At this past E3, Microsoft announced plans to integrate both Twitter and Facebook into the Xbox 360′s New Xbox Experience (NXE) dashboard.

Smart move.

Preceded by the computer and the mobile phone, the living room TV is quickly becoming the “third screen” to the web and the 360 has become a popular method of getting TVs online. So it’s only natural for Microsoft to look to integrate with the fastest growing social networks.

But does this decision create a strategic dilemma for Microsoft?

The 360 is, without a doubt, a terrific platform. It is also decidedly closed. Conversely, Twitter is an open, organic web experience that derives an increasing amount of value from the distribution of passed links. Fred Wilson, an investor in Twitter at Union Square Ventures, recently confirmed this. Facebook, as it methodically opens, is also becoming a conduit for passed links. In short, these services are dependent on the browser and an open web.

Therefore, the very addition of Twitter and Facebook leads me to believe that a 360 browser is imminent. After all, the alternative is crippled Twitter and Facebook experiences that would only highlight the limitations of Microsoft’s closed platform.

Yet, adding a browser is a difficult move for Microsoft, as it brings a host of unwanted issues. Do they block alternative videos sources like Hulu and YouTube to protect their own video marketplace? What about the increased competition to their Xbox live casual game library from free, browser-based alternatives? And (I can’t believe I’m writing this) what about putting a conduit to porn on a device marketed to children?

It will be interesting to see how Microsoft balances the demand for openness introduced by these services with the lucrative nature of platform control. However, this much is true; the Xbox will soon have an open browser or a severely limited social network experience.

Image by Clickr Bee on Flickr.

As of today, I’m no longer importing all of my Twitter activity to my Tumblog. I made the change after realizing that, through a haphazard spaghetti of crisscrossing RSS feeds, I had configured my Tumblr and Twitter content to match almost 1:1. While I liked the visually appealing, life-stream effect it created on Tumblr, I realized that my tweets were dominating my Tumblog despite the setup making me a very reluctant and infrequent Twitterer. I’d like to change that.

Yet, it was a tough call. I spent a good deal of time integrating Twitter into Tumblr just so, specifically removing duplicate posts from sites I fed into both services (mainly my blog and flickr account). I did this through a Yahoo! Pipe I created and call SlimTwitter. Today, I reworked SlimTwitter to only pass music tweets that come from The Hype Machine and We Are Hunted and those that I mark with an asterik (*), which SlimTwitter rightly removes en route. It ain’t perfect, but it’ll work for now.

I think it will make for a cleaner Tumblog and, maybe, make a more active Twitterer.

Image by poluz on Flickr.

In my recent redesign, I struggled with the decision of which publishing platform to run, Tumblr or WordPress. In the end, I punted and chose to run both; Tumblr for short, life-stream posts and WordPress for longer pieces. They both sit under the efliv.com domain, organized by tabs.

It’s clunky but, while I never felt comfortable using Tumblr as my sole platform, I also couldn’t let it go. Tumblr just has so much going for it and I think Marco and David are on to something. So here are my thoughts on what attracts me to, and bugs me about, Tumblr.

I love Tumblr’s…

• Simplicity: Posting on Tumblr is easy as pie. You simply head to the dashboard, select the post type, enter the info and presto! You have a post perfectly suited the type of media you’re blogging about. Even better, the bookmarklet allows you to post directly from the browser when you run across something you want to blog about.
• Versatility: For those comfortable with basic web design, Tumblr gives you full access to your site’s HTML and CSS. This is a big departure from other hosted solutions like Blogger. This results in incredibly beautiful and original Tumblogs.
• Social Networking: The Tumblr dashboard allows you to follow other Tumblogs and receive alerts when others start following you or reblog or like your posts. It’s a minor pain having yet another network to check, but I like it for some reason. And the iPhone app makes it easy to check on the go.
• Easy Importing: Tumblr allows you to import feeds from other services automatically. My Tumblog includes pics from flickr, links to my blog posts, and my tweets, which I’ve filtered through Yahoo! Pipes to remove duplicate flickr and blog postings (a major pet peeve of mine).

However, I couldn’t get over Tumblr’s…

• Ownership: Tumblr is a hosted solution, so they own all your content. I trust Marco and the technical team, but I just wasn’t comfortable leaving all my content on someone else’s servers with (as far as I can tell) no simple export option.
• Lack of comments: Tumblr lacks a native comment system. Sure they have the ‘answers’ feature (end any post with a ? to allow people to leave a short response) and you can always add Disqus or IntenseDebate comment systems. However, answers are pretty limited and the average user may not grok the use or advantages of third-party comment systems.
• Limited RSS output: This is a big one for me. I’m dying to get an RSS feed of only the Tumblr posts I create through the site, i.e. a feed that strips out all imported posts from my blog, flickr, and twitter. I’m a big fan of syndication and would push this feed to a number of other sites (Facebook, FriendFeed, etc.). That’s a good thing for Tumblr as it increases the “virality” of their service. However, using the current RSS feed would create numerous duplicate posts on sites where I already import those services. I’ve emailed Tumblr support and Marco directly about this. Hopefully they get the hint. As far as I know, there isn’t enough info in the current RSS feed to parse this out with Pipes. Maybe you can via the API, but I haven’t gotten that far.
• Lack of source info: This is another pain for me. With Tumblr, you can alter the appearance of your posts by type, i.e. video posts look different than text posts. However, you can not alter the appearance of a post by source. For instance, both my imported twitter messages and my reblogs and text posts fall into the “text” category. Ideally, I’d be able to differentiate the formatting of my tweets from my other text posts, adding a twitter logo for instance. This has to be on their to-do list, and I hope they add it soon.
• Direction: Tumblr clearly has big plans for the future, which are likely to include paid services and, possibly, changes to their current services. I simply don’t feel comfortable putting all my digital eggs in their undefined basket.

That about sums up my love/hate relationship with Tumblr. Let me know if you agree or disagree in the comments!

Image taken from: TravelByPhotos.com

Games, Games, Games – I’ve noticed a significant jump in the quality of iPhone apps recently, especially the games. Anyone who’s been around me recently knows I can’t stop playing Fieldrunners (must. beat. hard. setting.) and I’m eagerly anticipating Rolando. But today I saw the first legitimate first person shooter for the platform: Brothers in Arms. If it looks a little buggy, remember it’s pre-release, but it appears that they’ve nailed the controls.

2.2 & Stability – Apple released iPhone software 2.2 a few weeks back and there’s been a lot of controversy over the stability of the update. VentureBeat seems to think the claims are unwarranted (or at the very least exaggerated). But, from my own exprience, stability has definitely taken a dive. I’m not saying everyone will have these probems, but I certainly have. Now they’re neither a deal-breaker for everyday use nor have I quantified the severity to any degree, but apps and web pages are crashing more often than before, probably once or more a day. I’ve even had a couple full system freezes in the short time since updating, which rarely happened before.

Linux On The iPhone – This is awesome. I’ve been saying for a while that I want the ability to dual boot Linux (i.e. Android) and OS X on my iPhone. I’d love the abilty to switch over the Android for apps not supported by Apple. Well, the first steps are underway. And as great as this is, I’d much prefer an official “Boot Camp” quality option from Apple… but I’m not holding my breadth.

iPhone Outsells Windows Mobile – Not much else to say beyond the title, but iPhone sales surpassed those of Windows Mobile for the first time last quarter. It’s been relatively quiet on the WinMo front. I’m interested to see how the boys up in Redmond respond.

However, it’s Chrome’s Omnibox, a multi-functional URL box, that piqued my interest for a couple reasons:

1) Bye, Bye YubNub: I’ve been a big fan of YubNub, a site that lets a user query numerous sites from a simple, quick-loading web page. (I profiled YubNub once before on my old blog.) However, the Omnibox supercedes YubNub by planting this functionality right in the browser.

2) A New Revenue Stream: I’ve yet to see any evidence of this but it’s entirely possible that Google could plant advertisements into the Omnibox’s dynamic site suggesetions, either by paid advertisements (more likely) or moving a suggested website’s position closer to the top of the queue. This loosely parallels what I’ve seen in the brokerage business aimed at professional investors where firms are doing all they can to move upstream in a client’s investment process by gaining access to their trading book (i.e. the list of positions they need to enter/exit). The logic is that the earlier you determine a users/traders intentions, the earlier you can capitalize on this knowledge. Chrome’s Omnibox gives Google just such an advantage should they decide to use it.