Testing Flock, and liking it better than ScribeFire

It's been a while since I have used Flock, the "Social Web Browser", and I am happy to say that it has improved a lot since we last met.  I am typing this blog entry directly into the superb Flock blogging editor.  Here is a screenshot:

(the transparency is from Compiz; I used it in order to show the browser window behind the other things I had up).

So, anyway, here are my "likes" about Flock:

1. Super easy to connect one's social networking accounts to the browser
2. Super easy to update statuses in Twitter, Facebook, &c.
3. Nice blog-post editor, and very fast recognition of blog type, &c.
4. Great "Media Bar", that allows you to see streams of photos from feeds
5. Nice design (although, after about a month, one does get tired of it)
6. Great integration with del.icio.us
7. Nice scratchpad/clipboard
8. Super easy to use and speedy photo uploader (supports drag-and-drop)
9. Neat "My World" homepage that is supposed to aggregate your digital life
10. Fast startup time
11. Imports stuff from Firefox
12. "Search-as-you-type" supported for some engines, including Yahoo!
13. Easy tagging of blog posts

Here are my "don't likes":

1. No automatic <p> tags for real-person paragraphing in the blog editor
2. Lack of themes (I think)
3. Incompatibility with Firefox themes
4. Very awkward to install in Linux (no packages or anything; it just comes in a tarball precompiled; you extract, and run. While this is pretty intuitive, it is hard to get it set up in your menu system, with icons, &c. This section could use some work).
5. Yahoo! is the default search engine (yes, it does the search-as-you-type feature, but the search isn't as high-quality as Google)
6. No instant messaging
7. It has me subscribed to a bunch of crap feeds, like E!, CNN, and ESPN

So, that was my review of Flock. Go ahead and try it; you won't be sorry.

Blogged with Flock

A really awesome AIR app called Tweetr

First, a screenshot:

Tweetr is an Adobe AIR app (3rd party, of course) that lets me view "tweets" from Twitter from my "friends", and post tweets myself. It makes a nice little noise when a new tweet is received. It also has file-sharing capabilities, and if you have an iSight camera or something like it, you can put a webcam photo directly onto the tweet.

Another need feature is the ability to view replies to you, and direct messages.

I love how smooth the AIR apps are; this, singlehandedly, brought me back to Twitter. We will see how long it lasts; I still maintain that Twitter is partly nonsense. The only time I think that Twitter is the coolest thing around is when there an event that I can't go to, but that I want to hear about. Then, various geeks can liveblog/livetwitter it, effectively giving me a play-by-play.

Tweetr can be installed here: http://www.tweet-r.com/

Using Google Mashups with Twitter

I have used Google Mashup Editor to create two iGoogle gadgets for Twitter.

The first one is called "Robert Scoble and Friends". Basically it is an aggregator of tweets from Robert Scoble and those on his friends list. The second one is called "Twitter Public Timeline", and it basically aggregates all the tweets from twitterers who allow themselves to be featured on the Public Timeline. Here is a screenshot of the two:

If you want to try them, for the Scoble gadget, click here; for the Public Timeline gadget, click here. To play with them in a full-page view, for the Scoble gadget, click here; for the Public Timeline, click here.

What is Twitter? A bloody waste of time!, or one man's dramatic divorce of the narcissystem

I tried to get into Twitter. I was even enthusiastic. I used it for a while, and even made some 'social connections'. But now, I realise that it is an entire waste of time.

What can Twitter do for me? Nothing but keep me from my work, and stop me from going to bed when I ought. Because of things like Twitter, I have done less important things. Therefore, starting today, I am done with Twitter, Jaiku, or any other kinds of narcissystematical crap (too bad I am not as famous as Leo Laporte, because it could be a double whammy: I am not only quitting Twitter, but Jaiku and loads of other useless crap).

So, goodbye Twitter friends, for I doubt I shall ever meet you again, in the narcissystem.

[just in case this is just a passing rant, wait a few days before you stop following me... :) ]

Ustream, Istream, WeAll Stream, or, ScobleCam: our final fall into narcissystem-atical insanity

That's right folks, we have finally reached the pinnacle of human insanity, exhibitionism, and voyeurism. A while ago (to be more exact, 27 days, nine hours, and 38 minutes ago), some guy named Justin started to broadcast his life over the internet through a webcam. Ever since, for every single minute and second in the day, there has been a webcam that people can watch through the internet.

What does this mean? Why on earth is this enjoyable to people? The only thing I can think of that would explain why people are watching someone's life through a webcam is that they are unsatisfied with the lives that they lea. They decide since they 'have no chance to make a difference', they will just watch someone else 'not making a difference'. This is insane.

I would say that it is narcissm (see Scoble's post, Nothing more boring than the "narcissystem") on the part of Justin and the like, thinking that people actually would want to watch his every movement, but he is right! So many people actually do want to watch his life, wasting away their own. This is insane.

Yesterday, Robert Scoble posted an article called ScobleCam coming?. In it, he introduced his testing of his own ScobleCam, which broadcasted for more than three hours. I believe that this trend could have been something that would just die off, because the majority of internet users (I hope) are smarter than to unproductively watch someone driving around in a car for hours. But Robert Scoble, possibly the foremost internet tech blogger, is in it, and that changes everything. Things like Ustream die, but not if they have extremely important people talking about them.

What is different about this and Twitter? Isn't this just a bigger, better, more visual version of Twitter? No. While this performs the basic purpose of Twitter (what am I doing, where am I doing it, etc.), this is pure evil, and Twitter isn't. Period. While with Twitter you can quickly scan through peoples tweets, and by having quick, 140char conversations, you can make a social connection, with things like Ustream (the site that hosts Scoble's cam), you sit there for a long time, waiting for something to happen. Just watching. Waisting time. For instance, if I were into watching these weird whatever.tv things, I would not have time to be blogging, or reading my feeds. This would cause me to be unproductive, and uninformed. Do we really need more unproductive, uninformed people?

What makes watching other people bad? If we feel the need to watch someone else's life unfold before us, we must have some sort of psychological problem. We must feel that we don't have an interesting enough life, so we resort to envying someone else's, and watching it. All day. This is just like all those really bad reality shows on Television, except they really are reality. Just wait, I bet there will be some commercial ones, where there is an actor playing the person on screen ($$$ADS$$$MONETISATION$$$$$).

What is so bad about broadcasting your own life? Of course, it is your decision. But by broadcasting your own life, 24-7, I think that you have to have some sort of psychological problem. The condition that people who watch your life have is called voyeurism, and the problem of people who broadcast their lives is called exhibitionism. Not only does this demonstrate the existance of a psychological problem, but it also could create a psychological problem. Having that many people watching you must feel like eyes, everywhere. I wouldn't be surprised if this got popular, and we had an entire generation of schizophrenic youth. Being watched, you have to be careful about what you do, say, how you say it, who you are with, etc. It brings a whole new world of pressure into what once was reality.

So, readers, join me in not jumping into the pit of narcissystematical insanity.

Twitter: Befriend All

I don't know if this is a new feature, but I bet Scoble would have liked to have it a while ago when he had to add some-odd thousand people as friends in twitter...

When you go on your followers page, there is now a link to 'befriend all':

Dandy... This could be useful if I had more followers...

By the way, if you want to follow my 'tweets', you can get my profile here: http://www.twitter.com/ioannusdeverani.