Full Transcript:

Benjamin Higginbotham: Twitter, Jaiku,, Laporte, oh my! Building out your own persona: should you use your own blog or community site; playing space invaders on your network, an email rant from Ed, Google 411 and Justin.tv, all that coming up on Web 2.0 Wednesday. No theme music today either, sorry kids we'll build some theme music in later, you will like that flavor.

Ed Kohler: Those are awesome.

Jeremy Elfring: I like, in fact you couldn’t stop, but laughing.

Ed Kohler: Where is that four shadowing.

Benjamin Higginbotham: I can’t imagine.

Ed Kohler: All right, lets just jump into that one right away.

Benjamin Higginbotham: We have got Ed Kohler from Technology Evangelist, in front of me and to my right is Jeremy Elfring, yes placement matters. You can hear in the podcast. says Ed, you want to jump into that right away?

Ed Kohler: Breaking news actually, it's a few hours old at this point, but Justin.tv got laid last night. So, I found out about this through twitter, because chukumentary was up watching last night our own Minnesota, Chuck Olsen of Minnesota Stories, and he actually captured it, so you can watch it on blip.tv, if you are interested in finding out what it looks like when Justin.tv…

Jeremy Elfring: When Justin.tv actually gets laid.

Ed Kohler: Brings someone home, yeah, so that’s it for that news, we will add a link.

Jeremy Elfring: I can’t believe this is as news.

Ed Kohler: I can tell you that it’s not much.

Jeremy Elfring: A geek got laid, why I guess that is sort of news, but that’s…

Ed Kohler: It is hard enough to get it laid if you are a geek, but then…[Misc. Voice]

Jeremy Elfering: On camera! That’s the worst part, how, what woman would agree to this?

Benjamin Higginbotham: Apparently…

Jeremy Elfring: Apparently some people in Silicon Valley.

Benjamin Higginbotham: I guess, I don’t know, what kind of news coming, it is interesting, how much news they are going to be on that, with Justin.tv with all the "firsts" they are going to be able to do. I mean this is just going to be a non-ending like, “I can’t believe you did that on camera” although this was a pretty big one.

Ed Kohler: He was been interviewed by Ann Cury, she was having on the Today, a show one day, Justin is having a hard enough time just with the concept or she was having hard enough time with the concept that Justin had the camera on while he was going to bathroom or whatever, she said why would try and do that thing, “I don’t know some big deal to me is just who I am, there is nothing me embarrassed about, if you are just being yourself”, so I guess it extends to sex as well.

Benjamin Higginbotham: I guess so.

Jeremy Elfring: Apparently.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Then is that in one of their feature, you how they feature section for the day, they are going to feature that event.

Ed Kohler: Yeah, may be.

Jeremy Elfring: That might be pay-per-view content.

Benjamin Higginbotham: I don’t know, I didn’t see it, did they mask anything, what did they do?

Ed Kohler: He took the hat of and it was just dark, but there was audio.

Jeremy Elfring: So, we have audio of Justin.tv getting laid.

Benjamin Higginbotham: All right well…

Ed Kohler: He is sleeping right now, recovering. .

Benjamin Higginbotham: Recovering? , is that what it says?

Ed Kohler: I justknow that he's sleeping.

Benjamin Higginbotham: All right moving on, Twitter, Jaiku, Laporte and the big online scandal that is Laporte and Twitter, you got to do in that voice down there like that.

Ed Kohler: Yeah, so…

[Voice Music]

Benjamin Higginbotham: For those who haven’t heard, Laporte who helped to make Twitter what it is, has left Twitter in favor of Jaiku, I think I pronounced that right, Jaiku?

Ed Kohler: I believe so and it turns out that Laporte was the number one Twitter friend person, he had more friends than Scoble even. So, Scoble is probably the biggest user in terms of blasting out messages all day long, but in terms of building a network it was Laporte, so when he made a move, a lot of people followed.

Benjamin Higginbotham: And Laporte and Scoble are just going at it, right now. Actually it is more Scoble going after Laporte and Laporte is like, “well, I prefer Jaiku”. The question has been raised, why would he do such a thing? Why would he build up Twitter like this and then all of a sudden be like “I'm done here”. I wrote a little bit of an article saying what kind of impact is that going to have on these networks, when that happens, because there are a hand full of key players on each one of these networks, what happens if all of them leave?

Ed Kohler: Yeah, I think really there are influencers that make these networks what they are, and we have even seem on a much-much small scale at Minneapolis with Dodgeball, where there were few sub-communities within the site that were power user of the site or built up relatively large networks over time, but then eventually just got tired of it and they have backed off and it is been the significant drop of entire network in Minneapolis, just based on couple of users opinions of the service, then the Twitter which is obviously much larger scale Laporte really has influenced things significantly, but he is also on a much larger scale than a couple of restaurant food eats here in Minneapolis.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Right, actually going back to Dodgeball, I was on dodgeball, I dumped Dodgeball entirely I moved to Twitter and I just went cold turkey that one, I shut off my account and moved and that’s exactly what Laporte did, he shut off his Twitter account and moved to Jaiku and Jaiku has some really cool features actually brings in your RSS feeds. So, when I post some thing on Technology Evangelist, they will automatically send out a message stating I have done this and so I can even bring in my Twitter RSS feed, so I can blast just at Twitter and then everyone in Jaiku can see it, but it is just interesting that he did that, there are rumors going around that because Laporte owns the trade mark on This WeekI in Tech: Twit that, Twit and Twitter are too similar and that he is going to try to fight for trademark or something like that because I think you required to, I am not a lawyer, so don’t quote me on this, but what’s been running around in the forum or at least in the Twitter network is that you are required to try to uphold your own trademark, if you want to keep it otherwise you lose it.

Ed Kohler: I think he needs make a case if there is confusion and I don’t know if it is there are not, it is something very different from what he does for with the term Twit.

Benjamin Higginbotham: I don’t think there is any confusion or whatsoever.

Jeremy Elfring: I don’t think there is any confusion, I think it is just trying to…if the rumor is true, I think it is just trying to create no one is in, project trying for it no use for Jaiku and that might be one of the reasons why he did move.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Why? I mean he was on a Jaiku before he was on Twitter.

Jeremy Elfring: Was he on Jaiku before leaving there?

Benjamin Higginbotham: Absolutely, he was on Jaiku many months before, he just moved back over, he helped build Twitter to what it was and then he moved to Jaiku and of course as you said, because he was a major player, he basically took down the Jaiku network when everyone moved with him, because a good chunk, myself include else like “what’s this?” and I tried it out and I was this is like pretty cool, there is no API and third party support is non-existing essentially, but there is some pretty cool stuff going on there and so maybe he did that, but why? Like he had this great community built up on Twitter now, he is pissed off half of his people. I don’t know?

Jeremy Elfring: It is a question of, is it worth it to built up these social networks on Twitter and Jaiku or it is better to build something else?

Benjamin Higginbotham: Well to a point, we will touch on that in a moment, but I think the interesting thing with Twitter is that it is microblog as it were, as is Jaiku and so you can blog from wherever you are very easily and you can’t really, there is really no good tool right now, to be able to do that on personal blogs. Like if you are to build your own, I have yet to find a tool that allows me to very quickly and easily microblog.

Ed Kohler:  Yeah, definitely not at Twitter level.

Benjamin Higginbotham: No, not at that level. I can moblog and I can moblog somewhat quickly, but it is still not as optimized as I would like it to be.

Ed Kohler: Yeah, I think if you had moblog where you could fire stuff off via SMS  to an email address then publish it to your blog, you would be there, but I think it is different purpose for that or people who are reading your blog are probably expecting in something different than your short truncated thoughts.

Benjamin Higginbotham: I don’t know on my blog right now, I got both combined actually I got Twitter on the upper right hand corner then the main Tea of the days.

Jeremy Elfring: It might not be the best of all the worlds, as you have your main blog, but when you have a little blurbs they go on…

Benjamin Higginbotham: What happened here, I mean are we going to continue down this trail of, so we move from Twitter to Jaiku and then Jaiku to microblogger with just an R at the end to and then what’s the service after that and is it the same 200,000 people that keep moving from service to service as it going to cripple Twitter, whenever if everyone moves over to Jaiku, what…

Ed Kohler: I think we need, it depends on what people are looking for in these services and where they find value, if it is beind able to do some microblogging or I guess term I refer this week for is nanoblogging.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Nano?

Jeremy Elfring: Yes, nanoblogging. Are they doing it so, as a way that they can blog with just a few short key strokes or is it something where they want to be part of the community or what’s the purpose of the service and Jaiku has a different model than Twitter and that it is although it has it is own blogging thing, it is actually part of like a aggregator as well.

Benjamin Higginbotham: OK.

Ed Kohler:  So, that might be interesting some people, because they have a little bit more of a persona and Jaiku, they may do on Twitter where it is just based around one little thing. Of course there is as Scoble says, because Twitter didn’t support that it's much easier to use, I mean it is just click it in and off you go and then of course there are complaints of Jaiku are still cannot get SMS my phone, Twitter I was able to do that. So, that’s just a service problem, I am sure they will be able to fix at, if I have to spend time and try to fix it, so I just think that’s an interesting area, the Twitter Jaiku and then Laporte spinning off and doing the Jaiku thing and I what's to say that, he is going to stay there. Some shiny object in the distance grabbed his attention is he going to move towards that one to.

Jeremy Elfring: And that may be a problem for him on future if people start to stop following him, because it is like what shining object is he going to go after next?

Benjamin Higginbotham: I see, but he is such a huge impact in the industry, I am not sure that people will stop following him. He is on satellite, he is on terrestrial radio, he is on television, he is on videocasts, name a medium, he is in it and he is like huge following in each medium too. He is the 2 billion pound gorilla, today at least.

Ed Kohler: It is big gorilla.

Jeremy Elfring: It is a very big gorilla.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Encompasses half the globe, yeah no kidding. So, I see a photoshop graphic. All right lets move on. As Jeremy mentioned, should you build up your own persona on a community site, such as Jaiku, Twitter or even in MySpace or a give me another one Ed.

Ed Kohler: Facebook.

Benjamin Higginbotham: And Friendster, whatever happened at Friendster?

Ed Kohler: Friendster, I think they had scaling issues and just weren’t able to keep up.

Benjamin Higginbotham: And they scaled away?

Ed Kohler: Yeah, but that was an early thing where this same group of people who are now on Twitter are now moving to Jaiku or wherever they are today, they were all on Friendster at one point. So, services can die, not that it is completely dead, but I don’t may be, I never used Friendster.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah, I haven’t heard of it in a long, I mean in years. The last time I heard of it was with that Google-Friendster merger video thing where they were talking about the Google grid and whatnot. It is interesting how much of of that seems to be coming true, so should you build your own persona on a community built site or should you build your own website, a wordpress.org site I assume or something where you can host it and built it yourself and basically control all aspects of it and ensure that it remains online and then you can build your community there and you have all control over community? Thoughts kids?

Ed Kohler: Well I look at it, I am really got anything about that was reading an article by Rohit Bhargava the other day and he was talking about this concept where, he views his blog as his main kind of online persona, where he is putting out, basically he is blogging about the issues of the day that are important to him on the site, but on his bio page from there he links out to the sites that he participates and another quite a few of them he has linked in Miyazaki and lots of sites where he has syndicated information on his feed burner rankings or other, basically his tag cloud of his delicious bookmarks, just a lot of different ways to find out about him or from there to he is linked inside for example, for he is controlling his own persona, instead of everything he has done on his own blog. He could have also done on a MySpace page or on some other service, but it is his content and he has lot more control of it, if he does it for himself. He doesn’t build it or he isn’t host on website, he is using TypePad which is perfectly good blogging tool as well, but the point is that he is himself there and his persona isn’t going to disappear, if for example, he had build all out on Friendster blog that would have now, looking back on it might have been a mistake and may be the same thing could be said about MySpace or something.

Benjamin Higginbotham: To a point, but what if you build out a persona early on in one of these social networking sites that really takes off, such as on MySpace, but you are one of the original, you were way back in the beginning, they are helping you to get people on board, just because you are part of the beginning area there, don’t you think that, that would help increase your online presence and your online brand. Just because you were there early and another people are going to be interested in you and as this building up, everyone is like “who is that?” going back to you. Isn’t there value in that?

Ed Kohler: Participating in the different sites, I think is valuable. I think people who participate in Twitter are finding value from it even if they have their own blog. So, it is not that you should ignore those services, but your main base of your persona, should probably be something you have more control over than whatever the third party services of the day is so, but I think there is need to be some thought put into which service you choose to go with. For example, there is a time where my first start in MySpace page, I was doing a little bit of blogging within MySpace and just about random, whatever and later I decided switch over to using a personal blog or wordpress.org blog that I setup. Well when it came time to import posts from other sites, where previously I had a little Blogger blog and this MySpace blog and I am like “I just going to aggregate all this stuff, I wrote in all places and just trying to create more permanent home for myself. Well the Blogger blog was easy, because there was imports get from Blogger and it actually works. I didn’t get the comments so, because the blog was old enough for a how to use a third-party comment service HaloScan and so the comments didn’t come over, so I lost that. Then with MySpace all I could pull over was using in their RSS feed and I only got truncated posts. So, I wasn’t able to get the body of any of my own work. So, walking away from your own content, kind of sucks, so that’s where you got to be careful about who you are picking to partner with on things like that.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Lets backup a step.

Jeremy Elfring: Well, it really looks like it might be a better idea just to go with your own blog and then say “oh I have”, and then move it over to this, but your blog is still your central location.

Ed Kohler: Exactly and that’s what I think people who are saved in betting on Twitter widget into their wordpress site, it allows you to say here I am in different places around the web.

Benjamin Higginbotham: A twiget?

Ed Kohler: Twiget, yeah or you can use them like feed RSS for your, there is little top lots of way that you can agree that I am sure lot more going to be coming out.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Well, lets backup one step and why should I even have my own personal blog online? Why should I have my own persona?

Ed Kohler: Because someone is going to Google you.

Jeremy Elfring: Well, I actually just read an article that the most common thing to do on first date is to Google the person you are dating.

Benjamin Higginbotham: OK.

Jeremy Elfring: It is just a common practice, people expect that…

Benjamin Higginbotham: But, if you don’t have a blog and someone Google’s you and they don’t come up with any information, is that better or worse than having a blog and then go at, then they look at your blog and they like “oh, this guy is freaky”.

Jeremy Elfring: It depends on what’s on your blog, it all depends on what you are doing with your blog.

Ed Kohler: Yeah, if you are being yourself, you shouldn’t be afraid of being yourself I don’t think, if someone looks at your blog and thinks you are an idiot or a freak or something like that. Well, you just saved yourself that first date.

Jeremy Elfring: Exactly.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Right, but at the same time companies are looking at blogs, they are doing the same thing before they hire an employee. They will Google your name and see what they like and if you are being yourself and you are going out and having a couple of drinks and taking some pictures and adding that to your Flickr stream, they have access to this and they may be like, “oh, well”, grumble, grumble, grumble. Your blog could cost you a job.

Jeremy Elfring: Yes, it could if you are foolish enough to put something that could hurt your reputation on your blog.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Hang on, you just said being yourself, I mean there is nothing wrong with going out and having a drink, but you can’t put that in the context in a blog. when you are looking at this online, if I am potential employer and I am looking at this, I don’t know what is going on there, all I see is him slamming down a few and act like a wild party guy or whatever it is, is that fair, should shall I even do that or shall I just hide from it and run into a corner and “no, I don’t want to do it”.

Ed Kohler: I hope that companies are hiring people who have enough common sense to look at someone’s personality and aggregate where they go once a while, they go to a party, I don’t think it is abnormal behavior at all. If they do something that outrageous, then you have to look out “well, are our great employees doing this sort of stuff too” and so on. It could certainly be blown out of portion taken of a context and say if you are one day putting and running for political office, I am sure it would definitely been taken out of context and they would use wherever they could try to bring you down, but I think companies are, this is an area that there are going to be lot of stories that come out about this is such type of scenario in the near future where people coming out of college are going to miss opportunities, because of something that was on their MySpace or FaceBook and it is bound to happen, but I think companies over time, are going to realize that this is typical behavior for a college student and that’s a certain time in their life, so I guess it could be chalked up to use youthful discussions.

Jeremy Elfring: There is a difference between going to a party and I recall one story about one student who came out on his MySpace page he said, “hobby: smoking blunts” etcetera like that.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Like it was just stupid.

Jeremy Elfring: Exactly and that’s the part where I think.

Benjamin Higginbotham: For that’s not what I am referring to, all right…

Ed Kohler: He was applying for a job in Amsterdam, so that’s one virtually not for him.

Benjamin Higginbotham: So, all right, but again why should I do it? What’s the advantage of me having a personal blog, going on, so people can Google me and find me, if they are looking for a date or whatnot, whoop-de-do, right? So what? What’s the end advantage of doing this? Or why does anyone care in the long run? Why am I taking my personality which, why does that need to be online?

Jeremy Elfring: It doesn’t need to be online, but I think it depends on what you are doing for your personal blog. My personal blog is more of thing for family and friends to read, for just daily stuff what’s going on. It is handy for my mother-in-law to be able to see what’s going on our daily lives, so we don’t have to spend half hour on a phone call for just one little thing.

Benjamin Higginbotham: You don't ike talking to your mom is that what you are saying?

Jeremy Elfring: No, I don’t like talking to mother-in-law, that will will comeback to haunt we, won't it?

Benjamin Higginbotham: Oh, yeah.

Ed Kohler: I think there are two personal blogs that, two formats of personal blogs again they are useful in different ways. One would be a personal blog about your personal life where I see a lot of people that are using personal blogs in that sense to replace forwarding emails to friends for example, where get out of that habit and instead just post it to the web, your friends and all I have written that on personal blogs and kind of keep up with each other and what you think is interesting or funny that way or you are not clogging up your friend’s inbox and you probably had friends who are just notorious folders who just clogging in your blogs, because he see everything as something that you just have to see, so now you can decide for yourself if you want to visit their blog and catch up on what they found interesting, so I think that can be valuable and it is actually a better way to communicate that type of content with your friends, but there are certain things that were previously forwarded in emails that people wouldn’t post publicly to a blog and that’s probably for the best, like really offensive things, jokes or whatever pictures, so that’s good. And then the other side of things would be having a professional blog on a personal level where you are using this blog to just comment on the industry that you are interested in, it is a way that you are proving your skills and that you are knowledgeable and up to date on things, very popular say with consultants, because someone who is one day considering hiring them would be able to see that this person is really on top of the industry. So, that can also work as a great resume builder, so you enter a blog in terms to be your resume then.

Benjamin Higginbotham: All right, I will close up this conversation with the comment I heard once, I am just curious on your feedback, I was told once that great CEO’s don’t have blogs, it is damaging to them. Is that true? Or we past that day and age to the point where everything, are we moving to the point where everything is going to become transparent and the great CEO’s will have blogs and they will say this is exactly what’s going on, are we in middle transition area or that just simply never going to happen?

Jeremy Elfring: I don’t think the CEO’s will tend to have blogs just with simple fact that, their blogs will make their stocks volatile. One little bad thing on a blog could drop…

Benjamin Higginbotham: Well, I didn’t say a public company though, that’s right, but the CEO’s blog would it really do that though ?

Jeremy Elfring: I guarantee it would though.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Well every stock goes up and down now ?

Jeremy Elfring: Yes, but things like that do get looked at.

Ed Kohler: I think lot of publicly trade companies would freak out, if they had someone like Mark Cuban as their CEO who is blogging stream of conscious type blogging, I think that could be risky, but like take example of Steve Jobs when he wrote his big open letter about DRM.

Benjamin Higginbotham: You could consider that a blog entry actually.

Ed Kohler: Yeah, it is something where I wouldn’t expect the CEO to be writing everyday, they are extraordinarily busy people, but occasionally they may just want to speak directly to their customers or directly to their industry and what a great way to do it. So, they could be written and they are most probably can be valid much more than someone’s personal blog would be, but…

Benjamin Higginbotham: What about privately held company? Lets say one of Mark Cuban’s company is for example, HDNet, they are not publicly traded, are they? Say better not be, what about companies like that should CEO’s have blog there do you care about us stream of consciousness at that point, does it even matter?

Ed Kohler: Well I think they can shape the debate within their industry and I think they can play a big role in policy issues which is probably what Jobs is trying to do when he did his DRM post was, try to just change the way the industry stood on that particular issue, but same thing could happen with how HD is distributed and should be by the webber all the different options are there, there are lot of different decisions it can be, there is still going to be worked out on a policy level, which is great stuff for a CEO to have a stand on unless it is where one day they may want to take a stand in a certain way, but another day they don’t be…[Misc. Voice] and it is a question of what you say publicly versus privately, there are things where you will have a public position, but then it will harder on someone in private and that could be more confusing in some cases, if you are this what you things up that way, but that’s the nature of diplomacy.

Benjamin Higginbotham: So, all and all, would you say yes it is a good idea. No, it is not or every situation should be valuated on a one-on-one, I am just saying high ranking officers in company should they do it or should they just shy away and say it is safe or not to do it, the benefits out way the risks.

Ed Kohler: I think it vary a lot from one industry to next, I think it is something where I had a hard time seeing, for example a company like Blackwater or some sort of government contractors [Misc. Voice].

Jeremy Elfring: I don’t think Lockheed Martin is going to be blogging any time soon, about daily projects.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Hang on, NASA does a lot, actually NASA has a lot of stuff and sometimes you are looking to stuff going “I can’t believe, they said that”, so I don’t know. All right, lets move on. This one is a little bit more me, it is a NetQoS has a software called NetCasm, I believe it is pronounced which basically play space invaders, based on your network traffic, so the more bad network traffic you have, the more evil guys you have coming in and I just thought that was cool, I just wanted to touch on that for a moment.

Ed Kohler: Does it have the sound?

Benjamin Higginbotham: I don’t know, there is a video and …

Ed Kohler: You haven’t downloaded it yet?

Benjamin Higginbotham: No, you have to run it on their networks stuff, so there is a YouTube video that allows you to play it then the show notes. So that you can actually watch it and it looks really cool and I would love to have that sitting here on that network, so we can see when a video gets really popular and the traffic just spikes [Sound Effect], now the only problem is in, rather than actually trying to fix it or balance it, I would just be sitting there going [Sound Effect] and I want it to fix it, because…

Jeremy Elfring: Because it is fun to watch.

Benjamin Higginbotham: All right next on the docket Web Based Email Rant from Ed.

Ed Kohler: This is just a little mini rant, I was reading a webwork or daily today, they were breaking out an article that PC magazine did, so this is a rant about a blog post about an magazine article, but PC magazine took a look at the various web based email programs like AOL, Yahoo, Microsoft and Gmail and what’s the difference between these different services and one of the complaints they had about Gmail was that it didn’t have drag and drop capabilities, but that misses a point in Gmail, because there is nowhere to drag something too, there aren’t folders, so…

Benjamin Higginbotham: I think Gmail mixes the point of Gmail, because there aren’t folders.

Jeremy Elfering: It is exactly it, and I understand that you don’t use folders, you just search it, but there are some people who want that, they want that capability.

Ed Kohler: Well it is not for them.

Jeremy Elfring: I understand that they don’t have folders, there is no reason to have drag and drop, but may be it is something they want to add down the road.

Ed Kohler: It could be.

Jeremy Elfring: Because, it is a way a lot of people use to organize their own email.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Now in all fairness tags.

Ed Kohler: Right there are tags and when I can see where all people like folders, because I think they are coming from the mindset of trying to replace, they are trying to do a client based program on the web or that what the mindset they are coming from, but how would you put an email in two folders on your computer, you can put things in two labels, in Gmail, so something could be in your specific topic and to do this, for example folder in the Gmail, because it is a label, so tagging more than one way, that way.

Benjamin Higginbotham: I will say once you get used to it, it is actually very powerful, I am just a little bit surprised that they didn’t make it easier to transition into the service, I mean you really have to sit there and think about it for a minute or two, once you figure it out mentally, like “that’s really cool”.

Ed Kohler: Yeah, they kind of need an intro video like they have for Google reader, where they explains the concept of conversations, because if you have an multi threaded reply all email, it goes on and on and on, back and forth between say a dozen people or something like that. They can basically take over your entire inbox, if you don’t have a threaded emails, but in Gmail that would just be one short line and everything would fall underneath that and sorted by time and every single user, every single person is replied in there will be color coded, so it makes a lot easier to track conversations instead of clicking on one email then trying to find the follow up to that and in a normal inbox, those things get way out of whack. So, it is an advantage in that sense also.

Jeremy Elfring: And it is an advantage because you can, especially when you are done with that conversation and you know you don’t need keep it anymore, it is really easy to get rid of.

Ed Kohler: Well the best way to get rid of it is to archive it or you just buzz out of your inbox, but it is still in your…still searchable, so that is very-very handy, because there of course will be a time where you will need to rewind some other things.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah, absolutely after having just beat up Google for not having folders, which I really, I go back and forth on because there would be a really good transition area step for them to have folders as well as they would be able to tag things, I am not entirely sure what they just decided to draw that line and stand if you like “no, we are only going to do this searchy way”, actually I having said Google and only for searchy way, I think I figured out now, why?

Ed Kohler: Yeah, they are not much of a directory company.

Jeremy Elfring: No, they are not.

Benjamin Higginbotham: So, having said that, once you get used to it, probably the most powerful email, web based email client ever built. It is amazingly easy to find content again and just sort through stuff and once as long as you tag stuff, that’s just it. If you don’t tag stuff, it can be hard to find stuff again, their search is fast and accurate, but really if you want to look at stuff, if you bring in multiple accounts, if you want to look at stuff across multiple accounts, you are going to want a tag with account names, so you can find it again like a global inbox.

Ed Kohler: That will help for you do a lot.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah, and they let you do that on the incoming, so I did interrupt you rant, where you done with your rant?

Ed Kohler: No, that’s really that, I was just thinking up on the other day I was having a conversation with some friends talking about different passive aggressive things that people do with each other at work and one that came to mind was, if someone forgets about a conversation that they had with you by a email, if you can dig up the previous email where you have already talked them about that, I just forwarded it back over to them without comment just “you idiot we already talked about this”, I think that’s really high on the scale of different…[Misc. Voice] aggressive back handing things you could do to somebody, but email is just great for that.

Benjamin Higginbotham: I know, lets wrap this show up. Finally Google 411 service, we talked about that in an earlier show this week, we have actually had a little bit of time to use it, Ed, you were really impressed with it, it actually save your butt the other day.

Ed Kohler: Yeah, it really does work I had no issues with it, it takes a little bit make sure of your speaking clearly so it can understand, the city you are in, but once you get pass that it is really awesome, so I had great luck with it, for example, I on Easter I had to bring some dessert and it was running a little behind on buying that, so while driving…

Benjamin Higginbotham: Did you forget or where you running behind?

Ed Kohler: It is just how I roll, so everything is open on Easter, right?

Jeremy Elfring: No. There is nothing open on Easter.

Ed Kohler: Well if you spend much time on Google 411, you could find something that’s open, I can assure you. So, just while driving along I was able to spend time doing that where obviously you all driving I wouldn’t be able to hop on my Google web, search or anything, my Treo little bit more dangerous, but it works great…

Jeremy Elfring: Not pricing, you found that before?

Ed Kohler: Try not to do while driving, so but the service is smart and I think they are on something with that, quality is great and I think it is significantly faster than talking to a human, to get the exact same type of information, so…

Benjamin Higginbotham: It is toll free call.

Ed Kohler: Yeah, I am not sure eventually they will have ads in there, but there are services they will do that today, so I get things is what 800 free 411 or something.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah, but have those services really taking off, yet?

Ed Kohler: No, because I think the problem is that people don’t know, they don’t remember these services worth, you really need to like add that type of service to your contact list, so.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah you really do, but the Google 411 is what is it 1866 goog 411, something like that?

Ed Kohler: Yeah, so you have an 866 number, so you have to remember which toll free number it is, then you have to remember it is goog 411 then you have to remember what are the numbers that spell goog, so there is all these different things, or even where they have made it quite simple still, it’s fairly complex, if you are driving down the road trying to use it.

Benjamin Higginbotham: You think that Google could work with telecos and just get like a 511 or I don’t know if there is anything assigned to that.

Jeremy Elfring: I don’t know, but they are going to bet the telecos would charge them through the nose for it , that’s Google.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Probably, all right with that wraps up our show. Thank you so much for listening and thank you for those of who joining us on TalkShoe, we do this live everyday at 11 o’clock central, 12 o’clock eastern, 9 o’clock pacific, join us at TalkShoe, ID 23696 at talkshoe.com. If you would like to comment on this show, if you have suggestions or feedback you may do so at technologyevangelist.com. My specific contact information can be found at technologyevangelist.com/ben.html, yes I am capable of speaking faster at the end. Thank you for joining us and we will talk with you tomorrow.