Friday, December 12th, 2008
I’ve been slowly getting back into Twitter, and while searching Twitter for “Queen’s University”, I was surprised to find Queen’s Campus Security on Twitter.
Checking them out, the updates are actually pretty relevant and useful, warnings about fires, theft and other such concerns:
Queen
However, their last update was on the 22nd of November, which is roughly around the time SMS updates got shut off for Canada as well. (The rest of the world got it shut off back in August)
Earlier in the year, in Digital Media class, Andre’s group discussed how Twitter could be used as a real-time crisis tool in campuses and/or work places, exactly in situations like a fire where you can send out one tweet and it hits all students via their cell phones. I suppose now that’s only restricted to the US.
This is not meant to be yet another Twitter-bashing post, but instead I just want to highlight how clear it is to me that Twitter never thought about the implications of including all these bells and whistles early on, and since the Twitter Fail events earlier this year, it looks like things are only getting worse, not better.
At the crux of it, things would have been better if Twitter had never introduced SMS worldwide, but slowly rolled it out if and when they were sure it was financially feasible. Once people are used to a service and you take it away, they feel shortchanged.
Personally, I’m not sure what to feel about Twitter these days. On one hand I’m beginning to feel I’ve missed it after being away for a few months, and I’m beginning to re-discover a sense of community on it.
On the other, Twitter is still by no means stable and news like this that suggests a lack of business sensibility behind them (and recent purchase and shut down of I Want Sandy) just makes me feel unsure in investing time and attention on Twitter.
I want to know if you’re still using Twitter and in what way? If you’re out of the US, has the lack of SMS-capabilities annoyed you, or is it something you can live with?
Tags: digital media, i want sandy, queen's campus security, queen's university, twitter, twitter sms canada, twitter sms singapore, twitter sms US
Posted in Poor Practices, education, twitter | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, November 26th, 2008
I Want Sandy Back
I just found out that I Want Sandy is going to go offline from December 8th and it’s really depressing news. I’ve just gotten used to emailing “her” and getting prompt reminders when I need to get things done, and when I’ve shared the service with people like Chloe, they’re always impressed with Sandy’s ability to understand emails and convert them to appropriate email reminders.
A few thoughts right now:
1) This is a reminder of how, maybe, we shouldn’t place too much trust in the “cloud”. I have reminders with Sandy going till mid 2009, stuff that I thought I could trust to be off my mind until I needed to think about them in 2009, and now I can’t rely on that anymore.
2) It’s been echoed a bit in the comments on the news post, but although not officially mentioned, the CEO of I Want Sandy is working for Twitter now. Given Twitter’s a) unreliability, b) removal of text messaging for everyone outside of North America and Europe, the rest of us are probably not going to enjoy I Want Sandy, even if she was relaunched by Twitter.
3) Trust issues? I’m marginally on the fence for this. Lots of people are commenting that they feel a little silly now that they were evangelising I Want Sandy and encouraging people to sign up. They feel a little slighted by the CEO’s departure to Twitter. I understand that, but I also understand in this economy, if it was what he had to do, it was what he had to do. Still, it brings to mind “with great power comes great responsibility”. When you get so many people around the world to buy into your great idea (and Sandy is a great idea), they expect you to be there through it all, and not jump ship when another offer comes around.
Do you use I Want Sandy? Will you be affected by the loss of her? How would you feel if one of your favourite apps was pulled from the web? Remember the Milk? ReQall?
Tags: cloud computing, i want sandy, i want sandy is gone, productivity tools, remember the milk, reqall, should we trust the cloud?, twitter, twitter's unreliability, with great power comes great responsibility
Posted in social media | 3 Comments »
Wednesday, October 1st, 2008
As the name suggests, reQall helps you recall the stuff you need to do all day long. Although I’m pretty happy with Remember The Milk as a little add-on to my Gmail and I Want Sandy for meeting reminders and the like, the big advantage that reQall has over them is an iPod Touch application.
reQall becomes most effective when you’re in an environment that is highly connected. For me being in a school where there is wireless everywhere, and a home that’s wifi enabled is more than enough. The Firefox extension allows you to enter “What popped into your head”, and it understands simple context like dates and times, which is exactly what I need. So I’d be surfing or chatting to someone and someone says “oh by the way the assignment is due next Monday”, I can type that immediately right from my Firefox browser.
One other thing I like about the interface of reQall, is that it’s separated into an actual to-do list that is time-sensitive, a shopping list and a notes list. There’s even an option to upload images to trigger your memory, if that works for you. I really like the shopping list and notes function now that I’m living pretty much on my own. Everytime something runs out I just enter it in from my iPod Touch and sync it up and when I head out to the store, it’s all in one place (you don’t need internet access to retrieve data from your iPod Touch).
If you’re like me and was thinking long and hard about updating your iPod Touch software to 2.0, I’d almost say that the reQall app alone would be reason enough for me to pay that $9.99, so consider giving it a try.
Tags: gmail, gtd, i want sandy, ipod touch apps, notes, online productivity apps, productivity, remember the milk, remembering things to do, reqall, shopping lists, to do lists, wifi, wireless coneections
Posted in Tools | No Comments »
