Corey Gouker's Machine Inside the Mind

So I finally caved and decided to try out the always on instant status craze. Now I pretty much update my Live Messenger PSM all the time, especially when my Now Playing is turned on. However, I used to only update Facebook once in a while. Never updated MySpace. That was it, I didn’t (and still don’t really) care about any of the other sites, which frankly seem like a fad.

Like I said, I caved, logged into my Twitter account that I apparently opened a year ago, set it up so that Facebook and Twitter would communicate. Then I added the Messenger application to Facebook so those two could talk. I then updated my status in the Live Messenger dogfood, saw it updated Facebook and was amused, but looking at Twitter… saw nothing. How very lame.

Then I remembered reading this article on TechCrunch:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/31/pingfm-centralizes-status-updates-but-is-it-enough/

Hoping that maybe, possibly, someone would’ve managed to have the services in place to spread a status message across all services regardless of origin. This concept while simple and something that has been touted as the future for some time still eludes us… None the less within 30 seconds I was registered at HelloTxt, yet another website with yet another login to manage.

I then gave my login details to the 4 other social services that I have accounts with. This seems odd considering how much phishing is going on. Heck I bet there’s a lot of money and data to be had if someone were to create a cute Web 2.0 site that gathered account data like HelloTxt does then just sell it to the highest bidder.

After some additional reading and browsing I found this blog which discusses differences between HelloTxt and Ping.fm:
http://masontechbeat.blogspot.com/2008/07/title-fight-pingfm-vs-hellotxt.html

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m all for this reinvigorated interest in the web, if anything it seems geek is now chic, can’t go wrong there. But seriously? How on Earth do the 21 networks that HelloTxt communicates with manage to attract and keep users using their services? What value do any of them really have or add? Where’s all this VC coming from and can I have some please?

Now the point of all this is that it seems like there’s a lot of cool stuff going on, but the key issue to really making everything work is a central service for which all services communicate. There’s no central standard like RSS to make it all take off. In my mind all it’s going to take is Google, Yahoo, Facebook, or whoever to release a true framework that will be the platform for future services to grow. Google seems like the obvious candidate here with their ad platform and fingers dipped into everything you can think of.

It would seem like now is the prime time to make a move leverage the hundreds of millions of Live Hotmail and Messenger users and create an open platform for these Personal Status Message(PSM) sites to communicate. I’m sure that most people already have a Live ID so that won’t even be a major caveat. I tried finding a plugin for HelloTxt or Twitter for Messenger, the best I could find was this:
http://www.msgplus.com/scripts/search/?q=twitter
Sadly this will only update Twitter and since HelloTxt doesn’t seem to pull from Twitter the rest of the sites I’m on won’t get updated. FAIL.

If Microsoft has 300 million active Live Messenger users there must be at least half a billion or more PSM’s set every day. I’m going to guess if Microsoft had the open platform it would get used. Update your status on Windows Live, have it updated everywhere. Simple concept. This seems like a much better use of resources than changing bitmaps, adding more winks, and confusing users with design changes. Microsoft has Live Spaces, Live Messenger, and Live Mobile, what more is needed? Not to mention the close ties with Facebook. That’s a pretty fine start imho. Get tied to Twitter build some momentum and you’ve got the workings for real added value to Windows Live.

Now considering my PSM in Live Messenger doesn’t update my status on Zune or Xbox despite using the same Live ID. I’m just a little nervous that Microsoft may be latecomer to the conversation it should have started. Are there any conversations going on like this in Windows Live right now?

We shall see…

So one benefit of my job is that I get to work on some cool hardware long before it's released. While I couldn't say either way if I've played with the Inspiron 910, I have played with a PC running the Atom chips and such. I must say it ran Windows just fine and was totally usable. The form factor of x unit wasn't quite right for me, but this Inspiron 910 looks pretty sweet.

For the longest time I've had the thought that I'd only ever get laptops from now on. Figuring I could just get one with DisplayPort or HDMI and get an external keyboard, mouse, and 24" or 30" LCD for the 1920x1200+ experience. But that sort of requires a dock and such. Fine dandy, but I'd be paying a lot of money for lower end hardware. While I'm sure it'd run my daily stuff just fine it doesn't quite cut it for more hardcore stuff.

So I've sort of been thinking that a quad core iMac would be perfect for me. At the same time I want something mobile. Perhaps a quad core Mac Book pro or a Latitude would do it. Anyway, this got me thinking, why not get an iMac or regular Dell desktop. Then just get the Inspiron 910 as my Internet and IM box :). When I really think about what I do on a laptop... the only thing I do outside of IE is Messenger and some file management. So what's the point of having some crazy high end mobile PC?

I'd probably do a lot more if it weren't for the form factor or the fact I'm sitting down on the couch doing it. It's sad, in this day, I still can't quite live away from the de facto standard of PC usage, desktop, monitor, keyboard, mouse.

So my thought process behind getting rid of Exchange for a much simpler Hotmail or Gmail solution has got me thinking about simplification in general. I've been giving serious thought to dumping other complicated solutions for much mor elegant ones. For example no longer running my Server 2008 box in a domain, dumping all the services on the server and just hosting my blog and photo gallery in the cloud. In the end the server would just be a glorified file server.

Somehow though I can't bring myself to do this, I think it's got something to do with the feeling of control. Right now I can do whatever I want to the server or to any of the data. If I want to have my gallery full of 20K 8MP images I can, if I want to stream all my music I can. If I were to switch to Wordpress and Flickr I'd lose all that control.

I also find it amusing that while I want to just simplify things I'm also considering doing crap that's just the opposite. I'm tempted to switch from dasBlog to Community Server. I'm also thinking that if Apple announces Core 2 Quad's in the iMac's or MacBook's this month that I'll likely buy one and run Vista on it.

I'm tired of buying Dell's, they're just boring and work :), plus I wouldn't mind trying out OSX even if it's only for a few hours. I have considered just getting a new E series Latitude but meh, I'm not a fan of any of the Dell desktops either, they're cheap and quiet sure, but they just lack a certain something. Thinking about things a bit further, I'm kind of tired of using a laptop as my main machine. My neck is killing me from always sitting on the couch and typing away. On the other hand a laptop fits what I need really well. I guess I just need to get a small desk with a dock along with a real monitor and keyboard and mouse.

Who knows, things really aren't that complicated, everything I've got going on now just sort of takes care of itself and I don't do anything. When something does break though it is a pain. Would be nice if that wasn't the case.

I think I'm going to try and install Community Server now on coreygo.com get that running and migrate things over. Not sure what I'll do for redirection of this old site and how to migrate the data plus the RSS feed. Yay for complications.