OK, so I like the idea of my social network(s) revolving around my email but one problem (among many) that needs to be solved is the issue of ‘presence’ across all email platforms. My friends are spread across Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail etc. I am kind of experiencing Inbox 2.0 already in Gmail but those outside Gmail drop out of view when ideally they should be as visible as my Gmail contacts. The issue of cross-platform presence is nicely dealt with by Meebo so I’m sure it can be sorted by Gmail.

For someone like me who has conspired to run a very manageable email inbox, the idea of a social network around my email makes sense. Even more so given that I spend most of my time online inside Gmail/ GTalk and to some extent the better version of iGoogle - Netvibes. A year from now I can guarantee I will still be using my email but will I be so immersed in Facebook?

Mmm. The timing of my previous post was pretty good. What luck! If I’d put it off a day then the announcement by Google of their Open Social initiative would have made my post a little less prescient. I didn’t exactly hit the nail on the head put I think I was at least fiddling around with the right nail.

There’s a lot of talk at the moment about what Google is planning to do in the face of the popularity of Facebook. I believe that what Google will slowly roll out is exactly what they have been planning to roll out before Facebook exploded.

Their task is relatively simple - just let users join the dots between their existing products and keep the results nice and open - a la Google Maps. I can envisage people unconsciously rolling their own tailor-made networks, free from the silo-ed nature of Facebook, just by linking together their own personal combination of Google products. We’ll decide what combination of Talk, Desktop, Gmail, Reader, Video, Maps, Notebook, Jaiku, Shared Items, Blogger, Calendar, Orkut etc. etc - you get the idea - is right for us and our friends.

And it will happen slowly and gradually. One day we’ll wake up and suddenly realise Google is at the heart of our social network and we didn’t even notice.

Random thought: iGoogle - the place where it all happens.

Lifestreaming aggregates all your online activity into one place. A while back I discovered Tumblr (thanks to Leo Laporte) which is perfect for the task. Seems Steve Rubel thinks the same.

My lifestream.

Microsoft’s Silverlight will change the way we use the web. Good overveiws at TalkCrunch and ScobleShow. Look out Google!

Twitter now allows users to send direct messages to followers. A great idea to cut out some of the noise.

30Boxes and Netvibes are the two best web services hands down.

Once upon a time I used to have about 30 tabs running in my browser (Flock) which had the effect of slowing it’s performance down to a crawl.  Then one day I discovered Netvibes and I reduced the number of tabs down to about eight since many of the services and sites I used could be dealt with within my Netvibes page.

Today I revisited 30Boxes, the calendaring site, and now I only have two tabs open in my browser.  Using their nifty ‘webtop’ feature it can incorporate all the websites/ services I use into one location which behaves like desktop within a web page. Stunning!

Gmail is the only web service which doesn’t work within the 30Boxes ‘webtop’ (it opens itself in a new browser page) which means I might as well have it as a separate tab.

The only thing I’m waiting for from 30Boxes now is the ability for it to suck in my Google Calendar data automatically.

I’m using Netvibes as a full-on media consumption and creation manager and as such it’s proving to be amazing.

I can upload, store and playback mp3s. I can do all my show preparation right up to recording (for which I use Castblaster) and then use it to manage all post recording managing and posting.

I also use it read all my RSS feeds as well as watch all the video content I subscribe to which it plays right in the page. I used to live in Google Reader but right now I can’t see me going outside Netvibes. Pageflakes is for geeks. Netvibes is for the rest of us.

Having been an avid user of Google Reader over the last few months I finally realised that it was controlling me rather that I controlling it. With over 100 feeds I became a slave to the RSS torrent.

The answer has proved to be Netvibes. I started to use Netvibes as an online manager for my new music show and has ended up being my preferred RSS reader. It forced me to strip out all the feeds I didn’t really read but thought I needed. Now I’m down to only 16 blog feeds. Much better.

I bravely tried to use Podshow’s website again today to check out Natelie Del Conte’s new show Tech Check. Big mistake. Podshow has to have one of the most complicated, confusing and, quite frankly, unusable interfaces I’ve encountered.  Beware!

Finally Google Reader embeds and plays videos from Google Video, YouTube and a few others. It only plays the video if it’s embedded in the original web page however and not if it’s an enclosure. Shame. I want Google Reader to play video podcasts in the same way it plays audio podcasts.

I already use Google Reader to aggregate and listen to podcasts when I’m on other PCs  so how long will it be before I can watch video podcasts too? Not long surely given that Google already has an online video product. I just wish they’d hurry up!

googlereader, video

Why would anyone want to be the new Google of anything? Surely the idea is not to be the Google of anything.

google

From Nick’s Photography

Just test publishing a photograph from Google’s Picasa Web Albums. Seems to work OK.  One of the things I like about Picasa Web Albums is the way you can upload video along with pictures and Google simply converts it to play with Google Video. Will Flickr ever go video? I can’t imagine it but you never know.

google, picasa, webalbums, photography

I’ve read and heard three ideas recently that have made crystal clear how the future creation of consumer products should, and hopefully will, be.

The first was the suggestion made to the newly unemployed and not unwealthy Jason Calacanis, that he should team up with Engadget’s Peter Rojas to design the Wi-Fi enabled media player the market place is crying out for, but the vendors are failing to supply.

The second was Dave Winer’s idea that ultimately we the users will control what we want by telling our peers who have the skills to make the products and services we crave (see above really).

And the third was an extended ramble by Doc Searls around the idea of Vendor Relationship Management (VRM) whereby we the users are in control of the relationships we have with vendors instead of the vendors controlling and telling us what we want.

Ultimately it all boils down to a market ecosystem where we the customers supply ourselves with the help of other customers who have the skills to fulfill our needs.

UPDATE:  Interesting post from Dave Winer.

jasoncalacanis, davewiner, docsearls, vrm

I heard about Goosync on Adam Curry’s Daily Source Code and initially was very excited. It appeared that Goosync would syncronise your mobile phone calendar with your Google Calendar - just what Gcalsync does (except that Gcalsync doesn’t work on my Nokia N70 for some reason) so I was pleased to hear about an alternative.
However, unlike Gcalsync which connects directly with Google’s servers, Goosync takes your Google account login details and uses them to access Google’s servers on your behalf and passes all your data through their servers. Oh dear. Sorry guys, but if you want me to use Goosync it would need to talk directly to Google and not go through your servers. I wouldn’t recommend Goosync to anyone.
In the meantime can anyone tell my why none of the versions of Gcalsync work on my Nokia N70?

goosync, mobile, sync, googlecalendar, gcalsync, nokia, n70, nokian70

Now that my reading list is so large and unwieldly I have ditched just listing all the blogs I read in the side bar and replaced it with a link to the page of stories I read/share in Google Reader (my RSS feed reader of choice).
Robert Scoble does the same thing.
Google Reader is reinventing publishing, syndication and subscription in a fundamental way and it won’t be long before everyone else follows suit.

Technorati tags: blogroll, google, googlereader

All the mobile version needs now is for the Subscriptions page to only show updated feeds and not the entire list, which is completely pointless.