CouchSlobs - A Monument To Human Idleness

I sat down this morning to find a thing I could write about. I scowled through my rss reader for marked gadgets that at one point or another I thought might be nonsensical or amusing. After couple of hours of on and off rummaging for the perfect thing to mock, I found the best thing ever. It is stupid, useless, immoral (not that I’m a moral compass or anything) and complete and utter turd. Then I got the following email.

Yes, that’s right our prime slob and resident Fry expert bertas has joined this weeks favorite pastime of all geeks and twits. I’m talking about Plurk.  For all those still not familiar with the phenomenon of micro-blogging made popular by Twitter, Plurk is a new social network - micro-blogging - video and picture sharing site; so I decided to make it a gadget of the week instead.

I won’t make a stretch when I say that Plurk became mainstream this Sunday when mentioned on Leo Lapotrte’s twit and all geeks and geekettes, including your’s truly, rushed to  join. To explain what this thing I’m rambling about actually is; I’m going to quote Pluk’s authors and just copy their explanation. Plurk is: “A really snazzy site that allows you to showcase the events that make up your life, and follow the events of the people that matter to you, in deliciously digestible short messages called plurks.” To complicate it a little more, I’m just going to add that it is a medium for rambling about everything in your life from intestinal problems to politics (like two aren’t the same). Also, like all social networks, I’m sure soon it will be a perfect instrument for spamming.

Even though it is still in the early stages and there is no user customization to the whole experience, it is one of the better services I came across. Plurk surpasses Twitter in some aspects, like insertion of pictures and videos in your posts, which it actually makes quite easy. You just have to paste the URL of the attachment you want to share with your friends and it is automatically added to the post. You might say that this was also possible with certain hacks in Twitter, but seriously I don’t understand why one should have to hack this. If I wanna share the picture let me. The thing I’m missing, that non of the competitors have, is the built-in URL shortener. One feature I really like about Plurk is it’s timeline presentation of posts. This feature is nicely implemented and differentiates them from the competition. Also it makes it easier for me to follow my blood sugar by my crankiness level.

Even though Plurk has some shortcomings, now with Twitter being always down, it is a great substitute with lots of potential. Now that it has come into the picture, let’s hope authors will open themselves to independent developers to help them promote the site and make it even more popular.

Befriend us on Plurk:
http://www.plurk.com/user/bertas
http://www.plurk.com/user/marcop

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