Google's Opening The Kimono? Two announcements in 24 hours from Google of note:

- Google has released a Windows application to keep Outlook and Google Calendar in sync.

- Google has finally released an API for Contacts in Gmail, allowing external applications to actually integrate directly, such as Plaxo, Yahoo Mail, Outlook, etc.

The former was initially received with heartfelt happiness, until the limitations were revealed: you can only sync a single calendar. In Google, you can subscribe to an infinite number of shared iCal feeds, and they appear in your Google Calendar as a separate color/calendar. However, they don't actually integrate into the Google Calendar, nor is there a way to merge them in. That means the only place they appear is within Google Calendar. This means that Google's Calendar sync is only as good as Plaxo's, and with less error handling. Harumph.

The Contacts API, however, is long overdue. Now, people can sync between their Gmail and apps like Facebook, Plaxo, Trillian, and even, conceivably, a client app for Outlook. Perhaps Apple will even consider adding the conduit to the sync choices in the iPhone 2.0 firmware update in June?

Keep going, Google: this is how you get more eyeballs, and more revenue.

Labels: Facebook, Google, Plaxo, Software

  ¶ 1:05 PM (0) comments links to this post

  One Site To Rule Them All All right, I'll admit it: I'm confused. In this last week, I have watch the "new media" bubble uncontrollably about two things:

- Sites that can monitor you and your friends' activities on all of the "cool" sites, like Flickr, Twitter, etc., and publish them in a feed.
- Google Calendar sync with Outlook.

In all of the mentions, barely a word was spoken about Plaxo. Why? Plaxo has been doing both of these things for quite some time, and has an important advantage over Netvibes, Spokeo, etc.: it already integrates with your address book, and gives users ancillary benefits of keeping their address books up to date.

Maybe it's the desperate air of "for sale" that was the reason; maybe it's Plaxo's old "bac'n" problem, but whatever it is, it's unreal. Why would you want to set up all of these additional sites, then convince your contacts to join them, then convince them to sync their online social life, when you can offer them one membership, with Google Calendar sync, and so much more?

Man, I hope whomever pumped the $ into Plaxo can see the goldmine they have.

Labels: Plaxo, social networks, Twitter, Web 2.0

  ¶ 12:52 PM (0) comments links to this post

  Pulse Goes Public Plaxo's Pulse continues to get better and better. Today, they became the first to use Google's Social Graph API. The result? A public "pulse" page, that you can control the content of, available to anyone, not just Plaxo users. Mine is up. Another perk? Pulse status updates now link with your Twitter account and vice versa: update one, the other is automatically updated.

The article I link to above actually does the best job yet of stating why Pulse is not a Facebook "me-too:"

"Plaxo's Pulse platform, mistakenly thought of by some as just another social network, is actually an attempt at an open version of the social web where sites inter-operate with each other. Currently Pulse supports integration with flickr, YouTube, digg, LiveJournal, Windows Live, del.icio.us, yelp, MySpace, webshots, last.fm, Pownce, xanga, tumblr, jaiku, twitter, smugmug, Yahoo 360, Picasa, and Amazon."

Gotta say, I hope Plaxo continues their trend, missteps and all, cause it's the way I believe social networking was meant to be. Catch me there...

Labels: Plaxo, social networks

  ¶ 2:01 AM (0) comments links to this post

  iPhone vs. Treo: This Time It's Personal Ok, gadget fans. With the acquisition of the iPhone, and a few days to play with it, it's time to revisit the "What's Stopping Me From An iPhone" post from last year and see what, if anything, has changed. The rules remain the same: rank each of the day to day functions I use(d) my Treo 680 to do on a scale of 1-10 and compare the score with the iPhone. Got it? Great, then let's get ready to rumble!

Contacts. My biggest concerns were how the iPhone, with it's lack of search functions, would handle the over 8K contacts I have. Verdict: not a problem. The flick of the finger interface is complimented by an "Add to Favorites" that makes it easy to distill the most important contacts. The speed of finding a contact is roughly the same as using the Treo, as the unreal lag of the Treo in searching such a large contacts database was about the same. I would still prefer a real search, but the elegant browse interface makes it more than tolerable.
Old score: Palm: 10, iPhone: 2.
New score: Palm: 8, iPhone: 6.

Calendar. My old review said: "as a view only for my Outlook data, it'd do the job...but that's it." Uh, not sure why I thought that; you can easily edit and create appointments with a very cool analog dial interface. And Outlook synchronization with iTunes is actually flawless. The only feature I miss is a very minor one: the ability to have different colors on the appointments, depending on the category. However, the graphical display is so much better, it more than makes up for it.
Old score: Palm: 10, iPhone: 3.
New score: Palm: 10, iPhone: 10.

Tasks. Well, no change here: the feature does not exist on the iPhone. However, to be fair, I have used a total of 10 tasks in the intervening months since I wrote the last review. I'd say that this is kind of a dead feature for me, but I'd still like to have it.
Old score: Palm: 5, iPhone: 0.
New score: Palm: 2, iPhone: 0.

Podcast Player. If anything, I was way too generous to Pocket Tunes for the Treo. Since that review, it has repeatedly had a problem with skipping and freezing: nothing intolerable, but compared to iTunes and the iPod experience, I can't believe I suffered so long.
Old score: Palm: 7, iPhone: 10.
New score: Palm: 5, iPhone: 10.

Music Player. Uh, ditto.
Old score: Palm: 6, iPhone: 10.
New score: Palm: 5, iPhone: 10.

Movie Player. Wow, the iTunes interface and the big iPhone screen makes a pretty dramatic difference. And no audio sync issues. The biggest change? In the Treo, all applications have a 1 pixel white border around the screen, but in the iPhone, it's all one gorgeous glossy black surface, making it extremely easy to immerse in the video. Of course, not everyone feels the same, including noted director David Lynch: (note: he drops the f-bomb in this clip, so not all that SFW):

I, however, disagree entirely, and am absolutely floored by the capabilities here. The difference between the two is the different between YouTube and HD: yes, you can watch video through either, but what a difference. And the iTunes interface for video podcasts, etc. makes a whole world come alive. The only downside? No DiVX/Xvid support, so I have to reconvert the movies I have. That's aggravating.
Old score: Palm: 7, iPhone: 10.
New score: Palm: 6, iPhone: 10.

Calculator. No change here: still a wash.
Unchanged score: Palm: 5, iPhone: 5.

eWallet. Here's the biggest pain point so far of the iPhone. The Treo offers seamless, encrypted local data access for all of my passwords, etc. The iPhone offers a web-based sorta-solution, but, while security is perfectly fine, getting the data in there is a pain if you are not using SplashID. Plus, I need that info ASAP, not just when I have a web connection. This is the single biggest pain point, and will hopefully be solved with the new SDK in February. There is some hope on the horizon: Ilium, makers of eWallet, are doing a web-based version, but I still want it locally.
Old score: Palm: 9, iPhone: 1.
New score: Palm: 9, iPhone: 3.

Memos. Notes on the iPhone don't sync with the PC. What the heck? Annoying. I can still get all of my Outlook notes through Plaxo's iPhone optimized web interface, but that's just aggravating. However, aside from taking notes in meetings, I really only used Memos for blogging. With the iPhone keyboard, that could be a problem. Still, that interface is SO sexy...
Old score: Palm: 6, iPhone: 5.
New score: Palm: 7, iPhone: 5.

Games.. Yep, it's just that bad. As noted before, sure there are web based ones, but they are all pretty primitive and foolish. The iPhone supposedly runs OSX; you're telling me I can't play games? I've seen Jailbroken iPhones playing a full Nintendo emulator; this HAS to be addressed.
Old score: Palm: 7, iPhone: 0.
New score: Palm: 7, iPhone: 1.

Email. Ok, hang on, here. First, the iPhone keyboard is no tactile Treo, but it's definitely getting better. But the iPhone's email client is...OK. It has some notable lacks:
1) The fact that you can't multiple delete items at once is simply silly.
2) It tries to configure POP email accounts through SSL by default; that's not a usual setting for most POP accounts.
3) It does a good job with Google, but, while there is a default set up for Yahoo, they don't tell you you need a Yahoo Plus! account for it to work.
4) Um...I have yet to successfully configure it for my office. I hear tell from coworkers that there is a way, but the lack of configuration option detail in the iPhone makes me concerned.
5) You can't save emails. Strangely, the iPhone has an interface to file emails, but only to Sent, Trash, or Inbox: you can't add a folder? Well, you can if you use Yahoo or IMAP, but it seems there is only a way to create folders through a Mac or iTunes (haven't even verified if this is possible yet). Only way to save them is to keep them as unread.

Look, this is simply unacceptable. I'm expecting a LOT more here. This will be fine for me to browse email while on the road, but to use as a laptop replacement as I did with the Treo? No way.
Old score: Palm: 8, iPhone: 5.
New score: Palm: 8, iPhone: 4.

Bluetooth. Pairing my Jawbone was painless, unlike the kind of kludgy way the Palm does it. Surprisingly, I don't miss the Bluetooth headphones: the volume on them was definitely not loud enough in my downhill bike runs, and they are a little big. Plus, the A2DP solution I was using was repeatedly failing, making me very frustrated. And let's not talk about the fact that the Treo was simply losing the ability to send the audio anywhere, especially with a Bluetooth headset. The iPhone earbuds, by contrast, are light, loud, and comfortable. I still hate wires, but it's not noticeable.
Old score: Palm: 8, iPhone: 4.
New score: Palm: 6, iPhone: 6.

Camera. I'm pleasantly surprised by the quality here: far better than I expected. And the UI is slick. I would prefer a one-touch button like the Treo, but it's workable.
Old score: Palm: 5, iPhone: 7.
New score: Palm: 5, iPhone: 8.

eReader. Ok, I'll admit it: I will miss this one. However, with the video capabilities and iTunes sync, I think I can find other distractions. Still, I REALLY want an iPhone eReader. On the other hand, I have been reading books on the Treo less and less, and more using Google Reader to keep up with blogs, etc, so the overall impact is much lower. Finally, Amy has a Kindle on the way, and I'm sure it will make my eReader look like stone tablets.
Old score: Palm: 7, iPhone: 0.
New score: Palm: 2, iPhone: 0.

Google Maps. iPhone has the edge right now, with a slick UI, but the lead will be getting better with the new firmware update, which adds cell tower triangulation to Google Maps.
Old score: Palm: 5, iPhone: 7.
New score: Palm: 5, iPhone: 8.

GPS. Hoo boy, this is a tough one. I REALLY love the idea of convergence devices: one device to do it all. However, with the Tro and GPS, there were...issues.
1) If a call came in while using the GPS, the Treo forgot to talk to the GPS unit while I am on the call on my Bluetooth headset. As a result, it doesn't update the map...real helpful.
2) Listening to podcasts while the GPS was on was pushing the Treo to it's limit. Lots of skips and stutters.
3) Like the rest of the Treo, the TomTom software sometimes forgot how to handle audio, so the voice would just...stop. No way to get it back.
Having said all of that, I still REALLY love the convenience of it, but I always had to take a power cord and the GPS unit (about the size of a pack of cigarettes); I might as well take a separate GPS. Still, hope is on the horizon for GPS on the iPhone, soon.
Old score: Palm: 9, iPhone: 0.
New score: Palm: 6, iPhone: 0.

Travel Tracker. Haven't touched it since TripIt allows iCal feeds of your itinerary. Why? I added it to my Google Calendar, and Plaxo picked up the changes, and added to my Calendar. Voila.
Old score: Palm: 5, iPhone: 6.
New score: Palm: 1, iPhone: 6.

The Web. I called this one perfectly: while the minimalist approach of Blazer helps on the Treo, Safari is a FAR superior experience. I wish it supported Flash, and yes, I wouldn't mind some 3G action when I'm out in the Bay, but WiFi everywhere else more than makes up for it.
Unchanged score: Palm: 5, iPhone: 9.

The final tallies:
Old scores: Palm: 124, iPhone: 81.
New scores: Palm: 100, iPhone: 91.

The interesting part here is that parity is much closer, not so much for the iPhone being better than I previously estimated, but for the Treo getting so much worse since the last time I did this exercise. Again, these results are massively subjective, but the gist is that, with some email improvements and the ability to have applications locally on the phone, the iPhone blows away the Treo. Until then, it's a close call. Business users probably want to stick to the Treo for a month or two more until the SDK starts yielding good applications. If you don't care so much about Blackberry type of emailing, it's a no brainer.

Labels: Apple, cell phones, Google Maps, iPhone, Palm, Plaxo, Treo

  ¶ 2:27 AM (0) comments links to this post

  Kicking the Outlook Habit As a professional with over 8K contacts and over 2K appointments, I am a hopeless Microsoft Outlook addict. However, as any power user of Outlook will tell you, it becomes massively bloated, slow as molasses, and utterly frustrating with even the slightest extended usage. Worse, there is no way to make it go back to even resembling a responsive application once the damage has been done. Why, then, you ask, do I continue to use it?

- It is still the best email application, with it's MS Word integration with the only true inline spell correct on the market.
- It is the defacto standard for corporate mail and appointment requests.
- It is the best all in one application.

However, like any Outlook power user, I have found that I need to add things on to it to make it usable. This is where it gets fun: each of those add-ons makes Outlook massively harder to use. For instance:

- Spam control. Outlook's spam filters are laughable. I could use our server's draconian spam controls, but would easily miss emails from my clients.
Instead, I happily subscribe to Cloudmark Desktop: for $5 a month, I get incredibly intelligent spam protection, with built in crowdsourcing from over half a million users. The first user who gets a spam email marks it as such in Outlook, using the Outlook-integrated Cloudmark Desktop. The next person does the same. If a few more do, every other person who gets that email will automatically have it thrown in the spam folder. Using Cloudmark, I went from over 100 emails a day I had to delete as spam to less then 2. It works, period.

- Syncing. I sync my contacts and tasks with Salesforce, so I can keep up with my organization's workload. I sync everything with Plaxo, so I can have my information synchronized across Google, Yahoo, etc. Until last week, I synced with Palm for my Treo. Each of these require a little add-on to Outlook.

- Lookout. Though no longer made, and no longer available (Microsoft acquired the company, and replaced it with the far more bloated Windows Search), it can still be found, if you know where to look for it. It adds a powerful search, Google-style, to Outlook that makes it easy to find any email or contact, ever, in your Outlook. Outlook's own built-in search is so woefully painful, Lookout is simply a must-have.

However, time has marched on, and ever so slowly, there have started to appear a crop of combinations that tempt me to finally break my Outlook addiction. First, let me say it: I would LOVE to switch to Gmail exclusively. The calendar functions are perfect (actually, superior to Outlook by far), and play nicely with Outlook meeting requests. Their email interface is incredibly powerful, with integrated Google search that is truly the gold standard, and their spam detection is incredibly good, with almost no errors. With Plaxo integration, it even satisfies most of my syncing habits. However, the biggest Outlook withdrawal I would feel is the lack of realtime inline spell correction. I've written about this before, but it amazes me still this hasn't been solved. I've recently given As-U-Type a more thorough try, and, with some tweaking of the settings, it actually seems to do what I want without annoying the hell out of me. So, it seems possible this might be my Methadone.

Syncing? Well, Plaxo does 50% of the work. However, it lacks 2 major sync points: Salesforce and my new iPhone. For Salesforce, the picture looks pretty bleak: while there are definitely tools coming to sync Salesforce's Calendar to Google Calendar, I have found nothing for the contacts. Ouch. Given the announced partnership between the two companies, I expected something, but so far it's only seemed to yield AdWords and Google Maps integration.

For the iPhone, the future looks much brighter. First, there is Yahoo Contacts syncing built into iTunes. However, it means either dealing with Yahoo's abominable mail interface (uh...can I actually see my mail, or are there only ads in there?), or ponying up $20 for a Yahoo Plus account. Alas, the Plaxo/Yahoo sync is offline for now, and importing my contacts from a CSV seemed to top out at 1K or so, leaving me with no contacts past the letter "C." Not a real confidence builder, but the built-in iTunes sync is pretty tempting...

Even better, GooSync offers over-the-air based synchronization of Google Calendars, for free, and it even works with the iPhone. A paid version gets you more bells and whistles, but, alas, still no contact syncing. The problem seems to lie with Google, not providing an API for Gmail Contacts like they do for Calendar. There are some promising developments coming, not the least of which is Apple's February release of the iPhone SDK, but there is also the tantalizing temptation of Funambol, which claims they will have an over-the-air mobile contact sync soon:

"Compatible with Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, AOL, Microsoft Outlook as well as other email systems, the software interfaces with the free myFUNAMBOL portal which stores the most up-to-date collection of your PIM data. By the end of this year, Funambol expect to have a basic, contacts-sync’ing version available."

For now, it appears I am still stuck sucking on the Outlook glass pipe while Google and Apple chortle at a new addiction they are cooking up. Hey, I'm open to ideas here: anyone??

Labels: Google, iPhone, lifehacks, Plaxo, Software

  ¶ 1:16 AM (4) comments links to this post

  Plaxo Users: Banned on Facebook Ouch. It appears Plaxo was attempting to expand their Pulse service by crosslinking data from Facebook users with their Plaxo ID's. Unfortunately, they chose to do this without Facebook's OK, and used an utility to "screenscrape" Facebook. Facebook was, understandably, a bit miffed and responded by banning the users of this new Plaxo service from Facebook, including noted journalist Robert Scoble. Ouch.

Labels: Facebook, Plaxo

  ¶ 12:49 PM (0) comments links to this post

  Spokeo: Pulse, without Plaxo As you may have noticed, I've been become more and more fascinated with the evolution of Web 2.0 to harness the "cloud" of the Web to make the online world more relevant. In other words, using the web to enhance the social nature of interactions. This hearkens back to my early days as a BBS sysop, and actually has the potential to make the web ubiquitous. I've been quite congratulatory towards Plaxo for recognizing one of the key tenets of this, the ability to automatically discover interactions, and display and classify them, in the form of Plaxo's Pulse, which gives you a "news feed" of what your connections are doing, all over the web. I've also mentioned that Plaxo sometimes, rightly or wrongly, gets a bad rap as being a Facebook imitator or worse, but I have to tell you, the Pulse is addictive: like all good "push" applications, it keeps you up to date on everything. But what if you could have Pulse, without Plaxo?

Enter Spokeo, which does exactly that. Enter your GMail, Yahoo, or other major mail service credentials, and it will scan your online address book, pull it down, and create a news feed of all of your contacts actions on the popular networks. Your college roommate posts some images to Flickr? Bam, there they are. Your old girlfriend Twitters on her canceled flight? Now you share her pain. That guy you went to high school with creates a new mix to listen to on Pandora? Tune in, and hear how Travis Tritt has invaded his taste. And so on.

Before you go all George Orwell, hang on: Spokeo only finds publicly accessible info on your friends. If your friend doesn't publicly publish their Twitter feed, for instance (ahem...Carlos???), you will have to authenticate before it can appear in your feed. If your Flickr account is inactive, for instance, it will denote as such. It uses a slick interface that neatly arranges your list of friends on the left, divided into those that have active and inactive accounts, and on the right is the latest activity from them all. You can drill down to the individual or service you want to see. The image to the right here is from my feed, today.

I've played around with it for a couple of days, and here's some observations:
- It's free.
- It's slow. They got slammed with a Techcrunch story that is pegging their servers, but hey, it's free.
- They seem to have a 1001 limit of friends, and it goes alphabetically by first name. For folks with over 8000+ contacts like me, that's a drag, since I get as far as friends with first names starting with "C," and that's it (sorry, Vasska; guess I'll just pick you up on Pulse). Pulse has that completely beat, with up to 10K.
- Their "spidering" of your Yahoo contacts seems flawed: it loses the first name of the contact, giving your contacts a fabulouso Hollywood "Madonna" one word name. ;-)
- Did I mention it's slow? Took almost 15 minutes to handle 1001 contacts, and pegged my CPU while it did it.
- It has one killer feature Pulse is missing: the ability to manually add any RSS feed to any contact. For instance, I could add the RSS feed for my corporate blog to my contact, and see new posts in that blog associated with me.

Overall, Spokeo, like Pulse, offers a glimpse into an entirely new way of perceiving the web: a personal feed. In many ways, this is a rudimentary first step to what my fellow high school alumnus, Nova Spivack, calls the "semantic web:" the ability to perceive not just data, but meaningful data. Overall, I still very much prefer Pulse, but if you are turned off by Plaxo for some strange reason, I encourage you to try Spokeo, and get hooked on what your friends are up to.

Labels: beta, lifehacks, Plaxo, reviews, social networks, Twitter, Web 2.0

  ¶ 10:36 AM (0) comments links to this post

  Netiquette 2.0 Back in the pre-Web 2.0, pre-Web 1.0, pre-World Wide Web, and even pre-AOL, there were Bulletin Board Systems (BBS): isolated archipelagos of folks who shared their interests in forums and chat rooms to the point of obsessiveness. Like any isolated culture, each BBS evolves its own feel, with folks naturally gravitating to a certain form of behavior. And all was good in the world.

In the late 80's/early 90's, BBS operators started to connect their BBS'. Suddenly, you had an influx of new users participating in forums, violating unspoken rules and taboos, and the first "flame wars" erupted. Longtime BBS users were turned off: their vibrant forums were descending into annoyance, and their primary goals of connecting with like-minded folks were being thwarted. BBS participation started to drop. What to do?

BBS system operators ("Sysops") saw the threat to their nascent network, precursors of today's Web, and decided to take action. They drafted a set of guidelines for participation, to help new users ("newbies"), as well as establishing a clear set of rules that sysops could enforce. This BBS etiquette, or "netiquette," usually governed personal contact or posting rules, and sysops warned and booted repeated violators. And all was well in the world...at least until that pesky Web sprung up and crushed those BBS' out of existence. ;-)

Fast forward to today's hottest Web properties, social networks, and you can see the exact same issues developing. Each of the major social networks evolved to address a particular niche:
- MySpace for music lovers and young teens
- Facebook for alumni and shared interest groups
- LinkedIn for business networking
- Plaxo Pulse for people you actually know

Each of these networks has seen their growth skyrocket when they open the service up and it drives hordes of new users to join. As those new users eclipse the old-timers, the unwritten rules get trampled. Facebook becomes a site for people to prospect for jobs. LinkedIn becomes a haven for recruiters. Plaxo becomes a bac'n generator (some would argue it already was). At this rate, folks will get turned off and stop using the system. Less usage=less eyeballs=less ad revenue, which leads to the end of the network, and the bubble bursts.

The other day, I received invites to connect from one person on Plaxo, Facebook, and LinkedIn, in a 24 hour period. I did not know this person, nor did I seem to have any affiliation with her. I made the error of accepting her Plaxo request. In looking at her Pulse, I saw she was connecting with dozens of people an hour, all unrelated. Because her background was excellent, and seemed a pro, I emailed her, to tell her the negative effect she was having on me, in case others felt the same. She replied with offense and hostility, and, in a huff, told me she wouldn't want to connect to me anyway. I responded back, with a short comment, explaining again that I respected her background, and simply wanted her to understand the potential detrimental effect she was having for employment prospects. Mollified, she explained that my "old school" attitude was simply out of date, and I could simply decline her invite. And you know what? She was right: my unwritten understanding was not the same as hers, and the social networks do very little to enforce it.

Another example: I have been using Twitter for some time now for communicating my status. Because of the rise of the popularity of Facebook, with it's status updates, I decided to consolidate my updates: start at Facebook, and have them automatically syndicate to Twitter. About a month later, I received a note from a coworker who is also on Facebook, suggesting I should tone down the frequency of my status updates, since there were so many business contacts on Facebook who might be overwhelmed. Sure, I could have pointed out that they could simply turn off the status updates, but he's right: again, my "old school" understanding of the purpose of Facebook belies what it may have evolved into. The direct result? I participate far less on Facebook than before, keeping to Twitter, and relying on Plaxo to pick up and syndicate my info to people I actually want to communicate with. Less Facebook visits means less ads, less eyeballs...

It's time for Netiquette 2.0. Each network needs to clearly outline the goals and objectives for the participants, and start to police the adherence of the members. Stalkers on MySpace? Terminate with extreme prejudice. Recruiters on Facebook? You're fired. Unknowns on Plaxo? Exiled. You get the idea. The key is that Sysops need to be recruited and unleashed to identify, and then let the population decide the fate.

When the Wall St. Journal advocates mining Facebook for employment, we know the network is at risk. Let's use history to help save it.

Labels: Facebook, Plaxo, social networks, Web 2.0

  ¶ 11:04 AM (1) comments links to this post

  ConnectQuakes It starts with an innocuous blog post about a social network doing something cool. Then, it's followed by a namedrop in the office of the latest cool new social network. Your email inbox starts to waft the familiar aroma of bac'n. Curiosity piqued, you follow the link, and sign up, and before you know it...you've triggered a ConnectQuake(TM).

What is a ConnectQuake? I'm coining the term, so here's my definition: it's the explosion of connections on a social network that causes your network to grow exponentially. You sign up, invite a few friends. One of those friends signs up, and connects with other folks. You see the connections they've made, and you connect to the connections, and before you know it, the Richter scale needle is jerking like a Blackberry power user who's got no cell signal.

Take Plaxo Pulse, for instance. I continue to maintain that they are the one social network that will become the standard, primarily because of their embracing of the already-proliferating feeds and publishable components from the sites you already use. When Pulse first launched, a couple of months ago, I got a lot of "Oh no, not another social network Facebook-wannabe" responses from the invites I sent. I linked those naysayers to my blog post on why Plaxo is better than Facebook, and a few of them changed their minds. A selected few embraced it, and I saw they connected with dozens more. Now, I see almost a hundred updates of people connecting to each other in my network, and their extended network, as I connect to their connections. A full-on ConnectQuake.

Some of these ConnectQuakes have aftershocks: connections of connections come on, and one person gets REALLY into it, adding dozens of new connections. Some of them are like the typical Bay Area quakes: sharp jolts that quickly stop, after the initial connections (think Tom on MySpace, or Kevin Smith on Facebook). Some are downright exasperating (like this guy Jacques Pats-Nouguès on Plaxo). But most ConnectQuakes are undulating waves, with your connections adding about 10 or so people, with a few more over the next week, and a subsequent few degrees of separation connecting. They're fun to see happen, and amazing to watch the needle move.

So, don't fear the quake. Connect with it.

Labels: Facebook, Plaxo, Web 2.0

  ¶ 2:22 AM (0) comments links to this post

  Reason #471 Facebook drives me crazy Why, oh why, does Facebook make things so difficult? For instance, in the last week, I discovered that I could post these blog entries directly to "My Notes" in Facebook by harvesting the RSS feed. How did I discover this? The easy to use walkthrough of Facebook when you sign up? Oh, that's right: doesn't exist. Ah, the helpful tips email Facebook sends? Um, no...that's not anywhere. Perhaps the "We noticed you are not using function X..." note from Facebook they sent me? Er...no, that's my imagination again. No, I learned about this from (sigh) Plaxo Pulse, as I was prompted to hook up yet another feed to my Plaxo Pulse profile and they'd take care of everything else, so you get great things like this:


Now, take the Facebook Photos application, for instance. You create a new album, and you get this:


"Location:" what the heck is that? Hyperlinked for easy help, or a tool tip on mouseover? Nope. Ah, the ever helpful (hidden) Help link in the bottom right. Ok, let's click on it. What do we get? Standard help landing screen. After some navigation, we get to the help for Facebook Photos...and the helpful details are:


Um...where's the explanation for Location? Can I link to a photo on my website, or is that for flagging the location where the photo was taken? Nothing.

This type of poor quality and unintuitive use drives me bonkers. Hey, I'm fine with 3rd party apps replacing Facebook's own, especially if they HAVE documentation or are intuitive; just don't foist poor quality versions on me by default. With the Open Social or Plaxo approach, you simply don't have these problems: you use the apps of your choice, and are directed to them for you to automatically build your profile.

From the exponential growth I have seen in Plaxo Pulse in the last 2 weeks, and the Open Social alliance, it seems I am not alone at recognizing that Facebook's limitations are quickly getting exposed. Time to take some of that warchest and spend it on divesting the anchors that will keep it in place, while others zoom past.

Labels: Facebook, Plaxo, Software

  ¶ 12:50 PM (0) comments links to this post

  I'm Not Dead It only looks that way. Work has been brutal, but the end is nigh: I have hired two new staff members, and one has already started. With trips to Chicago and NY coming up, the extra help could not have come at a better time. I've also been logging a lot of biking and other fun exercise, so blogging (and calls to my mother, father and friends) have suffered. I've been reduced to Facebook status updates and occasional snippets...but hopefully, I'll be back in a regular publishing groove soon.

I owe a big post on Plaxo, as they worked through my issues to get me fully working. And man, is it sweet. Look for it shortly. I also need to point out the best PC deals ever in the Dell Outlet; top of the line PC's for under $400. Plus my recent solution for podcasts on the Treo, syncing with iTunes. And that's not mentioning my recent transition to Skype. And finally, a review of Madden 08 on the Wii: the results will surprise you.

For now, I leave you with an image of the coolest steampunk PC mod ever, courtesy of Brass Goggles. Look for the above posts soon!

Labels: blogs, Facebook, games, lifehacks, Madden, Plaxo, steampunk, VOIP, Wii, work

  ¶ 10:25 PM (0) comments links to this post

  Twitter, meet Facebook A short while ago, I blogged about the overwhelming and, in my opinion, unjustified hype about Facebook. My opinion still remains the same: Facebook is still way too much of a closed network to take advantage of many of the obviously better properties of Web 2.0. It does have one effective by product, however: all that hype is driving critical mass. That means more people will use Facebook than other, more elegant solutions. It also means they don't have to embrace open standards: they can command a large enough audience to force other sites to create Facebook "applications" and include them in their buried infrastructure, as that's where the eyeballs are.

Take status updates, for example. Twitter seems to be waning in popularity, as Facebook is waxing. Sure, Facebook status updates are there, but they lack the sheer usability of Twitter. Can I get SMS updates of my friends' status messages? Who knows: on Facebook, you might be able to, but it's infinitely harder than Twitter. Still, that's where the eyeballs are. Do I have to update both??

Maybe not. Like Twitter, I can update my status in Facebook through SMS, albeit a bit kludgier. In a typical Facebook move, you can get an RSS feed of your status updates, though locating it takes at least 3 levels deep. With the addition of a free service called Twitterfeed and some pretty convoluted configuration, you can theoretically have your Facebook status periodically update your Twittering.

This type of hack is reminiscent of other similar techniques employed in the past by frustrated users of closed network systems, chafing at the bit. Remember Prodigy? AOL? CompuServe? The one thing we have learned is that, to survive and thrive, no community can be an island. Sure, Facebook is the belle of the moment, but they had better sell soon, before the rising critical mass deserts them for the next big thing. The most frustrating part is that they should know this: MySpace was so closed network that even the fickle teens cast it aside for Facebook, once they opened membership.

So, I'll keep using Facebook, as that's where the people are, while finding every crack I can to make it open and hope for the rise of Plaxo's Pulse. Enjoy this Facebook hack, hopefully the first of many.

Labels: Facebook, Plaxo, Twitter, Web 2.0

  ¶ 9:04 PM (0) comments links to this post