the most complete way to share photos on Twitter, you can share them on Facebook just as easily.  TwitPic has a over a year head start on TweetPhoto but if nothing else I'm sure we'll start to see more capabilities from both and the user wins either way.

TweetPhoto greatly improves the user experience for those people who share photos on Twitter through the service. The capabilities include:

• Upload photos via mobile phone and the web to TweetPhoto; share through Twitter and Facebook


• Favorite the photos you like


• See who views your photos; favorites your photos, comments on your photos


• Track how many people looked at a photo


• Automatically geo-tag photos sent from a GPS enabled phone


• Use an integrated URL shortening service, http://pic.gd     Filter photos by Twitter or Facebook friends


• Self-moderate comments


• Search tagged photos throughout the site


• Subscribe to RSS feeds by user or tags

Twitter users can get started at http://tweetphoto.com by entering their Twitter username and password.

Would a Big Screen Kindle Save The Newspaper?

When I was a kid I always assumed that the newspaper format would change.  I figured we'd be reading from a tablet but that we would receive our daily newspaper via cd rom.  I also thought we'd be in flying cars and our tv would be a hollogram.  I was also 11.  Does that mean those things won't happen, no but it also shows how slow we are to change.  We drive cars today that get less gas mileage than they did ten years ago.  Our televisions are basically the same as they were 50 years ago.  And our newspapers are the same as they were 400 years ago.  We as a society are better at developing new technologies than updating old ones.   Where is our e-ink newsprint?  It's not going to happen but Amazon want's to use a new technology to replace an old one.

Nothing has been announced officially but word is that Amazon will release a bigger screen Kindle to better support newspapers and magazines, two areas that have been hit hard in print.  E-readers have yet to revolutionize the way people read books and it has yet to steer consumers from brick and mortar stores but there has been growth.   About a half a million people bought a kindle last year, and while that's not enough to start a mass exodus of advertisers from print, it is expected to show the growth to tempt them.  Kindle users are in the right age range 25-45 and have the disposable income that ad execs covet.  Is that enough to supplant newspapers?  Probably not.  Radio, television, and the internet all were supposed to be the death of newsprint and so far newspapers and magazines have survived.  Your big city newspaper will do fine as long as they manage to adapt like they have in the past.  Readership will be down but as long as they change thier expectations of what makes a successful newspaper and stay profitable, the 11 year old in me will have to wait a little while longer for the future I dreamed about.  With the trouble automakers are having I might never get my flying car.

The New Friendfeed... Is It All That Different?

Way back in '07', the infancy of micro-blogging, I was not only an early adopter of  Twitter but of Pownce.  Like Twitter, it allowed users to tell their friends or followers what they were doing with as little prose as possible.  I actually preferred the latter because of not only the ability to share links, images, and music, but the ability to create events.  Pownce  (who was created by  Kevin Rose, Leah Culver, and Daniel Burka) was acquired by Six Apart and subsequently shut down two weeks later.  I, along with many other former Pownce users, were looking for another place to call home that offered more than Twitter but not as involved as Facebook so we drifted to Friendfeed.   I enjoyed the conversational aspect but it didn't seem to have the sticking ability of Twitter or Facebook, not to mention it was a harbor for early adopters and not much else.  Friendfeed's new push for a simpler interface is a step in the right direction but is it enough?

At first glance it may seem like Friendfeed has taken a page out of Twitter's design playbook, but actually has more in common with Facebook and my beloved Pownce (R.I.P).  The ability to share more than text and expanding your thought to something more robust than 140 characters has always been there but now everything has been streamlined.  You will recognize the standard input box and river of messages below  from every other micro-blogging site you've ever used but it now it is in real time.



Having the feed in real time takes a bit getting used to and if you take your eyes off of the screen for a second you will have lost your place.  Friendfeed anticipated the learning curve and implemented a pause button.  Pressing the button queues up the backlog of posts the makes you feel like you are sticking your finger in the dam.  If you subscribe to a lot of user's feeds you'll quickly have a drowning sensation.



You may still be thinking it's just a faster Twitter, and you'd mostly be correct, but I'm not sure that would be their competition.  Facebook and Friendfeed have been trying to "one up" each other for a while now, and there were rumors of an acquisition, and this is just one more chapter.  Would a simpler theme and real time updates be enough to turn the tide?  I doubt it.  In fact it seems like a last ditch effort to stay relevant in the social networking space.  Pownce was almost a carbon copy of this new Friendfeed, with even more features, and they barely lasted a year.  Sure they may survive in its niche but it's simply a case of too little too late.  That's not to say I don't want them to succeed.  I actually am surprised that Twitter became the media darling but the simplicity drew the laymen to it.   I will continue to use Pownce... I mean Friendfeed, but if you want a mainstream audience, innovation, timing, and luck is your friend.  Just ask Kevin Rose.

Firefox 3.5 Beta 4 Available

Mozilla has released the newest beta of Firefox 3.5… 

Please note: Firefox 3.5 Beta 4 is a public preview release intended for developer testing and community feedback. It includes many new features as well as improvements to performance, web compatibility, and speed. We recommend that you read the release notes and known issues before installing this beta.

Firefox 3.5 (formerly known as Firefox 3.1) Beta 4 is now available for download. This milestone is focused on testing the core functionality provided by many new features and changes to the platform scheduled for Firefox 3.5. Ongoing planning for Firefox 3.5 can be followed at the Firefox 3.5 Planning Center, as well as in mozilla.dev.planning and on irc.mozilla.org in #shiretoko.

New features and changes in this milestone that require feedback include:

• This beta is now available in 70 languages - get your local version.
• Improved tools for controlling your private data, including a Private Browsing Mode.
• Better performance and stability with the new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine.
• The ability to provide Location Aware Browsing using web standards for geolocation.
• Support for native JSON, and web worker threads.
• Improvements to the Gecko layout engine, including speculative parsing for faster content rendering.
• Support for new web technologies such as: HTML5 <video> and <audio> elements, downloadable fonts and other new CSS properties, JavaScript query selectors, HTML5 offline data storage for applications, and SVG transforms.

Testers can download Firefox 3.5 Beta 4 builds for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux in 70 different languages. Developers should also read the Firefox 3.5 for Developers article on the Mozilla Developer Center.

Zoho Goes Mobile

Zoho today released mobile versions of many of their web office applications and it’s easy to see why some refuse to use anything else. 

Zoho Mail, Calendar, Writer, Sheet, Show & Creator are now available for the iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and Symbian devices (Palm support is in the works).  Zoho has many features not found anywhere else like group sharing across multiple apps and multiple log in options.  You can log in with your Google or Yahoo IDs, along with a unique Zoho login.  Go to http://mobile.zoho.com (or http://m.zoho.com) on your mobile device and check it out.  Leave your impressions in the comments.

When Did You Join Twitter?

I found this article for a new Twitter app today :

WhenDidYouJoinTwitter is one of the simplest twitter apps I’ve seen. But a much needed one! It’s so good to know the date you joined twitter and realize twitter only gets more exciting with each passing day!WhenDidYouJoinTwitter - do you remember!?, Apr 2009

You should read the whole article.

Beyonce’s Unedited Vocals

I originally was going to have my first post back be an in-depth review of social networking today or reflect on Earth Day… but this was just too good to pass up!

Beyonce was performing a song live on the TODAY show and apparently her vocals are feed through a soundboard that adjusts her pitch before it goes out.  Some spiteful enterprising person was able to record her original, unedited vocals, allegedly.  Take a listen if you can take the pain but make sure that dogs and/or small children aren’t in the room.

 

 

P.S.  This may be a hoax so please don’t sue if it is.