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New Media News Every Morning

One Number To Rule Them All

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If you are a minimalist with only one phone number that everyone can reach you at, and you are satisfied with that, this post is obviously not for you. On the contrary, if you are like the rest of us and have a cell number, a home number, a work number, and on the off day you’re traveling, a hotel number, there is a new way to use your phones.

GrandCentral, a new service fast approaching release, solves the multiple contact numbers problem. By signing up, you get one unified number that you can hand out to people, and when they call that number, all your contact numbers ring simultaneously, allowing you to pick up whichever one you’re closest to.

No longer will anyone have to track you down by dialing each of your numbers in turn. No longer does it matter if you’re home, at work or on the road. Your new GrandCentral phone number will find you.

Furthermore, all your voice-mails are aggregated in one place, and you can access them in three ways:

  1. Receive a text message on your cell and dial in from any phone number.
  2. Listen to them on GrandCentral.com
  3. Be notified via email and check them online.

The service is free if you are unifying only two phone numbers, but costs $15/month for up to six phone numbers.

Tim O’Reilly thinks the Web 2.0 address book may have arrived. [via NYTimes]

Originally posted on March 18, 2007 @ 2:11 pm

The Contrarian View on Twitter

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With our own David Krug so madly in love with Twitter, I thought I would add a contrarian view on the service. Scott Karp pretty much makes all the points against the service that I would have liked to make.

It’s only a matter of time before people start to Twitter in the bathroom. If you don’t know what Twitter is (either because you don’t follow online technology or you’ve been locked in a sock drawer), that is as bad is it sounds, but not in the way you probably think

The Twitter feeds that I have read thus far, look suspiciously like instant messaging conversations between 16 year olds from the MySpace demographic. You don’t have to look any further than the difference in the quality of Jason Calacanis’ blog and his Twitter feed to see what the service really has to offer.

Will the service replace blogging? Heck no!

“Twitter is just the next step in the evolution towards the complete fragmentation and disintegration of attention.”

Originally posted on March 18, 2007 @ 2:44 pm

Yahoo Japan Launches Social News Site, Braces Self

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Yahoo Japan has launched a socially driven news site called Minna No Topics or “Everyone’s Topics”. The site allows users to submit stories from around the web and then allows others to vote on the soties by clicking the plus button to add votes/points/score/value. The service is currently limited to Yahoo Japan users only.

Yahoo Japan is basically the Internet in Japan, ranging from broadband to cell phone to television services.

And taking that into consideration along with the fact that socially driven news seems to be the trend that the web is embracing, it makes sense for Yahoo it expand into the market and further strengthen their position. Furthermore, the fact that the site is in Japanese, might save it from vandalism from the Digg Mob.

Loren Baker has more observations on the site, including that he doesn’t see a story burying feature as seen on Digg.

Originally posted on March 17, 2007 @ 1:35 pm

Wired redesign verdict: Looking good

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The new Wired designSo the new Wired site is here. What do you think? Personally I think it’s a step in the right direction. They have maintained their visual identity without being crippled by it. And the number of ads are surprisingly low, hopefully that is a new trend. Then again, that only means that the ads will cost more on these big hotshot sites.

The top part, around the logo, on the front page looks bad though. The sub pages need work though, too wide text columns and a bit more line height would do them good.

What do you think?

By the way, don’t miss the Wired design stroll down memory lane.

Originally posted on March 16, 2007 @ 8:38 am

Why Blogs Will Stick Around

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Bruce Sterling might think blogs will die out within ten years, however, memes like the The Ageless Project may be what’s needed to keep them going. Ageless, if you’re not familiar with it, lists bloggers by their birth year, with the topmost two being 95 and 93, respectively. Listings for each decade range from 1910s to 1990s – the youngest blogger listed is twelve. (My father, whose health blog I’m trying to set up, is nearly 80.)

This sort of categorization is what will continue to keep the blogosphere interesting. I think that Bruce Sterling misses the point of why blogs are so popular. He is a popular, experienced writer (and one of my faves), but there are many people who are not, who crave to communicate. Proof of that is evident in the current success of widgets like Twitter.

Granted, people will get sick of reading about how many minutes ago you picked your nose. However, as long as humans feel the need to communicate in print/digital, I can’t see how blogs will not have some cultural value. They may not stay the cash cows that some blogs are today, but if consumer electronics goes the way that some think, there may be hope yet. I’m speaking of rollable screens and electronic newspapers with wireless content loading – why not blog content on there, too? Especially tech news, health, politics, etc.

What’s more, if more twelve-year old bloggers follow the one listed in The Ageless Project, in ten years, they’ll be out of college, past the diary blog stage, and have many more friends and readers than today. A whole generation of bloggers, who’ll learn what it takes to keep their blogs fresh and interesting. On the other hand, maybe vlogs will replace blogs entirely, though somehow I don’t think so.

Originally posted on March 16, 2007 @ 12:50 pm