The network really is the computer

It’s been almost two weeks since I released PresenceRouter into the wild. While it’s been interesting for me to deploy an actual working desktop application for the first time, more interesting has been to see how, in a small way, an application can stitch together disparate services, services that might even otherwise be seen as competitors, into a cooperative eco-system.

While the application has [[Plazes]] at its heart, here’s an example (and here’s another) where I’ve been providing PresenceRouter support inside [[Jaiku]] (that has a way of commenting on presence streams that Plazes doesn’t).

I knew that there was support to offer because I have a Google Alert set up for keyword “PresenceRouter” that pointed the way.

Since I’ve been sending my presence information to Twitter, I’ve started to actually use Twitter again, and I’ve been using its “direct message” feature to communicate there about things that, in a sense, “happened” on Plazes.

And, even though I have my suspicions that it might all be a house of cards built of University of Phoenix advertising, I even find that, now that my presence trickles through there too, I’m visiting Facebook more often.

All of which is causing me to be more vigilant about my Plazes presence, and a more active user of Plazes itself.

After two weeks, the lines between Jaiku and Plazes and Twitter and Facebook are starting to blur and I’ve begun to conceptualize them as neighbourhoods of the same town, or tools in the same toolbox with different strengths, rather than distinct destinations unto themselves.