After two years of online interactions I finally met certain Geneva twitter users. The tweetup took place at the Bristol Hotel in Geneva. There was a good group of people and they were what you would exepect from a tweetup. It was organised by bristolgva and here is some of the related twitter conversation linked to the event.
For a while I have been looking for an external feedreader for reading the items collecting and stagnating in google reader. Yesterday I came across Newsrack and what I like is that it syncs instantly with the online version. As a result I can read the feeds on the macbook air when I am at home and out and about or I can read the feeds in browser when I am at work.
What makes the situation in Cairo so interesting is the number of media outlets that you can use as sources. From 24 hour news channels like France 24, Al Jazeera, BBC World and others to individual people with mobile phones. For France 24 you have three languages to chose from, with Al Jazeera to you have three languages to chose from. With Sky News you have the choice between Standard definition and High definition.
Remember Jaiku? it’s that site that was compared to twitter and behaved like friendfeed before friendfeed existed. Over the last two days activity has increased on that site as at least twenty people go back to communicating on the site. It’s a throw back to a community that had been quite lively. Online communities are funny in the way they cluster back to a place where they used to be. It’s like a migration but of an electronic kind.
Glympse is a real time location software that allows you to share your location with twitter, facebook, by e-mail or via a number of other social networks. It is simple and intuitive to use. Connect your facebook, twitter and other services with the application. When you are heading to work or to the mountains for a ski trip you can start to share your location in real time. You can set the amount of time that the location is shared.
Disclaimer: These are thoughts, rather than a well structured post. Ridley Scott wants your user generated videos for a film “A Day on Earth” and whilst people are hyping this idea as something new the concept is an old one. Dziga Vertov had an idea that he would capture Life Unawares. Eventually he would end up with an experiment in six reels called “The Man with the Movie camera”. It’s aim was to show Soviet Russia as it was.
Once again I have deleted my twitter account. Here are ten reasons to give up on twitter. 1. Europe is neutral about the site. If you want friendships with people an ocean away join. 2. Whenever you want to post some technical problem means you have to post five times 3. If you have a real job, not freelancing, then you can’t afford to check updates all the time. 4. Lack of user engagement, when less than a tenth of your replies are responded to you know there’s no point staying up to date with those people.
Designers must understand that user interface as well as ease of use are the two most important features of any electronics device. The more intuitive the device the more likely people are to keep using it. As a first generation Ipod touch user and an iphone 3gs owner I see the value of simple, intuitive confident design. Looking at the itablet (ipad) what I see in this design are three key qualities, ergonimcs, ease of use and versatility.
We’ve all got smartphones. Some of us are using Nokia, Â others are using blackberries and yet more are using Android and Iphones. As a result when we interact with people we are not interacting with them from a desk somewhere in a building. We’re interacting with them from the middle of the street or on public transport. As the shift from computers to mobile devices gains momentum we will be meeting more and more people this way.
Paul W. Swansen - Mar 3, 2009
Unfortunately this is an Adobe AIR application which don’t seem to work on either my Intel iMac or my Netbook.
So far it’s been working fine for me. Not sure what’s breaking Adobe air on your system.