The new face of presence: Twitter?

twitter message

Ok I've made up my mind. Twitter is very cool. I can't work out exactly what it is but it just works. The ability to reach one person or many people instantly is great. Its almost a social instant messenger.

I don't subscribe to the RSS feeds because its too quick for a news reader. I did try it out in Touchstone's rolling banner with the RSS but it was still not right. So I mainly consume Twitter through a im window using Gaim. This works best for me, because I can leave it open and watch it through the day. I can also reply or drop things into twitter quickly using jabber. And to be honest its works and looks like all the widget and gadgets which are popping up now.

The API which is available for Twitter is very simple but does what you'd expect. I really want to upgrade to Blojsom 3.0 so I can automaticlly send an update to twitter when I post a new entry which seemed to take David Czarnecki all of a day to write.

What makes twitter intestesting is the presence side of things. Its a step well beyond things like Presence messages on IM and Skype. There updated much more frequenly and you can nudge someone into revealing there precence. This is like the etique of leaving some a message on skype before calling them.

I actually really want to pull my current twitter message into my jabber status message and skype thought. That would be very useful. The thing I also thougth would be great is a summary view for friends which is mobile. It would also be good if Twitter adopted the @username syntax for sending private messages. Everyone seems to be doing it and its easier to remember.

The last thing which is interesting about twitter is the speed of delivery. Sam Sethi's now famous entry on Twitter was the spark which made me understand how fast twitter can be.

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Whats up with the Xbox Mediacentre 2.1?

Robert Heron and Roger Chan are back with Team Blackbolt's 360 Blad Skin on top of XBMC on a modded Xbox.

They show off some of the new python scripts including the youtube one and revision3 one.

Since What's Up With Xbox Media Center has not had an update for quite some time, I thought it would be a good time to talk about some of the new developments. Some of Xbmc has been ported to the PC to make it easier to build skins and python scripts. People have been asking if a full port will be next but the creators have denied this for now.

  1. It's not a full port, nor is it planned to be a full port. We are not planning on abandoning the xbox anytime soon.
  2. With that said, most stuff works – at least stuff useful for the target audience.
  3. It's designed primarily for skinners and python developers who can test out their skins and scripts without having to transfer everything to the xbox.

Basically, it's a simple port of the majority of XBMC. This includes the entire gui system, file listing, some of the filesystem code (eg local, database files, zip + rar etc.), very simple audio playback, slideshows, python scripts and so on. Video playback is not supported, nor are screensavers or visualisations (basically anything that was relying on the xbox version of directx).

And last up there was a interesting interview with a series of xbox mediacentre coders.

I'm still of the mind that Xbmc should be ported to the PC and Apple operating systems. I'm hoping with the new XNA game studio express kit it might be possible to build XBMC for the Xbox 360. But actually with the PS3's somewhat openness for Linux it looks much more likely that Xbmc 3.0 will make a home there. Microsoft are not keen on Sony's new move.

When asked about Sony's efforts to create a homebrew culture by allowing Linux to be installed freely on the PlayStation 3 (albeit without access to the RSX graphics chipset, among other restrictions), Mitchell commented: “On the one hand I've got to commend them for moving up their platform there, but we really don't view what Sony and PlayStation 3 and particularly the Linux solution that they are making available – we don't really view that as a competitive offering or trying to do something in the same vein.”

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Le Web 3: Reactions comic and a letter to Arrington

Tom Morris does it again… Funny and ever-so true. Who says there's no room for another valleywag? Hey and why not comic form instead of text?

Cartoon depicting the reaction to Le Web 3

See my Flickr post for original.

in An open letter to Mike Arrington Mike Butcher outlines his thoughts behind the troubles at TechCrunch UK as co-editor.

You asked my colleague and co-editor Sam Sethi to remove the comment in what appeared to be a personal favour to Le Meur (given TechCrunch had no contractual or financial involvement in Le Web 3) and any other comments referring to Le Meur's comment.

By this stage that was going to be hard. A lot of people had now captured Le Meur's explosive comment and commented on it themselves, not just on TechCrunch UK but on their own blogs.

What were we going to do? Delete the whole web?

The bit I find most interesting is this part.

As regards the TechCrunch UK events. I understand you are a busy man, but the ideas about events we have promoted on TCUK for weeks now should not have come as a surprise to you. This was an attempt to build the business here not just as a franchise in the UK but it also would have benefited the TechCrunch US brand, obviously. Sam wasn't doing it to “futher his own business interests” [sic.] as you say in CrunchNotes. You own the brand. We don't.

Again, on Crunchnotes you say our event plans “were not specifically approved.” Well, a) this was supposed to be a franchise operation, not two employees with you as line manager and b) there are a lot of things we have done to make TCUK successful and until now you didn't seem to object to other public announcements about events (or even communicate at all about them, I might add. We thought you trusted us to get on with the job, and we did, but our email inbox from you about anything we were doing is pretty bare).

I also disagree with you in your view that it is unethical to criticise a competitor event, when it has already been trashed far more roundly by others. I would say it is far more unethical to ignore the sentiment of one's readers – who's views are plain to see – and whitewash one's editorial coverage, than massage it into a limp, inaccurate article for the sake of a favour. In this case a favour to a conference organiser.

Sam's last and final post (again, captured by bloggers) was just an attempt to say he was leaving, given that he had been summarily dismissed by you (can you dismiss a franchisee?) with wafer-thin due process. After such an immediate firing, I think you owed him that last opportunity.

But you removed that post as well.

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Very interesting and good to hear Mikes views on all of this.

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