Technology That I'm Thankful For

Over the last couple of days, I've seen a lot of friends and technology has seemed to come up in most conversations (typically b/c I've pulled out my iPhone). I've been a bit surprised how little most people are aware of - I know that I'm a geek, but still....

Anyway, I thought that I'd post links to a few things that are worth checking out - if only to be aware that they exist (listed from the most mainstream to the more geeky):

• Facebook: a social networking site to connect and interact with other people. It has something like 120 million users

• Flickr: an image and video hosting site. A great place to share photographs (although I typically just use Facebook), the service hosts more than 3 billion images and has a great search feature.

• Skype: software that allows users to make telephone calls over the Internet. Calls to other users of the service and to free-of-charge numbers are free, while calls to landlines and mobile phones can be made for a small fee. Skype also includes instant messaging, file transfer and video conferencing.

• Chrome: a free Web browser developed by Google launched in September. While it only has about 1% of the browser market today, I was hooked right away because it is so much faster than Internet Explorer or Firefox.

• Twitter: a "micro-blogging" service that allows its users to send and read other users' updates (known as "tweets"), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length. The search feature is extremely powerful, especially during a big conference or when there is breaking news.

• RSS: a family of formats used to publish frequently updated works, such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video, in a standardized format. An RSS document (which is called a "feed", "Web feed", or "channel") includes full or summarized text, plus data such as publishing dates and authorship. RSS feeds allow users to subscribe to timely updates from favored Web sites and to aggregate feeds from many sites into one place. I suggest signing up for an RSS reader, such as BlogLines and then adding feeds, which you can find on many Web sites (including virtually all blogs and mainstream media sites).

I know that many readers of this blog are familiar with everything I mentioned above - for those of you that aren't, feel free to drop me a line with questions about any of the above. You can reach me through my Facebook profile, Skype (Skype name "lee.kowarski"), my Twitter feed, or any other way you can imagine.

Voting and Commenting Comes to Google

I'm excited about Google's latest offering: allowing users to vote and comment on results. While my initial response was concern over potential abuses of the system, I have decided to focus more on the potential improvements that can be made by adding the intelligence of all the users to Google's technology. I can't wait for this to roll out to my account! And I'm loving the Google voice search on my iPhone.

Trying to Understand Twitter

I've been playing around with Twitter (@kowarski) and have to admit that I don't fully understand when/how I am supposed to use it. I linked it to my Facebook profile for a while, but have decided to separate them.

Anyone have any good insight on how/when Twitter is particularly useful? So far, I can see value when I'm at a conference or other big event - and it is kind of fun tonight to follow what other people are saying about the Jets-Patriots game.

I'd love your thoughts