I’m with Ben on this.  I’m always open to new things and seeing bit of buzz about Twitter, I wanted to understand what it was all about and where it fit.  Thus the placement on this blog and my attempts to use it by updating it with various things I am/was doing.  The question remains – who cares?  As my good friend Michael asked me yesterday via voicemail – "what the hell is that twitter thing for?"  I found my answer lacking, so maybe I just don’t get it yet.  I’ll keep trying.  I figure if Ben, who is 19, doesn’t get it immediately then I am in pretty good company.  And for those of you that really have nothing else to do, there is always TwitterVision – an overlay of "twitters" on a Google map.

The good news is that although Twitter seems to be having some growing pains, I have an alternative in Jaiku according to TechCrunch. 

We can all breathe a sigh of relief…

Made a rookie mistake by using MS Word as the place to write my posts which screwed up my feeds.  Should be corrected now (thanks Alan).  The journey up the learning curve continues…

I’m not even quite sure how I came across this post at this point, but thought it was worth highlighting.  This is from Going Private – a blog focused on the private equity business and an entry entitled Buried Cable.  The author provides some great perspective on the realities of Software as a Service (SaaS) from his perspective.  Whether you agree or not, it is a good read to keep those of us that advocate the new, new thing honest and humble.

Couple of my favorite points:

1.  On putting more infrastructure in place between the user and their data

• "…the strength of a chain is only that of its weakest link"
• "’Oh, but with the increasingly pervasiveness of fast internet because
  of wireless hot-spots and broadband internet…’  Hogwash."

2.  On real "use cases" and where to invest

"Still, every time I hear someone sing the praises of software as
service revenue I roll my eyes and
picture "Ralph," the union back-hoe
operator pulling up a fiber optic main, writing a blog post with my
e-mail client while sitting on an unconnected airplane, or imagine
myself working diligently on my laptop, finishing by candle light a
spreadsheet during one of the summer’s increasingly common blackouts
caused by increasing strain on decades old and barely adequate power
infrastructure.

Call me a Luddite, but I think I’ll invest in utilities with aggressive grid growth reinvestment policies instead."