Web Worker Daily

I’ve long been looking for a Windows-based Twitter client that can delight me as much as its native Mac counterparts. Too many clients for Windows depend on Adobe AIR, something which isn’t an ideal arrangement, in my opinion. TweetDeck and Seesmic are both powerful tools, but why can’t someone make a Windows-native app that works just as well?

Seesmic apparently saw the wisdom in that idea, because it recently revealed a new Windows-only Twitter client that doesn’t require AIR to run. I jumped at the chance to take the software, which is currently only available as a preview edition, for a test run. Read the rest of this entry »

Internet-based communication is changing so quickly these days that there seems to be an endless stream of beta releases. Yesterday, Simon wrote about some of the latest browser betas; let’s look at a few products and services for interacting with social networks, Twitter and instant messaging.

I don’t generally like living on the bleeding edge, but some betas are very usable, and I’ve already incorporated them into my daily workflow. Others look promising, but are not stable or are lacking too many features right now. But all of the following are worth trying, and watching as they develop. We’ll review them more thoroughly as they mature. Read the rest of this entry »

While trying to log into Facebook a few days ago, I got the message, “Your account is temporarily unavailable due to site maintenance. It should be available again within a few hours. We apologize for the inconvenience.” I checked with friends, and they were able to access their accounts, so the problem seemed to be limited.

It turns out that there have been widespread complaints about this issue, which Facebook has acknowledged on its Help page: Read the rest of this entry »

Image via Wikipedia

I was poking around the comments on my Preparing to Live Blog an Event post and came across a conversation about live blogging events at ProBlogger that made me think more about how I’m going to handle single-handedly “live blogging” a 3-day conference. The discussion also made me think more about what exactly “live blogging” means.

The social media maven for nonprofits Beth Kanter defined Live Blogging as: “basically taking notes, photos, or recordings at lectures, conferences, and presentations of what was said and posting it to your blog.” (quote found here) I agree with Kanter’s basic definition, but for anyone who hasn’t tried live blogging before, I think this definition isn’t detailed enough.

If I had to define live blogging, I’d define it this way:

“Live (multimedia) blogging is capturing the words, sounds, and images at an event and posting them online to a variety of Web 2.0 enabled sites with the goal of sharing the experience for those who cannot attend while preserving key moments in an archive.”

Here are some more of my thoughts about live blogging.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been joining a number of video microblogging sites (Seesmic, Phreadz, 12SecondsTV, Utterz, ViddYou) and maneuvering for alpha invites for several more (Hictu and what else is out there…?) but I still haven’t gotten into the groove. More than anything, I am wondering about real business applications for video microblogging. I can immediately rattle off the business benefits of microblogging, especially via Twitter, because the adoption rate with essentially text microblogging sites is still way ahead of audio and video ones. And when it comes to networking for business, for example, size does matter.

So when you add audio but even moreso video to the mix, you end up with a much smaller pool of potential contacts. Not everyone feels comfortable enough in front of a camera, much less broadcasting their video image to others. So is video microblogging nothing but a fun way to waste time and procrastinate from work? Or are there really going to be business applications for these sites once they get out of their alpha and beta phases?

Read the rest of this entry »