Mobile pownce pounces twitter turf

The showdown has been brewing for months.  And ladies and germs, it’s finally upon us.With the release of its mobile version, Pownce smacks down its Davidian challenge to Twitter’s Goliath.

vs.

There has been debating, hemming, even – I imagine – silent hawing. Pownce has more features, more control. Twitter loves mobile. Pownce has better personal network definition. Twitter has a massive user base. Pownce has themes, file sharing, more than 140 characters. Twitter has Biz Stone. Pownce has Leah, Kevin, and Daniel! Twitter has 40404. End of debate.

Enter m.pownce.com. It’s not quite an SMS gateway, but then again it allows file sharing. It works great on iPhones and the 4-y.o. RAZR alike. It’s fast and, even though it’s still an alpha, quite solid.  Usable.  In fact, for anyone inclined to interact with such a service in a manner other than SMS, it’s downright killer.  Ratings, reply tracking, links, files, and calendar events.  What it doesn’t have (and twitter does) is profile management.  But that’s a minor and temporary annoyance.  The only marked shortfall against its more established competitor is lack of SMS gateway.  Having followed the development of Pownce since its inception, I’ll make a gentleman’s bet that SMS or MMS is in the offing.

Check it out, use it, weigh in. If you are not already on Pownce, you might need an invitation to get started. I have a good chunk I can give out right now, so if you need one let me know.

Microsoft Paint – Freelove’s future (is in the past)

Sometimes it seems this way, don’t it? Lately, I’ve felt like even the venerable Google has started down the same path with its Google Docs. Can you make that line any thinner? (no.)

Special thanks to Carolyn Sonnek for the video link on Pownce.

constant entertainment

Speakers in every room. iPod in a pocket. Cell phones browse the internet. Television may no longer be on 24/7 – replaced by the computer.

Over Labor Day weekend, I went out of town to a cabin on a lake in Maine – to get away from civilization and relax for a few days – and getting there requires a plane trip to Boston, followed by a bus ride to Portland, followed finally by automotive extraction from the bus terminal by family members who brave winding back roads to take me to the undisclosed location. That final leg of the trip – 35 miles – takes an hour and a half. It is nearly as long as the ride from Boston to Portland, and almost double the plane trip. It is also the best part of the journey, crawling along the Maine back roads, looking for moose, gazing out at glistening lakes through dense forestation, and zoning out.

For the first leg of the journey, I flew Jet Blue. It was my first time on Jet Blue. I had taken Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death to read on my trip. Published in 1984, it is supposedly more relevant now than ever, and I’d long been looking forward to reading it. As I sat down in my comfortable leather airplane seat, cracked the spine, and started in on the introduction, I noticed a flickering light in my periphery. I glanced up to see what it was, and noticed (for the first time) that every single seat-back on the plane had its own little 9″ TV screen, and every single one was turned on. Wow, I thought, that explains the flickering. Apparently, among Jet Blue’s claims to fame is the fact that it graces passengers with 34 channels of Direct TV programming and 100+ XM Satellite Radio channels. Never a dull moment on Jet Blue. Nor, however, a moment to unplug. I tried to go back to my book, but the flashing lights of the televisions was relentless and distracting. I figured out how to turn my TV off, but the other 315 passengers were intently watching ET, The Sopranos, Who’s The Boss?, and a multiplying array of other junk food TV equivalents. I was physiologically overpowered by the lights. And after 20 minutes of vain struggle to read, I had to throw in the towel. Satellite Radio or Direct TV? That was my choice – simple and uncompromising. Yeah, yeah, I had options regarding what program to passively consume, but the option of unplugging was simply unavailable to me – and to all of us on that flight considering the enraptured stares on fellow passengers’ faces.

I didn’t even get far enough into the book, but the irony struck me like a cast iron skillet over the head. From Boston to Portland, the bus was nearly as bad. Multiple TVs playing a DVD to fill the minutes prevented dreaded lack of distraction. Why look out the windows when you can look into the flickering box of constant entertainment? I am deeply worried about us. And I’m saying so on a web log. Relentless.

iPoddy Training

It’s official: the “touch” revolution is expanding beyond iPhone. No longer the stuff of UI geek wet dreams, having moved beyond the Microsoft propaganda for “surface” (and all its satirical variants), beyond the Treo’s broken “keypad,” the “touch” interface made popular by iPhone in June has spawned a sibling. Or a cousin.

The question is not whether the touch interface is extremely cool, or whether or not the iPod Touch is a good product. The question is how fast user adoption of a touch-based interface paradigm is likely to spread based on the product expansion rate Apple’s apparently set to pursue. Your music is still just music. Your iLife is still just marketing. This is all about flash and glitz, but Apple’s moves in this area have consistently been indicators of broader market trends to come. Causal ones.

I do not want an iPhone or iPod Touch, yet I salivate over them. I do so not because I think they will do anything at all for me or my happiness, but because I recognize them as industry-shaping, paradigm-shifting, advances worthy of anthropological consideration.

That said, I sure do love them Nanos. If you want to send me one, I’ll use it every day – I promise. Silver or black preferred.