Rather then debating the pros and cons of Twitter vs Jaiku try using Hellotxt and free yourself from updating every socialmicroblog-network out there. It incorporates all the major microblogging tools as well as LinkedIN, Brightkite and may other services.

Kudos to the developers of this service. I’m very impressed with the usability and features of hellotext.

Two things though.
1) What’s the revenue model? Please tell me there is one. I’m all for great services but without a revenue model these tools can’t last forever.

2) I couldn’t get the SMS setup to work with my iPhone. Perhaps it has something to do with the developers living in Italy vs the US.

Also, one thing which freaked me out was when I pasted a URL and submitted my update, the service shortened the URL and redirected it to hellotxt.com then out to the destination URL. I’m still not sure what I think about that feature yet.

Perhaps one of the most enlightening discussions we’ve had at Imulus was in regard to the following question.

Starting now if you had to read all type for the rest of your life in one typeface, what would it be?^*

My answer: Gotham. The font is profound, clean, inescapably strong, yet different enough in weight to convey emphasis and prowess. Gotham is the sort of typeface that a type-designer becomes famous for. It’s Helvetica with out the genericism^**.

So while Gotham is used frequently (pdf) it deserves credit for being a landmark typeface in the twenty first century^***.

In the end a typeface is much like wine, if it tastes good to you the complexities and price don’t mean much. However, you may just find that over time your tastes refine. And as far as Gotham is concerned, it’s about as refined as it gets.

^{* Note: This means an entire font family, not one particular weight.
** I’m a wannabe lexicographer.
*** Gotham was released from H&J in the year 2000.}

It seems that the notoriously tightwad ICANN is now relaxing domain naming conventions. Now any combination of letters, numbers and non-Latin text will be able to resolve to a Web site. Personally, I think this is a serious mistake.

There already are plenty of domain name suffixes to select from but time and time again .COM is the most selected suffix. It’s what people know and they are used to. I remember a few years ago there was a huge stink over whitehouse.com going to a porn site rather then to a government site. Those who understood domain names would have gone to .GOV. At the time there were only a handful of suffixes to choose from, this new direction by ICANN will change all that.

Personally, I think this adds more confusion to domain names. I already see plenty of challenges, even with technical folks understanding the differences in subdomains such as blog.imulus.com vs imulus.com vs www.imulus.com. Usually there is a 50 / 50 chance that if I give someone a domain name containing a subdomain they will usually add www to the URL; for instance bet.rmi.org then becomes www.bet.rmi.org.

This will surely benefit search engines more then the average user. I guess the lawyers benefit also because it sure will be interesting to watch the copyright and trademark lawsuits for all the domain name variations which will be gobbled up by the name registers.

Nice move ICANN!

We all know that some of the biggest financial complaints these days are the high gas prices and airlines “nickel and dime-ing” us to death. Most people know that the latter is directly caused by the former but what a surprising amount of people don’t know is that it is also because of the Internet.

Some years ago sites started to emerge that promised low fares for airline tickets by lumping all the airline fares into one database. Unfortunately for the airlines, their customers were no longer concerned about being faithful to a particular airline anymore; it was all about the cheapest flights. What’s more is that after 9/11 there was a mass panic about flying, particularly with the airlines whose logo was plastered on the planes: American Airlines and United Airlines. One particular company (Frontier Airlines) jumped on the fact that two of the biggest names in the airlines were suffering by aggressively marketing their cute-sy talking animals on the tails of the plane matched with the promise of lower fairs.

This unfortunately opened a can of worms on the airline industry. The only way that airlines could make money was by having the cheapest flights, but with gas prices climbing and airlines struggling to make a profit this lead to a catch-22. What else can an airline do to stay afloat? Most have been finding the solution to that in charging for extra bags and food and drink on the flight. Sorry folks, can’t have your cake and eat it too. Furthermore, travel sites still charge a “booking fee” when you purchase tickets. By showing brand loyalty and going directly to the airline site, you save money. Next time you’re on a travel site, try thinking about if someone made a site to find the lowest prices in your business but the price for your materials have sky-rocketed. You may not feel like complaining about the airlines “robbing” you of your money anymore.

Netflix recently announced that they are eliminating the Profiles feature from their online movie rental service. For a company that built it’s business on customer service, this is a seriously bonehead move. For families or small businesses this was the feature that made the service work for them. Without it, it isn’t a very good solution at all. I can only assume that some bean counters at Netflix think that all those profile users are now going to have to signup for a full account and they will increase their profits. On the contrary, this is going to make the service unusable for a lot of people and they will try something else. If Blockbuster can add profiles they will destroy Netflix. If you want to voice your opinion, I suggest you email Netflix and sign the petition here: http://www.savenetflixprofiles.com/

Update: Netflix has reversed their policy on this topic and will be keeping profiles for single accounts. This is wonderful, and a great example of users making their voice heard. Way to support and respect your users Netflix!