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Why no Buzz for Google’s Twitter

Google launched Buzz last week to generally better press than Apple received seems to have received for it’s iPad, though I wonder if there are some similarities. For one thing, both of these are kind of re-imagines of already successful products. The iPad is basically the iPhone on a grander scale; if you watch Apple’s videos it’s clear they are thinking, “This is what we did with the iPhone- but what if we had a bigger screen?” Google’s Buzz of course is kind of reminiscent of Google Wave which was promoted famously as “What if we where inventing email today?” Buzz might well be asking “What if we invented Twitter today?”

There’s plenty of ways that kind of thinking can go right or wrong, but I’m wondering if what made Twitter what it is today was that it was kind of retro to begin with- and that’s what makes it fun. I’ve tried to explain Twitter to people for about 2 years now. The 140-character limit is kind of arbitrary- text messages can be up to 160 characters and computers-type limits would be multiples of 8, resulting in numbers like 128 or 256 characters.  So yes, it’s a bit of a toy, but it’s limitations are what make it a challenge, you can’t be sloppy with Twitter, it takes a bit of thinking to pack much meaning into 140 characters –spaces and punctuation included– and that in turn that appeals to certain people.

Google Buzz does away with that limit of course.  While  Buzz of course has no limits on text, it lets you add photos, links, probably video too. It’s certainly probably more practical, but it might not turn out to be as much fun.

Blogging with Twitter

I haven’t updated this blog in a while, but that’s not to say I haven’t been blogging pre-say. I realized a few months ago that most of my blogging had moved to Twitter.

Why? Well there’s a few reasons:

• via its gMail interface, blogging is as simple as sending a text message, making it very immediate
• the restrictions (160-odd characters, no images, short urls) make tight writing a necessity
• you don’t feel like you have to write 2-3 paragraphs (that’s me) when you can sum things up in a sentance
• the social aspects – it’s not Facebook, but that’s probably a good thing – really if i want post an album, I can use Flikr
• the 3rd-party apps – there’s a whole host of things built on Twitter’s api, from search engines like TweetScan to Twitbin there’s a lot of interesting things being built around it.
• it’s fun

Blogging certainly has its place, but if you’re looking for something less formal- and quite possibly the way things are going, give it a try.

SitePoint Blogs YYZtech.ca’s Web Design Book List

It looks like Sitepoint noted YYZtech’s list of best books for web designers 2007 a few weeks back – thanks guys! Seriously, SitePoint seems to be one of those publishers that is really improving, I remember their one of their early checklist books, good information, but very functional layout, flip forward to something like their CSS Anthology and you see how far they have come.

Stats down

Just checking the stats for YYZtech.ca, oddly they’ve been down this weekend. Since most of the site’s visitors are Canadian, I’m thinking, “What? is this everybody getting ready for the Grey Cup or something?” So much for Hockey Nation – or does that I should be looking for another downturn in the spring, about the time the Leafs start falling (apart)?

New section: WeirdPro

Somewhere doing the day the name came to me: WeirdPro, kind of sounds like WordPro – ok, seriously dating myself here, but I swear I was about 9 when this was sota (State Of The Art). What it references is much older, the phrase “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro” which is, of course, from the late Hunter S. Thompson (Fear and Loathing?… Johnny Dep?)

Anyways, this is going to be an occasional entry of lists of the weirdest, you can’t make this up stuff – kind of like what you can say about HotDocs - documentaries about these characters that if someone wrote them, no-one would say they’re beleavable.

So, now it’s 10:40pm, the Second Cup is closing and I’ve run out of time – so no list for today.

Saved by the book

The last few weeks I’ve been selling off a bunch of older titles I had laying around (instead of working on this blog), one of them that almost went off to the local BMV was PHP 5 In Practise; Fortunately, I passed on that one and tonight, while trying to finish off a tag-generator for Halifax-Restaurants.com, it saved my tail at least once. When I originally reviewed it, I was impressed with the amount of material in it- it’s still one of the best books out there when you’re looking for something like- “how do I remove white-spaces from a string” and such basic but necessary things.

Digital Bedouin of the North?

I’m sitting in a local Second Cup dashing (ok, bit faster than crawling) through my TTD (Things To Do) list, fueled by cold coffee (yes, more caffee – same price) and I’m thinking about the “Digital Bedouin” (so termed by a U.S. writer Dan Fost in his article WHERE NEO-NOMADS’ IDEAS PERCOLATE, written a few months back) and I’m wondering what it means- kind of like the team cybercrime or auto-crime (yes, apparently when cars where new, criminals who used cars where refered by their tool, much like there is crime and there is cybercrime – I give it another 10-15 years before it’s just called “crime” except for the old folks at CTV – yes, they still show temperatures in Fahrenheit, what 20 years on?).

Anyways, I’m thinking that it’s one of those things that people will just start doing without really thinking of it as anything special- go to a university campus and you’ll see students working on laptops far from the classroom – in a few years some of them will be working far from the boardroom- hopefully with newer laptops. Doubt most of them will describe themselves as Digital Bedouins as much as anyone called themselves a “computer user” past 1990.

In the mean-time, there’s a few good links over at Slashdot, ShannonClark, or Going Bedouin at Web Worker Dail if you’re looking to get into it anyways.