Have you checked out twitter? I’ve been seeing it mentioned on the Web a lot lately, and read about it in places like Time. It’s an application you can access from web, SMS, etc., that lets you post a little message – up to 140 characters like a text message.

You can make it visible to the world or not, but it gets distributed to anybody who’s signed up to follow what you’re doing. And that’s what you do: you type in what you’re doing. If you’re late for a meeting, or eating a fried tofurkey sandwich – whatever you want your friends to know you’re up to.

I guess it’s sort of like the next generation IM, except that it’s not really a conversation. You don’t sit there waiting for the other person to type, which was what killed Instant Messaging for me. You can reply if you want, but it’s not expected as far as I can tell.

You just answer the question “What are you doing?” and move on, and update it next time you feel like it. (Actually, many people just type whatever they feel moved to. Just a bit of blather, or a celebrity sighting.)

In a sense, it’s like a mini blog, in which the blogger — tweeter, twitterer? — just briefly posts what’s up. Others can subscribe to the feed, like we do with blogs, via computer, cell phone, etc. And if it’s not marked private, the feed becomes part of the global expression of being late and eating tofurkey.

It’s pretty cool. I want to play with it but I need friends to do it too. So if you and I are acquainted, I think you should go and sign up. Then e-mail me your user name, and I’ll send you mine.

Google Enters the Wireless World – New York Times: “SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 5 — Google took its long-awaited plunge into the wireless world today, announcing that it is leading a broad industry alliance to transform mobile phones into powerful mobile computers that could accelerate the convergence of computing and communications.”

Oh yes, boys and girls. Now we’re starting to get somewhere. The time has come to take the mobile phone from mere communication, thence to curiosity and toy, to a truly useful tool for grownups. And if there’s a company to lead that development, it’s Google.

In my humble opinion, Google has long since left Yahoo by the roadside, when it comes to developing useful platforms and clients, rather than just buying them and throwing up a coat of company paint.

Here’s a tip for those who like to read blogs:

I like to use an aggregator to read blogs and news. An aggregator is a Web site that serves to gather information published by different sources – such as blogs – and organises it together in a common search interface. It can do this for any Web site that publishes an RSS feed. RSS stands for Rich Site Summary (RSS 1.0), or Really Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0). Here’s an explanation.

Here’s another explanation, which includes Atom, another kind of feed that’s like RSS.

Basically, you use the aggregator to subscribe to the blogs or new sources you like, and it keeps track of them for you. So I can go to one place and see all your blogs, and whether they’ve been updated, see samples of new posts, and click through to read the real thing.

There are many different aggregators, and for the past few years, I’ve been using Bloglines. It’s OK, but it’s complicated. Even the new Beta is complicated. It causes a tight feeling between my shoulder blades and a vague knot of aaarrgh right above my left eye.

Google and MyYahoo have both gotten into the aggregating game, with Google Reader and MyYahoo! I’ve tried them both, and decided to go with Google Reader. It’s pretty simple compared to Bloglines, and it has a lot more functions for labeling and sharing content than Yahoo.

On this blog, you will find a section in the right column called Subscribe to Metaphor. It offers subscription through several of the more popular aggregators.

That’s it. Bon Jour. Y’all come back now.

Recently, my trusty Mozilla Firefox web browser has been loading kind of slow, acting a little glitchy. So I uninstalled it – completely, I thought – and used my not as trusty Internets Exploder browser to navigate to mozilla.com for a new one. It’s working fine, so far.

Wanna know something weird though? All my toolbar add-ons, saved stuff, bookmarks, etc., are still there. I wouldn’t have cared otherwise, because that’s all backed up on MyYahoo! anyhoo.

But where was it all stored, if I uninstalled the software? How do they do that?

Now I realize that doing the uninstall through the control panel does not remove the software from the hard drive. It uninstalls it, unregisters it – removes it from the Registry, so that it’s just sitting there, disassociated. Estranged, in a sense. It’s a download that is no longer installed. But I thought that if you uninstalled it, add-ons like Yahoo Toolbar and cookies were wiped. I guess not.

Confusing.

Yahoo! photos is shutting down on 9/20/07, believe it or not. Who would’ve thought that anything at Yahoo! would be circling the drain? Here’s a good article about the situation at zdnet.com.

So you’ve got a shipload of photos on yahoo photos? No need to panic, unless you just generally enjoy freaking out. Apparently, they’re helping move stuff to other sites.

Want my advice? Get Picasa from Google. Then you can use Google’s online Picasa web albums for your photo album sharing. It’s pretty cool. Picasa is not one of the photo sites that Y! photos is helping move your stuff to. Google and Y! are rivals. So you’ll have to do some uploading, but with Picasa, it’s super easy, once you get things set up.

Picasa’s web function is for album sharing – like when you have a bunch of shots from a vacation or holiday. Flickr is probably the best for individual photos – your favorite shots. Ironically, it’s owned by Yahoo.

I just saw a commercial for Cox High Speed Internet on TV. They were touting their “crazy fast” download speeds. I decided to run a speed test to see how fast I’m cruising here.

8161 Kbps

Back in my AOL days, I had a 56 kpbs modem, but usually was lucky to log on at 42. When I first got cable, I was impressed with 3000.

I’m getting dizzy.