Out for beta: Newsgator Online. Try it!

Somebody has been *reading* my mind (pun intended).

About 1 month ago I switched blog readers from the tragically out of date bloglines to Newsgator’s online service.  My reason for switching was purely subjective.  I felt that any service that won’t update and improve its service doesn’t deserve my attention.  All self-importance allocation aside, bloglines web 1.0 just bummed me out, it was not fun to look at, although it was fast.

I settled on Newsgator (nice UI, Colorado company, etc…) and made the switch.  My only beef with the service was the slow load time of the feed summaries.  I’m not an impatient guy, but they were really slow.

Today I saw Greg’s posting (ok, i’m a bit behind) and immediately switched to the beta.  MUCH BETTER!  Newsgator, thanks for reading my mind.

The Best Windows Machine Ever Built*

Without blatantly dating myself, I was once the source of envy (happened once) in college. My freshman year I had the greatest computer, a Macintosh. While it was not new to the market, it was safe to say that most students at the University of New Hampshire did not have access to one. I was in a crowd of one (as far as I know); a non-CS major, I was viewed with some degree of awe (again, a unique collegiate experience for me) that I had the inclination to learn how to use one.

While most people were using typewriters (remember those?) a fairly strait forward processing program allowed me to hunt/peck my way through any paper.

Fast forward, grad school, work world, bye-bye Apple. Life dictated adherence to Windows OS. I bought lots of grey boxes, both desktop and laptop. Windows OS got bigger, slower, and quite frankly a bloated mess of software overkill.

The title of this blog is a direct quote from David Cohen* (minus the quotes), so I can’t take credit for the origin. I can, however, take note that I am part of a growing number of people making a switch.

Give me a clean OS, visually appealing with lots of great features that I care about, not some engineer  (oh look, how exciting, excel has more cells).  Please give me a platform that works with my entire life, not just my work life.  Make it fun to use, it needs to run PowerPoint, Excel, and Word.  If you make it grey, please make it look somewhat cool.

The best Windows machine ever built? My Powerbook G4.

Twitter and Micro Attention

Just heard Evan Williams discuss Twitter.

I must admit, the jury is still out for me regarding wide acceptance of Twitter. For those that haven’t heard, Twitter is a mash of dodgeball, IM, and a blog that is designed to answer the question “What are you doing”?

At SxSW Twitter made quite a stir (techies + booze + music + wireless devices = FUN).  Apparently Twitter acted as a self reporting geo-locator.  I heard one podcaster say it was like high school: trying to figure out whose parents are out of town and have the best booze :-p

While I was considering how Evan plans to make money on Twitter (If I can track him down I’m going to ask him) it dawned on me that Twitter is a good tool to self report and parse out information in a micro attention social interface and easily digestible (albeit constantly interrupting) manner. It may in fact be the next evolutionary step for blogging.

Blogging tends to be a stream of consciousness, topically driven (at least at first).  Twitter limits user input by a 140 character cap.  This mandates pith.  And judging by the comments on Evan’s friends, it dramatically changes the nature of what is being shared among a friend network.  While we listened, updates flashed across his screen like: eating an orange, late breakfast, I HATE PHOTOSHOP,  checking emails now.  One guy even used his post to announce that he updated his blog.  Guess he doesn’t trust RSS.

 Stan James CTO of lijit has a different angle.

Blogging from the ICWSM in Boulder

Talk about being in heaven!

Currently at the ICWSM in Boulder.  Amazing speakers.  Will follow up with updates as it progresses.