Pownce goes public

No longer in private Beta, Pownce opened its virtual doors to the whole wide world last night. The desktop app is revised and improved, even though it sports a bug or two to be squashed. Congrats to Pownce developer Leah Culver and all three cofounders (Leah, Daniel, and Kevin) on the successful launch of a great service. Now, with my fingers crossed that it scales gracefully…

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.

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.