I could probably write regular posts on the horrible grammar I see used by others all the time in my day-to-day life. But Jan (@jannygirl) has already summarised everything you need to know in this handy image:
At one point in the commercial it showed a range of products available for purchase at any Hungry Jacks. One such product was a coffee cup that said ‘Expresso’ on the side.
Here’s a video of me explaining it:
I know it’s meant to mean an ‘express espresso’, but come on. Get over yourselves and just spell it correctly.
I’ve never been a super-fan of music, but when I find something I like I crank it up to 17!
The first CD I paid for with my own money was Britney Spears’ “(You Drive Me) Crazy (The Stop Remix!)” single. [Buy it on Amazon MP3/iTunes] Yup, I was a badass!
Of course, Napster came into my life in around 1999. The original Napster. I themed mine black with yellow text and I downloaded tons of music on there. My friend was over one day and asked me if I liked Eminem. “You mean M&Ms?” I responded. Nope, he didn’t mean the chocolate that melts in your mouth and not in your hand. He introduced me to rap. Eh. I like some Eminem songs.
Napster was sued by the same kind of people that now give their music away for free. Then KaZaA, Morpheus, Bearshare, and a plethora of other music, video, and software peer-to-peer sharing applications came along. Each one slowly being gobbled up be the record industry and various new laws. Limewire is the only one that my friends seem to have these days.
Once I bought my own Mac (a G5 20″ iMac) I said I wouldn’t download any peer-to-peer applications because I don’t want them tainting my lovely new computer. Even though a Mac can’t execute viruses and malware like computers Windows operating systems can. I’ve stuck to my word and never downloaded a peer-to-peer app to my Mac. I haven’t really needed one anyway; if I’m looking for a song I’ll ask a friend if they have it; borrow a friend’s album to rip.
I really don’t listen to much music anyway. Since 2005, I’ve listened to podcasts in my headphones. Ninety-nine percent of the podcasts I listen to are mostly spoken word. I learn so much more from them than listening to the junk on the radio these days. Did you know almost all new music you hear on the radio is remade in some form or another. Be it the beat in the background, the chorus, or even the entire song. Unique, original music is hard to come by and I hate it. I have very little musical education, so if I here a song I really like and I’ve never heard it before, I think it’s original. Usually, a month later I’ll somehow come across the original version of the song (made decades ago) and be quite disappointed in the band that did the remake.
I only recently discovered how easy torrenting was because of the free album downloads Nine Inch Nails offer on their website. That said, I haven’t actively pursued torrents that would be considered illegal because I feel I have all the music I need. Moreover, when I hear an awesome song on a podcast I’ll actively seek out a way to listen to more and then decide if I want to buy their album or just the song I heard.
BAM! That updates you to the situation I’m in right now.
This afternoon J. Adam Moore (better known as @DieLaughing) tweeted about an album he just received in the mail. He included this link: http://www.ilovemetric.com — I clicked it. A video started playing in a tiny box (no full screen option) and I jammed out to the music and was captivated by the neat camera work. Links everywhere said “Get the Album”. I was optimistic in thinking it was free. It wasn’t; it’s US$8.99. Not bad at all considering you have the option of downloading the 320kbps MP3 + FLAC (highest quality audio format in existence) files as well as a whole bunch of album art.
There are also CD, vinyl, and super super deluxe packages that come with all kinds of physical art and require shipping. Nice work having so many options!
After listening to a couple of their songs, I decided I’d buy the digital download (MP3 + FLAC). I thought they might use PayPal on their website or send me to iTunes, but they had their own overlay window which required me to sign up to Topspin (you have to look in the terms and conditions to discover what your signing up for - which I did), and then enter in my payment details.
I’m currently downloading all 622MB of MP3 + FLAC audio goodness which I’ll put on my iPod and probably not listen to it for a couple of months.
Oh. Yeah. The band is called Metric. You should check them out at ilovemetric.com. They use Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace. You can buy their music on iTunes (for US$9.99) and Amazon MP3 (for US$5.00), but it’s only going to be 256kbps MP3s.
Yes, Nielsen, people that steal/borrow music do pay for it too!
I checked to see if Sarah, @theoneinpink, had a Viddler account. Yup. Coolio. No videos though; un-coolio.
Anywho, the link on her Viddler is socialvibe.com. I checked it out.
SocialVibe is a very Flash intense website, but it doesn’t annoy me like OMGPOP (formerly iilwy) does. After playing around with the site for about an hour I discovered it’s basically a place were sponsors give you an ad (which I have an example of below) that you can put on your social network of choice (or your own website), and depending on the amount of clicks/impressions they’ll give money to the charity that you choose.
Basically, Sprint is giving me money and then I’m giving it to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). Except the money never touches my hands or my bank account. I’m just the dude that chooses which sponsor gives to which charity. Rad!
SocialVibe has a social network built around it too; you can add friends, upload an avatar, etc. If you want to score points/money via Facebook, you have to add SocialVibe’s Facebook Application. I almost never add Facebook apps that give you points and stuff (’little green patch’ anyone?), but I figured why not?
I thought I’d raised over $19,000 for WWF in the time that I’d signed up, but that’s the total raised from everyone who supports that charity on SocialVibe. Ha.
Here’s an example of the ad I can plaster all over the web:
Feel free to add me as a friend on SocialVibe. Although, I’ll probably only visit the site once a month of less; it just feels like one of those self-sufficient sites that I won’t need to attend to much.
There’s plenty of desktop applications that use Twitter’s API to allow a better experience of Twitter (I’m @djsteen, yo!) than just by using the website. Before some of these latest applications were created I would open Twitter.com in my browser every morning and click the next button (now replaced with a more button) until I’d read tweets from everyone I follow. Yes, I read them all. I even used to read all the @replies, but Twitterers like @ChrisBrogan reply to people far to often and I couldn’t keep up with that. Thus, I’ve set my @replies setting to ‘@ replies to the people I’m following’. This setting is a must if you follow more than ~15 people and like to read all their tweets.
Don’t get me wrong, Chris Brogan’s engagement with his community is awesome, but I personally can’t keep up.
Back in 2007 I’d tried using Twitter applications such as Twitterific and TwitterFox, but neither of them stuck and I continued using the website.
NB: Some of the following applications only run on Mac OS X. If you want to try those ones out, get a Mac.
Back in July 2008 I was visiting with my best friend Leah and was using TweetDeck on her MacBook. You can customise the colours of application, and she’d chosen an extreme bright pink/green combo that was almost blinding to look at. I think this is the sole reason I didn’t try out TweetDeck back then for myself.
Towards the end of 2008 I believe I was listening to a show on the TWiT network and Leo Laporte mentioned he was using TweetDeck. So I decided to download it. Of course, I had to download Adobe Air too. I’m not sure what the benefits of Adobe Air are, but it seems like a middle man that really isn’t needed.
Back then TweetDeck didn’t have spell checking, the ability to Cmd/Option+arrow to skip over words, nor the more recently integrated Facebook status update option. Regardless, it was my new way of reading and posting tweets.
Zoom on forward to April 2009 and we now have a plethora of Twitter Applications to suit everyone’s needs and desires. Well, almost everyone. The only feature TweetDeck is missing for me right now is multiple accounts. The most recently released applications all have this feature, and I thought TweetDeck would have counterbalanced with this feature by now.
Alas, I will continue to use TweetDeck over the following applications.
I only discovered Nambu earlier this month when Neil told me about it during an IM conversation. It supports multiple accounts, and has a multiple column view. There doesn’t seem to be a way to rearrange the columns though. Nor can you change to a different account when in the multiple column view.
Another minor fault to me is the lack of a way to change the colour(s) of the application like I can in TweetDeck.
Again, Neil referred me to this application. The next day I saw lots of people talking about it on Twitter and blogs. At first I thought ‘What the heck is a video blogging web application doing creating a Twitter application?’ Then I discovered that Seesmic also created the Twitter application Twirl. I guess it shows that Seesmic is a versitile company and want to me known for more than just video. Personally, I can’t stand Seesmic video. The entire site is—- I just looked at Seesmic.com for the first time in months and they’ve completely changed the design. It looks a lot better. It seems they’re trying to create threads of video a little bit like a Twitter feed. Interesting.
Now, back to the application — which I just realised wasn’t installed on my computer yet.
First look: I’m not sure if it’s a Twitter API problem, but no tweets appear in any of the columns in Seesmic Desktop. It allows the creation of multiple columns quite easily whilst keeping the left sidebar (containing multiple accounts, saved searches, and userlists/groups) visible. Nambu fails to keep the sidebar visible when in multiple column mode.
I’ll update this if Seesmic Desktop woos me when it begins to work.
I recently bought Tweetie for my iPhone and I absolutely love it! It allows multiple accounts, displays TwitPic images within the application (no need to open the web browser), and also displays hyperlinks the app (again, no switching to the web browser). For the longest time I used Hahlo on the iPhone, but now Tweetie has replaced it for me.
Alas, this is about desktop applications. Tweetie released its desktop application less than a week ago and there’s been mixed reviews about it in the Twitter community.
Pros:
- It handles multiple accounts, and threads DM conversations.
Cons:
- It lacks groups and a multiple column view.
- It’s very much like the iPhone application and thus doesn’t allow for the screen real estate a full size computer screen has.
- It costs US$15!!! By comparison, the iPhone app costs $3. I’m very happy to pay a few dollars for the iPhone app, but I figured the desktop application would be completely free. NB: There is a free desktop version that is ad-supported. I’m using this and I have yet to see an ad.
Conclusion
I’m still going to continue to use TweetDeck on my Mac. I’ve been hoping for multiple accounts in TweetDeck for the last two releases with no such luck, so I’ll just continue to wait.
Having all the applications I reviewed above open whilst writing this meant that Twitter’s API was exceeded in a matter of moments. This is one of the major downsides in using any Twitter application. If you follow a lot of people, the 100 requests per hour enforced by Twitter’s API will probably frustrate you.
What’s your favourite Twitter application, and why?
Now that people like Ashton Kutcher have a larger reach in social media — in his case, Twitter — than the mainstream media, it means that the people are in charge more than ever!
Sulking and complaining about how “life sucks” isn’t going t get you far. Before Ashton had a million followers, he complained about his neighbour’s construction in the early morning. Since then he’s turned himself around (either because he’s wise or he was told to) to doing positive things via Twitter.
It’s human to complain about things that are frustrating. Or is it? Why don’t we just think about the positive in everything. Whomever made up the term ‘turn that frown upside-down’ must have been a positive person. Think of that when you’re feeling depressed.
Growing up I observed a lot of wise (generally older) people with an open mind and the things they said have held true. I’m here to be that wise person and tell you that things work themselves out if you think positively.
You may find this hard to believe, but high school sucked for me at times too! I’d scratch lines in my arms and legs with my metal ruler when I was frustrated with homework, but eventually my term “Giddy up!” came along and everything has been amazing. I can bring a smile to almost anyone with those two simple words.
If you’re thinking: ‘Shut up, Derek! Two words can’t make my life better. I have no money, no friends, and my parents don’t let me do anything.‘ Well, then you should probably read this post again. And you need to get some optimism so you can be happy. All. The. Time.
I tend to surround myself with happy, fun-loving people. Not depressed people. Who would want to be around someone that complains about everything all the time? Maybe this is why you don’t have many friends.
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(for US$5.00), but it’s only going to be 256kbps MP3s.
No videos though; un-coolio. 
