For the longest time, all I heard about was whether or not some up-and-coming site would be the “Digg-Killer”. And site after site failed at that. But in my mind, we’ve had it around for a while now. Twitter. At around the time I really got into Twitter, I began to cut my time with Digg. I don’t really know why. I was an avid Digg user. I used it constantly.

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.

You can’t do anything online these days without hearing about Twitter.  I’ve written a few posts about it in the past (found here) and I have to admit that I am impressed with how it has been “blowing up” the past couple of months.  I have had discussions with friends and co-workers about the staying power of Twitter and wanted to share my thoughts with everyone else.

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.

Brightkite is a new site to me that is quickly becoming one of my new favorite sites out there. It’s basically a Twitter clone that allows you to “check in” where ever you are. I find myself using it more than Twitter lately. In fact, I can even update my Twitter feed through BrightKite.

It will tell me who is within a certain radius of me and what they are doing. Users also can upload pictures of these places and anything else that happens. But the best feature is its SMS capabilities. I can sent BrightKite a text message with “@ home” and it will check me in at the location I have marked as my home. I can do the same thing for work too. I can also take a picture, attach that picture to an email with the subject line of what I’m doing and send it to a special BrightKite email address and it will add that picture to that location with whatever I said along with it.

It’s a really cool site, still in beta so you have to get invited to get in. I have 2 invites left so if you want one, let me know. Also, check out my profile here.

Update: I have a total of 5 BrightKite updates to give away now thanks to the awesome people there.

About a year ago, I wrote that I was checking out the latest and greatest Web 2.0 tool out there, Twitter. Well everyone said it was so great but I wasn’t sure. I gave it a good run but eventually it just died out and i went months without even thinking about it. But recently, I decided to go back and check it out.

I’ve had some friends recently get involved with Twitter so I think that helped me go back. So I started writing what I was doing, or feeling, or just whatever. So it’s been probably 2 weeks that I’ve been back to using it and I have to say that this time is much better than before.

One main reason is the fact that I have several friends who use it now and it’s fun to pseudo-chat over it as we have done a few times. I also have it hooked up to my phone so that I can send and receive messages via text message on my Twitter account. I also have it on my iPod Touch. Makes it so I can have access to Twitter basically whenever I want.

So check me out. Here’s my Twitter page:

http://twitter.com/digijustin

Follow me and then you can have another insight in what makes me tick.

The couple of weeks ago, I see a link on Digg about a cool new online storage site called Dropbox. I click it since it’s the top one at that time and was amazed at what I found. It is a revolutionary new way of online storage. If you’ve worked with Subversion, you’ll find that some of its features are in Dropbox. Basically, it acts like this:

• You install their software on any machine you use and it will set up a folder in your My Documents folder called My Dropbox.
• On the web site, you add that computer to your account by name (i.e. My Work Computer).
• You can then copy any file or folder into your My Dropbox folder and it will upload to their web site what was in that folder.
• Go to another of your computers with Dropbox installed and open your Dropbox folder and it will get those new files or folders off of their site automatically.
• If you make a change to a file in your My Dropbox folder, it will be uploaded upon saving and the old version will be stored if you ever would like to revert back to it.
• You can also share folders with anyone else. For example, if you and a friend are working on a job together, you can both place assets up there to use but make it private for just those on the project.

I am really excited about this site. Not very often am I blown away by a new Web 2.0 application but I really think that this one is great in all senses. Unfortunately they do not have a way to invite people but once they do and I get some, I’ll post that I have those available. But do what I did and just hit up Google and do a search for “Drop Box Invites” and see what happens.

So it’s been a while since I wrote but it’s partially because of stuff I’ve been doing with Facebook. That and I’m lazy. I’ve worked on teams that have released 3 applications and in the process of finishing 1 at work right now. Along with those, I’ve personally released 1 and have 2 that I have in the works. So lots of apps in my head right now.

The first app we did is called Finders Keepers. It is a really cool wishlist site where you can keep products on your Wishlist, send your friends items for their Wishlists or buy products. It was my first adventure into a real, fully functional, Facebook application. It was tough but it all came together thanks to a great team and I am proud to say that I worked on it. It is going through some major revisions so keep an eye out for those in the upcoming weeks.

The second app we did was for the Pontiac Game Changing Performance. We worked with ESPN for the College Football season and just last week released the new version for College Basketball just in time for March Madness. We implemented a really nice recruiting component for it that I think helps out with the social aspect that all applications strive to find.

The third application is one that hasn’t been fully released yet but I used the new Facebook JavaScript Client Library. Using this allows you to write applications that do not need to live within the Facebook site. Now any site that can use JavaScript can use it. Really nice and once more documentation shows up, it will get only better.

Personally, I released an RSS reader application last October while I was trying to learn just how the API worked. You can find it here. Simply put, the user adds the feed that they want, how many items, and there it is. Still has some issues with it I am finding but not too bad for a first time app I think. Add it and let me know what you think.

So pretty much since October, I have been working on Facebook apps. I’ve done some in ASP.NET C# and a couple in PHP. I gotta say that each has its pros but being a .NET guy, I had a bit of an easier time with those. But that’s the beauty with the Facebook apps. It doesn’t matter what your comfort level is. You can do it in any language it seems. Facebook releases theirs in PHP and Java but there are many APIs written in whatever language you want. At Terralever, we wrote our own API for the .NET framework and I find it really easy to work with.

So if you’re wanting to get into writing your own Facebook app, it’s really easy to get started. There is a lot of people out there to help now. So do what I did and build a dinky little app and go from there.

I’ve been blogging for maybe a year now but nothing serious. Picked it up more in the past few months with my discovery of WordPress. It’s a truly great tool. I’ve never been much of a writer nor do I think I ever will be one. But I do feel that I have a lot of opinions about different topics and find this as a good way to get those out. But I got to thinking about what people look for in a blog.

Blogs are an important part of the internet today. Quite possibly the foundation of the Web 2.0 phenomenon. But why are some blogs more popular than others? Are they better written, have better content, what? I read quite a few blogs on a regular basis and wonder what those guys have that the average Joe doesn’t. I watched a video blog on ProBlogger.net last night that mentioned one blog that happens to come at the right time. He did a blog asking people what they thought about who had a chance to win American Idol and before he knew it, he had tons of people looking to talk about American Idol and who would win at his blog.

That seems like the easiest way to “make it big” in the blogsphere. That one hit that gets you noticed. Many blogs would love to have one article featured on Digg or one of the other popular book-marking sites out there. This will usually work to get a lot of users to your blog for a short period. But if my personal experience is common, I very rarely go back to a site that I have dugg.

I’m not sure of the magic mix to get a successful blog going but hopefully I find out someday. Would be fun to look back at this entry and think to myself that this was all crap and something else pushed me over the hump. If you like what I’m doing and want to know more, subscribe to my blog via email or via my RSS feed. Always feel free to leave me a comment, I like to hear what people have to say.

So I hunted down and finally received and invite to Streamy last weekend and got to get my grubby hands on it. So far I like what I see. I tried so hard to get it because of what I had heard; that is was the “Next Latest and Greatest” web app. While I can’t quite agree with that, I definitely can say that I would give it a “Thumbs Up”.

I have never been one to really get into the RSS readers before. I have one on the gadget bar for Vista but nothing other than that. Streamy has a really good way of handling RSS feeds. Very easy to add and go through. After you see one, it marks it read and takes it away. Not sure if it is lost forever from your subscriptions but it does what I would want so I’ve never looked.

I do like the start page but have run into a few situations where I have seen some old stories that should have only been up there for 24 hours. Not a big deal at all.

I really like the instant messaging offered. I haven’t used it yet but it seems really easy to IM your friends and share articles that you are reading. I can see this as very productive.

This brings me to my negative comment about the site. I really wish that they would open it up to more people. I would love to get some more friends of mine in here but I am only given a limited amount of invites (2 per email address). If they were to make that something in the 5-10 range, I can see this thing really taking off. If I was able to easily invite more of my friends and co-workers, I think my experience would be a whole lot better.

Overall I would give Streamy a 7 out of 10 rating (9 out of 10 if they let more users in). It’s a great app and I highly recommend begging anyone for an invite. I still have one left

As an update to my post a couple of days ago; I have 2 Streamy invites to give away. Here are the rules:

Tell me in 50 words or less why I should give “You” an invite and not anyone else who is requesting. So to enter, enter a comment to this story (or the original) and tell me why you deserve the Streamy invite over the others. I look forward to getting some creative answers.

I have one Streamy invite and would like to share it with you. Now I could be nice and just give it to the first person who responds but what’s the fun in that? So I started thinking of different ways to do this. I could trade it for a iPhone or iPod Touch. That would be nice. Or how about a Wii? While that would totally work, I feel that might not happen. (If you do have an iPhone or Wii to spare, we can talk.) But I would like to do a contest. But what???

Tell me in 50 words or less why I should give “You” an invite and not anyone else who is requesting. So to enter, enter a comment to this story and tell me why you deserve the Streamy invite over the others. I look forward to getting some creative answers.

UPDATE – I have 2 invites total so let’s get this going. Comment away if you’re interested.