I Remember When Twit Meant Something Else....

I was reading Helene's blog post about Twitter. Again, I don't get it. So I thought I'd try to answer one of my own questions - how does Twitter differ from IM? I found a link that led me to this quote, "You already know that you can interact with Twitter at our web site or by texting from your mobile phone but now you can use IM to do everything that you can do over SMS." What? So I continued to read and found another link that led me to some FAQs, specifically one that I thought would answer my questions:

Getting to know Twitter

What is it?

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent messages. People write short updates, often called "tweets" of 140 characters or fewer. These messages are posted to your profile or your blog, sent to your followers, and are searchable on Twitter search.

So now I am stuck with my original questions. Why do I need Twitter when I have a cell phone? I could just as easily call the person for an update, or leave a message, send a text, for an update? I could poke them on their Facebook account if I wanted a slower approach, but for speed, why not an IM or basic phone call? If they are there, they will opt to answer or send me to voice mail for later. If they answer, then I know. I have an outdated cell phone that even allows me to send the same text/photo message to anyone in my phone book at the same time.

Now, why Twitter?

Now If It Only Had A Phone.....

I'm sure I'm way behind here, but I just discovered netbooks. Or maybe I knew about them but thought people were saying notebooks, but at any rate, I just read an update on netbooks and am tickled. I remember when tech calculators were this size and we thought they were the cat's meow! This thing will fit in my pocket book and the keys are big enough for me to use!

New Aggitator, er Aggregator

Thanks to Aaron, we now know about Joongel. It is currently in beta, but the home page is really neat! Set up like a graph, the left column has topics from images, tech, general, gossip to Q&A. The icons are searchable independently or as a group, but it is really easy to just use the top bar to add your search, pick your category, and boom - have your best choices available to you.

Now for those who know me well, the idea of using the most popular sites for our base sources aggravates me. What about those really good sources that are not that popular? If you look at the sources used, you may even think to yourself, well what about source x, or they are not using y. Many of the sources they are using I am not familiar with. So in that sense, this is a great tool for learning a few new sites. Also, maybe someone could do the same thing on lesser known but very good sites. Maybe there should be one for academic or business or other areas. Maybe there is, and if so, maybe we should be using them in our daily activities. So much to play with, so little time...