I've been a Twitter user for some time now but, while a lot of people I know use it all the time, I really haven't found much use for it.  I'm not terribly interested in the minutiae of what people are up to.  Actually I am but I rely on the status updates of my Facebook friends for that.  They're not as real-time as Twitter but it suffices for me.  That's also one of the reasons that I don't update much.  Another big reason is that updating by text isn't (yet?) properly supported for the UK.  If Twitter came out with a blackberry client, I'd update much more but doesn't look like they do.  There seems to be a client made by a 3rd-party developer but, I dunno, I want to see a bit more traction before I trust it on my blackberry. 

Twitter's real-time nature makes it perfect for of-the-moment updates from events, which many picked up on during the recent tragedy in Mumbai.  JP muses further about the uses of Twitter during emergencies:

"Here’s a list of some of the things I witnessed in Twitter these past days:

• People used Twitter to find other people, loved ones, relatives,
  friends, acquaintances. They provided status updates to others who
  needed that information. Person to person communications. Hospital
  lists. Sadly, even lists of those that perished. A classic
  crowdsource-able activity, reducing the workload on emergency services
  personnel. Most of the time, the tool used was a mobile phone with a
  camera.
• People used Twitter to raise awareness of the need for resources. Blood. Food. Money. Shelter.
• Twitter became a go-to-place for important telephone numbers, particularly for overseas contact numbers.
• Twitter also performed one other critical function: the democratic
  nature of the beast meant that the voices of extremists and
  rumour-mongerers was drowned out."

I've also found it useful to track the goings-on at, say, an industry conference.  So I'll continue to use Twitter sporadically, especially for following events, but it doesn't yet provide me with the utility to make it a part of my daily life as with, say, Facebook. 

The attacks in Mumbai have really put the meaning of Thanksgiving into perspective.  Suffice it to say that my thoughts and prayers are with my brethren in Mumbai.

JP Rangaswami points out the value of twitter to follow an event such as this.  He's right.  It's a great, unfiltered resource of news junkies and also for people searching for help, trying to connect, etc. (and I personally think it's much more useful than broadcasting what I'm doing to a bunch of people, for which I have Facebook to do just that).  Anyway, here's the link to twitter #mumbai.  The Guardian is also live-blogging it here.

I caught The Airborne Toxic Event last night at the Dublin Castle in Camden (great, grungy venue to catch raw, indie rock).  They are an up-and-coming band based in LA (Loz Feliz to be specific).  They were on night 25 of a tour of the UK having them play 30 gigs in 30 days (file under "it seemed like a good idea at the time").  And while they definitely showed the effects of such a marathon – the singer's voice started to go towards the end — they rocked. 

Their sound has echoes of a number of indie bands.  In fact, Pitchfork (Bitchfork?) gave their album a lowly 1.6 for being so derivative, to which their lead singer, Mikel Jollett, putting his journalist skills to work, penned an articulate response.  Whatever the case, I dug their sound – reminded me of a non-self conscious Interpol combined with some, it can't be denied, Arcade Fire, what with the violin and their anthemic riffs.

Hat tip to my friend Mark for the lowdown on the gig and, at 6 quid a pop, the best value gig I've been to this year!  Besides finishing up their UK tour this year, they'll also be doing some shows in NYC, Boston & Philly, so catch them if you can.

[Below is a guest post that GigaOm just published on their FoundRead blog]

With all the doom and gloom of the past few months and all signs pointing to hard times ahead, I’ve been thinking back to earlier in the decade, during the dotcom bust.

I was at Live365, the Internet
radio network, and we had burned through millions of dollars with no
appreciable revenues nor a business model. Our CEO/founder had left,
and I found myself promoted to the management team well short of my
30th birthday and with no management experience to speak of.  Our
investors, having lost faith in the prior management team, had the
Company on a very tight leash.  So tight that we depended on a wire
transfer every two weeks to meet payroll and other obligations.

At one point, our ISP shut us off, and we had no Internet access at
the office. I had to get an employee to drive a check over so that they
would turn us back on. Even worse, our site went down when the people
we bought bandwidth from got shut off themselves. It wasn’t our fault,
but we were still down, and the worst part was that we didn’t have
enough cash to migrate to another bandwidth provider. I’ll never forget
one of our employees offering to make the Company a personal loan. I
couldn’t accept it because I wasn’t sure if we’d be able to pay him
back.

Amazingly, our users didn’t give up on us. They set up alternate
forums to discuss what was going on, sent pizza to our offices and,
most importantly, gave us moral support. I won’t go through the litany
of hardship we faced but, suffice to say we almost went under a few
times. We were able to survive through sheer will, the dedication of
our employees and users and a lot of luck.  There were so many lessons
learned, but, in particular:

1. Be as transparent with your employees and other stakeholders as you can be.
At one point, we had to tell everyone in the company that coming to
work was optional and that the next payroll was in doubt because of our
cash issues. Even though it was bad news, they appreciated the
transparency. In hindsight, I would have been much more communicative
than I had been.

2. Cultivate a trusted adviser or mentor outside of the workplace.
I think people should do this anyway but it helped me a great deal to
have someone I could talk to about the issues I was facing and
dispassionately help me evaluate the scenarios and available options.

3. Remember whom you work for and where your fiduciary duties lie.
Yes, you ultimately work for yourself.  But, as a founder or management
team member, you may have fiduciary duties to shareholders, both common
and preferred, to employees, creditors and customers.  Their interests
can diverge even in the best of times and especially so when things
start going pear-shaped. I made some painful decisions that ruined a
friendship but were for the ultimate good of the company and satisfied
my fiduciary and ethical obligations — and, to reiterate No. 2 above,
I’m glad I had a trusted adviser to help me make sense of things during
such an emotionally fraught period.

4. Accelerate non-advertising revenue models. This
is a more practical recommendation.  Even if your usage and advertising
metrics are growing nicely, now is the time to accelerate development
of non ad-based models and prioritize the other revenue streams more
highly.  Your investors and poptential investors and acquirers will
appreciate this. Not only that but they are likely to discount your
ad-based revenues anyway, so any momentum you can show outside of ads
will bolster your story.

5. What doesn’t kill you will only make you stronger. Easy to say, hard to live through. But just keep telling yourself this when things really, really suck.

6. Pray! Seriously, luck plays a big role. Do whatever you can to make your own luck.

While it’s going to be a bumpy road ahead that will involve a lot of
pain for many people, I think it actually will be better this time
around: The Internet, the web and mobile are real media with real
users, real revenues and real business models. Add to that the fact
that it’s orders of magnitude cheaper to develop and go-to-market than
it was then, and I don’t think the downturn in our general field will
be as drastic as it was back in the day.

I went to a double-bill of Indian jazz musicians last night at the Southbank Centre as part of the London Jazz Festival.  I've never seen so many South Asians at a jazz concert!

First up was the Arun Ghosh Quartet.  Led by the energetic Ghosh, they combined eastern sounds with a rocking rhythim with Arun's melodious clarinet and his bandmate's vibraphone on top.  It worked. 

The main bill was Rudresh Mahanthappa, Vijay Iyer and their band.  A much different, freer style and sound than the opening act, Rudresh has some pipes.  But I think I preferred the energy and sound of the Arun Ghosh Quartet.  The most annoying thing was when people in the audience started to leave in between songs, presumably to catch their trains on a sunday evening.  The band took it in good stride, buet hopefully someone told them that it was due to transportation and not people's dislike of their music.

A few things have had me noodling on games of late:

• Yesterday morning, on my commute into work, there were at least three people playing games on a mobile device.  Two were playing Sudoku and the third was playing some car game while listening to his ipod.  We all know casual games are a great time-waster and that a lot of people play them – I was joking about Scrabulous with a friend of mine who mentioned that his wife plays online Scrabble with random people online (and quickly shuts her browser when he pokes in!) — but I bet there's a lot more to this phenomenon in terms of demographics and types of games.  (Incidentally, check out Lexulous – Scrabulous with another name).
• I have witnessed social games such as Singstar, Guitar Hero, Wii and now Rock Band be the life of a few parties.  You might think it's because I have a lame social life but, hey, Viacom's paying a $300 Million bonus to the creators of Rock Band, so that has to tell you something!
• The New Yorker had a profile piece on Cliff Blezsinski of Epic Games who publish the super-popular Gears of War.  I've never been a hard-core game but clearly this is a large market, in fact bigger than theatrical movie box office receipts.
• A friend recently emailed about the topic of Games & Music and noted "Games are to kids today what rock music was to the kids of the 60's. It
  isn't just a place for popular music to go, it IS the new rock music…".  Games are now an established way to promote new music so he's definitely on to something there.

Of course lots of people and companies are working in this area but I still feel like there's a long way to go.  In fact I was joking with a friend about how there are some jaded veterans of digital music who are fed up with that and going into games!

Like many, I am energized, elated and proud of what my country did last night in electing Obama.  It was great to be in New York for such an historic occasion.  I will never forget the energy and electricity of the city during those evening hours as the results came in.  People in bars, eyes glued to the telly.  One election party I went to had tv and multiple laptops to follow the action, one of which had some friends on skype who were watching another tv channel and would report in from time to time.  Then, when the contest was called at 11 pm ET, the cheers, the hugs, the yelling & screaming.  People cheering on the streets, calling their loved ones.  Cars blaring their horns.  Impromptu rallies in public spaces like Union Square.  Free round of shots at the bar.  Getting choked up with emotion watching McCain's gracious concession speech and Obama's soaring victory speech.  I will never forget November 4th 2008.