These days you can’t really go anywhere without hearing of Twitter, Facebook or some form of social media. It’s everywhere and the reason is, because it’s instant and easy. What you aren’t hearing about as much is newspapers.

Newspapers used to be the only game in town and then TV but newspapers still had their place. Well in today’s “I need the news RIGHT THIS SECOND“, newspapers have been pushed out of the way but social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook.

I stumbled across this article from the The Independent in the UK about how people are moving away from traditional ways of getting news and moving more towards alternative means such as social media and various online resources. People, myself included, don’t have time to wait around for tomorrow morning to find out the news of today.

Some people say that they still get the daily paper for the coupons it comes with. Nowadays, you can type in “PRODUCT promo code” and get a multitude of deals on whatever you want. Plus Amazon is still pretty cheap if you’re okay with not going to a store to pick something up. Also, with the advent of Groupon, LivingSocial and other group couponing sites, this will only get better with time and further push the papers out.

Classifieds have moved aside for Craigslist and blogs have taken the place of Editorials. These are just more reasons why there really isn’t a need for newspapers any more other to cover my table with when my kids paint.

What do you think?

Well there it is. The iPad is born and while I’m impressed with the product, it’s still just what I thought it would be, a big iPod Touch. I was really disappointed in that they didn’t really go over anything that I wanted in terms of the iTunes update, AT&T exclusivity, 4.0 update.

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.

So today is the big Apple announcement of the super, over-hyped Tablet, iSlate, iPad, iHypeMachine… I’m actually less concerned over that as I already have an iPhone and an iPod Touch. What is super interesting to me is the iPhone exclusivity coming to an end. As a iPhone jailbreaker with T-Mobile, I would love to hear that I can’t unjailbreak my iPhone and not have to worry about it bricking anymore.

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?

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.

So as I’ve written about in the past, Twitter is becoming a bigger force in the Web 2.0 world everyday it seems. More so with people like me who work a little in the web field it’s considered a necessity these days to know what is going on and getting the latest, up to the minute news on Twitter minutes before it shows up on the traditional news sites. But the biggest thing with Twitter is getting your word out there. Finding as big of an audience as possible to listen to what you have to say. So I decided to try a little experiment.

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

So in today’s world of Web 2.0, everyone knows what everyone else is doing because of micro-blogging. If you’re not sure what micro-blogging is, here’s my definition. Micro-blogging is the idea of posting blogs of 140 characters or less. Because of the shortness of the blogs, they are posted at a much more frequent nature. Most people update what they are doing at that time while others use it to update a new blog post or a song that they just listened to.

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.

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.

A couple of weeks ago, I found out about a new chat client to rival the one I have used for so long. Digsby is the name. I instantly fell in love with it. It has all of the features that Trillian, Pidgin, and other “All in one” chat clients have. What it does have that those others don’t is the ability to hook in your e-mail, MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter into it. So now when I receive an email to any of the accounts that I have hooked up, I will see a small alert show up telling me. The same with Facebook or Twitter. The small alerts are an easy way to keep up to date to what is going on with friends you might have on those sites.

As good as Digsby is, it did have its issues. My work computer runs on Vista Professional and apparently Digsby has a memory leak issue with Vista that after a few hours, required a reboot. My home computer which runs XP 64 bit seemed fine. Another reason why Vista isn’t too good. Anyhow, I just read today that Digsby released an update that helps fix some of the issues that plagued it before. I actually just made the update and see that the memory usage is lower than it used to be.

Overall, I would pick Digsby over any other chat client hands down. There really isn’t any other program that combines all the features that I can find in Digsby. So check it out and tell me what you think.