Peter Armenti

I almost feel I’m committing some infidelity by even posting this, but after returning to the elgg site after putting it on the back burner for some time I realize this platform can no longer be ignored. True platform power comes from both it’s community and it’s ability to integrate with so many other popular platforms and Elgg really seems to be finding a way to weave it’s way into the mix.

I’ve been committed to phpfox for some time now and have been highly anticipating it’s v2 release, yet there is something wordpress’ish about the feeling I’m getting from elgg. The development community seems vibrant and professional and the coding fresh. It seems as though there are individuals making plugins for all the latest needs… twitter api, facebook connect, openID, and the likes. I’m not sure I can turn my head on this development any longer. It was only a short 4 or 5 months ago that I noted a yet non-existent community.

Why are they doing it? Well.. I did happen upon the yet to be released beta site for the full service Elgg by Curverider Ltd - Perhaps they don’t want us to see this yet but one of their pages must have stumbled into googles search engine :) Found here beta.elgg.com you can see the many services they plan on offering. It is my only hope that they maintain full source on the free open source side for those that have the technical know how to utilize such. I have no problem with them running a service based side of their creation but I hope the platform itself remains open.

Anyway, I’ll be giving this a full look into. Probably tonight I’ll install the platform into a development site and start playing with it. If I can feel comfortable that this might meet my communities needs then I may strongly have to consider it as a viable option. Oh, the decisions. Maybe phpfox should open source their platform and make money off of hosting and services instead. I think the power of scripts today is all about community. The more people using it the better you are and the more comfortable the individual developers are using it… cause when something goes wrong, you’re not the only one crying until its resolved :)

Well, I was about to go to sleep tonight when I got a google alert on my G1 that took me to mypre.com where they explained that Palm was looking for a few good men (or women) to become real reviewers of the yet to be release Palm Pre.  It took some crafty googling for me to find the actual survey to fill out but in short time I uncovered it.

I should have been in bed hours ago, mind you, but I couldn’t resist taking the time to submit the survey.  They asked a couple of quick questions about what your standard day was like, what parts of the social web world you used and what you thought the most important function of a cell phone was.  I wish they had asked for my website address as well, perhaps I would have gotten some brownie points for this post.  I explained to that them I have been recently discovering ways to blog, tweet, tumble, facebook and more - all from my mobile.

While I have been fairly happy with my G1 and enjoy the “idea” of Android being open source software (yes I realize it’s not truly open source) I still find the G1 UI and form factor a bit clunky and am not overly impressed with the web browser and task management capabilities - at least not when I compare them to some of the previews I’ve seen of the Palm Pre.  I did have an Iphone 3g for a short time and I can, with certainty say, that for a tech savvy person Android tops Iphones UI any day.  I felt SO locked in with the Iphone and so feature lacking with cut and past non-existent, no MMS and no multi-tasking which killed any idea of usable chat applications - just to name a few.  After following many of the reviews of the Palm Pre I’m quite excited about many of it’s features and I particularly want to experience the new webOS UI and what they are calling “synergy” which is supposed to deeply integrate your phone contacts and calendar with the many social applications that I already use.

Anyway, Palm Pre.. if you’re listening..  I would be an excellent applicant to review your phone :)  Somebodies got to be listening, right?  Well, now to go to sleep so I can pretend I’m going to wake up and study for my exam tomorrow.

oh, BTW - not that I want to increase the competition but I suppose it would be considerate of me to post the URL of the survey since the post I read didn’t.  Just don’t submit too many entries ok?  Thanks.
Real Reviewer Survey