How do I want to utilize it?
How can I let it work for me?
What do I want to achieve by using this technology?
As twitter, friendfeed and Google friend connect – and many of the other technologies – feature a user interface, they also open up their API for programmers to create interfaces to optimize the way you can work with these technologies. For me this was my first journey into utilizing the technologies for me. Over time I’ve found a few clients to use within iGoogle, Windows Mobile phone and desktop. The ones I go by at the moment, which optimize my usage for the technologies are: Twittergadget for iGoogle, Twikini for Windows Mobile and Twhirl for desktop.
As I’m almost getting my Android phone, I’ll be swapping the twikini – which now costs money to use – for twidroid.
The people who are also using the new technologies, form a great stream of interesting and non-interesting topics and items. I described in an earlier post, that it’s important to filter these streams into a custom stream which I find interesting. This is also how I let Twitter work for me. I handpick every user I follow and see if they post interesting tweets before adding them. When somebody is tweeting a tat bit too much to my liking I’ll most probably remove them from my list, as they’re cluttering the overall customized stream of things I do want to know about.
I’d like to see Google’s Friend connect more like a community builder, through which people can stay in touch, comment on and generally a central communication method. I setup the connect bar and widget’s up for people to join my site and leave their thoughts through that system.
Friendfeed on the other hand is a tool, which you can utilize in many different ways. It could be that I’d use it to search for the latest technologies people are talking about, or I’d like to find other people in the same area and follow their topics in friendfeed. On the other end, I’d rather have it working for me, as my time is limited and I don’t want to get consumed into the stream of friendfeed posts, likes and comments. the way I let it work for me, is to utilize it as a aggregator of all different items that I find, share, create, write, blog, etc… And put it in a single place called friendfeed, then it becomes a powerful database of information of which I know I can refer to or call on, when I want to find that one item again. This might not be the way friendfeed wants me to fully use it, but I let it work for me in this way, so it works for me.
Well staying up-to-date in the ever faster changing Internet world is important for me, these technologies make it possible for me to do that. Although I had to find my way with them, there always seems to be someone out there like me who put in the features I like. That way I’m able to fully utilize the technologies and let me operate at my full potential in finding my way around and communicating it with others who are interested in that kind of information as well. If there ain’t a technology for it yet, they always turn up after others have felt the need for it as well. The things you can achieve with today’s technologies, were far fetched in the time I started using web-related technologies, but here they are so “Use them” – Just do it!