Blogger/Internet socialite Robert Scoble has a problem. In attempting to scrape his personal data from Facebook (where he *had* several thousand "friends") he angered some of Facebook's internal monitoring drones and was forcefully removed from the service. True enough, what he was doing clearly violates Facebook's terms of service which state, "Thou shall not use automated means to scrape thine own data" but, should Facebook be allowed to collect the dossier you create through using the service, and then forbid you from getting a copy?
What's really at issue here is, who owns all this crazy social data you're constantly creating? Here's a tip; it's not you. All those clickwrap agreements -- or EULAs, also known as the Terms of Service document you never read -- say that Facebook can pretty much do whatever it wants with whatever data it manages to extort extract from you.
Still happy about the amount of time you spend on the most popular social networking site in the world? Or, rather, are you getting that icky, spine crawling feeling you get when you meet someone who knows just a little too much about you?
If you like to Twitter, now you can speak your mind - so to speak. Twitter gets even better with an amazing new innovation - sound. Thanks to uber tech Dave Winer, now you can send an mp3 file through your phone or computer as a TwitterGram, and your friends and the general public can click on the TinyURL and hear it.
Sending your brief recorded thoughts on your mobile (kind of a micro podcast) to the web is a saweeeet innovation. And it's incredibly easy. Here are the directions to send your voice by mobile from BlogTalkRadio's new dial-in service:
1. Choose which phone you want to use for TwitterGrams. It must have CallerID. 2. Go to the phone sign-up page and register your phone. Here you will put in your Twitter username, your phone number, and your Twitter password (which is put into a database and not used for any other purpose).
3. If you were successful in step 2, you will see a message that your phone number was saved. Then you can dial 646-716-6000, and record a brief message (200K limit), then hang-up. You message should then go to the Twitogram timeline, for all to see and now hear.
2. You can then select a title for your Twittergram (75 characters or less) and then you can upload your 200K or less mp3 file.
3. Your mp3 file will then be posted on the TwitterGram global account. If you checked a box to post to the global account and your friends, then your friends will see your gram in addition to all the other people who are following TwitterGrams.
If you use (or are going to), let us know how well you like TwitterGram.
You are reading this post about Twitter. That's what you would answer to Twitter's simple question, "What are you doing?", which is the entire premise of Twitter's existence. Getting people to answer in 140 characters or less, by IM or logging onto Twitter.com, what it is they are doing at that particular moment. Big stuff, right?
Constant stream of consciousness chatter is the lifeforce of Twitter. And this constant feed of the bright and banal is turning a lot of people into Twitter addicts. What makes this so? It could be the sheer ease of use to Twitter. You don't have to construct an entire blog post or for that matter, even a full sentence. Just a thought, a word, an impulse to share and you can Tweet (or post something on Twitter).
To Tweet or not to Tweet Warning: if you're the compulsive type, you may want to move onto the next post and stop your habit before you even have a chance to start it. (We're not making this up. According to Alexa, Twitter's user reach has increased 526% in the last three months). Now, for those of you who aren't the addictive type or who like to throw all caution to the wind, let's investigate what awaits you in the world of Twitter.
Two weeks ago at NAB, Microsoft announced their Flash competitor, Silverlight. At that time, I was like 'blah' about it, thinking it was just another reaction from Microsoft to Adobe. But when Microsoft elaborated more about their future web development strategy at MIX07 two days ago, I was stunned just like most Microsoft developers.
CoreCLR, cross-platform .Net Framework, DLR, Silverlight, the list goes on! But what is so great about them all, you ask? Currently we have the .Net Framework with ASP.NET AJAX and a library of free components to help web developers. But despite what those web monkeys try to convince us desktop developers, web programming sucks in general, and JavaScript/CSS in particular, because we have to deal with the web browser and the messy standard(s).
The big news this weekend is that Microsoft evangelist and notable bogger Robert Scoble is leaving Redmond to join young startup PodTech.net. The story was broken by blog Beet.TV and, after much bouncing around the blogosphere, finally landed at Scoble's blog where he confirmed it and straightened out a few of the facts. He's hasty to point out that he was not unhappy at Microsoft, saying, "I love Microsoft and Microsoft did not lose me-at least as a supporter and friend. I am not throwing away my Tablet PC or my Xbox or my other Microsoft stuff." Scoble will be joining PodTech.net as VP of Media Development. For endless discussion take a look at the waterfall of threads on the topic at Techmeme.
