Thoughtstream: Firefox, Google, Cloud Apps, and Mesh

I started this post as a review of Spicebird. But my thoughts, here at the end of day, drifted. It happens. But if you bear with me, I actually make a point…I think:

FIREFOX

Recently, I’ve seen a couple of new Mozilla-based applications being discussed in the blogosphere, one of which is Spicebird. Now, to complement the music browser Songbird and social browser Flock comes this open source collaboration client offering integrated email, calendaring, IM, task scheduling, and RSS. Unfortunately, the CNet’s Download Blog reports that Spicebird is "not quite ready to fly," claiming it had some serious bugs that needed to be addressed first.

My first thought when reading about Spicebird was that I already have a Mozilla-based RSS reader, email, and calendaring program: It’s called Firefox. In Firefox, I can access my Google Reader, Gmail, and Google Calendar.

GOOGLE

I suppose if I wanted them all together on one page, I could customize my iGoogle page to display widgets for these things, but I tend to use my iGoogle page for more important purposes…like FriendFeed updates and lolcat pictures.

However, a widgetized portal isn’t the same as an integrated program where everything works on one page or in one window. Hopping from tab to tab in Firefox like I do, necessary even to go from Gmail to Google Calendar, is, quite frankly, just as inelegant as hopping from window to window is when using various desktop software applications.

And let’s be honest here, even Google Apps is just an iGoogle page bundled with default widgets and ways to set permissions so Google can pretend there is some level of I.T. control and sell it to businesses. (See? Users can’t add lolcats to their page because you’re in control!)

OK, maybe I’m being a tad facetious, but the point is that despite the usability Google’s offerings, their productivity applications still sorely lack in other aspects. Even Microsoft Outlook users have the ability to do things that really shouldn’t be so hard for such a pretty AJAX interface.

For example, why can’t I drag and drop a Gmail email into my Google Calendar? Or forward contact information from my Address Book to someone else where they can add them to their Address Book with only a click? (Seriously, add a field for that in my contacts window.) Why can’t I add a task to a to do list? Where is the to do list? I can share a post in Google Reader, but why can’t I share the whole darned feed with someone? Why can’t I put HTML in my signature? All those things I just mentioned and many more I can do with Outlook out of the box, yet somehow…somehow…its very nature of being an old-school program - dreaded installable, paid-for software -means it can’t compare to its online counterparts. (Or can it?)

[Oh, and by the way, Microsoft Outlook doesn't need some downloadable "Gears" app to work offline. If you lose your internet connection, it just tells you "you are now working offline." ]

CLOUD APPS

Don’t get me wrong, I know why I moved to online apps - so I can get to them from any computer anywhere. Plus, they’re free. But is it really too much to expect that they should be able to offer me the features that I gave up by switching?  Or am I just supposed to be content with the fact that I get all new features instead (IM in my email! Avatars! Labels!)?

And as to my main reasons for switching: 1) cost 2) access anywhere, these might not be that big of a deal in the coming future.

MESH

In case you haven’t been paying attention, Microsoft’s big bet on Mesh means that you’re going to be installing software to the Mesh, not to one PC, then another, then another. The gory details on this are fuzzy, but something big is coming.

And they don’t mean just their applications - although I’m sure they wouldn’t mind - but any applications. Like free ones. Which means that Google (or any web app) might not be able to win dominance by their very nature of being an online, access-anywhere app. Any piece of software can become an install once, access anywhere app. All that will matter is that the app delivers features that the user wants or needs.

Maybe the Mesh team haven’t come right out and said all this yet…it’s hard to break through the dev speak and figure out what they mean, especially since they prefer to use terms like "unified application management," or speak in "big picture" views like Ozzie:

"Developers will need to build applications that can be delivered seamlessly across a loosely coupled device mesh by utilizing a common set of tools, languages, runtimes and frameworks – a common toolset that spans from the service in the cloud to enterprise server, and from the PC to the browser to the phone"

But if you’re installing software to Mesh, then what does this mean about the software business model? Will software be licensed based on number of Mesh devices it should install to? Listen to what David Treadwell has to say about Mesh, for example:

One thing that we feel very good about the Microsoft business model…is that mesh makes it a lot easier for people to own multiple devices.  Today people struggle with if you have 2-3 pc’s and a cell phone, and music player and other devices, it’s kind of a pain in the neck to keep the data across all the devices, to keep the applications across all the devices. So by virtue of making it…more easy…for users to have multiple devices that they use in different situations, it’s fairly clear to see how there’s some benefit to accrue to Microsoft because we think our devices are compelling, the software that runs on those devices are compelling, and so people will be more excited about owning multiple devices.

And then, on the Gillmor Gang podcast, all these industry pundits get access to David Treadwell, Mesh’s top guy, and they waste his time asking him questions like this:

"So the real question is: whether or not there’s gonna be a transport to take Twitter messages in through the mesh?"

You’ve got to be kidding me.

How about, will Microsoft be releasing all new versions of their applications for Mesh? How will Microsoft Office work on Mesh? Will people purchase Microsoft applications based on the number of Mesh devices it gets installed to? If you have to rebuild a PC, can you just re-install an app from Mesh back to the computer? If you have one Mac and one PC, can you just buy 2 Mesh licenses for Microsoft Office and install it over the net to both devices instead of having to buy Office Standard and Office for Mac? How can I.T. restrict Mesh-enabled work PCs from being shared with Mesh-enabled home PCs? And so forth and so on…

Oh no, they wanted to ask about how Mesh and FolderShare are going to work together. Who cares? Scrap FolderShare for all I care. FolderShare is a tool. Mesh is a platform.

And maybe after Treadwell said this:

Just like you can choose to map a folder to any client device, you’ll be able choose whether or not to map a given folder to the cloud storage as well.

…they could have asked more about the cloud storage platform instead of moving on to how Mesh competes with Amazon’s web services.

*sigh*

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I said you had until Tuesday at midnight. I lied. I have plenty of comments now left by people looking for Mesh invites, so I may as well give them out now.

Deciding Who Won

This was a tough decision. I only have five invites, so who can I say is worthy of them? I wanted to be picky and not just hand them out like candy since they are so scarce. I wanted the people who received them to really want to test and run Mesh and also have use for it. Like I said before, if you just want five GBs of online storage, use SkyDrive. Mesh is all about the sync. (It’s actually about MUCH, MUCH more, but for now, it’s about the sync).

Now, I did enjoy my Twitter debate with krishnan, and while I understand nikan’s point about convincing the non-believers, I decided to give Mesh to the full on Kool-Aid drinkers who are not jaded and skeptical, but are excited to play with this new technology.

There will be plenty of time later to put Mesh through its paces…believe me when I tell you that this is barely scratching the surface of Mesh. S, for right now, I just wanted to award the invites to people who sounded like they really, really, really wanted it.

Here are the top 5 I’ve chosen (and why):

• Ashish Mohta thinks Microsoft is "changing the way of the web." Plus he was the first to comment. Points!
• Phil dug Groove back in the day and is a fan of cloud computing.
• Shawn has 4 computers, 3 of which run Vista so he can really put Mesh through its paces. He has also participated in Microsoft betas in the past, so is familiar with providing feedback to the devs. Plus, he’s a tech news podcaster, so he will have the ability to talk about Mesh in the tech community.
• Chuckpalm  said he’s been waiting for something like Mesh for years. He’s also a podcaster, which again meets my other requirement about being vocal. (I don’t need to be on your podcast, though -  bribes are not accepted - but I appreciate the enthusiasm.)
• Alpesh was looking for a master sync for his various devices and participates in the SharePoint community.

Runners Up:

If you weren’t in the top five, you were either a hater (love you guys!) or just darned unfortunate.

Perry, close but no banana. You weren’t quite as enthusiastic, but you did say you have four computers and a Windows Mobile device, so you could really benefit from using Mesh. You will also be ready when mobile support is announced in the near future, which will be interesting. I was *this* close to giving the invite to you, but the others have the added benefit of being tech community participants, which was one of my requests. However, I’m going to encourage my winners here to please send you one of their invites. (Can someone please volunteer for that?)

Also, Vijay - man, you made it tough. As much as I would love to give out Mesh to someone who wants to prove Vlad wrong, I feel that some of these guys made a better overall case as to why they wanted to test out Mesh. But again, winners, please consider giving one of your invites to Vijay. Because proving Vlad wrong would be awesome.

Runners up, you should also know that if anyone doesn’t claim their Mesh invite, you’ll win by default.

Claim Your Invite:

Winners! To claim your Mesh invite, please email me or comment here with your email address you want the invite sent to.

My email is sarahperez (AT) gmail (DOT) com.

Recently, blogger Michael Klier came introduced a Greasemonkey script for identifying Twitter spammers based on the recommendations of a site called "The Twitter Blacklist." The site, which determines who is a Twitter spammer based on a "follow factor" ratio, has blocked 164 spammers to date. Michael’s script looks up the username of the visited Twitter profile, and, if the user is identified as a spammer, displays a hard to miss warning message at the topic of the screen:

(image via CH!MER!C.de)

Inspired by this script, blogger Andreas Gohr decided to create a script of his own using Evan Prodromou’s new scale for deciding who to follow.

The scale Evan proposed is as follows:

• 1:5 = twittercaster
• 1:2 = notable
• 1:1 = socially healthy
• 2:1 = newbie or social climber
• 5:1 = twitter spammer

This new script not only identifies Twitter spammers, but also classifies all Twitterers into categories based on their following to follower ratio, and displays their category in a colored bar at the top of the screen:

(image via splitbrain)

Considering Louis Gray’s recent classification brouhaha which categorized people as listeners, middle ground, conversationalists, or megaphones, it’s interesting to compare his findings with the classifications made by the script.

Below are Louis’s findings updated to include the new classification level as determined by this greasemonkey script:

Twitter’s Listeners (Ratio of Updates to Followers of Less than 1)

@om
Noise Ratio: 0.06 / twittercaster

@erickschonfeld
Noise Ratio: 0.08 / notable

@nbradbury
Noise Ratio: 0.08 / twittercaster

@techcrunch
Noise Ratio: 0.11 / twittercaster

@jasoncalacanis
Noise Ratio: 0.18 / newbie or social climber

@gaberivera
Noise Ratio: 0.23 / notable

@ev
Noise Ratio: 0.25 / twittercaster

@louisgray
Noise Ratio: 0.49 / socially healthy

@scobleizer
Noise Ratio: 0.50 / socially healthy

@dannysullivan
Noise Ratio: 0.79 / twittercaster

@gapingvoid
Noise Ratio: 0.90 / twittercaster

Twitter’s Middle Ground (Ratio of Updates to Followers of 1 to 2.0)

 

@jowyang
Noise Ratio: 1.03 / socially healthy

@tamar
Noise Ratio: 1.14 / notable

@loiclemeur
Noise Ratio: 1.16 / socially healthy

@adamostrow
Noise Ratio: 1.19 / socially healthy

@iankennedy
Noise Ratio: 1.20 / notable

@mashable
Noise Ratio: 1.28 / twittercaster

@susanmernit
Noise Ratio: 1.31 / newbie or social climber

@nicolesimon
Noise Ratio: 1.52 / socially healthy

@elliottng
Noise Ratio: 1.59 / socially healthy

@tonyhung
Noise Ratio: 1.67 / socially healthy

@calebelston
Noise Ratio: 1.72 / newbie or social climber

@shelisrael
Noise Ratio: 1.81 / notable

@ebrage
Noise Ratio: 1.98 / socially healthy

Twitter’s Conversationalists (Ratio of Updates to Followers of 2.0 to 5.0) 

@centernetworks
Noise Ratio: 2.02 / notable

@markevans
Noise Ratio: 2.15 / notable

@sarahintampa  (me!)
Noise Ratio: 2.22 / socially healthy

@marshallk
Noise Ratio: 2.26 / socially healthy

@mariosundar
Noise Ratio: 2.26 / notable

@charlieanzman
Noise Ratio: 2.29 / newbie or social climber

@chrisbrogan
Noise Ratio: 2.45 / socially healthy

@mathewi
Noise Ratio: 2.50 / notable

@mukund
Noise Ratio: 2.77 / newbie or social climber

@rizzn
Noise Ratio: 2.99 / notable

@parislemon
Noise Ratio: 3.07 / socially healthy

@nickhalstead
Noise Ratio: 3.35 / notable

@duncanriley
Noise Ratio: 3.43 / notable

@jeffisageek
Noise Ratio: 3.67 / socially healthy

@krynsky
Noise Ratio: 4.36 / notable

@pkedrosky
Noise Ratio: 4.68 / twittercaster

@fredericl
Noise Ratio: 4.95 / socially healthy

Twitter’s Megaphones (Ratio of Updates to Followers of more than 5.0) 

@stevenhodson
Noise Ratio: 5.12 / socially healthy

@stephtara
Noise Ratio: 6.42 / notable

@bgolub
Noise Ratio: 6.79 / newbie or social climber

@idonotes
Noise Ratio: 7.91 / notable

@solacetech
Noise Ratio: 8.50 / newbie or social climber

@fourlittlebees
Noise Ratio: 9.06 / socially healthy

@corvida
Noise Ratio: 9.75 / notable

What Does It Mean?

As you can tell, this represents a completely different way to categorize users - some of our megaphones become healthy and some of our listeners become twittercasters. But is this way any more helpful or accurate?

And then there is Dave Winer, who has his own method to determine who’s responsible for "Twitter spewage." But who is right?

I personally am using an auto-follow/auto-welcome script, something I turned on after Marshall posted the RWW team’s Twitter usernames in a recent post since I wanted to add the readers that were following me. That makes me socially healthy according to this script, but to be honest, if left to my own devices, I probably wouldn’t have added everyone that had added me…at least not right away. Scoble, too, had auto-followed people for quite some time, until he maxed out at 20,000. But here he sits at "socially healthy." I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t call Scoble’s user of Twitter socially healthy!

What do you think?

(P.S. Thanks to Corvida for discovering this script!)

Instead of doing searches on YouTube for videos, you can just hit up new site 7ags.com instead. 7ags wants to be your one-stop YouTube shop by offering you a place where you can find videos to watch via genres and tag clouds. The homepage features some recently found videos and a set of tags that appear to represent what people are searching for right now…at least that’s what I’m assuming since the site offers no explanations of its own.

To browse by a genre on 7ags, you click one of the links in the black box at the top of the homepage. On each category’s page, a tag cloud just for that genre is displayed.  For example, clicking the "Music" link takes you to a page where you’ll find tags like "guitar," "death metal," "new wave," and "rock." Each page also feature top videos from its particular category, just like the homepage does.

In theory, a site that functions as a big ol’ tag cloud for YouTube could be a fun way to explore and find new videos, but 7ags doesn’t quite pull it off. The main drawback to the site is its design, which is very - dare I say? - web 1.0. There’s also no "about" page to describe the site, no FAQ (not that you really need one, I guess), and nothing about who made this and why. The only hint is a small link to this site, which doesn’t really offer much more explanation. 

When I initially read about the site, I was interested enough to go take a look, but now that I have, I doubt I’ll return.

Live Mesh is just about the hottest thing the tech world has seen in a long time. The product represents Microsoft’s vision for cloud computing, designed to blur the line between data stored on a computer and data stored in the cloud. This game-changing "software plus services" platform promises to synchronize devices, enable collaboration, unify management of devices and applications, and much more.

Right now, select people have been invited to the tech preview of Live Mesh. This preview is only the smallest hint of what’s to come, but even still, it’s pretty amazing. The Mesh preview lets you install Mesh to your PCs and synchronize your files to Live Mesh, using up to 5 GB of online storage.

Five Mesh Invites

What I just discovered today is that I have the power to invite five people to Mesh. Given the scarcity of invites (some people at Microsoft can’t even get in!), I decided that I don’t want to hand these out haphazardly. I’m not interested in giving out invites to people who just want to have a look-see. I want to give out invites to people who are genuinely interested in this technology and who can benefit from using it. I know how insanely excited I was to get invited and I’m looking for people who feel the same. 

Who Should Get Mesh

After thinking about it for a bit today, I decided that the best way to find those people might be to hold a contest of sorts. Basically, the rules are as follows: just convince me that you’re a good candidate for Mesh.

I don’t care how you want to go about this. You can write one sentence or record a whole video. As long as I’m convinced, you’re in. The deadline is going to be midnight on Tuesday. I know that’s kind of soon, but hey, it’s not like I’m holding Mahalo Idol here. I’ll post the winning entries, whatever they are, right here on the blog.

Just a Few Requests

I do have a few requirements though. I can’t hold you to them or verify them (it’s honor system time!) -  they are just things I hope you will bring to the table.

1. You need to run Windows. Although Mesh will be supported on Macs and mobiles (and who knows what else) in the future, right now it’s PC-only. Mac/Linux users shouldn’t bother applying.
2. You should have more than one computer. The best thing about Mesh right now is the syncing. Why would you want Mesh if you only have one PC? For online storage? Just go use SkyDrive instead.
3. You should be a blogger or technology participant in some way. The reason I say this is because, ideally, I would like to see someone who’s interested in providing feedback about Mesh. Whether you want to blog about, promise to provide feedback to the Live Mesh team, or whatever, I don’t care. I just want to give the invites to someone who’s involved.

Get Started!

So that’s it. Hopefully you don’t think I’m going overboard with this whole invite contest thing. I just need a way to be picky but fair. I am looking forward to seeing what you come up.

Oh yeah, I’m in! I’m so excited to be trying out Mesh’s tech preview I can hardly stand it. I *will* be playing with this all weekend, I’m sure. More to come…

Well, it’s back to Twhirl. In my excitement to finally have my Twitter stream and FriendFeed stream all in one window, (and de-duped!) I temporarily forgot my obsession with having Twhirl pinned on top of my other windows, something which is especially important when I’m on my laptop. So, it’s back to Twhirl for now. However, the way things have been going with the AlertThingy/Twhirl war, I expect we’ll see a Twhirl upgrade…oh…tomorrow.

Update: Or, as it turns out, tonight. 

Here we go again -the battle of the AIR apps continues. This time, it’s AlertThingy in the lead. They’ve just released version 1.3 of their popular FriendFeed AIR app, which you can download from their new and improved web site.

The new version of AlertThingy is an answer to my prayers: Twitter and FriendFeed in the same window! What’s even better is that they are de-duping Twitter messages for you, so you won’t see both tweets - one coming via FriendFeed and the other via Twitter. I can’t even tell you how great that is for me.

In addition, the new client offers a flickr uploader tool built-in. Just drag-and-drop your pic and it gets uploaded to the site, and respectively, your FF lifestream, assuming you have that service enabled.

Version 1.3 also includes a couple new themes like a bright “Flickr pink” and a more demure “Twitter turquoise.”

It’s still too soon to call a clear winner since every time one app updates, the other quickly follows. What’s nice for us though is that we’re going to end up with the absolute best AIR app ever in the long run.

But for now at least, I can say it’s AlertThingy for the win.

There’s a lot of Live Mesh talk going on tonight, and I think I’ve just read just about every blog post about it so far. People are posting introductions, analysis, screenshots, videos, demos, opinions and so much more. But Live Mesh is really too big of a concept to get boiled down to one measly post. To really wrap your head around what Live Mesh is and why it’s important, you’ll have to read them all.

But in case you can’t do that, I’m hitting the highlights here.

What It Is

Here’s how Amit Mital, GM of Live Mesh describes it. Live Mesh has four components:

• Unified Device Management - your devices report into a common service for status, health, or to report their location
• Unified Data Management - transparent synchronization of files, folders, documents & media plus the bi-directional synchronization of arbitrary feeds of all kinds across your devices and the web
• Unified Application Management- centralized web-based deployment of apps across your devices
• Centralized Management - configure and personalize your devices and get remote access to them from anywhere

How It’s Made

• The Core of the Platform is Services. Core services, including some Live Services, can all be accessed using the Live Mesh API. Services include the following: 1) Storage - both online and offline, 2) Membership, 3) Sync, 4) Peer-to-Peer Communication and 5) Newsfeed.
• The API on Clients and in the Cloud is the Same. The API, or programming model, is the same for the cloud and all connected devices. This means a Live Mesh application works exactly the same whether it’s running in the cloud, in a browser, on a desktop, or on a mobile device.
• Open, Extendable Data Model  The basic data model is provided for the most common tasks needed for a Live Mesh application. Developers can also customize and extend the data model in any fashion that is needed for a specific application. In other words, developers can code for Mesh.
• Flexible Application Model. Developers can pick which application developer model best fits their needs. Believe me, they’ll like that.

Again, via dev.live.com

Who Built It?

Ray Ozzie, Microsoft’s CTO and also a team of 100 really smart people. As the Live Mesh Team blog says, it took "deep domain experts on distributed systems, scale data centers, web, Windows, Mac, mobile, networking, app protocols, file systems, databases, synchronization, peer to peer, security and more."

The Pieces

• Your Mesh: This includes 1) your device ring (a collection of devices you own), 2) your applications, and 3) your Live Desktop - all your same stuff, via a web OS type interface that you can get to from anywhere…like a kiosk PC. The Mesh Account service lets these things work together and gives you access to them.
• The Cloud: Across the cloud is where your data syncs. You don’t have to give up control of your stuff and store it entirely "in" the cloud.
• A Mesh Object: Sort of like a feed, it’s the building blocks of Mesh. Mesh objects are physically stored in a Live Mesh Storage Server and exposed as authenticated feeds. The Live Mesh storage server in the cloud is actually a bunch of P2P servers in the cloud.

Via the team blog

Some Stuff it Does/Will Do

• Add/Remove Devices from Mesh: just a little bit of software can Mesh-enable your PC. And soon your Mac, your mobile, and your whatever, too.
• Install to Mesh: "Customers will ultimately license applications to their mesh, as opposed to an instantiation of Windows, Mac or a mobile account or a web site.  Such applications will be seamlessly installed and run from their mesh and application settings persisted across their mesh." (via)
• Know What’s Going On: "The ability to subscribe (“tell me when it has changed”) to resources and publish (“I changed it”) notifications against resources." Right now it’s simple - e.g., who is “using” a Live Folder now -  but it can do more. Much more. (via)
• Share With People: Groups of people can be associated with a mesh object. You invite them via email. Or maybe they’re not people. You could invite a bot…like a spellchecker bot, for example. (via)
• Mesh is More than Devices: A FeedSync based sync infrastructure will let your own devices participate, but it can also support a "device" that’s a 3rd party web site, too. (Killer description of FeedSync is here). (via)
• Mesh Knows What You Need: I like how LiveSide describes it: "Live Mesh will know what computers I use, what files I need, who to share them with, what I’ve modified, what others have modified, and what I’ve shared in a number of complex ways."

OK, so maybe it’s a little confusing…it’s just so complex! But the end result will be easy for the end user: right-click and "add to mesh."

You may have seen my post over on Read Write Web about the concept for Twitpitches. I see that some companies are starting to use this system and I thought I would feature a few I thought were interesting:

Tweetlater: This Twitter app lets you schedule tweets for a later date/time so it appears that you are always on Twitter! But even better, it can (in theory) be used to send automated thank you notes to new followers. I tried to set it up to send an automated public tweet to my new followers, but it kept thinking that I had specified the DM option (I had not) and wouldn’t let me auto-welcome anyone unless I auto-followed them, too, which I’m not going to do since they could be spammers! However, if they get that fixed, it would be a great service. So, A for the idea, but they need to make it work!

Toonlet: According to their Twitpitch, Toonlet lets non-artists create webcomic blogs featuring their own characters: http://toonlet.com.

Zebtab: A desktop widget to bring RSS to the masses. It could work since the masses love their gadgets, but would be better if it was also available as a Google gadget, Yahoo widget, or gadget for Vista/Mac.

Hey, remember Twitpitchers:

Hashtags is an opt-in service. You must follow @hashtags for the service to index your tweets.

You can get the Twitpitch RSS feed here.