So I’ve had the Blackberry Curve about a week now and the new toy feel has yet to wear off.  I purchased it as an upgrade to the Razr, by Motorola.  The driving factors included my carrier, and the application choices.

     The Blackberry Curve is one of the most popular types of smartphones on the market today.  Though the iPhone and others are giving it a run for the money, it continues to be a well respected choice.  Chief among the reasons are the full QWERTY keyboard,  great Internet access, and the wealth of applications. Among the other features I like on this phone are the 2 megapixel camera and the built in GPS.

     So what have I been using it for? Social networking of course.  You know I’m big into social networking. My top used applications are Twitterberry and Shozu.  A third runner up is the Facebook app.  Of course the beginning and root of social networking tools is the browser, and it’s also seen heavy use this past week.

     Twitterberry is one of the most popular Twitter clients for the Blackberry.  Twitterberry has a simple and functional interface that works well with the Blackberry.  When first launched, it presents a screen to update your status.  It keeps count of remaining characters as you type and has one button send when your done typing. Another key press away are your replies and direct messages.   One winning feature of Twitterberry for me is the integration to the browser.  If a link is provided in a tweet, you can select it open it in the browser.  All in all a well put together application and it’s free.

     Shozu is the Swiss Army knife of social networking for tools for smartphones. It allows posting to a variety of sites including Flickr, Facebook, and some blogs.  I’ve used it to post photos to both Flickr and Facebook and it works as advertised.  It finds files on your phone and allows sending to multiple services.  The send goes on in the background and allows you to continue working.  Another example of photo sharing that can be done is to Twitpic.  The interesting thing about this application is that all of the real set up is done on the Shozu website, where you can register all of the interconnecting services, including Blogger.

     Facebook is another free application for that Blackberry. Heck, it’s on their own site and recommended.  The Facebook application is a simple interface to a few of the common things you’d normally do on the site.  You can update your status, as well as see the status updates of your contacts.  Poking is allowed of course.  Wall writing is even available. This application is streamlined but very functional. Everything is a button slide and press away.  Oh yeah, and you can upload pictures to Facebook as well.

     There are more applications I’ve been playing with, including the Flickr application and the Google applications.  Google apps includes Maps, Docs, Mail, Reader and News.  Believe it or not, I’ve used Google Reader the most.  All of the applications are tied to your Google account.  This enables me to read my Reader feeds while I’m out and about and idle.

     Games are another story. I’ve not played one game the entire week.  Oh, the Blackberry has a slew of them to be sure, and even has some free ones that are supposed to be fun.  It’s just that I’m not all that interested in that feature.

     The features I’m most interested in, and have been using, center around keeping involved in my social networks.  Photos seems to be universally easy to share, as well as messages.  What I’ll be looking into more is ways to post to blogging type tools, such as my blogs, and Utterz.

    Utterz, Brightkite, and other sites have mobile versions to make things easier though, and I’ve used those as well as others.  Utterz might end up being my simplest ‘path’ to blogging for now.

     So what’s my conclusion after one week? The phone is a keeper. I’ve not even given any applications that require a fee or subscription yet.  Some of those should prove to be really useful.  I’ll check in from time to time to share more about the phone and our adventures together.

Alltop much? If you want to know what’s hot, or at least the top 100 in something, there’s no better way than to visit alltop.com. Today is the premiere of utterati.alltop.com. It’s the site for the top Utterz users on the net.

Notice anything? Yep, yours truly made the page. My name is up there along with such greats as Chris Brogan, Andy Caster, and Paisano. Woot.

Do stop by the Utterati page and check out some of the goodness. You won’t be sorry.

Utterz wants to help you ease the pain, pump pain that is.  They want you to tell them about your pain at the pump, and even send a picture.

So how can telling them you pay to much help? Utterz wants you to tell them and the world, what’d you do if you got those precious dollars back. 

Utterz:

when you fill up your gas tank, just call Utterz while you’re pumping and tell the Utterz community what you would do if you had that money back!

Still need some inspiration? Check this out.

They’ll hook up 2 of you with an Amazon or Mobile gift certificate when they announce the second Utterz Game next week.

**BONUS** up your odds by sending in a picture of the total on your gas pump to go@utterz.com. Send it within 10 minutes of calling so it matches up to your recording.

What are you waiting for?!  Go, pump, pay, and share the pain!  Share your Utterz posts here in the comments was well for extra fun.

Jonny Goldstein is hosting a haiku contest.  The prize? A collectible Mimobot a designer collectible USB flash drive, courtesy of http://www.mimoco.com/.

encourage people to adopt puppies from their local shelter. If you are thinking about adopting a puppy, I encourage you to get one from the animal shelter. And make sure you get that critter fixed. 

The contest page is here, on Utterz. Visit, see Jonny’s own haiku, and find out what the requirements are and where to submit yours.

Just another great thing from Jonny, one of the nicest guys on the net.

As an aside, our dogs have been shelter puppies, yours? Got any good stories about bringing your dog into your household?  Did the internet play a part? Find your dog or cat online?

Twitter was first media source again today, and here’s the lead in.

St. Louis residents were awakened around 4:30 a.m. by a 5.2 magnitude earthquake centered several miles from West Salem, Illinois. The forceful shaking which lasted nearly a minute. As the shaking stopped, many St. Louis area Twitterers (and beyond) went to their keyboards to discuss damage. This was nearly 30 minutes before any word from the local media.

     The full article, shared on the St. Louis Bloggers Guild, gives a first hand perspective of new media’s impact. Twitter was the source for folks to find out what the all the shake, rattle and roll was about.  Waking to find pictures falling, windows rattling, and dogs going crazy, the TV and radio had nothing to say.

     Has the world turned on it’s ear when the first place people are going for live and important news is online, perhaps to people they’ve never met?  The Bhutto assassination news came to me with live reports relayed from the scene over Twitter. Now that’s speed. With the contacts I have, I can get the unabridged version of what’s said at many televised speaking engagements.  It’s neat to hear a first had report of Hilary Clinton’s remarks as she’s snuck out the back at an appearance and a few stray reporters are there to see.

     It’s not just Twitter were the news comes.  Many of my contacts have not only written blogs, but video blogs, and can do live video recording on their phones.  Talk about exciting to not just have someone tell me the news over Twitter, but to show me.  What better than pictures captured at an event and instantly transmitted across the world.

     Not only has new media brought us new tools, but a whole new sense of community to news.  No longer is an overly primped strong chinned host the only face on the news.  Becky down the street can bring me live coverage of her first walk for Cancer. Sanjib in overseas in the East can share what life is really like there, free from the cleansing of national and international television rules.  Jim in NY can share pictures of the Pope, pictures you won’t see on the news.  Want crowd reaction, why listen to some guy on NPR report on it.  Get it from the folks in the crowd through Twitter, Utterz, and Qik.

     Downsides you say, what about not coming from a professional? Heck, I’ll trade polished and good looking for raw footage any day. I’ll trade super quality video and sound for fresh and interesting as well.  So no, maybe the guy sharing isn’t briefed in world political history, and can’t comment except about how he feels.  But that guy bringing us a fresh view, and a view not likely tied to keeping his reporting job.

     There’s one thing I forgot to mention though in my excitement to brag about new media.  You can’t just tune in and turn it on and get the news.  You can’t just know which of your contacts will bring it to your door, and not even where the news might be about.

     How to get around that? Contacts and quality = value. Lots of contacts isn’t enough if most of them live down the street, though you might be surprised.  Contacts who never engage in conversation and never share, they won’t be of much news value either.  But you can cultivate great contacts.  I’ll leave that for you the reader to think about how to do it.

     To wrap up, is Twitter and such the end all and be all of getting your news? No, but it’s quickly becoming the place in my day to day life that I find out first about breaking news.

     What about you? Has your online network of friends, contacts, and feeds brought new life into finding out about the world around you? Or are you certain that the only good news is brought through nice safe professional channels, like Fox and CNN? Where do you stand?  Is a bloggers voice good enough? Or do you only read the newspaper?  Tell me where you get your info.

     Do we need fancy websites, new applications, and cool new gizmos to have social networks? One might think so in this day and age.  High school and college kids have one up on older folks here, the younger folks are painfully aware of their social networks.

     The tools we have today may seem like the end all of social networking, but networking has been a skill since there were more than two humans.  You and I are involved not just in networks enabled by Twitter or Facebook, but more likely, those tools support networks older than either one.

     In fact, the very tools many of us have integrated thoroughly into our lives, have become even less enablers to our networks, but perhaps barriers and resistors to the growth of those networks.  In the past, one simply became part of our networks by working at the same place, living in the same neighborhood, attending the same school, or shopping at the same local market.  Today, many of us don’t consider those very same folks to be part of our social network, even folks we spend 40 hours a week next to.

     Before I continue, I’m guilty of this same thing.  Not intentionally, but by default.  If people at work don’t make themselves more accessible than loaning me a pen, they’re pretty much out.  If my neighbor doesn’t borrow sugar or loan me their lawnmower, we’d hardly know their names.

     Now let’s assume the same neighbor signed up on Twitter, and somehow found out my Twitter ID, would that situation change?  Well it depends.  Is he a technofile? A photographer? Does he ooh and ah over the latest social media tool?  Ultimately, does he enable my life and success in some way.  If not? He’s likely just going to be someone that knows me and never engages with me, or vice versa. Wait, that’s much like our current arrangement.

    Magnify this situation to include the thousands of random people out there that might actually have some similar interests to you or I, but we’ve never met, never chatted, and never heard of them.  To make this more complicated, they are shy, or protective, or socially inept, so they don’t use even a name. Lots won’t have even a blog or some form of reference about themselves.  These are the people that want in our networks.

    These people, neighbors, strangers, spammers, odd followers and more want into our networks.  They follow us on Twitter, Utterz, Facebook and our blogs.  Some will track down our emails, and even rarer I hope, our phone numbers.  The contacts start showing up all over the place, first with comments, then emails, linking us or stealing our content, or even reaching us on the phone.  Some may just knock on our door here and there and follow quietly beside us.  But they all want in.

    My question though, even if we didn’t invite them or encourage them, and we don’t add them back, are they really outside our social network?  I’d contend that they are in our network, want them or no.  Oh, you and I may not engaged them, but they’re still there.  We can ignore them even, but we still notice them.  Our network notices them as well.  Heck, the blogosphere will notice them too.

    What should we do then? I say, other than the spammers and the really odd ones, why not cultivate them to become real contributing members of your inner circle?  They are already part of your life, why not make them a better part of your life.  Speak to them about the type of folks you like to socialize with, the type of people you want to do business with, and the ones you want to create art with.  Don’t give out your home address or anything but help them understand where your heart lives.  Let them know how they can be part of your success in work, play, and creation.  One can never have too much support.

     And the rest, the ones you can’t stomach, block the ones you can, and give little or no press to the rest.  Don’t blow your energy over them.

    Hopefully I’ve given you something to think about, and helped you realize that even folks on the edge of your life are in your networks, sometimes even unintentionally. Why not cultivate them to help move your life along?

     Who are you neglecting on the edges?

I’m sitting here and reminiscing about coloring books and crayons.  I used to love those as a kid; didn’t you?  The clean, colorless world of those pages, just waiting to be brought to life by us and our imaginations.

Yet those pages weren’t blank, nor were they unscripted. In contrast, each page told a story, or part of a story. The stories could be short and happy, longer and dramatic, and likewise the scenes simple or complex with many turns, and twists, and corners.  They all lacked one thing though, life.

Those stories weren’t truly told until we’d put crown to paper and told our version of the story.  Our sky could be purple, and our grass orange, while the cat was pink, and the water black, all just for us. We took those simple tools, the crayons, and breathed our life into those pages.  Each one uniquely our own. Each a mix of our experience and vision.

I’m coming to visualize the Internet and social media the same way, like a huge coloring book.  The pages are blogs, YouTube, Utterz, Facebook, and more.  What do we color them in with? Our own hands, voices, spirit, and experience. Our own vision.

YouTube is the story of sharing videos, and it’s only one coloring books worth though. It’s waiting out there for you and I to take our own pack of colors to it, and make reality  of our experiences and dreams.  We don’t have to have blue skies, and brown dogs when we flesh out a video, ours can be a world of the mildly different with funky colors, all the way to the supernatural, with ghosts and things that go bump in the night.

Facebook and Utterz are special coloring books if you will. In these, you can use all types of crayons, from video to voice, text and more.  There are many avenues of expression there.

So many choices, and so little time? Which book will you pick, and what color will your skies be?

—

Special thanks to Daniel Johnson Jr for dragging me into ooVoo to chat about blogging, podcamps and more.

Social media mavens talk about doing something useful with it, but we often here more talk about than actual making of media.  Or the media created is more navel gazing than content.  Live Readings aims to fight that tide.

The Live Readings blog is all about individual contributors from around the world contributing  by reading aloud poetry and prose.  An ever growing number of contributors have taken time to record themselves reading the favorite poems, sonnets, and short literary excerpts.

Voice readers of all stripes are welcome. Don’t be shy; be a contributor.  Anyone can join in the fun.

It’s easy but does require a small amount of effort:

1. Join Wordpress.com

2. Sign up or be invited to be a contributor on the Live Readings blog.

3. Join Utterz

4. Set up an Utterz connection so you can post there.

5. Record your reading on Utterz and Share It to the blog. Voila!

All of the Live Readings contributors are using that method.  You can ask questions in the comments here or over there.  Drop me an email if you’d like as well. tojosan — gmail.com.

So what has social media brought to you today?