Here are a few reasons why I like Plurk better than Twitter:

1. Inline Replies - Keeping conversations together.  This really makes it feel like a community of users and not just a string posts.  In Twitter, when someone replied to a Tweet I put up yesterday, it was hard to follow the conversation.  Plurk however, keeps everything together.
2. Cliques - For sending messages to specific groups of contacts.  I can put all my Minnesota friends or work buddies in one group and send private messages just to them.
3. Built in search. - I can instantly search for other Plurk users or topics from the timeline.  With Twitter, I have to use a separate service.
4. Stars & Karma - I think these are two items that make you want to interact with the Plurk community.  The more posts you make, and the more you interact with Plurk, the more karma, and other goodies, you get.  Post way to often, not often at all, or spam people and your karma goes down.  You can also refer people to get stars on your profile.  Not killer features, but smart ones that keeps users coming back and engaged.
5. Edit Plurks - When you create a Plurk post, publish it and then realize something is wrong, you can edit or delete it.  Yea!!!
6. Friend - Fan Notifications in Plurk - Get notified of new friends or fans within the application.  You can get email alerts too, but it’s nice to see them integrated.
7. Auto Update - The Plurk timeline automatically updates with new posts or replies.  No having to refresh the website.

These are just a few reasons why I like Plurk over Twitter.  There are some downsides too though as with any application.

Since Plurk is newer, it doesn’t yet have an official API and cool desktop applications.  Plurk will get there, but they are the new kid on the block who is focusing on creating a stable application so they don’t follow in Twitter’s recent footsteps with a large amount of downtime.

I do continue to read articles on how Plurk is not as good as Twitter.  But what bugs me is I don’t think those comparing the two are really comparing apples to apples.

When comparing Plurk and Twitter, you must not include Twhirl or Twitteriffic or one one of the many other Twitter apps that were not built by Twitter.  They are third party tools that Twitter fans built.  When Plurk comes out with an official API, they too will be able to have cool third party tools built.

Then there is the timeline.  Yes, the timeline takes time, for some, use to, but it really is easy and fun.  When something new comes along, you really should learn to use it before judging it.  And for those that don’t like it, they can always switch to the mobile version of Plurk.

Plurk really is a great social community tool.  Unlike some of the others out there, it’s taking micro-blogging to the next level and fixing some of the issues that plague other offerings.

Are you on Plurk?  What do you think?

Additional Plurk Resources:

• Plurk - My profile on Plurk.
• Plurkerati - Tracking Plurkers and a nice Plurk search.
• Plurkable - Plurk news & tips.
• Plurktionary - All things Plurk.
• Plurkular - Plurk news, apps, plurkers and more.

Check it out: http://twistermc.com/s

What’s cool about this is you can use it in a few different ways.

1 - Use it without Adobe Air.

2 - Load it in Firefox’s sidebar.  Just visit the URL above, bookmark the page and be sure to check the ‘Load in Sidebar’ box.  Now whenever you click on the bookmark, it’ll pop-open.

If you don’t see the ‘Load in Sidebar’ box, go to Bookmarks - Organize Bookmarks and edit the bookmark.  In Firefox 3 you’ll need to hit the ‘More’ button, Firefox 2 I think it’s the ‘Properties’.

I could turn it into a full blown extension, but I’ll wait and see if people want that.

3 - Load on mobile devices.  It seems to work great on my iPod Touch.  Let me know if it works on your mobile device.

Also, SocialAddict 1.1 is available for Adobe Air users.  Basically it replaces the BrightKite iPhone URL with the generic mobile URL as it didn’t work as nice as it should have.

Hope you enjoy it.

What SocialAddict does is loads the mobile or iPhone version of each site for easy access.  Again, I didn’t tie into any APIs or do massive re-construction.  These are all previously available applications that have been tied together to make it quick and easy to go from one to the next.

Within SocialAddict you’ll find:

• BrightKite
• Facebook
• FriendFeed To Go
• Hellotxt
• Jaiku
• MySpace
• Ping.fm
• Plurk
• Pownce
• SocialThing
• and Twitter

Download SocialAddict 1.1

Requirements: Adobe Air & a social media account or five. All Free.

Have suggestions for other sites?  Let me know the iPhone/mobile version of the site and I’ll add it in.

I’ve since been made aware of the issue and included a link to download the theme and extension file directly. Once downloaded, just open your addon’s window in Firefox, drag and drop them in and they should install.

Sorry about the confusion and thanks to those who brought it to my attention.

It’s really simple. All you need is Safari 3 and a Mac. Here’s how to do it.

1. Go to iphone.facebook.com in Safari 3.
2. Make your browser window as small as you can horizontally and as short as you’d like vertically. Make adjustments based on your personal likes.
3. Click the ‘Open in Dashboard’ button and select the visible screen area. If your browser window doesn’t show the button, you can go to File and select ‘Open in Dashboard.’
4. Done! Enjoy!

Now, whenever you open Dashboard, it’ll refresh the news feed and tell you what all your friends are doing. Unfortunately scrolling it’s as great as it should be, but it works sometimes.  If you need more room vertically, try to re-create the widget.

The Facebook widget features include:

• Seeing friend’s updates.
• Updating our status.
• Viewing Friends
• Writing on friends wall.
• Viewing inbox.
• Sending messages.
• All sorts of Facebook fun.

It may work with other iPhone apps too like Netvibes, Weather Underground or many others. However, if there is a good Dashboard widget already, that’s probably your best bet.

Thanks to Apple’s web clips technology, this widget is extremely easy to make. Thanks to Facebook’s iPhone application, it’s quite useful too.

When I wrote about Mozilla’s Prism project a while ago, I was very excited for the possibility of bring web applications to the desktop. Since then, a new project called Fluid has popped up. It’s the same ideas as Prism, however is Mac only.

Fluid is a small application that is used to create stand alone applications for web apps. Think of going into your applications folder and seeing Facebook or MySpace. In the end, they are individual web browsers that are created specifically for one website.

Fluid is moving a quite a fast pace and coming up with a lot of nice features. One cool feature that Prism lacks is custom dock icons. Fluid lets you choose an icon for your application, or, if you don’t have an icon to use, it’ll automatically pull the site’s favicon.

Fluid is also starting to tie directly into websites. Facebook, Gmail and Yahoo mail applications all come with un-read message count badges in the dock just like Apple’s mail.

The biggest downside to Fluid is that it only works on Mac OS 10.5. The main application, and mini applications it creates, don’t work under 10.4. This is the only area I see Prism winning. Neither project works under 10.3 either, even though Prism claims it does.

If you are on Windows or Linux, then Prism is a great project to watch grow. If you are on a Mac, Fluid is a great contender. It’s actively being built with new features and updates every week or so.

One thing to keep in mind here is that neither application is complete. Both are still under development and features will continue to change as they grow.

The more virtual friends I have, maybe my stories will get Dugg more or my Oregon Trail wagon will survive the trip!

Prism is basically a version of Firefox with no address bar, no icons, no bookmarks, nothing. It’s just a browser that loads one pre-defined bookmark at a time. It sounds a little weird, but it’s really useful.

When you start up Prism, it asks you for a URL, a name, a few options and where you want to save your shortcut. Then, when you open the shortcut, it loads the website in the Prism browser and you get a clutter free, simple, web application that runs off the power of Firefox.

Prism is cool because it creates a shortcut (or bookmark) that you can add to your applications folder. Then, when you open it, your web application just appears.

The beauty of this is how easy it is to create mini applications for those with less than great organizational skills.

Imagine this, you setup a Google Calendar account for you and your friends to share. However, they never remember how to get there, the login or what’s going on. So, just create a Prism shortcut for them and tell them to open the calendar application from their computer.

Maybe you created a cool ZoHo database application but someone always forgets the URL. Just create a Prism shortcut.

You can also setup a Prism shortcut to go straight to the admin area of a blog. That way a user never has to search for the login link again, they’ve just got to double click on the blog admin application on their computer.

Sure, you’d think that bookmarks in your browser do the same thing, but there are so many people that have no idea how to organize or search their bookmarks. They either don’t bookmark anything, or they bookmark everything and can’t find anything. However, they can always find their applications folder so putting a shortcut in there would be much easier for them.

I use it to keep my Google Accounts separate. I have one I use for Gmail, one I use for branded Google Docs and a third for a shared Google Analytics account. Firefox can’t keep all three accounts separate without logging in and out, but between Prism and Firefox, I have everything under control and easily accessible. Plus, with the shortcuts in my applications folder, my built in search (Quicksliver) pulls them up quickly.

There are a few downsides though. Like all Mozilla applications, it proves to be a bit large at 43.2 MB. I have a feeling that inside Prism is a bunch of theme files and a lot of other useless junk left over from Firefox.

Also, the shortcuts have less than desirable icons. The Prism application has a fantastic icon, but the shortcuts have the standard Mozilla globe. It’s not ugly, but doesn’t go with the Prism theme.

Prism is really pretty cool. Simple idea, but quite handy. Especially for non-techie folks who can’t keep their bookmarks organized. This proves to be a simple and effective way to ensure they have the right URL every time.

As a side note, Fluid just came out. It’s like Mozilla’s Prism but made just for Mac. It looks a bit nicer, but I’m just starting to try it out.

Hulu has a clean interface and is user friendly. It’s not over done with ads or extra stuff. It’s been streamlined and the only thing that could make it better is if the site was created with a black background and not white. That’d make the shows look so much nicer.

Hulu has a great selection of current & old TV shows, show clips, plus movies. Here are just a few of the shows available:

• The Office
• Simpsons
• Family Guy
• A-Team
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer
• Arrested Development
• Doogie Howser, M.D.
• Alfred Hitchcock Presents
• WKRP in Cincinnati
• Monk
• Dr. Steve-O
• Keeping Up with The Kardashians
• Weekend at Bernie’s
• Bulworth
• Andy Barker P.I.
• So You Think You Can Dance
• ‘Til Death
• Scrubs
• Bones
• My Name is Earl
• And many more.

The playback seems to work well on the older Windows 2000 machine we use to stream the shows to our TV. The quality is good also. That is, compared to other streaming TV channels like ABC or the CW. It’s even getting HD quality content which will be even better.

Some Hulu features include:

• Share - Send an email to your friends about a certain show or clip.
• Embed - Put the show on your site.
• Details - What am I watching and when did it air?
• Feedback - Video issues? Report them.
• Fullscreen Playback
• Pop Out Window Playback
• Lower Lights - Makes the site background light gray instead of white.
• Rate - Rate the episode.
• Playlists - Keep track of what you watched. Even comes with RSS feeds and privacy settings.

The commercials are done right too. There are a few 30 second commercials every so often. Just like regular TV, only one, not 5 commercials at a time. Some advertisers are creating interactive and entertaining ads, others are just playing the same boring commercial over and over again.

Hulu is going to be a big hit. It has variety in shows, good playback quality, a user friendly interface and it’s free; well once you get invited.

We’ve been enjoying Hulu for a while now at our house and thank the networks for getting together and creating a great online TV solution!

In the latest version of MacOSX, Wikipedia has it’s own tab in the dictionary. It’ll connect up to the internet and do your Wikipedia search for you.

I kind of have mixed feelings on this. Wikipedia is a good source for information, but is it really worthy of beign added into the OS? We never added any other type of encyclopedia service in the past. On the other hand, Wikipedia is very nice for researching topics. They seem to have all the facts and a good community driven site. So I guess it’s not a bad thing.

Wikipedia just kind of showed up one day and has been building momentum ever since. Google backs it quite a bit by ranking most Wikipedia pages very well. But what’s the future for Wikipedia? Will it continue to grow and be a valuable resource? Or will it end up corrupt and pointless like the DMOZ?

It also warns users if they have Firebug enabled. Yikes!

Have you seen any other improvements or changes?

Check your Gmail account now and you’ll know if your in the new version if in the upper right corner, after settings, there is a link that say “Old Version.” Clicking it will take you back to the old version and a “New Version” link will appear.

I’m still hunting for new more features.

Since I have 419 random emails in Gmail, I feel I just spammed hundreds of people. SORRY!! I didn’t mean to.

It seems that a number of those emails were to support sites so I just opened up quite a few support tickets too. Crap.

Oh well, maybe it’ll jazz up my StumbleUpon profile a bit.

If I didn’t spam you and you want to be my friend, just add me.

I guess classic SpyMac is a better representation of what it use to be. It was a huge Mac community with pretty good web hosting options, free email with tons of space and a decent forum community. It seemed to have a lot of drive, dedicated people and a large user base.

Now, when you visit the SpyMac homepage, the only decent looking aspect is the logo. The rest of the site has gone to crap.

It’s now all focused around some money making, “you wanna be a star” scheme. It seems that you can upload your videos and pictures in order to win cash and prizes.

I guess SpyMac is just a blast from the past. A Mac community that couldn’t say above the water and has since sold out to other interests. No longer is it a community of style and Mac enthusiasts, but rather a social dumping ground. I guess there’s a reason I forgot all about it.

If you’d rather connect via Pownce, I’m now no that too. I’ll use it about as much as I do Twitter, and that’s not a whole lot.

I’ve also been checking out Skitch, the new little graphics program that’s suppose to be amazing. So far, it looks very cool, acts great, but has been troublesum to actually use. Maybe I haven’t put enough time into learning it, or maybe I’m just stuck in my Fireworks ways, but Skitch just doesn’t seem quite as cool as I though it would. As I use it more though, I’ll probably like it more.

One last thing, I have iAqua up on the Mozilla Addon site. However, I need a bunch of reviews before they’ll make it live. So, if you could, please go over and review it. Remember, it’s in the sandbox!

Mint
This has to be one of the best stats programs out there. For $30 you get the code and install it on your own server. It’s no harder than installing Wordpress which means it’s quite easy. It comes with the basic functionality and you get to choose what elements you’d like to install to customize your own stats look and feel. It’s kind of like Firefox and having the ability to add extensions/functionality as you wish. Very easy to use and you have all your stats information at your fingertips, on your own site.

Google Analytics
A must install for any website. Sure, it may give you more data that you know what your looking at, but you should at least have it for the future. Google Analytics is 100% free and very in-depth. It’s great for those who want details and like digging into every aspect. I do like this information, but feel it’s a bit much to look at on a daily basis.

Clicky (aka Performancing Stats)
I liked the interface and it seemed to work quite well. However, it is a work in progress and is getting better all the time. They recently added the ability to report on blocks of time (like the past month) so it’s starting to rank higher in my book. It’ll be interesting to see where this one goes. The free version maxes out at 1000 visitors a day though so it doesn’t work for this site without paying.

FeedBurner StandardStats
I like FeedBurner’s StandardStats too. Simple and easy to use. All the basics are there; incoming traffic, outgoing traffic, pages and visitors. Another nice, and free, basic stats program. However, now that Google purchased it, I wouldn’t be surprised if the stats all rolled into Google Analytics.

103Bees
I’m not sure if it’s the bland interface or the odd usability but I’m not overjoyed about this one. It seems like it should be nice but I just can’t myself to use it.

Wordpress.com Stats (blog only)
I’m getting mixed signals with this one. With one site, it worked for a few days, then didn’t work for many more afterwards . I about gave up when it started working again. With other sites, it just works. Overall, it is a nice and simple interface that anyone can adapt to. Plus it’s free. It’s not that indepth, but is great for those that just want a quick overview of the past day or two.

Webalizer/AWStats
Ok, I’m really just putting this on the list so that people know that they are not the best stats programs. They usually come installed by default on most web servers and are better than nothing. However, they have a tendency to track things like css files and javascript files. In reality, we only want to track what pages visitors go to. If you just run Webalizer or AWStats, it’s time to look into something more indepth.

Now I know there are lots more stats programs out there. Some cost money, others are free and not all are worth the time and effort. Those above are a mix of free and low cost stats programs that all work well and they are a great addition to any site.

What stats program have you found that you like?

There were two things that drove me away from Flickr. One, the photo limit. I hit the max of 200 on a free account and that was it. No more uploading until I paid money. Doesn’t Yahoo own this now? Can’t they kick in the money and give me unlimited uploads? I’m sure it’ll happen, but not soon enough.

Second was another limitation on photo sets. It wasn’t the limitation that bugged me as much as the 30 minutes I spent searching for a ‘How To’ on creating photo sets. I was so frustrated and in the end, the answer was that I reached the limit on sets for my free account. Why they couldn’t have just said that in the first place is beyond me.

But long ago I came across Zooomr. It had an easy to use interface, no upload limits that I could see and I was just happy. Since then, no looking back.

I think that with the latest version there are no upload limits at all. I’m not 100% positive that thats for free accounts, but I do know that back in November they were giving free accounts with 100MB worth of uploads a month. Since Mark III just launched, I think the details on limits are a bit sketchy. But I know they out-do Flickr and keep talking about unlimited uploads.

I actually got in on a promotion that gave pro accounts to all bloggers that just created a free account, uploaded an image and posted it on their blog. I now have unlimited everything over at Zooomr and I LOVE it.

The latest version of Zooomr (live but with a few bugs) includes a Zipline which is like Twitter with text and photos, a market place where I can sell my photos, groups with games and privacy and many more features. They are working hard at making it the best photo sharing site out there.

Yes, Flickr is nice. But I’ve hit the limits and I’m not even an active photographer. I just needed a better option and Zooomr hits the sweet spot.

Apollo is basically an invisible application that you can run mini applications on. Much like Yahoo Widget Engine or Apple’s Dashboard. Only instead of small widgets, Apollo’s idea is to make full blown applications like an RSS reader. Once created for Apollo, they’ll work on Mac and PC without any extra coding. It really sounds like a cool idea, as long as users adopt it.

My issue is the whole installation process. You first must have an Adobe account to download Apollo. Then, once it installs successfully, there is no application in the Applications folder. No system preference and no clue that you actually installed it or what to do next. I re-installed it four times thinking I did something wrong. Nope, it was there, I just couldn’t see it.

In order to activate Apollo, I needed to download and run an Apollo app/widget. Apps run from little Apollo packages that, as far as I can tell, you must keep or else you’ll never get that app back again. Apollo doesn’t seem to organize them, doesn’t remember what you had open and seems to be lacking any kind of organization for the apps.

Once I did get it up and running, the Apollo app I was using (yourMinis) just kept throwing errors so I lost interest. Research into other Apollo apps didn’t bring up anything great.

Since this is still in development, there are going to be bugs. Here are my thoughts to make it better.

First, after the Apollo is installed, it should open a welcome app. Something that says “Apollo was installed and is running great. Here is what you do next and where you can find applications to run in Apollo.” That’d help greatly.

Second, it needs to organize the apps that run in Apolo. Much like Dashboard or Yahoo Widget Engine does by moving them into a specific folder for organizational purposes.

Overall, I think Adobe’s Apollo could be a cool thing. What it needs is a bit of usability work and then for developers to get on board with creating apps to run under Apollo.

Have you used Adobe’s Apollo?  What did you think?

One can donate via the Zooomr homepage. Any amount is accepted. If you work for, or know someone at, a large company maybe you could see this as an opportunity to fund the startup or donate some hardware.

In the internet age, everyone has the ability to create something fantastic. Zoho is taking on Microsoft & Google with office type applications. Zooomr is taking on Flickr & Photobucket. Meebo is trying to get the IM kids online and there are many more. Not long ago Flickr, YouTube and MyBlogLog were startups too and now are owned by major search companies and quickly becoming a household name.

Help Zooomr stay alive with a donation or even a Digg (scobleizer.com post).

Unfortunately this isn’t available for all cities yet, but New York City is one of the select cities you can test it out on right now. I gave it a test and moved my way though an intersection on a red light. Didn’t get pulled over though.

Ok, so I realize that’s really hard to see, so go to Prospect Park Southwest in Google Maps.

I think MSN has been working on this mapping technology for a while now and may have also recently launched it. Yahoo and Ask will have their version too soon.

It really is amazing what types of mapping technologies are coming out. Kind of scary though. What happens if you end up in a map?  Or your license plate? Then what?  Can you get removed?

I’m also on Tumblr and quite enjoying that. It’s like a scrapbook where you can save sites, images, links and videos. Part blog part social bookmarking. Easy to use and I’m enjoying that. Every time I come across something cool in my feeds, I Tumble it for later.

Of course I have Yahoo 360, MySpace, FaceBook, Linkdin, MyBlogLog and lots of other social media/networking accounts too. Most of which I don’t use often.

If you want to be my friend look me up. My user name is TwisterMc on about all of them so I shouldn’t be hard to find.