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Posts Tagged → Pownce

June 7th, 2008

My New Favorite Toy

I speak about social networking quite often and have raved about Facebook, Twitter, among others and more recently about Friendfeed.  When I first signed up for it a couple weeks ago, I really did not see the attraction but in keeping with my sign up for everything new attitude I signed up.  If you are unsure of what Friendfeed is all about, it is basically a feed of all of your social networks in one spot.  There are nearly 35 different social networks plus your personal blogs.  At first it seemed full of disorganized text and not really useful.

Since I use Twitter all the time, it shows my Twitter messages (Tweets) almost instantaneously.  I noticed one day that people had commented to my Twitter messages on Friendfeed page.  It allows people who are not on Twitter to respond to my Twitter messages, plus Pownce, Del.icio.us, Flickr, GTalk, Stumbleupon, Facebook, Blogs, and a ton of other services.  I have come to spend a considerable amount of time on Friendfeed to see and respond to people from 30 plus systems at once.

How nice it is to have a laptop with wifi because we have family staying with us this weekend and I can still get on the computer without waking up the family.  This morning I can hear the wind howling again this morning.  Anyway, back on topic…  I am amazed at how much news and information I can find in one place like I can on Friendfeed.  It is interesting how people post their comments about news stories,  happenings, and their events on what ever service they choose and I can read it all in one place and respond.  Sometimes I send a Twitter post from my cell phone and I get responses on Friendfeed.  Yes I know, I am a sucker to a new toy on the Internet.  Even this blog post will show up on my Friendfeed page.

Another cool feature that friendfeed has is the “rooms” feature.  You can create a room about any specific topic and people can join it and it keeps all posts related to this subject in one central location making the conversation easier to follow.  I know I am addicted again but it is really a lot of fun.  I hear rustling in the house so I think others are awake so I will send this and go see the family.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: Friendfeed, Twitter, Flickr, StumblUpon, Facebook, Gtalk, Del.icio.us, Pownce, Blog, Paul L. McCord Jr.

By Paul • Posted in Friendfeed, Internet, Technology, opinion • Comments
May 26th, 2008

Twitter!

In a funny attempt to get seen on Techmeme, Michael Arrington posted a one word blog post on Techcrunch last night and it has spread across the Internet.  That one word post was…

“Twitter!”

This post was though meant to be a joke, actually made it on Techmeme, along with about every other tech hobbyist’s site including mine.  I wasn’t sure exactly what it was about until I read his Twitter page.  I would not have posted about it myself except that I love Twitter.  This Memorial Day weekend was a perfect example of how wonderful Twitter is.  We went to Lake Eufaula this weekend to visit with my father in-law.  Although I did have a great time, I was missing my connected life with the Internet.  Even on the third floor of his house, I could not receive any wifi at all.  I felt like a smoker trying to survive the first day of no smoking.  At least I could send and receive Twitter messages through SMS on my cell phone.  Even at the water I could stay in touch with those friends that I have online.  Call me an Internet Junkie but this started way before the Internet.  As a ham radio operator of 25 years, I have been accustomed to communicating to remote places.  Now that the Internet has so many communication tools, it fits right in with me.

As always, you can follow me and my happenings by following my Twitter page.  These tools are becoming so widespread that more and more aggregate readers are coming along.  The newest one that seems to be the rage is Friendfeed.  With this new toy, it creates a news feed with all your Twitter, Pownce, Facebook, Youtube, Flicker, Tumblr, among others.  It is pretty nice as you can see my Friendfeed page here.  With Friendfeed, you can keep in touch with all the social actions a person makes on the Internet.  It seems to be pretty cool.  My favorite is still Twitter because of the SMS (text messaging) capability and it automatically updates my Facebook status.  I like that I can get messages through Skype, Flock, Google Talk (ughh).  If you get tired of all my new toys, you can just follow me on my Friendfeed page because it shows them all.  I guess I have sold out for these new toys and love to be able to communicate while mobile.  I just wish I could settle on just one.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: socialnetworking, Twitter, Pownce, Flickr, Friendfeed, Tumblr, Skype, Flock, Google Talk, Facebook, SMS

By Paul • Posted in Technology, opinion, social networking • Comments
March 27th, 2008

Social Networking and SMS

As most of you know, I am an Internet junkie and love to play with social networks minus Myspace.  No matter how much I try, I just cannot get into Myspace.  I have grown to love Twitter because of its short messaging system (SMS) capability.  It is really nice to be mobile and get text messages to my phone.   I can be out mobile and just send a text message to 40404 and it shows up on my Twitter page.  I wish Facebook would include T-Mobile in their mobile service.  I have been with T-Mobile since 2000 when it was Voicestream.  I really like Facebook but I wish they would wake up and realize that T-Mobile is NOT a small mobile service.  They are one of the major carriers and should be included in their mobile accounts.  I have been happy with their service and have no intentions of changing after eight years.

Facebook and Twitter go well together.  If I am out somewhere and post a Twitter message, it automatically updates my Facebook status and shows on the Facebook feed.  There are many programs similar to Twitter like Pownce, or Jaiku but I stick with Twitter because of the SMS.  I do not understand why they all do not include SMS.  Yes, I can go to their mobile page and log in to check the page but that is too much trouble.  Having SMS, allows me to get a message sent “to” me as opposed to having to go search for it.  I can be in a meeting at work, and get a message right to my phone.  This is where putting the phone on silent really helps :-) .  If they did not have any other features, SMS should be included.  Using mobile web is nice but not that convenient.

I think Pownce has a lot of potential but until they get SMS, they will never get a large following like Twitter does.  Myspace has finally included SMS but it is rediculous.  They send you an SMS message telling you that you have a new Myspace message.  Then you have to log into Myspace to check your message.  What a waste!  If i am in a meeting and do not have a computer nearby or do not want to pay extra for the mobile web, then I do not know the what or who the message is from.  If I am in a meeting, then I have to be discreet when checking my messages.  You cannot be very discreet while logging on to the web.

If you are like me and want to stay connected when I am away from home, you will love these toys.  I must say that my favorite is the Twitter/Facebook combination.  So far I think they are light years ahead of the others.  Without question MySpace is the worst.  It is the AOL of social networking.  They will not allow access through other forums and even their SMS is only one way and does nothing more than tell you that you have some information on their website.  Their pages are geared toward teens with hormone overload.  Every page has some girl wearing scantily clad outfits with some provocative comment.  I will admit that one thing that really bothers me about Facebook is the way it automatically requests you to send new applications to all of your friends by default.  When I get those, I always say no.

I am curious to see how this is going to hold up in the long run.  To my knowledge Twitter has no means of generating income so as much as I love it, I am not sure what their long term strategy is but for now it is just a lot of fun.  Oh…one more thing.  I know Microsoft Vista gets a lot of heat for many reasons but one thing that I love about it is the tagging features. For those that have come to love Flickr and its tagging and searching capability, you would love the fact that Microsoft has included this into Vista.  Lets hope this becomes standard and open to other standards.  I like having the ability to tag my photos and have this information embedded into the file itself making it search able.  If you are like me and have thousands of photos on your computer, it is nice to be able to search through them.  The new Office 2007 has the tagging capability as well even if you use the old Windows XP.

If people ever find out about these features and start to use them, it would make their lives a lot easier.  How nice to be able to find a single photo out of a library of 10,000.  I guess I have rambled long enough so I will get this sent.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce, Facebook, SMS, MySpace, T-Mobile, AOL, Microsoft, Vista, Office 2007, tagging Flickr,

By Paul • Posted in Technology, Twitter, opinion, social networking • Comments
November 13th, 2007

Twitter! How Cool Is That?

You know I am a little slow on some things and I know this.  I have been reading about Twitter for months and just did not get what the big deal was.  I never read the details of what you can do with it because I am always in a rush.  I signed up for an account back in January but just did not understand why those that were using it thought that it was so great.  Then I started hearing about similar systems like Jaiku, and Pownce.  These programs are like mini blogs on the web that you can update with your cell phone.  If your friends are on their, and have notifications turned on, then they will get notifications sent to their cell phone.

You can turn off the notifications by simply sending the text “off” to the number 40404.  You can text “on” to start them up again.  People can read your messages at your own website http://www.twitter.com/yourusername. In fact my Twitter page is http://www.twitter.com/plmccordj. You can be out on the road having fun and just send a text message to your 40404 and everyone can follow you in what ever you are doing.  You can go to the page and post from the web site or from your instant messenger as well.  I am quite impressed with it so far and can see how addicting this would be.

You can go to your web site and set a sleep time so it will never send you messages during that time.  I think this is very handy because it also gives you a running record of your conversations.  You can look back months ago and see messages that you posted.  If you have unlimited text messaging, you should try this out.  I think you will love it.

Technorati Tags: Twitter , Jaiku , Pownce , social networking , facebook , myspace

By Paul • Posted in Twitter, social networking • Comments