Do You Jaiku? A Review of the Upcoming Jaiku Beta Update!
I’ve tried more SoNets/microblogging/life streaming sites than I care to discuss, and until I came across Jaiku I didn’t stick with any of them. I won’t go through the whole list as I don’t want to insult your SoNet of choice, but I was absolutely certain that life streaming wasn’t for me until I came across Jaiku. There are three main reasons for my decision:
- The people there are friendly and inviting, and they actively participate in interesting conversations.
- The team behind Jaiku is extremely talented and responsive and they have created a well organized, ever-evolving environment that encourages interaction rather than stunting it (as others do).
- The S60 app!
Other SoNets might have mobile sites or third-party tools that let you post, but no other SoNet has embraced S60 like Jaiku. As a result you’ll find many, many S60 users on Jaiku but it’s by no means limited to S60. You’ll find people from all walks of life and from all over the world on Jaiku. I highly recommend that you head over to their site and sign up your free account to check it out. Beyond the Jaiku SoNet itself and all of the great contacts you’ll make, you’ll have the upcoming updated Jaiku Beta to look forward to…
The S60 Jaiku app overview is set up just like the web overview, but trimmed a bit to make it more usable on your mobile. On the overview screen you’ll find Jaikus (initial entries) from all of your contacts along with comments (responses to Jaikus) made by your contacts. To clarify; unlike SoNets such as Twitter that provide a waterfall of posts, Jaiku allows you to make an initial post (Jaiku) and then comments to that post will be listed in chronolgical order beneath it. This provides an organized means of conversation that is easy to track and easy to participate in. Jaikus and comments alike stream chronologically in your overview but click on any entry and you will see the initial Jaiku at the top of your screen followed by subsequent comments:
Posting a Jaiku is very simple. You can either select New Post from the Options menu or click on Post a Jaiku at te top of your overview. Once posted, your Jaiku will appear at the top of your overview and as new Jaikus and comments stream in it will move further down the list.
You’ll notice that at the top of the screen there are two main tabs. All of the functionality described above took place on the overview tab. The other is the contacts tab which lists all of you Jaiku contacts along with your phone book contacts. Just like the integrated S60 phonebook you can initiate phone calls and SMS messages from the Jaiku contact screen. I often use it in place of the integrated phonebook because it’s much faster.
Scroll to a contact and select him/her and you will be brought to their individual stream that lists their current status along with all of their recent Jaikus and comments. If they are also listed in your phonebook you can merge the two entries easily as seen below. You can then tab right/left to switch between their Jaiku stream and their contact details.
By accessing your own Jaiku stream you can click on your presence at the top of the screen to view your presence information and location. Location information is stored and automatically updated according to cell tower data, and is shared by the entire Jaiku community. If you enter a location never visited by a Jaiku user before, you can enter a location name yourself.
Jaiku is not just for posts and comments - users can also add any RSS/atom feed they wish and as these items are pulled from the feeds by Jaiku the are added to their stream (you can always unsubscribe to any user’s feeds individually and they will no longer display in your overview). Many users add feeds from their blogs, last.fm feeds, and Flickr feeds (photos from Flickr feeds will be displayed in the overview!). This content would surely clutter the S60 app so most of it is omitted. You will see subscribed Flickr feeds though and by clicking on the RSS icons you will be sent to the Flickr mobile site (S60 browser will launch) and the selected image will be displayed.
I could go on forever about this app and about Jaiku itself but the bottom line is that you have to try it for yourself. I’ve met many interesting people on Jaiku and I enjoy participating as much as I can in their conversations. The Jaiku app gives me an excellent way to do so from anywhere. It’s a huge upgrade from their current public beta and faster/more convenient than their mobile site although it doesn’t include as much content. I’ll post an update as soon as this new beta becomes available - and you can expect that to be very soon!
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