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The Seesmic Dinner

Byrichard

Last night I had the good fortune of attending the social media dinner at the Coach and horse in London. It was yet another opportunity to meet people like Lloyd, Sizemore, Phil Campbell, Deek, Rupert Howe, Jess and many other seesmic participants. It was also my opportunity to meet some new people.

I met Vinvin and Johann from Seesmic for example. They’re part of the Seesmic team in San Francisco. Loic Lemeur arrived a little later so it was great to meet him to. It’s not everyday (well actually it’s almost everyday) that you meet CEOs of startups.

It was also Phil Campbell’s birthday so that added a little something to the party. He presented a new method by which to use eesmic which looks interesting although at this moment in time it is more proof of concept and I’ll wait until it’s developed further before discussing it in depth.

I was able to try out the Nokia N95 layout and user interface for seesmic on that night. Loic lent me his phone and I was able to record and post one seesmic post. So far I still think it’s a little slow so i prefer to use the web interface.

I got to meet the charming Kittenfluff (unless it’s an imposter as is alleged in a seesmic video from the early hours of this morning;-)) and had a nice time chatting with her and playing around with two laptops, two seesmic accounts and a little seesmic camera ping–pong. I also got an exclusive interview about some mysterious january flies and why the London light is the paper of choice to use as a fly swatter
There’s a great picture of me taken by Thayer

Warzabidul on Seesmic

Take note that There’s seesmicAIR and Seesmic being used in this shot.

Two speeches were made, one by Loic Lemeur and the other by Gapingvoid (Pardon the poor sound quality.)

There’s one of Sizemore’s videos too.

Fooz, Giagia, Jason Jarrett and two or three others were present but I did not get to interact with them as personally for this event.

This is a fun group of people are fun to interact with and I’m happy I went to the event. i hope to have many more to look forward to.

Twitter is broken and I want an alternative

Byrichard

Twitter is a great idea poorly executed as a result of which I wish there was an alternative. It’s a chatroom that can be used on multiple platform which is what makes it so interesting. The managment however have decided to cancel Api support, or at least throttle it. As a result of this conversation is floundering.
As a result of this action twitter has become notoriously unreliable and people are no longer able to keep up to date with what people are doing quite as easily. This has resulted in many of my favourite tweeters being far more quiet. Others have felt the need to leave the service.

I would love an alternative to help me keep a constant wave of consciousness of what friends are doing. The 140 character model is good. It’s a very efficient way of dealing with information. We’ve got many alternatives but none are conversational yet.

I love the conversations and how you overhear so many things. I would pay for an alternative that has a far more stable track record. Give me that alternative.

I’m disappointed not angry.  There’s a really good product there but it’s so badly implemented I’m losing interest in twitter.

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SeesmicAIR and mobility

Byrichard

Last night at Four AM I got an alpha release of SeesmicAIR from Critter and I started to play with it. My initial response was good. It’s fast, intuitive and it doesn’t a browser. Today as I had lunch I went mobile with my laptop, relying on battery.

Those who follow my blog know that I’m using a macbook pro and those that follow my tweets know that I was happy about something. Usually when i seesmic I go into the user interface and I get told that my battery will last about an hour and a half to an hour as I seesmic. Today though I had almost three hours of battery life whilst being able to keep an eye on seesmic.

That’s because SeesmicAIR is running off Adobe and rather than use most of the CPU to work it’s running with far fewer resources. As a result I can lurk on seesmic without killing the battery or running a hot machine.

I saw that both Loic Lemeur and Johann are on the Eurostar and I was able to comment on seesmic and keep an eye on reactions. Vinvin answered my question and it’s good.

I love the fact that I don’t need to worry about battery life anymore. I’ve had time to prepare lunch, have lunch and then still have an hour and a half of battery life to write this post. I really enjoy having the ability to do this. It means that I can do something in the background. In brief SeesmicAIR is just as useful as I thought it would be.  It’s still a little buggy but that’s normal when dealing with Alpha.

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Blog Wars at the Frontline Club in London

Byrichard

Blog Wars is a documentary taking a look at how bloggers influenced the political debate in the state of Connecticut. It’s 58 minutes long and covers some interesting points but that’s not what I’m going to write about. For me what was interesting was seeing who was present.

For a start I didn’t expect for the venue to be full. I expected to see only a few people but that wasn’t the case. Most of them didn’t look like bloggers. Their phones weren’t out to tweet and their laptops weren’t in site. From the questions I think this assessment is correct.

I’m going to use my twitter notes in order to bring out some of the points I thought could be of interest. My first comment was about people sounding passive rather than active about blogging. In other words they are looking at the process of blogging as readers rather than producers of content. This is interesting since the cost is low for blogging. One of those involved in the production of this documentary did tell me at the end of the session that he loved reading blogs but that it was far too time consuming for him to write anything.

A second point that was made is that of deep linking. Someone in the crowd brought up the comment that whilst in Mainstream media all the information must be prepared in advanced and accurate with blogs we get a person’s opinion and due to the ability to link to those documents or sources it is up to the blog reader to look at issues in more depth should he desire this.

Some attention was placed on the forged document about Bush’s record but not much of note was mentioned.

A question about the difference between British and US blogging was brought up and it was brought up that US blogging is far more fun and exciting than that of England because of the debates. There was also a comment about how the tabloid press in England can already dissent against those in influential positions. As an aside to this attention was brought to how blogs are helping to chart Brown’s deciline from public favour.

Some time was taken to see just how influential blogging can be and there was a feeling that had the Swift Boat story in the US been taken more seriously and had the issue of forged documentaries been followed up the impact would have been far greater. One of the problems with bloggers was that one woman doctored an image which meant a loss of credibility for one of the candidates.

I was amused by one person’s comment about how blogging is live and instant when I’ve already seen the efforts made by twitter users during the New Hampshire and other primary votes in which Barak Obama got a clear lead. Anyone remember Obama girl… some blogs showed why he progressed in the polls. (Look these details up. This is simply a summary and commentary). The point is that Twitter may play an important role over the next few months so people should keep an eye on this new method of disseminating information.

Overall the conversation was interesting and it felt good to have experience of the topic discussed. I’ll look forward to more of these events.

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The Macbook Air

Byrichard

I really wanted a small device mid way between the ipod touch and the macbook but Apple have decided to come out with a thin rather than small device with five hours of battery life and a solid state drive.

These are great features but the device is so incredibly limited that it’s not interesting for me. I’ve got a macbook pro and it’s a great machine for anyone that wants to do video editing. I’ve also got an ipod touch which is great for twittering and keeping up to date with current affairs. One of these devices is great for computing, the other is great for browsing.

What I wanted is a small machine that’s easy to carry, along the lines of the powerbook but I’ll have to wait a little longer.

The key limitations I see with this device are the need for an external optical drive, only one USB port and a phone jack. That’s great for business men who travel a lot but what about the rest of us. If you plug in the USB drive how are you going to plug in anything else. If you’re like me you charge your ipod and your phone from the laptop because it’s convenient.

The price is also prohibitive. It’s a luxury product that doesn’t fill any new market niche. Let’s wait and see for new devices. I will drop by the apple store and play with it of course and give you a hands on review.

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The Francofous Seesmic Skype call

Byrichard

There are two communities on Seesmic, those that are English speakers and those that are French speakers. The French speaking seesmicers can be recognized by two things. The first one is the Racoon avatar, the second is that they refer to each other as the Francofous, the crazy french.

Last night Seesmic went down due to an upgrade gone wrong and as a result many seesmicers didn’t know what to do with their time. One seesmicer decided to create a skype conference call where over ten seesmicers were chatting for quite a few hours. I only found out about it via the discussion between Fred2baro and Sizemore and added Fred2baro. Quite a few of the French seesmicers were there and we discussed many topics and it lasted for at least three hours before it was cut short.

What made this conversation so interesting is how people came in and left at various points and how at one point Eric Rice and Purplecar joined the conversation. A few more people joined in including Loic Lemeur although his presence was short due to children in the background playing on a PSP.

I think that this is what the future of web interactions is about. It’s about a global community of people, at the moment early adopters, who have strong ties with friends and family in various parts of the world and no particular illustrated that such as the one of Kosso and Ifiz. They like to advertise that they met “in 140 characters or less”. That was a nice story and it shows the point of the new age of social interactions. I won’t give all the details here as you can easily ask them in person at a later date.

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The week ahead: Blog Wars, Seesmic meetup and more

Byrichard

This week should see me dropping by the Frontline Club in London for the first time in weeks. I want to see Blog Wars which could be quite interesting. “Blog Wars provides a sharp and funny look at the explosion of political blogs, which have become the loudspeakers for a new generation of activists speaking out and picking fights across the political spectrum”

I’m looking forward to yet another Seesmic meetup and I’ve heard that some interesting people should be present although I haven’t seen this written on paper yet. The usual London suspects should be there so that should be a really good evening. That will be on the 17th and more details are to follow.

I’m not sure whether there’s another Social Media Cafe but if there is then there’s a very good chance I’ll be present. I’ll keep you informed.

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The Social Media Caf̩ РLondon

Byrichard

Friday morning a few people from the Social Media scene met at the Breafast Club for the Social Media Cafe. A few of the usual people were there to discuss the direction the Social Media Cafe should take. There was talk about the need for more frequent of these events to take place as a way for people to get up to speed with what other people have been up to as well as to enable easier collaboration.

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Twhirl as your Twitter interface

Byrichard

For those of you familiar with twitter there are a number of ways of keeping up with information and my current favourite is Twhirl. What I love about using Twhirl is how well it works.

At first it feels clunky. You’ve got to download adobe air, then you’ve got to download twhirl and once this is done you’ve got to get used to the user interface. I went from twitterific to here and the transition was relatively painless. I missed one or two of the keyboard shortcuts.

Since then I’ve grown to enjoy using it for three key reasons. The first of these is that you don’t need to restart it as there are no caching issues. For someone who tweets as much as I do and follows as many a lot of time would be sent reseting twitterific. Not with Twhirl. It’s got over 5500 tweets right now and no sign of slowing down.

The second feature i love is how you can choose whether to @, DM, Favourite or re-tweet. Anyone using twitter is familiar with the first three. The re-tweet feature is fun. It allows you to retweet verbatim quite easily. I don’t see it used often luckily but it’s a nice gimmik.

The third feature that I enjoy are the shortcut keys specific to this program. R for replies, F for friends, D for direct messages and then there are two or three other such short cuts that could be of interest.

As an aside you’ve got the filter option although having not used it I can’t comment. It’s a nice package and anyone using Aero should give it a try.

SeesmicAIR

Byrichard

SeesmicAIR developed by Critter looks like a really fun application for those already using Seesmic. It looks quite similar in appearance to twitter but rather than be based around text content this is based around video. You see the video timeline and as you see a video of interest you click on it to watch.

There are two things I love about this. First it’s built in AIR and that’s a great platform. I’ve been using Twhirl a lot over the past two days and it’s working really well for me. There are no caching issues, even after almost 3800 tweets over the past two or three hours.

The second reason I love it is how fast it looks. Of course it’s fast because it’s running off a machine that’s been used to trial it before and the connection might be better than the one I’m using.

That’s really the type of app that would encourage me to use seesmic far more freely than I do currently. If as Christine suggested it could be brought offine for our viewing pleasure then that would be even better. I think being able to download at least the friend’s timeline would contribute greatly.

Now I’m really enthusiastic both for seesmicAIR and Seesmic and how this would improve how people interact with the too