Holy Crap, Friendfeed is taking over!

This may be a little bit of an overstatement, but from the talk of nearly EVERYONE over the last two weeks, Friendfeed is the next big thing. So far I’ve noticed Robert Scoble, Dave Winer, Fred Wilson, and Techcrunch comment on it, and I’m sure I’ve missed or dismissed many other bloggers commenting on Friendfeed.

What my understanding of Friendfeed is, is a one stop shop for all of your information needs. Tired of having to check out your Twitter, RSS reader, delicious, etc. accounts to get all of the latest news? Now all you have to do is join friendfeed, which amalgamates all of your friends twitter/blog/everything else together so you can get updated on everything they are doing, but in the same spot.

Besides the incredible benefits and A-lister recommendations, why is Friendfeed so good? For many reasons really. One of which, is their commitment to the user. Fred Wilson had a little bit of beef with a few aspects on Friendfeed, and so created a list of things they would like changed. Shortly after he received an email from one of the founders of Friendfeed saying he had passed the list around to the employees of the company, and they liked them and immediately began working on them. Now that is customer service.

Also, Dave Winer has been very impressed with the fact that Friendfeed has done a lot of work, and relatively quickly, dealing with Twitter users on Friendfeed. Although Twitter may be an acquired taste, people who use Twitter demand that it works well on Friendfeed. Friendfeed has worked very hard in making this possible.

Thats all for now I guess.

Cheers,

David McKenna

Classroom Twittering

I was just reading one of Mike Arrington’s blog posts on Twitter about how Twitter can be used in classrooms for reminders of whats going on in class. An example was if there was a test or assignment due the next day in class, Twitter could be used for a friendly reminder.

Would this be possible in our class or is it going too far? I haven’t yet used Twitter, only read about it, so would it be too much of a hassle to try a class Twitter blog that everyone could Twitter too?

Just a thought.

Also, just a side note, one of Robert Scoble’s post called “Diapers that Twitter when they are dirty…” referred to a post written by Phillip Torrone called “HOW TO – Make plants talk! [...]“, which, in a sense, does exactly that.  He has been able to hook up a device to plants that will Twitter your “twitter blog” (for lack of knowing the right term), when they need to be watered.  If this is possible, almost anything could be possible.  Can you image how Blackberry addicts would use this.  They’d get twittered for just about anything.  I can’t wait to be one:P

Cheers,

David McKenna

RE: Has Facebook’s Death Spiral Begun

I read the article that Dave posted with regards to Facebook’s Death Spiral, which reminded me of two posts I had read.

The first is by Erick Schonfeld, which talks about  how the US users of facebook has leveled off.
 
Erick predicts that the US usage of Facebook has leveled off because of “friend spam”.  This could very well be.  I know personally that my Facebook usage has decreased with becoming bored with the applications that has made Facebook popular.  They were a novelty when I first joined, however like many things people get bored.

Another post, this one by Robert Scoble,  talks about what I has just said.  Boredom.  Also, there has been many people being kicked off of facebook because of dumb reasons.  Scoble talks about a guy in France that was kicked off of facebook for simply messaging his friends.  Now I don’t know if that’s all the guy was doing but still.

In a post by Adam Ostrow, Facebook’s usage in Europe is growing very fast.
 
This could be just because Facebook is just getting caught on in Europe.  So this bags the question.  Will Facebook level off in Europe as well?  Who knows.  There are many things that different cultures embrace that other cultures do not.  The asian community has usually more technologically advanced gadgets than other continents, and then when we finally have it in North America, China/Japan/and Korea already have better gadgets.

So.  Do you think that Facebook will be a thing of the past here in North America? Or globally?

–Jerry 

Obsolete Skills

A s I was sitting in front of my computer, anxiously awaiting the birth of our second child, who is due in less than 3 weeks. However, my wife feels that it will be at any moment. Our first daughter was born about 2.5 weeks before the due date and who am I do disbelieve my wife and that our next child will be early as well. I was reading through out required blogs and came upon Robert Scoble’s Obsolete Skills.  It got me to thinking that a lot of the things that I had done has a child and an adult, my children will never have to do or even know what they were. As I read, I realized that of the 11  he had compiled in his list, I had done 8 of them and the other 3 were being done when I was younger. Not to outdate the rest of the class I was born the year when the Amazin Mets won the World Series and the NHL only had 12 teams. I then started wracking my brain on other things that have become obsolete, here’s a list of the some that I have come up with;

1. Playing cool Atari games, like Pac-Man and Asteroids.

2. Looking up places in an atlas.

3. Using encyclopedias for reports.

4. Using a dictionary.

5. Learning multiplication tables.

6. Using mail order catalogues.

7. Banking with an actual teller.

8. Rewinding a cassette tape with the end of a pencil.

9. Using 35 mm film.

10. Using the word GOTO when programming.

After coming up with my list I went to the website Obsolete Skills and found there was a list that was compiled of obsolete technologies.

A lot of these I have never done and will never do, the question that remains is in 20 years time what things we currently do will become a part of this list. Cellphones? Fax Machines? Blogging? Who knows but I’m sure these new advances especially in technology will better our children’s lives, like they have helped to enhance our daily lives. Or have they?

Tony

American Technology Sucks!

Wow, I read Scoble’s blog post about Engadget, which is a tech toy creator in China. Some of these toys are unbelievable. I’ve only briefly looked over the Engadget website, but from the three things shown in a video that Scoble showed, I want to know this company better! It seems their technology is greatly outpacing our own. I have been told this is the case, but I cannot believe to what extent. They actually have a pen-like scanner that can read books for you!

I think anyone who has an interest in the latest tech toys (*cough* Tony *cough*) should look into more of what Engadget has to offer.  P.S. They scanner is only $70 US.

Microsoft may have the last laugh on HD-DVD

After reading Scoble’s post on the latest technological war between Toshiba’s HD-DVD(Microsoft) and Sony’s Blu-ray. It appears Microsift was throwing their weight(plus the 150 million dollars each alleged to have changed hands to woo Universal and Paramount) to the HD-DVD supporters. However last week before the CES last week in Las Vegas, Warner dropped a bombshell and announced that they were going to switch support in favor of Blu-ray exclusively. This caused Toshiba to cancel their press conference last Sunday and was mentioned very little in Bill Gates last opening speeech at CES. IMHO I don’t think Microsoft was really wholeheartedly supporting Toshiba, they(Bill) always appears to be ahead of everyone else and could see theat the future would be with digital downloads. If they were a staunch supporter they would have a contingency plan if something like this happened and would have tried to keep Warner on the fence to prolong this further so they could be the one to offer this world wide. Although there are still some concerns with the download speed, price and the ability to make a backup copy have to be addressed. I believe that the XBOX already provides the ability to download movies. Although I’ve jumped on the bandwagon and declared Blu-ray the winner, I own a PS3. Oh well, I hope I picked the right side but who knows a few years down the road HD movies may  die the death like so many other before it such as; vinyl, 8 – track (for those who know what that is), casette, cd, VHS(who remembers the loser Beta) and DVD. Technology advances so quickly and there is always something out there that makes previous mediums obselete, just the nature of the beast that we know as technology.