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.
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.
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.
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.
It’s been over two years but I’m finally getting back into blogging. Real world things like getting married and having a baby kind of extended what I thought was going to be a two week break form blogging into a two year one.
If you are a returning reader you’ll still find the same tech coverage you were used to seeing but now with a bit more reach hopefully. This time around I plan on having contributors (so you don’t get sick of reading just my point of view) and hopefully get some press credentials. If you would like to help in either area please let me know.
This blog used to be known as infoblog 3.0 and was at a different location (which is still up btw) but I imported as many posts as I was able to. Somehow I lost about 500 posts over the years but I will make up for it. I also plan on using social media to expand my brand and this blog. I have already set up J-M-Williams as a Facebook application and am looking at doing other exciting things.
Please take the time to let me know your ideas on this blog, what you’d like to see and how we can make it better. I’ll talk to you again!
