Let’s face it, we all thought Tweetie 2 was abandonware, but with the announcement on Macheist that a private bate is opening up soon for those who bought the bundle, it will finally see the light of day!

Now, a while back I moved away from the whole Tweetie system, iPhone app and Mac application, and over to Echofon. I paid for the full iPhone version and have been beta testing the Mac version, and let me tell you, it is pretty much wonderful. So here is a list of things Tweetie 2 needs to do for me to move back over blindly. (I will probably try it out for a few days either way, but ticking some of the boxes here would make the choice easier.)

1. Syncing between the iPhone and Mac applications. This is one of thise features that I didn’t know I needed until I found it with Echofon. It’s pretty wondeful, and allows you to pick up exactly where you left off on either your Mac or Iphone without having to do endless scrolling. This should also work across all the Macs you own.

2. All the new Twitter features like RTs, Lists, geotagging and such

3. Push updates on the iPhone. I know it’s not a feature of a Mac application, but this will be important for bringing me back into the whole Tweetie ecosystem.

4. We should be able to log into bit.ly and such so that shortened links go into our bit.ly accounts.

So there are my top four wants for Tweetie 2. I suppose I will have to wait until next month when I hopefully get into the beta like Macheist said I would. Hopefully they have learnt from the Cha-Ching mess though. Several years later I’m still awaiting my beta for that.

Tags: Mac, tweetie, twitter

This year is a rather important year, for people like me. This year, we all have to face an exam known in certain circles as “The Leaving Cert”, most people call it by it’s official government given name, “That Pain in the Ass” certification, or the T-PAC.

This is a time for us 18 year olds that we find especially hard. Society tells us that we should be outside at 4AM, getting drunk, and enjoying the night with some young’un. However, the government have rudely placed this big looming megalith above our heads, promising rewards, an evolution of a sort, if we can work out it’s secrets. This results in us having to “knuckle down”, as the parents and adults around us keep pointing out self-satisfactorily. We nod our heads, and pretend that this is good advice that we had not thought of ourselves, and shuffle off, as if to make use of this tasty nugget it knowledge that this glorious creature has blessed us with.

But that’s not what I’m here to discuss about, today. I’m not going to mention how the T-PAC does not cater to the intellegent, how it can allow even a headcold to screw up the rest of your life, and I won’t even consider mentioning the stress that this system puts students under. Because today I am writing about how I gave up facebook, all in the name of this evil examination. CURSE YOU, T-PAC!

The decision to give up on facebook for a while was made when I realised that I would have to do a fair bit of work in order to bring my T-PAC grades high enough to get whatever course I wanted in whatever college I wanted. They would have to come up a lot. Facebook was probably the biggest timesink every day, and Twitter is too important for my communication with the outside world to drop. So facebook had to go. And go it did!

However, facebook did not go without a fight. Take a look at some of the emotional terrorism that it wrought upon me! (you can click to view the image slightly larger, if you so wish.)

That’s right! The buggers actually went and fished out images of me with people I know, and dragged them up in order to make me reconsider my account, because I will never talk to these people again!

Anyway. On with the post.

Day 1: After one full day without facebook, I notice how much I use it. When first opening a browser, my fingers use muscle memory to head to reddit.com, tab, facebook.com. I hope this stops soon, as closing facebook again and again makes me miss it more. Also, I keep heading over to my iPhone to check out the latest on that, but am always dissapointed when I notice that it’s not there. I also feel the need to poke everybody I see and write on all walls, but this might not be connected. I have also discovered a problem with deactivating an account. It’s basically just logging off. Nothing else. Hmm….

Day 3: I have still not gotten over facebook. You see, every time that I whip out my iPhone when I’m bored, be it on the bus, train, in a car, or just waiting around in school, I have a little ritual that I follow: Email, Twitter, Facebook, RSS feeds, Check for app updates. This systematic checking of my digital life is disrupted half way through now, as where there once was a facebook app, there is now naught bt black space. I stare at the screen for a moment, then realise what’s wrong, and move on to checking RSS feeds (there’s another blog post in the works on that topic. Long story.).
However, am I happy I gave up facebook? Yes and no. I miss the instant communication it gave me with many of my good friends, but I do not miss having to wade through loads of wallspam every day. Gives me more time to write these posts!

Day 5: I still get pangs for Facebook, every now and again. After all, it’s a really great way to organise nights outs, and such. However, I’m fairly sure that I am totally over it. Hurrah! Now, should I start up my usage of it again once the T-PAC is up? Only time shall tell!

So, the question is thus: Will giving up facebook for the next six or so months give me much more free time? I’m fairly sure that it will, if only from the time no longer spend deleting stupid wall spam. I know that some of you have given up facebook. Why have you done so? For those who haven’t, why not? Is the threat of loosing contact with your friends too strong? It seems that facebook have managed to build one of the ultimate systems for keeping people locked into their accounts.

Tags: emotional terrorism, facebook, Social Media, social networking

This is a piece that I wrote for school, but I thought that it was relevant too this blog as well. You will understand, therefor, it’s slightly different register then normal. No snark here!

Today’s technology is moving along at a blisteringly fast pace, speedier then anything even Science Fiction writers of yesteryear could predict. Except for the flying cars. I still hold out for the day I have to swat for my flying car driving license.

I remember receiving my first ever computer. I was 11, and it was a brute of a device, built by a company called Gateway who used to reside here in Ireland. It had a huge 4.6 GB harddrive (enough to hold an amazing 1,150 songs) two hundred and fifty six times the amount of RAM that the space shuttle uses every time it goes into space, and more importantly, a stuttering connection to the internet! The internet (or “The Web”, as we called it back then, in our late 90s and early millennium coolness) was an elusive place, to be both respected and feared. It could be used to send pages and pages of text in minutes around the entire globe, it could be used to listen to strange music, and we could even create our very own websites! I still look back at that dusty relic of my own first website, and realise that it was actually quite ahead of it’s time, using technologies that were just being developed. And who could forget the dialtone? I remember my first ever iPod, a chunky yet attractive 20GB machine, capable of holding 20GB of music, only a third of what our second computer could hold. Those were the good days! I still have it lounging around in one of my desk drawers, and some day, I hope to take it apart and restore it to it’s former glory. For some reason, I have always liked it’s clunkyness when compared to the new anorexic models that Apple release every year. And who could ever forget their first spontaneous, breathtaking encounter with an online message board or chatroom? It’s like we were thrown through a window of information, trailing colourful glass as we went.

Nowdays, however, things are totally different. My thin, light laptop has more speed, memory and storage capability that could have ever been built into that hulking Gateway. My phone is immeasurably more powerful then that machine, with the ability to access a wealth of information in a blink of an eye, and no longer am I confined to only checking the latest blogs and sites once a day, but these blogs and news sites come to me, every single minute of the day! The phone measures my sleeping habits, and wakes me up every morning within a 30 minute alarm period, based on when I am in my lightest phase of sleep. It can even listen to local radio stations from the other side of the world, and all this in a device smaller then a paperback book! I can shout at it, and it will play exactly the song that I ask it too, I can shake it to interact with it’s menus and, if I feel the need, I can play games on it that rival their console counterparts. This is the biggest change that I have seen happening around me, the change in communication. Sure, I missed the progression from pony to telegraph, from telegraph to phonecall, but I have witnessed the rise of the ability to send high quality videos around the world in seconds. I am watching the landscape of the social norm be torn asunder, the very meaning of “communication” changing day by day and most importantly, the ability for free information to propagate throughout the world within seconds. Less then five minutes after the Hudson plane crash, I was looking at pictures of the event, even watching short videos generated by people who were near the river that day. Somebody even leaked the audio conversation that the plane was having with the Air Traffic controllers, a shocking listen, if only for how calm everybody remained. Earthquakes in far off regions of the world were reported second by second by an army of anonymous fingers, dancing over phone keypads and laptop keyboards, and I didn’t even have to go looking for this goldmine of intelligence. It came to me. Newspapers, magazines and radio stations are going bust every single day. The biggest uprooting of information sharing ever is happening before our very eyes, and it is not happening quietly.

So what do you think? Am I right in suggesting that this is the biggest change to happen over the last 18 years? What is the biggest change that you have noticed in your lifetime?

Tags: growth, hudson, internet, personal writing, school

So I was lucky enough to get a ticket to Ze Frank and Jonah Peretti’s talk at the Science Gallery entitled GO VIRAL from the wonderious Darragh Doyle, one of the friendliest people in the Irish Blog space. And trust me. They are a friendly bunch, all in all.

So, I head into the Science Gallery to meet Alan Costello and Darragh, and get stopped by an official looking man in a white suit with what seems to be a metal detector. He asks me to please stand up against the wall, and starts scanning me, beeping every now and again. He then shines a bright light into my eyes, and begrudgingly says “Please walk this way, sir”. I head into this clean-roomesque tunnel, to be handed a face mask, a little baggie containing the programme of events and a little microchip which the white-suited person behind the table claims will begin to flash if I contract an infection spreading around the exhibit center. if I get this infection, I must move immediately to the disinfection area on the second floor. I am also instructed to avoid any people with flashing tags. Next to the disinfection area there was a map showing all the various connected tags. Quite interesting stuff.

So it was a weird day. What can I say?

Anyway, soon after all this, we started filing into the auditorium to see the big show.

It started off with Jonah Peretti giving a talk on his website, Buzzfeed along with his various forays into viral media, including accidentally becoming the spokesman for an anti racism movement along with an anti sweatshop movement. One of the highlights of his talk was a simple demonstration of viral activism in the real world. Mormonism. The idea behind this being that since every single Mormon must spend two years of his/her life converting others, the religion spreads like wildfire.

Many other interesting topics were brought up by Johna, such as Big Seed advertising, his foray into viral marketing with the Huffington Post and his various theories on advertising, such as the one of Mullet Advertising. (Business at the front, party in the back!)

Once Jonah was done, Ze Frank, self professed fame whore, came on-stage and started speaking on the 8 moments which made him realize much an emotional effect he could have on people over the internet. I’m not going to go through all the moments here, but check out his site for more. You might loose a few days in there.

Oh, also, I bought some Chlamydia.

Tags: Alan Costello, Jonah Peretti, marketing, Science, Social Media, Viral, Ze Frank

Few From The Quad has been a solo show for a long time now. Over 130 shows, I think. Of course, there were the odd guest host appearance, from Charly and Kiraun, but for the most part I have been going in It alone. So what made me decide to bring Liz onto VFTQ as a permanent cohost? Why give myself the extra work of having to edit longer shows, organize more sociable recording times and teach her not to hit the bloody microphone stand?
The reason is that VFTQ needed a cohost. Subscription rates have been falling for months now, and I am down to maybe a fifth of the listener base I once had. View From The Quad needed a quick stir up, format and talent wise. And hell, Liz has done a damn fine job!

So. What are the pros?

1. Longer, more entertaining, episodes. If you have a cohost, you shortly realize that it’s not just you ranting on to yourself every week. You can ha e a conversation, deepen your knowledge of the topic under discussion and provide entertaining debate to your listeners. This is likely the biggest pro to having your cohost.
2. Split the work. With a cohost, there is more then a single person working on the show staff. Gone are the days when you have to totally prep, record, edit and produce a show, all by yourself. Now you have somebody to help you. Split the jobs between you, an you will find that the show gets easier to do every week.
3. A new voice. Two voices discussing something are infinatly more fun to listen too then a single voice discussing the same thing. Give your listeners a break from your drone, let them hear a new voice.
4. Somebody to chat too. Seriously. This makes everything go so much faster.

So what about the cons?

1. You *might* have to spend a fair bit of time teaching the cohost exactly what a podcast is, and how one gets made. Not much of an issue, and you can take the chance to relearn your skills yourself.
2. You have to show them the way your show works. For instance, if I was to take on a cohost with Starting WoW, I would need to be sure that they kept to the format that I have worked for so long to create. While change might be a good thing to bring to a show, if SWoW totally changes it’s aim from humor and self deprecation to actually becoming a 100% serious show, most of my audience would just up and quit.

So there are my ideas for the pros and cons of bring a new staff member onto a show.

Have you gone through such a change? Leave a comment and let me know what you thought!

Tags: cohost, podcast

Every now and again somebody asks one of those big, important questions.

• Why keep up to date with the latest Twitter, Facebook or Youtube posts?
• Why is the economy doing downhill so fast, yet internet businesses are blooming?
• What shall I have for lunch?

These are some of the big questions internet startups ask themselves every day, but one particular thing has been bothering me for a fair long while now, about Scodio, View From The Quad and Starting WoW in particular.

If I get run over by a 16 wheeler tomorrow, what will happen to all my shows? How will my audience find out that I’m dead and gone? Will they just assume that I’m a podfader of massive proportions?

Now, this might be a bit of a weird thing to be worried about, but seriously. It has been bugging me for ages now, although it only occured to me to blog this worry of mine last night, when I was talking to a very good friend on IRC about this very topic. He doesn’t seem to be too worried about it, but then again, he doesn’t run two podcasts, both of which are on contract to advertisers, and so on.

So I began pondering how I would prepare for possibly kicking the bucket a tad early. Keep in mind that I don’t want all my passwords and things getting into anybody’s hands other then mine until the last dying beeps are audible from that yoke with the wavy green lines I saw on ER last night, yet if I do die, I want my next of kin to be able to let my audience know. Or at least shut down the websites.

At the moment, my main plan is thus.

1. Continue to use 1Password for all my stuff for the time being
2. Write my 1password password down on a piece of paper and seal in an evelope which I shall then give to my bank, if they will accept it, to be given to my parents in the case of my sudden death by 16 wheeler so that once they feel up to it, they may announce my death.
3. ???
4. Profit!

So. Are there any gaping holes in this masterful plan anybody can see?

Tags: business, death, IRC, passwords