I'm currently developing on the "Amazon Flexible Payment Services":http://www.amazon.com/Flexible-Payments-Service-AWS/b/ref=sc_fe_l_3?ie=UTF8&node=342430011 platform. To simplify the process, I'm using a rubygem created by "Tyler Hunt":http://tylerhunt.com called "Remit":http://protoh.com/projects/remit/. I looked up "Tyler's blog":http://tylerhunt.com to take a look at what he's up to, and the format really struck me. It looks like it's a 3-way mashup of his Del.icio.us, Twitter, and Netflix activity feeds. Simple. To the point. Kind of what I was going for on the front page of this site. Me likey. 0 true 2008-07-07T22:42:36-07:00 article true 12 false great-website-format true 2008-07-07T22:45:29-07:00 2009-04-23T14:22:03-07:00 There I was, minding my own business doing our taxes, when out of nowhere I get a text message, email, and Twitterific notice. I've been singled-out, selected, _chosen_ by a someone or something from atop that Mount Olympus we call Corporate. H&R Block sent me an @tweet. For those of you who don't know about Twitter, "wise up":http://twitter.com/faq. =more= I'd sent "a message":http://twitter.com/NewMonarch/statuses/787931781 earlier complaining about taxes. And someone there at H&R Block must be Twitter-tracking the term "taxes" and replying to any mentions. That's actually a pretty incredible concept for business. These types of interactions (company talking to consumer) never really made sense on a blog. If a company commented to a blog post on my own website, this would be pretty inappropriate. It would be blatant advertising and _on my own website!_ But Twitter is more democratic. On a blog you have predominantly out-flowing information. Someone like me is dishing out thoughts while readers listen and may provide some feedback on said thoughts. But overall it's very top-down. On Twitter, everyone is there to both give and receive. You're sharing thoughts, links, and activities while reading others' thoughts, links, and activities. So it's not stepping on my turf for H&R Block to send me a quick message offering their services in my moment of need. Heck, I kinda like it. 0 true 2008-04-12T14:12:37-07:00 article false 4 true h-amp-r-block-tweeted-me true 2008-04-12T15:02:39-07:00 2009-04-26T17:58:24-07:00