Twitter is officially described as a "global community of friends and strangers answering one simple question: What are you doing?"

I know - it sounds silly, and can turn into another huge time-waster like Facebook or Orkut if you get addicted, but it's actually quite interesting and fun! I had signed up for it sometime ago, but just started using it yesterday after Dave joined and blogged about it.

The thing that appeals to me about Twitter is its simplicity. I added the bot to my GTalk contact list, and I can update my status just by sending an IM to it. When my friends post tweets, the bot notifies me too. Of course, you can also use the site directly, post tweets and receive updates via SMS, or use various third-party widgets/gadgets/apps. I have imov installed on my Wizard and it's always signed in to GTalk, so that works well for me on-the-go.

Another neat idea that people have come up with is using Twitter at tech conferences and events (like the Sundance Film Festival at the moment). It's not a replacement for blogs, but it's faster, easier and more convenient for people to post short, regular updates while they're moving around, even from their cellphones.

Are you on Twitter too? If not, try it out! It's fun, and you can always stop at any time. Add me to your friends list. :)

Tags: twitter, tweet

The other day, I was curious to find out what it's like to build a Sidebar gadget for Vista.

As some of you know, I contribute my idle CPU cycles to Stanford's Folding@home distributed computing project. So I built a F@h monitoring gadget that tracks the progress of my work units; especially useful since I run the client as a GUI-less background service.

Preview:

Download: Folding@home Monitor Gadget

Note that if you run two or more separate F@h instances on a multi-core or multi-processor machine like I do, you can simply add multiple instances of the gadget to your Sidebar and point them to the different working directories.

Let me know what you think. :)

Update: A new, compact F@h gadget for dual-core machines is now available. (April 05, 2007)

While a large part of the blogosphere goes completely ga-ga over the newly announced iPhone, Eugenia Loli-Queru of OSNews has posted what I think is the most balanced initial analysis I've read so far. Once the RDF wears off, you realize that the points she makes are actually quite valid.

The iPhone is a gorgeous device, unmatched by any other - there's no shred of doubt there. More than the hardware, the beautiful software/UI is what really draws you in. Plus it's got nifty "extras" like an accelerometer that allows the screen to switch between portrait and landscape mode automatically (my Canon camera does this too), and a proximity sensor that turns off the display when you lift the phone to your ear (smart!). Small features, yes, but they definitely contribute positively to the overall user experience. Now throw in the 4 or 8GB of flash, a web browser, mail client, and traditional PDA functionality, and this is starting to look almost perfect!

But then the issues begin to arise...

1) Third-party applications: It's still not clear whether the iPhone allows you to install third-party apps to extend its functionality. It wasn't really addressed during the keynote. Engadget, via Michael Gartenberg, reports that it won't, which is just terrible. That's the killer-feature of smartphones and what got me to switch to them from standard cellphones in the first place. RSS readers, IM clients, games, GPS navigation apps, office productivity apps, eBook readers - there's a whole giant ecosystem of useful third-party software for Windows Mobile and Symbian smartphones out there. I find it very hard to believe Apple would do something like this though. I guess we'll have to wait and find out...

2) On-screen keys: Eugenia is not impressed by the on-screen QWERTY keyboard and the lack of tactile feedback, and I'm in total agreement there. This might not be an issue if you're not planning to do anything text-heavy, but if you start sending text messages and emails often, you're going to get sick of the tiny on-screen keys very, very soon.

3) User-replaceable battery: Well, is it? Pictures of the device on Apple's site show a closed shell similar to the iPod. If your iPod's battery dies, you ship it to Apple for replacement - that's okay. Are you willing to do the same with your cellphone and be without it for how much ever time it takes Apple to ship it back to you (especially if it's your only phone, or if you use it daily for important business calls)?

4) EDGE connectivity: All those fancy internet features, but only EDGE support for a cellphone scheduled to hit the shelves in mid-2007? My T-Mobile MDA uses EDGE too, and even though I like most other aspects of the phone, this sticks out like a sore thumb. My second Windows Mobile device, a Palm Treo 700wx on Sprint, supports EV-DO, which is blisteringly fast in comparison. Cingular has already been rolling out their HSDPA network in major cities across the country; why not include a HSDPA radio in the iPhone and usher it into the current generation, especially when you're asking customers to invest so much money into it? This isn't something that can be fixed with a software update, after all.

5) Carrier-restricted: I was a little baffled that the phone is restricted only to Cingular customers. Jobs described it as a "multi-year" deal with Cingular, so one has to wonder when it'll show up on other networks, if ever. Apart from the visual voicemail feature that needs additional work on the carrier's side, there's nothing that should have prevented Apple from selling an unlocked phone for anyone. It is a quad-band GSM device, after all. Was the visual voicemail feature that important to them that it warranted excluding a whole chunk of potential non-Cingular customers?

Besides all this, the seamless integration between Windows Mobile, Exchange Server and Outlook on the desktop is a killer feature for me, personally. Pair them up once, and it just keeps working without interruption. Sure, Apple has the whole push IMAP deal going with Yahoo, but who wants to bother changing email addresses (try suggesting that to business users!) or mail forwarding? Besides, that just covers email. What about over-the-air synchronization of contacts, calendar events, tasks, etc? Plugging in your device to a computer every night is so archaic.

Of course, that's not to say that the iPhone is without its merits. Microsoft and its hardware partners, like HTC, could surely learn a thing or two from Apple as well, especially with regards to design and aesthetics. It never hurts to have another good competitor in the marketplace to spark off some great ideas from everyone in the game. The iPhone is also Apple's first foray into the mobile devices space, so there's plenty of room for improvement in the future. I think it'll be interesting to see what direction they take it in.

So, what are your thoughts, now that you've had the time to let the news sink in?

Lots of announcements were made at CES today, and I'm still in the process of digesting all that information. I also just moved back to uni today (classes start tomorrow), so I' a bit behind on the news.

Anyway, I just spotted the new version of Yahoo! Messenger that's redesigned from the ground up, just for Windows Vista, using Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). And for a moment, my jaw dropped. That user-interface is just gorgeous, all the way from the smooth-scalable buddy icons in the contact list to the beautifully minimalistic chat window. Also, notice that they're using Segoe UI as the default font throughout the application, making everything look perfectly consistent. This app is totally a first-class citizen on the Vista desktop. Heck, I don't even use Yahoo! Messenger, but this is getting installed on my box as soon as it's out, just so that I can play with it in all of its WPF'd glory.

Windows Live Messenger team, take note - this is what WLM should have looked like on Vista; I sure hope you folks will deliver something equally eye-catching in the next release!

Update:Lee Brimelow from Frog Design, who worked on this with Yahoo! and Microsoft, has more information, including screenshots of the new voice call window, a Sidebar gadget (clever!), and an interesting color picker.

Mike Torres pointed out a great feature of Windows Vista that I've been using since I installed the RTM build on my machines - natural language search.

Most of you who have been following Vista's development and/or have used it know that indexed search is a prominent feature throughout the system. The inclusion of a search box right in the Start menu makes it extremely convenient to instantly find files, emails, contacts, and even launch applications. I'm a big fan of Windows Desktop Search on Windows XP (see my old review), but the tight system-integration and performance enhancements like prioritized I/O make the search experience so much better on Vista. It's definitely up there in my list of favorite features.


Both Windows Desktop Search for XP and the search system in Vista (which is based on WDS 3, by the way) include support for advanced query syntax to build more complex search queries. As a simple example, you can type in "from:john monkeys" to find all emails from John that have something to do with monkeys.

In addition to this, however, there's this gem of a feature in Vista that's disabled by default, and like Mike, I have no idea why! (Perhaps Brandon can shed some light?) Once you enable natural language search, you can perform the same query as the one above using syntax that's...well, much more natural - you can, for example, type "emails from john about monkeys." Power-users might find it more efficient to use boolean operators and properties (less typing!), but if you ever forget exactly what that property name was, you can easily fall back to this simple, natural syntax. And it works really well too!

To enable natural language searches in Vista, go to the Control Panel and type in "folder" into the search box at the top (yup, more search goodness!). Then click the "Change search options for files and folders" item. Check the "Use natural language search" box in the dialog box that appears, and hit OK. You're all set, and you can start playing with natural language search queries right away. :)