What's this?
Socialthing! is a lifestreaming web application that lets you pull in updates/news from your profiles on lots of major social networking sites ranging from Twitter to Digg to Facebook, even Guitar Hero Community. AOL just bought it last week. No clue yet on what they intend to do with it.
How does it work?
• Get an account (invite code 'CNET' working for the indefinite future), plug in usernames/passwords for all your social networking accounts. Socialthing! scans those friend networks and aggregates all the updates from those networks.
Yay!
• Great as a one-stop friend overview. If you have friends that only use Facebook, friends that only use Twitter, friends that only upload Flickr photos, you can see them all in one place. None of them need to have a Socialthing! account in order for you to do this.
• You can choose to group by friend or by timeline. The former is cool because it seems that people who are actually on Socialthing! will have all their various site updates in one box.
• Useful interface. Clicking on a friend's name creates a new tab just for their updates. Really great if Socialthing! has multiple types of updates for them. These tabs are saved each session - so if you've opened up multiple friend tabs, they'll be there when you revisit the site (unless you log out, or quit the application).
Boo!
• Timeline feature not that useful, since St! seems to update in blocks, meaning you'll see a ton of Facebook updates at once, and then a ton of Twitter updates.
• You'll only see people's updates if you're already friends with them on X social network. IE, if my buddy Sam has a Flickr account that mine is not 'friends' with, it won't show up in updates, no matter how good of friends we are on Facebook/Twitter.
• No 'profile' pages. Socialthing! seems like more of a personal tool than a "Check out all of my sites" tool. I can't show people my profile on Socialthing! where they can see all my services. In fact, it's kind of difficult to tell which of the friends in my timeline actually use Socialthing!
• Have to click an 'update' button in order to see new updates, even though it gives you a notification. Probably so that the view doesn't jump when you're reading something at the bottom, but it'd be nice to have an auto-update option.
FriendFeed Comparison
• Socialthing! pulls in all the friends you've already added on the separate networks. With Friendfeed, you have to manually find/add Friendfeed profiles -- so while I can read all Laurent Courtines' (AOL Games Community Manager) various feeds (including ones such as Google reader, which I don't currently use).
• Friendfeed lets you post updates from Friendfeed. Those updates can reside only on FF or can be propagated throughout Twitter and the like. Socialthing! only posts on behalf of your existing services. Which again shows the de-emphasis on having Socialthing! be at the center of your online persona, but is good if you don't want Twitter followers to miss out on an update.
So?
So it's interesting. I see more Facebook updates than I do on a regular basis. I'm still not a fan of FriendFeed (too much noise, too much clutter) but Socialthing! isn't quick enough on updating that I will switch over just now. It's great to have all your friends from your ten million networks automatically show up, but then again, I could just use XYZ external client or an RSS feed to accomplish pretty much the same. Hopefully AOL will do something great with it -- then we can hijack the service and use it on GameDaily. :) [I think I'm becoming a company gal... ]
So last week during E3, CNN had Libe hosting a short segment on Women in Gaming. I ended up in the background of a lot of the b-roll on the Rock Band segment. I'm the chick on the bass guitar (in case it wasn't painfully obvious).
Also, that's my heel you see on the 1-second drum pedal shot at 1:30. That's how I rock.
This was originally going to be a Best/Worst of E3 2008 post, but I ended up contributing to the GameDaily one anyway, so that went out the window. I'm responsible for these Bests: Resident Evil 5, Mirror's Edge, Dead Space, and Worsts: You're in the Movies, Wii MotionPlus.
Instead, here's a gem of a quote from Chris Grant from when I was driving him and the Joystiqs around LA last week.
"Bungie and Microsoft are like the couple that always argues, and everyone knows it. But then one day he slaps her, in public, and everyone is like, 'Whoa, did that really just happen?'"
- Joystiq Editor-in-Chief Chris Grant, on the Bungie snub during Microsoft's E3 2008 Conference.
[Updated] Clarified a few points to help out anyone who was having trouble. Points: 1) Make sure you have the Web Search module installed. 2) Check your 'target' panel to make sure it's empty. Thanks, @lightmanx5!
Quicksilver, as many have said before me, is one of those Mac OS X tools that is hard to describe, but also hard to live without once you've gotten used to. It's an application launcher, but also a hotkey binder, a web search, a system search, a music controller, a note taker -- all depending on how extensible you want it to be. If you're a Mac user and haven't given it a chance yet, I recommend you do so - it increases my productivity tenfold.
In any case, for those who have already discovered its awesomeness, here's one more cool thing that you can get Quicksilver to do: instant Summize/Twitter Search (by the way, Twitter acquiring Summize was by the far the smartest thing they've done in the last few months).
I've had a hotkey set up for searching Google since I started using Quicksilver (mine is Shift-Command-1), and I use it all the time for quick queries. And recently, I've been using Summize to track people talking about E3 on Twitter. What's the next logical step? Set up Quicksilver to query Twitter for trends! Yay!
Step 1: Install Quicksilver
Download latest version here. There are great sites to help you get started in the
tutorials section. For this setup, you'll need to install the
Web Search plugin, as well!
Step 2: Set Up Query Bookmark
Quicksilver responds to links prefixed with 'qss-'. If you look at the search results URL for any Twitter search, it looks something like this: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=robinyang ('robinyang' being our search example).
So take one of those URLs and bookmark it in a web browser. It doesn't need to be accessible through the bookmarks bar or menu; I hide it in a folder I use just for Quicksilver queries. Then change the name to something like "twitter search" and change the url address to this:
qss-http://search.twitter.com/search?q=***
The *** tells Quicksilver that this is where your search term should go in the URL. If you've done everything right so far, you should be able to click on that bookmark and invoke a Quicksilver panel for Twitter search. Type a search term, and it should lead you to the Twitter search results page. Awesome yet? Moving on...
Step 3: Set Up Quicksilver Trigger
Bring up the Quicksilver triggers panel by hitting your usual Quicksilver invoke key, then Command-' (that's an apostrophe). Click the (+) button to add a new hotkey assignment. Navigate to the bookmark you just created by typing "twitter search" (or whatever you named your bookmark). If you can't find it, check that you have the Web Search module installed. The Action panel should default to 'Search for Text on Web.' Make sure the Target panel says "Type to Search" (select the box and hit Command-X to get rid of any extraneous text, including the text icon!). Just one more step to go!
Step 4: Set Up Hotkey
Select your new trigger (it should be labeled "qss-http://search.twitter.com/search?q=***") and click the (I) Info button. Alternately, double-click 'None' in the Trigger column. Hit the 'Edit' button to set up a new hotkey combo for this trigger. I'm using Shift-Command-2 since my Google search is Shift-Command-1. And voila! That should be it.
Want More?
Here is a
list of more web search URLs that you can set up with Quicksilver triggers and hotkeys. Spread the word. :)
Features
Hands-On: Flower: The follow-up to 2007's flOw makes interesting strides, but we're still waiting for something more.
Eyes-On: inFamous: Sucker Punch's new action adventure is more impressive than screenshots and trailers can show.
Hands-On: Rock Band II: Rock Band's second tour is one we can't wait for.
Hands-On: Flock: We don't know what, exactly, makes assorted spherical farm animals so gosh darn cute. Whatever it is, we like it.
Hands-On: Mirror's Edge: DICE's sleek new first person adventure game turns heads... and corners.
Hands-On: LEGO Batman: The Dark Knight snaps into his LEGO debut.
Twitterati
Crashed a Gears of War 2 party with
@batgirl. Played Rock Band 2 for hours with
@nickchester. Ran into
@russ_fischer like, everywhere. Brief encounter pre-concert with
@majornelson. Finally met
@gamingangel, even though she was lame and totally ditched the party. Drove
@chrisgrant and his band of jolly Joystiq-ers around. Was about to open for The Who with
@tiffchow but everyone rushed to get good seats. Argued with
@GarnettLee about Flower but then hugged and made up. High-fived
@HarmonixSean more times than I can recall. Caught
@ncroal with phones in both hands on multiple occasions (see proof below).
Photos
N'Gai on the phone while everyone else was partying.
N'Gai on the phone AT THE WHO CONCERT. Geoff Keighley looks on.
GameDaily takes over Microsoft Press Conference.
Robin and Libe at El Compadre (with Rockstar Games' Steve Hahnel and Bruce Dugan hanging out in the background).
Harmonix CEO Alex Rigopulos chugging a Heineken while still managing to get 100% on his expert guitar solo.
THE WHO. THE FRIGGIN WHO.
Duffy performs at Microsoft Presser.
Robin performs headbang at Rock Band suite party, or is the girl from The Grudge.
Real meals in last 48 hours: 1.5
Drinks: fartoomanytocount
Correct to incorrect driving ratio: 0.4
Parties crashed: 2
Twitter friends -> real people: 5
VG 'names' met: 3
Rock Band songs sung: 5
Songs drummed: 2
Songs bassed: 2
I'll be covering the Electronic Entertainment Expo in LA for the next week. It's a lot of games, a lot of press conferences, and hopefully some degree of parties, too.
What I'll be doing:
• Live-twittering the big press conferences.
• Checking out my assigned games (Rock Band, Lego Batman).
• Wearing a t-shirt with this badass graphic.
• Meeting up with some games writers from Twitter.
• Hanging with GameDaily staffers, who rarely get to work in the same room.
• Having a great time on [Nintendo/Sony/Microsoft/EA]'s dime.
Check my Twitter page for all the live updates, sightings, photos, and more. Check our Guide to E3 page and main site for breaking news.
See you on the flip side!
This is the summer of making rash decisions (and actually following through).
I decided last night around midnight that the old robinyang.com was way too ... old... and frou frou. and overdone.
So I threw out the old code and put together a brand new one-pager (okay two, if you count the alternate view) by... oh, 1am. Most of the time was spent writing the copy.
It's fun, it's snappy, it's sweet, it's bright and it's straightforward. No bullshit, no fancy graphics (maybe one fancy graphic later. We'll talk.), just links and confirmation that X, Y and Z Google results for "robin yang" actually refer to me.
Check it out here: robinyang.com.
Next, sprucing up this place a bit. Thinking about adding comments again. Definitely need to add pagination.
