Webworld

Twitter

Web 2.0 cheerleaders are seeing www.twitter.com as one of the big new things. I signed up to it to see what it was all about and I’ve got to say that it really is completely pointless and not only that but not even interesting or fun. I suppose that it is like some kind of location specific real-time social networking site. You sign in, choose your picture then there’s an email box with a question, “What are you doing right now”. My last post was “Cancelling this pointless program”, then my message appeared with a “posted 5 seconds ago” next to it in a long list of other twitterers’ ramblings on what they are doing. I heard about it through http://digitalurban.blogspot.com/ which is a 3D modelling site associated with London University. They heard about Twitter as there is some way of joining Twitter up with Google Maps and then being able to see the location where people were trittering from. This was the initial attraction but I couldn’t get that to work. You can probably see how quickly the novelty wore off.

Joost

I reckon Joost is going to be the “Next Big Thing” so unless you subscribe to HolyMoly or read the Guardian geek pages on Thursdays you might not have heard about it. Holy Moly summed it up best. It is Sky Digital on your PC for free. Yes, it is online TV with no fees. Unlike YouTube I see that Viacom have just signed on to supply material. The guys behind Joost are the guys who created Kazaa (the peer to peer software) and who then went on to write Skype which they then sold to ebay for a crazy amount which is how they must have financed Joost.
I can’t say that I’ve actually used Joost a great deal due to time constraints but it has a great interface, is really user friendly and seems to have some good channels too.