Some Changes

So, I know it has been literally forever since I have posted here, and I apologize for that. School has been absolutely ridiculous, but anyways, I know that is the last thing that you wanna hear about. So lets get right to it.

In the past 48 hours I have discovered some new software/web 2.0 stuff that has given me a little refresh. I always love to get my hands on some new software or new stuff on the web, especially stuff that works really really well. So I just wanted to give you all a little review of this stuff.

So on Wednesday April 23 Facebook launched their new chat/notification feature. I noticed as soon as I logged on that morning that something was different. There was a little bar across the bottom of my browser that told me how many of my friends were online, and gave me this little notification icon. At first I was surprised, and couldn't quite see what facebook was trying to accomplish with this new feature. I mean, it just seemed like another chat client that wasn't going to go anywhere, because everyone is already on AIM, Yahoo Messenger, or MSN anyways, so why do we need one more. But it turns out, it was a brilliant move on Mike Zuckerburg's (Founder of Facebook) part. The more I thought about it, the more it started to make sense. Yes, everyone is on those chat clients, but there are so many that not all of my friends are on the same one. Once I realized that basically all and I mean ALL of my friends are facebook then I found a better use for the chat feature.

So, it looks like facebook still has a bright future ahead of them. I was starting to wonder where facebook could go from here. It hadn't seemed like they had made any significant changes in a while, so I was starting to wonder what they were gonna do to keep people interested, because after a while people just get tired of the same ol' thing, it is just the way the internet works, so I knew they had to do something to keep people's attention, and I think they've done it, for now at least.

As I was thinking about this new chat feature, I was thinking about facebook's business model, and it is a great one. They created a place where everyone wants to become a member and gather and network with all of their friends. They've spent a long time building this social network up, and I think they've had this chat idea for a while now, they just had to wait for the right time to release it. If they would've released it to early then it would've been a flop because there wouldn't have been a big enough audience on facebook. If they would've released it too late, then everyone would be gone from facebook because of disinterest. So they had to wait for just the right time when they believed was the peak of number of people on facebook, and they did just that. Just in the past couple days, I've found myself not logging onto AIM but instead looking on facebook for someone to chat with. Now, I don't think that AIM is going anywhere, I know I'm still going to be using it, but I may be using it less and less.

Facebook isn't perfect yet. Now if you read everything in this post up until now, you'd probably think that I'm saying that facebook is perfect, and I am absolutely not. There are still some GUI problems that I think they need to work out. I mean the chat feature isn't the prettiest thing in the world right now, and not the most efficient and functional thing ever, but I think they are making some steps in the right direction. I mean, I was talking to 5 people at one time last night and it was kinda annoying having to switch between every chat tab to see the window, and if you use a popout window, it is very big, and very unattractive, but I think they will fix these things in time. Like I said, I think this is enough to keep people interested for a while at least.

So, this is just one of the 3 new things that have come up in the past couple days. And this post is already getting too long, so I'm not going to talk about the other two, but they are quite awesome. Just to wet your appetite here are some links to the new things I've been playing with, and and just a quick synopsis, jott.com is an awesome way to post to the web from your phone through voice recognition, and twhirl is a great twitter client with alot of great features. Speaking of which, my twitter name is www.twitter.com/burno159 check it out.

Hope you all have enjoyed this post, and be on the lookout for a new episode of the JSquared Podcast soon.

Josh Burns

Happy New Year!

Well, as you all know... it's a few days past new years, but let's not worry about the details. The New Year's Eve episode of the JSquared Podcast is up, and sadly, it's our shortest ever. But, it's still an amazing listen, so pop up iTunes, grab some popcorn, and enjoy. We hope the start to your new year has been as amazing as ours, although that's not probable, but we'll have some new episodes coming at you soon, so check back for updates.
Hope you have a amazing 2008!

Josh P