So in my nerd rage, I posted to Twitter that I was upset:

Is @GoDaddy really an ASP.NET host or do they pretend to be? Anything I try to do mildly difficult, their shared hosting fails on.

I had seen that GoDaddy was pretty quick on their responses that day but not with my message. The next day, I did receive a message from them asking what my issue/question was and I promptly responded. I still haven’t heard back.

But what was interesting to me about this was that not long after my response to GoDaddy, I received a message from WinHost:

@digijustin What was it that GoDaddy had issues with doing?

I was pretty impressed and responded quickly and they even responded back saying that they could in fact do with GoDaddy couldn’t. Cool. Score one for them and hang another zero for GoDaddy.

Right after my response to WinHost, I received another Tweet. This time from DiscountASP to tell me that they too support what I was trying to do.

I was really impressed with these 2 hosts that they would jump in to help me out while GoDaddy left me hanging. I didn’t end up needing a Windows solution as the PHP option I was chasing ended up working but still time after time, GoDaddy fails me every time I try to do something that deviates from easy.

Next time I need a Windows host, I will have an easier time looking in the direction of WinHost and DiscountASP before I even think about GoDaddy.

They have made a great new product that will be really useful in schools I feel. But I have a hard time thinking that most people with an iPhone or iPod Touch will find it necessary to get an iPad. Seems like one extra thing to carry around and it won’t even fit in a pocket.

I absolutely loved the MLB app as well as the Need for Speed game demo. They both looked solid. The video quality on the MLB app seems like a must have for any baseball fan.

I also liked the iBook app. While I’m not that much of a book reader, I can see that this is Apple’s answer to the Kindle and will probably cause Amazon to make some changes. The book store is really nice.

But I still can’t get over the disappointment of really nothing else coming out. I don’t have iWork so I’m a bit biased there as I don’t care about that. But I guess most of the rumors other than the iPad were just that. Cool stuff but nothing materialized.

I am also curious as to the rumors of the iPhone 4.0 software being announced. I’m hoping that it includes the ability for apps to run in the background. That is something huge and I’m okay with taking a hit to the battery if that’s what it takes. I have a charger that I use everyday.

There’s also the tablet. As I mentioned earlier, I’m not really all that interested in it but I am curious as to what it will be other than a huge iPod Touch.

So as to my rumors about the event:

• The tablet of course will be announced. It will essentially be a huge iPod Touch with at data plan and GPS. I agree with the other rumors that it will need a contract with Verizon for 3G connectivity. I don’t think AT&T will be a provider for this.
• Apple will move away from AT&T and open its iPhone to multiple carriers but only announce a partnership with Verizon today for the iPhone and the tablet.
• Announcement of iPhone/iPod 4.0 firmware update. This will include background apps and better memory usage.
• Twitter will go down about 28 minutes into the announcement. Facebook will soon follow.
• New Macbook Pros will be announced using the new Intel i5 and i7 chips. Usual upgrade of features while staying at current prices.
• Updated iTunes.
• Updated Apple TV firmware update.

Those are a few of my ideas/wishes. I guess I’ll find out if I’m right or wrong in an hour or so. What do you think?

But as Digg began to have articles that I didn’t care about take over the front page, I grew less and less interested.  But I also noticed that articles that I did care about started to show up in my Twitter stream.  As I found a good group of people to follow that were interesting to me and from them, I got the news and articles that were important to me.  I didn’t need Digg and all of its LOLCATS pictures that I see as a waste.

I also started to find that most of the Digg stories that I clicked on came from the same group of sites.  So I just took out the middleman.  I still think that Digg is a great idea but now, I know that an article is really good if it’s re-tweeted to me by multiple Twitter friends.  I’ve removed the politics behind the front page of Digg by following people who I trust will submit interesting stories to me.

What do you think?  Am I completely off here?  I’d love to hear what you have to say.

Twitter is a force; an unstoppable force I feel right now.  The only thing standing in its way is itself.  With its huge growth, it has hard times with big events that come with a lot of tweets at the same time.  For example, at the Macworld conference, Twitter experienced a few “Fail Whales” for a couple of hours.  The same with CES that same week.  Other times, it goes down without much of a reason.  But other than that, I really don’t see anything or anyone getting in their way.

I wrote a post comparing Twitter, Plurk and Pownce a few months back and since then Pownce has bowed out of the battle.  Plurk is still just a blip on the radar.  I have an account but don’t really ever use it.  It seemed like a good idea but I never could catch on.  Too many of my friends were on Twitter already and like most people I thought, “Do I need this twice?”

Twitter is not going away any time soon.  I have heard others say that they don’t expect to be on it in 2-3 years time but when I hear that, I can’t help but to think “what will you be on?”  To me, Twitter just has that “it” quality and will soon be mainstream.  I mean, even my mom has an account   I can’t think of anything taking its spot.

It’s one of those things I see people realizing how they lived without before it existed.  Kind of like me with my DVR, I don’t know how I ever was without it.  I feel the same about Twitter.  I have met a ton of people and learned a lot of interesting things in the time I have used it.  I think that Twitter has the power to be around for a while and only grow stronger, probably with the assistance of a bigger company buying them out.  I just hope that They stay true to their initial idea and only imporove upon their infrastructure and stop all of the “Fail Whales”.  Twitter can be a big force like a Google if it plays its cards right.  I guess only time will see.

Five days ago, I had roughly 150 followers while I was following about 250. Not a bad niche but I figured I could do better. I just needed to be a little more proactive. I realized that usually when I follow someone, they return the favor and follow me back. So I decided to up the ante and I increased the number of people who I follow from 250 to 1610 as I write this post. After the dust has settled, I am currently up to 780 followers. So basically about half of the people that I followed returned the favor. Not too bad.

I’ve realized that in this ever changing Web 2.0 world, you have to stay on top of the trends because in the blink of an eye, they change and you’re left in the dust of yesterday’s must join site.

So I’ll continue with my experiment and keep you up to date on what is going on with it. And hey, I always appreciate new followers so check me out:

http://twitter.com/digijustin

Because I like to think that I have a pretty good knowledge of what is going on in the Web 2.0 world, I have accounts on a few of these micro-blogging sites. Following the release of Twitter at the 2007 SXSW, I signed up for it. I used it for a while but I didn’t get much out of it. But I’ve written about that before. I’m using it again on a pretty regular basis. I like to post things that I’ve done, heard or have opinions on.

Twitter is the biggest micro-blogging app out there with 2,955,142 users based on numbers from http://twitter.com/digijustin
Pownce – http://pownce.com/digijustin/
Plurk – http://www.plurk.com/user/digijustin

I’m also looking to meet new people and see what others are saying.

It only works on Windows machines right now but versions for Macs and Linux are coming soon according to Google so all can be happy. So if you haven’t yet, check it out at Google Chrome. You’ll be glad you did.

We did some work for 3 of Red Bull’s blogs (redbullsurfing.com, redbullskateboarding.com and redbullsnowboarding.com) where we allowed commenters the ability to login via their Facebook accounts and have their comments written to their MiniFeeds and NewsFeeds. Along with that, we added a flash piece to the redbullusa.com site that slowed all the entries from the 3 blogs in a cloud format and clicking on an article would show you what your Facebook friends had to say about that article. You could also directly see all of the articles that your friends had to say about any of the blog entires. It turned out awesome and very visually appealing.

None of these items are live yet but keep checking as Facebook Connect will be released to the masses soon. Other than the cool Connect stuff we’ve been able to play with, we have a few Facebook apps in the hopper. I can’t talk about them yet but they’ll be out soon and I’ll fill you in when they are released. Some cool stuff going on for sure.