As you can see from the Netmix blog updates and sidebar, I mainly use Twitter as a quick communication tool that resides somewhere between the world of an IM, an email and a blog post depending upon how you look at it. It’s the world of “micro-blogging,” a form of blogging that takes place in around 140 characters or less.

Surely, many early adopters of Twitter know about Pownce and its other competitor, Jaiku. Although Twitter is extremely popular, Pownce takes the strategy one step further by allowing file sharing and video posts.

I’ve found that on Twitter, the network I’ve built so far is mainly DJs who are early adopters and web development industry folks I like to follow whose kernels of insight I generally find useful to add to my knowledge base. I’ve been a little afraid of Pownce after getting a few invites this week from spammers, which I don’t seem to get as much of from Twitter. However, I’m willing to give Pownce a shot, mainly to distribute my mix shows to a built-in community; much like I do on Facebook. I’d like to see them add a similar Flash audio player to Pownce in the same way Facebook recently enabled which has allowed me to simply post a link to my mix on someone’s profile page, where they can play the show (hosted on my server) immediately without having to download it. That’s a pretty neat feature of Facebook, which MySpace or Bebo have yet to implement.

Pownce was co-founded by Kevin Rose, a co-founder of Digg.com, the popular bookmarking site. So, it’s got some leverage behind it. Oddly enough, when I was in San Francisco for Web 2.0 Expo, Digg folk were using Twitter. That seemed to be the main form of communication. Twitter is having its fair share of issues with the Ruby On Rails framework it relies upon. Over the past week, the site has been hit with a number of outages. If that continues, look for Pownce to become quietly take the lead in the space. Twitter has got to get a hold on their issues. One of the main architects at Twitter, Blaine Cooke, recently broke with the company and word on the street is that they are going to build out the next version in PHP, which should be more stable and scalable, which depends on your viewpoint, but I’ll leave that up to the experts to figure out.

On the Powce site, you’ll find a set of Tools & Apps already being implemented to interface with other services like TypePad and even Drupal, two popular open source CMS platforms. And, you can add most of your social networks to the sidebar as well as web sites you want to promote or be associated with.

For me, Facebook is far and away a better platform to promote my DJ work. The group features are much cleaner and the simplicity of the interface is what continues to attract me to the site. I’m on another 60 or so social networks anyway, so why do I prefer Facebook over the others? It seems as if Facebook is now becoming the spot for a higher level of discourse than MySpace. On Facebook, there seem to lengthier conversations taking place, whereas on MySpace you have short bursts of promotion and it’s difficult to add friends of friends because of the lack of AJAX technology that makes clicking around in Facebook a bit more intuitive than MySpace. I think these new, micro-blogging services will bridge the gap somehow.

Jaiku’s website seems to still be in beta mode. You’re allowed only so many invites and at this point, it all has to be done by email, unlike Pownce which provides tie-in to all the major services, including Facebook and Gmail among others. The interesting take-a-way from Jaiku, is that the site allows you to add RSS feeds from a variety of services, as well as importing you blog postings via RSS, which allows for the ability to micro-blog your main blog postings. You can also set up Groups around a common theme, which should help build the community. I added DJs and Tech House to see who would join the party, which would make it easier to find and follow others.

All the services allow you micro-blog to your IM account. That’s a neat feature, but once I don’t use much at this point. I’m sure my friends don’t mind following me outside of IM, but inside IM would probably get annoying after a while. I mean…who has the time? LOL. If you have time for Twitter, then you have time for just about anything that comes down the road.

But I could be wrong and have been before. It’s just what I feel I’m getting out of it for me that counts the most.

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Many of you may be wondering why I’ve been so quiet over the last few weeks? The answer: lot’s of reasons!

Okay, let’s start with the fact that my Wordpress blog broke. That’s right, it broke after I tried using a plug-in from a 3rd party developer to backup my blog’s database. After I ran the backup program, I couldn’t (for the life of me) login to the admin to post anything new. Oh, I tried upgrading again. When that didn’t work, I started my online search for an answer. One I actually never found.

I spoke to php/mysql guy and he wasn’t sure why I was getting “500 Internal Server Error” warning from my server. He suggested I simply add an asterisk after the file name of a plug-in in the plug-in folder to see if one was breaking the site. Sure enough, the first one I changed, “database backup,” was the culprit. Well, at least I thought so. It did allow me to finally log into the administration tool to look around and see what else was wrong.

I went to check the plug-in administration tool, which quickly returned another 500 Server Error. “Huh?”, I thought. Maybe there was another plug-in acting up. I perused the window of my Fetch FTP client to see which one would I choose in the hopes that it would bring everything back to life. I added an asterisk at the end of the filename for the Podpress folder and voila, entry was granted! Podpres is an important plug-in that handles podcasting on the site. I’d received a recent email from someone on Going.com looking for a mix, which said that they couldn’t download from the URL. Now I know why.

While I was trying to fix the issue, my 2 GHZ MacBook Pro–the one StarStyle kindly gave me as a parting gift when they LAID OFF OUR ENTIRE MUSIC DIVISION in December (we’ll get to that later)–went on the fritz after installing OS X 10.5, also known as Leopard. Over the course of the last three weeks, I installed Leopard approximately 10 times after experiencing delays, crashes and other problems. I backed up (very important) and wiped my drive to reinstall. I tried archive and install. I tried everything! You can’t even imagine the frustration. So much lost productivity, especially in the middle of a job search and working on my school projects.

In the middle of the last install, the computer froze at 19 minutes remaining. I shut it down, which was a no no. When I booted it up, the screen showed me the dreaded flashing question mark and folder. A few choice words later, I finally gave up, jumped in my girlfriend’s Honda Accord, and rushed it down to the Genius Bar at the Apple store in the Westchester Mall. Passing off my problems to one of geniuses, I was hoping they’d have some magical solution, but that was too ambitious. I had to settle for sending the computer to Cuptertino for an Apple Care tech to have a look-see. They may have to swap out the the drive he told me.

My optical drive was on the fritz anyway, so I agreed to have that replaced at the same time. Fortunately, to do so is about $300, which is far cheaper than purchasing a new computer altogether. I’m also hoping they grant me some kind of credit for having this problem occur AFTER I installed Leopard, which I’d purchased only three weeks earlier. And, after I called into Apple Tech support and NEVER received a return call from Reggie (ext. 7390). Reggie told me he’d call me back as he’d heard there was an issue with MacBook Pro 2Ghz machines. He said he needed to check in with the engineers to find out more. After four phone calls and left messages, I gave up on Reggie and decided the store might be a better option. Reggie, if you’re reading this, thanks for your excellent customer support.

Now, I have my fingers crossed that I’ll get my work machine back and leave my music computer, which is running absolutely fine on Leopard (it’s a 2.16 Ghz) to my mix show production. Being a technology enthusiast has its ups and downs. Believe me, I’m well aware. Especially, after purchasing Adobe CS3 Design Premium so I could start on building out my new consulting site, Netmix Media. I don’t want that package or Office 2008 on the same machine as my music apps, so I’m biding my time until everything is back to normal.

As for the blog issues with Wordpress plugins, I’ve figured that out too. I learned that there are a few plug-ins that are not playing nice with the latest Wordpress upgrade. Those plug-ins are as follows:

• WP Stats
• WP Stats Widget
• Adsense Manager
• Wordpress Database Backup
• AMM - Amazon Media Management Extension
• All in One SEO Pack
• WP Ajax Edit Comments

Now, these plug-ins may be working for others, but they’re not working for me. I’m going to try to delete and reinstall each to find out which ones have serious issues. For the time being, I’m going to steer clear of these plug-ins, unless someone has any information to the contrary.

With things finally getting back to normal, I can start blogging freely again without worrying about “500 Internal Server Error” issues and the like. Stay tuned for more.