I want to discuss something that has been on my mind for quite some time. I haven’t really discussed this before, at all, on the internet or maybe even in real life.

The internet has allowed us to communicate in brand new ways using innovative new media. It seems that in a very short time, the number of ways that I can choose to communicate with someone has shot up exponentially.

One of these new-fangled ways of communicating is Twitter (for the uninitiated, go read Wikipedia).

I find Twitter to be a very useful social tool for communication, conversation and keeping up with people. In contrast, I find traditional instant messaging (IM, such as AIM, MSN, XMPP/Jabber and the like) burdensome and difficult to use on a consistent basis.

My dislike of the traditional IM most likely stems from my introverted personality. Hopefully in this post I will explain exactly why and why Twitter is better.

Note that this is purely my opinion for what works for me. Everyone is different, which means that what might be true for me may not be for someone else, even with a similar personality. These are my personal views on Twitter vs IM.

» Read the rest of this post…

A couple of things have been bugging me recently. More specifically, two of Google’s new features they’ve added to their popular services haven’t sat very well with me.

Advance warning – this is a bit of a rant. I’m aware I’m being a little strong about two things which perhaps aren’t awfully important in the grand scheme of things. Anyway, here goes.

SearchWiki = Fail

The first is the Google SearchWiki thing. My friend Chris Van Patten shares my viewpoint on this and sums it up very well in this Twitter update.

It’s google’s job to craft my search results, not mine.

In addition to that, though, I find the new wiki controls next to each search result visually distracting. I mean, yes, they’re subtle, but the whole point of the Google interface is that it is effortless to use and really really simple.

» Read the rest of this post…

There has been a considerable traffic spike here, since Google announced their new web browser, Google Chrome.

Not because I’ve spoken about it until now, but because it sparked interest in my thoughts on Gecko vs WebKit.

Google Chrome is considerably ‘buzz’-y at the moment, so I thought I would fire up an internet-connected Windows machine and give it a try.

While from a technical point of view much of the browser seems very interesting – and a very good idea (separating each tab into its own individual process, the new V8 JavaScript engine), at the moment I can’t see it offers much unique user-visible functionality.

Regardless of whether something is technically awesome or not, you won’t get the masses to use it unless they can see a killer feature – something that is visible to them and benefits them.

There are some unique elements to Chrome’s interface – specifically the single address/search bar (Omnibar), but I can’t help feeling underwhelmed at the lack of ‘killer-ness’ about the browser at the current time.

It is early days, though – and Chrome does show some promise.

Google Reader finally has a search box, but more importantly, actually tells you how many items are left to read if there are more than 100.

Previously, you’d just get the extremely descriptive 100+ which didn’t really give you a realistic estimate of how much reading there was to do.

It is about time!

Uploaded with Skitch!

Not so tactful methinks…

Just done a quick review of the current alpha version of bbPress.

Read it here at Gizbuzz.

A while back I got an invite to Windows Live Mail Beta; basically, Hotmail 2.0. So I’ve finally got round to doing a short screencast showing off its interface, a couple of new features and me explaining my thoughts on the new service.

First of all, I’d like to apologise for the fact that the Firefox window is cut off and subsequently there’s some of the window that you can’t see. It’s not a major issue, but still, annoying and not worth re-recording for. Next time I’ll resize the window to exactly 720×576 to prevent this problem happening again (it’s an Adobe Premiere Elements thing).

Stay tuned for full size 720×576 XviD version, it will be available for download soon.

XviD 720×576 version now available for download. Download now!

I’ve played around a bit and now it’s time for the review, of Google Reader.

Check it out at Gizbuzz now (with screenshots!).

Yes, that’s right! Me and Huw (Gizbuzz) interviewed Raju Vegesna of Zoho, who are behind a lot of cool Web 2.0 office applications, including Zoho Writer, Sheet and Show for the first ever Gizbuzz Podcast.

We talk about Zoho, issues of trust with online office suites, I ask a few questions about the technical side (cross-browser implementation and stuff) and we also discuss the future of rich web applications (will they go mobile any time soon?), Google and more!

• See the original post at Gizbuzz
• Download the podcast now
• Subscribe to the Gizbuzz Podcast

This is actually a really interesting insight into what Zoho are doing and where rich web applications might be going soon.