Tweeting With TweetDeck

TweetDeck Logo

In an earlier post, I talked about what Twitter was originally made for, and what has become of it. Since the recent Twitter boom has reached all corners of the globe, and on many levels, there have been many third-party products and services introduced to the market to facilitate and improve the tweeting experience. After all, when you are following 4,000+ people, it is almost impossible to keep up, and it consequently becomes a bit of a mess. One of the most commonly used tools by hardcore tweeters is TweetDeck, an application built on Adobe’s AIR providing the user with a much more efficient interface for accessing and participating in the Twitter globe.

TweetDeck Interface

TweetDeck could be seen as a dedicated browser, where there are different columns showing tweets, mentions, messages, etc. Therefore, from a single screen, you can view many tweets at the same time. After that, you have the ability to add your own groups, which is ideal for friends, family, or special interest groups. For example, as a web designer, you might want to place your favorite designers in a group to have their own dedicated column. This way you are sure not to miss their tweets, and can easily browse through them. In fact, there are many features that come into play, most notably:

1. Tweeting directly from TweetDeck, you won’t need to visit Twitter.com in the browser, everything you need is in the application
2. Easily reply and forward, simple as clicking on one of the buttons the replace the tweeter’s image when hovered (Twitter.com does not provide a direct way of RT, this saves a lot of time and effort)
3. Aside from the main Group feature, you can have dedicated columns for searched items or hashed keywords. That is extremely useful when you want to stay updated about a certain topic, without following people who have discussed it at one point
4. Built-in URL shortener, very conveniently placed underneath the tweeting input field. Allows you to go with service of choice
5. Integrated photo-sharing service, also embedded in the tweeting field, allowing you to instantly share photos with a short URL directing to them
6. Access to most popular tweets and tweeters, plus stats that reveal the popularity of each
7. You can also access two different Twitter accounts at the same time, and integrate Facebook for status updates

It is obvious that there was a lot of work put into the application, it seems to offer everything a twitterer would need. However, as always, there are a couple of aspects that could use some improvement:

• As any AIR application, the interface is always strange and takes some getting used to. It seems that to be a Rich Internet Application, you need to have a navigation system that is completely different to what the entire world is used to. Moreover, the black background is not too appealing, and even though it is customizable, very few are willing to go through the trouble to change the colors to a more standard, adequate skin
• There doesn’t seem a way to add people to follow from the application itself, you have to visit the Twitter website from a browser
• You can customize notifications, so that you are alerted from someone from your custom groups has tweeted. However, you’re not given the choice of choosing which groups you are notified about, and which ones you are not

Overall, TweetDeck is a free application that runs on any operating system (since AIR can be installed on Windows, Mac OS or Linux, any AIR application will natively run on either one of them), and is an essential tool for anyone who takes Twitter seriously. After using it for a while, you will come to notice that without a tool of the same caliber, it is almost impossible to fully take advantage of the service. And as an application still in the beta phase, its future is very promising.

UPDATE: You can indeed follow or unfollow others easily via TweetDeck. If you hover on the person’s image and then click on the “other actions” icon > User,  you can make the choice from the menu. Thanks to @idesignstudios for pointing it out. However, you’ll need to click on your own name from a tweet to see your profile/summary. Moreover, in order to find people by name (as oppose to by #keywords), or to see who’s following you, you’ll need to visit the Twitter website from the browser.

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Should Adobe Slash Prices?

If you are in any way related to the design and/or multimedia realm, chances are you heavily rely on a handful of Adobe’s products. In fact, even the regular users with minimal technical knowledge naturally run applications such as Adobe Acrobat Reader, and more recently, Rich Internet Applications built on AIR. There is no doubt that with the acquisition of Macromedia in 2005, there has been very little competition in the different areas of the design and multimedia industries.

Adobe Photoshop Prices

Any web designer in particular is likely to be fully dependent on Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Flash, the later of which is by far the biggest gain from the Macromedia acquisition, as it brought the entire RIA industry into Adobe’s playground. As a freelancer, it only makes sense to purchase those applications, right? Well, with a total price tag of an incredible $2,300, it is of little surprise that the majority look to work around the hefty asking price. Sadly, millions of designers and web developers world wide rely on illegal copies of Adobe’s main money-makers, and it is not difficult to see why:

1. It is obviously a lot of cash, not the kind someone at the early stages of his or her freelancing career can dispose of
2. Following such an investment, as soon as the new version is out, the one you own becomes obsolete, and you would have to pay a significant amount to upgrade
3. It is easy to think that stealing a license is only temporary, until you have developed the capacity to live with the open-source alternatives (GIMP, Inkscape, etc.), or that you will be making more money in the future, allowing you to make such an investment

While there are many companies across Egypt and the Arab world that run bootleg copies of professional software, such an act is almost unheard of in the developed world. You’re very unlikely to be working for a design agency in the US, for example, and find that the Photoshop on your work computer is cracked or has by-passed activation. However in Egypt, for example, in the biggest ISPs and web development companies, it is common to see your colleague walk in with the good news that he or she has gotten a cracked version of the new Illustrator that has barely just come out in the US. A couple of hours later, everyone at the office is talking about their first experiences with the new product, after having made more copies for their personal PCs at home.

Adobe is clearly very aware of the situation. They know how over-priced their products are, as well as how easy it is to crack them, and how common it is to get a hold of illegal copies. Nevertheless, their strategy is to allow individuals to get their goods for free, students to grow up using them at close to nothing, but for companies to pay the full price. The idea is to have everyone addicted to them, and then force companies to purchase the licenses, because their designers are not willing to use GIMP, which would’ve saved loads of cash.

This all makes sense until you being the foreign companies into the equation. With thousands of agencies world-wide running illegal copies, Adobe is missing out on the chance to make much more profit. The theory would be that, just like anti-viruses have become significantly cheaper over the past 4 years or so, encouraging even the most loyal of software thieves to purchase original licenses, Adobe’s price reduction would help bring legit customers on board. If Photoshop, for example, was priced at $350 with a free upgrade, the number of legit users would at least triple. Even if you’re starting up your own agency or freelancing for the first time, that kind of money is recovered with the first project, and you get to match the newest version when it’s out. After that, they could make it more challenging to crack it (acknowledging that it is impossible to completely end it). Thus, many more people would not see it worth the hassle to skip the fee payment.

Judging from the progress over the past few years, it does not look like Adobe will rethink its pricing scheme anytime soon. However, they are clearly on the losing end as their bizarre price tags are encouraging millions everywhere to get a hold of them illegally, while many foreign companies will do the same, knowing they cannot get into trouble. Either way, besides four or five of their applications, Adobe’s programs have been defeated by open-source alternatives a while back, and the current survivors will soon follow.

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Possible Solution To Forwarded Emails

Although forwarding seems like a trend from the 90s, there is still a large crowd that constantly sends irrelevant, junk email to all names in the address book. Everyone share’s the troubling situation, and getting out of it is not as easy as one would hope for. Some people have email addresses that are specifically for receiving waste-of-time emails, but then you are left with the problem of not knowing who’s who in the constant-forwarding game. Besides, having more email accounts is incredibly inefficient – everything should be centralized.

The Stop Forwarding Letter

The people at StopForwarding.Us came up with the clever idea of offering the service of sending an anonymous email politely asking the abuser to stop sending chain letters and insignificant forwards. They do so by sending a carefully-worded email named after the person of your choosing politely asking him or her to refrain from the irritating act. That should successfully send the message across, without causing any awkwardness or drama.

Apart from the fact that it is quite humorous and entertaining, it is yet another example of the how the users of the internet are always offered new services for free thanks to the large-scale demand on one end, and the creativity of those who strive for it on the other.

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The Exploding Internet Trends

This is a graph that visually maps out internet usage world-wide. You can look through numbers all night, but nothing can help us comprehend the massiveness of the web like an illustration as such:

The Exploding Internet

There are several thought-provoking digits to draw conclusions from:

• China has the biggest user base, even though it is one of the countries that censors the web the most. Also, if your were to take into consideration that it is the most populous nation on the planet, and that less than a fifth of the population access the internet, the number loses significance. Japan, on the other hand, boasts a usage percentage of 74%
• India is widely believed to be an IT haven, and surely enough over 60 million Indians are connected to the information super highway. However, that number represents no more than 4% of its population
• Voice Over IP represents a mere 6%, which is shocking. With an infrastructure already in place, and the costs mostly taken care of, why is the huge majority still relying on old-school telephony? I expect this number to triplee in 2009, especially with various options available
• Africa doesn’t seem to exist – the sad story that I had discussed in an earlier post

It is beneficial for regular users to visualize the latest trends in terms of Internet usage worldwide. When the 2009 graphs are out, it will be interesting to compare and spot where the movement is heading. The beauty of the usage trends is that it is set by no one, except for the users themselves, and that is the source of freedom. The downside of the story, however, is the significant world population that is left outside of the internet game.

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So What Exactly Is Twitter About?

For Twitter users, not being part of this golden community is like giving up free prizes. For the Twitter addicts, there’s very little in life that can prevent you from constantly tweeting or following the latest tweets for 5,000+ people that you’re following. For people who are completely oblivious to this Web 2.0 revolution, it’s very difficult to explain. However, this videos actually does a pretty good job to give an introduction:

Notice that they are repeatedly arguing that it is about short updates between “blog posts”. While that is true to a certain degree, just like everything else, the actual uses deviate significantly from the original theory. Meaning, the huge majority of twitterers use the service for completely different motives. In fact, the most followed and the highest rated tweeters (besides celebrities like Obama), are the ones that are constantly sending out tweets with useful links. They are the ones that bring the best of your world (whatever your interests might be) to your Twitter page. Therefore, no need to search the web, and no need for RSS, just by checking out your Twitter page constantly, you immediately have access to all of the information that you are interested in, and/or in need of.

For example, web designers use Twitter to exchange websites and resources that are useful to everyone. It is an ideal way to use the tools and services that have been tested out and recommended by peers. More over, you can (briefly) discuss different topics, and it can eventually grow to be a conversation where thousands of members have taken part in it.

But why would people invest so much time in providing links and useful information for everyone? The main reason is exposure. By gaining people’s trust, and winning over thousands and thousands of followers, whenever you want people to visit a particular page (for example, your blog), you can immediately drive immense traffic and benefit in that way. It is perhaps the best way to market your blog, website and services.

Twitter went from being a service that allows individuals to connect to their loved ones by simple, insignificant updates, to being a Web 2.0 movement that you simply cannot miss out on. It is a platform of communication that is surprisingly simple, yet incredibly effective at the same time. Even though it wasn’t planned to be used in this way, it has inevitably become a huge success.

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Freelancing With “On The Job”

The On The Job icon

When you start growing as a freelancer,and begin to deal with more clients, you come to realize the importance of organization. If you are to become a successful freelance web designer, you need to be able to take advantage of the enormous collection of tools available (whether free or commercial) via the internet. I wanted to talk about On The Job, a program by Stunt software for time and expense tracking, and invoicing, that runs on Mac OS.

If you’ve taken the time to look around for the most common tools used by design agencies, there’s no doubt that you will have come across Basecamp by 37signlas. It is truly an impressive tools, or collection of tools. With Basecamp you can assign and divide tasks, set deadlines and milestones, share and collaborate on file, and track time in detail. While it already sounds like everything you need in one place, you have to keep in mind that the cheapest plan for Bascamp is at $24 a month (with only up to 15 projects and limited to 3GB of storage). The most popular plan is at no less than $49 monthly. Besides being over-priced, if you are working mostly alone, or up to three people together, it is actually inefficient to rely on such a solution. It is mainly geared towards design agencies that might have a team of 10 personnel working on several projects in parallel.

For that reason, On The Job targets a niche that represents a reasonable market share, but are nonetheless overlooked: Freelance web designers who mostly work alone and deal directly with clients. For that category, On The Job is spot on:

1. Set up clients and jobs: Therefore it is easy to see the different tasks that you’ve done for every client, and bill him or her accordingly
2. Configure the hourly rate, or flat fee: It automatically displays how much each client owes you for each particular job
3. Start/stop the timer: Sitting conveniently on the bar across the top, you can easily stop and continue the timer to find out exactly how much time you’ve been spending with each task
4. 

   The invoice editor

   Create invoices: It comes packed with some standard templates, but gives you the full control of making your own template, dynamically showing the new data with each invoice that you create. Not to mention that you can create invoices for certain jobs, or for everything you’ve done for the client

The best part of it all, is that it’s priced at $40. Even if you’re at the very beginning of your freelancing career, this is an extremely small price to pay, especially since you will be using it for at least a handful of years before you start working regularly with a group of fellow professionals.

The client view

It would’ve been nice to have a way to access it from other computers via the internet, for example, and to have it available across platforms. Nevertheless. given that it provides an easy way to track time, jobs, clients and invoices, On The Job is the ideal software for freelance web designers who are working alone and have their work mostly centralized on a single Mac.

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A Look Back At Digital Journalism

Hindsight bias is the devil. And although there are a couple of different generations that are regular users of the Internet, but at the same time old enough to remember the days before it even existed, no one could possible recall this, back in 1981:

It’s always intriguing to look back and witness the vision of the future from the people of the past. Not only does it take two hours to download the digital edition, but it also costs $5 an hour, while the paper edition in the street, at the time, only cost 20 cents! That is precisely the beauty of the Internet, the ability for each and every person to have a voice for free and say whatever he or she wants, for the entire world to view and share. Beautiful.

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Cloud Computing With eyeOS

The move towards online storage and web applications has been going on for a while. Soon enough, users will enjoy the ability to combine all of the documents and applications in central places so that they can be easily accessed from any computer via the internet. With the advancement of services and online applications available for free, plus the high-connection speeds available everywhere, it’s only logical to rely less on the local machines, and to take the tasks and documents on the move.

A group of youngsters from Barcelona started eyeOS back in 2005 with a clear vision of the future of the web. eyeOS is an open source operating system that is built to be placed entirely on a given server and accessed remotely. This basically means that it is no more than a simple, yet comprehensive, script that you upload to your server. It gives you an interface that is very similar to that of a Linux distribution made for the desktop, only tailored to work entirely online. Therefore, you can access your eyeOS from anywhere, view/edit/share all of your documents that are stored remotely, use the web applications available, and more.

Here are some screen captures that can help you visualize what it’s like (you can see the full set of screenshots at the eyeOS website):

eyeOS login

eyeOS desktop

Browse/add applications

The features of a self-hosted cloud operating system in general, and eyeOS in particular, are endless. The ones that stand out are the following:

1. Free and open source: Yet another beautiful product from the open source community. No need to pay anything whatsoever, and you have the advantage of constant free updates
2. Everything on your server: You no longer have to worry about carrying everything with you, moving things between computers, etc. With eyeOS, you potentially have all of your needs in one place to be accessed from anywhere. Moreover, you install it on your own server, meaning you have full access with complete freedom
3. Sharing documents: Now that you have all of your documents in one place, you can take advantage of the public folder to place all of the files that you would like others to access. Not to mention that you can allow people to sign up for accounts, or create accounts on their behalf, granting them access to certain directories. The best method to share photos, documents, etc.
4. Web applications: the eyeOS developers’ community is constantly growing offering tons of free web applications to install on your OS. Now you can view and edit all of the office documents, for example, directly on your remote server. There are more and more applications available, all free and open-source. It already comes packed with applications such as an FTP client and an RSS reader

So where’s the catch? There isn’t really, it’s only a matter of time before everyone fully relies on eyeOS and the likes. For the time-being, there are some drawbacks:

1. Speed and performance: Remember, everything is done via remote server. You need to have a very high speed internet connection, otherwise simple tasks might be somewhat frustrating. I personally think a 10Mbps broadband speed would be ideal, any less, and you might not appreciate its efficiency
2. Application list: Although still growing, it’s obviously still lacking many of those applications that users have taken for granted on any given OS
3. Upload limit: Many servers do not allow you to upload files of over 2MB in size via HTTP. Sadly, unless that changes, than a lot of time will be wasted moving large documents to the remote server via an external FTP client

The best part of it all is how easy it is to install and run. All you need to do is:

• Go to http://www.eyeos.org/ and download the file
• Using an FTP client (needless to say, FileZilla is the best), upload the directory to whatever location you want on your website
• Direct your browser to that directory (for example: www.mysite.com/eyeos), a click or two, and voila! You’ve successfully installed eyeOS

It is clear that eyeOS is the future of the web. Relying less on individual PCs and centralizing data is the way to go. As more and more developers join the project, and as the internet reaches further and at higher speeds, there will be very little preventing the regular users from going open source, and functioning fully online.

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Series: The Website Is Down

Very rarely will you come across videos that are as hilarious, informative and intriguing as this:

The Website Is Down is a free online video series created by technology geeks who are exceptionally good at what they do. With three episodes under their belt already, these guys have deservedly won a handful of awards. This one is the first episode from the point of view of the IT specialist, and there are a number of vital conclusions to draw from this:

• IT technicians are exceptional at multi-tasking, and all they are after is a piece of mind
• In any given company, every non-IT employee thinks that he or she is an expert and know how problems are solved
• Communication is always a miserable failure. No one has any clue what he or she is supposed to do, and how to relay the information
• Just because you are the person who implements decisions, does not mean that you are responsible for taking them. It’s the vicious cycle of all companies
• What goes on behind the scenes in the server room is nowhere near what is advertised

I personally think that the most important aspect of the video is the demonstration of the significantly large technological gap between the specialists and the regular users. It is cause for concern as fewer “Web Dude’s” possess enough patience to help the users get on their feet, and it’s only getting worse.

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The Fight Against Spam

It’s a sad but true story that as we witness technological developments, spammers become advance and reach new levels to infiltrate our mail boxes. It is by far one of the most frustrating aspects of the online experience, and unfortunately, it doesn’t look like it will be ending anytime soon.

Spamming started back in 1978 on the network of the time, ARPANET, when an email was sent to 600 address. But it started operating on a massive level in 1994, right around when millions of users were signing up for new email accounts and getting introduced to using the Internet. Today it is estimated that there are more than 100 billion spam messages every single day.

The following is a hilarious report by the Onion News Network on spam:

The best solution so far that has been developed to hold off spam is the Captcha. Basically, by having random numbers and letters covered with scribbles keeps the spammers away. However, it might not be the best solution out there, as it means that many humans are having trouble passing the test. From that perspective, it is clear that spammers are ahead in the battle, even if it is somewhat coincidental. The fact that millions of Internet users repeatedly fail to pass the captcha hurdle means that the spammers have successfully prevented the rest from the harmonious, smooth internet experience.

In order defeat the spammers, there needs to be a test that is incredibly easy for humans, and impossible for spammers. There have been some creative works as of late that will hopefully catch on in the near future. One of which is the Ajax Fancy Captcha:

The Ajax Fancy Captcha method

Not only is it easy, but it is also intuitive. This means that it only requires a few seconds and you won’t break a sweat, while it blocks off those attempting to spam. Seems like the ideal solution, and I’m looking forward to seeing it implemented everywhere on the web.

There’s no doubt that spammers will continue to grow and develop, but the strength of the community of the free and safe internet is far superior. And while we will always be facing periods when spammers have catch up, it will always be followed by another where users carry on their everyday lives without the slightest of worries.

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