Okay, I got bored – and now you can learn about my boredom any time I care to tell you about my boring life! Seems silly to do, but… I’m a silly guy. Silly people know me, too (as evidenced by today’s twitterpations):

• Kitta Not really amazed that Anna Nicole Smith is dead, she was pretty much a walking talking pharmacy and a bad soap opera all-in-one 6 minutes ago from web
• bbrooks IMAP + RDP + backed UP PST FTW 7 minutes ago from web
• P_Dilly back from lunch, logging into Second Life to check out an idea I had. 8 minutes ago from web
• NickStarr @Shooby Is it fast enough to support ReadyBoost? If so, I say take it. 8 minutes ago from im
• Bwana Forgetting how to embed quicktime movies 9 minutes ago from web
• rael Moving offices… Yay! 14 minutes ago from im
• fraying At dinner with the museum folks. There is much French. 19 minutes ago from mobile
• cvp putting together a temp site for the design firm.. until our backend is done anyway 19 minutes ago from twitterrific
• wisequark Merlin on TWiT? Wow, Dvorak might go wackadoo…er 25 minutes ago from twitterrific
• arstechnica [Infinite Loop] MacTech to publish “VBA to AppleScript” guide for Office developers – http://tinyurl.com/22m9w5 25 minutes ago from web
• leolaporte TWiT This Week: Dvorak, Wil Harris, Tom Merritt, and Merlin Mann 26 minutes ago from im

Have you been twitterpated? It’s the non-sequitur social center of the universe! I’ll be your random friend, sure.

The Deal with Twitter

Sean Carver is a rock star. No, seriously – he’s one of the guys at Microsoft who has always listened to my feedback. Not sure he’s always able to push my suggestions through the pipeline, but he really does listen (and I wish I could say that about more people I kenw). Microsoft just launched v8 of their Messenger product. It’s good, and I’d recommend it over previous versions of Microsoft’s IM client, but there are a few things that are holding it back from being great:

1. Yay: Cleaner, more efficient UI. I’m still not going to switch from Trillian 2.0, but I’m not immediately turned off by Windows Live Messenger’s interface. It’s still a bit laden with oversights, but not so many that it’s painful to use.
2. Boo: Advertisement overkill. Seriously, can’t I just pay to remove all ads from all Windows Live / MSN services? That, to me, would be worth $100 a year. Enough with the upsells, man – some of us just want to connect with friends and co-workers.
3. Yay: Yahoo! IM interoperability is coming. While this is a huge step in the right direction, I think more people would opt for the Yahoo! IM experience – which is far less annoying and contains fewer (if any) ads.
4. Boo: I don’t use MSN Spaces, I don’t use Windows Media Player, I don’t use Windows Live Mail, I don’t use Windows Live Search – but that’s all I can get to through Windows Live Messenger (go figure).
5. Yay: You can easily change the color of the window. Sounds like a minor feature, but try a few different colors on for size. It’s kinda nice!
6. Boo: Tabs still aren’t customizable at ALL – it’s either all or nothing. The “love” tab shouldn’t show me a dating site, it should show me places where I can order flowers for Ponzi. That, and the Xbox tab doesn’t seem to be pulling in my Friends list? That, and the Games tab is throwing back a JavaScript error. That, and the scroll wheel won’t let you scroll up and down through the tabs list. That, and the eBay tab doesn’t load my personal page. That, and I think Messengers Tabs are still half-baked and 90% useless.
7. Yay: You can import favorites from your del.icio.us account. Of course, I don’t use del.icio.us because they’re still blocking Gada.be – but it shows that Microsoft is willing to think outside their own universe (if only for importing).
8. Boo: You can’t control conversation fonts. I hate when people use 84pt Courier New to send messages to me. They think it’s wonderful – I don’t. And now, apparently, there’s no way of turning that off? Gah. Big mistake.

There, at least my impressions weren’t completely negative – but as I mentioned before, I’ll be sticking with Trillian 2.0 for the time being (going on record as stating that Trillian 3.0 is a performance dog). Windows Live Messenger 8.0 is certainly an improvement over 7.5. No instant messaging client is perfect, but if I were Microsoft, I’d start paying attention to Google. They hired the GAIM guy for Google Talk, ya know? No matter, I’m glad that Sean Carver’s team got this one out the door – but I want them to invite me into their office to make 8.5 a little more power-user friendly.

Is Windows Live Messenger Your Friend?