Archive for May, 2009
Five Reasons Why Twitter Is Better Than The Phone
2I believe that Twitter is the beginning of an entirely new communication paradigm. Try to look beyond the hype to the practicality and you might see what I mean.
Five reasons why Twitter is better than a phone:
- It permits time shifting. Just like your TiVo at home, Twitter permits asynchronous messaging. You can send and receive messages regardless of what the connectivity status of the other person is. There is no missed calls or busy signals.
- You don’t need to know their phone number or email address. So long as they used a portion of their name as their username, you can search the entire Twitter population in milliseconds to get their address. It is like having a global address book for the world.
- It is multi-point. By using Twitter in combination with any number of software packages or add-ons permits other’s tweets (the messages sent on Twitter) to get routed in parallel to any other micro blogging service you use, your cellular phone, your email, and even to other Twitterers.
- It is faster. I can write 100 character message and send it faster than I can dial a 10 digit number and wait for the other person to answer for sure. Try it sometime. You might be surprised.
- It can provide multimedia in addition to just voice. Using add-ons, you can send anything from pictures to video to audio along in a tweet.
This was not an effort to produce a list of all the ways that Twitter was superior to telephones, but just to highlight five off of the top of my head. I am pretty sure that we are seeing something revolutionary in communications being born here. Take note of the number of business cards that are starting to include a Twitter handle alongside an email address. Twitter is better than the phone for sure!
Do you use Twitter? How do you like it? Is it better than phones for you? Better than email?
By the way, my Twitter user name is @Scott_Coughlin and the site is @ITThought.
That is my Information Technology Thought of the Day (ITTOD) for May 25, 2009 ©Scott Coughlin .
Exciting Site Service Upgrades
1Hello, readers! I have some exciting news about the services available at the IT Thought of The Day website. I have decided to partner with Google’s Feedburner RSS service to bring you enhanced functionality! These new services are live right now for your use.
- RSS Feed. First off, if you have already subscribed to my RSS feed via any means – no action on your part is required. I have made the original and new RSS feed URLs completely backwards compatible. What you will notice however, is that that feed will now be much more rich in content. Feedburner gives me the ability to add attachments including podcasts, video, audio, etc. Its formatting is also much nicer. I think that it gives the feed a much more polished feel. If you are new to RSS feed subscriptions, please give it a try by using the link in the upper right hand corner or here .
- E-mail Subscriptions. Some of you asked for this. Now I can deliver it. You can use the new form on the right sidebar or Subscribe to IT THOUGHT OF THE DAY by Email by clicking here to get the IT Thought of The Day sent straight to your inbox everyday just as soon as I publish it! Please sign-up and give it a try.
I hope that the changes make your experience better. If, however, there are any unexpected consequences of my actions, please let me know. I welcome your feedback and comments on the changes.
News Commentary: Windows 7 Limits Netbooks
0On Sundays, I normally pick a news story that I found particularly interesting and relevant to Information Professionals to comment on.
This week’s story was the breaking news that Microsoft had lifted the long promised 3 applications open at a time limit from the soon to be delivered Windows 7 Starter Edition. The Starter Edition was designed to be the netbook load of Windows 7 and thus interests me greatly. I love netbooks and believe that they are the future of mobile computing for most users.
Engadget.com: Microsoft publishes maximum Windows 7 netbooks specs
You can see from the chart below, how limiting these restrictions really are. When Microsoft began permitting vendors to ship Windows XP on netbooks last year their excuse for the hardware limitations was that they were necessary to ensure user satisfaction with performance when using their nearly decade old XP OS. Remember that Vista was the flagship Microsoft OS when the netbook scene hit. Due to the high hardware demands of vista, however, no one has been able to get it to perform adequately on a netbook. Now that Windows 7 is here to correct all of the deficiencies of Vista — especially concerning bloat and slowness — this seems like a very self-serving argument. Word on the street is that the current beta of Windows 7 Full that is available to the public absolutely screams on average netbooks.
Chart Credit: Techarp.com
I really get very upset every time that a player in the Information Age, Microsoft this time, takes a self serving position for market reasons that hurts the Internet public. With these restrictions, no hardware vendor will produce a netbook exceeding these specifications because they will be unable to market or pass the cost of higher Microsoft licensing fees onto their customers. Time and time again, it has been shown that most users will simply not pay extra for operating system features. This will essentially stall all development on netbooks until Microsoft decides to raise their bar. Since we are discussing a hardware limitation here, users will not even have the option of purchasing an upgraded version of Windows 7 on their own since the hardware will limit its performance to no better than they would have gotten under the Starter Edition. This is sad news — netbooks will be crippled by this for years even though the technology is rapidly arriving to make their performance rival top-of-the-line notebooks of today. All I want is freedom for hardware vendors to make the netbooks that they want and can combined with freedom for users to purchase the version of Windows that they desire. I don’t want to be told by Redmond how powerful my netbook is allowed to be.
Maybe we can all hope that this will drive hardware vendors to alternate operating systems to show the power of their systems when not constrained by Microsoft licensing agreements. I doubt that will happen due to market share, thought.
What do you think? Do you like netbooks, too? Do you think that this is bad business? Bad for customers? Please share your thoughts on this news story with us.
That is my Information Technology Thought of the Day (ITTOD) for May 24, 2009 ©Scott Coughlin .