Jaiku adds IM blogging

Now you can Jaiku (I believe that’s a verb) from your IM client. I tested with GChat inside Gmail and it worked perfectly. It only works with that perfectly with XMPP based clients like GChat/GTalk. But evidently you can set up IMified to communicate with it from the other IM clients (AOL, Yahoo, MSN). Not that great, but I’ve actually got IMified already for another web app.

I’m a little scared that you can “delete me” from your IM client to remove your Jaiku account. That seems a little bit too easy. Not that I type “delete me” ever, let alone within Gmail or GTalk… but still…

Here’s my previous post on Jaiku, which now seems to be every bit as good as Twitter (except that Twitter is still more popular). I do kind of sense a VHS vs. Beta thing coming though…

Is Jaiku the ultimate microblogging platform?

For those of you just joining me, about a month ago I was trying to figure out what to do about the fragmentation created by microblogging platforms like Twitter, Jaiku, and Pownce vs. traditional blogging platforms like Blogger, WordPress, etc. I was not the only one pondering this concept, and what to do about all the feeds that can be generated from participation in Web 2.0 type social web applications.

Well, I think Jaiku has solved my problem. Jaiku seems like another Twitter at first, but looking further, you can add feeds from other sources and have items in those feeds show up in your Jaiku stream. So, for example, I’ve got my Flickr stream (public photos, of course), my Recently Played Tracks from last.fm, the posts from this blog, as well as those from my “aspiring novelist” blog, and (recently) my Twitters!

By making my Twitters public, I can add them to my Jaiku stream, but leave my Jaiku stream for friends only, and then use Jaiku for my private microblog posts. Did you follow that? Yeah, I didn’t really either. I’m not so sure it’s best way to work things, but I’m going to try it for a while.

Of course, what I feel is the strongest feature of Jaiku (which stems from it’s aggregation of feeds) is the ability to unsubscribe from other users feeds on an individual basis. In my previous post, I said:

the question still remains, will people want to see somewhat random photos just appearing in my feed whenever I happen to upload them, mixed in with the .plan posts as well as the more-than-one-paragraph posts? Or is it just better to have 3 separate feeds for photos, twitters, and posts, and let people subscribe to whatever they choose?

That question has been answered by Jaiku! Now, my friends can check out my Jaiku feed, and there’s everything you could ever want (and probably more). And if it’s too much too handle, you can go in and individually unsubscribe from the feeds of mine that don’t interest you.

Yes, at a high level, it’s basically an RSS reader filtered through a social network. But it also allows you to post to the feed from the application, as well as comment on other users posts (which is nice for platforms that you’d otherwise have to be a member of in order to comment). The commenting is also something that I feel is improved over Twitter, since there’s likely to be less of the @somebody kind of posting taking place.

Additionally, Jaiku has a pretty kick ass looking mobile application. I don’t have a phone that can run it yet, and I haven’t tried the plain vanilla Jaiku mobile stuff yet, so I’ll refrain from any comment beyond “it’s pretty.”

Speaking of pretty, my final note about Jaiku, you can add little icons to your posts! And if you post from Facebook (for some reason) there’s more than twice as many little icons to choose from!

There you have it. My thoughts on Jaiku. I think I could talk more about the app and it’s implications and uses and Things Of That Nature, but this post is long enough for now.

Twitter me this

Why is it that with Twitter, I feel like I can post just about every though that comes to mind (at least while I’m sitting in front of my computer and don’t feel like I’m going to annoy my Twitter friends), but when it comes to “actual”, “real” blogging, I feel like there has to be something to say, or something to talk about, or some point to make?

I mean, there are certain things I can say on Twitter that I probably wouldn’t here, since my Twitter feed is only viewable by my Twitter friends, and I can control who my friends are, so I know who is going to see what I write.

But something like “How is it 3:23 already?” could just as well be available to whole world (and still no one would care). Of course, I don’t want to start something along the lines of having to crosspost to Twitter, Facebook (cause those two aren’t quite integrated enough yet), and my blog. That would be the ultimate waste of time, and futile effort in futility. On the other hand, something I could do would be to add a category like “Twit” or “Snips” or “.plan” to this blog, and let people who want those shorty posts subscribe to that tag/category. I’m fairly sure the related statistics would blow your mind. In a “why is he still talking about this?” sort of way.

The problem then becomes that, on the surface, this blog seems to be more of a one way street of communication, where as Twitter feels much more like a two-way, albeit asynchronous, communication. Of course, I’m already to subscribed to a couple separate feeds of info that come from my Twitter friends, in addition to their Twitter feeds, so really, perhaps it only seems like more of a two-way communication because of the framework that Twitter has put in place.

Following that, though, is the ability to post from Twitter via cell phone (though I haven’t actually done that yet), and also via IM. The same applies to the ability to receive Twitter chatter via cell phone (again, haven’t done that) and via IM (which I do, and enjoy, but by which I am sometimes annoyed). Furthermore is the integration (weak though it is) of Twitter with Facebook (with which I am currently totally obsessed). I do see, though, that someone is working on a wordpress app for Facebook that would make posts show up in the Mini-Feed. If that worked, then posting “twits” to my blog would essentially eliminate the need to post them to either Twitter or Facebook. Perhaps I can get in touch with the developer of that plug-in and help him along with it.

And while this post may have appeared to decide nothing, it does serve as the birthplace of the .plan category.

Full RSS Feeds

The topic of Full RSS feeds is something that comes up every once in a while… Usually I have to bug sports blogs about it since they’re not always the most techno-savvy.

I am definitely in agreement with Fred over at WeBreakStuff that every blog should have a full post RSS feed. If you’re really desperate enough for ad revenue that you resort to a summary feed to drive traffic to your site, you need to figure out a way to get the ads into your feed. It’s that simple. As Fred says, if it’s not all there, well, it’s not going to happen.

Gladwell and Simmons

http://gladwell.typepad.com/gladwellcom/2006/03/sports_guy.html

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/060302

There are two people writing in the Simmons column. I liked reading one of them. No offense (well, actually, some offense, I guess), but I am not feeling Bill Simmons much anymore. Of course, while I am at it, I’m not feeling FreeDarko that much anymore either. There is something to be said for inserting random pictures in your blog posts… but do you really need 4 of them in every post?

I digress… I just started reading Gladwell’s blog a few weeks ago, and it’s impressive. He can certainly write. I was supposed to read the Tipping Point back in MBA school, but I never did. Too much Madden I guess. I was also supposed to read Crossing the Chasm. Neither were for a class, though, so the priority slipped.

Again with the digression. So far, I have enjoyed reading Malcolm as much as I used to enjoy reading Simmons, and so far, haven’t been burned out by him. Maybe that’s what happens when you just write whenever you feel like it, instead of having to write a column every week whether you like it or not. I mean, I’m not exactly one to talk, right?, since I’m not exactly the best nor most prolific writer ever. But there is a point where things just start getting old. I reached that point with Simmons just as I am with FreeDarko. It will be interesting to see how long I continue to read and be entertained by YaySports. It is funny and somehow still insightful in a way that has very rarely failed to amaze me. And I’m not just saying that because Brian The Cavalier is my friend on MySpace.

Bloglines Beta Environment

I see you.

What are you hiding behind those password protected doors?

Rojo vs. Bloglines: It’s sort of like Red vs. Blue

I use Bloglines. Straight up. I haven’t found a (web-based) RSS reader that allows me to get through as many feeds as quickly as Bloglines. The keyboard shortcuts are a revelation unto the application, just as they were when Gmail brought them to life. And now they have new icons for the folders and feeds! Wow! I guess they must have decided that the interface wasn’t glossy enough.*

But (there’s always a but, right?)…

Rojo’s got tags. Yeah, tags are probably a little overrated since they’ve been used in every New Web app since the very invention of tags. But here …by here, I mean, in a feed reader… there is a utility that I often dream about when “s”ing and “j”ing through Bloglines. I would no longer be restrained by having to sort my feeds into folders by category and then naming those folders so they sort in order of the ones that I usually want to read first. Because that “usually” is critical. The keystone, if you will.

With tags, I no longer have folders named like “01 Basketball - 01 News”… I can have a “basketball news” tag, and, if I find that some news sources are more reliable (or perhaps more well written) than others, I can add a tag called “Pri 01″ (or maybe even just “01″). So, now, when I’m strapped for time, I don’t have to sift through any blogs that aren’t really that important to get to FreeDarko or the Fantasy Basketblog.

The only problem is that Rojo does not (yet) have keyboard navigation. But, just writing about using the tags has worked me up into such a lather that I almost want to make the switch right now. I’m afraid that the sacrifice would just be too much to bear, though. And so, I will soldier on with the currently slightly better of two options.

* The drag and drop reorg would have been nice when I did mine 2 months ago. Too late now, though… so I’m having trouble giving credit for that one…