When did Facebook add the ability to update one’s status via text message? Actually, not only can you update your status by text, you can receive messages, pokes, wall posts, and friend requests as text messages as well.

If they add the ability to receive friends’ status updates via text, I wonder what it will mean for the future of Twitter?

I often link to articles about services that are in the works but then forget to actually go back and check them out after they are live. I came across an old post of mine about a service called In2TV that was to be offered by Warner Brothers in early 2006. According to a New York Times article (now hidden by NYTimes Select) over 100 shows would be made available with 4800 episodes.

Well, In2TV is live - and it disappoints on two levels.

The Content
In2TV certainly doesn’t offer 100 shows or 4800 episodes. That said, I was excited to reminisce while watching old episodes of Wonder Woman with Lynda Carter.

Wonder Woman (Note the Lasso of Truth)

Other old gems include Welcome Back Kotter, Alice and Eight is Enough. That said, the library needs work.

The Delivery
The site isn’t very user-friendly and the video service is poor. AOL offers both streaming and downloaded content. Before streaming, I was required to install an active-x plugin for my mozilla browser. Despite being on a T1 connection, the video had sync problems as it continually had to buffer.

I decided to download an episode to see how the video quality compared, but was rebuffed by AOL. Apparently you can only download the shows from In2TV if you use Internet Explorer.

Oh well. In2TV sounded promising. I am sure it is only a matter of time before someone gets this right. Unfortunately, AOL and Warner Brothers are likely in to deep to get their offering on the right track.

According to Kris, Zooomr will be launching tomorrow (7/16/06). As I mentioned in my previous post, Zooomr had a much hyped deadline on Friday that they missed due to a DOS attack.

I am writing this follow up post to express how impressed I am with Zooomr and specifically Thomas Hawk’s response to this mishap. Thomas Hawk is Zooomr’s Chief Evangelist, and he has earned his title (and salary) these past few days. Hawk found my post (I assume through Technorati) and responded within an hour of my posting comments on their missed deadline. More importantly, he followed up with another response today to let me know that the service would be launching tomorrow and to thank me for my earlier comments.

What Thomas did is simple and highly effective. It took him 30 seconds to personally let this potential customer know that the team was aware of the situation, that they appreciated the support of bloggers, and that they were rushing to solve the problem. The followup was even more key. By writing my initial post, I self-identified as an potential customer. Thomas went the next step and contacted me again to let me know that the worst was behind them and that launch was imminent. Had I read the blog post on Zooomr alerting me to this fact already? Of course. But the little extra step taken by Hawk was far more effective. Zooomr took what seemed like a negative situation and turned it into an opportunity to make meanigful connections with their potential customers.

This is the type of personal attention that wins hearts and minds.

Kudos to Thomas and the rest of the Zooomr team. You guys get it.

I look forward to seeing the finished product.

Update: Scoble explains my point above in three sentences (this in reference to a senior executive at Nestle replying to a negative blog post about his company):

Nestle just became a little more human due to a letter from George. I appreciate that a senior executive is fighting for his company’s reputation! I want to do business with people like that.

I guess that’s why they pay Scoble the big bucks.

Skype is allowing Skype-to-phone calls in the U.S. and Canada for free until the end of the year. Interesting.

I am researching internet usage statistics for a paper I am writing and came across a useful (or so I thought) chart about the percentage of people who reported doing various activities online yesteday. The results were spot on at first. Email came in first with 53% of internet uers claiming to have emailed during the previous day. Search was second with 38%. But things broke down toward the end of the chart. How did I know?

1% of online users claimed to have visited an adult site in the last 24 hours

I am no statistician, but that number cannot be correct. Perhaps consumers of adult content do not answer surveys. Perhaps it was a Sunday and everyone was in church instead. More liklely, despite the fact that the survey was anonymous, people simply refused to admit that they visited an adult site.

Whatever the reason, that stat just ain’t right.

I finally found an online calendar that works the way I do. Freak-ing fantastic. I am sold. I feel terrible for 30Boxes. They got out of the gate just in enough time to get steamrolled by Google. Let’s hope that someone buys them for their technology - and fast - because they won’t be around for much longer.

Update:

I am elevating Narendra’s thoughts from the comments. Narendra is the principal of 83 Degrees, the company that developed 30Boxes.

“If I were you, I would add your gcal feed to your 30boxes account so your buddies can stay up to date. 30boxes is a social network and you really shouldn’t feel sorry for us, we are going to be around for a long long time.”

Perhaps my words were too strong, but I do think that 30Boxes is up for a challenge. It’ll be interesting too see the innovation in the space over the coming months.

And it begins. I have been wondering for some months how long it would take law enforcementy types to realize that they could use social networks like MySpace and Flickr to track down graffiti and streetartists and the evidence (or leads to the evidence) they would need to bring a case. Users add fresh pictures of their latest escapades near daily. While I hoped that the Police would never get wise, it appears that the Boston Police just used MySpace to catch some kids (to the tune of $75,000 in damages).

I think this will become a series of posts on usability or at least incompetent practices I encounter on the web. I just followed a link to Fool.com and was asked to register (only an email address) before continuing to the content (”it’s free!” they said). I entered asd@asd.com (literally), I was thanked by the Fool team and was off to the races.

What good does that do any of us? You get a fake email and I had to drive over a speed bumb before getting to the content. If you are going to ask me to register, at least confirm the email before giving me access. If you believe your content deserves an email address, get an email address. Otherwise you are just wasting everyone’s time.

How did I miss this?

Granted, I skimmed over the Google / AOL news from a few weeks ago. According to the New York Times:

Google, which prides itself on the purity of its search results, agreed to give favored placement to content from AOL throughout its site, something it has never done before.

That doesn’t sound like ads… that sounds like prioritized results.

Boo.

Did Wired just change their design?

ps. I didn’t know that Lycos still existed.