I have attended many conferences throughout the years, Web / Internet conferences during the dot-bomb times, general IT/tech conferences (usually local) during the down years. I try and make a rule to get to at least one conference a year and one nationally based one every two years. I’ve yet to get the funds together to do the 21-25 hour trawl over to the US or England for a conference. Even through the IAsummit2007 was very tempting. Running your own business means that taking a week and half out of a busy work schedule to travel to the US is usually going to need a far bit of planning.

We all know about twitter, the online social networking/IRC thing. (got its own wiki now too). Well it’s been around for a while now (it’s been operational since March 2006). So with something as mature as this you would expect an extension of the API onto the desktop and generally outside the browser.

And so there are a range of desktop tools that allow you to access Twitter outside of the browser. What are they like? Some good some not so good. Is there a perfect one? Sadly there isn’t. They all lack in some point or another. Here’s a short overview:

It’s an ongoing debate, do you put ads on blogs (usually from Google) or not. Jeremy Keith thinks they suck and if you do you are an ad whore. Mind you I think he is missing a point in people wanting to drive traffic to their blog. It’s easier for Jeremy; author, speaker and web rock god. People just flock to his blog to read his pearls of wisdom. Others without this bonus (for which Mr. Keith has worked hard - hats off to you Jeremy) have to find other ways and means to drive traffic, be it Digg, Del.icio.us, Technorati or 9 rules etc, yes we have to whore.

If you have been working in the Web Industry for a while you would have been burnt out to some degree at one time or another. If you haven’t you’re kidding yourself. It has been my experience, over the years that the industry tends to promote a very dangerous lifestyle of an overwork ethic. You know the score, working long hours, working endlessly week in week out. This can lead to isolation (more on this later), depression and burnout.