Archives for February 2010

UberTwitter for Blackberry Phones

February 24, 2010 by

I’ve been using my Blackberry for almost a full year now and for the majority of that time, I’ve been using an application called twitterberry to access my twitter stream.  It works, but has some major failings for me.  Most importantly, it doesn’t allow for multiple twitter accounts.  Not that big of a deal for most people, but a downside for me.  Also, it seemed to load pretty slowly, and the customization is pretty limited.  So, with those things in mind, I went looking for something a little bit better.  What I found was UberTwitter.

UberTwitter is a great app.  It does multiple accounts.  Not as well as I could dream, but well enough that it satisfies my needs.  Loading still can be a bit slow, but it does it pretty well and when it does update, it remembers where I was in the stream.  That’s very helpful.  There’s plenty of customization (most of which I haven’t even touched on.).  It’s got a “add location” feature that I found a bit annoying.  That’s because it automatically added a link to my location on to each twitter posting.  I quickly figured out how to turn that off, and now I can add it if I so choose, but it isn’t on every post.  It also has the ability to modify the font size which allows me to reduce the size and see more of my stream at once.

There are a few other things that are completely unnecessary for me, but are probably pretty cool for other folks.  For instance, the “who’s twittering near you” feature.  It takes the location of your device and finds others who are within a certain mileage from you.  In a bigger city, that’s probably a pretty cool feature.  Here, in rural North Dakota, it’s nearly useless.

Overall, I’ll be sticking with the UberTwitter app.  At least until I can give the official RIM app a try and see if it’s any better.

Filed Under: General News Tagged With: , , , , ,

Buzz Off, Google Buzz

February 19, 2010 by

Like many of you out there, I turned Google Buzz on the second I was able to give it a go. When Google releases a product, it’s a bit like when Apple releases something new. Everybody lines up around the block and camps out for days on the concrete to get their hands on it. And just like those Apple addicts, we all should have just waited for the, ahem, buzz on Buzz to die down.

Turns out, Buzz was a bit of a buzz-kill.  (I’m going overboard on the puns, but I can’t help it.)  First and foremost, it had/has some very serious privacy concerns that caused an uproar among the more intelligent early adopters.  Further, it doesn’t add anything new to the market.  What it did do was tie a few other Google products together along with several of the more popular social apps like Twitter.  Whoopty Do.  There was no significant difference that it brought to the table.  What it really comes down to is Google doing something they don’t usually do.  Playing Catch-up.

As far as Buzz  is concerned, Google is to social media as Microsoft is to Search.  Always the bastard child that’s late to the party.  Everybody knows that you’ll never get to dance with the prom queen that way.  Google needs to go back to being innovative.  I’m beginning to wonder if Google, like Microsoft, hasn’t taken the complacency path for corporate development.  Let everybody else do the hard research and then just buy them up.  It’s worked well for Microsoft hasn’t it?  (I’m only being slightly tongue-in-cheek here.)

Bottom line for me, I don’t need yet another social app begging for my time.  I turned Buzz off.

Filed Under: General News Tagged With: , , ,

Jamie Oliver on Obesity

February 13, 2010 by

I’ve heard Jamie Oliver’s name once or twice, but usually related to his cooking shows.  I don’t know that I have ever actually seen any of them.  He was recently at TED and gave an amazing presentation on Obesity and the actions that he is taking to fight it.
(*note: The video is a bit larger than the layout here, so to see it properly, you might want to click on the ted logo in the upper left or the link under the video*)

Jamie Oliver at TED on Obesity

Incredibly well done and well worth the 20 minutes.

Filed Under: General News Tagged With: , , , , ,

Digging for Content

February 12, 2010 by

Part of the reason that it’s been so awfully quiet around here is that I’ve been struggling a lot with coming up wih content.  When I first began writing here, it seemed easy.  And in fact, it usually was.  Now?  Not so much.

What changed?  Me.  I think.  I used to be ok with trolling around the internet looking for the latest thing and trying to piggyback onto it with a comment or two.  I think I still am.  For the most part.  However, I seem to be having one heck of a time finding anything that I’m even remotely interested in to comment on.  Let’s see.  There’s the iPad.  I can’t stand Apple. I can’t even tell you why other than I think there’s a part of me that hates them because they are the cool kids and I never was.  Add on to that the fact that the iPad is not much more than a fancy ebook reader, and I have a hard time finding any real comments on it.

Lately, there’s been a fair amount of talk (buzz, if you will) about Google Buzz.  I’ve been playing with it a little and am still waiting for that lightbulb to light up when I figure out why it’s any better than any of the other services out there that I already use and already have set up the way I want.  So far, that hasn’t happened.  In fact, at the moment, I think it’s inferior to most of the services that it’s trying to replace.

There just is very little that I see that really entices me and jumps up and down yelling “Hey, Blogger!  Write about me!”.  So, I wander around going through my list on Google Reader, watching my feeds on Twitter, and even popping on to Facebook now and again for something other than games.  If I’m desperate, I might even pop over to Digg, Techmeme, or Technorati.

So, how do you find your content?  Where do you find your inspiration?  Tell me.  Share with me.

Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,