Master of All Distractions
Posted on 08. Sep, 2009 by Zahid Lilani. 0
Let’s accept it, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace are all just big distractions. You log onto FB and then you go onto Twitter and then you realize you have a MySpace account too and so on… but wait… now there is something else that will provide you all the distraction right on your desktop. It is called Digsby and I love it!
Digsby is a nifty little software that reminds me of ICQ because of its vertical rectangular layout that floats on the right of your monitor. Don’t worry, it is nothing like ICQ, it is 10 times better!
Digsby = Social Networking + Email + Instant Messaging
You can now save most of your time by having everything in one place right on your desktop. You now have no excuse not to be distracted.
Instant Messaging
AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, Google Talk, Jabber, and Facebook Chat Accounts all in one place. If you have two MSN IDs, you can use both at the same time.
Email
Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, AOL/AIM Mail, IMAP, and POP accounts. Be notified when new email arrives, add as many email accounts as you want.
Social Networking
Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn accounts. This is the main reason I use Digsby because I am hooked to Twitter and Facebook. It also allows me to manage my three Twitter accounts.
Chat
Easily place a widget on your blog, website, or social network profile so you can chat with visitors’ right from digsby.
To sum it up, Digsby is a great tool if you spend most of your time being lost in the sea of social networking website and have a strong urge of updating your status or profile all the time.
Tweeting and Jury Duty don’t Mix
Posted on 08. Sep, 2009 by Zahid Lilani. 0
Tweeting is now causing some problems for Jonhathan Powell of Fayetteville, Arkansas. Last month he was called for jury duty and he decided to tweet while serving as member of the jury, this act thrilled his Twitter friends but prompted the defense attorney to seek a new trial.
Question is, on what grounds? Well, Powell’s tweets showed his bias against defendant Russell Wright (Stoam Holdings), who was found guilty of mismanaging funds. The jury awarded investors who sued Stoam $12.6 million.
I have never been on jury duty but I know that you can’t talk about the case until it is over. You can’t try to seek facts outside the court, you can’t let any commentary taint your opinion about the defendant, and for the love of god you can’t tweet while serving on jury duty.
What I see is someone trying desperately to get popular, of course these days the medium has changed from TV to Internet. How many friends you have on myspace? How many people stalk (follow) you on twitter? You get the point…
Stoam Holdings would have been declared guilty even if Powell didn’t exist but his twitter of an existence has now caused a fairly normal trial to become a mistrial. Last time I checked, taxpayers pay for the costs associated with trials. We will be paying for two trials when there only need to be one, thanks to Jonhathan Powell.
Bloggers need Newspapers to Survive
Posted on 08. Sep, 2009 by Zahid Lilani. 0
As a Bay Area resident I wasn’t really shocked when the news broke that San Francisco Chronicle is in trouble. Chronicle isn’t in trouble because of diminishing advertising revenues, it is in trouble because most people get their news online through specialized news blogs and aggregators like Google.
To be honest, Chronicle is not in any way the best newspaper currently in circulation. It is a popular newspaper in San Francisco but in the Bay Area it is also competing with Oakland Tribune and San Jose Mercury. James Rainy, columnist at LA Times says:
“…the imperfect vessel for this perfectly self-centered city. The 144-year-old newspaper has never been accused of being great, but it somehow seemed to fit its place.”
That is exactly what I feel about Chronicle even thought it s the 12th largest newspaper in the country!
Bloggers need a source of information to properly blog about issues and generate opinions. If you think that once newspapers cease to exist then bloggers will be the source of information, you might be on the wrong footing. Bloggers can never have enough resources to take over the coverage of any large metropolitan area. We have no doubt changed how average internet user gets information but that doesn’t mean newspapers have no value in today’s environment. Newspapers have always been the very essence of Democracy and it should always remain that way.
Call me guilty because I am part of this electronic revolution and get my news from Google or Yahoo, I occasionally read Mercury News in print. A good idea right now would be to put more effort towards the electronic medium and sacrifice some resources on the ground.
We need newspapers because they keep the stories alive for years and years…
Do You Tweet?
Posted on 08. Sep, 2009 by Zahid Lilani. 0
In late 2007 when I signed up for twitter I didn’t honestly think that twitter would become popular; it is now the third largest social networking website behind facebook and myspace.
I recently re-discovered twitter because of iPhone. If I didn’t have iPhone, I wouldn’t tweet because I am not online 24/7. TwitterFon on iPhone is an excellent application and I say that after trying two other free twitter applications.
Concept of twitter is very stupid (for lack of a better word) and I am confused as to how it will ever make money using the platform it currently has. Tweeting is very similar to text messaging but has a wider appeal to people who are social networking junkies and want to stay updated every second in time. You create a profile, start following your friends and vice versa and there you are… now you can constantly stay in touch with everyone you follow and can update everyone following you.
I try to tweet 2-4 times a day; rambling about my thoughts, traffic, Berkeley, SFSU, news and interesting links. Tweeting can be really addictive, people I follow usually have 30-40 updates everyday which translates into I-Have-No-Life but I certainly do so don’t expect that from me!
Enough said, do you tweet? Follow me on Twitter
The Blackberry President
Posted on 08. Sep, 2009 by Zahid Lilani. 0
If you have been following Obama and his election campaign, you know very well that he has a very close connection to his Blackberry. He is of course the first U.S. President who will be allowed to keep his personal Blackberry in service during his time in office. After living through Bush’s Presidency one can take sigh of relief that our new President is not out of touch with the outside world.
Obama with his Beloved Blackberry
I like the idea that the leader of a nation is connected to the technology and is aware of what is going on in his social circle and the outside world. I have never used blackberry but I know it has immense email and internet capabilities. Most business people use blackberry but with the advancement of technology, email and internet phones have become very cheap and now a lot of non-business people also use Blackberry to make simple phone calls or to wake up in the morning.
Now the question is, do we really have to be connected 24/7? The answer of course is NO! But that doesn’t change the fact that we all are still connected in some fashion. We have facebook, we send Tweets, we txt like it is oxygen and we don’t seem to care about our surroundings when we deal with the technology.
Guess what? Obama used facebook, twitter, youtube and almost every other social media to basically connect to us the voters. Obama’s election campaign was far more technologically advanced than McCain’s. That reminds me of McCain’s age; I guess that must have been a factor why he didn’t care.
We now have our first Blackberry President who in reflects that social norms of most Americans who are of his age and young. I personally never thought we would see a President who is so well connected to the technology. But again, I also never thought that Obama will become the U.S. President.
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