Periodic Ramblings

Seesmic launched their latest Twitter client today called Seesmic Look.  It aims to make Twitter updates more friendly and accessible.

The interface is definitely a change from traditional Twitter clients and there are three different views that you can choose for displaying your tweets.  The above picture shows the “Playback” mode where Tweets are displayed on your screen in “bubbles” as they are Tweeted by the users you are following.

The “alphabetical” display shows your Tweets sorted alphabetically by who tweeted it.

And finally, there is a “timeline” view which displays the Tweets in a timeline as they are tweeted.

On the left side of the interface you can choose what you are viewing in the three display options.

• Trends – Displays latest trends in Twitter.
• Inbox – Displays your follower’s Tweets and Mentions.
• Social – Listing the Tweets from the users and groups that you follow.
• Favorites – Listing the Tweets that you have marked as favorites.
• Interests – Listing of Tweets by categories.
• Channels – Tweets grouped into channels.

I ran into a couple of bugs, nothing unexpected for a new release.  I had trouble with my feeds always updating.  It seemed to randomly “freeze” and I would either have to refresh or choose a different view on the left and then go back to my regular view.

The interface while polished and easy on the eyes, is not conducive necessarily for a laptop user as myself.  It takes up a large swath of screen real estate and shrinking it makes the Tweets less easy to follow on the screen.  It is aimed at a user who is willing to give up the screen, has multiple screens or has a large monitor on a desktop where the screen space is not an issue. 

It definitely is aiming for the casual Twitter user, as it removes some of the ambiguity around who to follow and what type of information is posted on Twitter.  While the typical Twitter user has a following and is following a group of people, people new to Twitter may feel overwhelmed with what Twitter is.  A tool like Seesmic is definitely going to help make Twitter more useful for a larger group of people.  It reminds me in a way of the Pointcast program that would push updates to the desktop and display them in a streaming bar.

While I may not use this on a regular basis, I do see myself using it every once a while, just because of the interface.  Nice work Seesmic.

While the big news from Bing is that Bing Maps is no longer in beta, what I was more impressed with was their new feature called Destination Maps.  I always dreaded putting a map into a document/web page/invitation that came from Google Maps, Yahoo Maps or Mapquest.  To me the maps were always cold and impersonal.  That was until today.

Destination Maps from Bing allows you to create a map that looks like it was written on the back of a napkin, making it more personal and warm in my opinion.

Here is an example of using Destination Maps to create a personalized map for the Whitehouse.

First go to http://maps.bing.com.  Choose Map Apps from the left hand pane:

Click on Destination Maps and enter in the address you want to search for in the Search box and click on Search.  This will bring up a normal Bing map showing your selected location.

Click on Continue to choose that location.  You will now be asked to choose the area of interest that you want the map made from.  Using the slider arrows on the four sides of the box to choose the area that you want a map created from.  When you are done, click on Continue.

Here Destination Maps will allow you to choose a name for your map.  In this example, I decided on “The Whitehouse”.  Click on Continue once you have named your map.

The personalized map will now be generated.  You are entertained with an animated “Loading” during the process which is a nice touch.

From here you can choose four different style, save/print (three sizes, PDF or JPEG), or share on the web for others to access.

I can now attach a map that is more personalized and not some boring perfectly drawn map.

Here in the United States we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day, commemorating the work of one of the greatest Civil Rights Activists in history.

TED has posted the following page complete with his “I Have A Dream” speech.

Are you looking for something different to read?  Maybe a classic that you remember from school or have been meaning to read?  Want something that is not going to cost you any money?

Well, Project Gutenberg can help.

Project Gutenberg aims to digitize books where the copyrights have expired here in the United States, providing these digitized versions to the Internet community.  Shakespeare, Homer, Doyle, Twain and Carroll are all there.  Read the original versions of Sherlock Holmes, Peter Pan and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

They are all there and ready to be downloaded to your computer or portable device.

I have a couple of EPUB books that I am doing reviews on for this site.  The problem was, I am not always at my computer, but still want to have access to the book. After searching the Internet, I found out that I already had part of the equation on my iPhone and just needed to load a desktop app on my laptop.

I had loaded Stanza about a year ago to read free ebooks from Project Gutenberg.  What I did not realize was the flexibility that this program offered.  It can allow you to read all sorts of documents on the iPhone.  And while I realized that you could use the app to download paid and free books, I did not realize that they had a desktop app that would allow you to transfer your own documents to Stanza on the iPhone.  I am sure there are a number of you about to point out that this has been there for a while, but I had never taken the time to go to their website, mostly because I never had a need until today.

So, over at their website, I downloaded the app onto my Windows 7 laptop.  The installation was straightforward, mostly just a number of clicks on Next.  The app and Apple Bonjour load, which must be for sharing purposes.

Once the app was loaded, I started it up, clicked on the File menu and opened one of my EPUB books.  The book came up on the desktop.  I then went to the Tools menu and clicked on Enable Sharing.  That was all I needed to do on the desktop side.

Over on the iPhone, I opened the Stanza app, tapped on Get Books and then chose Shared on the top of the screen.  Under the Computers Sharing Books, my computer showed up.  I tapped on my computer name and then on the book I wanted to download.  The book opened and downloaded to my iPhone.

The controls in Stanza are straightforward when viewing a book.  Tap on the left to go back, the right to go forward and the middle for other controls to use for viewing the book.

This is going to save me a lot of time, as I have a number of ebooks that I would like to place on my iPhone but did not realize I already had a tool for doing so.

If you are looking for a way to backup your on-line presence, well Backupify can assist in that regard.  For many of us, we spend a good portion of our time online and have a good portion of information that is important to us stored online.  Have you ever thought of “what happens if Flickr goes out of business and I lose all my pictures”?  Well, I have.  I have a lot of information that is only present online.  How many of your friends do you only have a Twitter or Facebook contact for?  How many documents do you have in Google Docs or Zoho Office?  If the answer pertains to data that is important, then you really should look at backing this data up.  We spend time thinking about backing up our laptop or desktop, but very little time is spent on our online presence.

This where Backupify can help.

Currently Backupify will backup the following services:

This Google Spreadsheet lists as of today (January 14, 2010), 474 Google products.  Included in the spreadsheet is Launch Date, Audience, Cost and Supporting Sites (Blog/Help/Ideas/Twitter) for the product.

This week marked the opening of the world’s tallest building Burj Khalifa in Dubai.  On the first weekend they had their first hiccup, a stalled elevator ride on the way up to the 124th floor.  The stall itself is not what fascinated me, but the amount of technology behind the elevators in the building and technology behind elevators.  They have a come a long way since the days of having a manual elevator operator that was responsible for making sure that riders were carried efficiently to their respective floors.

While I understood and had spent some time on resource scheduling of elevators in college in an Artificial Intelligence class I took, I did not realize the amount of active research that was taking place.  To me an elevator is pretty simple, you have a number of people on one floor trying to get to respective other floors and you need to make sure that is done efficiently.

NPR has an article on their website about the technology behind the Dubai 57 elevators and elevators in general.  So, next time you are in an elevator remember that there is a lot more to that ride, then just pressing a button and waiting for the doors to open and close.

Looks like Google is going to allow users to use Docs for more than just documents, spreadsheets and presentations. The Official Google Blog today posted that they will be allowing users the ability to upload files to their Docs area. These files can be 250mb in size and there is a free 1gb given to all users with additional storage available for a fee.

There is an interesting article over at Mashable about a possible decline in Twitter traffic and what could be the cause.  The article leads to pointing to a possible concern that Twitter is losing it’s edge and may need to reinvent itself.  I disagree.

I think that Twitter is starting to mature and refine it’s usage within the technology space.  Whereas it started as a simple notification/update tool, allowing one to post “I ate corn flakes this morning”, it has now changed.

I think Twitter is taking on two personae, both serving different audiences.

1. News Source

I look at Twitter as a modern day equivalent to the Town Crier.  Usually you can find information on some event either locally or globally on Twitter first before a mainstream news source has picked up on it.  Twitter has the ability through its unique user body to have an almost untapped potential for news gathering.  We tend to think of news gathering as something that needs to be done by a reporter working a beat, interviewing people and writing a story around the experiences of other people.  Twitter allows the everyday person to determine that story.  News does not need to be in the form of a 500 word New York Times article, sometimes the most efficient form of communication is a simple post/update, and if the person reading wants more information they can make the decision whether or not to do the additional research.

2. Marketing

I have seen a tremendous increase in the amount of non-people accounts on Twitter over the last year.  Almost all major consumer focused companies with a web presence, now have  a Twitter account.  They use this Twitter account to broadcast out a quick message to their customers about a particular event.  Think of the cost savings with this and the ability to reach a group of potential customers quickly.  One company that I follow is Geeks.com.  They continually send out “tweets” regarding sales and specials.  They are reaching a large number of people quickly and saving me time in that I do not have remember each day to visit their website or check my email to see what the special of the day is.

So, while Mashable thinks there is problem in the decline, I am not sure this is the case.  I think Twitter is maturing and usage is changing.  What Twitter needs to do, is continue to work on how to attract users and how to provide a service that serves the needs of an ever changing user base.