Technology
Skitching that Image Captioning Itch
TinyURL'd
I was talking to a friend about the new setup I have around my MacBook, she asked me how happy I was with it and I responded in glee. After then I told her she was the reason I decided on a Mac, or at least, it was an application she often showed me; Skitch.
Skitch is a freeware Mac OSX program that does such a great percentage of the average Photoshop usage; screenshots, captioning and captioning screenshots. To best describe how it works, I have used it to describe itself;
And if those arrows look familiar, websites like Lifehacker use it in their tutorials all the time, as well on my own website (all the bloody time). A small but really nice feature, as well, is the drag me option there in the bottom, where you just drag it onto your desktop, and in the case of my use of TweetDeck and the integrated TwitPic, I can simply upload my Skitches. It is pretty handy.
Even when I am captioning my own photos, I just open it in Mac’s preview, take a shot of the image itself and then caption it, it’s pretty nerdy, and I accept this.
Skitch (Mac)
Tweetree Houses, galore!
TinyURL'd
I often brag of my vast and lazy intelligence - I get great ideas, and it automatically makes someone else make it. For a while now I had a great idea for a threaded Twitter client and, unfortunately, missed the Quotably boat. Well, in a reply to my last post, I was given a link to Tweetree.com by a good friend of mine, Niha Tiwari.
Twitter is a much-needed Twit-threader. I really have no idea why Twitter doesn’t have this built in already; it really does help follow one’s own conversation, as opposed to ctrl+clicking every in reply to… link. Better even so, it embeds images from sites like TwitPic amd videos from YouTube, a la Power Twitter on Firefox, as seen below.
Also, unlike FriendFeed, Tweetree lets you post from the page into your Twitter page, as well as reply into the respective Tweeters.
Tweetree, TwitPic, Firefox (Mac/ PC/ Linux), Power Twitter (Firefox)
Swap the TweetDeck’s!
TinyURL'd
There are very many Twitter applications out these days, the Twitter API is, undoubtedly, one of the major reasons for its popularity. And believe you me, there is a crap load of popularity! TweetDeck is one of the larger of Twitter apps, aeshetically, at least. But I like that, as a late user of Twitterific (and Twhirl, and Spaz, and Google Desktop, and Digsby), I did not feel as centralized. TweetDeck is an Adobe Air application, its layout is a series of very useful columns that can be moved around horizontally; All Friends, Group, Replies, Direct Messages, Search, Favorites, TwitScoop and 12seconds. As well as a vertically expanding Tweet section with a very nice TwitPic integration and a TinyURL-esque service as well… with more than enough URL shrinkers to your service.
I find it to be a very clean layout and for me, someone with a second monitor, it is very nice to have it maximized all the time. As a recent adopter of TwitPic , I found the integration fantastic, as well as how simple it is to follow your own conversations in the Replies column. But more than anything, I love the use of the TwitScoop column; as a blogger (talented or non) it is a fast way to see what the general Twitosphere is currently interested in.
And the great part about this all is that, by the time you read this there will be a new one out, just as damn good.
Attack of the Clones
TinyURL'd
The micro-blogging world seems in a bit of an upheaval since the announcement by Leah Culver about the Perma Ackbar’ring of Pownce. Currently, I am only following 79 users on Twitter, and even still I have already heard of a few cases of ex-Pownce users planning on picking up where Pownce left off by creating yet another micro-blogging service. Are there not enough already? And with the maturity and popularity of the lacroni.ca platform, why would anyone bother on writing their own? I mean, how long did it take for Twitter to get it right, in at least the areas of stability?
A good 80% of Pownce users I have asked the question to confessed they came across that website because Kevin Rose said so. As imaginary as those numbers may be, Pownce started off with a lot going for it; namely the first half of the partnership between Kevin Rose and Leah Culver, and in the ever-expansive (and ever-cramped) world of micro-blogging, it needed the help.
Off the top of my head; Rejaw, Jaiku, Plurk, Identi.ca, Tumblr, Brightkite, kwippy, Yammer, Koornk and Utterli come to mind, and that is ignoring those of current mention already. And I am more positive than Pamela Anderson is of Hepatitis C that there are an innumerable amount still out there. That is a lot, and that is why Pownce needed that extra bit of something to stick out in the crowd, something that mattered before anyone mattered looking into the threading and UI design. But that is the same thing with the until-recently exlusive IM programs (Yahoo!, AIM, MSN, ICQ, etc) as their exclusivity was replaced by programs like Pidgin and Adium, but I digress. For the same reason certain people used one program over the other, certain communities revolved around certain micro-blogging services, so the most popular ones were, in itself, more reason to join. Community websites are the epitome of snowball effect usage.
As much a fan of Pownce as I was, I find it idiocy to even deny the fact that Pownce was heavily inspired by Twitter, in some places seen as a clone. The thing about clones is that there are a lot of them, so why are people insisting that Pownce needs to be rebuilt? I mentioned an excess of 10 similar programs and to me, Twitter and Tumblr prudently and with a few tweaks within the system, does all but replaced my Pownce account.
As Pownce used the popularity of Kevin and Leah, ex-Pownce users and next-Pownce owners are banking on the popularity of Pownce in itself, but will that be enough? Even within the geek-niche market that Pownce was originally marketted to, few of those users were exlusive Pownce users. And within that few, even fewer were within the motive to write their own service, and an even fewer within that fewer-few will bother and try to use anything but a laconi.ca engine.
Although I deem near-any attempts at this pitiful and hopeless, the need to replace a more media based micro-blogging service may come to some really nice things. Already I am talking to friends about creating a modified form of Twitter or using laconi.ca to write my own.
Why? The same thing we do every night Pinky, try to take over the world!
Pownce == Perma Ackbar’d
TinyURL'd
It was not within the first fifteen minutes of my logging on that I heard the news from the (former?) !leahbasskitten, a friend of mine on Pownce. It was nothing but a sad face and a link to this rather disheartening post by Leah Culver, for sake of brevity this is but a section of that post;
We have some very big news today at Pownce. We will be closing the service and Mike and I, along with the Pownce technology, have joined Six Apart, the company behind such great blogging software as Movable Type, TypePad and Vox. We’re bittersweet about shutting down the service but we believe we’ll come back with something much better in 2009. We love the Pownce community and we will miss you all.
This came up just after I had thought that morning of ways to integrate Twitter into my own Pownce account, as Twitter had a plethora of external programs, some of which would allow me to post via SMS. Also, it was the few days after another friend, Neha friend asked me which I use more, Twitter or Pownce, and why that was.
I use both with Ping.fm. I much prefer the Pownce interfact and community and layout, but I use Twitter and all its mad gadgets. I prefer Pownce on its own, but Twitters’ uses
For months I have been praising the usefulness of Ping.fm, a service I got into a closed Beta a while ago that lets you post in an excess of 15 different services. But really, I used it for Twitter and Pownce, the extra were a nice bonus. In the back of my head, I was looking for a simpler method, and I guess this really does do it.
The aforementioned uses of Twitter are far from a mystery to anyone, I may cover them in a later post, but if you are wondering I am sure you can Google yourself a few dozen. The popularity of Twitter, and thusly the API, made it a very good idea for anyone with an idea to stick with, the ample audience.
So, it is on this day I remove myself from the Ping.fm bots and stop with my terrible netiquitte. Today I go from a former “Twitter is stupid”ite to a perma “Twitter is stupid”ite.
As Neha said in he reply to this fiasco, “I know that Leah will be a great addition to SixApart, and will create some social networking tool that is ever spiffier for all of us.” it will still not be the same. Pownce had the niche market that Digg used to, and Twitter never did. Perchance I was just lucky, but during my months on Pownce I met some really cool people, a majority of which are now pleading for some form of adequate replacement.
On my way out, I leave you with some links to websites for the troubled Pownce’r, hoping to keep in some contact with those we once did; Poll: Pownce Exile - Where To Next? and teh similarly named FriendFeed room, PownceExiles.
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© Andrew Littler, 2008
