I discovered a couple of nice new (to me anyway) features on Microsoft's Local Live mapping service:
1. Send to mobile
Sends an SMS containing a web link to directions. Opening up the web link let's you update the directions and even route around traffic.
2. "If you see this you've gone too far" on the directions - see screen shot.
I've been using Facebook quite a bit recently now that more people my own age are on it :|
Anyway, one of Facebook's main features in my opinion is its developer platform, which in turn means third party applications. Unfortunately my experience of interacting with third party apps has been pretty poor mostly due to the following error message:
This type of error doesn't give me a huge amount of confidence in the robustness and scalability of the infrastructure. Web 2.0 at its finest...
Definitely worth a read in order to see stuff like this. 
I don't get Twitter. I've tried it a couple of times but only the second time did I make a conscious effort to use it and that was at MIX this week.
Popular among leading bloggers, Twitter is a glorified status display viewable to other Twitter users. Now, I'm the first to admit that I'm not an A-list celebrity blogger, but I just find Twittering to be sad. I don't feel the compulsion or the self-involvement to tell people what I'm doing every minute of every day. I don't feel the need to know what others in my "circle" are doing all the time either. I figure that if it is important enough, I'll know about it.
Maybe this is a sign of middle age? I'm becoming a techno-social luddite at the age of 36. Bah! When I were a lad, we all worked down 't pit and if we were lucky, we got a lump of coal to eat.
Oh yes, and if I see another bloody urban kitten "fixin' da serverz" I will scream.
Enjoy the Twitter panel at the side of this page. It will go soon and good riddance to it!
Every big corporate event has to have a party and MIX was no exception. The featured act were The Pussycat Dolls performing at the PURE nightclub at Caesar's Palace. For Pussycat Dolls aficionados (are there really any?) it might have been something of a let down because the performers at PURE are the Las Vegas Pussycat Dolls - not the recording artists. If nothing else, this is a demonstration of the product that entertainment has become: find a successful concept and license the hell out of it. Pussycat Dolls creator Robin Antin doesn't miss a trick. Anyway, judging by how crowded the stage area was, I don't think this mattered to any of audience who were unsurprisingly mostly male.
I squeezed in for a few minutes next to one of the burly bouncers who was keeping a passageway clear for the dancers to get on and off stage, though the only view of the performance that I had was of the large martini glass containing one of the 'cats.
The act wrapped up and I migrated back to find some desert only to run into the entire troupe surrounded by bouncers. I think it is fair to say that most of the people snapping pictures with their camera phones wanted one like this:
Later while wandering around the club, I came across the Windows Live bathtub that must have been part of the act. Branding gone mad I tell you!
Technorati Tags: microsoft, mix07, pussycatdolls
The second ever MIX conference is taking place in Las Vegas from April 30th to May 2nd. If you're a web designer, web developer or web businessperson, whether or not you're using Microsoft technologies, you'll want to attend.
To learn more about MIX, and to register, go to visitmix.com, and to help you count the days until MIX, you can download one of the Official MIX07 Countdown Gadgets for Live.com, Windows Live Spaces or Windows Vista Sidebar, or my very own Apple Dashboard Widget (see installation instructions below).
Dashboard widget installation instructions:
Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger is required. If you're using Safari, click the download link. When the widget download is complete, Show Dashboard, click the Plus sign to display the Widget Bar and click the widget's icon in the Widget Bar to open it. If you're using a browser other than Safari, click the download link. When the widget download is complete, unarchive it and place it in /Library/Widgets/ in your home folder. Show Dashboard, click the Plus sign to display the Widget Bar and click the widget's icon in the Widget Bar to open it.