In case you're wondering why I haven't posted anything lately, it's because I've been more of less off the grid in the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico for the past month or so, learning Spanish and escaping the cold Canadian winter. Before arriving here I was super busy planning and packing and tieing up loose ends. In short, sold the condo, quit my job, and high-tailed it down to paradise. Life is good, and I am enjoying this opportunity to get closer to nature, and live a simpler life. I am currently living on the island of Cozumel, taking Spanish classes with my wife. When we're not studying we are hanging out on beautiful beaches and snorkeling. "¡Qué vida!" as they say. If you're interested in keeping track of my travels, please follow me on Twitter. Postings here will continue to be sporadic, especially once we make our next move to the jungle, on Laguna Bacalar, where we will be completely off the grid, living without electricity. Hopefully all those years of watching Gilligan's Island and Swiss Family Robinson will pay off. :)

For anyone in Toronto tomorrow evening (Friday February 22), there is a PodCamp-related meetup in the works for Twitter-folks. Details and late-breaking updates can be found on the PodCamp wiki.

There's been a lot of buzz lately about the microblogging phenomenon. There's also been some shakeout recently, as the top 3 players in the microblogging application space, Twitter, Jaiku, and Pownce, have been competing for the loyalty and activity of a relatively small (but fast growing) community of "always-on" netizens. Until Google purchased Jaiku last October, not many people had even heard of "microblogging". That's because before 2007 there weren't enough people actually doing it to warrant a buzzword. But when Google buys a startup, analysts (and journalists) take note.

Jaiku was a Finnish startup with a cool product and a lot of promise. Or so everyone thought when the Goog put down cash to acquire them. Traffic and membership initially spiked, then, within a month, started to slide... A similar effect happened when Pownce launched last summer. It got a ton of press, loads of initial traffic, and then it too saw its numbers rapidly dwindle.

All the while, Twitter has kept a fairly steady growth rate, with a massive traffic bump last summer as microblogging hit the mainstream (probably due to the Pownce launch and its Kevin Rose/Digg connection). The difference is, Twitter achieved critical mass - a tipping point - that the others failed to reach. Without enough users and traffic, there's no reason to be on Pownce or Jaiku, in the same way there's no reason to be on Friendster (who's only current claim to fame is being the web's biggest social-network loser). Despite all the glowing press and cool features, without a healthy and active community Pownce and Jaiku will have a hard time staying alive. And that's too bad, because having signed up for all three, I can honestly say that they are all great services. The only way I can see them all thriving is if they all agree to adopt a more open ecosystem like the IM world has done with Jabber. That way Twitter users could mingle freely with Pownce and Jaiku users, something that would benefit everyone. And that would be something worth microblogging about.

This is another test post, to verify that the Twitter module has been setup properly. The first test failed, but that's because I was using the wrong password. Hopefully this one will work! Here's another video to make this post somewhat more interesting...

This posting is supposed to send a tweet to my Twitter account. We'll see... so to make it interesting I'll post a viral video from YouTube to test out the new video embedding feature.