Social sites are all the rage these days. How many of your friends have invited you to Facebook, Myspace, or some other social site guaranteed to keep you “in the know” about all of the people you care about? Most of my friends now have Myspace accounts. A lot of them have recently discovered Facebook. I have to admit that the poor design quality of the social sites (since most allow user-edited design) drives me up the preverbal wall. However, it is nice to be able to keep up with all my friends on a regular basis. Some of my friends that are on these social networks do not check their email often or run any type of instant messaging client. Therefore, the only way to really get in touch with them is to catch them on one of these sites or ,dare I say, “call” them.

One of my complaints with the instant messenger realm is that most of these clients are closed source and do not play well together. Over the years different companies have tried to force an all-in-one client that does mostly everything that the individual clients do. The problem is, this rarely works out well. It is aggravating to be using Miranda or Trillian and have a friend ask you why you cannot “ping” them, or some other stupid IM term. You want to tell them that it is because they are using a stupid closed source program. However, you refrain…most of the time. I would like to see companies begin to use more open platforms for their clients. Google did this when they based their Gtalk client off of the Jabber protocol. If you haven’t noticed yet, I am a fan of Google.

Have you been introduced to the newest rage in Web 2.0? Well, it may not be the newest rage for everyone, but I have noticed a lot of people doing it. It is the mini-blog. From Wikipedia.org:

A tumblelog is a variation of a blog, that favors short-form, mixed-media posts over the longer editorial posts frequently associated with blogging. Common post formats found on tumblelogs include links, photos, quotes, dialogues, and video. Unlike blogs, this format is frequently used to share the author’s creations, discoveries, or experiences without providing a commentary.

These mini-blogs, or micro-blogs as some call them, are easy to manage and yet tell your friends much about you and what you do with your time and energy. I have an account with twitter, jaiku, and tumblr. Have you noticed that Web 2.0 (which simply means the “new” web) drops the “e” out of the name. I am sure all the English teachers are big fans of this.

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Filed under: Interesting Links, Internet, Personal by Philip Williams