Browser vs Desktop Apps

I’ve been using Twhirl for quite awhile now but I keep finding myself going back and forth from using Twhirl to using Twitter, Pownce, Identi.ca, and Friendfeed in the browser. In the end, the browser is what I use the most so why use something like Twhirl or even Alert Thingy. Those 2 Adobe Air apps are very nice and stable but that’s not the point.

People are going to use web services in whatever they use the most whether it be the browser or desktop apps. Desktop apps have their place for a lot of people but while I used to be in that camp I most likely won’t be anymore. If I had a true dual monitor setup I’d stay with desktop apps, but I don’t, and I’m not.

Is it really a matter of convenience, or is it the other way around?

Web Services … and why I like FriendFeed

I’ve been using a lot more services online lately. I’ve been using Gmail but in either IMAP or POP3 since that inception and now I’m back to using the WebMail Notifier Firefox extension since it’s been updated for Firefox 3 (due for final release soon!) and accessing all my email online. I’ve been using Twitter for a little over a year, and I’ve signed up for Pownce to support Kevin Rose and his online efforts. And now FriendFeed comes into focus. It’s basically an aggregator. It allows you to pool Twitter, Pownce, blog rss, Netflix Queue, Last.fm, and many other services output into one single place. Is this really needed? I think so, especially if you want one place for people to comment on all your online activity.

Twitter is so addictive , Pownce is a lot fun and I’ve met a lot of really fun people in both. I really enjoy using FriendFeed to bring it all together. I use Twhirl as my desktop twitter client of choice and it also has FriendFeed support which makes it easy to keep up with both.

Web services are the glue that’s going to keep the internet going in the years ahead. Email might have been the internet’s first killer app, but web services/communication tools such as Pownce, Twitter and the new Plurk. will be the way forward for personal internet communications in the future. So in a sense, I want to be future proof. On the other hand, Robert Scoble (@scobleizer) mentioned recently that he’s following 25,000 people on Twitter which accounts to one tweet a second. Maybe being totally future proof on the internet isn’t such a good idea after all.

Twitter – JohnBfromTN

Pownce – JohnBfromMemphis

FriendFeed – JohnBfromMemphis

Plurk – JohnBfromMemphis

Seesmic – JohnBfromTN – look to the sidebar for all my seesmic posts! :)

… and more to come soon

Why I can’t stand Facebook

excerpt from WebWare …

“Now that Google has launched Friend Connect, we’ve had a chance to evaluate the technology,” the post by Facebook employee Charlie Cheever read. “We’ve found that it redistributes user information from Facebook to other developers without users’ knowledge, which doesn’t respect the privacy standards our users have come to expect and is a violation of our Terms of Service.”

So you were going to violate your own terms of service? You complain about privacy issues when Beacon (your own creation) originally was a very not-so-easy opt out, and that was only after the entire internet screamed in extreme outrage. Hypocrisy isn’t going to get me to come back to you. You should have left Beacon on the shelf from the get go. After all the “are you naked” invites I received on my facebook profile from some guy also located here in Memphis, even after I removed the app; I don’t think I’ll ever be going back to Facebook. What a name. And no, I didn’t ask for all the “Are You Naked” invites either. I don’t think I would be making this blog post if I “had asked for it”. BMSMA!