MIR: Bored bored bored bored

Mr Uber Mobile, James Whatley, is uninspired by the mobile industry this week. I get this now and again. It happens, it’s strange, but there you go. You’d think that the launch of two new Nokias would have got him moving? Not really. How about the brand new Nokia N95 8GB he’s brandishing? Not really. Things are so back to front that, traditionally a loyal Jaiku user, Whatley has even been playing round more on Twitter.

Over to him:

– – –

I’ve been scratching my head for some time about what to write; I’ve had such bad writer’s block lately that Ewan actually gave me the week off last week.

To be honest – I’m still kind of stuck.

So here’s a roundup of the stuff I’ve been kicking around in my head lately:

Microblogs:

I’m hooked on Twitter.

I haven’t left Jaiku, not by any stretch. But do have a strange addiction to all things Twiterry at the moment. Don’t shoot me. It’s just the scope of the damn thing.

Put it this way:

On Jaiku I have a community. In twitter I have an audience.

Nokia:

Two new music phones announced yesterday, anyone notice? No? Yes? Meh.
I tuned in for the webcast when I nipped out for a latte yesterday and well, kinda wished I hadn’t.

*yawn* – Don’t just take my word for it, read what other people thought too.

Digs aside, (music phones ain’t my thing), but keeping the theme:

I’m really loving my new Nokia BH-501 Bluetooth earphones; a gift from a good friend at CTIA. Cheers for those, you know who you are.

Those earphones, combined with my new found love of Mobbler (Last.fm scrobbling S60 client) has made my music experience/sharing/social experience complete.

Earphones on, Mobbler on, Music on; Mobbler scrobbles my tracks on the move, uploads them to Last.fm, the feed from that goes into my Jaiku and my lifestream is complete!

Well the music part of it anyway. It all makes me very happy. Good times.

Unfortunately: Earphones on, (Bluetooth Connection), Mobbler on, (Internet Connection), Music on also equates to the battery life of about 3-4hrs.

“She needs more power Cap’n!”

When will the handset manufacturers realise that us power users, as well as numerous functions also require uber batteries to support them! The N96 battery sent a few shivers across the blogosphere when it was announced (weighing in at 950mh only) but the Product Manger assured us that the applications had been optimised to use as little power as possible. We shall see…

What else?

Networks.

First up – Newsflash – Nokia N78 confirmed expected to arrive on Vodafone within 6wks. Nice.

Sticking with Voda – Thanks for the N95 8GB guys!

I really felt a bit icky when I first received it (special treatment and all that) but I’ve grown to like it; the screen is the big sell for me.

Shame you guys don’t do the N95-1 (original, silver flavour) anymore. I prefer being able to remove my memory and just dump music, images etc onto it over a card reader. Putting 6gigs of tunes on my phone when I first received it was an overnight process…. and I really wish I was kidding.

And – this is a phone fault, not a network fault – the onboard Mass Memory is SO SLOW it’s ridiculous. I often keep my SMS/MMS/Emails off of the phone memory, just to keep it free etc; I recommend NOT doing this with the 8GB. Makes using the messaging functions virtually impossible.
The S-L-O-W memory access also makes the recording of any video (straight to mass memory) equally futile. The image jerks continually and freezes and and and… well it’s just rubbish.

So if I want to make any kind of recording I have to change the camera memory from mass to phone, record the video, then change the memory back, then transfer the file over.
Seriously, it’s PAINFUL.

Just a shame Vodafone don’t stock the N82.

I’ve touched upon this phone in the past and, having trialled the device at length (thank you WOM World) I can tell you that it is arguably one of the best handsets on the market today. 5MP camera, GPS, auto-screen rotation etc etc… Something that makes it standout from the crowd in particular however is the Xenon Flash. Wow. Just WOW. I never thought the introduction of just one feature would change the way I feel about a device.

Two examples of picture quality:

The only reason I haven’t actually jumped ship and got one is that it’s on o2, and you all know how I feel about them. However if you’re not in the UK, you really should find out from your carrier where you can purchase the N82. Seriously it is that good.

The good news is for UK readers is that the N82 (as well as the N81 meh) have both just been confirmed for release on 3UK next month.

So if you’re looking at upgrading or simply getting a new device/contract, then make sure you check this baby out.

Bad points? There are two that I personally know of.

The screen size. Now this one is arguable. I’ve recommended the N82 to four different people already (all of whom have gone on to purchase one) and they’ve reported no problems. But, having been an N95 user for the best part of 18mths now, getting used to something smaller took a little while. N95 users take note.

The buttons. Now these buttons suffer from ‘Marmite-Syndrome’. You either love them or you hate them. I *thought* I would hate them. I really did. They put me off. All I can say is: Try it. I found that actually they weren’t that bad at all. Depends how dexterous you are really, but don’t judge a book by its cover as it were.

But aside from that? Solid phone.

And that’s about it from me this week. Don’t know why it’s a bit hotch-potch, or as Ewan would say ‘all over the shop’, but it is.

I’m off to go play with an Archos this afternoon. Should be fun. Will report back next week.

Been playing around with ShoZu vs Location Tagger vs Flickr vs OVI etc as well.

Got a few other things percolating around upstairs but I guess I’m a bit bored really. Nothing new/exciting going on.

Someone send me something cool to play with huh? Get my brain working.

Cheers.

– – – – – –

MIR: Jaiku Unwrapped – Part 2

In years gone by, expert craftsmen were named Masters. Master Builders, Master Blacksmiths and so on. In this new period of our history, labels are changing. Whatley is one of the only Master Jaikus that I know. He knows and uses the service inside out. Jaiku is his third eye.

Today we bring you part two of the Joy of Ku – Jaiku Unwrapped. Part One is here.

All good? The Master pulls down the hood of his dark billowing robe, turns toward us as we bow benevolently – and over to James.

– – –

Ok – so those of you that read my last official Whatley on Wednesday a fortnight ago (ignoring all the N95 shenanigans that happened in-between); and were quite interested to read my little introduction to Jaiku, then you’re probably wondering what I’m going to cover this week in part two of ‘Jaiku Unwrapped’ (nice title Ewan).

First up: Are you on Jaiku? If yes, read on. If no, go to http://jaikuinvites.com and get yourself in!

Next: Let’s talk about features

Well, there’s a lot to cover. I first encountered Jaiku way back in the Spring of 2007 as an early S60 app. This first iteration being ‘merely’ the cell-tower-naming, life-stream-enabled, active contacts book… and breathe.

So what does that mean?

Cell Tower Naming – Each Jaiku user can name the cell tower that is currently in use by their mobile handset. This information is then shared with your [Jaiku] contacts. This is cool.

Most of the cell towers near me are called variations of Teddington; Teddington Station, High St, Home etc and if any of my Jaiku buddies find themselves in the area, their Jaiku app updates their location accordingly. Can be fun when you’re browsing your contacts and you notice one of your friends is in one of your cells.

Life Streaming – Jaiku was at launch (and arguably still is in some respects) WAY ahead of its time when it comes to TRUE life-streaming. Any and all feeds can be pulled in and aggregated into the one stream. Here’s mine:


Comprising of my Last FM, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter and Various Blog Feeds.

All of my content in one place. Fantastic stuff. Interesting how this is now the business model for the relatively new Friend Feed. Something that I’m yet to try out but I’m told offers a very similar service on the full life stream front. Big deal, Jaiku’s been doing it for ages.

Friend Feed lacks a mobile component however which means no cool, location based stuff.

That aside, all of this life-streaming is no good if you can’t do anythingwith it. Which leads nicely into–

Active Contacts – Now that you (and your contacts) are all life streaming content or Presence Information, Jaiku takes on a more interesting role as a replacement for the native contacts application within the handset. Having Jaiku as an Active Contacts book allows you to see who is and is not available for calling just from one quick glance. Each contact displays the stream coming from their handset – this encompasses everything I’ve mentioned so far (Location, Life Stream Feed Content) and adds to it calendar info (shared, hidden or busy) AND profile information too.

The screens below are taken from the S60 app with my phone set to three different profiles:

The Profiles being General (Green), Vibrate (Amber) and Silent (Red) respectively.

If my Jaiku is displaying a red icon, now’s probably not a good time to call.

Note you can also see my latest ‘kus’ as well as the next event in my calendar; this information is opt-in as part of the sign-up. For the sake of sanity (and privacy) I normally have this set to busy but have shared for the sake of the screenshots.

Having this option available for all of my contacts would be excellent.

A quick glance can show me:

Where you are, what you’re doing, what your plans are, what you’ve been listening to, the last photo you shared, the last video you shared, the last blog post you wrote.

It goes on.

All of this stuff comes together to form one S60 app that is truly something spectacular.

Not got an S60 handset? Try http://m.jaiku.com instead. Not as functional as the app but still easy and accessible from your handset.

All this so far has been about the utility. The product. The usability. The benefits.

In my next (and last) Jaiku-themed piece I’ll cover off the final piece of the puzzle.

The thing that, in my opinion, truly makes Jaiku special:

The Community.
First is this piece from Jonathan Greene who gives a rough outline of the features I’ve mentioned above. It’s a good read but the good stuff is at the end with his fantastic video (from last year!) about the (now live) beta client of the S60 app.

Second is this post from co-creator of Jaiku, Jyri Engestrom. Entitled:

Blind Men’s Baseball – The Social Importance of Peripheral Vision

This one quote: ‘phones were designed with the assumption that when a person picks up the receiver to dial a number, they already know who they want to call.’ says it all for me.

Next week I’ll be in Las Vegas spreading the SpinVox love at CTIA.

If you’re heading out yourself, come find me and say hi.

If not, see you in a fortnight.

Thanks for reading.

MIR: The Joy of Ku: Jaiku Unwrapped

– – –

I’ve been meaning to write this piece for a while now. In fact, ever since Google made that purchase last year the whole blogosphere has been falling over itself trying to figure out exactly what Google intend to do with their now five-month-old purchase.

I had an eye on eventually contributing to this but by the time I got round to it, most of the good stuff had already been covered. Notably this piece by Jonathan Mulholland (‘What Google has planned for Jaiku‘).

Then there were the series of posts at the beginning of the year regarding the spate of errors/downtime that Jaiku kept throwing up – (downtime, by the way, is merely par the course for your average Twitter user. But we’ll leave that one there for now).

Again – this was aptly covered by someone else here (Jaiku users flee to Twitter as a result of Google neglect) and yet again ably kicked back by our friend Mr Mulholland (Think Jaiku is loosing to Twitter? Wait ’til Android devices start shipping).

(Damn he’s good)

So, what am I going to write about?

First off – without presuming too much – a brief explanation:

What is Jaiku?

* Micro-blogging (like twitter)
* Limited to 140 characters (like Twitter) to your first Jaiku
* Jaikus start threaded conversations (unlike Twitter) with no character limit (unlike Twitter)
* Jaiku also enables Presence from your S60 handset: Location + Phone Profile + Latest Jaiku
* Jaiku as a feed aggregator – pulling in all your feeds into one single life stream
* An active contacts book, when futurists debate the address book as being key to any user’s daily life, Jaiku is often looked upon as leading the way
* And above all, a community

That’s that covered. So what now?

Right, well – and there’s definite sleeves rolling up going on here – thing is, since the Google buy-out, Jaiku has become closed – aka invitation only.

Rubbish.

However another thing is – every user gets ten invites. EVERY user gets ten. If you’ve been there since the beginning or if you signed up an hour ago, ten invites is what you get.

So some clever chaps over at Weeno Media cracked onto this and thought that they’d play Google at their own game (remember Gmail invites folks?).

And their variant of this game? http://jaikuinvites.com.

What’s it for?

Well the clue is in the name. Jaiku Invites.

You need one? Let them know.

You got some to share? Let them know.

They do the hard part in the background and link up those that need them with those that have them spare.

Supply meets Demand. Magic.

Why the big fuss? Well this is kinda cool.

I’m using this space to tell you about this website because I want YOU to go and sign up for Jaiku RIGHT NOW.

Over the coming weeks I’m going to be going into what it is exactly I love about this service.

There are many, MANY reasons.

Is it the community? The threaded nature of conversation maybe?

What about the presence enabled S60 application? Ahead of it’s time when it comes to true life-streaming.

Then there’s the different ways to contribute to the site itself, (text/app/web/m.web), every one of them having their own plus/minus points. They each deserve a mention too.

As I said at the beginning of this post, I’ve been trying to write a piece about my love affair with Jaiku for some time now.

Each time getting halfway through and realising I’ve gone completely off-piste and spend the next 15mins fighting my way back to the point, (see this post on my VOX for a perfect example).

So I’ve decided to break it up a bit. Consider it a bit like a book club.

I’ve told you about Jaiku, I’ve told you I love it, I’ve told you how to go and get it.

Next week I’ll tell you what is so bloody great about it – (if you haven’t worked it out already)

So Jaiku went down…

…for like 24hrs!

To my knowledge, the longest ‘unscheduled’ downtime to date.

So what happened? Well.. on the Jaiku ‘back-end’ side of things, two servers died – See pic ———>

And it was all hands on pumps until she got back up and running again.

On the user side of things the loyal, and some may say fanatical, Jaiku-ers de-camped themselves off to Twitter for the day. Much to the amusement of the Twitterati; here were all these Jaiku-folk trying to emulate their Jaiku conversations over the Twitterverse.

It was hard going – but we needed to go somewhere…! For those of you that don’t know there is a, shall we say, friendly rivalry that goes between Twitter and Jaiku, I’ve blogged before how the two can co-exist but, in this instance, that argument is irrelevant. Yes of course they can co-exist. It’s the users themselves that poke fun at one another…

This is of course, by definition, a bit of fun. There are benefits to both of these micro-blogging platforms, I have always been a Jaiku person at heart but recently have found myself more and more on Twitter contributing to farther reaching conversations as the audience/scope is so much larger. Again, there is no problem in this whatsoever. The problem lies in the Jaiku user base not really knowing what the owners (since being bought by Google) intend to do with it.

All of my thoughts on that I’ll save for another post – I sense a few more Jaiku-themed posts in the future you see… However, if you can’t wait for that then you could do lot worse than read this post by Jonathan Mulholland, fellow Jaiku evangelist and all round intelligent fellow.

Going back to the ‘de-camping’ as I refer to it.. This resulted in a lot things. Twitter’s ‘landscape’ changed for a short while and that in itself resulted in this post, (again – a bit of fun), by a dear friend of mine, Vero Pepperrell – aka thatcanadiangirl.

Vero is cool. I like her. She’s got her head screwed on…

However in her post (I’ll re-publish, save you clicking through) she says:

This evening, looking at the activity on Twitter, I was fascinated to see how quickly the usual Jaiku crowd had migrated. For those who haven’t noticed, Jaiku was showing a big fat 502 Bad Gateway error for a number of hours before it was replaced by the Jaiku birdie telling us that busted hard drives were to blame for the downtime.

Now, Twitter is notoriously flaky and known for going up and down more than a kid’s see-saw in a busy park in midsummer. Yet, everyone flocked over as the default alternative to Jaiku. If it wasn’t Twitter, it would have been something else. Pownce? Facebook? Seesmic?

In a magpie-like fashion, the web 2.0 crowd will look for the next shiny thing. I know. I’m one of them, and I sure as hell am guilty for chronically creating accounts on every new service, just to promptly ditch it and move on.

So what makes a service people come back to? A site that makes it past the 12-18 months best before date? Or are all new web 2.0?ish services destined to peak quickly then die just as fast? Lots more thoughts to add on this, but first, I’m interested to see what everyone else thinks.

As I said, head screwed on. Knows her stuff etc… But… I can only agree in part.

Yes, us early adopters are always looking out for the next new shiny thing to try. Of course we are. That’s what defines us as early adopters. And yet I cannot see the correlation between this and Jaiku’s downtime resulting in Twitter’s ‘uptime’.

The response I put to Vero was as follows:

Dude,

We’re not fickle. We’ve just become accustomed to having our own Micro-blogging service to hand. Fickle we are not. In deed of a quick messaging community we are. If Jaiku, the service of (my) choice, is down. Then of course to Twitter I will head.

Not magpie like, not in search of new shiny things just trying to find a replacement implement that will serve for now while the social tool I prefer is down and out of action.

If this was Jaiku, I’d just post this as a reply. THE FULL POST.

I can’t even reply to your tweet, so I’m forced to reply to this post. I can’t share this response nor can I fit it within 140 characters.

Jaiku is a comfy sofa where the odd spring has sprung. We’re only sitting on the bench of Twitter because we need somewhere to sit. When the sofa’s sorted, we’ll be out of your way.

Each to their own you see. It’s not about chasing shiny things, not when you have something you use every day.
If this was the case then none of us would be using Google… Heaven forbid that would ever go down.. But I’m pretty sure if it did we’d all bugger off to Yahoo pronto.

Anywhoo – my point is – Jaiku went down, so the userbase went to Twitter. Jaiku came up, the userbase went back.

I just wonder how many were left behind…

Balls to it! (a Whatley rant-a-thon) Part 4: The thing about Facebook

It’s a Social TOOL – not a SOCIAL NETWORK!

As I’ve previously stated, I’m a huge fan of Jyri Engelstrom, creator of not only Jaiku but also the dude to first come up with the theory of Social Objects. I could explain what they are – but Hugh MacLeod, he of Gaping Void fame (read his website – it will change your life) has already nailed it to the wall better than I ever could. So go.
Read. Read some more. And get yourself an education.

EDIT – someone else who gets it: Russell Beattie

So yeah – facebook is a social TOOL. People throw objectives like: “We need to make money out of these social networks…”

To the point actually where recently I was unfortunate enough to be invited along to the Telecommunications Executive Network evening (a ‘TEN’ event) which was subtitled:

“Social Networking: What’s Telcoms got to do with it?”

And it was all tally ho and where’s the money and ad-sales this and monetization that… but everyone just seemed to miss the effing point.

To the point where I raised it as a question:

“Good evening. James Whatley, SpinVox… There’s a school of thought that the money is not in fact in Social Networks but in fact Social Objects. Here we are in this room and I know maybeeee… one or two people here. They aren’t in my social network and I doubt very much that I am in theirs. But here we all are gathered here tonight around
this Social Object. The network builds itself around it. The money, therefore… is in the object. Not the network. If you build it they will come. Your comments please?”

Well – that went down a treat!
(especially as the last question of the evening!)

The following exchange:

The guy from Ogilvy: “Is that yours? I’m stealing it…”
Me: “Er no. Actually it’s Jyri Engelstrom’s. Co-founder of Jaiku…”
Ogilvy: “Ah.. see! Another Aggregation site!”

AN AGGREGATION SITE?! AAAAAAAAARGH!

That. Says. It. All.

*sigh*

Ahem – anywhoo – that was a lovely evening.. 🙂

I was clearly the youngest person in the room and yet I felt completely out of my depth.
And in this instance being OUT of my depth meant swimming around in the shallows…

But hey – let’s not bitch moan – it was a very good evening… and I was known at the canapés afterwards as ‘The Social Object Guy’ which was quite amusing…

But yeah – Social Objects. They are what form the foundations of Social Networks. Plant the seed of a network with a Social Gesture from your Social Object.

Again – as Hugh Macloed rightly points out – it ain’t Rocket Science.
I seem to have gone off on a tangent… Where were we? Oh yeah – things that are annoying me online…
Err… I’ve had my Mobile Web Rant elsewhere… and I’ve raged about facebook to the nth degree…
What else…

Hmm.

No. I think that’s it.

I’m done.
For now anyway…

Balls to it! (a Whatley rant-a-thon) Part 3: What the hell is Facebook for anyway?

Well – a few things come to mind and it’s probably a mixture of these things… (and this is good that I’m writing this down actually because I’ve been meaning to shoehorn this into a project at work for bloody ages now) …right so:

Facebook – and I loathe that I’m dedicating blogspace to the ubiquitous behemoth that it is – but I need to:

There’s the facebook fiends that go round collecting friends like I collect socks (and I do – H&M is my best friend when it comes to socks). Like those people I know from school who I never spoke to, who in fact probably wouldn’t actually spit on me if I was on fire back then… They have NO PROBLEM with hitting the ‘add friend’ button on my profile! WTF?!

WHY?!

Were we friends at school? No – scrap that – ARE we friends NOW?! No.
(on this – have any of you hit the ‘ignore’ button on a friend request yet? Do it. It is SO empowering)

Maybe facebook needs to bring in hidden ‘layered’ friends:

  • Friends who I know and love and see/speak to regularly
  • People I work with
  • Some bloke I met down the pub last night
  • You who’s name I don’t actually remember who sat four tables away from me in Science class.

And YES I know that facebook has just introduced that stupid friend grouping thing etc but that’s not the point.
Maybe it’s my definition of the word ‘friend’ which – between you and me – I don’t bandy about lightly…

Right so yeah – Facebook fiends. Adding friends like it’s some kind of race. Well it ain’t. So you lose.

Then there’s the facebook address bookers. Now these people I don’t really mind that much. Having read about them online a fair bit of late… these folk actually use the ‘social tool’ (that’s right – it’s a TOOL not a NETWORK, but we’ll come back to that) for a single purpose and that is: As a very active contacts list.

What do I mean?

Well – instead of searching my contacts in outlook or in my N95 et al – I can search my ‘friends list’ on facebook and immediately glean a whole bunch of info about that person.

Email (do people still use this medium socially? I think I read somewhere that in 2007 email usage went down by about 80%. I think that figure could be wank rubbish. But still, food for thought) addresses, phone numbers, current status etc… ie: “Steve is planning beers tonight..” that there is a reason for me to call him.
Plus it gives you reminders about upcoming birthdays and events and such like as a personal contacts/diary would do so… but oh look.. We’ve come back to the walled garden thing again.
Grrr…

Ok – moving on from them – there’s folk like me. The sharers. I’ve built my social network up around me using facebook and now I use this tool for one function (as I am growing to dislike the site somewhat of late) and that is to share cool things I find online with my non-geeky friends.

I mean – I can share links through my Google reader to the 10 or so people that care to read or I can send a TinyURL out to the 50 or so people who are following me on Twitter… OR I can use my Jaiku to do something similar but ultimately – by using the social tool of choice (facebook) – I can share anything cool I find with over 400 of my friends/acquaintances/business contacts/etc… so of late, that’s all I’ve been doing. Sharing.

Incidentally –

‘Share’ is going to be THE theme of 2008.

In every sense of the word. That’s what I think anyway.
This is based a whole bunch of shit great stuff I’ve seen happening in ‘007 and in the first ten days of ‘008.
I’ll prolly expand upon this another time – already I feel like I’ve written bloody loads. But who cares… it’s my first proper post of the year – allow me a little self indulgence already!

Ok – coming back to the thing about facebook…

Conc in Part 4

Balls to it! (a Whatley rant-a-thon) Part 2: Facebook Events

WHY OH WHY can I not just hit ONE BUTTON and sync my events on Facebook with every other sodding calendar I have to keep?
See Plaxo/Yahoo/Google/iCal/And any bloody S60 calendar app I tend to be running on my N95 right now…

WHY?!

Talk about a blinkin’ walled garden. Apparently the walls are coming down. Well blow me if that’s not about time. I wrote a piece (that I never published here but hacked it to pieces, updated it and edited the mobile parts of it together here for smstextnews) wayback in September detailing what a pain in the ass backside this was/is.

The piece (entitled ‘Think of the Children’) talked (well – the unpublished parts did anyway) about Jaiku and Twitter and how they can happily ‘co-exist’ within the industry… Hang on – Let me go get the quote:

I’m sorry if this is out of context – but you’ll get the idea:

The walled garden appproach that these services offer mean that interoperability between the competition* (*my definition of competition is anything that competes for my spare time – my Nintendo DS is competition for the book that I’m currently reading for example) is impossible.
Imagine if you will Yahoo Mail refusing to send your emails to a Hotmail (sorry – Windows Live) account and/or a Gmail account.. Ridiculous huh? But this is what is happening currently with MySpace/facebook.

.

The Operators/Carriers of this world have finally come round to the idea that interoperability is the way forward. A quick glance at any website proves this as I would imagine you’d be hard pushed to find a tariff that doesn’t include Xnetwork minutes. Of course, this has not always been the case… but, eventually they (the operators) sat up and listened.
This is what the social networking sites of today should be working towards..

.

I’m a big fan of the micro-blogging service known as Jaiku. But more so am I a fan of one of the co-founders – Jyri Engelstrom.
He believes [or at least I think he does] in complete and open syncronosity across such services..
This is evident not just through recurring themes on his blog but also whenever he is asked the question:

.

‘Which is better; Twitter or Jaiku?’

.

You would think that, if pressed, he would of course say ‘Jaiku’. He would have to! Right? Wrong.
No. Jyri is an evangelist of co-existence… What do I mean?
Twitter works. Jaiku works. Why shouldn’t they work together?
Why insist that the user must choose one or the other and not both?

.

Taking this theme and expanding on it… – Why can’t I send a message from my facebook to my friend’s myspace?
If I tag a photo on flickr why aren’t my bebo friends notified?
One day, I hope, this will be the case… much like, as mentioned, how Xnetwork minutes are now ‘as standard’…

So yeah – interoperability (or lack thereof) really hacks me off..

But hey – while we’re still on the subject of facebook (ish)…

Cont in Part 3