I thought this was a nice usability feature of Brightkite:

This happened when I followed a link from someone pointing to a Brightkite user, but turns out that user doesn't exist on Brightkite.

With the abundance of social networks, it's easy to confuse users from one with another. Rather than plopping out a confusing 404 page, sites should take this next step which possibly saves the user time and misdirection.

Nothing wrong with helping the user out.

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Check out the SMS simulator I created for "At Me" App. I'm hoping to compact the source code into an easily re-usable widget that I can place on any site.

This example illustrates how "At Me" App works, and it should help people understand what the app can do, since contextual SMS interaction may still be new to a lot of people.

The site itself will then become a place for aggregating "At Me" submissions, so new users can see who is using the service already. Twitter users could log in and adjust their "At Me" preferences.

Let me know what you think of the SMS simulator and if there's anything I can improve.

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A short while ago, I had a real-world scenario occur in which I was extremely thankful for my prudent efforts with using online storage. You see, I can preach and preach about it, but it doesn't really hit home until a real catastrophe occurs.

My two-year-old MacBook hard drive failed and I lost all data on it. Thankfully, the only data on it was local applications and some random stuff I was currently working on. Anything important was saved to online storage.

Even better, my AppleCare was still under warranty, so I received a new hard drive free of charge. In the end, I only lost local applications and some time spent having to re-install, and re-adjust local app settings, preferences, etc.

This post is a warning to everyone who thinks their computer is invincible to hard drive failure. It's not. It can and will fail - it's just a matter of time. Don't trust it.

Get your important data backed up to reliable, scalable, and disaster-proof storage systems. These systems are available today. This is not some distant-future concept.

Don't wait until it's too late.

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Summary: The subject of the email indicates the topics contained within. If you're going to start a new topic, start a new email thread.

I understand it's easier to just spill out your thoughts in any email that you have open, but by doing so without regard to the subject, you're damaging the integrity of the email system. It becomes harder to find old emails when the subject is entirely unrelated to the topics contained within the thread.

People like to scan their email inboxes for topics of interest/importance, and they can't do this effectively when you ignore the prevalence of the subject line.

People usually commit this mistake in one of two ways:

1. Changing the topic in an email thread already addressed to individuals that need to be informed of the new topic.

2. Deliberately finding an old email addressed to the individuals that need to be informed of the new topic.

Number 2 intrigues me the most. Rather than starting a new thread by clicking "New," or "Compose," the person would rather scan their inbox or archives to find an email thread already addressed to the person(s). This is, I presume, to save the step of clicking "New," then manually putting in the email addresses.

It makes me wonder why email programs don't offer advanced features like "hotlinks" that immediately open a new email made out to a specific person. Because clearly the alternative is too much work.

Nevertheless, if you find yourself getting into these habits, consider it not necessarily "wrong," but just a matter of etiquette.

As a side note, a further form of etiquette (which could seem somewhat contradictory) is when you continue threads after a long break, you should always continue from the old thread, if the subject/topic is still relevant to your new thoughts. This is much easier with email systems like Gmail, where you can quickly search for the old thread.

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If you're like me, SMS is your main gateway for interacting with others while mobile. Did you know you can also interact with web applications using SMS?

It's not as pretty, but if you're just after information, who needs a nicely designed web page or application? Sometimes just the content is important.

SMS is great because it has very little overhead - it's just text. It's also easy to develop applications for, since SMS is a universal language amongst mobile devices. Whereas normal web development has to be fine-tuned for a specific browser and device, SMS does not. When developing SMS applications, all you need to be concerned with is the 160 character limit.

I've created an app that works solely over SMS.

I'm calling it "At Me" App. With it, you can retrieve your most recent Twitter public @ replies via SMS. No web browser or fancy iPhone app required.

Just text atme [username] to 41411 where [username] is your Twitter username (or anyone else's for that matter). You'll then receive a return text message with the most recent public @ replies directed towards that user.

Here is a preview of how the message looks:

1) buffalojoe: I knew you were heading there ...
2) sarcastic: Of course that was my ...
3) bettyjames: lol, I saw the same idea after ...
N) Next
R) Refresh

This is just an example, of course, but you can see how it works. Your top three @ replies are visible. To view the full tweet, just send back the number next to the preview. Or, you can send back "R" to refresh the list, or "N" to view the next three @ replies. You can view up to 15 of your most recent @ replies.

Please give it a shot and see if you like it. I will be constantly adding new features.

For more information, and to report bugs and suggestions, please join the official "At Me" App Google Group.

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After I angrily wrote about Twitter's lack of accessible archives for users, I decided to be proactive about it and create my own way of archiving my tweets.

Rather than updating Twitter directly, I will update via a custom app which copies each update into a local database, as well as updating on Twitter. To my followers, nothing changes. My updates still come across in real-time as they are sent.

There are two ways I typically update Twitter:

• Through a browser on twitter.com or m.twitter.com while mobile
• Via SMS while mobile

My custom app has a browser interface, as well as an SMS interface. So I don't sacrifice much by using my own app. However, I can no longer update via twitter.com, the Twitter SMS number, third-party utilities, etc. This is something I'm willing to accept. There is no other way, as I currently see it.

Twitter has essentially locked out all access to my entire archive of updates. My updates, mind you. Sure, they provide me the most recent 200, but out of 8,000 (and climbing), 200 is pathetic. It's really just the principle behind it. Users' data should be their data. Telling me your system can't handle users retrieving large amounts of updates is not my problem.

Take, for example, Flickr. Would it be acceptable for them to disallow access to any photos or videos older than a month? Should they provide you a message:

Sorry. Your archives only go back one month.

Absolutely not acceptable.

I understand Twitter may some day fix this limitation, but I'm not going to continue to sit around and wait for that day to come, while constantly giving them more updates, which eventually disappear into the void.

So, the deal is this. All future updates are now mine. However, the previous 8,000 are still on Twitter's servers. I haven't figured out how I'm going to get all those off, but at least I'm moving in the right direction.

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For a long time, I never knew why you'd want to set a functions' parameter equal to a value, in the function declaration:

function my_function($one, $two = false)
{
    ...
}

Notice the parameter $two is already set to 'false' within the function declaration.

I used to ask myself, if $two is always 'false' to begin with, why bother setting it there at all?

There could be many reasons, but one such reason came to me recently.

Since $two is already set to a value in the function declaration, you don't need to include that parameter in all function calls. In other words, it's an optional parameter. If you don't include it with your call to my_function, it will be set to 'false' by default.

So why is an optional parameter useful? Well, for one thing, if you add an additional parameter to my_function after you've already been using it everywhere in your application, you'd have to find every call to my_function and add that additional parameter, otherwise PHP will complain that you're missing a parameter.

With optional parameters, you don't have to worry about that. You can add a bunch of new parameters to the function declaration, and as long as they are set to a value, your existing calls to my_function remain intact and, well... functional!

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Reading a friend's post on Facebook etiquette, it got me thinking about how we make contacts and form relationships on social networks.

The post suggests that when you add a new friend on Facebook (and other social networks), you should follow that up with a direct message to the person explaining why or how you know them. It could just be something simple as:

"Hi, I've been following you on Twitter, and would like to get to know you further via Facebook."

That sounds kind of cheesy, but you get the idea.

It makes sense for social networks, like Facebook, that include lots of personal information, such as phone numbers, locations, etc. You wouldn't want to be handing out that information to just anyone.

Of course, if you don't know the person, you could simply deny their friendship request, and they won't see any of your information. However, this is easier said than done. The idea behind social networks is to meet more people, and how else can you do that if you deny friendship requests?

I typically "friend" anyone that has included useful information about themselves. If I sense that I could have something in common with the person, I don't take long to accept the friendship request.

I also send out friendship requests all the time, without ever stopping to think how the other person perceives it. Sure, I may have known a person ten years ago, but do I really need to "friend" them? In most cases, sure - you want to know what they've been up to. But just make sure to follow up with them immediately after they accept your friendship request. A lot may have changed in ten years, and they really don't know you at all anymore. Make them feel at ease by showing them you're still the same person, and you just want to catch up.

A few people have done this to me on Facebook, and I didn't think twice about it until now. It really is a "proper" thing to do.

I like the idea and I'm going to start doing it more often. Whenever I "friend" someone on a social network, I'll try to at least send them a simple message like:

"Thanks for accepting my friendship request. Looking forward to getting to know you better."

This lets the person know you are not some stalker or creep after their personal information. Show them you are a human (and normal) by sending a personal message.

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Twitter is great for starting conversational threads by including @username in front of any tweet. If you recall from a previous post of mine, @ replies are not a built-in feature of Twitter. Rather, it's a convention created by the masses. Therefore, Twitter's support for @ replies is limited.

The Twitter web interface does include a "Replies" tab, which is a nice way to quickly see all replies directed towards you. Problem is, it often misses replies.

Only at the beginning

The "Replies" section of the web interface only includes messages that begin with "@username." For example, in my case, anytime someone writes a tweet that starts with "@Matthom," that tweet will show up under the "Replies" section.

But what about when someone includes "@Matthom" in the middle, or towards the end of their tweet? For example:

Going to see The Dark Knight. @Matthom, will let you know how it is.

This tweet will not show up under my "Replies" tab.

Mis-spellings

Not only that, but quite often people will unintentionally mis-spell my username, probably because they are twittering from a mobile device, where it's harder to type accurately.

For example, this tweet will also not show up under my "Replies" tab:

@Mathom see you in a bit.

Notice my Twitter username is mis-spelled.

Solution: search.twitter.com

A great solution to both of these problems is to use search.twitter.com, formerly Summize.

search.twitter.com will show you real-time Twitter results for any search query. For my case, I set up a search for @ replies directed towards me. The results, however, include variations of my Twitter username:

• @Matthom
• @Mathom
• @Mattom

The bottom two seem to be the most common mis-spellings of my username. With search.twitter.com, I can now pool together all of these tweets into one stream, so I will never again miss an @ reply that was mis-spelled.

It also searches the entire tweet for my keywords, so even if someone puts "@Matthom" at the end of their tweet, search.twitter.com will still catch it.

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Brightkite employee, Mike Collins, on requests for a "check out" feature on Brightkite, which also reflects the API idea I mentioned yesterday:

If we add the ability to check out, and assume that people are at the place they checked in at until they either check out or check in at another place, we put the burden on the end user to remember to check out every time they leave a place they were checked in at. My guess is that a lot of users may forget to check out when they leave a place, or simply find it tedious, and so the quality of that information degrades pretty quickly. We don't want to tell you "X number of friends are here right now" only for you to find out that they all left an hour ago and forgot to check out. Users would stop trusting the accuracy of that information and then it loses its value.

Not to mention the whole new can of privacy worms that would be opened. Do you really want everyone on Brightkite to know how much time you spend at home? At work? At the bar? We'll leave it to the government to track your whereabouts 24-7, that's not really what Brightkite is about ;-)

Case in point: I didn't check in at all this weekend ( didn't have cell service for most of the time), so my last checkin was Friday at Brightkite HQ. I didn't check in again until this morning, again at Brightkite HQ. This doesn't mean I spent my whole weekend at the office, all it means is that I was here on Friday afternoon and again on Monday morning.

Essentially "checking in" with Brightkite may include a timestamp, but from what Mike is saying, it seems like that's irrelevant information. Just because you checked in at 2 PM someplace, that doesn't mean you are A) there for a certain amount of time, or B) there until you check into another place. It simply means you were there at one instance of time. Therefore, "checking out" would only add to the complexity of aggregating people's whereabouts.

It seems there's a lot more involved than I initially thought. It makes sense, though. Brightkite is not trying to be a 24/7 tracking utility - it's simply meant to share your location.

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Throughout my years as a developer and programmer, I've worked closely with many technical people, where I regularly required their assistance with everyday, work-related issues or problems. Even close friends or contacts of mine are technically-inclined, especially friends made through social networks, where it's my goal to meet like-minded people.

I realize there's that double standard going on when it comes to helping people with technical troubles. I've been on both sides of the fence. I've been annoyed at user's constant requests for piddly things (at least, things I think are piddly). I've also been in dire need of help, and been treated like my problem was piddly, with little or no help from others.

So I can accept that I can't expect superb help every time I need it, when I myself may have inadvertently treated others poorly.

The difference, though, is that I always go above and beyond to help someone. I don't just supply a two-word answer, or tell them "It works for me," and then ignore them. Sure, initially, I may provide a quick answer, because perhaps I'm in the middle of something, or maybe the user really is annoying and the request is piddly (if you asked most people, they'd think it is piddly too), but the difference is I will always follow up, no matter how piddly that user's issue seemed. I'll take the extra step to make sure the user was able to figure it out. Usually that means just stopping by and saying, "Hey, were you able to figure that out?" Just that extra level of care is what separates helpful people from unhelpful people.

I can usually tell pretty quickly who is helpful and who is not.

Helpful

Those that are helpful, I am comfortable pointing out bugs or issues that probably originated from their own efforts. I can simply say, "Hey, there's a bug on this page." Rather than getting defensive, they'll welcome the opportunity to fix something that they may have overlooked. They don't necessarily like bugs, but they enjoy challenges. This is the mark of someone who really loves what they do.

Those that are helpful also linger until the problem is fixed. This could be perceived as good or bad. They can often become overly helpful and continue to press the issue, when perhaps you just wanted a quick answer.

You know the type. They'll stand there by your computer while directing you to open a certain page or process, so they can look over your shoulder at the source of the problem. Eventually directing you becomes too difficult, so they'll completely overtake your computer.

Although this may seem annoying, this is a helpful person. They'll stay there with you until it's completely resolved, even if it means getting really behind on their own work.

Unhelpful

Those that are unhelpful are typically unapproachable. The slightest question will outwardly irritate them. Perhaps they don't come out and say they are irritated, but you can tell by their body language and response. It's like your completely interrupting something so important.

The most common response from an unhelpful person is:

"It works for me."

Unhelpful people will always find the gray area where they are neither right nor wrong. It's just enough to get you off their backs.

What are you?

It might be wise to consider what category you fall under. How do you respond to questions or problems directed at you? Do you immediately get defensive or argumentative, or are you open to hearing the person out?

It takes a certain amount of character to admit that you're wrong. Those are also the people I admire the most - selfless and caring.

I don't want to come across as the "morale police" here. I am not suggesting that I have never been unhelpful. We are all guilty of being unhelpful from time to time. However, if you try to be more helpful overall, you'll be doing a lot of good for those around you.

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When creating applications using API's, I tend to follow this mantra:

"Find out what's lacking, or could be improved upon, and use the API to create that."

With Brightkite's API, I have a few ideas for applications that could extend the usefulness of the service:

• Scheduled check-in's. Each weekday I usually check in at the same places, at the same time. Perhaps such check-in's could be automated, occurring in the background, not requiring my input or attention.
• Enhanced Twitter integration. Designate whether each check-in actually gets sent to Twitter. Sometimes I just need to update my location, and not necessarily "broadcast" it.
• Checking out of a location. Sure, you can check-in, but what about that gray area when you leave a place, and have yet to arrive at another place?

All three ideas could be created using the Brightkite API. I may opt to create one or two myself.

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Since I've started using GrandCentral, I've been a much happier telephone user. But the interface needs major improvements if GrandCentral ever wants serious adoption. There hasn't been a single front-end change since Google's acquisition.

The most glaring hole is lack of https. I'd feel a lot more secure if my sessions were encrypted, rather than possibly exposing my login credentials, allowing access to sensitive voicemails.

I've also noticed that older voice messages (anything older than four or five months) no longer play. It shows the message, but says it is 0:00 in length:

So much for never having to delete a voice message, eh? It seems they delete themselves.

I've also noticed strange looking URL's. For example, when I go to page two of my inbox (the screen showing my voice messages), the URL changes to:

http://www.grandcentral.com/messages/page/2//

The two slashes on the end makes it look like something is incomplete or broken.

It appears the entire interface is in need of a major overhaul.

I'd like to claim that I'll stick with GrandCentral forever, but to be honest, if a similar service comes along with a more fine-tuned experience, I won't hesitate to switch.

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I've never been enthused about contact manager applications - for example, within Gmail, or on my iPhone. I just can't get excited about organizing my contacts.

I think this is because, contact managers applications, by nature, are full of flaws. The larger your contact list grows, the more confusing it is to pull information from.

This is because the term "contact" is too vague. A "contact" could be a person, a place, a web service, etc.

You may not have all the information for a contact, so every contact appears differently. Some have a complete first and last name. Some just have a first name. Some just have an email address. Some are a name of a place, not a person.

Sorting all that information is never accurate, because there's never one field that is always filled in.

Duplicates are easy to create, since contact apps usually don't require any fields to be totally unique. For example, my Gmail contact list has numerous duplicates - the same person under different email addresses.

Some contacts I don't even recall how or why they are my contact. Perhaps I emailed the person once, three years ago, and never talked to them again. Should they still be in my contact list?

Then there's the problem of syncing. I have a contact list on my phone, another one on Gmail, and probably a few more elsewhere. None of them contain all of my contacts, but all of them contain some.

Some contact apps are web-based, providing me access anywhere with an internet connection. Others are client based, meaning I need to be using that device or machine. Unfortunately, I'm never near the one I need.

The emergence of social networks hasn't helped either. For every social network I am a part of, I have a different list of "friends" or "contacts." If I need to touch base with a particular person, first I have to remember which network I know that person from.

Altogether this leads to an organizational nightmare, further complicating the concept of "keeping in touch."

Unfortunately, I don't have an answer to this problem, or any ideas on how to improve it.

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This is absurd. Here's what a I want, and what Twitter will not allow:

Every day, I want to see the tweets I posted exactly a year ago, this date. From what I can tell, there is no way to specify a date in an API request. There are two methods that appear to do this: "since" and "since_id" - but neither of them work properly, nor make much sense. I don't want to see tweets since a certain date, I want to see tweets created on a certain date. This should be a simple parameter, something like:

http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline.rss?post_date=2007-07-12

Nope, that would be too easy.

There is no way to access tweets other than your most recent 200. (Or whatever Twitter is currently allowing - 200 is generous lately...)

What good does that do? I have almost two years worth of daily content posted to Twitter, and I can only see my most recent 200, which would probably equal the past two weeks for me.

I try other tools like Summize and Tweetdumpr, and they too are limited to how many tweets they can pull.

This is just not cool, and really limits things from a conceptual point of view. Twitter is just an entity, but my tweets are my tweets. I should be able to get them all whenever I want, and not be given an excuse that Twitter's servers can't handle it. That's not my problem. Give me my tweets.

I would be willing to pay for the service if they just fixed the damn thing.

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Back when Jim Thome played for the Cleveland Indians, he had a phrase, or a mantra, if you will:

"Don't believe the hype."

I believe he had that abbreviated into "DBTH," and written on his helmet, or something to that effect.

The phrase is one of my favorites, and often comes back to me, as I go through life and make internal decisions on what's really important, and really worth getting hyped up about.

Today the phrase stood out quite apparently, bouncing around in my head as I approached the Apple Store on Michigan Ave in the early morning sunshine.

As I glanced at the hundreds of people waiting outside the store for the 8 AM opening, I realized I was only looking at hype. These people weren't in line for a true need, like when you need food, or need a job. They were there because of a manufactured inner desire that was strategically given birth by extremely intelligent promotional genius.

The problem with hype is that it's short-lived, and it messes with your head. When you immerse yourself in hype, your normal, rational decision-making processes aren't functioning. Much like "love is blind," so is hype. And similar to love, eventually hype fades. True reality sets in and your affection and passion for whatever the hype was directed towards lessens.

As much as I love "iPhone release days" and the endless Apple hype machine, I still try to base purchases on needs, not hype. I try not to let hype make purchasing decisions for me.

I own an iPhone already. It's only a year old. What God-for-saken reason do I have to buy a brand new one, when there's nothing wrong with the one I have?

Being smart with your money means being able to tell the difference between needs and wants.

Here's to my discipline so far. Let's see how long this theory lasts. Will hype overcome me, or will I remain steadfast in my ideals?

I hate you Apple.

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I've always had an internal debate (OK, sometimes it's external) over JavaScript and Flash "widgets" that sites let you embed onto other sites.

Benefits are it's an easy way to quickly provide cross-network content, with minimal development skills required.

Drawbacks are that widgets often look tacky, and can sometimes break your page layout. They also slow page loading because if the server to be reached is slow or down, it affects the sites you embed onto.

Rather than using the pre-built widgets that some sites allow, I've become accustomed to grabbing that same content via the RSS feed. In a sense, I parse the RSS feed using a server-side language (PHP, in my case), then spit it out onto my site, all the while keeping the content appearance as if it's coming from my own database.

I find this approach more flexible, but I still ache from the page loading problem. The content still has to be accessed from another server, which could potentially be down. (Let's face it, in Twitter's case, being down is a frequent occurrence.)

Service like Gnip intrigue me, because supposedly it can handle the overload of API requests without hiccup. This is a fascinating idea that I'd like to see become a reality, with all the cross-network stuff going on these days.

Consider Gnip the Amazon S3 of API requests. Gnip scales with your application.

Imagine a world where data can be smoothly passed back and forth from one network/server to another without latency or throttling. This would benefit everyone involved: developers, application creators, and users.

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Shortwave is similar to Firefox keyword searches, except as a JavaScript bookmark, it is browser independent. This is useful if you use many different browsers, or just wish to have a central list of functioning keyword bookmarks.

Although, I don't like having to manually click on the bookmark before typing in my keyword search, but I suppose I could get used to it. The nice part about Firefox keyword search is that it allows you to use the address bar, which is where you'd type in your URL anyway.

However, I like the idea of having my keyword searches accessible regardless of the current browser I am using. In a way, this makes my keyword bookmarks portable and future-proof.

Also, it's an absolute must for iPhone/iPod touch users. It will save time typing, as well as reduce page loading time over the slow EDGE network, by bringing you directly to the search results page, rather than first going to the search page, then the results.

Create your own custom Shortwave

Creating your own Shortwave is easy. Just download the default waves.txt file, edit it with your own bookmarks, then upload to a web server of your own.

Go back to the Shortwave home page, and paste the URL to your waves.txt file into the box.

Sync your iPhone/iPod bookmarks

On your desktop Safari, drag the Shortwave bookmark to your bookmarks toolbar. In iTunes, sync your bookmarks to your iPhone or iPod touch.

You'll then have a JavaScript-prompt bookmark saved on your mobile device, ready for your keyword searches.

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Brightkite recently released a feature that allows users to customize their updates that get sent to Twitter.

Here's a standard Brightkite update on Twitter:

I'm at 150 N Michigan Ave, Chicago, IL 60602, USA http://bkite.com/977U.

If you ask me, this is rather bland. It sounds like a computer talking.

I've decided to make my Brightkite-to-Twitter updates look more human. I've converted the above example to:

I'm at or near 150 N Michigan Ave, Chicago, IL 60602. Say hello if you're here!

First, I added "at or near" since I'm not always exactly at the place when I update. "Near" means I could be just arriving, just leaving, or somewhere around the area. I've also added a personal touch to the very end: "Say hello if you're here!"

I use Brightkite and Twitter to meet people, after all. I want people to know that I'm open to meeting anytime, so don't be afraid to walk up to me and say hello.

I also removed the link at the end which normally takes you to the Brightkite site, with a map displaying exactly where I am. I've decided this is not necessary for Twitter. If you follow me on Brightkite, you have full access to the map already, so there's no need to send that to Twitter as well. I just want my Twitter followers to get an idea where I am. Doesn't have to be so precise with the map link (which also takes up extra characters in the tweet, so removing it saves room for other text).

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When I developed Twordy, I did so with the intention of filling a need - being able to post as much content as you'd like, while still taking advantage of micro-blogging services like Twitter.

This is especially useful for those that don't want/need to maintain a traditional blog, and already have a growing group of followers on Twitter.

I'm really not expecting this idea to take off and be a huge hit, but what I do expect is similar services to hit the web which mimic Twordy's concept.

One such service, called TinyPaste, does just that. You can copy/paste, or type directly into a text box, and then submit your content. You then receive a permanent URL for pasting into micro-blogging services. Essentially you're writing your content elsewhere, and just linking to it from micro-blogging services that would otherwise have limited the amount of text you could type.

This is no different from writing a separate blog post, and then linking to it on Twitter. The difference is that services like Twordy and TinyPaste remove the complexity and overhead of traditional blogging systems. They simply reduce the number of steps it takes to write content and share it - taking advantage of your micro-blogging network, which is already established and probably growing.

I think we're going to see more services like Twordy and TinyPaste, as social networks become more prevalent and necessary to conduct relations of any kind.

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