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This is how I imagine the life of a (frustrated) ‘social’ite in 2010:

” Just reached the hotel room. “

Checklist:

• Buzz ..done!
• Twitter.. done!
• Facebook..done!
• Latitude..updated with location
• Foursquare..checked in, badge unlocked
• Flickr..Hotel photo added
• Gowalla..stamped
• Jaiku.. not connecting.. don’t care
• Wave’d family about arrival..

All done.. ♫♫ Time to relax.. ♫♫

… 2 minutes later…

Oh shit! Oh shit! I forgot to update my LinkedIn status.  How will my professional contacts know which hotel I am staying in?? Fkkkkkkkkk!

What are we getting ourselves into?

Are we expected to spend our remaining life updating everyone about our ‘status’ so that they know what we are up to every second? Really, is that what we want?

There was a time (many many years ago!) when being ‘smart’ could earn you that ‘big’ job (read CEO).  It could earn you all the money you wanted, all the success you ever needed. Life was supposedly good. And then came the bummer. You got to be ‘social’!

Getting the ‘big’ job (again read CEO), the money, the success, all became significantly dependent on who you knew, how good your network was, you’re social presence (aka visibility) and so on.

Now compare this to the evolution of your beloved cellular phones!

The cellular phones (The Germans like to call them ‘handy’!  I prefer to call them just ‘Mobiles’) first became ‘smart’ when Symbian entered our lives. Wikipedia will probably tell you something else but I still stand by the fact that the Symbian OS really triggered the beginning of the ‘smartphone’. The Nokia Communicators, the Nokia 6600, 7650 and a whole bunch of smart phones flooded the world. The phones came with cameras that could take still images and videos, had the ability to install applications, allowed personalization with wallpapers, mp3 ringtones and screensavers, and made it possible for the first time to connect to the internet to check your email and enjoy the pretty basic and useless WAP sites! For most people, who were used to phones with around five built-in ring-rings, this was a miracle!

While people got used to these tiny miracles, the phone manufacturers kept making the phones smarter. Blackberry was soon born to destroy whatever personal life remained for the mid and senior level employees of many companies by being designed to push emails in their way at every moment of the day.

It was still all about making the phone smarter and smarter to do more tasks and make our lives simpler. Or at least that’s what each new phone claimed.

All was well, our phones were smart and our lives were supposedly simple. And then again, came the bummer! Our phones got to get ‘social’!

While the Apple iPhone wasn’t launched with the intention of being a ‘social’ phone, the credit for popularizing the concept does go to the iPhone simply because it created the largest collection of phone owners having bundled unlimited data with their subscription. Being connected to the internet all the time, made it the right platform to launch a slew of social tools which were an offshoot of the then increasingly popular and very social Web 2.0. Be it Myspace, Facebook or LinkedIn, it was all about the ‘social’ aspect.

Now, the focus has clearly shifted towards being as ‘social’ as possible! Having that 12MP camera isn’t going to do any good and the manufacturers know it.  The Android OS was born to make it simpler for the phone manufacturers to produce phones that were completely social (and at the same time keeping the market share growing for Mr. Google). The Palm WebOS also focuses on the social aspect (or was actually born for it!).  Every new phone is busy boasting about how it can merge all your contacts from your phone, (g)(e)mail, facebook, twitter, et al. Or how it can automatically leak your location and update all your social statuses (Read Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare etc).  Or how it can add layars (the ‘a’ is intentional) to what you see with all sorts of wanted and unwanted information thrown at you. Soon Google wave will add to the list. It goes on..

Bottom line: The cell-phones have moved from ‘smart’ to ‘social’ and it’s time for you to jump on the bandwagon! Let me see your tweets! Let me see your locations! Let me see your foursquare check-ins! I need that content from all of you else the ‘social’ world will get boring!

As a sidenote, I am quite excited about the forthcoming Motorola Droid. Check it out!

1. While reading an article on Forbes India, I came across this controversial statement: “Facebook has more followers than Buddha” and it got me thinking. and thinking. and thinking.
2. When you ask most people what is it they use the most in their life? the answer will most commonly be Google!

So starting with these two statements as a base, lets get started.

How do we define religion?  According to Wiktionary - The top three definitions of religion are:

1. “A collection of practices, based on beliefs and teachings that are highly valued”

2. “Any practice that someone or some group is seriously devoted to.”

3. “Any ongoing practice one engages in, in order to shape their character or improve traits of their personality.”

Now, let’s go back to Google. Which one of the above three definitions applies to Google?

Did I just hear you say all? Yes, all it is!

Coming back to the statement: “Facebook has more followers than Buddha”. Ok, agreed. In that case, what should we say about Google?

Google probably has the most users in the world. People ‘practise’ Google. People are more devoted to Google than anything else in the internet world. Google rules our lives.

• It started G.mail when it wanted to change the way we mail.
• It started G.Talk when it wanted to change the way we chat.
• It started G.Maps when it wanted to change the way we travel.
• It started G.Video / bought YouTube when it wanted to change what we see.
• It started G.Wave when it wanted to change the way we communicate.

Essentially, it has the power to change our way of lives. It has the power to change us! So, can we call it the Almighty Google?

• Start praying when Google is down?
• Start fasting when Google is down for more than an hour?
• Start protesting and burning effigies of the Chinese Government when they threaten to ban Google?
• Every Sunday, visit Picassa and upload all our sins of the week in the hope that we may be forgiven?

Oh, what am I getting at?

I recently came across a very intelligent web app from a startup in Netherlands. Thymer is a web based project management and task planning tool which makes this usually dull chore into an interesting and simple activity. The whole concept revolves around using a flexible and less complicated intuitive system where tasks can be added from multiple commonly used sources such as email, twitter or simply using the web interface.

This currently invite-only beta version has impressed me more than any other web application in the last couple of months. The simplistic yet highly functional interface is very easy to use yet so powerful. Give it a shot and I am sure you’ll love it! DM me on twitter if you need an invite.

I finally managed to find the time to move to WordPress. Joomla was good but performance issues with my previous host and a not-so-great UI finally tilted me in WP’s favour. As of now the performance is pretty good and I am happy with the more user-friendly blogging capabities offered by WP.

Now that the foundation is in place, the posts will follow. A lot to come! Stay tuned.