7:45 - Woke up earlier than usual, but later than I had hoped. The plan is to login to work from home and run some models and go back to sleep for about an hour (so that when I get to the office later, I’ll have results).

7:50 - Oh great, internet is down. Guess I’ll have to rush to work earlier instead. This probably means the video I was trying to upload to facebook before I went to bed last night failed as well.

8:20 - On my way to the bus stop, I drop by the sports facilities office downstairs to try to book a tennis court for tonight. They are already fully booked.

8:25 – Arrived at my bus stop. There are two bus routes that stop here, both come every 3-5 minutes. Three busses I don’t need pass by before the one I need arrives. Well, that’s normal for me I guess.

8:35 - Just as the bus finally pulls up to the stop, this lady cuts infront of me. What a bitch.

11:00 – I’m supposed to book a restaurant for lunch with an acquaintance. I’ve been intermittently calling all 6 restaurants on my list for the past hour and a half and no one is picking up. It’s already past 11 you lazy bastards.

Sigh. Well at least I discovered Rain Drum today. Sure, you look like an idiot carrying that thing around, but it’s still pretty neat!

Google buzz isn’t a Facebook replacement; It’s also not a Twitter replacement. It is a much improved version of Google Reader Shared Items (GRSI), with a better comment system and a whole lot less buggy (Don’t even get me started on how much I actually hated GRSI). Yeah, I actually like Google Buzz.

Likes:
Gmail integration
Comment notification (yeah I know alot of people whine about it, but you can easily set up a filter to have it bypass the inbox)
Realtime updates
Comments show up on GRSI for those who refuse to make the leap to Buzz

Dislikes:
I wish they would use the “compact” mode like how shared items show up in GRSI, that way I can scan though all these buzzes quickly.
How a buzz that has been recently commented get bumped to the top again. This should be optional/disabled (how the hell will I ever get through all these Buzzes. Are they even called Buzzes? Argh)
A “re-buzz” option would be nice too.
The sharing dilemma*
It would be nice if in the event that two (or more) people I follow posting the same thing on Buzz, it should be stacked and not show up as separate buzzes. (Not sure how well that would work out, actually…)

The Sharing Dilemma:
Prior to Google Buzz, anything I though worth sharing would be posted to Facebook and GRSI. If it was funny enough, then it would be posted to Twitter too.

After Google Buzz, well things got complicated. Witch such a large overlap,the decision is not as straightforward. I think I’ll go with posting things on Buzz and see how that works (although if its really good I guess I can still repost to FB and Twitter. I Kinda feel sorry for the people who are in the centre of the Venn Diagram though)

ps. It just occurred to me that Buzz would make a great metablogging platform. I hope this will reduce the amount of Twitter ranting I see (You know who you are! I mean there’s a 140 character limit on Twitter for a damn reason!!!)

I’m sure you’ve all seen the (RED) campaign and while I understand the “Buy (RED) and we’ll donate x% of the profits to fight AIDS” mentality, what I don’t understand is what Twitter, Facebook and the useless fluff have anything to do with it. Will adding the #red hashtag save lives? Will me joining the (red) facebook group prevent AIDS?

Of course not.

Raise awareness? I’m pretty sure every person who’s online knows about AIDS, whether or not they care is a different story. So really, what is the point?

(I’m all for supporting breast cancer, AIDS, whatever disease you find worthy of your time/effort, but in recent times some of these awareness campaigns are becoming utterly stupid, then again it’s Improv Toronto, at least they make living in Toronto tolerable).