Web Review: Kwippy.com

Kwippy.com is basically an alternative to Twitter and Plurk.

The functions are simple enough featuring the main aspects of Twitter… Microblogging, with permalinks to the various posts (called “kwips”) and the ability to reply. As per my previous post which put Twitter against Plurk, I have no idea if kwippy.com’s API is being shared or released. Also, it has the same downfalls as that of Twitter when compared to Plurk, where the design is not very Web 2.0 and it’s limited to passing links and is hindered by functionality to include pictures and videos. It does have IM updates via Google Talk though, which makes it a bit easier to post and deal with. Twitter used to have this before it started experiencing its problems…

So far, kwippy.com functions as Twitter, but without it’s API being widely available and having it’s functionality widely dispersed throughout the open source community and the web 2.0 community. Open Source is a major ingredient of web 2.0. Functionality in this regard and the ability to pass content easily between desktop and web applications is paramount.

This is what I see as a major stumbling block for this new Indian startup. They do have a feedback section though… so let’s hope we see some really good development from them in future… you never know, with the way things are going these days, they might surpass both Twitter and Plurk. Let’s wait and see.

Another major stumbling block at the moment – It’s invite only… I may have some available – just get hold of me if you want one – leave a comment or catch me on Twitter.

: Kwippy, kwippy.com, social media, Micro-blogging, Twitter, Plurk, Review

New Era Citizen Journalism – The Instablog Video Initiative

Instablogs.com has launched a new initiative taking advantage of their wide “citizen journalist” base which blog on its site on a daily/weekly basis. What the new initiative entails is a call to one of these “citizen journalists” who will answer the phone and immediately launch into a news report of whatever news happened to have occurred in their respective countries.

This call is recorded in MP3 and Instablogs.com edits it ad inputs it with relevant video clips they have of the situation in the country or even an image or slideshow. The end result is a video show of sorts aggregating news from all over the world for that day/week and instantly downloadable from their site.

This is an example of some real creativity and utilising all forms of media for the aim of spreading news. I think this formula is similar to that used by major news organisations, however, this is raw and its opinions are not from seasoned journalists who speak in that instantly-recognisable tone in which news reports are characterised. This is from the grass roots, people who have an opinion and all this is aggregated, not in text, but in audio and video. Absolutely amazing, I can never cease to be amazed by human creativity and the application of media in Web 2.0.

: Citizen Journalism, blogging, instablogs.com, Media, Video, Audio, News, reporting, journalism

Twitter vs. Plurk

vs.
With Twitter going down every so often, (reminding me of Eskom’s load-shedding), lots of people, including me, have been searching for an alternative. Well, we found it with Plurk. So after a few days of using it here’s my comparison of the two micro-blogging platforms.

Twitter, has amazing functionality and given that it’s API is freely available it’s very malleable and we can use it to do a million and one things. The only thing wrong with it is its periodic shut-downs and general irritability with some of its functions (like device updates via IM) working only on random occasions.

Plurk on the other hand looks very cool and puts all your “updates” on a time line so you can track who said what when (if you check the everyone list, this timeline is split by the second.) They have some other function a like a widget and gaining points called “karma”, which I’m not really sure how that works yet. I do like the reply function which is really easy and targeted towards various posts on plurk. The ease with putting up videos and photo’s is also a plus. You’ll find the little icons which you can represent yourself with are also a bit weird, cthulu-like thingies, with tentacles and spots and bones sticking out. Weird. Plurk’s downfall is it doesn’t share it’s API… so you get what they give you and that’s it. Their widget is only editable vertically which irritates me as it doesn’t fit on my blog sidebar and overall I just can’t seem to like it.

Twitter, however, could learn from Plurk’s visual standards, quirky nature and easier video and photo micro-blogging. It would also help if Twitter didn’t drop the ball so often.

Overall opinion… Plurk is very limiting compared to Twitter. If twitter sorts itself out, that’s where you’ll find me.

UPDATE: >Plurk is releasing their API! – Let the Micro-Blogging Wars begin! This will sway my opinion of which micro-blogging platform to use :)

Technorati Tags: Twitter, Plurk, Social Media, Micro-blogging, comparison

Twitter’s Turquoise Screen of Incompetence

Twitter is becoming increasingly irritating for such a popular social media application. I can’t believe the guys at the back-end of Twitter can be so increasingly incompetent. It’s text for God’s sake… people are not trading videos on a continuous basis. There are thousands of websites out there doing far more traffic than Twitter and with far more media applications and they also have FAR LESS PROBLEMS.

Come on… what gives? And these cutesy little pictures trying to make it seem like everything is fine reminds me of Microsoft’s “Blue Screen of Death” … what shall we call these Twitter Error Messages ??? “Twitter’s Turquoise Screen of Incompetence”.

To the guys @ Twitter… Please get your act together!

Technorati Tags: Twitter, Problems, Twitter’s Turquoise Screen of Incompetence, error messages, irritating

Get Yourself Into The Propaganda Business

In an ad bluntly called “McCain, Fire Charlie Black,” MoveOn tries strong-arming John McCain into dismissing his lobbyist, whose firm allegedly made millions by aiding dictators, terrorists and sundry other villains.

$25 helps get it on the air!

Link: Adrants

Technorati Tags: McCain, Propaganda, Charlie Black, Fire

Jim Cramer Attacks Google and Apple

Jim Cramer, the web entrepreneur and star of his own TV Show “Mad Money” on MSNBC (you might remember him from the part he played in Iron Man), recently told The Hollywood Reporter that he hates media stocks, maybe not all of them, but he hits on two media companies in particular…

“The world got changed by two companies,” he says. “Apple is taking away the profitability of TV, and Google is taking it away in print. And it’s never going to reverse.”

In the near term, Google is the bigger villain.

“It’s just a parasite,” he says. “It doesn’t create content, it steals it, borrows it, shares it.”

What he says does have some weight… recently both New York Times and the publishing company Gannet, both reported shortfalls in revenue and I’m sure other media are feeling the pinch too.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Google, Media, Jim Cramer

Magnify.net Introduces Live Posting of Relevant Video to Blogs

This is an amazing development by Magnify.net, what they’ve done is integrated their site’s functions into MovableType and WordPress Platforms where you can integrate relevant video’s or photo’s straight into your post on any topic you desire.

How it works is that in your WordPress/MovableType post page, you click a little orange button (which gets integrated via your plugins) and a search box appears… you type in a search term and out pops various videos from Youtube, Google Video, etc. for you to choose from and you can simply then just add it into your blog post.

Simple, Effective, Amazing… and your blog readers will appreciate the relevant media content.

Brand New Google Reader for iPhone

The guys at Google Reader really wanted to maximise the iPhone’s capability with Google Reader and have developed a Beta application which facilitates this. You can use it by visiting http://www.google.com/reader/i/ on your phone.

This new design is very similar to the desktop, making it quick and easy to act on items. It’s set in the list view, so you tap it and it expands… simple.  Starring, sharing, and marking unread are all done in oneplace, so you never have to leave the list view or refresh the page. This makes accessing your Google Reading list that much faster.

You don’t automatically get sent to it since it is still in beta, so bookmark the link above. There’s also a discussion group for those wanting to test it out fully and provide feedback.

From the Google Reader Blog

ReadBurner and NetVibes Team Up

Following on from the post about Powerset Semantic Web Search and Web 3.0. ReadBurner, which shows news from the point of view of how many people have shared it via Google Reader’s Shared Items function, has tied up with NetVibes (About an hour ago) via the Ginger API in order to provide a similar function as Shared Items in Google Reader.

The tab is already live and available on the Readburner site. You can test it out now.

So from Smart Searching we now have Smart Filtering :) Web 3.0 here we come… and as Chris Brogan put it, Why let Google have all the fun?

Google Killer: Powerset Semantic Search Engine

Having been long predicted as the shaping the next generation of search, Semantic Web Applications are now coming to the fore with Powerset leading the way. Powerset has released its beta version, allowing the public to finally try out the new key word technology. Ushering the new era of search, Powerset hopes to change people’s expectations of search by offering a far more intelligent and efficient form of searching, at least in theory.

“We’re changing the way information is searched by doing a much deeper analysis of the pages we index,” said Scott Prevost, Powerset’s product director.

Keyword engines treat pages as word bags, indexing their content without grasping its meaning, he said. Meanwhile, Powerset’s engine, applying technology developed in-house as well as licensed from Xerox’s PARC subsidiary, creates a semantic representation by parsing each sentence and extracting its meaning. “Meaning is what we index,” he said.

Google’s Marissa Mayer has even elaborated on the benefit of the semantic web…

“People should be able to ask questions and we should understand their meaning, or they should be able to talk about things at a conceptual level. We see a lot of concept-based questions — not about what words will appear on the page but more like ‘what is this about?’. A lot of people will turn to things like the semantic Web as a possible answer to that,” she said.

She also said that Google seems intelligent more through brute force because of the amount of data it crunches rather than it being really “smart” and working out what the user really means when they are searching for certain terms.

I can already see Google Scurrying to upgrade their system to incorporate this though… they certainly have the budget to do it. The current form of Powerset is limited, consisting only of millions of pages from Wikipedia and Metaweb Technologies’ Freebase, a Web-based structured database of information. Whatever it is, here’s to ushering in a new era in search, one that will ultimately provide a real challenge to the Google’s and Yahoo’s of our increasingly connected world.

Could this possibly be the beginning of a Web 3.0?

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