Jason Ball's TechBytes

I’ve been running Techbytes for about 8 years. Now I have vox blog too. And a twitter microblog. And now a pownce microblog and a jaiku microblog and so on…Will it ever stop?

Paul (and others) are asking "what’s pownce all about?"

I think Wired has nailed a key reason microblogs work :

When I see that my friend Misha is "waiting at Genius Bar to send my MacBook to the shop," that’s not much information. But when I get such granular updates every day for a month, I know a lot more about her. And when my four closest friends and worldmates send me dozens of updates a week for five months, I begin to develop an almost telepathic awareness of the people most important to me.

It’s like proprioception, your body’s ability to know where your limbs are. That subliminal sense of orientation is crucial for coordination: It keeps you from accidentally bumping into objects, and it makes possible amazing feats of balance and dexterity.

Twitter and other constant-contact media create social proprioception. They give a group of people a sense of itself, making possible weird, fascinating feats of coordination.

One of the other cool things about vox and pownce is that posts can be private or public. The idea seems to be that the "next web" is all about transparency- I’d be wiling to bet it’s about intimacy and privacy. Half of the posts on my vox blog are for friends only- same thing for pownce. Twitter is for all, and is a fun experiment, same thing for Techbytes.

I’m starting to appreciate that the platform that provides the best communication tool, while allowing users to determine who sees what will be the winner…

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Filed under: Software

I’ve recently left behind my Skype headphones for the ease of use and reliability of Jajah.

<– I see that Jajah have now released an “iPhone friendly” version of their service here. Because Jajah is inherently a web app, and not a local client like Skype, this could put them streets ahead of the competition.

Plus, there’s the added benefit that jajah call quality is pretty high in my experience..

If you haven’t tried jajah, give it a whirl. If you have an iPhone, enjoy your new found call freedom.

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Filed under: Software

I got the following from Joost yesterday: "We’d like to share some good news and celebrate the launch of the new Joost beta – Now For Friends. This means you can now invite as many friends as you want to try out Joost."

If you want one, leave your email addy in comments or email me at techbytes_invites at mac dot com and I’ll see that you’re taken care of.

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Filed under: Software

I received my Joost email inviting me to download the Mac version of their software. I’m not going to cover Joost to the degree that Ars Technica have. I’ve had some problems with the app connecting to the network, but aside from that my first impressions are really positive.

One tip for Mac users: Joost works with your Apple remote control.

Apple Remote Control keys:

Plus                  Increase sound volume

Minus                 Decrease sound volume

Back                  Jump to previous programme

Back (long press)     Jump to previous channnel

Forward               Jump to next programme

Forward (long press)  Jump to next channel

Play                  Play/Pause

Play (long press)     Show/Hide info

Menu                  Go to My Channels

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Filed under: Software

I downloaded Google Desktop for mac last night with great enthusiasm. I’ve uninstalled it less than 24 hrs later. I found that the software made my hard drive grind constantly and was taxing my Macbook more than I would have liked. (I’m using a Macbook Pro, 10.4.9, 2Ghz Intel Duo, 1GB RAM)

John Gruber at Daring Fireball walks you through what Google Desktop installs and raises some questions around what and where that happens. Good for a read if you’ve installed or are thinking about installing Google Desktop for Mac OS X.

For me, I’ll wait for a revised version before re-installing. The performance hit was too distracting…

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Filed under: Software

So, my techguru friend CK was on Twitter and there’s an aqualicious client for Mac OS X (Twitterfic 2.0 beta available here). Twitterfic 1.5 kept messing up my network connection- we’ll see how twitterific behaves.

Why does Twitter rock? This image (via Library House’s blog) pretty much sums it up:

All those posts at the bottom- if linked into your phone- generate major amounts of traffic.

Ringtones, games, video, etc are all about wasting time. Monetizing timewasting. I believe this is one of the great new business models… Blogger, Flicker, Youtube and now Twitter.

I won’t be a heavy user, just while on my Mac (self imposed twitter limits), but my profile is here.

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Filed under: Software