distractions and connections galore
I've been trying out some new sites lately and while some have stuck, others have just not quite done it for me -- here is a small roundup of them and some basic notes.
This site is amazing in its simplicity: you just update what you are doing and it does the rest. Once you have some friends setup you can follow them and then their status updates will be saved for you, or if you choose, they will be sent to your cell phone or Jabber ID. Very slick. They even score points by having an API available to allow you to send/receive updates. I've already created a weather update script that sends my local weather and others have created desktop apps that allow you to monitor Twitter from other than the browser.
This site is slick, and I do mean slick in the useful way, not in the hide-your-wallet way :) Basically think of this as a power todo site that understands what your typing and updates as you type. You can just start typing the note or task and it will pluck out information based on keywords and patterns. Items like dates, tags, email addresses, links, etc. -- all you need to do is type, review and save. If the entry you create has dates, then it becomes a calendar item, otherwise it's a task item and so on. You can review the tags, calendar, lists or "peeps" (what they call contacts).
There is even a javascript bookmarklet that lets you start a stikkit based on the page you are currently viewing.
This site is sub-titled "everyone's related" and that give you the bit of info you need to realize it's an online Geneolog app. Very web 2.0 and all ajaxy :) The site makes it very easy to enter people information and start setting up relationships and one of the things I really like is that you are prompted for a small amount of info to start with and then you can drill-down to add to it. Keeps you moving without bogging the interface down in all those data fields that can be a burden to the UI.
Any serious geneology person is muttering to themselves right now about not having those fields, but settle down - they are still present, just not in the initial data entry form. Sure, it's not Family Tree Maker or the like - but it does have all of the essential items and handles those odd-ball family links that are present in any family if you go back enough generations :) The one thing that impresses me about this app is that it makes sharing the task of editing/adding data to a familty tree very distributed. Anyone who you mark as a family member has the ability to edit the info within the bounds you set.
This one may not take me away from my own data files as I've spent over 8 yrs with my mom getting all of it in and I still have two boxes of notes to go thru - but I'm going to be keeping an eye on it for sure.
Now this site I actually found before Twitter but didn't really use it because it focused on using the web interface for updates and that quickly became an issue as I tend to hide my browser windows unless I'm researching something. Twitter on the other hand, allowed me to use my IM client (Adium) to send updates.
Jaiku does presence information a lot better than Twitter, heck to be honest Twitter doesn't do presence unless you include that in the text. While Jaiku allows you to actually update a text field with your presence info and it has a silly little icon that can give extra meta-info. But's that the rub, you have to click around to set the presence info and it's all on the web.
As soon as Jaiku added the ability to allow updates from what it calls "Web Feeds" the solution became very clear: let Jaiku poll Twitter for updates and then I can just use Twitter for both. Simple enough solution for me, but I'm sure it's not at all what the Jaiku people were hoping for.
This is a site that I just "discovered" (thanks to Peter Saint-Andre) today. It looks to be an XMPP (aka Jabber) based Firefox extension that allows for your web presence to be updated and for you to receive any other me.dium users who are visiting the same website. All in real-time. Very creepy but also very interesting. The forum entries show discussions from the developers that they are very aware of privacy issues and are taking great pains to restrict what info is sent.
More later once I've used it for a bit and get more of a feel for the service.
Summary
All of the above seem to be pointing to a more connected and "live" social scene - much more so than what Ookles, MySpace and others offered in the tired, old web 1.0 days ;) It remains to be seen how much actual use I get from them or do they turn into a source of distractions like TV became and I make the same decision I did years ago: to turn the thing off and read a book :)