Over the weekend I finally got off the fence as far as the decision to get an iPhone is concerned. I know, I’m not exactly an early adopter when it comes to spending money.

I’ve had this for two days now, and while I’m obviously still getting to know the technology, I can see that this little gadget is going to quickly become an integral part of my life.

Not only is it my primary phone, but from here I can create client invoices, surf the web, rent movies, paint a picture and make dinner reservations.

You can even hook it up to your blog. Right now, even though I’m surrounded by “real” computers, I’m typing this on my iPhone.

Why?

Because now, I can.

In an effort to be a little more easygoing with my schedule, I got rid of the clock in my menu bar.

Sort of.

I recently came across an application for OSX for Mac called FuzzyClock, created by ObjectPark. Rather than the sterile digital 10:15 AM that is normally displayed in the menu bar, the application displays the time in what its creators call a “more readable human style”, in this case, “shortly after ten.”

While it does take a little bit to get used to, once I did I’ve found it’s more calming. The application is obviously not geared towards the type of person who lives and dies by the second hand on their atomic clock, but then again, I don’t work for NASA. An approximate time is fine for most of the things on my daily schedule. If there is ever a need to know the “real” time, clicking on the application displays the time and date in normal, Type-A specificity.

So, if you ever feel the need to soften up your schedule, try snuggling up to FuzzyClock.

I’ve been slowly converting my circle of friends to the world of Twitter. Okay, maybe converting isn’t so much what’s going on as one-way evangelizing about social media in general, but that really puts me in the fanboy camp, so let’s pretend I didn’t let you in on that part.

I haven’t been on the microblogging bandwagon for very long, but in the year or so that I have, the world, at least as it pertains to the Internet and the people on it, has totally changed for me. At first I was a little unsure about what Twitter was, or why people would be interested in it, but now I don’t think its too big a statement to say that it’s shaping the way many people get their information.

It’s even shaping the way the news media gets their news, and by perhaps a smaller margin, how they are distributing it.

In April 2008, a student from UC-Berkeley was arrested in Egypt while he was covering an anti-government protest, and all it took was one word: “Arrested.” In an instant, people around the world knew that he had been detained. Ironically, he had learned about Twitter and begun using it only one week before his arrest. You can find more about the story here.

Janis Krums from Sarasota, Florida posts the first photo of U.S. Airways flight 1549 on Twitter.

Jump forward to January 15, 2009, Twitter once again is thrust into the limelight with his “citizen journalism” coverage of the U.S. Airways flight 1549 crash into the Hudson River outside New York.  Technically, Janis Krums, who took the picture below, used a web site called TwitPic that allows you to post photos in your Twitter feed, but still. Snapping a picture with his iPhone, he captured the event and instantly shared it with the world. Even though all the plane’s passengers had been saved by the pilot’s skills, MSN still interviewed Janis on the scene. Video interview via Google.

I can only say that I am looking forward to what else this world of social media has in store, particularly these light, mobile applications that enable us to stay connected wherever we are.

I choose to tweet.

I think you should, too.

PS And of course, the video of the crash is available on YouTube.

Remember the days when “going online” required some element of work your part? When you had to actually drive to a library, or a university, and have someone help you with the Telnet system? You know the one, with the black screen and clunky green type, the baby web before it had pictures? It was kind of like looking at the matrix, but slower, and with a louder modem.

Then in 1994 Netscape came out, and OMG – the background of the page was white! With black or (as was the case too many times) multi-colored text! You could actually read the page! And now there’s Internet Explorer too? Do we really need two of these magical programs?

Then came pictures. Holy crap, look at that, there’s a picture right there on my screen, put there by someone in another part of the country. Or it could be from the other side of the world, displayed right there in all its 64-color, grossly pixelated glory. But remember, you may want to turn off the images so the page loads more quickly – you don’t want to sit on the internet all day!
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Last night, I received a panicked phone call from a client regarding their web site. The weird thing is that it wasn’t because the site went down, but rather it was because the site was doing exactly what it was supposed to be doing.
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