Most bloggers should tweet instead

In the cacophonous jumble of thoughts that bounce through our heads every day, there are a few that stand out. We feel compelled to share these observations and ruminations -- the uncommon moment, for example, where you see a mailman who is walking quickly and smoking a cigar.

I've been using Twitter for about a month now and I've found it's a handy way to bookmark such observations and ruminations when they happen. And I've come to appreciate the beauty of Twitter's brevity constraint: your posts (or tweets) can be no longer than 140 characters.

What's so good about this extreme conciseness? This: it forces you to get to the point. Have you ever taken a random walk down blog street? Granted, there are great blogs out there, but the vast majority are one of two types:

• Ramblefests: Stream-of-conscious rants that are ferociously uninteresting.
• Copycats: Multi-paragraph quotations from news sites and other blogs, with maybe a sentence or two of original commentary.

All the bloggers that fit in the above two categories should discover the joy of Twitter -- where there's really only room for original content. And where it's difficult to repeat yourself (unless you accidentally hit the "update" button six times, like I did the other day).

You can stalk me on Twitter here: http://twitter.com/thefoible

Tags: Twitter

Healia's new Facebook application

Healia, where I've been interning this summer, has just launched a Facebook application: the Healia Health Challenge.

The game tests your general health knowledge with questions that cover nutrition, anatomy, and STDs, among other things. It starts you off as a pre-med student, and if you rack up enough points, you get promoted all the way up to Chief of Medicine.

It's definitely been a lot of fun to work on this as a group over the past few months. If you have a Facebook account, please give it a shot and let me know what you think. And if you like it, please feel free to pass it on. :)

Tags: internship Healia Facebook application health

Appaholic: facilitating obsession with Facebook statistics

If you're curious about which Facebook applications are hot (or cold) at the moment, Appaholic is worth exploring. It displays statistics on Facebook applications, updated hourly.

The Viral Dashboard page is interesting, but I was confused by it at first. The site FAQ doesn't explain this, but the applications are ranked by "% change" -- percentage change in users from yesterday to today. So this list is not based on the total number of Facebook users who have installed that particular application.

Because the appaholic rank list is based on daily percentage growth, it changes frequently. At the bottom of the list are applications that are, for whatever reason, quickly shedding users. In the rapidly-growing universe of Facebook applications, these negative-growth applications might have been at the top of the list not too long ago.

Tags: Appaholic Facebook application statistics percentage growth users rank

The next YouTube?

Interesting statistics today on Dailymotion, leading to speculation:

"There's been a great deal of speculation in the marketplace about which site is the next YouTube, and each of these next-tier sites has a particular draw...Dailymotion.com is stating the strongest case at the moment, both domestically and internationally."

Tags: YouTube Dailymotion video-sharing

Linkalicious: 7/2/07

A few stories have piqued my interest over the past few days...

• LinkedIn is hiring new staff and preparing for its upcoming IPO. Should it be worried about Facebook encroaching on its territory? I think not. Sure, you can do your professional networking on Facebook, too, but there are all those random applications littering your profile, and the not-so-professional photos. LinkedIn, on the other hand, is the online equivalent of the events you wear your suit to.

• Is there any connection between Neanderthals and modern humans? Perhaps we'll find out!
• Chronic disease has quadrupled among children.

  We will see much greater expenditures for people in their 20s than we ever saw before, and no one is thinking how we should prepare for that....We call it an epidemic.

• You should drink coffee instead of soda in the morning.

Tags: LinkedIn Facebook neanderthal coffee soda chronic illness

Linkalicious: 6/26/07

Last summer I was consuming so much new information about internet trends that I often just compiled it all in link-filled blog posts. Happily, I've resumed my news-consuming ways, so I'm going to kick off linkalicious posts again for the summer. I wonder what I missed over the past nine months...

• Basically all teens who are online use social networks. 96% of those aged 9-17, apparently.
• But there appears to be a growing class divide 'twixt MySpace and Facebook.

  those using Facebook come from wealthier homes and are more likely to attend college. By contrast, MySpace users tend to get a job after finishing high school rather than continue their education.


• Plaxo has released Plaxo Pulse, which essentially allows people to build their own private social networks from their address books.
• The video search engine Blinkx is launching speech recognition video search.

  Very much in its beta stage, the technology is designed to help advertisers target ads alongside or in Web videos based on speech-recognition technology. The program allows advertisers to buy specific words spoken in videos as well as categories created by analyzing its overall context.

Tags: social networking teens Facebook MySpace Blinkx Plaxo

World without oil

I've taken advantage of my recent wide-open schedule to catch up on my favorite podcasts, which was a frequent pastime of mine last summer. My curiosity was piqued by a recent Future Tense podcast that describes World Without Oil -- an alternate reality game (or ARG) in which participants collectively imagine how we'd all cope with a major spike in oil prices.

Participants describe how a significant oil shortage would prompt them to work closer to home, and how proximity would play an important role in relationships: you spend more time with friends in your immediate neighborhood.

It's true; that's what car-free living is like. I should know, as I haven't owned a car for a full decade. I've always worked at jobs that are easily accessible via walking or public transit. And I tend to spend most of my social time with friends who are within walking distance. Not owning a vehicle: the thought is anathema to so many Americans. But I can say from experience that it's really not that big of a deal, particularly in a city with a functional public transit system, like Seattle.

Tags: World Without Oil

Speaking of Yahoo! coolness...

My friends in Metaverse Technology directed my attention to something Yahoo! has been up to lately: Pipes. If only I had some time to play around with that right now! I'll make a note to check it out in detail during Spring break.

Tags: Yahoo Pipes

IBM, Second Life, and v-business

Futurismic reports that IBM is heavily involved in Second Life. According to Reuters (itself a big player in Second Life), IBM has the biggest Second Life presence of any Fortune 500 company. The CEO, Sam Palmisano, even has his own avatar there:

The company's move into virtual worlds is due in large part to the efforts of its "multiverse evangelists," Ian Hughes (Epredator Potato) and Roo Reynolds (Algernon Spackler in-world), who said last month that IBM wanted to make "v-business" a priority just as it championed "e-business" during the dot-com boom.

"We always ask the question, 'if you knew 20 years ago what you know about the Web today, what would you do differently?'" Sandy Kearney, IBM's director of emerging 3-D Internet and virtual business, told Reuters in a Second Life interview. "The Web took decades. This will likely take half that time."

V-business? It's a term presumably indicating business done in virtual worlds, such as Second Life. Wikipedia has a brief entry on virtual business, which gives an old-school definition, bascially non-bricks 'n' mortar e-business: "a business which operates without a corresponding physical identity."

But no entry for v-business.

I get the distinct feeling that this will change in the near future, as the term picks up steam.

P.S. Looks like this blog post is the first with the Technorati tag v-business.

Tags: Second Life IBM v-business multiverse virtual world

In other news

A couple months back, I confessed to finding Gmail ads fascinating, and going so far as to bring them up as objects of discussion. According to today's Wall Street Journal (subscription req'd), I'm not alone in this.

In other news, it's suddenly turned chilly in Seattle. This morning I wore the scarf my sister gave me for the first time in seven months or so.

In other news, we have a midterm in microeconomics today. We're allowed to bring in a one-page cheat sheet, and I believe I've set a new personal record for fitting a plethora of tiny text and graphs onto a page. Our instructor warns us that many of us will find this exam difficult, cheat sheet or no. The experience has certainly been building an in-the-trenches camaraderie amongst my classmates.

In other news, happy Halloween!

Tags: Gmail marketing ads

OpenID and digital identity

Doing research for one of my group projects this evening, I ran across a post about the growing interest in Identity 2.0: tools are appearing that facilitate a digital identity that you can use anywhere online.

OpenID appears to be the most well-known.

I'd love to look into this further, but I've got to get back to my project research at moment. It's an interesting project, actually, exploring the future of corporate blogging and its implications for business.

Tags: OpenID digital identity

Keep your eye on Second Life

Three Minds @ Organic reports that Reuters and Sun have both joined the growing list of companies that have established a presence in Second Life.

If you haven't heard about Second Life yet, this this article provides a good primer. Basically, it's a rapidly growing virtual world that's worth paying attention to.

I'd elaborate further, but I need to finish this stats assignment.

Tags: Second Life marketing

YouTube: not a cheap date

The big news today is that Google aims on buying YouTube. The rumored price tag: $1.6 billion. Apparently, News Corp is another interested suitor.

Speculation about the acquisition of YouTube has been buzzing for months now, but there hasn't been anything like today's news flurry. Will Google succeed in this? The market seems to think so; its stock (GOOG) is up over 2% today.

$1.6 billion. Staggering. Google is sitting on mountains of cash and short-term investments, so this isn't going to break its back or anything. Still, Google should have given this a shot earlier this year, when it could have secured a better purchase price. Perhaps they tried this; I'd be curious to find out.

Tags: Google YouTube acquisition

The elation of calcoolation

The venerable Microsoft Calculator is good at crunching out the basics, but it's not up to snuff for the more substantial calculations. You can use a spreadsheet application, like Excel, but it's a pain to a) open up a spreadsheet and (b) type the = sign at the beginning of your expression.

Enter Calcoolate. I was pleased as punch to discover it whilst browsing the chock-full-of-goodness blog Recommended. It's an online calculator that haughtily bills itself "the coolest calculator on the web."

After playing with it for a spell, I can affirm that Calcoolate has every reason to crow. It sports a spicy yet simple Ajax interface that lets you type fully nested expressions, along with basic functions (sqrt, etc). And everything can be quickly accomplished via your keyboard (which always wins me over).

Also, and this is lovely indeed, Calcoolate remembers your past calculations and displays them in a list. Click on one, and the expression appears; you can tinker with it as you like.

Tags: Web 2.0 calculator calcoolate

Your very own Web 2.0 logo

I discovered this site this morning via Micro Persuasion, and I just couldn't help myself. Don't worry, it's temporary. :)

8/17 update --> I changed back to my original plain "Fixing Foibles and Follies" title. But for posterity's sake, this was my title banner for one day:

Tags: blogging Web 2.0

Web 2.0: is the frenzy peaking?

There is currently a mad profusion of services designated Web 2.0. They are accompanied by ever-increasing reviews, commentary, and general blogsophere attention.

A few days ago, for instance, "web 2.0," "web-20," and "web2.0" were all within the 30 most active tags on Technorati ("web2.0" is the only one showing up now; the other two have been bumped by "Windows Live Writer" and something else). Are we smack dab in the middle of the Web 2.0 revolution?

A recent Gartner report examines four Web 2.0 trends -- Social Network Analysis, Ajax, Collective intelligence, and Mashups -- and concludes that Web 2.0 is at the peak of a hype cycle. In other words, it's at the second of five stages, in which:

a frenzy of publicity typically generates over-enthusiasm and unrealistic expectations. There may be some successful applications of a technology, but there are typically more failures.

Certainly, there is plenty of Hollywood-style hype surrounding the Web 2.0 world. Valleywag tracks all the hoopla, covering events like the recent wild party for Web 2.0 company Yelp.

Amongst all this fanfare, Webby's World points out that it's still pretty difficult to pinpoint just what Web 2.0 means:

Some say it’s merely a buzzword used by new Internet start-ups, powered by venture capitalism, as a way to generate hype; some say it’s a new style of design; some say it’s the new style of web development, i.e. AJAX and Ruby on Rails; and some say it’s simply the next step towards a Semantic Web. I doubt there’ll ever be consensus until what Web 2.0 is until is is was.

Whatever it is or isn't, Web 2.0 is attached as a label to new services that look pretty fun and interesting:

• Take Kevo, for instance, which is a social network for fans of celebrities (Mashable describes it as "Wikipedia meets Paris Hilton"). Natalie Portman is currently winning a popularity battle with Jesus Christ, by a rather significant margin.
• Singshot, a service that mixes karaoke and social networking, also recently made a debut. You can learn more about it here.
• Check out Emurse, an online resume-building application.
• And there's SlimTimer, which provides online time-tracking from within your browser.

Social networking is a big part of the Web 2.0 pheonomenon, and social networks have an interesting way of immediately catapulting regular people into celebrity status. A 79-year old Englishman has acquired a huge YouTube following, as has the the 16-year old known as lonely girl.

Web 2.0 also isn't confined to a few countries: it's thoroughly international, as a map on B2DAy 2.0 shows.

It's difficult to see how Web 2.0 could get much bigger; it will certainly start slowing down soon. In the meanwhile, it's a lot of fun to keep track of.

Tags: Internet trends Web 2.0 social networking Yelp hype Gartner

Linkalicious: 8/7/2006

• The BusinessWeek cover story on Kevin Rose has immediately inspired a volley of commentary amongst tech blogs.
• Peep down upon my neighborhood in Wikimapia, an addictive site that is a fetching blend of Wikipedia and Google Maps.
• Is a picture worth 1000 words? at Visible Wear, you can find one short story per week, 1000 words or less, each inspired by a found photo.
• Natural lighting. Plant-covered rooftops. Companies are embracing green buildings like never before.
• Picture tubes are quickly fading away. "One year from now, we will not sell picture-tube TVs."

So many Google products, so little time

Over the past year, Google has rolled out countless new products. I've played around with a few of them, some of which I've grown to really appreciate. Most, though, I haven't done much with. How about you? If you really want to geek out on this subject, take this poll at Google Blogoscoped.

Google Calendar has definitely wowed me the most. I've never encountered calendar software that is as efficient and easy to use. You just click the day in which you want to enter an event, and a popup (pictured at right) appears, prompting you to enter your information. You don't need to go through a cumbersome process of selecting the event time from a list -- you can just type in the time and the event name, and Google Calendar creates it for you. It also lets you share events with other Google Calendar users, which makes it an especially handy way to coordinate events with a significant other. My girlfriend and I have used it extensively to keep track of our social goings-on. It's like Outlook, only for your non-work life. And much easier to use.

Google Notebook is another pretty nifty service. As Google describes it, with Google Notebook "you can browse, clip, and organize information from across the web in a single online location that's accessible from any computer." I've found it to be an easy way to take notes for blog posts. If a web page catches my interest, I can stash it away in my Google Notebook, perhaps adding a few ideas for a blog post. Like del.icio.us and the Bloglines "Keep New" function, Google Notebook enables quick web browsing by "remembering" interesting things for you -- so you don't have to. We'll see more such externalizations of memory in the future.

Tags: Google

Meet my new tenant: Recommended

Following up on my previous post about BlogExplosion, another one of its interesting features is its blog rental service. You can earn credits (and attention) by renting out a space on your blog to other BlogExplosion members, and bid for spots on their sites. I put my rental spot up for bid last night. Right up in the upper left corner. I had three bids, and I chose Recommended because it's a truly interesting blog. It covers a wide variety of new gadgets, technological trends, and services (yes, I voraciously consume this sort of reading material), all delivered with a unique perspective. Give it a visit!

Tags: BlogExplosion blogging blog rental

The Democracy Player: nudging TV in the right direction

While walking to work this morning, I heard a
Future Tense podcast about the new Democracy Player. It's a new Internet TV application that subscribes to video RSS feeds. You can use it to search for videos and subscribe to channels. The Democracy Player is developed by the Participatory Culture Foundation. This group wants to make sure that the emerging world of online TV is more diverse and intelligent than the conventional TV wasteland we've been living with over the past half-century. From the PCF site:

Our mission is to build an open and democratic television platform. Television is the defining medium of our culture. There's now an opportunity to create a television culture that is fluid, diverse, exciting, and beautiful. Built by people working together....Television is moving online. Will it be the same narrow, top-down cultural stagnation that we see on traditional television?

Ever since reading Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death as a young lad in high school, I've been highly crictical of mainstream television. And so, "technoptimist" that I am (in this way I differ from Postman), I'm very excited about the move to online TV, especially considering technology like the Democracy Player.

Take a peek at some screenshots here.

Tags: Democracy Player online video Internet TV