I clearly need to reduce the number of folks I follow. I’m recently getting more utility from ignoring Twitter than from following it. Sep 1, 2010 8 :24 via Twitter

Someone looked at Powerpoint and said, “there’s clearly not enough abuse of animations and transitions here” then created Prezi. Sep 1, 2010 8 :22 via Twitter

Damn, I went to submit my talks for Le Web, but realized too late that the Sept 1 submission deadline comes earlier in Paris. Aug 31, 2010 8 :45 via Twitter

I’m speaking at an internal Intel event and they asked me to sign a photo release. And people wonder why I mock large companies. Aug 30, 2010 8 :29 via Twitter

I’m disappointed to see so many thinly-veiled product pitches on the panel picker at SXSW. Aug 28, 2010 8 :12 via Twitter

The feeling’s mutual. RT @arikfr I just learnt that the guy who emailed support on Topify is the founder of a startup I’m fan of. Woot. Aug 28, 2010 7 :51 via Twitter

.@United just offered to upgrade @jsgoecke to First Class on a flight from SFO to Denver for only $25,305. Aug 25, 2010 8 :42 via Twitter

I’d tell you what the hashtag is for the Google Apps hackathon, but I signed an NDA on the way in. Aug 24, 2010 12 :27 via Twitter

Heading down to Mountain View to represent @tropo at the Google Apps hackathon. Aug 24, 2010 8 :01 via Twitter

RT @dkworldwide: @akalsey Even worse, airlines then get to re-sell your ticket at a last minute higher profit margin. Aug 23, 2010 2 :32 via Twitter

I just got an email from Vonage announcing fee increases. In logic that only makes sense to a telco, they’re saving me money.

Here’s a translation from telco marketer speak to plain English.

At Vonage, we’re committed to providing our valued customers with the best experience possible through regular updates to our services. Effective April 23, 2010, we’re making the following changes:

Remember when we said we reserve the right to change our rates at any time if we give you notice? Here’s eleven days notice.

We’re adding free, unlimited Enhanced 411 to all Vonage calling plans – saving you $1.49 per 411 call! This added benefit is included in the Emergency 911 and Information Services Fee which also ensures we provide nationwide E911 service in accordance with FCC regulations.

No one was paying for or using 411 services from us since there’s this thing called the internet that has all the info you’d already need. So we’re going to charge you for it whether you use it or not. We’re going to make it sound like the FCC requires it by attaching it to a completely unrelated 911 service. That should make you think the government is to blame. Then we’re going to tell you you’re saving money on all the calls you aren’t making.

In addition, the Regulatory and Compliance Fee becomes the Regulatory, Compliance and Intellectual Property Fee. This fee covers our regulatory-related and legal compliance expenses, including those related to customer privacy protection, anti-fraud protection and number portability, as well as intellectual property-related costs enabling our services.

We keep getting hit with patent infringement lawsuits. We’re passing the costs on to you and attaching them to an official sounding line on our bill, one that makes it sound like we’re required to bill you for them, even though we aren’t.

Both fees will increase from $1.49 per month to $1.99 per month beginning with your first billing cycle on or after April 23, 2010. This change will allow Vonage to maintain our commitment to safety, innovation and customer service.

We don’t have the balls to raise our prices by $1.00 per month, so we’re going to add a few hidden fees. This allows us to still advertise that our price has never increased, even though it has. It’s called marketing and it’s complicated. You wouldn’t understand.

If you have any questions, please visit Vonage Customer Support.

Your money is important to us. Your question will be ignored in the order it is received.

Friday afternoon, Twitter announced they were acquiring Atebits, maker of Tweetie, a popular iPhone and desktop Twitter client and would be rebranding it as “Twitter for iPhone” and “Twitter for OSX.” People were up in arms over the weekend, angry that Twitter would now be competing against third party apps. One Twitter client maker questioned if it was wise for them to bother continuing development at all.

I can understand the sentiment, but once you get past the immediate emotional reaction to the news, life for Twitter clients is hardly over.

Presumably the developers of clients already thought their product was better than Tweetie. That’s why they continued to develop. The fact that Tweetie is now owned by Twitter and not Atebits doesn’t change this. If your product was better before, it’s still better now. Tweetie now has better distribution but that’s about all that changed.

Twitter’s ownership of Tweetie doesn’t automatically make it a winner. In fact, in their very announcement of the acquisition, Twitter made a huge marketing blunder in changing the name. They’ve taken an established brand and replaced it with a generic name. “Twitter for iPhone” doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. Consumers tend to shorten multiword brands to a single name. You don’t drive a Ford Mustang, you drove a Mustang. You don’t use Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome, you use Firefox or Chrome. What’s a consumer going to call Twitter for iPhone? Probably just Twitter, resulting in brand confusion and dilution. What app is that? “Twitter.” Uhh, the web site? Some Twitter app?

There are many products that have succeeded on a platform despite that platform having a bundled competitor. Firefox and is doing quite well, even though both Windows and OSX come with a web browser. My iPhone came with Notes, but I and millions of others use Evernote instead. Every new computer comes with an IM client and every IM network distributes their own, yet alternative clients like Adium, Pidgin, and Trillian still manage to do well.

These alternative tools thrive because they provide a better product than the native application. They add features that the bundled app doesn’t have, provide a better user experience, or give access to networks beyond those provided in the bundled apps.

Likewise, this is what Twitter clients can and should be doing. Did anyone really think there would be a solid long term business to be made around building a desktop portal to a single social network? Twitter clients are easy enough to build they’re the CS 101 student’s project of choice. Building a good one is harder, but a lightweight client that talks to well-known public APIs is going to get commoditized pretty quickly. See email, web browsers, and RSS readers for examples from history.

If you’re making a Twitter client today, you should see opportunity in this move by Twitter. One of your leading competitors has announced that they intend to never move beyond Twitter. You can do what you should have been doing all along, and add multiple social networks, better management tools, and better notification engines, and Tweetie won’t be matching you.

Highly technical people often have trouble comprehending how non-technical the rest of the world (the Normals) really is. The things we see, discuss, and get excited about simply don’t hold the same sway over everyone else.

A perfect example of this appeared over the weekend with the release of the Apple iPad. Techmeme at one point had 70% of the front page covered in iPad stories. Geeks at BarCamp Orlando who were carrying theirs around were treated with awe. Twitter and blogs were awash with reviews, predictions, and breathless fawning over the device. Online debates over whether the closed nature of the computer was a good thing or a bad thing or if it would attract or drive away consumers. Even the mainstream news covered the release. You’d think that the entire world was caught up in iPad release day frenzy.

But while the Normals were often aware that the iPad was out, they were by no means understanding what it was, never mind discussing how to jailbreak it.

On Saturday evening, while sitting at the airport in Orlando, three different people saw my Kindle and asked if it was an iPad. They had no idea what an iPad was supposed to look like.

One person asked if my laptop was “one of those new Apple things.” They knew Apple had released something, but had no idea what it was.

Later in the weekend, a fairly tech savvy person saw me pull my iPhone from my pocket and asked if I planned to upgrade to the new one now that it was out. He thought the iPad was the next revision of the iPhone.

Normal people watch technology from afar. It’s a tool to them, not a way of life. The next time you’re building something that you expect Normals to use, understand they don’t think like you.

Over at SacStarts, I have piece up discussing a common question I get from entrepreneurs. How can I get investors to put money into my idea?

I often hear would-be entrepreneurs who have an idea for a product or a company and are looking for investors. My advice is always the same. Build something before you start looking for money.

Ideas are cheap. Everyone has them, and most have more than one. The ability to make something work is a whole different matter.

If you want to understand why investors aren’t jumping the chance to put money into your brilliant idea, read Investing in Ideas.

Over at the Voxeo developer’s blog, I’ve started a series of blog posts on building voice apps with the VoiceXML standard. As a web developer, building voice apps sounds like a complicated process. From the first blog post…

Before joining Voxeo, I wasn’t much of a voice guy. I’m a web guy. I was pretty sure that voice applications were created through witchcraft. Turns out, there’s no magic involved, just some standards and markup languages. If you can create a web app, you can create a voice app.

My goal at Voxeo is to reduce the complications behind building real-time communications apps. Voice, SMS, and IM are all easy to add to an existing web app, and I intend to show you how. To get started, read my first two posts on VoiceXML for web developers: the introduction where I explain what the options are and get a phone number set up, and Hello World where I create a simple VoiceXML application. Next up will be adding speech recognition and touch-tone input to the application.