Tech Lunch

I’ve been looking into one of the newer technology crazes – microblogging – a term used to describe the practice of posting simple, bite-size updates on your current personal status to a range of Web 2.0 services. These little postings can form a kind of running commentary on where you are and what you are doing. Leading names in this field include Twitter, Tumblr and Jaiku.

I’ve yet to really work out what practical use these services could have, although I can see the attraction for teenagers who feel the need to be aware of their gang’s activities at all times. There is clearly something in it as Google have just bought Jaiku.

There are quite a few of these services and the minute one becomes wildly successful another seems to pop up which has better features. Add to this the existing chat and VoIP services like Skype, which also allow the display of your current status, and one is quickly led to the problem of keeping all these services up to date: a kind of update-anxiety.

However, no sooner had I thought there might be a problem than someone has created a solution in the form of MoodBlast – a single application which is displayed in the menubar of your Mac desktop and allows you to type one line of updated status information and then send it to all your micro-blogging and chat services at once. I tried it with Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook and it seems to work, although it strikes me that a client that allows you to mass update from a mobile phone when you are out and about might be more helpful.

This entry was posted on October 17, 2007 at 10:30 am and is filed under Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.