I have been dabbling with this Facebook / Twitter phenomenon for a while now, probably not as long as most, but longer than some.  What really pulled it together for me is the free software called “TweetDeck” which is (in a strange, spreadsheet kind of way) the closest thing we have to an actual hive mind.  Especially over the last two weeks, when I am at home and the computer is on – and it is most of the time – I have TweetDeck open full screen as my backdrop to everything else.  Instant Twitter / Facebook updates from just about every friend and family member I have will appear in close to real time.

So I’ll be working on a novel, or an article, or a short story, and then get this trilling sound from TweetDeck announcing a new message.  It gives me a little jolt of pleasure, and I alt-tab over to see who is doing what.  And since it’s usually 140 characters or less, I absorb it in an instant, then happily alt-tab back to what I was doing.

I live alone now, in a new place.  I don’t know many people here yet.  Occasionally I feel lonely.

When TweetDeck is up and running, though, I don’t.

This would probably be interesting fodder for some University psych study.  I can’t be the only one who finds companionship in TweetDeck.  When it’s running I don’t feel alone.

Case in point:  The trill just sounded.  I alt-tabbed over.  My cousin Traci, who was one of my dearest childhood companions, is going to see Aerosmith and ZZ Top tonight.

For some reason, just knowing that makes me happy.

I use TweetDeck on both my computer and my iPhone.  It’s available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.  It’s free.  And it’s hereby officially proclaimed groovy.

Dear Bill Gates,

I am very sorry I shoveled so much ire on Windows Vista over the last few years, both privately and publically.  I approach with hat in hand and offer an apology.

Recently I decided to buy a new computer.  Because of being such a raving fan of my iPhone, I thought I would switch to a Mac.  Mac computers are very elegant.  Macs are beautiful.

But for me, ultimately, a Mac didn’t make any sense.  Not after I saw, and fell in love with, an HP Quad Core desktop machine with 8 gigs of RAM, and a huge and beautiful 23 inch wide screen monitor … for 2/3 the price of a Mac which, by tech specs alone, was only half the computer.

The only drawback, I thought, was that the HP came preloaded with Windows Vista.  Every experience I’ve had with Vista has been negative.  But, I thought, I’ll just uninstall it, put XP on it, and then upgrade to Windows 7 when it comes out.

That’s not what happened, though.  It turns out with a powerful computer, 64-bit Windows Vista rocks.  It rocks hard.  Software I thought had been buggy (Firefox 3, which I had all but given up on) and Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 Ultimate (don’t try and say that with only one breath) both of them are rock solid on Vista.

On this computer, Vista runs effortlessly, and it multitasks like a supercomputer of yore.

It’s beautiful, elegant, and solid.  The operating system I thought I would hate, I have found I actually love.  Sure, it may suck on a lesser computer.  On hardware that is not worthy.  But on this machine?  Dare I say it?  It’s downright sexy.

And my apologies to Steve Jobs and Apple, and all the Apple fans out there, but this HP desktop kicks ass.  Vista kicks ass.

AND, something that people don’t figure in until it’s too late, I didn’t have to re-purchase all my software for the Mac platform.  That was really the nail in the coffin when I was teetering between choosing a Mac and a PC.  I have a significant investment in software.

So once again, Mr. Gates I am sorry for the loads of ire.  That is in the past.

And take heart Mr. Jobs, you still get a chunk of my money, as I pick up my new iPhone 3Gs tomorrow.

Here’s a lesson I’ve learned, not just in this instance but in many instances, and it holds true.  Brand loyalty is stupid.  It fosters complacency.  It even harms the companies you love, because what drives companies to continuously improve is competition.  If you’ve become a brand-loyal cash cow to your favorite company, you’re undermining the system of competition – and that actually ends up hurting the company you support.

I still like Apple better than I do Microsoft, and certainly more than I like HP (and I used to work for HP), but Mac computers are too expensive and too underpowered.  I don’t care how elegant they are.

Vista is pretty damn elegant if you give it a chance.  And I can’t wait to put Windows 7 on this thing.

But, I’ve decided, only after Windows 7 gets its SP1.

This is one of the reasons I totally love Google’s “Chrome” web browser.

Fast, more stable that both IE 8 and the current buggy Firefox (seriously, I love Firefox, but it crashes so often now I’m ready to abandon it entirely), and it protects you, too.  Neither IE8 or Firefox warned me that this site hosted malware … and even if it turns out to be a false alarm, I don’t care.  Better safe than sorry.

From back when I was active in the Dallas Area Rocket Society.

(Right now I’m playing with MobiDVD, ripping old movies off of disks I had transferred from tape using a 1st generation DVD recorder.  Ugh.)

If you’re into trance, ambient, Goa, or any number of trippy kinds of music, RjDj is a must have app for your iPhone.

It actually generates music from the sounds it samples — in real time — from your iPhone’s mic (note, though, that is has to be the one on your headphones).  The various styles of music generation are grouped in "scenes" which you can choose depending upon your mood.

What’s really cool is you can record and play back the music you generate.

I recently put this on and walked around downtown Helsinki, having left a restaurant, walked across a public square, and down into a train station.  The result was a very trippy 10 minute recording that only gives you a glimpse of what it’s like to use this software.  It really is like being on a hallucinogen, walking around listening to the world filtered through its music.  Strange, tranquil, and at the same time, exciting.

One thing that is different between this and, say, LSD, is if you start to have a bad trip, you can turn RjDj off.

Here’s my recording:  Evening in Helsinki.mp3

In the next release of the iPhone operating system, we’ve been promised native recording capabilities. If you want to record with it now, though, you have to install a third party app.

My favorite is called, simply, “The iPhone Recorder” by Retronyms.

It features a clean, simple interface, high quality recording, and the ability to pull your recordings off the iPhone either by emailing them or via a built-in WiFi webserver.

Here’s a sample of a recording I made using this software:  Music from Black Door Pub, Helsinki

Update:  Their Google Notebook importing feature is now live.

I’d discovered a wonderful service called Evernote.com through my iPhone. It came to me as an app recommended by a friend.

My first thought was, “Oh, look, another Google Notebook with added features.” Handy as it is, I’m already entrenched in Google Notebook, so even though I’ve added Evernote.com to my list of tools, I’ve never really done anything besides play with the iPhone app.

Today I learned that Google is abandoning it’s Notebook feature. Two things went through my mind:

• Google, you suck.  I came to depend on something of yours and you’re pulling the plug on me.
• Thank God I’d discovered Evernote!

And, as Andrew Sinkov of Evernote.com told me today, they are building a tool to allow Google Notebook users to import everything they have in Notebook over to Evernote.

I’d already done it manually, simply by using Notebook’s export feature (I displayed each notebook as a HTML page and then captured it from there into Evernote … it took about an hour to grab everything, but in the process I ended up skimming through some of the things I’d captured — that I’d forgotten about — and now have lots of ideas for articles).  That being said, I’m looking forward to their import feature, as it may pull things over more dynamically.

If you haven’t discovered Evernote.com, it’s actually lightyears ahead of Google’s Notebook.  More ambitious.  Their stated mission is to become the external extension of your brain.  How they’re doing it is to create a free form database that is accessible via the web, and via a mobile device, as well as having software you can download (for free) and load on your main computer.  Everything connects through the Evernote.com website and syncs up.  So if you take a note one place, it’s available everywhere.

Also, it’s much more than just screen captures from the web.  Using their apps for various devices (iPhone, Smartphones, etc.) you can record voice notes and snap pictures.  Once synced up to Evernote.com, OCR software actually reads your pictures, capturing any next therein, and indexing it in your database for easy retrieval.

That means you don’t have to jot something down, or type it, you can just take a picture of it.  Say, for instance, notes on a class chalkboard.  Bing!  Instant class notes in your database.

How cool is that?

Anyway, that’s why I’m saying “Goodbye and Farewell” to Google Notebook, and “Welcome Home” to Evernote.

I don’t know why I’m shocked that this happened, and I’m sure it’s old news.  But I don’t use Windows Media Player, though just this morning I needed it for listening to something that I didn’t want to run through iTunes, and it popped up with a notice saying it needed to update aspects of version 9.  I thought it was a security update so I said yes, go ahead, update it – keeping in mind it still stated it was updating version 9.  I didn’t want any of the newer versions on my machine.

And this is what happened…

Everything says version nine until it actually begins downloading version ELEVEN…

When it was done, it insisted I reboot the computer.

After I rebooted the computer, Microsoft Windows wouldn’t start.  I had to go back and set windows to use “Last known Good Configuration.”

Things like this make me want to switch to Linux or a Mac.

I’ve been using Google’s browser, which is now in open beta (available here) and this morning I finally decided I like it even more than Firefox.  It’s much more nimble, it takes less RAM, and the interface is so clean and simple … I’ve fallen in love with it.  So much so I decided I had to come out here and rewrite this posted article.

When they first came out with it, my initial reaction was, “WTF?  Why another freaking browser?”  But then I read the story behind it, about why they decided to create a new browser from the ground up, and … wow.  It made complete sense.

Who knows if it will catch on or not, but it has the potential to change everything.

Here’s the main advantage:  They designed it from scratch for how we use the Internet now, as opposed to how we used the Internet ten years ago.  All the other browsers, you see, are struggling to accommodate what they were never designed to do in the first place.

Think of it.  The browser has become the universal application.  We use it for everything.  It was never designed to do that — it was supposed to display passive HTML.  Everything else browsers do now is because of features tacked on to the original design and concept.

The Google browser is designed from the ground up to be the universal application, almost — if you will — an operating system.  They designed it with the features of an operating system.  It’s built to run programs.

For me it won’t completely replace Firefox, because I’m addicted to the Firefox plugins … but if Chrome starts using plugins…

That would be groovy.

If I hadn’t already taken the plunge and joined the iPhone cult, the news of this app would driven me over the edge. WordPress + iPhone = true convenient mobile blogging.

Obviously I am writing this using the software. One thing it will lead to is much shorter posts.

WordPress for the iPhone is hereby officially proclaimed Groovy.